Postcards from the Trenches: A German Soldier’s Testimony of the Great War 9781350015753, 9781350015784, 9781350015760

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[The author] has found an ideal way to use microhistory to tell a universal story of young lovers separated by war. The postcards are strikingly beautiful and intimate, and describe sentiments which existed in every combatant army on every single front of the war. —Jay M. Winter, author of War Beyond Words, and Charles J. Stille Professor of History, Yale University, US In 1916 Otto Schubert, a young German artist, faced a future as chaotic and destructive as the war from which he had returned. His output, dispersed or lost as the result of another war and the vicissitudes of German politics, has now been recovered in this beautiful and moving book. Irene Guenther has brought good luck and careful research to lay bare the artistic achievement of an ordinary man in extraordinary times. —Hew Strachan, author of The First World War, and Emeritus Fellow, All Souls College, University of Oxford, UK Guenther has clearly and profoundly uncovered an important but heretofore neglected artist whose works speak to the universal issues of war and remembrance. A critical art historical and cultural intervention into 20th century German art – and a superb tour de force! —Marion F. Deshmukh, author of Max Liebermann: Modern Art and Modern Germany and Robert T. Hawkes Professor of History, emerita, George Mason University, US This book – on the wartime postcards of a German artist who served on the battlefield – deals with a compelling but under-researched subject in art-historical scholarship. [An] intimate, personal account of the Great War frontline experience. The postcards themselves are poignantly beautiful objects, and this work will finally bring to a wider readership the work of a key German war artist. —Ann Murray, University College Cork, Ireland

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POSTCARDS

FROM THE TRENCHES A German Soldier’s Testimony of the Great War

Irene Guenther

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BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2018 Copyright © Irene Guenther, 2018 Irene Guenther has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on pp. viii–ix constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design by Catherine Wood Cover image: “Evening Mood at the Front” by Otto Schubert, 23 January 1916. Author’s Collection All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: PB: 978-1-3500-1575-3 ePDF: 978-1-3500-1576-0 ePUB: 978-1-3500-1577-7 Typeset by Lachina

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To all the lives lost in the volcano of war

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Contents Acknowledgments Preface

x

1 2 3

The Great War and the Uses of Art

1

German Artists and the Great War

21

The Life and Art of Otto Schubert

45

Postscript

83

The Artworks

List of Illustrations Endnotes

87

200

202

Bibliography Index

viii

219

228

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Acknowledgments

I

scribbled messages; Silke and Mathias Bugge, who, at a moment’s notice, refined my translations of postcard passages and letters to archives; Annemarie Wagner, whose magnanimous offer to help resulted in the discovery of documents that were key to filling in the gaps of Schubert’s biography; Frank Kempe, of Galerie Saxonia in Munich, who answered my countless questions; and Alexander Atanassow, whose knowledge of Dresden’s archives, sleuthing skills, and willingness to help were priceless to this project. Heartfelt thanks also go to Charlie Soparkar, whose surgical skill and friendship kept my eyes functioning; to Suzanne Deal Booth, Sandi Sykora Ross, Beth Madison, and Susie Soparkar, all of whom so generously infused the Schubert World War One Kickstarter; to Bill Monroe, Honors College Dean, University of Houston, whose enthusiasm for this project has been unstinting; to my University of Houston friends who have been so supportive of the exhibition and book, especially Debbie Harwell, Sarah Fishman, and Kim Meyer; to my Marquette University friends who advocated for this project in its infancy, especially Stephani RichardsWilson, Kristen Foster, and Steve Avella; to art historian Mary Weaver Chapin, who lovingly restored the century-old postcards back to their original vibrancy; and to the many individuals, including Michiko McMahon, Keelin Burrows, Robert Zaretsky, and Robert Cremins, who worked with me in various ways to offer Schubert’s art to a wider public. My sincerest thanks go to Frances Arnold and Pari Thompson at Bloomsbury for their great patience and

have accumulated a large debt of gratitude to many people – friends and strangers – who willingly gave their time, shared their knowledge, offered suggestions and research leads, and became so moved by Otto Schubert’s wartime postcards and interested in his enigmatic life that they took up their own searches for pieces to the Schubert puzzle. I am especially grateful to Marion Deshmukh, art and cultural historian, and the earliest and most pivotal supporter of this project. Upon seeing Schubert’s postcards, she insisted that we introduce them to a larger public. Her farsightedness and unflagging enthusiasm for Schubert’s art led to our deepening friendship and our centennial exhibition, Postcards from the Trenches: Germans and Americans Visualize the Great War. It was with the same fervor that she filled the roles of cheerleader and colleague as I worked on this book. Her insightful comments on each chapter were invaluable to me. My gratitude also goes to Jay Winter. His groundbreaking work on the Great War, on the ways in which individuals, families, communities, and artists experienced, grieved, remembered, and memorialized the four-year conflict and its shattering consequences, has profoundly shaped my understanding of the sources. His influence is woven into the pages of this book. Many thanks also go to the anonymous readers of the proposal and manuscript, whose sage advice and thoughtful suggestions substantively improved the final version. Special thanks for their meaningful contributions go to Ilse Baker, who initially helped me decipher Schubert’s

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enormous help in bringing this project to fruition, despite debilitating hurricanes and health issues causing delays; to remarkable Kathryn Earle, who shepherded my first book and introduced my Schubert idea to Bloomsbury; to Gus and Sharon Kopriva, whose multi-faceted support of the Schubert exhibit and book illuminates their inherent generosity; to John Kohan, who answered my numerous emails and graciously consented to my use of his splendid Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection; to Timothy Benson, art historian and curator of the Los Angeles County Museum’s Robert Gore Rifkind Collection of German Expressionist Studies, who so quickly and kindly gave me access to Schubert’s lithographs for this book; to German art historian Gerhard Schneider and to Rolf Jessewitsch, director of the Center for Persecuted Arts in Solingen, both of whom told me the story of Schubert’s little-known, but highly important “Auschwitz Triptych” and generously approved its reproduction; to Hans Molzberger, who further improved my postcard transcriptions and was key, along with Gus, to exhibiting Schubert’s postcards in Germany; and to the archivists at the Kupferstich-Kabinett in Dresden, who made possible my unforgettable encounter with the additional eleven Schubert postcards, and who so kindly navigated bureaucratic and financial hoops (with a special thank you to Frau Yvonne Brandt) for the reproduction of Schubert’s wartime drawings and postcards. Most importantly, a thousand thanks go to Frau Ulrike Meissner, who, without hesitancy, gave her permission for me to write this book about her father and to reproduce his artworks. I am still incredulous that my 2016 “shot in the dark” letter to her mother, Frau Christa FürederSchubert, based on an address I discovered in my father’s correspondence from the 1980s, actually made its way to the Schubert family and was responded to by Frau Meissner with such kindness and benevolence.

My deepest gratitude goes to my family, my heart of hearts. I am grateful to my father, Peter Guenther, who left clues everywhere for me that, together, pointed to a longtime connection to Schubert’s art; to my mother, who taught me by example that war leaves lasting marks on human beings who experience it, but that they can choose love to reshape those scars; to Bryn, whose birthday gift of a stunning website for the centennial exhibition introduced Schubert’s postcards to a large viewership, and who, thankfully, has always championed his mom’s history obsessions; to Courtney for her terrific book cover mock-ups; to Konnie, who so generously contributed to the exhibit, read chapters, and shared her sister’s interest in Schubert; to Annette, whose support has meant so much; to Mary, whose surprise bags of nourishment, big hugs of encouragement, and years of friendship I absolutely could not do without; and to Matt Flukinger, whose love sustains me and who has truly inhabited the Schubert project as much as I have. This book would never have come about without his willingness to travel with me to archives, to hear me talk – yet again – about some question related to my research, to digitize all of the postcards so I could read their minutely scribbled texts, and to fill in for me at home as I spent countless hours deciphering and internalizing the calamitous Great War and its consequences. Only then could I better understand the art and life of Otto Schubert. All of you have helped me more than you will ever know. Note on the text: In the translations of Schubert’s war postcards, I have lightly punctuated his sentences and added explanatory remarks in brackets to make his hastily scrawled messages more intelligible for the reader.

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nearly floor-to-ceiling bookcases. Sure enough, my fingers retrieved some paper clips, a few more post-it notes, a thin book that had fallen on its face, and two large envelopes that had also dropped flat against the top ridge. No wonder I hadn’t seen them before. The first one I opened held some reviews my father had written, with mark-ups from the editor. I then reached into the second envelope and pulled out what appeared to be old postcards. By then, it was two in the morning. The house sale was in seven hours. I was emotionally exhausted and in a hurry to crawl into bed. So, I glanced at a few of the cards to see if I should take them with me or just throw them out. They took my breath away. I quickly spread all eighty cards in front of me. And, in that moment, my life was changed. From that first chance discovery of Otto Schubert’s wartime trench postcards, I was transfixed by their beauty in the midst of almost indescribable destruction, by their quiet power in a conflict marked by overwhelming artillery noise, and by their uniqueness in the annals of World War One art. But who had painted them? And for whom? After deciphering the name of the postcard sender, I became increasingly perplexed. The postcards are exquisitely rendered. They are clearly not the work of an amateur. As a cultural historian of modern Germany, I should have recognized the soldierartist’s name, but I did not. Additionally, some of the cards inform us, through their titles, that the artist participated in battles that were notorious for their high casualty rates. The postcards are prolific in number, one almost every day and

t was my last night in the house before its sale the following morning. My parents had died an excruciatingly short time apart, although I should not have been surprised given the deep love they still felt for one another after fifty-eight years of marriage. Officially the executrix of their will and unofficially the daughter whose professional and personal interests most closely interwove with theirs, I began to go through the contents of the home they had lived in for forty years. This was no small task. Both of them had experienced great hunger and want as young adults. In translation, this meant they kept absolutely everything that held some personal meaning: an opened bottle of wine so old its contents poured out like molasses, letters dating back thirty years stored in boxes and desk drawers, file cabinets overflowing with my father’s professional correspondence, shelves filled with my mother’s piano music and sewing projects, works of art that hung on every inch of wall space, and several thousand books, often decorated with brightly colored post-it notes that they had written to one another to mark passages of particular relevance. Every night for six months I had grieved my parents while disassembling their home, filled with the tangible objects that comprised their remarkable lives. To be sure that I hadn’t missed anything – a note from my father to my mother, an errant book, an old photograph – I stood on the highest rung of a ladder to feel with my hands for anything I might have missed on top of the

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sometimes two a day; yet, they stop abruptly in May 1916. Was the artist killed at Verdun? As I spent time with the cards, translating them and examining the images more closely, I wanted to know who Otto Schubert was and who she was, this Irma Müller to whom he sent the postcards and to whom he was clearly devoted. I wanted to know if he survived the war and, if he did, what happened to him. And, of course, I wanted to know why I did not recognize his name as a twentieth century German wartime and postwar artist. Except for the soldier-artist Otto Dix, who sent numerous postcards to a friend in Dresden during the war, I knew of no soldier or artist who had produced such an extensive series of drawn or painted trench cards.1 So began my eight-year quest to find answers. While my initial questions led to more questions, detours, obstacles, omissions, and occasionally to clues, overwhelmingly what I discovered was that Schubert’s life, in so many ways, was shaped by the calamitous events of the twentieth century. It is, therefore, a life worthy of examination. It is a life from which we can learn much about war and fear, poverty and family obligation; about political ideologies and totalitarian aesthetics; about sloppy scholarship and academic biases; and about individual choices, human complexities, deeplyheld regrets, and great personal losses. A journalist reviewing a small exhibit in Regensburg, Germany in 1988 that included a few of Schubert’s works remarked, Otto Schubert’s life was characterized by need, war, and repression … When politics and contemporary history intervene in an artistic life in a most violent manner, such historical events can have a tragic effect on an artistic heritage and the survival of the artist’s life-work. This impression must be considered by someone who learns about Otto Schubert, a forgotten Expressionist graphic artist and painter.2 The exhibition’s curator was baffled when he learned that Schubert’s works sometimes hung in the same 1920s exhibitions as art by the “great German artists [Karl] SchmidtRotluff and [Otto] Dix.” He went on to say that, based

upon the surviving artworks he had seen, Schubert “was a master at drypoint and a very well-known graphic artist of that time.” Yet, he could find only the briefest mentions of Schubert in art history lexicons and a few “puzzle pieces,” the smallest of references, to Schubert in books about the German art scene in the years before the Nazi takeover of power. The journalist then raised the question, “Who was this elusive artist, who, despite his friendships with famous artist colleagues like [Oskar] Kokoschka, fell into oblivion through the turmoil of time?”3 That is exactly what I wanted to know when I saw Schubert’s hand-painted trench cards and, again, when I viewed his wartime lithograph portfolios, 24 Lithographs of the War in the West and The Suffering of Horses in War. I wondered why I knew nothing about him despite my academic training and my great personal interest in German art between the world wars. I assumed it was an oversight on my part, and that learning who Otto Schubert was, especially in the internet age, would simply be a matter of looking up his name and easily accessing information about his life and his art. However, like the Regensburg curator, I too found only small “puzzle pieces,” needles in haystacks that took me years to uncover and connect. As I hunted for clues, I learned that the City of Dresden’s Kupferstich-Kabinett had a few items by Schubert in its archival holdings. It made sense to me that Schubert’s hometown would own some of his art. I contacted the print collection right away, but could not ascertain what works by Schubert the archive held. So, off to Dresden I went. The same feeling that came over me when I first saw his eighty postcards took hold of me again when I opened the archive box marked “Otto Schubert” and spotted eleven additional wartime postcards positioned at the bottom of the box beneath some sketches and watercolors. The dates on the Dresden collection’s cards fit perfectly into the small chronological gaps of the eighty cards I had first seen some eight years ago. I was hooked. By complete happenstance, as I was scouring European art journals from the 1920s in the hopes that I might find some information on Schubert, I came across a full-page advertisement in a German journal of 1920 that touted my

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grandfather’s newly published book of poetry. Alongside a tantalizing description of his poems, the ad noted that the volume also contained “six woodcut illustrations by Otto Schubert.” I was astounded. My grandfather, Alfred Günther, lived in Dresden in the 1920s and 1930s with his second wife, Genja Jonas. Alfred was a poet, playwright, and journalist who wrote about local cultural activities and artists for two Dresden newspapers. He was closely connected to the city’s thriving art scene and was good friends with the German artists Conrad Felixmüller and Otto Dix, who, I discovered, painted a portrait of my grandfather in 1919.4 Genja was a cutting-edge photographer, whose studio was a popular meeting place for up-and-coming artists like Kurt Schwitters, who apprenticed under her watch. Genja was Jewish; Alfred was not. The two of them were prohibited from working once the Nazis came to power. No work; no income; sheer desperation. Several Gestapo summonses addressed to my grandfather, which I discovered in my parents’ family papers, provide clues that my grandparents’ lives were beyond difficult in Nazi Germany. Right before Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass” pogrom of November 9 and 10, 1938 that terrorized Jews and destroyed many of their businesses, synagogues, and homes, Genja died of breast cancer. The famous German modern dancer, Gret Palucca, who was a close friend of my grandmother, danced around her bed as she lay dying to ease her journey into the afterlife. Even after Genja’s death, my grandfather continued to have difficulty finding work because his politics and close ties to modern art and artists were viewed with suspicion by the regime. He sold her studio. And when he left Dresden, all that he took with him was a brown paper sack containing his pocket-size diaries, writing pads, hundreds of tiny photographic proofs of his wife’s work, and the x-rays that gave initial evidence of the cancer that eventually took her life. While the Second World War raged, he made his way to Stuttgart, where he remained for the rest of his life. All of this, I knew. What I had not known was that my elusive trench card artist, Otto Schubert, had collaborated with my grandfather on several projects.

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Just a month or two before the publisher’s deadline for my manuscript, in a search for something totally unrelated to the Schubert project, I uncovered a stack of folders filled with my father’s typed correspondence of many years. I’m not sure what compelled me to look through them. I had stuffed the folders in a box soon after he died, and had not found the heart to look at them closely since then. I certainly didn’t suspect that there was anything in the box relevant to my research on Schubert. And, with an important deadline looming, I didn’t have the time to examine the folders’ contents. Nonetheless, for whatever reason, look through them I did. Midway in the stack of folders was one on which my father had written “Otto Schubert.” To say I was astonished would be an understatement. Inside were letters back and forth between my father and Schubert’s second wife, Frau Füreder-Schubert, dating from the 1980s. My father, Peter Guenther, was an art historian. At the time of their correspondence, he was working on a research project on the second-generation German Expressionist artists for an upcoming exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.5 He had somehow tracked down Frau Füreder-Schubert to Linz, Austria in order to ask questions about a postwar Dresden artist group, Gruppe 1919, of which Schubert was a founding member. The letters were filled with revelations. My father wrote that he wanted to introduce Schubert to art historians and art lovers in the United States. He hoped to exhibit Schubert’s wartime art and to eventually write an article or book about him. Frau Füreder-Schubert offered to help in any way that she could, and patiently answered my father’s many questions in letter after letter. Nothing came of the project. My father fell off of the stage of a lecture hall at the university while teaching; soon thereafter, he began to lose his eyesight. By the early 1990s, he was almost completely blind, a cruel fate for a man whose purpose in life, aside from my mother, was art. Some thirty years later, with no knowledge whatsoever of my father’s previous plans, I co-curated with my colleague, the art historian Marion Deshmukh, a centennial exhibition of German and American soldiers’ wartime art, which

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included Schubert’s trench postcards.6 At the same time, I had begun to search obsessively for the “puzzle pieces” of Schubert’s life in order to write a book. As if all of this wasn’t serendipitous enough, my good friend Gus Kopriva, who owns a magnificent collection of German Expressionist art and a modern art gallery in Houston, called me one summer day from Berlin. I knew that he had gone to Germany to attend some art auctions, where he hoped to pick up a few works to add to his collection. I had told him about my Schubert project and had shown him some of the wartime postcards that Schubert had sent from the western front. Gus promised to keep an eye out for a Schubert work while he was in Europe. We both knew, though, that early pieces by Schubert were very rare, given the destruction wrought by the Allied bombings of Dresden during the Second World War. The telephone call from Berlin was memorable. Gus excitedly told me that the auction house was offering a 1920 woodcut by Schubert. He said that the hair on his arms was standing straight up because (and, for dramatic effect, he then paused for several long moments before continuing) the woodcut was of a beautiful young woman and it was

titled “Irena.” Practically yelling into the phone, Gus asked incredulously, “How could Schubert have known that one hundred years later, a woman by the name of Irene would curate an exhibit of his postcards?” It goes without saying that Gus bought the “Irena” woodcut, which my husband then purchased from him to give to me on Valentine’s Day. Since then, “Irena” has hung on the wall next to my desk. Day after day as I worked on this project, she urged me on when the research pathways I traversed proved to be deadends and the “puzzle pieces” of Schubert’s life became increasingly difficult to uncover. Ultimately, though, I realized that I didn’t need – had never needed – those inexplicable, uncanny events to solidify my interest in Schubert and to fuel my detective work forward. From the time I first saw those eighty handpainted trench cards, now a century old, I felt compelled to learn anything I could about the person who had created them. Invariably signed “a thousand heartfelt greetings, your Otto,” Schubert’s haunting visual missives are both a young man’s token of love and longing and a soldier’s testimony from the volcano of the Great War.

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Chapter

1

The Great War and the Uses of Art

The War Experiences of Soldiers and Civilians

missing-in-action – surpassed 37 million. And, of these, 9.5 million combatants and 6.5 million civilians were dead, sixteen million in total, due to battlefield deaths, war wounds on war fronts and home fronts, displacement, malnutrition, and disease. Back home, more than three million widows and ten million orphans had been left behind. They, too, were victims of the Great War.1 Machine guns; tanks; zeppelins; airplanes; poison gas; the forced expulsion and mass murder of Armenians; atrocities also committed against non-combatants in Belgium, Galicia, and elsewhere; and naval blockades designed to deny enemy civilians the most basic necessities, such as food and medicine – all of these signaled the advent of an entirely new kind of conflict. This was a war that in countless ways blurred, and began to erase, the line between civilians and combatants, between war fronts and home fronts.2 That line would be largely effaced in the 1930s during the Spanish Civil War, and entirely obliterated in the Second World War.3

The terrifying ferocity and unprecedented scale of the Great War still defy comprehension a century after the first shots were fired. In the four years between 1914 and 1918, more than one hundred countries on six different continents were embroiled in devastating conflict. Seventy million men served in uniform, and millions of civilians served on their home fronts or volunteered on the war fronts in various supportive roles. Russia, Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, and Romania suffered the gravest losses relative to the number of men they mobilized; each experienced a casualty rate exceeding 60 percent. By the war’s end, the number of military and civilian casualties – a category including not only the dead, but also those who were wounded, taken prisoners-of-war, or thought to be

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Governments employed coercion and propaganda on a massive scale to galvanize feelings of loyalty, willingness to sacrifice, hatred of the enemy, and national purpose in their citizenry.4 The initial “war enthusiasm” that propelled many men to volunteer in August 1914 had morphed into the need for a warlike logic of duty, will, hardness of character, and strong nerves by 1915, due to the calamitous death rates and lack of foreseeable end to the conflict.5 Seemingly unending artillery bombardments and shell fire had obvious consequences on soldiers’ morale, behavior, and anxiety levels.6 In contrast to the battles waged on the Eastern Front where there was far more troop movement, helplessness, hopelessness, fear of dying, “horror of isolation,” and, above all, “disempowerment,” feelings of “impotence to determine their own chances of survival,” made “service in the trenches of the Western Front a uniquely frightening, depressing and stressful experience.”7 The public face of war did not show the piles of dead corpses and maimed bodies each major battle produced or the debilitating psychological effects that the war had on soldiers. With few exceptions, if any dead were shown at all in photographs, they were the enemy’s dead.8 Posters and photographs depicted their nation’s wounded soldiers wrapped in unstained head bandages and clean white arm slings, with not one amputee in sight. The real trenches did not resemble the neat underground homes that looked like summer youth camps; yet, such idealized versions appeared in posters and newspaper photographs that claimed authenticity or were constructed for displays on home fronts to satisfy the curiosity of civilians.9 On the European Eastern and Western Fronts, soldiers described a very different war. Hugh Walpole’s letters from June 1915, when he served in the Balkans with the Russian Red Cross, provide searing testimony. He wrote, “Every kind of horror. Wounded on both sides of the road in the wood crying and screaming. . . . Day before yesterday eight hundred wounded in twelve hours. I cut off fingers with a pair of scissors easy as nothing!”10 German artist Otto Dix immediately volunteered when war was declared and, despite being wounded several times, served all four years

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of the conflict. He described in his diary the war he had grown grimly familiar with: “Lice, rats, barbed wire, fleas, grenades, bombs, caves, blood, liquor, mice, cats, gas(ses), cannons, filth, bullets, mortars, fire, steel, that is the war! All devil’s work!”11 The British poet Wilfred Owen’s letters tell of once healthy men who were sucked into and suffocated by mud, walked bent over like old men under the strain of their 70-pound equipment sacks, drowned in water-filled trenches and shell holes, and coughed to death from poison gas.12 The war consumed soldiers at an exorbitant rate. The Germans became known for their efforts to make their dugouts and trenches as home-like and hospitable as possible, especially when compared to the trenches built by the French.13 Otto Dix corroborates this view when he described one of his drawings to a friend on June 4, 1916: “In front is our battle-trench. It is cleanly concreted and is swept two times a day. Genuinely German, isn’t it?”14 Nonetheless, the Germans’ more sophisticated trenches depended upon location and were the exception, rather than the rule.15 The mud from seemingly non-stop rain on the Western Front sucked soldiers into shell-holes and caused them to drown.16 Tetanus infection from wounded soldiers lying on soil steeped with bacteria; long waits before the many who were wounded could be treated by doctors; trench fever; trench foot; dysentery; millions of rats and lice, both of which carried diseases; and swarms of flies plagued German soldiers and their dead, much as they did their adversaries.17 One German infantryman described his regiment’s accommodation as being like “pigsties,” writing, “I can only be amazed that I have not been suffocated in filth.” And Captain Helmuth Fuchs noted in his April 7, 1915 diary entry that a position he had visited was “almost waist-deep in water and had two sodden corpses stuck in its breastworks.”18 In his comparative analysis of British and German soldiers’ morale, historian Alexander Watson notes that the often-limited water rations, long exposures to risk on the battle front, news of pervasive food shortages on the German home front, and food limitations on the frontlines in the last two years of the war had a demoralizing effect

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on German troops. They worried about their families going hungry, wondered why they were risking their lives if their government could not provide for their loved ones, and felt their own hunger would prevent them from winning the war.19 On the home front, Germans were suffering from malnourishment due to scarcities of even the most basic foods. Bartering, black marketeering, hoarding, hamstering, queuing for hours, surviving the latest ration reductions, plundering, rioting, participating in hunger strikes at factories, fainting from lack of food, and starving increased each day.20 The cumulative effects of poor planning by the German government and inefficiencies in the food distribution system, as well as bad harvests, the terrible winter of 1916– 1917, and the extensive British “hunger blockade,” as the Germans called it, were devastating and resulted in a pervasive public health crisis on the German home front.21 In a letter to her brother in the summer of 1916, which censors confiscated and filed under the category of “anti-German activity,” Lina Dorstewitz described that the “food supply [in Saxony] had become ‘horrendous’ and civil war appeared in the offing. ‘No one has money any more; in any case one cannot buy anything with it.’” She had lost 37 pounds in the past year.22 Germany’s deplorable state of widespread and severe malnutrition deteriorated further as the blockade was maintained by the Allies after the armistice was signed on November 11, 1918.23 Continuing the blockade was a punitive measure, intended to ensure that the Germans fully understood they had lost the war and would sign the provisions of the treaty dictated by the Allied victors. Moreover, many British citizens did not believe the stories of rampant starvation, calling such claims “Hun trickery.” They, along with many French officials and citizens, wanted revenge after years of warfare and death. Prime Minister Lloyd George told Allied leaders at Versailles that the Germans were being allowed to starve, and warned that German memories of forced starvation could turn against them one day. British soldiers in Germany began to write home about the terrible state of German civilians; hunger, they reported, was everywhere. The French prime minister,

Clemenceau, however, continued to push back against such reports.24 By the time the Allies’ restrictions on food imports to Germany were officially lifted, which occurred not after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on June 28, 1919, but only after the German government ratified the treaty on July 12, 1919, several hundred thousand Germans on the home front had perished from starvation and starvation-related diseases.25 Equally debilitating, the Germany army kept its soldiers at the front until “they were no longer capable of holding the line,” which caused great stress, exhaustion, and demoralization. In contrast, the British Expeditionary Force observed a policy that regularly relieved their soldiers in active sectors. Finally, in the fall of 1917, the German army adopted a system of rotation similar to the British.26 Nonetheless, few changes were actually implemented. The Germans were plagued by ongoing food shortages at home and manpower shortages on the front, battles that featured unceasing artillery fire, such as the fifteen-day opening bombardment at the Third Battle of Ypres during which the British fired 4.3 million shells at their German counterparts, and fierce fighting that resulted in high casualty rates. The severe strain of those factors, and little time away from the frontlines, resulted in soldiers’ desertions, surrenders, psychological break-downs, and cases of collective disobedience.27 As one German psychiatrist noted, “there were few . . . who returned home with ‘entirely unscathed nerves.’”28 Unlike governmental posters that depicted healthy, happy men marching to the front in clean, crisp uniforms and shiny helmets, soldiers who returned home, either on leave or medically discharged, had been utterly changed by their experiences.29 Some came home without faces or legs or arms, visible reminders of what mechanized warfare could do to the human body. The men with broken faces, as they were sometimes called, caused governments much consternation since such an intensely personal, yet devastatingly visible injury shocked and repulsed civilians. Moreover, their faces, now resembling those of gargoyles, were living memorials to the grievous human suffering that

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occurs during war. In Sidcup, England, where a hospital for soldiers was located, some of the park benches were painted blue, “a code that warned townspeople that any man sitting on one would be distressful to view.”30 Severe facial disfigurements were viewed by surgical wards as the most psychologically traumatic of soldiers’ war injuries and were far more difficult to address than the losses of arms or legs. In response, Sir Harold Gillies, Francis Derwent Wood, Anna Coleman Ladd, and a few other surgeons, artists, and sculptors expended enormous effort to help British and French soldiers who had been facially maimed. Gillies became renowned for the facial reconstructive surgeries he performed to restore as much as he could of the men’s mutilated faces. Wood, Ladd, and several additional artists and sculptors created masks, first shaped and molded in plaster casts and then made from the thinnest copper, which were painted to match the patient’s skin. Much painstaking effort went into making the masks as natural looking as possible. Yet, only a few hundred men of the thousands upon thousands of soldiers who had lost their faces were fitted for masks. And, as Ladd later noted, the masks got very dirty and fell apart within a few years.31 Not many records survive on how the German medical community responded to the countless traumatic facial and bodily injuries of their nation’s soldiers. At the onset of the war, “the German Army’s medical corps was probably the best prepared among the major combatants” in part because of medical breakthroughs German doctors had pioneered in previous years and during the Great War on the battlefield. The historian Holger Herwig states, “Roughly 70 percent of Germany’s 25,000 doctors worked at the front or in rearechelon medical facilities during the Great War.”32 Given the exorbitant casualty rates, doctors worked almost non-stop, “till late into the night, into the morning, every single day.” Many of them labored in primitive field hospitals behind the front where survival rates from wounds were low.33 No German surgeons had been trained in general plastic surgery, so artists were recruited – as in England – to paint masks to cover the terrible facial wounds that disfigured so many soldiers. And to address the countless bodily injuries endured by soldiers, German orthopedic engineers developed

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dozens of types of artificial legs and arms. Already by the end of 1914, the German government ordered newspapers to cease publishing the names of soldiers who had been killed in the war, which by then was only five months old. Those name lists sometimes took up pages and pages, and dampened both volunteer rates and home front morale. However, the government did not prohibit published lists of the men who had been wounded. Altogether, some 2.7 million German soldiers became amputees or were “otherwise ‘disfigured’” in the war.34 In the postwar years, German artists who served in the war, among them Otto Dix and Max Beckmann, painted and drew and etched ferocious depictions of men with broken bodies, faces, and spirits to devastating effect. In contrast, Ernst Friedrich, an outspoken German socialist, refused to serve in the war. For that offense, he was first placed in a mental institute and then sent to jail. In 1924, ten years after the First World War began, he published Krieg dem Kriege! (War against War!). The book was filled with shocking photographs of the wounded, the mangled, and the dead, which were accompanied by acerbic captions underscoring the fallacy of national sacrifice and the deadly hypocrisy of those who had ordered and overseen the war, but did not fight in it. The next year, he established the Anti-War Museum in Berlin. Exhibited in dense fashion on its walls were medical photographs and artworks of soldiers who had been grotesquely disfigured by their wounds. Friedrich, an ardent pacifist, did not want his countrymen to forget the terrible human cost of war. Only one month after Hitler came to power in January 1933, Friedrich was thrown into prison. His Anti-War Museum was turned into a gathering place for members of the Nazi “Brownshirts,” the Sturmabteilung or SA, and his anti-war book was included in the infamous May 1933 bonfire of literature deemed unacceptable by the Nazi government.35 Some soldiers struggled for the rest of their lives with nightmares and battled physical responses to their psychological traumas, such as uncontrollable shaking or visceral reactions to particular colors and sounds. In the Great War, deserters on war fronts faced lethal repercussions, while strikers and anti-war activists on home fronts faced

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repression and incarceration. And civilians who did not support their nation’s war effort or dared to protest the war were ridiculed, ostracized, censored, and, in some cases, institutionalized or arrested.36 Governments extended their powers, distorted the reality of the war, and marshalled their resources to mobilize civilians and soldiers, women and men, war fronts and home fronts for four long years.37 Put succinctly, war was waged against entire populations, and the effects were brutalizing. At the end, four empires had been swept away – German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and Ottoman. In their places, new states emerged in Europe, in the Middle East, and elsewhere, a redrawing of political boundaries that continues to fuel conflict today. Millions of people found themselves displaced, homeless, physically and psychologically wounded, and without family; countless others were on the brink of starvation.38 Conveyed through numbers citing the wounded, missing, and dead, the Great War is both unimaginable and impersonal. The trail of statistics left in its bloody wake does much to acknowledge the dreadful cost to humanity, but does little to reveal the individual human experience of being swept up in the conflagration. Yet, during those 1,500 days of war and in the tumultuous months and years that followed, the world was enveloped in trauma and grief. As soldiers were ordered to walk into machine gun fire, lived among the dying and dead, left the frontlines mangled and shell shocked, became despondent that they had survived when so many of their comrades had died, and questioned or repressed their enormous sacrifices, civilians and communities mourned their losses and searched for meaning and solace. Because so many millions of men died on chaotic battle fronts, they were often buried by their comrades and field hospital staffers in graves close to where they fell or eventually in created national cemeteries located in the vicinity of the war fronts where they had died. Governments decided that soldiers would be buried where they were killed, stating that retrieval was impossible given the number of dead.39 More often, soldiers had been so obliterated by the weapons of war that their physical form was “missing,” their bodies had literally vanished.40 Unmarked, hurriedly dug graves also

made identification difficult, and the unrelenting artillery fire destroyed the terrain where such burials had occurred, which further eviscerated the human remains.41 Shells disinterred bodies and then reinterred them.42 And so, soldiers encountered and reencountered the decomposing bodies of their comrades or pieces thereof, whether that occurred from the further destruction of the ground by artillery barrages or as the men dug into the ground to reinforce trenches and to construct new ones. In the end, the remains of loved ones stayed far from home, which meant that grieving civilians had no bodies to bury. They experienced the war and the deaths of their loved ones as void of corpses. On the other hand, soldiers inhabited a world overwhelmed by corpses. This disjuncture in experiencing the dead served to widen and complicate the chasm between home fronts and war fronts.43 After the war, families often attempted to retrieve the bodies of their dead. However, exhumations were anguishing, expensive, sometimes prohibited by governments, and ultimately untenable due to the large number of fallen soldiers, many of whom remained unidentifiable and unidentified. In the grief that enveloped the living, there were trajectories of mourning that moved in different directions. In contrast to the official commemorative efforts by the victorious governments to transform national tragedy and sacrifice into national pride, and the stridently contested ideas of official commemoration in defeated countries like Germany, there were also more intimate group and communal efforts to respond to the anguish of loss and the multi-layered affect – the powerful emotional codes – of war. During and after the Great War, “a gathering together” took place, as “people related by blood or by experience tried to draw strength from each other.”44 Bereaved families and grief-stricken communities sought common languages of mourning and forged pathways of “mutual help . . . along which many groups and individuals sought to provide knowledge, then consolation, then commemoration.”45 As the cultural historian Jay Winter notes, “Art and ceremony helped them endure their losses.”46 It is to art of the Great War, in particular the phenomenon of postcards, that we now turn.

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The Uses of Art in the Great War Because of the war’s insatiable appetite for materiel and men, and the enormous problems caused by the disruption of international trade, home fronts reeled from the burdens created by the conflict. Complex, multi-faceted propaganda was needed to ensure the continued loyalty of citizens asked to sacrifice their fighting-age men for the duration of the war and forced to suffer ever-tighter rationing, food shortages that in some countries became severe, strict wage controls, and the ongoing, unbearable loss of loved ones. Every country engaged in the war enlisted the talents of artists, illustrators, printmakers, actors, designers, composers, musicians, and those with a poetic bent or gift of the pen to help fuel support for the war effort. These cultural emissaries were tasked with the role of providing inspiration for the troops in the field and the populations at home.47 Songs, sheet music, posters, leaflets, broadsheets, sculptures, postcards, paintings, short stories, and mottos abounded during the First World War. Regular citizens, swept up in war fever, also contributed to the plethora of propaganda material. In the first month of the war alone, supposedly more than one million German war poems were written in support of the country’s defense.48 In the propaganda contests, each side labeled the other as the aggressor. The enemy was either skewered with cynical caricatures or demonized through pictures and words as less than human. Inflammatory xenophobic harangues and outlandish accusations fueled exaggerated nationalism.49 Germans in France and French in Germany found themselves declared “undesirable aliens,” even if they had lived there for years. Numbers of people were interned, having lingered too long when war broke out, while others quickly fled back to their land of origin.50 Enemy authors, as well as the language of the enemy, were banned. For example, in Germany, almost immediately following the outbreak of hostilities, French words were prohibited and Germanicized, which was particularly noticeable in the German fashion industry, a world drenched in French influence. “Schick” replaced “chic.” “Silhouette” became “Silhuette,” the textile “Gabardin” was renamed “Schragrips,” “couture” was transformed into “Hauptmode,” and the French word

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“mannequin” was described as an “ugly word that actually means little man. It is a word for which we [Germans] have no use.”51 While language utilized to describe the enemy sharpened in its vociferousness, euphemisms such as “wastage” to substitute for “casualties” were employed to verbally dull the egregiousness of the war. Also dulling the deadliness of the war was the eventual disuse of customary mourning clothing. At first, traditional conventions were observed. In France, it was reported that just in one week “Paris was a changed city. The streets were full of women dressed in black; the churches were crowded all day long . . .” But as countless men died on battlefields and in trenches, those traditions disintegrated. Not only was it impossible to clothe in mourning all of the widows of the First World War, given textile rationing and shortages, particularly in Germany where cloth had become extremely scarce, but morale was also an issue. A Berlin report, published in the Times on January 30, 1915, asserted, “In the matter of mourning, it is agreed that the wearing of black can only tend to depress the spirits of those who have relatives at the front.” As a substitute for mourning attire, in Britain it was suggested that people wear a “purple band on the left arm as a token of the patriotic death of their relatives.” In Germany, the proposal was “a little scarf pin” inscribed with the words, “Proudly I gave a loved one for the Fatherland.” Governments were concerned that the sight of ever growing numbers of women wearing mourning black would have a ruinous effect on home front morale.52 News reports were often censored or were fabricated to underscore that “their” side was winning while the other was losing. Letters and cards sent between home fronts and war fronts were also censored, although censorship on the war front took a while to set in because no government had been prepared for the chaos and deadliness of those first months of fighting.53 In Britain, beginning in 1916, amendments to the “Defence of the Realm Act” made “any expression of opposition to, or criticism of, the war in any art form . . . a criminal offence.”54 In all countries, posters were ubiquitous in their use as a means to market the war. Produced by government agencies,

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as well as commercial enterprises, they proliferated in the nations’ campaigns to galvanize support for the war effort. Their messages and graphic images encouraged enlistment in the armed services or work in the war factories. They evoked hatred of the enemy and love for one’s own country. They urged the public to purchase war bonds, guard against wastefulness, and consume only home-manufactured goods. And they visually underscored the ideals of perseverance, sacrifice, loyalty, active participation, and steadfastness. Even though the images ranged widely, posters were viewed by officials tasked with creating propaganda as informative, eye-catching, persuasive, and crucial in shaping public opinion.55 France and Germany banned press photography at the front, while British photographers were prohibited from taking photographs of British dead56 and were often only able to take “before” and “after” scenes of battles because of the dangers and difficulties associated with getting close to the front.57 Although the public on all sides clamored for truthful visual testimony of the war as it was occurring – “war as it is” or, put another way, “seeing is believing” – photographers had extremely limited access to war fronts.58 Photographs, which had become incredibly popular in the years before the war for their perceived ability to capture “reality,” were no longer viewed as the most reliable visual narrators of the conflict. They did, however, remain popular in another art form, war postcards. Artists and illustrators benefited from this change in public opinion. They were not confined in their art production to “being there” in order to imagine and then create vivid images of the war that the public viewed as believable. Additionally, official war artists, those who were commissioned into the war and traveled with their nation’s military units, as well as soldiers who were artists before they were called to serve, could honestly claim that they were there at the front; they were eyewitnesses to the conflict as it occurred. Only they could capture both the physical reality and affect of the war. This earned them credibility and their art greater authenticity and veracity. In turn, the public embraced their art as reliable and truthful.59 The fact that all art is mediated and shaped by its creators, just as photographers shape the photographs they take and

develop, did not enter into the public’s pursuit of the visual “truth.” Moreover, whether created by photographers, artists, graphic designers, or illustrators, almost all images of the war that were published or displayed were carefully selected and controlled by the authorities. The war, which was awash in mutilated bodies and corpses, was rendered to the public as largely unlethal.60 In every way, from propaganda to enlistment to rationing to censorship, the reach of the state was enormous. Official war painters, graphic designers, and illustrators knew to create mostly positive pictures, and even in their works that depicted the war seriously and seemingly realistically, the messages of steadfastness, love of country, endurance, heroism, loyalty, and sacrifice leapt from the canvases. Religious and patriotic visual allegories proliferated, as did works that emphasized the human drama of war.61 Yet, for a public that could not imagine the unimaginable terror of mechanized warfare, the images and illustrations most appreciated were scenes of the war that persuaded viewers that they were right there at the front, that the image on canvas or paper captured the physical and emotional essence of the war. War art was produced by soldiers and civilians who had no previous artistic experience, artists who were commissioned into the conflict to record the war through images, established artists as well as soldiers with artistic talent who served, and artists on the home front, too old to enlist or medically unfit, but who wanted to help their country in some way. Numbers of soldiers who served in the war documented their experiences through drawings, paintings, and sketches. Some of them felt compelled to abandon conventional art forms in favor of a more viscerally expressive visual language – disjointed, distorted, and fragmented – to capture not only events, but their emotional memories. Artists’ reactions to their ordeals on the battlefield often mirrored the sentiments of the wider populations of all combatant nations. Many artists became quickly traumatized by the war and fervently hoped to return home. Sometimes, they were psychologically harmed; many times, they were physically wounded. Other artists saw the war as a culturally and politically liberating event,

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at least initially, or as a great and daring adventure during which they relished the brotherhood of fellow soldiers. No one who served, though, remained unmarked. Their trauma may have surfaced immediately, as occurred to Max Slevogt, who fled the front only three weeks after he had volunteered to be a war artist for Germany.62 Their trauma emerged more slowly, as in the case of Otto Dix, who recalled that he didn’t think much about the horrendous things he saw and experienced while serving as a machine gunner, but was haunted by nightmares for years after the war ended.63 No matter whether the trauma materialized immediately or emerged belatedly, all who served and volunteered on the frontlines and in the medical facilities bore scars of their experiences. Art supplied the means for governments to persuade and coerce, and for commercial enterprises to visibly display their patriotism and rake in profits. At the same time, art provided a medium for soldiers to record the war, to support or protest or simply survive the war, to bear witness, and to express in pictures what words could not convey. Imagery offered pathways of remembering and self-reflection, as well as communication between war fronts and home fronts hungry for a visual understanding of the conflict that separated them.

The War Postcard Phenomenon Alongside government-issued and commercially produced posters that were omnipresent during the war, postcards too were ubiquitous. Postcards had steadily grown in popularity in the decades preceding the conflict, so much so that by the early 1900s, they had elicited a collecting frenzy. Contemporaries remarked that with so many postcard clubs, postcard magazines, postcard exhibitions, and postcards being collected and mailed, Europe would be drowned under a sea of postcards.64 Only a few years later, they became “. . . the social currency of the Great War; they were the language through which the soldier at the front and his people at home communicated.”65 In today’s parlance, the postcard would be dubbed the “Twitter” of its day, a pervasive and public

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form of social media. The size of the postcard dictated that the message had to be brief, and what the sender wrote on a card could be read by anyone who handled it. To keep recruitment numbers and morale high, governments allowed soldiers and their families to send letters and cards with no postage required throughout the duration of the war. Altogether, more than seven billion picture postcards were mailed cost-free from war fronts and home fronts during the four-year conflict.66 That figure becomes even more astounding when one realizes that it does not include the countless number of postcards that were sent with postage, bought as souvenirs and never mailed, embroidered with silk (which became a thriving cottage industry in France during the war), or embellished in some other fashion and mailed in protective envelopes, postcards that were purchased by collectors, and postcards that were created from non-standard materials, such as tree bark, quilted material, or cut wood.67 (Figure 1.1) If one combines the billions of postcards that were sent with the millions upon millions of letters that were mailed, it becomes indisputable that communication with loved ones was the most important psychological comfort for those who were serving and those who were waiting. Army officials understood this and made every effort to deliver mail to their troops on a daily basis, along with the evening food and drink rations that were brought to the soldiers on the frontlines.68 The comfort wasn’t derived solely from what was being read or being written, which was sometimes quite mundane and invariably understated to both pass the censors and not unduly worry the recipient.69 Comfort was also derived from touching the paper or the card upon which the words were written – holding it closely or for long periods of time, rubbing its surface, fingering its edges – that connected loved ones with one another. Inadvertently smudged by tears, stained with fingerprints, or soiled because of the conditions in the trenches often evoked an even more intimate connection. Because the war was so long and so deadly, written communication between soldier and loved one, even on a postcard, helped to bridge the space between civilians and combatants and provided intricately layered meanings of comfort.

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Figure 1.1  “Greetings from Russia sent by your brother Albert, April 2, 1916” [front] “Happy Birthday!” [back] Card made by a German soldier on the Eastern Front from birch skin. Author’s collection.

Additionally, as a crucial human link in such an exceptional, emotionally heightened time, both the recipient and the writer read and reread, treasured, collected, sometimes displayed or safely tucked away those small cards, which had been infused with feelings and words, for the duration of the war and long afterwards. No longer simply an object – a piece of heavy-stock paper that had been officially or commercially produced – the war altered the card’s materiality.70 Within three days of the war’s declaration, patriotic postcards were available for purchase on most European home fronts. And, soon after, the government in Great Britain issued cards that were widely disseminated to its troops crossing the channel to Belgium; the Germans quickly followed suit. The cards the two governments distributed to their soldiers, however, notably differed.

