The oil painting from 1902 entitled "La Seine vue du Pont-Neuf, au fond le Louvre" (The Seine seen from the Pont Neuf) is "absolutely certain" to have been looted by Hitler's regime, the ministry said on Wednesday.
"For the restitution, we are already in contact with the heiress of the former owner," Culture Minister Monika Grütters said in a statement, without identifying the family.
Gurlitt, who died in May aged 81, had hoarded more than 1,000 paintings, drawings and sketches, including masterpieces by the likes of Picasso and Chagall, in his Munich flat for decades.
The Pissarro piece was discovered among more works uncovered at his Salzburg, Austria home.
The artworks were acquired by his powerful father Hildebrand Gurlitt who was tasked by the Nazis with selling artwork stolen from Jewish families in the 1930s and 1940s.
Research by a German government-appointed task force has already established that the artworks "Seated Woman" by Henri Matisse and "Two Riders on the Beach", painted by Max Liebermann, should be returned to the heirs of their rightful owners.
The Museum of Fine Arts in Bern, Switzerland, agreed in November to accept the controversial art trove left behind by Cornelius Gurlitt.
It agreed as part of an accord with the German government over the inheritance that it would return any works found to have been stolen by the Nazis.
GURLITT
‘Nazi-looted’ Gurlitt painting to be returned
Experts have established that a Camille Pissarro painting from the Cornelius Gurlitt art trove bequeathed to a Bern museum was looted by the Nazis and should be returned to the heirs of its rightful owners, the German culture ministry says.
ART
Germany returns final Nazi-looted artwork from pensioner’s trove
Germany said on Wednesday it had returned to its rightful owners the last artwork confirmed as looted by the Nazis uncovered in the collection of a reclusive Munich pensioner.
Culture Minister Monika Grütters said a total of 14 pieces had been handed back since a giant trove held by Cornelius Gurlitt, the son of a Nazi-era art dealer, came to light eight years ago.
The final work to be restituted was “Klavierspiel” (Playing the Piano), a drawing by German artist Carl Spitzweg. It was given on Tuesday to Christie's auction house according to the wishes of the heirs of music publisher Henri Hinrichsen, who was murdered at Auschwitz in 1942.
The transfer was arranged with the Museum of Fine Arts in Bern, which inherited Gurlitt's collection when he died in 2014.
READ ALSO: Germany returns famous artwork looted by Nazis
Grütters said it sent “an important message” that with the Spitzweg drawing “all art identified as looted from the Gurlitt art trove has been returned to the heirs of the victims”.
“Behind every one of these pictures is a tragic human fate,” Grütters said.
“We cannot make up for that great suffering. But by reckoning with the art looted by the Nazis, we are trying to contribute to historical justice and face up to our moral responsibility.”
'Enduring duty'
Grütters pledged to “decisively” continue provenance research on work in German collections, saying it was an “enduring duty”.
Adolf Hitler's regime stole the drawing from Hinrichsen in 1939 and the following year Hildebrand Gurlitt bought it.
The Nazis had engaged Hildebrand — who was part-Jewish — from 1938 to deal in items taken from Jewish owners or confiscated as “degenerate”.
A German government task force identified the drawing as looted in 2015 but legal complications meant its restitution could not be settled until now, Grütters said.
More than 1,500 works including pieces by Picasso, Renoir, Cezanne and Matisse in the possession of Cornelius Gurlitt were seized in 2012 during a tax probe.
The discovery of the stash, kept secret until the following year, made headlines around the world and revived an emotional debate about how thoroughly post-war Germany had reckoned with art plundered by the Nazi regime.
When Gurlitt died, the Bern museum accepted the collection, though it left about 500 works in Germany for a government task force to research their often murky origins.
Their work, and restitution, have been criticised by many heirs and activists as too slow. They say the Gurlitt case underlines the ongoing need for thorough provenance research in museum holdings and private collections.
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