The lost Nazi-era art trove

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 2 July 2020

⏱️ 14 minutes

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Summary

In 2012 a stunning, secret collection of art was found in Germany. Much of it had disappeared during Nazi rule in the 1930s and 40s. It had once belonged to one of the Nazi's top art dealers, Hildebrand Gurlitt. It was found by chance in the Munich apartment of his elderly, reclusive son, Cornelius. It contained lost works by Renoir, Matisse, Chagal and the masters of the German expressionist movement. Many of the works had been confiscated during the Nazis "Degenerate Art" campaign in the late 1930s, when the Nazis stripped thousands of works of art from public display. Alex Last spoke to Dr Meike Hoffmann, an expert on Nazi art policy, who was one of the first to examine the collection.

Photo: One of the art works discovered in the Gurlitt collection was Pferde in Landschaft (Horses in Landscape) by famous German expressionist Franz Marc.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless
0:06.8	searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the
0:11.8	telly we share what we've been watching
0:14.0	Cladie Aide.
0:16.0	Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming.
0:19.0	Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige.
0:21.0	And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less
0:24.9	searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC sounds.
0:29.2	Hello and
0:35.0	today the story of the BBC World Service with me Alex Last.
0:39.0	And today the story of the Discovery in Germany in 2012 of the Gerlid Art Collection, an astonishing
0:45.9	horde of artworks missing for decades which have been accumulated by one of the Nazis top
0:51.1	art dealers.
1:01.0	When you see these artworks and touch these artworks, you know I had the feeling that it was a direct touch to the past. So this was very emotional.
1:09.0	In 2012 a German art historian Dr. Micah Hoffman walked into a secret art storage
1:15.7	warehouse in Germany and became one of the first to see an extraordinary site.
1:21.2	All around lay the remains of a stunning collection worth of fortune. More than
1:25.8	1400 pieces of art, some had been missing, thought lost for more than 70 years,
1:32.3	not seen since the Nazis had ruled Germany.
1:35.0	It was so huge.
1:38.0	We went to the depot and there were boxes, also unwrapped artworks and it was a moment that I never experienced
1:51.4	before in my life. This was the collection of Hildebrand Gerlet,
	...

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