Free Republic

In the next few days "The Monuments Men," directed by George Clooney and boasting an all-star cast, will be previewed in staid and upper-crust locations such as the National Gallery of Art and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government before being released nationally on Feb. 7. This makes sense, for the film is about a small group of art professionals, many of them from Ivy League colleges and top U.S. museums, who, in the last days of the war and well after the surrender of Germany, secured and preserved millions of European cultural objects looted by the Nazis and returned them...

Art recluse Cornelius Gurlitt has said he wants the £1billion of art treasures taken from his flat by German customs officials returned to him – despite the fact at least some of the haul is Nazi loot strong-armed from Jewish people at knock-down prices. Gurlitt, 80, told Der Spiegel news magazine in a rambling interview laced with an overriding sense of victim-hood that his father Hildebrand – a powerful Nazi-era art dealer once tasked to sell modern art abroad for the regime to buy weapons – had acquired the priceless works legally and that he as his heir sees himself...

A treasure trove of artworks worth almost £1billion seized by the Nazis and reportedly destroyed in RAF bombing raids during WW2 has been found behind rotting food in shabby apartment in Munich. Experts have hailed the discovery of the 1,500 pictures, thought to have been lost or bombed, as a sensational find. The story of the lost masterpieces of such painters as Pablo Picasso, Renoir, Henri Matisse and Marc Chagall is revealed in this week's edition of Germany's Focus magazine which broke the story of the incredible find by customs officials. Art historians examining the collection claim up to 300...

The reclusive pensioner behind the secret trove of paintings worth nearly £1billion, seized by the Nazis in the 1930s, and revealed this weekend, was a man of mystery in many aspects of his life. Cornelius Gurlitt, 80, son of art dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt, did not have an official bank account, pension or insurance - he simply lived off the extensive collection, selling them when his money dipped. The pensioner, who had never worked, was not even registered with the police - mandatory in Germany - and was not known to the tax authorities or social services. The story which begins...

WASHINGTON - A federal judge has ruled that the U.S. government can keep four watercolors signed by Adolf Hitler and millions of photographs taken by the Nazi dictator's personal photographer, ending a 20-year dispute over their ownership. The case began in 1983 when Billy Price of Houston, who collects Nazi memorabilia, joined the heirs of Hitler photographer and friend Heinrich Hoffman and filed suit to obtain the paintings and photos. They charged that the materials were illegally seized by the U.S. Army near the end of World War II. U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. ruled May 30 that...