Gurlitt Saga Continues: U-Turn or Rotary?

By Steffanie E. Keim, Esq. 

Children should not be punished for the mistakes of their parents. Sometimes it gets difficult to determine where mistakes of the parents end and new mistakes, those by their children, begin. The international art community is continuing to look at the Gurlitt saga with great interest, not the least because of the mistakes that have been made in handling the art collection that Cornelius Gurlitt inherited from his father Hildebrand Gurlitt, the German art historian and art dealer who traded in “degenerate" and other art during the Nazi era, but also because of the glacial pace the entire process by the authorities has taken. More than 1,000 works of art were seized in the Munich apartment of art collector Cornelius Gurlitt in 2012 and the ongoing controversy surrounding the case has been widely publicized and reported on since November 2013. (See our original report; as well as an update WhoisGurlitt.info).

Now, there seems to be some new movement in the controversy regarding Gurlitt’s art collection. The German television news service Tageschau reported that Christoph Edel, the court appointed custodian of Gurlitt announced that his client plans to return all works of art which have been stolen or looted from Jewish owners. Concerned observers, including Nicholas O’Donnelle, a litigator and editor of the Art Law Report have already asked who will draw the line between what constitutes “stolen” and “looted” works and those that were just taken or sold under duress.

An agreement in the ongoing negotiations with the descendants of the Jewish art dealer Paul Rosenberg regarding the return of the portrait “Sitzende Frau” (Sitting Women) by Henri Matisse, which is valued in excess of $10 million, and is in custody of the Office of the Public Prosecutor in Augsburg, is expected shortly.  This work of art was looted by the Nazis and was part of the art collection of Herman Goering before it eventually came into possession of the Gurlitt family.  Rosenberg himself and his heirs have pursued the restitution of Rosenberg’s art collection since 1945 and been able to reclaim and re-purchase scattered pieces from his pre-war collection.