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In February 2012, the District Prosecutor of Augsburg confiscated 121 framed and 1,285 unframed artworks found in an apartment in Schwabing, Munich in the course of an investigation into possible tax evasion. The apartment was owned by Cornelius Gurlitt, the son of celebrated art historian, dealer, and war profiteer, Hildebrand Gurlitt, and grandson of the art historian Cornelius Gurlitt. Some of the paintings were immediately suspected of having been looted by the Nazis during the Second World War. The collection is largely undamaged and of remarkable quality. It contains Old Masters as well as Impressionist, Cubist, and Expressionist paintings by artists including Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri Matisse, Franz Marc, Marc Chagall, Otto Dix, and Max Liebermann, among many others. Although German authorities seized the entire collection, Gurlitt was not detained. Not until 3 November 2013 did the magazine Focus report the find. News of the discovery was reported worldwide.

Gurlitt initially refused to cooperate with investigators. He retained several dozen additional suspect paintings, kept not in Munich but in his home in Salzburg, Austria. In April 2014, an agreement was reached whereby the collection confiscated in Munich was to be returned to Gurlitt in exchange for his co-operation with a government-led task force charged with returning stolen pieces to the rightful owners. However, Gurlitt died on 6 May 2014. His will bequeathed all his property to the Museum of Fine Arts Bern, Switzerland, after all legitimate claims of ownership against it had been evaluated.

Background

In 1930 art collector Hildebrand Gurlitt was removed as director of the museum in Zwickau because he exhibited contemporary artists. After the Nazis came to power, he was stripped of his new job as director of Kunstverein Hamburg, because his grandmother was a Jew. He moved the family to Dresden and built a prosperous business as an art dealer, specializing in modern art.

Hildebrand was appointed as a dealer for the Führermuseum in Linz, Austria. On instructions from Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Göring personally appointed a Commission for the Exploitation of Degenerate Art. The Commission in turn appointed a series of dealers approved by the official Nazi confiscation service, the ERR, to handle the marketing of these art assets. Four men who had been dealing in modern art for years were chosen: Karl Buchholz, Ferdinand Möller, Bernhard A. Böhmer and Hildebrand Gurlitt. They were instructed to sell these artworks abroad for foreign currency. Hildebrand's extensive network of European and North American art contacts were invaluable in this. Göring used the funds raised to grow his personal art collection, though the four men did not always report to the Commission all proceeds of their sales. Among the works of so-called "degenerate art" that the Commission sold off were many paintings stolen from noted French art dealer Paul Rosenberg.

In May 1940 the Reich Propaganda Ministry sold to Gurlitt 200 paintings, including Chagall's The Walk, Picasso's Farming Family, and Nolde's Hamburg Harbour, for the small sum of 4,000 Swiss francs. Hildebrand similarly acquired 115 additional works of "degenerate art" in 1941. It is estimated that, at his height, he had a personal trading collection of more than 1500 art objects.

Gurlitt used his position to sell art to domestic collectors, most notably to Bernhard Sprengel, whose collection forms the core of the Sprengel Museum in Hannover.

Captured with his wife and twenty boxes of art in Aschbach (Schlüsselfeld) in June 1945, Gurlitt claimed that the art was part of his personal collection, and that most of his collection and all of his records had been destroyed during the bombing of Dresden in February 1945. He painted himself as a victim of Nazi persecution due to his Jewish heritage, and on those grounds he was released.

Although suspicious of his story, in December 1950 US investigators returned 206 items to Gurlitt, including Max Liebermann's Two Riders on the Beach, Otto Dix's self-portrait, an allegorical painting by Marc Chagall. Gurlitt continued trading artworks until his death in 1956.

Cornelius Gurlitt (28 December 1932 – 6 May 2014) was a German art collector, son of Hildebrand Gurlitt. He grew up in the Dammtor district of Hamburg with his sister Renate, who was born there in 1935. His great-grandmother was Jewish, which caused his father to be labelled as a "quarter-Jew" under the Nazi race laws in the Volkszählung vom 17. Mai 1939, or so-called "German Minority Census" of 1939.

