Artworks plundered by Nazis found in Bundestag

An ART historian has found two art works stolen by the nazis inside Germany’s parliament, reports have claimed, in a new embarrassment for authorities after a huge stash of looted art came to light last month.

The Bundestag said an art historian was reviewing two “suspicious cases”, but a spokesman would not confirm the find.

The art historian’s investigations into the German parliament’s art collection, which began in 2012, were continuing, the Bundestag spokesman said.

“It is unclear when there will be a result to the investigations,” he said.

Last month German authorities revealed that a trove of nazi-looted art, valued at 1 billion euros, had been found in a Munich apartment.

That collection had been held for decades by Cornelius Gurlitt, the elderly son of an art dealer of part-Jewish descent who was ordered by Hitler to buy up socalled “degenerate art” and sell it to raise funds for the nazis.

newspaper said one of the two works discovered in the Bundestag collection had also originally belonged to the Gurlitt family.

It is believed the two works are an oil painting, Chancellor Buelow Speaking in the Reichstag, by Georg Waltenberger dated 1905, and a chalk lithography entitled Street in Koenigsberg by Lovis Corinth.

The nazis plundered hundreds of thousands of artworks from museums and individuals across Europe. An unknown number of works are still missing and museums around the world have conducted investigations into the origins of their exhibits.

German authorities came under fire for keeping quiet for two years about the discovery of Gurlitt’s trove of 1,406 European artworks which, including some by Picasso and Matisse.