E. Randol Schoenberg ’88
Los Angeles, CA

At-Large Candidate

“My proudest accomplishments are in areas where I stretch myself beyond what is expected,” says E. Randol Schoenberg ’88. And he does just that, constantly evolving in every area. He started out as a math major at Princeton. He went to the University of Southern California to study law, and then on to argue and win a landmark case before the United States Supreme Court.

In addition to his degree in math, Schoenberg also received a certificate in European Cultural Studies. As part of that process, he wrote a paper “on the correspondence between my grandfather the composer Arnold Schoenberg and Albert Einstein, parts of which I located at the Mudd Library in Princeton,” he says. The paper was published and reviewed favorably in the New York Review of Books.

Schoenberg also was very active in many other ways at Princeton. He was News Editor of the Nassau Weekly and classical disc jockey for WPRB. He participated in sports, played violin in a chamber orchestra, organized a large forum on the strategic defense initiative and more. He also studied for a semester abroad in Berlin.

After law school, he built a career as an accomplished attorney, working on high profile cases for celebrities while at Katten Muchin & Zavis. He moved to Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobsen, before leaving the big firm life in 2000, at 33, to open his own firm to handle a case for a family friend who had lost a number of paintings in World War II to the Nazis. The case had a special place in Schoenberg’s heart because, like his grandparents, Maria Altmann had fled the Nazis during World War II. “The quest to recover her family’s paintings -- five spectacular works by Gustav Klimt -- lasted eight years and took me all the way to the United States Supreme Court.”

“Literally, no one thought I had a chance of winning,” Schoenberg says. The case ended up being arbitrated in Austria, and Schoenberg won. The paintings were returned to Altmann, and she sold one of them, the famous gold portrait of Adele Bloch Bauer, to Ronald Lauder for $135 million for the Neue Galerie in New York. The total value of the paintings was over $325 million. The other paintings were displayed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. “Along the way, I was able to recover $50 million from the Swiss Bank Claims Resolution Tribunal,” he says.

“I am always mindful that the great crimes of the Holocaust can never be remedied and no amount of compensation can account for the lives extinguished,” he says. “Nevertheless, it has been extremely gratifying for me to be able, so many years later, to obtain at least some restitution for a number of families.”

Schoenberg, named California Lawyer Attorney of the Year for 2006, is now at Burris, Schoenberg & Walden, LLP, which was formed in 2002, after two years of Schoenberg practicing alone. His significant success has enabled him to spend more time at home and on charitable efforts. He is a member of a number of boards, including the Los Angeles Opera, Sinai Akiba Academy, and the UCLA Center for Jewish Studies. He is President of the L.A. Museum of the Holocaust board, overseeing a capital campaign and the construction and design of a new building. He also edited and published a book in German of the correspondence between his grandfather and writer Thomas Mann, and will be preparing an English translation for the University of California Press.

Schoenberg has also remained connected to Princeton through alumni activities. He is an interviewer for Alumni Schools Committee in Los Angeles and has been a speaker on several occasions for the Princeton Club of Southern California.

“So besides making chocolate chip pancakes (like the ones I used to order at PJs), taking carpool in the morning or coaching little league, I am also able to engage in cultural and intellectual activities and give back to the community by serving on a number of boards of charitable institutions.”