Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: The Complete Story
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was the leader of Die Brucke and the nerve end of German Expressionism. Born in 1880, he painted Berlin's streets like an oncoming accident, was branded degenerate by the Nazis in 1937, and shot himself in Switzerland in 1938.
Few careers hold the whole German catastrophe in one life. His does. Here it is, from the bridge to the breakdown.
Kirchner at a glance:
Born in Aschaffenburg in 1880; co-founded Die Brücke in Dresden in 1905.
His Berlin street scenes of 1913-15 defined Expressionist anxiety.
Broke down in military training in 1915.
Rebuilt his life in Davos, painting the Alps for two decades.
Shot himself in 1938 after the Nazi degenerate-art campaign.
Die Brucke, 1905
Kirchner was an architecture student in Dresden when, in 1905, he and three friends, Heckel, Schmidt-Rottluff and Bleyl, founded Die Brucke, the Bridge: a commune of young men who wanted painting raw, carved woodcuts, jagged colour, models drawn in fifteen minute poses.
Their manifesto called on youth to wrest freedom from the comfortable old. Expressionism, as a movement, starts in that Dresden shopfront.
Berlin, painted at the speed of dread
After the group moved to Berlin and dissolved in 1913, Kirchner painted the works he is judged by: the Street Scenes of 1913 to 1915, prostitutes and buyers in feathered hats and blade like coats, the pavement tilting under them. City life had been painted as pleasure; Kirchner painted it as exposure, and those canvases became the face of Expressionism.
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The war that broke him
He volunteered in 1914 and lasted months: a breakdown ended his service in 1915, and the Self Portrait as a Soldier, painted that year with a severed hand that was pure invention, told the truth about his state better than any diagnosis. From 1917 he lived above Davos in the Swiss Alps, half patient, half hermit, painting mountain life while addicted to the medicines that steadied him.
The myth: the wild man of Expressionism
The paintings look like eruptions, so Kirchner is cast as pure instinct.
He was in fact his generation's most anxious strategist: he wrote glowing essays about himself under a pseudonym, and he backdated canvases to claim he had invented things first.
The wildness was built, defended and marketed by a man who checked the reviews. That does not diminish the paintings; it explains their precision.
1937: degenerate
The Nazi campaign against modern art hit him harder than anyone: in 1937 more than 600 of his works were seized from German museums, and 32 hung in the Degenerate Art exhibition in Munich. He was expelled from the Prussian Academy. On 15 June 1938, outside his farmhouse near Davos, Kirchner shot himself. He was 58.
Where to see Kirchner
The Kirchner Museum in Davos, opened in 1992 in the valley where he died, holds the largest collection. The Brucke-Museum in Berlin keeps the movement's story, and MoMA in New York hangs the Dresden street scene that announced him.
Die Brücke: art as a youth movement
Four architecture students founded Die Brücke in 1905 with a manifesto carved in wood, calling youth to authenticity against their fathers' world.
They shared studios, models, lovers, and a deliberately crude woodcut line. Kirchner later backdated works to claim priority, a habit scholars still untangle.
The uniform that broke him
Kirchner volunteered in 1914, terrified of the trenches, and collapsed during artillery training within months.
His 1915 Self-Portrait as a Soldier shows a severed painting hand that was never severed: the wound was inward, and he painted the metaphor as fact.
Davos, and the second style
From 1917 he lived above Davos, painting mountains and herdsmen with the same jagged nerves gone monumental.
The 1937 Degenerate Art campaign removed over 600 of his works from German museums. In June 1938, outside his Davos house, he took his own life. The chalet is now a museum path stop, and the Kirchner Museum stands in the town.
The Ernst Ludwig Kirchner questions that keep coming up
What is he known for? Founding Die Brucke in 1905 and the Berlin Street Scenes of 1913 to 1915.
What happened to him in the war? He volunteered in 1914, broke down, and was discharged; he never fully recovered.
Why did the Nazis target him? Expressionism was branded degenerate; over 600 of his works were seized in 1937.
How did he die? By suicide on 15 June 1938, near Davos, a year after the seizures.
What was Die Brücke? The bridge, the group Kirchner co-founded in Dresden in 1905, the launch of German Expressionism: woodcut roughness, studio communes, and a manifesto for youth.
Why did Kirchner take his own life? Broken health, morphine, and the Nazi campaign that seized more than 600 of his works and branded him degenerate. He died at Davos in June 1938.
More secrets to unlock
One last fact
The village he died in became his keeper: Davos opened the Kirchner Museum in 1992, and the farmers he painted, who had once found him strange, lent back the pictures he had given them. The Berlin nerve case ended as the Alps' most visited painter.
