About 1,260 works of art were found in Cornelius Gurlitt’s apartment in Munich. About 240 more were found in his house in Salzburg in February 2014. The federal culture commissioner, Monika Grütters, wanted the origin of every picture in the collection cleared up.
A task force worked on the provenance for about two years, at a cost of about 1.9 million euros. It identified works by Liebermann, Matisse, Spitzweg, Menzel and Pissarro as art looted by the Nazis.
After two years of research, only five works had been clearly identified as looted art.