German authorities have appointed 13 experts in art history, provenance research and restitution issues to a task force that will be responsible for establishing the history of hundreds of artworks discovered in a dilapidated apartment in Munich this past November. The works, which include masterpieces by Henri Matisse, Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso and Albrecht Durer, were found in the possession of Cornelius Gurlitt, the son of Hildebrandt Gurlitt. Hildebrandt had been put in charge of selling Nazi looted artworks abroad by Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda.
Jane Milosch from the Smithsonian, Thierry Bajou from the Musées Nationaux Récupération in France, Sophie Lillie from Vienna, Agnes Peresztegi from Budapest, and Yehudit Shendar and Shlomit Steinberg, both from Israel, will join the task force’s German members -- Uwe Hartmann, the head of Germany’s office for provenance research, art historian Meike Hoffmann, Michael Franz, the head of Germany’s restitution office, Magnus Brechtken, the deputy director for the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich, Roland Kempfle, a Munich-based prosecutor, Heike Impelmann from the office for unresolved property issues and Stephanie Tasch, who represents Germany’s 16 states.
First, the task force will research the ownership histories of the drawings, prints and paintings believed to have been stolen by the Nazis from their Jewish owners. The task force will then investigate the works believed to have been looted by the Nazis from public institutions. So far, authorities have begun photographing and publishing the artworks. Over 450 pieces have been added to Germany’s Lost Art Internet Database.
