Germany publishes list of looted art
The German government has bowed to international pressure and begun publishing an online list of works from a huge art trove seized in a Munich apartment.
Twenty-five of the 1,406 paintings discovered in Cornelius Gurlitt’s home were posted on a website created to help establish the provenance of works seized by the Nazis, after calls from Jewish groups and art experts.
But interest in the site was so high that the website was already crashing on Tuesday because too many people were trying to access it.
Sabine Kramer from the Lost Art Internet Database said Tuesday the website crashed shortly after the site lostart.de was launched. Kramer said the server had technical problems.
Germany believes about 590 of the more than 1,400 artworks may have been stolen by the Nazis. It said the website would be updated so people and institutions could tell if they had legitimate claims.
The German government has been heavily criticized for keeping silent for 21 months about the cache — thought to be worth close to $2 billion — notably by families whose relatives were robbed by the Nazis.
Gurlitt has been seen in public for the first time since the discovery was made public two weeks ago.
The 80-year-old collector, who has been in hiding, was spotted in a winter coat and scarf as he wandered around a Munich shopping centre.
He was reported Tuesday to have written to the news magazine Der Spiegel, asking that his name never again appear on its pages.
The magazine said Gurlitt had said he did not like his father, Hildebrand Gurlitt, being associated with the Nazis, by whom he had been given the task of collecting “degenerate art” across occupied Europe during the Second World War.
Hildebrand Gurlitt’s art collection, which included works by Chagall and Picasso, was widely thought to have been destroyed during the war — Hildebrand Gurlitt claimed his collection was destroyed in a fire. But the works survived and were apparently passed to his son after the father’s death in a car accident in 1956.
German authorities have been criticized for not acting fast enough to return the works to their rightful owners after it emerged last week that they had kept the discovery quiet for nearly two years.
Now calls are growing for the entire collection to be displayed online.
Ronald Lauder, the head of the World Jewish Congress, told Die Welt newspaper: “The police and politicians must immediately make an inventory and put the entire find online.
“Everyone will then have the opportunity to see what’s there. There are no moral questions here: It’s about justice and injustice. Property was stolen and it has to go back to the rightful owners.”
Germany also said it would form a task force of six experts to investigate works of art seized from Cornelius Gurlitt.