Original subtitles

[Music]

so

munich

march 2012

in the district of schwabing the

apartment of an eight-year-old recluse

called cornelius girl it is about to be

raided

[Music]

[Applause]

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little did people know that what would

be found there would open up a pandora's

box involving nazi loot

degenerate art and hitler's own private

museum

cornelius garlit is not a name that

would be familiar to many people until

this year and someone that lived as a

recluse in munich in a very

modest flat

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he's a bit of an enigma he was a loner

but we don't really know much about him

well he was a very interesting man it

wouldn't be surprising if he had a

slightly uh slightly strange upbringing

and some effect from that

[Music]

he wasn't seen much out and about and

was someone who hasn't even watched

television since 1963 he's really lived

completely a solitary life

as the investigators poured through the

collection of this solitary man they

uncovered over a thousand works by the

likes of matisse picasso chagall and

otto dix some of which were previously

unknown

there are things we think where did that

come from you know where has that been

for the last 60 years which is you know

exactly what can you this girl that

wanted it's uh

has lived a rather pathetic lonely life

with all these pictures i wonder if it's

uh if it's all true

when the story was broken by focus

magazine it captured the world's

attention

who was cornelius girlett how had he

stayed undetected for so long and just

where did all of these artworks come

from

the answer to all of these questions

begins in the town of zvikao in eastern

germany in 1930.

[Music]

was the hometown of cornelius girl it's

father hildebrand gurlit

he came from a well-known artistic

family and worked in the galleries at

the koenig albert museum

hildebrand gullit was

an art historian a good artist or an and

dealer and he worked for various german

museums he was known as being someone

who

had close links with the avant-garde art

world in germany um with a lot of the

modern expressionist painters of the day

the first exhibition he put on was max

peckstein which was

you know quite alternative at that time

um and he did worked with artists like

katy korvitz a lot of the expressionists

um so he was seen as really quite

radical and i think you know a lot of

people enjoyed the exhibitions but the

kind of local traditionalists

saw him as yeah this kind of

radical young guy who'd come in and

really shaken things up and think out

but with the nazis coming to power in

1933 and hitler's hatred of the modern

art movement hildebrand found himself

out of a job in svicao and forced by the

nazis to resign a new position he'd

found in hamburg soon after

hildebrand was not welcome in this new

cultural era of germany

modern art was declared an enemy of the

state and culminated in the antartica

kunst or so-called degenerate art

exhibition of 1937.

[Music]

the nazis

really felt very concerned about modern

art the avant-garde in germany at that

time

and it's testament to how powerful that

art is it was a genuine worry for them

and they really wanted to outlaw it and

ban it and also use it i think their own

propaganda is if you're against our

regime you'll end up like these people

you'll be mad you'll be completely

against the norm basically

when hitler in order to try and

focus

the german nation's psyche on its future

and its purity and its superiority

and he wanted to

connect the german nation in his

definition the best forms of art he

ordered a exhibition to be held of all

this degenerate art

[Music]

so they mounted actually two exhibitions

at the same time there was one of german

art really for the last 2000 years

then at the same time down the road in

munich there was the antarctic

exhibition

which actually had more visitors than

the other one unsurprisingly

there was a huge exhibition held in

munich in 1937

with paintings which they despised

presented with slogans against modern

art that which were written on the walls

and this exhibition attracted two

million visitors in munich which is an

amazing number and it then went on to

tour

other german cities

but it is most unusual to hold an

exhibition of art that you despise

i think a lot of

the journalists at that time who had

been

closely linked to

avant-garde circles found it really hard

because they were under pressure to

write very scornful and scathing

reports about the exhibition saying how

how horrendous all this work was can you

imagine you know if somebody put on a

show sort of accepted british art now

and then you're not allowed to see of

course you go to the one you're not

allowed to see i mean the kind of

hideous art

there were many people who went see it

and many were horrified by it

it was

absolute chaos in there everything was

hung stacked up on the walls paintings

were lopsided

things were propped against the wall

some were unframed some were framed and

they had graffiti explaining why each

work was degenerate so even if you

couldn't figure it out for yourself you

were told whereas in the other

exhibition it was all very classical

monumental

nudes uh representing

classicism and

longevity all the things that hitler

wanted to build into his aryan race four

times as many people went to the

generous art show it was the uh

as a corsair show and um

you know maybe hitler was a secret

modernist who knows i mean certainly he

exposed more germans to modern art and i

would never have seen it if he hadn't

put that show on

the antartica kunst exhibition was

organized by the ministry of public

enlightenment and propaganda headed by

joseph goebbels

[Music]

