Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption More than 1,400 works were found in Cornelius Gurlitt's Munich apartment 
 
 German Nazi-era art hoarder Cornelius Gurlitt, who died on Tuesday, has made the Bern Art Museum in Switzerland his "sole heir". Kunstmuseum Bern's director, Matthias Frehner, said in a statement: that the news had come "like a bolt from the blue", since Gurlitt had at no time had any connection to the museum. A website has been set up for potential claimants to see the collection. Gurlitt's lawyer Christoph Edel confirmed by telephone and in writing that Gurlitt had "appointed the private-law foundation Kuntsmuseum Bern his unrestricted and unfettered sole heir," the museum said in a statement. "The Board of Trustees and directors of Kunstmuseum Bern are surprised and delighted, but at the same time do not wish to conceal the fact that this magnificent bequest brings with it a considerable burden of responsibility and a wealth of questions of the most difficult and sensitive kind, and questions in particular of a legal and ethical nature", it said in a statement. Mr Gurlitt's father, Hildebrand Gurlitt, was ordered to deal in works that had been seized from Jews, or which the Nazis considered "degenerate" and had removed from German museums. The priceless collection was confiscated in 2012 by Bavarian authorities from the apartment of his son. Image caption A beach scene by German impressionist Max Liebermann was one of the important discoveries 
 
 Image copyright AFP / CHRISTOF STACHE Image caption Matisse's Femme Assise is the subject of an ownership claim 
 
 Image caption The hoard of paintings includes Pierre-Auguste Renoir's Man Seated 
 
 After initially refusing to give up the paintings, Mr Gurlitt changed his position, agreeing to co-operate with the German authorities on establishing the paintings' provenance, and returning them if they were shown to be stolen. Already boasting works by Pablo Picasso and Paul Klee, the museum could soon be showing paintings and sketches by Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Marc Chagall, Oskar Kokoschka and Max Liebermann among others.
– A Nazi-era art hoarder who died yesterday has left his entire $1.3 billion collection to the Bern Art Museum—which now has the unenviable task of deciding who owns which paintings, the BBC reports. Cornelius Gurlitt, the son of Adolf Hitler's art dealer, had no close relatives and named the museum his "unrestricted and unfettered sole heir." The museum said the news struck "like a bolt from the blue"—especially since it had no relationship with Gurlitt—but the "magnificent bequest" comes with "a considerable burden and a wealth of questions." Gurlitt had already agreed that paintings known to be looted must go to the victims' present-day heirs; other works, acquired before the Nazis took power, can stay with the museum. "But in between the two categories are hundreds of paintings which may be disputed," writes Stephen Evans in a BBC analysis. A website has been created for claimants to see the art collection, NBC News reports, and an art recovery expert representing claimants in the case says he likes Gurlitt's will—because, he tells the Guardian, "the museum is bound by international codes of ethics regarding looted artworks as well as the Washington principles on Nazi-confiscated art."