in what the Nuremberg Laws called a "privileged mixed marriage", and was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where she was killed on 21 November 1942. His Atelier in Berlin was bombed in March 1943 and completely destroyed with many of his works, in November 1943. The apartment where he lived with Elisabeth Hofer was also destroyed. His son Carlino would be killed in an assault in 1947. After the end of World War II, Hofer was involved in the construction of the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts, whose director he became in July 1945. He regained his artistic prestige once again in the post-war Germany. He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Berlin in 1948. He was also awarded the Order Pour le mérite for Science and Arts in 1952, and the Great Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1953. Hofer published two autobiographical books, Aus Leben und Kunst (Of Life and Art), in 1952, and "Erinnerungen eines Malers" (A Painter's Memories), in 1953. Hofer was involved in a public dispute with the art critic Will Grohmann on figuration and abstraction. The controversy led Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Willi Baumeister and Fritz Winter, to withdraw from the Deutscher Künstlerbund. Hofer planned to publish the treatise Über das Gesetzliche in der bildenden Kunst (On the Lawful in Fine Art), on the controversy, because in the same year, at the climax of the dispute, he suffered a stroke, from which he succumbed later. Hofer died on 3 April 1955, aged 76 years old. Some of his works were shown posthumously at documenta 1 in Kassel, in 1955. Hofer's importance for post-war German painting lies in his insistence that the antinomy between figurative and abstract painting was nonsensical. For him, the "distinction of value between representational and nonrepresentational appeared as a senseless absurdity." Works Early work, 1898–1920 1901: Betende Kinder (Praying Children), Oil on Canvas, Private Collection, Karlsruhe, Germany 1903: Karl und Thilde Hofer (Karl and Thilde Hofer), Oil on Canvas, Former Hofer Estate, Berlin, Germany 1907: Drei Badende Jünglinge (Three Young Bathers), Oil on Canvas, The Winterthur Museum of Art, Winterthur, Switzerland 1911: Im Sturm (By Storm), Oil on Canvas, The Winterthur Museum of Art, Winterthur, Switzerland 1913: Selbstbildnis (Self Portrait), Oil on Canvas, Bavarian State Picture Collection, Munich, Germany 1913: Fahnenträger (Flagbearer), Oil on Canvas, Municipal Art Gallery, Mannheim, Germany 1914: Im