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00:00Munich, March 2012.
00:26In the district of Schwabing, the apartment of an 80-year-old recluse called Cornelius Gurlitt is about to be raided.
00:35Beautiful.
00:42Little did people know that what would be found there would open up a Pandora's box involving
01:02Nazi loot, degenerate art, and Hitler's own private museum.
01:07Cornelius Gerlitz is not a name that would be familiar to many people until this year.
01:15Someone that lived as a recluse in Munich in a very modest flat.
01:20He's a bit of an enigma.
01:24He was a loner, but we don't really know much about him.
01:27Well, he was a very interesting man.
01:30It wouldn't be surprising if he had a slightly strange upbringing and some effect from that.
01:36He wasn't seen much out and about and was someone who hasn't even watched television
01:42since 1963.
01:43He's really lived completely a solitary life.
01:46As the investigators poured through the collection of this solitary man, they uncovered over a
01:52thousand works by the likes of Matisse, Picasso, Chagall, and Otto Dix, some of which were previously
01:59unknown.
02:00There are things we think, where did that come from?
02:02You know, where has that been for the last 60 years?
02:05Which is, you know, exactly what Cornelius Gerlitz wanted.
02:07It's, uh, has lived a rather pathetic, lonely life with all these pictures.
02:11I wonder if it's, uh, if it's all true.
02:16When the story was broken by Focus magazine, it captured the world's attention.
02:21Who was Cornelius Gerlitz?
02:23How had he stayed undetected for so long?
02:26And just where did all of these artworks come from?
02:30The answer to all of these questions begins in the town of Zwickau in Eastern Germany in
02:351930.
02:42Zwickau was the hometown of Cornelius Gerlitz's father, Hildebrand Gerlitz.
02:52He came from a well-known artistic family and worked in the galleries at the Koenigalbert
02:57Museum.
02:58Hildebrand Gerlitz was, uh, an art historian, a good art historian, and a dealer.
03:04And he worked for various German museums.
03:06He was known as being someone who had close links with the avant-garde art world in Germany,
03:13and with a lot of the modern expressionist painters of the day.
03:17The first exhibition he put on was Max Peckstein, which was, you know, quite alternative at that
03:22time.
03:23Um, and he did, worked with other artists like Kato Kovac, a lot of the expressionists.
03:28Um, so he was seen as really quite radical, and I think, you know, a lot of people enjoy
03:32the exhibitions, but the kind of local traditionalists saw him as, yeah, this kind of radical young
03:39guy who'd come in and really shaken things up in Zwickau.
03:42But with the Nazis coming to power in 1933, and Hitler's hatred of the modern art movement,
03:52Hildebrand found himself out of a job in Zwickau, and forced by the Nazis to resign a new position
03:59he'd found in Hamburg soon after.
04:02Hildebrand was not welcome in this new cultural era of Germany.
04:06Modern art was declared an enemy of the state, and culminated in the Intarteter Kunst, or so-called
04:12Degenerate Art Exhibition of 1937.
04:15The Nazis really felt very concerned about modern art, the avant-garde in Germany at that
04:23time.
04:24I mean, it's a testament to how powerful that art is, it was a genuine worry for them.
04:30And they really wanted to outlaw it and ban it, and also use it, I think, for their own
04:34propaganda as, if you're against our regime, you'll end up like these people, you'll be mad,
04:39you'll be completely against the norm, basically.
04:44When Hitler, in order to try and focus the German nation's psyche on its future and its purity
04:55and its superiority, and he wanted to connect the German nation, in his definition, the
05:02best forms of art, he ordered an exhibition to be held of all this degenerate art.
05:09So they mounted actually two exhibitions at the same time.
05:30There was one of German art, really, for the last 2,000 years.
05:35And at the same time, down the road in Munich, there was the Antarctica Kunst exhibition, which
05:40actually had more visitors than the other one, unsurprisingly.
05:44There was a huge exhibition held in Munich in 1937 with paintings which they despised, presented
05:53with slogans against modern art which were written on the walls.
05:58And this exhibition attracted 2 million visitors in Munich, which is an amazing number.
06:05And it then went on to tour other German cities.
06:09But it is most unusual to hold an exhibition of art that you despise.
06:15I think a lot of the journalists at that time who had been closely linked to avant-garde circles
06:22found it really hard because they were under pressure to write very scornful and scathing reports
06:27about the exhibition saying how horrendous all this work was.
06:31Can you imagine, you know, if somebody put on a show of sort of accepted British art now
06:35and then art you're not allowed to see, of course you go to the one you're not allowed
06:37to see.
06:38I mean, the kind of hideous art.
06:39There were many people who went to see it and many were horrified by it.
06:46It was absolute chaos in there, everything was hung, stacked up on the walls, paintings
06:51were lopsided, things were propped against the wall, some were unframed, some were framed,
06:57and they had graffiti explaining why each work was degenerate.
07:01So even if you couldn't figure it out for yourself, you were told.
