Women on Potsdamer Platz, 1914

About the Work

In the autumn of 1911, Berlin – a place of decadence and social contrasts – became Kirchner’s new domain. It was here that the artist produced his famous Berlin street scenes with their cocottes (street prostitutes), whom he regarded as a symbol of the times. Crowded together and nevertheless isolated from one another, they dominate the foreground. Beyond them is a shadowy sharp-edged punter roaming the streets of a city of such distorted perspective that it looks like a world out of joint.

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.