The British government issued to its soldiers pre-printed cards, officially known as “Form A. 2042,” but which the soldiers nicknamed “whiz bangs” (artillery shells that traveled quickly and made a whizzing sound) or “quick firers” (artillery pieces that could be fired rapidly). (Figure 1.2) The literary historian Paul Fussell observes that the British field card was the “progenitor of all modern forms on which you fill in things or cross out things or check off things . . .” The card begins with “NOTHING is to be written on this side except the date and signature of the sender. Sentences not required may be erased,” meaning they could be crossed out. Then, all underscored, “If anything else is added the postcard will be destroyed.” In terms of conveying how they were faring, soldiers’ choices were limited to “I am quite well,” “I have been admitted into hospital (sick and am going on well or wounded and hope to be discharged

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Figure 1.2  British Form A. 2042, Field Service Card. Author’s collection.

soon),” “I am being sent down to the base,” and “I have received your letter dated/ telegram dated/ parcel dated.” And, last, “I have received no letter from you lately/ for a long time.” Aside from crossing out or circling the preprinted statements, only a signature and date were allowed.71 There was purposefully no provision to transmit news like the amputation of a leg or arm, illness from a gas attack, the loss of one’s friends in a battle, the gnawing longing for loved ones that made it difficult to sleep, or a host of other facts and feelings that soldiers might have wanted to

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convey. Restricted to choosing “hospital” or “base” in terms of location, there was no means by which to transmit to the recipient, other than choosing “I am quite well,” that the sender was inhabiting the treacherous space – the war front – where real “quick firers” mutilated bodies and pulverized lives. Fear, sadness, pain, wound, or illness specificity . . . none of these were allowed on the British field card. Its characteristics of conformity, uniformity, superficiality, and the resulting dehumanization of its senders required little time of the censors, who had hundreds of letters and cards to read through each day. The young British officer and poet Wilfred Owen, who detested the army’s censorship, made an agreement with his mother that if he was advancing to the battle front he would send her a field service postcard with the sentence “I am being sent down to base” struck out twice. He sent just such a card days before he was transferred to the Somme region of France in 1917, where he participated in some of the heaviest fighting of the war.72 Soldiers too tired or busy or emotionally spent to write letters opted to communicate through the standard cards, many of which were also sent immediately following a battle to inform anxious loved ones that they had survived. The postcards took little time to complete and were delivered quickly. Altogether, millions of British field postcards were mailed from the war front, so great was the longing to communicate and the need for reassurance.73 The government-issued German Feldpostkarte, field postcard, differed significantly. (Figure 1.3) On one side of the card, pre-printed lines prompted the writer to give his name, as well as the army corps, division, regiment number, battalion, and company in which he was serving. Also pre-printed on the card were lines for the address of the recipient. The other side of the card was left entirely blank, a space big enough for soldiers to write several sentences. The German field or trench cards were distributed to each military company and unit to ensure easy access for soldiers. Daily, the cards that had been written on were collected in mailbags to be sifted through by unit censors before transporting them to the home front for delivery. Similarly, every day at the same time that evening food rations were distributed, cards and letters from the home front were

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Figure 1.3  German Feldpostkarte or military-issued “field postcard” [back]. Author’s collection.

handed out to the troops. Soldiers wrote brief, sometimes coded, messages on the cards to their families and friends, who were yearning to hear from them. Ever aware of military censorship and reticent to write anything that might worry the recipient, the cards’ contents were largely shaped by these two concerns. On home fronts across Europe, mothers and wives, fathers and grandfathers, children and friends sent postcards to their loved ones serving on war fronts. Most of these masscirculated cards were comprised of the front side taken up entirely with an image, while the back side was used for both message and address. Typically, wartime postcards were commercially produced or officially manufactured, although handmade cards also were sent through the mail. Additionally, governments produced countless propaganda postcards, urging the fighting spirit to encourage their troops and to underscore patriotism and sacrifice to citizens at home, especially as news spread of the appalling loss of life.

Postcards of the First World War are rich sources because they offer evidence of the range of imagery that was popular with the public and was government-approved at different points in the conflict. Because most of the postcards sent from home fronts were purchased, rather than homemade, government officials tasked with “selling the war,” as well as commercial enterprises looking to financially benefit from the postcard craze, paid close attention to which images sold or remained in the display racks. Additionally, the billions of wartime postcards, that were sent and received underscore the insatiable desire to communicate quickly, which was unleashed in a conflict characterized by its deadliness and the distances it created between loved ones. Nonetheless, any attempt to get at the “authentic” war experience of soldiers and civilians through an extensive examination of the contents of wartime postcards would be riddled with generalizations. Millions of people all over the world experienced and were affected by the Great War in myriad ways. To make conclusions through even an

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extensive sampling of postcards would diminish the multifacetedness of the human experience during war. Moreover, the emotions and experiences articulated through the words written on the cards were shaped by multiple factors. Of primary importance, soldiers and civilians were acutely aware that their communications would pass through the hands of censors, whether company officers or government officials. Additionally, the individual writer’s communication was tailored to the addressee. This factor appears most obviously in soldiers’ almost universal reticence to write or even allude to anything that might worry or upset their intended recipient, if he or she was a close family member. They avoided relating the worst excesses of the war and employed euphemisms to gloss over or dull traumatic facts. The size of the card required that the communication had to be succinct. And, last, the writer’s individual perceptions and feelings, societal expectations on war fronts and home fronts, government propaganda, and military culture also shaped the cards’ contents.74

Postcard imagery With these caveats in mind, as well as the fact that there are dozens of publications on postcard imagery of the First World War, a brief survey of picture postcards, so ubiquitous during the war, will suffice. Early postcards tended to be either overwhelmingly nationalistic – underscoring patriotism, God, and country – or lighthearted, echoing the common sentiment of all combatants that the war would be over by Christmas and the “boys” would be home for the holidays. However, the Battle of the Marne in September 1914 and the First Battle of Ypres, which began in mid-October, resulted in horrifically high casualty rates and no end to the war in sight. Those two events began to dissuade individuals who clung to the notion that the war would be brief. Postcards created after the fall of 1914 changed in tone from benign sentimentality to increasing seriousness. Even so, virtually no commercial enterprise and only a very few official artists depicted the true destructiveness of the war.

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Postcard businesses wanted to sell their merchandise and, as previously discussed, imagery was highly controlled. On both sides of the conflict, censors watered down the war’s horrors for civilian consumption. And, while the public claimed it wanted to see the “authentic” war, what it really wanted was the sanitized version that looked authentic, the rendition that had been offered since the war’s onset. Images showing “life in the trenches” were carefully constructed by the artists and illustrators whose works, once approved, were reproduced onto countless cards. In those images, the trenches were clean and healthy-looking soldiers were shown enjoying a good meal or sitting cozily in a group playing cards, smoking, or having a conversation. Or they were hard at work or accomplishing something heroic. There were no piles of bodies, swarms of flies, rats feasting on dead horses, or rotting corpses in mud-filled trenches. Cracks appeared in the image of the war being offered for public consumption as soldiers began taking photographs. Their photos, on which they had sometimes written brief descriptions, exposed the war they inhabited: fields littered with dead bodies, corpses decomposing in trenches, filth and mud and pervasive wretchedness, soldiers proudly posing next to dead enemy soldiers, rubble-filled villages, and the immense destruction caused by mechanized warfare. (Figure 1.4) Despite the authorities’ grip on censorship, many of these photos circulated and some of them were made into postcards by amateurs. Their existence in large numbers underscores the Janus-faced consciousness that developed due to the tightly censored and curated war that professional photographers, official artists, and governments presented to the public and the war that appeared in the soldiers’ photographs.75 Mostly, though, images on postcards exaggerated the foibles and machinations of the enemy, sometimes humorously, often crudely, and always zealously. After all, patriotic jingoism sold. (Figure 1.5) Additionally, images were produced that would engender support for the war effort, visually express longing for the intended recipient, and fuel allegiance to the nation and

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Figure 1.4  “After the Storm.” Photograph by Walter Kleinfeldt, age sixteen, at the Battle of the Somme, 1916. Public domain. Courtesy of Rare Historical Photos.

Figure 1.5  French war postcard satirizing German Kaiser Wilhelm [center] and his allies in Austria [left] and Turkey [right]. Public domain.

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its allies. Images also included young girls or children in national costume, flags and banners, portraits of the country’s political leader and military generals, and artistic interpretations of the “national” soldier. (Figures 1.6–1.8) Photographs, paintings, and illustrations of newly manufactured tanks, guns, war ships, zeppelins, airplanes, seaplanes, and the animals used in the war – especially dogs and horses – were also made into postcards. Sometimes, well-known poems, sayings, slogans such as “buy war bonds,” jokes, or lyrics to popular songs were printed as part of the postcard image, as were emotive slogans that invoked the cause. Religious and holiday cards also sold in large numbers. The Great War was a turning point in the visualization of modern war. Postcards became so popular, both as a form of communication and as a visual quasi-documentation of the war, that some of the smaller lithograph and design

enterprises expanded rapidly, employing hundreds of workers to keep up with the demand. Alongside the postcards that were made by graphic designers, illustrators, and artists, photo-postcards were all the rage during the war. Photographers were hired by commercial outfits or as official photographers to work in the propaganda and press departments. Amateurs also took photographs, which they made into postcards. Professional photographers set up studios around military training camps, snapping thousands of pictures that were then made into postcards. Their images showed individuals proudly posing in their new, pressed uniforms, as well as small or large groups of soldiers, all of them looking healthy, proud, invincible, and certain that their nation’s cause was right. (Figures 1.9–1.10) After the first gas attacks, more and more photographs were reproduced into postcards that showed soldiers, horses,

Figure 1.6  “A Heart’s Bliss” [or Heartfelt Bliss] German war postcard. Author’s collection.

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Figure 1.7  “For Our Brave Soldiers.” German war postcard. Author’s collection.

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Figure 1.8  German patriotic war postcard. Author’s collection.

Figure 1.9  “Xmas Greeting 1916 from the Salonica Army.” Photo war postcard. Author’s collection.

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Figure 1.10  Professional photo war postcard of four soldiers. Public domain.

and dogs outfitted with gas masks, a sight that had been unimaginable before the war began. (Figure 1.11) Even so, they offered a largely sanitized view of the war that belied the numbers of wounded and dead. Postcard images of women as nurses, munitions workers, mail carriers, policewomen, relief volunteers, and mothers “making do” despite the absence of their husbands emphasized the important roles they filled while “the men” were off fighting the war. Women also showed up in pin-up postcards, which were very popular with soldiers. Sometimes, they appeared overtly sexual and almost nude, while other images showed them in suggestive poses, for instance straddling a phallic-looking torpedo or gun in nothing more than a scant piece of lingerie. Numerous sources assert that the most colorful cards of the Great War were embroidered silk postcards, most of which were made in France. What started as a small cottage industry, with local women selling the embroidered cards they had made to soldiers stationed on the Western Front,

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became a big success story. The cards generally fell into three categories: sentimental, embellished with symbolic flowers like forget-me-nots, and inscribed with loving messages; patriotic and bearing slogans like “Might is Right”; and richly embroidered flags of the Allied nations. Silk postcards were more expensive than more typical postcards, and were usually purchased by soldiers as a special gift for the intended recipient or as a souvenir of the war. The fact that many extant embroidered silk postcards, still today, are beautifully preserved tells us that they were treasured objects, cherished and well taken care of. (Figure 1.12) Large numbers of picture postcards were produced when the war ended. Such images included victory marches, the leaders of the Allied nations signing the Armistice, memorials and plaques, crosses with verses and of cemeteries, returning soldiers neatly bandaged and looking relieved, joyous reunions, angels, artistic renderings of peace, and the occasional “resistance” photo-postcard. (Figure 1.13)

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Figure 1.11  “Two German soldiers and a mule wearing gas masks.” Photograph taken by Walter Kleinfeldt, age sixteen, at the Battle of the Somme, 1916. Public domain. Courtesy of Rare Historical Photos.

Figure 1.12  “Souvenir of Belgium.” World War One embroidered silk postcard. Author’s collection.

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Figure 1.13  German soldier standing next to large artillery shell on which he has written, “I did not want this war, remain neutral,” and on the two smaller shells, “Me neither.” Public domain.

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The other genre that appeared at the conclusion of the war was imagery of the “normal” or “pretty” things in life. From beautiful, untarnished landscapes or flower displays to children playing and women cooking dinner, it was obvious that the push was on to normalize life as quickly as possible. Nothing, though, would be the same after the war. Interestingly, when the war ended, the postcard craze also ended. Far fewer cards commemorating the conclusion of hostilities, memorializing the dead, or normalizing life after the war were purchased compared to the billions of postcards that had flown off the display racks during the war. As soldiers returned or didn’t, the fervent need to communicate quickly, often, cheaply, and over long distances diminished. Too many dead, too many wounded, countless missing or unidentifiable deepened the grief in the postwar years. No postcard image could counter such pain.76 Within the framework of war art, including postcards, it is possible to humanize and personalize such a broad subject by examining soldiers’ self-made postcards, drawings, sketches, and paintings created during and after the war. While soldiers served in different locations and had wideranging exposures and encounters, their art reveals that many, if not most, of them experienced the conflict in similar

ways. They were shocked and terrified by the bloodbath, longed for the conflict to end, afraid they would be forgotten on the home front or abandoned on the war front. They were haunted by what they saw and did, hoped to return home unharmed, and searched for meaning in their own suffering and in the suffering of their comrades. Many of these soldierartists used their artistic skills to protest the ongoing war or, in the postwar years, to remind a recalcitrant public of the human suffering wrought by war. As historian Otto Friedrich reminds us, “Art never stops war . . . The only thing that stops war is defeat . . . But, if art does not stop wars, it may yet convince the survivors that military victory or military defeat need not be our basic standards.”77 The primary subject of this book, a young German artist who was drafted into the war, created hand-painted images on the military-issued blank postcards, Feldpostkarten, he and his fellow soldiers received. On some ninety 4" x 6" cards addressed to his sweetheart waiting for him in Dresden, Otto Schubert painted scenes of his service on the Western Front. Before we turn our attention to him, it is important to offer some context. To do so, we will briefly examine German artists in the Great War, of which he was one of many.

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Chapter

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Artists’ Initial Reactions to the Great War

age. Still other artists asserted that art should serve only patriotic and nationalistic purposes during the war; artists should abandon their pre-war modernist experiments, their theoretical arguments, and their resistance to the prevailing social and conservative cultural mores that characterized Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany.1 Proponents of the war included such cultural luminaries as the painter and printmaker Max Liebermann, who was too old to serve, as well as the writers and poets Gerhart Hauptmann, Friedrich Gundolf, and Richard Dehmel. The German novelist and essayist Thomas Mann continued to defend the German military effort right up to Germany’s surrender in 1918, despite the war’s documented atrocities and a medical discharge that kept him safely out of harm’s way. As Max Slevogt noted soon after war was declared, “Above all of the fear rises a large, proud momentum of unity that – should we survive – must also find its expression in art.”2 We will return to Slevogt shortly. Paralleling the

With the outbreak of war in the first week of August 1914, a wave of enthusiasm swept through Germany, not only among the general public but also in artistic and intellectual circles. Many artists imagined that the war would end quickly, with Germany towering victoriously over its enemies. They also hoped that the conflict would serve to topple the oftenreactionary attitudes and restrictions of the state-run art associations, against which they had chafed for some time. There were artists who fervently believed that the war was a spiritual crusade, which would save German culture from Western crassness and materialism. Other artists argued that the war would sweep out the “old” and usher in the “new,” cleanse and purify “old” Europe of its bankrupt beliefs and, with artists leading the way, enter into a new spiritual

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Figure 2.1  Max Liebermann. “Now we want to thrash them!” Kriegszeit. 7 September 1914. Public domain. Courtesy of University of Heidelberg.

Figure 2.2  Ernst Barlach. “The Holy War.” Kriegszeit. 16 December 1914. Public domain. Courtesy of University of Heidelberg.

general euphoria, flag-waving, and calls for unity that characterized the first weeks of the war, numbers of German artists dropped their oppositional stances and volunteered their services, either as soldiers or war artists. On August 31, 1914, the Paul Cassirer Verlag began publishing Kriegszeit: Künstlerflugblätter (Wartime: Artist Leaflets), a four-page broadsheet that appeared once a week and, by mid-1915, every ten days.3 Comprised of artistic responses to the war, the featured artists were well known. Most were represented by the art dealer and publisher Paul

Cassirer, and were affiliated with the progressive exhibiting group, the Berlin Secession. Despite some of the artists’ antiestablishment, modernist credentials, when war broke out, the initial contributors to Kriegszeit unabashedly supported their nation. Whether it was Max Liebermann’s “Jetzt wollen wir sie dreschen!” (Now we want to thrash them!), which was featured on the cover of the second issue of Kriegzeit,4 (Figure 2.1) or Ernst Barlach’s “Der heilige Krieg” (The Holy War), which depicted a larger-than-life warrior surging forward ready for battle,5 (Figure 2.2) the art produced for the

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periodical in the first months of the war was characterized by unbridled nationalism and patriotism.6 The images largely held to the broad categories of victory, heroism, revulsion of the enemy, which typically translated into demeaning caricatures of Germany’s opponents, and worship of German soldiers, who were depicted as undaunted and unharmed. The war itself was represented in veiled, rather than realistic, portrayals. Some exceptions to such fervor appeared from the outset of the conflict and noticeably increased as the reality of mechanized warfare sank in and the number of injured and dead multiplied. Shock, fear, dread, and grief soon replaced war fever. Only a few months after the onset of the war, a young German poet who had volunteered for military service in the war’s first days wrote from the battlefield, “My heart is so large as Germany and France together, pierced by all projectiles in the world.”7 The author, Wilhelm Klemm, was not the only one who had become emotionally overwhelmed by the horrors of the war so soon after it had begun. Theo von Doesburg, a Dutch artist, also became deeply disenchanted. He wrote, “I placed a lot of trust in man’s higher being and in the spiritual. And then I was confronted by raw reality. Not art, not love, not wisdom, just bombs, bombs, bombs.”8 To be sure, many German intellectuals and artists shared the first flurry of war hysteria with their fellow countrymen. For some artists, however, such flag-waving quickly gave way to a sudden recognition of the bitter realities of war, the inglorious notion of heroic sacrifice, the restrictions on civil liberties, the censorship stringently enforced by the German government, and the growing deprivation and hunger on the German home front as both government ineptitude and the ever-tightening British blockade proved to be murderously effective. Mostly, though, their wartime disillusionment came from the appallingly high, irreplaceable loss of life.9 In part a reaction to Impressionism, to traditional forms of academic art, to art academies’ resistance to change, and to deeply felt anxieties evoked by the enormous changes in society by the turn of the century, the art movement dubbed Expressionism emerged in Germany in the early 1900s. Expressionist artists believed that art should come from within, from the emotional life of the artist and subject, rather

than from the external world. Often employing bold colors and depicting their subjects in exaggerated lines and brushstrokes, Expressionists wanted to imbue their art with authenticity and raw emotions instead of simply depicting the subject matter as it appeared. They valued emotional depiction over naturalistic representation, and sacrificed conventional form to inner expression. Modernity and its social consequences, urbanization, technology, loss of spirituality, alienation – all of these issues concerned Expressionists, who felt compelled to paint the inner life of their subjects.10 While the general term “expressionism” was used to describe various styles that had surfaced by the early years of the twentieth century, and Expressionist art had no national boundaries, it was particularly in Germany – where industrialization, modernization, mass production, mechanization, and technological innovation had developed rapidly and intensively – that Expressionism, both the style and the term, took hold in art, poetry, literature, dance, and music.11 Although numbers of German artists embraced the tenets of Expressionism, produced works that were intensely emotional and subjective, and were therefore called Expressionists, only a few German Expressionist groups were actually established. The best known of these were the groundbreaking Die Brücke (The Bridge), formed in Dresden in 1905, whose four original members wanted their art to provide a bridge to the future, and the more loosely convened Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), organized in 1911, whose primary touchstone was that color and form carry spiritual values.12 Because a substantial number of the prewar avant-garde, including German Expressionists, were young, they were among the first to be drafted or to volunteer for military service in 1914. Far too many were severely traumatized, wounded, or killed in the Great War.

The Great War’s Toll on German Artists August Macke, one of the founding members of Der Blaue Reiter and viewed by his peers as an exceptional talent,

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greeted the declaration of war with enthusiasm. Yet, only a few days later, he painted “Farewell,” a poignant reminder of the sorrowful leave-taking occurring all over Europe. He was drafted and, within days, his unit was sent to France. He wrote to his wife on September 9, 1914, “It is all so ghastly that I don’t want to tell you about it. Our only thought is for peace . . . war involves an unspeakable sadness.” Two days later, he wrote her again, “The people in Germany, drunk with ideas of victory, don’t suspect how terrible war is.” Macke was killed on September 26, 1914, the first of the Expressionists to die in the war. He was twenty-seven years old.13 Franz Marc, also a founding member of Der Blaue Reiter and regarded as one of the most important German Expressionists, volunteered for cavalry service in September 1914. He viewed the war as a force of regeneration and renewal that would lead to a new spiritual age. The loss of his good friend prompted Marc to question his beliefs. “With his [Macke’s] death a hand has been severed from the arm of the people; an eye blinded. How many terrible mutilations must our future culture suffer in this gruesome war,” Marc deplored in his tribute to Macke.14 As the fighting continued, he alternated between buoyancy, numbness, and despondency. In a letter to his wife, Maria, he despaired, “It is frightful to think about it, and all of this for nothing, because of a misunderstanding, because of the lack of ability to make oneself humanly comprehensible to the next man! And this in Europe!”15 The day before his death, he wrote, “[F]or days I have seen nothing but the most terrible things that can be painted by the human mind.”16 Franz Marc was killed by a shell explosion near Braquis in the vicinity of Verdun on March 4, 1916.17 The painter Hermann Stenner was killed on December 5, 1914, on the Eastern Front at the age of twenty-three.18 Grievously, four sons in the Stenner family died in the war. Albert Weisgerber wrote on New Year’s Day 1915, “It was horrifying, how my comrades were falling close by with appalling wounds. I couldn’t look at anyone on the first day. So I always looked forwards and never back.” Weisgerber was killed in the Second Battle of Ypres on May 10, 1915.19 Upon hearing the news of Weisgerber’s death, the artist

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Hans Fuglsang, who would die in 1917 fighting in France, declared, “The war has just taken one of the best German painters.” Max Beckmann, who volunteered as a medical orderly, lamented, “A.W. [Albert Weisberger] killed on the Western Front – I am devastated.”20 Towards the end of 1914, the painter Wilhelm Morgner wrote, “I don’t think that I will get shot. I have literally stood in a hail of bullets and to this day I don’t know how I didn’t get hit . . .”21 A little more than a year later, on January 6, 1916, he wrote, “It makes you sick. I can’t stomach this whole bogus affair. I’ve been a soldier now for two and a half years. Damn it! But now it doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter to me whether I get anywhere in the army or not. I just want to stay alive.” Morgner was killed near Langemark in Western Flanders on August 16, 1917.22 Rudolf Schlichter, who had been drafted into military service, went on a hunger strike that resulted in his transfer to a hospital in his hometown.23 Conrad Felixmüller served as a medical orderly, and produced “Soldat im Irrenhaus” (Soldier in a Lunatic Asylum) in 1918 at the end of the war. Already in November of 1914, with the war only three months old, Waldemar Rösler wrote, “How long will it go on? It’s got to end soon, this massive slaughter and the heavy losses!” Rösler committed suicide on December 14, 1916.24 Austrian Expressionist Oskar Kokoschka was severely wounded – a bayonet to the chest and a bullet to the head – on the Ukrainian Front in 1915. By 1916, he had recovered enough to be redeployed, this time to the Isonzo Front, where he was wounded yet again.25 The German artist, theater choreographer, and sculptor Oskar Schlemmer was injured in the fall of 1914. After his recovery, he wrote, “Now released from the hospital, ‘fit for service,’ although I feel shattered. I’m not the same man who volunteered in August.” Schlemmer suffered a minor arm injury after he was deployed to the Eastern Front in 1915, and thereafter was moved to a position in Colmar with the military cartography unit until the end of the war.26 Gert Wollheim , also a German artist, was badly wounded in the summer of 1917. Heinrich Nauen was drafted into the army, and was severely debilitated by a gas attack. Because his recovery was very slow, the German Army eventually

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assigned him to be an “official war artist,” a position that did not shield him from further war trauma.27 One of the leading Expressionists, Max Pechstein, was visiting the Palau Islands, which were German colonial possessions, when war broke out. He and his wife were imprisoned by the Japanese, war opponents of Germany, but were released in exchange for their oaths of neutrality. They finally made their way back to Germany by the circuitous route of Manilla, San Francisco, and New York. Almost immediately following their return, Pechstein was drafted to serve in the army and deployed to the Western Front. Only two months into his assignment, his physical and psychological reserves were depleted. “I feel half-dead from mental and physical pain,” he wrote on December 7, 1915. Pechstein’s unit was ordered to the Somme, where altogether more than one million men were wounded or killed during the largest battle on the Western Front. He suffered a nervous breakdown and was released from service in 1917.28 The eight etchings that comprise Pechstein’s Sommeschlacht (Somme battle) reveal his traumatic experiences during the Battle of the Somme.29 The war’s toll on artists continued to rise. Franz Nölken was killed on November 4, 1918, seven days before the armistice was signed.30 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, a founding member of Die Brücke, suffered a mental breakdown ten months after volunteering as an artillery driver to avoid being drafted to serve at the front. Although Kirchner was not involved in actual combat, the rigidity, oppressiveness, and loss of individuality in the military was enough to push him into a deep depression.31 Max Ernst was drafted into the German military and served on both the Western and Eastern Fronts. He wasn’t in favor of the war to begin with, an opinion that would become unshakeable as his service continued. He commented, “Max had to join the army. Field artillery. For months in the barracks in Cologne-Niehl, then into this shit. For four years. ‘We want to defeat France, and die as courageous he-he-he-heroes.’”32 The war had such a devastating effect on him that he later described his military service as, “On the first of August 1914 M[ax].E[rnst]. died. He was resurrected on the eleventh of November 1918.”33 And, Ludwig Meidner’s experiences, while serving in the German military as an interpreter for a prisoner-of-war

camp for fifteen months, turned him into an avowed pacifist. Meidner’s extraordinary prewar images, which seemed to foretell the ghastliness of twentieth-century conflict, had been realized in the Great War.34

Artistic Opposition Emerges Already forty-six years old at the onset of hostilities, Max Slevogt, one of Germany’s finest Impressionist artists, volunteered to serve his country as an official war artist. Initially, he felt sure that all Germans would come together to support their nation’s efforts and that art could serve to encourage and express that unity. Horrified by what he saw and experienced when he began his tour of duty – the deafening roar and relentlessness of the artillery, the destruction of homes and landscapes, and the countless number of dead and badly wounded soldiers – Slevogt wrote and drew sketches almost daily in a diary he carried with him to bear witness to the conflagration. On November 2, 1914, he scribbled, “Allerseelen, ich fliehe” (All Souls’ Day, I flee). Three weeks after entering the war, Slevogt, emotionally shattered, abruptly departed.35 For many months thereafter, he found it difficult to draw or paint. In 1915, Slevogt produced “Kunst und Künstler im Kriege” (Art and Artists in the War), which bitterly conveyed his belief that artists were being both utilized as propaganda puppets and censored by the military. He also created “Schlachtfeld” (Battlefield), based on one of his frontline drawings that somberly depicted the dead left behind on a ravaged field of war.36 Increasingly committed to employing his art to inveigh against the inhumanity of the conflict, in 1916 Slevogt contributed the frontispiece and several lithographs to the anti-war periodical, Der Bildermann, published by Paul Cassirer, who had earlier in the war published the nationalistic art broadsheet Kriegzeit. In the same year Slevogt created “Heldengrab” (Hero’s Grave). The stark lithograph captures the disjuncture between the rhetoric of heroism and sacrifice, which would surely bring the soldier his nation’s gratitude and a hero’s burial site, and the reality of a hurriedly marked grave in the middle

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Figure 2.3  Max Slevogt. “Hero’s Grave.” 1916. Courtesy of Gus and Sharon Kopriva Collection.

of nowhere. The grave is visited not by grateful citizens or saddened family members, but by wild dogs attempting to dig up the hero’s corpse. (Figure 2.3) In early 1917, Slevogt produced twenty-one haunting lithographs, also based upon his warfront sketches, which were published in a portfolio entitled Gesichte (Visions). These works, he noted, “are visions of an environment turned on its head.”37 In the foreword to Ein Kriegstagebuch, his war diary, published in 1917, Slevogt wrote that his last decisive memory of the front as he fled was of “a world that appears to have been ravished by blind destruction.”38 George Grosz was deeply affected by the war, although he never participated in any fighting. Rather than waiting to be conscripted, he volunteered in November 1914 in the hope that he would have some control over his deployment. He developed a high fever on his way to the front and

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underwent surgery for frontal sinusitis; six months later, he was discharged from military service as medically unfit for service.39 As he made his way to his assigned unit, Grosz was horrified by what he saw and drew sketches of battlefields strewn with limbs and bodies. Moreover, the institute where he had been studying art in Berlin had been partially converted to a military hospital, where he also saw wounded and dying soldiers.40 Grosz was re-conscripted on January 4, 1917, but on the first night of his reenlistment, he suffered a psychotic episode. After a series of other incidents, he was transferred from a military hospital to a mental asylum before being officially released from duty on April 27, 1917.41 Repulsed by the unthinking nationalism, warmongering, and oppressive censorship that characterized wartime Germany, and enamored for many years with American culture, Grosz anglicized his first name from Georg to

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George and internationalized his last name from Gross to Grosz in 1916 as a personal protest against nationalism.42 He wasn’t the only one who attempted to distance himself from his German roots. Fellow artist Helmut Herzfelde was so disgusted by the overwrought nationalism and anti-British propaganda enveloping Germany that he anglicized his name to John Heartfield. He was inducted for active service into the German army in 1915, and in 1916 pretended to have a nervous breakdown to obtain a release from military service. He returned to Berlin, where he began developing a new artistic medium, photomontage, a unique method of reusing and reshaping photographs, juxtaposing text and image fragments from mass newspapers and magazines, to create forceful political and social statements. He and his brother, Wieland Herzfelde, established the left-wing Malik Verlag, which published Grosz’s work alongside other artists’ and writers’ social commentary, as well as many of Heartfield’s photomontages. On the tenth anniversary of World War One, as contentious debates continued about how the nation should commemorate the war and memorialize its dead, Heartfield created “Nach Zehn Jahren: Väter und Söhne” (After Ten Years: Fathers and Sons). In the black-and-white photomontage, skeletons stand in a line as an army general, chest covered in medals, imperviously walks by. Underneath the skeletons’ feet are dozens upon dozens of boys and young men dressed in military uniforms, guns slung over their shoulders, obediently making their way towards the general. Throughout the 1920s, Heartfield created damning photomontages, reproduced in left-wing periodicals and on posters, book covers, and leaflets, that addressed the war mythologizing that had emerged so strongly in postwar Germany, the violent political climate, and the power of industrialists who had profited from the war and were beginning to monetarily support the emerging Nazi Party. By then, the impact of his images was so great that they transformed photomontage into a powerful form of political protest and mass communication. In the later 1920s and the 1930s, Heartfield risked his life to create and distribute dozens of scathing photomontages that warned of the dangers of war, of fascism, of the Nazis,

and of Hitler in particular. His anti-Nazi artistic crusade culminated in an exhibition in London in 1939 at the Arcade Gallery; the exhibit was named One Man’s War Against Hitler. Heartfield had been forced to flee Germany long before then. Already in April 1933, only three months after Hitler was appointed Chancellor, he jumped from his apartment balcony and hid in a trash bin when the SS broke into his apartment. He then walked for days until he reached Czechoslovakia, where he lived for several years. Never safe from the Nazi officials he had protested and ridiculed, Heartfield was included on the Gestapo’s most-wanted list. He was forced to flee again in 1938 as Hitler’s invasion of Czechoslovakia seemed imminent. He found temporary refuge in London, where his anti-Hitler photomontage exhibit was on display, only to be interned as an “enemy alien” in the fall of 1939 when the Second World War began.43 George Grosz, who also returned to Berlin after receiving a “permanently unfit for active service” discharge, began to artistically and politically collaborate with John Heartfield and his brother. Like them, he produced works rife with cynicism to protest the ongoing war and the military’s indifference to the plight of its soldiers. “Kriegsverwendungsfähig” (Fit for Active Service), a 1916/1917 ink drawing, portrays a physician examining a skeleton in front of several seated, obviously unconcerned military officials. The physician pronounces the skeleton “fit for service.” Grosz continued to employ his art as a fierce political weapon in the 1920s. Much of his artistic energy in the postwar years was spent vilifying army generals, faceless bureaucrats, smug industrialists, and war profiteers and their wives. All of them, he felt, had shamelessly benefitted from the war and cared not one iota for the human calamities – injured or blinded former soldiers, traumatized war veterans, impoverished workers – that littered the landscape of Germany. Varying his art form from painting to ink drawings and caricatures, Grosz aimed his talent and fury at a variety of targets: rampant militarism;44 greedy industrialists, corpulent businessmen45 and government bureaucrats;46 the corruption and avarice of German political and business leaders, especially the president of the new

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German republic, General Paul von Hindenburg;47 and a public willfully ignoring the plight and destitution of the nation’s veterans.48 There were countless former soldiers in postwar Germany just like the ones Grosz drew. Krieg (War), a portfolio of seven lithographs that Grosz produced for the tenth anniversary of the war, includes “General mit blutigen Händen” (General with Bloody Hands), a stark image of a general, his chest covered in medals, whose uniform and two large hands are dripping with blood.49 As one of his last contributions to the German art scene before he departed his home country, Grosz created “Der Held” (The Hero) in 1933. A war veteran sits on a sidewalk, teeth rotting, face downcast and scarred, legs amputated. He holds a small bouquet of flowers in his hands that he hopes to sell to passersby as a way to earn a little money.50 While increasing numbers of uniformed Nazi “Brown Shirts” marched and rabble-roused in cities across Germany, and extolled the virtues of violence, Grosz’s war amputee had been rejected outright. Vehemently antiNazi, Grosz emigrated to the United States on January 12, 1933, eighteen days before Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany.51 Wilhelm Schnarrenberger was drafted into the war in 1916, soon after his first solo art exhibition. One of the works included in the exhibit was “Sturm auf eine Stadt” (Assault on a City), one in a series Schnarrenberger made in 1915 that starkly illustrates the devastation wrought on a city and its inhabitants by aerial warfare. Never before had war come from the heavens. In the linocut, a zeppelin hovers overhead while explosives land on rooftops, fires consume buildings, and people attempt to flee. Schnarrenberger was appalled by the German military’s use of “zeppelin raids” against England, which began in January 1915. When he returned to Germany from the war front in 1918, he found his homeland in chaos – the Kaiser had abdicated; fierce political fighting had turned violent in the streets; and people who were broken from years of war, hunger, and turmoil were turning against one another. The war had solved nothing. His “Reisende Stadt I”and “Reisende Stadt II” (Rising City I and II) of late 1918 depict scenes in which it appears that the war has followed him home.52 (Figures 2.4–2.5)

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Figure 2.4  Wilhelm Schnarrenberger. “Rising City I.” 1918. Courtesy of Gus and Sharon Kopriva Collection.

Other voices of artistic opposition also emerged. Max Beckmann volunteered as a medical orderly so that he would not be responsible for any killing. First serving in East Prussia and then later on the Western Front, Beckmann’s close experiences with the intense suffering of the wounded and dying haunted him.53 On October 3, 1914, he wrote, “At this moment in time, my will to live is stronger than ever before; nevertheless I have experienced terrible things and have myself died several times over with the others.”54 In the November 4, 1914 issue of Kriegzeit, Beckmann eulogized his brother-in-law, Martin Tube, who

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Figure 2.5  Wilhelm Schnarrenberger. “Rising City II.” 1918. Courtesy of Gus and Sharon Kopriva Collection.

had sustained a serious head wound on the Eastern Front and died a short time later. Beckmann’s “Andenken an einen gefallenen Freund” (In Memory of a Fallen Friend)55 compassionately renders the thoughtful, pensive countenance of Tube, head wrapped in bandages, who had formerly believed, like Beckmann, that the war would “really not be so bad.”56 (Figure 2.6) The artist’s lithograph of his close friend countered the depictions of heroism that typically filled the issues of the nationalist Kriegzeit. Tube’s death and the mounting months of working as a medic enraged Beckmann and infused his art. Sketches of

Figure 2.6  Max Beckmann. “In Memory of a Fallen Friend.” Kriegzeit. 4 November 1914. Public domain. Courtesy of University of Heidelberg.

crippled and severely wounded bodies, as well as etchings of corpses in agonized poses and soldiers fleeing gas attacks, the first of which Beckmann witnessed at Ypres, multiplied after he was sent to work in a field hospital in Flanders.57 In April 1915, he wrote, “Down in the hospital were many wounded the last days. One had just been brought in and was dying, with a huge head bandage that was already darkened by blood, although it had been renewed half an hour ago. A young, very fine face. Horrible, as around the left eye, the face suddenly became transparent, like a broken porcelain pot.”58 Just two months later, in June, Beckmann suffered a

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severe mental breakdown. He wistfully commented, “I wish the war was over and I could paint again.”59 But, Beckmann’s recovery was slow. “Every day is a battle for me,” he wrote in a letter that fall. “A battle with myself and with the bad dreams that buzz around my head like mosquitoes. Singing: We’ll be back again, we’ll be back again.”60 Ernst Barlach contributed altogether eleven prints to Kriegzeit. At first an avid supporter of the war, by 1915 he had become increasingly disillusioned. His initial belief in the righteousness of Germany’s war effort, as illustrated in his December 1914 submission, “Der heilige Krieg” (The Holy War), had evaporated. His view that a new artistic age would emerge from the rubble of war had vanished. His contribution to Kriegzeit, “Das Massengrab” (The Mass Grave), was not accepted for publication on the grounds that it had been pressed onto a single page and, therefore, could not be reproduced. Barlach suspected, however, that it was his bleak subject matter and depiction that had prompted the rejection. Then, on December 7, 1915, at the age of forty-five, Barlach was drafted and sent to Sonderburg, close to the Danish border, as a reservist. The garrison, he wrote, was hell for him and the war horrified him. Discharged three months later due to a heart ailment, he went home a staunch opponent of the war. It was a change of heart that the woodcuts, sculptures, and war memorials he created for the remainder of his life embodied.61 Otto Schubert, the primary subject of this book, was in the cohort of German soldier-artists who fought in, painted, sketched, and drew the Great War. After the conflict ended, he became close colleagues with several artists who had also served in the military. As we will uncover in the next chapter, Schubert’s wartime art, much like his associates, chronicled his increasing despondency. Moreover, his artistic development and rising success in the postwar years closely mirrored of his associates. Yet, in two fundamental ways, Schubert veered from the paths his soldier-artist friends had chosen. The last issue of Kriegzeit, the art broadsheet with which this chapter began, appeared at the end of March 1916. During its final year of publication, the periodical had

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toned down its nationalistic fervor and had included images that far more realistically conveyed the realities of the war. Nonetheless, the artistic pamphlet was replaced in April of the same year by Der Bildermann (The Picture Man), also published by Paul Cassirer.62 The new periodical stated that it aimed to fulfill the longings of people who, despite all of the present difficulties and worries, wanted beauty again. And so, alongside war-related images, Der Bildermann would offer illustrated poetry and folksongs with a view to the past and to the beautiful future.63 Despite that initial statement of purpose, many of the images contained in the new periodical reflected the growing disillusionment and war weariness that had become palpable during the last two years of the war. Cassirer himself had experienced a change of heart. Initially when the war began, he volunteered to serve, although he was forty-three years old. Terribly shaken by his experiences, he returned to Berlin in 1916 and became an adamant opponent of the war, so much so that he was briefly arrested. Upon his release, he left Germany for Switzerland.64 All artists who experienced the war grappled with the challenge of giving visual expression to sights and sounds and events for which no one had been prepared, for which words were often inadequate and traditional art forms initially seemed unsuitable. Some artists searched for a new artistic language with which to chronicle the ongoing trauma that shaped and shadowed every person who was experiencing the Great War, whether on the home front or war front. Their pursuits sometimes led them to new methods, new forms, and new uses of color. Or, their searches led them to a viscerally expressive language comprised of disjunction and fragmentation; or, to an abandonment of experimentations in order to dig back to far older visual languages, for example, the age-old black-and-white woodcut. Its starkness spoke volumes in such bleak times. Other artists re-engaged with classical techniques and traditions in their ongoing efforts to capture and convey their war experiences. The German artist Heinrich Nauen asserted that art would be the only pathway forward from the spiritual wreckage wrought by the war when he wrote,

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“What the war gave every one of us is the disavowal of all the values we hold dear. And the only thing that can save us from this dilemma is to rediscover the path to the spiritual, to something that is greater than the moment – and that is art.”65 Several of the artists discussed in this essay – Max Slevogt and Ernst Barlach, to name but two – produced angry, honest, and heartbreaking works for Der Bildermann, for other publications, and for themselves. They made art that depicted the terrible, tragic things that human beings do to one another in the context of war and the consequences of war on human beings. They created art in order to try to understand how they and humanity had been forever changed in those years.

The War Goes On and On and On By the autumn of 1916, German casualties totaled 3,500,000; one million of those casualties were dead.66 Yet, it was clear to everyone that the war would not end anytime soon. Often viewed as the year when the armies of Britain, France, and Germany were bled to death, two of the longest, bloodiest battles of World War One – the Battle of Verdun and the Battle of the Somme – took place in 1916. Food riots in Austria-Hungary and Germany exposed governmental failures to foresee that either the war might drag on for a very long time or that their opponents might erect a sea blockade, and to plan for and distribute adequate food supplies to their home fronts. Already in the autumn of 1915, the first food riots in Germany, dubbed the Butter Riots, occurred, led by women who could not feed their families. Despite governmental price controls, prices for bread and potatoes rose 65 percent. Food ration cards, introduced in 1916, didn’t help the situation. Women waited for hours in queues in the hopes of procuring food for their families, only to be told that the daily ration supply had been depleted.67 By mid-1916, the rampant malnutrition on the German home front was largely

due to the ever-tightening blockade of Germany that the British had initiated soon after the conflict began and that Britain’s allies, particularly the United States, worked hard to make foolproof. Since Germany had relied upon a large import and export trade in the years preceding the war, the blockade, especially of foods and medicines, engendered hatred towards the British and became deadlier for Germans as caloric intake decreased to an average of 1,000 calories per day.68 In other ways, too, it was clear that 1916 would not be the year the war ended. Romania declared war on AustriaHungary on August 27, 1916, and Italy, which had already declared war on Austria-Hungary in 1915, officially declared war on Austria-Hungary’s ally, Germany, on August 28, 1916. Midway through 1916, two years into the war, the British government introduced universal conscription. Under the Hindenburg Program, inaugurated in August 1916, German officials made the decision to double industrial production to increase munitions.69 In other words, Germany was being organized for a total war economy. At the same time, the German army was experiencing large losses on both the Western and Eastern Fronts. Men were taken out of agricultural production and put into the army and in the munitions industry, which resulted in worsening food shortages. As the death toll mounted and more soldiers were needed on the frontlines, increasing numbers of women were placed in jobs vacated by men, especially in the armaments industry.70 Additionally, a very wet autumn in 1916 caused so many potatoes to rot that the German harvest was cut in half from the previous year. An exceedingly cold winter created a coal shortage. And, the naval blockade imposed by Britain had succeeded in effectively cutting all imports to Germany. The combination of these factors caused such terrible deprivation on the home front that the winter of 1916 was termed “the turnip winter.” Soon, the hunger protests and strikes grew and took on alarming political dimensions, so much so that officials viewed them as threatening the nation’s war effort.71 The worsening situation on the German home front, the catastrophic loss of life in the German army, and the conflict that continued seemingly without end led to ever

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Figure 2.7  Ernst Barlach. “Grant Us Peace!” Der Bildermann. 20 December 1916. Public domain. Courtesy of University of Heidelberg.

more restrictive governmental censorship and suppression to silence the growing voices of opposition to the war. It is, therefore, unsurprising that Der Bildermann, which suffered from a worsening war economy, severe paper and ink shortages, declining subscriptions, and censorship, ceased publication in December 1916.72 The cover of the last issue featured an image by Ernst Barlach, “Grant Us Peace!” (Figure 2.7) The war would continue for two more years. While some German artists persisted in depicting the calamitous war, as well as the deprivation and grief blanketing the home front, there were fewer and fewer places where they could exhibit their works. At the same time, censorship

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often prohibited their publication. Additionally, obtaining art supplies, paper, and canvas became increasingly difficult as the war went on. And, more and more artists were drafted to serve in a war that hardly any of them still supported. In the months following the closure of Der Bildermann, the German High Command announced that it would return to its earlier policy of unrestricted submarine warfare in warzone waters. The policy reversal was a determined effort to break the British blockade and achieve a victorious end to the conflict. However, it was a decision rife with risk since it would likely provoke the United States into officially entering the war.

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After convincing the Kaiser of the soundness of the submarine policy, the German High Command gambled. To Germany’s east, the Russian Empire collapsed under the weight of the war. As extreme privation and government dissatisfaction mounted, the czar left his throne to a temporary government, which continued the empire’s participation in the conflict. Soon, though, revolution ensued on the home front and Russia pulled out of the world war. In early April, President Wilson called a special joint session of Congress. He was angered by the brazenness of Germany’s submarine warfare and the number of American merchant ships that had already been sunk. On April 6, 1917, the United States officially declared war on Germany. The Great War would continue relentlessly for another deadly nineteen months. But, with the eventual influx of some two million American soldiers, the almost three-year war of attrition would move decidedly in favor of the Allied combatants. The German military suffered more than 300,000 casualties, about one-fifth of its available troops, just during the Ludendorff Offensive between March 21 and April 4, 1918. In the month of April 1918, alone, the German army lost more than 120,000 of its soldiers. The war consumed lives at a staggering rate in its last year. By the time the Armistice was signed on November 11, 1918, almost two million Germans serving in the military were dead; more than four million were wounded, missing, or unidentified.73 Thousands of civilians had died on the German home front from the deadly consequences of malnutrition.74 Appallingly, despite the Armistice, the blockade was sustained for an additional seven months. Many more Germans died from starvation and hunger-related diseases as the victorious Allies debated the stipulations of the treaty.

Confronting, Remembering, Memorializing, and Commemorating the Great War As the war ended, several artists turned to religious themes, particularly the Passion of Christ and the martyrdom of St.

Sebastian, in an attempt to find spiritual anchoring in an unanchored world. Otto Dix, Karl Albiker, and Otto Schubert all created works on St. Sebastian. Otto Lange produced a series of hand-colored woodcuts on the suffering of Christ. Karl Schmidt-Rottluff’s “Ist euch nicht Kristus erschienen” (Has not Christ appeared to you), one of nine black-and-white woodcuts in his Kristus portfolio of 1918, captures the broken, suffering face of Christ. One of his eyes is closed in pain, the other stares knowingly, all-seeing, at the viewer. Much like a crown of thorns, the year 1918 is branded upon his forehead signifying the end of the ruinous war and the possibility of a new and more peaceful world. Rays of grace and holiness surround his head. Despair and hope. Schmidt-Rottluff’s Christ implores the viewer to turn away from the terrible savagery mankind has committed and to return to Christ’s love.75 Memories of working as a medic among grotesquely wounded soldiers in temporary field hospitals overflowing with amputated limbs tormented Max Beckmann for years after his breakdown had led to his military discharge. In 1919, amidst the trauma of defeat, humiliation, abdication, insurrection, revolution, and hunger that seeped into every pore of postwar Germany, Beckmann created eleven prints for a portfolio he titled Die Hölle (Hell).76 “Just now, even more than before the war,” he asserted, “I feel the need to be in the cities among my fellow men. This is where our place is. We must take part in the whole misery that is to come. We must surrender our heart and our nerves to the dreadful screams of pain of the poor disillusioned people.”77 In his art, Beckmann confronted the human anguish, hellish social disintegration, and misery that flowed from the Great War and its consequences.

