The Gallery of Miracles and Madness

The untold story of Hitler’s war on “degenerate” artists and the mentally ill that served as a model for the ‘Final Solution’.  “Dazzling . . . Richly wrought and deeply researched, it’s also a salient reminder to beware of pseudoscience.”—Susannah Cahalan, author of Brain on Fire and The Great Pretender As a veteran of the First World War, and an expert in art history and medicine, Hans Prinzhorn was uniquely placed to explore the connection between art and madness. The work he collected—ranging from expressive paintings to life-size rag dolls and fragile sculptures made from chewed bread—contained a raw, emotional power, and the book he published about the material inspired a new generation of modern artists, Max Ernst, André Breton, and Salvador Dalí among them. By the mid-1930s, however, Prinzhorn’s collection had begun to...