A German man caught hoarding $1.3 billion in Nazi-era art has relented to the media glare and given an interview—in which he describes himself as a sad, lonely man who had nothing but great art to keep him company. "I'm just a very quiet person," 80-year-old Cornelius Gurlitt tells Der Spiegel on a train ride. "All I wanted to do was live with my pictures." Now authorities say that he will receive an indictment—presumably for hoarding stolen art—but will also get some of it back. And at the moment, that's all he lives for: "They have to come back to me," he whispers with tears in his eyes.
Gurlitt defends his deceased father, art dealer and critic Hildebrand Gurlitt, saying he bought the art during the Nazi reign but always from dealers or museums, never private sellers. "I'm not as courageous as my father," he says. "He loved art and fought for it. The state prosecutor has to restore my father's reputation." With his health deteriorating and medical bills piling up, Gurlitt admits to selling an expressionist work for nearly $1 million. But when he doesn't need the dough, "there is nothing I have loved more in my life than my pictures," he says. "When I'm dead, they can do with them what they want." (More Cornelius Gurlitt stories.)
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