Sometimes
during year 2010, a nondescript man travelling by train from
Switzerland to the German city of Munich, caught attention of the
Bavarian customs officials. The Customs officials at the
Germany-Switzerland border, carry out routine check on passengers as
many wealthy Germans deposit money illegally in Switzerland to evade
high tax rates at home. This white haired man, was asked for his
papers. The man showed an Austrian passport in the name of Rolf
Nikolaus Cornelius Gurlitt, born December 28, 1933, in Hamburg and
currently residing in Salzburg. Customs officials felt that the man
appeared nervous. When asked about the purpose of his travel, he said
that he had travelled to Switzerland for ‘business’ at the
Galerie Kornfeld in Bern. He then pulled out an envelope with 9,000
euros in 500 euro notes inside, which is perfectly a legal amount to
carry as amounts up to 10000 euros can be carried by passengers,
when crossing borders in Europe and can be declared to customs
officials. The man was allowed to go his way, but officials remained
somehow suspicious.
Subsequent
police investigations revealed that the man did not live in Salzburg
as told by him but in Schwabing. He was neither registered with the
police as is mandatory in Germany nor with the tax authorities or
social services. He drew no pension and had no health insurance. He
was a man, who had no official existence.
Further
investigations proved that the man was Cornelius Gurlitt. He was the
only and reclusive son of one Hildebrandt Gurlitt, a partially
Jewish origin German connoisseur of art and who was among the most
respected art historians in Germany by the time the Nazis came to
power. Hildebrandt was employed as a curator in a museum during
pre-WWII days, when Nazi's were rising up in Germany. He lost his job
when Nazi's decided to deride Germany’s most avant-garde art as
“degenerate.” He somehow managed to convince Joseph Goebbels,
Adolf Hitler’s propaganda boss about his credentials and was chosen
to sell much of the art that the Nazis confiscated. In the course of
time he managed to acquire ‘hundreds and hundreds’ of artworks at
knock-down prices on canvasses, lithographs and prints painted by
Germany's famous artists of the times like Max Beckmann, Otto Dix,
Emil Nolde, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Marc Chagall. Surprisingly almost
all the pieces of art that Hildebrandt Gurlitt could lay his hands
on had just disappeared as he never sold any of these.
Because
of his Jewish roots and anti Nazi stand, after the war was over,
allies always considered Mr Hildebrandt Gurlitt as a victim and not
not a persecutor and he was never charged with forcing and cheating
Jews to sell out their collections. The Americans, briefly detained
him for questioning to find out whether he can lead them to the
looted art so that it can be recovered. However Mr. Gurlitt
maintained that all his artworks kept at the family home in Kaitzer
Strasse. had been incinerated in the fire-bombing of Dresden in
February 1945. The Senior Gurlitt died in a car crash in 1956 and the
treasure, which he had hidden remained a secret forever.
However,
in reality, Hildebrandt Gurlitt had handed over the possession of his
art treasure to his only son, Cornelius who was an eccentric recluse
and did not have any family or job. The younger Gurlitt has been
living for decades in a nondescript apartment building in Munich. Now
under suspicion, investigators applied for a warrant to search the
rented apartment where younger Gurlitt has been living for decades.
According to a customs official, they received the warrant in 2012
and immediately afterwords, they went into the apartment expecting to
find a few thousand undeclared euros, maybe a black bank account. But
to the greatest surprise to everyone, the apartment appeared stacked
from floor to ceiling, from bedroom to bathroom, with piles and piles
of old food in tins and old noodles, much of it from the 1980s. But
behind this mountain of tinned and bottled food, long past its
sell-by date, lay the the real treasure, a stash of about 1,400
pictures or masterpieces in neat shelves.
For
all these years, Cornelius Gurlitt had never shown the pictures to
any one. Only occasionally, when he wanted to pay his bills, he would
show one of the pictures. Investigators are said to have also found a
bank savings book, belonging to Cornelius Gurlitt with hundreds of
thousands of euros on deposit in it perhaps proceeds of the sale of
the artwork over the years. The recovered artworks are now in a
security wing of Bavarian customs near Munich. An art historian has
been hired to begin evaluating the treasure trove. Probably these
paintings areworth more than €1 billion ($1.35 billion.)
Meanwhile
Mr Gurlitt, who is about 80 now, is absconding. No one really knows,
where Mr Gurlitt is or whether he is still alive as he remains at
large. The prosecutor’s office in Augsburg, which is dealing with
the case, says so far there is no evidence to charge him with a
crime. Though he may possibly face jail for tax evasion and money
laundering.
Ironically,
however, if the rightful heirs to the paintings are not found, many
of them could be returned to Cornelius because his father bought the
bulk of them with family money, even at shamefully low prices.
11th
November 2013
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