The industrialist and entrepreneur Oscar Bondy owned a collection of more than 1,600 valuable paintings, sculptures, furniture and decorative arts. Bondy lived at Schubertring 3 in the centre of Vienna from 1905, as well as in Bohemia and Moravia. In March 1938, as a Jew threatened by Nazi persecution, he did not return to Austria from what was then Czechoslovakia. He emigrated to Switzerland in May 1938, then moved on to Portugal and the USA and married his Viennese assistant Elisabeth (Elizabeth) Soinig (5.6.1890-21.4.1974) in exile. Bondy's apartment in Vienna was sealed by the authorities just a few days after the “Anschluss”, and part of the art collection there was seized at the request of the Zentralstelle für Denkmalschutz (Bundesdenkmalamt/Federal Monuments Authority) by order of the Wiener Magistrat on 1 July, 1938. Bondy refused the mandatory declaration of assets, arguing that as a Czechoslovakian citizen he was not subject to this legal provision. He demanded that the seizure be lifted and offered the Gestapo financial compensation and the Ministry of the Interior and Cultural Affairs part of the seized property in return. State Secretary Kajetan Mühlmann, one of the biggest “aryanizers” and profiteers of the Nazi era, was also involved in the Bondy case.

At the end of August 1939, the Landgericht (Regional Court) in Vienna ordered the seizure of the entire art collection due to the lack of a declaration of assets, followed by the confiscation without replacement in favour of the German Reich on 1 December 1939. Bondy's collection fell under the so-called “Führervorbehalt” (Führer’s Reserve). The Institut für Denkmalpflege (Bundesdenkmalamt/Federal Monument Authority), which took the majority of the collection into custody in the so-called Zentraldepot and compiled a list of around 1,600 officially recorded objects, presented Hans Posse, Adolf Hitler's representative for the art museum planned in Linz (“Führermuseum”), with the lists of proposed distribution of objects from the expropriated collection. In the end, the “Führermuseum”, the Kunsthistorisches Museum, the Albertina, the Barockmuseum and the Galerie des 19. Jahrhunderts (both Österreichische Galerie Belvedere), the Nationalbibliothek, the Kunstgewerbemuseum (MAK), the Städtische Sammlungen Wien (Wien Museum), the Heeresmuseum (Heeresgeschichtliches Museum/Museum of Military History), the Joanneum (Universalmuseum Joanneum), the Ferdinandeum (Tiroler Landesmuseen) and the Städtisches Museum Carolino Augusteum (Salzburg Museum), among others, received objects. However, dozens of expropriated objects from Bondy's collection had not been officially recorded and numbered. For example, the Vermögensverkehrsstelle (VVSt/Property Transaction Office) had already handed over silver cutlery and crockery from Bondy's apartment to the Dorotheum for sale in November 1939, and in March 1940 entrusted Bernhard Witke, who also worked for the Verwaltungsstelle für jüdisches Umzugsgut der Gestapo (Vugesta/Administrative Office for Jewish Removal Goods of the Gestapo), with the sale of just over one hundred objects (including furniture, carpets, two dismantled tiled stoves, mirrors and crockery). After 1945, Elizabeth Bondy also pointed out, on the basis of lists, that Bondy's collection comprised considerably more than the officially recorded 1,600 pieces.

In July 1945, two months after the end of the Nazi regime, the Vienna District Court appointed lawyer Friedrich Köhler as curator in absentia for Oscar Bondy, who had died in 1944. Köhler was to secure Bondy's assets, including his art collection, which was scattered among various museums and storage places (such as the Altaussee art depot at the salt mine). Bondy's widow temporarily returned to Austria, appointed Köhler as her legal representative and endeavoured to have the art collection restituted. The Finanzlandesdirektion für Wien, Niederösterreich und das Burgenland (Financial Directorate for Vienna, Lower Austria and Burgenland) rejected Elizabeth Bondy's application for restitution which was filed in November 1946 on the grounds of alleged lack of jurisdiction: The collection had been seized  in criminal proceedings in 1939 and therefore the First Restitution Act did not apply. However, Friedrich Köhler had been trying since the end of 1945 to have the 1939 seizure formally revoked by the public prosecutor's office and the Bundesdenkmalamt, as the “Vermögensanmeldungsverordnung” (Asset Registration Regulation) had already been repealed as a discriminatory Nazi law in May 1945. However, both authorities saw themselves as not having jurisdiction. Bondy's widow saw this as a sabotage of the restitution process and appealed against the negative restitution decision. In May 1947, the Bundesministerium für Vermögenssicherung und Wirtschaftsplanung (Federal Ministry for Securing Property and Economic Planning) upheld Elizabeth Bondy's appeal. The Bundesdenkmalamt then called on the Austrian museums to promptly restitute the objects to the legal successor of Oscar Bondy.

In the context of the restitution and the forthcoming export of restituted objects, the Austrian Federal Government and the institutions responsible for restitution demanded dedications or donations to Austrian museums from the rightful owners or heirs. In the case of the Oscar Bondy collection there were also countless negotiations between the Bundesdenkmalamt, the Bundesministerium für Vermögenssicherung und Wirtschaftsplanung, the Bundesministerium für Unterricht (Federal Ministry of Education) and representatives of museums with Elizabeth Bondy and the lawyer Friedrich Köhler.

In September and December 1947, the Bundesdenkmalamt presented lists of those objects that had been released for export, in return for which Bondy's widow agreed to donate other objects to Austrian museums. Many of these donations from the Oscar and Elizabeth Bondy collection, which were extorted or coerced under the Kunstrückgabegesetz (Art Restitution Act), as well as rediscovered objects, have been restituted from the museums concerned, including the Kunsthistorisches Museum, the Albertina, the Wien Museum, the MAK, the Tiroler Landesmuseen, the Universalmuseum Joanneum and the Salzburg Museum. After restitution to the rightful heirs, the Kunsthistorisches Museum and the Metropolitan Museum in New York purchased objects for their collections.