07:04Whereas in the other exhibition it was all very classical, monumental, nudes representing
07:11classicism and longevity, all the things that Hitler wanted to build into his Aryan race.
07:18Four times as many people went to the degenerate art show as the Corso show and, you know, maybe
07:24Hitler was a secret modernist, who knows?
07:26I mean, certainly he exposed more Germans to modern art than he would ever have seen it
07:29if he hadn't put that show on.
07:31The Entartete Kunst Exhibition was organised by the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and
07:36Propaganda, headed by Joseph Goebbels.
07:39Deutsche Männer und Frauen, das Zeitalter eines überspitzen jüdischen Intellektualismus ist nun zu Ende.
07:51And some of them went to look at it because they thought they'll never see it again.
07:54There had already been the book burnings earlier that year with Ed Berndt's works by many, many
08:01modern writers.
08:02So really it was maybe a death knell to those avant-garde artists and their work.
08:08So a lot of people who were sympathised went at the same time as a lot of people going just
08:12to have a kind of scoff and laugh at it.
08:15There were several reasons why the Nazis despised so-called degenerate art.
08:20Hitler himself personally was very, very conventional in his artistic taste and disliked modern art.
08:26Some of the artists who made the modern art, like Chagall, for example, were Jewish and the Nazis
08:35obviously despised them for that reason.
08:37And there was also a very strong streak of conventionality in Nazi thought.
08:44They espoused old-fashioned traditional values and modern art seemed to just run counter to that.
08:52The era of degenerate art may have ended Hildebrand Gerlitz's promising early career, but he had
08:58even more pressing concerns.
08:59He did have kind of Jewish blood in him, which would have made him slightly vulnerable to the Nazis.
09:07He was what they called a second level Michelin, wasn't he?
09:12So he was a quarter Jewish.
09:13It was probably better to play along.
09:15Hildebrand's heritage and his love of modernism would have seemingly ended any chance of a career in the art business.
09:22But amazingly, he was hired by the Nazis to work as a dealer on behalf of the state.
09:28When the Nazis were getting rid of degenerate art, he was singled out as one of a handful of major dealers
09:36who were entrusted with the task of selling off the art.
09:39So that's where he got quite a lot of his pictures and he was quite interested in modern art.
09:46He was able to ingratiate himself with the Nazis because of his understanding of the whole of the Jewish
09:52and other collectors of that current generation of art and become one of the main individuals
10:00who helped them loot art around Europe.
10:03He went on to work with the Nazis as one of four dealers who were charged with basically
10:08making some money out of the modernist or degenerate art as they saw it.
10:13I think there's a quote that says something like,
10:14we've got to make some money out of this rubbish.
10:16They just wanted to get it out of Germany and sell it off and get foreign currency in as well.
10:23He would argue that he'd saved some of the art by selling it off to foreign collectors
10:29rather than allowing the Nazis to destroy it.
10:32Hildebrand had a talent for gaining access to artworks,
10:36and he was soon buying pieces directly from those who had to sell as they were being persecuted
10:42or were forced to flee the country.
10:45This is my offer for all nine of the drawings.
10:49It is a fair offer, I believe.
10:59Good. Good. I'll arrange collection, handle all the details.
11:14It's very difficult to get inside the minds of people and it was a very difficult period
11:20and people did things that we would now regard as wrong in many cases.
11:24The art will be safe at least.
11:34It is the art that you're saving.
11:35Yes, of course.
11:37They've already dismissed me from my gallery.
11:40If they think I'm offering generous terms, I have a family.
11:45I'm a quarter Jewish.
11:51One doesn't know precisely why he dealt with the Nazis,
11:56but the most obvious reason is that it was a way of making money.
12:00This was a very comfortable, easy life that got him out of all the problems of the rest of the war.
12:07And the money must have been extremely good at a time when, unless you were in the armaments business,
12:13it was very difficult to make any money.
12:15I'll send my man for the paintings this afternoon.
12:22Doctor.
12:23Hildebrand Gerlitt would soon become one of the biggest dealers on behalf of the Nazis.
12:33The choice he had made would take him to Paris, where his mission was to acquire works
12:39for the Führer's own personal collection from Nazi-occupied France.
12:44The 2012 Munich artworks discovery had thrown light on the life and career of the man who had acquired the collection,
13:01one Hildebrand Gerlitt.
13:04He had started out as a respected museum director, but with the Nazis coming to power,
13:09he became a key part of the commission for the exploitation of degenerate art.
13:14Works were bought directly from those being persecuted and were seized for the Intartate Kunst exhibition.
13:21Hildebrand was able to build up his own collection as he worked to sell these so-called degenerate art pieces abroad,
13:28from where they were stored in the Schoenhausen Palace near Berlin.
13:32In the process, he was able to hoard many works for himself.
13:39This is how a number of paintings by the German artist Otto Dix,
13:43who featured heavily in the Degenerate Art exhibition, wound up in Cornelius Gerlitt's apartment in Munich.
13:51Otto Dix was heavily featured. Obviously his work is quite shocking visually, very caricatured.
