While art does not always mirror the social or political conditions of a country – nor should it necessarily – there is no doubt that the work created by artists in 1920s Berlin is a sober reflection of and on a tumultuous era. Much of it was later classified as degenerate art by the Nazis, whose idea of art – at least as it should be produced within the Fatherland – was that of an insipid realism or pseudo-classicism, similar to that decreed in Stalin’s Soviet Union.

Of course, the powers-that-be in Germany during the Nazi rule did not hesitate to collect a great deal of what they officially considered degenerate. They even put it on show to re-educate the people so they would know how debasing art looks. If we did not know the end result of those fateful 12 years of Nazi rule, it might even seem comical that these works were put on display for all to see, for they probably educated far more people than they re-educated. Proof of this is the speed with which Germans re-embraced modern art after 1945. But, when Adolf Hitler spoke . . .

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