BERLIN: A Swiss museum on Monday accepted a German recluse’s bequest of a spectacular trove of more than 1,000 artworks hoarded during the Nazi era, but pledged to restitute any looted pieces.

The decision, announced at a news conference in Berlin, covers valuable paintings and sketches by Picasso, Monet, Chagall and other masters that were discovered at two homes owned by Cornelius Gurlitt.

Gurlitt, who died last May aged 81, was the son of an art dealer tasked by Adolf Hitler with helping to plunder great works from museums and Jewish collectors, many of whom perished in the gas chambers.

After six months of negotiations with the German government, Christoph Schaeublin, president of the Board of Trustees at the Museum of Fine Arts in Bern, vowed to work with German authorities to ensure that “all looted art in the collection is returned” to its rightful owners.

Around 500 works of dubious provenance will remain in Germany so that a government-appointed task force can continue its research on identifying the heirs.

The trove of 1,280 works was unearthed in Gurlitt’s cluttered Munich flat during a routine tax inquiry in 2012. More than 300 other works were later discovered in a ramshackle house Gurlitt owned in Salzburg.

Although he was never charged with a crime, German authorities confiscated all of the Munich pieces and stored them in a secret location.

Gurlitt struck an accord with the German government shortly before his death to help track down the paintings’ legitimate heirs.

But his anger over his treatment reportedly led him to stipulate in his will that the collection should go not to a German museum but to the Swiss institution.

‘Mitigated joy’: German Culture Minister Monika Gruetters called the accord “a milestone in coming to terms with our history” during the Third Reich (Hitler’s rule from 1933 to 1945)..

She said the German government was committed to returning the looted works to Jewish descendants “as soon as possible, with no ifs, ands or buts”.

Schaeublin described a feeling of “mitigated joy” in accepting the remarkable collection, and the historical responsibility it carries.

Under the terms of the agreement, nearly 480 avant-garde works deemed by the Nazis to be “degenerate art”, not befitting the ideals of the Third Reich, would be loaned by Bern primarily to institutions from which they were confiscated.

Published in Dawn, November 25th , 2014