From March 1941 to July 1944, 29 large shipments including 137 freight cars filled with 4,174 crates containing 21,903 art objects of all kinds went to Germany. Perhaps the 13 years since Lohses death needed to pass for the author to view him with detachment. A legal guardian was appointed by the district court of Munich, an intermediate type of guardian who does not have the power to make decisions but is brought in when someone is overwhelmed with understanding and exercising his rights, especially in complex legal matters. The master glazier Samuel Morgenstern was his most consistent buyer. Hildebrand had a Nazi colleague, Baron Gerhard von Plnitz, who had helped him and another art dealer, Karl Haberstock, put deals together when von Plnitz was in the Luftwaffe and stationed in Paris. Petropoulos appears unsure about whether he got too close to Lohse. Forced to disperse his collection, he fled to Switzerland, then Italy, and finally America, where he died in Lake Placid, New York, in 1943. That's the equivalent of $12 million a year in 2012 US dollars. In anger, he threw the watch against the wall, breaking it into pieces. Amid an international uproar, Alex Shoumatoff follows a century-old trail to reveal the crimesand obsessionsinvolved. He would introduce Hitler at Nazi party rallies and held the official title of . Meanwhile, the collection remained in Garching, with no one the wiser, until word of its existence was leaked to Focus, a German newsweekly, possibly by someone who had been in Corneliuss apartment, perhaps one of the police or the movers who were there in 2012, because he or she provided a description of its interior. As reported by the German newsweekly Der Spiegel, while making his way down the aisle, one of the officers came upon a frail, well-dressed, white-haired man traveling alone and asked for his papers. For the last 45 years, he seems to have had almost no contact with anybody, apart from his sister, until her death, two years ago, and his doctor, reportedly in Wrzburg, a small city three hours from Munich by train, whom he went to see every three months. Kate Brown, October 24, 2019 The Arkell Museum in Canajoharie, New York. What they didnt know was that Hildebrand had lied about his collection having been destroyed in Dresdenmuch of it had actually been hidden in a Franconia water mill and in another secret location, in Saxony. Why is it always the name of Gurlitt which is spoken in the context of looted art? A dolf Hitler is considered one of the most infamous and disliked individuals in history. Hitler was eighteen years old when, in 1908, he moved from Linz and took up residence in Vienna. Hitler . What could have motivated Hitler's level of hysteria? Examples of these will be the strongest proof for the necessity of a radical solution to the Jewish question.. The total number of works plundered has been estimated at around 650,000. All animals were to be treated with respect. But after the Nazis rose to power and banned art they considered "degenerate" - mainly innovative, Modern pieces - he mixed politics with business. An international task force, under the Berlin-based Bureau of Provenance Research and led by the retired deputy to Germanys commissioner for culture and media, Ingeborg Berggreen-Merkel, was appointed to take over the task. Ad Choices. He and his Nazi government are known for causing World War II and the Holocaust, which killed millions.. Hitler became the leader of the Nazi Party in 1921. fifa 21 world cup career mode; 1205 n 10th pl, renton, wa 98057; suelos expansivos ejemplos; jaripeo sacramento 2021; mobile homes for rent san marcos, tx; To those with knowledge of Germanys art world during Hitlers reign, and especially those now in the business of searching for Raubkunstart looted by the Nazisthe name Gurlitt is significant: Hildebrand Gurlitt was a museum curator who, despite being a second-degree Mischling, a quarter Jewish, according to Nazi law, became one of the Nazis approved art dealers. Hess was a somewhat neurotic member of Hitler's inner circle best known for his surprise flight to Scotland on May 10, 1941 in which he intended to . Cosmopolitan Vienna incubated his peculiar genius as well as . Wounds have been torn open. Adolf Hitler replaced Anton Drexler as party chairman of the Nazi Party in July 1921, and soon after he acquired the title fhrer ("leader"). Within hours of the Focus pieces publication, the sensational story of Cornelius Gurlitt and his billion-dollar secret hoard of art had been picked up by major media all over the world. He acquired one masterpieceMatisses Seated Woman (1921)that Paul Rosenberg, the friend and dealer of Picasso, Braque, and Matisse, had left in a bank vault in Libourne, near Bordeaux, before he fled to America, in 1940. sword and fairy 7 how to change language. 