User talk:Laurareyes4512

Maria Altmann

Maria Altmann was an amazing person that can inspire any soul. She showed lots of braveness during the Holocaust and after it. She was a very prosperous woman even after the many tragic stages in her life.

Maria Victoria Bloch was born on February 18, 1916 in Vienna, Austria. The family name was changed to Bloch-Bauer the following year. She was the niece of Adele Bloch-Bauer, a Jewish woman who modeled for many famous artists of the day including Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss, Arthur Schnitzler, Johannes Brahms, Franz Werfel, Alma Mahler, Leo Slezak, Otto Wagner, George Minne, Karl Renner, Julius Tandler, and the main artist Gustav Klimt (Information from Wikipedia).

In 1937, Maria married Fredrick Altmann and they had a wonderful Paris honeymoon. However, soon after their honeymoon in 1938, Anschluss made Austria into Nazi Germany. During that time Fredrick got arrested and he was held hostage in a concentration camp (Dachau concentration camp to be exact).The Nazi’s did this to make Fredrick’s brother, Bernhard Altmann, to hand over his company to the German’s. Later on he was set free and Maria and Fredrick fled for their lives. They left everything...family, friends, possession, everything! (Information from Biography.com)

The couple promptly arrived to Fall River, Massachusetts. They soon changed to Los Angeles, California in a wealthy neighborhood called Cheviot Hills. Shortly after Maria arrived in Los Angeles, Bernhard Altmann mailed her a cashmere sweater (not yet available in the United States) with a note that said: "See what you can do with this." She took it to Kerr's Department Store in Beverly Hills were many buyers from California and from across the U.S raised high stakes for it. Maria became the face of cashmere in California and eventually started her own clothing business with her own clients, among them Caroline Brown Tracy, the mother of actor Spencer Tracy. Altmann became an American citizen in 1945. Her husband passed away in 1994.

Maria Altmann was also in a very important case called the Klimt case. This case was used to fight for some very important paintings in which her aunt Adele Bloch-Bauer was portrayed. These painting were sketched by the amazing artist Gustav Klimt. These Portraits were given to Adele yet she died in 1925, well before the rise of the Nazis. She told her husband to leave the Klimt’s (this was how the painting were named) to the Austrian State Gallery. However, not shortly after her death the Nazis came to power and as her husband fled, the paintings were looted. Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer (Adele’s husband) died on 13 November 1945, soon after World War II, leaving his estate to a nephew and two nieces, one of whom was Maria Altmann. By this time, five of the paintings had made their way into the possession of the Austrian government. However, some important people did research and found out that Ferdinand NEVER had donated the painting to the Austrian government. Maria Altmann saw this and she was not pleased. She made it her commitment to save the paintings. Altmann at first sought to negotiate with the Austrian government about retrieving some of the paintings. At this stage she asked only for the Klimt landscapes belonging to her family, and was willing to allow Austria to keep the portraits. Her proposal was not, however, treated seriously by the Austrian authorities. In 1999, she sought to sue the government of Austria in an Austrian court. Altmann and Austria agreed to go to trial for these paintings. On 16 January 2006, the arbitration panel ruled that Austria was legally required to return the art to Altmann and the other family heirs, and in March of the same year Austria returned the paintings. The paintings were estimated to be collectively worth at least $150 million when returned. In monetary terms this represented the largest single return of Nazi-looted art in Austria. The paintings left Austria in March 2006 and were on display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art until June 30, 2006. Months after the Austrian government returned Altmann's family's belongings, she consigned the Klimt paintings to auction house Christie's, to be sold on behalf of her family. The painting Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907) was sold to cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder for $135 million, at the time the highest sum ever paid for a painting. Since July 13, 2006, the painting has been on public display in the Neue Galerie in New York City, which was established by Lauder in 2001. The four additional works by Klimt were also exhibited at the Neue Gallerie for several weeks in 2006.

In all, I believe that she was and still is in our hearts, a very important woman. During the research I was amazed to learn the ups and downs of one of the most amazing woman that fought for something right. Hope you liked listening about this great woman, Maria Altmann.