by Adam Thorpe
Copy after Johann Christian Vollerdt (1708–1769)
Landscape with Ruins c. 1760
Oil on canvas, 24 x 32
Rosa Luxemburg Hall, Lohenfelde
This undistinguished painting is nevertheless the best-known work in our 1964 Peace exhibition, as its ripped and blistered state has long symbolised the horrors of the Fascist war to the thousands who come to our city in order to gaze upon the ravaged canvas, hung and dramatically spotlit in the huge vestibule of our new town hall.
Recovered from the rubble of an apartment block on former Hermann-Goering-Strasse (now Karl-Marx-Strasse) in 1945, this copy – probably by one of Vollerdt’s pupils – is one of the few works from Lohenfelde’s magnificent pre-war collection, housed in the former Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, to have survived. (The accompanying monochrome photograph is the only record of the original painting, destroyed in the bombing of Magdeburg.)
An eye-witness of the time, 31-year-old teacher Elisabeth Hoffer, gives us this account: ‘Lohenfelde had fallen to the Americans after a severe bombardment. Our apartment block was badly damaged, and many of us were trapped in the cellar for nearly two days. Brave attempts were made to free us. The building finally collapsed and only about half of us (thirty-three in total) were pulled out alive. All those attempting to rescue us perished when the building came down. Among the victims were my sister and my mother. My father, Heinrich Hoffer, who was not present, went missing during the same bombardment. It is possible that, as Acting Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, he had brought certain of its works home to avoid them being appropriated by either the Fascists or the invading American forces, and the Vollerdt copy was among these.’
Exhibited alongside the painting is a notebook retrieved from the same spot, containing the diary of an unknown Jewish girl in hiding. The badly scorched notebook is of the type used at the time by the library of the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum. It is not known whether she was concealed in the attics of the museum (on the site now occupied by the Werner Seelenbinder Hall), or in the apartment belonging to Director H. Hoffer. Nevertheless, this anonymous diary is a moving testament to courage in the face of the Fascist horror, just as the painting has become a celebrated witness, throughout the GDR, to the tragedy of war.
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