Viktor Zuckerkandl

Viktor Zuckerkandl was a faithful patron and supporter of Gustav Klimt. During his life he owned and sold a great many of Klimt's paintings. In 1912 he commissioned Klimt to paint a full sized portrait of his wife Paula (nee Freund). It was likely destroyed in a warehouse in Berlin during an allied bombing raid in Nov. 1943. Only black and white copies of the painting that is listed in Novotny & Dobai catalogue of Klimt's works exist today. Preliminary sketches can be found in Alice Strobel's Drawings by Klimt. They still exist and are now and then encountered in art auctions.

The aryanization of Das Sanatorium Purkersdorf, owned by the Zuckerkandl family in Vienna, is the subject of a chapter in Arisiert: Eine spurensuche im gesellschaftlichen Untergrund der Republik by Irene Etzersdorfer (1995).

From ArtDaily.org: Viktor and Paula Zuckerkandl were at the center of Viennese society and culture at the turn of the 20th century, counting playwright Arthur Schnitzler, composers Gustav Mahler and Arnold Schönberg, and collectors such as Ferdinand and Adele Bloch-Bauer and August and Serena Lederer among their friends. The Zuckerkandls entertained the city’s elite from their home in the suburb of Purkersdorf, a masterpiece of modernism by celebrated architect Josef Hoffman known as the Purkersdorf Sanatorium. Viktor and his siblings were also among the most notable patrons of the arts in Vienna at the time, acquiring several extremely important paintings directly from Klimt, including Litzlberg am Attersee. Such purchases helped them form one of the greatest early collections of the artist’s work. When the Zuckerkandls died in 1927 without children, part of their extraordinary collection was sold, while the remainder passed onto Viktor’s family. "Litzlberg am Attersee" entered the collection of Viktor's sister Amalie Redlich who, together with her daughter Mathilde, was deported to Lodz in 1941 and never heard of again. Her collection was seized by the Gestapo and sold off. In 1947 when Redlich’s son-in-law returned, he could not find a trace of the pictures. Georges Jorisch, grandson of Amalie Redlich, was able to give an accurate description of the precious canvas hanging with Kirche in Cassone on either side of a bay window at the Purkersdorf Sanatorium, where he lived until leaving Vienna at the age of 10. It took leading Viennese researcher Ruth Pleyer and lawyer Dr. Alfred Noll years of intensive archival research to establish that Mr. Jorisch’s childhood memory was correct, and that "Litzlberg am Attersee" was one of the paintings from his childhood home that had been stolen by the Nazis. Since 1944, "Litzlberg am Attersee" has been part of museum collections in Salzburg–initially in the collection of the Landesgalerie Salzburg, now known as the Residenzgalerie, and later in the Museum der Moderne Salzburg, which ultimately returned the painting to Georges Jorisch in July of 2011. Mr. Jorisch will donate a portion of the proceeds from the sale of the canvas to the Museum der Moderne for the building of an extension that will be named in Amelie Redlich’s honor.

Viktor Zuckerkandl died Feb. 9, 1927; the Neue Freie Presse death notice appeared on Feb. 17.