2023 Cinemaholic Inc. All rights reserved. The fact that the works were kept in the dark means that so many of them have retained their colourful vibrancy. In fact, the 1938 Nazi law that allowed the government to confiscate Degenerate Art has still not been repealed. On November 4, 201320 months after the seizure and more than three years after Corneliuss interview on the trainthe magazine splashed on its front page the news that what appeared to be the greatest trove of looted Nazi art in 70 years had been found in the apartment of an urban hermit in Munich who had been living with it for decades. This bombshell gave traction to the governments suspicion that there might be more art in Gurlitts apartment. Long before he rose to become a ruthless dictator, the Nazi leader was a struggling young artist. Was his work not the very epitome of Germanness? he thunders. Most of them came from his father, an avid collector of modern art, he said. Nemetz estimated that 310 of the works were doubtless the property of the accused and could be returned to him immediately. After arriving in Argentina, the Nazis built a bunker and stored all the treasures there. And yet even as he denounced it, he was also dealing in it to his own financial advantage. Eva Braun, (born February 6, 1912, Munich, Germanydied April 30, 1945, Berlin), mistress and later wife of Adolf Hitler. It was a little expedition, and a welcome change of scenery from his hermetic existence in the apartment, that he always looked forward to, Der Spiegel reported. Altogether, about 100,000 works were looted by the Nazis from Jews in France alone. Adolf Hitler's two life-sized bronze horse sculptures have been recovered by German police after being missing for decades. 'Entartete Kunst': The Nazis' inventory of 'degenerate art', "Hitler's Speech at the Opening of the House of German Art in Munich", "HIGH ART AND NATIONAL SOCIALISM, PART I: The Linz Museum as ideological arena", "Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Art_collection_of_Adolf_Hitler&oldid=1099392443, This page was last edited on 20 July 2022, at 14:36. Some of the . These were produced twice a year, and shown to Hitler at Christmas and on his birthday. One of the pieces had coordinates inscribed on it. Hildebrand Gurlitt applied for a job in what was advertised as Department IX of the Ministry for Public Enlightenment and. He was chancellor of Germany from 30 January, 1933, and Fhrer and chancellor combined from 2 August 1934. Age has not faded them one whit. . Booth realized that they indicated the location where the Nazis built a secret bunker and stored everything they looted during World War II. He was chancellor from January 30, 1933, and, after President Paul von Hindenburg's death, assumed the twin titles of Fhrer and chancellor . In Red Notice, art thieves Nolan Booth (Ryan Reynolds) and the Bishop (Gal Gadot) pursue the three legendary bejeweled eggs that originally belonged to the Egyptian Queen Cleopatra, while the FBI Profiler John Hartley (Dwayne Johnson) pursue the two thieves. A lot of black moneyoff-the-books cashis taken back and forth at this crossing by Germans with Swiss bank accounts, and officers are trained to be on the lookout for suspicious travelers. It was a Zurich bank vault that catapulted Lohse back into public view in 2007, just weeks after his death at the age of 95. As reported in Der Spiegel, after France fell, in 1940, Hildebrand went frequently to Paris, leaving his wife, Helene, and childrenCornelius, then eight, and his sister, Benita, who was two years youngerin Hamburg and taking up residence in the Hotel de Jersey or at the apartment of a mistress. Hundreds are still missing. Like Hitler, he wanted to re-build the reputation of Germany as a nation of culture. Even though much of it was not actually made by Jews, it was still, to Hitler, subversive-Jewish-Bolshevik in sensibility and intent and corrosive to the moral fiber of Germany. All you have proved is that six of these works have been looted! A week later, Holzinger announced the creation of a Web site, gurlitt.info, which included this statement from Cornelius: Some of what has been reported about my collection and myself is not correct or not quite correct. Provenance research into these works has never been published and they have been distributed among Lohses many heirs, or sold discreetly. Rudolf Hess, the onetime deputy to Hitler who early in World War II parachuted into a Scottish meadow in what he called an attempt to make peace between Nazi Germany and Britain, died yesterday. As Hitler came to power, in 1933, he declared merciless war on cultural disintegration. He ordered an aesthetic purge of the entartete Knstler, the degenerate artists, and their work, which to him included anything that deviated from classic representationalism: not only the new Expressionism, Cubism, Dadaism, Fauvism, futurism, and objective realism, but the salon-acceptable Impressionism of van Gogh and Czanne and Matisse and the dreamy abstracts of Kandinsky. Nana is herself an artist, and we spent three hours in her studio in Schwabing, about half a mile from Corneliuss apartment, looking