FROM THE STUDIES ON ‘DEGENERATE ART’ TWENTY YEARS AFTER THE WASHINGTON CONFERENCE. SZCZECIN’S CASE (MUSEUM DER STADT STETTIN)

On 5 August 1937, fulfilling the orders of theChairman of the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts (Reichskammerder bildenden Künste), a confiscation committee showedup at the City Museum in Stettin, and demanded to bepresented by the Director of the institution the Museum’scollection in view of ‘degenerate art’. While ‘hunting’for the Avant-garde and ‘purging museums’, the Nazisconfiscated works that represented, e.g. Expressionism,Cubism, Bauhaus Constructivism, pieces manifesting theaesthetics of the New Objectivity, as well as other sociallyand politically ‘suspicious’ art works from the late BelleÉpoque, WWI, German Revolution of 1918–1919, or fromWeimer Republic Modernism of the 1920s and 30s. Theinfamous Munich ‘Entartete Kunst’ Exhibition turned into atravelling propaganda display, presented in different variantsat different venues. A three-week show (11 Jan.–5 Feb.1939) was also held in Stettin, in the Landeshaus building(today housing the Municipality of Szczecin).Provenance studies: biographies of the existing works,often relocated, destroyed, or considered to have been lost, constitute an interesting input into the challengingchapter on German and European Avant-garde, Szczecinmuseology, and on Pomerania art collections. Side by sidewith the artists, it was museologists and art dealers who cocreatedthis Pomeranian history of art. The Szczecin StateArchive contains a set of files related to ‘degenerate art’,revealing the mechanisms and the course of the ‘museumpurge’ at the Stettin Stadtmuseum. The archival recordsof the National Museum in Szczecin feature fragments ofinventory ledgers as well as books of acquisitions, whichprovide a particularly precious source of knowledge. Thepublished catalogue of the works of ‘degenerate art’ fromthe Museum’s collections covering 1081 items has beencreated on the grounds of the above-mentioned archivalrecords, for the first time juxtaposed, and cross-checked.The mutually matching traces of information from Polishand German archives constitute a good departure point forfurther more thorough studies.