Bernhard Fulda, Christian Ring and Aya Soika for the Nationalgalerie Der Staatlichen Museen Zu Berlin and the Nolde Stiftung Seebüll Bernhard Fulda

Edited by Bernhard Fulda, Christian Ring and Aya Soika for the Nationalgalerie der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin and the Nolde Stiftung Seebüll Bernhard Fulda

EMIL NOLDE The Artist during the Third Reich

KAPBILD PRESTEL Munich / London / New York

Contents

Preface Udo Kittelmann 6 Foreword Christian Ring 9

I Introduction Bernhard Fulda, Aya Soika 17

II The Long Dispute Over Expressionism Around Nolde Aya Soika 39

III Nolde’s Autobiography: The Misunderstood Genius in the Struggle for German Art Bernhard Fulda 69

Excursus I – Nolde’s Network 76

IV Nolde’s Anti-Semitism Bernhard Fulda 97

V Jews, Fantasy Figures and Vikings Bernhard Fulda 119

VI Nolde’s War Bernhard Fulda 137

Excursus II – Rebirth 142 Excursus III – The Painting Gallery in Seebüll, 1942 150 Excursus IV – Mountains, Castles and Fire 160 Excursus V – The Eppendorf Watercolours, 1943 166

VII The ‘Unpainted Pictures’: Genesis of a Myth Bernhard Fulda 179

VIII Creating a German Post-War Legend Bernhard Fulda 221

Picture Section 248

Notes on Use 362 Biography 1867–1956 363 List of Exhibited Works 367 Bibliography 372 Index of Names 376 Authors’ Acknowledgements 380 Picture Credits 381 Preface

There is a powerfully influential story behind the brilliantly coloured paintings by Emil Nolde, which have been seen to great effect in many exhibitions in recent decades: the legend of Nolde the artist. It was a good story, about a maverick old master in the North German province on the Danish border who – after initially sympathising with Nazi ideology – turned his back on the regime that in 1937 vilified him as ‘degenerate’ and in 1941 officially forbade him to paint. Undeterred by defamation and persecution, he continued to produce hundreds of ‘unpainted pictures’ in secret. After 1945, these brilliant little watercolours soon came to be regarded as symbols of the resilience of artistic creativity in the face of totalitarian oppression. They allowed their creator to become the embodiment of the upstanding, persecuted modern artist. It is an heroic story that essentially influenced the public’s interest in Nolde’s art during the post-war era, and Siegfried Lenz drew upon it for his novel Deutschstunde (The German Lesson), which fascinated millions of readers. This German legend, originating with the artist himself, was developed and maintained for decades by the Nationalgalerie in Berlin, and later by the Nolde Foundation, in cooperation with collectors, admirers, art historians and curators. Today, however, this image of Nolde as an oppositional artist can no longer be upheld. The image of the ‘historical’ Emil Nolde that emerges from this profoundly researched study could not be more different. After 1933 Nolde proved to be an enthusiastic supporter of the National Socialist regime, and he hoped that the government would acknowledge his efforts as an artist who blazed a trail for a ‘purely German’ kind of art. Of crucial signif- icance to the old artist’s unreserved identification with National Socialism was his anti- Semitism, which became shockingly radicalised over the course of the ‘Third Reich’. To the very last, Nolde continued to explain that the official rejection of his work could only be blamed on the notion that real artistic genius has always gone unrecognised by contemporaries. His self-stylisation as a misunderstood ‘German’ artist was not limited to his writings, but also shaped his artistic output. He turned away from biblical motifs because he no longer wanted to paint Jews; he also reduced the number of controversial figura- tive pictures he executed, whilst intensifying his engagement with Nordic mythology, and he produced many works (including his small watercolours, the so-called ‘Unpainted Pic- tures’) whose choice of motifs would have pleased National Socialist dignitaries. Instead of an artist-resistor, the ‘historical’ Nolde turned out to be a painter who aspired to become a state artist, but who was never officially acknowledged by the regime as one of its own kind. At the same time, both before and after 1945, Nolde took advantage of society’s need for venerable artist-heroes, which reflected the longing for a wholesome national identity. Along with the Stiftung Seebüll Ada und Emil Nolde (the Ada and Emil Nolde Founda- tion), the Central Archive of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (Berlin State Museums) was an official partner in the years-long research project sponsored by the Gerda Henkel Foundation and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the results of which are now on display in an exhibition at the Nationalgalerie in the Hamburger Bahnhof: Emil Nolde – eine deutsche Legende. Der Künstler im Nationalsozialismus (Emil Nolde – A German Legend. The Artist During the Nazi Regime). The location is particularly suited to the theme, for, historically speaking, the Nationalgalerie and its staff played a major – and, in comparison to the rest of Germany, unique – role in constructing the legend of Nolde the artist. It started with the acquisition policies of its director, Ludwig Justi, in the 1920s and early 1930s, and moved on to the controversial exhibition project Neuere deutsche

6 Kunst (Recent German Art), curated by Ludwig Thormaehlen in 1932. There were also the failed attempts by interim director Alois Schardt to establish Nolde as an old master of Nordic Expressionism in 1933, the display policies of his successor Eberhard Hanfstaengl from 1933 to 1937, Paul Ortwin Rave’s invention of the ‘resistant’ artist in his book Kunst- diktatur im Dritten Reich (Art Dictatorship in the Third Reich, 1949), and finally, Werner Haftmann’s congenial continuation of the Nolde heroic narrative in the late 1950s and 1960s. As this study now reminds us, the Nationalgalerie – especially the Kronprinzenpalais and its department of contemporary art – helped to set the tone for the museum landscape throughout Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. Of course, this tradition is tied in here in a thoroughly self-critical manner. The history of our own institution and its collection has already been the theme of several exhibitions, such as the presentation of the collection under the title Moderne Zeiten (Modern Times, 2010) at the Neue Nationalgalerie, in which the losses caused by National Socialism were alluded to in the form of a ‘shadow gallery’. Another example was Twilight over Berlin (2015), which celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and the Federal Republic of Germany; fifty major works of classic Modernism from the Nationalgalerie were on display at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. During the renovation of the Neue Nationalgalerie, a series of shows in the ‘New Gallery’ at the Hamburger Bahnhof began in 2015 with the exhibit Die Schwarzen Jahre. Geschichten einer Sammlung 1933–1945 (The Black Years: Histories of a Collection, 1933–1945), which focused on the interplay of art, politics and the provenances of artworks. The project now on display follows this enlightening tradition, yet also goes beyond it. In recent years the Nationalgalerie has rarely had an opportunity to present such a comprehensive, scientifically based revision of the knowledge we thought we had about an artist and his art. In their analysis of Nolde’s legend, the achievements of the curators Bernhard Fulda and Aya Soika, along with Christian Ring, the director of the Nolde Stiftung Seebüll, have opened up new perspectives of the dynamics between the presentation of art and an artist’s identity, works and life. The tales about Nolde, his invention of himself and others’ characterisations of him, which declared the artist a uniquely German mani- festation, are stripped away, layer after layer. Nolde added a codicil to his will that his paintings should “not be subjected to any varnishing” – so here, his pictures have been freed of the varnish of his autobiography and reception. Thanks go first of all to Christian Ring, who opened up the archive in Seebüll and thus laid the foundation for the work on this research project, and whose willingness to lend many of Nolde’s works made the exhibition in Berlin possible. We are also grateful to Aya Soika and Bernhard Fulda, whose scientific and curatorial work on the complex material forms the basis for the project. Joachim Jäger, Dieter Scholz, Katharina Wippermann and Anja Pawel of the Nationalgalerie attended to the planning and execution. Special thanks for their faithful support also go to the Freunde der Nationalgalerie e. V., represented here by Gabriele Quandt, André Odier and Katharina von Chlebowski. The other sponsors, all of the lenders, Prestel Publishing, the exhibition designers mvprojekte, the graphic designers Thoma + Schekorr, and everyone else involved in the show and its two companion publications are also cordially acknowledged. The result of these united efforts is a sub- stantially different perspective of Emil Nolde and his work.

Udo Kittelmann Director of the Nationalgalerie

7 Foreword

On 7 August 2017, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Emil Nolde’s birth, Bild newspaper published an article entitled “Emil Nolde Was a Nazi, but His Art Was ‘De generate’”. This perfectly summed up the interim results of recent research into the topic of Emil Nolde and his period. As late as 2013, one of the questions posed at a Nolde conference in Halle an der Saale was: “Why is it so difficult for us to say that Nolde was really a staunch National Socialist?”1 The answer is partly grounded in the fact that public perception of the Nazi dictatorship was, and still is, strongly tied to moral categorisation. There were perpetrators, followers and victims, and Nolde easily allowed himself to be shoehorned into the victims’ group, thanks to the ‘Degenerate Art’ campaign. Emil Nolde owes much to Adolf Hitler’s reactionary taste in art – something that is true of the status of all contemporary art from that period, which, as Peter-Klaus Schuster pointed out as early as 1999, was “‘rescued’ by National Socialist iconoclasm itself”. This permitted “Mod ernism itself to be counted among the factors resistant to Hitler, and it is precisely because of this that Modernism was able to function in a leading role with a seemingly limitless impact during the reconstruction of Germany after World War II. Unencumbered, it embodi ed a better Germany. […] Nothing vanquished Hitler as vividly as the comeback of the art he hated so much”.2 And in 2017 Berthold Hinz explained: “Even the fact of being a Nazi and, at the same time, considered ‘degenerate’ (as was the case with Emil Nolde) seems to reveal an insoluble contradiction. Yet, what was to the artist a barely negotiable, paradox- ical personal matter – and hence, a subjective one – remains so for his interpreters to this day. Objectively, however, it possesses the stringent rationality of authority and is a good lesson on how National Socialist policies on culture and art functioned as instances of ‘regulation’, so to speak”.3 Over time, the view of Nolde and his relationship to National Socialism has changed and become more precise, particularly thanks to the scholarly work of Aya Soika and Bern- hard Fulda.4 In recent years, the art historian, the historian and the author (who is also the director of the Stiftung Seebüll Ada und Emil Nolde (the Ada and Emil Nolde Foundation Seebüll)) have had a number of conversations, which have ultimately led them to initiate a research project on the topic of “Nolde and National Socialism”. Even though there are a series of essays devoted to the subject, a comprehensive and distinct picture of Emil Nolde and his perceptions, ideas and behaviour during and after the National Socialist dictatorship was still lacking.5 There was no compilation of previous insights, or of further, more probing research. Inevitably tied to that was an investigation into the history of the reception of Nolde’s work, especially after 1945. From the start, it was clear to all of the participants – including the authors of the study, as well as the directorate and trustees of the Stiftung Seebüll Ada und Emil Nolde – that this project had to be carried out independently of the Foundation. Obviously, it was also necessary for both researchers to have unlimited access to the Foundation’s archive in Seebüll, with its more than 25,000 documents. In addition, it was agreed that the research had to be open-ended, and the Nolde Foundation Seebüll would have no influence over the content.6 The project began in April 2013 and by autumn of that year it became clear that the topic was a controversial one. The weekly newspaper Die Zeit devoted a full-page article to Emil Nolde, which stated: “His art was decried in the ‘Third Reich’, his paintings were confiscated, he was forbidden to paint. And yet, Emil Nolde remained an ardent Nazi”.7 The report referred to a newly surfaced, six-page document dated 6 December 1938, in

9 which Nolde wholeheartedly commits himself to the Nazi regime, and which contains an abundance of disgusting anti-Semitism.8 In 2014, as part of the Nolde retrospective at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt am Main, the initial results of the research were published. They untangled the legend of the so-called “painting ban”, tracing it back to a prosaic professional ban,9 and also proved that Nolde remained an adherent of the Na- tional Socialist regime until the collapse of the ‘Third Reich’. The sentence repeatedly cited as evidence appeared in Werner Haftmann’s 1963 book on the ‘Unpainted Pictures’: “It was not until the Nazis dropped one mask after the next, until the public no longer shied away from its moral turpitude, until Nolde was forced to acknowledge that the persecution he endured was only a tiny fraction of a gigantic terrorist apparatus targeting the independent spirit and the dignity of human beings, that he rejected it”.10 This sentence, however, is demonstrably false. Nolde had not renounced National Socialism by the end of the Second World War. The very foundation of the Nolde legend tottered, and the directors and trustees began the process of documenting both Nolde and the history of the Nolde Foundation Seebüll for posterity. It was time to bid farewell to widespread myths. The first step was to open up the research to new results and adoptsine ira et studio an enlightened perspective that was as objective as possible and was based on original sources and the results of research. For the Berlin exhibition Emil Nolde – A German Legend. The Artist during the Nazi Re- gime and the accompanying publications, Aya Soika and Bernhard Fulda read and evalu- ated a cornucopia of documents in the Stiftung Seebüll archives, as well as others in public archives and private estates around the world. They presented a multi-layered picture of Emil Nolde as a man and an artist. This image is becoming increasingly distinct, and new facets continue to alter the view of Nolde and the Foundation’s own history. In her biography of Nolde, published in early 2013, Kirsten Jüngling shed some critical light on the history of the Foundation. She had been denied access to the Seebüll archives. Nevertheless, the material in other archives exposed an illuminating picture: “It was about presenting Emil Nolde as a victim of National Socialist persecution. One obviously did not trust the persuasive impact of his paintings. One – meaning, the Stiftung Seebüll Ada und Emil Nolde – did one’s utmost immediately after his death to obtain sole authority over interpretations of Nolde”.11 In his 1967 address commemorating Nolde’s hundredth birthday in Seebüll, Walter Jens legitimised the Foundation’s dictum, which was valid up until a few years ago. Jens claimed that, “particularly in the Nolde case, the attempt to protect the artist from the most dangerous attack of all – his own interpretation of himself – was more an act of piety than one of brazen indecency”.12 It “bade farewell to the German, the fascistically distort ed, the all-too-Noldian Nolde”.13 Jens’ speech served to justify the Foundation’s attempts to protect Nolde from Nolde. Today, on the other hand, more than fifty years later, the directorate and trustees of the Nolde Foundation Seebüll no longer see any necessity to protect Nolde from himself. His art, which blazed a trail for Expressionism and Modernism, is strong enough to sustain the discussion about his relationship to National Socialism. In 2016, the year that marked the Foundation’s sixtieth anniversary, the Foundation undertook a re-evaluation of how Emil Nolde had been depicted as a person. It was deem ed necessary to admit that there had been errors of judgement in the past. Myth-building had been encouraged, while not enough of Nolde’s biography had been told. Today, the Foundation believes that it is especially obliged to explain these misjudgements, to make sources available for discussion and to offer opportunities for freely assessing the information and putting it into context. To create a basis for this, in the same year the Founda- tion hired an archivist to carry out the task of evaluating all of the documents left behind by Ada and Emil Nolde until at least 2022. The ongoing goal is to digitalise them and to make them accessible online. We are grateful that the ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin and Gerd Bucerius, as well as the Wüstenrot Stiftung, have made this project possible. The Nolde

