Austria gives up on bid for Klimts

The Austrian government has abandoned a plan to buy back five Gustav Klimt paintings, whose owner was forced to give them up while fleeing the Nazis in the late 1930s.

In January, an arbitration court ruled that the five works, including Klimt's masterpiece Adele Bloch-Bauer I (also called the Golden Adele), belong to Maria Altmann and other heirs of Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, who owned the works and whose wife Adele was the subject of the famous gold leaf-encrusted painting.

After the ruling, Austrian officials had been considering negotiating the purchase of one or more of the Klimt works.

Elisabeth Gehrer, Austria's minister of culture and education, issued a statement Thursday saying that the government could not afford the approximately $300-million US pricetag for the five works.

"Therefore the paintings are immediately available for [Altmann] to inherit," Gehrer said, adding that the government's Council of Ministers could not find the cash in its budget to keep the paintings, widely considered by Austrians to be national treasures.

Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel said, "we're simply unable" to buy the paintings, which have been on display in Austria's Belvedere Gallery since 1939. "Further negotiations are pointless." 

Altmann, 89, is the niece of Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, a Jewish sugar merchant who was forced to give up the paintings in 1938 when the Nazis took over Austria.

The two sides have fought since 1998 over ownership of the works, which also include a lesser-known Bloch-Bauer portrait, Apfelbaum (Apple Tree), Buchenwald/Birkenwald (Beech Forest/Birch Forest) and Haeuser in Unterach am Attersee (Houses in Unterach on Attersee Lake).