When Sotheby’s sold Franz Marc’s Weidende Pferde III (“Grazing Horses III”) in London this past February for a record £12.3 million ($24.3 million), many people were surprised by the price, which was far above the £8 million ($16.1 million) high estimate. They probably shouldn’t have been, given the recent performance of several other German works at auction: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s Berliner Strassenszene (“Berlin Street Scene”) sold for $38.1 million in November 2006 at Christie’s in New York; Lyonel Feininger’s Jesuiten III (“Jesuits iii”) brought $23.3 million in May 2007 at Sotheby’s New York; and Marc’s Der Wasserfall (“The Waterfall”) went for $20.2 million last November at Sotheby’s New York.

In the past few years, German Expressionist paintings—especially those of the colorful Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider) and Die Brücke (the Bridge) schools—have moved quickly to the top of the art world’s “most wanted” lists. And the enthusiasm is spreading way beyond Marc, Kirchner, Feininger and other top-tier artists such as Wassily Kandinsky and Max Beckmann. With their sales gathering strength and quality material in good supply, Expressionist works are looking to some market observers like the new Impressionists, long considered the ne plus ultra for collectors.

“The excitement was very, very evident in February,” says Helena Newman, Sotheby’s vice chairman of Impressionist and modern art and a specialist in German and Austrian Expressionism. The auction also included Impressionist and modern works, but “this was the hot area,” she says. “We made the highest ever in this category, nearly $80 million.”

That same night other artist’s records were set: Alexej von Jawlensky’s Schokko mit Tellerhut (“Schokko with Wide-Brimmed Hat”) made £9.4 million ($18.6 million), more than twice the $8.3 million it brought in 2003 at Sotheby’s New York. And Max Pechstein’s Zirkus mit Dromedaren (“Circus with Dromedaries”) fetched £1.9 million ($3.8 million), double his previous top price. At Christie’s the night before, meanwhile, Gabriele Münter’s Gelbes Haus mit Apfelbaum (“Yellow House with Apple Tree”) brought a record £535,700 ($1.1 million), some 30 percent above its high estimate. And it’s not just the auction houses that have seized the moment: Visitors to Maastricht’s TEFAF fair in March report that it was loaded with German Expressionist offerings.

Exactly why collectors have suddenly developed a fascination with these long-neglected artists is hard to pinpoint. For a start, says Jane Kallir, co-director of Galerie St. Étienne, in New York, “this has been an underappreciated category, one with a lot more good material available than in the French Impressionist and more heavily traded modernist areas.”

But German Expressionism’s appeal is not limited to its relative bargain status—it’s also a sign of developing tastes and the broadening of collectors’ interests beyond their national boundaries. Die Brücke artists, who came together around 1905 to create a powerful, emotional style emphasizing color and form and bridging the traditional to the contemporary, and the Blaue Reiter school, formed around 1911 by artists intent on giving their works a spiritual aspect, were popular in their own time. Their diverse, often distorted images—whether reflecting personal experiences or reacting to German politics—were appreciated as part of international modernism. It was the rise of nationalism, fed by the two world wars, that turned them into “German” Expressionists, encompassing both native artists and those working with them in Germany.

Some dealers believe that anti-German sentiment, especially after World War II, lowered demand for the works, as the French especially shunned them. Other dealers disagree, pointing to the fact that the Nazis labeled the Expressionists’ art degenerate. Rather, they say, the style simply fell out of favor as American artists and Europeans like Yves Klein and Lucio Fontana came into fashion. “I spoke to a German dealer recently who said it was difficult in the 1970s to sell German Expressionists even in Germany,” says Andreas Rumbler, Christie’s German-art expert. “German Expressionists looked a bit dated.”