The Cornelius Gurlitt story has been disappointing in terms of the value of the art reported in the press but in all other aspects it keeps providing further twists with this discovery of a third house owned by Gulitt:
Austrian TV station Puls 4 revealed the existence of the house belonging to Gurlitt’s son Cornelius in the village of Bad Aussee in central Austria last week. Investigators believe the house was used as a storage depot for stolen art and the station reported that the property had been “stuffed with art” as recently as 2012. […] Earlier this year, a second property belonging to Gurlitt in Salzburg, Austria was located. While an initial sweep turned up 60 objects, a second look revealed 180 more works. Among them are a 1903 Monet oil painting of London’s Tower Bridge worth an estimated $13 million, a bronze sculpture by Renoir and drawings by Gauguin, Cezanne and Picasso.
The Bad Aussee property is located near salt mines dating from the time of the Roman Empire,which the Nazis used to store approximately 6,000 works of art.
Local Austrian media has more information:
The legal team for example had not realised that there was a third house in Austria where his sister had lived, and that this house, which has still not been searched, had been stuffed with art works at least until 2012 when she died and it was visited by Austrian officials to remove her body. […]
The sensational discovery by a journalist working for the Vienna-based TV station Puls 4 that a third house had been used as a storage depot for the Gurlitt family art deepened the mystery surrounding the hoarded art collection.
The house belonged to Wolfgang Gurlitt, a cousin of Hildebrand who was also acquiring artworks on behalf of the Nazi’s. With their Jewish ancestry their connection enabled them to obtain artwork at a low price from persecuted families who were forced to sell their possessions as they tried to flee to safer countries.
Austrian investigators discover third property linked to Nazi-tied art dealer (Fox News)
Nazi Gurlitt family may be hoarding more artwork (Salzburg Times Online News)
