Ernst Mollenhauer was born in 1892 in the East Prussian town of Tapiau. From 1913 he studied at the Prussian Academy in Königsberg, among others under Richard Pfeiffer and Artur Degner. After the First World War he exhibited as one of the first German artists in the United States. In the village Nida at the Curonian Spit Mollenhauer made the acquaintance with Brücke-painters Max Pechstein and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and lived there from 1924 to 1945. During this time he took care of the Inn owned by his father in law as well as Nida’s artists' colony. In 1939 Mollenhauer’s art was labeled as ‘degenerate’, banning him from exhibiting. After the war, he set up a new studio in Dusseldorf and a second o...