People Timeline

Egon Schiele did not live to see World War II, as his promising artistic career was cut short decades earlier when he succumbed to the global Spanish flu pandemic in October 1918 at the age of 28, just three days after losing his pregnant wife Edith. However, the profound societal trauma and the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of World War I directly coincided with the tragic end of his life and his final breakthrough artistic successes.

Oskar Kokoschka was targeted by the Nazi regime, which denounced his expressionist art as degenerate, prompting him to flee Austria for Czechoslovakia and later obtain citizenship. Threatened by the impending German invasion in 1938, he and his wife Olda escaped to Great Britain. Throughout World War II living in London and Cornwall, he actively produced anti-fascist art and political allegories, fiercely criticizing totalitarian aggression and the appeasement policies of the era.

Although Alban Berg passed away in December 1935 shortly before the outbreak of World War II, his legacy was profoundly impacted by the era. As a prominent modernist composer associated with Arnold Schoenberg, his works were banned and branded as degenerate music by the Nazi regime, halting performances in Germany. Despite his early death from blood poisoning, his revolutionary operas and concertos cemented his status as a pillar of 20th-century music.

Anton Webern faced severe financial hardship, professional isolation, and the suppression of his music under the cultural policies of the Nazi regime and the Anschluss of Austria. Amidst the devastations of World War II, he lost his only son Peter to a strafing attack. As the Red Army advanced, he and his wife fled to Mittersill, Salzburg, where he tragically met his untimely death in September 1945 when he was mistakenly shot by an Allied soldier.

During the German occupation of Paris in World War II, Pablo Picasso chose to remain in the city despite surveillance and interrogation by the Gestapo. Continuing to paint under oppressive conditions, his wartime work reflected deep suffering and resilience. Following the liberation of Paris in 1944, he joined the French Communist Party and dedicated his voice and art, including his iconic peace dove, to international anti-war and peace movements.

Paul Klee's life and career were severely impacted by the rise of the Nazi regime, which condemned his avant-garde style as degenerate art and confiscated numerous works from public collections. Facing political pressure and dismissal from his teaching post in Düsseldorf, he emigrated from Germany back to his native Switzerland. Centering his final years in Bern, he displayed remarkable productivity despite declining health, creating powerful late works dealing with political tension and mortality.

Arnold Schoenberg faced severe political and cultural persecution due to his Jewish heritage after the Nazi rise to power in 1933. Emigrating to the United States via France, where he formally returned to Judaism, he settled in Los Angeles. Throughout World War II, he taught at prestigious universities, mentored a new generation of American composers, and used his music to voice direct opposition to fascism, notably composing works like "Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte".

Käthe Kollwitz endured severe hardships during World War II, facing Nazi persecution, the loss of her position at the Prussian Academy of Arts, and the destruction of her Berlin home in an Allied air raid. Living through these dark years as an elderly artist, she expressed her profound grief, anti-war stance, and solidarity with the suffering through powerful late works like her "Death" series, ultimately evacuating to Moritzburg where she passed away in April 1945.

Living in France during World War II, Wassily Kandinsky faced the pressures of Nazi occupation and the suppression of modern art. Despite the turmoil, hardships, and the closing of the Bauhaus where he once taught, he continued his artistic endeavors in Neuilly-sur-Seine near Paris. He spent his final years refining his distinctive organic and geometric abstract style until his death in December 1944, shortly before the war's conclusion.

During World War II, European arts and music served as both tools for Nazi propaganda and profound mediums of resistance, mourning, and survival. While the regime branded modern and avant-garde works as degenerate art and music, suppressing independent expression, many artists and composers used their crafts to document the devastation, protest totalitarianism, and preserve human dignity amidst immense conflict, exile, and loss.