recognised as being looted - to further enrich his own holdings, and also became very wealthy from commissions on the enormous amounts of money being paid by Hitler's regime for artworks at that time.

Gurlitt also purchased paintings on his own behalf from artists who were being persecuted by the Nazis, among them Max Beckmann who by 1944 was living in exile in the Netherlands, prior to departing for the United States in 1947. Gurlitt and his associate Erhard Göpel,