10 Foreword

Foundation Seebüll will do everything in its power to combine the new knowledge resulting from the research with the outstanding artwork, for the purpose of presenting Emil Nolde, the person, authentically and distinctly, so that his extensive oeuvre can be exhibited in an informative manner that is in step with the times. Among other things, the new information and even the Foundation’s critique of itself found their way into the 2017 filmEmil Nolde – Maler und Mythos. In October of the same year, the Nolde Foundation Seebüll and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung sponsored a conference entitled “Emil Nolde in His Time: In National Socialism”,14 and the lectures given parallel to the exhibition were published. The Foundation supports a holistic observation of Nolde’s life and work, as well as a critical exploration of them, while at the same time taking into consideration the historical context and Nolde’s environment. The time has come to show the whole picture: the magnificent work of a great artist, and a person with a multi-layered biography. “Not until Nolde’s personality is accepted in all of its crude contradictions can one […] really do justice to his art”, wrote Florian Illies in 2008.15 Emil Nolde and his art are ambassadors for Schleswig-Holstein in Germany, as well as for Germany in the world. He and his work are a part of the history of Schleswig-Holstein and Germany during the National Socialist regime. He and his Foundation are also part of post-war German history and its efforts to suppress the incriminating aspects of it for a wide variety of reasons. Taken together, all of these facets make Nolde’s life, his body of work and the reception of it today an important part of twentieth-century German history. Only by examining all of the aspects will it be possible to come close to a historically correct portrait. Individuals must make their own final – and perhaps moral – judgement of the man and his art. It took a long time for the Nolde Foundation Seebüll to open up. In the past, it used its role as the administrator of the estate to control access to the archives. After the Seebüll archives have been assessed and digitalised, the original sources will be available for examination, making it possible for people to do their own research and ask their own questions. Today, the Foundation stands for open discourse and debate on how to interpret the original sources or evaluate Nolde’s life; as Uwe Danker states, “All of this nur- tures science, which is never without presuppositions and will always be controversial”.16 The Foundation is very deliberately surrendering the remains of its historical authority and putting itself on the same footing as other scholars. The exhibition Emil Nolde – A German Legend. The Artist during the Nazi Regime and its accompanying two-volume publication also formally document a step toward historicising Nolde and the story of the Nolde Foundation Seebüll, in order to shape the Foundation’s future free from myths and legends. The founding director, Joachim von Lepel, wrote in 1961: “The range of this oeuvre is so large, both in terms of themes and painting styles, that there is always something new to discover in it. […] They are creations of strong intensity, living lives of their own. Of course, we are not always ready to accept this at any time. We will probably never learn the last secret, let alone be able to explain it”.17 With the exhibition Emil Nolde – A German Legend. The Artist during the Nazi Regime and its companion publications, we are perhaps coming closer to Emil Nolde’s ‘last secret’ as an artist and a person than we have ever been before.That this has been possible is due to the achievements of many contributors, whom I would like to thank here for their persistently faithful and inspiring cooperation and committed participation; they have contributed considerably to the success of the show and the two- volume publication accompanying it. I would like to thank certain colleagues at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz by name: Michael Eissenhauer, Udo Kittelmann, Joachim Jäger, Dieter Scholz, Katharina Wippermann and Anja Pawel, as well as the Freunde der Nationalgalerie e. V., Gabriele Quandt, André Odier and Lutz Driever, and Petra Winter, head of the Central Archives. For his ambitious installation of the show, my thanks go to Meyer Voggenreiter of mvprojekte.

11 I am extraordinarily grateful to the Friede Springer Stiftung for supporting the educa tional programme that accompanies the exhibition. Also accompanying the show is a catalogue in two volumes, whose careful supervision lay in experienced hands. For their professional oversight, thanks go to the editor Clemens von Lucius and the coordinator Sabine Bleßmann. The outstanding layout was done by e o t . Lilla Hinrichs and Anna Sartorius. Katharina Haderer, Anja Besserer, Andrea Bartelt and Nora Schröder of Prestel also provided professional, cordial supervision. The catalogue was made possible thanks to the support of the ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius, in particular I would like to express gratitude to Michael Göring and Christine Neuhaus, and thanks to the Ernst von Siemens Kunststiftung, in particular I would like to gratefully thank Martin Hoernes. My great thanks go to the trustees of the Stiftung Seebüll Ada und Emil Nolde and all of its employees, especially Astrid Becker, Hartmut Petzak and Sabine Zeh. Last but not least, I am grateful to Aya Soika and Bernhard Fulda for their inestimably valuable commitment, their profound knowledge, their passion for Emil Nolde and their meticulousness. Despite – or perhaps because of – the hard facts, their consistently faith ful collaboration was greatly enriching and inspiring. The exhibition Emil Nolde – A German Legend. The Artist during the Nazi Regime and its two companion publications, the Volume of Essays and Illustrations and Chronicle and Documents, represent important milestones on the path to understanding Emil Nolde, his art, its reception and the history of the Foundation. How will new information about the old artist alter the perception of his work? 18 The readers of the books and the visitors to the show are heartily invited to pursue the question for themselves and to discover their own answers.

Christian Ring Director, Stiftung Seebüll Ada und Emil Nolde

1 Conference “Emil Nolde und Max 4 See the essays on this group of by grants from the Alexander von Sauerlandt. Aspekte einer Freund- themes published by the authors Humboldt Foundation and the Gerda schaft”, 14/15 February 2013, since 2014: Bernhard Fulda and Aya Henkel Foundation. Aya Soika, Stiftung Moritzburg, Halle (Saale). Soika, “‘Deutscher bis ins tiefste “Emil Nolde, Die Sünderin (Christus Question posed to Isgard Kracht Geheimnis seines Geblüts’. Emil und die Sünderin), 1926”, in: Dieter by Olaf Peters during the conference. Nolde und die nationalsozialistische Scholz and Maria Obenaus (eds.), Quoted in: Aya Soika, “Emil Nolde Diktatur”, in: exhib. cat. Frankfurt Die schwarzen Jahre. Geschichten im Netzwerk der Moderne”, in: Kunst- am Main 2014, pp. 45–55; “Emil einer Sammlung 1933 bis 1945 (exhib. chronik, no. 66, 2013, pp. 304–309, Nolde and the National-Socialist cat. Nationalgalerie, Staatliche here p. 308. Dictatorship”, in: Olaf Peters (ed.), Museen zu Berlin, Berlin 2015), 2 Peter-Klaus Schuster, “Die doppelte Degenerate Art. The Attack on pp. 71–75; Aya Soika, “Ein Künstler ‘Rettung’ der modernen Kunst durch Modern Art in Nazi Germany, 1937 reagiert. Emil Nolde und die Ausstel- die Nationalsozialisten”, in: Eugen (exhib. cat. Neue Galerie, New York, lung Twentieth Century German Art”, Blume and Dieter Scholz (eds.), Munich 2014, pp. 184–193); Fulda in: Lucy Wasensteiner and Martin Überbrückt. Ästhetische Moderne 2015; Bernhard Fulda, “Myth- Faass (eds.), London 1938. Defending und Nationalsozialismus, Cologne Making in Hitler’s Shadow. The ‘Degenerate’ Art. Mit Kandinsky, 1999, p. 45. Transfiguration of Emil Nolde after Liebermann und Nolde gegen Hitler 1945”, in: Jan Rüger and Nikolaus (exhib. cat. The Wiener Library 3 Berthold Hinz, “Das Nolde-Dilemma Wachsmann (eds.), Rewriting German for the Study of the Holocaust & im Rahmen der ‘Gleichschaltung’ History. Festschrift for Richard J. Genocide, London; Liebermann- der bildenden Künste 1933–1937”, in: Evans, Basingstoke 2015, pp. 177–194; Villa, Berlin, Wädenswil 2018), publication accompanying the confer- Fulda 2016; Bernhard Fulda, “Emil pp. 201–207; Aya Soika, “‘Ein wahrer ence “Emil Nolde in seiner Zeit. Im Nolde in seiner Zeit. Der ‘historische Atlas der schwarzen Rasse in unseren Nationalsozialismus”, held by the Nolde’ und der ‘Künstler Nolde’”, in: Kolonien’. Emil Noldes Südsee- Stiftung Seebüll Ada und Emil Nolde conference publication (see note 3). Aquarelle im kolonialen Kontext”, in: in cooperation with the Frankfurter Also in planning is an extensive Marco L. Petersen (ed.), Sønderjyl- Allgemeine Zeitung, 26/27 October biographical study by Bernhard land-Schleswig Kolonial. Eine 2017 at the Freie Akademie der Fulda. As with the essays mentioned Spurenlese (University of Southern Künste, Hamburg (forthcoming). above, this study is made possible Denmark Studies in History and

12 Foreword

Social Sciences, vol. 569), Odense Emil Nolde als Vertreter der deutschen Nolde und die nationalsozialistische 2018, pp. 277–304; Aya Soika, “Emil Avantgarde im ‘Dritten Reich’”, in: Diktatur”, pp. 45–55. Nolde und die Ausstellung ‘Entartete Georges-Bloch-Jahrbuch des Kunst- 10 Haftmann 1963, p. 15. Kunst’”, in: conference publication historischen Instituts der Univer- (see note 3). sität Zürich, 2002/03, pp. 334–343; 11 Jüngling 2013, p. 291. 5 Many essays about Nolde’s James A. van Dyke, “Something 12 Jens 1967, n.p. National Socialist sympathies have New on Nolde, National Socialism, 13 Ibid. been published since the early 1990s, and the SS”, in: Kunstchronik, 65:5, May 2012, pp. 265–270; Isgart Kracht, 14 “Emil Nolde in seiner Zeit. Im without, however, the opportunity Nationalsozialismus” (see note 3). to thoroughly examine the contents “Ansichten eines Unpolitischen? Emil of the archives at the Nolde Stiftung Noldes Verhältnis zum National 15 Florian Illies, “Das liest die Kanz- Seebüll. See: Sönnich Volquardsen, sozialismus”, in: Emil Nolde. Farben lerin”, in: Die Zeit, 31.7.2008. “Es ist an der Zeit, Fragen zu stellen. heiß und heilig (exhib. cat. Stiftung 16 Uwe Danker, “Noldes ideologische Zum 125. Geburtstag von Emil Nolde”, Moritzburg – Kunstmuseum des Heimat? Schleswig-Holstein und der in: Nordfriisk Instituut (ed.), Nordfries Landes Sachsen-Anhalt, Halle 2013), Nationalsozialismus”, in: conference land, no. 97, March 1992, pp. 17–19; pp. 193–198; Jüngling 2013. publication (see note 3). Hecker 1995; Peter Vergo, “Emil 6 A small portion of the mostly 17 Joachim von Lepel, “Emil Nolde”, Nolde. Myth and Reality”, in: Peter unpublished correspondence will be in: Emil Nolde – Wilhelm Lehmbruck. Vergo and Felicity Lunn (eds.), Emil made available in the second volume Meister der Plastik des 20. Jahrhun- Nolde (exhib. cat. Whitechapel Art accompanying the exhibition: derts (exhib. cat. Kunst- und Kunst- Gallery, London 1995), pp. 38–65; (Fulda/Ring/Soika 2019, vol. 2). gewerbeverein e. V., Reuchlinhaus, exhib. cat. Hannover 1999 (including 7 Stefan Koldehoff, “Noldes Bekennt- Pforzheim 1961), pp. 6–9, here p. 8. Heinzelmann 1999; Krempel 1999); nis”, in: Die Zeit, 10.10.2013. Uwe Danker, “‘Vorkämpfer des 18 For more on the reception from Deutschtums’ oder ‘entarteter 8 See vol. 2 (Fulda/Ring/Soika 2019, today’s point of view, please see the Künstler’? Nachdenken über Emil vol. 2), doc. 48. address by Jürgen Kaube, Sehen, Nolde in der NS-Zeit”, in: Demo- 9 Exhib. cat. Frankfurt am Main 2014. was gemalt wurde – Wissen, was krati sche Geschichte, 14, 2001, See ibid.: Bernhard Fulda and Aya getan wurde. Zum 150. Geburtstag pp. 149–188; Urs Langwiler, “‘Meine Soika, “‘Deutscher bis ins tiefste von Emil Nolde am 7. August 2017, Kunst ist deutsch, stark, herb, innig.’ Geheimnis seines Geblüts’. Emil Seebüll 2018.

