Visual arts The museum inherits valuable art from a billion-dollar Nazi collection, and now a few stolen watercolors are being returned to the Jewish families

Swiss Seven years ago, the Bern Art Museum received a very valuable, but at the same time obscure, donation, the fate of which has been speculated ever since. The huge collection included more than a thousand works, and their total value is estimated at up to one billion euros.

What made the case obscure is that many of the works in the collection have been suspected of being stolen during Nazi rule.

After years of research, the Bern Art Museum has now announced the abandonment of 29 works in the disputed collection that the museum had received through a will. The fate of the other works in the collection remains unclear.

The roots of the historical art mess go back to 1930s Germany, the Nazi leader Adolf to Hitler and the persecution of the Jews.

Controversial and a huge collection of art came to people’s air a decade ago, when the debate over the history and ownership of the works also arose.

The collection inherited by the museum belonged to an art collector named Gurlitt, who died in 2014. The legacy of his family was anything but pure. Cornelius Gurlitt had inherited the collection in many respects in part from his father From Hildebrand Gurlitt, who had good relations with the German National Socialists as an art mediator in the 1930s and 1940s.

Father Gurlitt had been tasked with selling works confiscated from Nazi Jews and “decaying art” removed from art museums. At the same time, he accumulated a valuable collection in one way or another, which included, among other things Cézannen, Holbein, Delacroix, Renoirin and Munchin works.

World the family collection, which was hidden from view, came to light shortly before the death of the boy Gurlitt.

First, in 2012, authorities seized a very large collection of art from Gurlitt’s possession. It was found during a home search of an apartment building in Munich. Two years later, the authorities made a new collection discovery of Gurlitt’s second apartment in Salzburg, Austria. The discovery of a Nazi art treasure after many decades was considered outrageous.

You can read more about the collection’s fascinating background from this article by Helsingin Sanomat.

In In 2014, the son of Gurlitt died, and in his will he ordered collection to the Art Museum in Bern.

However, the World Jewish Congress demanded the recent return of the works to the relatives of the original owners of the works. Soon too Gurlitt’s cousin woke up to demand in court the collection itself.

The court ordered the works for the museum. The Berne Museum agreed to accept the collection, while at the same time trying to find out the origin and ownership of the works.

Very in a slow-moving survey, museum researchers have listed the works in the Gurlitt collection in green and red. The museum talks about the investigation on its website. Studies have also been reported The Art Newspaper.

The works, the ownership of which was clear during the Nazi rule, ie in 1933–1945, received the green label. Only 28 works are included in this group after the study.

The red group left works that the Nazis had undoubtedly robbed their owners. According to the museum, there are nine of these works. The museum has given them up before.

The Nazis the history of the works that changed hands during the reign and the Second World War (1939-1945) is obviously difficult to some of the work in the collection has remained in the yellow area.

Researchers have gone through this group in recent years, further dividing the works into yellow-red and yellow-green.

Yellow-green includes both the works of the Painters of the Gurlitt family and works with gaps in the history of ownership, but according to the museum, there would be no signs of seizure. The museum estimates that much of the Gurlitt collection, or 1,091 works, belongs to the yellow-green group.

Its instead of yellow-red works, there is reason to suspect seizure or other obscurity, and now the museum has said it is abandoning a total of 29 works classified in this group.

There are two among those to be returned Otto Dixin watercolor work from 1922. Dame in der Loge and Dompteuse paintings are returned to two different families.

The museum says five “yellow-red” works will be returned to the German state because no surviving owners can be found for them. The remaining 22 works remain to be awaited by the museum for further clarification of ownership. Among these works are 13 works by a Jewish art collector Fritz Salo Glaserin relatives are according to The Guardian, among others demanded of themselves.

The museum says the stolen doubt also in their collections Matissen Les anemones -painting, Ernst Ludwig Kirchnerin work called Dünen und Meer, Fehmarn mixed Max Slevogtin landscape painting from 1930.

Bernese the art museum is planning to hold an exhibition of the Gurlitt works in its possession at the end of 2022. In addition to the works, the exhibition will also highlight the collection’s work and the contradictory background.