“Woman In Gold”

GRANTS, NM— What does it mean to not only watch the enemy take your homeland, kill your family, rob all your possessions, send you away from your family to a camp, and then claim all you once held dear as their own heritage?

“Woman in Gold,” a 2015 film, does not sound like such a real-life drama, but it is. Starring Helen Mirren as Maria Altmann, this is the story of her life. Her story is one of love, survival, and eventual justice. But the film is really about Maria’s aunt, Adele Bloch-Bauer, the “Woman in Gold,” a painting by Gustav Klimt.

When Maria was a young girl being raised in Vienna, her family was hard working, business oriented, successful, and lovers of art and artists. They could afford beautiful works of art and were friends with the creators. One of their treasured paintings was of Maria’s mother’s sister, her aunt Adele, by family friend, Gustav Klimt.

Then, in the early 1940s, politics and governments were changing. Maria’s family was Jewish and when the Nazis aggressively moved through Europe. They entered her beloved Vienna and began to persecute the Jewish community. Some of the Austrian population pretended to be patriotic, but they welcomed the Nazis. Their reasons may have been political, or they may have just been jealous of Jewish prosperity.

Many innocents, peaceful Jews were publicly humiliated, robbed of their livelihoods, their businesses, homes, possessions, and sent to concentration camps. The Bloch-Bauer family was among those whose precious family possessions were confiscated, stolen, by greedy military officials.

Maria, a newlywed at the time, escaped the fate of many of her neighbors. Her safety came at a cost. She left her parents, who remained in their stripped Vienna home because her father was too ill to travel. This was no doubt a difficult decision.

However, in an April 2015 interview for the USC Shoah Foundation, she stated that she considered herself lucky to have only lost material possessions, unlike so many others. Maria had escaped with her husband. Her uncle had left before the turmoil began, realizing that conditions were going to worsen.

Helen Mirren is Maria Bloch-Bauer in the film and Ryan Reynolds portrays the young lawyer, Randol Schoenberg, who, although just starting his career, helps Maria regain the portrait of her aunt. It was hanging in the Belvedere Gallery in Vienna where it was given the name “Woman in Gold,” further stripping the family of any identity.

The battle begins when the Austrian government begins a program of Art Restitution, pretending to be interested in returning family treasures that had been stolen by the Nazis, to Jewish families. The program was a public relations stunt, meant only to repair the reputation of Austrians who had been friendly to the Nazis regime but were reluctant to let go of any valuable art they considered their own.

After several goarounds which included finding lost wills, winning a case in the United States Supreme Court, with Schoenberg’s help she eventually won the case through arbitration in Vienna and Maria was awarded her family’s Klimt paintings.

The painting of Adele Bloch-Bauer was subsequently sold to the Neue Galerie in New York City for $135 million, making it one of the five most valuable paintings in the world today.

Other players in the film are: Tatiana Maslany – young Maria Altmann Max Irons – Fritz Altmann Katie Holmes – Pam Schoenberg, Randol’s wife Daniel Bruhl – Hubertus Czernin, a sympathetic reporter Antje Traue – Adele Bloch-Bauer Moritz Bleibtreu – Gustav Klimt

Jonathan Pryce – Chief Justice Rehnquist