Introduction

I 01

16 Introduction

The Hamburg museum director Max Sauerlandt had already twice paid literary homage to his friend Emil Nolde, whom he greatly admired – both times with the active assistance of his esteemed subject. In 1921 he published the first biography of the artist. In 1927, on the occasion of Nolde’s sixtieth birthday, this was followed by an edition of letters containing the great master’s words. At the turn of the year 1928/29 Sauerlandt approached the painter with a new idea for a tribute: “Dear Nolde, have you ever thought about having a sculpture made of yourself?” One of his protégés, the sculptor Gustav H. Wolff, wanted very much to make a bust of him but wasn’t sure whether he would be “up to the task”.1 After Nolde had convinced himself of the young man’s talent by visiting his studio, he gave him the chance and was “a well-behaved model”, as he wrote to Sauerlandt.2 Initially the artist seemed satisfied with the result: a half-length portrait in the form of an approximately forty-centimetre- tall terracotta bust. At the beginning of 1930, however, Nolde changed his mind only shortly after his friend let him know that the Reichskunstwart (Reich Arts Commissioner) Edwin Redslob had visited, and on that occasion had admired the Nolde bust which was there as well.3 Clearly the painter had only now become aware that the young artist’s work would reach a significantly wider audience. For that, however, he did not think the bust was good enough after all, and he informed Sauerlandt that he would ask Wolff to destroy it.4 After some to-ing and fro-ing they agreed that Wolff would be allowed a second attempt, but this time only of the head, which Nolde clearly still viewed as having been the most successful section.5 Yet the second clay head, which, at a height of forty-five centimetres, was clearly larger than life-sized, also met with no real acceptance until Sauerlandt came up with a brilliant idea: if cast in bronze, it would have a completely different effect. The young artist informed his friend, however, that he did not have the means to do this. Would Nolde step into the breach? 6 The painter did not take long to convince. He was much happier with the bronze version of the portrait: so happy, in fact, that he repeatedly com- plained to Sauerlandt about photos sent to him of the work, which were intended for repro- duction: “The sculpture by Wolff is much better than the photographs. I would not be happy if these were published”.7 As a symbol of Nolde’s artistry, he wanted the momentous work shown to advantage as three-dimensionally as possible. | fig. 01 |

In fact, the original did not fall short of its intended effect, either. Even shortly after the cast was made the Museum Wiesbaden purchased a copy, and another found its way, via the Galerie Flechtheim, into the collection of Carl Hagemann for 2,500 Reichsmark.8 In 1932 the curator of the Nationalgalerie in Berlin, Ludwig Thormaehlen, borrowed the bronze bust from Wiesbaden for the showcase exhibition Neuere deutsche Kunst – the controversial and final major international exhibition of the Weimar Republic – in order to accompany the displayed works by Nolde with an image of the person behind their creation.9 There, it was – at least in the eyes of Sauerlandt – “by far the most significant piece of sculpture in the exhibition”.10 After this, the bust was moved into the Nationalgalerie’s Nolde room in the Kronprinzenpalais (Crown Prince Palace), where it could still be admired in the spring of 1933 before it went back to Wiesbaden.11 | fig. 09, p. 46 | In the spring of 1937 some of Nolde’s greatest admirers considered giving the bronze bust to the painter 01 Gustav H. Wolff, for his seventieth birthday. Ultimately, however, a large silver candle holder turned out to Head of Emil Nolde, 12 1930 be more affordable. Then, too, the bronze head would probably have brought Nolde little Bronze, height: ca. 45 cm joy in the summer of 1937. The Nolde room at the Nationalgalerie had been cleared out Museum Wiesbaden

17 by then; Nolde’s artworks were being spectacularly paraded in the propaganda exhibition Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art), and the bust was a painful reminder to the artist of better times. “Have you seen the bust?” he inquired of friends in October 1937: “It stood in the Kronprinzenpalais, but is now dishonoured along with me”.13 Yet interestingly this observation was not true. Although a total of twenty-eight of Wolff’s sculptures were also removed from German museums during the course of the Degenerate Art campaign, this did not include the bronze head, which was allowed to remain in the collection of the Wies- baden museum. For this reason, in 1955 Werner Haftmann was able to present the imposing bronze portrait of Nolde, by then a legendary old master of German modern art, along with six selected paintings by him, at the now famous firstdocumenta – that showcase exhibition of contemporary art featuring a demonstrative rehabilitation of classical modernism, and located in the ruins of the Fridericianum Museum in Kassel.14

Why – as some readers now ask – is this bronze bust placed at the beginning of a study about Nolde’s relationship to National Socialism? The artist Emil Nolde was always ‘larger than life’, just like the bronze portrait by Gustav H. Wolff. And as the story of this bust’s origins makes clear, the painter played a central and active role in the process of creating his own image as an artist. That which we previously knew about Nolde in the ‘Third Reich’ was largely the result of his work regarding his own commemoration. The painter did not only produce thousands of artworks; for his contemporaries, and for posterity, he also provided a framework suitable for casting a particularly impressive light on these works, particularly through the autobiography he authored in the 1930s and 1940s. The terms ‘painting ban’ and ‘unpainted pictures’ are inseparably linked with one another, and even to this day they inform our view of Nolde’s time under National Socialism. More than that, they also influence viewers’ reception of Nolde’s creations from these years. This is because a visitor to an art exhibition does not approach the artworks in a cultural vacuum; instead, the images mobilise memories of other images and texts. They hang “from the threads of an invisible text”, as Gottfried Boehm put it.15 In his work on the power that images have to affect us, Horst Bredekamp created the concept of the “absent narrative”, describing it as a “narrative arising only in the viewer’s mind, triggered by the image, and simultaneously framing the image”.16 For Nolde’s contemporaries after 1945, the small-format watercolours (the so-called ‘Unpainted Pictures’) were the act of an heroic, non-collaborative resistance in the era of the omnipresent Gestapo – the secret police on which, after 1968, the village policeman Jepsen in Deutschstunde (The German Lesson) by Siegfried Lenz was modelled.

When, in the following text, Nolde’s images and narratives are placed – figuratively speaking – in a different framework than the one conceived by Nolde after 1930, this can be understood as a two-fold act of emancipation: emancipation from both the narrative framework and the image of the artist-hero as a solitary figure. For Nolde not only created a narrative framework for his art; he also – for his paintings – created a recognisable material aesthetic with their wooden frames. The typical Nolde ‘flair’ at a painting exhibition is at least partly constituted by the contrast between his powerfully colourful paintings on the one hand, and the dark-brown or black frames on the other. These are “serious, black wooden frames”, as Nolde declared in his volume of memoirs Jahre der Kämpfe (Years of Struggle): “This was the greatest contrast imaginable with the usual, playfully rococo-gilded French plaster frames. The public was not satisfied with my style, and wanted to see gold – gilded plaster! – but I did not do it”.17 That was true, but it was not the whole truth, for in the early years Nolde had long experimented with the most diverse frames, including gilded ones, but at that time their gilding or painting had been the task of his wife Ada.18 If one disconnects the years of National Socialism from the narrative framework created by Nolde, this simultaneously reveals the artist’s wife’s central role in the dynamic process of creating the artist legend surrounding Nolde.

18 Introduction I

At the same time, the bronze bust by Wolff impressively demonstrates that this process of self-stylisation took place in a dynamic societal context of expectations and conventions, and of adulation and criticism, and that this in turn affected both the artist’s behaviour and his self-representation. Even while Nolde was still alive some art historians began to show interest in this dynamic. In 1934, the year in which Jahre der Kämpfe was published, a pioneering study by two Viennese art historians, Ernst Kris and Otto Kurz, also appeared: Die Legende vom Künstler. Ein geschichtlicher Versuch (Legend, Myth, and Magic in the Image of the Artist. A Historical Experiment). Kris and Kurz showed that the life stories of Renaissance artists primarily consisted of a sequence of universal motifs. These motifs played a part in emphasising the respective person’s special status, based on stereotypical features common among these ideal-typical ‘great artists’. Time and again they dealt with the social rise of producers of art, their self-taught natures, and the importance of chance as being formative to their artworks.19 According to Kris, the cultural effects of this collective mythologisation were considerable. Not only did biographers tailor their narratives to fit the ideal image of the artist as had been formed in literature and internalised; even more important was the reciprocal effect these ideal-typical narratives had on individual artists. They began to identify with the stereotypical patterns of these narratives of genius, and to integrate them into their own lifestyles and artistic identities. Kris called this phenomenon “gelebte vita” (enacted biography).20 In 1935 Thomas Mann, then in his American exile, received an article from Kris containing this thesis and he found the concept extremely inspiring: “Mixing freedom and obligation, independence and imitation in the conduct of one’s life”, he noted in his diary, adding an observation of his brother’s: “Heinrich talks about my ‘amalgamation with Goethe’, which is based on the infantile game of identification”.21

If one wants to understand Nolde’s self-perception and his self-stylisation during the Nazi regime – whether towards his friends or Joseph Goebbels – then that cannot be separated from his artistic habitus, which was already formed well before 1933.22 The tragedy of the misunderstood artistic genius wreathed Nolde throughout his life – not least because the painter oriented himself time and again on this biographical type whenever it came to describing his artistry. In other words, this publication is not simply about countering the painter’s self-narrative with a different narrative – thus tearing off the stylised artist’s mask in order to reveal the ‘true’ manipulative Nolde underneath – but rather to historically contex- tualise and thereby to explain Nolde’s hard work on his own artistic legend as a component of his artistic identity. For one cannot separate oeuvre, biography, autobiographical self- stylisation and reception of artworks from one another.

The new Rembrandt and his wife

In August 1933, Emil Nolde’s hopes of being appointed as an official state artist by the new National Socialist government had reached their zenith. While he painted in his summer residence of Seebüll, close to the Danish border, his Danish wife Ada was helping the director of the Nationalgalerie, Alois Schardt, to create a new hanging of Nolde’s works, keeping her husband informed by mail of the latest developments in art politics. She also wrote to Nolde about where he could find his presents for his sixty-sixth birthday, which she could not celebrate with him due to her endeavours in Berlin: “In the suitcase in the hall you will find the blanket that you are to have, and on the bookshelf in the living room between the other books you will find the bookRembrandt als Erzieher (Rembrandt as Educator) by Langbehn. We always wanted to get to know Langbehn”.23 It was a very timely gift. At a time when there was bitter dispute among the German public regarding the value and content of ‘German’ Expressionism – whether it was ‘artistic Bolshevism’ or ‘revolutionary, Nordic expressive art’ | ➤ Chap. II | – Ada bestowed a classic of völkisch- nationalist literature on her beloved painter husband. Julius Langbehn’s book had first

19 been published in 1890, and around the turn of the century it had developed into a type of bible amongst the education-zealous conservative German bourgeoisie. In his book, Langbehn turned against prevailing naturalistic trends and postulates a purely “German” art as a remedy for the malaise of the modern world. He demonised internationalism, large cities and mass culture, ranted against “specialisation” and about education in knowledge and understanding, and demanded instead a new “education of the heart”, which was to be based on character, instinct and above all individualism, the root of all art and all German- ness.24 The key to cultural rebirth thereby lay in a new “localism”: “The righteous artist cannot be local enough. A healthy and truly beneficial development of German artistic life can consequently only be expected if it is subdivided and organised into as many geographi- cal, topographical and local schools of art as possible, with individual characters as sharply distinct as possible”.25 Rembrandt served him as a model for this, as “the most German of all German painters”, from whose spirit the völkisch rebirth was to ensue.26 Langbehn used this appropriation of the Dutch painter to create a new Greater German role model. Rem- brandt, he argued, was a “low-German and soil-loving artist”, and this characteristic allowed him “to function as a coloniser on the spiritual level; because he is a farmer, he can be a constructor”.27 For a young North German painter and farmer’s son from the German-Danish border region such as Emil Nolde, who tried to establish himself after the turn of the century in a saturated German art market, the image as popularised by Langbehn of the individual artist as saviour and as national redeemer was extraordinarily attractive, not least due to the hints strewn throughout the book that the German renewal would find its source in Northern and “Lower” Germany. At the very beginning of his career Nolde therefore contacted Langbehn’s loyal assistant, the painter Momme Nissen, perhaps also in the hope of personally meeting the prominent author – or at least Ada’s remarks in the summer of 1933 seem to suggest this.28 For the ideas Langbehn touted in his book were largely congruent with Nolde’s self- perception as an artist. This also becomes clear in his letter to Ada of 8 August 1933, in which he thanks her for his birthday present: “I looked into the Langbehn book. Conceptually, it is exactly the way I like to think as well; some of it lags a bit behind, but some of it is still completely appropriate for today”.29

