A collection tainted with blood

A 1,500-piece art collection donated to a Swiss museum has been found to include works believed stolen from Jews during World War II • World Jewish Congress threatens legal action, as international art world remains fascinated by the scandal.

When Cornelius Gurlitt died last May at the age of 81, the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph saw fit to feature the news in its obituary section. Gurlitt was an ordinary man who lived outside the public eye, and from time to time would sell one of the valuable works of art in his possession to support his modest lifestyle. In 2012, however, he found himself at the center of a scandal: about 1,500 works, whose worth was pegged by the British daily at 1 billion pounds ($1.57 billion), were found in a police raid on his rented apartment in Munich. The paper did not reveal much about his life, since it was the nature of his will that was the true subject of public interest: He left the extensive art collection to a Swiss museum.

Unlike the reclusive Cornelius, his father, Hildebrand Gurlitt, was an opportunist. As the son of a well-known art historian, Hildebrand made a name for himself as an art curator between the world wars, until he found himself in trouble when the Nazis came to power. The reason? His paternal grandmother, Elisabeth Lewald, had been Jewish.

But instead of fleeing or hiding, Hildebrand Gurlitt found a way to connect with the heads of the Nazi party. After being dismissed from his position as manager of an eastern German museum on the grounds that he promoted modern art and showed works the Nazis deemed "degenerate" -- a label they affixed to modern art in general and particularly to works by Jewish artists -- Gurlitt was soon employed by the Nazis again, this time as an art dealer and collector of that same "degenerate art," which the Nazis displayed, among other works, in an exhibition in Munich in 1937.

More than a million people visited that exhibition, which was conceived by Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels.

When the war began, and with it the Holocaust of European Jewry, the lives of "the Fuehrer's art dealers" became easier. Of course, they not only dealt in public art collections, but also robbed private collections. Gurlitt himself visited France several times and returned with very impressive collections. An investigative report by the German weekly Der Spiegel discovered one of Gurlitt's shady tactics during that time: He would buy art works from Jews in financial straits for pennies. These art dealers also robbed museums -- Gurlitt is alleged to have stolen art works from a museum in Wroclaw, Poland.

Gurlitt's opportunism and survival instincts did not forsake him when the war ended. After his home in Dresden was destroyed in Allied bombing raids, he stayed in a villa belonging to a local Nazi aristocrat. With him was another of Hitler's art dealers, Karl Haberstock. Members of a special unit set up by the Americans described Haberstock as "the most notorious art collector in Europe." They captured an enormous number of rare drawings and illustrations in the villa.

According to Der Spiegel's examination of the American documents, Gurlitt reinvented himself during his interrogations "as a victim of the Nazis, a man who had saved precious art works from destruction and someone who had never done anything malicious." Although the Americans were suspicious of him, his grandmother's Jewishness helped him avoid prosecution. Also, although he was under house arrest for several years, the art collection remained in his possession. When he was killed in a car accident in 1956, he was described as an important figure in West German art circles.

The German authorities have become highly suspicious in recently years of German citizens who withdraw funds from Switzerland because of tax issues. These suspicions led to the arrest of Hildebrand Gurlitt's son, Cornelius, on a train in 2010. He was carrying 9,000 euros ($11,200) in cash, and during questioning said he was an art dealer.

But a probe turned up no sign of a bank account, a registered business or anything of the sort. A search of his apartment in 2012 revealed the vast art collection, which included paintings by the Jewish artists Marc Chagall and Max Liebermann, and even works by Henri Matisse. The affair was criticized because, regardless of Hildebrand Gurlitt's actions, his son was only 12 when the war ended, and certainly was not guilty of any crime.

In an interview he gave, Cornelius Gurlitt portrayed himself as a broken man as a result of the art collection's loss. But he was no innocent man, since later more than 200 works of art were found in a home he owned in Austria.

Germany in the 21st century is determined to investigate not only Nazis criminals, but also how people became wealthy from the Nazis' actions. For a long time, the existence of the art collection was kept from the public, and authorities slowly examined it, only to conclude that while some of the pieces had been stolen from museums, others had been acquired by taking advantage of their owners' hardships.

Once the story broke, about 300 art works that were found to belong to Gurlitt legitimately were restored to him.

Attorneys from all over the world brought lawsuits in the names of people claiming that their families were the original owners of the art, but 400 to 500 of the claims are considered suspicious. As part of the deal with Gurlitt, the Bavarian government and the Jewish Claims Conference set up a website to make it easier for potential plaintiffs to find works their families had owned. Gurlitt himself declared that he was committed to the return of the stolen works to their rightful owners.

Unfortunately, Gurlitt died at the height of the affair, leaving the collection to the Museum of Fine Arts in Bern, Switzerland. The German media reported that he had chosen the museum because he was angry over the way that Germany had chosen to deal with the matter. The Bern museum issued a statement saying, "The Board of Trustees and Directors of Kunstmuseum Bern are surprised and delighted, but at the same time do not wish to conceal the fact that this magnificent bequest brings with it a considerable responsibility and a wealth of questions of the most difficult and sensitive kind, and questions in particular of a legal and ethical nature."

Museum officials claim they had never been in contact with Gurlitt, and the bequest had come to them "like a bolt from the blue." The museum is a signatory to the 1998 Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art, which stipulate that the museum has an obligation to try to find the legal owners of art works that belonged to victims of World War II.

The art works are still in the possession of German authorities. Ron Lauder, the president of the World Jewish Congress, threatened that the museum in Bern would be inundated with "an avalanche of lawsuits" if it dared put the works on display. The decision on the matter will be issued on Nov. 26. It appears that the museum will receive most of the art works, but about 500 of them that are suspected of "Nazi connections" will remain in Germany's possession.