030512 SE The World of Wohllebengasse: The Law and Culture of Looted Art and Property in Austria (2015W)

The Gallias were Jews who came to Vienna in the late nineteenth century, grew wealthy through the gas mantle, one of the great Austrian inventions of the fin-de-siecle, and became notable patrons of the arts with a lavish Hoffmann apartment in the Fourth District filled with Secessionist pictures. When one of the Family´s descendants, Tim Bonyhady, a cultural historian and lawyer at the Australian National University, came to write their story in his book Wohllebengasse, he was particularly concerned to contextualize the Family´s experience and examine what was distinctive and highly individual about the Gallias and what was more typical and general about them, whether in relation to the Gallias´ religion, wealth, art, or persecution. This interdisciplinary seminar will take up key themes of the book, historical and contemporary, cultural and legal. It will explore the world of Wohllebengasse, not just when this street was the Family´s home, but also the immediate context in which the book appeared in 2013, with particular emphasis on contemporary commemoration, restitution and litigation.