The Gurlitt Collection (alternatively known as the "Gurlitt Trove", "Gurlitt Hoard", "Munich Art Hoard", "Schwabing Art Trove", "Schwabing Art Find", etc.) was a collection of around 1,500 art works inherited by Cornelius Gurlitt, the son of one of Hitler's official art dealers, Hildebrand Gurlitt (1895–1956), and which was found to have contained several artworks looted from Jews by the Nazis.
Description The collection attracted international interest in 2013 when it was announced as a sensational 2012 "Nazi loot discovery" by the media as a result of actions by officials of Augsburg in Cornelius Gurlitt's apartment in Schwabing, Munich, investigating Gurlitt on suspicion (later shown to be unfounded) of possible tax evasion. German authorities seized the entire collection, although Gurlitt was not detained. Gurlitt repeatedly requested the return of the collection on the grounds that he had committed no crime, but eventually agreed that the collection could remain with the Prosecutor's office for evaluation in case any Nazi-era looted works could be identified. In 2014, a new agreement was reached that the collection would be returned to Gurlitt, but he died shortly thereafter, leaving all his property – including two Munich apartments plus a house and additional works stored at his residence in Salzburg, Austria – to the Museum of Fine Arts Bern in Switzerland, which agreed to accept the collection (minus any works suspected of being looted) in November 2014. Hildebrand Gurlitt, who had assembled the collection, was suspected of incorporating a number of looted items and, potentially, works acquired in dubious circumstances during the Second World War and preceding period in Nazi Germany, in addition to works acquired legitimately and/or passed down through his family; the provenance of a significant subset of items is still under investigation.
The collection contains Old Masters as well as Impressionist, Cubist, and Expressionist paintings, drawings and prints by artists including Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, Eugène Delacroix, Edgar Degas, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Franz Marc, Marc Chagall, Édouard Manet, Camille Pissarro, Auguste Rodin, Otto Dix, Edvard Munch, Gustave Courbet, Max Liebermann, Wassily Kandinsky, and Paul Klee, among many others, as well as works by family members who were themselves artists. A considerable portion of the collection is in the form of prints and other "dealer stock" in addition to a smaller, but still noteworthy number of unique and more valuable works; initial sensationalist claims of the value of the collection being "in excess of 1 billion dollars" based on its size alone have proved to be unfounded, though the collection is certainly worth tens of millions of dollars. Legally, Cornelius was the owner of all the works upon their discovery because, in Germany, legal claims on potential looted works expire after 30 years; however, from 2012 he agreed to voluntarily return any works that were shown to be looted to the heirs of the families concerned, a provision that has been carried on by the new custodians of the collection. By May 2020, 14 works had been returned, with a further 7 stated in 2021 as to be returned shortlyArtNews, 13 December 2021: Kunstmuseum Bern to Return Seven Works from Gurlitt Trove including works by Henri Matisse, Max Liebermann, Carl Spitzweg, Camille Pissarro, Adolph von Menzel and Paul Signac, while a profit-sharing agreement was reached with the heir of another family for a work by Max Beckmann prior to its sale in 2011.
Role of Hildebrand Gurlitt, Cornelius' father Hildebrand Gurlitt was an art historian, museum director and art dealer in Germany during the 1930s who became an official art dealer for the Nazis. He was particularly interested in modern art of the day, befriended a number of artists and purchased their works for the museums under his control; when he became a dealer he often exhibited their works for sale, and on occasion purchased items he particularly liked for his own collection. From the mid-1930s onwards, he also purchased and, in some cases, sold on artworks, often bought for low prices, from private individuals including Jewish owners who were under duress to pay extortionate taxes, or were otherwise liquidating assets in order to flee the country. On the one hand he claimed he was helping the owners in their predicament, since there were few dealers who were prepared to undertake such transactions, but on the other he was not averse to enriching himself in the process, as well as providing no cooperation to post-war claimants seeking to reclaim or obtain compensation for such works sold under duress.Hickley, 2015: pp. 46-47, 128-129.
In 1937, Nazi Germany under Hitler condemned modern art as "degenerate" (not fitting to be called art in Hitler's view) and confiscated it from museums all over Germany. A travelling Degenerate Art Exhibition was set up where some of these pieces were displayed to the public to show their so-called "degenerate" nature. The Nazis set up a system to raise cash by selling as confiscated items abroad. The Nazis authorized four dealers, Hildebrand Gurlitt, Karl Buchholz, Ferdinand Möller and Bernhard Böhmer to trade such pieces, seeking overseas buyers in return for an agent's commission. Gurlitt's name appears against many of the entries on a listing compiled by the Ministry of Propaganda and now held by the Victoria and Albert Museum that provides details of the fate of each object, including whether it was exchanged, sold or destroyed.Victoria and Albert Museum (2014). "Entartete" Kunst: digital reproduction of a typescript inventory prepared by the Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda, ca. 1941/1942. London: Victoria and Albert Museum. (V&A NAL MSL/1996/7)
Following the fall of France, Hermann Göring appointed a series of Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce approved dealers, including Gurlitt, to acquire French art assets – mainly comprising works looted from museums and from the previously wealthy collectors of the day – for Hitler's planned Führermuseum which he wanted to build in Linz; some of the works also went to swell Göring's personal art collection. Gurlitt, who had already embarked on purchasing trips to Paris on behalf of German museums, purchased around 200 works in Paris and the Netherlands between 1943 and 1944, not including works acquired for his own collection, of which 168 were intended for the Führermuseum.Hickley, 2015: pp. 78–85 Gurlitt undoubtedly used his thus "officially sanctioned" purchasing trips to Paris – which was at that time awash with artworks, including old masters of dubious provenance and including many items now recognised as being looted – to further enrich his own holdings, and also became very wealthy from commissions on the enormous amounts of money being paid by Hitler's regime for artworks at that time.
