Oskar Reichel


Oscar Reichel was an Austrian physician and art collector. His work was confiscated by the Nazis during World War II, leading to claims from his descendants to restore it to them.

Early life

Reichel was born in 1869 in Vienna.

Art collector

Reichel was a prominent collector of Austrian Expressionist art, including Egon Schiele, Max Oppenheimer, and Oskar Kokoschka. Reichel collected many artworks by Schiele and Kokoschka. Schiele painted a portrait of Reichel in 1910 as well as a black crayon drawing "Portrait Study of Dr. Oskar Reichel with Raised Left Hand" Other Schiele artworks owned by Reichel included "The Self-Seers" and Black Girl. Art by Kokoschka included "Two Nudes" and Susanne

Persecution by the Nazis

When the Nazi persecution of Vienna's Jews began, with the Anschluss on 12 March 1938, Reichel and his wife Malvine remained in Vienna. Their home furnishings business was forced shut after the anti-Jewish attacks of Kristallnacht in 1938, and in 1941 the Nazis forced them to sell their shares in a family-owned building, with the proceeds going into blocked accounts that they could not access.
The Reichel's eldest son, Maximilian Reichel, born in 1900, was deported in a Transport from Poland to Lodz and murdered by the Nazis in 1942. On 7 May 1943, Oskar died. His widow, Malvine Reichel, was deported with Transport 46c from Vienna, Austria to Theresienstadt Ghetto, in Czechoslovakia on 11 January 1943.
Reichel’s two sons, Raimund and Hans fled to South America and the United States, respectively. Their mother, Malvine, survived Theresienstadt and joined her son Hans in the United States after the war.

Claims for restitution

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

In March 2007, Claudia Seger-Thomschitz, an heir to Jewish art collector Reichel, requested that the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston restitute Two Nudes, a 1913 painting Oskar Kokoschka that Reichel had owned prior to the Nazi Anschluss. She claimed that Reichel had sold the painting under duress in Nazi-occupied Vienna in 1939. The MFA responded that Reichel sold the painting voluntarily and "filed suit against her in January in US District Court for the District of Massachusetts to establish legal title to the painting," creating consternation among Holocaust experts.
Reichel's business and home were confiscated during World War II, and one of his sons was sent to a concentration camp, where he died. Reichel's wife was deported to a camp, but survived.
"To suggest, at that period in Vienna, that there was no pressure is ridiculous," said professor Deborah E. Lipstadt, a Holocaust historian and former director of the Tam Institute for Jewish Studies at Emory University. "It's ludicrous."
The case was dismissed by the US court of Appeals which ruled that the claim was "time-barred".

Sara Dunbar

In 2009, a restitution claim against Sarah Dunbar for the painting “Portrait of a Youth”, by Oskar Kokoschka, which Reichel had sold to art dealer Otto Kallir in Vienna in 1939 was also unsuccessful. The subject of the painting was Hans Reichel, son of Oskar Reichel. Dunbar’s lawyers, Thaddeus Stauber and Jennifer Borum Bechet, argued that "although the Reichel family had long ago sought reparations for property that was stolen by the Nazis, they never sought the return of the Hans portrait." The court ruled in Dunbar's favor and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the decision, stating that, under Louisiana law, Dunbar is the clear owner of the Kokoschka by “acquisitive prescription,” because she openly held the painting for 10 years.

Albertina Museum in Austria

In 2011, Austrian culture ministry's art restitution council told Vienna's Albertina art gallery to return six works by Anton Romako to Reichel's descendants on the grounds that his collection was lost due to persecution by the Nazis. The artworks included The Spring, Nike with Wreath and Young Girl, Nude.