Art: Lost and found
The greatest find of Nazi-confiscated art since 1945 has been met with awe and controversy
A few weeks before it was due to go under the hammer, Markus Stötzel, a German lawyer, discovered that Max Beckmann’s “The Lion Tamer”, a gouache and pastel work on paper, was being advertised as one of the highlights of a modern art sale at the Lempertz auction house in Cologne. Mr Stötzel was astonished. The heirs of Alfred Flechtheim, an art dealer, collector and champion of German modernism who was persecuted by the Nazis, were his clients. He knew that Mr Flechtheim’s collection – most of which was confiscated by the Nazis – had included more than a dozen Beckmann works, among them “The Lion Tamer”. The public reappearance of the painting was a rare chance to get justice before it vanished once more into private hands. “It was all very tight,” Mr Stötzel said this week. “Two weeks before the auction – [we were still] going back and forth.” The owner, Cornelius Gurlitt, an elderly man from Munich, acknowledged that his father had bought the painting from Mr Flechtheim in 1934. “Mr Gurlitt was willing to accept the fact that Mr Flechtheim was a persecuted Jew who had lost his collection under duress,” Mr Stötzel says. “The Lion Tamer” was auctioned for €720,000 on December 2 2011, with part of the proceeds going to the Flechtheim heirs. It was one of Mr Gurlitt’s final sales. On February 28 last year his Munich apartment was raided by investigators from the state prosecutor’s office in Augsburg and customs officials. More ON THIS STORY Germans defend art hoard operation ‘€1bn’ Nazi art loot found in Munich Peter Aspden Catalogue lists art looted by Nazis Scandal casts shadow over Paris auction house IN ANALYSIS Argentina populism still prevails Finance Plugged into the party The Palestinian economy’s hard road out of isolation Media – Tight focus It took them three days to go through the treasure trove they discovered inside: paintings by Picasso, Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec, previously unknown works by Marc Chagall and Otto Dix, the latter a self-portrait. There were paintings and drawings in oil, ink, watercolour and pencil, as well as lithographs. And there were works by artists the Nazis had vilified – Max Beckmann, Max Liebermann – in a Munich exhibition of Entartete Kunst, or degenerate art. Some of the work predated the 20th century, including a copper engraving of the crucifixion by Albrecht Dürer. In all there were 1,406 artworks; 121 of them stored in their frames – stacked up on a shelf as tidily as if it were a museum depot. The unframed pictures were stored in the drawers of a cabinet. All of the works were kept in their own room in the 90 square metre apartment in a 1960s concrete block a short walk from the green expanse of Munich’s Englischer Garten. The Gurlitt hoard has aroused controversy as well as amazement. Under the principles of the 1998 Washington conference on Nazi-confiscated art, accepted by Germany, every effort should be made to publicise such discoveries so that prewar heirs or owners can be located. But the greatest find of Nazi-confiscated art since the end of the second world war became public only on Sunday, almost two years after the raid, when it was revealed by Focus, a German magazine. The Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany has called for information about the Munich collection to be published immediately “so that families may determine if the discovered paintings include their lost and stolen artwork”. The German authorities’ reluctance to go public is grounded in a cautious legal culture. Prosecutors have declined even to name 80-year-old Mr Gurlitt publicly. They will only say that “a person is under investigation on suspicion of tax secrecy and misappropriation” – and are resisting international pressure to publish the seized works online. Exposing his collection in detail might leave the authorities open to a lawsuit by Mr Gurlitt, says Mr Stötzel. Not all of the works were stolen by the Nazis. Meike Hoffman, the German art historian who is cataloguing the discovery, said this week that more time was needed to untangle provenance. But this official reticence may be hard to maintain. The US is urging German authorities to publish a full list of the recovered paintings. Steffen Seibert, spokesman for Angela Merkel, German chancellor, said Berlin “is in favour of publishing information about those artworks where there are already indications that they may have been confiscated from people persecuted by the Nazis.” But there is no certainty that descendants of German Jews will be recompensed for art which was either stolen by the Nazis or sold in distressed circumstances. The Washington conference calls for a “just and fair solution” in such cases. Mr Stötzel, who acts for about 50 other claimants – chiefly of German Jewish descent – said that while Germany accepted these principles on behalf of public institutions, they did not bind