page_title: Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I
section_title: 1912–1945
hierarchical_section_title: Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I / History and ownership / 1912–1945
context_page_description: Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I is a painting by Gustav Klimt, completed between 1903 and 1907. The portrait was commissioned by the sitter's husband, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, a Jewish banker and sugar producer. The painting was stolen by the Nazis in 1941 and displayed at the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere. The portrait is the final and most fully representative work of Klimt's golden phase. It was the first of two depictions of Adele by Klimt—the second was completed in 1912; these were two of several works by the artist that the family owned.
  Adele died in 1925; her will asked that the artworks by Klimt were to be left to the Galerie Belvedere, although these belonged to Ferdinand, not her. Following the Anschluss of Austria by Nazi Germany, Ferdinand fled Vienna, and made his way to Switzerland, leaving behind much of his wealth, including his large art collection. The painting was stolen by the Nazis in 1941, along with the remainder of Ferdinand's assets, after a charge of tax evasion was made against him. The assets raised from the purported sales of artwork, property and his sugar business were offset against the tax claim.
context_section_description: After exhibition at the Kunstschau, the portrait was hung at the Bloch-Bauers' Vienna residence. In 1912 Ferdinand commissioned a second painting of his wife, in which "the erotic charge of the likeness of 1907 has been spent", according to Whitford. In February 1918, Klimt suffered a stroke and was hospitalised; he caught pneumonia due to the worldwide influenza epidemic and died that month.
  On 19 January 1923 Adele Bloch-Bauer wrote a will. Ferdinand's brother Gustav, a lawyer by training, helped her frame the document and was named as the executor. The will included a reference to the Klimt works owned by the couple, including the two portraits of her:
  Meine 2 Porträts und die 4 Landschaften von Gustav Klimt, bitte ich meinen Ehegatten nach seinem Tode der österr. Staats-Gallerie in Wien, die mir gehörende Wiener und Jungfer.
  
  (Translates from the German as: "I ask my husband after his death to leave my two portraits and the four landscapes by Gustav Klimt to the Austrian State Gallery in Vienna.")
  In February 1925 Adele died of meningitis. Shortly afterwards Gustav filed for probate; he included a document that stated that the clause in the will was precatory, i.e. a request rather than a binding testament. He added that Ferdinand had said he would honour the clause, even though he, not Adele, was the legal owner of the paintings. The works by Klimt which Ferdinand owned, including the two portraits, were moved to Adele's bedroom as a shrine to her. The painting was lent for an exhibition at the Vienna Secession in 1928 to mark the tenth anniversary of Klimt's death; in 1934 it was displayed in London as part of the Austria in London exhibition. In 1936 Ferdinand gave Schloss Kammer am Attersee III to the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere; he later acquired a further Klimt painting, the Portrait of Amalie Zuckerkandl (1917–1918). In 1937 the golden portrait of Adele was lent for display at the Paris Exposition.
  In December 1937 Gustav's daughter–and Ferdinand's niece–Maria, married the young opera singer Fritz Altman. Ferdinand gave her Adele's jewelled choker as a wedding present. Ferdinand left Vienna for his Czechoslovakian castle in March 1938, following the Anschluss of Austria by Nazi Germany. That autumn, following the Munich Agreement, he realised he was not safe and left for Paris. In September the following year, he moved to neutral Switzerland where he lived in a hotel. In his absence the Nazi regime falsely accused him of evading taxes of 1.4 million Reichsmarks. His assets were frozen and, in May 1938, a seizure order was issued that allowed the state to dispose of his property as they felt fit. His sugar factory was confiscated and turned over to the state, and went through a process of Aryanisation as Jewish shareholders and managers were replaced. His Viennese residence became an office of Deutsche Reichsbahn, the German railway company, while his castle in Czechoslovakia was taken after the German occupation as the personal residence of the SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich.
  As part of the process to deal with the purported tax evasion, the Nazi lawyer Friedrich Führer was appointed as the administrator of the estate. In January 1939 he convened a meeting of museum and gallery directors to inspect the works and to give an indication of which they would like to obtain. After the collection was catalogued, Adolf Hitler used the Führervorbehalt decree to obtain part of the collection at a reduced price. Several other Nazi leaders, including Hermann Göring, the Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe, also obtained works from the collection. Göring also used the Führervorbehalt decree to obtain the jewelled choker that had been given to Maria Altmann; it was given as a gift to Emmy, his wife.
  In December 1941 Führer transferred the paintings Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I and Apfelbaum I to the Galerie Belvedere in return for Schloss Kammer am Attersee III, which he then sold to Gustav Ucicky, an illegitimate son of Klimt. A note accompanying the paintings stated he was acting in accordance with Adele'
caption: Schloss Kammer am Attersee III (1910), which was swapped for the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I
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