Magazine Focus revealed the secret of the German government - a warehouse with works of art worth 1 billion euros Automatic translate

BERLIN. A sensational message appeared in Sunday news releases in Germany - almost 1,500 priceless works of art, including painting, drawing and engravings by Picasso, Matisse, Chagall, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Franz Marc, Max Liebermann, Paul Klee, Max Beckmann, Emil Nolde, Oscar Kokoschka, and the works of Dürer considered lost, stolen by the Nazis during World War II, were found in an ordinary Munich apartment.

According to an article published in the magazine, the police entered an unprecedented warehouse of paintings by accident, in 2011 during a search of an apartment owned by the eighty-year-old son of collector Hildebrand Gurlitt, who significantly replenished his collection during the 1930s and 1940s. The search was attempted because of the collector’s son, Cornelius Gurlitt, who was suspected of tax evasion after being detained by the police with a large sum of money. According to preliminary estimates, the cost of works found in the modern market is about one billion euros.

The paintings were hidden in the dark rooms of Gurlitt’s apartment, between old jam jars and garbage, among which they had lain for more than half a century. Gurlitt was a recluse, never worked and lived off gradually sold paintings. His father, although he was half Jewish, occupied an important place among the officials of the Third Reich. Nazi Germany, he was needed as a competent art critic, who had wide connections in the art world. Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels personally made Gurlitt responsible for the export and sale of works of art that the Nazis considered “degenerate.” The German government kept the find secret, fearing a flood of restorative claims. Currently, a professor at the Free University of Berlin, Mr. Meik Hoffmann, is studying the origin of all 1,500 works and is evaluating their value.

The list of artists recognized by the Nazis as "degenerate" includes many great masters of the 20th century, including German painters Emil Nolde, Franz Marc, Max Beckmann and Max Lieberman. Also, among the works of art was discovered the canvas of Henri Matisse, belonging to the Jewish collector Rosenberg, who fled to Paris, abandoning his entire fortune. Incidentally, he was the grandfather of Ann Sinclair, the ex-wife of the disgraced French politician Dominic Strauss-Kahn.

According to the German press, the prosecutor of the southern part of the city of Augsburg, who is conducting this case, refused to comment on this story. At the moment, the pictures are safe. According to the magazine Focus, they are stored in a customs warehouse outside Munich.

During World War II, the Nazis massively robbed works of art in Germany and throughout Europe, simply confiscating them from Jews or forcing them to sell their treasures at ridiculously low prices. Between 1940 and 1944, German troops seized about 100,000 paintings, drawings, tapestries and antiques from Jewish homes in France, deprived of their rights, according to racial legislation of the Nazi government.

Thousands of stolen works of art were returned to their owners or their descendants, but many remain undetected. In 2007, a German expert published a book on looted works of art. According to her, thousands more masterpieces and tens of thousands of works of lesser importance have not been returned to their rightful owners. An investigation by the Dutch museums last week alone revealed that they contained 139 works, including one by Matisse and two paintings by Kandinsky, which may have been stolen by the Nazis.

Anna Sidorova © Gallerix.ru