Cornelius Gurlitt (art collector)

Rolf Nikolaus Cornelius Gurlitt (28 December 1932 – 6 May 2014) was a German art collection owner. The son of Hildebrand Gurlitt, an art gallery director and Nazi-era dealer of looted art who worked for Adolf Hitler and Hermann Göring, Gurlitt inherited from his father a collection of over 1,400 artworks known as the Gurlitt trove or Gurlitt Collection, a small number (less than 20) of which were subsequently demonstrated to have been looted from Jews by Nazis. Upon its public discovery, the collection was impounded by the Augsburg Prosecutor's Office as evidence in a possible case for tax evasion that was never mounted; the works were not returned to Gurlitt's estate until after his death. In his will, Gurlitt left the entire collection, minus any works that turned out to be looted, to a lesser known gallery in Switzerland, the Museum of Fine Arts Bern (German: Kunstmuseum Bern), apparently in reaction over his perceived poor treatment by the German authorities.