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The Holocaust Art Restitution Project, a group set up last fall in Washington to document Jewish cultural losses under Nazism, got into the act and started urging MOMA and its chairman, Ronald Lauder, not to return the paintings. (As it happens, Lauder was ambassador to Austria from 1986 to 1987 and is a notable Schiele collector.) In response the Leopold Foundation proposed that an international tribunal be set up to examine the Schieles' true ownership, and it pledged to comply with the tribunal's findings. Constance Lowenthal, director of the World Jewish Congress's Commission for Art Recovery (whose chairman is Lauder), said the foundation's offer was unique in her experience, since few owners of art with clouded title are apt to be so cooperative.
So why did Morgenthau step in? Dr. Klaus Schroder, the Leopold Museum's managing director, suspects that behind the D.A.'s subpoena lies the hand of New York's Republican Senator Alfonse D'Amato, who is seeking support during this election year for his bill on property restitution to the heirs of the Holocaust, which passed the Senate in November and awaits House action. "It is of course political," said Schroder. He dismisses the Reif and Bondi claims as invalid, as the statute of limitations has expired, and vehemently defends Rudolf Leopold as a good-faith purchaser.
Whether anything but rhetorical heat and resentment will come out of this whole debacle remains to be seen. At worst it could do severe damage to the loan system on which museums depend, while adding very little to the principles of restitution of stolen property. But that's what can happen when grandstanding pols and D.A.s get in on emotionally supercharged issues that ought to be resolved with tact and studious neutrality.
--With reporting by Massimo Calabresi/Vienna and Daniel S. Levy/New York