The Case of Käthe Kollwitz Käthe Kollwitz, renowned as Germany’s finest female artist before the war, produced “Das Bangen” (Anxiety), which

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Figure 2.8  Käthe Kollwitz. “Anxiety.” Kriegzeit. 28 October 1914. Public domain. Courtesy of University of Heidelberg.

appeared in the October 28, 1914 issue of Kriegzeit.78 It was one of the few images that did not exude the strident nationalism for which the artistic broadsheet was initially known.79 The lithograph depicts a woman whose torso is erect, her eyes are closed, arms folded in front of her, conflicting emotions of anxiety, stoicism, and hope etched upon her face as she wills the safe return of her loved one. (Figure 2.8) Kollwitz’s two sons, Hans and Peter, had volunteered for war service at the onset of hostilities. Despite her husband’s misgivings, Kollwitz supported her sons’ decision to volunteer, but she also felt deeply ambivalent. She was torn between

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the abstract national imperatives of patriotism and sacrifice that citizens of all countries had been raised on, the multilayered meaning of “sacrifice” – the soldiers’ sacrifices and their families’ sacrifices, as well as the sacrifices that nations require of their citizens – juxtaposed with “such madness,” as she described the “ghastly and insane” war.80 Only two days after “Das Bangen” appeared in Kriegzeit, she was informed that her son, Peter, had been killed in Belgium on October 22, 1914. The war was less than three months old.81 From that point forward, Kollwitz concentrated her formidable artistic powers on capturing the war’s consequences – grief, hunger, fear, separation, and despair – on the home

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front, particularly its effects on women and children; on unpacking the seemingly unquestioned, vaunted notion of sacrifice for the nation; and on memorializing not only her beloved son’s death, but the deaths of all who were killed in a war she had come to believe was senseless. When faced with huge combatant losses and the possibility of defeat, the German government increased its public exhortations for national sacrifice. The writer and poet Richard Dehmel volunteered his services in 1914 at the onset of the war. He was fifty-one years old, and served until he was wounded in 1916. In 1918, as Germany attempted to reverse its losses, Dehmel volunteered again for service and called for more men to join the fight. In her published response to Dehmel’s appeal, Kollwitz implored, “There has been enough of dying! Let not another man fall!”82 By then, Kollwitz had concluded that Germany was close to defeat. While the Allied side would be victorious and her country’s loss might be terrible, sacrificing any additional young lives could not be justified. In the end, no one would truly win the war. There would only be those who died and those who survived. On the altar of patriotism and national sacrifice, “Peter and millions, many millions of other boys. All betrayed.”83 And, for the countless number of people who had experienced the heart-wrenching losses of loved ones, the war would never end. In 1923, Kollwitz created a portfolio titled Krieg (War). She had been working on it since 1919 as a response to what she described as the “unspeakably difficult years” of the war and its aftermath. As she struggled with what art form she should use, she viewed an exhibit of woodcuts by Ernst Barlach, the preeminent German artist and sculptor who had rapidly moved from supporting the war to employing his art to remonstrate against its tragic repercussions. The starkness and simplicity that the woodcut offered, Kollwitz realized, would best serve her artistic response to the Great War. In the seven woodcuts and frontispiece that comprise Krieg, she illuminates the experiences of those who had been left behind: bereaved women who had lost their husbands, traumatized children clinging to their weeping mothers, mothers encircling their children to protect them, and parents bent over with the weight of their inconsolable grief. In only one of the

woodcuts, “Die Freiwilligen” (The Volunteers), do combatants appear. Kollwitz’s son, Peter, is situated next to Death, who is shown beating a war drum. Peter is flanked by other young volunteers who, led by Death, fearlessly go off to war with ideas of patriotism and sacrifice fueling their commitment. While her war series was a deeply personal project, Kollwitz made no particular references to the Great War in any of the images. Krieg, therefore, serves as a timeless indictment of the bitter truths of war and a searing reminder of its dreadful human consequences.84 It is fitting that Ernst Friedrich, whose Anti-War Museum we discussed in the previous chapter, received permission from Kollwitz to exhibit Krieg soon after his museum opened in 1924, on the tenth anniversary of the First World War. Additionally, Otto Dix’s Der Krieg was exhibited at the museum, alongside photographs of maimed soldiers, a forceful response to the ongoing wave of “war forgetting.” Kollwitz also produced a number of works to draw attention to the suffering that continued in Europe after the war. Germany, in particular, experienced near famine conditions because of the continuation of the Allied blockade until July 12, 1919, eight months after the Armistice had ended the fighting. By 1923, the country was facing disastrous instability due to massive unemployment, historic-level hyperinflation, bank collapses, and deeply-felt resentment in response to the high war reparations stipulated by the Allies two years after German representatives had signed the Treaty of Versailles. Money was worthless. Hunger and destitution were widespread. Kollwitz and her husband, like many Germans at the time, lost most, if not all, of their life savings. Kollwitz’s woodcut of 1923, “Hunger,” which she released soon after her Krieg series, starkly depicts the effects of such catastrophic circumstances on a mother. (Figure 2.9) She is emaciated. Her hands cover her eyes, her mouth is contorted in anguish, her breasts are empty of milk, and her child – ghostly in color, both bloated and skeletal from long-term hunger – lies starving in her lap. The mother’s agony leaps from the paper.85 A year later, Kollwitz produced the impassioned poster “Deutschlands Kinder hungern!” (Germany’s Children Are Starving!)86 to urge donations to help feed the nation’s most

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Figure 2.9  Käthe Kollwitz. “Hunger.” 1923. Courtesy of Gus and Sharon Kopriva Collection.

vulnerable.87 And, on the tenth anniversary of the onset of the Great War, Kollwitz created two of her best-known posters. “Die Überlebende/Krieg dem Kriege” (The Survivors/War against War), produced for “Anti-war Day” on September 21, 1924,88 and “Nie wieder Krieg!” (Never again War!) were potent responses, a call-to-action and a cry against the “war forgetting” and “heroic remembering” that were reshaping the war narrative in Germany.89 The figure in Kollwitz’s “Never again War!” poster, torso erect, one arm raised straight in the air, one hand placed over the heart, urges the viewer to act, to act against forgetting, to act against any future war. A second, even deadlier war erupted only fifteen years after Kollwitz produced “Never again War!”90

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Two months after her son Peter was killed, Kollwitz began to work on ideas for a memorial.91 Initially, she had wanted to create something just for him. She soon decided, though, that the memorial should be for Peter and for all of the sons who had lost their lives in the war. It took eighteen years from her first sketches to the memorial’s dedication in 1932 in a war cemetery in Roggevelde, Belgium. Trauerndes Elternpaar (Grieving Parents), later moved to Vladslo when German cemeteries in Belgium were consolidated, was placed in front of the headstone of her son and the headstones of thousands of German sons buried far from home. The father, a likeness of Kollwitz’s husband, Karl Kollwitz, is on his knees. His torso is straight, almost rigid, his arms

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Figure 2.10  Käthe Kollwitz. Grieving Parents. 1932. Vladslo, Belgium. Public domain.

folded at his chest, his hands tightly gripping his arms as if he is trying to hold himself up and to hold in his emotions before they overwhelm him. The mother, a self-portrait of Kollwitz, is on her knees and bent over with the weight of her grief. Her hands hold onto the cloak she has wrapped tightly around her. Both the father and the mother exude immense sadness, but also palpable self-reproach and responsibility for all of the parents who had encouraged or supported their children’s military service on behalf of the nation. Before the thousands of buried sons, with their own son’s grave just a few feet in front of them, they “beg forgiveness” for their complicity.92 (Figure 2.10) Kollwitz noted in her diary already in 1917 that she wanted “to make these parents – simplicity in feeling, but expressing the totality of grief.”93 In the end, she did not incorporate the father and mother into one sculpture, as

they appear merged together in “Die Eltern” (The Parents) from her 1923 Krieg portfolio. Instead, in the memorial she created, the father and mother are two figures separated physically by several feet, as well as separated emotionally by their individual responsibility and by their intensely personal grief.94

The Case of Otto Dix The German artist Otto Dix was drafted as an auxiliary reservist in August 1914. He was deployed to the front as a machine gunner in the fall of 1915 and served until the end of the war, despite being wounded several times, once almost fatally. He survived the Battle of the Somme, trained

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to become a pilot, and was awarded an Iron Cross. He stated that, as a “man of reality,” he had to see the war, he had to experience for himself “all the pain and suffering . . . the whole stinking sordid mess” in order to truthfully depict it.95 Throughout his years of service, he produced a vast number of drawings and sketches – unstintingly clear-eyed snapshots of his brutal frontline experiences – that would fuel and shape his postwar art.96 Dix later recalled that while he was soldiering, he did not think about the gruesomeness of his day-to-day experiences.97 Yet, he returned to Germany deeply burdened by the terrible war he had survived and tormented by nightmares that continued for years. His contribution to the First International Dada Fair, held in postwar Berlin, was a canvas entitled “Kriegskrüppel” (War Cripples). It is a grotesque, almost cartoonish-like depiction of four war invalids composed of stumps, prostheses, facial wounds, twisted bodies, disfigured faces, and broken spirits making their way down a city street. They pass a shoemaker’s shop. In its store window hangs a large boot, an item that war amputees have no need for.98 From 1920 to 1923, afraid that the German public was already allowing itself to gloss over the horrors of the war that the soldiers had experienced and, thereby, negate their trauma, Dix worked on a massive painting entitled “Der Schützengraben” (The Trench). Rendered in devastating fashion, Dix’s trench has been apocalyptically obliterated by bullets and explosives, and filled with maimed bodies, heads from which brains pour out, limbs or fragments thereof, shreds of uniforms and intestines, and corpses in various stages of decomposition. When “Der Schützengraben” was purchased and displayed in a museum in Cologne in 1923, the public response was decidedly mixed. The painting was removed. The museum director who had procured it submitted his resignation, and the piece was returned to Dix. It was purchased again in 1928, this time by a museum director in Dresden, where it remained in storage under the auspices of restoration.99 On the tenth anniversary of the war, in 1924, Dix completed a cycle of fifty etchings that he titled

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Der Krieg (The War).100 Human suffering, mutilated soldiers, corpses situated next to living soldiers, limbs scattered everywhere, gas attacks, fear, horror, chaos, soldiers’ bodies pierced by barbed wire, pervasive mud, and a severed skull with grass growing on its crown and worms crawling out of its gaping mouth and eye sockets – all of these Dix unflinchingly depicted in Der Krieg because all were components of the conflict he experienced, the memories of which plagued him long after the military hostilities ended. Often described as the most ferocious anti-war statements of the twentieth century, one might speculate that “Der Schützengraben” and the etchings that comprise Der Krieg served several additional purposes. Perhaps Der Krieg was less a pacifist statement by Dix and far more an ongoing, yet futile attempt to exorcise the war from the depths of his being. Dix, who had served his country with distinction, could also have decided to thrust himself into the role of authentic witness to the war’s horrors in Der Krieg and “Der Schützengraben,” along with his equally shocking triptych painting “Krieg” (War), which he completed in 1932. Art critics, nationalists, and right-wing political groups might have deplored the images he created, but they certainly could not have doubted their veracity, given Dix’s lengthy and honorable frontline war service. In all combatant nations, the traditional imagery of heroic soldiering and glorious war-making emerged again after the First World War in an attempt to justify the loss of millions of young men and to refashion tragedy into honor.101 As historian Modris Eksteins aptly notes, the “real war had ceased to exist” by the end of the war. “Thereafter it was swallowed by imagination in the guise of memory.”102 Such heroic imagery became particularly prevalent in Germany because it not only had lost the war, which made its two million human losses that much more difficult to justify, but it was found guilty by the victorious Allies of causing the deadly conflict. Furthermore, Germany’s defeat was coupled with royal abdication, internal revolution, the end of its empire and its colonial reach, and the loss of its prominent position among powerful nations. Germany suddenly had pariah

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status. Additionally, the military war had not taken place on German soil. Most of its dead soldiers had died outside of Germany, and were buried in unmarked mass graves or in graves that were located in the lands of its wartime enemies. While the mourning of personal loss was difficult enough, agreed upon rituals and symbols of national mourning and commemoration, which might have drawn Germans closer together, proved to be an impossibility, given the contentious political climate in the years following the war.103 Moreover, the newly constituted German government, the Weimar Republic, found itself suddenly responsible for almost 2.7 million disabled veterans, more than one million war orphans, and 533,000 widows. An angry debate about war victims, about how much to compensate for the loss of an arm or leg or face, about whether or not psychiatric war disorders and injuries merited compensation and, if so, how much compensation, fed into the general bitterness about the war, the defeat, the treaty, and the inability to mourn as a nation. All of these factors further accelerated the need to forget or to disavow.104 Dix’s visceral postwar works targeted those persons who sought to “eradicate the humiliation of defeat from Germany’s history.”105 Perhaps, then, Dix produced the etching cycle Der Krieg, the triptych “Krieg,” and the large painting “Der Schützengraben” as monuments to surviving soldiers, who – wounded, amputated, blinded, traumatized – themselves were living memorials to the war; painful reminders to a public and government that wanted to shove them aside. He created visually configured testimony to remember his and their sacrifices, pushing back on the collective erasure that was occurring. In doing so, he also countered the idealized war representations that had reemerged with images of the war he and countless others had experienced first-hand. He intended for his art to convey the gruesome reality of trench warfare and the trauma soldiers carried back home with them. As Dix said of his triptych “Krieg”: In 1928 I felt ready to tackle the big theme . . . At this time many books in the Weimar Republic were

again promoting notions of the hero and heroism, long since reduced to absurdity in the trenches of the War. People had begun to forget the terrible suffering the war had brought to them. From this situation arose the triptych . . . I did not want to cause fear and panic, but impart knowledge about the awfulness of war and thus awaken people’s power of resistance.106 If this is the case, both Otto Dix and Käthe Kollwitz thrust themselves into the role of artist-witness – he as a machine gunner and medaled soldier, and as an authentic witness to the war front; she as a mother who had supported her son’s voluntary enlistment at the start of the war, only to lose him two months later, and as an authentic witness to the home front. Their art imploringly reminded their fellow citizens of a fact which they had both struggled with personally – that war mythologized and war realized, on war fronts and home fronts, are two very different creatures.

Ernst Barlach’s War Memorials Like many of the German artists discussed herein, the cultural luminary, sculptor, printmaker, and playwright Ernst Barlach redirected his creative powers from initially supporting the war in the wartime broadsheet Kriegzeit to protesting its inherent inhumanity after his brief military service.107 The woodcuts and lithographs, as well as the sculptures and memorials to the fallen, that Barlach created in the last two years of the war and in the postwar years angered those persons who still firmly held onto the beliefs that war was good and that soldiering for the nation was the penultimate show of heroism and sacrifice. Instead, Barlach’s deeply moving memorials, such as Der Schwebende or Schwebener Engel (The Floating or Floating Angel) of 1927, whose face bears the likeness of Käthe Kollwitz and who hovers silently between heaven and earth, make visible the despair, grief, and pain

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Figure 2.11  Ernst Barlach. Floating Angel. 1927/1942. Antoniterkirche, Cologne. Public domain. Bodoklecksel, GNU Free Documentation License.

caused by war. They illuminated the need for the public to remember.108 (Figure 2.11) They still speak to us today.

Gerhard Marcks’s Wars Gerhard Marcks, preeminent German sculptor, printmaker, and friend of Ernst Barlach, also served in the military in the First World War. He became very ill and was released from service in 1916, but continued to struggle with longterm health problems. Miraculously, Marcks survived both world wars. Yet, he lost almost everything during the Second World War. His son was killed in combat and his studio in Berlin was badly bombed. Marcks, whose life had been indelibly shaped by conflict, made several memorials that countered traditional forms of national memorialization.

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Four years after the Second World War ended, Marcks created Die Trauernde (The Mourner), a woman whose head is bowed in grief. She stands alone in front of the St. Maria im Kapitol church in Cologne, Germany as a stark admonition of the human cost of war. Marcks also created a memorial, situated in the Ohlsdorf Cemetery in Hamburg, for all victims of the aerial warfare that characterized the Second World War. His small bronze sculpture, Der Rückkehrer (The Returnee), does not personify a vaunted military hero, an image so popular on mass-produced postcards and paintings when the First World War began. Rather, Marcks’s returnee is a gaunt, emotionally shattered soldier making his way home. (Figure 2.12) He could be any soldier from any country who had served in any war. Thus, Marcks reminds the viewer of the profoundly universal, yet acutely personal experiences of soldiers and of what war does to its combatants.

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Figure 2.12  Gerhard Marcks. The Returnee. Gift from Gerhard Marcks to Peter Guenther. Author’s collection.

The Nazis’ War on Art Throughout the conflict and well into the postwar decade, many German artists produced works in which they refused to sanitize the war and its long-lasting effects.109 Their uncompromising stances often caused them great difficulties in the Weimar Republic, which was founded in the revolution that followed the Great War. Describing their works as “lunatic trash,” conservatives repeatedly asserted that there was a link between modern art and Bolshevism, while the government constructed a war narrative of heroic sacrifice and glory.

During the Third Reich, the attacks worsened. Dozens of artists, including every artist discussed in this chapter, were vilified and ostracized for their less than heroic depictions of the war and its human costs. They were castigated for their surmised left-leaning political views and for the styles in which they painted and created, remembered and memorialized. While invectives were hurled at their artworks and memorials in essays published in state-supported newspapers and journals, their works were confiscated by the thousands from museums, public buildings, collections, and galleries. Once seized by the Nazi government, the art was either destroyed, sold to profit the state, or stacked in warehouses and left to rot.

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More than six hundred artworks deemed to be Jewish, Bolshevist, anti-German, un-German, insulting to the Germanic heroic spirit, technically incompetent, modern, distorted, foreign, or decadent, or some mixture of these pejoratives, were chosen from the seizures as exemplifications of the artists’ attempts to undermine the German people and nation. They were hung crookedly or crowded together, often unframed and degraded with demeaning and defaming captions in the now infamous Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) exhibition, which opened in Munich on July 19, 1937. Dix’s “Der Schützengraben,” which had so horrified the public in 1923, was one of the showpieces of “degeneracy” in the Naziorganized exhibition. Several local exhibits preceded the large Munich show, and numerous smaller derivative Degenerate Art shows were organized to travel to various German cities before and after the Munich exhibit closed. The president of the Nazi government’s Reichskammer der bildenden Künste (Reich Chamber of Visual Arts), Adolf Ziegler, opened the Degenerate Art exhibition with the following words: We now stand in an exhibition that contains only a fraction of what was bought with the hard-earned savings of the German people and exhibited as art by a large number of museums all over Germany. All around us you see the monstrous offspring of insanity, impudence, ineptitude, and sheer degeneracy. What this exhibition offers inspires horror and disgust in us all.110 On the previous day, July 18, 1937, also in Munich, Adolf Hitler officially opened the Grosse Deutsche Kunstausstellung (Great German Art Exhibition), which displayed art considered acceptable by the Nazi state. All of the Degenerate Art exhibitions, designed to educate the public about the Nazis’ cultural agenda, exhibited “unacceptable” art to millions of Germans in small towns and large cities across the country. Fired from their teaching positions and professorships, often prohibited from working and exhibiting, increasingly isolated and financially destitute, the defamed artists faced accusations that they were traitors to their nation and that

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their “depraved” art denoted insanity or, worse, a genetic defect in the artists themselves.111 Only two years after the 1937 Degenerate Art exhibition opened in Munich, the German nation was again at war.

Why German Art of the Great War Still Matters Both during and after The Great War, various artists in Germany believed it was imperative to unmask the egregiousness of war and to bear witness to its vast consequences. They did so in a visual language of meaning and mourning, of evidence and provocation that they hoped would effectively counter the proclivity to revise, rewrite, and forget. Although they faced the loss of their professions and commissions, vitriolic press criticisms, litigation, harassment, censorship, defamation, and often virulent public reactions, they unblinkingly exposed the brutality, wretchedness, and infinite sadness of the war they had experienced. By doing so, they resisted long-established, ennobling traditions of conflict commemoration. They made art that depicted the trauma of war on human bodies and souls. And, they reminded the public through their art that the Great War, shocking and grievous by its very nature, continued to shape and haunt the nation and its people long after the fighting had ended. Their visual discourses presented the war as a universal catastrophe for combatants and noncombatants alike, who shared commonalities of experience, anguish, loss, and grief. As the centennial commemorations for the Great War were set to begin in England and elsewhere in Europe in 2014, the British art critic Jonathan Jones asserted, “. . . no other artists saw this dreadful war as clearly as German artists did. While British war artists, for example, were portraying the generals, Germans saw the skull in no man’s land.” While his remark diminishes the war art produced by British artists such as Paul Nash and C.R.W. Nevinson, it serves to underscore the fact that when art of the war is discussed, the searing images created by German artists predominate. Although they paid dearly for their unwillingness to adopt

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the prevailing nationalist narrative or to participate in the project of historical erasure and public forgetting, “German artists showed the war with utter clarity when others turned away.”112 This is why their art is still wrenching to viewers a century after it was created. And why their art is as important now, in its depictions and messages, as it was when it first appeared. As innumerable conflicts, catastrophic hunger, decimated bodies, and broken spirits envelop the globe, yet rarely prick

our consciences enough to speak and to act, the works of German artists who felt compelled to bear witness to war and its aftermath are as necessary and relevant to us today as they were one hundred years ago. The overarching theme of the art they produced – that the prospect of humanity’s salvation is imperiled by unthinking nationalism, political gamesmanship, violent solutions, and dismissive historicizing – resonates through the decades for those who choose to look and to learn.

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Chapter

3

The Life and Art of Otto Schubert Schubert’s Postcard Project When the Great War began, Otto Schubert was twenty-two years old and attending art classes at the highly-respected Dresdner Kunstakademie, the art academy in Dresden. His studies abruptly ended when he was drafted into the German army in October 1914. He was quickly deployed to the Western Front, where casualty rates were skyrocketing beyond comprehension in the first months of the conflict. (Figure 3.1) Deeply disappointed about leaving behind his dreams of becoming an artist, he also had to part from his family and his sweetheart, Irma Müller. During his deployment, he and his fellow soldiers received Feldpostkarten, blank 4" x 6" “field postcards” distributed by the military, on which they could write to their loved ones. To stay in close communication with Irma and to keep his artistic skills finely tuned, Schubert pictorially recorded his war experiences on the military-issued postcards. The few sentences he wrote were relegated to the thinnest of margins, essentially serving as a frame for the image he had painted. Sometimes, he titled his miniature works of art. But mostly,

Figure 3.1  Otto Schubert. Circa 1914. Public domain. Permission given by Ulrike Meissner.

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the small, scratchy writing around the cards’ edges offers us only a hint of his most personal thoughts and experiences. The words convey far less than do the images, but even the images need to be carefully examined for what they do and do not contain. Amidst days comprised of boredom, preparation, and travel through the countryside of Belgium and northern France, as well as days of brutal fighting, anxiety, and exhaustion, Schubert depicted the mundane realities and terrible truths of war. Essentially, he visually captured moments that words were insufficient or too lengthy to describe on the small cards. In contrast to the government propaganda postcards and commercially-produced postcards that became all the rage during the war, his painted postcards are quintessential trench art; art personally invested with layers of meaning made from the material – the experiences – and the transformed matériel – military-issued cards – of war. Schubert’s postcards are, in the words of the poet Wallace Stevens, messages “from the volcano” of war.1 They contribute to our understanding of trench art, which has most often been categorized as items made by soldiers from war matériel, such as spent bullets or trench wood, that they transformed into ashtrays, crosses, paperweights, lighters, cups, and a myriad of other objects inlaid with meaning and memory. It is largely due to the groundbreaking work of the archaeologist and anthropologist Nicholas Saunders that trench art has been given the attention, close analysis, and significance it deserves in war studies. Schubert’s Feldpostkarten, miniature paintings on military-issued cards, further complicate and enrich the study of trench art. They are, as Saunders writes, objects that “move through symbolic as well as geographical space, intersecting cultural ideas, historical events, and personal lives.”2 Schubert’s postcards also contribute to the field of art history, particularly the history of wartime art and of twentieth-century German art. Their discovery implores a reassessment of Schubert’s place in the cannon of World War One art. Additionally, Schubert’s postcards compel us to think about the fragility of his project – sending tiny cards through a war zone like none other to his beloved waiting anxiously for some word from him hundreds of miles away on the home

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front. His cards are not cards that were commercially massproduced, hurriedly filled up with words, or bought from one of the local French women who made silk postcards to sell to soldiers wanting souvenirs. Rather, Schubert’s cards are self-created and profoundly personal. He utilized the non-descript military-issued cards on which to employ the paints and pencils that Irma purchased and sent to him in order to create the cards that he then sent to her. They reflect his time and effort, thought and care. He touched them, painted on them, spent time with them, and filled them with emotions. Once received, she touched them, savored them, read and reread them, perhaps displayed them on her bedroom dresser or dining table to look at as often as she needed. In these ways – across the miles and miles of loneliness – the cards provided an intimate connection, a bridge from war to home. Schubert imbued his postcards with the core of who he believed himself to be, an artist. In this way, too, they provided a coping mechanism, a bridge from his present self as a soldier to his former self and, perhaps, his future self as a talented and ambitious art student. Even though there were countless civilians and volunteers serving in different capacities who experienced the war, it is to the soldiers that we look for answers to our perennial questions, such as what was the war really like and how did they spiritually, physically, and emotionally endure the seemingly unendurable. Although their authenticity, their witnessing of the war, was shaped by a myriad of social, governmental, cultural, and personal pressures, the frontline soldiers have become our iconic “authentic” witnesses, the truth-tellers on whom we rely to understand a war that is largely incomprehensible still one hundred years later.3 Schubert is one of those authentic witnesses, and the postcards he painted are one of his primary means of bearing witness. Upon reading the short phrases and sentences that Schubert wrote on his cards to Irma, it becomes clear that, alongside the other purposes his postcards served, he intended to produce a visual diary of his war experience on the Western Front. He wrote to Irma, “Keep the postcards,” and asked on two occasions if she had received them all,

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clearly worried that perhaps one or more of the cards might have gotten lost in the mail as it made its way from the front. He was keenly aware of the multi-faceted importance of his project, as well as its fragility. For all of these reasons, Schubert’s postcards deserve our thoughtful attention. They provide us with written and visual testimony of the war, rather than only one or the other. And, while we cannot hear the mediated scenes that he painted, we can read his words and feel his emotions, so palpable in some of the images, as we examine what he chose to paint and what he chose to omit. Both an intimate record of the war and a powerful form of bearing witness to the conflict, Schubert’s postcards are deeply moving and illuminating because of the window they open onto the personal landscape of the Great War.

Postcards from the Trenches Karl Max Otto Schubert was born on January 29, 1892, in Dresden into a very poor family.4 His father was a shoemaker at a time when, increasingly, shoes were being mass produced. His mother struggled to feed the children on the small income the father brought home.5 Schubert later recalled that while his parents were full of love and sacrificed greatly for their children, “memories of his childhood were sad and painful, as was likely the case for many poor proletariat children at the time.” Given the circumstances, Schubert had to work from a young age in order to contribute to the family’s survival. He delivered bread rolls to people’s houses in the mornings before school and, in the afternoons, he tended to graves in the nearby cemetery.6 In school, he exhibited a talent for art, so his parents allowed him to keep a little of the money he earned in order to purchase paper and pencils. Those precious supplies he took with him into the forest close to his home, where he happily went to draw in the late afternoons after he finished his work. Soon before Schubert completed school, he so impressed one of his teachers with a Malik Company advertisement he had reproduced and improved upon that his version was hung in the school’s art classroom for everyone to see and admire. He

also received a small amount of prize money. At his teacher’s urging, his parents agreed that he could pursue art studies.7 In 1906, at the age of fourteen, Schubert enrolled in classes at the Dresden Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Applied Arts) with the aim of becoming a lithographer, fashion designer, or pattern illustrator; in other words, a line of artistic work that would provide an income. After a year there, he was told by the director that he lacked talent and that he would not be allowed to remain at the school. The director was known for favoring students whose families had money, while rejecting those who came from the lower socioeconomic rung and were often late in paying their tuition. At the time, Schubert was still so impoverished that he had to wear his father’s only jacket on days it was too cold to keep warm in the one sweater he owned. It was only through the effort and kindness of the drawing teacher that he was allowed to continue his studies at the school. And continue he very much wanted, especially since in the next class he would learn about color and paint.8 The painting teacher encouraged Schubert’s artistic talent, allowed him to work on illustrations for a newspaper the teacher contributed to, and even published several of his best works. Those small successes fed his great longing to eventually attend the Kunstakademie, the renowned art academy in Dresden. Schubert graduated from the School of Applied Arts in 1909, but his parents could not afford to keep paying for his art education. So, he got a job as a scenery and set painter for one of Dresden’s most important theaters, the Hoftheater, where he worked for several years. By 1913, he had saved enough money to finally fulfill his deepest desire, to begin his studies at the esteemed art academy. He had chosen well. Otto Dix, Conrad Felixmüller, George Grosz, Max Pechstein, and several other artists discussed in the previous chapter also attended at various times the Kunstakademie in Dresden. In his first year there, Schubert received instruction from Professor Emanuel Hegenbarth, whose “master class” focused particularly on animal painting.9 He also began learning printmaking techniques. Schubert was in heaven. The school’s atmosphere and the training he was receiving were everything he had longed for, and he began to allow

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himself to believe that he might eventually become a fullfledged, self-sustaining artist. He became friends with several aspiring young artists attending the Kunstakademie, including Kurt Schwitters, with whom he shared a studio during the initial year of classes.10 Schubert also met Irma Müller around the same time. Her father was a blacksmith and her family, like Schubert’s family, was poor. He was evangelical Lutheran; she was Roman Catholic. He was short in stature, just a few inches over five feet in height. She was beautiful and one year older than him. He felt he had nothing to offer her, and struggled with deep insecurities bred in an impoverished childhood. Nonetheless, the two fell in love.11 In the first days of August 1914, the war began. Schubert was not one of the many young men who immediately volunteered for military service when hostilities commenced. Instead, he registered for fall classes at the art academy. His fervent hope to persist in his studies ended abruptly, however, when he was drafted into the army on September 10, 1914, and deployed to the Western Front.12 He was twenty-two years old. Over the next twenty months, he would experience the war in Ypres, Champagne, Argonne, and Verdun, where battles infamous for their extraordinarily high casualty rates took place. During his first year of service, Schubert wrote letters as often as he could to Irma, as well as to members of his family. Thereafter, though, he also began to send Feldpostkarten, the standard blank “field postcards” issued by the German Army on which soldiers wrote to their loved ones. Rather than jotting some sentences on the small allotment of space, Schubert mostly communicated to Irma, and occasionally to others, through paintings on the 4" x 6" cards. On some ninety Feldpostkarten, which span from November 1915 to May 1916, he pictorially captured the landscapes, both personal and physical, of the Great War.13 The minuscule sentences Schubert wrote around the edges of the images usually pertain to mundane matters, and only hint at his inner thoughts and experiences. On rare occasions, though, he could not contain his loneliness for Irma or his anger

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about the war, and those emotions would surface in a flurry of words. While the small size of the field card minimized how much he could write, there are two other reasons as to why Schubert’s postcards offer only glimpses into his inner life. Certainly, he was aware of the stringent military censorship through which all letters and postcards had to pass. And postcards, far more than letters, were pushed by the military because they relieved the censors of time-consuming work. Postcards did not require envelopes and they were small, which meant they were faster for the censor to review. Moreover, soldiers often hid the reality of the war from their loved ones to spare them concern and anguish. It is likely that Schubert censored himself since he would not want to send images and messages that might evoke fear or despair in his sweetheart. We do not know if Schubert wrote so little for these reasons or if he felt, as an artist, that he could convey his experiences more powerfully through images. Even so, the scenes he depicted on his cards often belie the reality of the places to which his military unit was deployed on the Western Front. Instead of wreckage and carnage, there are beautiful French landscapes with only an occasional cross marking the grave of a soldier. Instead of battle-hardened enemies, there are depictions of war-weary French prisoners-of-war, of lovely French peasant women, and of rural families. And, instead of trenches filled with mud, rats, errant body parts, and rotting corpses, there are images of tidy, comfortable underground soldiers’ homes.14 Yet, as the First World War scholar Jay Winter reminds us, the war “created an otherworldly landscape, [where] the bizarre mixture of putrefaction and ammunition, the presence of the dead among the living, literally holding up trench walls from Ypres to Verdun, suggested that the demonic and satanic realms were indeed here on earth.”15 Statistics support Winter’s assertion. In 1920, Albert Demangeon described the Western Front as “a zone of death, 500 km long and 10–25 km broad . . .” Officials reported that in some areas, more than 1,000 shells had fallen per square meter. Landscapes that had once been idyllic were

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Figure 3.2  Otto Schubert. “Mr. Frenchman.” Field Postcard. 7 November 1915. Author’s collection.

wastelands, scarred by trenches, barbed wire, devastating artillery fire, and the bones of the unidentifiable dead.16 Despite the constraints of size, military censorship, and self-imposed restraint, Schubert’s cards are revealing. He always filled out the pre-printed “Sender” form on the back of the cards the same – 3rd Army, 3rd Battalion, 11th Company, Infantry Regiment 192; also on the back appeared the pre-printed “Feldpostkarte” signifier and the stamped date on which the card was mailed. The fronts of the cards

are entirely different. They are emotions encapsulated and sent to his beloved Irma on the home front. For example, November 7, 1915: Title is “Mr. Frenchman” [a depiction of a rural French male] “Dear Irma! Many greetings on Sunday. Hopefully they will find you in the best of health. Many warm regards also to your family. With a heartfelt greeting, Your Otto.” (Figure 3.2)

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Figure 3.3  Otto Schubert. Field Postcard. 14 November 1915. Author’s collection.

November 14, 1915: “With a thousand greetings for Sunday. Your Otto.” (Figure 3.3)

November 18, 1915: “My dear Irma! A thousand greetings. Your Otto. Many greetings to your family, most of all to your brother. All the best.” (Figure 3.4) Note that behind the self-assured soldier, strolling with his hands in his pockets and cigar in his mouth, his confident demeanor due to the fact that he has not yet been at the war front, is another soldier, perhaps injured, back on the home front, grayish in complexion, eyes turned down, seated and holding up a newspaper.

Figure 3.4  Otto Schubert. Field Postcard. 18 November 1915. Author’s collection.

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Figure 3.5  Otto Schubert. Field Postcard. 19 November 1915. Author’s collection.

November 19, 1915: “Dear Irma! The greetings from Mr. G[räubig?], Miss Martha and my mother from the Hofe-wiese [a popular outdoor area with picnic facilities near Dresden], I warmly welcome. Received letter and newspaper this evening. Thank you for those. Letter tomorrow evening. Your Otto.” (Figure 3.5) Note how healthy and innocent the young soldier looks as he goes off to war. And then Schubert wrote one of his lengthiest messages, which is infused with homesickness and longing. As always, he painted an image on the front of the trench card, while his scrawled message begins on the back of the card and spills over onto the front.

Figure 3.6  Otto Schubert. “The Village Beauty.” Field Postcard. 25 November 1915. Author’s collection.

November 25, 1915: “The Village Beauty” [a rural French woman who, unlike the mass-produced propaganda cards, Schubert depicted with no demeaning “enemy” caricature]. “Dear Irma! For two days no news from you. Hopefully my greeting card will find you in perfect mood and health. How long will it take? This evening received your letter.” [His message continues on the front of the card:] “The wonderful Christmas celebration is soon here. I hope it will bring much joy to all of you at home. Now the second winter at the front. I cannot allow myself think about it. When I remember how wonderful the winter semester was at the [art] academy, I could go crazy. May life be good to you, and take from my heart a thousand greetings, from your Otto.” (Figure 3.6)

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Figure 3.7  Otto Schubert. Field Postcard. 4 December 1915. Author’s collection.

December 4, 1915: “Dear Irma! Many greetings from the land of the enemy. It is constantly raining. Day after day, bad weather. Apparently, winter is here. Is there snow at home? Today I sent a card to all the ladies at home. Hopefully they will get there. I also wrote to your brother. Your Otto. Many greetings to your parents, also sister.” (Figure 3.7) Note that, again, Schubert chose to depict a rural French woman without disparaging “enemy attributes,” as was so common during the war.

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Figure 3.8  Otto Schubert. Field Postcard. 8. December 1915. Author’s collection.

December 8, 1915: “Dear Irma! I will now send you a series of cards that depict our daily life as vividly as possible. Each card has a No. [number]. You write to me then please if you have received all No. [numbers]. The series depicts one day. Hopefully, you will get them all regularly. The cards you sent me are simply great for painting. New thousand greetings from your Otto.” (Figure 3.8) This image is one of Schubert’s few self-portraits.

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In the next two cards he sent her, December 10 and 12, 1915, he painted soldiers in their underground bunkers drinking coffee and washing themselves.

December 15, 1915: “Small Village in France.” “Dear Irma! Many thousand greetings. Your Otto. Just write me a lot. No letter from you for so long. Yesterday received the field postcards. I also sent a card to your brother. I’m really fed up with life!!!” (Figure 3.9) The bright, cheerful colors Schubert utilized to convey the beauty of an idyllic French village contrast sharply with the despair in his message and with the destruction and carnage that was occurring on the Western Front during the winter of 1915. Figure 3.9  Otto Schubert. “Small Village in France.” Field Postcard. 15 December 1915. Author’s collection.

December 23, 1915: “The Most Beautiful Hour of the Day.” “Dear Irma, a thousand greetings, Otto. The mail has been delivered. Good cigars and more. A letter. But in the newspaper there is nothing about peace?!” (Figure 3.10) The image depicts a few soldiers relaxing in their “home” underground, temporarily removed from the dangers lurking above. Even so, their faces are etched with fatigue and worry.

Figure 3.10  Otto Schubert. “The Most Beautiful Hour of the Day.” Field Postcard. 23 December 1915. Author’s collection.

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Figure 3.11  Otto Schubert. “Argonne.” Field Postcard. 16 April 1916. Author’s collection.

The almost daily flow of Schubert’s postcards continued for months. Every once in a while, a scene made the war more visible: a village on fire (December 1, 1915); battleweary soldiers cleaning their guns or falling asleep while sitting upright (December 19, 1915); a soldier standing in a trench and keeping watch through the night so his comrades can sleep (January 6, 1916); a scene of what looks to be a gas attack or the sun peeking through ominous clouds on the front (January 14, 1916); two soldiers who are standing in a trench and peering out into the night sky with rifles in hand (January 16, 1916); a totally exhausted soldier, likely Schubert, coming out of a fighting line, the regiment’s number “192” painted on his helmet (January 19, 1916); soldiers throwing hand grenades across a field from behind a trench wall (March 3, 1916); horses galloping to flee artillery fire, while the soldier in the wagon is pulling tightly on the reins to get them back under control (March 11, 1916); a destroyed village surrounded by trees that resemble charred skeletons (March 5 and March 14, 1916); a small group of soldiers, with shovels over their shoulders, returning to their trench (March 8, 1916); three soldiers who have been injured and bandaged, a Red Cross

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emblem attached to the outside of a building wall behind them (March 25, 1916); and evocatively-colored landscapes in which small, handmade crosses appear, signifying the hurriedly dug graves of soldiers killed in battle (January 21 and January 24, 1916). All of these are so beautifully painted and carefully contained that the gruesome reality of the war front doesn’t quite sink in. On one of the postcards, Schubert thanked Irma for the pencils she sent him. On another card, he worried that he was using up his allotment of the military-issued field postcards. On still another card, he expressed his gratitude to her for sending a “block of paper,” but that the drawing pad was too big to fit into his rucksack. Alongside the painted postcards, Schubert was making large rough sketches, mostly with charcoal pencil, of his experiences on the Western Front. These were scenes that would not have passed the censors and that he, therefore, kept to himself. Some of them would be exhibited in the fall of 1916, and they would form the basis for two war portfolios Schubert created. The sketches and the postcards were closely linked. Both were snapshots of Schubert’s war experiences, which he made at almost the same time.

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Figure 3.12  Otto Schubert. Field Postcard. 12 May 1916. Author’s collection.

April 16, 1916: “Argonne.” [Painted on Easter Sunday, Schubert’s bleak mood is captured in the colors he utilized to depict the destroyed village.] “Dear Irma! Sunday morning. Easter. No book. Think a lot about you. Hopefully you are doing well. Greetings home. Your Otto.” (Figure 3.11) With this, the prolific flow of postcards suddenly stopped. Almost four weeks later, Schubert painted one last card. The postmark stamp on the back informs us that he was in a military hospital in the town of Frankenholz, in the region of the Rheinpfalz, just inside Germany close to the FrenchGerman border. May 12, 1916: “Dear Irma! Today card and letter forth. Hopefully, you will find my card quite cheerful. A heartfelt greeting to you and yours. See you soon. Your Otto.” (Figure 3.12) We can surmise from the month-long gap in postcards and the date stamp on the back of the card that Schubert was wounded in mid-to-late April of 1916. He was severely injured

(“schwer verwundet”) during the Battle of Verdun.17 Close to one million casualties were suffered during the 303 days of fighting at Verdun. Of those casualties, 300,000 soldiers were dead or were missing and eventually presumed dead.18 The longest battle in World War One between the French and German armies, the Battle of Verdun began the morning of February 21, 1916, when, for close to ten hours, the Germans fired 1,000,000 artillery shells along a front about thirty kilometers in length, while twenty-six long range guns fired on the forts nearby and on the small town of Verdun itself. New weapons of war were used at Verdun, such as phosgene, a colorless asphyxiating gas, better known as mustard gas. Flamethrowers, which had been tested a year before, were employed in large numbers at Verdun. Steel helmets weighing three pounds, which were made from a chrome-nickel-steel alloy, both protected and encumbered soldiers already weighted down with seventy-pound packs.19 And, air power continued to play a role in the war. Beginning with the Germans’ use of zeppelins, and continuing with the utilization of airplanes by the Germans, British, and French, the most notorious air incident during the Battle of Verdun occurred when the French bombed the German town of Karlsruhe on

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June 22, 1916, killing 120 people, including seventy-one children who were watching a circus performance.20 The weight and relentlessness of the explosives used at Verdun eradicated trenches and dugouts, and created huge lunar-like craters, “eye-sockets of the earth” as Otto Dix described them, that filled up with wounded men and dying horses as the battle went on. The weapons of the Great War transformed the ground at Verdun into a pulverized wasteland; obliterated human bodies; and caused some soldiers to go mad.21 Many men died agonizingly slow deaths from shrapnel injuries or bled to death in No Man’s Land because overwhelmed medics could not reach them in time.22 Schubert was one of the lucky ones. He was badly injured, rescued, and moved from the war front to a makeshift military hospital behind the frontlines. From there, he was transported to the German military hospital in Frankenholz until he had stabilized enough to return to his hometown of Dresden to receive further treatment. His rehabilitation was slow, and his injuries were grave enough to prohibit his return to the front. He was officially released from military service on November 7, 1916.23

Bearing Witness to the War Just five weeks before, on September 27, 1916, an exhibit opened in one of the most prestigious galleries in Dresden. Galerie Arnold was hosting the Zweite Ausstellung Dresdener Künstler die im Heeresdienste Stehen (Second Exhibition of Dresden Artists Serving in the Armed Services). The large exhibit was comprised of 150 pieces by Dresden artists who were currently serving or who had served in the military. The displayed works included sketches, drawings, paintings, and watercolors “made by men on the front, in the garrison, or in the hospital,” many of whom were still serving on the warfront or were injured and could not attend the opening. Some of the displayed pieces were older works contributed by artists who “had not been able to take pencil and brush into the storms of war,” but who wanted to be represented in the exhibit in some manner. In honor of the fallen, the exhibition also included a few works by Dresden artists who had been killed in the war.24

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Since 1902, the current owner of Galerie Arnold, Ludwig Wilhelm Gutbier, had built up the gallery’s already sound reputation by hosting cutting-edge exhibitions of works by modern artists such as Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh, German Expressionists from Die Brücke and der Blaue Reiter, and Paul Klee, Max Ernst, and Lyonel Feininger. For modern art lovers, Galerie Arnold was the place to be.25 To a packed house, Gutbier began his introduction by noting that the number of Dresden artists serving in the war had increased dramatically, from 70 in 1915 to more than 130 in 1916. It was “a duty, even more important now than previously,” he emphasized, “to support the families of those who swapped the brush and palette with a rifle . . . and who had to struggle just as hard for their art, for their ideals, and for their families in peacetime.” He explained that the exhibit “shows that our artists, even during the war, have not ceased to serve art and to make art.” Gutbier ended his welcome address by reminding the crowd that the exhibition would continue until October 29. He hoped that the exhibit would “encourage the art lovers to enrich their collections” and, thereby, also help “our struggling artists.” All 732 works listed in the exhibit catalogue were for sale, with the funds going to the soldier-artists and their families.26 Sixteen of Schubert’s wartime sketches were in the exhibition. Some of their titles – “Argonnen” (Argonne), “Montfaucon” (in the Verdun Arrondissement), “Höhe 304” (the notorious Hill 304, close to Verdun), “Champagne” (where battles took place from December 20, 1914 to March 17, 1915, and again from September 21 to November 6, 1915), “Avocourt” (in the area of Verdun), “Strassenkampf in Flandern” (Street Fighting in Flanders), and “Strassenkreuzung bei Ypern” (Road Crossing at Ypres) – inform us that he had fought in some of the worst combat on the Western Front.27 (Figure 3.13) A few of his pieces, such as “Gefangene Franzosen” (French prisoners-of-war), were identical in their titles to postcards he had painted and mailed to Irma, but far bleaker in color and form. Almost all of the drawings Schubert exhibited in the Galerie Arnold show are gut-wrenching images that evoke visceral reactions from the viewer: scenes of hand-to-hand combat, of terrified horses fleeing from explosions, of a group of soldiers dying

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Figure 3.13  Otto Schubert. “Road Crossing at Ypres.” War sketch. Circa 1915–1916. Kupferstich-Kabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden; photo: Andreas Diesend.

in a forest whose trees have been mangled and crushed by firepower. This was the war that Schubert had only hinted at, with the censors in mind, in the postcards he had created for Irma. This was the war that Schubert had experienced.28 As the conflict continued to rage, Schubert recovered enough from his injuries to return to the Dresden Kunstakademie to continue his studies. He took two additional animal painting classes with his first professor, Emanuel Hegenbarth, and then became a “master student” under the renowned art professor Otto Gussmann, who also taught Otto Dix and Peter August Böckstiegel, both of whom were still serving in the war.29 The three – Dix, Böckstiegel, and Schubert – would be among the founding members of an art group in postwar Dresden. While Schubert was taking classes at the Kunstakademie, he produced two lithograph portfolios in 1917.30 Drawing from his wartime postcards and sketches, some of which had been exhibited at the Galerie Arnold in 1916, Schubert first released the portfolio 24 Lithographien vom Krieg im Westen (24 Lithographs of the War in the West). In large, black-and-white

renderings, Schubert depicted the ferociousness of close combat, the destruction of towns and of shot-up landscapes, the pervasive human fear and loneliness evoked by war, the exhaustion of ration carriers whose formidable task was to get food and water to soldiers wherever they were assembled, the despondency and bone-tiredness of soldiers as they carried their wounded, the overwhelming artillery fire and mass graves that had come to characterize industrialized warfare, and the grief soldiers felt as they buried their dead comrades. Intended as chapter markers, three of the plates in the portfolio, Flanders (plate 1), Champagne (plate 9), and Argonne (plate 17) are lithographs printed in red, yellow, blue, and black. The colorful images convey the beauty of those places before they were traumatized by war. The seven black-and-white lithographs that follow each of the color lithographs consist of Schubert’s testimony of the war he and millions of other soldiers endured. Neither overwrought nor overtly personalized, and assigning cause or guilt to no one, the scenes illuminate the conflict as universally experienced by soldiers on all sides. The war depicted in 24 Lithographs

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Figure 3.14  Otto Schubert. “Defense” from 24 Lithographs of the War in the West. 1917. Courtesy of Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies (M.82.287.63m) © artist or artist’s estate, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA.

of the War in the West was not the one that had been promoted and proselytized by governments. Instead, the twenty-four lithographs comprise Schubert’s war diary.31 (Figure 3.14) Soon after, Schubert published his second portfolio, Die Leiden der Pferde im Krieg (The Suffering of Horses in War), also in 1917. In this series, too, he drew from his painted postcards, several of which contained images of horses, whether pulling the wagon of a rural French family out for a Sunday ride or pulling the wagon of a soldier close to the front. While numerous artists depicted in single artworks the hardships horses had to endure during the war, no artist but Schubert devoted an entire portfolio to the subject.32 A deeply empathetic series consisting of a color title page and twelve large black-and-white lithographs, Schubert skillfully captured the brutal effects of war on cavalry horses – great hunger and thirst, fear and stress, hard labor in often difficult weather conditions, debilitating fatigue, injury,

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agony, and death.33 (Figure 3.15) He starkly, yet emphatically, humanized the horses by illustrating that they went through what soldiers themselves experienced. His portfolio reminds us that in the Great War, always described as the first major industrialized conflict, armies still greatly relied upon horses, even to strenuously carry or pull the new modern weapons of war to the front. The irony, of course, was that horses could not protect themselves from mechanized warfare. They lost their lives by the hundreds of thousands. They died by artillery fire, drowning, falling into shell holes, and becoming mired in the consuming, strangling thickness of the mud that was so pervasive. They died of starvation as it became increasingly difficult to keep them well supplied. They died from diseases. And, they died of injuries suffered from barbed wire and unexploded ordnance that they inadvertently stepped on, from poison gas, shell shock, and sheer terror.34

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Figure 3.15  Otto Schubert. “Death” from The Suffering of Horses in War. 1917. Courtesy of Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies (M.82.287.64L) © artist or artist’s estate, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA.

