At about nine P.M. on September 22, 2010, the high-speed train from Zurich to Munich passed the Lindau border, and Bavarian customs officers came aboard for a routine check of passengers. A lot of â??blackâ? moneyâ??off-the-books cashâ??is taken back and forth at this crossing by Germans with Swiss bank accounts, and officers are trained to be on the lookout for suspicious travelers.
As reported by the German newsweekly Der Spiegel, while making his way down the aisle, one of the officers came upon a frail, well-dressed, white-haired man traveling alone and asked for his papers. The old man produced an Austrian passport that said he was Rolf Nikolaus Cornelius Gurlitt, born in Hamburg in 1932. He reportedly told the officer that the purpose of his trip was for business, at an art gallery in Bern. Gurlitt was behaving so nervously that the officer decided to take him into the bathroom to search him, and he found on his person an envelope containing 9,000 euros ($12,000) in crisp new bills.
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