Bloomberg’s Catherine Hickley has been working in overdrive on the Munich Hoard. She has now been told of the existence of a US Government inventory of the Gurlitt collection made after the war and discovered today in the National Arhives by Marc Masurovsky and Willi Korte, researchers at the Holocaust Art Restitution Project:
The list obtained by Korte and Masurovsky also includes a Degas, several Beckmann oils, two Courbet paintings and an Otto Dix self-portrait — probably the same one investigators projected onto a screen at a news conference in Augsburg today.
Other works in Gurlitt’s collection in 1950 included paintings by Emil Nolde, Hans Thoma, Otto Mueller, George Grosz, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, August Macke and the Italian painter Guardi.
Some works from the Munich stash were seized by the Nazis from German museums, while others may have been sold by Jewish owners under duress, said Meike Hoffmann, the investigating art expert. She declined to comment on estimates valuing the hoard at 1 billion euros ($1.35 billion).
Masurovsky said Gurlitt regularly acquired works at the Jeu de Paume in Paris, where the Nazis assembled art looted from French Jewish families during the occupation. Under agreements between the Allies, art looted from France was returned to the French government after World War II.
“I am wondering when the German government is going to call France about returning some of this,” Masurovsky said. “There are clearly some works in the collection that came from France.”
Heirs to Nazi Loot in Munich Helped as Art List Revealed (Bloomberg)