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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 occupied 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, claiming that he had not committed any crimes and that the paintings had come from the collection of his father, whom he believed had saved them from both the Nazis and the subsequent Russian liberators of portions of occupied Europe. In addition, according to German law, any claims to wartime looted property expired after 30 years, long before the collection came to the attention of investigators, so he was indeed the legal owner of the works. He also retained an additional store of 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, never seeing the collection again. 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.

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.

• 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