The consensus Nolde confirms here with one of the most important thought leaders of the völkisch world view is only surprising if the art history of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is misunderstood as a type of modern devotional literature, with clearly assigned roles and values: with ‘good’ Modernism on the one hand, seen as rule-breaking, liberal, pluralistic and valuable, and on the other hand the supposedly ‘anti-Modernist movement’, considered backwards, illiberal, repressive, and artistically insignificant. All too often the myriad of diverse branches of Modernism – even today – is pared back to this type of more accommodating pattern. As in a flower arrangement, the Rembrandt-German Langbehn is tucked in with the race theoretician Houston Stewart Chamberlain, in order to reveal the poisonous blossom – Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts. Eine Wertung der seelisch- geistigen Gestaltenkämpfe unserer Zeit (The Myth of the Twentieth Century. An Evaluation of the Spiritual-Intellectual Confrontations of Our Age) by Alfred Rosenberg, chief ideologue of the Nazis – in an appropriately isolated light.30 If this arrangement is also supplemented with artwork, then these are pictures that may be identified, thanks to the highly effective Nazi propaganda, simply as a part of the official ‘Blut-und-Boden’ (blood and soil) ideology, like the paintings of Adolf Ziegler, for example, who, from December 1936, was president of the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts, or like depictions of diverse glorifiers of Germanic people, a category Nolde had already made fun of in 1910.31 Today, these are pictures one may still be able to find in history books but which are generally not exhibited in the celebratory public sphere of German art museums. Conversely, the scholarly activity around so-called Modernism revealed decades ago that the frequent attempts by contemporaries of the time to adequately aesthetically express the perceived modernity of their

20 Introduction I age contained many thoroughly ‘reactionary’ elements. Friedrich Nietzsche’s intellectual influence could assume the most diverse guises. And instead of perceiving Langbehn simply as a representative of a völkisch conception of the world, one should see him as part of a much broader world of Neo-Romanticism, which encompassed such diverse personalities as Stefan George, Hermann Bahr, Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach, Rudolf Steiner and many more. Despite their individual differences and contradictions, these all were ultimately ‘Lebensreformer’ (life reformers) who felt it their mission to create an elite counter-movement of art, feeling and experience, that could oppose the rationalism of ‘enlightened’ civilisation with its bourgeois materialism and merit principle – a creative renaissance of the mind as a remedy for the crisis of meaninglessness felt by modern people.32 Nolde was not the only painter of his time to react enthusiastically to this exaltation of the individual artist; the same can be established – despite complete stylistic differences – for contemporaries of his such as Wassily Kandinsky, Johannes Itten or Kurt Schwitters. The cult around the Bauhaus ‘Masters’, which can still be experienced in striking detail at the World Heritage Site in Dessau, was rooted in the same soil.33

Nolde was also a child of his time, an era which held the ideal of the timeless artistic genius before his eyes. Thus the enthusiastic reaction of Ada and Emil Nolde to the NSDAP’s (National Socialist German Workers Party’s) takeover of government in 1933 – which was a turning point celebrated in propaganda as a ‘national uprising’ under the sign of the ‘Führer cult’, or cult of the leader – can be understood in the context of the artist’s exaggerated sense of mission and his unsatisfied desire for recognition. For ever since the beginning of his artistic career, Nolde had hoped to be recognised as the “new Rembrandt”.34 That is not just expressed in one of his earliest paintings The Painter (Self-Portrait) of 1899, which, with its chiaroscuro, seems like a quotation from one of the young Rembrandt’s many self- portraits that Nolde knew from various art publications, including from the title page of the Langbehn book. | fig. 02 | As well as this, he used the famous Dutch artist’s The Pilgrims at Emmaus, which he had studied in the Louvre during his visit to Paris, as a direct model for his first commissioned work, the large altar paintingChrist at Emmaus, painted for a church in Ølstrup in West Jutland.35 For Christmas of 1906 he gave the Swiss lawyer Hans Fehr, who was his oldest friend and earliest patron, an etching: a self-portrait with a floppy hat. This work bore a strong resemblance to a Rembrandt self-portrait the friends had admired when they had seen it together on a visit to the museum in Leipzig.36 This identification still lingered decades later: “The highest dramatic emotion I feel is in front of Grünewald’s Passion, and in the pictorial artistry of Rembrandt”, the artist confessed on one of his little notepads during the Second World War.37 After the imposition of the professional ban by the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts, the painter consoled himself with the prominent company in which he thereby found himself: “World rulers, popes and kings were almost always unbelievers towards geniuses. […] The fine arts hold some fates like those of Riemenschneider and Rembrandt, both in the past and now”.38 Even shortly before the end of the Third Reich Nolde still philosophised about these parallels: “Rembrandt’s fate and misfortune emerged when lesser painters became the judges of his art. Small criticism looked up at greatness from below – and gained the perspective of a mole”.39 But this self-stylisation as the “new Rembrandt” did not originate solely in Nolde’s wishful thinking; he was thereby also reflecting societal projections upon him. As early as 1908, Fehr had already organised a Rembrandt-Nolde exhibition at the Jena Kunstverein and subsequently praised it as “the most beautiful exhibition in Germany”.40 One of his earliest patronesses, the Jewish art critic Rosa Schapire, who in numerous lectures before 1914 sought to win her contemporaries over to Nolde’s art, repeatedly voiced her impression on such occasions: “it is as if all preceding art – including Rembrandt – was only a preparation for Nolde”, as recorded by one of her listeners in his diary from that time.41

21 02 03

The most influential voice in the choir of Nolde idealisers, however, was his wife Ada. | fig. 03 | For this young Danish woman, her encounter with the awkward artist in 1901 was not just the fulfilment of a great “longing for love”, as she later noted in her diary.42 For Ada Vilstrup, Nolde and his art became the meaning and purpose of her own life. The fact that the pretty pastor’s daughter with her educated middle-class origins would give her heart to, of all people, a not particularly attractive farmer’s son who initially had neither money nor success was also the result of a spiritual longing that would be satisfied through her belief in artistic genius. This can be seen not least in one of her diary entries in which – a few years after the fact – she recalled her encounter with her future husband in a type of psychological sketch: “Him: a genius, still completely unknown, unworldly, without the usual aesthetic appeal, with warmth, great goodness, strong roots, and therefore capable of gradually spreading a magnificent crown. Externally not repellent but without any at- traction for the world: utterly lonesome. Unkempt to the highest degree, but conducting himself with great care, as though surrounded by an isolating atmosphere. Rebuffing. She: young, beautiful, appealing, always inspiring attention and joy, yet without real friends, because always being chosen she wished to choose. Inherent periodic melancholy, not smooth in dealings, not great, but with a longing for greatness and loving only greatness. Endlessly capable of sacrifice, no vigorous drive within. Disappointed if something does not succeed after a long time”.43 Through her choice of partner Ada was the first to recognise and discover Nolde’s genius, and thus every tribute to Nolde also became a validation of her own life choices. That her husband, “who the young, clairvoyant artists call the new Rem- brandt” as she enthusiastically reported to a supporter in 1907, was turned away everywhere, “especially by the art-dealer gang”, was something that she saw only as proof of Nolde’s artistic genius: “How is it that in our times the greats always have to fight with such things?” 44 02 The Painter (Self-Portrait), Ada’s love for her Emil therefore cannot be separated from her deep belief in his artistic 1899 Oil on rough canvas greatness. All of the difficulties that the couple had to overcome were interpreted within (sackcloth), this genius narrative and religiously suffused. Despite chronic illnesses, Ada promoted 70.5 × 53.5 cm her husband’s art with true missionary zeal. Thereby she was not just interested in the material gain that a newly won admirer of Nolde’s art could bring to the couple. The trans- 03 Portrait of Ada, formation from neutral observer to adoring devotee was explained by Ada as being due 1904 Oil on canvas, to the spiritual power of Nolde’s pictures, and was interpreted as a type of enlightenment 33 × 47 cm experience for which the artist could never be sufficiently financially compensated. In

22 Introduction I

1916, she confided to her diary: “It was not uncommon for other people’s experiences of Emil’s art to be an experience for us […] for they were often converted from protesters or the indifferent, and permeated by the holy warmth of his art – but we have been much too trampled upon for years and years, and above all we know that Emil is the one giving, so that when it comes to saying thank you it just gets stuck in our throats”.45 This sanctification of Nolde’s art ties in seamlessly with the Romantic concept of ‘art as religion’. Again and again during her life, Ada spoke enthusiastically about the “old art which had endured for centuries, it becomes religion, one can step before it only in reverence, it speaks a holy language, the language of those blessed by God, who have brighter eyes than all other living creatures, which can see more deeply and celebrate more wildly than we can”.46 Only a few contemporaries, however, were able to receive the happy tidings: “The circle of people who really live with art and who grasp it is so small that one may speak of the small chosen few”, she announced during the First World War to one of Nolde’s most ardent admirers, the young museum director Max Sauerlandt.47

This overlapping of artistic individual and religious saviour is powerfully expressed in one of Nolde’s early religious works, the painting Pentecost of 1909. | fig. 04 | It is indeed a key work, and not just because the artist supplied it with a corresponding legend in his later autobiography.48 As with the other religious paintings from the summer of 1909 – paintings which helped to create his later fame – Nolde dealt with the role of the saviour here and transferred his own feeling of being a misunderstood outsider onto the isolation of the chosen one and his story of salvation. The painting Pentecost is thereby the crowning finale to an entire series, beginning with the painting The Last Supper and followed by Derision and Crucifixion.49 That Nolde further embellished his image as a misunderstood prophet in these pictures – after his 1906 painting Free Spirit – is evident. As creator of an art that he saw as being decades ahead of his own time, he considered ridicule and misunder- standing to be his fate, and made admirers aware of his lot time and again in his writing. And didn’t his fate and that of the works he created appear to confirm this opinion? Max Liebermann, by 1900 the grand old man of new German art and the president of the Berlin Secession – that place to which all ambitious ‘modern’ German artists aspired after the turn of the century – rejected Pentecost for the spring exhibition in 1910, along with many other works by younger artists. Although this rejection was not the direct cause for Nolde’s attack on Liebermann shortly thereafter, it did play an important part. In December 1910, Nolde wrote a letter accusing the art critic Karl Scheffler of being a “claqueur” for the old art dictator who, he insinuated, now produced only senile kitsch. For good measure, Nolde also sent Liebermann the letter for his perusal. What had been planned as the grand prelude to a palace coup within the Secession ended as a tragedy for Nolde. The letter was published, the press made fun of this unknown poser, and with insult and dishonour Nolde was barred from the Secession. Instead of being recognised as the new Rembrandt, in 1911 he found his public reputation in a shambles. He was not completely abandoned, however. The painting Pentecost that had been rejected by the Secession jury was purchased by his most faithful disciple, Hans Fehr, who hung the painting in his study – with breathtaking results, as Fehr informed the artist in a letter: “While immersing myself in it you were suddenly also there, both of you, not the painter alone, but also you, Ada, for you are also a bit of a co-creator, through that which you gave him. A painting like that could only be created by someone who themselves is permeated and sustained by the Holy Ghost, who has had to employ a thousand times his whole being. Only a year ago I stood quizzically in front of the same painting. Today it struck me like a revelation. A thousand thanks to you, painter, for the path you are leading me along”.50

23 04 Pentecost, 1909 Oil on canvas, 87 × 107 cm Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie

The cult of the artist as a bridge into National Socialism

While the ‘cult of the Führer’ and its socio-political dynamics has already been analysed extensively concerning the period 1900 to 1950, the number of art-historical studies on this theme for the first half of the twentieth century remains relatively small. The figure of the artistic genius – still omnipresent in the nineteenth century and commensurately thoroughly analysed – seems to fade almost to invisibility with the dawning of ‘Classic Modernism’.51 These were decades in which contemporaries on both sides of the Rhine frenetically revered the Rembrandt cult,52 and Nolde was able to watch the re-evaluation of Romanticism and the rise of Caspar David Friedrich to be the early nineteenth century’s new shining star in Berlin.53 They were years in which the artist could experience first-hand the transformation of a previously unknown Dutchman, the recently deceased Vincent van Gogh, into the superstar of sophisticated art criticism.54 It was an age of innovation in printing technology and of the mass distribution of illustrated art publications which repeated, mantra-like, the Romantic leitmotif of the artistic genius misunderstood during his lifetime. One such publication, published by a history painter from Kassel, Hermann Knackfuß, was the popular series of books Künstler-Monographien of which over two million copies were sold between 1895 and 1935. Emil Nolde himself bought sixty-four of these books, and they are still to be found in his library today.55 Yet ironically it is precisely for these years – the era of art guidebooks, of ‘Kunstführer’, as they are called in German – that we still know surprising little about what the widespread ‘Führer cult in the art world meant for contemporary painters living through those times. For one of them at least – the failed fine-art painter Adolf Hitler – the idea of genius became the “core of his ideology and of his system of rule”, as diverse new studies have convincingly established.56

