Erworben · Besessen · Vertan

Rarely has an event in the national and international cultural and art scene triggered so much and such a long-lasting public controversy as the handing over of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's Berlin Street Scene, a major work by the style-defining Brücke painter from the legendary collection of the widely respected Jewish shoe manufacturer Alfred Hess in the Weimar Republic.The book attempts to explain the fate of Kirchner's Berlin Street Scene, a major work by the style-defining Brücke painter from the legendary collection of Alfred Hess, a Jewish shoe manufacturer from Erfurt who was widely respected in the Weimar Republic, and at the same time a centrepiece of the holdings of the Brücke Museum in Berlin. This book attempts to place the fateful path of this unique work of art in the context of contemporary history against the backdrop of the decline of the collector's family's business and fortune, and to trace it in documentary form.