13:57People saw it as really horrifying. Couldn't understand why he would choose to represent the human figure and face in that way.
14:04During the First World War, Dix was very shocked by what he saw,
14:08and a lot of his pictures show the savagery of the fighting.
14:12And the Nazis despised his paintings as degenerate, and he was categorized as such.
14:18Another artist that was interestingly very vilified was Emil Arnoldo, who actually had been a member of the Nazi party,
14:25and a real sympathizer from quite early on.
14:27But he was the artist that had the most works of any of them, had 27 works featured in the exhibition.
14:33And he was the one that had said, you know, I am a Nazi sympathizer, I stand up for what you believe in.
14:39And there's a very sad story about him, who was very elderly, going to, after the exhibition, going to the authorities and saying,
14:46you know, I am a sympathizer, please can you release my work? And they refused.
14:51And he had very important crucifixion work, which they wouldn't give him back, despite his allegiance to the party.
14:57The label, Degenerate, even applied to music, with an Intatata music exhibition also being staged.
15:04It was a bizarre and terrifying time for anyone working in the arts in Germany.
15:09And Hildebrand Gerlitt was caught right up in the middle of it.
15:14I think we all want to see the kind of Nazi epoch in terms of black and white.
15:18And I think a lot of people were both black and white.
15:21And certainly before the war, he was incredibly white.
15:23He was passionate about modernism.
15:25And then the next thing you know, he's in Paris expropriating art from Paul Rosenberg and the Rothschilds and, you know, doing rather kind of dreadful things.
15:36It was in Paris that Hildebrand took full advantage of his new position of power.
15:57The Intatata de Kunst exhibition had made some of the best modern expressionist paintings available.
16:04But with the Nazis having taken control of France, some of the greatest art of the era was within reach.
16:10Paris has always been an important centre of the art market, particularly in the 20th century.
16:16So it's no surprise that a German dealer would have very good and close contacts with Paris and spend time there.
16:24The best art of all belonged to Paul Rosenberg.
16:27He'd managed to escape just in time, but the same could not be said for his whole collection.
16:33He's an incredibly important dealer and came from a family of dealers, so he really had it in his lineage.
16:40And he was most famously Picasso's dealer from 1918 to 1940.
16:45He and Picasso were like sort of family, weren't they?
16:47They lived next door to each other and they spent holidays together and it was, you know, it was a love thing.
16:53He was also a dealer for Matisse from 1936.
16:57So he really had the big names and his gallery was on Rue La Boétie and it was really known as the kind of hub in Paris of these modern artists that were breaking the mould.
17:07You could find them all there with Paul Rosenberg.
17:09Rosenberg was one of the most important dealers, particularly in modernist works, the post-impressionist early 20th century works.
17:19He was among the most important dealers for that period.
17:23Well, he was kind of Mr. Cubism really, wasn't he?
17:25He and his brother Léonce were the big sellers of mid-period Cubism and they internationalised it.
17:32And they, you know, they opened a gallery in London, a gallery in New York and they sold museum modern art and, you know, had massive collections and were massively rich.
17:42When things became more tense in Europe, he started to get nervous and did ship off a lot of his collection, which was very, very expensive.
17:51So it was, went to South America, Australia and also to London and New York to his galleries.
17:57But unfortunately, he didn't get everything out.
17:59And in 1940, he fled to New York, managed to get a visa, got his family out very quickly, but there were, I think, over 2,000 works left.
18:07Paul Rosenberg's confiscated collection, along with all other art labelled Degenerate in France, was stored at the Jeux de Paume gallery in Paris.
18:17Hildebrand Gerlitt was then able to purchase these works at knock-down prices at the nearby Drouot Auction House.
18:24Many sales were made at the Drouot Auction House and that continued during the Second World War.
18:31And it was a place to trade in the work of the Impressionists in post-Impressionists.
18:36Between 1941 and 1945, while Gerlitt was living and working in Paris, he was able to add top quality paintings to his already impressive collection.
18:47But as the tide of the war turned against Germany, he needed to find a way to keep them for himself.
18:56As chaos reigned towards the end of the war, from about the early 1944 period, when it was clear that the war was lost and the Russians were approaching,
19:06there were a lot of people who spent most of their time thinking about how they were going to survive at the end of the war.
19:12And for somebody like him, in a very privileged position, to move art to secret locations where he could say he was trying to sell it for the Nazis,
19:20but actually he was keeping it for himself at the end of the war.
19:23Having noted the warning signs, Hildebrand Gerlitt moved swiftly and managed to relocate much of his art collection away from his home in Dresden.
19:40They were kept on a farm outside Dresden and then they were in some sort of nameless castle in some nameless town in nameless southern Germany.
19:47It doesn't seem to be a collection that was put together with love.
19:51You know, it seems a kind of expedient collection.
19:53It looks like the kind of collection that was designed to be sold quietly, not raise too many eyebrows.
20:17It was fortunate that Hildebrand was able to get the works away from the city of Dresden, given what was about to happen.