Schubert clearly expended an enormous amount of energy and effort to produce these two portfolios so soon after he had returned to Dresden to recover from his grave injuries. He must have felt compelled to publish them as quickly as he could. Whether that was because he was afraid his memory would dull, or because he thought that by putting his experiences on paper he might be able to expunge the war from the depths of his being, or because he had assigned himself the task of countering his own government’s belligerent war language with the realities of war, we do not know. What is indisputable, however, is that less than a year after leaving the war front badly injured, he published 24 Lithographs of the War in the West and The Suffering of Horses in War as a clarion call. No longer restricted by military censorship or self-imposed restraint to alleviate his sweetheart’s worries, Schubert marshaled his formidable talent to bear witness to, and to remember for all times, the inhumanity and tragedy of war.

Schubert and the Postwar Dresden Art World Schubert’s two war portfolios, his wartime sketches, and his ninety painted postcards comprise a noteworthy wartime oeuvre for a very proficient, experienced artist; yet, he was still a student at the Kunstakademie. Notably, his two 1917 portfolios were published six years before Käthe Kollwitz’s War and seven years before Otto Dix’s The War portfolios, which were discussed in the previous chapter. Both of these works – Kollwitz’s portfolio of the home front and Dix’s portfolio of the war front – have become the standard bearers of World War One art. Kollwitz and Dix are held in high esteem by art historians, who include the two artists’ names in almost any discussion about art of the Great War. Curiously, although Schubert’s portfolios preceded theirs by several years, and he was artistically prolific throughout the 1920s, his artwork is hardly known today. In an attempt to

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understand how and why this disregard or oversight occurred, Schubert’s life after the war, pieced together from the few relevant documents and sources that still exist, needs to be examined. After all, one of the purposes of this book is to reverse Schubert’s usual omission from the World War One art canon and to offer his war art in context to a larger public. After the release of his two war-related portfolios, and while he continued his studies at the Kunstakademie under Professor Gussmann, Schubert produced another portfolio, Salambo in 1918.35 It was comprised of thirty-five lithographs illustrating Gustave Flaubert’s historical novel Salammbo, originally published in 1862 in French and set in Carthage in the days following the First Punic War with Rome. The extensive portfolio of Flaubert’s novel, published by the well-known Emil Richter Verlag, which likened Schubert’s creative power to that of the highly-respected artist Max Slevogt, was the first of what would eventually be a profuse output for Schubert in the field of literary illustration.36 Salambo was followed by an oil painting titled “Nacht der Geburt” (Night of Birth), “Strassenkreuzung bei Ypern” (Crossroads at Ypres), a drawing based on one of his previously exhibited war sketches, and another oil painting, “Der heilige Sebastian” (St. Sebastian), all produced in 1918. Schubert was not the only artist to depict the saint in the wake of the war. The German artists Willy Jaeckel, Karl Albiker, and Otto Dix, among others, also turned to the martyred saint as “emblematic” of “a loss of faith on the part of the artists.” St. Sebastian became symbolic of the German people, who were assailed by hunger, defeat, political revolution, and unprecedented economic inflation in the postwar years.37 Additionally in 1918, Schubert created a lithograph titled “Finale,” which he contributed to Shakespeare Visionen: Eine Huldigung deutscher Künstler (Visions of Shakespeare: A Tribute by German Artists), a portfolio of thirty-two prints by various artists.38 It was the third publication of MaréesGesellschaft, an art and bibliophile society founded in 1917 by the avant-garde publisher Reinhard Piper and the influential art critic and historian, Julius Meier-Graefe.39 For twelve years, the society published portfolios by individual artists, a yearbook titled Ganymed that featured art, literature,

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and original prints by known artists, and group portfolios, of which Shakespeare Visionen was one. Notably, Meier-Graefe began to take a particular interest in Schubert’s artistic work. The year 1918 ended with even more success for Schubert. He was awarded the prestigious Grosser Staatspreis, the state of Saxony’s highest arts recognition to an individual and a sign of extraordinary appreciation given to the young artist for his numerous achievements thus far.40

Gruppe 1919 The following year was equally busy and notable for Schubert. On January 29, 1919, Schubert’s birthday, a number of artists established Dresden Sezession Gruppe 1919 (Dresden Secession Group 1919).41 Founding members were Conrad Felixmüller, Lasar Segall, Wilhelm Heckrott, Hugo Zehder, Otto Dix, Constantin von Mitschke-Collande, Will Grohmann, and Schubert. The group quickly expanded to include the artists Otto Lange and Peter August Böckstiegel, as well as Gela Forster, a sculptor and the only female member in the organization. The Austrian artist Oskar Kokoschka received an honorary membership in March. Grohmann served as the group’s art critic and publicist.42 And Zehder, an architect turned publisher, featured the group’s art in several issues of his new journal, 1919, Neue Blätter für Kunst und Dichtung (New Pages for Art and Poetry). Almost all of Gruppe 1919’s members had received training at the Dresden Kunstakademie. Schubert, Heckrott, and Dix were still students there.43 Several of the members had served in the war; some of them, like Schubert, had been badly injured. Gruppe 1919’s founding statute stated that the group was formed by a number of artists, “who, in the sense of their art, have ideological undertakings which, like their art, necessarily separate them from the previous artists . . . The main principles are: truth – fraternity – art.”44 The city of Dresden was the cultural center of Saxony. Like many German cities at that time, it was overflowing with artistic vitality in spite of – or, perhaps, in response to – the collapse of Kaiser Wilhelm’s government, the proclamation of a socialist republic on November 9, 1918, the end of the war,

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the revolutions that swept many regions of the country, and the social upheaval and economic instability that followed.45 The Dresden Kunstakademie was finding itself pressured by a number of its students to change the institute’s long-held parameters, to include students in decision-making, and to hire an Expressionist art professor. And, Dresden itself was becoming the center point for the new Expressionist dance movement led by Mary Wigman and her gifted students, including Gret Palucca.46 Change seemed to be in the air. All over postwar Germany, in seemingly one voice, albeit through numerous groups and their journals, artists proclaimed the necessity for a new man and a new society in a new world without war – a new humanism. Some of the groups, such as the Berlin-based Arbeitsrat für Kunst and the Novembergruppe, were initially more politically engaged than others. Some artists advocated for communism, socialism, internationalism, workers’ revolution, or a mixture thereof. Yet, politically active or not, artists of the time expressed their commitment to utilizing all of the arts – music, literature, poetry, architecture, theater, film, dance, and visual art – as the means by which to bring about the sea change they desired. Their fervent belief was that only the arts could truly humanize man, and only humanized man would be capable of creating a more just and peaceful society.47 Gruppe 1919 was similar in many respects to these groups. Its members asserted that the arts were crucial to leading mankind to a socially equitable and peaceful future. Already on April 5, 1919, Gruppe 1919 held its first show of prints and drawings at the Galerie Emil Richter. The month before, the group published a catalogue. The primary essay, written by the expressionist author Walter Rheiner, was titled “The New World,” indicative of the hopes expressed by so many postwar art groups.48 The group’s debut show was a success, eliciting great public interest and positive press in the major newspapers.49 Most of the displayed works were “optimistic regenerative images,” rather than overtly political or war related, and in their artistic forms some of them underscored their continuity with the art of the prewar Die Brücke group and its “expressionist heritage in Dresden.”50 Two of Schubert’s exhibited works, the woodcut “Märzspaziergang” (March Stroll) and the etching “Ostern”

(Easter), displayed “variations of Brücke imagery” and were set in the spring season of renewal.51 “Easter,” Will Grohmann noted, not only signified the resurrection for which the religious event is observed, but Schubert’s own resurrection, a reference to his near mortal war wounds from which he had recovered.52 His woodcut “Umarmung” (Embrace) depicts a man and woman with their arms wrapped around one another. Their cheeks are touching. The moon shines in through the window at which they are standing. Her eyes are shut and her face is serene. His eyes are open, and his expression is an admixture of sadness, reflection, and detachment, as if he is struggling with memories and fearful of removing his emotional walls. His arms, so tightly embracing her, indicate one thing; his expression conveys something else. Psychotherapists working with shell-shocked soldiers during and after the First World War discovered that traumatic detachment, sometimes termed dissociation, is one of the most significant symptoms of combat neurosis. “March Stroll” shows a man and a woman who are walking side by side, but their two faces have merged into one. Love, Schubert seems to say, will be his salvation.53 Gruppe 1919’s successful debut garnered an invitation for their works to be exhibited at the Berliner Freie Sezession (Free Berlin Secession). And, only a few months later, in the summer of 1919, Galerie Emil Richter hosted another exhibition of Gruppe 1919, which included works by members of the group, as well as guests such as George Grosz, Kurt Schwitters, and Karl Schmidt-Rotluff.54 Yet, despite such auspicious beginnings, differences soon emerged. The most prominent founding member, Conrad Felixmüller, was also the most politically active of the group. He was a member of the German Communist Party, the KPD, and he hoped to convince his colleagues to join the party and to use the group’s combined talents to evoke radical political change. Kokoschka, the honorary member, strongly argued against radical political engagement, and the other members had little to no interest in politicizing their activities. Of the group’s founding members, only Constantine von Mitschke-Collande joined the KPD.55 Felixmüller later recalled,

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Except for Mitschke-Collande, everyone had grounds for refusing to join the Communist Party. Otto Schubert: As a soldier I lay long enough in the mud at the front – I want peace. Segall: As a foreigner, a Polish Jew, I cannot be in a German party . . . Otto Lange held back as a trade unionist. Dix said: Leave me out of your stupid politics . . .56 Alongside political differences, personal and artistic divergences also strained the group’s cohesion. Gruppe 1919 never had one singular style. Rather, the members’ works have been described by art historians in various ways, including Ecstatic Expressionism, Socialist Expressionism, Expressionism in which Cubism also played a role, and, last, Second Generation or Late Expressionism, a generational development, shaped by the war experience, from the style of the original Expressionist group, Die Brücke. Some art historians have also noted that Dadaist and Futurist aspects are evident in this postwar Expressionism. With so many differences emerging so quickly in Gruppe 1919, members began to pull out. Hugo Zehder left already in August 1919 due to “principles and personal reasons.” Schubert, whose personal responsibilities were increasing, as we shall see, left towards the end of 1919. By early 1920, Felixmüller and his brother-in-law, Peter Böckstiegel, had also departed the group. Mitschke-Collande left soon thereafter.57 Although the original group dissolved by 1922, due to the exodus of several of its founding members, the few remaining members and invited guest artists continued to exhibit together for a while.58 The roster reads like a “who’s who” of post-World War One modern European art: George Grosz, Karl Schmidt-Rotluff, Lyonel Feininger, Paul Klee, Erich Heckel, Alexei Jawlensky, and Max Beckmann. While some artists continued to combine their political and artistic activities, others became deeply dispirited when they realized that little had changed in the postwar world in which they had placed so much hope. Their idealism shattered, they began to turn towards a new realism.59 The change in direction, however, does not diminish the fact that the works of wartime and postwar German artists “remain the most powerful chapter of social criticism in modern art history.”60

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In the summer of 1919, as Gruppe 1919 was already contending with internal issues, Robert Sterl, a German painter and graphic artist, professor at the Kunstakademie, board member of the Dresden Gallery advisory board, and supporter of young artists, paid for Schubert to take a short “study trip” to the Netherlands so that he could view in person some of the outstanding artworks hanging in Dutch museums.61 To see the works of the “masters” in Paris and Amsterdam had been a longtime dream of Schubert’s, but he never had the financial resources. Sterl’s gift was a dream come true. The art of Rembrandt, Frans Hals, and especially Van Gogh made the strongest impact on him. The trip, he said, had been transforming.62 When Schubert returned to Dresden, he produced illustrations in a small portfolio for the comedic play Joseph der Sieger by the poet Max Hermann.63 And two of the works he exhibited in the first Gruppe 1919 exhibit, “Embrace” and “March Stroll,” were published in the journal Menschen.64

Schubert’s Star Rises in the 1920s On August 23, 1919, Otto Schubert married the woman who had been the recipient of his painted postcards, the woman to whom he had sent his “1,000 heartfelt greetings” from the war front, Irma Müller. She had waited for him on the German home front, written him letters, sent him packages, and supplied him with the drawing materials he craved while he was a soldier. And, she had nursed him back to health after he returned badly injured from the war front. To celebrate the union, Schubert created a woodcut of a man and a woman in profile, facing each other, with flowers and the words “Ich liebe Dich” (I love you) filling the space between them.65 (Figure 3.16) Soon after, he made a lithograph of a man and a woman standing side by side, leaning into each other. The woman appears to be wearing a simple wedding dress and veil. The couple is surrounded by flowers.66 (Figure 3.17) Schubert and his wife would have three children together, Rose Nele born in March 1920, Peter Tyll born in June 1923, and Maria Saskia, born in September 1925.67 With more mouths to feed, Schubert worked constantly throughout the 1920s to earn money. The need to support his

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Figure 3.16  Otto Schubert. “I Love You.” 1919. Courtesy of Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies (M.82.288.281) © artist or artist’s estate, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA.

family, and memories of his own impoverished and miserable childhood, fueled his wish to create a happy, stable, worryfree life for his loved ones. In turn, that desire drove him to accept whatever commissions were offered him and to be more flexible, less specialized, than many other artists.68 However, he also relished what he did – illustrations, woodcuts, etchings, lithographs, drawings, and paintings – and stated that while he “used all of the possibilities out there,” it ultimately did not matter to him what he created. Aside from Irma, “art was the love of his life.”69 In 1920, Schubert received as an academic award a prestigious scholarship from the Raphael Torniamentischen Stiftung of 700 marks, as well as 300 marks from the Ministry of the Interior.70 In the same year, he produced several

“lyrical” lithographs to illustrate a third volume of poetry by the thirty-year-old German poet, Alfred Günther, Beschwörung und Traum (Incantation and Dream).71 One of the lithographs was the “wedding couple” image he had created soon after marrying Irma. (Figure 3.17) Schubert then self-published a portfolio comprised of twenty drypoints, titled Bei uns (With Us), in which he depicted scenes of daily family life.72 Equally notable, he began to receive tangible support from Julius Meier-Graefe, who urged Schubert to concentrate on graphic art and contracted him for several projects linked to Marées-Gesellschaft. Schubert’s first work for the art and bibliophile society was Bilderbuch für Tyll und Nele (Picture Book for Tyll and Nele), with twenty-three full page, four-color woodcuts and color

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Figure 3.17  Otto Schubert. Untitled from Incantation and Dream. 1919. Courtesy of Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies, purchased with funds provided by Anna Bing Arnold, Museum Associates Acquisition Fund, and deaccession funds (83.1.183d) © artist or artist’s estate, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA.

vignettes. Described as “undoubtedly, one of the most original children’s books of the 20th century, the brightly colored woodcuts are of the best-known animals, while children’s rhymes are scattered throughout.”73 Schubert and his wife named two of their children after the characters in the picture book that had garnered him such positive reviews. Schubert followed the children’s book with a series titled Die 4 Jahreszeiten (The Four Seasons) comprised of four drypoints for Ganymed, the yearbook published by Marées-Gesellschaft.74 He then produced six lithographs for a special edition of Carl Hauptmann’s Die lilienweisse Stute (The Lily-white Mare);75 a portfolio of ten woodcuts based

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upon Heinrich von Kleist’s comedy Der zerbrochene Krug (The Broken Pitcher);76 six original lithographs for Heinrich von Kleist’s novella Michael Kohlhaas;77 thirty etchings for Honoré de Balzac’s Contes drôlatiques (Droll Stories);78 twenty drypoints for Charles De Coster’s 1867 novel about the allegorical adventures of a Flemish prankster turned hero, Ulenspiegel; and a series of watercolors for Jen Peter Jacobsen’s Die Pest in Bergamo (The Plague in Bergamo). He was elated when Gerhart Hauptmann, who had won the Nobel Prize in Literature just a few years prior, purchased some of his Bergamo paintings.79 Altogether, Schubert had produced more than one hundred artworks in 1920 alone.

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His hard work was beginning to reap rewards. In 1921, he participated in the Dresden Kunsterverein, an art association under the auspices of which he exhibited some of his oil paintings. He created twelve color lithographs and a title page to illustrate Mirèio, the lengthy poem in Provençal by Frédéric Mistral. And, he produced the first of two illustrative portfolios on Grimm’s Fairytales; the first was comprised of thirty drypoints, the second twenty-five drypoints. However, it was a portfolio of thirty-three etchings to illustrate Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Reinecke Fuchs (Reynard the Fox) for Marées-Gesellschaft that brought Schubert the most accolades and cemented his reputation as a stellar printmaker and illustrator.80 Remarkably, he had just completed his art studies at the Kunstakademie.81 In 1922, Schubert made watercolors for the book cover and title page of an edition of Grimm’s Fairytales, while inside were thirty of his illustrative drypoints. Next, he produced sixty-one original lithographs for Gulliver’s Travels, thirtysix for The Adventures of Sinbad the Sailor, and a portfolio of twelve etchings for a special edition of Goethe’s Faust. He painted landscapes, farmers at work, flowers, children, and portraits. And, he sometimes worked with his former Gruppe 1919 colleague, Conrad Felixmüller. The two artists occasionally designed stage sets for the plays performed at the Neue Schaubühne (New Theater) in Dresden. The director, Hugo Zehder, was also a former member of Gruppe 1919. Along with the stage design work, Zehder promoted Schubert’s art in the journal he edited, Neue Blätter für Kunst und Dichtung. To top off an outstanding year, the influential MeierGraefe wrote an article about Schubert titled “A German Relative of van Gogh” for the Berlin-based journal Der Querschnitt. He asserted that “much like van Gogh, Schubert longs for humanity and does everything not for a particular [art] style, but to get closer to us . . . With such convincing life-affirming gestures by the young artist, one must not give up hope on the future of our art.”82 Meier-Graefe’s ringing endorsement of Schubert’s talent was in response to his first major one-man show (Sonderausstellung) at the well-known Galerie Flechtheim in Berlin in 1922. That exhibition was followed by exhibits in Bremen, Mannheim, Cologne, and,

in late 1923, in Chemnitz at the Kunsthütte and Galerie Gerstenberg. In the art world, Schubert’s star was rising. By November 1923, however, Germans were reeling from economic and political instability. On November 8 and 9, 1923, Adolf Hitler and some of his followers unsuccessfully attempted a takeover of the young German government, in what became known as the “Beer Hall Putsch.” At the same time, the country was experiencing catastrophic hyperinflation. Inflation began when the German Reich did not pay for its war effort by raising taxes. It intensified with the reparations payments Germany had to make as stipulated in the Treaty of Versailles. And, it escalated dramatically with the French occupation of the Ruhr in early 1923, the Ruhr workers’ strike, and the German government’s pledge to pay its workers. All the while, the government continued its practice of printing money, which increasingly had no value. Towards the end of November 1923, one US dollar was worth more than four trillion German marks.83 The social, political, and economic consequences of such astronomical hyperinflation were traumatic. Few Germans were in the mood, or could afford, to purchase art. Schubert continued to receive praise for his woodcuts, lithographs, book illustrations, and etchings, one of which focused on the pervasive hunger during the grave economic crisis. Like most artists at the time, though, he had trouble selling his work. Memories of his impoverished childhood and fears of not being able to provide for his growing family drove him to work even harder.84 His friends from Gruppe 1919, like Otto Dix and Wilhelm Heckrott, were experimenting with new artistic styles and creating often shocking, provocative statements about the war they had experienced and about postwar German society. In contrast, after the 1917 publication of his two war portfolios, 24 Lithographs of the War in the West and The Suffering of Horses in War, and a very few individual works, such as his 1918 “Crossroads at Ypres,” Schubert kept his war experiences off of his canvases. He abandoned Expressionism and postExpressionism in its various permutations as hyperinflation began, and he did not make art that could be viewed as political or that might cause offense. Instead, he created art for himself and art that he hoped would sell; art that

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Figure 3.18  Otto Schubert. Aesop’s Fables. Cover of portfolio. Circa 1926. Author’s collection.

would put food on the table. Schubert never again painted or etched or drew the war he had barely survived. For the remainder of the 1920s, Schubert was extremely productive. He illustrated dozens of children’s stories, poetry collections, fairytales, and anthologies. He partnered with the writer Herbert Roth on several children’s books. Roth wrote the verses while Schubert made the illustrated book covers and color drawings for Bilderbuch für kleine Kinder (Picture Book for Small Children), Die verkehrte Welt (The Upside-Down World), and Ein froher Kindertag (A Happy Children’s Day). He created seemingly countless etchings, drypoints, woodcuts, lithographs, linocuts, drawings, watercolors, and oil paintings. He drew illustrations for stories in magazines. And, he produced extensive artistic and illustrative portfolios for classic literature, including works by Shakespeare, Goethe, Brentano, Rilke, Balzac, Cervantes, and Rabelais. James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales, tales from One Thousand and One Arabian Nights, and Aesop’s Fables also were recipients of Schubert’s artistic efforts. (Figure 3.18)

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Additionally, Schubert was drawn to religious subjects. And so, alongside the classical texts he illustrated, he focused his artistic prowess on Biblical themes and stories. In 1925 alone, he made lithographs of “Christ on the Sea”; “St. Sebastian,” whose martyrdom he had explored in an oil painting in 1918 at the end of the war; “Temptation of St. Anthony”; and “Judith Beheading Holofernes” from the Book of Judith.85 By the latter part of the 1920s, he had produced works such as “The Flood,” “Annunciation,” “The Prodigal Son,” “Sampson,” and “The Resurrection” in etchings, woodcuts, watercolors, and drawings.86 (Figure 3.19) Many of Schubert’s portfolios and literary illustrations were published by highly regarded German publishers, such as Piper, Marées Gesellschaft, Emil Richter, Kaemmerer, Phantasus, and Arndt Beyer.87 Likewise, his single artworks hung in some of the best galleries of the time.88 In addition to his “fine arts” work, he made book plates, designed eye-catching packaging for candy and wrappers for chocolate, drew newspaper cartoons, and

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Figure 3.19  Otto Schubert. “The Resurrection.” Circa 1927. Author’s collection.

created advertisement posters for well-known companies, such as Baedeker. Schubert had become one of Germany’s most prolific graphic artists.89 A fragile stability emerged in Germany in the mid-1920s. By then, the Ruhr crisis and hyperinflation had ended, currency reform had been enacted, and war reparation payments had been restructured. Due to the improving economy, artists felt more positive about the reception and possible sales of their work. Under the auspices of the 1909-founded Künstler-Vereinigung Dresden (Artists Association Dresden), three of the early members of Gruppe 1919 – Schubert, Böckstiegel, and Felixmüller – along with

Josef Hegenbarth, Otto Meister, Edzard Dietze, and Paul Rössler organized an exhibition of their works in the summer of 1925. Sales were brisk.90 The following year, Schubert took part in several meetings of the Sächsischen Kunstverein (Saxon Art Association), established in 1828, which for almost a century had hosted speakers, artist meetings, and exhibitions. Its particular purpose was to promote art of the Saxony region.91 More than thirty artists, including Schubert, participated in the association’s Grosse Aquarelle Ausstellung (Large Watercolor Exhibit), held in 1926 from May 22 to the end of September.92 A year later, on October 16, 1927, Schubert hosted a Sunday

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Figure 3.20  Otto Schubert. Hand-painted invitation. 1927. Author’s collection.

morning “opening” event for his two-week solo art show in the exhibit terrace of the Saxon Art Association.93 (Figure 3.20) The next year, almost two dozen artists participated in the Sächsische Kunst unserer Zeit. Jubiläums-Ausstellung (Saxon Art of Our Time. Jubilee [Anniversary] Exhibit), which was held from July 21 to October 31, 1928. Attendance numbers were high and reviews were positive.94

Schubert and the Nazis’ War on “Degenerate” Art By 1928, eight percent of adult citizens were unemployed in Germany, a big improvement from prior years, the economy had been on firm footing for some time, and political radicalism on the far right and left had dissipated. Increasing numbers of Germans had faith in their new democratic system. The stock market crash of October 1929, made worse when President Herbert Hoover demanded immediate repayment

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of European loans, and the onset of the Great Depression ruptured Germany’s tenuous security. The economic crisis spread like a virus from the United States to Europe, and it hit Germany harder and faster than any other European nation. Simmering on the fringes of German society after its failed 1923 “Beer Hall Putsch,” the Nazi Party began winning more and more seats in the German Parliament as the Depression tightened its grip. By the end of 1930, the unemployment rate had shot up to 15.3 percent. The party’s most fervent supporters brawled and marched in the streets, spoke of enemies inside the country, organized soup kitchens and networks of supporters, and promised to make Germany great again.95 In October 1930, three of Schubert’s paintings were featured in the illustrated monthly journal, Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration (German Art and Decoration). The essayist described his art as “a broad joy in color, air and light, a sure, warm touch to nature and its appearance.”96 Perhaps Schubert could survive yet another economic calamity. By 1932, the unemployment rate had skyrocketed to more than thirty percent of the German adult workforce. Many

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Figure 3.21  Otto Schubert. Goethe’s Balladen. Cover of portfolio. 1932. Author’s collection.

Germans felt as though they were reliving the nightmarish hyperinflation period, just a few years prior, which had wiped out people’s savings, caused grave social upheaval, and galvanized political instability. The Nazis gained even more seats in the German Parliament in the federal election that was held in July 1932, but they still did not have a majority. Despite the economic catastrophe, which would surely have dampened sales and attendance, Schubert decided to participate in that year’s International Book Illustration Exhibition. The event was taking place in Paris, a city he had dreamed of visiting ever since he was a first-year art student.97 Before he departed for his four-day trip, he completed a portfolio of twenty etchings to illustrate Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Balladen (Ballads). (Figure 3.21) Once he arrived in Paris and made his way to the exhibition venue, Schubert displayed some of the best illustrative works he had produced in the creative whirlwind of the preceding years. Three months later, on September 1, 1932, Schubert joined the Nazi Party.98 Very few Schubert-related documents and no personal correspondence have survived. So, it is impossible to know

what prompted him to affiliate with the Nazis in the months before Hitler was appointed Chancellor and the seizure of power began. Was it because he was an opportunist and thought he would benefit in some way by becoming a member, perhaps by receiving state support for his art? Or, was it because he embraced the Nazis’ promises to undo the hated Treaty of Versailles and to resurrect Germany’s former place on the world stage? Or, was it because he had always been haunted by poverty and was worried about enduring yet another financial crisis with three children and a wife to support, and he believed the Nazis could quickly halt the Great Depression’s effects in Germany? Or, was it because he supported the Nazi Party’s virulently nationalist, racist, anti-Semitic, anti-foreigner ideology? We do not know. None of the art Schubert had produced thus far – individual paintings, book illustrations, etchings, woodcuts, graphic portfolios – reflected Nazi ideological tenets. Moreover, his sketches, drawings, postcards, and lithographs of the war certainly did not exemplify a nationalist’s viewpoint. Rather than demeaning the enemy and depicting soldiering as

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heroic, as the highest form of sacrificial duty for the nation, Schubert did neither. Instead, he emphasized the humanity of the French, regardless of if he was depicting rural French men and women or French and Russian prisoners-of-war. He highlighted the terrible suffering of horses and of human beings. Most importantly, he emphatically illuminated the universal tragic truths of war. Joining the Nazi Party did not help Schubert advance his career, secure employment, or protect him from Nazi policies. In fact, the opposite occurred. Attacks against modern art and artists, described as “lunatic trash” by conservative critics, preceded the Nazis. However, during the Third Reich, a state-run campaign against modern art began in full with cultural and political aims.99 Many of Germany’s – and Europe’s – best known modern artists were vilified and ostracized for the subjects of their works and for the styles in which they painted and created. They, as persons, were defamed, while more than 16,000 of their so-called “degenerate” paintings, sculptures, prints, and books were seized from German museums and public collections. The confiscated art was then displayed as examples of “cultural degeneracy” or “Jewish-Bolshevist art,” sold to bolster the state’s coffers, or destroyed. Modern art dealers were hounded out of business. Museum directors who had purchased modern art for their museums’ collections were fired and replaced with people who supported the Nazis’ cultural views. Modern art, the Nazis claimed, was pathogenic, and therefore needed to be extirpated from German society. Dismissed from their teaching positions, and often prohibited from working and exhibiting, modern artists faced accusations that their “depraved” art indicated insanity or a genetic defect in the artists themselves.100 Schubert was among the defamed. His defamation came first in his hometown. In Dresden, the attack against modern art began immediately. The city was home to the 1905-organized German Expressionist group, Die Brücke, the postwar Gruppe 1919, of which Schubert was a member, and the Association of Revolutionary Visual Artists of Germany, better known as ASSO.101 By the 1920s, Dresden had become one of the most important cultural centers of innovative modern photography, dance, and art in Germany. Much of this innovation deeply

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offended cultural conservatives and art traditionalists, who deplored the modernist aesthetic. The Nazis’ ascension to power meant that Dresden’s anti-modernists felt empowered to go after whatever they perceived to be “degenerate” art. Several of Schubert’s works, as well as other Dresden artists’ watercolors, sculptures, oil paintings, and graphics deemed to be unacceptable, were expropriated from museums in Dresden. Soon thereafter, Richard Müller, in his position as the director of the Kunstakademie and well known for his longtime anti-modernist stance, was tasked with lending his credibility to a large exhibition of the confiscated art. The show, entitled Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art), was displayed in the inner courtyard of the Neues Rathaus (New Town Hall) from September 23 to October 18, 1933.102 In his opening remarks, Müller introduced the exhibit as “a faithful confession of the art city of Dresden to the guiding words of the Fiihrer [Hitler] in Nürnberg . . .” He then went on to deride the modern art purchases of the past years, most of them influenced by “Berlin – by people like the Jewish art dealer Alfred Flechtheim,” which cost the cities and states large sums of money and “filled the museums with crap while squeezing out good, solid art.” No modernists, even artists who had been students of the Kunstakademie, were omitted from Müller’s scathing comments: among others, George Grosz, Karl Schmidt-Rotluff, Oskar Kokoschka, Conrad Felixmüller, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Lasar Segall, Constantine von Mitschke-Collande, Walter Jacob, Otto Lange, and Gerhard Marcks. Otto Dix was singled out because “as art instructor in the Kunstakademie [he] has been foisting his poisonous influence on youths for several years.” However, that situation “has finally and justly been interrupted with his dismissal in the spring.” Schubert was also included in Müller’s remarks, demeaned for his “wretched compositions” that were on display.103 When the exhibit was presented again in Dresden in August 1935, top Nazi officials – Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, and Hermann Göring – traveled from Berlin to view it. Hitler found the Dresden show to be exemplary, and was quoted as saying that it “ought to be shown in as many German cities as possible.”104 Soon, officials from other cities asked if the Dresden exhibit could travel. Although Richard

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Müller, who had overseen the original exhibit in Dresden, had soured on the Nazis’ ideologies and policies, and with some courage had left the Nazi Party, the city’s mayor, Ernst Zörner, was still an enthusiastic Nazi supporter. He wrote a letter to explicate the traveling exhibition’s purpose, which accompanied the display wherever it went. The Degenerate Art exhibit, he stated, was intended to show “into what a morass of vulgarity, incompetence, and morbid degeneration German art – previously so lofty, pure, and noble – had sunk in fifteen years of Bolshevist Jewish intellectual domination.”105 Somewhat reduced in size from the original exhibit, the Dresden traveling display toured various German cities; for example, Regensburg, Munich, Dortmund, Darmstadt, and Frankfurt. After the works were returned, the Dresden show was incorporated in its entirety into the culmination of the Nazis’ attack on modern art, the Degenerate Art exhibition, which opened in Munich on July 19, 1937.106 Other cities such as Stuttgart, Karlsruhe, Nuremberg, and Mannheim organized their own exhibits, giving them names sure to draw public interest: “Chamber of horrors,” “Art that did not issue from our soul,” “Images of cultural Bolshevism,” or variations thereof.107 However, the Dresden exhibit, an attack against the city’s modern art collections and artists, most of them Dresdenborn or longtime residents, was “the immediate model and actual forerunner of the Munich exhibition of 1937.”108 A number of Schubert’s graphic works and one of his oil paintings, “Freud und Leid” (Joy and Sorrow), were displayed in the 1933 Dresden Degenerate Art exhibit.109 Works by Schubert were also included in the Dresdencurated traveling shows. Clustered around and above a doorway in one of two downstairs rooms of the building in Munich where the 1937 Degenerate Art exhibit was installed were two of Schubert’s oil paintings, “Beerdigung” (Funeral) and “Verkündigung” (Annunciation). They hung next to pieces by his Dresden colleagues Conrad Felixmüller, Constantin Mitschke-Collande, Otto Dix, and two of the founding members of the Dresden Expressionist group Die Brücke, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Erich Heckel.110 Dix’s 1924 portfolio Der Krieg (The War), which showed the horrors of the Great War, as well as his provocative “War Cripples” and “The Trench,” were displayed next

to Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s “Self-portrait as a soldier” in one of the upstairs rooms. They were accompanied by the slogans “Deliberate sabotage of national defense” and “An insult to the German heroes of the Great War,” even though both men had participated in the war, Kirchner briefly and Dix for the entirety of the conflict.111 Copies of Schubert’s two war portfolios, published in 1917, had been purchased by individuals and private galleries, but had not been acquired by a public museum. This is likely how his war art escaped the various Degenerate Art exhibits. The vast Munich exhibition featured 112 artists, whose more than 650 works were purposefully displayed chaotically, crooked, and often crowded together in poorly lit rooms, accompanied by texts decrying their incomprehensibility and degeneracy. Entartete Kunst was – and still is – the most notorious, venomous attack ever mounted against modern art.112 Schubert, like most of the other denigrated artists, was prohibited from exhibiting throughout the years of the Third Reich. Economic deprivation followed artistic defamation. He was unable to publish any book illustrations or special edition art portfolios. While he self-published a few etchings and drawings, the last commercial publication of his work in the 1930s was his late 1932 portfolio of thirty-two etchings to accompany Goethe’s Ballads.113 Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany just three months later, and the attack against “Jewish Bolshevik” modern art began in full soon thereafter. Schubert’s Nazi Party membership had not gained him one iota of protection. By mid-1933, as the Nazi state began to take shape, his paintings and graphic works judged to be “degenerate” had been seized from museums in Dresden. The public shaming of Schubert’s art and, therefore, of Schubert began in the city of his birth less than a year after he joined the Nazi Party.114

A Life Shaped by War The Second World War, which the Nazi government unleashed with the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, was even more devastating for Schubert than his defamation. In 1943, his only son Peter Tyll, who had been drafted into military

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service, died from severe injuries sustained during combat on the Eastern Front. He was twenty years old.115 As part of the Nazis’ “total war” mobilization after the German Army’s loss at Stalingrad in the spring of 1943, physical classification standards, as well as draft ages, were widened. Males up to sixty years of age were registered for military service, and “even men with severe stomach ailments were drafted into special-diet battalions.”116 Those changes, however, were not enough to counter the oncoming armies of the Allied Powers. Therefore, by Hitler’s decree in September 1944 and announced the following month by Heinrich Himmler, the Volkssturm (People’s Militia) was established.117 Males between the ages of sixteen and sixty who were not already serving in some military capacity were drafted into this national “people’s army.” The units were mostly comprised of Hitler Youth members, men previously deemed unfit for service, and a large number of World War One veterans now in their 50s and 60s. They lacked all but the most basic military equipment and training. A futile and deadly effort, given the Allies’ overwhelming material and numerical superiority, the death rate in the rag-tag army was extremely high.118 Schubert, who was fifty-two years old, was drafted into this last-ditch militia effort. Thus, he, like his postwar Gruppe 1919 art colleague Otto Dix, found himself serving in yet another world war. He was not, as one art historian erroneously asserted, a concentration camp survivor.119 On October 7, 1944, the Allies attacked Dresden. Twentynine B-17 bombers dropped seventy tons of high-explosive bombs. Particularly the western part of Dresden, where the historical Altstadt was located, was severely damaged. More than four hundred people were killed during this first bombing of the city.120 The dead included Schubert’s wife of twenty-five years, his beloved Irma, to whom he had sent those many hand-painted postcards as a soldier in the First World War. Schubert received a brief release from his military deployment in order to attend a small memorial service for her the following month.121 Again, on January 16, 1945, Allied bombers dropped 379 tons of high-explosives and 41 tons of incendiaries on Dresden. And then, from February 13 to February 15, 1945, the city was repeatedly targeted in a concerted

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US–British bombing campaign that produced a firestorm with temperatures peaking at over 1,500 degrees centigrade. Large portions of the city were obliterated and an estimated 25,000 people were killed.122 Schubert’s art studio and its entire contents, including his graphic works, woodcuts, and copper lithograph plates that he had stored there, were destroyed.123 Before the Second World War ended, two additional smaller raids targeting Dresden took place on March 2 and April 17, 1945. Three weeks later, on May 7, General Alfred Jodl, representing the German High Command, signed the unconditional surrender of all German forces, a surrender that took effect at one minute past midnight on May 8, 1945. Remarkably, Schubert’s two daughters, 25-year old Rose Nele and 20-year old Maria Saskia, survived the numerous bombings. Both young women left Dresden after the war. Maria Saskia made her way to England, where she married in 1949 and raised her family.124 Rose Nele married and moved to Switzerland.125 Their father stayed behind to pick up the pieces of his shattered life. By remaining in Dresden, Schubert and other Germans living in the eastern region of Germany became residents of the postwar Soviet occupation zone. As tensions escalated between the former Allies, and the Cold War quickly emerged, the temporary occupation zones morphed into lines of demarcation between East and West. Four years later, on October 7, 1949, the German Democratic Republic, better known as East Germany, was established, propped by the Soviet Union.

Schubert’s Art in the Cold War Schubert did not join the East German Communist Party, the SED. While he, like all working artists in East Germany, had to register with the Verband Bildender Künstler der DDR (the VBK or Association of Visual Artists of the DDR), he declined to incorporate the East German regime’s politics or its “Socialist Realism” aesthetic into his artistic work.126 That meant he received little to no state support for his art. No commissions came his way, and few people knew of or recognized his previous work. So, Schubert mostly drew and painted landscapes, portraits, children, and flowers. These were all subjects that he

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hoped might entice an individual sale, but would not evoke any unwanted attention from the repressive East German government in the fraught decades of the Cold War.127 He was able to earn a little money when he was hired to create wall paintings to decorate the dining rooms of large firms in the east.128 Then, finally, he received a commercial contract. His first published work since his 1932 illustrative portfolio of Goethe’s Ballads was a set of illustrations to accompany a 1949 popular guide to mushroom varieties by Franz Engel. It had taken Schubert seventeen painful years to journey from artistic defamation to reemergence, however slight, and from Nazi Party membership to East German citizenship.129 On October 21, 1950, Schubert married Christa Scheffler, a native Dresdner thirty years his junior.130 The couple had two daughters, Agnes Belinde and Christa Ulrike.131 Energized by his new wife’s encouragement and the need to support his young family, Schubert returned to one of his pre-Nazi era artistic strengths – illustrations for children’s books. His work was abundant in this area. For example, in 1954 alone, he created the book covers and story illustrations for seven Brothers Grimm fairytales, each released individually by a children’s book publisher in East Berlin.132 He also produced enchanting illustrations for another children’s book, Till Eulenspiegel: Abenteuer und Erlebnisse eines Bauernsohnes (Till Eulenspiegel: Adventures and Experiences of a Farmer’s Son). First published in 1953, the book was so popular that it was reissued in an expanded format in 1956.133 And in 1957, Schubert supplied the illustrations for a book of Czech fairytales.134 Alongside these commissioned projects, which brought much-needed money into the household, Schubert threw himself into a project of his own choosing. Completed in 1956, he created altogether 210 sepia brush drawings to illustrate Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quichotte (Don Quixote).135 Schubert’s prolificacy had clearly returned. The following year, he created a series of woodcuts based on the life of St. Christopher, Der heilige Christophorus. But, the crowning achievement of Schubert’s post-World War Two artistic reemergence was an extensive retrospective of his work, Otto Schubert: Druckgraphik und Zeichnungen (Otto Schubert: Print Graphics and Drawings).

An exhibition comprised of almost one hundred works of art, ranging from the post-World War One period to his recently completed Don Quixote drawings, the exhibit was held in East Berlin in the gallery of the Prints and Drawings Collection of the State Museum from April 2 to June 2, 1957. From woodcuts and etchings to drawings, individual lithographs, and portfolios of his book illustrations and serial lithographs, it seemed that Schubert had finally carved a niche for himself in East Germany and, importantly, had earned his place in the lexicon of respected twentiethcentury German artists. Notably, while he chose to exhibit his wartime portfolio The Suffering of Horses in War, he did not include his other wartime series, 24 Lithographs of the War in the West, which focused on the soldier’s experience in the First World War.136 One wonders if that wound was still too raw, too personal to be put on display. It is also worth noting that there were no works of art in the exhibition pertaining to the Second World War. Upon his completion of the Don Quixote illustrations and his retrospective exhibit, Schubert changed his artistic direction dramatically. By the mid-1950s, the Cold War had heated up, not just in places like Korea and Vietnam, but also in Germany. Soon after the 1948/1949 Berlin Blockade ended, the divisions that had marked Germany’s occupation after the Second World War became permanent. Two Germanys were established in 1949, one supported by the United States and the other supported by the Soviet Union. To slow the numbers of people leaving East Germany, the inner German border between east and west was officially closed in 1952. The East German government implemented severe travel restrictions in 1956. At the end of 1957, officials enacted a new passport law to further limit departures from East Germany. Yet, the movement of people from east to west continued, particularly through Berlin. To finally halt the flow of human beings, the East German government decided upon the construction of a wall to divide East and West Berlin, which began on August 13, 1961. That barrier provided physical and symbolic evidence of two competing ideological systems that had divided – and would continue to divide – Germany and Germans for decades.

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Schubert Faces the Abyss of Nazism On April 11, 1961, Adolf Eichmann’s sixteen-week trial in Jerusalem began, a trial that was globally broadcast on television. An explosive event, the televised trial and daily newspaper reports revealed to an international public the horrific details of the Nazis’ plan to exterminate European Jewry, the extent to which those plans had been carried out, and the crimes committed against Roma and Sinti, Poles, and Slovenes. If that wasn’t enough to force a confrontation with the recent past, from 1963 to 1965 the Frankfurt-Auschwitz Prozesses, a series of trials of twenty-two defendants who had been charged with committing crimes in AuschwitzBirkenau, were also broadcast and reported on in-depth. Schubert must have taken notice. He must have listened to the trials and read the news. He must have felt compelled to confront his support of and early membership in the Nazi Party, which had established a criminal state, waged a world war, and, aided by outright collaboration and indifference, committed genocide. I utilize the words “must have” purposefully because it was at this time that Schubert abruptly stopped creating children’s book illustrations and ceased painting landscapes and portraits and flowers in vases. Rather than looking to the German countryside or to literary classics and fairytales for inspiration and for his livelihood, he finally permitted himself to once again peer into the abyss. This time, though, the abyss was not the fear and longing, the pain and devastation Schubert had experienced in the Great War, emotions that he infused into his trench postcards and war portfolios. Nor was it his defamation in the 1930s or the profound personal losses he sustained during World War Two, none of which appears in his art. Instead, Schubert faced the abyss of Nazism when he responded artistically to the Frankfurt-Auschwitz trials, to the Eichmann trial, and to four literary works, which were published in Germany in rapid succession and which detailed the crimes and horrors of the Third Reich. Those publications were Lord Russell’s The Scourge of the Swastika, a book that examined the atrocities committed by the Nazis and was translated as Geissel der Menschheit in 1956;137 Bruno Apitz’s Nackt

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unter Wölfen (Naked among Wolves, 1958), a novel steeped in fact about the Buchenwald concentration camp in which the author had been imprisoned for eight years;138 Rolf Hochhuth’s Der Stellvertreter: Ein christliches Trauerspiel (The Deputy: A Christian Tragedy, 1963), a controversial play condemning the Vatican and, in particular, Pope Pius XII for having shown indifference to the plight of the Jews by not speaking out, by not taking action as the Holocaust unfolded;139 and Peter Weiss’s Die Ermittlung: Oratorium in 11 Gesängen (The Investigation: Oratorio in 11 Songs, 1965), a play that delved into the human beings, the testimonies, and the truths of Auschwitz that emerged during the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, which had just ended.140 The play premiered simultaneously in fourteen cities in West and East Germany, as well as in London, on October 19, 1965. As twenty years of silence shrouding the crimes of the Third Reich finally burst through the surface into public debate and discussion in both Germanys, Schubert joined the conversation with powerful, unforgettable visual language centered on the suffering of human beings. Among others, he produced “Father Kolbe in Auschwitz. In the Hunger Bunker” and “Father Kolbe in Auschwitz. Under the Whip of Kapo Krott.” The focus in these two works is on the Polish friar Maximilian Kolbe, who was sent to Auschwitz, where he was punished and starved for his undimmed religiosity. Kolbe became revered for offering comfort to fellow inmates in the midst of his own suffering and renowned for volunteering to die in place of a stranger.141 Schubert also created “At Night in the Cattle Car on the Journey from France to Buchenwald,” one of several haunting works he made in response to two autobiographical novels, Bruno Apitz’s Naked Among Wolves and Jorge Semprún’s Die grosse Reise, which details Semprún’s five-day journey from a French internment camp to the Buchenwald concentration camp. Schubert does not employ distortion or abstraction to blur or confound the visual impact on the viewer. Instead, the image overflows with human beings, individually depicted with expressions of horror and fear, anguish and resignation, tightly packed into a livestock wagon that is taking them into a terrifying unknown. The deep sepia tones, partially washed, intensify the agonizing scene.142

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Figures 3.22–3.24  Otto Schubert. “Auschwitz Triptych.” Fig 3.22, left panel; Fig 3.23, center panel; Fig 3.24, right panel. Circa 1965. Courtesy of Zentrum für verfolgte Künste/ Center for Persecuted Arts, Kunstmuseum Solingen.