at reproductions of her grandfathers work and tracing his remarkable careerhow he had transcendently documented the horrors he had lived through on the front lines of both wars, at one point being forbidden by the Gestapo to paint or even buy art materials. Even Henry Moore was condemned. The previous day's press conference had allowed ample time for questions, and many of the press in the audience would have wished to interrogate this man on the record. "That's when I started to think about publishing something on Hildebrand Gurlitt," recalled the author. The chief prosecutors office made no public announcement of the seizure and kept the whole matter under tight wraps while it debated how to proceed. Fortunately, he and his wife, Helene, had been offered refuge in Aschbach Castle by Baron von Plnitz and had managed to get out of Dresden with these works just before the bombing. How do Germans feel about support for Ukraine? He did read the paper and listened to the radio, so he had some idea of what was going on in the world, but his actual experience of it was very limited and he was out of touch with a lot of developments. All rights reserved. No one takes art that seriously now. Yet he stole from Hitler too, allegedly to save modern art. Rudolph Zeich, Hitler's art and antiquities dealer, left Germany for Argentina with 16 five-ton shipping containers filled with all the treasures that the Nazis gathered during their reign of terror. (Wollf had been removed from his post in 1933 and would commit suicide with his wife and brother in 1942 as they were about to be shipped to concentration camps.) Sign up to our monthly newsletter, This article was featured in our free monthly Book Club newsletter. It would open old wounds, fault lines in the culture, that hadnt healed and never will. There are a lot of solitary old men in Munich, living in the private world of their memories, dark, horrible memories for those old enough to have lived through the war and the Nazi period. Lohse became Gring's agent in Paris, charged with helping Adolf Hitler's number two to amass his vast store of stolen art. They had fired him from two museums. German restitution laws that apply to looted art are highly complex. "A number of them were certainly acquired for personal reasons, but most of them are the leftovers that he was not able to sell to German museums," said the author. Cornelius has hired three lawyers, and a crisis-management public-relations firm to deal with the media. But they proceeded cautiously. In U.S. dollars, the three . During the Third Reich, he had amassed a large collection of Raubkunst, much of it from Jewish dealers and collectors. The Nazi art dealer who supplied Hermann Gring and operated in a shadowy art underworld after the war A new book by Jonathan Petropoulos explores Bruno Lohse's devotion to Hitler's number . Bruno Lohse, with SS insignia on his sweater, an unknown colleague and two women in occupied Paris. It is easy for a modern person to condemn the sellouts in a world that was so inconceivably compromised and horrible. The 'Munich Art Hoard', as it became known, was immediately suspected of being looted during the Nazi era, not least because Cornelius's father was the celebrated art historian and dealer . German art collector Cornelius Gurlitt whose secret collection contained paintings allegedly looted by the Nazi's has died at the age of 81.A tax investigati. A Thriller Gabriele Kohlbauer-Fritz and Tom Juncker - December 2021 He was a close adviser to Hitler and one of the chief proponents of the "Final Solution." After the close of World War II,. 1:21. He claimed that the rest of his collection had to be left behind and was also destroyed. His treasured mementoes included his Nazi party membership card and a letter from Gring written in Nuremberg testifying that he had repeatedly asked to be excused from his duties in Paris to return to the front. Still, he indirectly admits it was a mistake to get embroiled in this affair, citing the lawyer Randol Schoenbergs comment that academics like Petropoulos are invaluable for provenance research but out of their league if they try to negotiate a works return. The Monuments Men eventually returned 165 of Hildebrands pieces but kept the rest, which clearly had been stolen, and their investigation of his wartime activities and his art collection was closed. Regardless of this awkward friendship, Grings Man in Paris is far from a whitewash. As an "official dealer" for Hitler and Goebbels, Hildebrand Gurlitt became one of the Third Reich's most prolific art looters. But his avant-garde taste didn't please everyone and pressure from the conservative community led to his dismissal. As part of his settlement with the Flechtheim estate, according to an attorney for the heirs, Cornelius Gurlitt acknowledged that the Beckmann had been sold under duress by Flechtheim in 1934 to his father, Hildebrand Gurlitt. In the 1920s, as a successful museum director in the Weimar Republic, he