User:Eli185/Ferdinand Spany

Ferdinand Spany (26.3.1897 Vienna – 1.10.1983 Vienna) an art dealer, convicted criminal and philanthropist involved in numerous restitution cases for property and artworks looted from Viennese Jews.

Before moving into the art business, Ferdinand Spany worked as a shipping clerk for the E. Bäuml company.

From 1921 to 1925 he was managing director at the art auction house Leo Schidlof.

He was arrested in 1927 and four years later sentenced to ten months in prison for embezzlement and fraud. Other criminal convictions included bodily harm, insult to honor and embezzlement.

The Nazi years

After the Anschluss in 1938, Spany worked for the provisional administrator Rudolf Maier and Andreas Käs of the liquidation office for the liquidation and Aryanization of the watch and jewelry trade, among others. He was involved in the liquidation of the estate of Jakob Futterweit and the Kauftheil & Müller company. "Taking advantage of the predicament in which Jews of his extended circle of acquaintances found themselves, Spany also arranged apartments and passports for them in return for payment, which again resulted in criminal proceedings before the Vienna Regional Court." In 1940, Spany was sentenced to several months' imprisonment in two trials for incitement to abuse official authority or aiding and abetting such abuse.

Spany applied for membership in the Nazi party in 1939, but was rejected ue to his numerous previous convictions. He was expelled from the SA, of which he had been a member since 1938, in 1941 for the same reason.

End 1942/43, he moved with his wife Josefine and their four joint children into an "Aryanized" four-room apartment in Vienna 1, Hegelgasse 6, and rented two rooms of the apartment of Ludmilla Wotawa, whom he had known since 1925, in Vienna 3, Landstraßer Hauptstraße 58, as an office.

From April 1943 to April 1945, Spany was assigned to the heavy anti-aircraft battery at Bisamberg.

Postwar restitution cases and more criminal charges

Despite several pending court cases in the post-war period, he continued to operate successfully as an art and antiques dealer. When he was arrested again in September 1945, the criminal police seized and inventoried part of the extensive stock of art objects in Spany's apartment and office, which was estimated at over 40,000 Reichsmark. The preliminary investigations subsequently initiated against him and Wotawa by the People's Court of Vienna on suspicion of abusive enrichment under § 6 KVG on the basis of Spany's buying and selling activities in the close vicinity of Vugesta, Vermögensverkehrsstelle and Dorotheum were discontinued in 1950. Nevertheless, early restitutions of art and furnishings, some of them out of court, were made, for example to Anna Stein.

In 1952, Spany was forced to restitute the apartment in Hegelgasse to the plundered Jewish owner, according to the findings of the Restitution Commission.

In the 1950s claims for restittuion of artworks from Josef and Cäcilie Lilienthal resulted in an out-of-court settlement.

After the death of his first wife Josefine, Spany married Ludmilla Wotawa in 1962.

Donations to the Belevedere and the City of Vienna

In the 1960s and 1970s, he and she made joint donations to the Österreichische Galerie and the City of Vienna.

Spany also maintained good relations with the rector and later academy director of the Academy of Fine Arts Alfred Sammer. In 1970, for example, he dedicated a painting by Koloman Moser to his memory. Four years later, at the request of the Academy of Fine Arts, Spany received the professional title of professor and in 1983 the Golden Decoration of Honor of the Republic of Austria for his services to the rediscovery of the artists Max Kurzweil and Bernhard Zdichinec, the donation of valuable works of art to the Austrian Gallery, and his research on the idea of Pan-Europe. Furthermore, he was awarded the Golden Decoration of Merit of the Province of Vienna and the Honorary Certificate of the Academy. After his death in 1983, Ferdinand Spany was buried in an honorary grave at the Vienna Central Cemetery.