Experts involved in returning art from Nazi-era lootings should have known earlier about the giant hoard of stolen works that was made public in Germany this week, leading Austrian art expert Alfred Weidinger claimed Wednesday in Vienna.
“The existence of the collection was no secret,” said Weidinger, the deputy head of Vienna’s Belvedere museum, which has been involved in high-profile restitution cases of looted paintings.
“Basically, every important art dealer in the southern German region knew that it existed, and that it had this dimension,” he told the Austrian press agency APA.
German investigators are now trying to research the ownership history of the more than 1,400 paintings and other art works that were discovered early this year in the Munich apartment of Cornelius Gurlitt, 79, the son of a leading Nazi-era art trader.
Gurlitt financed himself by selling pictures from time to time.
His father had claimed that the collection of works by artists such as Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse was destroyed in World War II.
Restitution experts could have easily have followed the traces to the Gurlitt family’s treasure, Weidinger said.
Cornelius Gurlitt also owns a house in the Austrian town of Salzburg, but Austrian authorities say they have received no request yet from Germany to search it.
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