Historical background: 

Germany Since the turn of the century, many German museums had spent considerable sums on collections of modern art, buying works of Expressionism, the New Objectivity, Cubism, and Dadaism as well as French modernism. The National Socialists, who had seized power in 1933, branded such art with the derogatory label “degenerate.” In the summer of 1937, the Nazi authorities seized more than 21,000 works of “degenerate” art from German museums. Works by Jewish artists and works with Jewish or political subjects were among the primary targets of the campaign. Many of the confiscated works were displayed in the exhibition Degenerate Art held in Munich in 1937. 

 Out of the vast stockpile, around 780 paintings and sculptures and 3,500 works on paper were declared “internationally salable”—which is to say, they were seen as suitable for sale abroad to raise funds in foreign currencies. These works were moved to a storage site in the north of Berlin. 125 works were selected for an auction to be held by Theodor Fischer in Lucerne in late June 1939. Four art dealers, among them Karl Buchholz and Hildebrand Gurlitt, were brought on board to find international buyers for the remaining art. Much of the “unsalable” stockpile was burned in Berlin on March 20, 1939. 

Basel around 1939 

In 1936, the Kunstmuseum Basel had inaugurated its new home on St. Alban-Graben— today’s Hauptbau. The relocation into the spacious building revealed how little the collection of modern paintings had to offer: the works of Old Masters Konrad Witz and Hans Holbein the Younger constituted the core of the holdings. Otto Fischer, the museum’s director at the time, had sought to rectify this imbalance, but several attempts to buy modern art had been rebuffed. 

Taking the helm of the museum in 1939, Georg Schmidt, like his predecessor, wanted to build a modern collection. As a journalist, he had observed and criticized the persecution of modern art in Germany since 1933. His ambition was to buy as many of the confiscated works as possible—at the upcoming auction in Lucerne, but also directly from the warehouse in Berlin, which he visited in late May 1939 at the invitation of the dealers Buchholz and Gurlitt, who had been tasked with “liquidating” the art. Buchholz and Schmidt drew up a selection of works that was sent to Basel for inspection. 

The Fischer auction in Lucerne 

The auction Modern Masters from German Museums was held at Galerie Theodor Fischer, Lucerne, on June 30, 1939. The Kunstmuseum’s board of trustees applied to the Canton of Basel-City for a special fund in the amount of CHF 100,000 for acquisitions of art formerly held by German museums. The question of whether buying art from a dictatorial regime was a defensible decision—especially at a time when everything suggested that war was imminent—was controversial. On the evening before the auction, however, the canton allocated CHF 50,000. At the auction, the Kunstmuseum purchased eight works: Paul Klee’s Villa R, a still life by Lovis Corinth, Otto Dix’s Portrait of the Artist’s Parents I, Paula Modersohn-Becker’s Self-Portrait as a Half-Length Nude with Amber Necklace II, and Franz Marc’s Two Cats, Blue and Yellow, as well as André Derain’s Still Life with Calvary, a work on paper by Marc Chagall, and his large painting The Pinch of Snuff (Rabbi). These works now rank among the highlights in the museum’s classic modernism galleries.

 Even before the auction, Marc’s Animal Destinies was the first work removed from a German museum to be bought directly from Berlin. Two weeks after the Lucerne auction, the works sent from Berlin for inspection were set up in the Kunstmuseum’s skylight hall. The museum purchased an additional twelve of them, including Max Beckmann’s The Nizza in Frankfurt am Main, Lovis Corinth’s Ecce Homo, two paintings by Modersohn-Becker, and Oskar Kokoschka’s Bride of the Wind, a masterwork of Expressionism. Due to budgetary constraints, the museum was unable to buy all works at the auction and from the selection sent to Basel that Schmidt would have liked to acquire. 

