How Munich’s Museums Are Confronting their Nazi History

The power of the archive lies not only in its documentation of events that ought to be remembered but also in the records it holds of histories that some might otherwise prefer to forget. While researching her recent show at Kunstverein München, ‘No River to Cross’, the artist Bea Schlingelhoff unearthed a disturbing document from 1936 which stated that non-Aryans could not become members of the association. Following the formation of the Reich Chamber of Culture in 1933, which promoted Nazi ideals, amendments like this were common across Germany. Arguably the nadir of this cultural oppression was the ‘Degenerate Art’ exhibition of 1937, one iteration of which was held in the building where Kunstverein München is now located.

For ‘No River to Cross’, Schlingelhoff filled the entire space with differently sized, dark-green rectangles painted across the gallery’s bright-green walls. These rectangles, the exhibition text explains, are placeholders for the 650 modernist artworks seized by the Nazis from 32 German museums, which were shown and defamed here during the ‘Degenerate Art’ exhibition. By painting the squares in a darker colour, the artist also echoes the gaps which appeared on the walls of the pillaged museums.

While many buildings in the city have historical ties to the fascist regime, Kunstverein München bore no marker of its own affiliation until Schlingelhoff installed four permanent plaques on the facade, naming the only female artists that were included in the ‘Degenerate Art’ show: Maria Caspar-Filser, Jacoba van Heemskerck, Marg Moll and Emy Roeder. As with many of Schlingelhoff’s works, the project’s significance extends beyond the dates of the exhibition. Prior to the show, Schlingelhoff also proposed a change to the Kunstverein’s statutes, in which the institution ‘asks for forgiveness for its collaboration with the Nazi regime […] and acknowledges its substantial share of responsibility for the injustices committed by the Reich Chamber of Culture’. In exhibiting both her initial handwritten proposal, marked-up with edits by director Maurin Dietrich and curator Gloria Hasnay, and the final version of the statute, which was passed on a majority vote, Schlingelhoff exposes the inner workings of the museum, which can only be as progressive as its members.

Founded in 2015, the Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism is another successful example of a Munich institution acknowledging the importance of commemoration. In 2019–20, the centre, which stands on the site of the former headquarters of the Nazi Party, hosted the landmark exhibition ‘Tell Me about Yesterday Tomorrow’ – curated by Juliane Bischoff, Nicolaus Schafhausen and Mirjam Zadoff – which placed works by more than 30 contemporary artists in dialogue with the museum’s permanent collection, underscoring the complex relationship between historic atrocities and the current rise of the alt-right. In November, the museum permanently installed artist Michaela Melián’s Memory Loops (2010), an audio work comprising 300 German and 175 English tracks based on transcriptions of historic and recent accounts by victims of the Nazi regime in Munich. On the project’s website, visitors can listen to the different stories by clicking on a map of the city. Conceived as a virtual monument, the work provides a space in which Holocaust victims and their families can commemorate their losses without having to visit Germany again.

Originally founded as Haus der Deutschen Kunst in 1937, a museum to showcase German art aligned with Nazi politics and ideals, Haus der Kunst has arguably the strongest connection of any cultural institution in Germany to fascism. The museum has addressed its past in a number of ways, including decades of public debate as to whether the building should be demolished entirely. In 1992, however, the state of Bavaria voted to preserve the institution as a foundation, enabling a series of directors – from Chris Dercon and the late Okwui Enwezor to current director Andrea Lissoni – to develop considered formats that constantly challenge Haus der Kunst’s past by way of recollection and reclamation.

As the city where the Nazi Party was founded in 1919 and which Adolf Hitler called the ‘capital of the movement’, Munich’s links with the terror regime are more obvious than anywhere else in Germany, explaining why the museums feel the responsibility to address this history. However, as contemporary witnesses to the Second World War steadily diminish while racist and anti-Semitic tendencies are on the rise throughout Germany, I hope that these sensitive responses to the country’s dark past, which are more important than ever, can soon be witnessed elsewhere too.

_{Main image: Bea Schlingelhoff, Four Artists of the ‘Degenerate Art’ exhibition in Munich, 2021, installation view, Kunstverein München. Courtesy: the artist and Kunstverein München e.V.; photograph: Constanza Meléndez}