A reproduction of a painting by German artist Otto Dix is seen during a press conference in Augsburg, Germany, on the discovery of 1,400 paintings including works by Picasso and Matisse looted by the Nazis. / Christof Stache, AFP/Getty Images

BERLIN - Watching the TV news report on a cache of art seized in a German apartment, Berlin lawyer Lothar Fremy was surprised to see a painting he and his clients had been hunting for years flash across the screen.

The painting, Riders on the Beach by German-Jewish artist Max Liebermann, had once belonged to his clients' great-uncle David Friedmann, a Jewish businessman persecuted by the Nazis. It had been lost for more than 70 years.

"They were very surprised and kind of delighted," said Fremy, a lawyer at Rosbach & Fremy law firm in Berlin, referring to Friedmann's now 88- and 92-year-old grandnephews, who fled the then-German city of Breslau, now Wroclaw in Poland, shortly before the war before ending up in the United States.

He said they had mixed feelings upon hearing the news.

"One question that came up pretty quickly was why do we only find out about this now through the TV," said Fremy, who has been working on art restitution cases for eight years.

Fremy's question is on the minds of many art experts. Why, they ask, has it taken so long for German authorities to go public with the find and why do they appear to be dragging their feet regarding the restitution of Nazi-confiscated art?

"I think there is goodwill in Germany but more sensitivity and transparency is needed," Dieter Graumann, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, an umbrella organization that represents local Jewish communities in Germany, told USA TODAY.

"The issue was kept secret for a year and a half and who knows how much longer it would've been kept secret had it not been published in the media."

The painting that piqued the interest of Fremy was one of more than 1,400 artworks, including pieces by Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and Marc Chagall, seized in an apartment in the south German city of Munich.

Investigators were looking into Munich resident Cornelius Gurlitt for possible tax evasion after he crossed the Swiss border with a large amount of cash. Gurlitt's father, Hildebrand Gurlitt, was a German art dealer during the Nazi era and had left his collection to his son.

Though the artworks were discovered by investigators 18 months ago, the find was not made public until German weekly Focus reported on it a week ago.

The art historian evaluating the works for the Bavarian authorities described her happiness at seeing the paintings for the first time. But Graumann said he felt no joy.

"I feel sadness with these paintings because I know they were to a large extent extorted and stolen and I don't know how someone can speak of happiness in regard to them," he said.

The find illustrates what appears to be a persistent feature of German handling of cases in which they suspect artwork of being in the hands of wrongful owners: lack of transparency.

"There is so much looted art in German museums - the families have waited over 70 years now to find their paintings," said Anne Webber from the London-based Commission of Looted Art in Europe.

"So we have called on the German government and all the German states to publish lists of works of art (they have from) between 1933 and 1945 that are in public collections."

The Austrian government has been doing research on its federal collection for 14 years and has returned 30,000 items in that period, said Webber. But there is much more out there.

During Hitler's reign, the Nazis are estimated to have seized 600,000 pieces of art and millions of cultural items such as books and manuscripts. The items were either stolen from individuals or museums.

In many cases, Jewish art dealers were forced to sell works for well under their value.

After World War II, the U.S. government, France and the United Kingdom returned the pieces the Germans had amassed to their countries of origin, says Wesley Fisher, director of research for the N.Y.-based Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, which works for the restitution of Jewish-owned property taken by the Nazis.

"They gave them back to the countries' governments," said Fisher. "Sometimes the governments did return them to the original owners and sometimes they did not. ... You have collections kept by the governments that only in the last 10 to 15 years have been dealt with."

A collection of works owned by Hildebrand Gurlitt actually traveled to the U.S. in 1956 as part of an exhibition, according to records from the American Federation of Arts, The Wall Street Journal reported. Of the works found in the apartment of Hildebrand's son were as many as 163 that may have been returned to the Gurlitt family in 1950 by the U.S. after an evaluation of their provenance, it said.

In 1998, Germany and more than 40 other countries signed the Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art, which calls for transparent identification and fair restitution processes for works that may have been looted by the Nazis. Around 200,000 items had not been returned at the time of the conference, says Fisher.

"If you look at how many works have been restituted since 1998, I think it's around 1,000," he said. "In the Jeu de Paume (museum's) database, there are some 22,000 works of which over half are still missing."

The database of the Jeu de Paume in Paris is a searchable collection of more than 20,000 art objects taken from Jews in German-occupied France and Belgium by the Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce (EER), a Nazi agency which was charged with plundering cultural valuables.

The EER looted French Jewish and Belgian collections from 1940 to 1944, bringing them to the Jeu de Paume for cataloguing before sending them to Germany. Hildebrand Gurlitt worked with art works taken from the Jeu de Paume and was a prominent art dealer who specialized in what the Nazis termed "degenerate art."

He was stripped of his post as director of the Hamburg Kunstverein (art association) because of his Jewish roots but was regarded as useful by the Nazis because of his art connections, so he continued to work trading in art under Nazi propaganda minister Josef Goebbels. Fisher says many Jewish art dealers were forced to work for the Nazis.

"Because of the criminal nature of this, there was an awful lot of blackmailing and pocketing of money and hiding of artworks including, in this case, by someone with Jewish roots," said Fisher. "He wasn't alone, there were other Jewish art dealers who were in this position: They profited and they saved their lives by dealing in this fashion."

Determining the ownership of paintings is very difficult cases such as Gurlitt's because as an art dealer, he may have purchased some art works legitimately but could also have paid below market prices in cases where people were forced to sell their works.

"You'd have to prove that the price paid was considerably less because the Jewish people involved were being forced, under duress, to sell their property," said Fisher. "This whole area is complicated because there is no real regulation of the art market."

However, it is possible to reclaim works of art if there is a good case, said lawyer Fremy.

"For example, we have recently settled a case with the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in which we got back an old Dutch master," he said. "It's not easy but if you have a good clear case, the chances are quite good."

Most Jewish descendants trying to claim artworks are not doing it for the money, says Graumann.

"It is about a grave injury, precious objects that were stolen and families and futures destroyed," said Graumann. "We don't want anything more than a bit of understanding from the authorities and the public."

Meanwhile, little is known of what happened to David Friedmann's collection of artwork. He is thought to have died of natural causes but his wife and daughter were killed in the Holocaust, said Fremy.

It remains unclear whether Fremy's clients will see their great uncle's painting or any compensation for it. The case is legally complicated and it depends on how the Gurlitt family will want to resolve the matter.

"But as the German saying goes," said Fremy. "Hope dies last."

Copyright 2015 USATODAY.com

Read the original story: Looted art cases paint a picture of frustration

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