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The Priesters

Julius (1870-1955) and Camilla Priester’s (née Robitschek, 1885-1962) elegant apartment in the heart of Vienna displayed over 80 fine Italian and Dutch Old Master and 19th-century paintings in every room, evoking the refinement and confidence of pre-war Vienna and the Priesters’ own clear sense of taste and style. [Fig.1-3]

LV Priester Fig. 2 - Julius Priester 1923 — Fig. 2 Julius Priester in 1923
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LV Priester Fig. 3 - Camilla Priester in the 1950s — Fig. 3 Camilla Priester, Mexico, 1950s
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Julius Priester was a banker and an executive in the oil and energy sector, director of the Naphta (petroleum) stock corporation Galicia with offices in Drohobycz (in present-day Ukraine) and at Heumarkt 10 in Vienna. Following the mid-nineteenth century Galician oil boom, the region around Drohobycz had become a centre for oil extraction, with the Austro-Hungarian empire becoming, in the decades before World War I, the world’s third largest oil producer after the USA and Russia. [Fig. 4-5]

LV Priester Fig. 4 - Viennese Commercial Register — Fig. 4 First page for the Galizische Naphta-Aktiengesellschaft “Galicia” in the Viennese commercial register; the company was liquidated by Julius Priester in 1925

LV Priester Fig. 5 - Postcard of Galician Oil Wells — Fig. 5 Postcard showing oil wells of the Anglo-Galician Oil Company in Boryslav, predecessor of the Petroleumgesellschaft Galizin G.m.b.H., of which Julius Priester was director

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LV Priester Fig. 6 - 1926 directory Lindemann

LV Priester Fig. 12 - Sousa Mendes visas 1940

LV Priester Fig. 16 - Frans Hals in colour

LV Priester Fig. 17 - Neues Oesterreich 1953 article

LV Priester Fig. 20 - El Greco_SN00627820_001

LV Priester Fig. 21 - Reverse_El Greco_SN00627820_001 cropped

LV Priester Fig. 22 - El Greco Knoedler stockbook entry 5282 cropped

LV Priester Fig. 23 - De Witte_SN00627820_002

LV Priester Fig. 24 - Master of Frankfurt_unframed_SN00627820_003

From the early 1920s, when he was in his 50s, Julius Priester devoted himself to building an art collection. He was advised by Moritz Lindemann (1880-1944/1945), an Old Master dealer with a gallery on Vienna’s Karlsplatz. [Fig 6]

The collection was displayed both in Priester’s office and in the third-floor apartment where he and his wife Camilla lived from 1914 onwards at Ebendorferstrasse 8, near the city hall and the Burgtheater, in Vienna’s historic centre. [Fig. 7]

In the late 1920s, Priester was a donor of the Kunsthistorisches Museum (Art Historical Museum) of Vienna and a supporter of the museum’s yearbook, as were Lindemann and Eisler. [Fig. 8]

In 1932, Ludwig Baldass of the Kunsthistorisches Museum was invited to the Priester apartment to view the art collection. [Fig. 9]

Fig. 8 Supporters of the Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien [Yearbook of the Art Historical Collections in Vienna], 1928Digital image: Courtesy of The Heidelberg University Library.

LV Priester Fig. 9 - Baldass letter 1932 — Fig. 9 Letter from Ludwig Baldaß, Kunsthistorisches Museum of Vienna, to Julius Priester, 23 February 1932
Credit line: KHM-Archiv, II 664, 1932, Priester

Julius Priester was particularly interested in Dutch and Italian artists including Peter Paul Rubens, Frans Hals, Tintoretto, David Teniers, Pinturicchio and Anthony van Dyck, and had a distinct eye for portraits. The collection also included outstanding works by nineteenth century Austrian artists such as Josef Danhauser, Moritz Michael Daffinger, Carl Moll and Rudolf von Alt.

Photographs of the Priester apartment taken before 1938 show the art collection displayed within and complemented by an oak-furnished setting evoking a Renaissance-style interior. [Figs 1, 10-11]

LV Priester Fig. 10 - Pre-1938 interior Cranach — Fig. 10 Pre-war photograph of the Priesters’ apartment in Vienna including on the left a Madonna and Child by Cranach and a Barthel Bruyn portrait
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LV Priester Fig. 11 - Pre-1938 interior w Frans Hals — Fig. 11 Pre-war photograph of the Priesters’ apartment in Vienna including portraits by Frans Hals and Rubens
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Persecution and the Looting of the Collection after 1938

The Priesters’ life was dramatically changed by the ‘Anschluss’ or annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany on 12 March 1938. Forced to flee their home and their country, they lost all of their property and assets in Vienna, including all their paintings, as well as silverware, tapestries and antique Persian carpets.

In March 1938, Julius and Camilla Priester fled to Paris. Julius Priester had business interests in France and may have owned a property in Trouville, Normandy. When Nazi Germany attacked France in May 1940, Julius and Camilla fled via Bordeaux and Lisbon to Mexico City, where they arrived in late August 1940. The Priesters, together with Julius’ brother Leo Priester and his companion Lilly Matathias (later Priester), were able to escape Europe because of visas issued by Aristides de Sousa, Portuguese consul in Bordeaux, in defiance of official instructions. [Fig. 12]

The Priesters reached Mexico aboard the Portuguese cargo ship SS Quanza (81 passengers without visas, threatened with return to Europe, were granted asylum in the USA following legal petitions and the intervention of Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. The Priesters never returned to Austria. Julius died in Mexico in 1955, Camilla in 1962.

