Jewish Journal
April 25, 2003

Lawyer Takes on Looted Art, Austria

by Tom Tugend, Contributing Editor

In one of the most complex legal battles in the annals of Holocaust
restitution, centering on the return of art looted by the Nazis to their
rightful owners, E. Randol Schoenberg is stationed on the front lines.

The stakes are enormous. In the biggest collective art theft of all time,
Hitlerís minions seized up to 600,000 important works between 1933 and 1945,
according to a recent report in The New York Times.

If one includes all art objects, books, Judaica, silver pieces and other
valuables, the Nazis stole 10.7 million items in all of Europe, worth more
than $37 billion today, the same article estimates.

A current case, which has drawn wide attention, pits Schoenberg against the
government of Austria. There is some historic irony in the confrontation,
since the 36-year old Brentwood lawyer is the grandson of the pathbreaking
Austrian Jewish composer Arnold Schoenberg, often dubbed "the father of
modern music."

Schoenberg, the lawyer, represents Maria V. Altman, an 87-year-old resident
of Cheviot Hills, who is seeking to recover six paintings by the early 20th
century Viennese painter Gustav Klimt. The paintings, valued at $150
million, include a stunning portrait of her aunt, Adele Bloch-Bauer.

The Austrian government, which holds the paintings, is contesting the claim.
Last year, Schoenberg scored a major victory when an appeals court in San
Francisco ruled that a foreign government could be held to answer in the
United States for a Holocaust-based claim.

But the two-and-a-half year old case is far from over. The Austrian
government is appealing the decision and, to Schoenbergís dismay, the U.S.
administration is backing the Austrians on the grounds that a sovereign
foreign state is immune to lawsuits in American courts. The case might end
up in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Last December, Schoenberg opened up another front by seeking to recover a
$10 million Picasso oil painting for the Berkeley-based grandson of a Berlin
woman who owned it before World War II.

The 1922 painting, "Femme en Blanc" ("Woman in White"), was "confiscated" by
the Nazis in 1940. After the war, by a circuitous route via French and
American art dealers, the Picasso eventually became the property of a
Chicago art patron, who is fighting the grandsonís claim.

Besides these headline cases, Schoenberg has advised hundreds of Jewish
families from Austria on their restitution rights, usually as a free
service, but he earns his bread and butter through more mundane business
litigation.

"It is enormously time-consuming to pursue the art recovery cases ó I
received my first call from Maria Altman in the Klimt case in 1998 ó and
enormously expensive, running into millions," said Schoenberg, sitting in
his high-rise office on Wilshire Boulevard. "So you can only initiate an
action if the paintings are immensely valuable. Youíre not going to sue over
a looted $50 mezuzah."

"Randy" Schoenberg has the rare distinction of being the grandson of two
eminent 20th century composers, both of whom fled the Nazis and settled in
Los Angeles.

On his motherís side, his grandfather was Eric Zeisl, best known for his
"Requiem Ebraico," composed in 1945 when he learned that his father had
perished in a concentration camp. Zeisl also wrote music for a number of
Hollywood movies.

But because Randyís last name is Schoenberg, the young lawyer is most
closely identified with his other grandfather, fervently admired, and
sometimes damned, for his development of atonal music and the 12-tone
technique.

Arnold Schoenberg, who spent the last 17 years of his life in Los Angeles
and taught at UCLA and USC, was largely ignored by the classical music world
in the 1930s and ë40s. But since his death in 1951, there has been a major
rediscovery and appreciation of his works.

"I run into people who are ecstatic to meet Arnoldís grandson and who
worship and love him," said the lawyer, who was born well after his
grandfatherís death. "There are others who hate his music, but I doubt if
they know all his works. He wrote so much, 15 hours worth if you play it
all, thereís something a music lover is bound to like.

"Itís funny, people who would hesitate to give an opinion on paintings or
literature will instantly pronounce judgment on a piece of music."

Arnold Schoenberg had a stormy relationship with his ancestral faith. As a
young man, he converted to Lutheranism and then reconverted to Judaism in
1933, when Hitler came to power.

He predicted the Holocaust with prophetic clarity and eventually became a
utopian Zionist, whose opera, "Moses und Aron," expressed his faith in his
peopleís destiny.

Randy Schoenberg himself grew up in a nonobservant environment, but since
his marriage to Pamela, and the birth of their two young kids who attend
Sinai Temple preschool, the family has established a kosher home.

"Being Jewish has played such a major part in the history of my family,"
mused Schoenberg, an ardent genealogy researcher. "I am deeply involved in
our culture, history and philosophy and I try to incorporate them in my
personal and professional lives."