Outsider art

The complexities of Schleswig-Holstein run deep. Here’s Emil Nolde, an artist born south of the German-Danish border and steeped in the marshy mysteries and primal romanticism of that landscape. In 1920, he sees his region, and himself, become Danish following a post-Versailles plebiscite. An already well-established German nationalist bent — pronounced despite, or perhaps because of, his shifting national identity and shaky grasp of the German language — is inflamed. He moves back across the new border before eventually joining the local branch of the Nazi party and writing a volume of autobiography entitled, Jahre der Kämpfe in which he rails against the Jewish dominance of the art world.

National Socialism attracted Nolde and he saw the Nazis as an opportunity for the German avant-garde. He envisaged his model of expressionism becoming the cultural face of the nation and a new wave of artists being empowered by the state to become the modern equals of Dürer, Grünewald and Holbein.