Original subtitles

(dramatic music)

(chanting foreign language)

It was perhaps the biggest art heist

of all time, countless millions of dollars

of the finest European art simply seized by the Nazis.

Picassos, Rembrants, Titians,

along with precious family silver and gold

taken by the Nazis from museums and private collections

as their army advanced relentlessly across Europe.

Among the booty was one of the most extraordinary paintings

of the 20th century,

owned by a wealthy Jewish industrialist.

It was A Portrait of a Woman,

by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt.

For 60 years, the painting's owners fought to get it back.

They were hoping I'd die, I mean I was old enough

that they felt (snapping) and then it's finished.

The battle took them

to the American Supreme Court.

It's a story of mystery, corruption, and double-dealing.

Could they possibly fight a nation and win?

(ominous music)

(whimsical music)

Vienna at the beginning of the 20th century

was a thriving metropolis that had become

the cultural center of Austria

and home to the rich and famous.

It housed one of the world's greatest art galleries,

boasted a world-class orchestra,

and was full of beautiful buildings

and aristocratic mansions.

The city's famous coffee houses were teeming

with intellectuals, artists, and musicians,

such as Sigmund Freud, Egon Schiele, and Arnold Schoenberg.

And the man Viennese society flocked to for their portraits

was Gustav Klimt.

(soft music)

Klimt was already in his lifetime so highly paid

so there was no other painter in Austria who could demand

such prices, and if you look at the female portraits,

who were these persons?

They were all coming from the upper class,

they were wives of industrialists, of academic professors.

So they really came from a very wealthy background.

One person who could easily afford

Klimt's prices was Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer

who had amassed a significant collection of Austrian art.

The Viennese had a sweet tooth

and he made his fortune by refining sugar.

His wife Adele became a socialite who organized parties

for Vienna's finest at their mansion.

Her niece Maria was nine years old at the time.

(upbeat classical music)

She surrounded herself with artists, composers,

she had what they called a salon at the time.

She had all these fabulous people,

Richard Strauss, and Vas Aman, I mean she had people,

painters, poets, composers,

and this is where she got her intellectual stimulation.

Klimt was one of the artists

who frequented the salon.

He became a personal friend but what would he charge

to paint Adele's portrait?

The price at that time

was already extremely high, it was enormous.

I think that it was as high as you could have

acquired at that time a whole villa, a good land house

in the suburbs, in Vienna, it was that high.

It may have been expensive,

but Klimt's portrait of Adele would become

one of the most famous paintings of the 20th century.

This was one of only a handful of paintings

from Klimt's famous Golden Period

in which he produced highly decorative work

resembling a jewel box.

Here is Adele in the most lavish dress,

adorned with glittering jewelry.

We know it took Klimt over a year to finalize the painting

and he visited her many times, making over 200 sketches.

We know from portraits which he prepared for one year,

just the preparation, that's just thinking about

how I want to have the posture of this woman?

How she should she stand, should she sit?

Where should be the arms?

And so Klimt really thought about all details

and he made sketches of all different postures.

I think it makes sense if you think he had

really a personal relationship to this woman.

He made a kind of reference to her because of course

by meeting often the person he gets to know her very well

and it is said, I mean there are rumors that with

some of the sitters, with some of the models,

he had even more close relationship,

maybe some sentimental affairs too.

In the paintings of his Golden Period

Gustav Klimt seems to be capturing the seductive

and passionate nature of these women.

Many believe that Adele was also the model for The Kiss,

one of the most sensual works ever produced.

So could Adele have been Klimt's lover?

When I asked my mother did Adele have

a relationship with Klimt?

She said how dare you ask such a question?

It was an intellectual friendship.

But my mother would always say that

even if when she was 100% sure

that the people had more than an intellectual friendship.

At the time they had their affairs and didn't discuss it.

We know that he had many children,

illegitimate children with women whom he didn't marry,

he never was married.

But we do not know exactly how many children there are,

who were the women.

I mean this is incredible that such a famous painter

had so many liaisons, who were just hidden.

Whatever the relationship

between Adele and the artist,

Ferdinand and his wife were delighted with the picture.

It wasn't long before the portrait of Adele

grasped the imagination of the art establishment.

The painting became a centerpiece of Klimt exhibitions.

The Bloch-Bauers wanted more Klimts

and they invested in four of his landscapes

painted between 1903 and 1916.

(soft music)

In the summer Klimt loved to escape from his studio

and head out to the lakes near Strasbourg.

This subject to which Klimt returned time and again

held a special fascination for him.

I think perhaps it was the combination

of the natural geometry of the the lake shore,

and then the buildings rising up

but with the steep hill behind them,

pushing forwards, that held an attraction for him.

