Maria Altmann | Recovered stolen art, 94

Maria Altmann, 94, who fled Nazi-occupied Vienna as a newlywed and returned to wage a triumphant fight to recover Gustav Klimt's iconic 1907 gold portrait of her aunt, has died.

Ms. Altmann died Monday at home in Los Angeles after a long illness, said family friend E. Randol Schoenberg.

Ms. Altmann was an 82-year-old widowed grandmother and retired dress-shop owner in 1998 when she enlisted the young Schoenberg, a lawyer who was the son of a friend, to investigate the Nazi theft of her Jewish family's Klimt collection. The collection included Klimt's famous Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, hanging in the Austrian National Gallery.

The battle took Ms. Altmann and Schoenberg to the U.S. Supreme Court - which ruled that the case could go forward in U.S. courts. An Austrian mediation panel ultimately awarded Ms. Altmann and four other heirs the five Klimts in 2006.

"They delay, delay, delay, hoping I will die," she said in 2001. "But I will do them the pleasure of staying alive."

Cosmetics baron Ronald Lauder bought the gold portrait of Adele, calling it the "Austrian Mona Lisa," for $135 million, a record then. It is on display at his Neue Galerie in New York. The four other works brought $192.7 million at auction and went into private collections.

Born Marie Viktoria Bloch-Bauer in Vienna, Ms. Altmann was the youngest of five children of Therese Bauer and Gustav Bloch.

Her mother's sister, Adele, married Gustav's brother, Ferdinand, who ran his father's sugar factory. Later, the Bloch and Bauer families united their surnames in the style of Vienna aristocrats.

In March 1938, Nazi Germany annexed Austria.

In an attempt to gain control of the family's bank accounts, the Gestapo sent Ms. Altmann's husband, Fritz, to Dachau. He was freed when his brother, a textile manufacturer, promised to hand over his foreign accounts.

Maria and Fritz Altmann fled on foot to the Netherlands. Ferdinand escaped to Switzerland, leaving the palatial estate he had shared with Adele and their collections of art and porcelain. The Austrian National Gallery snapped up the gold portrait of Adele, which was delivered with a letter proclaiming, "Heil, Hitler!"

- Los Angeles Times