The story
The Kunsthalle Bremen is unusual among big German museums: it was founded by private citizens and is still owned by them. An art society of Bremen merchants and art lovers set it up in 1823 and put up its own building by 1849, and that same society, not the state, runs the museum today.
That independent streak once caused a national row. In 1911 the director bought Van Gogh's Field with Poppies for the collection, and conservative German painters protested loudly at money going to French modern art. The purchase stuck, and the painting still hangs here.
The war treated the collection harder. Its holdings were hidden for safety, and in 1945 around 1,500 works, including drawings by Dürer, were taken to the Soviet Union as war trophies. Many have never returned. What remains still spans seven centuries, from medieval panels to Beckmann and the Worpswede painter Paula Modersohn-Becker.
