German art heir demands works back

An elderly German man has demanded the return of some 1,400 masterpieces seized by police from his Munich apartment in February of last year.

Cornelius Gurlitt (80) said the paintings – his only companions for decades – were rightfully his and purchased legally by his father, a Nazi-era art dealer.

Two weeks after news broke of the paintings’ discovery in February of last year, Mr Gurlitt has accused German police and prosecutors of subjecting him to trial by media. “They have it all wrong, I won’t speak with them and I won’t voluntarily give anything back,” he said.

“I’ve really missed the paintings – I notice that now. When I’m dead, they can do with them what they want.”

Until then, however, he is unrepentant: “I hope everything will be cleared up quickly, so I can finally have my pictures back.”

'Horrible' night
In his first interview, Mr Gurlitt recalled the "gruesome . . . horrible" night in February 2012 when customs officials and prosecutors – about 30 in all – broke into his apartment in Munich's Schwabing district and seized his art collection.

Over four days they carried away everything: the Chagall in a locked cabinet, a Liebermann from the wall, a Matisse, Picasso, Marc, and even a suitcase containing the favourite works he unpacked each evening – to admire and talk to – before putting them away again.

He said he had been hounded by journalists since news of the find emerged. “I’m not Boris Becker, what do these people want from me?” he asked.

“Why are they photographing me for these newspapers, which normally only feature photos of shady characters?”

After half a century guarding the collection built up by his father – selling off a work when he needed cash – it was only by chance that he attracted police attention. Asked by customs officials on a train from Zurich to Munich if he had any money to declare, he produced €9,000 in cash.

The customs officials took his details and a background check revealed he had no pension or health insurance, just a current account with €500,000. It was the remainder of a fortune left after his father’s death in 1956. His widow bought two apartments in Munich and moved there with her son, Cornelius.

Today Mr Gurlitt has no love lost for the Bavarian capital, which he dubbed the "source of all evil" and "where the [Nazi] movement was founded". Der Spiegel describes him as a man "trapped in another time" who stopped watching television half a century ago and makes his hotel reservations months in advance by typewritten letter.

He giggled when asked if he had ever had a relationship with another human being. “Oh no . . . there is nothing I have loved more in my life than my pictures,” he said.

He insisted his father, art critic and dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt, collaborated with the Nazis to sell the modern art they dubbed "degenerate" to prevent them being destroyed. Hildebrand Gurlitt's postwar claim that the collection was destroyed in the 1945 bombing of Dresden was a ploy, his son said, to keep them secret from the advancing Red Army.

A six-man team has been assigned by Bavaria’s state government to establish the provenance of the artworks. Many are suspected of being looted by the Nazis or sold under duress by their Jewish owners.

Mr Gurlitt insisted he had not committed a crime by concealing the works’ existence. “Even if I had, it would fall under the statute of limitations,” he said. “I never had anything to do with acquiring the pictures, only with saving them.”