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It is not the painting from Merkel’s office that is currently on display as part of the special exhibition titled Tell me about yesterday tomorrow at the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism, but an image of similar intensity, likewise dedicated to the interplay of the elements: Meer und Himmel (Sea and Sky), from 1937. The oil painting, done in many shades of blue, stands out among the factual information on Nazi art policy displayed in the permanent exhibition. It invites the viewer to indulge in the depth of the horizon between the sea and sky, while at the same time prompting reflection on Nolde as an artist and as a political person shaped by the times he lived in – in short, on art, politics, and morals.

Emil Nolde, born to farmers in the border zone between Germany and Denmark in 1867, was regarded as a leading light in the German expressionist movement in the early 1930s. He was among Germany’s most highly esteemed modern artists, with works featured at numerous galleries and museums. But being avant-garde in his work evidently did not mean he could not be anti-modern in his personal views. Nolde and his wife, who was Danish, were thrilled when the Nazis seized power. A staunch anti-Semite, Nolde was a right-wing nationalist, seeing in Hitler the strong leader who would restore Germany’s stature. Nolde offered his services to the Nazi regime and was willing to take on a prominent position within it. He complained of the “excessive foreignization of German art” (as he wrote to Reich propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels on July 2, 1938) and crafted a plan to “de-Jewify” German society, which he hoped would find favor with those in power. Nolde sought membership in the reactionary Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur (Nazi Fighting Association for German Culture) in April 1933, but his request was denied because of his artistic position. Through Erna Hanfstaengl, the sister of Hitler’s confidant Ernst “Putzi” Hanfstaengl, Nolde was a guest of honour of Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler at the celebrations marking the tenth anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich on November 9, 1933. In 1934, Nolde, who had been a Danish citizen since Northern Schleswig joined Denmark in 1920, joined the Nationalsozialistische Arbeitsgemeinschaft Nordschleswig (National Socialist Working Party of Northern Schleswig), a Nazi organization composed of members of the local German minority. He maintained ties with high-ranking party members and sought recognition for his work.

But while Nolde was devoted to the new regime, his art became the focus of ideological debate. Leading party ideologues rejected expressionism as an artistic movement associated with the “system era,” (as the Nazis called the Weimar republic) as “degenerate art” and as “culturally Bolshevist.” True believer Nolde still had supporters in the government and the party, who argued that there was a “Nordic expressionism” compatible with Nazi ideology. He enjoyed success with exhibitions at galleries and museums, and the Folkwang Museum in Essen acquired his works. But by 1937, the year Meer und Himmel was created, the wind was changing. Nolde’s work was now officially defamed from the highest levels as “un-German” and “degenerate.” Works on display at museums were seized. The Nazi propaganda show titled Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) opened in Munich on July 19, 1937. Thirty-three of Nolde’s works appeared at this smear exhibition at the gallery building on Munich’s Hofgarten – the most of any single artist.

Nolde was asked to resign from the Prussian Academy of the Arts, where he had been a member since 1931. The artist refused, invoking his membership in the Nazi party – with success. He also left no doubt of his anti-Semitic views. As early as 1933, immediately after the Nazis’ rise to power, he denounced the artist Max Pechstein to the Reich propaganda ministry by reporting that Pechstein was allegedly of Jewish ancestry. He commented approvingly on the regime’s increasingly anti-Semitic policies.

“One must understand that the operation to remove the Jews, who have bored so deep into all the peoples, cannot take place without a lot of pain.”

Emil Nolde in a letter to his Swiss friend Hans Fehr, October 29, 1938 | Archive of the Nolde Stiftung Seebüll

Nolde and his wife responded to the beginning of World War II with nationalist fervor, reaffirming their loyalty to Hitler and the Nazi regime.

But Nolde’s art remained officially banned. In 1941, he was excluded from the Reichskammer der bildenden Künste (Reich Chamber of Fine Arts) for “lack of reliability”; from then on, his works could not be exhibited or sold. Despite this occupational ban, Nolde continued to identify with National Socialism and its aims. He also continued to abide by his anti-Semitism even in the face of the regime’s steadily radicalized persecution of Jews. Right up to the bitter end he clinged to his hope for the vaunted “final victory”.

After the war, Nolde faced denazification proceedings, emerging exonerated in 1946 despite his party membership. The defamation of his art was viewed as proof of his rejection of the Nazi regime. He successfully presented himself as a victim of the Nazi regime and its art policies, depicting the prohibition on his work as a ban on painting. Nolde destroyed incriminating evidence, cleaned up his autobiographical writings, and turned his stance on Nazism around in his statements about himself.

“With regard to me personally, I note that I was persecuted to a rising degree since the change of government in 1933, then joined the party to protect my work and (...) was later excluded from the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts, which was associated with a ban on painting and sale of my works.”

Emil Nolde in an affidavit on June 18, 1946 | Archive of Nolde Stiftung Seebüll

Nolde’s work returned to public view starting in 1946, first appearing in the exhibition titled Befreite Kunst (Liberated Art) in the state of Lower Saxony. To mark his 79th birthday, the Minister-President of Schleswig-Holstein named Nolde an honorary professor on August 7, 1946. A year later, galleries and museums all over West Germany celebrated as Nolde turned 80. The art world and the public willingly accepted Nolde’s posturing as a victim of National Socialism. The young Federal Republic, striving to distance itself from the Nazi dictatorship, took up the banner of restoring the honor of modernism, and especially expressionism, in the arts as an act of compensation. Nolde, previously ostracized, received many honors and distinctions, standing as a kind of representative for all Germans who suffered under the Nazi dictatorship – or so the exculpatory West German narrative went. The fact that he had been a Nazi party member was suppressed.

Nolde died at his home in Seebüll in 1956. A foundation he had endowed was tasked with keeping his memory alive and managing his work. For decades, this foundation cultivated and spread the myth of Nolde as a persecuted artist. Anti-Semitic passages were scrubbed from new editions of Nolde’s autobiographical writings and letters, and biographers repeated the story of victimhood. The legend of the artist as resister grew even more popular with the 1968 publication of Siegfried Lenz’s novel Deutschstunde (The German Lesson), which centered on a painter under surveillance by the Gestapo and was loosely based on Nolde’s life story – the cleaned-up version, that is. Without Lenz intending it this way, the book contributed to Nolde’s self-exculpation process. The expressionist became a kind of poster child for a different, reformed Germany. His works began to appear in the offices of government figures from German president Gustav Heinemann to Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and then Angela Merkel.

It took over half a century for scholars to begin focusing on Nolde’s affinity for the Nazis and two more decades before it became known to the public at large. This is due first and foremost to the major Nolde exhibition held at the Hamburger Bahnhof museum in Berlin in 2019.

The fact that Nolde’s painting Meer und Himmel is now part of the special exhibition titled Tell me about yesterday tomorrow at the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism has nothing to do with “showing up” the artist again. The aim is not to take a moral stance and judge Nolde and his work. Instead, the goal is to highlight the different shades of gray and the contradictions and discrepancies inherent in the artist’s life and work. Turning Nolde from a victim to a perpetrator at this point and condemning his art would be the wrong conclusion. It is more historically accurate to view Nolde for what he was: an artist whose work was denounced by the Nazi regime, but who was at the same time a committed Nazi and admirer of Hitler, an anti-Semite and a right-wing nationalist. And last but not least, a master of self-exculpation who encountered a society that was only too glad to accept his story of victimization and take it for its own.

By Ulla-Britta Vollhardt, research associate at the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism

Emil Nolde. The Artist during the Third Reich, 2 volumes, edited by Bernhard Fulda, Christian Ring, and Aya Soika, Munich 2019