Draft:Mathilde Lukacs

Mathilde Lukacs (née Herzl; 30 August 1883 – 1979) was an Austrian Holocaust survivor whose postwar sales of artworks have made her a figure of interest in art provenance research. She is chiefly remembered for having sold parts of the collection of her brother-in-law, the cabaret artist Fritz Grünbaum, in the 1950s, thereby playing a key role in the dispersal — and subsequent restitution disputes — of works by Egon Schiele.

Early life

Mathilde Herzl was born on 30 August 1883 in Vienna, the eldest child of Bernhard Herzl (1842–1915), a Viennese goldsmith, and his wife Julie Engelsmann. In 1909 she married Sigmund Lukacs (1877–1971), a jeweller and merchant originally from Bátaszék, Hungary. The couple lived at Rudolfsplatz 3 in Vienna’s Innere Stadt, where Mathilde served as Prokuristin (authorised signatory) in her husband’s family business.

Nazi persecution and emigration

Following the annexation of Austria in March 1938, Sigmund Lukacs was briefly arrested by the SA. Released on the condition that he and his wife would emigrate, they applied in May 1938 for Belgian visas arranged by Mathilde’s brother, Maximilian Herzl. In August they deregistered from Vienna, exporting household and art goods — including porcelain and carpets — under an export licence issued by the Central Monument Protection Office. The Lukacses lived in Antwerp from August 1938 to January 1941, then in Brussels, where they were interned from October 1943 until liberation.

Post-war

The Lukacses returned to Vienna in 1948. Mathilde and Sigmund Lukacs resettled permanently in Vienna in 1958, living in a senior citizens’ home in Döbling until their deaths (Sigmund in 1971; Mathilde in 1979).

Art collection

Between 1952 and 1956, Mathilde sold 113 works from Fritz Grünbaum’s former art collection — notably watercolours and drawings by Egon Schiele — to Galerie Kornfeld in Bern. These sales included oil paintings and dozens of paper-based works, which were exhibited in Bern in autumn 1956 and marked the beginning of Schiele’s postwar market revival. The precise means by which Mathilde acquired the artworks remains unclear, as she was never formally recognised as Grünbaum’s heir and withdrew her 1954 application to have her sister declared dead. The dispersal of these works has led to prominent restitution cases, including legal disputes over a Schiele drawing sold to a New York gallery.