24 Introduction I

The cult operating around Nolde was of central importance for his identification with National Socialism. As presented in the second chapter, “The Long Dispute Over Expression- ism Around Nolde”, even before 1933 Nolde was celebrated as a paradigmatic ‘German’ artist. After Germany’s traumatic defeat in the First World War, strong hopes of salvation were linked to a resurgence originating in German culture. Art became – especially in the late 1920s – a “means of national self-assertion”.57 That which Nolde’s enemy Max Liebermann had been for German Impressionism, Nolde himself was to become for German Expressionism: the old master of new German art. That also explains the central role Nolde’s work played, after the National Socialists took over government, in the fierce debates over what should be the ‘correct’ revolutionary German art. Nolde’s planned appointment as state artist, the private exhibitions for Goebbels and Hitler, an invitation to the festivities celebrating the tenth anniversary of the ‘Beer Hall Putsch’ as Heinrich Himmler’s guest of honour – what other artist could pride themselves on a comparable effort by their supporters? Even without knowledge of Nolde’s extensive contacts, it was clear to many of his artist colleagues that he was ideally suited to represent a ‘modern’ National Socialist art. For someone like George Grosz, a member of the KPD (German Communist Party) in the early 1920s who had emigrated to New York by the summer of 1932, it was obvious in April of 1933 that “Nolde has his big chance”.58 The veneration emanating from his circle of supporters also had an important psychological function during the Entartete Kunst exhibition. A Danish journalist who visited Nolde in Seebüll on his seventieth birthday in August 1937 subsequently reported: “Mrs Nolde shows a pile of letters, certainly around a couple of hundred, which had come for his birthday […] and all extol Nolde’s art. On the grand piano stands a large solid silver candle holder, with a candle as thick as an arm. This candle holder is a birthday present accompanied by a note signed by many famous Germans, friends of Nolde and admirers of his art”.59 The journalist also quoted the wording of the greeting in the note: “‘To our dear painter Emil Nolde, who in our hearts – we who stand in work-filled, worry-filled everyday life – has consolingly ignited the holy flame of art, we dedicate for his seventieth birthday and in deepest gratitude this flame of life, to himself for safe and blessed accomplishment, for the honour of the German artistic community, and the high glory of the fatherland’”. | figs. 05, 06 | At approximately the same time, Walter Benjamin put the finishing touches to his now famous thesis that it is only a small step from the religious exaltation of art to the fascist aestheticisation of politics.60 Thanks to the support of his many admirers, Nolde finally succeeded in convincing decision-makers that the paintings of a staunch supporter of National Socialism did not belong in the Entartete Kunst exhibition; they were removed from the travelling exhibition at the end of 1938.

The chapter “Nolde’s Autobiography: The Misunderstood Genius in the Struggle for Ger- man Art” concerns the process of creating his two volumes of memoires, Das eigene Leben (My Own Life, 1931) and Jahre der Kämpfe (Years of Struggle, 1934). Nolde’s work on these autobiographical texts took place in the tense terrain between euphoric stylisation by his admirers, and bitter attacks by the National Socialist Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur (Combat League for German Culture). While the discussion about the public portrayal of Expressionism as ground-breaking German art flared up again in these years, Nolde was attempting to narratively position himself and his art in such a way that his contemporaries could perceive him as a misunderstood ‘German’ artistic genius. This work of writing his own artistic legend was a dynamic process which was strongly influenced by exterior pressures. Nolde’s self-representation as an artist struggling against all obstacles not only satisfied the expectations of his admirers; the painter also took up an entire series of themes – such as the concept of race, for example – through which he thought even his worst critics should be able to see ideological commonalities, and would thereby be able to appreciate the ‘Germanness’ in his art. In turn, the reception of his self-stylisation had a feedback effect on his self-perception. Not only did his publishing house’s ad- vertisements celebrate him as the “leader of the latest pictorial art”, but the reactions from

25 his personal surroundings to the first volume of memoirs also seemed to him to confirm his special status in the art world. In the course of writing his second volume of memoirs, Nolde consequently constructed a self-narration that supplied a biographical basis for his special status as a pioneering loner in German art: that because he, as a courageous representative of young ‘German’ art, had attempted but lost the fight against Max Lieber- mann – the Jewish old master of Impressionism, a style oriented on France – Nolde had then been persecuted and ostracised by a ‘Jewish-dominated’ press in the following years. Throughout his life Nolde suffered from negative art criticism, which he always perceived as if under a magnifying glass, and in this anti-Semitic conspiracy theory he found something it could convincingly be attributed to. Through these autobiographical recollec- tions at the beginning of the 1930s, the artist constructed a coherent narrative framework – not just for others, but also for himself – which gave form to the contexts and import of his life. Thereby Nolde – unlike Thomas Mann – did not ponder the constructed character of this self-portrayal.61 For him these were not memoirs but “books of life”, and he regularly read to others from them. In his will, he later stipulated that the manuscript of his still unpublished “books of life” – two further volumes – were to be published by the foundation he established.62 The anti-Semitic escalation in his self-stylisation of this year wove itself into Nolde’s artistic identity, and became a part of his self-presentation as an artistic genius.

At the same time this self-narrative also explains the Noldes’ exuberant identification with Hitler and with the ideological renewal promised by the ‘national uprising’ after 1933. When in March 1933 Ada wrote about Hitler – whom she had only now “recognised” – as a genius sent by God, with his exhilarating mission “to open our eyes to how completely we were controlled by Jews”, then that was both a part of the widespread ‘cult of the Führer’ and an expression of her hope that a similar appreciation was still imminent for Nolde.63 “Many are called, but few are chosen”, as Nolde reminded himself and his readers in his second volume of memoirs.64 The publication of Jahre der Kämpfe in November 1934, only a few weeks after Nolde’s admission to the NSAN (National Socialist Workers Party of Northern Schleswig), was intended to help smooth the way for this recognition. Although the longed-for appreciation of Nolde’s art from “above” did not arrive as quickly as the couple had hoped, they were nonetheless reassured by responses from their circle of personal friends that it would only be a matter of time.65 Oskar Schlemmer, who as a Bauhaus artist had also encountered strong hostility and had unsuccessfully attempted to render his services to the new regime as a representative of the “steely romanticism” invoked by Goebbels, was impressed after reading Jahre der Kämpfe despite the obvious egocentricity of the author, as he confided to his diary in 1935: “He had an ideal, or it formed 05 Emil Lettré, silver in him, and he crafted everything according to it and judged everything by it, as indeed candlestick, ca. 1937 Height: 41 cm (gift for it should or must be. He is – thus seen – really the German artist whom National Socialism Nolde’s 70th birthday) must unconditionally lift upon its shield, if there is justice in this world”.66 Nolde’s close confidant Ernst Gosebruch, who, in 1933, had been suspended from his position as director of the Folkwang Museum in Essen, also verified, after the appearance of Jahre der Kämpfe, 06 Address given by the the obvious double tragedy of Nolde’s fate: “For him who throughout his life had striven presenter of the silver candlestick, on the for, and had certainly also already achieved, those things the National Socialist movement occasion of Nolde’s 70th had set before our people’s emerging artists as the goal and criterion: the German, the birthday on 7.8.1937 Nordic, the masterful – it is very bitter that he repeatedly has to suffer unfair blows from high places”.67

07 Ada and Emil Nolde in the garden. In the The fact that the swastika flag was flying over the artist’s house in Seebüll shortly after background is the artist’s the National Socialists assumed power in 1933 – as was later recalled by the Seebüll house at Seebüll, with farm tenants of the time – shows that this political conviction was openly on public display.68 the second-storey gallery added in 1937; The same could be observed in many parts of Germany at the time. A later chapter, “Nolde’s ca. 1940 Anti-Semitism”, will deal with what made Nolde’s self-mobilisation for the Nazi regime

26 Introduction I

05 06

27 so exceptional. It is not the painter’s anti-Semitism itself, though, which is surprising. Throughout the German Empire, and especially among the nationalist, conservative bourgeoisie, anti-Jewish clichés were already widespread, and they had become more radical during the First World War and the revolutions of 1917/18.69 The notion of ‘consensual anti-Semitism’ within German society – which included those anti-Jewish statements which were completely socially acceptable – embraced a wide range which seems shocking to our present-day understanding. But in the course of his autobiographical self-representation, Nolde made his own anti-Semitism one of his unique selling points within newer German art, thereby radicalising himself. Until now the intensity with which the artist grappled with the ‘Jewish question’ after 1933 was not known. He went so far as to elaborate a “de-Jew- ification plan”, through which he wanted to demonstrate to Hitler his own ingenious far- sightedness and loyalty. If, after 1937, Nolde vehemently defended himself against the accusation of being a ‘degenerate’ artist, and to have thus been among those profiting from the supposedly Jewish-dominated ‘system time’ (the Weimar Republic era), then this was also because he felt himself to be profoundly misunderstood in his opposition to Jews. As a passionate wireless listener, Nolde followed the increasingly radical Jewish policies of the Nazi regime with inner approval and with a feeling of being at the forefront of the fight against the ‘Jewish subjugation of German culture’. After the war broke out, he attempted to win Hitler over to this view of his artistry in a letter of request. In 1943 – about a year and a half after his expulsion from the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts – this self-stylisation as a divinely gifted and misunderstood champion of German art in the context of extremely anti- Semitic wartime propaganda reached its appalling pinnacle. The reflections on Golgotha that Nolde sent his wife in May 1943, and his subsequent letters about the World War as a “Jews’ war”, leave little doubt that at this point in time he completely concurred with the central political project of the Third Reich – the ‘ethnic cleansing of the German community’.

But to what extent was Nolde’s anti-Semitism and ideological accord with the ‘young’ National Socialism expressed in his artistic work of those years? This question is dealt with in the chapter entitled “Jews, Fantasy Figures and Vikings”. The fact that the vast majority of the artworks he created in those years were not significantly different, at first glance, from the pictures he painted before 1933 gave many art viewers after 1945 the false impression that Nolde had – at least artistically – not made any concessions to the Nazi regime. This chapter shows how the artist modified his visual repertoire’s motifs to suit the artistic image he was promoting, without thereby having to change much stylistically. For, unlike many other painters, he believed he could help shape the National Socialist canon in the long term. Among other things, the chapter deals with an empty spot in Nolde’s oeuvre that needs explaining – the complete lack of biblical motifs after 1934 – and points out the way in which Nolde compensated for the exclusion of Jews from his imagery. Thereby Nolde’s painting production in this year was directly related to the written artist’s profile he was developing at the same time. It was not only a case of an ‘enacted biography’ – the subconscious orientation of one’s own artistic identity on that of an ideal-typical artistic genius – it was also a ‘painted biography’.

The chapter “Nolde’s War” concerns itself with those years that have until now remained completely in the shadow of Nolde’s 1941 professional ban. It shows, among other things, how strongly the artist identified with the German fight for world domination, while at the same time continuing to work intensively on his image for posterity. It also presents a nuanced picture of Nolde’s professional ban. His expulsion from the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts was also above all a result of his financial success, with earnings of close to 80,000 Reichsmark in 1940, the second year of the war. Although the artistic “trustworthiness” of the submitted works was denied to Nolde, and he was required to have all future sales and presentations authorised by the Chamber, his expulsion from the Reich Chamber was not an ‘absolute painting ban’, as it was eagerly characterised after 1945. At the same

28 Introduction I time, the official prohibition against him participating in public life in the arts led to an intensification of Nolde’s self-perception as a (still) misunderstood artistic genius, recognised only by a select band of often younger admirers – including many members of the German armed forces – who would perhaps be appropriately honoured in the future. Nolde was deeply affected by his expulsion from the Reich Chamber. Yet the image of his supposed ‘inner emigration’ and withdrawal to Seebüll is contrasted here with the artist couple’s active efforts to achieve Nolde’s professional vindication, for which they mobilised their far-flung network of supporters and travelled to Vienna in 1942 in order to win Baldur von Schirach over to their cause – with paintings that did not leave the Reichsstatthalter (Reich Governor) unimpressed.

Images of legends

The final two chapters deal with Nolde’s success at creating his own legend – a legend that was perpetuated in the decades after 1945 by numerous other authors. The narrative of the ‘recalcitrant’ artist battling through all resistance during the National Socialist era became a collective inspirational story that allowed Nolde’s pictures to be transformed into a screen for the projection of individual and societal longings. Nolde succeeded in creating what is probably one of the most effective representations of an ‘inner emigration’ in twentieth-century German cultural history, thereby also camouflaging his enthusiasm for Hitler and Nazi Germany, when in 1946 he developed the image of the “small, half-hidden room” where he had ostensibly painted the “small, special inspirations” on “very small bits of paper” during the “painting ban”.70 The chapter “The ‘Unpainted Pictures’: Genesis of a Myth” subjects this origin story to its first critical analysis, and locates these famous small-format watercolours in an entirely new position within Nolde’s artistic oeuvre. This sheds light not only on the close interrelationship between the processes of artistic creation, self-presentation, and making autobiographical sense of one’s life; it also shows how strongly the reception of these works was influenced by the mass-media and socio- political contexts of the 1960s – beginning with the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem in 1961 – and how central a role Werner Haftmann, a later director of the Nationalgalerie in Berlin, played in popularising Nolde’s heroic tale.

