Cornelius Gurlitt, the 81-year-old heir of the controversial World War II art dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt, has agreed to an independent investigation into the provenance of all his pictures and promised to return any Nazi-looted art works to their rightful owners.
In return, Gurlitt will be given all works seized by prosecutors in Augsburg in 2011 that are not under any suspicion. The art collector has signed an agreement with the federal government of Germany and the state of Bavaria, according to a statement released on Monday.
Gurlitt inherited the collection from his father, who helped the Nazi regime hoard art plundered from Jews.
The trail leading to the artworks began in September 2010, when customs officers carrying out a routine check on a train bound for Munich found that Cornelius Gurlitt was carrying an envelope containing a large amount of cash in crisp new bills.
One year later, Cornelius drew attention when he sold a 1930s painting (The Lion Tamer by the German artist Max Beckmann) through the Cologne auction house Lempertz for €864,000 (US$ 1.2 million). According to art experts, Lempertz has a long history of trafficking in art confiscated from Jews. In March 2012, during a raid of his apartment in the Schwabing district of Munich, police discovered a stash of 1,379 works of art — sketches, oil paintings, charcoals, lithographs and watercolors — stored behind mountains of canned food.
Although German public prosecutors confiscated the trove, its existence was concealed from the public for nearly two years until November 2013, when an article published by the German news magazine 'Focus' forced the German government to come clean.