Discovery by German customs authorities

In 2010 German customs officers detained Cornelius Gurlitt entering Germany from Switzerland carrying €9,000 (£7,500; $13,000) in cash, which he explained as the proceeds of a transaction with the Galerie Kornfeld in Bern. Gurlitt was allowed to go on his way, but he had aroused suspicions. Further investigation by the prosecutor's office, the federal police and the tax authorities uncovered a number of anomalies. Investigators discovered that Gurlitt had never been employed, had no obvious source of income, was not registered with the Einwohnermeldeamt [de] or with the tax authorities or social services, had never married, and had no pension or health insurance.

In late February 2012, the authorities searched his apartment, finding more than a thousand paintings valued at as much as €1 billion. The magazine Focus stated that at least 200 pieces were believed to have been lost during the Nazi era. The paintings recovered included works by Ernst Barlach, Max Beckmann, Canaletto, Marc Chagall, Hans Christoph [de], Gustave Courbet, Honoré Daumier, Eugène Delacroix, Otto Dix, Albrecht Dürer, Erich Fraaß [de], Conrad Felixmüller, Bonaventura Genelli, Ludwig Godenschweg, Otto Griebel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Paul Klee, Bernhard Kretzschmar [de], Oskar Kokoschka, Wilhelm Lachnit, Max Liebermann, August Macke, Franz Marc, Fritz Maskos [de], Henri Matisse, Claude Monet, Edvard Munch, Emil Nolde, Pablo Picasso, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Auguste Rodin, Théodore Rousseau, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Carl Spitzweg, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Christoph Voll.

Initial legal handling of the Gurlitt case

On 5 November 2013, Reinhard Nemetz, the head of the prosecutors' office in Augsburg, said that 121 framed and 1,258 unframed works had been seized from the apartment of Cornelius Gurlitt in early March 2012, including unregistered works by Chagall, Dix, Liebermann, and Matisse. The art historian who first examined the collection, Meike Hoffmann, claimed in print in 2010 that "not a single one" of these works was ever acquired by Hildebrand Gurlitt. Dr. Meike Hoffmann wishes to remark that this controversy derives from a misreading of her book on Bernhard A. Böhmer. In her book, the art historical term 'Bildwerke' is used. The term refers only to sculptures, which indeed Hildebrand Gurlitt did not take from the 'Degenerate Art' Confiscation. Of course, Meike Hoffmann has never questioned the fact that Hildebrandt Gurlitt dealt with other kinds of artworks from the 'Degenerate Art' Confiscation. She stated to Focus that as many as 300 pieces had appeared in the 1937 Nazi Degenerate Art Exhibition in Munich. At the time of the interview with Focus, she was trying to trace the original owners of the works and their surviving relatives. Art historians asked that a complete list of the paintings be published in order that they be returned to their rightful owners.

Speaking to Der Spiegel magazine in November 2013, Cornelius insisted that his father had obtained the works legally and stated that he would not voluntarily return any of them to previous owners. Feeling threatened by the intense media attention, Gurlitt's brother-in-law offered 22 works in his possession to the police for safekeeping. In November 2013, Der Spiegel revealed that they had received a letter from Gurlitt telling them that "the name Gurlitt may not appear in your magazine." Gurlitt then told two reporters from the Paris Match, who confronted him in a Munich supermarket, that "Applause from the wrong side is the worst thing there is." Der Spiegel found this comment "puzzling."

Portrait of a woman by Henri Matisse was directly traceable to the collection of Paul Rosenberg, a Jewish art dealer from Paris who had represented Matisse and Picasso and who had been forced to leave his collection behind when he fled France. When approached by Focus, Rosenberg's granddaughter, French television presenter Anne Sinclair, who had been fighting for decades for the return of the art dealer's paintings, stated that she knew nothing of the existence of the painting. Recovery efforts for Portrait of a woman were immediately undertaken on behalf of the Rosenberg heirs by Christopher A. Marinello, who entered into negotiations with Cornelius Gurlitt, his legal representatives and the German state. Portrait of a woman was in fact returned to Paul Rosenberg's heirs on 15 May 2015. Other paintings that Gurlitt had already sold have yet to be recovered, such as an oil on canvas of Aline Charigot done by Pierre-Auguste Renoir in 1881. It is believed the work was sold to a collector in Florida in 2002.

