The lost half of a stolen German expressionist painting has been found in a sack by the side of a road near Berlin.

It can now be put back together with the other half of Max Pechstein's Junges Maedchen (Young Girl), which was recovered along with eight other stolen works in a holdall in May.

The painting can now be reconstructed, police have said.

A passer-by found the missing half on the side of the highway, according to the police.

Smashed

The painting was part of the $3m (�2m) haul stolen from Berlin's Bruecke Museum in April.

Irrer Soldat (Mad Soldier) by Erich Heckel: Among the recovered works

Thieves escaped by disconnecting an alarm and smashing a rear window.

Six of the stolen paintings were by Erich Heckel, and one each by Emil Nolde, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Pechstein. Most were painted between 1908 and 1920.

The paintings were found rolled up in the holdall in an apartment. Eight were unharmed, but Pechstein's work had been cut in half.

The Bruecke Museum houses one of the most important collections of expressionist art, a style that emerged largely in Germany in the early 20th Century.

Bruecke - German for Bridge - was the name of a group of German painters whose founders in 1905 included Kirchner and Heckel.

Often associated with the freewheeling artistic life of 1920s Germany, the group's works were banned as "degenerate art" by the Nazis after they took power in 1933.

The Berlin museum, which opened in 1967, has more than 400 paintings as well as drawings, watercolours and sculptures.