The final chapter, “Creating a German Post-War Legend”, expands the view further. Beginning with Nolde’s dramatisation of his alleged surveillance by the Gestapo, and with the elimination from his collection of aphorisms, after the end of the war, of all political statements that were overly problematic, it goes on to show the enthusiastic acceptance of the painter within German post-war society as a cultural identification figure. Nolde’s self-stylisation as a victim of National Socialism also found a thankful audience because untainted artist-heroes were needed for cultural reconstruction. Thus the Nazi state propaganda that ‘degenerate’ Modernism represented historical reality was accepted, but its conclusions were reversed, so that the formerly ostracised painter was now celebrated as a resistance fighter within fine art. Thereby Nolde came to personify the modern art martyr – oppressed but unbroken despite defamation and persecution. The greatest number of confiscated works, the largest work at the defamatory exhibitionEntartete Kunst, the professional ban of 1941: through what other artist could the repressive character of the National Socialist regime be expressed more vividly? It was no accident that a year after the artist’s death the first large Nolde retrospective in 1957 also made a stop in Munich. There – twenty years after the opening of the Grosse Deutsche Kunstausstellung and its antithesis, the propaganda exhibition Entartete Kunst – the retrospective helped to free the former National Socialist temple of art, previously called Haus der Deutschen Kunst (House of German Art) but now renamed Haus der Kunst (House of Art), from its past. | fig. 08 | Thereby the presentation of The Life of Christ merged with the depiction of

29 08 Nolde retrospective, Haus der Kunst, Munich, 1957. The Life of Christ was considered the main work of the exhibition.

08 the art martyr Nolde. Even before his death on 13 April 1956, the tale of his persecution as a putative resistance-fighter artist had been considered by many actors as suitable for adaptation. Beyond their efforts in support of formerly ‘degenerate art’ – and of Nolde’s art in particular – they were also reinterpreting their own experience and own roles during National Socialism. Their participation in Nolde’s vindication became part of their own means of dealing with the past. The cult of the artist could take many forms in this, ranging from the individual hero worship of Nolde’s assistant Joachim von Lepel, who later became the Nolde Foundation’s founding director, through effusive praise in the press for Nolde’s eightieth birthday on 7 August 1947, to appreciative co-optation by German politicians, both at state and federal levels. Nolde’s heroic narrative, however, had its strongest continuing effect in Seebüll. The Foundation executives there, in their concern with reputation manage- ment, were uncritical believers of the artistic legend established by the artist, which they then willingly sustained and institutionally perpetuated. They equated their own modified image of Nolde with the historical Nolde. But the Foundation’s efforts on Nolde’s behalf could not have had the same effect without the publication of Siegfried Lenz’s Deutschstunde in 1968. Lenz raised Nolde’s ‘painting-ban’ narrative to the level of world literature. The artist’s legend became a fixed component of the German state’s stock of narratives, and only now did Nolde’s art find its way into the state chambers of German federal presidents and chancellors.

So now, ninety years after the Nationalgalerie first purchased a Nolde painting – The Sinner, acquired in 1929 – what does it mean to hold an exhibition entitled Emil Nolde – eine deutsche Legende. Der Künstler im Nationalsozialismus? Isn’t one thereby perpetuating the institutional appreciation of an anti-Semitic party follower of the genocidal Nazi regime, and thereby unintentionally sustaining a national-conservative hero narrative? That would indeed be the case if contemporary art museums still understood their societal function as being within the ‘temple of art’ Romantic tradition – as being places where the education- zealous cultural bourgeoisie could seek and find positive self-affirmation. But the readiness shown by the Stiftung Seebüll Ada und Emil Nolde and the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

30 Introduction I to open themselves to external scholars, and – with funding from the Gerda Henkel Stiftung and the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung – to support a multi-year research project that also unveils unflattering realisations about their own institutions and founding personalities, demonstrates that a historically informed, self-reflective and evidence-based attitude has now become an integral component of the identity of museums. The new findings presented in this volume, which will be further contextualised in an accompanying volume with 103 documents and a comprehensive chronicle of these years, and which will be spatially and visually united with Nolde’s art in the exhibition, are challenging in many respects. They are irksome, and they demand both a rethinking of cherished ideas about history and deep reflection about the connections between images and words, presentation and content, and art and identities – be these identities individual, collective or national.

What do these insights mean for the presentation of Nolde’s artworks? For obvious reasons one cannot and should not blame the paintings. Any politically justified banishment of the artworks from public view would entail an unwitting alignment with the traditions of National Socialist cultural politics. As understandable as the contemporary need to distance ourselves from the unjust regime of the Nazis is, any “historical exorcism” in which everything unpleasant in German history were to be removed from public view would produce only one-dimensional hero narratives.71 But the suggestion by Walter Jens in 1967, on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of Nolde’s birth – to make the historic Nolde and his self-stylisation taboo, and thus separate the ‘person’ from the ‘artist’ in order to protect Nolde’s art – also seems no longer appropriate for our time. For even after Jens’ warning about the siren song of Nolde’s autobiography, one would not want to completely do without quotes from Nolde’s memoirs for catalogue texts and for presenting his artworks in public. As with many other artists, quotes by the artist often were (and will be) em- ployed to give the respective pictures a suitable framework. In Nolde’s case, the authority of the artist is thereby often invoked to point out the ostensibly necessary separation of ‘person’ and ‘artist’, which makes ignoring the National Socialist Nolde easier. For this, one could fall back on a text from the edition of letters of 1927 in which Nolde told his friend ‘S.’ – Max Sauerlandt – his view of this relationship: “You know my penchant to want to differentiate between the artist and the person. To me the artist is something like an add-on to the person and I can speak about him as I would about something other than the self, and I certainly may do that too”.72 This quote has been presented, like evidence from a witness, in numerous Nolde publications.73 The historical context of these words thereby slips from view. Nolde was reacting here to Sauerlandt’s suggestion of honouring his sixtieth birthday with an edition of letters. As would later be the case with the bronze bust by Wolff, this was intended to clearly demonstrate Nolde’s special status to his contemporaries. When Nolde asserted a distinction between the roles of ‘person’ and ‘artist’ here, it was also because the person and artist Nolde, when writing this passage in October 1926, had the readership of the planned edition of letters firmly in view. It was a rhetorical strategy which allowed him to detail his own artistic identity in writing. Through this separation he was able, in a quasi-objective way, to indulge in the myth of the unsociable, lonely and divinely gifted artistic genius.

A contemporary, reflective curatorial practice cannot simply continue practising the modernist belief in the autonomy of the work of art, but must consider ways in which the viewer can be given a chance to critically examine the narrative context surrounding the artwork, even within the framework of an exhibition with its celebratory intent. In the present climate in which images and staged presentations are more omnipresent than ever before, revealing this dynamic process of meaning creation – with all its effrontery and inconsistencies – can open new perspectives on artists and artworks, and on the societies in which they circulate.

31 Introduction I

1 See Max Sauerlandt to EN, the most expensive – But the materials 29 EN to AN, 8.8.1933, ANS. 30.12.1928, ANS. that he needs to use, even though I 30 See Ernst Piper, Alfred Rosenberg. 2 EN to Max Sauerlandt, 5.4.1929, gild all of his frames, that is difficult Hitlers Chefideologe, Munich 2015 ANS. for us to finance”. Or also, AN to Luise [2005], pp. 163–211. Schiefler, 20.10.1909: “I have no help 3 Max Sauerlandt to EN, 18.1.1930, around the house and then we now 31 See EN to Hans Fehr, 21.7.1910, quoted in: Kurt Dingelstedt (ed.), have to paint all the frames, and it ANS. Max Sauerlandt. Im Kampf um die seems like 100,000 of them to me, and 32 See Otto Weiss, Aufklärung, Mo- moderne Kunst. Briefe 1902–1933, god knows what else”. Quoted from: dernismus, Postmoderne. Das Ringen Munich 1957, p. 351. Woesthoff (forthcoming). der Theologie um eine zeitgemässe 4 See Max Sauerlandt to EN, 19 See Ernst Kris and Otto Kurz, Die Glaubensverantwortung, Regensburg 19.2.1930; EN to Max Sauerlandt, Legende vom Künstler. Ein geschicht- 2017, p. 28 f. The exhibition in the 5.3.1930, both ANS. licher Versuch, Frankfurt a. M. 1980 Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt a. M., 5 See Max Sauerlandt to EN, [1934]. See Kerstin Maria Pahl and Künstler und Propheten. Eine geheime 18.3.1930, ANS. Lukas Werner, “Variation als Aneig- Geschichte der Moderne 1872–1972, addressed this topic in 2015. 6 See Max Sauerlandt to EN, nung. Affirmation und Demarkation 8.4.1930, ANS. in der Dürer-Biografik zwischen 1790 33 See Christoph Wagner, Das Bau- und 1840”, in: Beate Böckem et al. haus und die Esoterik. Johannes Itten, 7 EN to Max Sauerlandt, 14.9.1931. (eds.), Die Biographie – Mode oder Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Biele- See Max Sauerlandt to EN, 14.11.1931 Universalie? Zu Geschichte und feld 2005; Christine Eckett, Kurt and 9.12.1931, all ANS. Konzept einer Gattung in der Kunst- Schwitters. Zwischen Geist und Materie, 8 See Delfs 2004, p. 651, note 2. geschichte, Berlin 2016, p. 92. Berlin 2012. 9 See Ludwig Thormaehlen to 20 Ernst Kris, “Zur Psychologie älterer 34 A detailed discussion of the effects Städtisches Museum Wiesbaden, Biographik (dargestellt an der des of the Rembrandt cult during that 18.12.1931, SMB-ZA, I/NG 757, f. 245. bildenden Künstlers)”, in: Imago, 21, period appears in the upcoming bio- Many thanks to Janna Stolte for the no. 3, 1935, pp. 320–344. graphy of Nolde by Bernhard Fulda. information. See Markus Lörz, Neuere 21 Thomas Mann, diary entry, 35 See Johannes Stückelberger, deutsche Kunst. Oslo, Copenhagen, 27.12.1935, quoted in: Thomas Rembrandt und die Moderne, Munich Cologne 1932. Rekonstruktion und Schneider, Das literarische Porträt. 1996, pp. 210–216. Dokumentation, Stuttgart 2008. Quellen, Vorbilder und Modelle in 36 See Hans Fehr to EN, n.d. 10 Max Sauerlandt to EN, 19.1.1932, Thomas Manns ‘Doktor Faustus’, [Christmas 1906] and 29.12.1906, both ANS. Berlin 2005, p. 96, note 41. ANS. The “head” mentioned in these 11 An exact date for the return letter 22 For one of the few historico-cultural letters can only be a reference to could not yet be determined. works on this topic, see Wolfgang The Painter (Self-Portrait), 12 See Ernst Gosebruch to Carl Ruppert, Der moderne Künstler. Zur 1905/06, Schiefler-Mosel 6. For the Hagemann, 21.5.1937 and 4.8.1937, Sozial- und Kulturgeschichte der kre- Rembrandt self-portrait in Leipzig, in: Delfs 2004, pp. 650 f., 671. ativen Individualität in der kulturellen see Nelly Fehr to AN, 28.4.1906, Moderne im 19. und frühen 20. Jahr- ANS, in which Fehr’s wife mentions 13 EN to Mr and Mrs Heuer, GRI, hundert, Frankfurt a. M. 1998. that Nolde called her attention to the 2001.M.35. 23 AN to EN, n.d., “Sonnabend picture when they visited the 14 See Walter Grasskamp, “documenta. Abend” [postmarked 5.8.1933], ANS. museum together. kunst des XX. Jahrhunderts, inter- 37 WaR, 24.8.[19]40, ANS. nationale ausstellung im museum 24 See Liselotte Ilschner, Rembrandt fridericianum in kassel 15. juli bis als Erzieher und seine Bedeutung. 38 WaR, 27.9.[19]42, ANS. 18. september 1955”, in: Simon Studie über die kulturelle Struktur der 39 WaR, 5.7.[19]44, ANS. The last Grosspietsch et al. (eds.), documenta neunziger Jahre, Gdan´sk 1928. half-sentence was later crossed out 1955. Ein wissenschaftliches W. Steven Bradley was the first to by Nolde. emphasise the importance of Lesebuch, Kassel 2018, pp. 18–25, 40 Hans Fehr to AN, 16.11.1908, here p. 21. Langbehn’s book for Nolde’s self- conception as an artist: Bradley 1986, ANS. 15 Gottfried Boehm, “Jenseits der pp. 21–26. 41 Gustav Schiefler, Nolde diary, entry Sprache? Anmerkungen zur Logik 25 [Julius Langbehn], Rembrandt for 16.1.1908, quoted in: Woesthoff der Bilder”, in: Christa Maar and (forthcoming). A hint about the Hubert Burda (eds.), Iconic Turn. als Erzieher. Von einem Deutschen, Leipzig 1890, p. 15 f. reactions of other listeners can also Die neue Macht der Bilder, Cologne be found there: “Senator Heitmann, 2004, pp. 28–43, here p. 35. 26 Ibid., p. 9. who certainly was interested in him 16 Horst Bredekamp, “Bildakte als 27 Ibid., p. 125. [Nolde], said to me: ‘Hello, hello! Zeugnis und Urteil”, in: Monika 28 See EN to Hans Fehr, 20.7.1905, That really is going a bit far!’” Flacke (ed.), Mythen der Nationen. ANS; DeL, p. 281; EN to Mr and 42 AN, diary entry, 1.7.1912, diary 2, 1945 – Arena der Erinnerungen, Mrs Heuer, 11.8.1943, GRI, 2001.M.35 f. 77, ANS: “You are the most amiable, Mainz 2004, vol. 1, pp. 29–66, here in which Nolde, on the occasion of greatest and biggest-hearted person pp. 58–62. Nissen’s death, mentions that he knew that the earth possesses. If I had not 17 JdK, p. 186. him “slightly” and “a few letters said found you, my great longing for love 18 As for example in an early letter more”, and stated, “He was a serious would have never been extinguished”. of request, AN to Eugen Ziegler, person and artist, but conceptually Original in Danish. 20.8.1904, ANS: “However it is diffi- he grasps everything as easily as water 43 AN, diary entry, “July, Denmark” cult for us to get by, for every day running downhill”. Nissen’s letters [1920], diary 3, f. 94 f., ANS. one has to live and that is not even are no longer retained at Seebüll.

