A controversial reassessment of painter Max Beckmann's experience under Nazi rule challenges the widely held belief that he was systematically persecuted by the regime. New research suggests that while the Nazis defamed so-called "degenerate" artists through propaganda campaigns, they did not subject visual artists to the same life-threatening persecution faced by banned authors and writers.
French-American writer Jonathan Littell's 2006 novel "The Kindly Ones" contains a fictional but historically insightful dialogue that illuminates this distinction. In the book, SS officer Dr. Max Aue discusses music with his brother-in-law, Baron Berndt von Üxküll, a composer. The conversation, set in 1942 or 1943, reveals Üxküll's artistic devotion to Arnold Schoenberg, alongside Bach, as one of only two German composers of true rank. When the Nazi-trained Aue objects that the exiled Jewish composer Schoenberg cannot possibly be placed in German tradition, Üxküll's wife interjects with a telling observation: fortunately her husband is a musician rather than a writer, or he would be either in America with Schoenberg and the Mann brothers, or in Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
This fictional exchange reflects a harsh historical reality that historian Wolfgang Benz highlights in his recent comprehensive study of exile ("Exile: History of an Expulsion 1933-1945," C.H. Beck 2025). According to Benz, recognizing subtle symbolism was not the Nazis' specialty - they relied on the obvious and surface-level. This approach significantly influenced how the Nazi regime treated different categories of artists and intellectuals.
The distinction between the fate of visual artists and writers under Nazi rule was stark and consequential. Artists faced existential threats only if they fell into the Nazis' delusional categories of extermination or actively opposed the system. Jewish painters Otto Freundlich and Felix Nussbaum were murdered in 1943 and 1944 respectively, communist Otto Rischbieter was shot in 1943, resistance fighter Ernst Hampel was executed in 1945, and expressionist painter Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler was killed as part of the T4 euthanasia program for being deemed incurably mentally ill.
However, for visual arts, unlike anti-Nazi writings, the National Socialists did not recognize any significant political threat. Although they ideologically rejected works of Expressionism, vilified them publicly, and removed artists like Otto Dix or Max Beckmann from their public positions, there were no systematic persecutions that directly threatened the lives of those affected. This fundamentally distinguished the Nazi approach to "degenerate" artists from their treatment of banned writers.
Authors such as Heinrich Mann, Annette Kolbe, and Kurt Tucholsky were in mortal danger from the moment the Nazis took power. Had they not fled Germany in time, they would have had little chance of survival. Joseph Roth wrote to his colleague Stefan Zweig in mid-February 1933: "I don't give a damn about our lives anymore." Roth managed to escape to Paris in time, but publisher and "Die Weltbühne" editor Carl von Ossietzky was less fortunate - he was interned by the Nazis in a concentration camp at the end of February 1933 and later murdered.
Modern artists did not face comparable threats. Even Käthe Kollwitz, who was an early thorn in the Nazis' side due to her works and pacifism, was able to live and work in Germany largely unmolested throughout the entire Third Reich period. This remained true despite the fact that just months before the Nazi rise to power, she had published an urgent appeal together with 18 other artists, including Heinrich Mann, calling for defensive action against the approaching fascist threat.
Otto Dix, whom the Nazis considered the prime example of a degenerate artist, withdrew to southern Germany after his dismissal as professor at the Dresden Art Academy in 1933, where he continued his work outside public attention. This pattern of marginalization rather than persecution also applies to Max Beckmann, though art historians and exhibition curators usually classify him broadly - if only partially accurately - as an exile.
A closer examination reveals that Beckmann lived eight of the twelve Nazi years under direct Nazi influence: from 1933 to 1937 in Berlin and from spring 1940 in German-occupied Amsterdam. Beckmann left Germany for Dutch exile on the occasion of the Munich defamation exhibition "Degenerate Art" that opened on July 19, 1937. By this point, it must have become clear to him and his wife Quappi that the material basis for life in the Nazi state was being increasingly withdrawn from them - not because Beckmann's works could no longer be acquired or were forbidden in Germany, but because hardly anyone wanted to buy them anymore.
Beckmann's exile ended barely three years later with the German occupation of the Netherlands. From May 1940 until the end of the war, he and his wife again lived under direct Nazi control. The NS occupiers knew where Beckmann lived and worked in Amsterdam. He was summoned twice for military examination and found unfit for service. His friend Erhard Göpel, who was responsible for art acquisition in German-occupied territories on behalf of the Nazi state, stood by his side.
Beckmann continued to maintain contact with individuals and business partners who had connections to the Nazi regime, including Göpel and Hildebrand Gurlitt. On October 20, 1943, Beckmann noted in his diary - as can be read for the first time in the recently published complete edition of Beckmann's diaries by the Munich Max Beckmann Archive - a successful business deal with Gurlitt and Göpel that brought him 3,000 Reichsmarks. While this was far from the financial success of the 1920s, it was still a considerable sum, as the average annual German income in 1943 was 2,200 Reichsmarks.
None of this was reprehensible, and there is no evidence that Beckmann served the Nazi state or otherwise compromised himself between 1933 and 1945. However, he was not a persecuted person who had to fear for his life, but rather someone who was pushed aside and ignored. This can also be seen in the fact that his 50th birthday in 1934 received virtually no mention in German media.
The persistent portrayal of Max Beckmann as an artist persecuted by the Nazis raises important questions about historical narrative construction. Scientific and journalistic works on Beckmann predominantly stem from art historians who focus on his artwork, with biographical context often treated as a side issue. These accounts frequently draw from representations written directly by family members, friends, and admirers of Beckmann, or rely on sources that themselves drew from such accounts. A convincing biography of this century artist remains to be written.
The Beckmann diaries exemplify this problem. The previously available version, published in 1955 by Beckmann's friend Göpel, had been fundamentally revised by Quappi Beckmann before publication. More than 800 editorial interventions can be documented for the period 1940 to 1950 alone. Additionally, the lasting impact of the 1937 "Degenerate Art" exhibition continues today, along with the widespread belief that the artists defamed there were necessarily victims of Nazi persecution.
The narrative of the artist persecuted and threatened with death by the National Socialists developed its own momentum after World War II. This narrative likely had a positive effect on market value as well - Beckmann's self-portrait "Yellow-Pink" sold for a record price of over 20 million euros at the end of 2022.
Yet reality was different. While the book burnings that began in 1933 foreshadowed the Nazis' physical destructive intent toward unwelcome authors, and violent attacks against them often occurred beforehand, comparable action against unwelcome visual artists did not occur. Artists like Max Beckmann or Otto Dix were indeed removed from their positions, excluded from public life, and forced to accept painful material restrictions. However, the defamatory public presentation of their works and the removal of "degenerate" art from circulation - while most artists' works could still be traded privately - was primarily a symbolic act of exclusion, albeit an especially perfidious one.
