Max Beckmann is considered one of the best-researched artists of classical modernism. Since his death in 1950, more than 4,500 publications have appeared on Beckmann. The period of National Socialism, during which he was defamed as a ‘degenerate artist’, and his emigration are caesuras in his biography. Surprisingly, however, Beckmann’s life and work in the years 1933–45 have hardly been systematically analysed on a source-critical basis. The symposium attempted to close this research gap. The conference proceedings bring together the multi-layered contributions to the symposium ‘Legende und Realität. Max Beckmann in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus’, which was organised by Kaldewei Kulturstiftung and the Max Beckmann Archive of the Bavarian State Painting Collections in Munich in May 2024.