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German Officials Provide Details on Looted Art Trove German Officials Provide Details on Looted Art
(about 7 hours later)
AUGSBURG, Germany — Priceless and wholly unknown works by Henri Matisse, Otto Dix and a host of other major 20th-century artists formed part of a collection of some 1,400 works of art confiscated or sold under the Nazis and discovered last year when customs officials investigated an elderly man for tax evasion, officials and an art historian said Tuesday. This article is by Melissa Eddy, Alison Smale, Patricia Cohen and Randy Kennedy.
Addressing a packed news conference here, Meike Hoffmann, an art historian at an institute of the Berlin Free University who has been assigned to examine the spectacular find, said the hundreds of works at the Munich apartment of the man, identified as Cornelius Gurlitt, spanned from the 16th century into the 20th century. It is almost certainly the biggest trove of missing 20th-century European art discovered since the end of World War II, and the first glimpse of it on Tuesday brought astonishment but also anger and the early stirrings of what will likely be a prolonged battle over who owns the works.
“All these paintings and prints are in a very good condition,” Ms. Hoffmann said, explaining that the works were somewhat dirty, but otherwise in museum condition. Research is continuing, she said, and it is impossible to put a value on the works. “Of course, it is of a very high value for art historians,” she said. For the first time, German authorities described how they discovered 1,400 or so works during a routine tax investigation, including ones by Matisse, Chagall, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, Picasso and a host of other masters. Some were previously not known to have existed. Others appear to have disappeared around the time the Nazis raided German museums and public collections in the late 1930s to confiscate works they classified as “degenerate.”
In addition to the works of Matisse and Dix, the trove includes works by Picasso, Chagall, Renoir, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and the German artists Max Beckmann, Max Liebermann, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Carl Spitzweg, said Siegfried Klöble, the head of the Munich customs office, which oversaw the operation to recover the art. Meike Hoffmann, an art historian called in to evaluate the discoveries in the spring of 2012, said she could not believe her eyes, realizing that “we are missing a part of our culture” that the Nazis had tried to destroy and that had now miraculously reappeared.
Ms. Hoffmann showed slides of some of the works, including what she said was a haunting and previously unknown self-portrait of Dix, dating probably from 1919, a period right after World War I in which Dix, a German artist, painted little. “These are truly museum-quality works, and you simply do not find these on the market anymore,” she said.
A Matisse portrait of a woman was also previously unknown, she said, dating it to the mid-1920s. A drawing by Canaletto and a stunning allegorical work by Chagall – also previously unknown – were among the treasures shown on slides and commented on briefly by Ms. Hoffmann. But she and German officials offered only a peek — pictures of a mere handful of the works and a short list of artists — at a packed news conference on Tuesday in Augsburg, an old Bavarian town, leaving many unanswered questions and provoking mounting criticism of officials’ slow and perhaps overly discreet handling of the trove.
She stressed that it was extremely difficult to nail down the origin and the ownership history of some of the works and that she had only begun initial research on some 500 of the works. Further research, she said, could take years. Fully aware that the discovery is bound to set off a storm of claims — already being mobilized — officials in Augsburg would not release a complete inventory of what they know so far about their discovery, citing privacy rights and concerns that tracing the provenance of the works will be a costly labor that could take years. Officials would not say where the works are stored. They would not even confirm the name of the man who is believed to have kept the art hidden for decades in his Munich apartment. Nor, they said, do they know where that man is now.
There is, however, little doubt that at least some of the art discovered was part of an exhibit of what the Nazis termed “degenerate” art and which they put on show from 1937 to 1941 throughout Germany. Other works were probably among those that collectors — often Jews looking to flee the Third Reich — were forced to sell for rock-bottom prices, Ms. Hoffmann said. The discovery of the works was first reported by Focus magazine on Sunday. They were thought to have been found in the apartment of Cornelius Gurlitt, 79 or 80, the son of Hildebrand Gurlitt, who was stripped of two museum posts by the Nazis after it was determined that he had a Jewish grandparent. Nonetheless, the elder Mr. Gurlitt later became one of the few art dealers selected by Joseph Goebbels to sell to buyers abroad the Modernist works banned by the Nazis.