private owners. . . . As collectors and dealers gathered in New York this week for the season’s biggest auctions of impressionist and modern masterpieces, the Munich discovery has captured almost as much attention as the Giacomettis, Picassos and Monets going under the hammer at Sotheby’s and Christie’s. The art world was gripped by two questions: what impact would a sudden influx of treasures – Focus estimated the value at €1bn – have on prices in the global fine art market? And, as families prepare for a long fight over rightful ownership, how long will it be before the works appear in an auction room? Julian Radcliffe, owner and chairman of The Art Loss Register, an international database of stolen and missing works in London, says the Munich hoard will not have much impact on values soon. “Suggestions of a flood of priceless new inventory on to the market are utterly unrealistic,” he says. “Firstly, not every work uncovered will be worth a sky-high price – current valuations are still just guesswork. But more meaningfully, it’s unlikely that many will even ever reach the auction or dealer circuit, given the painstaking decades of restitution ahead before pieces are in the hands of those legally able to sell them on.” Dealers and auction houses are under greater pressure to establish the provenance of pre-sale works. A public “taint” can make paintings difficult to sell even if a work’s legal position has been resolved and an heir has surrendered their claim. Few expect the paintings that can be returned to direct heirs to remain in the families for long. Unlike gold, works of art cannot be split. Most works are likely to be sold, with proceeds divided between descendants. There are no independent arbitrators to rule on the fairest outcome, suggesting the fate of each work will be decided in court. “The art market is still very lightly regulated in comparison to, say, the financial services industry,” Mr Radcliffe says. German authorities say the trail to the extraordinary discovery began at about 9pm on September 22 2010, when Mr Gurlitt was subjected to a routine search onboard a high-speed train from Zurich to Munich. Focus reported that Mr Gurlitt claimed his destination in Switzerland had been Galerie Kornfeld in Bern. From an inside pocket, the magazine said, he pulled out an envelope containing 18 crisp €500 notes. The gallery says it had nothing to do with the money and that its last dealings with Mr Gurlitt were in 1990. At the time, he sold works on paper for SFr38,250, “which probably came from the inventory of the Reich Chamber of Culture, of ‘degenerate art’ confiscated from German museums”, it said in a statement. “Even today, the trade [in such works] cannot be contested,” the gallery said, insisting on a distinction between looted art and works confiscated from museums by the Nazis. . . . Mr Gurlitt was a man who did not exist. While he appeared to be living in Munich he was not registered there. He had no German tax number, did not pay health insurance or draw a pension. In art circles, however, his surname was well known. “Of course we knew!” says Karl-Sax Feddersen, of Lempertz, when asked if he recognised the name. Mr Gurlitt’s father Hildebrand was a renowned art historian and dealer of the Weimar Republic who promoted progressive German artists. After the Nazis came to power, he was one of a handful of dealers permitted to trade in modernist artworks. The modern artworks in the collection included those for which the Nazis bore a passionate, ideological hatred – dealers such as Mr Flechtheim were labelled “agents of Kulturbolschewismus” or cultural Bolshevism. But the Reich was not averse to turning the despised art into cash. This week, researchers at the Holocaust Art Restitution Project discovered evidence that some of the artwork the elder Mr Gurlitt owned was held by the Allies after the war and handed back to him in 1950. It was the kernel of a vast, hidden collection inherited by his son. The list of 115 paintings seized and returned by the Allies included “The Lion Tamer”. Mr Feddersen recalled “The Lion Tamer” as a “wonderful” picture. “It is one of the most beautiful pictures I have ever seen. A very, very impressive, large work.” His curiosity piqued by the famous name, he asked if Mr Gurlitt might have others to sell. “He didn’t answer,” Mr Feddersen said. Mr Gurlitt’s whereabouts are unknown. He has a house in Salzburg, Austria, too – but has not been seen there either. At the press conference on Tuesday, a reporter asked if he was dead. Reinhard Nemetz, senior prosecutor for Augsburg, replied: “I can’t comment on that.” Galerie Kornfeld said it had been posting catalogues to Mr Gurlitt’s Munich address since 1990 but they had been returned marked ‘undeliverable’ for seven years. At the apartment block this week, Bernhard Eggenweiler, the caretaker, said he had seen Mr Gurlitt two weeks ago. “He was walking out of here, wheeling a shopping trolley,” the caretaker said. “He didn’t say a word.”