八、完碧难归 [Raubkunst and Restitution]
画作被没收后，当局请来柏林自由大学“堕落艺术”研究中心的艺术史学家梅柯·荷夫曼追溯作品出处。梅柯用了一年半的时间鉴别出380幅属于堕落派艺术品，但她明显已力不从心。这时，一个由设在柏林的渊源研究局组办，由已退休的前德国文化传媒局长英格·伯格林-默克尔领导的国际专案组负责接手。伯格林-默克尔说“透明度和办案进度是当务之急。”这些作品一经鉴定就立即在官方的“失散作品网站”予以登载。在公寓里发现的最值钱的作品，是一幅从保罗·罗森伯格处被盗的马蒂斯，估价在600-800万美元之间（有的专家说一旦拍卖可能会卖到两千万）。罗森伯格的继承人仍有1923年的收据并已向总检察官立案索取。罗森伯格的继承人之一是安·辛格勒，她是（前国际货币基金总裁）多米尼克·斯特劳斯－卡恩的前妻、法国著名政治评论家、法语版《赫芬顿邮报》主编。去年十二月，德国电视节目《文化》报道说，有多达３０人声称认领这幅马蒂斯，充分说明了罗纳德·兰黛跟我说的，“这些画作一旦在网上公布，大家就都开始说，‘我记得我叔叔当年有这幅画哎！’”
伯格林-默克尔还说，她所领导的专案组直属总检察长耐米兹，但并无权要求将原画退还原主或其继承人。再说德国没有任何一条法律规定康纳利斯必须完碧归赵。耐米兹估计其中大约310幅画无疑是属于康纳利斯本人的，应该立即予以归还。对此，德国犹太同乡总会总理事迪特·格鲁曼回应说，总检察长应对此决定三思而行。
去年十一月，巴伐利亚新上任的司法部长温弗瑞德·波斯巴克说，“联邦和州政府各部门从一开始就应该对这个问题的处理给予更高的重视和紧迫感。”今年二月，由他起草的关于更改诉讼时效的法律更正案已被提交到国会上议院。美国现任国务卿凯瑞在犹太大屠杀问题上的特别顾问、1998年华盛顿大会条约中有关归还艺术品之国际惯例的起草人斯图尔特·爱森斯代特也不断向德国施加压力，呼吁取消30年的诉讼时效。说来说去，如果一个人事先不知道这批作品的存在，如何可能申报认领呢?
九、鞠躬尽瘁 [To Protect and Serve]
希德布兰·葛利在车祸身亡前一年（1955年），在一篇没有发表的六页短文中写道他的英雄壮举，“这些作品意味着我生命之最精彩。”他回忆起在十九世纪初母亲带他去参观的首次画展，那是表现主义和其它现代艺术派的一次盛事。“其作品的野蛮、激情有力的色调，那种原始感，甚至那质地极差的木画框”就像是给中产阶级“搧了一记耳光”。他说他逐渐认识到这些画作落到自己手里“并不为我所有，我只是一片圣地的守护者。”康纳利斯觉得自己传承了同样的职责，就像父亲当年救藏品于纳粹、轰炸、美国人一样。
《焦点》周刊的曝光文章发表后十天，康纳利斯逃过狗仔队，搭上火车，前去见他三月一次的医生。据《镜报》的报道，这个旅程对于蛰居公寓的康纳利斯来说是不错的转换环境，他对此总是很期待。他提前两天到，看完医生次日回来。而酒店是用打好的预订信，钢笔签字，然后将信寄出去的方式提前几个月就订好的。康纳利斯心脏有问题，他的医生说最近由于各种刺激情况更不好。
去年十二月底，康纳利斯住进了慕尼黑的一间诊所。慕尼黑地区法院派出了一名过渡期监护人，这样的监护人不能为当事人决策，可是在当事人力不从心、不能清楚了解和行使自己的权利，特别是法律权利时，他会予以介入。康纳利斯雇了三名律师，以及一间危机公关公司负责跟媒体打交道。今年1月29日，其中的两名律师向慕尼黑公共检察院提出起诉，追究向《焦点》周刊走漏消息因而违反司法机密的泄密人。
2月10日，奥地利当局在康纳利斯邵兹堡的家中发现了包括莫奈、雷诺和毕加索在内的六十多幅画作。根据康纳利斯的新发言人史蒂芬·赫辛格所说，是康纳利斯主动要求当局调查这些收藏品来源,以确认其中有否当年以盗窃所得，初步的检查结果是没有。一周后，赫辛格公布了新设立的网站gurlitt.info（葛利.info）并在网站上发表以下声明：“有些关于我和我的收藏品的报道并不属实，或者不完全属实，因此，我和我的律师、法律监护人愿意提供信息，将有关这些画作和我本人的讨论具体化。” 赫辛格还说设立这个网站的意图是“清楚地表明我们愿意和外界以及可能的原画主产生对话。” 康纳利斯卖掉《驯狮人》并与原画主弗莱克海姆的继承人分成，就是一个例子。
2月19日，康纳利斯的律师对当年的搜查及没收令提出上诉，要求推翻原诉，因为这与当时指控的逃税罪无关。
康纳利斯的表弟爱哈特·葛利是位摄影家，住在西班牙巴塞罗那。他说康纳利斯是“一位独行的牛仔，一具孤寂的灵魂，一个悲剧的人物。他不为谋财，否则他早把这些画卖掉了。” 他爱的是这些画。这些画是他生命的全部。
若无痴爱如斯，艺术一文不值。
图1：安·辛格勒
图2：康纳利斯·葛利 - 其邵兹堡家的门牌
Raubkunst and Restitution
After the artworks were seized, Meike Hoffmann, an art historian with the “Degenerate Art” Research Center at Berlin’s Free University, was brought in to trace their provenance. Hoffmann worked on them for a year and a half and identified 380 that were Degenerate artworks, but she was clearly overwhelmed. An international task force, under the Berlin-based Bureau of Provenance Research and led by the retired deputy to Germany’s commissioner for culture and media, Ingeborg Berggreen-Merkel, was appointed to take over the task. Berggreen-Merkel said that “transparency and progress are the urgent priorities,” and that the confirmed Raubkunst was being put up on the government’s Lost Art Database Web site as quickly as possible. One of the paintings on the site, the most valuable found in Cornelius’s apartment—with an estimated value of $6 million to $8 million (although some experts estimate it could go for as much as $20 million at auction)—is the Matisse stolen from Paul Rosenberg. The Rosenberg heirs have its bill of sale from 1923 and have filed a claim for it with the chief prosecutor. One of the heirs is Rosenberg’s granddaughter Anne Sinclair, the ex-wife of Dominique Strauss-Kahn and a well-known French political commentator who runs Le Huffington Post. In December, the German television show Kulturzeit reported that as many as 30 claims have been made on the same Matisse, which illustrates the problem Ronald Lauder described to me: “When you put them up on the Internet, everybody says, ‘Hey, I remember my uncle had a picture like this.’ ”
Berggreen-Merkel also said the task force, which answers to the chief prosecutor, Nemetz, does not have the mandate to get the artworks back to their original owners or their heirs. There is nothing in German law compelling Cornelius to give them back. Nemetz estimated that 310 of the works were “doubtless the property of the accused” and could be returned to him immediately. The president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Dieter Graumann, responded that the prosecutor should rethink his plans to return any of the works.
