The collections of the German Historical Museum

The largest part of the Collection of Art II consists of the inventory of the former Museum for German History (s. history).

This unique inventory documents how the marxist-leninist interpretation of history used to be presented in the museum. Understanding history as the "history of class struggles" requires a focus on those few events that allow to be interpreted accordingly. For example, the great Peasant War of 1525 and the revolutions of 1848 and 1918 were understood as milestones on the road toward a socialist society.

Likewise, the communist opposition against the National Socialists in the 1920s became, albeit ideologically exaggerated, appreciated art motifs. Through governmental commissions the national achievements were magnificantly transformed into art. The inventory furthermore contains of quite a number of portraits and busts of thinkers and fighters for the classless society, as well as the founding fathers of the east German state. In order to maintain the heroic and exaggerated style of the artefacts, even artists who had already worked for the National Socialists were commissioned in the early years of the GDR.

In the 1960s the museum decided to acquire paintings and sculptures by artists who had worked for the Communist Party in the 1920s. The incunabulum of the Labor movement, Otto Griebel's "Die Internationale" of 1929/30, was bought along with other important works of artists from the "Association of Revolutionary Artists." Thus, the museum holds a large number East German works of art.

Additional to this inventory are those works that have been collected by the German Historical Museum since its foundation in 1987. Here, representative examples from different epochs of the 20th century can be found, so that the whole inventory today constitutes an important collection of the history of 20th-century art. For example, works by Lovis Corinth and Käthe Kollwitz can be found, as well as paintings by Felix Nussbaum, who was killed in Auschwitz in 1944, from a time when he took hide from the Nazis in Brussels. Additionally, a painting by Matthias Koeppel represents a good example for the contemporary German history, the German unification.

Have a look at the archive.