Helmut Schmidt was the first federal chancellor to occupy the new Chancellery in Bonn, which was completed in 1976. With its consciously understated, matter-of-fact architecture, the Chancellery reminded Schmidt of “a savings bank in the Rhineland.” Thus, he devoted special attention to the interior decoration of his new offices: as an expression of the Federal Republic’s cultural-political and historical identity, Schmidt installed works by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel, and other artists associated with classical modernism, a movement that the National Socialists had defamed as “degenerate.” As can be seen in this photograph, Schmidt also had a portrait of SPD co-founder August Bebel hung behind his desk.