ABSTRACT
A portrait, a landscape, a characteristic style, anything could distil the nebulous concept of a German identity - or Russian, or Polish. The originators of the institutions were the provincial Kunstvereine - Art Unions - of local artists and amateurs, which appeared first in Switzerland and the German states, then in many other countries. A rival museum complex of a different kind, almost a mixed solution to the French/German dialectic of modern/national art, developed in Prussia - the boldest rival to Bavaria as an emergent Germanic power in the museums' field. Unlike Fascist Italy, where new museums burgeoned, the only shrine erected by Adolf Hitler to German art was the new palace of exhibitions of Munich projected in 1934, because the old Glaspalast had been destroyed by fire. The Russian example, in combination with the imitation of German models, exercised a great influence in other cities of Slavonic Europe having already important galleries of old masters.
