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Museums, heirs stake first claims to Nazi art trove
By Korea HeraldPublished : Nov. 10, 2013 - 19:08
BERLIN (AFP) ― Museums and heirs have begun to stake claims to a vast trove of priceless paintings long hidden in a German flat, as calls mount for authorities to publish a definitive list of the works.
Prominent lawyer and art patron Peter Raue, who works closely with museums in Berlin, said Germany must do its part for transparency as many families of Jews stripped of their assets under the Nazis believe their works may be among those found.
“It would be more sensible to post the paintings on the Internet, why not with the (London-based) Lost Art Register?” he told the daily Tagesspiegel.
“Only then can there be a chance, for example, for the owners of the breathtakingly beautiful suspected Matisse painting presented Tuesday to come forward. Maybe the Winterstein family from Ohio will say: that picture was hanging in our home in Berlin on Klopstockstrasse.”
Despite international pressure, German prosecutors have refused to publish a full inventory of the works, citing a need for more time to fully catalogue them and for discretion in their probe.
They have launched an investigation on charges of tax evasion and misappropriation of assets against Cornelius Gurlitt, in whose garbage-strewn Munich apartment the more than 1,400 works including paintings by Pablo Picasso, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Henri Matisse were found in February 2012.
The case only came to light this week in a magazine report.
Gurlitt is the son of Hildebrand Gurlitt, a powerful Nazi-era art dealer and collector who acquired the paintings in the 1930s and 1940s.
Hildebrand Gurlitt had been tasked by the Nazis with selling works looted from Jewish collectors or seized as part of a crackdown on avant-garde, so-called degenerate art in exchange for hard currency.
However he appears to have held on to many of the works, even after an investigation by U.S. occupying forces after the war, and he left them to his family after he died in a car accident in 1956.
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert also called for openness, while stressing that the prosecutors were responsible for the probe.
Prominent lawyer and art patron Peter Raue, who works closely with museums in Berlin, said Germany must do its part for transparency as many families of Jews stripped of their assets under the Nazis believe their works may be among those found.
“It would be more sensible to post the paintings on the Internet, why not with the (London-based) Lost Art Register?” he told the daily Tagesspiegel.
“Only then can there be a chance, for example, for the owners of the breathtakingly beautiful suspected Matisse painting presented Tuesday to come forward. Maybe the Winterstein family from Ohio will say: that picture was hanging in our home in Berlin on Klopstockstrasse.”
Despite international pressure, German prosecutors have refused to publish a full inventory of the works, citing a need for more time to fully catalogue them and for discretion in their probe.
They have launched an investigation on charges of tax evasion and misappropriation of assets against Cornelius Gurlitt, in whose garbage-strewn Munich apartment the more than 1,400 works including paintings by Pablo Picasso, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Henri Matisse were found in February 2012.
The case only came to light this week in a magazine report.
Gurlitt is the son of Hildebrand Gurlitt, a powerful Nazi-era art dealer and collector who acquired the paintings in the 1930s and 1940s.
Hildebrand Gurlitt had been tasked by the Nazis with selling works looted from Jewish collectors or seized as part of a crackdown on avant-garde, so-called degenerate art in exchange for hard currency.
However he appears to have held on to many of the works, even after an investigation by U.S. occupying forces after the war, and he left them to his family after he died in a car accident in 1956.
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert also called for openness, while stressing that the prosecutors were responsible for the probe.
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Articles by Korea Herald