20:47To see you, the
21:01Ain't it painful for you that you'd love to know?
21:04You know what it is.
21:07I have to keep her alive.
21:09The
21:09The
21:10The
21:13With the Allies approaching,
21:15The firebombing of Dresden provided him with an ideal cover story.
21:19Well, he had a home in Dresden, and actually his street was bombed.
21:23So I think Hildebrand saw it as a very obvious and clear solution to their hoard.
21:29I think they just said, you know, our street was bombed, all the records have gone, all the art's gone,
21:33we don't have anything, we have no letters, we've got nothing.
21:36And it made complete sense because it was actually bombed and no one knew that I think Hildebrand
21:40had actually taken the art out at the very, very last minute when the Allies were approaching.
21:46So there was no reason really why it wouldn't be true that it was bombed.
21:51Hildebrand Gerlitt had another secret, though.
21:53He had been hired to find works of art for Hitler himself,
21:56and in the process had greatly expanded his own collection.
22:01His pretense that it had all been destroyed in Dresden was successful.
22:05For over half a century, the hoard was considered lost to the world,
22:09and it would have remained so had his son Cornelius not tried to sell one of his paintings
22:15just a couple of years ago.
22:17A sale that would see the net begin to close in on this 60-year-old crime.
22:31The firebombing of Dresden could have wiped out most of the artworks
22:35found in Cornelius Gerlitt's Munich apartment in 2012.
22:40But his father, Hildebrand Gerlitt, had been smart enough to transport his collection
22:46of over a thousand works away from the city.
22:51When World War II came to an end,
22:53Hildebrand had managed to get away with storing these artworks in a secret location,
22:59thought to be on the outskirts of Dresden.
23:01He was able to return to his pre-war career in the art market,
23:06but died suddenly in a car crash in 1956.
23:10His son Cornelius then succeeded in moving the cache of works
23:14into the Schwabing apartment in 1960.
23:17They remained here for over 50 years,
23:26where every night Cornelius would take the paintings out of storage to admire them.
23:37Well, it does seem that he just inherited the pictures.
23:40The son enjoyed them privately and would look at them
23:45and saw no reason why he should sell them or do anything with them.
23:50So the status quo continued and he just took over his father's picture collection.
23:56Anybody who is the son of somebody with as extraordinary a career as his father
24:02and the constant moves and times that his father was under suspicion
24:08and worked for both the Nazis and the Allies,
24:10he must have known that his father had been playing both sides of the street.
24:15And that may well, I think, have set up various tensions within him.
24:24Cornelius had remained hidden from society for all this time.
24:28But with no state health insurance in his old age,
24:32he was forced to enter the art market himself
24:34and sell one of his paintings for much-needed funds.
24:39Spending so much time alone,
24:40Cornelius was known to write what he intended to say
24:43on cue cards when faced with a conversation.
24:50Good afternoon.
24:52This is the painting that I wish to sell.
24:55Cornelius Gerlitt decided to part with this important work by Max Berkman,
25:06The Lion Tamer,
25:07because he was getting increasingly ill
25:09and I think really out of desperation,
25:11he just decided to sell one via an auction house in Cologne.
25:14The auction house sent a representative, as they do,
25:27to come and do evaluation
25:28and she came in expecting, I'm not sure what,
25:32into a very gloomy, dark flat.
25:34Mr. Gerlitt, I'm Ms. Berkman from the auction house.
25:44We spoke on the phone.
25:47Yes.
25:48Come in.
25:52She had no inkling of what else was hiding in that flat.
25:55How did you come by it?
26:07Was it in your family?
26:09My mother's.
26:12You don't have any more then?
26:14No, this is the only one.
26:16This is the painting that I wish to sell.
26:22Well, when it was taken to the German auction house, Lemperts,
26:27it was very clearly in the provenance
26:31his father's name was up in lights
26:34and his father's name is on our red flag list.
26:38Any picture we see anywhere in the world with his name,
26:41we undertake extensive research.
26:44So it would have been immediately obvious to Lemperts
26:48that this picture was claimed by the family
26:53of the victims of the original persecution.
26:58And so the normal thing then is to contact the family
27:01and to say to them, this picture's coming up for sale
27:03and there is a deal that could be done
27:05whereby you should get some of the proceeds.
27:08Whether they knew at the time
27:09the exact circumstances under which he'd held it
27:12is probably doubtful.
27:13They probably thought he'd got it
27:15in possibly good faith.
27:18That's highly debatable now, I think.
27:21He made an arrangement
27:22with the heirs of the pre-war owner
27:25so they agreed to split the proceeds
27:29and it just went on the market as a normal picture
27:32and wasn't particularly closely examined.
27:34I would like to know what was in the collection in 1956
27:36before Hildebrand died
27:39and how much of that has been sold off quietly
27:41in the intervening years.
27:43But by selling the Lion Tamer,
27:46Cornelius had started the process
27:48that would lead to his eventual downfall.
27:51He was merely following the example
27:53of his father Hildebrand, though,
27:55who had been expected to generate funds
27:57by selling modern paintings.
