German authorities decided to shed light on a treasure found two years ago

AUGSBURG. Among the works of art found in a cluttered Munich apartment, previously unknown works by artists such as Marc Chagall and Otto Dix were discovered. He reported this, breaking an ambiguous two-day silence, an art critic engaged in the paintings, on behalf of the government. According to Meike Hoffmann, the allegorical composition of the 1920s, belonging to the brush of Marc Chagall, has great artistic and historical value, as well as a rare self-portrait of Dix, written in 1919.

At a press conference in the southern city of Augsburg, where German authorities decided to shed light on this story, Hoffmann showed slides of paintings, among which were works by Pablo Picasso, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Henri Matisse, who were in the apartment of an eccentric collector. At the time of the police search, Cornelius Gurlitt lived in the apartment (now, Gurlitt, who has an Austrian passport, abandoned this living space), who is the son of Hildebrand Gurlitt, a prominent art dealer of the Nazi era who was actively buying The Third Reich works of art in the 1930s and 1940s.

Hildebrand Gurlitt was one of the few experts in the field of art who was tasked with selling valuable works stolen or seized from Jewish collectors. These works were classified as “degenerative” and are rather low appreciated by the Nazi government. Augsburg’s chief prosecutor, Reinhard Nemetz, said there were 1,285 unframed paintings and 121 framed paintings, sketches and prints, some of which date back to the 16th century.

Focus magazine, which told the world about what was happening, estimated the value of this collection at one billion euros. Reinhard Nemeths declined to name the market value of the collection. The main problem of the entire investigation is the determination of which works were looted by the Nazis, which were bought under pressure, and which were acquired legally. This can take years or even decades.

Hoffmann noted “an extraordinary sense of happiness” when he leafed through slides in a darkened room, showing works that had not appeared in public for seven decades. Among them were innovative paintings by expressionist Franz Marc, a lively portrait of a seated Matisse woman, and a touching image of a 19th-century French artist Gustave Courbet. And also a self-portrait of Dix, on which we can see the thin face of a German artist just a year after the First World War, a conflict in which he fought and whose horrors left deep wounds in his soul, influencing all his work until his death in 1969 year.

The Augsburg prosecutor said the authorities did not plan to post an exhaustive list of work online, because it could violate the privacy rights of some participants in the process and cause a huge number of frivolous requests. “That would be counterproductive to us. It would be a threat to the investigation and would threaten the works of art themselves, ”he said. “We have no interest in keeping the paintings at home forever,” he added.

Siegfried Kloeble, chief of customs in Munich, who launched an investigation into Gurlitt on suspicion of tax evasion and misappropriation of assets, said that as a precaution, the work was moved to a secret place. Cloebel also said that most of the collection, which included works by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Max Beckmann, Max Lieberman, Emil Nolde, Oscar Kokosch and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, were dumped in one room in Gurlitt’s apartment. However, “the paintings were professionally stored and in very good condition,” he said, adding that although some were contaminated, none were damaged.

Nemets noted that the elderly hermit had cooperated with the authorities after the seizure of his work, but now they do not maintain contact with him and no arrest order has been issued for him. Gurlitt’s official residence is in Austria, but his current whereabouts are unknown. Reinhard Nemets also contested the Focus version of the raid that took place in early 2011, and that the authorities have been silent about the matter since then. He said that although the investigation began in 2011, searches in Gurlitt’s apartment began on February 28, 2012 and continued for three days.

The Nazis robbed collectors in Germany and throughout Europe before and during World War II. Thousands of stolen works of art have since been returned to their owners or their descendants, but many more have disappeared.

Anna Sidorova © Gallerix.ru