Son of the librarian Carl Christoph Bernoulli and Anna Bertha, née Burger,[1] he spent his childhood in Basel with two older sisters.
He collected Appenzell peasant painters and in 1941, together with Lucas Lichtenhan, organized the Swiss Folk Art exhibition at the Kunsthalle Basel.
[6][7][8] In 1946 the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) Art Looting Intelligence Unit compiled a list of people who were allegedly involved in "looted art" trafficking in which Bernoulli appears in connection with Nazi looter Hans Wendland ("Reported also by French Police to have transacted business in Paris on Wendland's behalf.)"
[11][12] Bernoulli had a close, long-term relationship with both Curt Valentin and Alex Vömel, the Nazi art dealer who in 1933 Aryanized the gallery of his former employer Alfred Flechtheim.
[14] The Basel Historical Museum describes Bernoulli as an "educated and sociable art connoisseur "and says that "During the time of National Socialism he supported numerous emigrants".
In 1946 Bernoulli set up the Swiss embassy in Paris, which was used as a warehouse during the war, for his friend, the historian, diplomat and writer Carl Jacob Burckhardt.
One of the most famous is Léone Meyer's claim against the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art at the University of Oklahoma for the Pissarro Shepherdess Bringing in the Sheep.
The museum acknowledged that the Jewish art collector has been persecuted by the Nazis but refused to restitute The Muse that Inspires the Poet.