The Loss of Modernity

From 1933, the Nazis turned their attention to classical modernism. Their smear campaign reached Dortmund in 1935. An exhibition entitled Degenerate Art was staged in the Haus der Kunst featuring paintings by Paul Klee, Georg Grosz and Otto Dix. They intensified their propaganda in 1937 with the Great Anti-Bolshevik Exhibition at the Teacher Training College. Its Cultural Bolshevism section adopted the aesthetics of the Degenerate Art exhibition in Munich of the same year. In August 1937, a commission of the Reich Chamber of Culture confiscated 11 paintings, 1 sculpture, 81 graphic works and 25 graphic portfolios from the Museum of Art and Cultural History.

This included the painting The Ruhr Valley near Herdecke, originally entitled Blue Hills. Düsseldorf gallery owner Alfred Flechtheim (1878-1937) had donated it to the Dortmund Museum in 1922. After it was confiscated, the Nazis removed the initials ‘CR’ to make the painting easier to sell. In 1954, it was repurchased by the Ketterer Kunstkabinett in Stuttgart.