CHAPTER XGermany After _z 871 : Kollwitz, Beckmann, Grosz, Dix

T was almost twenty years after the endof the Franco-Prussian War in i87i be-fore social protest art of consequence

appeared in defeated France . It took evenlonger in victorious Germany, where therewas no nineteenth-century tradition of po-litical comment by major artists . Except foroccasional, mildly satirical thrusts by art-ists such as Chodowiecki in the eighteenthcentury, German political art had had littlegraphic comment of significance and nomajor figure since the seventeenth century.The continued division of Germany intomany petty principalities after the ThirtyYears War and the oppressive and paro-chial atmosphere discouraged bold socialcriticism . Urbanity and political sophistica-tion-essential ingredients for effective sat-ire-were lacking. Also, the failure of theRevolution of 1848 in Germany led to vio-lent repression and the emigration of manytalented dissidents .

Soon nationalism, the desire for unity,replaced liberalism as the main politicaldrive. It found fulfillment in 1871 whenBismarck completed the unification of Ger-many . Bismarck's carrot-and-whip policyof combining advanced social legislation-sickness, accident, and old-age insurance-with repression of radical movementsblunted organized protest . In the ninetieshowever, after Kaiser William 11 dropped

the coercive legislation against the Social-ists, protest against the aftermath of the In-dustrial Revolution took political as well asintellectual and artistic form . By 1912 theSocial Democrats held one hundred seatsand comprised the largest party in theReichstag.As in France and England, the Industrial

Revolution had brought long hours, lowpay, and slum conditions for the majorityin Germany. The middle class and the newindustrial rich were materialistic, smug andparochial . The military aristocracy wasmore powerful than ever as the new nationplunged into the armaments race andjoined the struggle for colonies and rawmaterials that was to lead to World War I.In the prevailing authoritarian atmosphere,the petite bourgeoisie were always ready toobey their "betters ." This sycophancy wasbrilliantly satirized by Paul Klee (1879-1940) in "Crown Mania," with its Jugendstilcurvilinear forms bent into ridiculous ab-jection .

As_ the nineteenth century ended, agrowing number of artists were agitated bythe economic injustices and the spiritualpoverty . Many were to find an outlet in theemotional mystique of Expressionism .Others were to combine the passion of Ex-pressionism with the detail of realism in auniquely German comment on their times.

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Kdthe Kollwitz (1867-1945) veered fromnaturalism to Expressionism during herlong career . Aside from the intrinsic inter-est of her work, her career spanned vitalyears and is worth exploring in some detail .

Boundless compassion and lifelong com-mitment to her fellow man were the quali-ties that made her so rare a person and souniquely compelling an artist . Her life wasmarked by a deeply felt empathy for thestruggling men and women whose burdens

Germany After z87z

pressed on her daily in the working-classdistrict of Berlin where she lived.

Kdthe's father was a socialist, her grand-father an independent minister who hadbeen expelled from the official state church .Socialism, religion, and her sense of com-mitment were the motifs of her moral andsocial growth . "Man is not here to be happy,but to do his duty" reads the inscription onher grandfather's gravestone .Her father early recognized her talent

for drawing and encouraged her to trainfor a career as an artist . Her first teacherwas an engraver . She studied art in Munichand Berlin, but to her father's disappoint-ment-he doubted that she could pursuetwo careers at once-she married, attwenty-three, a young doctor, Karl Koll-witz . Her husband headed a tailors' medi-care clinic in a Berlin working-class dis-trict, where they lived for fifty years.

In the mid-nineties "a milestone in mywork" took place, she wrote. She attendeda performance of Gerhart Hauptmann'sThe Weavers, a drama about an abortivestrike of 1840 . Its overtones for the Ger-many of her time inspired her to beginwork immediately on her own version . Thesix-part cycle of prints was submitted tothe Great Exhibition at the Lehrter Bahn-hof in Berlin in 1898 . The jury voted herthe gold medal, but the Kaiser, who hatedwhat he called "gutter art," set aside theaward. Overnight she had won an audi-ence, and years later copies of "The Weav-ers" sequence were still found in workers'homes throughout Germany.

254. "Crown Mania." Paul Klee . 1904 . 61/x61/4. Etching and aquatint . Museum of Modern Art, New York.

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255. "Conspiracy." Kathe Kollwitz. 1895 . 111/>x7 . Etching. Plate No . 3 from The Weavers. Rosenwald Collection .256

National Gallery of Art, Washington .

Two of these prints will suffice to showwhy the Kaiser was made uneasy . "Con-spiracy" captures a scene repeated all overEurope : a huddle of desperate men plot-ting to fight against their miserable livingconditions . The dim light, the tense faces,the hunched postures, all combine to makethe sympathetic viewer hope that no gov-

Germany After z877

ernment police are near . The inexorableloom in "The End" dominates the cottagewhere the dead are brought after the re-volt fails . The mother-one of the first ofKollwitz's unforgettable mothers-looks on.

