The Gallery of Miracles and Madness: Insanity, Art and Hitlers first Mass-Murder Programme

(Hardback)

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A riveting tale, brilliantly told' Philippe Sands

The little-known story of Hitlers war on modern art and the mentally ill.
In the first years of the Weimar Republic, the German psychiatrist Hans Prinzhorn gathered a remarkable collection of works byschizophrenic patients that would astonish and delight the world.

The Prinzhorn collection, as it was called, inspired a new generation of artists, including Paul Klee, Max Ernst and Salvador Dali. What the doctor could not have known, however, was that these works would later be used to prepare the ground for mass-murder.

Soon after his rise to power, Hitlera failed artist of the old schooldeclared war on modern art. The Nazis staged giant Degenerate Art shows to ridicule the avant-garde, and seized and destroyed the cream of Germany's modern art collections. This action was mere preparation, however, for the even more sinister campaign Hitler would later wage against so-called "degenerate" people, and Prinzhorn's artists were caught upin both.

Bringing together inspirational art history, genius and madness, and the wanton cruelty of the fanatical "artist-Fhrer", this astonishing story lays bare the culture war that paved the way for Hitler's first extermination programme, the psychiatric Holocaust.

Reviews

A superbly told story of worlds colliding Theres so much thats wonderful about this book; its hard to know where to start heaping praise. It is by turns intriguing, tragic, horrifying and occasionally funny
The Times

English has written a terrific book, taut and thematic As beautiful as it is bleak
Guardian

Engrossing The work of these artists, much of which miraculously survived the war, lives on as testament to the variety of human experience, and of ways to communicate what it feels like to be alive
Economist

Compelling The twin strands of Hitlers thinking on art and racial purity draw remorselessly together Memorable
Literary Review

A riveting tale, brilliantly told'
Philippe Sands

A fascinating new book
Daily Mail

Fascinating Journalist English unpacks Hitlers mad campaign against mentally ill artists Englishs story feels strikingly relevant. While shedding new light on this piece of history, English also provides a cautionary tale for the future
Publishers Weekly

An extraordinary, deeply researched work which is a testament to the Prinzhorn artists
The Tablet

Perhaps only in 1920s Weimar Germany where expressionism and dadaism were exploring the dark sides of sex and fantasy could the art of the mentally ill first get its due. And perhaps only in Germany could the story Charlie English tells so well have ended in such horror. English takes us through uncharted artistic waters in a narrative of great humanity: a gripping journey into art, madness and modern history
Jonathan Jones, author of Sensations

Dazzling This poignant narrative centres on the complicated psychiatrist Hans Prizhorn and the eccentric patient artists whose work helped usher in a new epoch of the modernist avant-garde only to become fodder for Hitler's hateful ideology of degeneration. Richly wrought, and deeply researched
Susannah Cahalan, author ofBrain on Fire

Author Bio

Charlie English is the former head of international news at the Guardian. A fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, he is the author of The Snow Tourist and the widely acclaimed The Book Smugglers of Timbuktu. He lives in London.