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In March 2012, 121 framed and 1,258 unframed artworks were seized by the District Prosecutor of Augsburg from an apartment in Schwabing, Munich.〔 The artworks, some of which were suspected of having being looted by the Nazis during the Second World War, were discovered in the possession of Cornelius Gurlitt, the son of art historian and dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt, and grandson of the art historian Cornelius Gurlitt. The collection contains old masters as well as impressionist and expressionist paintings by artists including Marc Chagall, Henri Matisse, Otto Dix, and Max Liebermann, among many others. The magazine ''Focus'' reported the discovery on 3 November 2013.〔 In February 2014, Gurlitt had his lawyers secure additional paintings in his Salzburg home and investigate their provenance. On 7 April 2014, an agreement was reached by which the collections of artwork which had been seized were to be returned to Gurlitt in exchange for his co-operation with a government-led task force charged with determining which of the pieces had been stolen and returning them to the rightful heirs. However, Gurlitt died only a month later, on 6 May 2014. In his will, he gave all his possessions to the Museum of Fine Arts Bern, Switzerland, and the museum will inherit his collection after legitimate claims against it have been evaluated. ==Background== (詳細はFührermuseum in Linz and being personally instructed by Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, Hildebrand was employed by the Commission for the Exploitation of Degenerate Art with Karl Buchholz, Ferdinand Möller, and Bernhard A. Böhmer to market confiscated and stolen works of art abroad. They were instructed to sell these for foreign currency and make a good profit out of them, which he enabled through use of his extensive network of European and North American art contacts, though they did not always report all funds to the commission.〔〔〔 Degenerate art was legally banned from entering Germany by the Nazis. Once so designated, this art was held in what was called the Martyr's Room at the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume in Paris, France. Much of noted impressionist and post-impressionist dealer Paul Rosenberg's professional and personal collection was designated degenerate art by the Nazis. Following Goebbel's decree, Hermann Goering personally appointed a series of ERR approved dealers in Paris, including Gurlitt, to liquidate these art assets and then use the funds to swell his personal art collection.〔 It was later reported by ''Bild am Sonntag'' that, as part of its investigative process, current German authorities had gone back through Nazi records looking for correspondence exchanges with Gurlitt.〔 Through this process it was discovered that, in May 1940, the Reich Propaganda Ministry sold 200 paintings to Gurlitt for 4,000 Swiss Francs, including Chagall’s ''The Walk'', Picasso’s ''Farming Family'', and Nolde's ''Hamburg Harbour''.〔 Hildebrand acquired an additional 115 works of degenerate art in the same way in 1941.〔 It is hence estimated that, at its height, he had established a personal trading collection of more than 1,500 pieces.〔〔〔 Gurlitt used his position to sell art to domestic collectors, most notably to Bernhard Sprengel, whose collection forms the core of the Sprengel Museum in Hannover. As most of the looted degenerate art was sold overseas via Switzerland, Rosenberg's collection was scattered across Europe. Today, some 70 of his paintings are missing, including: the large Pablo Picasso watercolor, ''Naked Woman on the Beach'', painted in Provence in 1923; seven works by Matisse; and the ''Portrait of Gabrielle Diot'' by Degas. Captured with his wife and 20 boxes of art in Aschbach (Schlüsselfeld) in June 1945, Gurlitt told interrogating United States Army authorities acting on behalf of the joint-allied army's Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program (MFAA) that the art was part of his personal collection, but that all of his records had been destroyed at his home in Kaitzer Straße during the bombing of Dresden in February 1945. Assessed as a victim of Nazi persecution due to his Jewish heritage, he was released.〔〔 Questioning by the authorities was focused on the MFAA's core classical art brief of preserving Europe's cultural history over the impressionist and post-impression "degenerate art" in which Gurlitt traded under the Nazis. He was only specifically questioned about the origin of some 200 paintings that stemmed from French ownership, which he stated that he had legally acquired between 1942 and 1944 from a French art dealer in Paris. Suspicious of his story, after further investigation on 15 December 1950, the U.S. Army returned 206 items to Gurlitt, including: Max Liebermann's ''Two Riders On The Beach''; Otto Dix's self-portrait; an allegorical painting by Marc Chagall; 112 further paintings; 19 drawings; and 72 "various other objects". Gurlitt continued trading art works until his death in a car crash in 1956.〔〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「2012 Munich artworks discovery」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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