The culmination of Schubert’s Holocaust-related art is comprised of two paintings; first, “Christus mit Dornenkrone” (Christ with Crown of Thorns), and then “Auschwitz Triptych,” his last known oil painting. In stark contrast to the triptych’s usual religious connotation, its historical use as an altarpiece, and its three-wing construction of birth, crucifixion, and resurrection, Schubert perverted traditional Christian iconography in this work. The left wing of the triptych depicts a scene where the rape of a female inmate by the camp’s commandant has just occurred. She has been terribly violated. Her body is splayed and her eyes exude shock, while he sits smugly upright on the bed and lights a cigarette. (Figure 3.22) Underneath a black and blood-red sky, the center piece illustrates the ongoing murderous violence perpetrated in the camp. The commandant who raped the female prisoner appears in this scene as well, only now he is fully clothed in his black boots and black uniform, cigarette in his mouth, conducting the ongoing savagery of whippings and beatings as a prisoner’s orchestra plays nearby. The commandant’s

left boot rests on the backside of a dead female inmate who lies at his feet. It is the same woman he raped in the prior scene. Situated directly opposite the commandant, a soldier next to him on bent knee pointing a gun at the prisoners, and a snarling dog is an old man with flowing white beard, wearing a robe that is spotted with blood, his arms extended beseechingly above his head; a prophet in the midst of the camp yard. (Figure 3.23) The triptych’s right wing delineates mass death as cigarette-smoking Sonderkommandos (Kapos) pull lifeless inmate corpses, children and adults, from the entrance of the overflowing gas chamber. The Kapos themselves are prisoners, chosen by concentration camp officials to help with the disposal of inmates who have been gassed. While their own deaths are delayed by the work they are doing for the SS in the camps, the Kapos too will eventually be earmarked for the gas chambers, but not yet, not in this scene. (Figure 3.24) In “Auschwitz Triptych,” Schubert does not turn away. He offers no respite from the suffering, no hint of salvation, no possibility of resurrection. Instead, he unblinkingly details

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the crimes committed by human beings in the most notorious of the countless concentration camps erected by the Nazi State. Notably, Schubert’s artwork is among the first to focus on Auschwitz and to detail the ongoing sexual violence that took place in the concentration camp system. In this aspect, he pushes back at the post-1945 assertion that female inmates who survived the camps did so by prostituting themselves. Schubert makes clear that there was no sexual bargaining in the camp for the possibility of living another day. The post-rape scene he depicts obviates that the sex has been forced and violent. And, in the very next scene, which occurs perhaps moments or hours after the rape, the same woman lays dead at the feet of her rapist, the commandant. “Auschwitz Triptych” leaves the viewer overwhelmed by the terror, violence, inhumanity, and complicity that comprise the core of genocide.143

Schubert’s Last Years – “Lord teach us to pray” Around the time that Schubert was completing his works on the Holocaust, he was formally diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. The symptoms, though, had been troubling him for some time. A rare exhibition in 1962 titled Meine Kinder (My Children) in Karl-Marx-Stadt, now Chemnitz, was comprised of a few pleasant, unremarkable drawings and watercolors of his children.144 Despite the small size of the exhibit, the preparations for it had completely worn him out.145 Nonetheless, he seized upon the opportunity to showcase any of his work because his art had been largely ignored by the East German government and public. Aware that his illness was impinging upon his ability to draw and paint, Schubert returned to the woodcut and to classic literary works. And, perhaps, because of his diagnosis, he also returned to Biblical texts that had engaged him throughout his life, even though sacred art was not an officially approved genre in East Germany. He produced a portfolio of woodcuts to illustrate Offenbarung Johannis (The Revelation of John), as well as a series of compelling woodcuts on Johannes Jörgensen’s Der heilige Franz von Assisi (St. Francis

Figure 3.25  Otto Schubert. “St. Francis Tending to the Sick” from the cycle of St. Francis of Assisi. 1962. Courtesy of The Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection.

of Assisi).146 (Figure 3.25) In 1964, he created woodcut illustrations to Shakespeare’s best known plays, including Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, King Lear, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest.147 And, as a commissioned work, he made two woodcuts for a 1966 West German publication, Graphik zur Bibel (Graphics to the Bible).148 The power of his printmaking had finally transcended the Wall. Before his illness rendered him unable to earn a living as an artist, Schubert created woodcuts depicting Maxim Gorky’s Die Mutter (The Mother), the first major Socialist Realist novel about worker revolution.149 He felt sure that the portfolio of illustrations, which illuminated the

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Figure 3.26  Otto Schubert. From the cycle of The Weavers. Circa 1967. Author’s collection.

regime’s original ideological foundations, would sell in East Germany. He then produced a series of woodcuts to illustrate Die Weber (The Weavers), a play written in 1892 by Gerhart Hauptmann. The play dramatizes the 1840s uprising of Silesian weavers, whose work had become irrelevant with the onset of industrialization in Germany. (Figure 3.26) Still coming to terms with the Nazi Party he had joined and the Nazi government that had wreaked havoc on millions of lives, Schubert illustrated Bertolt Brecht’s play Mutter Courage (Mother Courage), which the German dramatist wrote in protest against the 1939 invasion of Poland by German troops. Brecht’s dual themes, “the devastating effects

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of a European war” and the moral failing of anyone hoping to profit from war, have led some literary analysts to view Mother Courage as the greatest anti-war play ever written.150 Notably, Schubert did not make the woodcuts of Brecht’s masterpiece to fulfill a commission. He created them, his second wife recalled, because “he felt compelled to,” as he had felt compelled to finally confront the monstrosities of the Third Reich.151 Schubert produced his last commissioned works in the late 1960s. The first was a set of colored brush drawings to illustrate a book by the East German writer Johannes Bobrowski, Levins Mühle, 34 Sätze über meinen Grossvater

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Figure 3.27  Otto Schubert. “Lord, Teach Us to Pray.” 1969. Courtesy of The Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection.

(Levin’s Mill. 34 Sentences about my Grandfather), a novel that concerns the thorny issue of national honor and universal justice.152 The second was comprised of a series of eight engaging, imaginative, and detailed woodcut illustrations for a new edition of Gottfried August Bürger’s popular Adventures of Münchhausen.153 To the end of his life, printmaking, whether woodcuts, etchings, linocuts, or lithographs, had offered Schubert the means to fully develop and display his artistic talent and technical skill. Additionally, illustrative work had provided him with a much-needed source of income.

The final artwork Schubert created was a linocut for himself.154 The piece recalls the graphics created in Germany in the period immediately following the Great War. Powerful in its simplicity, humility, and message, “Herr, Lehre uns Beten” (Lord, teach us to pray) brought him full circle back to those difficult, yet hopeful days when German soldier-­ artists, recently returned from the war, formed groups and wrote manifestos and acted upon their fervent belief that art could lead the way to a more just and peaceful world. (Figure 3.27) Schubert died from complications related to Parkinson’s on June 12, 1970.155

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Postscript Otto Schubert passed away virtually unknown in the West, unlike his now famous First World War artist colleagues, many of whom have been discussed in this book. He is rarely included in art history books on German art of the twentieth century, and just as rarely mentioned in publications and conversations about art of the Great War. Yet, his war art was comprehensive – two large portfolios, several individual pieces, and an extensive series of trench postcards – and it preceded by several years the well-known war-related works of Otto Dix and Käthe Kollwitz, among others. Moreover, Schubert was a prolific illustrator and artist, especially in the field of graphic art, as this book has attempted to document. And because he was so fundamentally marked by the major events of the European, specifically German, twentieth century – the First World War, the promise and instability of the postwar Weimar Republic, the rise of fascism and Nazism, and the establishment of the authoritarian Nazi state, the Second World War and its disastrous consequences, the occupation and partitioning of Germany, and the decadeslong Cold War – his life and his work offer rich historical avenues to explore. Schubert was a desperately poor but talented art student before the First World War. He was drafted and served in the German army, and he was badly wounded on the Western Front. He finished his academic studies at the Dresden Kunstakademie, an education that culminated in receiving the top artistic award, the prestigious Grosser Staatspreis. He was one of the founding members of Gruppe 1919,

a rising star in the dynamic postwar German art scene, and close colleagues with Otto Dix, Peter Böckstiegel, Conrad Felixmüller, Oskar Kokoschka, Wilhelm Heckrott, and Constantine von Mitschke-Collande, all of whom he remained in contact with for the rest of his life.1 Shaken by the huge economic gyrations of hyperinflation in the early 1920s and the grave depression that began in the late 1920s, he nonetheless exhibited widely and produced copiously, especially in the field of literary illustration. He was artistically defamed by the Nazi Party, which he had supported with his membership. And, he was financially ruined by the prohibitions against defamed artists. He was personally devastated by the world war the Nazi government unleashed. He lost his beloved wife, his twenty-year old son, his home, and his studio, as well as the many artworks and lithograph plates he had stored there. After the First World War, Schubert declined to engage in the political battles that were being waged in postwar Germany, stating, “As a soldier I lay long enough in the mud at the front – I want peace.”2 Yet, he found himself at the age of fifty-five again bearing arms as a German soldier towards the end of the Second World War. During the Cold War, Schubert made the decision to remain in his lifelong home of Dresden, which was located in East Germany. He was therefore isolated from the growing western art market and out-of-step with the abstract art movements that were developing. Equally distressing, both the Soviet-propped, repressive East German government and

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the barriers erected between East and West Germany, as well as between eastern and western Europe, made abundantly clear, ideologically and physically, that two calamitous conflicts had solved nothing in the power-politics that roiled the century. Because Schubert did not engage in the politics or the officially supported art aesthetics of East Germany, he neither received commissions from the government nor was he ever able to cultivate any official interest in the countless works he produced. And so, he never regained the stellar reputation he had worked so hard to achieve during the years following the Great War. In the period after the disintegration of the East German regime and the reunification of Germany, more than two thousand artworks by Schubert and other artists were discovered, covered in dust, stored and forgotten in warehouses, lockers, and closets of East German government facilities. The reason given for the massive pile-up was the official edict that banned state-wide distribution of art. It was far more likely, however, that the art was apolitical or religious or in other ways did not support the government’s ideology and aesthetic.3 East German cultural officials declined Schubert’s “Auschwitz Triptych,” which he had offered them, and so the three panels of the artwork somehow became separated from one another after he died. It was only in the early 2000s that the German art historian and collector of defamed art, Gerhard Schneider, was able to reunite, through detective work and sheer luck, Schubert’s artistic acknowledgment of the crimes committed in the Third Reich. It took forty years for his triptych to find a befitting home in The Center for Persecuted Arts in Solingen, Germany.4 As is the case with many of his artist colleagues, Otto Schubert was indelibly shaped by war. Twice in their lives, a war brought great suffering to the generation of German artists born between 1885 and 1900. Some served in both world wars, like Schubert and his friend Otto Dix. More than two-thirds of the German artists of that generation lost almost all of their works due to the massive art seizures by the Nazis and the destruction of their homes and studios wrought by the intense bombing campaigns that characterized the Second World War.5 Additionally, some artists destroyed

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their own works, rather than giving the Nazis an opportunity to confiscate them. Moreover, large numbers of artworks disappeared in the chaos, looting, occupation, and deprivation that characterized the immediate post-World War Two period. The postwar art landscape must have felt overwhelming to navigate. Artists’ relationships to art dealers and collectors were often broken.6 Some of the best connected, most knowledgeable German modern art purveyors of the 1920s were Jewish. They had either fled Germany before the war or had been murdered in one of the Third Reich’s countless concentration camps. Other dealers had lost most of their assets in the Nazis’ prewar art purges or in the war’s destruction. Food and water, clothing and fuel were almost non-existent in the cities of Germany that had been bombed into rubblefilled moonscapes.7 Art supplies were virtually unobtainable. And, hope for a sustainable future as an artist was held in the hands of the victorious occupiers. Yet, in some cities where music and art had filled an important cultural role prior to the Nazi takeover, the overwhelming desire for creative release trumped the enormous obstacles present in the postwar period. Despite the hunger and need that enveloped Berlin like a thick fog, well over seventy art exhibitions were held in that city alone in the first year of peace.8 Those artists who managed to remain in the West after the war were sometimes able to reclaim their places in the pantheon of German artists fairly quickly.9 Unless they bowed to the East German government’s cultural aesthetic, artists in the East, even when their political leanings lined up correctly, faced many more difficulties restarting their careers after the war. The great photo-montage artist and courageous anti-Nazi John Heartfield, who had fled to Czechoslovakia and then to England to escape his Nazi pursuers, found himself unwelcome in Britain and East Germany when the war ended. One of the most artistically vehement opponents of the Nazis, Heartfield created some 240 political photomontages between 1930 and 1938 as warnings against the rise of fascism and the dangers of Hitler and the Nazis. Yet, the British government rejected his application to remain in England, and when he moved in 1950 to live next to his brother in East Berlin, he was

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interrogated by government officials, almost put on trial for treason, and denied admission into the East German Akademie der Künste (Academy of the Arts) for six years.10 During the span of Schubert’s life, Dresden, the city of his birth, went from being one of the cultural “pearls” of the German Empire and home to the first Expressionist group, Die Brücke, to a hotbed of artistic innovation during the early years of the postwar Weimar Republic, to the location where the first “degenerate art” exhibitions occurred under the Nazis, to a cultural outpost in East Germany. In their lifetimes, German artists such as Schubert experienced four vastly different governments whose cultural aesthetics often illuminated official ideology. Otto Schubert, who lived in Dresden throughout his life, found it impossible after the Second World War to reclaim the stature he had earned in the years before the Nazi takeover of power. During the Cold War, the difficulties he faced in getting his art to a larger public and art market on the other side of the Wall felt insurmountable to him. At one point, he went to his studio and destroyed numerous artworks he had stored there, so great was his frustration. His second wife’s intervention saved the few works that remained.11 Three times during Schubert’s professional career much of his artistic legacy was destroyed – by the “degenerate art” seizures and destruction under the Nazis, by the bombs that laid waste to large parts of Dresden including his studio during the Second World War, and by his own hands under the East German regime. As a result, the art Schubert created before the Second World War is very rare. Even so, by the end of his life, he had produced a remarkable oeuvre: more than eighty graphic series or portfolios, full illustrations for dozens of children’s books as well as biblical texts and literary works, and countless individual etchings, drypoints, lithographs, woodcuts, watercolors, and oil paintings.12 While some of the individuals involved in Gruppe 1919 have been ranked among the most important German artists of the twentieth century, Schubert, one of the group’s founding members, has been largely forgotten. That erasure becomes more permanent when occasionally, in chapters and essays

written about Gruppe 1919, he receives at most two or three sentences or is entirely omitted from the list of founding members.13 Schubert’s exquisite trench postcards, alongside his extensive wartime sketches and lithographs, call for his insertion into the art historical annals of the Great War. His sometimes detached, sometimes despairing, yet always intimate cards illuminate his desire to capture and to remember the intensely personal landscape of war. Additionally, his ninety-two hand-painted cards, which he almost always ended with “a thousand heartfelt greetings, your Otto,” remind us that Otto and Irma’s love story took place in the midst of the First World War. The stark lithographs, which he created from his wartime sketches and postcards while he recovered from his injuries, depict uncensored scenes of brutal combat, exhaustion, violence, fear, suffering, and grief. They too exemplify his need to document in a visual language of meaning and mourning the truths of war for soldiers everywhere. Schubert could finally and fully render the conflict he had experienced because he was removed from the deadly artillery fire of the front, away from the prying military censors, and safely home with Irma. That their love story, rooted in the First World War, ended so suddenly with her violent death in the Second World War, adds yet another poignant layer of meaning to his postcards “from the volcano” of war, from the frontlines and trenches of the Western Front.14 In a myriad of ways, Schubert’s wartime art bears powerful witness to the experiences of all persons – combatants and noncombatants alike – who were branded by the Great War and shaped by the twentieth century. His deeply moving tokens of love, created amidst unprecedented death and material devastation, and his wrenching images of conflict, as experienced by horses and soldiers, are one hundred years old. Even so, they are as relevant now, their messages equally powerful, as they were a century ago. They cause us to stop, to take them in, and to contemplate how complicated and terrible the consequences of war are on every individual who endures it.

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The Artworks

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Figure 1  7 November 1915 “Mr. Frenchman” Dear Irma! Many greetings on Sunday. Hopefully they will find you in the best of health. Many warm regards also to your family. With a heartfelt greeting. Your Otto 88

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Figure 2  14 November 1915 With a thousand greetings for Sunday. Your Otto

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Figure 3  18 November 1915

Figure 4  19 November 1915

My dear Irma! A thousand greetings. Your Otto. Many greetings to your family, most of all to your brother. All the best.

Dear Irma! The greetings from Mr. G[räubig?], Miss Martha and Mother from the Hofe-wiese [picnic area near Dresden], I warmly welcome. Received letter and newspaper this evening. Thank you for those. Letter tomorrow evening. Your Otto

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Figure 5  22 November 1915 Many greetings. Your brother, Otto

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Figure 6  25 November 1915 “The Village Beauty” [Message begins on back] Dear Irma! For two days no news from you. Hopefully my greeting card will find you in perfect mood and health. How long will it take? This evening received your letter. [Text continues on front of card] The wonderful Christmas celebration is soon here. Hopefully it will bring much joy to all of you at home. Now the second winter at the front. I cannot allow myself to think about it. When I remember how wonderful the winter semester was at the [art] academy, I could go crazy. May life be good to you, and take from my heart a thousand greetings, from your Otto

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Figure 7  [undated/postmarked 27-11-15] My dear Irma! Many greetings. Received your letter last night. How nice it must have been in Rockau [outside of Dresden]. How much I would have liked to have been there. Let us hope for next winter, shall we? Many greetings to your dear parents. Short on field postcards. Soon the last ones. Maybe you can occasionally send me a few of the kind like the last ones; it is very easy to paint on them. Hopefully you are doing well? Letter follows.

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Figure 8  1 December 1915 A thousand greetings. Your Otto

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Figure 9  3 December 1915 Dear Irma! Received your letter last night. Letter follows!

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Figure 10  4 December 1915 Dear Irma! Many greetings from the land of the enemy. It is constantly raining. Day after day, bad weather. Apparently, winter is here. Is there snow at home? Today I sent a card to all the ladies at home. Hopefully they will get there. I also wrote to your brother. Your Otto. Many greetings to your parents, also sister.

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Figure 11  8 December 1915 Dear Irma! I will now send you a series of cards that depict our daily life as vividly as possible. Each card has a No. [number]. You write to me then please if you have received all No. [numbers]. The series depicts one day. Hopefully you will get them all regularly. The cards you sent me are simply great for painting. New thousand greetings from your Otto. This image is one of Schubert’s few self-portraits. 97

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Figure 12  9 December 1915 “Midnight” My Irma. Doumely Doumely is in the Ardennes. The back of the card is blank.

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Figure 13  10 December 1915 “No. 2. Washing. In the Morning”

Figure 14  12 December 1915 “No. 3. Drinking Coffee”

Dear Irma, Yesterday I received the letter and newspaper. I was so curious about the situation in Greece and you sent me a newspaper from the 14th of August. Immediately I had to think again about that beautiful time.

What is your brother doing? Many greetings. Your Otto.

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Figure 15  14 December 1915 “Stormy Night. France” The back of this card is blank.

Figure 16  15 December 1915 “Small Village in France” Dear Irma! Many thousand greetings. Your Otto. Just write me a lot. No letter from you for so long. Yesterday received the field postcards. I also sent a card to your brother. I’m really fed up with life!!!

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Figure 17  19 December 1915 “No. 9. Lunch Break in Quarters?!” Dear Irma! Many thanks for your dear letter. Will send the mail to you in Grossenhain. Hopefully you will get everything there. With a thousand greetings. Your Otto

Figure 18  23 December 1915 “No. 12. At Supper in the Quarter!?” Please tell me your Grossenhain address. Have forgotten it. Sending a letter there today. Hopefully you’ll get it anyway. Your Otto

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Figure 19  23 December 1915 “No. 13. The Most Beautiful Hour of the Day” Dear Irma, a thousand greetings, Otto. The mail has been delivered. Good cigars and more. A letter. But in the newspaper there is nothing about peace?!

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Figure 20  26 December 1915 Dear Irma! Received letter and newspaper last night. Take many hearfelt greetings from me. Your Otto. Letter sent at same time.

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Figure 21  30 December 1915 My dear Irma! On the 28th received your letter from […]. For that, thank you. Hopefully, you are still well. Letter follows.

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Figure 22  5 January 1916 Dear Irma! Our dugout. Today in the trench. Received your parcel before 9, which I was very happy about. Many thanks to you. Greetings please to your parents from me. You too. New thousand greetings from your Otto.

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Figure 23  6 January 1916 Dear Irma! Yesterday received letter and cards from Grossenhain. I was very happy. What is your brother doing? My sister would have been pleased because you […] were there.

Figure 24  7 January 1916 “Dugout” Dear Irma! Many greetings to you from our dugout. Received your letter yesterday. I wrote to Berlin. Letter immediately. Your Otto

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Figure 25  12 January 1916 “Our Home” Dear Irma, received your letter and newspaper last night. I still don’t have the package from Miss Hansen. To you thousand greetings.

Figure 26  13 January 1916 Dear Irma! Thousand greetings. Your Otto. Many greetings home.

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Figure 27  14 January 1916 Dear Irma! For days, no mail from you! How are you actually?

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Figure 28  15 January 1916 Dear Irma! Today received your letter in the trench, as well as newspaper. Many, many thanks. Thousand greetings to you. Your Otto

Figure 29  16 January 1916 My dear Irma! Received your mail in the trench this morning, newspaper and package. Made me very happy. Now I will eat ‘high on the hog’ [ich werde hohe Tafel halten] and, while doing so, I keep thinking how beautiful it would be if only we could do this at home. Thousand greetings to you. Your Otto

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Figure 30  17 January 1916 “Enemy Position at Dawn” Dear Irma! I still don’t have the package from Miss Hansen. Received newspaper today! Many greetings to your parents, also sister and brother. Your Otto

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Figure 31  19 January 1916 “Fresh from the Position” [straight from the frontline] Dear Irma! Yesterday received card with newspapers; as soon as I can I will send you the desired cards. I will send some to Miss Hansen and Hedwig. Your Otto. Letter immediately. The number 192 – Schubert’s regiment number – appears on the helmet of the exhausted soldier, likely Schubert himself.

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Figure 32  21 January 1916 “Terrain behind our Front” “On the left a shot-up [battered] farm” Dear Irma! Today I send you the 5 cards. I hope you like them. […] given the circumstances, yes not one […]

Figure 33  23 January 1916 “Moonlight Night at the Front” Got newspapers and letter yesterday. The outing to […] must have been beautiful. Your Otto. Greeting home!

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Figure 34  24 January 1916 “Evening Mood at the Front” Dear Irma! Hopefully, my birthday card [as well as letter?] is in your possession today. Yesterday received your dear package and one from Hedwig. I was very pleased. Greetings to you. Your Otto

Figure 35  25 January 1916 “Evening at the Front” Dear Irma! To you thousand greetings. Your Otto. Letter received, as soon as I can an answer. Greetings home.

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Figure 36  26 January 1916 “Evening Mood at the Front” Many greetings. Your Otto

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Figure 37  27 January 1916 “Moonlight Night at the Front” Dear Irma! Today received newspapers as well as “Medea.” It gives me a lot of pleasure to read “Medea” again. Unfortunately, however [...]. With Greeting. Your Otto

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Figure 38  31 January 1916 My dear Irma! Another month over – all still good. To you a thousand-fold greeting. Your Otto

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Figure 39  1 February 1916 “French Boy” Dear Irma! As soon as I can, a letter. So you received my cards. I hope you liked them. I got a package from Uncle Gustav with a letter, and also sent him a painted card. Everything is still going well. Your Otto.

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Figure 40  2 February 1916 Dear Irma! Today letter. How are you? Hopefully my card will reach you in the best of health. Many greetings to you. Your Otto.

Figure 41  4 February 1916 “Sunday Morning at the Aisne” [the River Aisne, close to where the three Battles of the Marne took place] My dear Irma! Yesterday, I got a package with letter from Berlin, made me very happy. Greetings to you. Your Otto. [Text continues on back]: “A Sunny Evening in the Town” My dear Irma! Yesterday I received a package from Miss Hansen, which I was very happy about. One thousand greetings to you. Your Otto.

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Figure 42  4 February 1916 There is no text on this card, only the painted image, which clearly alludes to the title written on the back of the previous card, “A Sunny Evening in the Town.”

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Figure 43  5 February 1916 “French Type” Dear Irma! Yesterday, received the letter and newspaper. Now I am curious what the photo will look like. Miss Hansen also wrote me that the weather is so nice right now at home. Also for us comes soon the time that we can again enjoy the beauty of our homeland. [The war would continue for 2-1/2 more years.] Until then, live well. Everything else is still fine. Greetings to home. Your Otto. Uncle Gustav also sent me a package.

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Figure 44  8 February 1916 “Stormy Day” Dear Irma! Today in addition to your package received […]. I was very happy and will answer the ladies immediately. Letter still today. Your Otto

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Figure 45  9 February 1916 [On back of card]: Dear Irma! French family out for a ride. Good trip! With heartfelt greeting. Your Otto. Hopefully, we will get our pictures soon and I can send you one of them.

Figure 46  10 February 1916 “Moonlight in the Town” Dear Irma! Thousand greetings. Your Otto

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Figure 47  12 February 1916 “Rain Day” Dear Irma! Yesterday, I received your friendly card greeting from the old Schönfeld. The greetings of the ladies, I warmly welcome. Greeting to you. Your Otto

Figure 48  12 February 1916 Dear Irma! Received your dear letter yesterday. I have not received the cigarettes from Frau Langgemach! [Mr. And Mrs. Langgemach were neighbors of the Müllers in Dresden; Mr. Langgemach was a decorative painter.]

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Figure 49  13 February 1916 “Sunny Evening in the Town” Dear Irma! Greetings to you. Your Otto. Sent letter yesterday.

Figure 50  14 February 1916 “Landscape in the Ardennes” Dear Irma! Thousand greetings to you. Your Otto 124

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Figure 51  15 February 1916 “Railway Station in Town” Dear Irma! Many greetings […]. Your Otto. Received your dear letter.

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Figure 52  16 February 1916 “Peaceful Village in the Ardennes” Dear Irma! Received your letter last night. Many heartfelt greetings. Your Otto

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Figure 53  18 February 1916 “Ardennes” [unclear text]

Figure 54  21 February 1916 “Moonlit Night in the Town” Dear Irma! Many greetings from the heart. Your Otto 127

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Figure 55  22 February 1916 “Sunday Evening in the Village” “Ardennes” Dear Irma! Many heartfelt greetings. Your Otto. For days no mail from you.

Figure 56  23 February 1916 “Veiled Evening Sun” “Ardennes” Dear Irma! I had already written Miss Hansen. But I will write her again. I think the card did not arrive. With a thousand greetings. Your Otto

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Figure 57  25 February 1916 “Landscape in the Ardennes” Dear Irma! As soon as I can, I will answer your letter. I do not feel the best right now. But hope the discomfort is temporary. Your Otto

Figure 58  26 February 1916 “Horse Inspection” Dear Irma! Letter came this evening. Thousand greetings. Your Otto

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Figure 59  27 February 1916 “French Track [Rail] Workers” My dear Irma! Letter received. Many thanks. The greetings from Mr. Gräubig and Martha I warmly welcome.

Figure 60  [undated; postmark on the back is 2 March 1916] “Sunny Day in the Ardennes” Dear Irma! Did you receive the last shipment of drawings? Write me please! Many greetings to you and home. Your Otto

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Figure 61  3 March 1916 “Evening. Little Town in the Ardennes” Dear Irma, Many greetings. Your Otto

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Figure 62  3 March 1916 “Throwing Hand Grenades” My dear ones! Today received letter and package. Many thanks. The toothache, thank God, I haven’t had any more for days. But it’s good when one has something here. The cake “Hurray” was very fine. Tasted good. Your Otto This postcard is most likely to Schubert’s family. The back of the card, where the recipient’s address is usually noted, is glued onto cardboard and is inaccessible.

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Figure 63  4 March 1916 “Evening in the Town” Dear Irma! Received letter today. Many thanks. Your Otto

Figure 64  5 March 1916 “At the Front” Dear Irma! Many heartfelt greetings. Your Otto 133

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Figure 65  8 March 1916 “Returning Home from the Entrenchments” Dear Irma! Thousand greetings. Your Otto

Figure 66  9 March 1916 Dear Irma! Yesterday received the pad [sketchbook]. It is, however, a bit too big for the knapsack. The [...] I knew about that. I have [...] Thousand greetings. Your Otto 134

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Figure 67  11 March 1916 “Wagon In Shrapnel Fire” Dear Irma! Greetings from the heart. Your Otto

Figure 68  13 March 1916 “Russian Prisoners” [captured Russian soldiers] Dear Irma! A thousand greetings from the West. Your Otto

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Figure 69  14 March 1916 “Village at the Front” Dear Irma! Received map from Switzerland. Liked a lot and […] Greetings […]

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Figure 70  15 March 1916 “Young Frenchwoman” “France” Dear Irma! The most marvelous weather here. Sunshine all day, and yet one can enjoy the beautiful days so little. No desire to write letters. I really like your card from Switzerland. Many heartfelt greetings. Your Otto.

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Figure 71  16 March 1916 “Morning Sun in Ardennes” Thousand greetings. Your Otto

Figure 72  17 March 1916 “At the Front” Dear Irma! Thousand greetings. Your Otto

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Figure 73  18 March 1916 “From Our Quarters” Dear Irma! Many heartfelt greetings. Received your letter today. Many thanks for this. Did you receive my flowers? Greeting to you and yours. Your Otto

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Figure 74  19 March 1916 “Early Spring in the Ardennes” Dear Irma! I hope my card greeting finds you in the best of health. See you soon. Your Otto. Greetings to Miss Hedwig.

Figure 75  22 March 1916 “France” Dear Sister! Thousand greetings, your Otto. How is Walther? I wanted to write him again.

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Figure 76  22 March 1916 “France” Dear Irma, Many new things. Hopefully it goes well for you. Greetings to Miss Hansen and Hedwig.

Figure 77  25 March 1916 “Wounded at the Collection Point” Many greetings.

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Figure 78  27 March 1916 “France” Thousand greetings. Your Otto

Figure 79  1 April 1916 “Argonne. French Prisoners” [captured French soldiers] Dear Irma, a thousand heartfelt greetings from the hot West. Your Otto. With many greetings home. Most beautiful weather to go for a walk.

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Figure 80  2 April 1916 “Evening Sun in the Argonne” Please a letter!? Newspapers boring. Everything is still going well. Your Otto. Greeting to Miss Hedwig.

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Figure 81  3 April 1916 “Argonne” Dear Irma! Thousand greetings from the West[ern Front]. Your Otto. Hopefully my card will find you in good health and spirits.

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Figure 82  4 April 1916 “Argonne. Building a Road in the Argonne.”

Figure 83  7 April 1916 “A Hot Day” Dear Irma! From the West a thousand greetings. Your Otto. Received card.

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Figure 84  Sunday 16 April 1916 “Argonne” Dear Irma! Early Sunday. Easter. No book. Think a lot about you. Hopefully you are doing well. Greetings home. Your Otto

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Figure 85  12 May 1916 “Pfalz” [in the Rhineland-Palatinate] Dear Irma! Today card and letter forth. Hopefully, you will find my card quite cheerful. A heartfelt greeting to you and yours. See you soon. Your Otto

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Figure 86  [undated, likely sometime in January 1916] Dear Ones! Sending you some mail; picks me up as well. I include 4 marks [4M]. Write me if you receive the money. With these 4 marks, it is now 9 marks that I have sent to you. So, write me if you have received the 9 marks. [On back]: Christmas was very nice. Everything is still going well. Otto.

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Figure 87  [Undated] No text

Figure 88  [Undated] “Night in the Champagne” [written on back of card] “Otto Schubert” [top right front of card] 149

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Figure 89  [Undated] “French Prisoners” [written on back of card] “Otto Schubert” [written on front bottom right of card]

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Figure 90  [Undated] “Fallen Frenchmen in the Champagne” [written on back of card] “Otto Schubert” [written on front bottom left of card] The First Battle of Champagne was fought from December 20, 1914 to March 17, 1915, and was waged by the French 4th Army and the German 3rd Army, of which Schubert’s unit was one of many.

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Figure 91  [Undated] no signature, title, or message

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Figure 92  [Undated] “Outing at the Edge of Amiens” [written on front; back of card is inaccessible, glued to cardboard] Amiens is a city in northern France divided by the River Somme. 153

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Figure 93  Otto Schubert. “Execution.” War sketch. Circa 1915–16. Kupferstich-Kabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden; photo: Andreas Diesend.

Figure 94  Otto Schubert. “Road Crossing at Ypres.” War sketch. Circa 1915–16. KupferstichKabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden; photo: Andreas Diesend. 154

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Figure 95  Otto Schubert. “Departure to the Frontlines at Sunrise.” War sketch. Circa 1915– 16. Kupferstich-Kabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden; photo: Andreas Diesend.

Figure 96  Otto Schubert. “Infirm Collecting Point Flanders.” War sketch. Circa 1915–16. Kupferstich-Kabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden; photo: Andreas Diesend. 155

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Figure 97  Otto Schubert. “Field Hospital.” War sketch. Circa 1915–16. KupferstichKabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden; photo: Andreas Diesend.

Figure 98  Otto Schubert. “Flanders.” War sketch. Circa 1915–16. Kupferstich-Kabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden; photo: Andreas Diesend. 156

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Figure 99  Otto Schubert. “The Battle of Béthincourt. Left the Dead Man. In the middle, the village Béthincourt under German artillery barrage. In the background, hardly visible through the smoke, Hill 304. Near Verdun.” War sketch. 1916. Kupferstich-Kabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden; photo: Andreas Diesend. The double elevation called The Dead Man, also known as Der Toter Mann and Le Mort Homme, is located about 10 km northwest of the city of Verdun, and consists of two high hills on which calamitous battles took place. When the top of The Dead Man was re-measured after the war, it was 16 meters lower due to the unrelenting artillery fire. Dead soldiers were found 10 meters below ground.

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Figure 100  Otto Schubert. “Destroyed Church in Passchendaele.” War sketch. 1915. Kupferstich-Kabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden; photo: Andreas Diesend.

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Figure 101  Otto Schubert. “Flanders” from 24 Lithographs of the War in the West. 1917. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies (M.82.287.63a) © artist or artist’s estate, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA.

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Figure 102  Otto Schubert. “Street Battle” from 24 Lithographs of the War in the West. 1917. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies (M.82.287.63b) © artist or artist’s estate, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA.

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Figure 103  Otto Schubert. “Country Road” from 24 Lithographs of the War in the West. 1917. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies (M.82.287.63c) © artist or artist’s estate, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA.

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Figure 104  Otto Schubert. “Relieving a Sentry” from 24 Lithographs of the War in the West. 1917. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies (M.82.287.63d) © artist or artist’s estate, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA.

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Figure 105  Otto Schubert. “In the Rain” from 24 Lithographs of the War in the West. 1917. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies (M.82.287.63e) © artist or artist’s estate, photo © Museum Associates/ LACMA.

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Figure 106  Otto Schubert. “Ration Carriers 1” from 24 Lithographs of the War in the West. 1917. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies (M.82.287.63f) © artist or artist’s estate, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA.

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Figure 107  Otto Schubert. “Wounded Soldiers” from 24 Lithographs of the War in the West. 1917. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies (M.82.287.63g) © artist or artist’s estate, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA.

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Figure 108  Otto Schubert. “Destroyed Forest” from 24 Lithographs of the War in the West. 1917. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies (M.82.287.63h) © artist or artist’s estate, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA.

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Figure 109  Otto Schubert. “Champagne” from 24 Lithographs of the War in the West. 1917. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies (M.82.287.63i) © artist or artist’s estate, photo © Museum Associates/ LACMA.

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Figure 110  Otto Schubert. “Ration Carriers 2” from 24 Lithographs of the War in the West. 1917. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies (M.82.287.63j) © artist or artist’s estate, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA.

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Figure 111  Otto Schubert. “French Prisoners” from 24 Lithographs of the War in the West. 1917. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies (M.82.287.63k) © artist or artist’s estate, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA.

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Figure 112  Otto Schubert. “At the Mass Grave” from 24 Lithographs of the War in the West. 1917. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies (M.82.287.63L) © artist or artist’s estate, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA.

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Figure 113  Otto Schubert. “Defense” from 24 Lithographs of the War in the West. 1917. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies (M.82.287.63m) © artist or artist’s estate, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA.

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Figure 114  Otto Schubert. “Under Barrage” from 24 Lithographs of the War in the West. 1917. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies (M.82.287.63n) © artist or artist’s estate, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA.

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Figure 115  Otto Schubert. “Water Carriers” from 24 Lithographs of the War in the West. 1917. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies (M.82.287.63o) © artist or artist’s estate, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA.

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Figure 116  Otto Schubert. “Wounded” from 24 Lithographs of the War in the West. 1917. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies (M.82.287.63p) © artist or artist’s estate, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA.

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Figure 117  Otto Schubert. “Argonne” from 24 Lithographs of the War in the West. 1917. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies (M.82.287.63q) © artist or artist’s estate, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA.

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Figure 118  Otto Schubert. “Direct Hit” from 24 Lithographs of the War in the West. 1917. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies (M.82.287.63r) © artist or artist’s estate, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA.

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Figure 119  Otto Schubert. “Hand-to-hand Fighting” from 24 Lithographs of the War in the West. 1917. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies (M.82.287.63s) © artist or artist’s estate, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA.

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Figure 120  Otto Schubert. “Wounded 2” from 24 Lithographs of the War in the West. 1917. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies (M.82.287.63t) © artist or artist’s estate, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA.

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Figure 121  Otto Schubert. “In the Forest” from 24 Lithographs of the War in the West. 1917. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies (M.82.287.63u) © artist or artist’s estate, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA.

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Figure 122  Otto Schubert. “Transport” from 24 Lithographs of the War in the West. 1917. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies (M.82.287.63v) © artist or artist’s estate, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA.

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Figure 123  Otto Schubert. “Outpost” from 24 Lithographs of the War in the West. 1917. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies (M.82.287.63w) © artist or artist’s estate, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA.

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Figure 124  Otto Schubert. “At Night” from 24 Lithographs of the War in the West. 1917. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies (M.82.287.63x) © artist or artist’s estate, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA.

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Figure 125  Otto Schubert. “Labor” from The Suffering of Horses in War. 1917. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies (M.82.287.64a) © artist or artist’s estate, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA.

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Figure 126  Otto Schubert. “Hunger” from The Suffering of Horses in War. 1917. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies (M.82.287.64b) © artist or artist’s estate, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA.

Figure 127  Otto Schubert. “Thirst” from The Suffering of Horses in War. 1917. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies (M.82.287.64c) © artist or artist’s estate, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA. 184

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Figure 128  Otto Schubert. “Heat” from The Suffering of Horses in War. 1917. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies (M.82.287.64d) © artist or artist’s estate, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA.

Figure 129  Otto Schubert. “Agony” from The Suffering of Horses in War. 1917. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies (M.82.287.64e) © artist or artist’s estate, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA. 185

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Figure 130  Otto Schubert. “Fear” from The Suffering of Horses in War. 1917. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies (M.82.287.64f) © artist or artist’s estate, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA.

Figure 131  Otto Schubert. “Shelter” from The Suffering of Horses in War. 1917. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies (M.82.287.64g) © artist or artist’s estate, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA. 186

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Figure 132  Otto Schubert. “Under Shell Fire” from The Suffering of Horses in War. 1917. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies (M,82.287.64h) © artist or artist’s estate, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA.

Figure 133  Otto Schubert. “Weather” from The Suffering of Horses in War. 1917. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies (M.82.287.64i) © artist or artist’s estate, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA. 187

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Figure 134  Otto Schubert. “Infirmary” from The Suffering of Horses in War. 1917. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies (M.82.287.64j) © artist or artist’s estate, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA.

Figure 135  Otto Schubert. “Wounded” from The Suffering of Horses in War. 1917. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies (M.82.287.64k) © artist or artist’s estate, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA. 188

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Figure 136  Otto Schubert. “Death” from The Suffering of Horses in War. 1917. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies (M.82.287.64L) © artist or artist’s estate, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA.

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Figure 137  Otto Schubert. “I Love You.” 1919. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies (M.82.288.281) © artist or artist’s estate, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA.

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Figure 138  Otto Schubert. Untitled from Incantation and Dream. 1919. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies, purchased with funds provided by Anna Bing Arnold, Museum Associates Acquisition Fund, and deaccession funds (83.1.183d) © artist or artist’s estate, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA.

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Figure 139  Otto Schubert. “Irena.” [Artist’s proof] 1920. Author’s collection.

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Figure 140  Otto Schubert. “The Resurrection.” Circa 1927. Author’s collection.

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Figures 141–143  Otto Schubert. “Auschwitz Triptych.” Fig 141, left panel; Fig 142, center panel; Fig 143, right panel. Circa 1965. Courtesy of Zentrum für verfolgte Künste/ Center for Persecuted Arts, Kunstmuseum Solingen.

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Figure 144  Otto Schubert. “St. Francis Tending to the Sick” from the cycle of St. Francis of Assisi. 1962. The Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection.

Figure 145  Otto Schubert. From the cycle of The Weavers. Circa 1967. Author’s collection.

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Figure 146  Otto Schubert. “Lord, Teach Us to Pray.” 1969. The Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection.

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List of Illustrations

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

“Greetings from Russia sent by your brother Albert, April 2, 1916” [front] “Happy Birthday!” [back] Card made by German soldier on the Eastern Front from birch skin. British Form A. 2042, Field Service Card. German Feldpostkarte or military-issued “field postcard” [back]. “After the Storm.” Photograph by Walter Kleinfeldt, age sixteen, at the Battle of the Somme, 1916. French war postcard satirizing German Kaiser Wilhelm and his allies “A Heart’s Bliss.” German war postcard. “For Our Brave Soldiers.” German war postcard. German patriotic war postcard. “Xmas Greeting 1916 from the Salonica Army.” Photo war postcard. Professional photo war postcard of four soldiers. “Two German soldiers and a mule wearing gas masks.” Photograph taken by Walter Kleinfeldt, age sixteen, at the Battle of the Somme, 1916. “Souvenir of Belgium.” World War One embroidered silk postcard. German soldier standing next to large artillery shell on which he has written, “I did not want this war, remain neutral,” and on the two smaller shells, “Me neither.”

Max Liebermann. “Now we want to thrash them!” Kriegszeit. 7 September 1914. Ernst Barlach. “The Holy War.” Kriegszeit. 16 December 1914. Max Slevogt. “Hero’s Grave.” 1916. Wilhelm Schnarrenberger. “Rising City I.” 1918. Wilhelm Schnarrenberger. “Rising City II.” 1918. Max Beckmann. “In Memory of a Fallen Friend.” Kriegzeit. 4 November 1914. Ernst Barlach. “Grant Us Peace!” Der Bildermann. 20 December 1916. Käthe Kollwitz. “Anxiety.” Kriegzeit. 28 October 1914. Käthe Kollwitz. “Hunger.” 1923. Käthe Kollwitz. Grieving Parents. 1932. Vladslo, Belgium. Ernst Barlach. Floating Angel. 1927/1942. Antoniterkirche, Cologne. Gerhard Marcks. The Returnee.

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Chapter 3 Otto Schubert. Circa 1914. Otto Schubert. “Mr. Frenchman.” Field Postcard. 7 November 1915. Otto Schubert. Field Postcard. 14 November 1915. Otto Schubert. Field Postcard. 18 November 1915. Otto Schubert. Field Postcard. 19 November 1915. Otto Schubert. “The Village Beauty.” Field Postcard. 25 November 1915. Otto Schubert. Field Postcard. 4 December 1915. Otto Schubert. Field Postcard. 8. December 1915. Otto Schubert. “Small Village in France.” Field Postcard. 15 December 1915. Otto Schubert. “The Most Beautiful Hour of the Day.” Field Postcard. 23 December 1915. Otto Schubert. “Argonne.” Field Postcard. 16 April 1916. Otto Schubert. Field Postcard. 12 May 1916. Otto Schubert. “Road Crossing at Ypres.” War sketch. Circa 1915–1916. Otto Schubert. “Defense” from 24 Lithographs of the War in the West. 1917.

Otto Schubert. “Death” from The Suffering of Horses in War. 1917. Otto Schubert. “I Love You.” 1919. Otto Schubert. Untitled from Incantation and Dream. 1919. Otto Schubert. Aesop’s Fables. Cover of portfolio. Circa 1926. Otto Schubert. “The Resurrection.” Circa 1927. Otto Schubert. Hand-painted invitation. 1927. Otto Schubert. Goethe’s Balladen. Cover of portfolio. 1932. Otto Schubert. “Auschwitz Triptych.” Left panel. Circa 1965. Otto Schubert. “Auschwitz Triptych.” Center panel. Circa 1965. Otto Schubert. “Auschwitz Triptych.” Right panel. Circa 1965. Otto Schubert. “St. Francis Tending to the Sick” from the cycle of St. Francis of Assisi. 1962. Otto Schubert. From the cycle of The Weavers. Circa 1967. Otto Schubert. “Lord, Teach Us to Pray.” 1969.