27:59But he also had another major role
28:02to purchase or otherwise acquire
28:05works for the Führer himself.
28:08Hitler had grand plans
28:09for his own purpose-built Führer Museum
28:11in his hometown of Linz
28:13and he needed the greatest works in history
28:16to fill it.
28:17His desire to make a mark in the art world
28:20had started from a very young age
28:22when he first moved to Vienna in 1905.
28:29When he was young,
28:31Hitler wanted to become an artist
28:33and he applied to study
28:36at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna
28:38and was turned down twice.
28:40He was rejected as data without even interviews
28:43so he really got a slap in the face from that.
28:46He felt rejected
28:48at a crucial point in his career.
28:51I think that made him
28:52dislike the art establishment
28:54and by this time
28:56the art establishment
28:57had been seen as supporting
28:59the development of modern
29:01and 20th century art.
29:03He does believe that there is
29:04a kind of world conspiracy
29:05not specifically against him
29:07but against people like him,
29:09people with his kind of taste
29:10and it's these nasty
29:11interchangeable
29:13sort of deranged Jewish
29:16Bolshevik folk
29:17who liked that kind of painting.
29:19Vienna, at the start
29:21of the early 20th century,
29:22was the home of a bustling
29:24new artistic community
29:25that Hitler simply did not fit into.
29:29In Vienna, there was no doubt,
29:31there was a very libertarian,
29:33rather degenerate feeling
29:36to the city
29:36and it's quite clear
29:38that in Vienna at the time,
29:41the Austro-Hungarian Empire
29:43was falling to bits.
29:45I think it's what had happened
29:46in Paris sort of 25 years before
29:48was that you had a kind of
29:49imperial heavy hand
29:50suddenly, in the case of the French,
29:54was lifted by Napoleon III
29:55being got rid of.
29:56In Vienna, it was just,
29:58you know, poor old Franz Josef
29:59had been there for 50 years
30:00by that time.
30:01And I think also it was the city
30:02of Sigmund Freud
30:03because one thing
30:04that all of these things
30:04have in common
30:05is kind of psychic introspection
30:07and a kind of an idea
30:10of the possibility of madness.
30:13And that, of course,
30:14went down like a cup of gold sick
30:15with the Nazis.
30:16They didn't like that
30:16sort of thing at all.
30:18I think in Vienna
30:19what was incredible
30:20was a real mix
30:21of all the different arts,
30:23as it were.
30:23So there was the birth
30:24of atonal music
30:25happened in Vienna.
30:27You had a new psychological study
30:30from Freud.
30:31You had artists
30:32like Klimt
30:33and then the next generation
30:34following him,
30:36showing an emotional response
30:38to art.
30:38It was about the internal
30:40rather than the external.
30:41So it was coming
30:42from all directions.
30:43It was music.
30:43It was theatre.
30:44It was literature.
30:45It was art.
30:46It was a real sort of hotbed
30:47for this new avant-garde
30:49and new way of seeing
30:50and thinking.
30:51There was some great work
30:52done in mathematics
30:53and science.
30:55There was some great work
30:56done in psychology,
30:57but you can see
30:57a lot of people
30:58would have felt
30:58that that was all
30:59pretty strange
31:01and a bit unsettling.
31:03And there was some,
31:05in many ways,
31:05great art,
31:07but what would be to them
31:09and even now
31:09rather shocking in some ways.
31:12It was very exciting,
31:13the early 20th century
31:15in Vienna.
31:15I mean, culturally,
31:16there were a lot
31:17of avant-garde artists
31:19who were really pushing
31:20the boundaries.
31:22In Vienna at the time
31:23when Hitler was living there
31:25in the earlier 20th century,
31:26there was quite a conflict
31:27between the avant-garde
31:30and the traditional art,
31:33which was the art
31:34that Hitler espoused.
31:37Hitler's traditional style,
31:39which included watercolors
31:40and drab sketches
31:41of the sights of Vienna,
31:42were not going to cut it
31:43in this new modern art scene.
31:45But his enormous political success
31:47allowed Hitler
31:48to finally fulfil
31:49his artistic ambitions
31:51with the construction
31:52of the Führer Museum
31:53in his country of birth,
31:55Austria.
31:56The Führer Museum
31:58was going to be
31:58in Austria in Linz,
32:00which was the hometown
32:00of Hitler,
32:01and he really wanted
32:02to construct this
32:03enormous pantheon
32:05of the culture
32:07of the new Reich.
32:08It would be an art museum,
32:10but not only that,
32:11a library, opera house,
32:12theatre,
32:13everything to do
32:14with his new imposed culture
32:16would be here
32:17in this enormous,
32:18great symbol of his power.
32:21He's not the only man,
32:23he's not the only
32:23megalomaniac man
32:25who has seen
32:26that a museum
32:27is maybe the best way
32:28to have your name
32:31set for posterity.
32:32As ambitious
32:33as the Führer Museum
32:35was on its own,
32:36it was actually
32:37only a part
32:38of the grand restructuring
32:39of the entire city
32:41of Linz.
