Stealing Klimt (2007)

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Gustav Klimt was one of the most celebrated Austrian artists of the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century, and between 1900 and 1907 a wealthy gentleman from Vienna, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, commissioned five paintings by Klimt. In her will, Ferdinand's wife Adele bequeathed the valuable… More Gustav Klimt was one of the most celebrated Austrian artists of the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century, and between 1900 and 1907 a wealthy gentleman from Vienna, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, commissioned five paintings by Klimt. In her will, Ferdinand's wife Adele bequeathed the valuable canvases to their nieces and nephews, including Maria Altmann, who was born in 1916. Like her wealthy aunt and uncle, Maria was Jewish, and when Austria willingly surrendered to an invasion by German forces in 1938, her family fled to the United States. The Gustav Klimt paintings that belonged to Maria's family -- including the one that was meant to be left to her -- were stolen by Nazi troops, and after the war they ended up in an Austrian state art museum. It wasn't until the late 1990's when Maria Altmann's family discovered Adele Bloch-Bauer's will that they realized that she'd been robbed of a fortune in art. With the help of attorney Randol Schoenberg, Maria Altmann took the Austrian government to court to win back her family's property, a legal battle that eventually went all the way to the United States Supreme Court. Stealing Klimt is a documentary which examines Altmann's efforts to win back the paintings her family lost in the war, as well as Austria's reluctance to atone for (or acknowledge) crimes committed during the Third Reich. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi