A special 13th birthday
Family of Elisabeth Glanville
Birthdays are exciting for every child. But Ernst Gotthilf-Miskolcz from Vienna remembered his thirteenth birthday for the rest of his life for another reason: It was the day on which German troops marched into Austria, March 12, 1938.
Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-1987-0922-503
"I'll never forget it. Before the invasion, I had always been treated like a little gentleman, but suddenly I was a "Jew pig". My school friends had been very happy to come to my birthday party the week before. When I went back to school on Monday, they shouted "Sieg Heil" and "Heil Hitler" to me," he recalled decades later.
The Three Ages of Life
Family of Elisabeth Glanville
Ernst lived with his parents Stephan and Elisabeth and his sister Marietta in a beautiful large apartment in Vienna's First District. An impressive work of art hung in their dining room. A triptych that depicted the three ages of a woman's life in three large-format paintings. As a shy young girl harvesting wheat, as a mother carrying a heavy basket filled with potatoes on her back, a little boy at her side, and as a hunched, exhausted old woman. The original title of the painting, ‘Our Life Lasts 70 Years’, refers to the 90th Psalm:
“The days of our years are three score years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow, for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.”
Jugend 1898, Band 2. Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.3338#0223
In 1898, when it was completed, this work of art caused a sensation. Even in the year of its creation, it was reproduced on a double page in the influential magazine "Jugend", and was exhibited in the Munich Secession exhibition and the German Art Exhibition in Dresden.
Family of Elisabeth Glanville
Soon after, Elisabeth's parents, Dr Fritz and Emmy Redlich, acquired the triptych and gave it a prominent place in their apartment. Elisabeth, born in 1901, grew up with the painting, and after she married Stephan Gotthilf-Miskolcz in 1924, she received it as a wedding gift. It then hung in their Falkestraße apartment, and her children Ernst and Marietta remembered having it in front of their eyes every day until they left Vienna.
The triptych dominated the room, recalled Ernst's sister Marietta. Her place at the dining table was exactly opposite the monumental figures. "It was a family icon."
Hasty escape
Bulmash Family Holocaust Collection. 2019.2.189. https://digital.kenyon.edu/bulmash/1517
The annexation of Austria by the Nazis in March 1938 meant the end of the family's secure, prosperous existence. Ernst described the sudden changes: "I was no longer allowed to go to the park, I was not allowed to sit on the bench, I was no longer allowed to buy ice cream... everything was forbidden to me."
Although Elisabeth and Stephan were baptized Catholics, they were considered Jewish in the racial ideology of the Nazis. Father Stephan fled in a hurry after receiving a tip off that he was to be deported to Dachau. Ernst recalled: "He immediately packed a suitcase and went to the train station, where he took the first train to get to a visa-free country. It happened to be Yugoslavia." Elisabeth fled to Switzerland with the children. It was not until months later that the family was reunited in London.
Stadtarchiv München, DE-1992-FS-STB-5091
In May 1938, the family apartment in Vienna was looted by the Nazis. The triptych came by still obscure paths into the ownership of a Countess Weikersberg. In 1942, she offered it for sale to the Bavarian State Painting Collections, mediated by the painter's son, Johannes von Kalckreuth. A sum of 15,000 Reichsmarks was agreed. This is how the triptych came to Munich in 1942.
Long and ardent search for the art work
Family of Elisabeth Glanville
In England, Stephan and Elisabeth changed their family name to Glanville and Ernst became Ernest.
Bundesarchiv, Bild 101 III-Schilf-003-09
After the war, the Glanville family searched for their relatives. Not all of them survived the Nazi terror. Elisabeth's sister Alma Eisenberger and her 15 year old son Max were murdered in the Łódź Ghetto. The rest of the family were able to flee and now live scattered all over the world.
Elisabeth Glanville also searched for her lost possessions, including the missing works of art. She wrote to the Federal Office for the Protection of Monuments and to various galleries in Vienna, even to Interpol. But in 1948 she was told no one knew anything about their whereabouts.
Family of Elisabeth Glanville
Elisabeth did not give up. In 1971, she turned to the Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Their enquiries led her to the then location of the von Kalckreuth – the Bavarian State Painting Collections in Munich. However, in April 1973 her application for restitution or compensation was rejected by the Restitution Chamber in Berlin as inadmissible because the deadlines had expired in 1948.
More than a quarter of a century later, a turning point came with the Washington Conference in 1998. Elisabeth Glanville had died in 1983. But her children, Ernest and Marietta, had not forgotten the triptych and their mother's failed efforts to recover the cherished artwork. The demands of the Washington Principles and the first restitutions made to victims and their heirs encouraged Ernest and Marietta to make a new attempt. With the help of the Commission for Looted Art in Europe, the siblings applied for the return of the painting in December 1999. And this time their request was granted.
Restitution in London
Wikimedia Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported
On March 12, 2000, Ernest Glanville was 75 years old. It was a special birthday because he knew that the next day he and his sister Marietta would finally get the triptych back. Coincidentally, the artwork was at that time on display in London at the Royal Academy of Arts, in the exhibition ‘1900: Art at the Crossroads’. The siblings, who both lived in north London, did not have far to go for the restitution ceremony which was attended by Dr Reinhold Baumstark, Director-General of the Bavarian State Collection and David Gordon, Secretary of the Royal Academy.
PA Images / Alamy Stock Foto
At the ceremony on March 13, 2000, Ernest Glanville revived the painful memories of the family’s persecution by the Nazis. But he also emphasized how grateful he was that the fight for the stolen property had finally come to an end - especially on his 75th birthday.
Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen
‘The Three Stages of Life’ became the first work in Britain to be returned to its original owners and the national and international press gave extensive coverage to this event.
Marietta died in April 2012 and Ernest in June 2018. Their respective children still treasure the memory of that special day in March 2000 and the miracle of their parents’ escape from Vienna.
