just read about Cornelius Gurlitt......all i can say is DAMN!

here is the article....im going to post a few snippets though

www.nytimes.com...

As an expert in works of art that the Nazis called “degenerate” and in the dealers who traded them during World War II, Vanessa Voigt often wondered what had become of Cornelius Gurlitt, the son of a prominent Nazi-era art dealer and a figure she had come to view as a “phantom.”

Early last year, Ms. Voigt finally came face to face with the elusive man who kept popping up vaguely in her research. German customs officers had just stumbled on some 1,280 paintings and drawings — masterworks possibly worth more than $1 billion

In an interview, his first, published on Sunday, Mr. Gurlitt, 80, told the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel that the confiscation of the artwork was a devastating blow — more difficult even than the loss of his sister, Benita, to cancer last year.

Mr. Gurlitt said he had not watched television since 1963 and had never gone online, but did talk to his pictures

Until the raid in February 2012, Mr. Gurlitt had guarded his privacy zealously, refusing to open his door even to meter readers from the gas company.

The collection was so valuable and, perhaps, its provenance so tainted by the family’s association with the Nazis, that the desire to keep it secure compelled Mr. Gurlitt to live a strange, Gollum-like existence behind permanently drawn blinds, obscuring not only the works but also the man himself.
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there is more to the article but damn....thats nuts...

i would like to know more about this....

what do you guys think? was he just some innocent guy that loved the collection that was passed down from his dad?
or
is he a vile human that lived in seclusion because he knew the artifacts were plundered and not his?

this is a crazy article...i had never heard this before

here is more....i dont really know what to think about it....
i mean, 'poor guy' or 'f him'
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Konrad O. Bernheimer, a prominent Munich art dealer, said he had never come across Mr. Gurlitt despite decades in the business. “The saddest part of this whole story is this man’s life,” he said. “He was locked up in the dark with all these wonderful paintings. He is a man in the shadows, a ghost who never came out.

Mr. Gurlitt’s apartment was not the home of a collector, said Ms. Voigt, the art historian. “A collector prides himself on his art and shows it off,” she said. It was, rather, that of someone who “wanted to hide from the world.” The darkened living room had a “cavelike” quality, she said.

Watching over his family’s art trove was Mr. Gurlitt’s only known job. Periodically, he dipped into the collection to select a work to sell, a need that, according to Der Spiegel, became more pressing in recent years as his health declined.

The last piece he is known to have sold — “The Lion Tamer,” by the German artist Max Beckmann — fetched 864,000 euros, or $1.17 million, including commissions, at an auction in Cologne in 2011

In 1956, Hildebrand Gurlitt died in a crash on the autobahn while racing from Berlin back to the family’s home in Düsseldorf, but the war years continued to shadow the family. At the time of his father’s death, Cornelius was just 23 and was already retreating deep into his own world
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this is really interesting.....

the article said his father died when he was 23.....

im trying to decide what i think about this...

if he was 23 in 1956 then this dude was old enough to remember the war.....did he know the particulars i wonder?

was he just protecting what he thought was his fathers collection?

in the end i find it hard to believe that he didnt know where this stuff came from. im thinking if you have a billion dollars worth of art, you find some way to learn about the works..where they came from, etc....

maybe he didnt care.

then again, maybe he did research it and didnt care where the stuff came from...

wow

edit*

another article
en.wikipedia.org...

unless his family was independently(sp) wealthy, which it does not sound like they were, this dude had to know that something was very wrong with his father handing him a collection like that

a reply to: Grovit

The guy appears to have spent most of his life cut off from the main sources of information available to people over the last few decades.

He does not watch television, and has never been on the internet. Certainly any research he would have done, must have been done either in the privacy of his own home, with any records or data his father had collected on the works themselves, or at a public library perhaps.

It is perfectly possible that using such limited means, and without access to things like the evening news, and documentaries about art and so on, he may well have been utterly unaware of the reality of the situation, especially if, as I suspect is the case, the gentleman suffers from some sort of mental dysfunction.

The reason I believe this is the case, is that he stated himself that he has never loved anything more than the paintings and works of art which were in his possession. He had a sister, a father, and one must assume since it is necessary from a biological perspective, a mother. That he never loved any one of them as much as these mere demonstrations of the use of pigment, is telling I believe.

originally posted by: TrueBrit
a reply to: Grovit

The guy appears to have spent most of his life cut off from the main sources of information available to people over the last few decades.