But also the great natural combination of colors.

(soft music)

Walking by the lake shore

he would be fascinated by the effect of light

on the trees and flowers.

And he was back at the autumn

with a more subdued set of colors.

Here Klimt takes as his subject a birch forest.

The innards of the forest in a glade there was a reflection

of perhaps getting deep into nature

being at the very heart of things.

In truth it's a fairly restricted palette.

Green representing the lichen climbing up the trees,

and the leaf canopy, the russet colors,

earth colors for the floor.

And then the lovely silvery colors on the tree trunks.

So Adele and Ferdinand's house in Vienna

became home to one of the largest private collections

of Klimt paintings.

Adele's face seems to have inspired Klimt

in his Golden Period.

When he abruptly changed style in 1912,

Adele was once again the subject he chose to paint.

So here we have the second portrait

of Adele Bloch-Bauer

commissioned by her husband from Klimt in 1907.

When Adele was in her late 20s and shot through this,

what is a fairly muted color costume.

We have the great blue, cobalt blue sash at her waist,

and fine details, highlights of blue throughout the costume.

Another fascinating factor is the Japanese influence.

All around her she stands,

these Japanese tapestries behind.

Here with the horse and rider themes running across the top.

We see probably Klimt using something

that was hanging in his studio as a backdrop.

For 10 years the house on Elisabethstrasse

teemed with the color of Klimt's paintings.

But in January 1925 the household sank

into darkness and despair.

Adele died of a brain disease at the age of 43.

She died so very young, she was only in her early 40s

and she was only sick like three days

because meningitis is devilish,

I mean it hits you and it kills you.

Ferdinand was heartbroken.

He left his wife's room in their Viennese home

just as it was when she died.

I remember her bedroom which he converted

into a memorial room

and he always had beautiful fresh flowers there

all year round.

And there was nothing but the Klimt paintings,

the two portraits and the landscapes.

(somber music)

Ferdinand also placed a photograph

of Gustav Klimt on her bedside table.

Adele seemed clear about what she wanted to happen

to her paintings.

Her will stated,

my wish is to leave my two portraits and four landscapes

by Klimt to the Belvedere.

The Belvedere was Austria's prestigious national gallery

where all society people

wanted their portraits to be admired.

(dramatic music)

This beautiful baroque building in the heart of Vienna

was a favorite meeting place for the rich and famous.

But for the moment at least the painting remained

in the room Ferdinand had left in memory of his wife.

(dramatic music)

As the 1930s wore on, peace in Europe

became increasingly fragile.

The Nazis had come to power in Germany.

(speaking in foreign language)

Hitler's territorial ambitions soon became clear.

Ferdinand foresaw Germany's intention to invade Austria

and used his wealth to support resistance fighters

to protect its borders, but that proved futile.

In 1938 Hitler ordered the annexation of Austria,

and German troops marched into Vienna.

Before the Nazis arrived in the Austrian capital

Ferdinand fled to his country mansion

across the border in Czechoslovakia

leaving the precious portrait of his wife by Klimt behind

with the rest of his art collection

on the walls of his Vienna house.

As he left the house for the last time

he would have walked past the Academy of Fine Arts

right across the street.

The shadow of Hitler hung over this place.

The Academy had rejected him in 1907, the very year Klimt

was painting the Gold Portrait of Adele.

Hitler may have left Vienna as a failed artist

but in March 1938 he came back

in very different circumstances

and Viennese Jews grew to fear the knock on the door.

(crowd clamoring)

(knocking)

They just came and took things, they didn't ask you.

They just rang the doorbell and I opened

and there they were, and they were not in uniform

because it was Gestapo and they didn't wear uniforms.

They immediately asked me for my jewelry,

which I had just gotten from my uncle

for my wedding present.

It was Adele's beautiful diamond necklace

with the earrings to match.

And that went to Mrs. Goering.

Adolf Hitler! Hermann Goering

was one of the main architects

of the Third Reich, an era he believed

would produce 1,000 glorious years of German achievement.

As an aristocrat he saw music and art

as part of this great age.

(speaking foreign language)

As in most things, the Nazis

are very organized about their looting.

When they were deciding which countries

they were going to invade and what their plans

for invasion were they would send out spies, or scouts

if you like, to see what collections were worth seizing

so that when they went into the country, once they invaded,

they would immediately go after those collections.

It was a massive operation.

These pictures show preparations for a huge exhibition

of the looted art the Nazis had taken from all over France.

Every work of art was inventoried, it was described,

it was photographed, and then displays were put on

for the main Nazi leaders, for Hitler, and for Goering

so that they could take their pick of the best

of some of the world's art.

