Josef Morgenstern (born June 6, 1886 in Kis-Szlatina, Hungary; died after September 1942 in

Auschwitz Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...

) was a Jewish art collector who was murdered by the Nazis in the

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...

Early life

Josef Morgenstern worked in the banking and tube industries in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

and

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...

from the 1920s. He studied political science at the

University of Vienna The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich histor ...

, receiving his doctorate in 1928. Morgenstern was accepted as a supporting member of the Central Association of Architects in 1921. He married Alice (née Freund, born 1885 in Prag). In March 1922 the Morgensterns acquired a home at Apfelgasse 3, Vienna 4, furnished by architect Otto Bauer.

Art collection

The Morgenstern collected art. In the music room of their Vienna home hung the painting Vier Bäume (Four Trees) by Egon Schiele, which was to be shown at exhibitions in the Neue Galerie in Vienna and the Kunsthaus in Zurich in 1928 and 1930. The exact contents of the rest of collection is unknown.

Nazi persecution

When Austria joined the Nazi Third Reich in the

Anschluss The (, or , ), also known as the (, en, Annexation of Austria), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into the German Reich on 13 March 1938. The idea of an (a united Austria and Germany that would form a " Greater Germany ...

of March 1938, the Morgensterns were persecuted because they were Jewish. His employer, the limited partnership Kontinentale Eisenhandelsgesellschaft Kern & CoMorgenstern, fired him from his job as deputy head of the Röhrenkartell office in May 1938. The Morgensterns attempted unsuccessfully to flee to North America. Alice and Josef Morgenstern left Vienna for Yugoslavia on August 13, 1938 to the island of Korčula. In December 1938, they traveled to Brussels thanks to a work visa that Morgenstern was able to obtain in Zagreb. However, when German troops invaded Belgium in May 1940, Josef was arrested, deported to southern France, imprisoned in the Saint Cyprien camp, then, at the end of 1940, sent to the Gurs camp and then to the Drancy transit camp. On September 9, 1942, Josef Morgenstern was deported on the 30th deportation transport to Auschwitz, where he was murdered at an unknown date. Alice Morgenstern remained in hiding in Brussels with the help of her lodger. She died on 25 October 1970 in poverty in a Jewish old people's home in Brussels. Josef Morgenstern's only brother and all three of Alice Morgenstern's sisters were murdered by Nazis in the Holocaust.

Restitution claims for Nazi-looted art

On August 26, 1959

survivor Alice Morgenstern, the widow of Josef Morgenstern murdered in

, filed a claim to the Finanzlandesdirektion für Wien, Niederösterreich und das Burgenland (Provincial Tax Office for Vienna, Lower Austria and Burgenland in which she stated, "the picture ''Four Trees'' by

Egon Schiele Egon Leo Adolf Ludwig Schiele (; 12 June 1890 – 31 October 1918) was an Austrian Expressionist painter. His work is noted for its intensity and its raw sexuality, and for the many self-portraits the artist produced, including nude self-portr ...

, which used to be owned by us, is now hanging in the Upper Belvedere. We never sold the picture but gave it to a friend, Robert Röhrl, lawyer in Vienna, Gumpendorferstrasse, for safekeeping. He unfortunately died, and I do not know how the picture landed in the nineteenth-century ecte twentieth-centurycollection in the Belvedere." On March 20, 2020 the Austrian Advisory Commission recommended that the Schiele be restituted to Morgenstern's heirs According to the restitution report, a false provenance had been registered in 1946, with Morgenstern's name replaced by that of Wengraf.

"Whether the name “Dr. Wengraf” was entered deliberately to hide the fact that the picture was owned in 1938 by Josef Morgenstern can only be speculated at. The art dealer Paul Wengraf acquired the picture in 1917 directly from the artist. Bruno Grimschitz, who was relieved of his post as director of the Österreichische Galerie in October 1945 on account of his membership of the NSDAP, must have known the former owner, Josef Morgenstern, who loaned the painting for the Schiele-Gedächtnisausstellung in 1928. As mentioned earlier, Grimschitz wrote the foreword to the exhibition catalogue"

References

{{Authority control 1866 births 1942 deaths Austrian Jews who died in the Holocaust Austrian people of Hungarian-Jewish descent Jewish art collectors University of Vienna alumni 19th-century art collectors 19th-century Austrian Jews 20th-century Austrian Jews