The United States provided the tip of the threat to this week’s “Eras” tour concerts which have been cancelled, the US administration said.

Austrian police on Wednesday arrested suspects aged 19 and 17 over a plot to kill “a large number of people” at one of the three gigs, which were meant to start Thursday, according to authorities.

Interior Minister Gerhard Karner said that “an 18-year-old Iraqi close to the main suspect and who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group was arrested” in Vienna on Thursday.

The main suspect, a 19-year-old Austrian with North Macedonian roots, had allegedly confessed, saying he “intended to carry out an attack using explosives and knives”, according to domestic intelligence agency (DSN) head Omar Haijawi-Pirchner.

The second suspect, a 17-year-old Austrian of Turkish and Croatian origin, had been hired by a facility company that was to have worked at the Ernst Happel Stadium where Swift was to perform, said Haijawi-Pirchner.

Chancellor Karl Nehammer said there were “concrete and detailed” plans to commit a “bloodbath”.

The White House on Friday confirmed the United States had provided intelligence to Austria to thwart the plot.

“We work closely with partners all over the world to monitor and disrupt threats,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters.

The Austrian army’s intelligence service was warned of a looming attack 10 to 15 days prior by two unspecified countries that helped it foil the plot, news agency APA had reported.

Swift was set to perform three shows from Thursday to Saturday as part of her mega record-breaking “Eras” tour.

The European leg of the sold-out tour began in Paris in May and has taken in Sweden, Portugal, Spain, Britain, Ireland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy, Germany and Poland.

Her next concerts are at Wembley stadium in London from next Thursday and authorities have said they will go ahead.

In Austria, the shows had been expected to bring in some 100 million euros ($109 million) and gather 170,000 fans, according to APA estimates.

Swift has not yet commented on the decision to cancel the Vienna shows but said she was “completely in shock” after a deadly attack in Britain on July 29 at a Swift-themed dance class.

Three girls were killed and five people seriously wounded in the mass stabbing at the class in Southport, England.

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Austrian authorities detained two suspects on Wednesday for allegedly plotting to attack this week’s Vienna concerts by the US star, which organisers cancelled at the last minute.

The 19-year-old main suspect had confessed, saying he “intended to carry out an attack using explosives and knives,” domestic intelligence agency (DSN) head Omar Haijawi-Pirchner told a news conference.

“His aim was to kill himself and a large number of people during the concert… either today or tomorrow,” he added. The concerts were to run from Thursday to Saturday.

The second suspect, a 17-year-old Austrian, was employed at a facility management company which would have “provided services” at the Ernst Happel Stadium where Swift was to perform, said Haijawi-Pirchner.

The younger suspect, who has so far refused to talk to authorities, was “in the area” of the stadium where he was detained, said Haijawi-Pirchner.

According to Interior Minister Gerhard Karner, a “tragedy was averted”.  “The situation was very serious”, he added, particularly in view of a recent attack at a Taylor Swift themed event in Britain, where three girls were killed in Great Britain.

Explosives and detonators were found in a search of the main suspect’s apartment, authorities said.

Disappointed Swifties

Austria’s top security chief Franz Ruf told reporters the two suspects had recently made changes in their private lives.

The main suspect, an Austrian with Northern Macedonian roots, had changed “his appearance and adapted it to Islamic State propaganda”, while the second, an Austrian of Turkish or Croatian origin, had broken up with his girlfriend, he said.

Ruf earlier confirmed that authorities had received information “from foreign partners” which led to the arrests, but he declined to specify.

Police had promised to ramp up security for the concerts while having minimised any concrete danger, but organisers still cancelled Swift’s shows. About 65,000 people were expected at each show.

Swift did not immediately comment on the decision to cancel the Vienna shows but after the British attack said she was “completely in shock”. Three girls were killed and five people seriously wounded in the mass stabbing at a dance class in Southport inspired by the American singer.

According to Ruf, police “did everything humanly possible to ensure” that the Vienna concerts “could go ahead”, but the cancellation decision was taken by the organisers.