had put on shows of work by the moderns, arguing that it was the new work by such painters as Beckman which would serve 'as a bait for everything spiritual', as he put it. More than two decades later, Petropoulos has written what will surely be the definitive biography, Grings Man in Paris: The Story of a Nazi Art Plunderer and his World, published this month. What could have brought his country to its knees? Cornelius had mentioned the art gallery on the train. List of all 20 artworks by Adolf Hitler. Even more interesting, according to Der Spiegel, the money from the sale was split roughly 6040 with the heirs of Jewish art dealer Alfred Flechtheim, who had had modern-art galleries in several German cities and Vienna in the 1920s. On September 22, 2010, a stooped, white-haired man in his late 70s taking an evening train from Zurich to Munich was asked by customs officers why he was crossing the Swiss border. But the damage was done; the floodgates of outrage were open. In 1960, Helene sold four paintings from her late husbands collection, one of them a portrait of Bertolt Brecht by Rudolf Schlichter, and bought two apartments in an expensive new building in Munich. Emil Nolde had 1,052 works seized from German museums. He hadnt watched television since 1963. He seemed content to be alone, a reclusive artist in Salzburg, his sister reported to a friend in 1962. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. He reportedly told the officer that the purpose of his trip was for business, at an art gallery in Bern. Many of their tragic human stories are told here. The Monuments Menapproximately 345 men and women with fine-arts expertise who were charged with protecting Europes monuments and cultural treasures, and the subject of the George Clooney filmwere brought in. The collection could be worth more than a billion dollars. He would have the official Nazi photographer supply him with pornographic films and play . He spent the last twenty years of his life in England, setting up the Art of Movement Studio in Manchester and refining his movement theories. Hermann Gring, one of Hitler's senior officers, . They also tell the immensely complicated story of that seizure and its subsequent impact, demonstrate how the provenance experts of Germany and Switzerland responded to its shock waves, and show off some of its best works by such modern masters as Klee, Munch, Dix, Marc, Nolde. Hitler believed that art should be elevating, noble, in tune with the aristocratic principle. He was to champion it yet again after the war. In the last few years of her life, Geli became Hitler's world, his obsession, and potentially his prisoner. That is why the works on these walls were so dangerous, because they had the power, in Hitler's opinion, to deprave the human spirit. Raiders of the Lost Art | Episode. Like many key Nazi looters, Lohse escaped conviction after the Second World War, although he did spend several years in prison, in Nuremberg and in France. The only answer was to cosy up to the regime. Menu Adolf Hitler was an artista modern artist, at thatand Nazism was a movement shaped by his aesthetic sensibility. August 12, 2022 5:14pm. Rudolf Hess stands in the background. Posted at 02:28h in kevin zhang forbes instagram by 280 tinkham rd springfield, ma michael greller net worth Likes Meike Hoffmann was also a member of the taskforce, which was dissolved after two years. Once he came to power in Germany, the Nazi leader and all who followed him were responsible for millions of deaths, as well as the mass theft of valuable artworks. Perhaps one day we will find out who they once belonged to. So why did provenience researchers only resolve five cases before wrapping up their mandate? There is a lot of interest among the descendants of Holocaust victims in getting back artworks that were looted by the Nazis, for getting at least some form of compensation and closure for the horrors visited upon their families. Gurlitt was behaving so nervously that the officer decided to take him into the bathroom to search him, and he found on his person an envelope containing 9,000 euros ($12,000) in crisp new bills. His grandmother was Jewish, which qualified him as a quarter Jewish - enough to draw the scorn of the Nazis. Photograph: Photo 12/Universal Images Group/Getty Images. Rudolph Zeich, Hitler's art and antiquities dealer, left Germany for Argentina with 16 five-ton shipping containers filled with all the treasures that the Nazis gathered during their reign of terror. This admission stops the torture, and then the Bishop double-crosses her temporary partner Voce before leaving. Two additional pieces are strongly suspected of having been looted by the Nazis. The burnt-out plane aboard which Rudolf Hess left for Scotland, May 1941. Hoffmann called his work there the "Wiedergutmachung" - or compensation of the Classical Modern. He may have agreed to his deal with the Devil because, as he later claimed, he had no choice if he wanted to stay alive, and