BERLIN.- With Ruin and Rush, the Neue Nationalgalerie highlights selected works from its outstanding Classical Modern collection that explore Berlin in the 1910s and 1920s. These decades – shaped by the First Word War and the Weimar Republic – were marked by constant ten-sion between extremes: excess and poverty, emancipation and extremism, all coexisting in a rapidly growing, cosmopolitan city. Featuring around 35 works in a variety of artistic styles, the exhibition makes the ambivalence of glamour and misery, and rise and fall in Berlin of that era viscerally tangible.

At the dawn of the 20th century, Berlin evolved through industrialization into not only an economic hub but, above all, a political and cultural center. With the founding of ‘Groß-Berlin’ (Greater Berlin) in 1920, the population surged to approximately 4 million, making Berlin the third-largest city in the world by population, after New York and London. Alongside sweep-ing advances in technology, construction, and transportation, profound social transformations took shape – among them democratization and women's emancipation. The traumas of World War I, political unrest, and the rising tide of National Socialism cast a long shadow over the ‘Golden Twenties’. Even back then, Berlin was referred to as ‘Babylon’ – a refer-ence to the biblical ‘Babel’ – where people from all over the world gathered and crossed moral boundaries. The city was in upheaval on every level: freedom, consumerism, and excess stood in stark contrast to grow-ing poverty and unemployment.

Ruin and Rush explores, in three main sections, the simultaneity of glamour and misery, and rise and fall in Berlin during the 1910s and 1920s. The exhibition opens with Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s painting Potsdamer Platz, which, as early as 1914, captured the fractured spirit of the age. After an introductory section examining the dynamism of the growing metropolis – its architecture, traffic, and nightlife – the second part of the exhibition turns to the social suffering, hardships and deprivations that defined the daily lives of most of the population. The third section sheds light on the multifaceted, urban new woman, addressing changing attitudes toward freedom, self-determination, and queer life. The exhibition closes with Lotte Lasersteins melancholic work Evening over Potsdam (1930), a reflection on the rising tide of National Socialism.

The exhibition primarily features paintings and sculptures from the Nationalgalerie’s collection, supplemented by a major loan from the Landes-bank Baden- Württemberg collection in the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart: Otto Dix’s 1925 portrait of the dancer Anita Berber. All works have an explicit connection to the city of Berlin – whether through their subject matter or through biographical ties to the artists. The polyphonic voices of the era unfold through works representing styles as varied as Expressionism, Dadaism, Constructivism, and New Objectivity. Clips from Fritz Lang’s silent film classic Metropolis (1927) and Walther Ruttmann’s experimental documentary Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927) are also on view. Three listening stations feature poems by Anita Berber, Mascha Kaléko, and Erich Kästner that complement the exhibition’s themes.

Artists in the Exhibition: Josephine Baker, Anita Berber, Rudolf Belling, Otto Dix, Heinrich Ehmsen, Paul Fuhrmann, George Grosz, Hans Grundig, Thea von Harbou, Hannah Höch, Karl Hofer, Constantin Holzer-Defanti, Mascha Kaléko, Erich Kästner, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Georg Kolbe, Käthe Kollwitz, Fritz Lang, Lotte Laserstein, Tamara de Lempicka, Jeanne Mam-men, Carlo Mense, Otto Nagel, Oskar Nerlinger, Ernest Neuschul, Walther Ruttmann, Renée Sintenis, Jakob Steinhardt, Georg Tappert, Lesser Ury, Gustav Wunderwald.

The exhibition is accompanied by an extensive outreach and education program featuring guided tours and workshops for families, students, and adults, as well as a full events calendar including concerts and lectures.

Ruin and Rush. Berlin 1910–1930 is curated by Uta Caspary and Irina Hiebert Grun, curators at the Neue Nationalgalerie, with curatorial assistance from Noor van Rooijen.