Austria, whose Parliament has just given final approval to a law permitting restitution of hundreds of artworks seized by the Nazis, expects to return some works to their owners by late December. But the law will not resolve some of the toughest cases involving many of the most valuable works.
The law covers paintings, furniture and other artifacts held by the Austrian Government, Culture Minister Elisabeth Gehrer said in an interview in New York on Saturday. After World War II, the Government returned some works confiscated by the Nazis but also instituted an art export ban, refusing to allow people who had fled the country to reclaim all of their property.
Most of the cases are known, Mrs. Gehrer said, because in January Austria's 10 state museums were ordered to review the provenance of works in their collections.
The order followed an uproar over two Egon Schiele paintings lent by an Austrian foundation to the Museum of Modern Art in New York a year ago and then claimed by two American families.
But Mrs. Gehrer said the new law did not apply to the Schiele paintings, nor to cases like the claim by a Los Angeles resident, a niece of the renowned collectors Ferdinand and Adele Bloch-Bauer, for several important paintings by Gustav Klimt.
"These cases have to be dealt with by a court, and I am not a court," said Mrs. Gehrer, who was in New York to check the progress of a teacher exchange program between Austria and city schools.
Mrs. Gehrer said she expected restitution to involve perhaps 20 families and 400 to 500 items, including furniture, armor, coin collections and some paintings. Under the law, a seven-member advisory panel, including the Finance and Justice Ministers, will review claims. "Once the advisory commission gives its recommendations, we have to check the last wills and see if the claimants are indeed the rightful heirs" before restitution can take place, she said.
Mrs. Gehrer said each family would decide whether to make its claim public. Many in the art world expect the first case, which Mrs. Gehrer predicted would come before the end of December, to involve the Austrian branch of the Rothschild family, many of whose works hang or are stored in the Kunsthistoriches Museum and the National Gallery.
"All the facts are clear on that case," said Mrs. Gehrer.
But Mrs. Gehrer said many questions, like the Bloch-Bauer case, would have to be resolved not by the advisory panel, but in the courts.
That case is being pressed by Maria Altmann of Los Angeles. She is named as a beneficiary in the will of her uncle, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, who owned seven Klimt paintings, including two famous portraits of his wife, Adele, as well as a famed porcelain collection and other paintings and property.
The Nazis seized or sold his property, and the Klimt paintings were claimed by the Austrian National Gallery because Adele Bloch-Bauer, who died in 1923, had asked her husband in her will to give them to the gallery after his death.
But Mr. Bloch-Bauer, who died in exile in 1945, left all of his property to his heirs, who, led by Mrs. Altmann, say the provision in his wife's 1923 will was a request, not legally enforceable. They have retained a lawyer.
"My uncle would never have donated anything to Austria after the way he had been treated," Mrs. Altmann said in a recent statement.
Mrs. Gehrer said: "That is not a political question. It is a legal question. The political question was whether the artworks were held in Austria by anti-export laws, and I made a political decision on these cases.
"The case of a last will is not up to politicians to make the decision. We have to make a distinction between those cases that are political problems and those that are not.
"My opinion is that the museum legally owns the paintings. But if the court disagrees, it will be accepted."
She spoke of the Schiele case in the same vein. Austrians were incensed when the District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau of Manhattan issued a subpoena preventing the return of the two paintings to Austria in January, pending a criminal investigation of their ownership.
The Museum of Modern Art contested the legality of his move, and in May a State Supreme Court justice agreed. But the District Attorney's office appealed. The paintings continue to sit in the Modern's storage rooms. An appellate court ruling is expected within weeks.
Lawyers for one of the claimants want to meet with the Austrian Government and possibly resolve the matter. On Saturday Mrs. Gehrer said: "There's nothing to discuss. It is not customary in Austria to negotiate. According to our legal practices, the case has to be clarified by the courts, not resolved by negotiations and deals."