enter

and some of them went to look at it

because they thought they'll never see

it again

they'd already been the book burnings

earlier that year with ed burnt works by

many many modern writers

so really there was a maybe a death

knell to those avant-garde artists and

their work so a lot of people who were

sympathized went

um at the same time as a lot of people

going just to have a kind of scoff and

laugh at it

there were several reasons why the nazis

despised so-called degenerate art

hitler himself personally was very very

conventional in his artistic taste and

disliked modern art some of the artists

who made the modern art like chagall for

example were jewish and

the nazis obviously despise them for

that reason and there was also a very

strong streak of

conventionality in nazi thought they

espoused old-fashioned traditional

values and modern arts seem to just run

counter to that

the era of degenerate art may have ended

hildebrand girl its promising early

career but he had even more pressing

concerns

he did have kind of jewish blood in him

which would have made him

slightly vulnerable to the nazis he was

what they called a second

second level michelin wasn't he so i

mean he was a quarter jewish it was

probably better to play along

hildebrand's heritage and his love of

modernism would have seemingly ended any

chance of a career in the art business

but amazingly he was hired by the nazis

to work as a dealer on behalf of the

state

when the nazis were getting rid of

degenerate art he was singled out as one

of a handful of major dealers who were

entrusted with the task of selling off

the art so that's where he got quite a

lot of his pictures and he was quite

interested in modern art he was able to

ingratiate himself with the nazis

because of his understanding of the

whole of the jewish and other collectors

of

of that current generation of art and

become one of the main individuals who

helped them lose heart around europe he

went on to work with the nazis

as one of four dealers who were charged

with basically making some money out of

the modernist or degenerate artists they

saw it i think there's a quote that says

something like we've got to make some

money out of this rubbish they just

wanted to get it out of germany and sell

it off

um and get foreign currency in as well

he would argue that he'd saved some of

the art by

selling it off to foreign collectors

rather than allowing the nazis to

destroy it hildebrand had a talent for

gaining access to artworks and he was

soon buying pieces directly from those

who had to sell as they were being

persecuted or were forced to flee the

country

this is my offer for all nine of the

drawings

it is a fair offer i believe

good

good

i'll arrange collection handle the

details

it's very difficult to get inside the

minds of people and uh um it was a very

difficult period and people did things

that we would now regard as wrong in

many cases

the art will be safe at least

this is the art that you're saving

yes of course

they've already dismissed me from my

gallery

if they think i'm offering generous

terms i

i have a family

i'm a quarter jewish

one doesn't know precisely why he dealt

with the nazis but the most obvious

reason is that it was a way of making

money this was a very comfortable

easy life that got him out of all the

problems of the rest of the war

and the money must have been extremely

good at a time when unless you're in the

armaments business it was very difficult

to make any money i'll send them i'll

send my man for the paintings this

afternoon

doctor

hildebrand gurlett would soon become one

of the biggest dealers on behalf of the

nazis

the choice he had made would take him to

paris where his mission was to acquire

works for the fuhrer's own personal

collection from nazi occupied france

[Music]

