Emil Nolde
Emil Nolde, born Emil Hansen in 1867, was a prominent German painter and a significant figure in the Expressionist movement. Initially influenced by Impressionism during his studies in the 1890s, Nolde evolved his style after immersing himself in the artistic circles of Paris and Berlin, particularly as a founding member of Die Brücke and the New Berlin Secession. His work often featured Christian themes and later gravitated toward primitivism, inspired by his ethnological expeditions to Russia and the Far East.
The complex relationship between Nolde and the National Socialist Party has been a subject of discussion, as he was accused of having "Volkish" ideas about art and was alleged to have joined the party in 1920—a claim that remains unconfirmed. Despite early support from some Nazi cultural figures, Nolde faced backlash from the regime, particularly during the 1937 Degenerate Art Exhibition, where his works were denounced. He continued to paint in secret despite restrictions, producing over a thousand watercolors during this period. Nolde's legacy is marked by both his artistic contributions and the irony of his persecution by a regime he initially sought to align with, making his life and work a poignant study of artistic integrity amid political turmoil. He passed away in 1956 at his home in Seebüll.
Subject Terms
Emil Nolde
Identification: German expressionist painter
Significance: Nolde was featured prominently in the Nazis’ Degenerate Art Exhibition of 1937, and most of his work was confiscated
Nolde was born Emil Hansen but changed his name on the occasion of his marriage to the Danish actress and musician Ada Vilstrup in 1902, taking the name of the town in northern Schleswig where he grew up. He tended toward impressionism in his early years, notably during his studies in Munich and Dachau in the 1890’s. In the early 1900’s he spent time in Paris and Berlin, briefly joining the circle known as Die Brücke in 1906, and acting as a founding member of the New Berlin Secession in 1910. He soon took Christian religious scenes as his subjects in a well-known series of paintings, but became fascinated with primitivism during an ethnological expedition to Russia and the Far East during 1913-1914.
Perhaps because of Nolde’s “Volkish” ideas about art, which emphasized the spiritual and natural relation of race and landscape, or because of early support from Nazi cultural figures such as Alois Schardt and Alfred Rosenberg, the allegation has been widely accepted that Nolde joined the National Socialist Party officially in 1920—the same year as Adolf Hitler. This has, however, never been confirmed. On the other hand, Nolde has also often been excused as merely politically naïve, although he publicly stated that he believed in the racial superiority of the Nordic peoples. The question of his allegiance to Nazism has been, and remains, a matter of some controversy. In any case, expressionism as Nolde and others practiced it lost out to the demand for aesthetic and ideological purity in Germany in the 1930’s.
In his autobiography Nolde suggests that he became persecuted by the Nazis because he refused to accept a high-level position in the Imperial Ministry of Culture, the Reichskulturkammer. In fact, the highest court of the Nazi Party investigated Nolde and determined in March, 1937, that he had never been a member of the party, thus rendering calls for his expulsion moot. This verdict is deceptive, however, because documentation unearthed in later years shows clearly that Nolde joined the party relatively late—not in 1920, but in 1934—although his membership was in the Danish National Socialist Party in northern Schleswig, which since the 1919 Versailles Treaty had belonged to Denmark.
Nolde attempted to justify himself and his art to the Nazi authorities for years after their denunciation of him, especially in 1937, after the Degenerate Art Exhibition in Munich. In the summer of 1939 he went as far as to write to Hitler’s minister for propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, demanding the return of his confiscated work. Over a thousand of his paintings had been removed from German museums and galleries by that time. However, the Reichskulturkammer demanded that Nolde cease painting altogether and turn over his previous two years’ work. Nolde continued to paint in secret at his isolated house in Seebüll. To avoid the detectable odor of oil paints, he switched to watercolors, and the police and Gestapo never found contraband in their visits to his residence. During this wartime period, which ended with Germany’s surrender in 1945, Nolde secretly painted more than thirteen hundred aquarelles, which he called “unpainted pictures.” These were the basis for a hundred large oil paintings made between 1945 and 1951.
Nolde never comprehended the National Socialist persecution of him, since he believed he himself had struggled, mostly alone, against foreign influences on contemporary German art. The Degenerate Art Exhibition placed his altar piece Life of Christ (1912) at the center of the first gallery on the upper floor and labeled it a mockery of the Divine. Otherwise the official objections to Nolde’s expressionistic art were those applied to most modern art: that unconventional style is “impure” and “unhealthy,” its images distorted and deformed. The exhibition leaders displayed almost thirty other paintings by Nolde to prove his degenerateness, including pictures of Frisian houses, sunflowers, and cows.
Already an old man by the time of his difficulties with the Nazis, Nolde died at his Seebüll home in 1956. The Nazis were more preoccupied with Nolde than with any other artist; he is the ironic example of the artist censored in spite of his expressed sympathy for the ideology of the regime.
Siegfried Lenz modeled his fictional character “Ludwig Nansen” on Nolde in his novel The German Lesson (1968).