The German magazine Focus broke a story over the weekend that could be the biggest restitution news since Portrait of Wally or Altmann v. Republic of Austria: roughly 1,400 paintings were found in a Munich apartment that may have been seized, looted, or sold bought under duress by the Nazis in the 1930s as part of their drive to purge what they called “degenerate”—but extremely lucrative—art (the Focus coverage is extensive and excellent, though fair warning, in German). The paintings, which were apparently recovered not recently, but in 2011 as part of a customs seizure related to a currency declaration of all things, include works by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Marc Chagall, Emil Nolde, Franz Marc, Max Beckmann, Paul Klee, Oskar Kokoschka, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Max Liebermann and Albrecht Dürer, from collections traced back to Paul Rosenberg and others who had to abandon their property during the war, all long thought lost to the destruction of the war. They are valued in excess of 1 billion euros.
As has been well documented, particularly in the 1991 exhibition “’Degenerate Art’: The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany,” at the Los Angeles County Musuem of Art and curated by Stephanie Barron, the Nazis had an obsession with art that ranged from their own tastes, to their scorn for the leading artists of the time, many of them German—and many of them critical of militarism and fascism. This scorn culimated in the 1937 “Degenerate Art” exhibition, at which the works were displayed with mocking, sarcastic labels. There are competing theories about the reasons for the incredible popularity of that 1937 among Germans; lines snaked around the block for weeks.
In any event, as with so many other persecuted groups, the Nazis hounded modern artists out of activity or out of Germany and Austria, but also sold their quite-valuable output for much needed hard currency (the infamous 1939 Galerie Fischer auction being the most prominent example). And, of course, the Nazis also spent the better part of the war rounding up masterpieces of Western art for inclusion in the planned Führermuseum in Linz. By war’s end, much art of both categories had been evacuated to the salt mines in Alt Aussee and elsewhere, where it was recovered by the Allies and restituted, where possible, through the Munich and Wiesbaden Collection Points. It is timely that the Lawyers’ Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation only Friday held its excellent annual conference devoted to the Monuments Men of World War II; one of the great privileges of my pre-law museum career was working with S. Lane Faison, who in turn interrogated many of the Führermuseum functionaries after the war.
Art of all kinds went missing during the war, of course, and that which was not found in the aftermath (particularly given the meticulous records kept by the Nazis) was understandably presumed to have been destroyed. But three years ago, an unlikely chain of events set off this remarkable discovery.
Cornelius Gurlitt was returning home to Germany on a train from Switzerland, and made a currency declaration regarding the € 9,000 in cash that he had with him (apparently from selling one or more of the works in question). The declaration, or Gurlitt, or something, aroused the authorities’ suspicion, and they searched his apartment in 2011. There, they found the works whose value Focus estimates at over €1 billion stashed in an unkempt apartment (described as “dark, garbage filled rooms”) in Schwabing, a Munich suburb . The find includes more than 300 works of artists condemned by the Nazis as “degenerate,” and more than 200 that are the subject of official searches. Remarkably, Gurlitt was still able to sell one painting by Max Beckmann after the raid for 864,000 at the Lempertz auction house, which has now come under sharp criticism as a result.
Gurlitt—whose very presence in Germany was apparently unknown— is the son of the art dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt, who himself seems to have bought the works from the Nazis. The elder Gurlitt is a controversial figure; some see him as an enabler of the Nazis’ odious practices; some see him as a vital proponent of modern art who aided collectors in need. But in any event, he claimed after the war that the thousands of works he had purchased were destroyed in the firebombing at Dresden in 1945 and was sufficiently victimized himself that that was considered the end of it.
The legal implications hereafter are hard even to organize by category. The most obvious would seem to be possible claims by heirs arguing that the paintings were sold under duress. Given the Nazi occupation, and then the official acceptance of the paintings’ “destruction,” such claimants would have fewer time-bar/statute of limitations problems than those who had some sense of where the paintings had been. Who the counterparties might be is also a complicated question; certainly Gurlitt himself may face such claims, but since the paintings were seized two years ago and are now in the posssession of customs officials, the German claims process may also be invoked. Germany has one of the more robust claims procedures, overseen by the Advisory Commission on the Return of Nazi-Confiscated Art.
Anyone who thinks they could be a claimant should review any documents they have and consult an attorney about their rights. Time could be a factor.
