Banned from his art | NOVEMBER 22
The works of the Expressionist painter and graphic artist Bruno Gimpel were classified as “degenerate” during the Third Reich. Neither his voluntary service as an aide in a military hospital during World War I nor his “mixed marriage” with an “Aryan” woman spared him the usual repressive measures. On November 22nd, 1938 he received a letter from the Reichskammer der Bildenden Künste, the Nazi authority in charge of the visual arts, which yet again denied him membership and banned him from all branches of his profession. In 1935, this institution of the Third Reich had once before rejected a request for admission by the Dresden artist. Since 1937, he had no choice but to make a living by giving drawing lessons to Jewish children.
“Degenerate” | FEBRUARY 24
In the traveling exhibition “Degenerate Art,” initiated in Munich in 1937, the Nazis used 650 works of art confiscated from 32 museums in order to force their idea of art upon the populace: newer trends like expressionism, surrealism, or fauvism, to name just a few, were regarded as “Jewish-Bolshevist” and roundly disparaged. The front page of the exhibition catalog shows a piece titled “Large Head” from the workshop of the German-Jewish artist Otto Freundlich, one of the first exponents of abstract art. It was created in 1912 to symbolize hope for a new beginning. Even apart from Freundlich’s Jewish background and his artistic leanings, being a communist made him politically unacceptable in the eyes of the regime.
Karl Adler’s 48th Birthday | JANUARY 25
Born in Buttenhausen, Wuerttemberg on January 25, 1890, Karl Adler studied music at the Stuttgart Conservatory, where he became Director in 1921. He was a cofounder of the Verein zur Förderung der Volksbildung, an adult-education organization, and director of its music department. In 1926, he was among the leading forces that built the Jüdisches Lehrhaus Stuttgart. After his dismissal from his position at the conservatory in 1933, he initiated and directed the Stuttgarter Jüdische Kunstgemeinschaft, a branch of the Kulturbund. In 1935, he became the head of the music department of the Mittelstelle für jüdische Erwachsenenbildung, a division of the Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland dealing with adult education.