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Statement by the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation on the dpa report of 3 January 2006: Norwegian sells Munch painting from "degenerate art"
Press release from 01/03/2006
After the book burnings of 10 May 1933, the National Socialist German state's plundering of modern art in "museums and publicly accessible collections" under the euphemistic slogan of "degenerate art" was one of the first openly celebrated acts of barbarism by this state. They were subsequently sanctioned by the "Law on the Confiscation of Degenerate Art Products" of 31 May 1938.
It is appropriate to remember this barbarism of the National Socialist, but German, state, which was directly directed against art and its creators, again and again today.
It is not appropriate to place this remembrance in a context that conceals one thing: it was the state sponsor of the German state museums at the time that did not consider the ostracised art in its collections to be worthy. Insofar as the state collections were also victims of this bloodletting, they were also fatefully interwoven with the state that carried it out. This cannot be the starting point for reclaims by today's state museums. They lack any legal basis.
The Nationalgalerie of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin - Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz is one of the collections in Germany that even today still shows the most painful gaps as a result of the cultural-political clear-cutting during the era of the Third Reich. In a few individual cases, it was possible to close these gaps by buying back the artworks.