32:42Really quite early on
32:43in 1936,
32:44he had already spoken
32:45to his head architect
32:47at that time.
32:49It was going to be
32:49500 feet long,
32:50you know,
32:51arbit sphere,
32:52lots and lots and lots
32:53of columns,
32:53peristyles,
32:54all the usual
32:55Nazi claptrap.
32:57He pored over the plans,
32:59pored over
32:59what works he wanted
33:01to get,
33:02and then he went
33:03on really a rampage
33:05across the countries
33:05that they were invading,
33:06taking works
33:08from Jewish families,
33:10from museums.
33:11A lot of religious art
33:13was taken from churches
33:14even in Germany
33:14and stored them
33:17at that time
33:18ready for the Führer Museums.
33:20And it was a kind of
33:21degree of thought
33:22that went into it
33:22because it was,
33:24you know,
33:24it was going to be
33:24the central museum
33:25of the Reich.
33:26It was going to have
33:27a collection
33:27that effectively showed
33:29the whole course
33:30of art history
33:30leading to Germany.
33:32Every single masterpiece
33:33from right across time
33:36would be housed here
33:37in that museum.
33:38And people were going
33:39to come from all over
33:39the Reich to Linz
33:41to see it,
33:41so there was also
33:42the Adolf Hitler Hotel
33:43as part of the complex
33:44because, of course,
33:44they would have to have
33:45somewhere to stay
33:45when they got there.
33:47One of the people
33:48entrusted with acquiring
33:49works for this audacious
33:50museum was Hildebrand Görlitt.
33:53During his time in Paris,
33:55Görlitt was a big-time buyer
33:57who acquired major works.
33:58He even spent 5 million francs
34:01on a Cézanne landscape painting
34:03of the Vallée de l'Arc,
34:05which later proved
34:06to be a fake.
34:07But he wasn't alone
34:08in trying to acquire
34:09works for Hitler.
34:11Dr. Hans Posset,
34:12a close confidant
34:13of the Führer,
34:14was tasked with seizing
34:15the most challenging
34:16paintings to obtain,
34:18including works
34:19by Johannes Vermeer.
34:22Hitler's taste ran
34:23mostly to German
34:24and Austrian
34:25Romantic 19th-century art,
34:27so I imagine
34:28there would have been
34:28lots of Caspar David Friedrich
34:31and that sort of stuff.
34:32But the chap who was
34:33buying for him
34:34was a great expert
34:36in Netherlandish
34:37and Flemish art.
34:38So, I mean,
34:38there were two Vermeers,
34:40for example,
34:40and there were going
34:41to be lots and lots
34:41of the old Michelangelo,
34:44you know, big stuff.
34:45If you're going
34:45to find a museum,
34:47you've got to have,
34:49if it's going to be
34:49the great pictures
34:50of the world,
34:51some of the great
34:52Dutch and Italian masters.
34:55There were two
34:56masterpieces by Vermeer
34:57which were destined
34:58for the Fuhrer Museum,
35:00one of which was bought
35:02and one of which
35:02was stolen.
35:03Now, the bought one
35:04was called
35:05The Artist's Studio,
35:06very, very important
35:07work by Vermeer.
35:09And Hitler actually
35:10bought that directly
35:11from Count Zernan himself
35:13for quite a lot of money,
35:15but his descendants
35:16are now contesting.
35:17It's still a case
35:17that's going on
35:18as we speak.
35:20The other was stolen
35:21from the Rothschild family
35:22as part of the hoard
35:23taken from them.
35:24The Fuhrer Museum,
35:28along with other
35:28grand schemes
35:29for the reconstruction
35:30of Linz,
35:31never got past
35:32the design stage.
35:34But many artworks
35:35had already been acquired,
35:37ready to be moved in.
35:38They had been stored
35:39in Munich,
35:40but with the threat
35:41of bombing,
35:42the hall was moved
35:43for safekeeping
35:44to a salt mine
35:45in the Austrian region
35:47of Alterssee.
35:48They were boxed up,
35:53sent there,
35:54and no-one really
35:54knew much else about it.
36:03When the war in Europe
36:04came to an end,
36:05the Allies managed
36:06to track down
36:07the salt mine
36:07in Alterssee.
36:09Inside,
36:09they were able
36:10to recover
36:11both the astronomer
36:12and the artist's studio.
36:14They also managed
36:15to reclaim
36:15a stolen bust
36:16by Michelangelo
36:17and the priceless
36:19Ghent Altarpiece,
36:20all of which were taken
36:21in preparation
36:22for the Fuhrer Museum.
36:24The Ghent Altarpiece
36:25was a seminal work,
36:27I think that's
36:27the right expression,
36:28by the Van Eichs,
36:30and it set a tone
36:33and a procedure
36:34for things
36:34that makes it
36:36historically enormously
36:37important.
36:37But I think
36:38perhaps the most
36:39valuable painting
36:40taken during the war
36:41were those various
36:42remeers that were
36:42stolen individually.
