Fritz Grünbaum died at Dachau owning about 70 Schieles; his heirs won them back in New York, then one heir sued Christie's over the rest

Fritz Grünbaum, a Vienna cabaret star, owned several hundred artworks, including about 70 by Egon Schiele. In 1938 he and his wife Lilly tried to flee and were caught. He was sent to Dachau, then Buchenwald, then Dachau again, where he died on 14 January 1941. Lilly died in a camp the next year. In the mid-1950s Schiele works from the collection were sold in Switzerland by Lilly's sister, Mathilde Lukacs. How she obtained them is unknown; she died in 1979. Austria's restitution board refused claims in 2010 and 2015, finding no proof that those works had been seized^†. In New York, the heirs sued a London dealer over two Schieles. A trial court ruled for them in 2019, holding that a power of attorney signed in Dachau conveyed no title, and an appeals court upheld it 5 to 0 in 2022. In 2023 the Manhattan District Attorney issued seizure warrants. MoMA, the Morgan Library, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Oberlin's Allen museum and the Carnegie Museum gave up Schiele works. The heirs sold several at Christie's, each for about $1 million. On 7 August 2025 Milos Vavra, a descendant who had received 50 percent of those proceeds, petitioned the New York Supreme Court to make Christie's disclose three more Schieles a Swiss family wanted to sell. Status: petition filed 7 August 2025, New York Supreme Court; no ruling found^†.