Fake Hitlers and a Real Art Problem for Merkel
Paintings signed “A. Hitler” attract wealthy buyers – but at the same time, Merkel removes paintings by a true master from her office wall because he was a Nazi.
Nolde’s sunflowers; Merkel’s problem.
Photographer: Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Adolf Hitler, the failed artist, appears to be taking his revenge on Emil Nolde, the successful artist he envied and hated. Just as Hitler watercolors, even those demonstrated to be fake, fetch high prices at auctions, there’s a political backlash in Germany against Nolde. Chancellor Angela Merkel even took his works off her office walls this year.
The contrasting and intertwined stories of Hitler and Nolde — the latter as ardent a Nazi as the former — are among the best illustrations of the complicated relationship between art and evil that permeates the last century of German history. Both men’s artistic careers started with a rejection by a major art academy (Hitler in Vienna, Nolde in Munich), but that led them in startlingly different directions — and to an eventual clash.