There were sometimes disputes between Hitler and Goering

as to who was going to get which painting

or which sculpture, but there are extraordinary photographs

that we see today of Goering going round

these special displays which were put on for him

of all this stolen art.

They seized every possible kind of collection.

They were ready to exploit any work of art that was there.

Obviously some of the works of art

were not to their taste

and they had certain ideological approaches

to particular schools of art.

Ferdinand owned one of the largest collections

of art in Vienna.

It ranged from the contemporary Klimt paintings

to six works by the 19th century German painter Waldmuller.

Ferdinand may have been safe in Czechoslovakia

but his paintings were very vulnerable back in Vienna.

Unfortunately for him Hermann Goering

was very fond of Waldmuller's work.

Goering was also somebody who in every country

was particularly voracious to increase his art collection.

He was particularly interested in old masters as well,

and in fact he had an interesting scheme

whereby some of the paintings that the Nazis didn't want

like the Impressionists, when they were seized

he arranged for them to be smuggled out to Switzerland

in a diplomatic bag where they would then be swapped

for the old master paintings that he particularly wanted.

And that was, you would find these extraordinary exchanges

whereby you might have

something like 23 or 25 Impressionists, Cora, Degas,

Matisse, which will be swapped for one old master

that the Nazis particularly wanted.

The Bloch-Bauer family did not escape

the horrors that were destroying

Jewish families across Europe.

Maria's husband was imprisoned in Dachau concentration camp

until the family handed over property to the Nazis.

They released him when my brother-in-law

signed over the factory to them.

And so he was brought home shaved and the head was shaved,

really, really looked awful.

But we managed to escape across the border

with the help of a German farmer

who took us into Holland.

Having gotten their hands

on the Bloch-Bauer's factories they turned their attention

to Ferdinand's art collection.

They claimed that Ferdinand owed huge amounts of taxes

and sent Dr. Fuhrer to the house in Elisabethstrasse

to organize one of the greatest art heists

of the 20th century.

Dr. Fuhrer knew Hitler and Goering would want

the German paintings by Waldmuller

for their private collections,

but they would have no interest in these decadent Klimts.

He decided to sell them off.

It turned out later on that it was a terrific Nazi,

name was Dr. Fuhrer, and he had years in prison afterwards.

He made a deal with the Belvedere,

the national gallery,

for the two Adele portraits and The Apple Tree.

And he sold The Birch Trees to another gallery.

The Houses on the Lake he squirreled away

for his own collection.

The Belvedere has always claimed ownership of the paintings.

It had after all bought them from Dr. Fuhrer.

Besides it was the wish of Adele herself

set out in her will.

With the Bloch-Bauer Klimt's in their possession

they were able to stage one of the largest exhibitions

of Klimt's work ever mounted, but there was a problem.

How could they display portraits of Jewish women

now that the country was under Nazi rule?

To give the names of these women would in some ways

give lies to the ideology of racial superiority

that they were at that time promoting.

So they were forced to omit or change

the names of the paintings.

So the portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer One became simply known

as The Lady in Gold.

The three Klimts stayed in the Belvedere

until the end of the war.

When the Allies took control of Vienna

they rounded up all the looted art.

The Klimts in the Belvedere were reunited

with the one Dr. Fuhrer had sold to another gallery,

and the one he kept for himself.

The Allies took all five to Munich to be cataloged.

I think you know one of the questions is

what happened to all these works of art

at the end of the war?

Particularly the works of art that were

in the hands of the Nazi leaders.

And quite a lot of them were collected up by the Allies

at the end of the war.

As they were collecting up they found all these depositories

of looted art in Germany and Austria,

and they then took them to collecting points

where they did, I suppose the reverse of the process

that Germans had done at the beginning.

Which was they inventoried them, they photographed them,

and they established where they had come from

with the help of the Nazi records of course.

And then decided to return them to the countries

from which they had been taken.

And those countries were charged with setting up

commissions for restitution.

So the works of art would then be returned

to their rightful owners.

The Allies didn't want to do that work themselves.

In the case of the Goering collection, when they didn't know

where they came from, they were subsequently given

to German museums to hold.

And today there are over 100 paintings

from the Goering collection

whose rightful owners have not been established yet.

This policy of returning the stolen art

back to its country of origin

meant all of Ferdinand's Klimts

were sent back to the Belvedere,

to the very people who had bought three of them

from the Nazis in the first place.

(soft music)

In 1938 the Bloch-Bauers had owned two huge factories,

mansions in Vienna, a castle in Czechoslovakia.

They had 69 major works of art.

By the end of the Nazi period, they had nothing.

Ferdinand lived out the final years

of his life in Switzerland.

