![\"Adler](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.heuermontage.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Adler-copy-2.jpg?resize=800%2C533&ssl=1\")
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One of my occasional odd jobs during law school was milking cows. The farm had\u00a0a thatched roof and hunkered down behind a dike and a stand of chestnut trees against the raw\u00a0North Sea winds. The owner was a god-daughter of Emil Nolde (1867 – 1956) one of the first expressionist painters in Germany. The living room contained a large number of his big oil paintings, all tied down with wires to nails in the wall to protect from theft – they could not afford the astronomic insurance payments.<\/p>\n
I was really drawn to the strong colors and fluidity of his paintings and watercolors as a child, but when I learned as a young adult about his affiliation with the National Socialist Party since the early 1920s I had a hard time \u00a0reconciling my political disgust with my admiration for his art. Ironically his body of work was declared to be degenerate art <\/em>by the Nazis despite his sympathies for their cause and his declared anti-semitism. \u00a0After the war he found recognition and fame in Germany, all leanings conveniently forgotten.<\/p>\n The farmstead\u00a0as well as the paintings within it found a tragic ending in a fire that engulfed the thatched roof in the 1980s. They could not rescue much because the paintings were tied down. \u00a0My own tug-of-war, on the other hand, had a happy ending. I decided long ago that the art counts, not who produces it. \u00a0And today’s montage is an homage to Nolde’s choice of colors, with a photograph of a juvenile bald eagle who just caught a bird for breakfast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of my occasional odd jobs during law school was milking cows. The farm had\u00a0a thatched roof and hunkered down behind a dike and a stand of chestnut trees against the raw\u00a0North Sea winds. The owner was a god-daughter of Emil Nolde (1867 – 1956) one of the first expressionist painters in Germany. The living […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[11,10,3],"class_list":["post-78","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","tag-bald-eagles","tag-expressionism","tag-nature"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n