Lea Bondi, later Lea Jaray or Lea Bondi-Jaray (12 December 1880 – 1969) was an Austrian art dealer and art collector who was forced to emigrate to Great Britain due to Nazi persecution after the annexation of Austria to the Nazi German Reich. The Würthle Gallery, which she ran, was "Aryanized" by Nazis and her art collection, including the Portrait of Wally by Egon Schiele, extorted.
Biography
Family
Lea Bondi was born into a German-Jewish merchant family in Mainz who moved to Vienna in the mid-1880s. Her parents were Marcus Bondi (1831–1926) and Bertha nee Hirsch (1842–1912). She had 16 siblings, eight brothers, eight sisters.
In 1936 she married the sculptor Alexander Sándor Járay (1870–1943) from Temešvár, after his first wife died becoming Lea Jaray or Lea Bondi-Jaray.
Gallery owner in Vienna
On 6 June 1919, Lea Bondi was entered in the Vienna Commercial Register as authorized signatory of the Würthle & Sohn Successor, known as Kunsthandlung Würthle or later as Galerie Würthle. In the following year the business was expanded and Verlag Neuer Graphik added to the name. On 22 June 1920, Otto Nirenstein (1894–1978), who later became known as Otto Kallir, also received individual procuration. The expanded company published contemporary and modern original graphics from Austria by artists such as Faistauer, Itten, Jungnickel, Kubin and Schiele. Nirenstein's power of attorney was canceled on 26 May 1922. Bondi became an open partner in the company. In 1926, the owners Leopoldine and Ulf Seidl (1881–1960) resigned; on 13 August 1926, Bondi became the sole owner of the art dealership. According to the database of Jewish collectors and art dealers, the manufacturer and collector Otto Brill (1881–1954) is said to have been a partner.
Lea Bondi also collected art, acquiring the Portrait of Wally (Wally Neuzil) by Egon Schiele in the mid-1920s. She herself was portrayed several times, including in 1927 by Christian Schad in oil on wood.
Aryanization, robbery, emigration
There are no original sources about the Aryanization of the Würthle Gallery by the Salzburg art dealer Friedrich Welz, because – as emerged on the occasion of allegations of fraud against Welz in 1943 – according to Welz, “no written contract was concluded [...] – only in its place a log that Welz keeps at the disposal of the tax office. ". Following the Aryanization of the Würthle gallery, Friedrich Welz visited Bondi-Jaray in her home at Weißgerberlände 38, on the Danube Canal the day before the planned departure for London, 17 March 1939. Schiele's Portrait of Wally hung on the wall. Welz immediately recognized the value of the painting and demanded it, as well as a piece of furniture. Lea Bondi-Jaray made it clear that it had been her private property for many years and that the picture neither belonged to Galerie Würthle nor was it for sale. Welz insisted until Bondi-Jaray's husband told her not to risk the planned escape. According to court filings, he told her she should not resist Welz, because "you know what he [Welz] can do.'"
Holocaust: Fate of family members
Four sisters and a brother were murdered in the Shoah, Rosa Gradenwitz and Helene Hausdorff in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, the unmarried twin sisters Hilda and Hinda Bondi in the Izbica ghetto and Siegmund Bondi in the final days of the Nazi regime in 1945 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Three brothers escaped, Joseph to New York, Hugo Naftali to Palestine and Samuel Bondi, an internist, to an unknown location.