The collection of the Nolde Foundation Seebüll, together with the archive, forms the heart of the institution. It comprises the world’s largest holdings of works by Emil Nolde as well as his written estate, including correspondence, documents and photographs. Collection and archive thus offer not only personal insights into the life and work of the artist, but also a central source for research on Expressionism.
Archive and Research
Documentation and research in the archive
Archival processing of the estate “Ada and Emil Nolde”
Ada and Emil Nolde kept their correspondence with family, acquaintances, artist friends, collectors, art dealers and museums. It consists of many thousands of letters, which today form a core component of the archive of the Seebüll Ada and Emil Nolde Foundation. In addition, the archive preserves the biographical original documents, personal papers and notes, as well as photographs left by the Nolde couple.
The archival processing of the estate includes a reorganisation of the holdings for conservation reasons, the cataloguing of more than 25,000 documents, and the digitisation of each sheet. In the end, the digitised documents will be fully available to all scholarly users on site in a digital long‑term archive (OAIS).
During the archival processing of the estate, the foundation endeavours to continue making the archival materials available to external researchers on site.
Only through the financial support of the Wüstenrot Foundation and the ZEIT‑Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius, Hamburg, was the first‑time archival processing and digitisation of the entire estate of Ada and Emil Nolde made possible.
We thank our sponsors:
Ongoing Research Projects
Christian Ring
Joachim von Lepel and the founding history of the Seebüll Ada and Emil Nolde Foundation
The Seebüll Ada and Emil Nolde Foundation was recognised by the Ministry of the Interior of the State of Schleswig‑Holstein on 12 June 1956 after the death of Emil Nolde. In his will, Nolde appointed his secretary and confidant Joachim von Lepel (1913–1962) as director. Joachim von Lepel reviewed, organised and managed the artistic estate, initiated numerous exhibitions in Germany and abroad, published foundation yearbooks and initiated standard works. Just one year after Nolde’s death, Seebüll was opened as a museum with annually changing exhibitions. After living for ten years at the side of first both Noldes and then Emil Nolde alone, von Lepel, due to his early death in 1962, was able to lead the foundation for only six years. The foundations he laid continue to have an effect to this day, even though he never placed himself in the foreground. Christian Ring is dedicating himself to the early years of the foundation and approaching its first director.
A publication is in preparation.
Christian Ring
“Interplay”
Since his intensive engagement with the late work in the 60th Annual Exhibition Seebüll 2016, Christian Ring has been examining the close interconnection between works on paper and paintings in Emil Nolde’s oeuvre. From 1945 to 1951, Nolde painted more than 100 oil paintings, with most of the figure paintings and landscapes based on the watercolours of the group “Unpainted Pictures”. An initial result of his research was published in the most recent standard work on Nolde’s watercolour painting: “On the Unpainted Pictures and other works on paper as models for oil paintings by Emil Nolde”. There are partly literal relationships of inspiration, but also more concealed ones. Nolde himself cultivated the topos of the original genius whose work flowed from his hand. Only in the case of the “Unpainted Pictures”, the masterful watercolours created since the 1930s, is the connection to the oil paintings in the late work known through partly literal transfer. Further results are published by the author in the chapter “Interplay. Works on paper as models for oil paintings” in the monograph Art Itself Is My Language.
A publication is in preparation.
Indina Woesthoff
Emil Nolde and Hans Fehr. Correspondence 1892–1956
During his time as a teacher at the School of Applied Arts in St. Gallen (1892–1897), Emil Nolde met Hans Fehr, seven years his junior. From the initial teacher‑student relationship grew a lifelong friendship that lasted until Nolde’s death in 1956. The legal historian Fehr was among the first supporters of Nolde and enabled the then unknown artist to make a living through early purchases and constant financial support. He also organised exhibitions in Jena and Halle and published texts on Nolde, most recently in 1957 A Book of Friendship.
The significance of the Nolde–Fehr friendship cannot be overstated; its study through the letters opens up an important source for objective Nolde research. The treasure of letters, most of which is held in the archive of the Nolde Foundation Seebüll, is now to be fully edited and published as part of the editorial project “Emil Nolde and Hans Fehr”. A detailed commentary will accompany the letters.
A publication is in preparation.
Completed Research Projects
Indina Woesthoff
Ada and Emil Nolde – Gustav and Luise Schiefler. Correspondence 1906–1956
The Hamburg lawyer and print collector Gustav Schiefler and his wife Luise were close friends and supporters of Emil Nolde for forty years. The correspondence, comprising nearly 700 letters, is a rare stroke of luck for research. The correspondence published in 2023 is supplemented by Schiefler’s diary notes as well as additional letters and documents from the estates. A detailed commentary and several indexes complete the two‑volume edition and make it a pleasure to read – not only for art historians.
“I so dearly wish that my work may grow forth from the material …” Art‑technological research on the work of Emil Nolde
From 2018 to 2021, a collaborative project funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) was dedicated to Emil Nolde’s painting technique and artist materials. Partners in this multidisciplinary research project were the Doerner Institute of the Bavarian State Painting Collections, Munich (coordination), the Seebüll Ada and Emil Nolde Foundation, and the Hamburger Kunsthalle, in cooperation with the University of Hamburg and the Dresden University of Fine Arts. The results of the technical evaluation of the artist’s archive and studio estate, as well as the extensive technological, imaging and analytical examinations of around 50 paintings from the collections in Seebüll, Hamburg and Munich, have been published since 2022 in Emil Nolde’s Painting Method. One Colour Demands the Other.
S‑H World. Schleswig‑Holstein between openness to the world and colonialism. The ethnographic collections of Schleswig‑Holstein’s museums
In Schleswig‑Holstein, numerous ethnographic objects are held that originate primarily from former German colonial territories such as West Africa, East Africa, East Asia, Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. To uncover these treasures of Schleswig‑Holstein’s colonial history, the Museumsverbund Nordfriesland, the Seebüll Ada and Emil Nolde Foundation, and Dr Claudia Kalka initiated the digitisation and publication of ethnographic objects from 19 museums between 2017 and 2020. The project was funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).
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