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Endnotes Preface   1. Ulrike Rüdiger, Grüsse aus dem Krieg: Die Feldpostkarten der Otto-DixSammlung in der Kunstgalerie Gera (Gera: Kunstgalerie Gera, 1991). When he viewed Schubert’s postcards, art historian Michael Mackenzie wrote to me that “the postcards as a corpus constitute a more coherent, mature, and informative archive of images than even Dix’s famous drawings.” Email between Michael Mackenzie and Irene Guenther, January 20, 2016. Dix’s postcards were either photo-postcards on which he would write or trench cards on which he had drawn in pencil, charcoal, and ink, usually with writing on the back. In addition to the postcards, Dix wrote letters and mailed two portfolios from northern Belarus, which he sent to Helene Jakob, a longtime acquaintance of his in Dresden, where the two met in 1910. The Kunstgalerie Gera Dix Collection’s holdings include forty-six postcards and seven photo-cards.   2. “Auf den Spuren eines vergessenen Künstlers,“ no author, no newspaper title; date is likely 1988, derived from a sentence in the article that states, “18 years after Schubert’s death.” Schubert died in 1970. Xerox newspaper clipping in folder titled “Schubert,” Peter Guenther estate.  3. Ibid.   4. The Otto Dix portrait is titled “Bildnis des Dichters Alfred Günther” (Portrait of the Poet Alfred Günther), 1919. The painting is currently in the collection of the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart.   5. Stephanie Barron, ed., German Expressionism 1915-1925: The Second Generation (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Munich: Prestel Verlag, 1988).   6. Marion Deshmukh and Irene Guenther, Postcards from the Trenches: Germans and Americans Visualize the Great War, exhibition in Washington, D.C. and Houston, Texas, 2014-2015.

  2.

  3.   4.

  5.

  6.   7.

  8.   9.

Chapter 1   1. See Jay Winter and Blaine Baggett, The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century (New York: Penguin, 1996), pp. 9–15, and throughout; G.J. Meyer, A World Undone: The Story of the Great War 1914 to 1918 (New York: Delta/Bantam Dell, 2007); Alexander Watson, Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary in World War I (New York: Basic Books, 2014); and Peter Englund, The Beauty and the Sorrow: An Intimate

History of the First World War, trans. Peter Graves (New York: Vintage Books, 2012). All translations are mine unless otherwise noted. On home fronts, see Jay Winter and Jean-Louis Robert, eds., Capital Cities at War: Paris, London, Berlin 1914–1919 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999); for deprivation and suffering of central European civilians, see Alexander Watson, Ring of Steel, pp. 330–374. For an overview of the Armenian genocide, see Rouben P. Adalian, “The Armenian Genocide,” in Samuel Totten and William, S. Parsons, eds., Centuries of Genocide, 4th ed. (New York: Routledge, 2012), pp. 117–56. Jay Winter, War beyond Words (New York: Cambridge UP, 2017), p. 19. Richard Bessel, “Mobilizing German Society for War,” in Roger Chickering and Stig Forster, eds., Great War, Total War: Combat and Mobilization on the Western Front, 1914–1918 (New York: Cambridge, UP, 2000), pp. 437–451. Bernd Ulrich, Die Augenzeugen: Deutsche Feldpostbriefe in Kriegs- und Nachkriegszeit, 1914–1933 (Essen: Klartext Verlag, 1997). On the unforeseeable end to hostilities, hopelessness, and long exposure to risk, see also Alexander Watson, Enduring the Great War: Combat, Morale and Collapse in the German and British Armies, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2008), pp. 21–23. Alexander Watson, Enduring the Great War, pp. 26–27. Ibid., p. 34. See also, Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker, 14–18: retrouver la Guerre (Paris: Folio histoire/Gallimard, 2003) on what they refer to as culture de guerre, or the set of representations civilians and soldiers constructed to think about and make sense of the war and to continue fighting and supporting it. Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age (New York: Anchor Books, 2000), p. 233. German book collection drive poster (1917) of clean-shaven, welldressed soldiers reading in a perfectly tidy trench in the Harry Ransom Center WWI Collection (University of Texas at Austin), along with hundreds of newspaper photographs and British, French, German, Russian, British, and American government-produced posters also in the Ransom Collection. A smaller number of posters can be found in the “Posters from the First World War, 1914–1918 Ransom Center First World War” Digital Collection. The Hoover Institution’s World War I pictorial collection, online and in its archives, is extensive and remarkable in terms of holdings that offer an international perspective; at Stanford University and online at http://www.hoover.org/libraryarchives/collections/world-war-i. In London, as well as in Berlin,

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10.

11.

12. 13.

14. 15.

16. 17.

18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23.

24.

25.

idealized trenches were built for tourists to walk around in so they could “experience” the war. School children played “war” between the clean sand sacks, pretending to shoot at imaginary enemies and expressing their hope that they would soon be old enough to become “real” soldiers. Hugh Walpole’s war letters in the Harry Ransom Center WWI holdings and displayed during the Center’s “The World at War, 1914–1918” exhibition (2014). Quoted in Otto Conzelmann, Der andere Dix. Sein Bild vom Menschen und vom Krieg (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1983), p. 132; translation mine. Dix materials are in the extensive Dix-Sammlung of the Städtische Galerie in Albstadt, Germany. See also same passage as cited in Eva Karcher, Otto Dix, trans. John Ormrod (New York: Crown Publishers, 1987), p. 14. Wilfred Owen Collection, Harry Ransom Center. This observation was made quite often by soldiers from the other side. For example, British soldiers were pleased when they were able to take over a German trench, which, they said, was always kept cleaner and in better condition than the trenches maintained by the French. See examples in John Ellis, Eye-Deep in Hell: Trench Warfare in World War I (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1976), pp. 19–20. Ulrike Rüdiger, Grüsse aus dem Krieg, p. 30. There is a vast literature on the trenches, their development from the initial quickly dug holes to the more elaborate trench systems that developed, and the differences between French, British, and German trenches. For examples, see John Ellis, Eye-Deep in Hell, pp. 9–20. Ibid., pp. 45–46. Holger H. Herwig, The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary, 1914–1918 (London: Arnold, 1997), pp. 299–300. See also John Ellis, Eye-Deep in Hell, pp. 54–59. Quoted in Alexander Watson, Enduring the Great War, p. 19. Ibid., pp. 20, 164. Holger H. Herwig, The First World War, pp. 288–293. “Hamstering” was the German term used to describe the common wartime practice of urban dwellers going to the countryside to forage for food as shortages in German cities worsened. See also Alexander Watson, Ring of Steel, pp. 336–338 on hamstering. Irene Guenther, Nazi Chic? Fashioning Women in the Third Reich (Oxford: Berg, 2005), pp. 32–33. Holger H. Herwig, The First World War, p. 291. N.P. Howard, “The Social and Political Consequences of the Allied Food Blockade of Germany, 1918–19,” German History 11, no. 2 (1993): 161–188. See also Alexander Watson, Ring of Steel, chapter titled “Deprivation,” pp. 330–374, in which he examines the blockade, government inefficiencies and mistakes, ersatz food substitutes, queuing, strikes and riots, and the socio-political and physical damage caused by the endemic hunger on the home front. It is no wonder, he argues on p. 374, that in December 1916, “the German Chancellor made the Reich’s most sincere offer of peace yet to the Entente,” given the exhaustion of the German army after the Verdun and Somme battles, and a home front that was angry and hungry. Alex Paul, “The First World War Hunger Blockade of Germany,” Honors Thesis, University of Houston, 2016; see especially Chapter 5, “Peace and Hunger.” The number of dead due to starvation and hunger-related diseases range between 400,000 and 763,000, some on the Allies’ side accusing the German government of exaggeration. See N.P. Howard, “The Social and Political Consequences.” See also C. Paul Vincent, The Politics of

26.

27. 28. 29. 30.

31.

32. 33. 34. 35.

36.

37. 38.

39.

40.

41.

42.

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Hunger: The Allied Blockade of Germany, 1915–1919 (Athens: Ohio UP, 1985), p. 145; and Alexander Watson, Ring of Steel, pp. 338–339. Alexander Watson, Enduring the Great War, p. 165. See also ibid., p. 101, “[A]t best, German soldiers were released from the army once a year . . .” Ibid., pp. 168–169. Quoted in ibid., p. 35. “Step Into Your Place,” British poster (1915) depicting happy, healthy, neatly dressed soldiers, Harry Ransom Center WWI holdings. Caroline Alexander, “Face of War,” Smithsonian Magazine (February 2007); accessed at http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/facesof-war-145799854/. Ibid. See also David M. Lubin, Grand Illusion: American Art & the First World War (New York: Oxford UP, 2016), pp. 215–216, 218–228; and Olga Khazan, “Masks: The Face Transplants of World War I,” The Atlantic (August 4, 2014), accessed at https://www.theatlantic.com/ health/archive/2014/08/the-first-face-transplants-were-masks/375527/. Holger H. Herwig, The First World War, p. 296. Ibid., p. 300. Ibid., pp. 297. Ernst Friedrich, Krieg dem Kriege! Guerre à la guerre. War against War. 2 vols. (Berlin: Verlag Freie Jugend, 1924). See also Douglas Kellner, ed., War Against War, 3rd ed. (Nottingham: Spokesman), p. 201; and Friedrich’s autobiography, Vom Friedensmuseum zur Hitlerkaserne. Ein Tatsachenbericht über das Wirken von Ernst Friedrich und Adolf Hitler (Zürich: St. Gallen/Genossenschafts-Buchhandlung, 1935). Lubin describes Friedrich as a “young German anarchist” in David M. Lubin, Grand Illusions, p. 222. While there is much academic literature on the psychological and physical wounds suffered by WWI combatants, the photo and film images, accompanied by narrated soldiers’ letters and diary entries, are particularly helpful in comprehending the devastation wrought by mechanized warfare. See The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century, especially Episode 4 “Slaughter” and Episode 5 “Mutiny.” Eight-part documentary produced by KCET/Los Angeles, British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), and Imperial War Museum; Blaine Baggett, executive producer (1996). Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring, pp. 233–237. David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East (New York: Holt, 2009); G. J. Meyer, A World Undone; and Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World (New York: Random House, 2003). Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2014), p. 27. See also “The Imperial War Graves Commission,” Times [London], November 10, 1928, War Graves Number: vi+. Jay Winter, “Missing Sons: War as a Vanishing Act,” in Uwe M. Schneede, ed., 1914: The Avant-Gardes at War (Cologne: Snoeck Verlagsgesellschaft, 2014), pp. 326–331. In some of his war postcards, Dix sketches and writes about the several levels of graves in the war: a “good” one, which means that the soldier has been buried in a shell hole and has been completely covered with dirt, his grave marked by a small makeshift cross; one that is shallower and the dead soldier’s feet remain uncovered; and the worst type of grave, where the shoulders and head stick out. See Ulrike Rüdiger, Grüsse aus dem Krieg, p. 12. Peter Vansittart, ed. Voices from the Great War (London: Allen & Unwin, 1987), p. 95; and John Ellis, Eye-Deep in Hell, p. 54.

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43. Allyson Booth, Postcards from the Trenches: Negotiating the Space between Modernism and the First World War (New York: Oxford UP, 1996), p. 21. 44. Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, p. 29. 45. Ibid. 46. Jay Winter, “Missing Sons,” p. 331. 47. Stephan Barkensiek, Kriegszeit: Kunst im Dienst von Krieg und Propaganda (Hamburg: Norderstedt Books, 2014). 48. Annette Lettau, “Taumel und Ernüchterung. Deutsche Künstler und Schriftsteller im 1. Weltkrieg,” in Michael Pabst, ed., Der I. Weltkrieg: Vision und Wirklichkeit, exh. cat. (Munich: Galerie Michael Pabst, 1982), p. 7. 49. Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring, pp. 233–236; and Ross J. Wilson, Landscapes of the Western Front: Materiality during the Great War (London/New York: Routledge, 2012), pp. 97–99. 50. Irene Guenther, Nazi Chic, p. 25. 51. Ibid., p. 29. For the cultural contestations that took place in the French and German art worlds after the outbreak of war, see Kenneth Silver, Esprit de Corps: The Art of the Parisian Avant-Garde and the First World War, 1914–1925 (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1989). 52. Irene Guenther, Nazi Chic, pp. 30–31. 53. Bernd Ulrich, Die Augenzeugen, especially pp. 16–18. 54. Samuel Hynes. A War Imagined: The First World War and English Culture (New York: Collier-Macmillan, 1992), p. 80. 55. James Fox, British Art and the First World War, 1914–1924 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2015), pp. 69–74. See also Walton Rawls, Wake Up, America. World War I and the American Poster (New York: Abbeville Press, 2001); Pearl James, Picture this. World War I Posters and Visual Culture (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009); Tanja Mruck, Propaganda und Öffentlichkeit im Ersten Weltkrieg (Aachen: Shaker, 2004); Anne Schmidt, Belehrung – Propaganda – Vertrauensarbeit. Zum Wandel amtlicher Kommunikationspolitik in Deutschland 1914–1918 (Essen: Klartext Verlag, 2006); Florian Altenhöner, Kommunikation und Kontrolle. Gerüchte und städtische Öffentlichkeiten in Berlin und London 1914/1918 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2008); and James Aulich and John Hewitt, Seduction or Instruction? First World War Posters in Britain and Europe (Manchester: Manchester UP, 2008). 56. Modris Ecksteins, Rites of Spring, p. 233; and Samuel Hynes, A War Imagined, p. 80. 57. James Fox, British Art and the First World War, p. 99. 58. Ibid. 59. Ibid., pp. 90–107. 60. Allyson Booth, Postcards from the Trenches, pp. 21–25. 61. Ibid. See also Stephan Barkensiek, Kriegzeit; M.R.D. Foot, Art and War: 20th Century Warfare as Depicted by War Artists (Terra Alta: Headline Books, 1991); Alfred Emile Cornebise, Art from the Trenches: America’s Uniformed Artists in World War I (College Station: Texas A & M UP, 1991); and Neil Harris and Teri J. Edelstein, En Guerre: French Illustrators and World War I (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014). 62. Gesa Bartholomeyczik, Im Banne der Verwüstung: Max Slevogt und der Erste Weltkrieg, exh. cat. (Mainz: Generaldirektion Kulturelles Erbe Rheinland-Pfalz, 2014), p. 10; and Slevogt’s war diary, Ein Kriegstagebuch (Berlin: Verlag Bruno Cassirer, 1917). 63. Jörg Martin Merz, “Otto Dix’ Kriegsbilder. Motivationen – Intentionen – Rezeptionen,” Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft, 26 (1999): 189-226; and Kira van Lil, Otto Dix und der Erste Weltkrieg. Die Natur des Menschen in der Aunsahmesituation. Ph.D. diss., Ludwig-

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64.

65. 66.

67.

68. 69.

70.

71. 72.

73.

Maximilians-Universität zu München, 2000. Otto Dix, interviewed by Maria Wetzel, 1963: “As a young man you don’t notice at all that you were, after all, badly affected. For years afterwards, at least ten years, I kept getting these dreams, in which I had to crawl through ruined houses, along passages I could hardly get through.” Tonie and Valmai Holt, Til the Boys Come Home: The Picture Postcards of the First World War (London: Macdonald & Jane’s, 1977), p. 8. For a brief history of postcards, see also Peter Doyle, British Postcards of the First World War (Oxford: Shire Publications, 2010), pp. 5–7. John Laffin, World War I in Postcards (Sparkford, UK: Wrens Park Publishing, 2001), p. 2 for quotation. Christine Brocks, Die bunte Welt des Krieges: Bildpostkarten aus dem Ersten Weltkrieg 1914–1918 (Essen: Klartext Verlag, 2008). The figure of seven billion does not include the countless number of postcards that were hand-made, embroidered, drawn and painted, and even created from scraps of trench wood and tree bark. For example, a postcard made from a piece of birch bark skin by a German soldier fighting in Russia, who sent “happy birthday” greetings to his brother, dated April 3, 1916. Remarkably, even such an unusually-constructed card was postmarked and sent through the military mail. For silk postcards, see Pat Tomczysyn, “With love from the trenches: embroidered silk postcards of the First World War,” Material History Review, no. 51 (2000): 43–49. John Ellis, Eye-deep in Hell, pp. 136–140. Alexander Watson, Enduring the Great War, 88; and John Ellis, EyeDeep in Hell, pp. 139–140. See also Fussell’s description of “British Phlegm,” the term he uses to describe soldiers’ attempts to write home in ways that would understate and normalize the horror of their experiences (stoical reticence, unflappable, and filled with clichés and euphemisms) in Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory, pp. 181–183. In my discussion of the meanings, affects, and materialities of postcards, I benefited from the following works: Nicholas J. Saunders, Trench Art: Materialities and Memories of War (Oxford: Berg, 2003); Nicholas J. Saunders, “Material Culture and Conflict: The Great War, 1914-2003,” in Nicholas J. Saunders, ed., Matters of Conflict: Material Culture, Memory and the First World War (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 5–25; Paola Filippucci, “Postcards from the Past: War, Landscape and Place in Argonne, France,” in Nicholas J. Saunders, ed., Matters of Conflict, pp. 220–236; Pat Tomczysyn, “A Material Link between War and Peace: First World War Silk Postcards,” in Nicholas J. Saunders, ed., Matters of Conflict, pp. 123–133; Marie-Monique Huss, Histoires de famille 1914/1918: Cartes postale et culture de guerre (Peronne: Historial de la Grande Guerre, 2000); Stephane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker, eds., 1914–1918: Understanding the Great War (London: Profile Books, 2002); Clare Whittingham, “Mnemonics for War: Trench Art and the Reconciliation of Public and Private Memory,” Past Imperfect, 14 (2008): 86–119; and Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (New York: Oxford UP, 1985). Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory, pp. 183–185. Wilfred Owen Collection, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin. The Collection includes more than a dozen of the Field Service cards that Owen sent his family while on active duty in France from 1916–1918. Owen was killed on November 4, 1918, exactly one week before the Armistice was signed. Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory, pp. 183–185.

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74. Bernd Ulrich, Die Augenzeugen, pp. 16–18, whose work focuses on analyses of Feldpostbriefen, soldiers’ frontline letters. See Alexander Watson, Enduring the Great War, p. 8, about the difficulties encountered in attempting to analyze war letters and postcards. See Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory, p. 183, and Alexander Watson, Enduring the Great War, p. 88, regarding soldiers’ reticence to write little more than generalities and to normalize their experiences so as to not to upset the recipient. 75. Large numbers of such photographs and photo-postcards are in the holdings of archival and museum collections; for example, the collection of Karl Stehle, Munich, one of the largest postcard collections in Europe. For other examples of soldiers’ photographs, see Anton Holzer, Die andere Front. Fotografie und Propaganda im Ersten Weltkrieg (Darmstadt: Primus, 2007); Guido Knopp, Der Erste Weltkrieg: Die Bilanz in Bildern (Hamburg: Edel Germany, 2013); and R.G. Grant, Der Erste Weltkrieg: Die visuelle Geschichte (London/Munich: Dorling Kindersley, 2014). 76. I have drawn from the following sources for the section on governmentissued and commercially-produced wartime picture postcards: Deutsches Historisches Museum, ed., Digitale Bibliothek 66. Der Erste Weltkrieg in deutschen Bildpostkarten (Berlin: Deutsches Historisches Musuem/ Directmedia Publishing GmbH, 2002); Christine Brocks, Die bunte Welt des Krieges; Pat Tomczysyn, “With Love from the Trenches”; Pat Tomczysyn, “A Material Link between War and Peace”; Thomas Flemming and Ulf Heinrich, Grüsse aus dem Schützengraben. Feldpostkarten im Ersten Weltkrieg aus der Sammlung Ulf Heinrich (Berlin: be.bra-Verlag, 2004); Claude Morin, La Grande Guerre des images: La propagande par la carte postale, 1914–1918 (Turquant: L’àpart éditions, 2012); Michel Wery, La carte postale. Témoin de l’enfer des tranchées de la Grande Guerre de 1914–1918 (Paris: Éditions des écrivains, 2001); John Laffin, World War I in Postcards; Marie-Monique Huss, Histoires de famille 1914/1918; Anton Holzer, Die andere Front; and Guus de Vries, The Great War through Picture Postcards (South Yorkshire: Pen and Sword, 2016). 77. Otto Friedrich, Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920s (New York: Fromm, 1986), p. 240.

Chapter 2   1. For ease of discussion, throughout this essay I refer to the Second German Empire as “Germany” or “the nation,” although the Second German Empire consisted of far more than the political expression and geographic boundary of continental Germany. Additionally, I sometimes refer to the postwar Weimar Republic as Germany. All translations are mine unless otherwise noted.   2. Quoted in Gesa Bartholomeyczik, Im Banne der Verwüstung p. 8.  3. Kriegzeit: Künstlerflugblätter (Berlin: Verlag Paul Cassirer), published from August 1914 through March 1916; in total, sixty-five issues of the periodical, containing 266 lithographs, were published. The periodical was generally four pages in length, occasionally it expanded to eight pages. Paul Cassirer was a publisher, art dealer, and member of the Berlin Secession, later called the Free Secession, and therefore had many connections with artists who would contribute to his periodical.   4. Max Liebermann, “Jetzt wollen wir sie dreschen!” in Kriegszeit, 1, no. 2 (7 September 1914).   5. Ernst Barlach, “Der heilige Krieg” in Kriegszeit, 1, no. 17 (16 December 1914).

  6. Full runs of Kriegzeit are in the holdings of the University of Heidelberg, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Los Angeles County Museum’s Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies, among others. For a fuller discussion of Kriegzeit, see Stephan Brakensiek, ed., Kriegzeit Künstlerflugblätter: Kunst im Dienst von Krieg und Propaganda, 1914–1916 (Norderstedt: BoD and Universität Trier, 2014); Tim Benson, “Kriegzeit and the Discourse of War Imagery,” in Marion Deshmukh, Francoise Forster-Hahn, and Barbara Gaehtgens, eds., Max Liebermann and International Modernism (New York: Berghahn, 2011), chapter 12; and the discussion of Kriegzeit in Peter Paret, The Berlin Secession: Modernism and Its Enemies in Imperial Germany (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1989).   7. Wilhelm Klemm, “Schlacht an der Marne,” Die Aktion, no. 4 (1914): 834.   8. Quoted in Uwe M. Schneede, “Artists in Uniform,” in Uwe M. Schneede, ed., 1914: The Avant-Gardes at War, exh. cat. (Cologne: Snoeck Verlagsgesellschaft and Bonn: Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 2013), p. 310.   9. Dietrich Schubert, Künstler im Trommelfeuer des Krieges 1914–18 (Heidelberg: Wunderhorn, 2013); and Bernd Küster, ed., Der Erste Weltkrieg und die Kunst. Von der Propaganda zum Widerstand, 2nd ed. (Hamburg: Merlin Verlag, 2014). Although I focus on German Expressionists who fought in or protested against the war, or both, German Impressionist painters also had much to say in visual language about the war. See Marion Deshmukh, “German Impressionist Painters and World War I,” Art History 4 (1981): 66-79. 10. Stephanie Barron and Wolf-Dieter Dube, eds., German Expressionism: Art and Society, exh. cat. (New York: Rizzoli, 1997); Timothy O. Benson, ed., Expressionism in Germany and France: From Van Gogh to Kandinsky, exh. cat. (Munich: Prestel Verlag, 2014); Donald E. Gordon, Expressionism: Art and Idea (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987); and Peter W. Guenther, Deutscher Expressionismus Notizblock: German Expressionism Toward a New Humanism, exh. cat. (Houston: Sarah Campbell Blaffer Gallery, 1977), between graphic 24 and 25, n.p. Founding members of Die Brücke, which began in Dresden and then moved to Berlin in 1911, were Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel, and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. They were soon joined by Cuno Amiet, Axel Gallen, Emil Nolde, who only stayed for a short time in the group, and Max Pechstein, who became the leading member of Die Brücke. The group broke up due to personal differences in 1913. Der Blaue Reiter was founded in Munich by Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc. It was more loosely organized and attracted several additional artists. Der Blaue Reiter dissolved with WWI. Kandinsky had to return to Russia and Franz Marc volunteered for military service. 11. Joachim Radkau, Das Zeitalter der Nervosität: Deutschland zwischen Bismarck und Hitler (Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1998); Wolfgang Mommsen, Bürgerstolz und Weltmachtstreben 1890–1918 (Berlin: Propyläen, 1995); Volker Berghahn, Das Kaiserreich 1871–1914: Industriegesellschaft, bürgerliche Kultur und autoritärer Staat (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2003). 12. Stephanie Barron and Wolf-Dieter Dube, eds., German Expressionism; Timothy O. Benson, ed., Expressionism in Germany; and Dietmar Elgar, Expressionism (Cologne: Taschen Verlag, 1994). See also Die Brücke’s manifesto, as well as Wassily Kandinsky’s landmark treatise, Concerning the Spiritual in Art (Mineola: Dover, 1977), originally published as Über das Geistige in der Kunst: Insbesondere in der Malerei (Munich: R. Piper, 1911).

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13. Macke’s letter to his wife Elisabeth Macke, 9 September and 11 September, 1914, quoted by Jill Lloyd in “August Macke 1887–1914,” in Tim Cross, ed., The Fallen: An Exhibition of Nine Artists Who Lost Their Lives in World War One (Oxford: Museum of Modern Art, Armistice Festival, 1988), p. 36. Also quoted in Irene Guenther, “Modern German Art and Its Demise, 1914–1945,” in Gustav Kopriva, ed., Broken Brushes: German Art from the Kaiser to Hitler (Houston: Redbud, 2006), p. 21. For more on Macke and WWI, see Anna Meseure, August Macke 1887–1914, trans. I. Galbraith (Berlin: Taschen, 1991), p. 87–92; and Richard Cork, A Bitter Truth: AvantGarde Art and the Great War (New Haven: Yale UP, 1994), pp. 42–43. 14. Quoted by Tim Cross, “The Accident of the Individual Death,” in Tim Cross, ed., The Fallen, p. 3. 15. Franz Marc, Briefe aus dem Felde (Munich: Piper, 1982), p. 128. 16. Andreas Hüneke, “‘Das ist der Weg zur Läuterung’: Franz Marc und der Erste Weltkrieg,” in Franz Marc, Paul Klee. Dialog in Bildern, exh. cat. (Wädenswil: Nimbus, 2010), pp. 121–131. Also quoted by Tim Cross, “The Accident,” pp. 4–7. See letters in Franz Marc, Briefe aus dem Feld (Munich: Piper, 2000); analysis by Richard Cork, A Bitter Truth, pp. 110–112. 17. Photo of Marc and date of death in Uwe M. Schneede, “Artists in Uniform,” p. 314. 18. Uwe M. Schneede, “Artists in Uniform,” p. 302. 19. Ibid., p. 308. 20. Irene Guenther, “Modern German Art,” p. 21; abbreviated quote in Richard Cork, A Bitter Truth, p. 48. 21. Uwe M. Schneede, “Artists in Uniform,” p. 304. 22. Helga Gutbrod, ed., Verglühte Träume: Werke junger Künstler – Opfer des Ersten Weltkriegs. Benno Berneis, Hans Fuglsang, Franz Henseler, Wilhelm Morgner, Franz Nölken, Otto Soltau, Hermann Stenner und Albert Weisgerber (Berlin: Mann Verlag/Deutscher Verlag für Kunstwissenschaft, 2014); and Klaus Kösters and Walter Weihs, Wilhelm Morgner und die Anfänge der modernen Kunst (Berlin: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2016). Quote comes from Uwe M. Schneede, “Artists in Uniform,” p. 313. 23. Uwe M. Schneede, “Artists in Uniform,” p. 319. 24. Ibid., p. 317. 25. Richard Cork, A Bitter Truth, pp. 83–84; Beatrice von Bormann, “Oskar Kokoschka: The Great War and Love Lost,” in Gordon Hughes and Philipp Blom, eds., Nothing but the Clouds Unchanged: Artists in World War I (Los Angeles: Getty, 2014), pp. 167–168; and Fondation Oskar Kokoschka, accessed at http://www.oskar-kokoschka.ch/biography.html. 26. Paul Monty Paret, “Oskar Schlemmer’s Triadic Ballet and the Trauma of War,” in Gordon Hughes and Philipp Blom, eds., Nothing but the Clouds Unchanged, p. 172. 27. Klara Drenker-Nagels, ed., Heinrich Nauen 1880–1940: Monographie und Werkverzeichnis (Cologne: Wienand, 1996). 28. Bernhard Fulda and Aya Soika, Max Pechstein: The Rise and Fall of Expressionism (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013); and Magdalena M. Moeller, Max Pechstein: Pionier der Moderne (Munich: Hirmer, 2016). 29. Sommeschlacht (Battle of the Somme) by Max Pechstein, consists of eight etchings, which he completed in 1917 soon after his release from service. While the etchings are signed and dated 1917, the portfolio was not published until 1919 by Gurlitt-Presse. 30. Uwe M. Schneede, “Artists in Uniform,” p. 323. 31. Andreas Gabelmann, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Ein Künstlerleben in Selbstzeugnissen (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2010); and Lucius Grisebach, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner 1880–1938 (Cologne: Taschen, 1995).

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32. Quoted in Uwe M. Schneede, “Artists in Uniform,” p. 306. 33. Quoted in Werner Spies and Sabine Rewald, eds., Max Ernst: A Retrospective, exh. cat. (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art/New Haven: Yale UP, 2005), p. xiv. 34. Ibid., p. 341; and Irene Guenther, “Modern German Art,” pp. 21–22. See, for example, Meidner’s “Bombs” (1914), but especially his 1913 “apocalyptic landscape” paintings, as they are often described. 35. Max Slevogt was officially enlisted on October 12, 1914; his tour of duty lasted from October 15 to November 2, 1914. 36. Gesa Bartholomeyczik, Im Banne der Verwüstung; “Kunst und Künstler im Kriege” reproduced on p. 12, “Schlachtfeld” reproduced on p. 13. 37. Ibid., p. 18; reproductions on pp. 19–22. 38. Slevogt quoted in ibid., p. 10. Slevogt’s war diary was published as Ein Kriegstagebuch (Berlin: Verlag Bruno Cassirer, 1917), quotation appears in the Foreword to the diary. For an analysis of Slevogt’s war portfolio, Gesichte (Visions), see Richard Cork, A Bitter Truth, pp. 173–175. I also drew from Sabine Fehlemann, ed., Max Slevogt-Die Berliner Jahre (Cologne: Wienand Verlag, 2005); and Sigrun Paas and Roland Krischke, Max Slevogt in der Pfalz (Berlin/Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2009). 39. Ivo Kranzfelder, George Grosz (Cologne: Taschen, 2005), p. 15. 40. Michael White, Generation Dada: The Berlin Avant-Garde and the First World War (New Haven: Yale UP, 2014), pp. 116–117; Peter Nisbet, ed., The Sketchbooks of George Grosz, exh. cat. (Cambridge: Harvard University Art Museums, 1993), pp. 41–61; and Timothy O. Benson, “George Grosz and World War I,” in Gordon Hughes and Philipp Blom, eds., Nothing but the Clouds Unchanged, pp. 138–139. For Grosz’s art from 1915, see for example “Luftangriff” (lithograph) and “Aufstand der Irren” (pen and ink drawing). 41. Serge Sabarsky, ed., George Grosz: The Berlin Years (New York: Rizzoli, 1985), p. 26; Lucian Hölscher, “1914: The Rupture in History,” in Uwe M. Schneede, ed., 1914: The Avant-Gardes at War, pp. 13–14; and Timothy O. Benson, “George Grosz and World War I,” pp. 140–141. See also Ralph Jentsch, George Grosz: Berlin-New York, exh. cat. (New York: Skira, 2008); and Ivo Kranzfelder George Grosz. 42. Ivo Kranzfelder, George Grosz, p. 92. 43. For John Heartfield, I drew from the following sources: David King and Ernst Volland, John Heartfield: Laughter is a Devastating Weapon, exh. cat. (London: Tate, 2015); John Heartfield, Photomontages of the Nazi Period (New York: Universe Books, 1977); Andrés Marion Zervigón, John Heartfield and the Agitated Image: Photography, Persuasion, and the Rise of Avant-Garde Photomontage (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012); Sabine T. Kriebel, Revolutionary Beauty: The Radical Photomontages of John Heartfield (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014); and Peter Pachnicke and Klaus Honnef, eds., John Heartfield (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1993). 44. See his portfolio Gott mit Uns (God with Us), the title taken from the motto inscribed on every German soldier’s belt buckle. See also Grosz’s “In Front of the Barracks,” and “For German Right and German Morals – German Soldiers to the Front.” 45. See, for example, Grosz’s “Swamp Flowers of Capitalism.” 46. See, for example, Grosz’s “Grey Day” and “Pillars of Society.” 47. See Grosz’s “Eclipse of the Sun.” 48. See Grosz’s “The Hero,” “Street Scene – Kurfürstendamm,” and “Perfect People,” which is one of the drawings from the portfolio Die Schaffenden (The Creative Ones). 49. George Grosz, Krieg. 7 Originallithographien . . . Zum 10. Jahrestage des Kriegsbeginnes (Berlin: Neuer deutscher Verlag, 1924).

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50. George Grosz, “Der Held,” lithograph, 1933. 51. Ivo Kranzfelder, George Grosz, p. 92. For the section on Grosz, I drew from the following works: Ralph Jentsch, George Grosz: Berlin–New York; Ivo Kranzfelder, George Grosz; Serge Sabarsky, ed., George Grosz: The Berlin Years; Timothy O. Benson, “George Grosz and World War I”; George Grosz, Ein kleines Ja und ein grosses Nein: Sein Leben von ihm selbst erzählt (Frankfurt am Main: Schöffling, 2009); Gunda Lyken and Beat Wismer, George Grosz. Der grossen Zeitvertreib (Cologne: Wienand, 2014); and Richard Cork, A Bitter Truth. 52. Hans-Dieter Mück, ed., Wilhelm Schnarrenberger: von der Poesie der Dinge; zum 100. Geburtstag, exh. cat. (Buchen: Stadt Buchen 1992); Hans-Joachim Müller, Wilhelm Schnarrenberger. 1892–1966 (Freiburg: Schillinger, 1977); and Bernd Striffler, ed., Vor allem Malerei: Stillleben von Wilhelm Schnarrenberger, exh. cat. (Karlsruhe: EnBW, 2004). 53. Richard Cork, A Bitter Truth, pp. 95–97. 54. Uwe M. Schneede, “Artists in Uniform,” p. 304. 55. Max Beckmann, “Andenken an einen gefallenen Freund” in Kriegszeit, 1, no. 11 (4 November 1914). 56. Max Beckmann, Leben in Berlin. Tagebuch 1908/09, ed. by Hans Kinkel (Munich: Piper Verlag, 1966), p. 22. Beckmann’s brother-in-law, Martin Tube, had predicted the war already in 1908, six years before it began, but Beckmann and Tube agreed at the time that the war would “really not be so bad.” 57. See, for example, Beckmann’s “Carrying the Wounded,” 1914; “Operation,” 1914; “Big Operation,” 1914; “The Morgue,” 1915; “The Grenade,” 1915. 58. Max Beckmann, letter of April 20, 1915, in Max Beckmann, Briefe im Kriege 1914/1915 (Munich: Piper Verlag, 1993), pp. 43–45. 59. Max Beckmann, letter of 8 June 1915, in ibid., pp. 72–73. The original is Max Beckmann, Briefe im Kriege (Berlin: Bruno Cassirer Verlag, 1916), assembled by Minna [Beckmann] Tube. 60. Max Beckmann, letter of September 1915, in Briefe im Kriege; quoted in Stephan von Wiese, Max Beckmanns zeichnerisches Werk 1903–1925 (Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1978), pp. 171–172, footnote 125. Also quoted and translated in Richard Cork, A Bitter Truth, p. 97. See also Uwe M. Schneede, “‘I drew, it safeguarded me against danger and death.’ Max Beckmann’s War Year 1914–1915,” in Uwe M. Schneede, ed., 1914: The Avant-Gardes at War, pp. 254–263; Stephan Reimertz, Max Beckmann: Biography (Munich: Luchterhand, 2003); and Carl Schulz-Hoffmann and Judith C. Weiss, Max Beckmann: Retrospective (Munich: Prestel Verlag, 1984). 61. Ernst Barlach Stiftung, 1914-1918, accessed at https://www.ernst -barlach-stiftung.de/ernst-barlach/sein-leben/1914-1918/ Ernst Barlach, Ein selbsterzähltes Leben, 7th edition (Munich: Piper Verlag, 2004); and Tom Crepon, Leben und Leiden des Ernst Barlach, 2nd edition (Rostock: Hinstorff Verlag, 1990). 62. Stephanie Barron, ed., German Expressionism 1915–1925: The Second Generation (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Munich: Prestel Verlag, 1988), p. 12. 63. Paul Cassirer and Leo Kestenberg, “Vorwort,” in Börsenblatt (April 4, 1916), in the remarkable Cassirer compendium by Markus Brandis and Rahel E. Feilchenfeldt, Paul Cassirer Verlag Berlin 1898–1933. Eine kommentierte Bibliographie (Munich: K.G. Saur/Berlin: De Gruyter, 2002), pp, 510–511. 64. Rahel Feilchenfeldt and Thomas Raff, eds., Ein Fest der Künste: Paul Cassirer. Der Kunsthändler als Verleger (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2006). 65. Quoted in Uwe M. Schneede, “Artists in Uniform,” in Uwe M. Schneede, ed., 1914: The Avant-Gardes at War, p. 323.

66. Richard Cork, A Bitter Truth, p. 10. 67. Holger H. Herwig, The First World War: Germany and AustriaHungary 1914–1918 (London: Arnold, 1997), p. 286, 292; and Mareike Witkowski, “Der Erste Weltkrieg von der Kriegsbegeisterung zur Kriegsmüdigkeit,” in Gerhard Schneider, Rolf Gottschlich, and Christiane Ladleif, eds., Der Erste Weltkrieg im Spiegel Expressiver Kunst: Kämpfe – Passionen – Totentanz, exh. cat. (Reutlingen: Stadt Reutlingen, 2014), pp. 29–30. 68. Alexander Watson, Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary in World War I (New York: Basic Books, 2014), pp. 230–235; and Holger H. Herwig, The First World War, pp. 283–296. Holger writes, “The average diet between 1914 and 1918 was reduced from 3,400 to 1,000 calories,” p. 295. Historian Matthew S. Seligmann has asserted that the blockade was not effective throughout Germany. Even so, Germans overall experienced food deprivation, hunger, illnesses and diseases related to extreme hunger, and, in some cases, starvation. 69. Richard Bessel, “Mobilizing German Society for War” in Roger Chickering and Stig Forster, eds., Great War, Total War: Combat and Mobilization on the Western Front, 1914–1918 (New York: Cambridge UP, 2000), pp. 437–451. 70. Holger Herwig, The First World War, pp. 293–295. 71. Ibid., 290-92; Alexander Watson, Ring of Steel, pp. 330–335; and Belinda Davis, Home Fires Burning: Food, Politics, and Everyday Life in World War I Berlin (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000). 72. Stephanie Barron, ed., German Expressionism 1915–1925, p. 12. Barron writes that Der Bildermann (The Picture Man) was published from 1916 to 1918. According to my research, only eighteen issues of Der Bildermann were published, from April 1916 to December 1916; thereafter, publication ceased due to dwindling subscriptions and increasing difficulties with censors. The journal Die Aktion (Action), founded in 1911 by Franz Pfemfert, published works of art and political protests of artists, poets, and essayists during the war and into the postwar period, and became the primary publishing outlet for their political beliefs. Many of the artists who contributed to Der Bildermann also contributed to Die Aktion. Die Neue Jugend (The New Youth), which Wieland Herzfelde took over in 1916, provided a venue for politically left-leaning and/or anti-war art, poetry, and literature. Neue Jugend lasted only one year, ceasing publication in 1917. Other art journals published during the war include Krieg und Kunst, Bilder aus Deutschlands Sturmzeit, Zeit-Echo, and Cicerone. See Claudia Schönjahn, “‘Krieg und Kunst’: Kriegsgrafik im Ersten Weltkrieg in Zeitschriften und Mappenwerken,” in Gerhard Schneider, Rolf Gottschlich, and Christiane Ladleif, eds., Der Erste Weltkrieg im Spiegel Expressiver Kunst, pp. 43–51. 73. John Keegan, The First World War (New York: A. Knopf/Random House, 1998), p. 406, 423; Mark Mazower, Dark Continent (New York: Knopf, 1999), p. 397; Rüdiger Overmans, “Kriegsverluste,” in Gerhard Hirschfeld, Gerd Krumeich, and Irina Renz, et al., eds., Enzyklopädie Erster Weltkrieg (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2004), pp. 663–666; and Robert Weldon Whalen, Bitter Wounds: German Victims of the Great War (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1984), pp. 39–40. See also Antoine Prost, “The Dead,” in Jay Winter, ed., The Cambridge History of the First World War, vol. III (New York: Cambridge UP, 2014), chapter XX; and “World War I Casualty and Death Tables,” Public Broadcasting System (PBS/ USA), based on the United States Justice Department’s statistics, at http://www.uwosh.edu/faculty_staff/henson/188 /WWI_Casualties%20and%20Deaths%20%20PBS.html

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74. C. Paul Vincent, The Politics of Hunger, especially pp. 137–146; Alexander Watson, Ring of Steel, pp. 338–339; and Holger Herwig, The First World War, pp. 295–296. See also my previous chapter regarding the blockade and relevant references. 75. Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, “Kristus – ist euch nicht Kristus erschienen,” woodcut, 1919, title page for the portfolio, nine woodcuts altogether. 76. Beckmann’s portfolio Die Hölle (Hell) was published in 1919 by J.B. Neumann, Berlin. It is comprised of prints the artist executed in 1918 and 1919. In these works, Beckmann confronted the hellish social disintegration, violence, and misery that was rampant in Germany after the catastrophic world war. 77. Max Beckmann, “Schöpferische Konfession,” vol. 13 of Tribüne der Kunst und Zeit. Eine Schriftensammlung, Kasimir Edschmid, ed., 2nd edition (Berlin: E. Reiss, 1920), p. 63. Also quoted and translated in Richard Cork, A Bitter Truth, p. 239. Other works consulted for the section on Beckmann include Stephan von Wiese, Max Beckmanns zeichnerisches Werk, 1903–1925 (Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1978), see the analysis of Beckmann’s drawings from WWI, pp. 45–108; Max Beckmann, Briefe; Uwe M. Schneede, “‘I drew, it safeguarded me’” in Uwe M. Schneede, 1914: The Avant-Gardes at War; pp. 254–263; Stephan Reimertz, Max Beckmann; Carla Schulz-Hoffmann, ed., Max Beckmann: A Retrospective (St. Louis Art Museum in association with Munich: Prestel Verlag and New York: W.W. Norton, 1984); and Susanne Bieber, ed., Max Beckmann (New York: The Museum of Modern Art), 2003. 78. Käthe Kollwitz, “Das Bangen,” in Kriegzeit 1, no. 10 (28 October 1914). 79. I strongly disagree with Joan Weinstein’s assertion that Kollwitz “publicly became part of the patriotic consensus in the German art world” when she contributed the lithograph, “Das Bangen,” to the October 28, 1914 issue of Kriegzeit. Kollwitz’s “Das Bangen” is so obviously different from the hyper-nationalistic images published in Kriegzeit and in other early wartime periodicals, newspapers, and posters, and it stands in such contrast to the prevailing public mood during the first months of the war, that her sole Kriegzeit contribution can be read as an act of resistance. After all, resistance does not have to take the form of “radical insurrection” or the shape of “female revolutionaries,” per Weinstein’s discussion of Kollwitz’s earlier cycle The Weavers and her Peasants’ Revolt portfolio. In those two cycles, created in 1893–1897 and 1903–1907, respectively, Kollwitz produced etchings based upon past historical events, not current wartime events that were unfolding in real time and that, moreover, might have been censored or would have encountered great difficulty being published. Nor does the change in Kollwitz’s art from “technically accomplished” etchings of the prewar years to the stark black-and-white woodcuts of the postwar years, as well as a change in subject matter, suggest “a mute attitude of reproach” to the war and a turn away from “female revolutionaries” to “passive mothers and wives.” See Joan Weinstein, “Käthe Kollwitz, the First World War, and Sacrifice,” in Gordon Hughes and Philipp Blom, eds., Nothing but the Clouds, pp. 146–155. 80. Hans Kollwitz, ed., The Diary and Letters of Käthe Kollwitz, trans. Richard and Claire Winston (Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1989), diary entry September 30, 1914, p. 63. 81. Ibid. 82. Ibid., diary entry October 30, 1918, p. 89. The quote comes from her written response to Dehmel’s call for volunteers, which was published in the newspapers Vorwärts and Vossische Zeitung, among others. 83. Ibid., diary entry March 19, 1918, p. 88.

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84. Kollwitz’s portfolio, Krieg (War), executed in 1921–1922 and published in 1923 by the Emil Richter Verlag in Dresden, contains 8 woodcuts, 7 in the portfolio and 1 on the cover: “The Widow I,” “The Widow II,” “The Sacrifice,” “The Volunteers,” “The Mothers,” “The People,” “The Parents,” and “The Survivors.” Again, I disagree with Weinstein’s assertion that the change in Kollwitz’s art from “technically accomplished” etchings of the prewar years to the woodcuts of the postwar years suggests “a mute attitude of reproach” to the war and a turn from “female revolutionaries” to “passive mothers and wives.” Weinstein concludes that it was not until the Nazi dictatorship that Kollwitz found “the power to indict in her art, with mothers assertively protecting their children and resisting victimhood.” In plate 6 of Krieg, “Die Mütter” (The Mothers), the female figures form a defensive huddle, their strong arms and hands, clearly depicted, tightly hold onto one another, thereby protectively encircling their children. On the left side of the woodcut, a pair of hands emerge from the closely clustered women, the hands pushing out and away what or who attempts to break the shield the women have formed around their children. The mothers are, without a doubt, protecting their children, a few of whom attempt to peek out between their mothers’ clothing. Plate 7, “Das Volk” (The People), depicts a woman, front and center, surrounded by “the people,” all with deep anxiety etched upon their faces, huddled next to and behind the woman in the center. Her large strong hand keeps her child close to her. Her strength and composure, her eyes rendered as slits of steely resolve, make clear that she will not let the child, whom she is partially covering with her clothing, be taken from her . . . ever again. While neither plate depicts “militant female anger” or “revolutionary activism,” as in Kollwitz’s The Weavers cycle in which women are shown rioting, in Der Krieg, the women’s tightly bound encirclement of their children in Plate 6 and the mother’s determined stance and expression in Plate 7 illustrate a subtler, but no less powerful form of resolve and defiance. Neither plate, countering Weinstein’s assertion, depicts “passive mothers and wives.” To this point, and to also counter Weinstein’s suggestion regarding Kollwitz’s choice to create with woodcuts, rather than to continue with the more “technically accomplished” etchings she had employed in her prior works, see also Richard Cork, A Bitter Truth, pp. 270–272. Last, Kollwitz’s poster of 1924, “Nie wieder Krieg!” (Never Again War!) is not only a direct call to act against any future war, which is why the poster was resurrected during the protests against the Vietnam War, but the figure rendered in the poster is hardly passive. The young person, androgynously depicted, is shown with torso erect, hair blowing behind him/her, and has his/ her left hand over the heart while the right arm is held straight up – powerfully so – in the air. The facial expression is one of defiance, the mouth is wide open, loudly declaring “no more war.” Given the fractious political climate in Germany in 1924, the tenth anniversary of the war, when Kollwitz created the poster, and the contentious public debates about how to memorialize the dead, as well as the “war forgetting” and “heroic war imagery” that had taken hold by then, Kollwitz’s poster is a potent response to that war amnesia and reemerging heroic imagery. It is a call for activism and for active remembering. Kollwitz’s other poster of 1924, “Die Überlebenden/Krieg dem Kriege,” (The Survivors/War against War), produced for Anti-War Day on September 21, 1924, shows a woman in the center of the poster, her face strong and stern, her large hands wrapped tightly around several children to protect them. Behind her are injured war veterans, including men with blindfolds around their eyes, indicating they are victims of gas attacks. It clearly did not take Kollwitz “until the Nazi dictatorship” to find “the power to indict

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85. 86. 87. 88.

