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Nazi Loot Claim Over $77 Million Bruegel
Painting Triggers Dispute Between Austria
and Poland
17 November 2015
A painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Fight Between Carnival and Lent (1559), is at the centre of a
dispute between Austria and Poland after claims arose that the artwork might be Nazi loot.
According to the Financial Times, documents that have surfaced in Krakow's National Museum claim that
the Renaissance masterpiece, whose value is estimated at $77 million, was seized by Charlotte von
Wächter, the wife of Krakow's Nazi governor Otto von Wächter, during the German occupation of Poland.
This has sparked an administrative row over the provenance and ownership of the painting, which is
currently displayed at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
“It is impossible to overstate the importance of this painting," Meredith Hale, a fellow in Netherlandish
art at Cambridge University, told the press. “If it was taken unlawfully from Krakow to Vienna, it would be
a huge story for the art world, as big as it gets.
Diana Blonska, director of the National Museum in Krakow, has presented a research paper in which she
claims that documents in the museum's archive state that Charlotte von Wächter visited the museum in
1939 and took the painting alongside others, some of which “ended up in the antique markets of Vienna."
Blonska even cites a letter written by Feliks Kopera, then-director of the museum, in March 1946 and sent
to Krakow's authorities:
"The Museum suffered major, irretrievable losses at the hands of the wife of the governor of the Kraków
Distrikt, Frau Wächter, a Viennese woman aged about 35. […] Items that went missing included paintings
such as: Breughel's The Fight Between Lent and Carnival."
The Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, meanwhile, claims that it has owned the painting since the 17th
century, and that the artwork seized by von Wächter in 1939 was a different painting.
According to the FT, the conflict coincides with a campaign by Polish authorities to track down and recover
art and artifacts looted from galleries and private collections by Nazis during World War Two, with an
estimated aggregated worth of €22 billion. Poland will demand Austrian authorities to conduct a proper
investigation into the provenance of the painting, Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita reported.
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/nazi-loot-claim-bruegel-painting-346763
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