1990: Foundation of the Else Lasker-Schüler Society

In 1990, the WDR journalist Hajo Jahn founded the Else Lasker-Schüler Society in Wuppertal, the birthplace of the painter-poet Else Lasker-Schüler. She had become famous in Berlin and had to flee from there to escape the National Socialists. Because Hajo Jahn saw her biography as a link between all the persecuted art genres, he committed himself to a contemporary culture of remembrance and a center for persecuted arts that would take into account all art genres.

1992–1994: Call for the establishment of a Center for Persecuted Arts

Against the backdrop of racist attacks against refugees and minorities in reunified Germany, Hajo Jahn and Jürgen Serke initiated a nationwide action of the Else Lasker-Schüler Society on November 9, 1992: A Night in Germany, a reaction to the arson attacks, in which authors read in the homes of asylum seekers—“against xenophobia, violence, and anti-Semitism”: in Rostock, Moelln, Cottbus, Hünxe, Magdeburg, Schwerin, Dresden, and Solingen. In 1994, the Else Lasker-Schüler Society Wuppertal, together with Exil-P.E.N., called for the establishment of a Center for Persecuted Arts.

1994: Burned and Banished Poets/Artists Foundation

On September 12, 1994, the Else Lasker-Schüler Society presented the concept for the dependent foundation “Burned and Banished Poets/Artists – for a Center for Persecuted Arts” at the state parliament in Düsseldorf. An appeal with the signatures of fifty authors was presented, among them Günter Grass, Siegfried Lenz, Johannes Mario Simmel and Tankred Dorst, along with authors from the former GDR Sarah Kirsch, Reiner Kunze, Jürgen Fuchs, and Wolf Biermann, as well as Herta Müller and the Israelis Yehuda Amichai, Jakob Hessing, and Tuvia Rübner. The signature of the world’s most famous persecuted writer, Salman Rushdie, stood for the topicality of the subject: writers, journalists, and artists were and are persecuted, censored, imprisoned, and killed in dictatorships.

1997: The Collection of Dr. Gerhard Schneider

In 1997, Rolf Jessewitsch, director of the Solingen Museum Baden (later the Kunstmuseum Solingen), came across a private collection of more than 3,000 pictures of figurative art from the German-speaking world from the dawn of modernism around 1910 to the penultimate decade of the twentieth century. The collection of Dr. Gerhard Schneider focuses on the works of unappreciated figurative artists who have been largely forgotten due to political circumstances and ideological guidelines. These distortions of German art history already began with the First World War, continued most severely through the manipulations of National Socialism with its notion of “degenerate art,” and continued to have an effect on an ideologically guided understanding of art in divided Germany after 1945. At the turn of the millennium, this collection formed the basis for a first exhibition and accompanying catalogue: Verfemt—Vergessen—Wiederentdeckt (Ostracized—Forgotten—Rediscovered).

2003: Society for the Establishment of a Museum for Ostracized Art

In 2003, the collector Dr. Gerhard Schneider, in consultation with Dr. Rolf Jessewitsch, then director of the Museum Baden, founded the Society for the Establishment of a Museum for Ostracized Art. On February 5, 2004, Mr. and Mrs. Fervers, together with Thomas Busch and Mr. and Mrs. Schneider, founded the Civic Foundation for Persecuted Arts with the Gerhard Schneider Collection in Solingen. Thomas Busch and Mr. and Mrs. Fervers provided the cash capital. The City of Solingen joined as a shareholder of the foundation through the Kunstmuseum Solingen Betriebsgesellschaft. It made the upper floor of the museum and later a part of the first floor of the former Gräfrath town hall permanently available for the presentations of the foundation. The first exhibition was opened on December 12, 2004.

Here, one rediscovers artists who for a long time were hardly remembered in Germany. After the terror of the Nazi regime and the Second World War, the younger generation of modern artists active during the Weimar Republic, those born between 1890 and 1910, were largely forgotten. The collector Gerhard Schneider tracked down these forgotten modern artists and made their works and biographies accessible to the public. The various collection catalogues published since 1999 present a wealth of previously lost works of art.

2007: The Literary Collection of Jürgen Serke

In 2007, the foundation of the Else Lasker-Schüler Society acquired the literary collection of the journalist and author Jürgen Serke, consisting of more than 2,500 objects, including books, documents, handwritten letters, typescripts, and photographs. In 2008, this literary collection was presented at the Solingen Museum and accordingly now in the Center for Persecuted Arts under the title Heaven and Hell between 1918 and 1989. The Burned Poets in a permanent exhibition as well as changing special exhibitions. As early as 2008, newspapers throughout Germany wrote: “With the existing art collection and the literary collection, Solingen is a center for persecuted arts.”

2014 and 2015 : Merger of the Gerhard Schneider Collection with the Else Lasker-Schüler Foundation and the establishment of the Center for Persecuted Arts

In 2014, the Civic Foundation for Ostracized Arts merged with the Gerhard Schneider Collection and the Else Lasker-Schüler Foundation for Burned and Banished Poets/Artists, founded in 1994, to establish a Center for Persecuted Arts. It contributed the collection of Jürgen Serkes, the author of the book Die verbrannten Dichter (The Burned Poets, 1977), to the foundation. On December 8, 2015, the Center for Persecuted Arts in Solingen was officially opened. The founding of the Center was preceded by long negotiations between the two shareholders, the Rhineland Regional Council (LVR) and the City of Solingen. Prominent guests were present, including Prof. Dr. Norbert Lammert, President of the German Bundestag; Sylvia Löhrmann, Deputy Prime Minister of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia; Ulrike Lubek, Director of the LVR; Prof. Jürgen Wilhelm, Chairman of the Regional Assembly of the Rhineland; Milena Karabaic, Head of the Cultural Department of the LVR; and Tim Kurzbach, Lord Mayor of the City of Solingen.

2017: Expansion of the collection

In 2017, funding from the German Bundestag made it possible to significantly expand the Civic Foundation by adding a group of works from the Gerhard Schneider Collection and the estate of the artist Oscar Zügel. Donations, such as nearly seventy works by the painter Leo Breuer from the period between 1939 and 1946, continue to enrich the collection.