89.

90. 91. 92. 93. 94.

95.

in her art,” as Weinstein asserts. See Joan Weinstein, “Käthe Kollwitz, the First World War, and Sacrifice,” pp. 146–155. Kollwitz, “Hunger,” 1923, woodcut on laid paper. The poster is alternatively titled “Unsere Kinder hungern!” (Our Children Are Starving!). Kollwitz’s poster entitled “Vienna Is Dying! Save Its Children!” served as the basis for “Hunger.” The poster “Die Überlebenden: Krieg dem Kriege!” was commissioned in 1922 by the international trade union movement for the planned Anti-War Day, set for September 21, 1924, the tenth anniversary of the First World War. Kollwitz produced “Nie wieder Krieg” for the Mitteldeutschen Jugendtag der Sozialistischen Arbeiterbewegung (Central German Youth Day for the Socialist Workers’ Movement). See the end section of my footnote 84, in which I describe “Nie wieder Krieg!” in greater detail. Hans Kollwitz, ed., The Diary and Letters, diary entries December 1 and 9, 1914, p. 63. Jay Winter, “Missing Sons: War as a Vanishing Act,” in Uwe M. Schneede, ed., 1914: The Avant-Gardes at War, pp. 329–330. Hans Kollwitz, ed., The Diary and Letters, diary entry December 17, 1917, p. 86. Again, as discussed in footnote 84, I question Weinstein’s assertion that it was not until the Nazi dictatorship that Kollwitz found “the power to indict in her art.” Alongside the examples I have given in footnotes 79 and 84 to counter Weinstein’s argument, Kollwitz’s war memorial, dedicated in 1932, not only indicts war, but it also indicts all of the parents who bought into notions of heroism, national sacrifice, and honor, and encouraged or supported their children’s participation in the war. Her memorial not only flies in the face of traditional conflict commemoration and war memorials, it confronts the parents, her husband and herself included, with their complicity in and responsibility for their children’s deaths. See also Jay Winter, “Missing Sons,” in which he argues that Kollwitz’s memorial is “personal, communal, and political,” p. 329. For the section on Kollwitz, the following works were consulted alongside my own work on Kollwitz: Martha Kearns, Käthe Kollwitz: Woman and Artist (New York: The Feminist Press at CUNY, 1993); Elizabeth Prelinger, ed., Käthe Kollwitz, exh. cat. (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1992); Käthe Kollwitz, “Erinnerungen” in Jotta Bohnke-Kollwitz, ed., Käthe Kollwitz; Die Tagebücher (Berlin: Siedler, 1989); Hans Kollwitz, ed., Ich sah die Welt mit liebvollen Blick (Hannover: Fackelträger, 1968); Hans Kollwitz, ed., The Diary and Letters; Joan Weinstein, “Käthe Kollwitz, the First World War, and Sacrifice,” pp. 146–155; and Jay Winter, “Missing Sons,” pp. 326–331, as well as discussion with Winter. Robert Eikmeyer and Thomas Knoefel, eds., Otto Dix. Ich folge lieber meinem Dämon, original soundtrack recordings, rereleased 2009. Quoted partially in Uwe M. Schneede, “‘I drew, it safeguarded me,’” p. 256; and Otto Dix, “Über Kunst, Religion, Krieg. Grespräch mit Freunden am Bodensee” (1963), cited in Diether Schmidt, Otto Dix in Selbstbildnis (Berlin: Henschel, 1981), p. 255. See also Otto Conzelmann, Der andere Dix. Sein Bild vom Menschen und vom Krieg (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1988); and http://www.otto-dix.de/ leben/1914-1918. I thank art historian Ann Murray for her important correction to this manuscript regarding Dix’s frontline service. He was not deployed to the front until the fall of 1915, although many authors have written that Dix served on the front as a machine gunner the entire four years of the war.

  96. Dietrich Schubert, “Otto Dix zeichnet im Ersten Weltkrieg,” in Wolfgang J. Mommsen, ed., Kultur und Krieg. Die Rolle der Intellecktuellen, Künstler und Schriftsteller im Ersten Weltkrieg (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1996), pp. 179–193.   97. Otto Dix, interviewed by Maria Wetzel, 1963, from which the quote, “As a young man you don’t notice at all that you were, after all, badly affected . . .” is taken. See Maria Wetzel, “Gespräch mit Otto Dix,” in Diplomatischer Kurier, 14th annual edition, vol. 18 (1965), p. 745.   98. Otto Dix, “Kriegskrüppel (1920), initially an oil on canvas, the image was then made into drypoint; believed to have been destroyed by the Nazis in the 1940s. Sometimes the piece is also referred to as “FortyFive Percent Fit for Work.”   99. Dennis Crockett, “The Most Famous Painting of the ‘Golden Twenties?’ Otto Dix and the Trench Affair,” in Art Journal 51, no. 1 (Spring 1992): 72–80; Richard Cork, A Bitter Truth, p. 273; and Paul Fox, “Confronting Postwar Shame in Weimar Germany: Trauma, Heroism and the War Art of Otto Dix,” in Oxford Art Journal 29, no. 2 (June 2006): 247–267. See also George L. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (New York: Oxford UP, 1990) for the resurrection of heroic war imagery, especially in Germany, soon after the war ended. For analysis of Germany’s “culture of defeat,” see Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Culture of Defeat. On National Trauma, Mourning, and Recovery, trans. Jefferson Chase (London: Granta, 2003). 100. The etchings (etching, aquatint, and drypoint) that comprise Der Krieg were first published in a very limited run of seventy by Karl Nierendorf, Berlin. Later in the same year, the images were published in small paperback format. For analyses of “Der Schützengraben” and Krieg, see among many others, Richard Cork, A Bitter Truth, pp. 272–279; and Olaf Peters, Otto Dix; Der unerschrockene Blick: Eine Biographie (Leipzig: Reclam, 2013). 101. Ernst Piper, Nacht über Europa: Kulturgeschichte des Ersten Weltkriegs (Berlin: List, 2014), pp. 461–483. 102. Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring, p. 297. 103. Robert Weldon Whalen, Bitter Wounds, pp. 21–35; see also Jason Crouthamel, The Great War and German Memory. Society, Politics and Psychological Trauma, 1914-1945 (Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2010), chapters 1–4; and Jeffrey Verhey, “Some Lessons of the War: The Discourse on Propaganda and Public Opinion in Germany in the 1920s,” in Bernd Hüppauf, ed., War, Violence and the Modern Condition (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1997), pp. 99–118. For more on the Weimar Republic’s socio-political instabilities and cultural manifestations, the literature is large; see, for example, Sabine Rewald, ed., Glitter and Doom: German Portraits from the 1920s, exh. cat. (New Haven: Yale UP in conjunction with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, 2006); Eric D. Weitz, Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy, expanded ed. (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2013); Otto Friedrich, Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920s (New York: Harper Perennial, 1995); Dennis Crockett, German Post-Expressionism: The Art of the Great Disorder, 1918–1924 (University Park: Penn State UP), 1999; and for first-hand reporting, Joseph Roth, What I Saw: Reports from Berlin 1920–1933, trans. Michael Hofmann (New York: W.W. Norton, 2004). 104. Robert Weldon Whalen, Bitter Wounds, pp. 95, 143, 155–163. For a first-hand account of the public and official devaluing of soldiers’ injuries and trauma, see Erich Kuttner, “Vergessen! Die Kriegszermalmten in Berliner Lazaretten” (1920), in Bernd Ulrich and Benjamin Ziemann, German Soldiers in the Great War. Letters and

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Eyewitness Accounts, trans. Christine Brocks (Yorkshire: Pen & Sword, 2010). 105. Richard Cork, A Bitter Truth, p. 273. 106. K. H. Hagen, “Gespräch mit Otto Dix,” interview in Neues Deutschland, 15 September 1964, partially reproduced in Diether Schmidt, Otto Dix im Selbstbildnis: Eine Sammlung von Schriften, Briefen, und Gesprächen (Berlin: Henschel Verlag, 1978), p. 4. See also Ulrike Rüdiger, Grüsse aus dem Krieg. 107. Barlach’s lithographs, “Aus einem neuzeitlichen Totentanz” (From a Modern Dance of Death), “Selig sind die Barmherzigen” (Blessed are the Merciful), and “Dona nobis pacem!” (Grant Us Peace!), all created by Barlach in 1916 and published in Der Bildermann, exemplify Barlach’s artistic focus on the tragic human consequences of war. 108. Barlach’s Der Schwebende memorial, in Güstrow, was judged by the Nazis to be degenerate, as were many of the war memorials he created. That particular memorial was melted down during the war, its metal supposedly to be used for better purposes, such as providing the material for bullets. However, a mold of it was discovered and a second cast of the memorial was made. The recast sculpture hangs again in Güstrow, where Barlach, one of the most highly respected German artists, spent the last isolated years of his life, defamed by Nazi officials who viewed his memorials as threatening to their ideology. An additional cast was made of the memorial and is located in the Antoniterkirche in Cologne. Regarding the angel’s face being a likeness to Kollwitz, a testimony to his respect and affection for her, Barlach wrote, “The angel has Käthe Kollwitz’s face, although I did not set out to do that.” See Werner Haftmann, Banned and Persecuted: Dictatorship of Art under Hitler, trans. Eileen Martin (Cologne: DuMont, 1986), p. 231. 109. Given space limitations, I have only discussed a few of the dozens of German artists who served in the war and painted, drew, sculpted, etched, and printed their experiences during and after the war. For an overview of the many artists not covered in this chapter, see Gerhard Schneider’s vast and remarkable collection of mostly German World War I artists and soldier-artists, catalogued in Gerhard Schneider, Ralf Gottschlich, and Christiane Ladleif, eds., Der Erste Weltkrieg im Spiegel Expressiver Kunst. 110. Quoted in Stephanie Barron, ed., “Degenerate Art”: The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany, exh. cat. (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1991), p. 45. 111. The scholarly literature on the Nazi Party’s cultural agenda and the notion of “cultural degeneracy,” is large. For a thorough analysis, as well as a reconstruction of the Nazis’ infamous Entartete Kunst exhibit in 1937, see Stephanie Barron, ed., “Degenerate Art”: The Fate of the Avant-Garde. See also Olaf Peters’ newer publication, Degenerate Art: The Attack on Modern Art in Nazi Germany, 1937 (Munich: Prestel, 2014), which builds upon Barron’s fine publication and the groundbreaking exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art that reconstructed the original 1937 exhibition. See also Werner Haftmann, Banned and Persecuted. The notion that the “degenerate” artists were either criminals, foisting their transgressive art on the German people, or they were defective, meaning they suffered from a genetic defect that the Ministry of the Interior should investigate in case sterilization would be required, is contained in Adolf Hitler’s speech at the dedication of the Hall of German Art in Munich, 1937, “The End of Artistic Bolshevism.” It is reproduced in Stephanie Barron, ed., “Degenerate Art”: The Fate of the Avant-Garde.

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112. Jonathan Jones, “The first world war in German art: Otto Dix’s firsthand visions of horror,” The Guardian (May 14, 2014); accessed at https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/may/14/first-worldwar-german-art-otto-dix.

Chapter 3   1. Wallace Stevens, “A Postcard from the Volcano” (1923) in Wallace Stevens, Ideas of Order (New York: The Alcestis Press, 1935).   2. On the issue of “authentic” witnesses, see, for example, Bernd Ulrich, Die Augenzeugen: Deutsche Feldpostbriefe in Kriegs- und Nachkriegszeit, 1914–1933 (Essen: Klartext Verlag, 1997).   3. Nicholas J. Saunders, Trench Art: Materialities and Memories of War (Oxford: Berg, 2003), pp. 3–4. Saunders makes the designation “trench art” more inclusive with his definition on p. 11. He also provides general classification system for trench art, both on pp. 38–44, as well as in Nicholas J. Saunders, “Bodies of Metal, Shells of Memory: ‘Trench Art’ and the Great War Re-cycled,” Journal of Material Culture 5 (March 2000): 43–67. See also the two edited collections on trench art, Nicholas J. Saunders, ed., Matters of Conflict: Material Culture, Memory and the First World War (London: Routledge, 2004); and Nicholas J. Saunders and Paul Cornish, eds., Contested Objects: Material Memories of the Great War (London: Routledge, 2009). Even with such rich scholarship on trench art, no essay or book makes note of soldiers’ hand-painted army-issued postcards; only silk postcards, which were particularly popular in France, and photographic or topographic cards are included in the scholarship. See, for example, in Saunders, Trench Art, pp. 164–173, his discussion of what some of the better-known soldier-artists created from the matériel of war.   4. Akten der Ev.-Luth. Kirchgemeinde Dresden-Loschwitz, Bestattungsbuch 1970/36.   5. Dresden Archiv, death certificate number 69 (9 January 1925) of Johannes Schubert, father of Otto Schubert, in which it states that he was a shoemaker; information corroborated in Dresden Archiv, death certificate number 1413 (10 December 1936) of Henriette Pauline Schubert, in which it states that her husband, Schubert’s father, was a shoemaker.   6. Karl Blanck, “Otto Schubert ein deutscher Haus- und Buchkünstler,” in Archiv für Buchgewerbe und Gebrauchsgraphik 70, no. 10 (1933): 311–321; quote from p. 312.   7. The quoted biographical information on Schubert’s childhood and youth comes from ibid, the only source I was able to uncover in which he was interviewed and quoted. He left behind no documents or autobiographical essays, no writings on his artistic or political thoughts.  8. Ibid.   9. HfBK (Hochschule für Bildende Kunst) Dresden, Archiv, Bestand Matrikel und Schülerlisten, “Schülerlisten 1912–1916,” Signatur 06/62. 10. On Kurt Schwitters sharing an atelier with Schubert, which both artists enjoyed, letter from Peter Guenther to Chris Füreder-Schubert (February 25, 1987). 11. On Schubert’s height, email from Frank Kempe to Irene Guenther (August 1, 2017). Kempe was a neighbor of Schubert during the 1950s and 1960s. On Irma’s beauty, letter from Schubert’s second wife, Chris Füreder-Schubert, to Peter Guenther (December 16, 1986).

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12.

13.

14. 15. 16.

17.

18.

On Irma’s Catholicism, see Akten der Ev.-Luth. Kirchgemeinde Dresden-Loschwitz, Bestattungsbuch 1944/77a, and Karl Max Otto Schubert Marriage Registration (23 August 1919), no. 750, Dresden. On Schubert’s Lutheranism, see Akten der Ev.-Luth. Kirchgemeinde Dresden-Loschwitz, Bestattungsbuch 1970/36. On Irma Müller’s age, see Karl Max Otto Schubert Marriage Registration (23 August 1919), no. 750, Dresden, and Bestattungsbuch 1944/77a in which it states that Irma was born on January 24, 1891 in Dresden. Aside from a paragraph or two in a few publications on postwar German art and the Nazis’ degenerate art exhibit, there has been no published scholarship on Schubert or his art until fairly recently. This lacuna is slowly being addressed due to the notable efforts of the German art historian, collector, and museum founder, Dr. Gerhard Schneider, in whose collection, Zentrum für verfolgte Künste in Solingen, some of Schubert’s works can be found. Catalogues that have accompanied the Zentrum exhibitions include essays that contain brief analyses of Schubert’s art. Nonetheless, there are no publications that detail his life or the full extent of his oeuvre, and there are multiple errors and omissions about Schubert, as I will note later in this chapter, even in these more recent publications. HfBK Dresden, Archiv, Bestand Matrikel und Schülerlisten, “Schülerlisten 1916–1920,” Signatur 06/63. He was assigned to the 192nd Infantry, designated as a Saxon outfit. Schubert always wrote on the back of his postcards the following: “3rd Army, 3rd Battalion, 32nd Division, 11th Company, Infantry Regiment 192, Western Front.” For more, see in the Dresden Hauptstaatsarchiv: Bestände 11355 Armeeoberkommando der 3. Armee and 11347 Generalkommando dex XII. Armeekorps; Bestände 11348 Stellvertretendes Generalkommando des XII. Armeekorps, 11349 Kriegsamtstelle Dresden, and 11248 Sächsisches Kriegsministerium. The exact number of painted postcards Schubert sent is impossible to ascertain. Clearly, the largest bulk went to Irma, of which there are approximately ninety (seventy-nine in the Guenther collection, eleven in the Dresden Kupferstichkabinett collection, a few of these not mailed, not stamped). It is quite likely, though, that Schubert painted additional postcards since he alludes to having “sent cards” to various family members and friends in a few of his written passages to Irma. I am not aware that any of these still exist, whether in private or city/ state collections. The fact that the ninety painted cards still exist is remarkable, given that they survived two world wars and the bombing of Dresden, where Schubert lived his entire life. See first-hand descriptions in, for example, Alexander Watson, Enduring the Great War, pp. 19–20. Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning, pp. 68–69. Hugh Clout, After the Ruins: Restoring the Countryside of Northern France after the Great War (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1996), pp. 45–49, quote of Demangeon on pp. 3–4. “Verlustlisten” in Beilage des Dresdner Journals vom 19. August 1914 bis 30. Mai 1918, “Otto Schubert.” In Beständen des Hauptstaatsarchivs Dresden. William Philpott, Attrition: Fighting the First World War (London: Little, Brown, 2014), p. 226. The total number of French and German dead, wounded, or missing and later presumed dead at Verdun has varied somewhat – from 600,000 to more than one million. See, for example, Alexander Watson, Enduring the Great War, who cites 315,00 French casualties and 281,000 German casualties at Verdun in Enduring the

19. 20. 21. 22.

23.

24.

25.

26. 27.

28. 29.

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Great War, p. 11. Some of the discrepancy is due to the records kept by the various departments of the militaries and governments at the time. For example, some departments did not keep records on the “lightly wounded,” while others only kept records on the dead and missing. Regardless, Verdun was catastrophic, and laid bare the terror of industrialized warfare. Alexander Watson, Enduring the Great War, p. 15. Holger H. Herwig, The First World War, pp. 183–189. Otto Dix, written in 1916 to Helene Jakob, quoted in Ulrike Rüdiger, Grüsse aus dem Krieg, p. 13. The longest battle in World War One, the Battle of Verdun was fought from February 21 to December 18, 1916. There is a large amount of published scholarship on the Battle of Verdun, as well as rich primary source material. See, for example, Paul Jankowski, Verdun: The Longest Battle of the Great War (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2013); Roger Chickering, Great War, Total War: Combat and Mobilization on the Western Front 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000); John Keegan, The First World War (London: Hutchinson, 1998); the classic by Alistair Horne, The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916 (London: Penguin, 1993 reissue); and William Martin, Verdun 1916 (London: Osprey, 2001). The 192nd Regiment to which Schubert was assigned saw action at Verdun from March 1916 on. HfBK Dresden, Archiv, Bestand Matrikel und Schülerlisten, “Schülerlisten 1916–1920,” Signatur 06/63. “W[ar] 10.9.14 – 7.11.16 b[eim] Militär.” This finally corrects the error, replicated in every online gallery biography, as well as published sources I have located (catalogues, books, essays, and chapters in which Schubert is included), which incorrectly state that Schubert was in the military until 1917. Galerie Ernst Arnold, Zweite Ausstellung Dresdener Künstler die im Heeresdienste Stehen, preface by L. W. Gutbier, exh. cat. (Dresden: Kunstanstalt Stengel & Co., GmbH, 1916), preface pp. 3–4. Title of catalogue often appears on internet and in publications as “Zweite Ausstellung Dresdner Künstler”; however, catalogue’s title page spells it “Dresdener Künstler.” I could not find a catalogue for the first exhibition. Ruth Negendanck, Die Galerie Ernst Arnold (1893–1951). Kunsthandel und Zeitgeschichte (Weimar: Verlag und Datenbank für Geisteswissenschaften, 1998); and Anne Seidel, “Offen für die Moderne? Galerien in Dresden zur Zeit der Künstlergruppe ‘Die Brücke,’” Dresdener Kunstblätter 45, no. 5 (2001): 163-66. Galerie Ernst Arnold, Zweite Ausstellung, pp. 3–4. Ypres became one of the dreaded fronts – along with Somme, Arras, and Verdun – where even battle-hardened soldiers “became strangely quiet” and spoke of it with a mixture of “reverence, reluctance, and fear.” See Ross J. Wilson, Landscapes of the Western Front: Materiality during the Great War (New York: Routledge, 2012), pp. 100–101. Galerie Ernst Arnold, Zweite Ausstellung, pp. 39–40, contains the list of Schubert’s exhibited works. Schubert studied five semesters under Professor Hegenbarth, “Tierklassen unter Hegenbarth,” both before his military service and once he returned from his military service; these included semesters from fall of 1913 until fall of 1914, and again after his military service from the fall of 1916 to February 14, 1918. Schubert then began working as a “master student” in the studio of Professor Gussmann on February 15, 1918. He continued to study under Gussmann until he officially “signed out” of the Kunstakademie on March 11, 1921. His

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31.

32.

33.

34.

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last registered semester at the academy was the winter semester of 1920/21. HfBK Dresden, Archiv, Bestand Matrikel und Schülerlisten, “Schülerlisten 1916–1920” Signatur 06/63; Bestand Kunstakademie, “Zeugnisabschriften,” 1920–1923, Signatur 01/121, Bl. 9v and 39r; Nr. 78/VI. These specific dates are given to correct the errors in the short biographies of online galleries and in the few art history anthologies that include Schubert, which state Schubert left the Kunstakademie already by 1918. He did not even begin his studies with his influential teacher, Otto Gussmann, until 2-15-1918. See, for example, Fritz Löffler, “Dresden from 1913 and the Dresdner Sezession Gruppe 1919,” in Stephanie Barron, ed., German Expressionism 1915–1925, p. 66, where he incorrectly states that Schubert had concluded his academic studies with Gussmann already in 1919, and p. 67 where he erroneously states that Schubert’s two war portfolios, 24 Lithographien vom Krieg im Westen and Die Leiden der Pferde im Krieg were produced in 1919, even though it clearly states “1917” on the two portfolios’ title pages. There are numerous additional errors and often disparaging comments about Schubert in Löffler’s various chapters and essays on the Dresden postwar art scene and, particularly, on the Dresden art group Gruppe 1919. To offer just two of several examples, see his previously cited essay in Stephanie Barron, ed., German Expressionism, as well Fritz Löffler, “Die Dresdner Sezession Gruppe 1919 – 1919–1925,” in Joachim Uhlitzsch, ed., Kunst im Aufbruch. Dresden 1918–1933, exh. cat. (Dresden: Staatliche Kunstsammlung Dresden, 1980), pp. 39–61. The two essays are essentially the same, one is in English, the other in German. One of the only publications to examine in any depth Schubert’s two war portfolios is Gerhard Schneider, Ralf Gottschlich, and Christiane Ladleif, eds., Der Erste Weltkrieg im Spiegel Expressiver Kunst; see in particular, Gerhard Schneider, “Entstehung und Profil,” p. 18; Bernd Küster, “Die Kunst und der Erste Weltkrieg,” in ibid., pp. 38–39; and Claudia Schönjahn, “‘Krieg und Kunst’: Kriegsgrafik im Ersten Weltkrieg in Zeitschriften und Mappenwerken,” in ibid., pp. 48–49, with reproductions of some of Schubert’s works on pp. 49, 50, 138, 181–183. Schneider’s vast collection holds several of Schubert’s works, including his war portfolio, Die Leiden der Pferde im Krieg. There is also a brief mention of Schubert’s “horses” portfolio in Nina Christine Dusartz de Vigneulle, “Fur im Menschenschlachthaus – Zur künstlerischen Darstellung des Pferdes in der Kriegzeit,” in Stephan Brakensiek, ed., Kriegszeit; pp. 131–152, comments regarding Schubert’s horse portfolio on p. 150. Otto Schubert, 24 Lithographien vom Krieg im Westen (Dresden: Emil Richter, 1917); 24 lithos, first edition of 50 numbered and signed by the artist; 21 lithos are black-and-white, 3 lithos are colored. Colored lithos are approximately 6-1/2” x 10” while the black-and-white lithos are approximately 11-1/2” x 16,” which further sets apart the colored from the black-and-white lithographs. Artists who depicted horses during the war include Otto Hettner, “Zerschossene Batterie,” Georg Greve-Lindau, “Reitergefecht,” and in Kriegsbilderbogen, several individual depictions of horses appear. See also Richard Seewald, “Ulanenangriffs,” Max Feldbauer, “Husaren im Angriff,” Walther Teutsch, “Reiterschlacht am 4. Oktober 1914,” Lothar Bechstein, “Treffen,” and Otto Kopp, “Morgenrot.” Otto Schubert, Die Leiden der Pferde im Krieg (Dresden: Emil Richter, 1917); 12 lithographs, first edition of 50 numbered and signed by the artist; lithographs are black-on-white; title page is a color lithograph. The use of horses and the difficulties they endured during the war are touched on in most histories of World War I. See, for example, John

35.

36.

37.

38.

39.

40.

41.

42.

43.

44.

45.

Keegan, The First World War; G. J. Meyers, A World Undone; and countless letters, diaries, and autobiographical accounts by soldiers of the war in which horses still played a prevalent role. The Germans had to stop using horses before the end of the war because the British Blockade prohibited them from importing horses and their supply had run out, even after seizing them from places the Germans occupied. The British, in contrast, utilized horses until the end of the war. Otto Schubert, Salambo, portfolio of 35 lithographs to Flaubert’s Salammbô, first edition of 30, signed and hand-numbered by artist (Dresden: Emil Richter, Verlag, 1918). Advertisement for Salambo portfolio by Otto Schubert, printed in Neue Blätter für Kunst und Dichtung, 1918, p. 156. Copy of ad in Peter W. Guenther “Otto Schubert” file. Stephanie Barron, “Introduction,” in Stephanie Barron, ed., German Expressionism 1915–1925: The Second Generation (Los Angeles/ Munich: Los Angeles County Museum/Prestel Verlag, 1988), p. 31, 33. Shakespeare Visionen: Eine Huldigung deutscher Künstler. Radierungen, Steindrucke, Holzschnitte; mit Vorrede von Gerhard Hauptmann (Munich: Marées-Gesellschaft/R. Piper, 1918). Julius Meier-Graefe wrote the opening rabble-rousing editorial for the first issue of Kriegzeit in August 1914. In it, he suggested that “the war bestows on us [artists] a gift . . . Art was for many but an amusement . . . What we were missing was meaning – and that, brothers, the times now give us . . . The war has given us unity. All parties are agreed on the goal. May art follow!” Julius Meier-Graefe, “editorial,” Kriegzeit 1, no. 1 (August 31, 1914). He, like many other Germans, changed his position on the war in the deadly months that followed. HfBK Dresden, Archiv, Bestand Kunstakademie, “Zeugnisabschriften,” 1920–1923, Signatur 01/121, Bl. 9v., and Bestand Matrikel und Schülerlisten, “Schülerlisten 1916–1920,” Signatur 06/63. This is to correct the numerous date errors in newspaper articles and online short biographies of Schubert. See, for example, Jochen Wollenweber, “1922 Staatspreis erhalten – nach 1933 verfemt,” states date of prize is 1922, newspaper clipping from the 1980s in Peter W. Guenther files. The prize is referred to as the Grosser Staatspreis, the Sächsischer Staatspreis, and the Staatspreis in the various brief online bios. The group is also sometimes referred to as Dresdner Sezession or Gruppe 1919. Several members of Gruppe 1919 were previously involved in Gruppe 1917, including Felixmüller, Lange, Böckstiegel, and Mitschke-Collande. See, for example, Will Grohmann’s essay about the group in “Dresdner Sezession ‘Gruppe 1919,’” Neue Blätter für Kunst und Dichtung 1 (März 1919): 257-260. Joan Weinstein, The End of Expressionism: Art and the November Revolution in Germany, 1918–1919 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), p. 121. For the group’s founding statute, dated January 29, 1919, see Fritz Löffler, Emilio Bertonati, and Joachim Heusinger v. Waldeggg, eds., Dresden Sezession 1919–1923, exh. cat. (Munich/Milan: Galleria del Levante, 1977), n.p. (founding statements and statute reproduced on the two pages following the first essay, also unpaginated). There are several notable publications on the most important German artists and art groups of the postwar period. See especially Stephanie Barron, ed., German Expressionism 1915–1925: The Second Generation; in particular, see Peter W. Guenther’s essay in which he explores many of the lesser known postwar artist groups in Germany, “A Survey of Artists’ Groups: Their Rise, Rhetoric, and Demise,” in ibid., pp. 99–115. See also Dennis Crockett, German Post-Expressionism: The Art

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46.

47.

48. 49.

50.

51. 52.

53.

54.

55. 56.

57. 58.

59.

60.

of the Great Disorder, 1918–1924 (University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1999). Joachim Uhlitzsch, “Über den Neuen Künstlerischen Tanz in Dresden,” in Joachim Uhlitzsch, ed., Kunst im Aufbruch, pp. 159–166; and Hedwig Müller, Mary Wigman. Leben und Werk der grossen Tänzerin (Weinheim/Berlin: Quadriga Verlag, 1986). See, for example, Ida Katherine Rigby, War-Revolution-Weimar, pp. 29– 30, 52–57; and Stephanie Barron, “Introduction,” in Stephanie Barron, ed., German Expressionism 1915–1925, pp. 11–37, and Eberhard Roters, “Prewar, Wartime, and Postwar: Expressionism in Berlin from 1912 to the Early 1920s,” in ibid., pp. 39–55. Sezession, Gruppe 1919 (Dresden: Verlag Emil Richter, March 1919); Walter Rheiner’s essay on p. 7, “Die Neue Welt” (The New World). The first exhibit of Gruppe 1919, held at the Galerie Emil Richter, opened on April 5, 1919 and closed May 13, 1919. Exhibited works included paintings, woodcuts, lithographs and other graphics, as well as sculptures by the female member of the group, Gela Foster. The timeline included in Joachim Uhlitzsch, ed., Kunst im Aufbruch, contains numerous errors, including the date of the first Gruppe 1919 exhibit; see p. 338, where it states that the first exhibit was held in March. Joan Weinstein, The End of Expression, p. 123; and Karin MüllerKelwing, Die Dresdner Sezession 1932 (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 2010). Joan Weinstein, The End of Expression, p. 123. Menschen: Buchfolge Neuer Kunst, Sonderheft von Graphik der “Gruppe 1919” Dresden, vol. VIII, no. 62/65 (Dresden: Dresdner Verlag von 1917, 1919), Will Grohmann’s introduction on pp. 1–2; Schubert’s personal “resurrection” in Grohmann’s comments about the artists’ works on p. 2. Schubert’s three works are reproduced in ibid., pp. 17–19; volume and issue number per the text in the original, in contradiction to citations in a few works, which refer to the same “Sonderheft” of Menschen as vol. 2, nr. 8. Fritz Löffler, “Dresden from 1913,” pp. 57–79. There are numerous errors in this essay, as well as in Fritz Löffler, “Die Dresdner Sezession, Gruppe 1919,” pp. 39–61; please see my footnote 29. Klaus von Beyme, Das Zeitalter der Avantgarden: Kunst und Gesellschaft 1905–1955 (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2005), pp. 540–541. Quoted in Fritz Löffler, “Die Dresdner Sezession, Gruppe 1919,” pp. 43, 45, but Löffler gives no footnote or endnote citations for any of the quotations he includes in this essay. Karin Müller-Kelwing, Die Dresdner Sezession 1932. Fritz Löffler, “Dresden from 1913,” on p. 57 he states that the group dissolved in 1925. However, the most recent and most thorough work on Gruppe 1919 argues persuasively that the group, in fact, broke up in 1922, even though some of the original members exhibited with other artists for a few more years. See Karin Müller-Kelwing, Die Dresdner Sezession 1932, p. 53. This turn to a “new realism” developed into two branches – a “new objectivity” (Neue Sachlichkeit) and Verism. Sometimes, the term “magical realism” also emerges in art historical discussions of this mid-1920s change in style. See Irene Guenther, “Magic Realism, New Objectivity, and the Arts during the Weimar Republic,” in Lois Zamora and Wendy Faris, eds., Magical Realism: Foundations, Theory, History, Community (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995), pp. 33–73. Suzanne Muchnic, “1918–22: Call for a New Germany,” Los Angeles Sunday Times (May 29, 1983), p. 72. Muchnic’s review pertains to An

61.

62. 63. 64. 65.

66.

67.

68.

69. 70. 71.

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alle Künstler! War-Revolution-Weimar,” an exhibit in San Diego that featured 133 German Expressionist prints, drawings, periods, and posters of the postwar period. Robert Sterl was known as an artist and professor, and he also operated a private painting school for women in the early 1900s. He was appointed to a professorship at the Dresden Art Academy in 1906, where he taught until 1931, and was a war painter during World War I on the Western and Southern Fronts. Two of his works were condemned as “degenerate” by the Nazis in 1937. By then, Sterl had died after a long illness. Even after his death, he supported the work of young artists by bequeathing his estate to the Dresden Art Academy for that specific purpose. See Horst Zimmermann, Der Maler Robert Sterl: Leben und Werk in Briefen und Selbstzeugnissen (Dresden: Sandstein Verlag, 2011). Karl Blanck, “Otto Schubert: ein deutscher Haus- und Buchkünstler,” p. 313. Otto Schubert, Bühnenbilder von Otto Schubert zu der Komödie “Joseph der Sieger” von Max Herrmann (1919). Menschen. Monatsschrift für Neue Kunst, no. 8 (November 1919); two original Schubert woodcuts, “Umarmung” and “Märzspaziergang.” The 1919 woodcut, “Ich liebe Dich,” is held in the collection of the Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies, Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The 1919 lithograph is untitled, but is noted as “from Incantation and Dream,” and is held in the collection of the Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies, Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Rose Nele Schubert was born on March 1, 1920; Peter Tyll Schubert was born on June 11, 1923; and Maria Saskia Schubert was born on September 10, 1925. Akten der Ev.-Luth. Kirchgemeinde DresdenLoschwitz, Karteikarte der Kirchgemeinde, and Taufbuch 1923/1947, Taufbuch 1925/1953. Letters between Peter Guenther and Chris Füreder-Schubert, September 17, 1986, October 20, 1986, and December 16, 1986. See also Helma Schaefer, “Der Dresdener Illustrator Otto Schubert,” in Pirckheimer-Gesellschaft, ed., Marginalien. Zeitschrift für Buchkunst und Bibliophilie, 38. Heft (Berlin/Weimar: Aufbau Verlag): 26–39; see p. 31, where she comments that it was likely Schubert’s strong desire to provide a stable, happy life for his family, with none of the material deprivation of his own childhood, that caused him to not make the socio-political art that his associates like George Grosz, Max Beckmann, and Otto Dix were making. Letters between Peter Guenther and Chris Füreder-Schubert, September 30, 1986 and February 25, 1987. HfBK Dresden, Archiv, Bestand Kunstakademie, “Zeugnisabschriften,” 1920–1923, Signatur 01/121, Bl. 9v. u. 39r, “Nr. 78/VI.” Alfred Günther, Beschwörung und Traum: Gedichte (Dresden: Emil Richter Verlag, 1920). Günther had published two previous volumes of poetry that had received very positive reviews, Phönix and Von Gott und Frauen. The description “lyrical” is contained in the Richter Verlag’s promotional material for the poetry book, which was the first volume in a new Richter series, Bücher der neuen Kunst. Fritz Löffler, the art historian who became the “go to” historian of 1920s–1960s Dresden, and who made numerous errors and disparaging statements about Otto Schubert (see my footnote 29), did the same in his comments about Günther, referring to him as a “Nazi-dichter” (Nazi poet) in his essay “Expressionismus in Dresden,” Imprimatur (new series) 111 (1962): 235–239, “Nazi-dichter” on p. 237. Such comments by Löffler are not only defamatory, they are incorrect and completely unsubstantiated. Günther was hardly a Nazi. He never joined the party. His second

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73.

74.

75. 76.

77. 78. 79. 80.

81.

82.

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wife, Genja Jonas, whom he married in 1923, was a German Jew, a groundbreaking photographer and at the core of the lively modern arts scene in Dresden. Once the Nazis came to power, both Günther and Jonas were prohibited from working. Günther’s plays could not be performed; Jonas had to resort to portrait photography and find clients in England to help make ends meet. Günther received several summonses by the Gestapo, and even after Jonas died of breast cancer in 1938, he encountered difficulties getting work due to his criticisms of the Nazis. In fact, it was Löffler who joined the Nazi Party, not in the early period when it was still somewhat unclear as to how ferociously anti-Semitic and anti-modernist the regime would be, but in 1937. By then, the Nazis had excluded Jews from much of German society, and had fulfilled their goal of purging German museums and galleries of modern art. Löffler remained in the party until the Nazi government ceased to exist at the end of WWII. Otto Schubert, Bei uns (Selbstdruck/Borsberg), portfolio with 20 etchings and a title page; 30 examples originally printed, 1920. Reprinted in 1923 (Selbstdruck/Dresden-Loschwitz). Otto Schubert, Bilderbuch für Tyll und Nele, 27th imprint of M-G (Dresden/Munich: Verlag Marées-Gesellschaft/R. Piper, 1921), limited edition of 300. Quoted comments from Adolf Seebass, as quoted in Ketterer Kunst auction catalogue, auction 418, lot 886, November 18, 2014. Otto Schubert, “Frühling,” “Sommer,” “Herbst,” and “Winter” in Ganymed: Blätter für Marées-Gesellschaft 2 (1920). Kaltnadelradierung is drypoint. Each drypoint features a woman who is shown at a task personifying the particular season. Carl Hauptmann, Die lilienweisse Stute. Legende. Mit Sechs Original Lithographien (Dresden: Rudolf Kaemmerer Verlag, 1920), 400 ex. Heinrich von Kleist, Der zerbrochene Krug. Mit Zehn Holzschnitte von Otto Schubert. No further publication information is available; title page and three lithos appear in Fritz Löffler, Emilio Bertonati, and Joachim Heusinger v. Waldeggg, eds., Dresden Sezession 1919–1923, n.p. Heinrich von Kleist, Michael Kohlhaas. Mit Sechs Lithographien von Otto Schubert (Dresden: Kaemmerer, 1920). Honoré de Balzac, Contes drôlatiques, 30 etchings (Dresden: Eigendruck in geringer Auflage, 1920). “Bio per Galerie Oltmanns, Unkel Germany”; Oltmanns.de/kuenstler/ Otto_Schubert. Drucke der Marées-Gesellschaft, Reinecke Fuchs. Zwölf Gesange. Mit Rahmen, Initialen und Bildern gezeichnet und radiert von Otto Schubert, 30th imprint of M-G (Dresden/Munich: Verlag Marées-Gesellschaft/R. Piper, 1921). In 1920, Schubert had created 20 drypoints on zinc plate as illustrations for Reineke Fuchs. Meier-Graefe was enchanted with them, and asked Schubert to create an expanded edition for a MaréesGesellschaft special edition. This edition consisted of 53 drypoints, as well as vignettes. Relevant to many of the titles and art forms of Schubert’s works that I note in this chapter, Schubert would often make two to three different editions of his various illustrative portfolios. I have attempted to take those variances into consideration when listing the literary titles and numbers of lithos, etchings, or woodcuts per book or portfolio. HfBK Dresden, Archiv, Nr. 78/VI, “Abgangszeugnis für Herrn Karl Max Otto Schubert,” studied under Professor Gussmann from February 15, 1918 to Easter 1921. Julius Meier-Graefe, “Ein deutscher Verwandter van Goghs,” Der Querschnitt, Jarhrgang 2, Frühjahrsheft (1922): 16–18.

83. Gerald D. Feldman, The Great Disorder: Politics, Economics, and Society in the German Inflation, 1914–1924 (New York: Oxford UP, 1996); Adam Fergusson, When Money Dies: The Nightmare of Deficit Spending, Devaluation, and Hyperinflation in Weimar Germany (New York: PublicAffairs, 2010); and Frederick Taylor, The Downfall of Money: Germany’s Hyperinflation and the Destruction of the Middle Class (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013). 84. Letters between Peter Guenther and Chris Fürderer-Schubert, September 17, 1986, September 30, 1986, and December 16, 1986. 85. “Christus auf dem Meere,” lithograph in an edition of 30 prints, “Versuchung des heiligen Antonius,” lithograph in an edition of 30; “Judith mit dem Haupt des Holofernes,” lithograph in an edition of 20; and “Der heilige Sebastian,” lithograph in an edition of 12; all created in 1925. 86. I have compiled Schubert’s remarkable artistic output during the 1920s in part from the following sources: Karl Linke, Die Nibelungen neu erzählt. Nacherzählung (Vienna: Deutscher Verlag für Jugend und Volk, 1924); Hans Vollmer, ed., Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart. Dreissigster Band (Leipzig: Verlag von E.A. Selmann, 1936), “Schubert, Otto,” p. 306; Adolf Sennewald, Deutsche Buchillustratoren im ersten Drittel des 20. Jahrhunderts: Materialien für Bibliophile (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1999), “Schubert, Otto,” pp. 191–194; Karl Blanck, Otto Schubert: ein deutscher Haus- und Buchkünstler, pp. 313–318; Rolf Jessewitsch and Gerhard Schneider, eds., Entdeckte Moderne (Bönen: Kettler, 2008), p. 515–516; Rainer Zimmermann, Expressiver Realismus. Malerei der verschollenen Generation (Munich: Hirmer, 1994), pp. 443–445; Otto Schubert: Druckgraphik und Zeichnungen, exh. cat. (Berlin: Kupferstichkabinett, 1957); and archival and library searches of exhibitions and exhibit catalogues produced in the 1920s. 87. Publishers include Piper, Marées Gesellschaft (bibliophile society that produced special edition books with Piper), Emil Richter, Kaemmerer, Phantasus, and Arndt Beyer. 88. Galleries include Galerie Flechtheim in Berlin, as well as Galerie Arnold and Galerie Emil Richter, two of the leading modern art galleries in Dresden, to name just three. 89. Karl Blanck, Otto Schubert: ein deutscher Haus- und Buchkünstler, pp. 313–318, for a fairly comprehensive, but nonetheless incomplete list of book illustrations; also searches of exhibit catalogues, magazines, and advertisements produced in the 1920s. Also helpful was “Otto Schubert,” written by Belinde Kreutinger, one of two daughters from Schubert’s second marriage. While the short biography of her father is largely drawn from Karl Blanck’s article, Otto Schubert, the bio includes a copy of one of Schubert’s advertisements, along with a few details not included in any other source material I was able to locate. 90. Stadtarchiv Dresden (StA Dresden), Bestand 2.3.1 Hauptkanzlei, Signature: 11 D 37 (1920–1929). 91. Dieter Kusske, “Zwischen Kunst, Kult und Kollaboration. Der deutsch kirchennahe Kunst-Dienst,” Ph.D. dissertation, Universität Bremen (August 2012), p. 208. 92. Sächsichen Kunstverein, Grosse Aquarell-Ausstellung Dresden. Brühlesche Terasse, May 22–September 30, 1926, exh. cat. (Dresden: Verlag von Wolfgang Jess, 1926). 93. Otto Schubert, handmade graphic invitation, hand-signed by Schubert, “Einladung zur Ausstellung Otto Schubert,” “Im Sächsischen Kunstverein Dresden, Brühlsche Terasse.” 94. Sächsischer Kunstverein. Sächsische Kunst unserer Zeit. II. JubiläumsAusstellung, July 21–October 31, 1928, exhibit catalogue.

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 95. Richard Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich (New York: Penguin), pp. 231–265.   96. “Zu den Gemälden von Otto Schubert,” in Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration: Illustrierte Monatshefte für moderne Malerei, Plastik, Architektur, Wohnungs-Kunst und Künstlerische Frauenarbeiten, no. 3, Jahrgang 34 (1930): 170–172. The three featured paintings are “Mutter und Kind,” “Im Garten,” and another “Mutter und Kind.” The short essay on Schubert’s work was written by “H.R.”  97. Karl Blanck, Otto Schubert: ein deutscher Haus- und Buchkünstler, p. 313.   98. “Otto Schubert”: NSDAP Midgliedskartei (Zentral- und OrtsgruppenKartei); Mitglieds Nr. (membership no.) 1319583 (September 1, 1932). No essay, article, chapter, or online art gallery biography pertaining to Schubert that I was able to find mentions Schubert’s Nazi Party membership. They all simply jump from his 1932 participation in the International Book Fair in Paris to the loss of his wife and destruction of his studio in Dresden in 1945 (incorrect year) and then on to the 1952 exhibit in Berlin, which is where these brief biographies then stop, if they even include this much. One author even incorrectly asserts that Schubert was a concentration camp survivor, an assertion which he has since retracted.   99. Stephanie Barron, “1937: Modern Art and Politics in Prewar Germany,” in Stephanie Barron, ed., “Degenerate Art”: The Fate of the AvantGarde, pp. 9–23. 100. The notion that “cultural degeneracy” stemmed from a genetic defect in the artist was emphasized by Hitler in his speech on July 18, 1937 at the opening of the House of German Art, which contained the exhibition of state-approved art. See “Hitler’s Speech at the Opening of the House of German Art in Munich” (July 18, 1937), accessed at http:// germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=1577 (German History Documents and Images/GHDI). 101. ASSO – Assoziation revolutionärer bildender Künstler Deutschlands 102. Müller oversaw Willy Waldapfel, artist and councilman of Dresden, and Walter Gash, official art commissioner of Dresden, both of whom were the primary catalysts in putting the exhibit together. See Christoph Zuschlag, “An ‘Educational Exhibition’: The Precursors of Entartete Kunst and its Individual Venues,” in Stephanie Barron, ed., “Degenerate Art”: The Fate of the Avant-Garde, p. 100; and email from Gallerist Frank Kempe to Irene Guenther, August 10, 2017. Kempe states that Müller was not actively involved in organizing the “degenerate art” exhibit, and that his presiding position was due mostly to his directorship of the Kunstakademie. Richard Müller, who joined the Nazi Party in 1933, became very disenchanted. His primary opposition to modern art did not stem from ideological affinities with the Nazis, but rather a consistently negative view of modern art, which he had held throughout his professional life. He decried modern art before the Nazis came to power, and he continued to do so after he left the Nazi Party. Eventually, he refused to pay his party membership dues, knowing full well that he would be ejected, which was his intent. See also Corinna Wodarz, “Kunstpropaganda in der DDR: Müller contra Dix,” in Christof Römer, ed., Mitteldeutsches Jahrbuch für Kultur und Geschichte, Band 4 (1997): 153–162. 103. Richard Müller, Rektor der Staatl. Kunstakademie in Dresden, “Die Ausstellung ‘Spiegelbilder des Verfalls in der Kunst,’” Dresdener Anzeiger, no. 204 (September 23, 1933). Copy of article located in HfBK Dresden, Archiv, Bestand Kunstakademie, “Gutachten über Kunstwerke sowie An- und Verkauf von Einzelstücken,” 1924–1945, Signatur 01/41, Bl. 102f.

