A Swiss art gallery discovered on Wednesday that it had been named as the sole heir of Cornelius Gurlitt, the reclusive German owner of a hoard of masterpieces discovered accidentally in a tax probe, who died this week aged 81. The Bern Art Museum said the news “came like a bolt from the blue” as…
The elderly recluse whose Munich apartment contained a secret art hoard, including masterpieces looted by the Nazis from their Jewish owners in World War Two, has died after a heart operation, his spokesman said on Tuesday. Authorities stumbled upon Cornelius Gurlitt’s trove of paintings and drawings by the likes of Marc Chagall, Toulouse-Lautrec and Picasso…
Germany reached an agreement with an elderly recluse on Monday on the future of a billion-dollar art trove confiscated by authorities, part of which is suspected of being stolen or extorted by the Nazis. The federal government and Bavaria state said Cornelius Gurlitt, 81, has agreed to cooperate with authorities to determine if some of…
A German recluse’s pledge to give his billion-dollar hoard of Nazi-looted artworks back to their rightful owners was welcomed on Thursday but also met with scepticism about how it would work in practice and whether all of it would actually be returned. The legal custodian of Cornelius Gurlitt, who inherited the paintings drawings and sculptures…
A New York man has gone to court for the return of several Nazi-looted artworks from the controversial collection of Cornelius Gurlitt in Munich. David Toren, 88, whose father and uncle were art collectors in the prewar German city of Breslau, sued in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., court earlier this month to demand…
Art historian Meike Hoffmann speaks to the media regarding the seizure in 2011 of 1,500 paintings from Cornelius Gurlitt in Germany. / Getty Images It looks like the German lawmakers will be too late. Cornelius Gurlitt’s spokesman, Stephan Holzinger, announced today that Gurlitt’s lawyers filed a complaint at an Augsburg court, arguing that tax authorities’…
Cornelius Gurlitt, whose stash of art in Munich was revealed to the world last fall, has launched a web site. In English and German, Gurlitt explains that he is both duty bound “to preserve and maintain his father’s collection” and “open to historic responsibility” in a post on the gurlitt.info site. At issue is whether…
Art historian Meike Hoffmann speaks to the media regarding the seizure in 2011 of 1,500 paintings from Cornelius Gurlitt in Germany. / Getty Images Today the Bavarian Minister of Justice Dr. Winfried Bausback presented a bill to the Upper House of the German Parliament proposing retroactive abolition of the statute of limitation for claims on…
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