Hundreds of Masterpieces, Possibly Looted by Nazis, Found in Germany

LONDON (Los Angeles Times/MCT) —

The elderly gentleman appeared nervous when police questioned him during a customs check aboard a train from Switzerland to Germany. He was carrying about $12,000 in cash, just within the legal limit.

But a feeling that something was not quite right led authorities to raid the man’s apartment in Munich several months later, resulting in the astonishing discovery of what could amount to more than $1.3 billion worth of artistic masterpieces, some — or all — of them looted by the Nazis more than 70 years ago. That would make it one of the largest such troves recovered since World War II.

The stunning find is being reported by the German news magazine Focus, which said the hoard included paintings by Picasso, Chagall, Matisse and Klee that were believed to be lost or destroyed in the war. Though priceless, the 1,500 pieces were crammed next to piles of canned food in the messy Munich apartment of Cornelius Gurlitt, the 80-year-old son of a well-known Nazi-era art dealer.

The raid on Gurlitt’s home was conducted in early 2011, Focus reported, but German officials have kept mum for more than two years as they moved the artworks into safe storage outside Munich and started untangling the tricky knot of issues surrounding their provenance and whether — and how — to return them to their rightful owners.

Many of those original owners could turn out to be Jewish families who saw their belongings confiscated by the Nazis or who sold them at knock-down prices in their desperation to flee Europe and avoid deportation to the death camps.

Of special interest to art historians will be the 300 or so pieces that may have featured in the catalogue of what Hitler denounced as “degenerate art,” works that did not fit in with his vision of a reactionary, racially pure society. In an infamous 1937 exhibition in Munich, the Nazis displayed 650 such objects — sculptures, paintings, books — with derisive explanatory labels.

Holocaust survivors and their descendants around the world have campaigned for years to have their family treasures restored to them. In March of this year, the French government returned seven paintings to the heirs of their original owners, calling it a “moral issue.” Six of the pieces went to the American grandson of a Jewish couple who escaped from Vienna to France and then to Cuba by selling off part of their collection.

Only last week, Dutch museums announced they had identified 139 artworks that might have been confiscated from Jewish owners.

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