One of the last pieces that Cornelius Gurlitt sold was The Lion Tamer by Max Beckmann. After a settlement, initiated by the Lempertz auction house in Cologne, was reached between Gurlitt and the heirs of Alfred Flechtheim, it was auctioned off for nearly £750,000. Another work was reportedly sold in 1990 through the Bern-based gallery of Eberhard Kornfeld.

In March 2014, a BBC reporter was granted access to one of the locations where 238 of the seized works were stored. He viewed works such as Monet's Waterloo Bridge (1903) and others by Picasso, Cezanne, Liebermann, Renoir, Courbet, and Manet.

On 7 April 2014, a month before Gurlitt's death, an agreement was reached whereby the seized artwork was to be returned to Gurlitt in exchange for his co-operation with the government-led task force charged with determining which of the pieces was stolen and returning them to the rightful heirs.

Schwabinger (Gurlitt) Art Trove Task Force

An entity called the Schwabinger Kunstfund or Gurlitt Task Force was created to research the provenance of the paintings in the Gurlitt trove. However, after several years of operations under the direction of Ingeborg Berggreen-Merkel it was widely criticized for having few results and little visibility.

Berggreen-Merkel was accused of visiting the severely ill Gurlitt at his hospital bed and persuading him to sign over the ownership of his collection, allegedly as the only way to prevent Gurlitt from getting sued from various interest groups, Jewish or other. In early 2014 Gurlitt designated the Kunstmuseum as his sole heir. A few weeks earlier, Berggreen-Merkel had met with the President of the Museum's Foundation Council, Christoph Schäublin. One year later, her taskforce was dissolved. "We are disappointed," said Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress.

Death of Gurlitt, and after

Cornelius Gurlitt died on 6 May 2014. In his will, written on his deathbed, Gurlitt named the Museum of Fine Arts Bern in Switzerland as his sole heir. People close to Gurlitt told an American newspaper that he decided to give the collection to a foreign institution because he felt that Germany had treated him and his father badly. The legacy included the paintings Gurlitt had kept in Salzburg, paintings which German authorities had not confiscated because their remit did not extend to property held in Austria. Gurlitt's decision created further controversy over the appropriateness of the museum accepting this bequest. The will stipulated that the museum would be required to research the provenance of the paintings and make restitution as appropriate. The museum decided to accept those works which are not legally the property of previous Nazi-era owners, or their heirs, and has entered into a joint-agreement with German and Swiss authorities about the handling of this bequest.

Gurlitt's family (cousins) also entered the discussion, raising questions about the legality of the will, based on his state of mind at the time. Gurlitt's cousin, Uta Werner, filed a claim of inheritance on the artwork. Werner's lawyer, Wolfgang Seybold, argued that Gurlitt's relatives were the rightful heirs. Seybold supported his argument with the opinion of psychiatrist and lawyer Helmut Hausner, who stated that Gurlitt suffered from schizoid personality disorder, delusions, and dementia when he wrote the will bequeathing his collection to the museum. It is possible that a number of artworks will be returned to Gurlitt's estate, as he would have been considered the rightful owner unless the heirs of previous owners could prove that he obtained them through unlawful means. German authorities estimate that around 590 pieces need further investigation to determine whether they were confiscated under the Nazi regime, and a further 380 have been definitively identified as confiscated by the Nazis as "degenerate art".

Art objects continued to surface after Gurlitt's death. In July 2014, a new discovery was made in his Munich apartment: two sculptures, possibly the work of Rodin and Degas. In September, a landscape by Claude Monet was discovered in a suitcase Gurlitt had left in a hospital where he stayed.

Legal issues

German newspapers questioned the prosecutor's right to seize the collection. Property rights in cases of works of art acquired during the Nazi period are highly complex. After the war the Nazi law legalizing possession of stolen works of degenerate art was deliberately upheld by the Allied Control Council in order that the trade in artworks could continue.

Unlike in Austria, there is no law in effect in Germany requiring the return of Nazi-looted art, as long as the items in question can be proven to have been, at any point in time, legally acquired. As signatories of the 1998 Washington Agreement, Germany agreed that all of its public institutions would check their inventories for Nazi-looted goods and return them if found. However, this is on a strictly voluntary basis and, 15 years later, very few museums and libraries have done so. Individuals are under no legal requirement whatsoever to return Nazi-looted art. A failure on the part of the German government to return the rightful possessions of Cornelius Gurlitt might have been a violation of his property rights as guaranteed in the German constitution.

