ABSTRACT
Less than eight weeks after the official and splendiferous inauguration of the newly founded German National Gallery in Berlin that had taken place on the king's birthday on 22 March 1876, the first monographic exhibition had already opened there. Max Jordan led the German National Gallery, at that time the most important museum for contemporary art in Germany, for more than twenty years. But his work has been ignored in art historical discourse. It is noteworthy and very important that Jordan points out patriotic, educational and scholarly reasons for establishing his project. Jordan thematically assembled the different stages of the artistic working process including drafts, detailed studies, elaborated drawings as well as compositional studies and sketches in oil and watercolours and arranged them close to the final paintings. Jordan attempts to constitute a narration of art history besides the official Prussian representational heroic tale, which can be characterised as historical-critical, middle-class art history.
