HAMBURG.- The exhibition Müde Helden (Exhausted Heroes). Ferdinand Hodler – Aleksandr Deyneka – Neo Rauch deals with the utopian ideal of the ‘Neue Mensch’ (‘new man’) and its history in the 20th century. In the oeuvre of the three painters featured in this exhibition, the radical transformation of this ideal can be observed in exemplary fashion. It starts with the proclamation of the ‘new man’ at the beginning of the 20th century, leads on to the political appropriation of the ideal in the vision of a socialist order, and ultimately draws to a close with the abandonment of all idealism after the end of Communist rule in the East Bloc in the late 1980s. The art of the Swiss painter Ferdinand Hodler (1853–1918) is deeply rooted in the ideals of the ‘life reform’ movement. The discourses of a ‘new man’ that featured so prominently, and with great pathos, in the