The chief of the state prosecutor’s office, Reinhard Nemetz, said Mr. Gurlitt first attracted the attention of customs officials during a routine check on a train from Zurich to Munich on Sept. 22, 2010. Some of the works seized in the apartment appear to resemble the titles of works that were in the custody of American and German investigators sent to safeguard cultural treasures in the late 1940s, said Marc Masurovsky, founder of the Holocaust Art Research Project. In 1950 that unit ultimately returned 115 works to the elder Mr. Gurlitt because he convinced the unit that the works were not illegally acquired, said Mr. Masurovsky, whose organization recently joined with the Paris-based dealer and restitutions expert Elizabeth Royer. For example, American cultural advisers returned “Self-Portrait,” by Otto Dix, and “Lion Tamer,” by Max Beckmann, both names of works that have been identified as being in Mr. Gurlitt’s possession.
The newsmagazine Focus has reported that Mr. Gurlitt was carrying empty white envelopes and 9,000 euros, or about $12,140. The heirs of Jewish and other German collectors whose missing artworks may be among those discovered minced few words, accusing the Germans of failing to live up to the spirit of the 1998 Washington accords on restituting confiscated art or works that sellers were forced to give up for rock-bottom prices in order to flee Nazi Germany.
Mr. Klöble would not specify what attracted the authorities’ attention, but said they had reason enough to begin an investigation on suspicion of tax evasion that led the authorities to raid the Munich apartment some 17 months later. One of the only former owners to be publicly identified is Paul Rosenberg, a French dealer whose family has spent decades searching for hundreds of confiscated works. His granddaughter Marianne Rosenberg said she was angry that her family members had not been contacted and that they were still unable to get more information about a Matisse that reports have identified as belonging to her grandfather.
Mr. Klöble and the head of the state prosecutor’s office in Augsburg, near Munich, said the joint action by customs officers and the police that resulted in the stunning discovery of the art occurred on Feb. 28, 2012, and not — as reported by Focus, which first disclosed the find on Sunday — in 2011. “We were aware of the name Gurlitt,” she said. “We are trying to track down things ourselves and fail to understand why the German authorities have said nothing to date.”
It took the authorities three days to remove the artwork from the apartment, Mr. Klöble said. Specialists ensured that it was not damaged in transit to a storage facility where it has been held since. Renée Price, director of the Neue Galerie in New York, which specializes in German Modernism, said that the discovery was a bombshell. “I think many people thought that works like these were never going to be found,” she said.
They refused to give any indication of its location, citing security. Of the oil paintings, drawings, watercolors, lithographs and other prints, 120 were in frames and stored on a shelf. Another 1,285 works were unframed and stacked in a drawer, the authorities said. Jonathan Petropoulos, a professor of history at Claremont McKenna College in California and the author of “The Faustian Bargain: The Art World in Nazi Germany,” called the trove “the most important discovery of Nazi-looted art since the Allies discovered the hordes in the salt mines and the castles.” The only comparable revelation in terms of numbers of works that disappeared from Nazi-era Germany was the public display at the Hermitage in 1995 of Impressionist and Post Impressionist works, mostly from private collections, looted by the Red Army at the end of World War II.
Of the whereabouts of Mr. Gurlitt himself, nothing is known, the officials said. Mr. Nemetz said that he had been questioned after the paintings were found, and that investigation under the tax law was continuing. But there was no reason to detain him, and the authorities do not know where he is, Mr. Nemetz said. Mr. Petropoulos added that one reason the younger Mr. Gurlitt might not have been on the radar of those looking for missing art was that his father died relatively soon after World War II, in a car crash in 1956, and had said that his papers about art transactions had been destroyed.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

