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In the winter of 1816/17, the romanticist artists Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld and Friedrich Olivier created a series of studies of wilted leaves. Some of the studies remained in the family’s possession for more than 100 years before being put up for auction by C.G. Boerner in 1939. Under Nazi laws on race, the owner Marianne Schmidl, the great-granddaughter of Friedrich Olivier, was considered to be Jewish. After the annexation of Austria, she was dismissed from her position at the National Library in Vienna. In 1939, she was forced to sell the drawing to pay the Judenvermögensabgabe, a so-called tax on Jewish assets. Marianne Schmidl was deported to the Izbica Ghetto in 1942, where she is thought to have been murdered. She was declared dead in 1950. Following this forced sale as a result of Nazi persecution, the drawing was acquired for the “Linz Special Commission” via another art dealer. In 2015 it was restituted to the descendants of Marianne Schmidl.