Book & Art: Imagery and Reflections From Germany’s Transformation Under Hitler

On July 19, the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) will close its exhibition about how modern art shaped — and was shaped — during Germany’s turbulent years between the creation of the Weimar Republic after World War I and the fall of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime during World War II. Modern art both reflected and shaped public discourse, and politics both shaped and constrained artistic expression.

Mia’s exhibition is organized according to six primary themes:

• emotionally charged Expressionism;
• sober New Objectivity portraits during the climate of the Weimar Republic;
• avante-garde international artists, including Pablo Picasso, alongside portraits of influential art dealers who introduced modernism to Germany;
• abstract art from Bauhaus masters who were influenced by Cubism and other international movements;
• the rise of nationalism and atrocities reflected in powerful works of politics and war;
• and works by artists who were exiled or labeled “degenerates” in a before and after selection of their work.

I had a highly informative personal 1.5-hour tour by curator Tom Rassieur of the 70 paintings and sculptures in the exhibition, which come largely from the collection of Germany’s national museum, Neue Nationalgalerie. I also recently read Erik Larson’s book In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin, which was based on the true story of U.S. ambassador William E. Dodd and his family in Berlin as Hitler’s influence, power, and intentions were becoming increasingly evident.

This is the first of several “Books & Arts” compilations we can offer, thanks to underwriting from Mia. Travel with me through the exhibition, accompanied by parts of the book.

The “Degenerate Art” Exhibition of 1937

The blue horses painting on wall is a variation on the lost “Tower of Blue Horses;” the Rudolf Belling sculpture “Head in Brass” in far right also reflects a tumultuous journey, rejected as “degenerate” for depicting a woman as feminine rather than sturdy.

The 1937 “Degenerate Art” exhibition in Germany is depicted at Mia. This exhibition featured 600 works of art that had been confiscated from German museums by the government and publicly displayed to ridicule both the artists and their ideas. Some artists rejected traditions of objective reality and sought to paint emotional experience — tension, vulnerability, alienation — which clashed with the Nazi’s conservative vision of German art. Ironically, many of these works, including Marc’s lost Tower of Blue Horses, later became icons of artistic freedom.

Artists such as Emil Nolde, who sympathized with aspects of Nazi ideology, were condemned when their artistic style failed to conform to official standards — even though other examples of their art did conform. The exhibition includes Rudolf Schlichter’s portrait of the nationalist writer Ernst Jünger, who rejected the commissioned portrait because it didn’t adhere to a sense of militarized masculinity. Other sculptures — including one of German heavyweight boxer Max Schmeling by Rudolf Belling — demonstrate how classical athletic figures embodied the Aryan ideal promoted by Hitler. 

The exhibition introduces lesser-known figures whose careers were shaped by Nazi cultural policies. Kate Diehn-Bitt, for example, was denounced by a Nazi critic as “alien to the species,” destroying her career before it could flourish. Painter Franz Lenk was admired by the regime and even served on the Reich Chamber of Art, yet reportedly used his influence to protect fellow artists. 

Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc, founders of the Blue Rider Group, sought spiritual meaning in their work through color, music, and symbolism rather than realistic representation. Marc’s expressive paintings of animals reflected his belief that animals retained a purity humanity had lost, while Kandinsky explored synesthesia — the idea that colors and forms could evoke musical experience. Marc was drafted into the army and died at the Battle of Verdun. Kandinsky and other Blue Rider artists later became central figures in Walter Gropius’s revolutionary Bauhaus school, whose innovative approach to art and design was repeatedly disrupted before being shut down entirely by the Nazis.

The history of Rudolf Belling’s modernist sculpture Head in Brass illustrates the changing fortunes of avant-garde art. Initially acquired by Germany’s National Gallery, it was confiscated as “degenerate” under Hitler, briefly displayed in the Degenerate Art Exhibition, hidden away under East Germany’s socialist government, and finally restored to public view only after German reunification.

Its journey mirrors the exhibition’s central message: that art not only reflects history but also survives political repression, carrying with it the complex stories of the people and ideologies that shaped twentieth-century Germany.

Perspective in Time

One theme of the exhibition is the crucial role played by Jewish art dealers in introducing modern art to Germany. Alfred Flechtheim championed avant-garde artists such as Otto Dix and brought Cubism into the German mainstream. Dix’s famous portrait of Flechtheim intentionally exaggerates stereotypically Jewish features, reflecting the anti-Semitic atmosphere of the 1920s without endorsing it. After the Holocaust, however, the portrait acquired disturbing new meanings that Dix himself rejected. Flechtheim ultimately fled Germany, lost his fortune and collection to the Nazis, and died in exile.

Curt Querner, “Self Portrait with Stinging Nettle,” 1933

Heinrich Thannhauser similarly transformed German artistic culture by promoting Pablo Picasso and organizing pioneering exhibitions of French modernism and the Blue Rider movement. Escaping Nazi persecution, his family eventually settled in New York, where their collection became part of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. 