He never saw his precious paintings again.

He died in 1946.

Some years later Maria and her husband

settled in the United States

with the little money they had left.

Maria started making clothes

in her small Los Angeles apartment.

As the years went by she saw the Klimt paintings

escalate in value as they became world icons.

In the United States during the '70s,

Klimt paintings enjoyed a resurgence as dorm posters.

The Kiss and the portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer

were hung in American college dorms

alongside posters of Che Guevara,

or Jimi Hendrix, or whatever.

Somehow he came into vogue, into American pop culture.

So that painting was recognizable to many Americans.

While the Klimts were worth millions

Maria was still trying to make ends meet selling clothes.

But her battle would soon begin

to reclaim the family treasure.

For 50 years Maria Altmann never gave up hope that one day

her family would get back

the rare and valuable Klimt paintings stolen by the Nazis.

It seemed like she had little chance but something happened

in New York which turned the art establishment on its head.

In 1998 the Museum of Modern Art borrowed some works

of Egon Schiele from an Austrian gallery.

Schiele's heirs claimed the paintings

had been looted by the Nazis.

After the exhibition

the Schiele works were impounded by the U.S. courts.

The Schiele case in New York also raised the profile

of this whole issue.

It raised also the whole question of museums

and what the role of museums had been

and what the role of museums was today

in this whole process.

Many museums in Western Europe and America,

places that weren't occupied, Australia, and so on,

did acquire unknowingly, usually unknowingly,

looted works of art.

But up until this whole subject

came onto the international agenda and until there was

a conference in Washington organized by the State Department

in 1998, museums were quite, and art dealers

were quite freely trading

in what may have been a looted work of art.

The Schiele case suddenly made Maria Altmann

think it was time to contact a lawyer.

Could she challenge the Belvedere's claim to her aunt

and uncle's paintings?

There never really was an actual proof

that these paintings belonged to the Belvedere.

And then I called Randy.

Maria had known

the Schoenberg family all her life.

Arnold Schoenberg, the famous composer,

had been a part of her aunt's social circle.

So she turned to his nephew, the young lawyer,

Randy Schoenberg for his legal advice.

She called me in September of 1998.

I was working in a small office

of a large New York based firm.

I looked online, a relatively new activity at that time

in 1998 at the Austrian newspapers

which had just become available like that,

to see what was going on in Austria.

So when she called me I knew exactly

what she was talking about.

And that's really how it started.

Because Randy Schoenberg's family

had also suffered under the Nazis, he was prepared to leave

his well-paid job in order to help prosecute the case.

Randy likes to play the odd game of poker

and was prepared to gamble his career

to seek justice for Maria.

He would take on the case and try to recover the paintings

on a no-win, no-fee basis.

It was deeply personal because both of his grandfathers

were exiled composers.

His maternal grandfather lost his parents in the Holocaust.

Maria had to flee Austria after the Anschluss,

when Germany and Hitler invaded Austria.

So I would say that for them

there was a lot of deeply personal feeling

behind the case as they were proceeding.

Gustav Klimt painted

Adele Bloch-Bauer in 1907.

In her will written in 1925, Adele stated

that her two portraits and four landscapes by Klimt

were to be left to the Belvedere

where they would hang alongside Klimt's other portraits

of wealthy Viennese women.

I think the point at this time was

that the Austrian government was of the opinion

that the last will of Adele gave the Austrian gallery

clear title to the paintings.

The Austrian government was convinced

the Belvedere did not contain any looted art

and opened its archives to prove it.

An Austrian journalist Hubertus Czernin spent a whole year

in these archives researching the looted works

of Jewish families.

Before he died, he discovered key documents

that would transform the chances of Maria Altmann

recovering her family's paintings.

He thought Adele's will wasn't the only relevant document.

Hubertus Czernin went into archives that had been closed

to journalists and began to look at the records.

When he was done he wrote a investigative series

for a newspaper in Austria that basically showed

that the Austrians, even back into the '50s,

were not as confident that the will

gave them ownership of those paintings.

And that they themselves thought

that they should have gotten

some kind of a signed permission from Ferdinand.

Although Adele had left the paintings

to the Belvedere, her husband decided

to overrule that request.

He was the one who had paid for the paintings

and his last will explicitly stated

that all previous testaments concerning the Klimt paintings

were to be null and void.

He just left a will leaving everything to my sister,

me, and my brother.

The last letter that exists from my uncle

written to the painter Kokoschka,

two days before he died was,

I am told that I might get maybe the portraits of my wife

sent to me, so that was the last letter of my uncle.

In 1999,

Austria's Minister of Culture and Education,

Elisabeth Gehrer took control

and immediately closed the archives.

