Emil Nolde, the German expressionist 'degenerate' painter with Nazi convictions

The 1936 painting "Breaker" hung in Chancellor Angela Merkel's study until recently. Showing a breaking wave under a sky that is painted blood red, the painting was on loan from the Berlin State Museums, which had requested its return to be included in an exhibition about Nolde's work in Berlin. Afterward, it will not return to the Chancellery, the result of the painter's troubled biography.

Emil Nolde (1867-1956) is regarded as one of the most famous painters of German expressionism. Nolde's expressive use of color is one his trademarks. His bright watercolors in particular have drawn in many followers and continue to attract art enthusiasts. On the art market, Nolde's works are in demand and sell for high prices. This 1921 painting by Nolde is titled "Paradise Lost."

Emil Nolde had more works confiscated and displayed as "degenerate art" under the Nazis than any other artist. But Nolde was a opportunist, creating his own narrative. Before 1945, he saw himself as misjudged and persecuted by Jews. However, after the war, he presented himself as a victim of the Nazi regime. Researchers are uncovering his biographical inconsistencies.

Although Emil Nolde wasn't one, he would have liked to become an official state artist for the Nazis. According to art historians, Nolde was an anti-Semite, committed to the Third Reich, who joined the National Socialist Association of Northern Schleswig in 1934 at the age of 67. He even wrote a plan to remove Jews from the country.

Joseph Goebbels, confidant of Hitler and minister of propaganda for the Third Reich, is shown here visiting the "Degenerate Art Exhibition" in Berlin in 1938. The show displayed banned pieces that had been removed from museums, including the confiscated works of painter Emil Nolde. This deeply affected the artist. But, as new research shows, he remained staunchly committed to the Nazi ideology.

The art of anti-Semitic artist Emil Nolde no longer has a place in the German Chancellery. The work of another expressionist, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, is set to be displayed in Merkel's study. In an office that welcomes foreign heads of state in which Germany is keen to show its best side, what can be taken from the art that hangs on its walls? This painting by Nolde is called "The Sinner".

The Nolde Foundation in Seebüll occupies the space where the artist once lived and worked from 1930 until his death in 1956. Every year, thousands of Nolde fans visit the museum exploring his life and work. It was not until the opening of the Nolde archive in 2013 that the foundation brought controversial new insights about Nolde's biography to light.

In Berlin in 2019, the exhibitions "A German Legend. Emil Nolde and the Nazi Regime" at the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum and "Escape into Art? The Brücke Painters in the Nazi Period" at the Brücke Museum aim to question the myth surrounding Nolde. Whether or not the works can be separated from the artist is a heated point of discussion.