by the Nazis, with the result that several works were in the infamous exhibition of "degenerate art" in Munich in 1937, along with that of other Bauhaus artists, among them Herbert Bayer, Lyonel Feininger, Johannes Itten, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, László Moholy-Nagy, Oskar Schlemmer and Lothar Schreyer. Despite such persecution, Marcks continued to live in Germany (in Mecklenburg) throughout World War II. In 1937, when twenty-four of his works were confiscated and destroyed by the Nazis, he was prohibited from exhibiting and threatened with being forbidden to work. During this period, he made several trips to Italy, where he worked in the Villa Romana in Florence and the Villa Massimo in Rome. In 1943, his studio in Berlin was bombed during an air raid, and many of his works destroyed. After World War II, Marcks became Professor of Sculpture at the Landeskunstschule (Regional Art School) in Hamburg, where he taught for four years, before retiring to Cologne. He also designed memorials for soldiers and civilians who had died in the war, and his work was part of the art competitions at three Olympic Games. Death and legacy Marcks died in 1981 in Burgbrohl, Eifel. A decade earlier, the museum called Gerhard Marcks Haus, which houses a permanent exhibition of his artwork, was established in his honor in Bremen, Germany. In this museum are 12,000 of his sketches and preparatory drawings, 900 prints, and all his sculptures (about 350). In the U.S., there is a collection of Marcks' work (68 drawings, 65 prints and 9 nine bronze sculptures) at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, most of which were given to that school by his former student and close associate, Marguerite Wildenhain. Of particular note is a monumental Marcks bronze statue titled Oedipus and Antigone (1960), which was installed there in 2000. Honors and exhibitions In 1914 Marcks participated in exhibitions of the Berlin Secession and the Deutscher Werkbund, after World War II at the Venice Biennale and the Documentas I (1955), II (1959) and III (1964) in Kassel. In 1949 the city of Frankfurt am Main awarded him the Goethe Plaque. In 1952 he was appointed a Knight of the Peace Class of the Order Pour le Mérite. In 1954 North Rhine-Westphalia awarded him its Grand Art Prize. In 1955 the city of Berlin awarded him its Art Prize. In 1962 the Academy of Fine Arts, Nuremberg, made him an honorary