the 2012 munich artworks discovery had

thrown light on the life and career of

the man who had acquired the collection

one hildebrand girl it

he had started out as a respected museum

director but with the nazis coming to

power he became a key part of the

commission for the exploitation of

degenerate art

works were bought directly from those

being persecuted and was seized for the

antartica kunst exhibition

hildebrand was able to build up his own

collection as he worked to sell these

so-called degenerate art pieces abroad

from where they were stored in the

schonhausen palace near berlin

in the process he was able to hoard many

works for himself

this is how a number of paintings by the

german artist otto dix who featured

heavily in the degenerate art exhibition

wound up in cornelius girlitt's

apartment in munich

autodex was heavily featured obviously

his work is quite shocking visually very

caricatured people saw it as really

horrifying couldn't understand why he

would choose to represent the human

figure and face in that way during the

first world war dix was very shocked by

what he saw and a lot of his pictures

show the savagery of the fighting and

the nazis despised his paintings as

degenerate and he was categorized as

such another artist that was

interestingly very vilified was emily

lonaldo who actually had been a member

of the nazi party and a real sympathizer

from quite early on but he was the

artist that had the most works of any of

them had 27 works featured

in the exhibition and he was the one

that had said you know i am a nazi

sympathiser i stand up for what you

believe in

and there's a very sad story about him

he's very elderly going to after the

exhibition going to the authorities and

saying i'm a sympathizer please can you

release my work and they refused

and a very important crucifixion work

which they wouldn't give him back

despite his allegiance to the party

the label degenerate even applied to

music with an antartica music exhibition

also being staged

it was a bizarre and terrifying time for

anyone working in the arts in germany

and hildebrand girl it was caught right

up in the middle of it

i think we all want to see the kind of

nazi epoch in terms of black and white

and i think a lot of people were both

black and white and certainly before the

war he was incredibly white he was

passionate about modernism

and then the next thing you know he's in

paris

expropriating

art from poor rosenberg and and the

rothschilds and you know doing doing

other kind of dreadful things

[Music]

it was in paris that hildebrand took

full advantage of his new position of

power

the antartide kunst exhibition had made

some of the best modern expressionist

paintings available but with the nazis

having taken control of france some of

the greatest art of the era was within

reach

paris has always been an important

center of the art market particularly in

the 20th century so it's no surprise

that a german dealer would have very

good in close contacts with paris and

spend time there the best art of all

belonged to paul rosenberg he'd managed

to escape just in time but the same

could not be said for his whole

collection he's an incredibly important

dealer and came from a family of dealers

so he really had it in his lineage

and he was most famously picasso's

dealer from 1918 to 1940. he and picasso

were like sort of family weren't they

they um they lived next door to each

other and they spent holidays together

and it was you know

um it was a love thing

he was also a dealer for matisse from

1936 so he really had the big names and

his gallery was on reliability and it

was really known as the kind of hub in

paris of these modern artists that were

breaking the mold you could find them

all there with paul rosenberg resmeg was

one of the most important dealers

particularly

in

modernist works the post-impressionist

early 20th century works he was

among the most important dealers for

that period well he was kind of mr

cubism really wasn't he he and his

brother leons were the big

sellers of mid-period cubism

and they internationalized it and they

um you know they opened a gallery in

london a gallery in new york and they

sold museum modern art and

were you know had massive collections

and were massively rich

when things became more tense in europe

he started to get nervous and did ship

off a lot of his collection which was

very very extensive so it was went to

south america australia and also to

london and new orleans galleries but

unfortunately he didn't get everything

out and in 1940 he fled to new york

managed to get a visa got his family out

very quickly but there were i think over

2 000 works left

paul rosenberg's confiscated collection

along with all other art labeled

degenerate in france was stored at the

jodopom gallery in paris

hildebrand gurlett was then able to

purchase these works at knockdown prices

at the nearby druo auction house

many sales were made at the druo auction

house and that continued during the

second world war

and it was a place to trade in the work

of the impressionists in post

impressionist

between 1941 and 1945 while gurlitt was

living and working in paris he was able

to add top quality paintings to his

already impressive collection

but as the tide of the war turned

against germany he needed to find a way

to keep them for himself

as chaos reigned towards the end of the

war from about the early

1944 period when it was clear that the

war was lost and the russians were

approaching there were a lot of people

who spent most of their time thinking

about how they're going to survive at

the end of war and for somebody like him

in a very privileged position to move

art to secret locations where he could

say he was trying to sell it for the

nazis but actually he was keeping it for

himself at the end of the war

having noted the warning signs

hildebrand girl it moved swiftly and

managed to relocate much of his art

collection away from his home in dresden

they were kept on a farm outside dresden

and then they were in some sort of

nameless castle in some nameless town in

nameless southern germany

it doesn't seem to be a collection that

was put together with love you know it

seems a kind of expedient collection it

looks like the kind of collection that

was designed to be sold quietly not

raised too many eyebrows

[Music]

it was fortunate that hildebrand was

able to get the works away from the city

of dresden given what was about to

happen

[Music]

