Die Ostdeutsche Galerie in Regensburg.

Abstract

The Ostdeutsche Galerie in Regensburg

The Ostdeutsche Galerie in Regensburg was established by Article 96 of the Law on Expellees of 1966. This gallery has a specific program: to document the work of artists connected with East European regions settled by Germans (the Czech Lands, Silesia, East Prussia) as well as to present the contribution of these artists to the development of European art from romanticism to the present day. The gallery initiated its activities in 1970 when the Adalbert Stifter Society lent it approximately 600 works created by Czech-born artists. Over the years, the activities of the gallery shifted from the regionally defined and nostalgic “Heimatkunst” (homeland art) to a more general emphasis on “exile art” documenting the destinies of individual artists in the twentieth century. Under this emphasis, paintings by artists holding irreconcilable ideological positions appeared next to one another; some examples are Oskar Kokoschka and George Grosz or Richard Müller and Ludwig Meidner. The terms “refugee” and “refugee art” thus became more objective because they ultimately referred not only to those artists forced to leave their homeland in 1945, but also to those who fled Germany after 1933.

Keywords: German art, Ostdeutsche Galerie Regensburg