page from the exhibition brochure "Entartete Kunst" from 1937
page from the exhibition brochure "Entartete Kunst" from 1937
After all my experience and work (...) finally at the start of the Thousand Year Reich I was publically branded a Jewish-Bolshevik artist, my works, insofar as they were publically owned, were ostracized and burned, and I myself had to leave the country with my family.
Ludwig Meidner, "meine gehobenen Hände, ein Abendopfer" Psalm 141,2, aus: Ludwig Meidner. (exhibition catalogue Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden), 1959
Ludwig Meidner was already defamed as a "Maljude" (painting Jew) in the inflammatory book "Säuberung des Kunsttempels" (Cleansing the Art Temple), which was published at the beginning of 1937 and is seen as providing an ideological and artistic basis for the "Degenerate Art" exhibition. Referring to Meidner’s hymnic prose poetry, the author describes the artist as an "avid Expressionist," who "with a 'September cry' bawls out prayers and sacrilege." (Wolfgang Willrich: Säuberung des Kunsttempels- Eine kunstpolitische Kampfschrift zur Gesundung deutscher Kunst im Geiste nordischer Art. Munich / Berlin 1937)
In the brochure for the propaganda exhibition “Degenerate Art” Meidner’s self-portrait from 1912 (formally Kunstmuseum Breslau, now Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt) was prominently displayed as a "sample of Jewish painting and sculpture." A register of "degenerate" works removed from public collections compiled in 1941/42 by the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda lists 81 of Meidner’s works. However, the majority of these are prints and drawings, which complicates the identification of their provenance.
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