Instead she announced that she was setting up

a government committee to rule on the ownership

of the Klimt paintings.

We had a conservative government,

right-wing government, and she was a member

of the Conservative Party.

She's not in power anymore,

she wasn't the most popular person in the government.

And a lot of her decisions have been doubted.

So the Klimt case didn't help either

to arouse her popularity.

Minister Gehrer and her committee

became a real thorn in Randy and Maria's side.

The committee wouldn't even look at their evidence.

I begged them to come and and be able to speak to them

on Maria's behalf, and I was told, no, we've decided

not to speak to any outside people,

and that they consider Maria and her attorney

to be an outside figure

in the case concerning her family's paintings

which I thought was remarkable.

So we tried to influence this committee

that was meeting and going to decide what would happen

with the paintings, but to no avail.

And then at the end of June of 1999,

that committee recommended against

returning the Klimt paintings.

They were hoping I died, I mean I was old enough

that they felt (snapping) and then it's finished.

But I didn't do them that favor.

Minister Gehrer actually wrote a public letter

that was published in the newspaper.

I'm quoting her now.

"These paintings were not robbed during the war

"and therefore they don't come under the new law."

It's completely false and I think she was just

completely ignorant of the facts of the case,

willfully ignorant as I think many Austrians

sometimes are of the Nazi period.

Even though taking paintings was a very small portion

of what the Nazis did, how is it possible

that a Minister of Education can make that type of mistake?

The government committee found in favor

of the Belvedere gallery and Minister Gehrer

endorsed their decision.

I think Minister Gehrer was convinced

that Austria's got the right to keep the pictures.

She didn't look at any other possibility.

She just thought this is the way it has been handled

in the past and the law is on our side.

And why should we give the pictures back?

Because in the will of Adele Bloch-Bauer

it said the pictures should actually be given

to the Belvedere gallery after her death.

(upbeat classical music)

The five disputed paintings

were part of the largest collection of Klimts in the world.

The Belvedere had a total of 25 on show.

They were national icons.

Some said the portrait of Adele meant as much to Austrians

as the Mona Lisa did to the French.

Klimt was an Austrian painter

portraying his native countryside and the people of Vienna.

For any tourist the Klimt collection

was one of the must-sees on their visit,

adding huge amounts to the Austrian economy.

I wrote them the nicest letters.

I told them that I don't want to take

those paintings away from Austria,

but we have an English proverb I wrote in German

that is saying where there's a will, there's a way,

and if you want to work with me we can find a way

that the paintings remained there.

They never even bothered to answer the letter.

After Minister Gehrer had blocked

any further discussion over the restitution

of the five Bloch-Bauer Klimts

Randy wrote to her directly saying in all fairness

she should consider arbitration.

And her response to me was in writing,

if you don't like the way we've dealt with the law

you have to go to court.

The Austrians must have felt confident

that Randy and Maria wouldn't sue in Austria

as Maria would have to put down

a large deposit reflecting the value of the painting,

but they hadn't bargained for the tenacity

of the American lawyer.

In this case it would have been

almost several million dollars for Maria

just to initiate a lawsuit.

So we tried to reduce that, and the judge said,

well yes, Maria Altmann you don't have to pay more than

everything you own, you just have to pay everything you own.

And literally all of her assets other than her home,

she would have had to pay

to start the litigation in Austria.

And then Austria appealed and said the amount should be

even higher than that.

So at that point let's forget about suing in Austria,

let's see if we can sue in the United States.

That was something

Austria never thought possible.

If Randy couldn't fight them in Vienna

he would fight them in his hometown, Los Angeles.

Randy needed to bring pressure to bear on the case.

He got to work making sure that the world

knew about the injustices

inflicted on the Bloch-Bauer family.

One of the papers he turned to was the "Los Angeles Times."

I went over to Randall's office to meet the lawyer.

He was in his early 30s,

he looked like he'd just graduated from college.

He was pacing around the office,

and pulling books out of bookshelves, showing me pictures,

spreading things out like characters from a Russian novel.

And I remember standing there thinking, huh,

this is the kind of case that's untested.

I mean I wouldn't say I thought it was a lost cause,

but I certainly thought it was a case for which

there was no legal precedent in the United States.

But how could he sue Austria?

He searched and searched for a way,

then he found that if he could prove that Austria made money

out of the Klimt paintings in the U.S.

he might have a chance.

And Austria of course had cashed in on posters

and books about the artist.

I thought, I think we can file a lawsuit

here in Los Angeles.

Maria Altmann's been a citizen here for 60 years,

she should have the right to have her courts

decide this legal issue between her and Austria.

So I filed the complaint in August of 2000

and it didn't cost $2 million to file a complaint,

it cost a few hundred.