In November, Bavaria’s newly appointed justice minister, Winfried Bausback, said, “Everyone involved on the federal and state level should have tackled this challenge with more urgency and resources from the start.” In February, a revision of the statute-of-limitations law, drawn up by Bausback, was presented to the upper house of Parliament. Stuart Eizenstat, Secretary of State John Kerry’s special adviser on Holocaust issues, who drafted the 1998 Washington Principles’ international norms for art restitution, had been pressuring Germany to lift the 30-year statute of limitations. After all, how could anybody have filed claims for Cornelius’s pictures if their existence was unknown?
To Protect and Serve
Hildebrand Gurlitt, spinning his heroic narrative in an unpublished six-page essay he wrote in 1955, a year before his death, said, “These works have meant for me … the best of my life.” He recalled his mother taking him to the Bridge school’s first show, at the turn of the century, a seminal event for Expressionism and modern art, and how “these barbaric, passionately powerful colors, this rawness, enclosed in the poorest of wooden frames” were “like a slap in the face” to the middle class. He wrote that he had come to regard the works that had ended up in his possession “not as my property, but rather as a kind of fief that I have been assigned to steward.” Cornelius felt that he had also inherited the duty to protect them, just as his father had from the Nazis, the bombs, and the Americans.
Ten days after the Focus story, Cornelius managed to escape the paparazzi in Munich and took the train for his tri-monthly checkup with his doctor. It was a little expedition, and a welcome change of scenery from his hermetic existence in the apartment, that he always looked forward to, Der Spiegel reported. He left Munich two days before the appointment and returned the day after and had made the hotel reservation months ahead of time, posting the typed request, signed with a fountain pen. Cornelius has a chronic heart condition, which his doctor says has been acting up now more than usual, because of all the excitement.
In late December, just before his 81st birthday, Cornelius was admitted to a clinic in Munich, where he remains. A legal guardian was appointed by the district court of Munich, an intermediate type of guardian who does not have the power to make decisions but is brought in when someone is overwhelmed with understanding and exercising his rights, especially in complex legal matters. Cornelius has hired three lawyers, and a crisis-management public-relations firm to deal with the media. On January 29, two of the lawyers filed a John Doe complaint with the public prosecutor’s office in Munich, against whoever leaked information from the investigation to Focus and thus violated judicial secrecy.
Then, on February 10, Austrian authorities found approximately 60 more pieces, including paintings by Monet, Renoir, and Picasso, in Cornelius’s Salzburg house. According to his new spokesman, Stephan Holzinger, Cornelius asked that they be investigated to determine if any had been stolen, and an initial evaluation suggested that none had. A week later, Holzinger announced the creation of a Web site, gurlitt.info, which included this statement from Cornelius: “Some of what has been reported about my collection and myself is not correct or not quite correct. Consequently my lawyers, my legal caretaker, and I want to make available information to objectify the discussion about my collection and my person.” Holzinger added that the creation of the site was their attempt to “make clear that we are willing to engage in dialogue with the public and any potential claimants,” as Cornelius did with the Flechtheim heirs when he sold The Lion Tamer.
On February 19, Cornelius’s lawyers filed an appeal against the search warrant and seizure order, demanding the reversal of the decision that led to the confiscation of his artworks, because they are not relevant to the charge of tax evasion.
Cornelius’s cousin, Ekkeheart Gurlitt, a photographer in Barcelona, said that Cornelius was “a lone cowboy, a lonely soul, and a tragic figure. He wasn’t in it for the money. If he were, he would have sold the pictures long ago.” He loved them. They were his whole life.
Without admirers like that, art is nothing.
