NOTED ART WORKS MISSING IN GERMANY

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 22907, 29 March 1949, Page 2

NOTED ART WORKS MISSING IN GERMANY

(From a Reuters Correspondent in

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.

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, modem 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 safe-keeping in an 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 was 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.