On 4 December 2013, prominent German art historian Sibylle Ehringhaus, who was one of the first experts to view the artworks in the spring of 2012, gave an interview in the newspaper Augsburger Allgemeine, demanding the immediate return of the complete collection to Gurlitt. However, she had looked at the works very briefly and had not researched their provenance because, as she stated in the interview, "Cornelius Gurlitt commissioned neither myself nor anyone else" to perform such research. Chief Prosecutor Reinhard Nemetz vehemently denied her appeal, yet apparently failed to cite any concrete legal grounds for the seizure.

On 20 November 2014, the German jurist Jutta Limbach, the head of the Limbach Commission on Nazi-looted art, confirmed the opinion of the German Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper that the Bavarian "State Prosecutor used an incorrect application of the tax liability law to seize" the artworks of Cornelius Gurlitt.

Some of the artworks have been returned to the heirs of the legitimate owners, notably a portrait by Matisse restored to the heirs of French art dealer Paul Rosenberg. Another major painting from the collection, Two Riders on the Beach (1901), by Max Liebermann, was returned to the heirs of the German-Jewish industrialist and art collector David Friedmann, and sold at auction in June 2015. Two Riders on the Beach was auctioned at Sotheby's on 24 June 2015 in London.

Swiss museum's acceptance of Gurlitt's estate

On 24 November 2014, the Museum of Fine Arts in Bern agreed to accept the Gurlitt estate. Museum officials stated that no art looted by the Nazis would be permitted to enter the museum's collection. Some 500 works were to remain in Germany until their rightful owners could be identified. Three pieces were singled out for immediate return: Henri Matisse's Femme Assise to the descendants of the Jewish art dealer Paul Rosenberg, Max Liebermann's Two Riders on the Beach to the great-nephew of the industrialist and art collector David Friedmann, and Carl Spitzweg's Playing the Piano to the heirs of music publisher Henri Hinrichsen, who was murdered at Auschwitz.

The first public display of the Gurlitt art trove took place at an exhibition curated by the Bern Fine Art Museum, running from November 2017 to March 2018, which featured 160 works from the controversial Gurlitt art collection.

List of selected works

German authorities announced that they will list all 590 suspect pieces in the Lost Art Internet Database. As of 17 March 2016 only 464 objects are listed. Descriptions of some of the artworks found have been made public since their discovery, which include:

• Allegorical scene, a gouache painting by Marc Chagall
• Conversation mauresque sur une terasse (Moorish Conversation on a Terrace) pencil drawing by Eugène Delacroix
• Lady in the Lodge, 1922 watercolour by Otto Dix
• Dompteuse, 1922 watercolor by Otto Dix
• Woman in the Theater Box, by Otto Dix
• A self-portrait by Otto Dix
• Playing the Piano, drawing by Carl Spitzweg
• The Veiled, 1926 watercolor by Otto Griebel
• Child at the table, watercolor by Otto Griebel
• Don Quichote and Sancho Panza, painting by Honoré Daumier
• Etude de femme nue debout, les bras relevés, les mains croisées au-dessus de la tête ("Study of a Woman Nude, Standing, Arms Raised, Hands Crossed Above Head"), drawing by Auguste Rodin
• Girl at the table, 1923 watercolor by Wilhelm Lachnit
• Man and woman at the window, 1923 watercolor by Wilhelm Lachnit
• Male Nude, drawing by Bonaventura Genelli
• Male portrait, etching by Ludwig Godenschweg
• Female Nude, etching by Ludwig Godenschweg
• Monk, 1921 watercolor by Christoph Voll
• Explosives master Hantsch, 1922 drawing by Christoph Voll
• Mother and Child, 1922 watercolor by Erich Fraaß [de]
• Couple, 1924 watercolor by Hans Christoph [de]
• Couple in countryside, 1924 watercolor by Conrad Felixmüller
• Riders on the beach, 1901 painting by Max Liebermann
• 'Sa. Giustina in Prà della Vale' in Padua, etching by Canaletto
• Musing Woman, etching by Fritz Maskos [de]
• Tram, watercolor by Bernhard Kretzschmar [de]
• Vue de la vallée de la Seine, drawing by Théodore Rousseau
• A painting of a girl with a goat, by Gustave Courbet
• Melancholic Girl, by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
• Pferde in Landschaft ("Horses in Landscape"), ca. 1911 painting by Franz Marc
• Seated Woman, ca. 1920 painting by Henri Matisse

