BERLIN—The German government wants regional authorities in Bavaria to make public the 1,400 artworks found in a Munich apartment to help clarify whether any were looted by the Nazis, it said Thursday, amid mounting international outcry over local prosecutors’ handling of the recovered cache of art.

German prosecutors in Augsburg, a town in Bavaria, have come under sharp criticism—particularly from the U.S.—for keeping the find secret for more than a year and refusing to publish an inventory of the discovered artworks, some…