Swiss Museum Accepts Art From Late Dealer Cornelius Gurlitt

Kunstmuseum Bern’s Move Could Help Conclude Limbo for Collection With Nazi-Era Links

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A Swiss art museum said Monday it will accept artworks bequeathed by the late son of one of Hitler ’s main art dealers, a move that could conclude a period of legal limbo for a collection whose Nazi-era roots gripped the nation for over a year.

The Kunstmuseum Bern announced it would accept the estate of the late Cornelius Gurlitt at a joint news conference with the governments of Germany and the state of Bavaria, where Mr. Gurlitt lived.

Under the deal, hundreds of artworks with stay in Germany and German authorities will assume responsibility for legal proceedings, as well as for returning artwork to the heirs of Holocaust victims whose works were stolen.

“The decision was anything but easy for the foundation board,” said Christoph Schäublin, president of the Kunstmuseum Bern’s foundation board, reiterating previous assurances that it was crucial that looted art wouldn't be accepted.

“Looted art and that suspected to be looted…won’t get on Swiss ground,” he said.

The museum’s bid still faces a legal challenge by relatives of Mr. Gurlitt, the octogenarian son of Hildebrand Gurlitt, one of Adolf Hitler’s principal art dealers, who died in early May in his Munich apartment after a protracted battle with heart disease.

Mr. Gurlitt’s cousin Uta Werner, supported by other relatives of the late art collector, has applied to the Munich Probate Court for a certificate of inheritance for the collector’s estate decision, saying the move was motivated by a recent psychological report that expressed serious doubts about Mr. Gurlitt’s mental capacity as he drew up his will.

Government officials confiscated his collection in early 2012 as part of a tax investigation. It includes masterpieces by Claude Monet, Henri Matisse and Pierre Auguste-Renoir and was amassed during and shortly after World War II by Mr. Gurlitt’s father, a museum director turned art dealer for Hitler. Historians and lawyers have already concluded the trove contains several pieces stolen from European Jews by the Nazis.

Works that are suspected of being looted or have already been confirmed will stay in Germany until 2015. If a task force looking into the issue isn’t able to sufficiently determine whether it is Nazi-looted art or not, the Kunstmuseum will have to decide whether it will take the work and would then have to bear the sole responsibility for its decision.