Längmatte bei Monduntergang, 1919

About the Work

„Winter Moon Night” has its origins in what the artist referred to as a “madly beautiful” experience of nature. In extravagant colours it shows the view from his window – across the Längmatte, with the Altein massif on one side and the Tinzenhorn in the background. Kirchner printed this woodcut from several blocks, each inked in a different colour, which he placed precisely next to and on top of one another in such a way that the colours overlap. Earlier that year, he had had his press, which weighed over 100 kilograms, brought from Berlin to his place of exile in Switzerland.

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.