Whenever modern art is mentioned, one invariably thinks first of France in the early part of the twentieth century. Cubism, Fauvism, and Surrealism - these are the stuff of legend. Rarely does anyone pause long enough to give a thought to Germany, even though two vitally important schools, Expressionism and the Neue Sachlichkeit, both originated there. It is only when one makes this comparison that one realizes how successful were Hitler and his Nazis in their campaign to eradicate all traces of modernism from German heritage.
Few institutions bore the brunt of this cultural vandalism more directly than the Nationalgalerie Berlin's annex, the Kronprinzenpalais, which the Nationalgalerie had acquired following the fall of the monarchy at the end of World War I and which, under the directorship of Ludwig Justi, it had given over to the display of modern art, including a gallery of living artists (the Galerie der Lebenden). On July 7, 1937, a commission led by Adolf Ziegler, the official in charge of the Reich Association of Fine Art, arrived at the Kronprinzenpalais and confiscated sixty-eight paintings, seven sculptures and a number of works on paper, all by Germany's most prominent modern artists. Not content with these spoils, the commission next went to the Nationalgalerie's main building on August 12 and this time removed seventy-two paintings, twenty-four sculptures and hundreds of drawings. When the museum's new director Eberhard Hanfstaengl refused to meet with the commission he was immediately replaced. The works taken were then displayed at the infamous Entartete Kunst exhibit held soon thereafter in Munich. Many of these were subsequently lost, as was the case with Franz Marc's masterpiece Turm der blauen Pferde ("Tower of Blue Horses"), or else destroyed outright.
It was appropriate then that one of the earliest exhibits to be staged at New York's Neue Galerie consisted of works of modern art on loan from the Nationalgalerie which had done its utmost over the years to rebuild its ransacked collection. The show consisted of paintings by the very same artists whose lives and careers had been so violently disrupted by the events of 1937, Among the works displayed were Paula Modersohn-Becker's Kniende Mutter mit Kind ("Kneeling Mother with Child"), Max Pechstein's Am Strand von Nidden ("On Hidden Beach"), Emil Nolde's Pfingsten ("Pentecost"), Max Beckmann's Adam und Eva ("Adam and Eve"), Otto Dix's Altes Liebespaar ("Old Couple") and George Grosz's Grauer Tag ("Gloomy Day"). The highlights of the exhibit were a number of paintings by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, the finest of which was unquestionably one of his studies of Berlin streetwalkers, the 1914 Potsdamer Platz. Kirchner was an especially tragic figure. His mental health unbalanced by the virulence directed toward him by the Nazis, he committed suicide in Switzerland in 1938.
While we must be grateful for these works, their relatively small number are a constant reminder of the extent of the Nazis' depredations. One can't help imagining how much more extensive this show would have been if not for their pillaging. There were no works on view, for example, by the aforementioned Franz Marc, not only a notable artist but a war hero who had perished on the front in 1916 while fighting for his country in World War I.
Arcadia and Metropolis: Masterworks of German Expressionism is the catalog published to accompany the Neue Galerie's 2004 exhibit. It's an excellent work that carefully presents each of the paintings accompanied by a page of insightful analysis. In addition, there are five essays that trace the development of modern art in Germany as well as a discussion of its most important critics, the establishment of the Kronprinzenpalais as a venue for the permanent display of these works, and finally a detailed chronicle of the shameful actions of the Nazis who could only destroy what they could not understand. There are also two appendices, one of which reproduces four full color posters advertising relevant art exhibits held between 1904 and 1912, and the other containing detailed biographies of the artists whose work is reproduced within the catalog. The volume is valuable not only as an art book but also as a visual history of what can occur when an entire nation loses its way.
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