Gurlitt recommenced his art dealings, and in 1956, the year he would die in a car accident, he even showed paintings in New York. In secret, Gurlitt reunited them with other parts of his collection he had hidden in an old water mill. In January 1948 Gurlitt moved the family to Dusseldorf, where he became the director of a museum, and in 1950 the Allies returned the confiscated 140 works. Somehow, however, after three years of house arrest in Aschbach, Gurlitt convinced the authorities both of his persecution under the Nazis for his Jewish heritage (his paternal grandmother was Jewish, and as a “mongrel” he would have faced Aryan race laws), and of the destruction of the majority of his art collection in the February 1945 firebombing in Dresden. ‘There is reason to believe that these private art collections consist of looted art from other countries’
There is reason to believe that these private art collections consist of looted art from other countries.”
He acted on behalf of other Nazi officials and made many trips to France, from where he brought home art collections. The Monuments Men documented then that they believed Gurlitt to be “an art collector from Hamburg with connections within high-level Nazi circles. Gurlitt,” a member of the forces noted in mid-May. “A large room on the upper floor with 34 boxes, two packages containing carpets, eight packages of books… one room on the ground floor containing an additional 13 boxes owned by Mr. When the Monuments Men arrived at the Aschbach castle in May 1945, they found an “enormous warehouse,” writes Der Spiegel. By war’s end his house had turned into a refuge for works from nearby museums and private collections, including that of the two art dealers - and for the dealers themselves. The lord of the manor, Baron Pölnitz, according to the Der Spiegel report, had gone beyond his duties as an SS officer in Paris and aided the two art dealers in their work. Also in residence at the manor was notorious Nazi art dealer Karl Haberstock, considered the most important of the Nazi art agents. (photo credit: YouTube screenshot)Īfter the 1945 firebombing of his family home in Dresden, Gurlitt moved to an Aschbach castle of one Baron Gerhard von Pölnitz with wife Helene and children Cornelius and Benita. Several SS officers bolstered their art collections through the designated Nazi art agents. In post-war Germany, one lucky recipient of some 140 “restituted” works from the hands of the Americans and Germans was art dealer/historian Hildebrand Gurlitt.Ī December 23 in-depth profile of Gurlitt in Der Spiegel portrays the dealer as a crafty swindler who double-dealt the Nazis and the Allies while carefully hoarding and protecting his own growing, valuable art collection. The legal ramifications are so complicated that, as German solicitor Peter Bert laughs, “If you had come up with this case as an exam question, people would say it’s a professor’s imagination gone wild.” The Schwabing collection
Hidden for 70 years and sold piecemeal to cover 81-year-old “owner” Cornelius Gurlitt’s ballooning medical bills, the collections is surrounded by legal questions that involve the expiration of the statute of limitations - and just whose property is it anyway? This week the German Culture Ministry confirmed the pending legislation and, raising the stakes, told The Times of Israel, “The federal government is going to look into the legislative initiative.”Īs to whether the notorious Munich collection would be open to claims under this new legislation, the ministry cryptically wrote, “The German constitution will only allow repercussions of such a law within narrow, strict limits on those cases whose statute of limitations has already expired.”
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