VALUABLE PAINTINGS MISSING

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 69, Issue 160, 19 April 1949, Page 6

VALUABLE PAINTINGS MISSING

. BIG REWARD OFFERED

(Air Mail). LONDON. German art authorities are offering 10,000 marks reward for information leading- to the return of 137 valuable paintings, believed to have been stolen from an air raid shelter in Bad Wildungen at the end of the war. The total value of the paintings, which formerly belonged to private Frankfurt collectors, the Frankfurt Municipal Gallery, and the City Art Institute, is so high that it cannot be accurately assessed.

Art experts say that included in the lost art trove are paintings by Italian masters, modern French impressionists, Dutch, Flemish and famous German artists. One official connected with the Frankfurt Gallery said that the reason only 10,000 marks had been offered as a reward, was because it was felt that a* higher sum would make the holders of the paintings aware of their value, and consequently less willing to surrender them.

According to the City 'Art Institute, the paintings were originally registered in a group while they were stored for safekeeping in an air raid shelter in Ziegenberg, in Hesse. On August 8, 1944, they were placed in the furniture van of a Frankfurt transport company for removal to another air raid shelter at Bad Wildungen.

When in the autumn of 1945' an inventory was taken at Bad Wildungen it ivas discovered that 114 of the paintings belonging to the Frankfurt museums, and another 23 belonging to private Frankfurt collectors, had disappeared. Huge posters announcing the loss of the paintings have been placed on pillar boxes and in police stations throughout Hesse. Among the missing works of art are the martyrdom of Saint Lawrence by Paolo Veronese, portrait of a bearded man by Giovanni Tiepolo, and Christ on a Cross by Simone Martini. —Reuter’s.