From abroad, Julius Priester arranged for the contents of the Ebendorferstrasse apartment to be packed and stored with the interior decorator and shipping agent Max Föhr, who was to have them sent on to Paris. But, as the Nazi grip on Jewish property tightened, these plans proved in vain.

In August 1938 and on 11 May 1939 the contents of the apartment were appraised by art experts under the supervision of the Gestapo and the Zentralstelle für Denkmalschutz (Central Office of Heritage Protection). This resulted in the seizure of five paintings in November 1938, followed by a further nine in May 1939, which entered museum collections including that of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. [Fig. 13]

LV Priester Fig. 13 - confiscation 4 Nov 1938 — Fig. 13 Confiscation decree, 4 November 1938, for several pictures from the Priester Collection, including the Frans Hals portrait
Digital image: Archiv des Bundesdenkmalamts Wien (BDA-Archiv), Restitutionsmaterialen, K 43-1, PM Priester Julius, fol. 86. Photo: © Bundesdenkmalamt Wien.

The latter included a Frans Hals Portrait of a gentleman, a painting known to Ludwig Baldaß (1887-1963) of the Kunsthistorisches Museum since at least 1932, when he had visited the Priesters at home and viewed the collection. [Fig. 14]

The rest of the collection and furnishings were transferred to Max Föhr at Rienößlgasse 13 in Vienna for storage but, although an export license was applied for, no shipment was permitted [Fig. 15]. In February 1944, the art collection and furnishings were confiscated by the Gestapo and removed in six trucks and, research suggests, taken to a storage space of the Nazi looting organisation Vugesta at Krummbaumgasse 8 in Vienna.

Fig. 15 Export Ban Collection Julius Priester, September 1938.Digital image: Archiv des Bundesdenkmalamts Wien (BDA-Archiv), Restitutionsmaterialen, K 43-1, Priester Julius, fol. 158. Photo: © Bundesdenkmalamt Wien.

Post-war Restitution Efforts

After the war, Julius Priester made extensive efforts to trace and recover the stolen works.

In May 1947, his lawyer, Dr Erich Goglia, registered a claim with the Austrian authorities, attaching a list of paintings based on an inventory drawn up for insurance purposes on 4 May 1937 by Dr Robert Eigenberger (1890-1979), director of the Picture Gallery of Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts.

That same year, Frans Hals’ Portrait of a Gentleman was restituted to the family, later to be donated to the Museo Nacional de San Carlos in Mexico City (inv. 10425). [Fig. 16].

From Mexico, Julius Priester was in frequent contact with his Vienna-based lawyers and his private secretary Henriette Geiringer. Their extensive correspondence on tracing the collection bears testimony both to their concerted efforts but also to the obstacles encountered.

They contacted the authorities in Austria – including the Federal Heritage Office (Bundesdenkmalamt) and the Austrian Federal Police, and internationally, through Interpol and their own efforts, the German, Swiss and French police and US legal authorities.

The Priester losses were also reported in the press, notably in connection with legal proceedings, such as a 1953 court case against Julius Strecker, a former appraiser for the Gestapo, in whose possession a Rubens painting Man with a fur coat was located. [Fig. 17]

In 1954 the Austrian Federal Police circulated internationally an illustrated search list of 17 of the missing Priester paintings, resulting in the recovery of several works. [Fig. 18]

While a number of works, notably those confiscated in 1938 and 1939, could be traced in the years after the war, the bulk of the collection remained missing. [Fig. 19]

LV Priester Fig. 19 - export confirmation 25 July 1947 — Fig. 19 - export confirmation 25 July 1947
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REFERENCES

Sophie Lillie, Was einmal war: Handbuch der enteigneten Kunstsammlungen Wiens, Vienna, 2003, chapters on Julius and Camilla Priester (pp 905-909) and on Leo Priester (pp 910-913)

“Looted Art Research Unit”, Report of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies 2014–2015, pp 87-94, < https://www.ochjs.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Annual-Report-2014-15-compressed.pdf>

Christie’s, “How these Old Masters were seized by the Gestapo and returned decades later”, 26 November 2021, <https://www.christies.com/en/stories/reunited-three-old-masters-from-the-priester-collection-c4748ff183974d628808874c1402467b>

Archives of the Bundesdenkmalamt & Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Lexicon of Austrian Provenance Research, <www.lexikon-provenienzforschung.org>

Commercial Register, Municipal Archives of Vienna
https://www.wien.gv.at/actaproweb2/benutzung/archive.xhtml?id=Stueck%20%20e69e8e2e-34cf-4e9d-bc94-e6e0763ad179VERA#Stueck__e69e8e2e-34cf-4e9d-bc94-e6e0763ad179VERA

Sousa Mendes Foundation, < https://sousamendesfoundation.org/visa-recipients/>

Archives de la Préfecture de Police, Paris

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