I think people thought it was sort of a quixotic effort

that I was tilting at windmills

to take on the Austrian government

and sue in the United States

to try to get back paintings that were in Vienna

seemed a little bit nuts, I must say.

And I think most people who were looking at it

thought I was a little bit crazy.

But when I won the district court,

people started taking a little more notice,

but you know crazy things happen in the district court,

it'll get corrected on appeal.

But when I won in the court of appeal,

then people started to really pay attention to the case.

(dramatic music)

Six years after taking on the case

Randy's determination took him

before the judges of the Supreme Court.

The Austrian government had the resources to fight the case

all the way to the highest court in America.

Very few cases go to the Supreme Court,

just about 80 cases per year, and so very rare

that you'd get a private litigation like this

going to the Supreme Court.

You can count on on a few hands the number of people

in Los Angeles who get to do that type of thing.

But as the date

for the Supreme Court hearing grew nearer,

Randy found he wouldn't just be fighting the Austrians.

A number of other countries

including the Bush administration wrote legal briefs

basically supporting Austria's contention that the case

shouldn't go forward in U.S. courts,

that the U.S. was not the proper jurisdiction.

Many countries don't want to see themselves

in the same position where they're being sued

in a foreign court over an historic grievance

that's 50 years old.

I think probably many U.S. judges don't want

to see those kinds of cases regularly in U.S. courts.

So basically when he went to go argue against Austria

in the U.S. Supreme Court, the Bush administration

had already cast a vote that was supportive of Austria.

On February 25, 2004,

Randy finally had the chance to take on both the Austrian

and his own government before the Supreme Court.

He's not a big guy, you know, and there's this huge room,

the court room, you know, and they had on this podium

sat the judges and then little Randy walked up there.

But Randy was desperate not to be

over-awed by the occasion.

I went up last after the U.S. government

and the Austrian government argued.

And so I got up and you don't prepare a speech

in the Supreme Court because they always interrupt you.

So I just had a general outline

of what I wanted to say.

And I said there are four grounds

for affirming the Ninth Circuit.

Ground one is, and then boom

I got interrupted by Justice Souter,

and he asked me this long, long question,

convoluted, twisting, and turning question.

Da da da da da da da, like that.

And all of a sudden the question was over.

And he's looking at me and I had not the slightest idea

what he had just asked me, not a clue.

All I could think of saying was I'm sorry, your honor,

I don't think I understood the question,

could you please rephrase it?

And there were these gasps in the audience.

But the other Justices were so nice.

They all smiled as if to say oh, don't worry,

he does that all the time or, you know,

thank goodness you asked

because we didn't understand it either.

It was a turning point.

Far from being a blunder, Randy had succeeded

in endearing himself to the court.

That opened everything for him

because all the other judges smiled.

From that moment, he had the judges on his side.

It must have had a good impact and it just seemed really

at the end of it, it seemed like we had a chance of winning,

which was a big surprise.

And so I just floated out of the room, and I was so happy.

And everybody congratulated me,

The room was filled with men, all lawyers.

They came running up to me,

and they said Maria, it looks fabulous.

And I said, how can you tell?

Nobody said anything.

(upbeat music)

Randy flew back to Los Angeles

uncertain whether he had won or lost.

No sooner had he arrived, then he got some bad news.

I got home and I opened up the legal newspaper

here in Los Angeles and the headline was

court likely to reverse Altmann case,

that we were gonna lose.

And so I called up the reporter and I said,

how could you say this?

Everybody thought it went so well.

And he said trust me, I've been reporting

on the Supreme Court for 35 years,

you don't stand a chance, it's all over.

I said well you know, some of the Justices

didn't even open their mouths.

He says, I can tell by the body language, you lost.

It was the spring when the case

was heard in Washington but it was the fall in Los Angeles

when Randy finally learned the result.

Three months later, I'm making breakfast for the kids,

and I get this call from the reporter.

He says, hello, this is Dave Pike.

And I said okay, well give me the bad news.

He said no, not bad news, you won!

I said you're kidding, he said no six-three decision

by Justice Stevens.

I literally couldn't believe it.

But it was coming from him, I had to believe it,

and so you know I tried to call Maria

and her phone was busy.

And then we finally got together

and just, I mean the celebration was enormous.

But very quickly we realized wait a second,

what did we just win?

Nothing, right?

All we won was the right to start the case in Los Angeles,

the paintings are still in Vienna, we hadn't won anything.

We just won the right to start.

It may have been just the beginning for Randy,

but the judgment put the Austrian government

in a difficult position.

They may have been anxious to throw off their Nazi past,

but now the case had attracted media interest

from around the world.

