Nazi Looted Art: The Gurlitt Art Trove

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This episode focuses on Nazi art dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt, recent findings about the history of the art he held, and ongoing efforts to return Nazi-looted art found in his collection, which was in the possession of his son, the late Cornelius Gurlitt. 

Show Notes:

1:30 Hildebrand Gurlitt exhibited modern artists, including German Expressionists 

2:30 Gurlitt began work for Nazis; he gathered art for the Führermuseum and was authorized to liquidate degenerate art

4:25 Hildebrand’s son, Cornelius, inherited his father’s collection 

5:20 German tax investigation led to locating approximately 1,500 works in Cornelius’ residences in Munich, Germany and Salzburg, Austria

6:20 Claim by Alfred Flechtheim’s heirs for Beckmann’s The Lion Tamer

8:00 Kunst Museum Bern inherited Gurlitt’s collection

8:30 Manet’s Ships at Sea in Stormy Weather was sold to Tokyo’s National Museum of Western Art

8:50 Gurlitt Art Find: Paths of Research 

10:15 27,000 documents from Gurlitt’s estate provide unreliable information about sales

11:00 Thomas Couture’s Portrait of a Seated Woman

11:40 Paul Cezanne’s Mont Sainte-Victoire

12:20 To date, 14 looted works have been returned to heirs, including Henri Matisse’s Woman with a Fan and Max Liebermann’s Two Riders on a Beach 

13:50 Questions arising from the Gurlitt Collection: how can right and wrong be so easily blurred? 

15:00 Why, in the shadow of mass murder, is the stealing of art important? Because small steps of hate, like theft of a people’s culture, lead to larger steps.

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Music by Toulme.

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© Stephanie Drawdy [2026]