The V&A and the Lost Art the Nazis Tried to Erase
The V&A Library © The Victoria & Albert Museum
The Nazi Inventory of ‘Degenerate Art’ - and the British Museum That Preserved It
In the late 1930s, the Nazi regime launched a cultural war against modern art, targeting any work that didn’t align with its rigid, fascist ideals. Artists were slandered, exhibitions raided, and over 16,000 artworks were seized from public museums and galleries across Germany. These pieces were labelled Entartete Kunst - degenerate art.
But in a remarkable twist of history, the only known complete inventory of that mass censorship effort now sits in London, at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
What Is the Entartete Kunst Inventory?
Compiled between 1941 and 1942 by the Nazi Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, this two-volume list documented the so-called “cleansing” of Germany’s cultural institutions. Each entry recorded:
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the name of the artist
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the title and medium of the work
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the museum or gallery it was taken from
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the artwork's fate - whether it was sold, destroyed, or displayed in the infamous 1937 Degenerate Art Exhibition.
The inventory spanned hundreds of artists, many of them Jewish, queer, left-wing, or simply too experimental for the Nazi worldview. It included works by names we now consider essential to modern art history - Paul Klee, Otto Dix, Max Beckmann, Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler, and many more.
What the Nazis Didn't Expect
When the Degenerate Art exhibition opened in 1937, it was intended to shame. The Nazis wanted to turn the public against modernism. Instead, it became a sensation.
Over 2 million people visited the exhibition, averaging around 20,000 each day - far outnumbering the 600,000 who attended Hitler’s official “Great German Art” show next door.
For many Germans, it was their first time seeing this kind of work. In trying to bury modern art the Nazis had accidentally created a Streisand effect, bringing the art they tried to suppress into the spotlight.
How Did The Directory End Up in the V&A?
The inventory list was smuggled out of Germany by Harry Fischer, a Jewish art dealer who fled the Nazis and later co-founded the Marlborough Fine Art gallery in London. After his death, his widow Elfriede Fischer donated the inventory to the V&A in 1996 - quietly returning one of the regime’s own tools of cultural erasure to public hands.
Today, the V&A has made the entire document freely accessible through their website. It’s a sobering archive, painfully bureaucratic in tone, yet seething with the violence of what it represented.
© The Victoria & Albert Museum
Why It Matters
This list is more than a record - it’s evidence. It proves how thoroughly and methodically the Nazis sought to erase ideas, identities, and creative freedom from public life - and just how much time and effort they put into silencing these artists.
It also stands as a counterweight. By preserving this history, we resist it. Every time someone reads this list, researches one of the artists it mentions, or hangs one of their prints in their home, the Nazi attempt to silence them fails a little more.
In trying to ban modern art, the Nazis ended up doing the opposite. Their infamous Degenerate Art exhibition exposed more Germans to modernism than ever before - an unintended spotlight that gave many people their first encounter with the very work the regime wanted to erase.
Explore the V&A’s Archive
The full inventory is split into two volumes and arranged alphabetically by city and institution:
Visit the V&A blog to learn more and view the directory.
You can also explore a searchable version via the Freie Universität Berlin.
At Cynefn, we believe in reclaiming the work the Nazis tried to erase. Not just because it’s beautiful work - but because it was meant to be wiped from history.