In "The Weavers," Kollwitz employed apictorial naturalism . The prints have theweakness of story illustration ; only later

256. "The End." Kathe Kollwitz . 1897 . gi/x12. Etching and aquatint . Plate No . 6 from The Weavers. Library ofCongress, Washington .

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was she to develop a much greater econ-omy of means as she evolved toward a lessdetailed Expressionism .Despite her liberal-radical upbringing,

Kathe Kollwitz was dominated at this timemore by artistic than political considera-tions in the selection of subject . In herdiary, she notes:

I should like to say something about myreputation for being a "socialist" artist,which clung to me from then on . Unques-tionably my work at this time, as a result ofthe attitudes of my father and brother and ofthe whole literature of the period, was inthe direction of socialism . But my real mo-tive for choosing my subjects almost ex-clusively from the life of the workers wasthat only such subjects gave me in a simpleand unqualified way what I felt to be beau-tiful .For me the Koenigsberg longshoremen

had beauty ; the Polish jimkes on their grainships had beauty ; the broad freedom ofmovement in the gestures of the commonpeople had beauty . Middle-class peopleheld no appeal for me at all . Bourgeois lifeas a whole seemed to be pedantic . The pro-letariat, on the other hand, had a grandnessof manner, a breadth to their lives .Much later on, when I became acquainted

with the difficulties and tragedies under-lying proletarian life, when I met thewomen who came to my husband for helpand so, incidentally, came to me, I wasgripped by the full force of the proletarian'sfate . Unsolved problems such as prostitutionand unemployment grieved and tormentedme, and contributed to my feeling that Imust keep on with my studies of the lower

Germany After z871

classes . And portraying them again andagain opened a safety valve for me; it madelife bearable.

The theme of revolt against oppressionwas employed even more dramatically in aseries of seven plates she executed from19oi-o8, based on the sixteenth-centuryPeasants' War. "Outbreak" is an impas-sioned call to arms . Even the peasants in"The Prisoners," the final etching in the se-ries, give one the feeling that their hatred isimplacable, that whatever their fate, thestruggle will continue. There is strength,movement, and passion in these etchings,revealing the sure hand of a decisive artist,if a still primarily representational one .War was a constant motif in Kathe Koll-

witz's art and life . Within a few years aftercompleting the Peasants' War cycle, sheand most of Germany's artists were sweptinto the vortex of World War I . Perhapsnever before had a single event had soshattering an effect on so many artists .One of the most interesting groups of

artists to emerge in the early twentiethcentury was Die Brucke or The Bridge,founded in 1905 by Karl Schmidt-Rottluff,Erich Heckel, and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner(later joined by Emil Nolde, Otto Mueller,and Max Pechstein) . Alienated by Germansociety, they assailed bourgeois values bythe shock of their Expressionism, but theirrebellion was more artistic than social orpolitical . All six served in the army, Kirch-ner suffering a breakdown .Many other German artists, interrupted

in their peacetime search for new modes of

258

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258 . "The Prisoners." Kathe Kollwitz . 19o8 . 127/Hxi 6 H. Etching. Plate No . 7 from "The Peasant's War." The26o

Galerie St . Etienne, New York .

expression in painting, were killed orwounded or underwent severely traumaticexperiences in the war. Franz Marc andAugust Macke of Der Blaue Reiter (TheBlue Rider) group were killed ; Oskar Ko-koschka and Otto Dix were wounded; Lud-wig Meidner, Max Beckmann, and GeorgeGrosz served in the German army and sur-vived, but with psychological scars thatdeeply affected their outlook and theirwork. The mood of agitation and despairthat characterized much of Germany'spostwar art certainly was a direct by-prod-uct of the war.Kathe Kollwitz's eighteen-year-old son

Peter volunteered for what he believed tobe the defense of Germany. She was tornbetween respect for his sense of duty andrevulsion against the act of war. "In suchtimes it seems so stupid that the boys mustgo to war," she wrote in her diary. "Thewhole thing is so ghastly and insane . Occa-sionally there comes the foolish thought :how could they possibly take part in suchmadness? And at once the cold shower :they must, must!"A month later Peter was killed . Her bit-

terness and hatred of war mounted. As herson Hans noted, "To her dying day, sheheld to the belief, `No more war."' Herlithographs, woodcuts, and posters in thepostwar years caught in a few strokes theuniversal grief of the shattered women andchildren left behind . The flaming poster,"Never Again War!" powerfully expressesher militant pacifism . In contrast to herearly work, there is no detail here, no back-

Germany After z87z

ground, no pictorial treatment-only emo-tion expressed with swift, broad, surestrokes.For several years she worked on a "War"

cycle, which finally emerged in i925 as aseries of seven woodcuts, almost whollyExpressionist . "The Parents," reproducedhere, is massive, overwhelming and eternal.Now master of several media, she turned towoodcuts as the best way to express grief ."Sorrow is all darkness," she wrote whenreworking the "Parents" block, noting thather first attempts were "much too brightand harsh and distinct ."

