Földvári Books

1940 Official Note about the Nazi-Looted and Privately Sold Klimt-Painting, the Water Serpents II

[Klimt, Gustav]; [Ucicky, Gustav]

[Water Serpents II. Klimt’s Oilpainting. ]. Aktenvermerk. Betrifft: Ölgemälde des Malers Klimt (“Wasserschlangen”).

Signed, dated in Vienna on January 18, 1940. 1 page, typed document. Punched twice at the left edge. In fine condition.

Important document about the Nazi-looted and subsequently privately sold Klimt’s masterpiece, the Water Serpents II.

Gustav Klimt’s Water Serpents II was painted between 1904 and 1907 and was originally commissioned for and owned by Jenny (Eugenie) Steiner (neé Pulitzer; 1863–1958), the wife (and at the time of the issue of the present document already the widow) of a wealthy Viennese Jewish industrialist. The painting was apparently an asset of the late husband’s silk company, “Brüder Steiner” as it is referred to in the document. In June 1938, after the Anschluss, under the threat from the Nazis, Jewish herself, Jenny Steiner fled from Vienna, and the painting, together with several of her valuable tangibles, including other works by Klimt and Egon Schiele, was confiscated as Jewish property.

In 1940, three of Steiner’s Klimt paintings, including the Water Serpents II, were offered on the sale of the leading Viennese auction house, Dorotheum (458. Kunstauktion, March 4–6.; the two other paintings were the Country House by the Atteree and the Portrait of Mäda Primavesi). (Fleckner, 2017) However, by the intervention of Josef Bürckel, then Gauleiter of Vienna, the painting was withdrawn from the auction, and sold privately to the Nazi filmmaker and alleged illegitimate son of Klimt, Gustav Ucicky (1899–1961) through his second wife Inge (Ingeborg Davis). The picture remained in Ucicky’s possession until his death in 1961, when his third wife, Ursula (née Kohn; b. 1922) inherited it.

In 2013, Ursula Ucicky, in agreement with the heirs of Jenny Steiner sold the Water Serpents II through Sotheby’s, sharing the income 50/50. The painting reached the price of $112 million, at the time the 6th most expensive painting in the world, and the most expensive Klimt painting by then to be sold.

The present typewritten and signed secretarial note (Aktenvermerk. Betrifft: Ölgemälde des Malers Klimt [“Wasserschlangen”]) was written on behalf of Hermann Drum (1911–1945), the administrative assistant (Adjutant) of Josef Bürckel, the Gauleiter, and later Reichsstatthalter too of Reichsgau Vienna, (in office as Gauleiter from 30 January 1939, as Reichsstatthalter from April 1 1940 until 2 August 1940) in regard the withdrawing from the auction and the private sale of Klimt’s Water Serpents II. (See also in Lillie’s Was einmal war; note that in the book the intervener erroneously ascribed as Reichsstatthalter Baldur von Schirach, in fact it was Gauleiter Bürckel.) In the text Drum’s secretary summarizes how the painting ended up at the Dorotheum sale, with the estimated value of 6,000 Reichsmark, states the wish of the Gauleiter that the painting should be sold privately to Mrs. Ucicky, and delineates a plan, developed together with dr. Deigelmaier, an official from the local revenue service, for withdraw and sell the painting out of the sale if an appropriate purchase offer would be made privately (“ich halte einen Preis von 8–9,000 RM für angemessen” / “I think a price of 8–9;000 RM is reasonable”). The secretary misspells the name “Ucicki”, and also mixes up the family relations, claiming Mrs. Ucicky the descendant of Klimt.

Rare and important document related to one of the most well-known Nazi-looted pictures.

Literature: Fleckner, U. et al. Markt und Macht Der Kunsthandel im »Dritten Reich«. De Gruyter 2017. pp. 304–9; Lillie, S. Was einmal war: Handbuch der enteigneten Kunstsammlungen Wiens. Czernin 2003.

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Price: €4,000.00