A Jewish group accused Germany on Monday of moral complicity
in concealment of stolen paintings after it emerged authorities failed for two
years to report discovery of a trove of art seized by the Nazis, including
works by Picasso and Matisse.
Customs officials' chance discovery of 1,500 artworks in a
Munich flat owned by the reclusive elderly son of a war-time art dealer, was
revealed in a report by news magazine Focus over the weekend.
Officials in the southern state of Bavaria declined comment
on what could be one of the most significant recoveries of Nazi-looted art.
They have called a press conference for Tuesday. German government spokesman
Steffen Seibert confirmed the find and said experts were assessing its
provenance.
The case poses a legal and moral minefield for authorities.
The Nazi regime systematically plundered hundreds of thousands of art works
from museums and individuals across Europe. An unknown number of works is still
missing, and museums worldwide have held investigations into the origins of
their exhibits.
Focus estimated that the works found amongst stacks of
hoarded groceries in the flat of Cornelius Gurlitt, could be worth well over 1
billion euros ($1.35 billion). Some, it said, could have been bought by his
father Hildebrand from the collections of German state museums. Others were
seized, or extorted from persecuted Jewish collectors.
"This case shows the extent of organized art looting
which occurred in museums and private collections," said Ruediger Mahlo,
of the Conference on Jewish material claims against Germany, noting private
collections were almost all Jewish.
"We demand the paintings be returned to their original
owners. It cannot be, as in this case, that what amounts morally to the
concealment of stolen goods continues."
He criticized the lack of transparency in dealing with the
case and said it was typical of the attitude towards looted art, which for some
Jewish families constitutes the last personal effects of relatives murdered
during the Holocaust.
Germany has faced criticism that the restitution process is
too complicated and lacks sufficient funding and has set up research schemes.
The Gurlitt haul is also believed to contain a painting of a
woman by Henri Matisse which belonged to Paris-based Jewish art collector Paul
Rosenberg.
Focus said Cornelius Gurlitt had funded himself by
occasionally selling art works and he had a bank account containing half a
million euros. He attracted the suspicion of authorities in late 2010 when they
found him travelling from Zurich to Munich with a large, albeit legal, amount
of cash.
A search of his flat led them to the sensational find.
Cornelius's father Hildebrand Gurlitt was from 1920 a
specialist collector of the modern art of the early 20th century that the Nazis
branded as un-German or "degenerate" and removed from show in state
museums.
Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels recruited Gurlitt
to sell the "degenerate art" abroad to try to earn cash for the
state. Gurlitt bought some for himself and also independently bought art from
desperate Jewish dealers forced to sell.
After the war he persuaded the Americans that, as he had a
Jewish grandmother, he himself had been persecuted. He continued working as a
dealer and died in a traffic accident in 1956.
Ownership
Auction houses in Berne, Switzerland and Cologne, which sold
some of the art works both said Hildebrand was a known dealer.
Karl-Sax Feddersen, a lawyer with Lempertz auctioneers in
Cologne, which sold a pastel drawing of a lion tamer by German expressionist
Max Beckmann, said, "from our point of view this is a totally normal case.
An old gentleman contacted our Munich office and offered them a Beckmann
pastel... we had a restitution problem which we actively addressed and we found
a solution ahead of the auction."
It turned out the artwork had been bought from a Jewish
owner under pressure at the time to sell. After selling for 864,00 euros,
Cornelius gave a portion to the heirs of the original owner.
Galerie Kornfeld, an auction house and gallery in the Swiss city
of Bern, where Gurlitt auctioned paper works for 38,250 Swiss francs (31,000
euros) in 1990, said in a statement the works were purchased cheaply in 1938 by
Hildebrand from a collection of state-owned art.
"Cornelius Gurlitt inherited the works after the death
of his mother Helene. Basically this is a case of undeclared inheritance."
The gallery added a clear distinction should be made between
looted art and works from the Nazis' former holdings of state-owned so-called
"degenerate art" which can be freely traded.
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