Now the U.S. Supreme Court had basically weighed in

and said okay well, you can hear it in U.S. Court.

U.S. courts tend to be more favorable in these cases.

However, the Austrians could have appealed,

as they had appealed some of the other decisions

in the past.

But to have this dragging on in the public view

during these appeals as an issue that really at this point

was not gonna go away

I think was a very difficult quandary for the Austrians.

But it wasn't just the Austrian government

that was in a precarious position,

Randy's client was now 89.

Could he risk a lengthy court case?

If she died his case was over;

she had no other relatives living in the United States

who could continue the case.

It took a year of negotiations but eventually both sides

agreed to a do-or-die arbitration.

I went behind closed doors with Maria and I said Maria,

this is the greatest thing, we can have this arbitration,

we can get it finally finished and by your 90th birthday,

next February, it'll all be over with,

and isn't that great?

And she said, are you crazy, why on earth

would we go back to Austria when we just been

fighting for five years all the way to the Supreme Court

and back to have the right to try the case

in front of this wonderful judge here in Los Angeles?

I said you're crazy, why would three Austrian arbitrators

go against their government and give us the paintings

when for eight years they kept saying?

And he said we have to take the chance.

Having convinced Maria, Randy flew to Vienna.

The game was on.

He was going to gamble everything.

The Klimts were probably worth over $100 million.

Who had the strongest hand?

Randall was very skillful

at getting his side of the story out.

I think he was more skillful than the Austrians

in articulating his position in the media.

So when the panel was deciding this case,

it was another period of months and months that went by

where they were still in this limbo.

And you kind of thought anything could happen.

Once again Randy had no idea

whether he had won or lost.

He returned to Los Angeles.

Then four months later he got an email message.

I came home late one night from my neighborhood poker game

where I had lost my shirt, and checked my email.

And sure enough there's an email from the main arbitrator

with the decision, and so I opened up the decision.

And it's all in German, you know?

And my German's pretty good, but it took me a while

until I got to the part where they said we won,

and I was obviously overjoyed.

It was after midnight on a Sunday night, Monday morning,

so I didn't call Maria right away.

I let her sleep and then in the morning

we really celebrated, this time we really celebrated.

It was very, very exciting.

I did not expect it, I was hoping.

But because I couldn't imagine and I still think

it is incredibly just, that these three Austrian judges

unanimously vote for something

which their government was so totally against.

Nobody in Austria thought this could happen.

They were shell-shocked.

These paintings were national icons.

I think it was a wise decision, but it came too late.

Of course Klimt is the national culture

and heritage of Austria,

and his paintings are famous and we're proud of them.

And he is Austrian and he wanted them to stay in Austria.

So Austria needed to find a solution,

a diplomatic solution, and that they knew

they're gonna be watched internationally

on how they will handle this case.

It could have been done smarter, it's done now,

but it could have been done smarter,

and the damage could have been less.

I think you cannot take a better example

for the style of Klimt than to compare

the Adele Bloch-Bauer One, with Adele Bloch-Bauer Two.

I mean we are very sad that from now on

we do not have this possibility anymore in our museum.

And this is very sad because this was such

a fascinating comparison which is so unique,

because you see not only the same person

only five years are in between these two portraits,

but you see also the change of style

which is in this short period.

When finally a decision was made

that the pictures will leave Austria

there was a national outcry.

There was lots of criticism,

and I was like why do we have to give the pictures away?

Why couldn't you find another way of handling this matter?

Of buying the pictures?

Because everybody thought we would have enough money to get

at least one of the pictures back or two,

but that wasn't the case.

So a lot of people felt sad and felt about a missed chance.

And so many people stormed, not stormed but so many people

went to the gallery to have a last look

at the Klimt pictures.

One aspect on the Austrian side is a certain lack

of coordination in this case, or maybe a lack of leadership.

So I don't think they had a plan A.

So they did not need a plan B.

This story began in 1938 with the Nazis

looting the Bloch-Bauer Klimts in Vienna.

The paintings were locked in Austria for 68 years.

For the first time since they were looted

they were leaving Vienna.

(upbeat music)

On the 24th of April 2006,

the paintings arrived in the city where Maria lives.

They went on display

at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art

for one of the most popular exhibitions ever held there.

When Maria first walked in and saw the paintings here

first of all she said, they look so much bigger here.

And I think it was wonderful for her

to be able to have them here in Los Angeles,

where she settled, where she raised her family,

to be able to share them with her family.

And we also have a great collection in the city

of German and Austrian art of this period.

So it would have had a marvelous context as well.

This was the final victory for Maria,

but far from keeping them as a family heirloom,

she decided to sell them.

