Lehrter Bahnhof ~ Train Station by Hans Baluschek, 1929 Watercolour and pastel 99 cm x 70 cm Berlinische Galerie, Germany
Hans Baluschek (9 May 1870 Breslau Prussia nowadays Wrocław, Poland– 28 September 1935 Berlin Germany) was a German painter born in Breslau Prussia (nowadays Wrocław Poland), a graphic artist and writer.
Baluschek was a prominent representative of German Critical Realism, and as such he sought to portray the life of the common people with vivid frankness. His paintings centered on the working class of Berlin. He belonged to the Berlin Secession movement, a group of artists interested in modern developments in art. Yet during his lifetime he was most widely known for his fanciful illustrations of the popular children's book Little Peter's Journey to the Moon (German title: Peterchens Mondfahrt).
After the year 1920, Baluschek was an active member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany. Predictably, after the Nazis came to power in January 1933 they branded Baluschek a "Marxist artist" and classified his work as so-called degenerate art (entartete Kunst). He was dismissed from all his posts and banned from exhibiting.
Hans Baluschek died on 28 September 1935 in Berlin, aged 65, and was buried in the Wilmersdorf Forest Cemetery in Stahnsdorf, south of Berlin near Potsdam.












