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Hello and welcome to the Witness History podcast from the BBC World Service with me

Louise Adaggo. Today we go back to 2006 and the story of Maria Altman, an

elderly Jewish refugee living in Los Angeles who were the young lawyer

fought the Austrian government for almost a decade to reclaim paintings by the artist Gustav

Klimt that had been stolen from her family by the Nazis.

At stake were five pictures by the Great Viennese painter, among them one of Klimp's most iconic portraits, the woman in gold, for a while the world's most expensive painting. But to Maria Altman, it was a reminder of her aunt, a deli blockbower, who the

portrait was of, and a link to her family's lost Austrian past.

I know in my family we still consider ourselves Austrian and

Maria and I both felt that that was part of us that couldn't be taken away by

the Nazis. Randall Schoenberg the young lawyer who'd help Maria Altman, win back the painting, was also from an illustrious Austrian family.

Randall's paternal grandfather was the great composer, Arnold Schoenberg.

Like the Altmans for Schoenberg had fled Vienna

when the Nazis arrived. And for as long as Randall could remember, the two families had

been close. I remembered my mother pointing to the gold portrait of Adelechbauer and telling

me your grandmother's friend Maria, that's her aunt.

The portrait of Adelechbauer won or the woman in gold was painted by Klimt at the turn of the century.

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