Herwarth Walden, another influential Jewish dealer and publisher, founded Der Sturm, one of Europe’s most important platforms for modern art. A committed communist, Walden fled to the Soviet Union, only to die in a Stalinist labor camp after Germany invaded the USSR.

One of the exhibition’s powerful works is Horst Strempel’s monumental 1945 painting, Night over Germany. After surviving imprisonment and forced labor, the artist returned to find Berlin in ruins. Working with inexpensive pigments on stitched-together burlap because proper materials were unavailable, Strempel deliberately modeled his composition on a Christian altarpiece. At its center, however, Christ is replaced by a Jewish victim of the Holocaust. Flanking panels depict Jews living in fear and hiding from persecution, while the predella below honors the underground resistance. 

Although acquired soon after its completion by East Germany’s National Gallery, museum officials found the painting too unsettling. They ordered key elements, including explicit Stars of David and expressions of anguish, to be painted over before quietly storing it in the basement for decades. Only after German reunification did the work return to public view, reflecting a broader willingness in the 1990s to confront the legacy of Nazism and pursue restitution for victims.

Transformation

Christian Schad, “Sonja,” 1928

Christian Schad’s portrait of the modern woman, Sonja, captures the dramatic social transformation of the Weimar Republic — and is the iconic image used to promote the exhibit. With her bobbed hair, fashionable black dress, cosmetics, cigarette, and financial independence, she embodies the “New Woman,” whose freedoms would have been unimaginable a decade earlier. 

Sonja’s own true story adds another layer of complexity. Born Albertine Gimpel, she was Jewish and survived the Holocaust because friends repeatedly hid her from the Nazis.

Schad himself later joined the Nazi Party, illustrating the uncomfortable contradictions that often complicate artists’ legacies.

Josef Scharl, Ecce homo, 1931

Josef Scharl confronts a hidden legacy of war through Ecce Homo, portraying a disfigured veteran whose injuries society preferred not to acknowledge, asking viewers to recognize the humanity of those whose suffering had become invisible.

Another defining work in the exhibition is Wilhelm Lehmbruck’s reconsideration of military heroism. Instead of celebrating wartime valor, Lehmbruck created a vulnerable, broken figure. Holding only the remnant of a sword, the nude warrior embodies not triumph but sacrifice, illustrating the immense personal and cultural toll of violence.

Erwin Hahs, forced to paint a portrait of Hitler in 1944, depicted the dictator standing amid ruins, suggesting Germany’s impending collapse. Later, Hahs painted over Hitler on The Great Requiem canvas while preserving the surrounding devastation, leaving behind a hidden record revealed today through X-rays.

 Depicting the Darkness

Alice Lex-Nerlinger, “Field Grey Creates Dividends,” 1931-1961

The exhibition includes Alice Lex-Nerling’s powerful painting Field Gray Yields Dividends, a condemnation of war profiteering. Depicting a dying soldier ensnared in barbed wire beneath the looming machinery of industry, the work argues that economic interests profit while ordinary people pay with their lives. Considered too dangerous under the Nazi regime, the original painting was destroyed by the artist herself. She recreated it decades later.

Max Beckmann’s Blind Man’s Buff, is one of Mia’s treasures in the exhibition, which also features three Beckmann works from the Neue Nationalgalerie. Declared a “degenerate artist” in 1937, Beckmann fled Germany but became trapped in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam while awaiting an American visa. Painted in 1945, his complex triptych captures the profound disorientation of a society attempting to rebuild after catastrophe. Blindfolded figures, whispered conversations, mysterious symbols, and indifferent gods evoke uncertainty, mistrust, and the search for direction in a shattered world. The painting asks not simply how Germany would recover materially, but how trust, identity, and humanity could be reconstructed after years of terror.

The exhibition includes the work of Käthe Kollwitz, whose art transforms personal tragedy into universal mourning. After losing a son in the First World War, Kollwitz devoted herself to depicting the suffering endured by mothers, widows, children, and grieving families. Her woodcuts — and the sculpture Tower of Mothers — shift attention away from the battlefield to those left behind, offering one of the exhibition’s most compassionate and enduring statements on the true cost of war.

artwork by Käthe Kollwitz

Political Critique

George Grosz offers perhaps the exhibition’s sharpest political critique in Pillars of Society. Borrowing its title from Henrik Ibsen’s play on hypocrisy, Grosz satirizes the institutions that enabled Germany’s descent toward fascism. Aristocrats, industrialists, politicians, and judges appear as grotesque figures blinded by greed, nationalism, and moral failure, while violence unfolds around them. Painted in 1926, the work demonstrates Grosz’s awareness of the dangers already taking shape. 

George Grosz’s “Pillars of Society”

“Modern Art and Politics in Germany 1910–1945” closes July 19.

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