“The Rape of Europa,” which airs on PBS on Nov. 24 at 9 p.m. New York time, has a number of heroes and heroines. My favorite is Maria Altmann.
It took a lifetime, but finally in 2006 the Austrian government — with much lack of grace — returned a few nice paintings by Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele that the Nazis had pilfered from her uncle’s Viennese mansion during World War II.
Altogether, Nazi elites stole an estimated million-plus artworks in the strangest melding of extermination and aesthetics the world has ever seen.
“The Rape of Europa” documents how the lurid appetite for art coexisted with an equally powerful urge to torment and destroy.
Klimt’s glittering 1907 portrait of Altmann’s aunt, Adele Bloch-Bauer, spent the postwar years thrilling crowds at the Austrian State Gallery in the Belvedere. The Austrians sure didn’t want to see her go.
Altmann, born in 1916 and even in her ninth decade a glorious vision in lavender cashmere and pearls, speaks eloquently of their perfidy and her triumph.
Supposedly, her aunt willed her pictures to the Austrian state, a very ambiguous reading of the text and one that ignores the fact that when she wrote her will in 1923, she hardly expected her beloved country to turn into a happy outpost for murderers and thieves. (Bloomberg)