Wolfgang Gurlitt

A friend of Alfred Kubin and Oskar Kokoschka, he was one of the first gallery owners in Germany to exhibit the work of artists such as Lovis Corinth, Leon Dabo, Henri Matisse and Max Slevogt.

Although many customers had lost money and he was unable to pay his debts, in particular his tax liabilities, he continued to work in the art business.

The Berlin Regional Director of the Reich Chamber of Visual Arts, Artur Schmidt, successfully intervened several times on Gurlitt's behalf and reduced the amount demanded by the creditors, while Gurlitt ran his affairs in the name of his divorced first wife Julia.

The pictures were lost in the first days of World War I "and subsequently confiscated, or threatened with confiscation", but "they survived intact [even though they] never returned to Paris, resurfacing after complex and protracted negotiations in private hands in Copenhagen (where [many] can be seen today in the Statens Museum for Kunst)."

He received travel and transportation facilities as well as rapid access to his bank accounts which had at first been closed.

Despite numerous conflicts with the trustees of the museum Gurlitt was by January 1956 director of the new gallery in Linz.

This may have been the primary reason that the greater part of the Gurlitt collection was transferred in 1953 to the city of Linz.