then he was gradually corrupted by the money and the treasures he was accumulatinga common enough trajectory. It was all Jewish Bolshevik art. Cosmopolitan Vienna incubated his peculiar genius as well as his hideous ideas. . They first double-cross Booth, revealing that they are lovers and partners-in-crime, and then they betray the billionaire by contacting Interpol. The second egg is in the private collection of arms dealer Sotto Voce (Chris Diamantopoulos) Valencia, Spain. And, most interesting of all, they present in great detail the convoluted, morally dubious story of Hildebrand Gurlitt himself within the context of the tumultuous times through which he lived. With carte blanche from Goebbels, Hildebrand was flying high. The relationship between Booth and his father became strained after the latter erroneously accused Booth of stealing his wristwatch. The son of a Budapest rabbi, Nordau saw the alarming rise in anti-Semitism as another indication that European society was degenerating, a point that seems to have been lost on Hitler, whose racist ideology was influenced by Nordaus writings. A shrewd, inscrutable man, he was always welcome at the table, because he had millions of reichsmarks from Goebbels to spend. Between 1951 and 1955 Royal Welch Fusiliers Sergeant Major Colin Lambert was detailed to guard Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess, during his life-long sentence at Spandau Prison in Berlin. Maybe there was an element of revenge in the way Hitlerwhose dream of becoming an artist had gone nowheredestroyed the lives and careers of the successful artists of his day. Lohse tracked down hidden collections belonging to Jews who had fled or been deported and took part in raids to seize their collections. Do all these works have something in common then to our eye now? They found Haberstock and his collection and Gurlitt, with 47 crates of art objects, in the castle. Adolf Hitler was an artista modern artist, at thatand Nazism was a movement shaped by his aesthetic sensibility. Although part Jewish, Hildebrand Gurlitt loved the Modern art the Nazis banned. The gentleman,. If you are wondering who among the main characters finds the third egg, this is what you need to know. In November, Bavarias newly appointed justice minister, Winfried Bausback, said, Everyone involved on the federal and state level should have tackled this challenge with more urgency and resources from the start. In February, a revision of the statute-of-limitations law, drawn up by Bausback, was presented to the upper house of Parliament. She smiles. They hid themselves away, consumed by an inner darkness. Hildebrand Gurlitt applied for a job in what was advertised as Department IX of the Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. And then there are Hitler's words themselves, written by a man imprisoned in the fortress of Landsberg am Lech in 1924, nine years before he came to power, all six hundred pages of them, pent, furious, illogical. The old man produced an Austrian passport that said he was Rolf Nikolaus Cornelius Gurlitt, born in Hamburg in 1932. Though he had done nothing illegalamounts under 10,000 euros dont need to be declaredthe old mans behavior and the money aroused the officers suspicion. The art dealer Peter Jahn, who later searched for Hitler's artwork on behalf of the NSDAP, attested to the extremely good relationship between Hitler and Morgenstern. 5 at 1 Artur-Kutscher-Platz. Vanity Fair may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. Aschbach Castle had been made into a displaced-persons camp. Petropoulos is the author of several authoritative, lucidly written and important books about the arts in the Third Reich, including The Faustian Bargain: The Art World in Nazi Germany. He rarely traveledhe had gone to Paris, once, with his sister years ago. To this date, Cornelius has not been charged with any crime, bringing into question the legality of the seizurewhich was probably not covered by the search warrant under which authorities entered his apartment. Adolf Hitler with his half-nice and lover Geli Raubal (Image: rodoh.info) A dolf Hitler was the personification of evil. Even today, to be reading Mein Kampf on the upper deck of a clean and orderly public train one dark November night in Germany, feels a little staining, as if one's very finger ends might just turn an accusatory yellow. Dixs powerful, searingly honest images reflectas Hildebrand Gurlitt described the unsettling modern art he collectedthe struggle to come to terms with who we are. According to Nana Dix, 200 of his major works are still missing. One of the heirs is Rosenbergs granddaughter Anne Sinclair, the ex-wife of Dominique Strauss-Kahn and a well-known French political commentator who runs Le Huffington Post. He must not be a happy man, having lived a lie for so many years, Nana Dix, the granddaughter of the Degenerate artist Otto Dix, said to me about Cornelius. Once they are inside, Booth and Hartley discover that the