The coincidence of three shows by German artists, including a selection of vintage Neo-Expressionist history paintings by Jorg Immendorff from the early 1980s, prompts the question: Can German artists escape the burden of history? There are striking differences in intention, style, and generational attitude between Mr. Immendorff and the younger artists, crossover fashion and art photographer Juergen Teller, and – in his debut New York solo exhibition – painter Bendix Harms, yet the work of each is somehow complicated by the problem of national identity.

Mr. Immendorff’s extensive series “Cafe Deutschland,” a monument to the late phase of the Cold War, established the artist’s reputation and helped define the postmodern zeitgeist. A kind of absurdist pantomime of German history, “Cafe Deutschland” is a circus where the past tumbles into the present and the clowns of art and politics collide.

The series marked Mr. Immendorff’s return to painting, in 1977, after years of disdaining the medium in favor of political activism (producing masks and props for street protests, running for public office, etc.). As a student of Joseph Beuys at the Dusseldorf Academy, he was attracted to far-left politics, forming a “red cell” and later joining a Maoist collective. He also studied with Teo Otto, Bertolt Brecht’s legendary set designer. In a Dada gesture, Mr. Immendorff placed one of his early canvases in an open hole during construction work at the academy to protect the bemused workers from falling dust.

Perry Rubenstein is presenting three paintings from “Cafe Deutschland” and a selection of related studies on paper. Two, which come from the recently formed Hall Collection, were formerly in the private collection of veteran German painter Georg Baselitz.

In “Cafe Deutschland (Heuler)” (1983), the space is at once claustrophobic and expansive, a crowded stage set with pockets opening out into undefined deep space. Jarring juxtapositions – ideological and chronological – keep pace with the visual cachophany. A young, barebreasted, red headed punk and a Prussian officer in a spiked helmet share the bar with assorted bohemian types (likely the artist himself and his friends and collaborators, including the East German defector A.R. Penck). Mao and Che Guevara peer down benignly from a balcony rather like gods in a Greek drama.

In “Cafe Deutschland (Lift/Tremble/Back)” (1984), a mere glimpse of the floorboard identifies the ubiquitous cafe interior (symbolically conceived by Mr. Immendorff at the border of East and West Berlin), while the rest of the space submits to a swirling baroque freefall. Burlesque women cascade from precarious walls while an ominous Nazi (perhaps the Fuhrer himself) barks from the sidelines.

Vintage Immendorff comes across as very different from other Neo-Expressionists such as Mr. Baselitz and Markus Lupertz, who would focus on a single figure or motif and then make these the springboard for extensive painterly elaborations. Mr. Immendorff presents more involved narratives than these artists, with historic and contemporary personalities interacting in specific, if symbolic, space.

Although Mr. Immendorff can deploy delicious paint handling when he wants to, there is a cartoon-like graphic efficiency in his figuration that makes him seem less the fine artist, ever the provocateur. He is a storyteller, but beyond recognition and a general sense of “theater,” there is no discernible storyline to be deduced (nor are program notes provided).

Ultimately, the jumbled figures and situations meld with his bright colors and agitatedly awkward handling as just so many different decorative elements. In Mr. Immendorff’s version of history painting, one provides an excuse to avoid the other.

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Like Mr. Immendorff, Juergen Teller creates a bewildering kaleidoscope of the personal and the political, history and the present, in a series of images titled “Nurnberg.” In his case, the journey to the hallowed ground of fine art isn’t from street protest but from fashion photography, where he was a pioneer of a studied, unglamorous grunge aesthetic. His style suited perfectly the anemic, heroin-chic look of his favorite model, Kate Moss.

He brings a sense of “blah” – quotidian lighting, nonchalant snapshot composition, and a seemingly gratuitous eclecticism – to images devoted ostensibly to a city marked by opposite qualities: Nuremberg, with its portentous rallies and didactic trials. His C-prints include “Smiling Ed” (2005), the primal astonishment on the face of his bathing baby beaming through the soap suds; “Bambi, Bubenreuth” (2005), a saccharine portrait of a resting faun; “I Love My Wife, London” (2005), a cropped, double portrait of a man’s stomach and penis against the belly of a pregnant woman; an animal carcass on a rotisserie; and various nature and graffiti studies of the decaying rally grounds, which are deliberately undermaintained, informal parkland – an urban-planning equivalent, it might be said, of Mr. Teller’s willfully lethargic photography.

If his mundane, personal randomness is a means to exorcise the demons of German history, he might succeed through the extremity of his informality and understatement in demolishing any sense of history at all, of throwing out his baby with the bathwater.

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Bendix Harms is a spirited original whose works exude intriguing attitude: It is hard to determine whether he shares the bombast of Mr. Immendorff or the “blah” of Mr. Teller. But he shares an element of narcissism with both.

His show at the cavernous Anton Kern gallery consists of a baker’s dozen of large canvases, all delivered in a loose, dashed-off hand.These are narratives with a repeating cast of characters, the most memorable being a goofy, hook-nosed man with a shock of dark hair, identified as a self-portrait.

Naive handling is matched by exuberant color and urgency. The themes are at once childlike and archetypal, with the artist embracing an airplane with the letter B on its tail, or stooped over a supine raven, or hunting sea urchins with a female companion. “Frau Harms” (2005) depicts the artist as a woman, sporting multiple breasts like the Artemis of Ephesus.

There is a genuine gay abandon in the sloppy-joe messiness and speed of delivery that feels eons away from the tight, knowing awkwardness of Mr. Immendorff. Mr. Harms is closer to Philip Guston, but is equally remote from the American’s urgent sense of the personal being the political. Mr. Harms delivers an expressionism that’s completely devoid of angst.

Immendorff until February 18 (527 W. 23rd Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues, 212-627-8000).

Teller until February 11 (540 W. 26th Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues, 212-255-2923). Prices: $3,000-$40,000.

Harms until February 25 (532 W. 20th Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues, 212-367-9663). Prices: $10,000-$14,000.