Disillusionment, widespread hunger, de-spair, violence, and chaos gripped Ger-many. Workers' and sailors' revolts broughtan end to imperial rule . Moderate SocialDemocrats gained power and the inevitableclash occurred with the left-wing Socialistswho advocated a social and economic aswell as a political revolution . A revolt inBerlin in igig by left-wing Socialists knownas Spartacists was crushed by the govern-ment and the army, and its leaders, KarlLiebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, werebrutally slain . Kathe Kollwitz's Expression-ist woodcut, "Memorial to Karl Lieb-knecht," is a moving visualization of grief,bitterness, and betrayal . She noted in herdiary that she felt she had "the right to por-tray the working class's farewell to Lieb-knecht, and even to dedicate it to the work-ers, without following Liebknecht politi-cally." And, typically, she added, "Or isn'tthat so?"Much of the agony of the Weimar Be-

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259. "Never Again War!" Kathe Kollwitz . 1924 . 361/2x2'71/1. Lithograph. The Galerie St . Etienne, New York .

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26o. "The Parents ." Kathe Kollwitz . 1923 . 13 1/2x161/4. Woodcut. New York Public Library .

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public is reflected in the work of Kollwitzand other German artists . The social Dem-ocrats pinned their hopes on PresidentWilson's Fourteen Points, only to see thembetrayed . Combating the militant left-Socialists and Communists, they made analliance with the monarchist, right-wing,

antirepublican military establishment thatwas to prove fatal to German democracy .The "war guilt" label pinned to the Ger-man and the French occupation of theRuhr spurred the propaganda mills ofthe right-wing nationalists . The fall of themark-from seventy-five to the dollar in

261 . "Memorial to Karl Liebknecht." Kathe Kollwitz . 1919-20 . 13%xlg:%4 . Woodcut. The Galerie St. Etienne, New264 York .

ig2i, to a million to the dollar, and then toworthlessness in 1923-wiped out the sav-ings of the middle and lower classes andbenefited the industrialists and large land-lords.

It was a period of hopeless misery for thepoor . The bleak lives of the workers whowere her neighbors and her husband's pa-tients continued to elicit Kdthe Kollwitz'scompassion . She listened sympatheticallyto the wives' stories of poverty and struggle,absorbed their experiences, and trans-muted them into art. In "Lunch Hour" shesketched the workers' emptiness and hope-lessness . Her magnificent posters for hun-gerwracked Germany-"Germany's Chil-dren Are Starving!" and "Bread!"-werepowerful, direct statements.Many other German artists also protested

the brutality of the times, especially GeorgeGrosz and Otto Dix, the Verists. But inplace of their harsh, strident angry attacks,Kollwitz manifested anguish. Instead oflashing out, as they did, at society's exploit-ers, she expressed her feelings through itsvictims . Where they displayed contemptfor humanity, she projected love and em-pathy.

Deep as her sympathies were, she foundherself repelled by violence . "I have beenthrough a revolution," she wrote in herdiary, "and I am convinced that I am norevolutionist . My childhood dream of dy-ing on the barricades will hardly be ful-filled, because I should hardly mount abarricade now that I know what they arelike in reality."

Germany After 1871

Her identification with the struggle forexistence, however, never faltered . Shewrote : "Everyone works the way she can . Iam content that my art shall have purposeoutside itself . I would like to exert influ-ence in these times when human beings areso perplexed and in need of help." It is diffi-cult to estimate whether her work did ac-tually "exert influence," but there is noquestion that her haunting, emaciated facesstirred consciences, and her humanisticwoodcuts and lithographs moved thou-sands for a generation .

Her later years were filled with anxiety,pain, and repression . Hitler's seizure ofpower led inevitably to the banning of herworks, and although she was offered ahome in America, she remained in Ger-many until the end. Her beloved husbanddied, and her oldest grandson was killed inaction . Characteristically, her last work, adefiant plea for peace, "Seed for the Plant-ing Must Not Be Ground," shows a motherprotecting her three children from thethreat of war.As Romain Rolland wrote of her,

The work of Kdthe Kollwitz which reflectsthe ordeal and the pain of the humble andsimple is the grandest German poem of theage. This woman of virile heart has lookedon them, has taken them in her motherlyarms, with a solemn and tender compassion .She is the voice of the silence of the sacri-ficed.

At various times until 1933 Kdthe Koll-witz contributed drawings to Germany's

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262. "Lunch Hour ." Kathe Kollwitz . agog . i8l,~2xU. Pen and wash drawing. The Galerie St. Etienne, New York .

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263 . "Bread!" Kathe Kollwitz . 1924 . 31',x12 . Drawing. The Galerie St. Etienne, New York .

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264

lively satirical weekly, Simplicissimus . Thisrather elegant magazine of political and so-cial protest was cofounded in 1-896 by Th.Th . (for Thomas Theodore) Heine (1867-1-948), whose graphic satires needled two

generations of Germans until he fled theNazis in 1-933 .

Simplicissimus was essentially middle-class liberal in contrast to the working-classappeal of L'Assiette au Beurre in France .

264. "Seed for the Planting Must Not Be Ground." Kathe Kollwitz . 1942 . 14%x15'h . Lithograph . The Galerie St.268

Etienne, New York .