The exhibition Castaway Modernism is the first to reunite the works of “degenerate” art that entered the museum’s collection at the time with those that Basel did not purchase, among them Pablo Picasso’s The Soler Family, James Ensor’s Death and Masks, and Wilhelm Lehmbruck’s Seated Girl. Three of the works that traveled to Basel for inspection in 1939 or that Schmidt had requested are now believed to have been destroyed: Oskar Schlemmer’s Three Women and Otto Dix’s The Widow and Trench. Represented by black-and-white projections, these works are included in the exhibition as well. 

 The “forgotten generation” 

The great majority of the 21,000 confiscated artifacts were works by artists in the early stages of their careers. Many of these objects were destroyed in 1938 because the Nazis did not see any possible use for them. The names of the creators faded into obscurity. The exhibition Castaway Modernism dedicates a separate gallery to this “forgotten generation.” Marg Moll’s Dancer is an especially striking illustration of the vagaries of the history of loss bound up with the persecution of “degenerate art”: until recently, the work, which was displayed in the exhibition Degenerate Art, was thought to have been destroyed. In 2010, it was recovered during the construction of a new subway line from the rubble left by the bombing of Berlin. Films in the exhibition Silent films with a running time of around three minutes based on historic photographs and documents play in a loop in each gallery and serve as an introduction to the exhibits. The films were developed and produced by teamstratenwerth. 

The scholarly catalogue reconstructs the events, beginning with the confiscations from German museums, and embeds them in their historical context. Essays on the auction in Lucerne, on Georg Schmidt’s strategy, and on the place of the acquisitions in the history of the Basel collection bring specifically Swiss aspects into focus. With essays by Claudia Blank, Gregory Desauvage, Uwe Fleckner, Meike Hoffmann, Georg Kreis, Eva Reifert, Tessa Rosebrock, Ines Rotermund-Reynard, Sandra Sykora, Christoph Zuschlag. Eds. Eva Reifert, Tessa Rosebrock, Hatje Cantz Verlag, 296 pages, 200 illustrations, ISBN 978-3-7757-5221-3

Images

The Basel Acquisitions 1939 (Selection)

Pablo Picasso, The family Soler, 1903. Oil on canvas, 150 x 200 cm. Musée des Beaux-Arts de Liège, © Succession Picasso / 2022, ProLitteris, Zurich.

	Franz Marc Animal Destinies (The Trees Showed Their Rings, the Animals Their Veins), 1913 Oil on canvas, 194.7 x 263.5 cm  Kunstmuseum Basel Photo: Jonas Hänggi	Kunstmuseum Basel Photo: Jonas Hänggi
	Oskar Kokoschka The Bride of the Wind, 1913 Oil on canvas, 180.4 x 220.2 cm Kunstmuseum Basel © Fondation Oskar Kokoschka / 2022, ProLitteris, Zurich Photo: Jonas Hänggi	Kunstmuseum Basel © Fondation Oskar Kokoschka / 2022, ProLitteris, Zurich Photo: Jonas Hänggi
	Marc Chagall The Pinch of Snuff (Rabbi), 1923-1926 Oil on canvas, 116.7 x 89.2 cm Kunstmuseum Basel © 2022, ProLitteris, Zurich Photo: Martin P. Bühler	Kunstmuseum Basel © 2022, ProLitteris, Zurich Photo: Martin P. Bühler
	Paula Modersohn-Becker Self-Portrait as a Half-Length Nude with Amber Necklace II, 1906 Oil on canvas, 61.1 x 50 cm Kunstmuseum Basel Photo: Martin P. Bühler	Kunstmuseum Basel Photo: Martin P. Bühler

Works sold as "internationally marketable"
	Paul Gauguin The Sorcerer of Hiva Oa, 1902 Oil on canvas, 92 x 73 cm Musée des Beaux-Arts de Liège	Musée des Beaux-Arts de Liège
	James Ensor Death and Masks, 1897 Oil on canvas, 78,5 x 100 cm	Musée des Beaux-Arts de Liège
Max Beckmann Descent from the Cross, 1917 Oil on canvas, 151 x 129 cm

The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Peasants Eating Lunch (Peasant Meal), 1920 Oil on canvas, 133 x 166 cm