They weren't destined to stay in the Los Angeles gallery.

They were on the move again, this time to New York.

Wealthy collectors from all over the world

were heading to Rockefeller Center.

The Klimts were going up for auction.

There's been a lot of interest.

They've been on view for the past four days,

and we've had record figures through.

Three four times the number of people

who normally come through our exhibition rooms

have been arriving and so I think from that

we can gauge that there's strong interest.

But after the long legal battles

why had Maria decided to sell?

It seems the main consideration was security,

how could Maria protect them?

These paintings now become so valuable

that the heirs didn't have the ability

to keep them themselves.

And this is really a way for Ferdinand and Adele's heirs

to transform this inheritance into something

that they can actually use for other good purposes.

And I know that they all have really terrific things

that they're going to be doing with the money for it.

So I hope the sale goes well,

and that they find good homes.

It doesn't bother me necessarily

if they go into private collections.

These were after all private property,

and it's only because of the this history

that they were in the Austrian Museum for so many decades.

but they belonged to Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer

and he willed them to his family.

And now just like any inheritance whether it be stock,

or cash, paintings, or whatever,

they're entitled to do with it what they want.

You so seldom see pictures of this quality

come to the market and to have four at one time

is something very special indeed.

I think each picture has its own particular facets

that will attract different clients.

And their general importance is something that has been

recognized by collectors far and wide.

Maria had struggled for a lifetime

to get the paintings back

and only owned them for a few months.

Did she have any regrets

about not leaving them together in Vienna?

Well I mean I wasn't willing to donate it

because I think the Belvedere had the paintings for 68 years

and there was no reason to make a donation after that.

But he could negotiate just like everybody else will do.

Maria Altmann didn't even want the pictures,

she didn't want 'em for her living room.

She wanted them actually to stay in Austria,

but she couldn't find another way to do it.

And she said look, if you wanna buy the pictures,

fair enough, if you don't, we're gonna take 'em.

Not only was

the Christie's auction room packed,

but there were international bids coming in by telephone.

The first painting up was Klimt's The Birch Forest.

And still bidder 36 million,

at $36 million all done.

And selling right at $36 million,

mark your bidder at 36 million.

Second Klimt the Austrian Landscape there, lot 52,

is illustrated in your catalogs.

$28 million, it's still up front against you here

and selling this time all done at $28 million

for you madam, $28 million dollars.

Lot 53 is the third Klimt Apple Tree.

Number one, at 29 million 500,000.

29 million five selling this side for 29 million 500,000.

Lot 54, fourth Klimt there,

portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer Two.

It's the 1912 portrait, 65 million.

$67 million,

67 million 500,000.

68 million.

At $68 million, it was down to two bidders.

How far would they go?

70 million 500,00, 71 million,

72 million, 73 million.

But just when the hammer was about to fall.

74 million, new bidder.

(laughing)

It's 74 million dollars, new bidder at 74 million.

75 million, 76 million,

77 million, 77 million 500,000,

78 million, 78 million 500,000.

At 78 million $500,000 on this telephone,

fair warning, and selling all done at 78 million 500,000.

Guy your bidder at $78 million 500,000.

(applauding)

It felt tremendous.

There was sort of an energy in the room

when the paintings came up

that I think was a response to the story itself.

The background of the pictures not just the pictures as art.

And I felt that electricity in the air.

I was sitting there and, at least that's how it felt to me.

The three Klimts had raised

a staggering $172 million.

Where they are now is a mystery.

Christie's is not saying who the buyers are.

But where was the most famous painting of all,

the Gold Portrait of Adele?

This painting was meant to be auctioned with the others,

but it never came up for sale.

It had been sold three months earlier

for a record-breaking $135 million to Ronald Lauder,

the head of the perfume Empire.

When Ronald Lauder was in Vienna

and he saw that painting he said he never forgot it.

Of course he'd already seen reproductions of it before,

and I think that Lauder's reaction was similar

to everyone's reaction, including my own.

Which was when I saw a picture of the painting

that was under discussion

my first reaction was oh, that painting.

And I think everyone has pretty much the same reaction.

Lauder himself put it this way,

as a 14 year old boy he had walked across

to the Belvedere one morning.

Nothing prepared me for how it looked.

It was something that symbolizes so many things to me.

It was just me traveling without my parents,

it symbolizes that moment of my growing up.

Perhaps the greatest irony of this art heist is this.

The paintings Hitler and Goering took

from the Bloch-Bauer's collection

and considered so valuable, faded into obscurity.

The ones the Nazis viewed as insignificant

and simply sold off

became the major treasures of the 20th century.

And Adele Bloch-Bauer's image came to be known

all over the world.

(dramatic music)