BERLIN – Germany on Wednesday returned three art works to a descendant of a Jewish French collector who owned them until his death in 1941 in Nazi-occupied France.
Two of the pictures came from a trove of works held by Cornelius Gurlitt, which was discovered in 2012 by German tax inspectors in Munich. His father had been an art dealer and sold what the Nazis dismissed as “degenerate” art.
At a ceremony in Berlin, culture minister Monika Gruetters said the return of the pictures was a small but important step.
“We Germans know of our wrongdoing and know that we can never put right the misery. But at least returning these kinds of art works are small but important and necessary steps towards justice in one small area,” she said.
A great niece of the pictures’ owner, Parisian lawyer and art collector Armand Dorville, said she was very touched by their return.