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 The Bern Art Museum discovered in May it had been named sole
heir of Cornelius Gurlitt, the reclusive son of a man who dealt
in so-called "degenerate" art for Adolf Hitler. The Bern museum
has yet to decide whether to accept the artwork.
World Jewish Congress president Ronald Lauder said that since
Gurlitt's father, Hildebrand, had collected art stolen by the
Nazis from Jewish collectors or taken from German state museums,
Bern would have a problem on its hands if it accepted the works
before their provenance has been fully investigated.
"If this museum in Switzerland gets involved with this
inheritance, it will open Pandora's box and unleash an avalanche
of lawsuits - possibly from German museums, but certainly from
the descendants of the Jewish owners," Lauder said.
"The people in Bern will harm themselves and their country if
they take these paintings before their provenance is cleared up.
They would become a museum of stolen art," he told German
magazine Der Spiegel in an interview to be published on Sunday.
Gurlitt died in May at the age of 81, in the flat in Munich
where he lived and stored the art collection. The Bern museum
said news of his bequest came "like a bolt from the blue,"
because it had not had any connection with him.
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Hundreds of masterpieces by the likes of Chagall and Picasso were
secretly stored by Gurlitt at the Munich apartment and a house in
nearby Salzburg, Austria. He occasionally sold pieces to finance his
quiet lifestyle and his healthcare. The collection is worth an
estimated 1 billion euros ($1.4 billion).
The Gurlitt family had said its collection was destroyed in the
bombing of their home in Dresden during World War Two. Its survival
remained secret until 2012, when tax inspectors stumbled across the
hoard during an unrelated inquiry.
The Bern museum denied a German media report last month that it had
decided to accept the artworks. It said it was still in talks with
German authorities to ascertain all the implications of accepting
the inheritance.
"In the end our board of trustees is free to decide whether it is in
the best interests of the Bern Art Museum to accept or decline the
estate," it said in a statement in mid-October.
(Reporting by Stephen Brown; Editing by Larry King)
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