Munich Court Rejects Cousin’s Inheritance Claims to Gurlitt Collection

The trove of over 1,000 artworks, originally collected for a museum planned by Hitler, was discovered in a Munich apartment during a tax investigation in 2012. Cornelius Gurlitt, a reclusive art collector who died in May 2014, had willed the works to Kunstmuseum Bern in Switzerland. However, a cousin of Gurlitt, Uta Werner, filed a lawsuit to block the transfer of the artworks to the museum. This week, a German court rejected the suit.  As reported by the New York Times,

In a statement in German released on its website on Thursday, the Munich court said:  “The decision finds Cornelius Gurlitt’s will, in which he names the Kunstmuseum Bern as sole heir, valid. The decision dismisses the claim made by his cousin that the testator Cornelius Gurlitt was incapable of making a will at the time of signing.”

Via ARTnews.