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By Root 2813 0

chill of Nazi conformity sent Germany into artistic deep freeze in the 1930s and 1940s. In the capital, many artists were classified as ‘degenerate’ (see the boxed text, opposite) and forced into exile – where a creative explosion abroad took place especially among the Bauhaus movement protagonists who settled in the USA. Other artists were murdered, retreated from public life or tossed in art altogether. In Quedlinburg a fine collection of works by Lyonel Feininger (1871–1956) survives thanks to a local citizen who hid them from the Nazis (Click here).

One of Germany’s most influential visual artists was Käthe Kollwitz (1867–1945), who travelled through naturalism and expressionism to arrive at agitprop and socialist realism. Complete series of her Ein Weberaufstand (A Weavers’ Revolt; 1897) etchings and lithography based on a play by Gerhart Hauptmann (1862–1946), as well as other works, are showcased in Käthe Kollwitz museums in Berlin and Cologne.

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Jugendstil – an alternative name in German for art nouveau – takes its name from the arts magazine Jugend (the word Jugend means ‘youth’), first published in Munich in 1896.

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Berlin’s Bauhaus Archive/Museum of Design and Weimar’s Bauhaus Museum have fascinating exhibits on the Bauhaus movement, which continues to shape art and design. Works by Kandinsky, Hungarian László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946), Klee and the sculptor Gerhard Marcks (1889–1981) are housed in the Berlin venue. See the boxed text, Click here, for more on Bauhaus. Marcks’ most visible work is Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten (Town Musicians of Bremen; Click here).

MODERN & CONTEMPORARY

Post-1945 the creative influence of expressionists such as Nolde, Schmidt-Rottluff and Kandinsky was revived; and a new abstract expressionism took root in the work of Stuttgart’s Willi Baumeister (1889–1955) and Ernst Wilhelm Nay (1902–68) in Berlin.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Düsseldorf-based Gruppe Zero (Group Zero) plugged into Bauhaus, using light and space as a creative basis. The ‘light ballets’ of Otto Piene (b 1928), relying on projection techniques, were among the best known. Celle’s Kunstmuseum uses some of his light works for effect.

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DEGENERATE ART

Abstract expressionism, surrealism and Dadaism – ‘Jewish subversion’ and ‘artistic Bolshevism’ in the eyes of the Nazis – were definitely not Hitler’s favourite movements. In fact by 1937 such forms of expression fell under the axe of Entartung (degeneracy), a German biological term borrowed by the Nazis to describe virtually all modern movements. The same year, paintings by Klee, Beckmann, Dix and others – all supposedly spawned by the madness of ‘degenerates’ – were exhibited in Munich and promptly defaced in protest. Ironically, the exhibition drew a daily scornful yet curious crowd of 20,000 odd.

A year later, a law was passed allowing for the forced removal of degenerate works from private collections. While many art collectors saved their prized works from Nazi hands, the fate of many other artists’ works was less fortunate. Many works were sold abroad to rake in foreign currency and in 1939 about 4000 paintings were publicly burned in Berlin.

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Arguably Germany’s most exciting contemporary painter and sculptor is Anselm Kiefer (b 1945), some of whose works are in Berlin’s (confusingly named) Hamburger Bahnhof. His monumental Census (1967) consists of massive lead folios arranged on shelves as a protest against a 1967 census in Germany; another, the haunting Mohn und Gedächtnis (Poppy and Memory; 1989), is a large lead aircraft with three small glass windows in the side filled with poppy seeds. Both are regularly on display.

The same Berlin museum permanently displays works by Düsseldorf’s Joseph Beuys (1921–86). Wherever Beuys laid his trademark hat, controversy erupted. Strassenbahnhaltestelle (Tram Stop; 1976) consists of rusty iron tram lines and a cannon with a head poking out of it. Beuys says it was inspired by a childhood experience, but bear in mind that he was a radio operator in a fighter plane shot down