Rarely has an event in the national and international cultural and art scene sparked as much prolonged public debate as the return of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's Berlin Street Scene, a major work by the influential Brücke painter from the legendary collection of the well-respected Jewish shoe manufacturer Alfred Hess in the Weimar Republic, and simultaneously a centerpiece of the Berlin Brücke Museum's collection. This book attempts to contextualize the fateful journey of this unique artwork against the backdrop of the decline of the collector's family's business and fortune, documenting it in detail.