chamber is filled with precious items, and searching for the third egg in there will be akin to looking for a needle in a haystack. For instance, there was a painting by the Bulgarian artist Jules Pascin. German task force finds five Nazi-looted works in Gurlitt trove, How Germany has dealt with Nazi-looted art after spectacular Gurlitt case, Task force investigating art trove inherited from Nazi collector achieved 'embarrassing' results, Ukraine updates: Russia says defense minister visits Donbas, Russian mercenary chief says Bakhmut almost fully encircled, 'The future is now': Jewish war refugees in Ukraine. Gradually the artworks became his entire world, a parallel universe full of horror, passion, beauty, and endless fascination, in which he was a spectator. The president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Dieter Graumann, responded that the prosecutor should rethink his plans to return any of the works. (14.01.2016), Since 2013, a task force, soon to be disbanded, has sought to clarify ownership of the artwork found in Cornelius Gurlitt's apartment. Meanwhile, the seekers of the provenance of these works who exactly acquired it and when, and then who acquired it after that continue their dogged, unglamorous and morally impeccable work. Rudolph J. Heinemann, also known as Rudolf J. Heinemann, (1901 - February 7, 1975) was a German-born American art dealer and collector of Old Masters. In total, Mein Kampf sold over 10 million copies . This catalogue contains entries on fifteenth- and sixteenth . The artists were culturally Judeo-Bolshevik, and the whole modern-art scene was dominated by Jewish dealers, gallery owners, and collectors. Or a triple life, because at the same time he was also amassing a fortune in artworks. hitler's art dealer rudolph 16 .. Share Article topics Art Crime Kate Brown Europe Editor And yet with a little more digging they discovered that he had been living in Schwabing, one of Munichs nicer neighborhoods, in a million-dollar-plus apartment for half a century. Published 6:15 AM EST, Mon February 20, 2017. The customs and tax investigators, following up on the officers recommendation, discovered no state pension, no health insurance, no tax or employment records, no bank accountsGurlitt had apparently never had a joband he wasnt even listed in the Munich phone book. After his fathers death, Booth found that watch inside one of his fathers desk drawers. The commissions work culminated in the Degenerate Art show that year, which opened in Munich a day after The Great German Art Exhibition of approved blood and soil pictures that inaugurated the monumental, new House of German Art, on Prinzregentenstrasse. Six years later, their mother died. With John Cusack, Noah Taylor, Leelee Sobieski, Molly Parker. 'We even hope to make money from the garbage,' quipped Goebbels. Rudolf Hess. But he was also quietly acquiring forbidden art at bargain prices from Jews fleeing the country or needing money to pay the devastating capital-flight tax and, later, the Jewish wealth levy. Hildebrand explained that they were legitimately his. Genres. The Rosenberg heirs have its bill of sale from 1923 and have filed a claim for it with the chief prosecutor. They called him a mongrel because of his Jewish grandmother. It's on the house. They committed suicide. Adolf Hitler passed an animal rights law. "Even today, nearly all of the museum archives in Germany, but also in Switzerland, France and England, contain Hildebrand Gurlitt's correspondence because he maintained such intensive contact with all the museums at the time," Hoffmann told DW. When the film opens, the first egg is at the Museo Nationale di Castel SantAngelo in Rome. Germany is a signatory to the 1998 Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art, which say that museums and other public institutions with Raubkunst should return it to its rightful owners, or their heirs. Experiments on animals became illegal. After the war, with his collection largely intact, Hildebrand moved to Dsseldorf, where he continued to deal in artworks. He describes, for example, turning up with begonias on the doorstep of the widow of a long-dead Nazi art looter in the 1990s (she invited him in, offered him coffee, and talked). The pieces are still in a warehouse in a sort of limbo. After being mobbed by paparazzi, he spent 10 days in his empty apartment without leaving it. By Judith Vonberg, CNN. Suspected as Nazi-looted art, many of the pieces were confiscated by the police. There is nothing in German law compelling Cornelius to give them back. Petropouloss research sheds important light on the post-war networks, radiating from Munich to Switzerland, Paris and even the US, that allowed Lohse to stay in business. At the press conference for the exhibition in Bonn, Ekkeheart Gurlitt, an elderly cousin of Cornelius Gurlitt, outrageously swaggery in his cowboy hat, neck wreathed in great gobbets of amber, denounces the work of the exhibition makers in no uncertain terms.