Content of Gurlitt’s Munich Art Trove to Remain a Mystery

Max Liebermann, Two Riders on a Beach (1901). One of the paintings found in Cornelius Gurlitt's possession. Photo by Christof Stache, courtesy of the Public Prosecutor's Office Augsburg.

Neither the press nor the public will ever know the complete makeup of Cornelius Gurlitt‘s 1280-work-strong art collection, recovered from his Munich apartment in 2012. According to the dpa, a Bavarian court ruled on Friday that prosecution in the Gurlitt case will not be required to hand over a full list of the artworks as well as their dimensions.

The decision goes against a previous judgment made by a court in Augsburg as well as a formal request made by German tabloid, Bild. In considering the appeal of that previous decision, the Bavarian court ruled that sufficient information about the contents of the collection were already available on lostart.de. The website, Germany’s central resource for artworks that might fall under the various categories of Nazi loot, has published images and information about 500 works from Gurlitt’s collection.

Last week, Gurlitt’s spokesman announced that the octogenarian would begin returning some of the works from his collection.