[Music]

with the allies approaching the

firebombing of dresden provided him with

an ideal cover story

we had a home in dresden um and actually

his street was bombed so i think hillary

saw it as a very obvious and clear

solution to their horde i think they

just said you know our street was bombed

all the records have gone all the arts

gone we don't have anything we have no

letters we've got nothing and it made

complete sense because it was actually

bombed and no one knew that i think

hildebrand had actually taken

the art out and very very last minute

when the allies were approaching so

there was no reason really why it

wouldn't be true that it was bombed

hildebrand girlitt had another secret

though he had been hard to find works of

art for hitler himself and in the

process had greatly expanded his own

collection his pretence that it had all

been destroyed in dresden was successful

for over half a century the horde was

considered lost to the world and it

would have remained so had his son

cornelius not tried to sell one of his

paintings just a couple of years ago a

sale that would see the net begin to

close in on this 60 year old crime

[Music]

the fire bombing of dresden could have

wiped out most of the artworks found in

cornelius gurlitz munich apartment in

two thousand and twelve

but his father hildebrand girlitt had

been smart enough to transport his

collection of over a thousand works away

from the city

when world war ii came to an end

hildebrand had managed to get away with

storing these artworks in a secret

location thought to be on the outskirts

of dresden

he was able to return to his pre-war

career in the art market but died

suddenly in a car crash in 1956

his son cornelius then succeeded in

moving the cache of works into the

schwabbing apartment in 1960

they remained here for over 50 years

where every night cornelius would take

the paintings out of storage to admire

[Music]

them well it does seem that he just

inherited the pictures the sun enjoyed

them um privately and would look at them

and saw no reason why he should sell

them or do anything with them so

the status quo continued and he just

took over his father's picture

collection anybody who is the son of

somebody with as extraordinary career as

his father

and the constant moves and

times that his father was under

suspicion and worked for both the nazis

and the allies he must have known that

his father had been playing both sides

of the street

and that may well i think have set up

various

tensions within him

cornelius had remained hidden from

society for all this time

but with no state health insurance in

his old age he was forced to enter the

art market himself and sell one of his

paintings for much needed funds

spending so much time alone cornelius

was known to write what he intended to

say on cue cards when faced with a

conversation

[Music]

afternoon

this is the painting that i wish to sell

good afternoon

this is the painting that i wish to sell

columbia scarlet decided to part with

this important work by max beckmann the

lion tamer because he was getting

increasingly ill and i think really out

of desperation he just decided to sell

one

by an auction house in cologne

[Music]

the auction house centre representative

is they do to come and do evaluation and

she came in

expecting i'm not sure what into a very

gloomy dark flat

[Music]

mr gurlitt i'm ms balman from the

auction house we spoke on the phone

yes

come in

she had no uh inkling of what else was

hiding in that flat

[Music]

how did you come by it

was it in your family

my mother's

you don't have any more then

no this is the only one

this is the painting that i wish to sell

well when it was taken to the german

auction house lempats

uh it was

very clearly in the provenance

his father's name was up in lights and

his father's name

is on our red flag list any picture we

see anywhere in the world with his name

we

undertake extensive research

so it would have been immediately

obvious to memphis

that this picture was claimed by

the family

of the victims of the original

persecution

and so the normal thing then is to

contact the family and to say to them

this picture is coming up for sale and

there is a deal that could be done

whereby you should get some of the

proceeds

whether they knew at the time the exact

circumstances under which he'd held it

is probably doubtful they probably

thought he got it in

possibly good faith that's highly

debatable now i think he made an

arrangement

with the heirs of the pre-war owner so

they agreed to split

the proceeds and it just went on the

market as a normal picture and wasn't

particularly closely examined i would

like to know what was in the collection

in 1956

um before hildebrand died and how much

of that has been sold off quietly in the

intervening years

but by selling the land tamer cornelius

had started the process that would lead

to his eventual downfall

he was merely following the example of

his father hildebrand though who had

been expected to generate funds by

selling modern paintings

but he also had another major role to

purchase or otherwise acquire works for

the fuhrer himself

hitler had grand plans for his own

purpose-built fuhrer museum in his

hometown of linz and he needed the

greatest works in history to fill it

his desire to make a mark in the art

world had started from a very young age

when he first moved to vienna in 1905

[Music]

