English Translation

6 that the Czernin family sought an offer of US$1.2 million. Around the same time, the Seligmann art store offered US$ 1.2 million and claimed to know four potential buyers. Vienna art dealer Marianne Sharmützer offered Eugen Czernine čsKr 18 million for the present painting on 17 February 1936 for unspecified customers. In March 1936, the art dealer Kurt Walter Bachstitz, who called on the Federal Chancellor and the Minister of Education Kurt Schuschnigg for an export permit from the Federal Monument Office and was sent a draft contract for the purchase price of US$ 935,000 by Jaromir Czernin's lawyer Ernst Egger on 9 March 1936. The export permit was to be obtained by the buyer. Eugen Czernin's lawyer Anton Gassauer stated in a protocol that Eugen Ccernin was in favour of a sale without an export permit to preserve the rest of the gallery and expected at least US$1.2 million, but would not want to go below US$1 million. In April 1936, the Amsterdam art dealer Nathan Katz appeared, who had already offered 1 million for the painting in March, and who was seen in connection with the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum. In May 1936 Eugen Czernin, who had previously expressed his preference for the sale to the Netherlands, requested an offer of at least US$1.050,000,-- and a payment of the amount train by train with the handover of the painting in Vienna, regardless of the granting of an export permit. A report by the Austrian envoy in The Hague, Felix Orsini-Rosenberg, shows a differentiated assessment by Nathan Katz as an art dealer and the indication that neither the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam nor the Mauritshuis in The Haag would be able to acquire the representational painting. At most, a gift by an art patron would be eligible. At the beginning of July 1936, attorney Anton Gassauer informed that a sale of the painting by Nathan Katz was hopeless. In parallel to this, contract negotiations between Jaromir Czernin and Duveen Brothers took place in April 1936. In a draft contract, a six-month option for a purchase at the price of US$ 1 million was set up; the export costs were to be borne by the seller at 15 %, 85 % by the buyer. In discussions, Duveen Brothers emphasized that the painting was to be handed over abroad and that the payment would only be made after the handover.