Fascist Art Aficionados

"We went into the apartment expecting to find a few thousand undeclared euros, maybe a black bank account. But we were stunned with what we found. From floor to ceiling, from bedroom to bathroom, were piles and piles of old food in tins and old noodles. Behind it all were these pictures worth tens, hundreds of millions of euros."
Customs Spokesman, Munich, Germany

"As important a story as this is, why have the Bavarian authorities been sitting on them for two years? Bavaria needs to publish a list of these works as soon as possible."
"We need to ask why they haven't published a list of all the paintings that have been found, so that the families who are looking for their paintings, and have been looking for the past 75 years, can find them. We represent hundreds of families around the world and we are looking for thousands of paintings, so we and others want to see a list of those paintings immediately."
Anne Webber, Commission for Looted Art in Europe, London

There are an estimated one hundred thousand (100,000) works of art that have been unaccounted for respecting their whereabouts, since the end of the Second World War. The Third Reich, under direct orders from their Fuhrer Adolf Hitler, who despised what he considered to be degraded, or "degenerate" art, the work of "culture-barbarians" producing "primitive scratchings", undertook to establish a program of confiscation.

They looted the possession of art lovers, primarily Jewish families of means. They took family silver, furs, sculptures, jewellery and anything of value that might enrich themselves. They also took possession of artwork, and of antiques, objects of great heritage  esteem and saleable potential. That, aside from taking possession of their victims' real estate properties, their livelihoods and their dignity.

^{A painting that could be attributed to French painter Henri Matisse (AFP/Getty Images)}

And along with all of that, they focused as ordered, on the 'worthless, modern, degenerate art' of the barbarians who produced them and the connoisseurs who bought them. Most of whom were destined for the Death Chambers of the Nazi concentration camps in any event, so what conceivable use would they be to them? "The number of works is overwhelming", said Monika Tatzkow, a provenance researcher, author of books on Nazi-looted art, from her home in Berlin.

Paintings by Belarusian-born French artist Marc Chagall and Otto Dix Photo: AFP/Getty Images

Art experts in Germany have identified previously-unknown paintings by Chagall, Matisse and Canaletto among the 1,406 works found in the flat of an elderly recluse

All those useless faux works of art that Hitler so abhorred were to be destroyed, but second thought occurred that they were, although detestable, valuable, and as such of potential future use. And so trusted regime art dealers in league with the stone-age barbarians that represented the Third Reich, kept those artworks, and among those who did was an insider, Hildebrandt Gurlitt. Whose then-teen-age son knew what treasures his father gathered to himself, and kept them eventually among his own possessions.

^{A painting by Italian painter Canaletto}
That would be over 1,500 works of looted art, which were kept in squalid surroundings, in an apartment complex built after the war. Mr. Gurlitt aroused suspicion when he behaved suspiciously while travelling to Germany from Switzerland. Officials attempted to track him down in police files with whom all citizens must normally register, but there was no evidence of the man; no tax records, social security documents, pension data.

The invisible white-haired 80-year-old had his tawdry flat searched by officials expecting to find evidence of black-market activity, discovering instead a treasure-trove of purloined world art of the most impeccable lineage. Among the 1,500 hidden artworks were masterpieces by Henri Matissse, Pablo Picasso, Pierre-August Renoir and Marc Chagall, all of it with an estimated value of $1.4-billion.