The Berlin Secession was an art association founded by Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 artists in 1898 as an alternative

Secession

Secession is the act of withdrawing from an organization, union, or especially a political entity. Threats of secession also can be a strategy for achieving more limited goals.-Secession theory:...

 to the conservative state-run Association of Berlin Artists. That year the official salon jury rejected a landscape by Walter Leistikow

Walter Leistikow

Walter Leistikow was a German artist from Bromberg .After having been dismissed by the Academy in Berlin for lack of talent, he studied with Hermann Eschke and the Norwegian painter Hans Fredrik Gude....

, who was a key figure amongst a group of young artists interested in modern developments in art. Sixty-five young artists formed the initial membership of the Secession.

Max Liebermann

Max Liebermann

Max Liebermann was a German-Jewish painter and printmaker best known for his etching and lithography.-Biography:...

 was the Berlin Secession’s first president, and he proposed to the Secession that Paul Cassirer

Paul Cassirer

Paul Cassirer was a German art dealer and editor who played a significant role in the promotion of the work of artists of the Berlin Secession and of French Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, in particular that of Vincent van Gogh and Paul Cézanne.- Starting out :Paul Cassirer started out as...

 and his cousin Bruno

Bruno Cassirer

Bruno Cassirer was a publisher and gallery owner in Berlin who had a considerable influence on the cultural life of the city.He was born on 12 December 1872, the second child of Jewish parents, Julius and Julcher Cassirer. Julius was a partner, with two of Bruno's cousins, in a cable factory...

 act as business managers.

In 1901 Bruno Cassirer resigned from the Secession, so that he could dedicate himself entirely to the Cassirer publishing firm. Paul took over the running of the Cassirer gallery, and supported various Secessionist artists including the sculptors Ernst Barlach

Ernst Barlach

Ernst Barlach was a German expressionist sculptor, printmaker and writer. Although he was a supporter of the war in the years leading to World War I, his participation in the war made him change his position, and he is mostly known for his sculptures protesting against the war...

 and August Gaul

August Gaul

August Gaul was a German sculptor.August Gaul was a founding member of the Berlin Secession. On close terms with art dealers like Bruno and Paul Cassirer, he became a leading figure in the Berlin art scene before World War I.Gaul died of cancer in 1922.-External links:Der Tierbildhauer August...

, as well as promoting French Impressionism

Impressionism

Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...

 and Post-Impressionism

Post-Impressionism

Post-Impressionism is the term coined by the British artist and art critic Roger Fry in 1910 to describe the development of French art since Manet. Fry used the term when he organized the 1910 exhibition Manet and Post-Impressionism...

.

Notable members of the Secession included: Max Beckmann

Max Beckmann

Max Beckmann was a German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor, and writer. Although he is classified as an Expressionist artist, he rejected both the term and the movement...

, Lovis Corinth

Lovis Corinth

Lovis Corinth was a German painter and printmaker whose mature work realized a synthesis of impressionism and expressionism....

, Lyonel Feininger

Lyonel Feininger

Lyonel Charles Feininger was a German-American painter, and a leading exponent of Expressionism. He also worked as a caricaturist and comic strip artist.-Life and work:...

, Georg Kolbe

Georg Kolbe

Georg Kolbe was the leading German figure sculptor of his generation, in a vigorous, modern, simplified classical style similar to Aristide Maillol of France.Kolbe was born in Waldheim ....

, Käthe Kollwitz

Käthe Kollwitz

Käthe Kollwitz was a German painter, printmaker, and sculptor whose work offered an eloquent and often searing account of the human condition in the first half of the 20th century...

, Julie Wolfthorn

Julie Wolfthorn

Julie Wolfthorn was a German painter. Born as Julie Wolf to a family of Jewish faith, she later styled herself as Julie Wolfthorn after the city of Thorn, where she was born.-Life:...

, Hermann Struck

Hermann Struck

Hermann Struck was a German Jewish artist known for his etchings.Hermann Struck was born in Berlin. He studied at the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts. In 1904, he joined the modern art movement known as the Berlin Secession.In 1900, Struck met Jozef Israëls, a Dutch artist, who became his mentor...

, Adolf Eduard Herstein and Max Slevogt

Max Slevogt

Max Slevogt was a German Impressionist painter and illustrator, best known for his landscapes. He was, together with Lovis Corinth and Max Liebermann, one of the foremost representatives in Germany of the plein air style.-Biography:He was born in Landshut, Germany...

.