Many Jewish and non-Jewish German artists alike had their work branded “degenerate” by the Nazis and were forced to flee Germany. Georg Stahl responded to the political turmoil of the Weimar Republic, and later World War II, with work that moved from a modernist style in the 1920′s to pure abstraction in the 1950′s.
The exhibition “Final Sale. The End of Jewish Owned Businesses in Nazi Berlin” documents the process by which Jews in Germany were expropriated through the examples of 16 Berlin businesses, but that is only half the story. It also demonstrates the flourishing of Jewish entrepreneurship in Berlin before 1933, when the city was a center of Jewish life.
The second installment in a collaboration with the German Ambassador in Washington, DC, this exhibit showcases the everyday lives and extraordinary accomplishments of Jewish women in Germany. It combines portraits of luminaries like the brilliant salonnière Rahel Varnhagen with seemingly profane objects like a “Jewish Cookbook” from the turn of the 20th century.
