Over 1,200 disputed works of art left to Bern museum

Reclusive art collector Cornelius Gurlitt has exacted posthumous revenge on his native Germany.

A day after he died in Munich, his will bequeaths to the Art Museum in the Bern the spectacular collection – with works by Picasso, Renoir, Matisse and dozens of other modern masters – and seized by German investigators two years ago as suspected Nazi looted art.

Mr Gurlitt described the 1,280 works as the only thing he ever loved, but he died without seeing them again. Now, in protest at what he viewed as an illegal appropriation, the 81-year-old has made sure the works will never again be seen in Germany, either.

Mystery man
In the Swiss capital, the Bern museum described their windfall as a "bolt out of the blue" that brings with it a "burden of responsibility". It will be some time before it learns just how many artworks it will inherit.

With his death Mr Gurlitt leaves behind unanswered questions about the works he hoarded in his Munich apartment, many believed destroyed in the second World War. That was the story his father Hildegrand Gurlitt, an art dealer, told Allied authorities who quizzed him about works he had bought and sold as a licensed Nazi-era dealer in modernist works dubbed "degenerate" by Hitler.

After his parents’ death Cornelius Gurlitt, unmarried and childless, became the sole custodian of works he stored in Munich and Salzburg. The collection came to attention by chance, when Mr Gurlitt attracted the attention of customs officials in a 2010 spot check on a train from Zürich to Munich. After investigating how he financed his life – by selling artworks, investigators raided Mr Gurlitt’s home in 2012 and seized the collection.

When news of the find leaked last November Mr Gurlitt insisted he was the rightful owner of all works in the collection with an estimated value in excess of €1 billion. Last month, ailing after a heart operation, he agreed to hand back to previous owners works likely to have been looted or sold under duress in the Third Reich era. In return, the German authorities agreed to return to him artworks where the ownership was not in question.

Until all provenance research was completed the works were to be retained in an undisclosed location – thus Mr Gurlitt was not reunited with his beloved collection before his death.

Escape from Germany
For each work, researchers have to establish how it came into his collection: acquired as a legitimate purchase, through a fire sale by state museum curators or sold by Jewish collectors desperate to finance their escape from Germany. The provenance hunt becomes even more complicated in countries occupied by the Nazis such as France, where Hildebrand Gurlitt was active as a dealer.

A state task force, working in partnership with the Gurlitt estate, insists it will return all art to rightful heirs, or agree compensation where appropriate. The task force estimates that about one- third of the 1,280 pictures have unclear provenance. Mr Gurlitt’s lawyers see only 40 such works.