Ruminations

Blog dedicated primarily to randomly selected news items; comments reflecting personal perceptions

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Beyond a Shadow of Doubt

"What do these people want from me? I'm just a very quiet person. All I wanted to do was live with my pictures."
"Now they are taking everything from me."
"There is nothing I have loved more in my life than my pictures."
"Saying goodbye to my pictures was the most painful of all."
Cornelius Gurlitt, Munich

This is a elderly man, a recluse by habit and inclination, incapable of forming normal emotional links with other human beings. His link to life has been the art collection that his father before him, Hildebrand Gurlitt, amassed before, during and after the Second World War. The elder Gurlitt was in fact employed on an art contract of sorts for the Third Reich, to trade 'degenerate'-designated art, art held to deviate from tradition reflecting the modernist school, which Adolf Hitler loved to hate.

It was a lucrative business, that. Though the modern art so detested by the modern world's most notorious would-be-but-failed artist, who turned instead to a campaign for Aryan world domination, could have been destroyed, practicality stepped in and whispered in the ear of the truculently odious man that money, a lot of it, could be realized to further his aspirations, with the sale of the despised art. And this is where Gurlitt senior came in.

He was himself a discriminating art collector, with an eye for art considered degenerate by the degenerate mind of the Fuhrer and he knew also, like the other three dealers granted the Nazi imprimatur for collecting-and-trading for the regime that desperate Jews hoping to fund their escape would surrender their treasure trove of art and other valuables for desperately steep discounts; what other choice had they than to relinquish what could be summarily requisitioned and mostly was?

That was then, when Hildebrand Gurlitt saw fit to align himself profitably with the reign of an implacable monster set out to destroy an entire ethnic-religious community initially by stealth and soon enough openly and viciously. A lover of art, he amassed for his own delectation his very own private collection. And on his death his only son inherited that collection. A son introverted by nature, finding gratification in his own love of art and rejection of human contact.

Mr. Gurlitt, the son, now 80, was content to live his anonymous life, fondling his treasures, admiring and valuing and treasuring them as his very own. These were 'lost' or unknown works by the great masters of traditional and modern art, among them Picasso, Chagall, Gauguin and countless others, to a total of 1,280 paintings of unbelievable value.

It was a mere happenstance that made his presence known to German authorities when customs officers questioned him and the funds he carried on his person returning to Germany from Belgium. Checking his identification on computer, they discovered no trace of a Cornelius Gurlitt, a German citizen living in Munich, and made further enquiries, finally acquiring a legal permission to inspect his apartment.
Max Liebermann's "Riders on the Beach," painted in 1901, is also part of the...
DPA/ Staatsanwaltschaft Augsburg
Max Liebermann's "Riders on the Beach," painted in 1901, is also part of the collection.

The discovery of those countless stacks of valuable works of art immediately drew attention to the potential that they might represent a treasury of wartime art theft, a thriving industry of the time, resulting in around a hundred-thousand works of art and antiquities missing, unaccounted for, and being searched out by the inheritors of those who had originally owned them.

The discovered paintings are held to likely have a tainted provenance; that is, many of them are doubtless represented by Jewish owners under duress to dispose of them, forced by circumstances to do so, if they weren't outright confiscated by the Nazi authorities. Others may be works of art legitimately bought and owned by Mr. Gurlitt's late father. Whatever they represent, to him they represent the reason for his existence.

The collection includes this painting by Wilhelm Lachnit, "Mädchen am Tisch"....
DPA/ Staatsanwaltschaft Augsburg
The collection includes this painting by Wilhelm Lachnit, "Mädchen am Tisch". The artist's paintings were labelled by the Nazis as "degenerate art".
He is said to be a highly intelligent man of gentle persuasion. Perhaps it is beyond his imagination to attempt to restore some of the paintings of questionable provenance to their rightful owners; perhaps he cannot imagine how he might embark on such a journey to rectify a very old situation that may or may not trouble his conscience. But trouble his conscience it must.

His failing health has given impetus to the need to sell off a few of his treasures. The most recent of the pieces sold was a painting by German artist Max Beckmann, The Lion Tamer, which realized $1.17 million at auction in 2011. Its proceeds would go far to ensure he had ample funds to pay for his living and medical needs. And something must have twinged his conscience for he had agreed to hand over 45% of the proceeds to the Jewish family who were the painting's original owners.
Among the works of dubious origin in the collection is this graphic from the...
AFP -- Italian painter Canaletto, city of Padua
"He wasn't just weird these last few years; he's always been that way", said the caretaker of the building where Mr. Gurlitt lives. He lived quietly, without visitors. So quietly that enquiries were made whether his apartment was empty and for sale. For the 29 years Christine Echter, the building caretaker worked there, she had never seen anyone enter that apartment but for Mr. Gurlitt's sister who died six years ago.

Cornelius Gurlitt was 23 years of age when his father Hildebrand died. "Even then, he was considered an eccentric fellow", Karl-Heinz Hering who worked for the father as an assistant at the Dusseldorf Kunstverein, the area's leading art museum, remembered. He recalled that, but not that the family enjoyed ownership of a large private art collection.

After weeks of notoriety and claims and counter-claims, German prosecutors involved in investigating the art trove have concluded that the art should be returned to Cornelius Gurlitt, once confirmation is made they are his private collection and not items taken by the Nazis from their rightful owners.

A prosecutor in Augsburg has tasked a newly-established force to identify the owners as soon as possible, returning to Mr. Gurlitt those artworks that belong him him beyond a shadow of doubt.
Nazi stolen art trove
A work by Antonio Canaletto is shown on a computer screen during a news conference on the Munich art stash. Photo by AP

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