Graphics for the Dictatorship. The Birth of the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart’s Graphic Collection in National Socialism

The foundations for a municipal art museum in Stuttgart were laid during the “Third Reich.” The National Socialists also established an extensive collection of graphics for this purpose. Looking back, the history of this collection vividly illustrates the repression and forgetting that set in in West German museums after 1945 and are only now slowly being overcome.

The exhibition focuses on the birth of a “völkisch” (ethnic-nationalist) collection that above all was meant to correspond to Nazi ideology. Even so, the collection policy was not without its contradictions from the very start, and there were a number of unusual purchases. On view for the first time is a collection of war pictures whose origins remained obscure until recently. In addition, artists who were members of the NSDAP and profited from fascism are also examined.

Likewise presented in the exhibition, the restitution case of the Stuttgart businessman Max Rosenfeld (1867–1943) reveals that works confiscated in connection with Nazi persecution likewise made their way into the museum’s graphics collection. The case shows the complexity of such provenances and the frequent difficulty in reconstructing the biographies of the victims and their collections.