he was young hitler wanted to become an

artist and he applied uh to study at the

academy of fine arts in vienna and was

turned down

twice he was rejected stayed out without

even interviews so he really got a slap

in the face from that

he felt

rejected

at a crucial point in his career i think

that made him dislike the art

establishment and by this time the art

establishment had been seen as

supporting the development of modern and

20th century art he does believe that

there is a kind of cons a world

conspiracy not specifically against him

but about people against people like him

people with his kind of taste and it's

these nasty

interchangeable sort of

deranged jewish bolshevik

folk who like that kind of painting

vienna at the start of the early 20th

century was the home of a bustling new

artistic community that hitler simply

did not fit into

in vienna there was no doubt there was a

very libertarian rather degenerate

feeling to the city

and it's quite clear that in vienna at

the time the austro-hungarian empire was

was was falling to bits i think it's

it's what had happened in paris sort of

25 years before was you had a kind of

imperial heavy hand um suddenly

um in the case of the french was lifted

by napoleon's third being got rid of in

in vienna it was just you know poor old

francios have been there for 50 years by

that time and i think also it was the

city of sigmund freud because one thing

all of these things have in common is is

kind of psychic introspection

um and a kind of an idea of the

possibility of madness um and that of

course went down like a cup of cold sick

with the nazis they didn't like that's

everything at all

i think in vienna was what was

incredible as a real

mix of all the different arts as it were

so there was the birth of atonal music

happened in vienna you had a new

psychological study from freud you had

artists like klimt and then the next

generation

following him showing an emotional

response to art that was about the

internal rather than the external so it

was coming from all directions it was

music it was theater it was literature

it was art it was a real sort of hotbed

for this new avant-garde and new way of

seeing and thinking there was some great

work done in mathematics and science

there was some great work done in

psychology but you can see a lot of

people would have felt that that was all

pretty strange and a bit unsettling

and there was some in many ways great

art but what would be to them and even

now rather shocking in some ways

it was very exciting the early 20th

century in vienna i mean culturally

there were a lot of avant-garde artists

who were really pushing the boundaries

in vienna at the time when hitler was

living there in the early 20th century

there was quite a conflict between

the avant-garde and the traditional art

which was the art that hitler espoused

hitler's traditional style which

included watercolors and drab sketches

of the sites of vienna we're not going

to cut it in this new modern art scene

but his enormous political success

allowed hitler to finally fulfill his

artistic ambitions with the construction

of the fuhrer museum in his country of

birth austria

the fuhrer museum was going to be in

austria and lintz which was the home

town of hitler and he really wanted to

construct this enormous pantheon of the

culture of the new rice it would be an

art museum but not only that a library

opera house theater everything to do

with his new imposed culture would be

here in this enormous great symbol of

his power

he's not the only man he's not the only

megalomaniac man

who has seen at a museum is maybe the

best way to have your

your name set for posterity

as ambitious as the fuhrer museum was on

its own it was actually only a part of

the grand restructuring of the entire

city of lintz

really quite early on in 1936 he had

already spoken to his head architects at

that time

it was going to be 500 feet long you

know albert sphere lots and lots and

lots of columns perry styles um all the

usual nazi claptrap

he poured over the plans poured over

what works he wanted to get and then he

went on a really a rampage across the

countries that they're invading

taking works from jewish families from

museums a lot of religious art was taken

from churches even in germany

and

stored them at that time ready for the

furore museums and it was a kind of

degree of thought that went into it

because it was

you know it was going to be the central

museum of the reich

it was going to have a collection that

effectively showed the whole course of

art history leading to germany every

single masterpiece from

right across time would be housed here

in that museum and people were going to

come from all over the reich to lintz to

see it so there was also the adolf

hitler hotel as part of the complex