See also

• Looted art
• Nazi plunder

References

1. ^ "Nazi trove in Munich contains unknown works by masters". BBC News. 5 November 2013. Retrieved 5 November 2013.
2. ^ "Fahnder entdecken 1500 Werke von Picasso, Chagall und weiteren Künstlern". Focus. 3 November 2013. Retrieved 3 November 2013.
3. Smale, Alison (4 November 2013). "Report of Nazi-Looted Trove Puts Art World in an Uproar". The New York Times. Retrieved 18 March 2016. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
4. "Nazi loot probe: More art found at Gurlitt Austria home, BBC News, 11 February 2014". Bbc.co.uk. 11 February 2014. Retrieved 28 July 2014.
5. ^ R, D (7 April 2014). "Gurlitt reaches deal with German authorities over vast trove of art". Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 16 April 2014.
6. ^ "Cornelius Gurlitt - obituary". Telegraph. 6 May 2014. Retrieved 28 July 2014.
7. ^ "'Nazi art' hoarder Gurlitt makes Swiss museum sole heir". BBC News. 7 May 2014. Retrieved 7 May 2014.
8. "Artnet news, Alexander Forbes, Will Germany Keep Gurlitt's Trove from the Swiss?". News.artnet.com. 8 May 2014. Retrieved 28 July 2014.
9. ^ Hall, Alan (3 November 2013). "£1billion art collection seized by Nazis found in shabby Munich apartment". Daily Mail. Retrieved 3 November 2013.
10. Lichtblau, Eric. "Nazi Policies Toward Jews and Minorities, NY Times, 18 November 2013". Topics.nytimes.com. Retrieved 28 July 2014.
11. Nicholas, Lynn H. (1995). The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War. Random House LLC. p. 24. ISBN 9780307739728. Retrieved 22 December 2009.
12. Nicholas, p. 24
13. Feliciano, Hector. "The Lost Museum". Bonjour Paris. Retrieved 4 November 2013.
14. ^ Barnett, Louise (10 November 2013). "Art dealer paid Nazis just 4,000 Swiss Francs for masterpieces". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 10 November 2013.
15. ^ Nicholas, Lynn H. (22 December 2009). The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War. Random House LLC. p. 24. ISBN 9780307739728.
16. "Entartete Kunstgeschäfte". Der Standard (in German). 6 August 2008. Retrieved 3 November 2013.
17. ^ Mazzoni, Ira (3 November 2013). "Depot mit Nazi-Raubkunst in München". Süddeutsche.de (in German). Retrieved 3 November 2013.
18. Enoch, Nick (9 November 2013). "How U.S. military quizzed German dealer of £1bn Nazi art loot just after the war". Daily Mail. Retrieved 9 November 2013.
19. This "German Minority Census" is available in digital form at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum Resource Center in Washington D.C. and at the German Federal Archives in Berlin-Lichterfelde. An unsourced copy of the database was published online by the Holocaust Era Assets and Restitution Taskforce Archived 2013-11-09 at the Wayback Machine.
20. ^ "Nazi looted art 'found in Munich'". BBC News. 3 November 2013. Retrieved 3 November 2013.
21. "Schwabinger Kunstfund: Ein Dementi, weitere Meldungen, nüchterne Schätzungen". Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. 22 November 2013. Retrieved 22 November 2013.
22. Hoffman's book (in German) Ein Händler "entarteter" Kunst: Bernhard A. Böhmer und sein Nachlass. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-05-004498-9. (Schriften der Forschungsstelle "Entartete Kunst"), p. 211
23. Alexander, Harriet (4 November 2013). "Art experts demand Germany releases list of €1-billion Nazi art trove". The Telegraph. Retrieved 4 November 2013.
24. "Nazi-looted art: German collector says he owns pictures". BBC News. 17 November 2013. Retrieved 17 November 2013.
25. Gezer, Õzlem (17 November 2013). "Interview with a Phantom: Cornelius Gurlitt Shares the Secrets of His Pictures". Der Spiegel. Retrieved 18 November 2013.
26. ^ "German police check new art haul near Stuttgart". BBC News. 12 November 2013. Retrieved 13 November 2013.
27. Der Spiegel, 11 November 2013 (in German).
28. Oltermann, Philip (3 November 2013). "German police recover 1,500 modernist masterpieces 'looted by Nazis'". The Guardian. Retrieved 3 November 2013.
29. Lane, Mary (15 August 2014). "German Experts Say Max Liebermann Painting Was Nazi Loot". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 7 April 2015.
30. Eddy, Melissa (15 May 2015). "Matisse From Gurlitt Collection Is Returned to Jewish Art Dealer's Heirs". The New York Times.
31. Evans, Stephen (26 March 2014). "Cornelius Gurlitt: One lonely man and his hoard of stolen Nazi art". BBC News Magazine. Retrieved 27 March 2014.
32. http://www.dw.com/en/task-force-investigating-art-trove-inherited-from-nazi-collector-achieved-embarrassing-results/a-18876659
33. http://www.taskforce-kunstfund.de/en/chronology.htm
34. https://www.tagesspiegel.de/kultur/gurlitt-und-die-folgen-des-schwabinger-kunstfunds-kunstmuseum-bern-tritt-gurlitt-erbe-an/11021442.html
35. https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/kultur/Laesst-sich-Bern-die-grosse-GurlittAusstellung-wegschnappen-/story/31357598
