A haunting painting titled "Das Referat" (The Presentation) hangs in the editorial office of German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel, leaning against the wall like a forgotten relic from another era. Created in 1945 by artist Horst Strempel during the founding year of the newspaper, this enigmatic work serves as a message in a bottle from Berlin's turbulent Cold War past. The circumstances of how and when the 69 by 88 centimeter painting came into the newspaper's possession remain unknown, though its substantial size suggests it once held a place of honor, possibly in the publisher's office or executive suite at the original building on Potsdamer Straße.

Strempel painted this work immediately after his return from American prisoner-of-war captivity in 1945, using the most basic materials available in post-war Germany. The canvas had to be extended with an additional strip on the side, visible as a fracture line on the front surface. His color palette was severely limited, as painters could obtain virtually no pigments during this period. However, Strempel deliberately chose muted tones to create a specific mood: people emerging from what was euphemistically called "the dark time" of National Socialism, gazing toward a vague future that seems to come from the left, where the group's attention is directed.

The artist's approach in the post-war years was to look decidedly backward before embracing any declared new beginning. His most famous work, "Night Over Germany," currently housed in the Neue Nationalgalerie and also created in 1945, conjures up the horrors of the Nazi era once more. While the Tagesspiegel painting addresses departure and renewal—albeit cautiously, as three depicted figures rest their chins on their hands, signaling thoughtfulness—the dramatic "Night" painting shows frightened, starving, and persecuted people with expressively widened eyes and desperately raised arms.

Tagesspiegel founder Edwin Redslob expressed deep shock over Strempel's "Night Over Germany" in an April 1947 article, writing: "Strempel builds the altar of the Hitler era, which under the title 'Night Over Germany' erects a monument to a misguided time." When the Berlin magistrate wanted to purchase the work, they requested that Strempel paint over the initially visible Jewish stars on the right panel. Apparently, the remembrance should not be quite so precise.

It's quite possible that "Das Referat" came to Der Tagesspiegel through Edwin Redslob, or alternatively through the newspaper's other founder, Walter Karsch. Both men might have appreciated that the painting was created in the newspaper's founding year and depicted the moment of a newly forming society that Der Tagesspiegel was journalistically accompanying. In another article, Redslob called it a preliminary study for a mural for a lecture hall and recommended that a wise art authority should commission such a work.

Horst Strempel was born in 1904 in Beuthen, Silesia, as the son of a drugstore owner. He initially trained as a decorative painter before studying art in Breslau and Berlin, including under Karl Hofer at the United State Schools in the second half of the 1920s. His paintings circled around socially critical themes, poverty, and unemployment. In 1927, he became a member of the Communist Party (KPD). The consequence: in 1933, he had to emigrate to Paris, leaving behind his entire body of work.

This bitter experience repeated itself twice more for the artist. Six years later, in 1939 with the outbreak of war, he was interned in France as an enemy alien and again lost all the paintings he had created in Paris. Released from custody back to Germany, he was forced to the front and taken prisoner. After the war, Strempel flourished in East Berlin and was even appointed professor at the College of Applied Arts in Weißensee in 1947. However, he then became caught in the machinery of the formalism debate over the correct socialist painting style.

A devastating judgment was passed on Strempel in a 1951 article in the Tägliche Rundschau, the organ of the Soviet Control Commission, under the title "Paths and Aberrations of Modern Art." His previously praised mural "Clear Away the Rubble—Build Up," which he had created in 1948 for the ticket hall of Friedrichstraße Station, was painted over. The situation became increasingly precarious for the artist who had previously engaged enthusiastically. In 1953, he barely escaped arrest by fleeing the GDR overnight with his wife and child. Again, the now 49-year-old could take nothing with him.

Until his death in 1975, Strempel never regained his artistic footing in West Berlin, although he occasionally received exhibitions. He earned his living designing wallpaper and fabric patterns. For years, his recognition as a political refugee was delayed because authorities found his professorship at the Weißensee College of Applied Arts suspicious. Strempel was stuck between political systems again: his earlier works were viewed in the West as state art, while his newer works featuring braided young women were criticized as too pleasing. Unnoticed was his graphic work addressing the tragedy of the Berlin Wall's construction. Once again, he fell through the cracks and is now considered typical of a lost generation.

However, a rediscovery appears to be emerging. The Neue Nationalgalerie displays a work by Horst Strempel in the first room of the basement of the Mies van der Rohe building as part of its permanent exhibition "Stress Test: Art Between Politics and Society." This 1949 painting titled "Plan Discussion" bears strong resemblance to the Tagesspiegel's painting, also showing a group of people standing together, with a brigade leader explaining to workers how to proceed using a plan.

This clarity is absent from "Das Referat" in Der Tagesspiegel's possession, which shows eight people—five sitting in front, three standing—in a wall niche with a vaulted ceiling. Whether they are listening to a presentation or themselves embodying a presentation remains uncertain. Two of them hold a yellow sheet or booklet that could be either an admission ticket for the lecture or a reference to the Jewish star. The man on the right edge with a mustache, who immediately reminds us of Hitler, seems to emerge from the Nazi era. Between him and the central figure, only a shadowy person emerges, as if embodying the ghost of the past.

All of this makes Horst Strempel's charged painting not necessarily comfortable for today's viewers: dark and ambiguous. It has mysteriously connected itself with Der Tagesspiegel, even though the paths can no longer be reconstructed. In the artist's catalog raisonné, it still lists "Owner: unknown." At least this much would now be clarified.