| Heinrich Amersdorffer | |
| Birth Date: | 10 December 1905 |
| Death Date: | 2 December 1986 |
| Nationality: | German |
| Occupation: | painter, printmaker, war artist, art teacher |
Heinrich Amersdorffer (10 December 1905 – 2 December 1986) was a German painter, printmaker, war artist and art teacher.
Amersdorffer was a son of Alexander Amersdorffer (1875–1946), the successor to art historian Ludwig Justi as director of the Prussian Academy of Arts.[1]
During the 1930s he exhibited a number of times in the National Socialist Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung (Great German art exhibition) at Munich.[1] During the Second World War he worked as a war artist on behalf of the Wehrmacht, covering the western campaign and the invasion of France, including the depiction of undamaged French cathedrals amidst the ruins of bombed cities,[1] which was used to propagate the claim that German forces gave "magnanimous protection to architectural cultural heritage".[2] His cycles of war art made his name within the Third Reich, especially a painting of Rouen Cathedral, exhibited in 1941.[1] In January 1942 Amersdorffer said in the magazine Art for All: "It has been granted to me to be able to work on this great task on behalf of the armed forces".[3]
In the postwar period Amersdorffer was appointed to a teaching position at the Academy of Arts, Berlin, and later became an honorary professor.[1]
In 1976 he gave his collection of about 1,000 ancient Greek and Roman coins to the Berlin Antiquities Collection. A chief condition of the donation was that it would forever remain a part of the collection of antiquities, and consequently, could not become part of the Berlin Coin Cabinet.