33 44 AN to Mr and Mrs Schiefler, 54 See Stefan Koldehoff,Meier- 65 AN to EN, 5.8.1933, ANS n.d. [ca. September 1907], quoted in: Graefes van Gogh. Wie Fiktionen zu [vol. 2, doc. 15]. Woesthoff (forthcoming). Fakten werden, Nördlingen 2002. 66 Oskar Schlemmer, diary entry, 45 AN, diary entry, 13.4.1916, diary 3, 55 See Michael Fuhr, Die Buchreihe 19.9.1935, quoted in: Andreas Hüneke f. 76, ANS. This entry was connected der Künstler-Monographien im Ver- (ed.), Oskar Schlemmer – Idealist der to the sale of fifty South-Seas water- lag von Velhagen & Klasing (1894–1941) Form. Briefe, Tagebücher, Schriften. colours to the Imperial Colonial als Beispiel nationalkonservativer 1912–1943, Leipzig 1990, p. 293 f. Office, for which Nolde received a Kunstpolitik und ihrer Auswirkung auf See also Magdalena Droste, “Ambi- total of 25,000 Reichsmark, which die Akzeptanz der Moderne, Berlin tionen und Ambivalenzen. Oskar at that point was the most significant 2004, p. 66. Schlemmer 1933/34”, in: Wolfgang sale in his artistic career. 56 Schwarz 2011, p. 11. See Wolfram Ruppert (ed.), Künstler im National- 46 AN to Max Sauerlandt, 21.5.1917, Pyta, Hitler. Der Künstler als Politiker sozialismus. Die “Deutsche Kunst”, ANS. und Feldherr. Eine Herrschaftsanalyse, die Kunstpolitik und die Berliner Munich 2015. Kunsthochschule, Berlin 2015, 47 Ibid. pp. 177–202. 48 See JdK, pp. 104–107. The 57 See Kratz-Kessemeier 2008, pp. 164, 541–544. 67 Ernst Gosebruch to Carl following passage is based on the Hagemann, 12.12.1934, quoted in: upcoming biography of Nolde by 58 George Grosz to Mr and Mrs Delfs 2004, no. 582. Bernhard Fulda. Fiedler, 12.4.1933, quoted in: George 68 See unpublished memoirs of 49 See The Last Supper, 1909 Grosz. Briefe 1913–1959, Herbert Knust (ed.), Reinbek 1979, p. 171. Nolde’s tenant, Johannes Kahlke, (Urban 316), Derision, 1909 (Urban typescript, n.d. [after 1976], f. 53, 317) and Crucifixion, 1909 (Urban 319). 59 “Hos den 70-aarige banlyste copy, ANS. Nolde” (At the home of the 70-year- 50 Hans Fehr to EN/AN, 26.1.1913, 69 See Peter G. Pulzer, Die Entsteh- ANS. old exile Nolde), in: Nationaltidende, 7 August 1937, newspaper excerpt, ung des politischen Antisemitismus in 51 For diverse strategies in the ANS. Original in Danish. Deutschland und Österreich 1867–1914, presentation of modern artistry see Göttingen 2004 [1964]; Frank Bajohr, Stefan Borchardt, Heldendarsteller. 60 See Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte “Unser Hotel ist judenfrei”. Bäder- Gustave Courbet, Édouard Manet Schriften, vol. 1, Frankfurt a. M. 1972, Antisemitismus im 19. und 20. Jahr- und die Legende vom modernen pp. 471–508. hundert, Frankfurt a. M. 2002. Künstler, Berlin 2007; Beatrice von 61 For this ‘reality-effect’ see Jens 70 RÄB, p. 126. Bismarck, Auftritt als Künstler. Brockmeier, “Erinnerung, Identität Funktionen eines Mythos, Cologne und autobiographischer Prozess”, in: 71 See “‘Historischer Exorzismus’. 2010. Journal für Psychologie, 7, no. 1, 1999, Spiegel-Gespräch mit Martin pp. 22–42. Sabrow”, in: Der Spiegel, no. 6, 52 See Anne Chalard-Fillaudeau, 3.2.2014, pp. 46–48. “Das Konzept ‘Kunstreligion’ im 62 Approval of the foundation charter plastischen Licht des rembrandt- for establishing the Nolde Foundation 72 EN to Max Sauerlandt, 9.10.1926, schen Helldunkels”, in: Alessandro Seebüll from 1.11.1952 by the Minister ANS. See Sauerlandt 1927, p. 179; Costazza et al. (eds.), Kunstreligion. of the Interior of the Land of Schleswig- “Aus Briefen von Emil Nolde”, in: Die Ein ästhetisches Konzept der Mo- Holstein, 26.6.1956, p. 4, ANS. Kunst für Alle, 44, 1928, p. 45; Fehr 1957, p. 95. derne in seiner historischen Entfalt- 63 AN to Otto Beyse, 17.3.1933, ung, vol. 2: Die Radikalisierung des quoted in: Woesthoff (forthcoming). 73 Exemplary not least due to Hans Konzepts nach 1850, Berlin 2012, See Chap. III, p. 83. Fehr being falsely named as the pp. 341–358. addressee: Manfred Reuther and 64 See JdK, p. 187. Originally Martin Urban (eds.), Emil Nolde 53 See Christian Scholl, Revisionen Matthew 22:14. der Romantik. Zur Rezeption der (exhib. cat. Württembergischer ‘neudeutschen Malerei’ 1817–1906, Kunstverein, Stuttgart 1987), p. 9. Berlin 2012.

34 Biography 1867–1956

1867 Emil Nolde is born Hans Emil Hansen name from Hansen to Nolde. Moves from on 7 August 1867, the fourth son of a farmer, Copenhagen to Berlin. The first volume of Niels Hansen, and his wife, Hanna Christine, his memoirs ends with this chapter in his in the village of Nolde near Tondern, in life (Das eigene Leben (My Own Life), 1931). the German-Danish border zone. His first 1903–1905 Winter in Berlin, summer on the language is Low Danish, but High German island of Alsen in the Baltic. After Ada’s is spoken in school. health breaks down, Fehr financially assists 1884–1888 Apprenticeship as a wood sculp- the couple so that they can spend six tor and draftsman at the Sauermann furni- months in Italy in 1904/05. Nolde has his ture factory and wood-carving school in first exhibition in Berlin in September 1905 Flensburg. at Paul Cassirer’s Art Salon. 1888–1891 Wood carver in furniture 1906–1908 Joins the art group Brücke in factories in Munich and Karlsruhe. Attends February 1906. Nolde wants to rename it the applied arts school in Karlsruhe. the “Young German Artists’ Association”. After leaving the group in November 1907, 1889–1891 Moves to Berlin; in 1890 is hired Nolde makes several attempts to start a at a Berlin furniture factory. group of his own, and meets with Edvard 1892–1897 Teaches commercial drawing Munch, among others. Moves to Berlin and model building at the Industrial and permanently. Becomes a member of the Commercial Museum in St. Gallen. Estab- Berlin Secession in 1908. Travels to Sweden lishes a friendship with his pupil Hans Fehr. in the autumn of 1908. Produces his first landscape watercolours 1909 Produces the religious paintings The and drawings. In 1894, begins a series Last Supper, Pentecost and Derision depicting mountain peaks as grotesque during the summer months in the fishing mythical figures; he has large editions of village of Ruttebüll. these printed and sold as “Mountain Postcards”. The financial success of this 1910 Moves to Tauentzienstrasse 8 in project secures him an income after Berlin, where he lives until 1929. After a he is dismissed from his job in St. Gallen. confrontation with Max Liebermann, Nolde is excluded from the Berlin Secession; 1898 Is rejected by the Munich Academy joins the New Secession (leaves in late 1911). of Fine Arts; attends Friedrich Fehr’s painting school and the Hölzel School in Dachau. 1911 The Hamburg art collector Gustav Schiefler, an acquaintance since 1906, 1899 Journeys to Paris; attends the publishes the catalogue raisonné of Nolde’s Académie Julian. prints. At the Völkerkundemuseum Autumn 1900 Rents a studio in Copen (Ethnographic Museum) in Berlin Nolde hagen; produces his first series of produces studies, which he turns into religious paintings. many paintings over the following years. 1901/02 Copenhagen. Summer holiday in 1911/12 Creates the nine-part painting The the fishing village of Lildstrand, on the Life of Christ. His religious pictures north coast of Jütland. Executes a series bring him a great deal of public attention. of fantastical drawings. 1912 Trips to Brussels and Ostende; 1902 In February marries Ada Vilstrup, the visits James Ensor. daughter of a Danish pastor. Changes his

363 1913 Max Sauerlandt’s purchase of two and studio there in 1927, based on his own Nolde paintings for the Städtisches designs. Lays out a flower garden. Museum in Halle provokes a public 1927 Nolde’s sixtieth birthday celebrations debate about the role of modern art in include an anniversary exhibition in Dresden the museum. that later travels to Hamburg, Kiel, Essen 1913/14 In October the Noldes leave for the and Wiesbaden. Receives an honorary “German protectorate” of German New doctorate from the University of Kiel. Guinea, travelling through Moscow, Sibe- Release of a commemorative publication, ria, Korea, Japan and China. As unofficial Max Sauerlandt’s edition of the correspond participants in the “Medical-demographic ence and Gustav Schiefler’s second volume German New Guinea expedition”, they of the catalogue raisonné of prints. are permitted access to the colonial infra- 1929 The Nationalgalerie acquires The structure there. Particularly after war Sinner (1926). The Noldes move to Bayern- breaks out in August 1914, the return trip allee 10 in Charlottenburg, Berlin. becomes an adventure as they make their way through the Suez Canal, and then 1930 Nolde’s public letter on the independ across France and Switzerland to Germany. ence of the Nationalgalerie’s acquisition Enthusiasm over the world war. The second policy and his defence of Ludwig Justi’s volume of Nolde’s memoirs ends with job performance. Summer/autumn: sojourn the year 1914 (Jahre der Kämpfe (Years of on Sylt, meets the Jewish sculptor Struggle), 1934). A separate volume of Margarete Turgel. Works on the manu- memoirs is devoted to the South Sea jour- script of Das eigene Leben. ney (Welt und Heimat (World and Home), 1931 Nolde and his wife attend Paul 1936/1963). Schultze-Naumburg’s lecture “Kampf um 1916 Begins spending summer holidays in die Kunst“ (The Struggle for Art). Nolde Utenwarf farmhouse on the North Sea becomes a member of the Prussian Acad- coast (until 1924). emy of Arts. Publishes Das eigene Leben. Paints small watercolours to accompany 1919 Becomes a member of the Berlin copies of a special edition. This is the Arbeitsrat für Kunst (Workers’ Councils start of a series of works that later be- for Art). Series of fantastical watercolours comes famous as the ‘Unpainted Pictures’. on Hallig Hooge. 1932 Debates about the travelling 1920 After the referendum in the border exhibition Neuere deutsche Kunst (Oslo, zone, Utenwarf becomes Danish, making Bergen, Stavanger, Malmö, Copenhagen Nolde a Danish citizen. and Cologne); Nolde takes a position in 1921 Max Sauerlandt’s monograph Museum der Gegenwart. Emil Nolde is published. Trips to London, 1933 The Noldes react enthusiastically Plymouth, Paris, Toulouse, Barcelona, when the Nazis take over the government, Granada, Madrid and Toledo. The religious hoping that Hitler will name Nolde a state paintings are exhibited at St. Catherine’s artist. The painter becomes a major point in Lübeck in August 1921. of contention in the bitter debates over 1924 Trips to Venice, Florence, Zurich, and the role of Expressionism in the National Vienna. Socialist state, which reach their height in early summer. The exhibition 30 deutsche 1925 Nolde works on an elaborate engineer Künstler, organised by the National Socialist ing plan to drain the marshes in the area German Students League and containing around Utenwarf, but it is rejected by the two of Nolde’s paintings, in the Galerie authorities. Ferdinand Möller is banned; it opens a little 1926 Gives up Utenwarf; buys Seebüll terp, while later, however, without the partici- which lies a few kilometres to the south pation of the students’ league. During these in Germany. Begins building his residence months, Nolde works on a ‘de-Jewification’