Gurlitt also purchased paintings on his own behalf from artists who were being persecuted by the Nazis, among them Max Beckmann who by 1944 was living in exile in the Netherlands, prior to departing for the United States in 1947. Gurlitt and his associate Erhard Göpel, local buyer for Hitler's planned Führermuseum, purchased five works from Beckmann in September 1944, including Bar, Brown which Gurlitt retained for himself. After Gurlitt's death the painting was offered for sale by both his widow (unsuccessfully) and subsequently by his son Cornelius, when at auction by Ketterer in Stuttgart in 1972 it realised DM 90,000 to Cornelius after auctioneer's fees (the same painting later re-sold at Sotheby's in London for £1.2 million). Beckmann's family did not dispute the distribution of the sale proceeds and considered that the original purchase by Gurlitt had been legitimate, albeit under reduced circumstances of the artist.Hickley, 2015, pp. 84–85, 151
Post-war Hildebrand was captured with his wife and twenty boxes of art in Aschbach (Schlüsselfeld) in June 1945. Under interrogation after capture, Gurlitt and his wife told United States Army authorities that in the fire bombing of Dresden of February 1945 much of his collection and his documentation of art transactions had been destroyed at his home in Kaitzer Strasse. One hundred and fifteen pieces were taken from him by American and German authorities, but returned to him after he had convinced them that he had acquired them lawfully. Gurlitt successfully presented himself to his assessors as a victim of Nazi persecution due to his Jewish heritage, and negotiated the release of his possessions. Whether or not portions of his collection and records of business transactions were destroyed in Dresden as Gurlitt claimed, additional portions apparently had been successfully hidden in Franconia, Saxony and Paris, from which they were retrieved after the war.Hickley, 2015: pp. 112, 117.
By 1947, Gurlitt had resumed trading in art works and also took up a position as Director of the Art Association for the Rhineland and Westphalia, based in Düsseldorf. In 1949 his mother died (his father, Cornelius senior, having died in 1938) and he may have inherited additional works held by the family at that time, if not previously; according to his papers (later found not to be entirely trustworthy), Monet's painting of Waterloo Bridge, subsequently one of the most valuable in the collection, was purchased by his father as a gift to his mother at some point from 1914 onwards, and had passed already to Hildebrand in 1923 as a wedding present.Kunstmuseum Bern, 2018. "Gurlitt Status Report Part 2: Nazi Art Theft and its Consequences (Exhibition Guide)" (PDF). Bern: Kunstmuseum Bern. He continued to purchase works for his own collection, including Courbet's Village Girl with Goat for which he paid the then very large sum of 480,000 French Francs,Hickley, 2015: pp. 125–127. and lent works from his collection for several travelling exhibitions: one such show, "German Watercolors, Drawings and Prints: A Mid-Century Review" included 23 works from Hildebrand's collection and toured the United States up to and beyond his premature death at age 61 in a car crash in 1956.Hickley, 2015: pp. 127–128. On his death, the collection passed to his wife Helene, and on her death in 1964, mainly to their son Cornelius, with some items also passed to Cornelius' sister. Knowledge of the collection appears to have persisted in the minds of his contemporaries in the German art dealing world, and in some cases with their successors in business, but eventually – particularly with the passage of more than four decades – faded from public awareness.
The bulk of Hildebrand's collection survived with his son Cornelius, who lived a quiet, virtually reclusive life with the artworks inherited from his father for over forty years, with portions of the collection kept at his two addresses in Munich, Germany and Salzburg, Austria; additional items appear to have been held by Cornelius' sister Benita, who later married and moved away to Stuttgart with her husband. Apart from any monies inherited after his parents' deaths, Cornelius survived by selling a small number of items from the collection, notably in 1988 and 1990, with the proceeds paid into a Swiss bank account which he would visit at four- to six- week intervals to withdraw money for his living expenses. Another painting, Max Beckmann's The Lion Tamer, was sold at auction in 2011, most likely to cover medical bills; Cornelius had already agreed to share the around €800,000 proceeds equally with the heir to the Jewish family that had originally possessed the painting.Hickley, 2015, pp. 153–154.
2012 discovery by German tax authorities