Republic of Austria v. Altmann

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Poster in Vienna, bidding goodbye to the painting Adele Bloch-Bauer

Republic of Austria v. Altmann, 541 U.S. 677 (2004)^[1], was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act applies retroactively. It is one of the most recent cases that deals with the "Anti Retroactivity Doctrine, which is a doctrine that holds that courts should not construe a statute to apply retroactively (to apply to situations that arose before it was enacted) unless there is a clear statutory intent that it would do so. This means that, regarding lawsuits filed after its enactment, the FSIA standards of sovereign immunity and its exceptions apply even to conduct that took place before 1976.

The result of this for the plaintiff, Maria Altmann, was that she could bring an action against Austria for recovery of a painting stolen by the Nazis and now housed in a government museum. Both parties agreed to arbitration in an Austrian court in 2005. The court ruled in favour of Altmann on January 16, 2006.

Adele Bloch-Bauer, the subject of two of the paintings, had bequeathed them to the Austrian government in her will.[2] However, the Supreme Court determined that Adele was never the legal owner of the paintings. Rather, it determined that Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer was their legal owner and that Altmann was the rightful heir of Ferdinand's estate.

The ruling in favour of Maria Altmann came as a great shock to the Austrian public and the government. The loss of the paintings was regarded in Austria as a loss of national treasure. The Austrian government received wide criticism from the opposition parties for its failure to have secured a deal with Maria Altmann at an earlier stage. Maria Altmann told the government that the time was up and there would be no deal from her side anymore. She had attempted earlier to come to some mutual agreement in the 1990s, however the government kept on ignoring her offers and her letter. The paintings left Austria in March 2006 and were flown to Los Angeles. There were various attempts by Austrians to buy at least some of the works back.