High Forest, 1919

About the Work

Schmidt-Rottluff was recruited for military service in May 1915. Assigned to an armament battalion, he worked digging trenches and building barbed-wire abatis, eventually ending up in Kowno (present-day Kaunas) in Lithuania. In 1919, back in Berlin, he executed a series of woodcuts with motifs from Russia and Lithuania. Signs of battle or destruction are sought here in vain. The scenes show the simple life of the rural population in close touch with nature. The artist abbreviated the trees in “High Forest” to mere ciphers.

About the Acquisition

From 1900 onwards, the Frankfurt chemist and industrialist Carl Hagemann (1867‒1940) assembled one of the most important private collections of modern art. It included numerous paintings, drawings, watercolours and prints, especially by members of the artist group “Die Brücke”. After Carl Hagemann died in an accident during the Second World War, the then Städel director Ernst Holzinger arranged for Hagemann’s heirs to evacuate his collection with the museum’s collection. In gratitude, the family donated almost all of the works on paper to the Städel Museum in 1948. Further donations and permanent loans as well as purchases of paintings and watercolours from the Hagemann estate helped to compensate for the losses the museum had suffered in 1937 as part of the Nazi’s “Degenerate Art” campaign. Today, the Hagemann Collection forms the core of the Städel museum’s Expressionist collection.