Jewish advocates on Thursday called for the publication of newly found artworks at the Austrian home of an elderly German recluse whose main collection is suspected to include Nazi-looted works.
Aside from 1,400 paintings and drawings found in the Munich apartment of Cornelius Gurlitt, another 60 pieces including works by Claude Monet, Edouard Manet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir surfaced in Salzburg, his spokesman said on Tuesday.
A list of the latest batch of masterpieces in Gurlitt’s possession “must be made public,” in an effort to find the rightful owners or their heirs, according to the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, known as the Claims Conference.
“The prerequisite for any restitution is the publication. Otherwise survivors and their families cannot register claims,” the Holocaust restitution organization added.
Gurlitt’s spokesman Stephan Holzinger swiftly rejected the request, having said that an initial analysis appeared to rule out that any of the works were stolen or extorted by the fascist regime.
“It’s a private collection,” Holzinger said. “If one were to follow that logic, all the collections in Germany would have to be published.”
Asked about the value of the Salzburg find, Holzinger said the “objects are largely oil [paintings], on average of greater value than those discovered in Munich,” which included many drawings.
The Claims Conference highlighted that Gurlitt, 81, was the son of Hildebrand Gurlitt, “one of four art dealers commissioned by Adolf Hitler to handle stolen art.”
“Therefore the origins of his inheritance should be checked,” the statement quoted Ruediger Mahlo, the Claims Conference’s representative in Germany, as saying. “The victims of the Holocaust and their heirs have a right to that.”
The Gurlitt case first made headlines late last year when it emerged that investigators had in 2012 found more than 1,400 artworks in his Munich flat, including long-lost works by masters Henri Matisse and Marc Chagall.
A research task force has since said that about 590 of the works are suspected to have been looted or bought cheaply under duress from Jewish collectors.
“For the moment we’re examining the Salzburg collection ourselves” to see if it contains stolen art, Holzinger said, adding that they would get in touch with possible interested parties.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion