The businessman Adalbert Bela Parlagi, registered in Vienna from 1913, married Hilda, née Hock, in December 1919. They had two children, Hedwig Elisabeth and Franz Richard. At first the family lived at Türkenstraße 25 in the 9th district. Then they were registered at Modenapark 10/6 in the 3rd district, where the family stayed until their flight at the end of 1938. According to the records, until 1938 Adalbert Parlagi was a Hungarian citizen and a Jew. Thereafter he is registered as an Austrian citizen and member of the Evangelical Augsburg Confession. He and his wife had both left the Vienna Jewish Community on 3 October 1923. Their two children, born in 1923 and 1926, were baptized as Evangelical. After the annexation of Austria to the Nazi German Reich, the family was nevertheless considered Jewish under the First Regulation to the Reich Citizenship Act of 14 November 1935 and were obliged to leave Vienna on account of the increasing repression. In December 1938 the family emigrated to London, where Adalbert Parlagi had worked previously as a financial adviser for the Prudential Assurance Co. and also had a residence. The family's removal goods – including artworks by Rudolf von Alt, Miklós Barabás, Franz von Lenbach, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Paul Signac and Carl Spitzweg – were stored by the transport company Zdenko Dworak in Währing but never left Vienna. At the end of 1940 the goods were seized by the Gestapo and in early April 1941 passed on for disposal to the Dorotheum, where the household furnishings and artworks were sold at the 466th art auction from 17 to 20 June 1941 and at other auctions.

After the war, Parlagi sought to discover the whereabouts of his assets and was able to locate at least one of his artworks – a chalk drawing of Richard Wagner by Franz Seraph von Lenbach – owned privately in Vienna. He was unable to repurchase it, and the sheet was later acquired by the Albertina through the art market. Following an inquiry in February 2021 by the Commission for Looted Art in Europe, the attention of the provenance researcher in the Albertina was drawn to the sheet formerly owned by Parlagi. In March 2022 the Art Restitution Advisory Board recommended its restitution.