36:45Even for Hitler,
36:46getting hold
36:48of vermeers
36:49and pictures
36:50of that quality,
36:51not easy.
36:52I mean,
36:53it's just really
36:53very fortunate
36:54that those
36:55were not destroyed.
36:57I mean,
36:57there were
36:57quite a lot
36:58of very good pictures
37:00which we're pretty
37:01certain were destroyed,
37:03i.e.
37:03there's records
37:04of where they were
37:05and it's known
37:06that that place
37:07was bombed
37:09or damaged
37:10or flooded
37:10or whatever
37:11and the pictures
37:13were destroyed.
37:16Just as Hitler's
37:17secret hoard
37:18had been recovered
37:19at the end
37:19of the war,
37:20time was running
37:21out for Cornelius
37:22Gerlitz's stash
37:23in his Munich
37:24apartment
37:24and a trip
37:26to Switzerland
37:26would prove
37:27to be
37:28his final undoing.
37:30Until 2010,
37:44Cornelius Gerlitz's
37:45remarkable cache
37:46of over 1,400 artworks
37:48was still unknown
37:49to the world.
37:51He had managed
37:52to successfully
37:53sell the Lion Tamer
37:55painting by Max Beckman
37:56for quick funds.
37:57But his luck
37:59started to run out
38:00when he was stopped
38:01at a customs point
38:02on a train
38:03from Switzerland.
38:05Well, Gerlitz
38:05was on a train
38:06from Zurich
38:08to Munich
38:09and he was stopped
38:10by German customs officials
38:13who were just doing,
38:14we believe,
38:15just doing routine checks
38:16and he was found
38:18to have a substantial
38:19amount of cash
38:20with them.
38:21He had on him
38:229,000 euros
38:24which is just
38:25under the limit
38:26of what you have
38:27to declare
38:27coming out
38:28of Switzerland.
38:28This was a train
38:29from Zurich
38:30to Munich
38:30and then they
38:31looked for his
38:32identity papers
38:33and he appeared
38:35to be a rather
38:35strange individual
38:36hence the Germans
38:37then raided his flat.
38:39He had no tax
38:53references,
38:54no health insurance.
38:56He's someone
38:57who's been
38:57completely off
38:59the radar
38:59of the German authorities
39:00so they were
39:02quite surprised
39:03to find him
39:03with this huge loot.
39:05I mean I think
39:10they thought
39:11why is this
39:11old man
39:12carrying 9,000 euros
39:13from Switzerland?
39:14As I say
39:15it's an entirely
39:15legal thing to do
39:17but I suppose
39:18it raised questions
39:18I must have flagged
39:19him up on some
39:20horrible tax database
39:22somewhere.
39:27I would not be
39:28at all surprised
39:29if in fact
39:30his name
39:31was on the list
39:32of those individuals
39:34who had
39:35Germans with
39:36bank accounts
39:37in Switzerland.
39:40There have been
39:40some whistleblowers
39:41in the Swiss banks
39:43who gave these
39:44lists of names
39:45to the American
39:47and German
39:47intelligence services
39:49so I wonder
39:50whether in fact
39:51they hadn't
39:52spotted him
39:53as it were
39:53from one of those lists.
39:59When will you
40:00bring them back?
40:01Finding 1,400
40:02works of art
40:03in Germany
40:04is just the start
40:05of the treasure hunt.
40:06The cramped
40:07London offices
40:08of the Art Loss Register
40:09have been besieged
40:11ever since
40:11German prosecutors
40:12announced
40:13the discovery
40:14of works
40:14by masters
40:15such as
40:15Marc Chagall
40:16Henri Matisse
40:17and Pablo Picasso.
40:19The race is now
40:20on to find
40:21the rightful owners.
40:22What is unusual
40:23is the sheer size
40:25of the collection
40:261,400 pictures
40:29and drawings?
40:30Ranging from
40:31works on paper
40:31right through
40:32to oil paintings.
40:33It's got a lot
40:34of the German
40:34expressionists in there
40:35people like
40:36Emil Knowles
40:37Max Peckstein
40:38right through
40:39to Picassos
40:40Matisses
40:41so it's really
40:43quite broad
40:44and it's said
40:45to be a value
40:46over a billion euros.
40:48It's slightly
40:48unfortunate
40:49the whole thing
40:49was kept very quiet
40:50for about a year
40:51or so
40:52and it only emerged
40:53later when a German
40:54magazine discovered
40:56what had happened
40:57and published a story
40:58that it came out
40:59and I say
41:00it's important
41:01to come out
41:02but if there are
41:02claimants for the pictures
41:04it's important
41:05that they're all
41:06recorded publicly
41:08so we know
41:09what's out there.
41:10at least one of the works
41:23found in the Munich
41:23apartment
41:24a Matisse painting
41:25of a seated woman
41:26is thought to have
41:27belonged to Paul Rosenberg.
