Hildebrand Gurlitt

Hildebrand Gurlitt (15 September 1895 – 9 November 1956) was a German art historian and art gallery director who dealt in Nazi-looted art as one of Hitler's and Goering's four authorized dealers for "degenerate art".

A Nazi-associated art dealer and war profiteer, during the Nazi era Gurlitt traded in "degenerate art", purchasing paintings in Nazi-occupied France, many of them stolen, for Hitler's planned Führermuseum (which was never built) and for himself. He also inherited family artworks from both his father and his sister, an accomplished artist in her own right. Following World War II and the denazification process he became Director of the Art Association for the Rhineland and Westphalia, until his death in a car accident at the age of 61. His personal collection of over 1,500 artworks by Impressionist, Cubist, and Expressionist artists and Old Masters, remained virtually unknown until it was brought to public attention in 2013 following its confiscation from the possession of his son, Cornelius Gurlitt, who, although never reunited with the collection, bequeathed it upon his death in 2014 to the Museum of Fine Arts Bern in Switzerland.