Germany to Comb Museums for Nazi-Looted Art
Decision Follows Fresh Revelation of Cache Held by Son of Nazi-Era Dealer
The house of German Cornelius Gurlitt in Salzburg in November. More than 60 additional works have been discovered in Gurlitt's Austrian home. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
BERLIN—Germany will set up an independent center to comb museum collections for art looted by the Nazis, the country's culture minister said, shortly before representatives for the son of an art dealer tied to Hitler disclosed another hidden cache of paintings.
The discovery of more unrecorded treasures, including paintings by Impressionist masters Monet, Renoir and Manet, was likely to add fuel to the firestorm of criticism over Germany's record in dealing with potentially looted art.
Representatives of Cornelius Gurlitt, whose vast collection was seized in 2012 by Munich prosecutors, revealed that he had dozens more works stashed outside the country in a second home in Salzburg, Austria.
Several families of Holocaust victims have laid claims to some of the 1,400 works seized in Munich as part of a tax investigation. Among them are relatives of Anne Sinclair, the ex-wife of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who are claiming a Matisse portrait that experts say could fetch up to $20 million at auction.
Unlike the Munich trove, none of the 60 pieces found in Austria appears on databases of Nazi-looted art, according to a person familiar with the situation.
The Munich art consisted largely of works on paper; the Salzburg collection is mainly paintings, as well as one Picasso work on paper, this person said. Paintings typically far outstrip paper works in price.
Culture Minister Monika Grütters, an art historian and parliamentarian, said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that the Gurlitt case had revealed weaknesses in Germany's restitution system.
The various institutions that share responsibility for art restitution had been "a bit shy in their public relations activities," she said, speaking from her office in Angela Merkel's chancellery, overlooking Berlin's government district.
"These are delicate matters to articulate," she said. Many German museums had underestimated "the emotional components" of the debate, she said. "It's a matter of earning back trust."
Authorities in the German state of Bavaria kept the existence of the Munich collection secret for nearly two years as their investigation progressed, without examining their provenance. That prompted renewed scrutiny of Germany's record in researching and returning looted art.
Bavarian officials have defended their decision to keep the trove secret, despite international guidelines on art restitution that Germany signed in 1998, by saying that the works were part of a confidential tax investigation and their provenance was immaterial to the case.
Lawyers and international art experts as well as U.S. and Israeli diplomats have called the country's procedures to establish ownership of disputed artworks slow and the legal framework governing restitution weak. They also have criticized German museums as being reluctant to open their collections to scrutiny.
The vehemence of the criticism took government officials aback in a country that has won praise for its efforts to compensate Holocaust victims and generally take responsibility for years of Nazi terrors.
The revelations about 60 other works that Mr. Gurlitt had in Salzburg—even though outside Germany—could rekindle the debate.
The legal guardian, lawyer and spokesman for the octogenarian collector went to the house with an insurance agent Sunday and loaded up the artwork, the person familiar with the situation said.
The three representatives are having experts catalog and store the works in an undisclosed facility, light- and temperature-controlled, outside Germany to avoid confiscation by authorities, this person said.
Mr. Gurlitt hasn't lived in the Salzburg house since 2011 and his team hadn't visited it before, this person said. Some of the works they found there were in bad condition while others were "unharmed," this person added.
His representatives declined to comment publicly beyond a statement announcing the discovery.
It is unclear how many lost works from Impressionist and modern masters are still in existence. Many works registered in the artists' records, like the Matisse Ms. Sinclair claims or a Max Liebermann also claimed by Jewish heirs from the Munich trove, were missing and presumed destroyed in the war until the Gurlitt discovery upended that assumption.
Ms. Grütters's proposed provenance research center, the exact blueprint for which is being completed in talks with Germany's 16 state governments, would operate at arm's length from German museums and from the government, she said Monday, in her first interview with an international newspaper since taking office in December.
Her proposal would address what art experts and historians have long seen as a weakness in Germany's restitution policies: The absence of an independent organization with the money and authority to conduct research into museum holdings.
So far, most historians culling state and local museum collections for possibly looted art are employed by the individual museums.
Ms. Grütters said the center's legal and financial structure could be determined as early as March and it could start operating this autumn.
She declined to name the institution's expected budget but said the government's annual spending on provenance research should be doubled from its current €2 million ($2.7 million) a year and some of these activities bundled into the new structure. Including overhead, this could leave the center with an annual budget just shy of €10 million.
Ms. Grütters warned the initiative shouldn't be understood as an attempt to relieve museums of their duty to scour their vaults for loot.
"The museums must take a new approach: Their work will not only be judged by which exhibitions they hold, how many visitors they have and which purchases they make but also by how they handle their own histories," said Ms. Grütters. "We shouldn't make it too easy and say 'The national government should do it.'"
Culture in Germany is largely a regional affair. Currently, 12% of spending on cultural projects, including museums, is paid out of the federal budget, with 43% coming from state—or Länder—governments and 44% from municipalities. Ms. Grütters would like the Länder to participate in the effort to beef up provenance research, including financially.
This federal structure is often invoked as a reason why Germany has lagged behind in its restitution system. But museum directors—who typically refrain from criticizing other countries—were shocked at the extent to which the Gurlitt case highlighted the weaknesses of the country's framework.
"If you had asked me a year ago if a situation like Gurlitt could have happened, I would have said 'absolutely not,'" said Martin Roth, the head of London's Victoria & Albert Museum, who in January digitized all 479 pages of the list of art labeled "degenerate" by the Nazis on the V&A's website.
Ms Grütters said her ministry would also throw its weight behind a recent proposal being heard by the upper house of parliament to change Germany's 30-year statute of limitations as it applies to art looted by individuals from World War II victims.