Initial results of new Gurlitt research

The short re­ports with in­ter­im re­sults, so-called Ob­ject Record Ex­cerpts, on art­works from Cor­nelius Gurlitt’s Salzburg es­tate are now pub­licly avail­able. The Ob­ject Record Ex­cerpts on the ori­gin of 189 art­works from Gurlitt’s Salzburg es­tate are now pub­licly avail­able on the project’s web­site and on www.lostart.de.

To­day, Ju­ly 18, 2016, the Gurlitt Prove­nance Re­search project will present the ini­tial re­sults of the work it com­menced in Jan­uary this year. The short re­ports with in­ter­im re­sults, so-called Ob­ject Record Ex­cerpts, on art­works from Cor­nelius Gurlitt’s Salzburg es­tate are now pub­licly avail­able.

The Ob­ject Record Ex­cerpts on the ori­gin of 189 art­works from Gurlitt’s Salzburg es­tate are now pub­licly avail­able on the project’s web­site https://www.kul­turgutver­luste.de/Webs/EN/Pro­ject­Gurlitt/Gurlitt-Prove­nance-Re­search/In­dex.html and on www.lostart.de.

Dur­ing the sci­en­tif­ic in­ves­ti­ga­tions, sus­pi­cions were con­firmed that 91 of the 502 works so far ex­am­ined as a mat­ter of pri­or­i­ty were works loot­ed by the Nazis. A to­tal of 680 art­works could not be con­clu­sive­ly ex­am­ined by the Schwabing Art Trove Task­force, prompt­ing more in-depth re­search on these. Ear­li­er, in March 2016, de­tails of 184 art­works re­cov­ered from the Salzburg home of Cor­nelius Gurlitt had been pub­lished in the Lost Art Database by the project team. The sus­pi­cion that these were con­fis­cat­ed from their own­ers as a re­sult of Nazi per­se­cu­tion can­not be ruled out.

An ex­pert was able to es­tab­lish that 33 works from the col­lec­tion of “de­gen­er­ate art” sus­pect cas­es were not sus­pi­cious. They had been ac­quired by the her­itage mu­se­ums be­fore 1933.

“We have made sig­nif­i­cant progress to­wards our goal of in­ves­ti­gat­ing the Gurlitt case prompt­ly and trans­par­ent­ly,” said Uwe M. Schneede of the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion’s Ex­ec­u­tive Board.

Cor­nelius Gurlitt’s ex­ten­sive col­lec­tion of writ­ten doc­u­ments has al­so been dig­i­tized with the help of the Fed­er­al Archives. Since April, it has been pos­si­ble to view around 2,400 pho­tographs of art­works in the Fed­er­al Archives. The re­main­ing doc­u­ments, of which there are ap­prox. 22,000, are cur­rent­ly be­ing ex­am­ined for in­for­ma­tion on the art­works’ prove­nance his­to­ry. The busi­ness records in­clud­ed among the doc­u­ments are al­so due to be made ac­ces­si­ble in the Fed­er­al Archives. The prepa­ra­tions for this have been com­plet­ed by the Gurlitt Prove­nance Re­search project team, and the con­sent of Kun­st­mu­se­um Bern, the tes­ta­men­tary heir of Cor­nelius Gurlitt, has been ob­tained. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, it has not yet been pos­si­ble to ob­tain the con­sent of the le­gal heirs for pub­li­ca­tion of the ma­te­ri­als.

The re­ports on the ori­gins of the art­works are com­piled by an in­ter­na­tion­al team of 20 prove­nance re­searchers. Renowned ex­perts from Is­rael, France, the Unit­ed States, Ger­many and Aus­tria work on a vol­un­tary ba­sis to check the find­ings with re­spect to plau­si­bil­i­ty and fair­ness of sci­en­tif­ic meth­ods.

The Gurlitt Prove­nance Re­search project, fi­nanced by the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment Com­mis­sion­er for Cul­ture and Me­dia, is con­tin­u­ing prove­nance re­search ac­tiv­i­ties in­to the Gurlitt art trove. The Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion in Magde­burg is the body re­spon­si­ble for the project.