Painting by Emil Nolde Turns Up 25 Years After Going Missing

BERLIN (The Associated Press)—A portrait by German expressionist Emil Nolde worth about €500,000 has been discovered more than 25 years after it went missing, a spokesman for Baden-Wuerttemberg state police said Friday.

The oil painting Nadja was discovered by an art historian who said he stumbled across it when cleaning out his attic and realized the work did not belong to him. The man, whose name was not released, handed it over to state police, said Ulrich Heffner, a spokesman for Baden-Wuerttemberg authorities.

Painted in 1919, the portrait originally belonged to Walther Rathenau, the foreign minister of Germany's Weimar Republic who was murdered in 1922. Rathenau's brother then inherited the picture, which went missing while in the hands of a transport company in the late 1970s.

The Emil Nolde Foundation in the German town of Seebuell confirmed the painting was original and estimated its value.

Police are now trying to determine the rightful owner of the painting.

Nolde was a member of the German group the Bridge Bruecke in German set up in Dresden in 1905. His works are distinguished by simplified, sometimes deliberately crude forms, and intense color.