page_title: Gurlitt Collection
section_title: Other works previously sold
hierarchical_section_title: Gurlitt Collection / Contents / Other works previously sold
context_page_description: The Gurlitt Collection was a collection of around 1,500 art works assembled by the late German art dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt which was passed first to his wife, Helene, and on her death to their son, Cornelius Gurlitt, who died in 2014.
  The collection attracted international interest in 2013 when it was announced as a sensational 2012 "Nazi loot discovery" by the media as a result of actions by officials of Ausgburg in Cornelius Gurlitt's apartment in Schwabing, Munich, investigating Gurlitt on suspicion of possible tax evasion. German authorities seized the entire collection, although Gurlitt was not detained. Gurlitt repeatedly requested the return of the collection on the grounds that he had committed no crime, but eventually agreed that the collection could remain with the Prosecutor's office for evaluation in case any Nazi-era looted works could be identified.
context_section_description: Other paintings which had previously been in the collection but sold prior to its 2012 rediscovery included a Paul Klee landscape painting sold by Hildebrand in 1950, the Picasso Portrait of a Woman with Two Noses and two items by Rudolf Schlichter and Georg Schrimpf sold by Helene in 1960 as noted above, Beckmann's Bar, Brown and The Lion Tamer by Cornelius, and Macke's Woman with a Parrot, which was sold in 2007 for €2.4 million and (according to Hickley) was most likely consigned by Benita. The eleven works sold by Cornelius in 1988 included a Degas pastel and items by Otto Dix, Erich Heckel, Christian Rohlfs, Max Pechstein and Otto Müller; according to gallery owner Eberhard Kornfeld, Cornelius also sold four other works on paper via him in 1990, originally from the 1937 "degenerate art" holdings. Paul Klee's Swamp Legend, purchased by Hildebrand from the "degenerate art" holdings, was still in his possession at his death and then sold some time between 1956 and 1962 (when it appeared at auction), probably by his widow; after several changes of ownership, this work ended up in Munich's Lenbachhaus Museum, where in 2015 it was under protracted legal action from the heirs of original owner Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers for its restitution. An agreement was finally reached in 2017 for the Museum to retain the painting but for compensation (estimated at €2–4 million, or $2.33–4.65 million) to be paid to the heirs of the original owner.
caption: Swamp Legend by Paul Klee, in the Collection at Hildebrand's death, subsequently sold (presumed by Helene) in or before 1962
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