Kupferstichkabinett and the "Degenerate Art" campaign of 1937: New publication commemorates Willy Kurth's rescue operation
Press release from 10/10/2023
The curator saved hundreds of masterpieces by Kirchner, Heckel, Picasso and Beckmann from the Nazi iconoclasm - and kept quiet about it for the rest of his life - now he is being remembered for the first time and his daring rescue operation is being comprehensively reconstructed
Summer 1937: The National Socialists confiscate over 800 works from the Kupferstichkabinett of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, at the time the most important collection of modernist prints in Germany, as "degenerate". This iconoclasm also affected around 100 other German museums with the loss of a total of around 21,000 works of modern art, some of which were shown throughout the country for several years in the defamatory travelling exhibition "Degenerate Art". Nevertheless, several hundred of the ostracised works remained in the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett - including major works by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and his "Brücke" companions Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Max Pechstein and Otto Mueller, as well as Emil Nolde, Max Beckmann, Ernst Barlach, Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky and other modernists - because the curator in charge, Willy Kurth (1881-1963), evaded the Nazi confiscation commission with admirable civil courage and daring tricks.
The division of the Berlin museum landscape after the Second World War and the associated arbitrary separation of collection holdings and acquisition documents, as well as the wartime loss of the Kupferstichkabinett's business files, prevented a valid reappraisal of the historical events until the reunification of Germany.
The Berlin art historian Anita Beloubek-Hammer, who worked at the Kupferstichkabinett until 2015, has now shed light on this process for the first time and honoured the role of Willy Kurth in a book published by Lukas Verlag, Berlin. The Ferdinand Möller Foundation provided significant support for the research and the newly published book. In 2003, the foundation initiated and financed (until 2017) the "Degenerate Art" research centre at the Free University of Berlin.
Next year, the Kupferstichkabinett will also be dedicating an exhibition to the subject under the title "Die gerettete Moderne. Masterpieces from Kollwitz to Kirchner" (1 February to 21 April 2024).
Born in Berlin in 1881, Willy Kurth was the son of a civil servant. He attended the Sophien-Realgymnasium in Berlin from 1887 to 1897. From 1901 to 1903, he studied painting at the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts. He later passed his Abitur at the humanistic Leibniz-Gymnasium. From 1908 to 1912, he studied art history, classical archaeology and history at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin, where he was awarded his doctorate in 1912. A year later, he joined the State Museums in Berlin, becoming curator of the Kupferstichkabinett in 1924.
Willy Kurth was always opposed to the Nazi regime. The works were rescued on his own initiative. The then director of the Kupferstichkabinett, Friedrich Winkler, according to documents a supporter of the National Socialists, had no idea of Kurth's actions. After the end of the war, until his death in 1963, Kurth was Director General of the State Palaces and Gardens Potsdam-Sanssouci and a confidant of the first President of the Republic, Wilhelm Pieck. He also held a professorship for art history at the Humboldt University in Berlin. (An article by Jürgen Becher is dedicated to Kurth's work after the end of the war). It was only through these functions that Kurth became known to the public, because in view of the renewed ostracisation of modern art in the GDR as a result of the formalism debate in the 1950s, Kurth preferred to remain silent about his courageous act of salvation.
Dagmar Korbacher, Director of the Kupferstichkabinett, says: "Anita Beloubek-Hammer's research work, which is as passionate as it is meticulous, has closed a significant gap in the history of the Kupferstichkabinett and provided many new insights into our museum and the key players during the Nazi era. Willy Kurth's civil courage should be a role model for us all."
Wolfgang Wittrock, Chairman of the Ferdinand-Möller-Stiftung, adds: "Since we established the foundation in 1995, we have been committed to bringing clarity and differentiation to the reappraisal of Nazi 'cultural policy'. Thanks to Mrs Beloubek-Hammer's research work, an important facet of the period has now become visible."
Reference to the book:
Anita Beloubek-Hammer: "Die Aktion "Entartete Kunst" 1937 im Berliner Kupferstichkabinett. Custodian Willy Kurth rescues modernist masterpieces"
409 pages, 118 illustrations, 240 x 300 mm, four-colour throughout. Hardcover, partly coloured illustrations, price: 40 euros
ISBN 978-3-86732-426-7