He does not watch television, and has never been on the internet. Certainly any research he would have done, must have been done either in the privacy of his own home, with any records or data his father had collected on the works themselves, or at a public library perhaps.

It is perfectly possible that using such limited means, and without access to things like the evening news, and documentaries about art and so on, he may well have been utterly unaware of the reality of the situation, especially if, as I suspect is the case, the gentleman suffers from some sort of mental dysfunction.

im still searching the net, trying to decide what i think about it...
the article said he had not watched tv since the early 60's...what about before that?
he was 23 when his father died.....he had to know something about the war i would think...something about the nazis.....
i would also think he knew his father was not mega rich.....did he not ever wonder where all that stuff came from?
it kind of seems like with a collection that big and the way he lived that he had to know something was foul about the whole deal....

who knows?

maybe his father told him that because of the war and the nazis if people ever found out about the colelction they would try to steal it and thats why he lived like a recluse....

the article talked about him getting stopped at a search with a bunch of cash...talks about him selling a piece due to health and got like 1.7 mill us...

so, dude had enough resources to know who he could contact to unload a piece of art for almost 2 mill.

if i had something like a piece of art that was 'worth' 2 mill, it would basically be worthless to me if i did not have a chain of custody or legal proof.....
its not like the movies where you walk around the corner to a local fence and unload a big ass stash of goods....

if i 'found' a legit picasso or a faberge' egg or something like that i would never be able to unload it......

seems like this dude didnt have a problem dumping off something worth more than a mill.

that alone is suspect to me.

it would be different if he was known in the circles of collectors, rich folk, museum people, etc....

he wasnt....

not saying one way or the other......just speculating on the possibilities.....this is something we will probably never know the truth about

check this out

online.wsj.com...

Mr. Gurlitt—stung by the local government's seizure of the cache of priceless art that he called his life's only love and by the world-wide furor over the fact that much of it was snatched from Jews by the Nazis—had two desires: to burnish his family name by giving the trove to a museum and to send it out of Germany.

Only two months earlier, after a German magazine had exposed his secret collection, Mr. Gurlitt had vowed never to return any of the paintings.

But the secret will he signed in the Ludwigsburg, Germany, hospital was his first step toward an agreement with German officials ensuring the looted works could go back to their rightful owners.

The agreement in which Mr. Gurlitt would pledge to return all stolen works was finalized between the lawyers and the government the first week of April. Mr. Gurlitt asked for the weekend of April 5 to read through the six-page contract
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why the change of heart?

did he really know for a fact he was sitting on a fortune in stolen art, or, was he just trying to protect his fathers 'good' name?

hard to say

gonna be hard to get to the bottom of this...

from another article
www.spiegel.de...


The Swiss Incident

The life of Cornelius Gurlitt has become an infinite loop of remorse and coincidence. It was pure chance that he was the one who survived everything. It was also pure chance that he boarded a train with €9,000 in his pocket and attracted the attention of customs agents -- and that he first lied and then was caught red-handed when they searched him in the toilet. The Swiss incident annoys him terribly. He says he sold a painting there over 20 years ago and deposited the money on a Swiss bank account
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mr innocent recluse had the mental capacity to stick that cash in a swiss bank.

that to me does not scream mental illness...

Maybe he associated the memory of his father and family with those paintings. Every time he saw a painting he remembers his father telling him about it. Then keeping all those paintings would be like preserving his family memories.

originally posted by: stormcell
Maybe he associated the memory of his father and family with those paintings. Every time he saw a painting he remembers his father telling him about it. Then keeping all those paintings would be like preserving his family memories.

yeah,thats a definite possibility...

this is one of those things i would love to know for sure....
just seems so shady....that really does not mean anything though...just cause it seems shady does not mean it is.

a few of the articles mention the statute of limitations in germany is 30 years...
so if this stuff was stolen by the nazis/his father, by 2012 when all this started, from a technical, legal standpoint it was all his

Just an update this priceless collection was willed to the kunstmuseam in Berne, Switzerland.
The museum is located at the latitude of 46.951 noted in Anders Behring Breiviks cryptic GPS coordinate list.

analysis.no.net...

Could be a puzzle?