00:00A rare Gustav Klimt portrait with a remarkable survival story just shattered records at auction.
00:09Gustav Klimt's portrait of Elizabeth Lederer sold for, get this, $236.4 million after a 20-minute bidding war at Sotheby's in New York on Tuesday,
00:21setting a new record as the second most expensive piece of modern art ever sold at auction.
00:27You see it there?
00:28The six-foot-tall portrait was painted between 1914 and 1916, and its history is just as extraordinary as its price tag.
00:37Follow me here.
00:38When Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938, the Lederer family's vast art collection was looted,
00:45but their portraits were left behind, deemed too Jewish to be worth selling.
00:51That's according to the National Gallery of Canada.
00:52Elizabeth Lederer survived by claiming that Klimt, who wasn't Jewish, was her father.
00:59With help from her former brother-in-law, a high-ranking Nazi official,
01:03she obtained documents stating she descended from the artist,
01:07a lie that protected her and allowed her to remain in Vienna until her death in 1944.
01:13For more information, visit www.knota.gov.au.au.au.au.au.au.
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