The 34-year-old star was to bring her record-breaking “Eras” Tour, which began its European leg in Paris in May, to Vienna on Thursday.

Following France, the tour stopped in Sweden, Portugal, Spain, the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy, Germany and Poland.

In Austria, more than 170,000 spectators were expected to attend the shows, bringing in some 100 million euros, according to estimates by the news agency APA.

By the end of the year, “Eras” had already become the first tour to sell more than $1 billion in tickets and it is on track to more than double that by the time it concludes in Vancouver in December.

Austria experienced its first deadly jihadist attack in November 2020, when a convicted IS sympathiser went on a shooting rampage in Vienna, killing four people and wounding 23 before police shot him dead.

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“Bildnis Fraeulein Lieser” (Portrait of Miss Lieser) was commissioned by a wealthy Jewish industrialist’s family and painted by Klimt in 1917 shortly before he died.

The unfinished portrait of a dark-haired woman was likely last seen at a Viennese exhibition in 1925. It reemerged this year when auction house im Kinsky announced its sale.

“No one expected that a painting of this importance, which had disappeared for 100 years, would resurface,” said im Kinsky expert Claudia Moerth-Gasse.

Portraits by the Austrian great rarely come onto the open market.

The auction house estimates its value at 30-50 million euros ($32-53 million), but Klimt works have sold for higher prices at recent auctions.

Last June, Klimt’s “Dame mit Faecher” (Lady with a Fan) was sold in London for £74 million ($94.3 million at the time), a European art auction record.

The highest price paid at auction in Austria is a work by Flemish painter Frans Francken II, which fetched seven million euros in 2010.

Helene, Annie or Margarethe?

Wednesday’s auction will begin at 1500 GMT. Besides “Portrait of Miss Lieser”, sketches by Klimt and works by his contemporaries such as Egon Schiele will be on sale.

Ahead of the auction, the well-preserved painting has been put on show in Vienna, but also in Switzerland, Germany, Britain and Hong Kong.

The unsigned painting shows a young woman adorned with a large cape richly decorated with flowers on a bright red background.

Mystery surrounds the identity of the model, who visited Klimt’s studio nine times for the portrait.

She is known to be from the Lieser family, a Jewish industrial dynasty.

She could be one of the two daughters, named Helene and Annie, of Henriette (Lilly) Lieser, an art patron. But the first catalogue dedicated to Klimt, dating from the 1960s, said it was Lieser’s niece, Margarethe.

Lilly Lieser remained in Vienna despite the Nazi takeover, was deported in 1942 and murdered in the Auschwitz internment camp in 1943.

Nazi trader?

Before her death, Lieser seems to have entrusted the painting to a member of her staff, Austrian daily Der Standard found based on correspondence in an Austrian museum.

It then turned up in the possession of a Nazi trader, whose daughter inherited it and who in turn left it to distant relatives after her death.

Im Kinsky, which specialises in restitution procedures, insists it has found no evidence that the work was stolen or unlawfully seized.

The back of the painting is “completely untouched” and has “no stamps, no stickers, nothing,” which would indicate it was seized or left Austria, according to the auction house.

Moreover, none of the Lieser descendants who survived the war claimed the painting.

Moerth-Gasser told AFP the current owners, who wish to remain anonymous, contacted im Kinsky two years ago for legal advice. Im Kinsky then informed the Lieser families, who are largely US-based.

Some travelled to see the painting, before signing an agreement with the owners, thus removing any obstacle to its sale.

Some experts have called for a more in-depth investigation of the work’s provenance, however.

“Several points should be questioned more critically, as the provenance of the picture has not yet been completely clarified,” Monika Mayer, head of archives at the Belvedere museum, which houses Klimt’s famous “Kiss”, was quoted as saying by Austria’s Profil magazine.

Moreover, the painting was not presented in the United States, for fear it could be held there, as has happened before with Austrian works under dispute.

Austrian museums have returned a number of Austrian art works to descendants of Jewish art collectors, including an American claimant who sought five Klimt masterpieces.

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