because of course they would have to

have somewhere to stay when they got

there

one of the people entrusted with

acquiring works for this audacious

museum was hildebrand girlitt

during his time in paris gurlitt was a

big time buyer who acquired major works

he even spent five million francs on a

suzanne landscape painting of the valley

de lac which later proved to be a fake

but he wasn't alone in trying to acquire

works for hitler

dr hans posse a close confidant of the

fuhrer was tasked with seizing the most

challenging paintings to obtain

including works by johannes vermeer

[Music]

hitler's taste ran mostly to german and

austrian romantic 19th century art so he

i imagine there would have been lots of

um casper david friedrich and that sort

of stuff but the [ __ ] trap he was buying

for him was was a great expert in in

netherlandish and flemish art so i mean

there was you know there were two

vermeers for example and there were

going to be lots and lots of the old

michelangelo you know big stuff if

you're going to find a museum

you've got to have if it's going to be

the great pictures of the world

some of the great dutch and italian

masters

there were two masterpieces by vermeer

which were destined for the fuhrer

museum

one of which was bought and one of which

was stolen now the bought one was called

the artist studio very very important

work by vermeer

and

hitler actually bought that directly

from count gernan himself for quite a

lot of money but his descendants are now

contesting it's still a case that's

that's going on as we speak

the other was stolen from the rothschild

family as part of the [ __ ] taken from

them

[Music]

the fuhrer museum along with other grand

schemes for the reconstruction of lintz

never got past the design stage

but many artworks had already been

acquired ready to be moved in

they had been stored in munich but with

the threat of bombing the hall was moved

for safe keeping to a salt mine in the

austrian region of altasey

they were boxed up

sent there and no one really knew much

else about it

[Music]

when the war in europe came to an end

the allies managed to track down the

salt mine in alta sea

inside they were able to recover both

the astronomer and the artist studio

they also managed to reclaim a stolen

bust by michelangelo and the priceless

ghent altarpiece all of which were taken

in preparation for the fuhrer museum the

kent older piece was a um a seminal work

i think that's the right expression

by the van nuys

and

it set a a tone and a procedure for

things that makes it historically

enormously important but i think perhaps

the most valuable painting taken during

the war were those various vermeers that

were stolen individually

even for hitler

getting hold of vermeers and pictures of

that quality not easy i mean it's just

really very fortunate that those were

not destroyed i mean there were quite a

lot of very good pictures which were

pretty certain were destroyed

uh ie there's records of where they were

and it's known that that place was

bombed or damaged or flooded or whatever

and the pictures were destroyed

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just as hitler's secret horde had been

recovered at the end of the war time was

running out for cornelius girl it's

stash in his munich apartment

and a trip to switzerland would prove to

be his final undoing

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until 2010 cornelius gerlet's remarkable

cache of over 1400 artworks was still

unknown to the world

he had managed to successfully sell the

lion tamer painting by max beckman for

quick funds

but his luck started to run out when he

was stopped at a customs point on a

train from switzerland

well garlic was on a train and uh from

zurich uh to munich and uh he was

stopped by

german customs officials who were just

doing we believe just doing routine

checks and he was found to have a

substantial amount of cash with him

he had had on him

9 000 euros which is just under the

limit of what you have to declare coming

out of switzerland this was a trade from

zurich to munich and then they looked

for his identity papers and certainly

other and he appeared to be a rather

strange individual hence the germans

then raided his flat

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he had no tax and references

no health insurance he's someone who's

been completely off the radar of the

german authorities

so they were quite surprised to find him

with this huge loot

i mean i think they thought why is this

old man carrying 9 000 euros from

switzerland as i say it's an entirely

legal thing to do but i suppose it

raised questions i must have flagged him

up on some

horrible tax database somewhere

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i would not be at all surprised