36. "'Nazi art' hoarder Cornelius Gurlitt, 81, dies". BBC. Retrieved 6 May 2014.
37. Lane, Mary M. (20 November 2014). "Swiss Museum Close to Accepting Trove of Nazi Art". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 13 March 2016. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
38. Lane, p. A12.
39. "Die 'Causa Gurlitt': Leichtgradig Kompliziert". Franffurter Algemeine. Retrieved 8 August 2015.
40. Dittmar, Peter (3 November 2013). "Wie Picassos in einer vermüllten Wohnung landeten". Die Welt (in German). Retrieved 4 November 2013.
41. ^ "Schwabing art trove: Provenance of treasures to be researched alongside criminal proceedings – suspicious works being publicised at lostart.de" (Press release). the Bavarian State Ministry of Justice, the Bavarian State Ministry of Education, Science and the Arts, the Federal Ministry of Finance and the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. 11 November 2013. Retrieved 19 November 2013.
42. "Possible Rodin and Degas works found at Gurlitt home". BBC. 24 July 2014. Retrieved 24 July 2014.
43. "Cornelius Gurlitt: Monet found in art hoarder's suitcase". BBC. 5 September 2014. Retrieved 5 September 2014.
44. Voss, Julia (17 November 2013). "Münchner Kunstfund: Wo bleibt der Rechtsstaat?". Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (in German).
45. Politische Strafjustiz (in German) in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 25 November 2013, by Volker Rieble.
46. Dittmar, Peter (7 November 2013). "Verbrechen lohnt sich". Jüdische Allgemeine (in German).. This article refers in particular to works of degenerate art, whose confiscation had been formalized by a Nazi law. Gesetz über Einziehung von Erzeugnissen entarteter Kunst (Act on the Confiscation of Works of Degenerate Art) of 31 May 1938
47. Heuer, Carl-Heinz (undated). "Die eigentumsrechtliche Problematik der entarteten Kunst" – "The problems surrounding ownership rights to degenerate art" Archived 2 December 2013 at the Wayback Machine (bilingual), on the website of the Free University of Berlin
48. Kunstrückgabegesetz 1998 (Art Return Law 1998) See the German Misplaced Pages entry for details.
49. The Central and Regional Library of Berlin is the only library in Germany to have full-time staff devoted to the search for Nazi-looted cultural goods.
50. Fluch des Schatzes (Curse of the Treasure) in Der Zeit, 21 November 2013 (in German). "German museums are accordingly, albeit rather hesitantly, searching for looted art in their collections, and from time to time works are returned. This is cumbersome, mostly unspectacular and takes far too long, but it is still the right way. But Cornelius Gurlitt is a private person, and therefore the principles of the Washington Agreement do not apply to his artworks. He cannot be forced, and it appears the government wants to seize the works, which is hardly possible in the face of the constitution."
51. See Interview: Kunstexpertin fordert Rückgabe aller Bilder an Gurlitt, Augsburger Allgemeine, 4 December 2012 (in German) or a translation Archived 4 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine of the article in English.
52. Augsburger Staatsanwaltschaft weist Vorwürfe der Kunstexpertin zurück Augsburger Allgemeine, 5 December 2012 (in German)
53. Süddeutsche Zeitung, Ein Bild lässt sich abhangen, Schuld nicht (in German; English: "A picture may be taken down, but not the guilt"), interview by Heribert Prantl and Kia Vahland, 20 November 2014, p. 19.
54. Eddy, Melissa (May 15, 2015). "Matisse From Gurlitt Collection Is Returned to Jewish Art Dealer’s Heirs". New York Times. Retrieved 2016-12-19.
55. Holmes, Ruth (June 24, 2015). "Nazi-looted painting from Munich fetches close to $3m". Times of Israel. Retrieved 2016-12-19.
56. "First painting to be sold from Cornelius Gurlitt trove". BBC. 22 May 2015. Retrieved 22 May 2015.
57. ^ Neuendorf, Henri (10 July 2017). "The Notorious Gurlitt Trove of Nazi-Tainted Art Makes Its First Appearance at Kunstmuseum Bern". artmet.com. Retrieved 12 February 2018.
58. "Swiss museum to accept Gurlitt 'Nazi art'". BBC News. 24 November 2014.
59. "Gurlitt exhibition attracts droves of visitors". Swissinfo.ch. 2 January 2018. Retrieved 12 February 2018.
60. As of 20 November 2014 492 objects were listed. Lost Art Database Archived 7 March 2014 at the Library of Congress Web Archives, listings from the so-called "Munich artworks discovery" at bottom under Bestände (English: Inventories) Viewed on 20 November 2014. Viewed again 17 March 2016.
61. "Picasso, Matisse and Dix among works found in Munich's Nazi art stash". The Guardian. 5 November 2013. Retrieved 5 November 2013.
62. "Nazi trove in Munich contains unknown works by masters". BBC News. 5 November 2013. Retrieved 5 November 2013.
63. "In pictures: Long-lost art unveiled in Germany". BBC News. 5 November 2013. Retrieved 5 November 2013.
64. "Photo Gallery: Munich Nazi Art Stash Revealed". Der Spiegel. 17 November 2013. Retrieved 17 November 2013.

