Discussion: Lost Monet Picture Found In German Collector's Suitcase

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Discussion for article #227289

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Only a small fraction of the massive theft of art by the Nazis has been recovered, The rest was either destroyed or secreted away into private collections and even museums.Gurlitt is merely a small example as the current German government drags its heels.

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Now just where did I put that Vermeer? Was it in the large carry-on, or in the wheeled duffel?

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I prefer to keep my monet in my wallet

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Read ‘The Rape of Europa’ for a detailed account of how the Nazis destroyed and stole western civilization’s heritage. Devastating.

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Being the son of a looter doesn’t really make him a “collector.”

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All I wanna do is [bang, bang, bang, bang]
And [click, ka-ching]
And take your Monet.

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It is a little more complicated than that. If most of the paintings and drawings had been from Jewish or other private collections, it would have been relatively easy to restore them to their rightful owners (as complicated as that is some 80 years after the fact). And Gurlitt had agreed to restore the paintings; some art historians who are experts in stolen art are working on that at this moment.

But most of the stuff comes apparently from German museums which were only too happy to sell the “un-German” art after 1933 in order to cleanse their collections. Gurlitt sr. seems to have bought the vast majority of his art holdings in a perfectly legal way, from sellers who undoubtedly owned the art and were only too glad to get rid of it. Sorting out which part of the collection actually belongs to Gurlitt and which does not has kept art historians in business for the last few years, and it is still a very, very difficult set of questions.

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I thought socialized German healthcare was supposed to be affordable!

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