if in fact his name was on the list

of those individuals who had german

germans with bank accounts

in switzerland

there have been some whistleblowers

in the swiss banks who gave these

lists of names to the american and

german intelligence services so i wonder

whether in fact they hadn't spotted him

as it were from under those lists

when will you bring them back

finding 1400 works of art in germany is

just the start of the treasure hunt the

cramped london officers of the art lost

register have been besieged

ever since german prosecutors announced

the discovery of works by masters such

as mark chagall henry matisse and pablo

picasso the race is now on to find the

rightful owners

what is unusual is the sheer size of the

collection um 1400

pictures and drawings ranging from works

on paper right through to oil paintings

it's got a lot of the german

expressionists in there people like emil

knowles max peck stein

right through to picassos matisses and

so it's really

quite broad and it's said to be a value

over a billion euros

it's slightly unfortunate the whole

thing was kept very quiet for about a

year or so and it only emerged later

when a german magazine discovered what

had happened and published a story that

it came out and i say it's important to

come out but if there are claimants for

the pictures

it's important that they're all

recorded

publicly so we know what's out there

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at least one of the works found in the

munich apartment a matisse painting of a

seated woman is thought to have belonged

to paul rosenberg

there's been a lot of criticism on the

case that there haven't been so a very

detailed inventory released which is

against the

established policy of how you should

deal with stolen art and the family of

paul rosenberg

are already questioning whether this is

their seated woman

the recovery process of paul rosenberg's

stolen paintings has been long and

arduous it started right at the end of

world war ii with rosenberg's son

lieutenant rosenberg

was the son of paul rosenberg who was

the parisian dealer who went fled to new

york uh at the start of the war

who had been the um the dealer for all

these great matisse and picasso and

people like that and he found some of

his father's pictures and as well of all

the other things

that's fascinating i mean there's still

70 picassos missing out there in the

world um from the war

and lots of paul rosenberg's collection

still unaccounted for

but that's a separate part of history

because then paul rosenberg's

granddaughter

is anne sinclair she's a wonderful lady

and she's pursuing the pictures in her

own way through the courts

and is is actively involved in that at

the moment so you can see this evolution

of how the stolen art

um

is is recovered if it belongs to ann

sinclair and her family the descendants

of paul rosenberg and i i think they

have every right to make her claim for

it

however just six months after his story

was revealed to the world cornelius

gurlitt passed away following ill health

after heart surgery

during that time it was discovered that

he held even further paintings in two

properties he owned in austria

these included works by renoir

and monet

in a surprising twist though the burn

museum of fine arts revealed that they'd

been named the sole heir of cornelius

girlitt's collection despite him having

had no connection to the institution

during his lifetime

but the restitution process of many of

the works in the collection could

continue for a long time

it's extremely

complex working with restitution tracing

back

and uh trying to figure out who actually

owns these paintings and in what

circumstances they went from the family

or owner pre-war and into the hands of

hildebrand girls

so it's going to be a lot of research

very detailed and who knows how long

it's going to take and and actually if

we'll ever know the full history and

provenance of every single work well i

think one of the lessons of this is that

the art trade has to be more open and

people buying at auction have to ask

more questions about the works this is

happening more now and there's been

increasing focus in the last 10 years on

provenance

but i think the girlick case shows the

importance of monitoring it carefully

and people asking questions

by and large the rule of thumb

so far is right and wrong is concerned

if the nazis have had anything to do

with any art deal between

the mid-30s and 1946

they must always lose

it's a it's a principle it's not a

anybody's law or anything like that it's

just a kind of modern principle which i

agree with so could there be any more

cornelius girlitts out there with hidden

masterpieces just waiting to be found to

get well into the 21st century and for

these things still to be coming up it is

quite a

you know quite an eye-opener i don't

think they're going to be everywhere i

think it's probably a very rare case

there's quite a lot of people who've got

the odd work or two but but something of

this scale has not emerged in many many

years i think it's unlikely there are

many people who've got something of that

size stashed away secretly

i think this is a real one-off and the

fact that he was such a reclusive

character made this possible but it's

certainly not going to be something that

happens every day it will probably take

years to sort out the pictures and what

category they fall into and whether any

were looted and the whole saga will take

a long time to resolve

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you