Art works seized by Nazis discovered
Print Edition
A vast trove of modern art seized under Germany’s Nazi regime, including works by Picasso, Matisse and Chagall, has been discovered in a Munich apartment among stacks of rotting groceries, German magazine Focus reported.
The 1,500 art works, missing for more than 70 years, and discovered by chance by customs authorities in the southern German state of Bavaria in 2011, could be worth over 1 billion euros (US$1.35 billion), Focus said.
There was no word on why the find had taken so long to come to light.
Bavarian officials declined any comment on what could be one of the largest recoveries of Nazi-looted art.
Focus said experts were now valuing the paintings, drawings and prints, being held in a customs depot, and trying to determine their ownership.
Some may once have been on display in German museums, then removed from 1937 onwards because Hitler’s Third Reich considered them “degenerate,” while others were seized, or forcibly sold for a pittance by persecuted Jewish collectors.
The collection was also believed to contain a painting of a woman by Henri Matisse which belonged to Paris-based Jewish art collector Paul Rosenberg, Focus said.
Customs investigators made the sensational find in 2011 after a 76-year-old man traveling by train from Zurich to Munich aroused suspicion at the border when he was found carrying a large, albeit legal, amount of cash.
The man was Cornelius Gurlitt, son of art dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt, who was a specialist in the modern art of the early 20th century that the Nazis branded as un-German.
Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels recruited Hildebrand Gurlitt to sell abroad the “degenerate art” to try and generate cash for the state. He 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 had also been persecuted. He continued working as a dealer and died in a traffic accident in 1956.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