364 Biography plan, a territorial solution to the so-called anniversary retrospective at Rudolf Probst’s Jewish question. On 9 November Nolde in Mannheim closes prematurely. Nolde is Heinrich Himmler’s guest of honour at successfully fends off demands that he the ceremonies commemorating the tenth give up his membership in the Prussian anniversary of the National Socialists’ Academy of Arts, with another reference March on the Feldherrnhalle (‘Hitler’s coup’) to his Party membership (like the one in in Munich. The Noldes take part in the July 1933). Starting in summer 1937 Nolde ceremonies at the Berlin Philharmonic begins writing a series of letters to Nazi celebrating the opening of the Reichskultur- officials, including Education Minister kammer (Reich Chamber of Culture). Rust and Propaganda Minister Goebbels, requesting the return of the paintings con- 1934 Successful exhibition of watercolours fiscated from him. From late 1938 onwards, at the Galerie Möller (with subsequent none of his paintings are included in the showings in Düren, Hamburg and Hannover). Entartete Kunst exhibition. In 1938 Nolde Nolde spends six weeks in the hospital paints Gaut the Red, based on one of recovering from a thrombosis, followed his small watercolours: the first of three by phlebitis, and a longer stay at a spa in Viking paintings he produces that summer. Bad Kissingen. In August he co-signs the “Call to cultural workers”, reinforcing 1939 In spring the Noldes go to Schloss his support for Hitler’s role as leader. The Schönhausen in North Berlin, where the next month, as a Danish citizen, he joins ‘degenerate’ art is stored. There, Ada reads the Nationalsozialistische Arbeitsgemein- from Jahre der Kämpfe in an attempt to schaft Nordschleswig (National Socialist prove her husband’s loyalty to the Nazis. Society of Workers of Northern Schles- In May, Ada’s brother, the art dealer Aage wig), which is forced into line the following Vilstrup, is able to acquire eleven of the year by the founding of the Nationalsozia- confiscated Nolde paintings. Another listische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei Nord- seven are sold by the Ministry of Propa- schleswig (National Socialist Workers Party ganda at auction in the Galerie Fischer in of Northern Schleswig). In November he Lucerne in June 1939, in exchange for for- publishes the second volume of his auto- eign currency; Fehr purchases The Sinner. biography, Jahre der Kämpfe. As they did with the First World War, the Noldes again react enthusiastically to the 1935/36 Large exhibition at the Hamburg start of the Second World War, although Kunsthalle; nearly all of Nolde’s prints are Nolde immediately stores ninety-one acquired by the Folkwang Museums- paintings at a farm near the mouth of the verein in Essen. In December 1935 Nolde Elbe, fearing they might be damaged. is operated on for gastrointestinal cancer in Hamburg-Eppendorf, where he remains 1940 Nolde begins assigning dates to his an inpatient until March 1936 and then aphorisms, the so-called “Words in the travels to Switzerland to convalesce. During Margin”. In this year he achieves the highest the second half of the year, he works on income of his career from sales of his the third volume of his memoirs, covering work. He writes a letter to Hitler in which the period from 1913 to 1926, and prepares he once again emphasises his agreement to publish his correspondence with Fehr. with the regime. Due to the increasing number of aerial attacks on Berlin, for the 1937/38 Visits one of his collectors in Munich, first time the couple spends part of the Friedrich Döhlemann, treasurer of the winter in Seebüll. Haus der Deutschen Kunst (House of Ger- man Art) in February 1937; then vacations 1940/41 Based on a “decree concerning the in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. In July the sales of inferior works of art”, the Reichs propaganda exhibition Entartete Kunst kunstkammer (RdbK) demands that Nolde (Degenerate Art) opens in Munich. The submit more recent works. At the same celebrations for Nolde’s seventieth birth- time, nearly one hundred works of art are day in Seebüll are cancelled; the large confiscated from his gallerist in Düsseldorf,

365 Alex Vömel, including twenty-one of referring to his Party membership and Nolde’s paintings, which had been sent futilely requesting von Kursell’s help in there on commission. After Himmler’s getting the professional ban lifted. On deputy, Reinhard Heydrich, complains to 15 February 1944, bombs destroy Nolde’s the Ministry of Propaganda about Nolde’s home in Berlin; around 3,000 prints, water- large income, it is decided internally that colours and drawings, as well as works Nolde will be expelled from the Reichs by his artist friends, go up in flames. Just kunstkammer, even before the artist sub- before the war’s end, Nolde hopes for the mits his selection of paintings and water ‘Endsieg’ (final victory). In the summer of colours to the Committee for the Evaluation 1945 Joachim von Lepel becomes assis- of Inferior Works of Art. Nolde is not tant to the now elderly couple in Seebüll. officially notified of his exclusion until 1946–1955 In August 1946 the Kiel De- August 1941. Additionally, he is forbidden Nazification Committee exonerates Nolde, to work in any visual arts field, either despite his Party membership, and inter- professionally or on the side, which also prets the National Socialists’ rejection of means he is not allowed to sell or exhibit Nolde’s art as a “renunciation of the regime”. his work. As well as this, he loses his right Nolde decides to establish a foundation to obtain increasingly scarce painting main his name through his last will and testa- terials, so that friends must help him get ment. Ada dies on 2 November 1946. paint and canvases. In June 1941 Nolde Nolde writes the last chapters of his fourth starts storing many other paintings with volume of memoirs, the posthumously acquaintances, fearing aerial attacks and published Reisen, Ächtung, Befreiung official confiscation. Late that year the (Travels, Ostracism, Liberation). On 22 Feb- couple self-publishes around fifty typed ruary 1948 he marries twenty-six-year-old manuscripts of the memoirs of their travels Jolanthe Erdmann, the daughter of his to the South Seas, which they distribute friend, the composer and pianist Eduard among friends. Erdmann. Up until 1951 he produces more 1942 In February the young painter Dieter than a hundred paintings – most of them Hohly spends a week with the Noldes in based on the small watercolours – and up Seebüll and later writes an extensive report until 1955 countless watercolours. Nolde of his experience. That spring the Nolde receives many honours and awards, includ- couple travels to Vienna, in another attempt ing the Stefan Lochner Medal from the to get the professional ban lifted, this time City of Cologne (1949), the print prize in a meeting with the governor Baldur from the 26th Venice Biennale (1952) and von Schirach. The meeting does not occur, the Order Pour le Mérite (1952). His work but von Schirach promises to advocate is exhibited several times at the Venice for Nolde’s art. Ada must spend several Biennale (1950, 1952, 1956) and in Kassel months in hospital in Eppendorf. at documenta (1955). 1943 Ada is again in Eppendorf hospital from 1956/57 Emil Nolde dies on 13 April in See- April to June; while there, she begins büll. The Stiftung Seebüll Ada und Emil translating Das eigene Leben into Danish. Nolde (Ada and Emil Nolde Foundation) In mid-May Nolde sends her his “Golgatha- provided for in his will is recognised as a Reflexionen” (reflections on Golgotha): legal German foundation on 12 June 1956. four pages of aphorisms in which he identi- In accordance with Nolde’s will, his fies with the historic mission of National long-term confidant Joachim von Lepel is Socialism. Just before the firestorm in named director. The Foundation’s mission Hamburg, Ada is released from hospital is to administer Emil Nolde’s extensive and returns to Seebüll. estate in Seebüll in the way the artist would have wanted, as well as to maintain his 1944/45 In February 1944 Nolde turns to work for posterity and to impart knowledge the newly appointed director of the Berlin of it around the world. The first annual Vereinigte Staatsschulen, Otto von Kursell, exhibition at the Nolde house opens in 1957.

366 List of Exhibited Works

Unless otherwise noted, all of the art- The titles of the watercolours are given as works, photographs, originals and docu- they are listed today in the Nolde Founda- ments reproduced here can be found at tion Seebüll. In brackets, reference is made the Stiftung Seebüll Ada und Emil Nolde. to alternative designations such as those Dimensions are in the form ‘height × breadth’. of Ada Nolde (see pp. 166–169) and Dieter The indication ‘Urban’ refers to the cata- Hohly (see pp. 152–153, 155). logue raisonnée of the paintings by Martin Urban (see Bibliography). The indication Page numbers preceded by ‘ps’ page ‘Schiefler-Mosel’ refers to the catalogue numbers refer to the illustrations in the raisonnée of the graphic work by Gustav Picture Section, further page numbers Schiefler, Christel Mosel and Martin Urban to comparative illustrations. (see Bibliography).

2 Woman’s Head in Profile, n.d. (before/ca. 1934) 7 The Sinner, 1926 12 Woman and Little Girl (I), Watercolour Oil on canvas 1918 (Hohly: Mother and 18 x 15 cm 86 x 106 cm Child in the Garden) Privately owned Urban 1038 Oil on canvas | ➤ fig. p. 201| Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 73 x 89.5 cm Nationalgalerie. Acquired in 1999 Urban 823 ➤ ➤ with the assistance of the Verein der | ps. p. 259 | fig. p. 152 | 3 The Painter Freunde der Nationalgalerie and the (Self-Portrait), 1899 Land Berlin Oil on rough canvas 13 Young Horses, 1916 | ➤ ps. p. 253 | ➤ fig. p. 38 | (sackcloth) Oil on canvas 70.5 x 53.5 cm 72.4 x 100.5 cm Urban 45 8 Family, 1931 Urban 727 | ➤ ps. p. 248 | ➤ fig. p. 22 | Oil on canvas Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 111.5 x 74 cm New York, Purchase and by exchange, 1979 Urban 1115 4 Portrait of Ada, 1904 | ➤ ps. p. 260 | ➤ figs. pp. 53, 194 | | ➤ ps. p. 255 | ➤ fig. p. 53 | Oil on canvas 33 x 47 cm 14 Mowing Corn, 1900/01, Urban 135 9 Robbers, 1902 | ➤ ps. p. 249 | ➤ fig. p. 22 | revised 1940 (Hohly: Harvest Oil on canvas Painting 1900–1940) 57.5 x 71 cm Oil on canvas Urban 101 106 x 120 cm 5 Pentecost, 1909 | ➤ ps. p. 256 | ➤ fig. p. 152 | Oil on canvas Urban 88 87 x 107 cm | ➤ ps. p. 261 | ➤ fig. p. 153 | Urban 318 10 Six Gentlemen, 1921 Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, (titled by Nolde on stretcher 15 Mill, 1924 Nationalgalerie frame: Experts) | ➤ ps. p. 251 | ➤ fig. p. 24 | Oil on canvas Oil on canvas 73.5 x 88.5 cm 72.5 x 107 cm Urban 994 Urban 941 | ➤ ps. p. 262 | ➤ fig. p. 152 | | ➤ ps. p. 257 | ➤ fig. p. 80 |

17 Landscape 33 Yellow Pond with (North Friesland), 1920 25 Dahlias (Small), 1939 Meadows and Banana Oil on canvas (Hohly: Flowers w. Stars) Tree (Bay of Rabaul), 86.5 x 106.5 cm Oil on canvas n.d. (1913/14) Urban 920 65 x 46.5 cm Watercolour | ➤ ps. p. 264 | ➤ fig. p. 53 | Urban 1199 34.5 x 45.3 cm | ➤ ps. p. 273 | ➤ fig. p. 152 | Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett 18 Farm-Houses in the Marsh, | ➤ ps. p. 282 | ➤ fig. p. 53 | 1939 (Hohly: Landscape 26 Autumn Flower Garden (B), with Black Clouds) 1934 (Hohly: Flowerbed) Oil on canvas Oil on canvas 34 Marabu, n.d. (ca. 1923/24) 65 x 86 cm 73.5 x 88.5 cm (Nationalgalerie: Lonely Bird) Urban 1203 Urban 1140 Watercolour Privately owned | ➤ ps. p. 274 | ➤ fig. p. 152 | 47.1 x 33.9 cm ➤ ➤ | ➤ ps. p. 265 | ➤ fig. p. 152 | | ps. p. 283 | fig. p. 50 |

368 List of Exhibited Works

40 Prophet, 1912 50 Old Man and Woman 60 Four Warriors, n.d. Woodcut with White Veil, n.d. Watercolour 32 x 22 cm Watercolour 16.9 x 21.7 cm Schiefler-Mosel 110 21.8 x 15.1 cm | ➤ ps. p. 312 | ➤ fig. p. 123 | | ➤ ps. p. 289 | ➤ fig. p. 56 | | ➤ ps. p. 302 | ➤ fig. p. 124 |

54 Woman with Golden Hel- 64 Bearded Man in Profile 44 Viking (with Spear), n.d. met, Three Figures, n.d. (in front of Mountain Watercolour Watercolour and India ink Landscape), n.d. 27 x 19.6 cm 23.7/24.2 x 16.6/17 cm Watercolour ➤ ➤ | ➤ ps. p. 293 | ➤ fig. p. 123 | | ps. p. 307 | fig. p. 125 | 16.8 x 22.9 cm | ➤ ps. p. 317 |

370 List of Exhibited Works

97 Old Woman and Two Works of Other Artists Young Women – ‘Spanish Girls’, n.d. (before/ca. 1943) (Ada’s title: Sinful 101 Emil Lettré Daughter with the Culprit Candlestick, ca. 1937 in the Background) Silver Watercolour Height 41 cm 26.2 x 22.8 cm | ➤ fig. p. 27 | | ➤ ps. p. 355 | ➤ fig. p. 167 |

102 Edwin Scharff 98 Two Men (in Conversation, Head of Emil Nolde, n.d. (before/ca. 1943) 1945/1980 (Ada’s title: Arch-Villain) Bronze cast, from the Watercolour original model owned by 14.9 x 24.5 cm daughter Tetta Hirschfeld- | ➤ ps. p. 357 | ➤ fig. p. 167 | Scharff Height 32 cm | ➤ fig. p. 223 | 99 Jesus and the Scribes, n.d. (before/ca. 1951) Watercolour 103 Gustav H. Wolff 17.1 x 22.4 cm Head of Emil Nolde, 1930 | ➤ ps. p. 358 | ➤ fig. p. 228 | Bronze Height ca. 45 cm Museum Wiesbaden 100 Jesus and the Scribes, | ➤ fig. p. 16 | 1951 Oil on canvas 73 x 100.5 cm Urban 1346 | ➤ ps. p. 359 | ➤ fig. p. 228 |

371