When valuable artworks plundered by the Nazi regime turn up in public and private collections in Germany, there are strict procedures to discover the provenance, or origin, of the work — and to alert any descendants of the original owner.

During the Nazi dictatorship that existed from 1933 to 1945, experts say that at least 200,000 works of art were taken from their mostly Jewish owners in Germany, whether through direct expropriation or forced sales. Many Jewish art collectors left Germany or were deported to death camps.

Now it has been revealed that the Bavarian State Painting Collections possess some 200 artworks looted by the Nazis — among them paintings by early 20th-century modernists like Germany's Max Beckmann and Pablo Picasso. Yet the Jewish owners have seemingly been kept in the dark.

The body that oversees collections in Bavarian museums and public art galleries appointed provenance experts to systematically research the origins of works marked red to symbolize their theft during the Nazi dictatorship.

This is according to German daily newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, which received leaked files of the provenance research list that the Bavarian arts body had not made public. It is alleged that the true number of Nazi-looted works held in the southern German state collections could be as high as 800.

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