41:30There's been a lot
41:30of criticism on the case
41:32that there haven't been
41:32so very detailed
41:34inventory released
41:35which is against
41:36the established policy
41:38of how you should
41:38deal with stolen art
41:40and the family
41:41of Paul Rosenberg
41:43are already
41:44questioning
41:45whether this is
41:45their seated woman.
41:47The recovery process
41:48of Paul Rosenberg's
41:50stolen paintings
41:50has been long
41:51and arduous.
41:52It started
41:53right at the end
41:54of World War II
41:55with Rosenberg's son.
41:57Lieutenant Rosenberg
41:58was the son
42:00of Paul Rosenberg
42:01who was the Parisian dealer
42:02who fled to New York
42:03at the start of the war
42:05who had been the dealer
42:07for all these great
42:08Matisse and Picasso
42:09and people like that
42:10and he found some
42:11of his father's pictures
42:12and as well
42:12with all the other things
42:13and it's fascinating.
42:15I mean there's still
42:1670 Picassos missing
42:17aren't there in the world
42:18from the war
42:19and lots of
42:20Paul Rosenberg's
42:21collection is still
42:22unaccounted for.
42:23But that's a separate
42:25part of history
42:25because then
42:26Paul Rosenberg's
42:27granddaughter
42:27is Anne Sinclair.
42:30She's a wonderful lady
42:31and she's pursuing
42:32the pictures
42:33in her own way
42:34through the courts
42:35and is actively involved
42:37in that at the moment.
42:38So you can see
42:39this evolution
42:39of how the stolen art
42:41is recovered
42:44if it belongs
42:45to Anne Sinclair
42:45and her family
42:46with the descendants
42:47of Paul Rosenberg
42:48then I think
42:49they have every right
42:49to make a claim for it.
42:52However,
42:53just six months
42:54after his story
42:54was revealed to the world
42:56Cornelius Gerlitt
42:57passed away
42:58following ill health
43:00after heart surgery.
43:02During that time
43:03it was discovered
43:04that he held
43:04even further paintings
43:06in two properties
43:07he owned in Austria.
43:09These included works
43:10by Renoir
43:11and Monet.
43:13In a surprising twist though
43:15the Berne Museum
43:16of Fine Arts
43:17revealed that
43:18they'd been named
43:18the sole heir
43:19of Cornelius Gerlitt's
43:20collection
43:21despite him having
43:22had no connection
43:23to the institution
43:24during his lifetime.
43:26But the restitution
43:28process of many
43:29of the works
43:29in the collection
43:30could continue
43:31for a long time.
43:34It's extremely complex
43:36working with restitution
43:37tracing back
43:39and trying to figure out
43:41who actually owns
43:42these paintings
43:43and in what circumstances
43:44they went from
43:45the family
43:45or owner
43:46pre-war
43:47and into the hands
43:48of Hildebrand Gerlitt's.
43:50So it's going to be
43:51a lot of research
43:52very detailed
43:53and who knows
43:54how long
43:54it's going to take
43:55and actually
43:56if we'll ever know
43:57the full history
43:58and provenance
43:59of every single work.
44:00Well I think
44:01one of the lessons
44:01of this is
44:02that the art trade
44:05has to be more open
44:06and people buying
44:08at auction
44:08have to ask
44:09more questions
44:10about the works.
44:12This is happening
44:13more now
44:14and there's been
44:15increasing focus
44:16in the last 10 years
44:17on provenance
44:18but I think
44:20the Gerlitt case
44:21shows the importance
44:22of monitoring it carefully
44:24and people asking questions.
44:26By and large
44:26the rule of thumb
44:27so far as right and wrong
44:29is concerned
44:30is if the Nazis
44:32have had anything to do
44:33with any art deal
44:34between the mid-30s
44:37and 1946
44:37they must always lose.
44:41It's a principle.
44:42It's not anybody's law
44:44or anything like that.
44:45It's just a kind of
44:46modern principle
44:47which I agree with.
44:49So
44:49could there be
44:50any more Cornelius Gerlitts
44:52out there
44:53with hidden masterpieces
44:54just waiting
44:55to be found?
44:57To get well
44:57into the 21st century
44:58and for these things
44:59still to be coming up
45:00is quite a
45:01you know
45:02quite an eye-opener.
45:03I don't think
45:04they're going to be everywhere
45:05I think it's probably
45:05a very rare case.
45:07There are quite a lot
45:08of people who've got
45:08the odd work or two
45:10but something
45:12of this scale
45:13has not emerged
45:14in many many years.
45:16I think it's unlikely
45:18there are many people
45:19who've got something
45:20of that size
45:21stashed away secretly.
45:23I think this is
45:24a real one-off
45:25and the fact that
45:25he was such a reclusive
45:26character
45:27made this possible
45:28but it's certainly
45:30not going to be
45:30something that happens
45:31every day.
45:32It will probably take
45:33years to sort out
45:35the pictures
45:35and what category
45:36they fall into
45:37and whether any
45:38were looted
45:39and the whole saga
45:41will take a long
45:42time to resolve.
45:43THE END
45:56THE END
45:57Transcription by CastingWords