Pre-Holocaust German art celebrates the doctor as a hero,triumphant over disease and poor hygiene. It emphasizes the ontologicalconception of disease and the ability of medicine to cure pathology orremove it. Some New Objectivity artists question this conceptualizationby pushing it to the extreme of realistic representations. However,the clinical encounter has virtually disappeared from post-Holocaustart. Medicine is depicted in three main ways: as an ambiguous andalien Faustian craft; with a focus on holistic notions of healing,thus avoiding biomedicine altogether; or with a focus on the subjectiveexperience of illness, thus ignoring the interaction between medicineand the diseased person.