Further reading

• German watercolors, drawings and prints . A midcentury review, with loans from German museums and galleries and from the collection Dr. H. Gurlitt, Catalogue of the exhibition in New York City, San Francisco and Cambridge MA, 1956
• Feliciano, Hector; Vernay, Alain (1998). The Lost Museum: The Nazi Conspiracy to Steal the World's Greatest Works of Art. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-04191-4.
• Hoffmann, Meike, ed. (2010). Ein Händler "entarteter" Kunst: Bernhard A. Böhmer und sein Nachlass. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-05-004498-9.
• Petropoulos, Jonathan (2000). The Faustian Bargain: The Art World in Nazi Germany. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-512964-4.

External links

• German Lost Art Foundation: Gurlitt Art Trove
• Obituary in The Independent by Marcus Williamson
• Haaretz, Israeli art expert says Nazi-looted trove in Munich is 'just the tip of the iceberg' (requires subscription and/or registration)
• "Documents Reveal How Looted Nazi Art Was Restored to Dealer", NY Times, 6 November 2013
• "Germany to Form Task Force on Looted Art", NY Times, 12 November 2013
• Michael Kimmelman, "In a Rediscovered Trove of Art, a Triumph Over the Nazis’ Will", New York Times, 6 November 2013
• Smale, Alison (4 November 2013). "Report of Nazi-Looted Trove Puts Art World in an Uproar". The New York Times.
• Verena Nees, Nazi looted art works discovered in Munich
• BBC inspects art stash
• The Gurlitt collection should be sold to benefit Jewish organisations, by Flavia Foradini, The Art Newspaper, online edition, 20th Nov 2014
• The other Gurlitt: the dealer cherished by 'degenerate' artists and Nazis alike, by Flavia Foradini, The Art Newspaper, January 2015

• 2012 in art
• 2012 in Germany
• 2010s in Munich
• Art and cultural repatriation after World War II
• Art history
• Cultural history of World War II
• Looting
• Stolen works of art