What's happened
Artworks by Egon Schiele, previously owned by Fritz Grünbaum, have been returned to his heirs after being seized from museums in three different states.
Why it matters
The return of the looted artworks to the heirs of Fritz Grünbaum, a Jewish cabaret performer who died in the Holocaust, highlights the ongoing efforts to reclaim art stolen during the Holocaust and the significance of restitution in acknowledging historical injustices.
What the papers say
The New York Times and The Times of Israel provide detailed accounts of the artworks being seized from museums and returned to the heirs, while AP News and The Independent also cover the restitution of the looted art.
How we got here
The artworks were previously owned by Fritz Grünbaum, a well-known Austrian comic and songwriter, who died at the Dachau concentration camp in 1941. His heirs have been engaged in a lengthy legal battle to reclaim the looted art.
More on these topics
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Franz Friedrich 'Fritz' Grünbaum was an Austrian Jewish cabaret artist, operetta and popular song writer, actor, and master of ceremonies whose art collection was looted by Nazis before he was murdered in the Holocaust.
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Egon Leo Adolf Ludwig Schiele was an Austrian Expressionist painter. A protégé of Gustav Klimt, Schiele was a major figurative painter of the early 20th century.
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Jews or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and a nation originating from the Israelites and Hebrews of historical Israel and Judah.
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National Socialism, more commonly known as Nazism, is the ideology and practices associated with the Nazi Party—officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party —in Nazi Germany, and of other far-right groups with similar ideas and aims.
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Alvin Leonard Bragg Jr. is an American lawyer and politician from the state of New York who previously served as Chief Deputy Attorney General in New York State Office of Attorney General.
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The Carnegie Museum of Art, abbreviated CMOA, is an art museum in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The museum was founded in 1895 by the Pittsburgh-based industrialist Andrew Carnegie.
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The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the World War II genocide of the European Jews. Between 1941 and 1945, across German-occupied Europe, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews, around two-thirds of Europe