We have covered the spectacular Gurlitt case here before. The treasure trove of looted art seized by the Bavarian public prosecutor’s office in a Schwabing apartment raises complex legal issues at the cross-road of the law of seizure and the law of movable property – these were discussed at the VII. Heidelberg Art Law Conference last week. The panel discussion was jointly organized by the German Institute of Art and Law and the Research Center for Transnational Commercial Dispute Resolution at EBS University of Economics and Law, Wiesbaden. I am glad that one of the panellists, Professor Matthias Weller, co-director of IFKUR and director of the EBS Dispute Resolution Center, has agreed to share his views in a guest post. He argues that the seizure of the works of art by the Augsburg public prosecution opens the doors for civil law claims. Read More
Tag: Hildebrand Gurlitt
Update on Art Law: The Gurlitt Paintings – A Treasure Trove of Looted Art
In today’s Legal Tribune Online, I have published a German language piece which adresses the limitation issues in more (technical) detail. Interestingly, one of the few cases that ever dealt with these limitation issues, not only in the context of looted art, under German law was an English High Court case: City of Gotha and Federal Republic of Germany v. Sotheby’s and Cobert Finance S.A. of 1998. Read More
Art Law: The Gurlitt Paintings – A Treasure Trove of Looted Art
Picasso, Chagall, Marc, Nolde, Spitzweg, Renoir, Macke, Courbet, Beckmann, Kandinsky, Kokoschka, Matisse, Liebermann and Dix – the names of the artists, and the sheer amount of art seized by German authorities in Munich in 2012 is making headlines around the world, since news magazine FOCUS broke the news on Sunday. Almost 1,500 paintings were seized, as part of a customs and tax investigation by German authorities, in the apartment of Cornelius Gurlitt. It is both temping and somewhat dangerous to come up with a legal assessment at this point in time, where many facts are not known. The Augsburg’s public prosecutor’s office (Staatsanwaltschaft Augsburg) held a press conference this morning and press reports are coming through as this post is written (here’s the link to the live blog from that press conference on FOCUS). Read More