75th Anniversary Haus der Kunst

On July 18, 1937, Adolf Hitler opened the “House of German Art” with the first of eight “Great German Art Exhibitions”. While the display of a predominantly conservative realism was celebrated here, in the nearby gallery building in the Hofgarten, Modernist works were pilloried as “degenerate art” (in the vilifying show “Degenerate Art”, which opened on July 19, 1937). “The National Socialists,” wrote the artist John Heartfield in 1937 from exile in Prague, “have castrated the truth, free thought, the development and the lives of many Germans, and now the painters and sculptors have been chosen as the next victims.” The freedom of art and the creative power of the individual were repealed with these events on July 18 and 19, 1937.

The 75th anniversary gives us the opportunity to reflect on this iconoclastic thinking, as well as on the complex historical process that has produced Haus der Kunst in its current form: from its being the venue for the “Great German Art Exhibitions”, its housing of a United States Army officers’ casino, and finally to its development into an internationally renowned art institution. “Histories in Conflict: Haus der Kunst and the Ideological Uses of Art, 1937 – 1955” was conceptualized in relation to the building’s 75th anniversary and focuses on the international dimension of the institution’s history in the first 18 years of its existence.