The son, Cornelius Gurlitt, is assumed to be the man German officials have said was searched by customs officials on Sept. 22, 2010, on a train from Zurich to Munich, and whose conduct, or possessions, prompted suspicion that led the police and customs officials to raid his Munich apartment 17 months later, on Feb. 28, 2012.
There they uncovered 1,258 artworks that were unframed and 121 more framed works, said Reinhard Nemetz, head of the state prosecutors’ office in Augsburg, in whose jurisdiction the initial encounter on the train occurred. It is unclear how many of the works are paintings and how many are drawings, prints and other works on paper.
Evidently stunned by their find, the authorities took three days to pack up the works and take them to a special storage facility. In March 2012, Ms. Hoffmann was summoned to start evaluating the collection, which she said included drawings, lithographs, prints and watercolors.
Many of the works cited by Ms. Hoffman on Tuesday were by German artists of the Expressionist period that is her specialty, including Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Emil Nolde. A previously unknown Chagall painting and a previously unknown Dix self-portrait, thought to have been painted in 1919, just after his service in battle in World War I, were among the few images of works shown.
The descendants of Alfred Flechtheim, a Jewish gallery owner and dealer forced to flee Germany before dying penniless in London in 1937, called for the results of research done so far to be made public, in keeping with the Washington accords, which stress that speedy release of information can be crucial for aging heirs.
David Rowland, a lawyer representing several families and heirs trying to find and reclaim art, said: “They should publish a photo of each artwork, front and back, and any and all provenance information that they have.”
Ms. Hoffmann said the decision not to disclose a list of the findings was due partly to the difficulty of researching each work, made harder because there are no records to build on. “This was not about keeping something secret,” she said. “We had, of course, to reach a certain level of knowledge about this collection to understand what we had.”
Charles Goldstein, counsel for Commission for Art Recovery, which is based in New York and was founded by Ronald S. Lauder, said his group had heard a few months ago “that a cache had been found,” and that it had belonged to “one of Hitler’s dealers.”
He expressed some understanding for the Germans’ difficulty in proceeding. “They’ve got a hot potato,” he said. “This stuff belongs to Gurlitt, and they have no proof that it’s not his. In order to determine that it’s not his, they have to make a determination that it was stolen or taken from the museums.”
He added that it was not clear that some or even most of the art can be restituted because of the statute of limitations and problems proving ownership.
Focus cited as just one example the case of Henri Hinrichsen, a Leipzig collector who was said by to have died in Auschwitz in 1942. His two granddaughters are still looking for the works taken from him, Markus Krischer, one of the two Focus journalists who broke the story, said in a telephone interview.
A copy of a letter, obtained by The Times from the state archives in Berlin, sheds light on the matter. It is a copy of a correspondence dated Dec. 5, 1966, sent to Helene Gurlitt, the widow of Hildebrand and mother of Cornelius.
She was asked if she knew anything about the whereabouts of four pictures said to have belonged to Mr. Hinrichsen, by the French artist Camille Pissarro and three German artists. She replied that her husband’s entire collection had been destroyed in the bombing of Dresden in 1945.
“Dear Sirs!
“Regarding your inquiry from December 5, 1966, which according to the enclosed envelope was received on January 1, 1967, I can only tell you that all business records and inventories of our company were incinerated on February 13, 1945 — during the major attack on Dresden, where we had moved to from Hamburg.
“My husband died on November 9, 1956 in Düsseldorf. The art gallery Dr. H. Gurlitt hasn’t opened since 1945.
“Sincerely,
“Helene Gurlitt”

Melissa Eddy reported from Augsburg, Germany; Alison Smale from Berlin; and Patricia Cohen and Randy Kennedy from New York.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: November 5, 2013Correction: November 5, 2013

A picture that had accompanied this article was published in error. It showed Hildebrand Gurlitt, the father of Cornelius Gurlitt, not Cornelius Gurlitt.

A picture that had accompanied this article was published in error. It showed Hildebrand Gurlitt, the father of Cornelius Gurlitt, not Cornelius Gurlitt.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: November 5, 2013

A previous version of this article misstated the relationship between Marianne Rosenberg and Paul Rosenberg. She is his granddaughter, not his daughter.