On the eve of World War II, Nazis in Austria seized a pastel by renowned impressionist artist Claude Monet, selling it off and sparking a family's decades-long search that culminated Wednesday in New Orleans. At an FBI field office, agents lifted a blue veil covering the Monet pastel and presented Adalbert Parlagi's granddaughters with the artwork more than 80 years after it was taken from their family. Helen Lowe said she felt that her grandfather would be watching and that he would be "so, so proud of this moment," reports the AP. Monet's 1865 "Bord de Mer" is one of 20,000 items recovered by the FBI Art Crime Team out of an estimated 600,000 artworks and millions of books and religious objects stolen by the Nazis.
After Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938, Adalbert Parlagi, a successful businessman and art-lover, and his wife, Hilda, left behind almost everything they owned and fled Vienna, using British license plates to drive across the border, their granddaughters said. Though the Parlagis hadn't identified as Jewish for years and baptized their children as Protestants, they were still considered Jewish under Nazi laws, according to Austrian government records. Other relatives were killed in concentration camps. The Parlagis attempted to ship their valuable carpets, porcelain, and artworks out of Vienna to London, but found out later that their property had been seized and auctioned off by the Gestapo to support the Third Reich.
Adalbert Parlagi's efforts to recover his stolen art were stonewalled by the Vienna auctioneer who had bought and sold the Monet pastel and another artwork owned by Parlagi. The records were lost after the fighting in Vienna, the auctioneer told Adalbert in a letter shortly after World War II, according to an English translation of a document prepared by an Austrian government body reviewing the Parlagi family's art restitution claims. "I also cannot remember two such pictures either," the auctioneer said. But Adalbert Parlagi and his son Franz kept meticulous ownership and search records. After Franz's death in 2012, Françoise Parlagi stumbled upon her father's cache of documents, including the original receipt from her grandfather's purchase of the Monet pastel.
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She reached out to Commission for Looted Art in Europe for help in 2014. The commission's research team reviewed archives and receipts, contacted museums and art experts and scoured the internet, but initially found "absolutely no trace," said co-founder Anne Webber. Then, in 2021, the team discovered online that a New Orleans dealer acquired the Monet in 2017 and sold it to a Louisiana-based doctor and his wife. The FBI investigated the commission's research and, earlier this year, a federal court ruled the pastel should be returned to the Parlagis' descendants. "There was never a question" of returning the art to the rightful owners after learning of its sordid history, said Bridget Vita-Schlamp, whose late husband had purchased the Monet pastel. "We were shocked, I'm not going to lie," she said.
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