Talk: ostracized, persecuted, forgotten: the fates of female avant-garde artists during the Nazi regime (GER)

The Nazi art policy’s caesura continues to have an impact on art historiography to this day. Ostracism, retraining, confiscation, and occupational bans, all the way to expulsion and deportation, erased the careers of large sections of the contemporary artistic community. The extent of the measures was often more severe for the female representatives of the avant-garde than for their male colleagues, who were often able to seamlessly continue their successes after the end of the Second World War. In order to successively reappraise the history of these unjustly forgotten female artists, a course was held in the winter semester of 2022/23 at the Art History Institute of Freie Universität Berlin in cooperation with the Brücke Museum, the research results of which are presented here in part.

With Ida Berenstein, Sophie Nastatsia Holl, Sarah Macedo Santiago (students of the Institute of Art History, FU Berlin), Moderation & Introduction: Meike Hoffmann (Head of the Research Center “Entartete Kunst”, FU Berlin), Lisa Marei Schmidt (Director, Brücke-Museum)

Inputs:

Ida Berenstein on Paula Grünfeld: Example of an artist who was ostracized, persecuted and deported because of her painting style and origins / The painter, who was born in Breslau and trained at the local academy under Otto Mueller and Oskar Moll, was deported to Ausschwitz in 1943 and declared dead in 1945.

Sophie Anastasia Holl about Irma Laskowsky: Example of the difficulty of research and the almost complete disappearance of any traces of an artist’s work / Hardly any data could be found on the artist Irma Laskowsky, who was probably active in Königsberg, partly because the exact spelling of her name is not known.

Sarah Macedo Santiago on the artist Luise Mangold: Example of an artist who adapted herself / Luise Mangold worked in the tradition of expressionist woodcutters before 1933, but then aligned herself with the regime, was also a member of the NSDAP, and received several honors and awards during the regime in Ulm, the place where she worked.

Introduction and moderation

Dr. Meike Hoffmann (Head of the Research Center “Degenerate Art”, Institute of Art History, Freie Universität Berlin) in dialogue with Lisa Marei Schmidt (Director Brücke Museum)

Supported by Berliner Landeszentrale für politische Bildung.

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