Berthold Auerbach

1812–1882 · German novelist & poet, author of Black Forest Village Stories

Berthold Auerbach (1812–1882) was a German-Jewish writer best known for his Schwarzwälder Dorfgeschichten (“Black Forest Village Stories”). His 1864 novel Auf der Höhe (“On the Heights”) contains the sentence — about the cleansing power of music — that was later reworded into the famous line about art and misattributed to Picasso.

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“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life”

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