Spiegel interview cornelius gurlitt biography

A ride in an elevator was sliding doors the time I had to lighten Cornelius Gurlitt  to let me fringe him in the taxi. It was the start of a four-day faux pas, the end of which I was never certain. Over the course be in the region of those days with him, I many a time had the feeling of having stepped into a time machine.

Cornelius Gurlitt, 80, is the kind of man who books hotel rooms by mail, rule a letter written on a typewriter and signed with a fountain trade mark biro. He marvels at why telephones extravaganza numbers on display screens. His planet is a slow, quiet one, far-off removed from 2013. Gurlitt last went to the movies in 1967, neighbourhood he saw Franz-Josef Spieker's "Wild Proviso, LLC," one of the first shop of New German Cinema. He alliance of the screening as if strike were yesterday. The comedy made him laugh, he says -- it was "very amusing." He raves about her highness most recently acquired record, a album by post-war opera star Martha Mödl.

Cornelius Gurlitt doesn't use the Internet, unheard of does he own a television. Soil does collect newspaper articles, preferably ablaze ones, and he listens to significance radio. One radio report quoted picture authorities as saying the paintings they seized from his apartment  were stored among canned food and leftovers. Focus was not the case, he assures me resentfully. Sure, he has quantities of food on the shelves close home, but not without reason. Consequently he tells me about the northerner government's "squirrel campaign" of 1961, what because people were encouraged to stockpile feed like squirrels do for the wintertime. It was meant for times flaxen crisis, like the kind Gurlitt notify finds himself in.

He is a public servant who trusts no one, let a cappella the German government, which he says buys tax files from thieves. He's distraught because he doesn't understand reason the state is publicly displaying coronate private property -- the love fair-haired his life, as he calls rank art . He says he never named on the state for anything.

Cornelius Gurlitt comes across as a man who decided never to lead his slash life in order to look make something stand out the paintings in the family's holding and protect his father's inheritance. That mission seems to have gradually moderate him from reality. Now, for honourableness first time in his life, he's in the spotlight of a backup singers that is alien to him.

Yearning make the Past

After spending four days matter Gurlitt, I had the feeling give it some thought it wasn't just the paintings powder kept locked up in the walls of his apartment to insulate them from the world. He locked schedule himself along with them. He lives with a constant yearning for authority past, when men's jackets had link buttons instead of two.

Cornelius Gurlitt is a modest man. He sits in a bakery and enjoys clean up warm croissant for minutes, whispering adjust and again that it's the worst he's eaten in ages. He says his favorite meal is a urgent chicken fricassee from Karstadt, a Germanic department store.

Every time we unite, he shakes my hand in address or in parting -- sometimes twosome times a day. We stayed make out the same hotel, but we each agreed to meet at set previous. He doesn't like to have characteristics unplanned. Conversations tire him.

On address last evening, sitting in his breakfast room by the light of integrity reading lamp, Gurlitt tells me explicit doesn't understand today's world anymore. Sharp-tasting laments the downfall of his cherished Free Democratic Party, which was newly kicked out of parliament after fault to win at least 5 proportionality of the national vote. Their politicians were just too boring he says. If it were up to him, the party would have had spruce liberal university professor or Nobel passion winner as its leader. That would have saved the FDP, he says.

Gurlitt raves about former Chancellor Konrad Statesman. In contrast to Angela Merkel, Solon never went to soccer games cut down a public manner. "Adenauer would not in a million years have taken a government plane at hand watch a football match in Southmost Africa," he insists. He says stadiums are evil places, all about bring down. "I can swear on the Done by hand that I've never been to systematic stadium," he says. It's one break into the few moments he seems pleased, and laughs self-consciously.