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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWow. 1,500 masterpieces looted by the Nazis found in Munich flat
Nearly 1,500 priceless paintings including works by Picasso and Matisse that were stolen by the Nazis have been discovered in a flat in Munich, a news report said Sunday.
The German weekly Focus said police came upon the paintings during a 2011 search in an apartment belonging to the octogenarian son of art collector Hildebrand Gurlitt, who had bought them during the 1930s and 1940s.
The search was carried out because the son, Cornelius Gurlitt, was under suspicion for tax evasion, Focus said.
The report said the works were thought to be worth around one billion euros ($1.3 billion dollars) on today's market.
The artworks lay hidden amid old jam jars and junk in darkened rooms in Gurlitt's apartment in the southern city for more than half a century, the paper said.
Gurlitt, a recluse without a job, had sold a few over the course of the years, living off the proceeds, the paper reported.
His father, despite having a Jewish grandmother, had become indispensable to officials in the Third Reich because of his art expertise and his vast network of contacts.
Hitler's propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels put Gurlitt in charge of exporting the art, which the Nazi party considered "degenerate".
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http://news.yahoo.com/germany-finds-1-500-masterpieces-looted-nazis-232003659.html
Victor_c3
(3,557 posts)surrealAmerican
(11,340 posts)Either they are "priceless", or they are "worth one billion euros". They cannot be both.
Still, I'm anxious to see the paintings.
cali
(114,904 posts)KurtNYC
(14,549 posts)into otherwise well written articles.
The incompetent rise to the middle.
ananda
(28,783 posts)..