JavaScript is off. Please enable to view full site.

Germany finds 1,500 masterpieces looted by Nazis

Germany finds 1,500 masterpieces looted by Nazis

Monday, November 04, 2013, 11:25 GMT+7

Nearly 1,500 priceless paintings including works by Picasso and Matisse that were stolen by the Nazis have been discovered in a flat in Munich, a news report said Sunday.

The German weekly Focus said police came upon the paintings during a 2011 search in an apartment belonging to the octogenarian son of art collector Hildebrand Gurlitt, who had bought them during the 1930s and 1940s.

The search was carried out because the son, Cornelius Gurlitt, was under suspicion for tax evasion, Focus said.

The report said the works were thought to be worth around one billion euros ($1.3 billion dollars) on today's market.

The artworks lay hidden amid old jam jars and junk in darkened rooms in Gurlitt's apartment in the southern city for more than half a century, the paper said.

Gurlitt, a recluse without a job, had sold a few over the course of the years, living off the proceeds, the paper reported.

His father, despite having a Jewish grandmother, had become indispensable to officials in the Third Reich because of his art expertise and his vast network of contacts.

Hitler's propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels put Gurlitt in charge of exporting the art, which the Nazi party considered "degenerate".

The collection included many of the great masters of the 20th century, among them the German painters Emil Nolde, Franz Marc, Max Beckmann and Max Liebermann.

Among the paintings discovered was one by Henri Matisse that had belonged to the Jewish collector Paul Rosenberg.

Rosenberg, who fled Paris leaving his collection behind, was the grandfather of Anne Sinclair, the former wife of the disgraced French politician Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

The prosecutor in the southern city of Augsburg, who is reportedly handling the affair, declined to comment on the story, according to German press agency DPA.

The paintings are stored safely in a customs warehouse outside Munich, Focus said.

The Nazis massively plundered artworks in Germany and across Europe before and during World War II, confiscating many from Jews or forcing them to sell their works at a low price.

Between 1940 and 1944, German forces seized an estimated 100,000 paintings, artworks, tapestries and antiques from the homes of Jews in France, stripped of their rights by the racial laws enforced by the collaborationist government.

Thousands of stolen artworks have since been returned to their owners or their descendants, but many more have never resurfaced.

In 2007 a German expert published a book on looted art, estimating that thousands of masterpieces and tens of thousands of lesser works had yet to be restored to their rightful owners.

Only last week, an investigation by Dutch museums revealed that 139 of their artworks, including a Matisse and two Kandinsky paintings, may have been stolen by the Nazis.

AFP

More

Read more

;

Photos

VIDEOS

‘Taste of Australia’ gala dinner held in Ho Chi Minh City after 2-year hiatus

Taste of Australia Gala Reception has returned to the Park Hyatt Hotel in Ho Chi Minh City's District 1 after a two-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic

Vietnamese woman gives unconditional love to hundreds of adopted children

Despite her own immense hardship, she has taken in and cared for hundreds of orphans over the past three decades.

Vietnam’s Mekong Delta celebrates spring with ‘hat boi’ performances

The art form is so popular that it attracts people from all ages in the Mekong Delta

Vietnamese youngster travels back in time with clay miniatures

Each work is a scene caught by Dung and kept in his memories through his journeys across Vietnam

Latest news