Parzinger: SPK will permanently commemorate the horrors and effects of the propaganda exhibition "Degenerate Art"
Press release from 07/19/2017
According to its President Hermann Parzinger, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation will permanently commemorate the National Socialists' defamatory and denunciatory "Degenerate Art" campaign. Exactly 80 years ago today, on 19 July 1937, the associated propaganda exhibition was opened in Munich. "This campaign is one of the darkest and most terrible chapters in German museum and art history. Within a few days, a state commission confiscated 20,000 works by 1,400 modern artists. You can't build a museum for 20th century art in Berlin without also commemorating it with a visible sign. The ostracism of the artists concerned, their systematic marginalisation and persecution, continues to have an impact to this day.
The Nationalgalerie, which had built up one of the most important collections of contemporary art under its then director Ludwig Justi, lost over 500 works. The SPK not only laments the huge gaps that the 'Degenerate Art' campaign tore into the museum collections, but is also investigating the role that museum staff played in the segregation and destruction of artworks," said Parzinger.
The SPK President also recalled the travelling exhibition on the "Berlin Sculpture Discovery - Degenerate Art in Bomb Rubble", which was on show in five German cities as part of the Foundation's Federal Programme and will be making further stops. In 2010, classical modernist sculptures were found during an archaeological excavation in front of the Rotes Rathaus. Research revealed that the works by Otto Baum, Karl Ehlers, Otto Freundlich, Richard Haizmann, Karl Knappe, Will Lammert, Karel Niestrath, Marg Moll, Emy Roeder, Edwin Scharff, Naum Slutzky, Milly Steger, Gustav Heinrich Wolff and Fritz Wramp had been confiscated during the "Degenerate Art" campaign.
Currently, the Nationalgalerie regularly shows exhibitions of modern art in the "Neue Galerie" in the Hamburger Bahnhof, currently: "Rudolf Belling. Sculptures and Architectures" (until 17 September 2017). Works by Belling were also included in the "Degenerate Art" exhibition.