104. Quoted in Christoph Zuschlag, “An ‘Educational Exhibition’: The Precursors,” p. 85. 105. Quoted in ibid. 106. Ibid. 107. Ibid., Table 1, pp. 98–101. 108. Ibid., p. 85. 109. Ibid., Table 1, p. 100. 110. Stephanie Barron, ed., “Degenerate Art”: The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany, p. 68–69. 111. Ibid., 54. 112. The scholarly literature on the Nazis’ cultural agenda, as well as the notion of “cultural degeneracy,” is large. For thorough scholarly analyses, as well as a reconstruction of the Nazis’ infamous Entarte Kunst exhibition in 1937, see Stephanie Barron, ed., “Degenerate Art”: The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art), 1991; and Olaf Peters, ed., Degenerate Art: The Attack on Modern Art in Nazi Germany, 1937, exh. cat. in conjunction with the Neue Galerie (New York: Prestel Verlag, 2014). See also Irene Guenther, “Modern German Art and its Demise,” pp. 20–37; and Richard Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich, pp. 405–418. Barron’s “Degenerate Art” exhibition catalogue, weighing in at more than 400 pages, is a remarkable reconstruction of the infamous 1937 exhibit, as well as its predecessors, and its intellectual, political, and cultural aims. Biographies on most of the defamed artists run two or more paragraphs in the appendix of the catalogue. It becomes clear just how little was/is known about Schubert or how irrelevant he has been viewed by art historians when examining the compilation of artists’ biographies. Schubert receives no biography, and his inclusion is only noted by the two works that hung in the 1937 Entartete Kunst exhibit. Even his death date is noted as “unknown,” although it would have taken minimal effort to locate it; see p. 349. 113. Based upon my research, Schubert’s last commercially published art before the Nazis’ seizure of power was his late 1932 portfolio of thirtytwo etchings to accompany Goethe’s Balladen. The only self-published work I could find still existent or referred to in sources is his selfpublished portfolio of eleven etchings (10 etchings inside portfolio, 1 etching as title page) titled Blätter für Freunde der Jagd. 114. I could not locate any document, newspaper, or journal sources that suggest Schubert was in any way active in the party, either in Dresden or nationally. However, I also could not locate any records to indicate that his membership was revoked or that he rescinded his membership. 115. Peter Tyll Schubert suffered severe injuries to both lower limbs, neck, and thoracic vertebrae during combat; per letter of the company commander from July 29, 1943 with the notice dated August 1, 1943. He died on August 20, 1943 in the military field hospital in Insterburg, in the northern part of East Prussia. The city is now called Chernyakhovsk and is a part of Russia. Akten der Ev.-Luth. Kirchgemeinde Dresden-Loschwitz, Bestattungsbuch 1943/50; Lt. Schreiben der Dienststelle 100 35 A v. 21.08/1943 durch Kompaniebefehl vom 29.07.1943 mit Wirkung vom 01.08.1943 zum Gefreiten befördert. He is buried in a group grave, “Gruppengrab,” in the Loschwitzer Friedhof war cemetery in Dresden-Loschwitz; see “Peter Tyll Schubert,” Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e.V. 116. U.S. War Department Technical Manual, TM-E 30-451 (15 March 1945), “The German Soldier: Manpower Problems.” 117. Belinde Kreutinger, daughter of the artist, “Otto Schubert,” p. 13. While she does not specify the Volksturm in the short biography she

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wrote about her father, most older men were not drafted until the last year of the war and the establishment of the Volksturm divisions. 118. Stephen G. Fritz, Endkampf: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Death of the Third Reich (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004), p. 191. See also Richard Bessel, Germany 1945: From War to Peace (New York: Harper Perennial, 2010), pp. 135–140; and U.S. War Department Technical Manual, TM-E 30-451 (15 March 1945), “The German Soldier: Manpower Problems.” The same manual states that other changes made by the Nazi government to fill the dwindling numbers of German soldiers after the heavy losses in the Russian campaign included cancellation of Hitler’s order “exempting ‘last sons’ of decimated families and fathers of large families from front-line combat duty.” 119. See Jürgen Kaumkötter, Der Tod hat nicht das letzte Wort: Kunst in der Katastrophe 1933–1945 (Berlin: Galiani-Berlin, 2015), pp. 40–41. On p. 40, Kaumkötter erroneously asserts that Schubert “was himself a survivor of the concentration camp,” with no sources cited to back up that claim. He has rescinded that assertion. 120. Alfred Hahn and Ernst Neef, Dresden. Werte unserer Heimat, Band 42 (Berlin, Akademie-Verlag, 1985). 121. To correct errors in brief online gallery biographies of Schubert, as well as in Helma Schaefer’s essay on Schubert’s illustrative work, “Der Dresdener Illustrator Otto Schubert,” p. 26, all of which state that Irma was killed during the infamous firebombing of Dresden in February 1945, Irma’s exact date of death is October 7, 1944, during the first bombing of Dresden. Akten der Ev.-Luth. Kirchgemeinde DresdenLoschwitz, Bestattungsbuch 1944/77a: “gest. 07.10.1944 in Dresden, am Queckbrunnen; bestattet: 13.10.1944 Matthäusfriedhof Dresden, bei einem feindlichen Luftangriff gefallen.” 122. “Historical Analysis of the 14–15 February Bombings of Dresden.” Prepared by USAF Historical Division Research Studies Institute Air University. See also Frederick Taylor, Dresden: Tuesday, February 13, 1945 (New York: Harper Collins, 2004). 123. Belinde Kreutinger, “Otto Schubert,” p. 13; Helma Schaefer, “Der Dresdener Illustrator,” p. 26. 124. Married on April 2, 1949 in Manchester, Lancashire; died on April 20, 2013 in Blackpool, Lancashire, England; see “England & Wales, Marriage Index, 1916–2005, Ancestry Sources, Saskia Maria Schubert.” She married a man with the last name of Jones; Manchester, vol. 10e, page 813, “Marriages registered in April, May, and June, 1949.” 125. I could find no sources on Rose Nele, but in Belinde Kreutinger, “Otto Schubert,” p. 13, the author states that “both daughters married,” and that “Nele went to Switzerland,” and “Saskia went to England.” The church documents state that both daughters were “verzogen,” they had moved away after 1945. See Akten der Ev.-Luth. Kirchgemeinde Dresden-Loschwitz, Karteikarte der Kirchgemeinde/Ergänzung, “Rose Nele Schubert” and “Maria Saskia Schubert.” 126. The East German Communist Party was called the Socialist Unity Party (in German, the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschland, the SED), which was established in April 1946 and was the governing MarxistLeninist political party of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) from 1949, when the GDR was established, until it was dissolved in the “Velvet Revolutions” of 1989/1990. Socialist Realism, an art genre supported and encouraged in the Soviet Union and its satellite states, depicted in a “realistic” way everyday life under Socialism in a positive light. The East German government was repressive and perfidious in its censorship and repression of the arts, including visual arts, music, and literature, to its last days. The Ministry for State Security, the

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Stasi or secret police, monitored artists thought to be dissidents. Even so, a creative, albeit risky, underground art movement developed in East Germany. As a working artist, Schubert had to become a member of the VBK; he was also a member of the Dresden Kunstverein, art association. For his memberships, see Dietmar Eisold, ed., Lexikon: Künstler in der DDR (Berlin: Neues Leben, 2010), “Otto Schubert”; and Thieme-Becker-Vollmer, Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon – Internationale Künstlerdatenbank (Berlin: DeGruyter, continually updating resource). 127. This is based on my search of auction and exhibit catalogues, which reveal unmemorable portraits, landscapes, still life paintings of flowers, and scenes of family life Schubert produced in the 1950s. Artworks dating from the 1950s include titles such as “Liebespaar an der Bergstrasse in Wachwitz,” “Kinder unterm Apfelbaum,” “In der Küche,” “Familienbild in Wachwitz,” “Christel in grauem Kleid,” “Blick von der Terrasse des Künstlers, in Vordergrund seine drei Töchter,” “Blumenstilleben,” and so on. 128. Belinde Kreutinger, “Otto Schubert,” p. 14. 129. Franz Engel, Pilzwanderungen. Eine Pilzkunde für jedermann (Dresden: Dresdner Verlagsgesellschaft, 1949), eight colored line drawings by Schubert. Three children’s books by Ernst Scheibelreiter, Kasperl-Abenteuer, Auszählverse: Kinderreime, and Die Arche Noah, published in 1947 and 1948, have been attributed to “our” Dresden artist Otto Schubert in Adolf Sennewald, “Otto Schubert,” Deutsche Buchillustratoren, p. 194). According to a note on http://www. dictionnaire-des-illustrateurs.com/, these attributions are incorrect and should instead be attributed to a Viennese-based Otto Schubert. As I have translated from the French Swiss site: “Not to be confused with the German Otto Schubert of Dresden, who appears in volume 3 of the Dictionnaire des illustrateurs.” See Marcus Osterwalder, Dictionnaire des illustrateurs 1905–1965 (Lausanne: Ides et Calendes, 2005), p. 1454. Regarding the lack of any commissions or published art, I base this assertion on my lengthy search of auction and exhibit catalogues for Schubert works, as well as an extensive search of book illustrations published between 1933–1949. 130. Akten der Ev.-Luth. Kirchgemeinde Dresden-Loschwitz, Traubuch 1950/37, Eheschliessung am 21.10.1950 (Dresden V, No. 1036 Standesamt); Trauung (ev.-luth.) am 23.10.1950 (Kirchgemeindehaus Dresden-Loschwitz). Christa Margarethe Scheffler, geb 07.12.1923 in Dresden-Loschwitz; Unterlagen zum Traubuch 1950/37: Ehefrau: Chemische Assistentin. 131. Akten der Ev.-Luth. Kirchgemeinde Dresden-Loschwitz, Taufbuch 1952/5: “Agnes Belinde Schubert, geb. 25.01.1952”; Taufbuch 1956/8: “Christa Ulrike Schubert, geb. 17.01.1956.” 132. Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, Der Frieder und das Katerlieschen; Das Lumpengesindel; Rotkäpchen; Das tapfere Schneiderlein; Strohhalm, Kohle und Bohne; Tischlein deck dich; and Der Wettlauf zwischen dem Hasen und dem Igel (Berlin: Kinderbuchverlag, 1954). In 1953, he created seventeen illustrations to accompany Annelies and Kurt Paul, Heimat im Bayrischen Wald (Dresden: Sachsenverlag, 1953). In 1954, along with the numerous Grimm fairytale illustrations, Schubert produced eighteen brush drawings for Wilhelm Hauff’s Phantasien im Bremer Ratskeller: Ein Herbstgeschenk für Freunde des Weines, and thirty-three brush drawings and one title page for Nachtwachen von Bonaventura. 133. Anne Geelhaar, Till Eulenspiegel: Abenteuer und Erlebnisses eines Bauernsohnes (Berlin: Kinderbuchverlag, 1953/1956). 134. Das Vöglein Glück und viele andere tschechische Märchen (Berlin: Altberliner Verlag, 1957).

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135. Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quichotte, I. Teil: 100 Pinselzeichnungen; 2. Teil: 110 Pinselzeichnungen, 1955/1956. 136. Otto Schubert: Druckgraphik und Zeichnungen, Ausstellung des Kupferstichkabinetts der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, April 2–June 2, 1957, exh. cat. (Berlin: Kupferstichkabinett, 1957). Two items worth noting in the catalogue: the “Lebenslauf” or short biographical chronology on p. 6 of the twenty-page exhibit catalogue is incorrect. It is not stated who wrote the chronology, whether it was a curator at the museum or Schubert himself, but some of the dates are incorrect (for example, regarding his release from his WWI military service). Moreover, the chronology skips from Schubert’s participation in the International Book Fair in Paris in 1932 to February 13, 1945 when the firebombing of Dresden occurred and Schubert’s studio, along with all of its art contents, was destroyed. Unsurprisingly, there is no mention of his Nazi Party membership. Surprisingly, there is no mention of his designation as a “degenerate” artist during the Third Reich. Not only do these errors and omissions make it clear as to why virtually all of the brief biographies of Schubert I was able to find are incorrect, but it also raises the question of whether or not the omissions were purposeful and whether or not Schubert himself was attempting to rewrite his biography. 137. Edward Russell, 2nd Baron Russell of Liverpool was a prosecutorgeneral in the British Army and one of the chief legal advisors during the Nuremberg Trials after WWII. Lord Russell of Liverpool, The Scourge of the Swastika: A Short History of Nazi War Crimes during World War II (London: Cassell, 1954); and in German as Lord Russell of Liverpool, Geissel der Menschheit: Kurze Geschichte der Nazikriegsverbrechen, trans. by Roswitha Czollek (Berlin: Volk und Welt Verlag, 1955). 138. Bruno Apitz, Nackt unter Wölfen (Halle: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 1958). 139. Rolf Hochhuth, Der Stellvertreter. Ein christliches Trauerspiel (Reinbek: Rowohlt Verlag, 1963). Stellvertreter is probably better translated as “the representative” or “the vicar,” but English-language versions of Hochhuth’s play utilized “the deputy,” a translation which has stuck. 140. Peter Weiss, Die Ermittlung: Oratorium in 11 Gesängen (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1965). 141. Maximilian Kolbe was beatified as a Confessor of the Faith by Pope Paul VI in 1971, and was canonized as a saint and declared a martyr by Pope John Paul II on October 10, 1982. 142. Jorge Semprún, Die grosse Reise: Roman, trans. Abelle Christaller (Leipzig: Rowohlt Verlag, 1964). Schubert pulled together the numerous illustrations he made in response to the Holocaust-related literary works by Hochhuth, Weiss, Apitz, Semprún, and Russell under the title Scourge of Humanity, borrowing Russell’s book title. None of these illustrations were commissioned. 143. Otto Schubert, “Auschwitz Triptychon,” oil painting, circa 1965, housed in the “Bürgerstiftung für verfolgte Künste – Else-Lasker-SchülerZentrum – Kunstsammlung Gerhard Schneider.” Dr. Schneider stated that he was told by Schubert’s longtime Dresden art studio neighbor, the sculptor Hermann Naumann, that it was the Auschwitzprozesse – the trials and the reporting thereof, the publication of books and plays about the crimes committed in the Third Reich, and the public discussion that emerged from these developments – that fueled Schubert’s Holocaustrelated artworks. See Rolf Jessewitsch, Gerhard Schneider, Axel Wendelberger, eds., Expressive Gegenständlichkeit. Schicksale figurativer Malerei und Graphik im 20. Jahrhundert: Werke aus der Sammlung Gerhard Schneider (Bönen: Kettler, 2001), p. 7. See also analysis of Schubert’s triptych in Jürgen Kaumkötter, Der Tod hat nicht das letzte Wort: Kunst in der Katastrophe 1933–1945 (Berlin: Galiani-Berlin,

2015), pp. 40–41. As previously noted, Kaumkötter incorrectly asserts, without sources or citations, that Schubert “was himself a survivor of the concentration camp.” Upon contacting Kaumkötter to question the basis of his assertion, he rescinded the statement by email to this author, dated May 23, 2017. My examination of the US Holocaust Museum’s Holocaust Survivors and Victims database, which is the International Red Cross concentration camp inmate database, to search if, indeed, the artist Otto Schubert was a concentration camp inmate quickly uncovered an Otto Schubert whose birth date and death date differed substantially from those of the artist Otto Schubert. See also Kathrin Hoffmann-Curtius, Bilder zum Judenmord: Eine kommentierte Sichtung der Malerei und Zeichenkunst in Deutschland von 1945 bis zum Auschwitz-Prozess (Marburg: Jonas Verlag, 2014), pp. 171–173, where she asserts that Schubert’s depiction of the forced sex or rape of a female inmate in the triptychon’s left wing was one of the few Holocaust artworks up to that time that pointed out not only the physical violence (as Schubert shows in the center piece of the triptych), but also the sexual violence that occurred in the camps. Hoffmann-Curtius’ recent analysis of Schubert’s triptychon has been made possible only due to Schneider’s success in reassembling the three pieces of the triptych. 144. Otto Schubert, Meine Kinder: Zeichnungen und Aquarelle, exh. cat. (Karl-Marx-Stadt: Städtische Kunstsammlung/Tetzner et Zimmer, 1962), seven-page catalogue. The exhibit was from January 21 to February 25, 1962 in Karl-Marx-Stadt in the Museum am Theaterplatz. 145. Letters between Peter Guenther and Christa Füreder-Schubert, dated December 16, 1986 and February 25, 1987. 146. Johannes Jörgensen, Der heilige Franz von Assisi. 1182–1226 (Leipzig: St. Benno, 1962), fifteen text illustrations from woodcuts; translated into Eskimo and reissued in Greenland as Johannes Jörgensen, Frans iluortok assisimio (Nasigtok Isländ ausgabe, 1969). 147. Helma Schaefer, “Der Dresdener Illustrator Otto Schubert,” p. 34. 148. Hans-Martin Rotermund and Gerhard Gollwitzer, Graphik zur Bibel (Lahr: Verlag Ernst Kaufmann and Freiburg: Christophorus, 1966); woodcuts by Schubert on pp. 179 and 180. 149. Maxim Gorki, Die Mutter (Berlin: Aufbau Verlag, 1962); original published in 1906. Gorky is spelled Gorki in various publications. 150. John Willett and Ralph Manheim, eds., Bertolt Brecht: Collected Plays, vol. 5 (New York: Vintage Books, 1972), p. xi. 151. Letters between Christa Füreder-Schubert and Peter Guenther, dated July 22, 1986; September 17, 1986; December 16, 1986; March 22, 1987. 152. Johannes Bobrowski, Levins Mühle: 34 Sätze über meinen Grossvater (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag, 1964). 153. Gottfried August Bürger, Wunderbare Reisen zu Wasser und zu Lande. Feldzüge und lustige Abenteuer des Freiherrn von Münchhausen (Memmingen: Dietrich, 1968). 154. Letters between Christa Füreder-Schubert and Peter Guenther, dated October 20, 1986 and September 18, 1988. 155. Akten der Ev.-Luth. Kirchgemeinde Dresden-Loschwitz, Bestattungsbuch 1970/36: “Karl Max Otto Schubert,” died June 12, 1970; buried June 19, 1970 in Friedhof (cemetery) Dresden-Loschwitz.

Chapter 4   1. Letters between Christa Füreder-Schubert and Peter Guenther, dated between July 22, 1986 and January 14, 1988.   2. Fritz Löffler, “Die Dresdner Sezession, pp. 43, 45; quoted and translated in Ida Katherine Rigby, War – Revolution – Weimar, p. 85.

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  3. Jochen Wollenweber, “1922 Staatspreis erhalten – nach 1933 verfemt,” no newspaper title, no date, likely 1988; xeroxed newspaper clipping, in folder titled “Otto Schubert,” Peter Guenther estate.   4. Email from Dr. Rolf Jessewitsch, director, Zentrum für verfolgte Künste, Solingen, dated March 26, 2017, to the author. See also Gisela Schütte, “Im Keller der Kunstgeschichte,” Die Welt, special edition Welt am Sontag (22.02.2004): np.   5. Rainer Zimmermann, Expressiver Realismus: Malerei der verschollenen Generation (Munich: Hirmer Verlag, 1994), p. 191.  6. Ibid.   7. Irene Guenther, “Out of the Ruins: Fashioning Berlin, 1945–1952,” Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture 21, no. 4 (July 2017): 391–421.   8. Cora Goldstein, “Purges, Exclusions, and Limits: Art Policies in Germany 1933–1949,” Cultural Policy Workshop (2001), p. 3; more indepth regarding art in the postwar period, see Cora Goldstein Capturing the German Eye (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).   9. Even some of the artists who had compromised themselves by joining the Nazi Party were able to regain much of the respect they had accrued in the years before the Third Reich if they lived in the West after World War II. For example, the painter Emil Nolde was an avid Nazi supporter already in the 1920s. Like many of his colleagues, he was defamed in the Degenerate Art exhibition, and more than one thousand of his works were seized during the art purges. He remained in the West after the war, and was able to resurrect his artistic reputation, despite his embrace of the mysticism, German-ness, and anti-Semitism touted by the Nazis. See Felix Kramer, Emil Nolde: Retrospective (Munich: Prestel Verlag, 2014). 10. David King and Ernst Volland, John Heartfield: Laughter is a Devastating Weapon (London: Tate, 2015); Wieland Herzfelde, John Heartfield: Leben und Werk: Dargestellt von seinem Bruder, 3rd ed.

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11. 12.

13.

14.

(Dresden: VEB Verlag der Kunst, 1976); and Andrés Marion Zervigón, John Heartfield and the Agitated Image: Photography, Persuasion, and the Rise of Avant-Garde Photomontage (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012). Letter between Christa Füreder-Schubert and Peter Guenther, dated December 12, 1986. Helma Schaefer, “Der Dresdener Illustrator Otto Schubert,” p. 36, notes that Schubert produced sixty-nine portfolios; however, she only counts illustrations of classical literary works and children’s books. I was able to track down more than ten additional portfolios, as noted in various parts of this text. Fritz Löffler, “Dresden from 1913,” pp. 66–67, writes that Schubert’s post-World War One works contain “little to no social commentary” and that they are “second rate.” In several chapters and articles Löffler wrote on Dresden in the 1920s, he omitted Schubert as a founding member of Gruppe 1919. Those who knew Löffler and worked with him fairly closely said he had “vendettas” and grudges against particular individuals, especially artists, that he held onto for years. As noted in this biographical chapter, Richard Müller, Alfred Günther, and Otto Schubert were three targets of Löffler’s contempt. Email from gallerist Frank Kempe dated August 1 and August 10, 2017, as well as my own research. Please see my footnotes 29, 54, 56, 58, and 71 in Chapter 3 regarding Löffler’s sloppy scholarship and baseless accusations. As I have contended throughout this book, most art historians do not mention Schubert when discussing German artists who served in the war and visually documented their experiences, although Schubert captured his experiences not only in the form of postcards, but also in his two war portfolios, war sketches, and individual works. Only occasionally are Schubert’s wartime works included in exhibitions related to the First World War. Wallace Stevens, “A Postcard from the Volcano.”

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Bibliography Archival sources

Stadtarchiv Dresden (StA) StA Dresden, Bestand 2.3.1 Hauptkanzlei, Signature: 11 D 37 (1920–1929) StA Dresden, death certificate no. 69 (9 January 1925), Johannes Schubert, father StA Dresden, death certificate no. 141 (10 December 1936), Henriette Schubert, mother U.S. National Archives, College Park Microfilms of NSDAP records; Midgliedskartei (Zentral- und Ortsgruppen-Kartei) “Verlustlisten” in Beilage des Dresdner Journals vom 19. August 1914 bis 30. Mai 1918 Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e.V., “Peter Tyll Schubert”

Akten der Ev.-Luth. Kirchgemeinde Dresden-Loschwitz Bestattungsbuch 1943/50 Bestattungsbuch 1944/77a Bestattungsbuch 1970/36 Karteikarte der Kirchgemeinde Karteikarte der Kirchgemeinde, Ergänzung, “Rose Nele Schubert” Karteikarte der Kirchgemeinde, Ergänzung, “Maria Saskia Schubert” Taufbuch 1923/47, 1925/53, 1952/5, 1956/8 Traubuch 1950/37 und Unterlagen Hauptstaatsarchiv Dresden Bestand 11248 Sächsisches Kriegsministerium Bestand 11347 Generalkommando dex XII. Armeekorps Bestand 11348 Stellvertretendes Generalkommando des XII. Armeekorps Bestand 11349 Kriegsamtstelle Dresden Bestand 11355 Armeeoberkommando der 3. Armee Hochschule für Bildende Kunst (HfBK) Dresden, Archiv HfBK Bestand Matrikel und Schülerlisten, “Schülerlisten 1912–1916,” Signatur 06/62 HfBK Bestand Matrikel und Schülerlisten, “Schülerlisten 1912–1916,” Signatur 06/63 HfBK Bestand Kunstakademie, “Gutachten über Kunstwerke sowie An- und Verkauf von Einzelstücken,” 1924–1945, Signatur 01/41, Bl. 102f. HfBK Bestand Kunstakademie, “Zeugnisabschriften,” 1920–1923, Signatur 01/121, Bl. 9v. HfBK Bestand Kunstakademie, “Zeugnisabschriften,” 1920–1923, Signatur 01/121, Bl. 39r, Nr. 78/VI

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———“Käthe Kollwitz, the First World War, and Sacrifice.” In Nothing but the Clouds Unchanged: Artists in World War I, edited by Gordon Hughes and Philipp Blom, 146–155. Los Angeles: Getty, 2014. Weiss, Peter. Die Ermittlung: Oratorium in 11 Gesängen. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1965. Weitz, Eric D. Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy, expanded ed. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2013. Wery, Michel. La carte postale. Témoin de l’enfer des tranchées de la Grande Guerre de 1914–1918. Paris: Éditions des écrivains, 2001. Wetzel, Maria. “Gespräch mit Otto Dix.” Diplomatischer Kurier, 14th annual ed., vol. 18, 1965. Whalen, Robert Weldon. Bitter Wounds: German Victims of the Great War. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1984. White, Michael. Generation Dada: The Berlin Avant-Garde and the First World War. New Haven: Yale UP, 2014. Whittingham, Claire. “Mnemonics for War: Trench Art and the Reconciliation of Public and Private Memory.” Past Imperfect 14 (2008): 86-119. Wiese, Stephan von. Max Beckmanns zeichnerisches Werk, 1903– 1925. Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1978. Willett, John, and Ralph Manheim, eds. Bertolt Brecht: Collected Plays, vol. 5. New York: Vintage Books, 1972. Wilson, Ross J. Landscapes of the Western Front: Materiality during the Great War. New York: Routledge, 2012. Winter, Jay. “Missing Sons: War as a Vanishing Act.” In 1914: The Avant-Gardes at War, edited by Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland GmbH, 326–331. Translated by Tim Connell. Cologne: Snoeck, 2013. ———Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995, reissue 2014.

———War beyond Words. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2017. ———and Blaine Baggett. The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century. New York: Penguin, 1996. ———and Jean-Louis Robert, eds. Capital Cities at War: Paris, London, Berlin 1914–1919. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999. Witkowski, Mareike. “Der Erste Weltkrieg von der Kriegsbegeisterung zur Kriegsmüdigkeit.” In Der Erste Weltkrieg im Spiegel Expressiver Kunst: Kämpfe – Passionen – Totentanz: Werke aus der Sammlung Gerhard Schneider und aus Künstlernachlässen, edited by Gerhard Schneider, Rolf Gottschlich, and Christiane Ladleif, 25–31. Bönen: Kettler, 2014. Wodarz, Corinna. “Kunstpropaganda in der DDR: Müller contra Dix.” Mitteldeutsches Jahrbuch für Kultur und Geschichte 4 (1997): 153–162. Wollenweber, Jochen. “1922 Staatspreis erhalten – nach 1933 verfemt,” clipping, no newspaper title, n.d., likely 1988. “World War I Casualty and Death Tables,” U.S. Justice Department’s statistics; Public Broadcasting System (PBS). http://www.uwosh .edu/faculty_staff/henson/188/WWI_Casualties%20and%20 Deaths%20%20PBS.html Zervigón, Andrés Marion. John Heartfield and the Agitated Image: Photography, Persuasion, and the Rise of Avant-Garde Photomontage. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012. Zimmermann, Horst. Der Maler Robert Sterl: Leben und Werk in Briefen und Selbstzeugnissen. Dresden: Sandstein Verlag, 2011. Zimmermann, Rainer. Expressiver Realismus: Malerei der verschollenen Generation. Munich: Hirmer Verlag, 1994. Zuschlag, Christoph. “An ‘Educational Exhibition’: The Precursors of Entartete Kunst and Its Individual Venues.” In “Degenerate Art”: The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany, edited by Stephanie Barron, 83–104. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art / New York: Harry Abrams, 1991.

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Index 24 Lithographs of the War in the West (Schubert), 57–58, 59, 65 “Argonne,” 175 “At Night,” 182 “At the Mass Grave,” 170 “Champagne,” 167 “Country Road,” 161 “Defense,” 171 “Destroyed Forest,” 166 “Direct Hit,” 176 “Flanders,” 159 “French Prisoners,” 169 “Hand-to-hand Fighting,” 177 “In the Forest,” 179 “In the Rain,” 163 “Outpost,” 181 “Ration Carriers 1,” 164 “Ration Carriers 2,” 168 “Relieving a Sentry,” 162 “Street Battle,” 160 “Transport,” 180 “Under Barrage,” 172 “Water Carriers,” 173 “Wounded,” 174 “Wounded 2,” 178 “Wounded Soldiers,” 165

A “After the Storm,” photograph (Kleinfeldt), 13 Albiker, Karl, 33 Allied Powers, 72 Anti-War Museum, 4, 35 Apitz, Bruno, 74

“Ardennes” (Schubert), 127, 128 “Argonne” (Schubert), 144, 146 “Argonne. Building a Road in the Argonne” (Schubert), 145 “Argonne. French Prisoners” (Schubert), 142 art, uses in Great War, 6–8 “At Supper in the Quarter!?” (Schubert), 101 “At the Front” (Schubert), 133, 138 “Auschwitz Triptych” (Schubert), 75–78, 79, 84, 194–97

B Barlach, Ernst, 22, 30, 31, 35 Floating Angel, 39–40 “Grant Us Peace!,” 32 war memorials, 30, 39–40 “Battle of Béthincourt...,” war sketch (Schubert), 157 Battle of the Marne, 12 Battle of the Somme, 13, 17, 25, 31, 37 Battle of Verdun, xi, 24, 31, 48, 55–56, 157 Beckmann, Max, 4, 24, 28, 29, 30, 33, 62 Berlin Secession, 22 Bobrowski, Johannes, 80 Böckstiegel, Peter August, 60, 62 Brecht, Bertolt, 80 British card, “Form A. 2042,” 9, 10 British Expeditionary Force, 3 Bürger, Gottfried August, 81 Butter Riots, 31

C Cassirer, Paul, 25, 30 Cervantes, Miguel de, 73 Cold War, 72–73, 83–84 communication, war postcard phenomenon, 8–12 Cooper, James Fenimore, 66 Cubism, 62

D The Dead Man, 157 Dehmel, Richard, 21, 35 Demangeon, Albert, 48 “Departure to the Frontlines at Sunrise,” war sketch (Schubert), 155 Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), 23, 24 Deshmukh, Marion, xii “Destroyed Church in Passchendaele,” war sketch (Schubert), 158 Dietze, Edzard, 67 Dix, Otto, xi, xii, 2, 4, 8, 33, 47, 60, 65, 70, 72, 83, 84 case of, 37–39 Don Quixote (Cervantes), 73 Dresden Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Applied Arts), 47 Dresdner Kunstakademie, 45, 61 “Drinking Coffee” (Schubert), 99 “Dugout” (Schubert), 106

E “Early Spring in the Ardennes” (Schubert), 140 Eichmann, Adolf, 74

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Eksteins, Modris, 38 “Enemy Position at Dawn” (Schubert), 110 Engel, Franz, 73 Ernst, Max, 25, 56 “Evening at the Front” (Schubert), 113 “Evening in the Town” (Schubert), 133 “Evening. Little Town in the Ardennes” (Schubert), 131 “Evening Mood at the Front” (Schubert), 113, 114 “Evening Sun in the Argonne” (Schubert), 143 “Execution,” war sketch (Schubert), 154 Expressionism, 23, 62, 65 German Expressionist art, xii, xiii German Expressionist group(s), 23, 70 Expressionists, 23

F “Fallen Frenchmen in the Champagne” (Schubert), 151 Feininger, Lyonel, 56, 62 Feldpostkarte, German field postcard, 10, 11, 19 Feldpostkarten (Schubert), 46–48 Felixmüller, Conrad, xii, 24, 47, 60, 61, 65, 70, 71 “Field Hospital,” war sketch (Schubert), 156 Field Service Card British Form A. 2042, 9, 10 German Feldpostkarte, 10, 11 First Battle of Ypres, 12 First International Dada Fair, 38 First World War. See Great War “Flanders,” war sketch (Schubert), 156 Flechtheim, Alfred, 70 food shortages/deprivation, 2–3, 5, 23, 31, 33, 58 Forster, Gela, 60 “France” (Schubert), 137, 140, 141, 142 Free Berlin Secession, 61 “French Boy” (Schubert), 117 “French Prisoners” (Schubert), 150 “French Track [Rail] Workers” (Schubert), 130 “French Type” (Schubert), 120

French war postcard, 13, 16 embroidered silk postcards, 16 satirizing Kaiser Wilhelm, 13 “Fresh from the Position” (Schubert), 111 Friedrich, Ernst, 4, 35 “From Our Quarters” (Schubert), 139 Fuglsang, Hans, 24

G Galerie Arnold, 56, 57 George, Lloyd, 3 German art and Great War (WWI) artistic opposition, 25–31 Barlach, Ernst, 30, 31, 39, 40 Barlach’s Floating Angel, 40 Barlach’s “Grant Us Peace!” 32 Barlach’s “The Holy War,” 22 Barlach’s war memorials, 39–40 Beckmann, Max, 28–30, 33 Beckmann’s “Hell,” 33 Beckmann’s “In Memory of a Fallen Friend,” 29 case of Käthe Kollwitz, 33–37 case of Otto Dix, 37–39 commemorating, 33 Ernst, Max, 25, 56 Grosz, George, 26–28 Herzfelde, Helmut (John Heartfield), 27 importance of, 42–43 initial reactions to war, 21–23 Kirschner, Ernst Ludwig, 25 Kokoschka, Oskar, 24 Kollwitz’s “Anxiety,” 34 Kollwitz’s Grieving Parents, 37 Kollwitz’s “Hunger,” 36 Lieberman’s “Now we want to trash them!” 22 Macke and “Farewell,” 23–24 Marcks, Gerhard, 40, 41 Marcks’ The Returnee, 40, 41 Marc, Franz, 24 Morgner, Wilhelm, 24 Nauer, Heinrich, 24, 30 Nazis’ war on art, 41–42 Nolken, Franz, 25 Pechstein’s Sommerschlacht (Somme battle), 25 Schliechter, Rudolf, 24

Index

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Schnarrenberger, Wilhelm, 28, 29 Schnarrenberger’s “Rising City I,” 28 Schnarrenberger’s “Rising City II,” 29 Slevogt, Max, 25–26, 31 Slevogt’s “Hero’s Grave,” 25, 26 Stenner, Hermann, 24 toll of war on artists, 23–25 unending war, 31–33 Wollheim, Gert, 24 German Expressionist art, xii, xiii German Expressionist group(s), 23, 70 German Feldpostkarte, 10, 11, 19 German war postcard “A Heart’s Bliss,” 14 “For Our Brave Soldiers,” 14 opposition to war, 18 patriotic, 15 Gillies, Sir Harold, 4 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 65, 69 Great Depression, 68, 69 Great War, xiii, 56, 59, 71, 81, 84. See also World War One artists’ initial reactions to, 21–23 Barlach, 39–40 commemorating, 33 Dix, 37–39 German art of, 42–43 Kollwitz, 33–37 Marcks, 40, 41 toll on German artists, 23–25 use of art in, 6–8 Grieving Parents (memorial by Kollwitz), 36–37 Grohmann, Will, 60, 61 Grosz, George, 26–28, 47, 61, 62 Gruppe 1919, 60–62, 67, 83, 85 Guenther, Peter, xii Gundolf, Friedrich, 21 Günther, Alfred, xii, 63 Guthier, Ludwig Wilhelm, 56

H Hals, Frans, 62 Hauptmann, Carl, 64 Hauptmann, Gerhart, 21, 64, 80 Heartfield, John, 27, 35, 84. See also Herzfeld(e), Helmut Heckel, Erich, 62

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Heckrott, Wilhelm, 60, 65, 83 Hegenbarth, Emanuel, 47 Hegenbarth, Josef, 67 Hermann, Max, 62 Herzfelde, Helmut, 27. See also Heartfield, John Herzfelde, Wieland, 27 Himmler, Heinrich, 72 Hindenburg Program, 31 Hitler, Adolf, 42, 65, 69, 84 Hitler Youth, 72 Hochhuth, Rolf, 74 Holocaust, 74–75, 79 Hoover, Herbert, 68 “Horse Inspection” (Schubert), 129 “Hot Day” (Schubert), 145 hunger strikes, 3

I “I Love You” (Schubert), 63, 190 Incantation and Dream untitled litho from, by Schubert, 64, 191 “Infirm Collecting Point Flanders,” war sketch (Schubert), 155 “Irena” (Schubert), 192

J Jacob, Walter, 70 Jacobsen, Jen Peter, 64 Jawlensky, Alexei, 62 Jonas, Genja, xii Jorgensen, Johannes, 79

K Kaiser Wilhelm, 13, 21, 60 Kirchner, Ernst Ludwig, 25, 70, 71 Klee, Paul, 56, 62 Kleinfeldt, Walter, 13, 17 Klemm, Wilhelm, 23 Kokoschka, Oskar, 24, 60, 70, 83 Kollwitz, Hans, 34 Kollwitz, Käthe, 39, 59, 83 “Anxiety,” 33, 34 case of, 33–37 “Hunger,” 35, 36 memorial Grieving Parents, 36–37 sons Hans and Peter, 34

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Kollwitz, Karl, 35 Kollwitz, Peter, 34, 35, 36

L Ladd, Anna Coleman, 4 “Landscape in the Ardennes” (Schubert), 124, 129 Lange, Otto, 60, 70 Liebermann, Max, 21, 22 “Lord, Teach Us to Pray” (Schubert), 81, 199 Ludendorff Offensive, 33 “Lunch Break in Quarters?!” (Schubert), 101

M Macke, August, 23–24 Mann, Thomas, 21 Marc, Franz, 24 Marcks, Gerhard, 40, 41, 70 Meidner, Ludwig, 25 Meier-Graefe, Julius, 60, 63, 65 Meister, Otto, 67 “Midnight” (Schubert), 98 “Moonlight in the Town” (Schubert), 122 “Moonlight Night at the Front” (Schubert), 112, 115 “Moonlit Night in the Town” (Schubert), 127 Morgner, Wilhelm, 24 “Morning Sun in Ardennes” (Schubert), 138 “Most Beautiful Hour of the Day” (Schubert), 53, 102 “Mr. Frenchman” (Schubert), 49, 88 Müller, Irma, xi, 45, 46, 48–55, 62, 72, 85 Müller, Richard, 70–71

N Nash, Paul, 42 Nauen, Heinrich, 24, 30 Nazi war on “degenerate” art, 41–42 , 68–71 Nazi Party, 27, 68, 69, 70, 71, 73, 74, 80, 83 Nazism, abyss of, 74–75, 79. See also Holocaust Nevinson, C. R. W., 42 “Night in the Champagne” (Schubert), 149 Nölken, Franz, 25

O “Our Home” (Schubert), 107 “Outing at the Edge of Amiens” (Schubert), 153 Owen, Wilfred, 2, 10

P Palucca, Gret, xii, 61 Parkinson’s disease, 79, 81 “Peaceful Village in the Ardennes” (Schubert), 126 Pechstein, Max, 25, 47 “Pfalz” (Schubert), 55, 147 Piper, Reinhard, 60, 66 Pius XII (Pope), 74 postcards. See also Schubert (Otto) postcards birthday, 9 embroidered silk, 16 from the trenches, 47–56 imagery, 12–19 photo-card, 13, 16, 17, 18 war phenomenon, 8–12

R “Railway Station in Town” (Schubert), 125 “Rain Day” (Schubert), 123 “Resurrection” (Schubert), 67, 193 “Returning Home from the Entrenchments” (Schubert), 134 Rheiner, Walter, 61 Richter, Emil, 61, 66 “Road Crossing at Ypres,” war sketch (Schubert), 154 Rösler, Waldemar, 24 Rössler, Paul, 67 “Russian Prisoners” (Schubert), 135

S “St. Francis Tending to the Sick” (Schubert), 79, 198 Scheffler, Christa, xiii, 73 Schlemmer, Oskar, 24 Schlichter, Rudolf, 24 Schmidt-Rotluff, Karl, xi, 33, 61, 62, 70 Schnarrenberger, Wilhelm, 28, 29 Schneider, Gerhard, 84 Schubert, Agnes Belinde, 73

Index

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Schubert, Christa Ulrike, 73 Schubert, Otto, x, xi, xii, xiii, 19, 30, 33, 45–81, 84. See also 24 Lithographs of the War in the West (Schubert); Schubert (Otto) postcards; Schubert (Otto) war sketches; The Suffering of Horses in War (Schubert) Aesop’s Fables, 66 art in Cold War, 72–73 “Auschwitz Triptych,” 75–78, 79, 84, 194–97 bearing witness to war, 56–59 from the cycle of The Weavers, 80, 198 daughter Maria Saskia, 62, 72 daughter Rose Nele, 62, 72 facing abyss of Nazism, 74–75, 79. See also Holocaust field postcards, 50–52, 55, 90–91, 93–97, 103–9, 116, 118, 122–23, 134, 148–49, 152 Goethe’s Balladen, 69 Gruppe 1919, 60–62, 67, 83, 85 hand-painted invitation, 68 last years of, 79–81 life shaped by war, 71–72 “Lord, Teach Us to Pray,” 79–81, 199 Nazis’ war on “degenerate” art, 68–71 photograph, 45 postcard project, 45–47 postcards from the trenches, 47–56 postwar Dresden art world, 59–60 son Peter Tyll, 62, 71 star rising in 1920s, 62–68 Untitled from Incantation and Dream, 64, 191 Schubert (Otto) postcards “Ardennes,” 127, 128 “Argonne,” 54, 55, 144, 146 “Argonne. Building a Road in the Argonne,” 145 “Argonne. French Prisoners,” 142 “At the Front,” 133, 138 “Death,” 59 “Defense,” 58 “Drinking Coffee,” 99 “Dugout,” 106 “Early Spring in the Ardennes,” 140

“Enemy Position at Dawn,” 110 “Evening at the Front,” 113 “Evening in the Town,” 133 “Evening. Little Town in the Ardennes,” 131 “Evening Mood at the Front,” 113, 114 “Evening Sun in the Argonne,” 143 “Fallen Frenchmen in the Champagne,” 151 “France,” 137, 140–41, 142 “French Boy,” 117 “French Prisoners,” 150 “French Track [Rail] Workers,” 130 “French Type,” 120 “Fresh from the Position,” 111 “From Our Quarters,” 139 “Horse Inspection,” 129 “A Hot Day,” 145 “I Love You,” 63, 190 “Irena,” 192 “Landscape in the Ardennes,” 124, 129 “Lunch Break in Quarters?!,” 101 “Midnight,” 98 “Moonlight in the Town,” 122 “Moonlight Night at the Front,” 112, 115 “Moonlit Night in the Town,” 127 “Morning Sun in Ardennes,” 138 “The Most Beautiful Hour of the Day,” 53, 102 “Mr. Frenchman,” 49, 88 “Night in the Champagne,” 149 “Our Home,” 107 “Outing at the Edge of Amiens,” 153 “Peaceful Village in the Ardennes,” 126 “Pfalz,” 55, 147 “Railway Station in Town,” 125 “Rain Day,” 123 “The Resurrection,” 67, 193 “Returning Home from the Entrenchments,” 134 “Russian Prisoners,” 135 “St. Francis Tending to the Sick,” 79, 198 “Small Village in France,” 53, 100 “Stormy Day,” 121 “Stormy Night. France,” 100 “Sunday Evening in the Town,” 118, 119

Index

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“Sunday Evening in the Village,” 128 “Sunday Morning at the Aisne,” 118 “Sunny Day in the Ardennes,” 130 “Sunny Evening in the Town,” 124 “At Supper in the Quarter!?,” 101 “Terrain behind our Front,” 112 “Throwing Hand Grenades,” 132 “Veiled Evening Sun,” 128 “Village at the Front,” 136 “The Village Beauty,” 51, 92 “Wagon In Shrapnel Fire,” 135 “Washing. In the Morning,” 99 “Wounded at the Collection Point,” 141 “Young Frenchwoman,” 137 Untitled postcards not indexed Schubert (Otto) war sketches, 60 “The Battle of Béthincourt...,” 157 “Departure to the Frontlines at Sunrise,” 155 “Destroyed Church in Passchendaele,” 158 “Execution,” 154 “Field Hospital,” 156 “Flanders,” 156 “Infirm Collecting Point Flanders,” 155 “Road Crossing at Ypres,” 57, 154 Schwitters, Kurt, 48, 61 Second Battle of Ypres, 24 Second World War. See World War Two Segall, Lasar, 60, 70 Semprún, Jorge, 74 Shakespeare, William, 79 Slevogt, Max, 8, 21, 25, 26, 31 “Small Village in France” (Schubert), 53, 100 social media, 8 soldiers, war experiences of, 1–5 “Souvenir of Belgium” embroidered silk postcard, 17 Spanish Civil War, 1 Stenner, Hermann, 24 Sterl, Robert, 62 Stevens, Wallace, 46 “Stormy Day” (Schubert), 121 “Stormy Night. France” (Schubert), 100 The Suffering of Horses in War (Schubert), 58, 59, 65 “Agony,” 185 “Death,” 189

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The Suffering of Horses in War (Schubert), continued “Fear,” 186 “Heat,” 185 “Hunger,” 184 “Infirmary,” 188 “Labor,” 183 “Shelter,” 186 “Thirst,” 184 “Under Shell Fire,” 187 “Weather,” 187 “Wounded,” 188 “Sunday Evening in the Town” (Schubert), 118, 119 “Sunday Evening in the Village” (Schubert), 128 “Sunday Morning at the Aisne” (Schubert), 118 “Sunny Day in the Ardennes” (Schubert), 130 “Sunny Evening in the Town” (Schubert), 124

T “Terrain behind our Front” (Schubert), 112 tetanus, 2 Third Battle of Ypres, 3 Third Reich, 41, 70, 71, 74, 80, 84 “Throwing Hand Grenades” (Schubert), 132

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Treaty of Versailles, 3, 35, 65, 69 Tube, Martin, 28–29 “Two German soldiers and a mule wearing gas masks,” photograph (Kleinfeldt), 17

V “Veiled Evening Sun” (Schubert), 128 “Village at the Front” (Schubert), 136 “Village Beauty” (Schubert), 51, 92 von Doesburg, Theo, 23 von Kleist, Heinrich, 64 von Mitschke-Collande, Constantine, 60, 61–62, 70, 71, 83

W “Wagon In Shrapnel Fire” (Schubert), 135 Walpole, Hugh, 2 war enthusiasm, 2, 21, 24 war memorials, 30, 36–37, 39–40 Ernst Barlach, 30, 39–40 Käthe Kollwitz, 36–37 war postcards. See also French war postcard; German war postcard; Schubert (Otto) postcards phenomenon, 8–12 professional photo, 16 war sketches. See Schubert (Otto) war sketches “Washing. In the Morning” (Schubert), 99

The Weavers, from the cycle of (Schubert), 80, 198 Weimar Republic, 83, 85 Weisgerber, Albert, 24 Weiss, Peter, 74 Wigman, Mary, 61 Wilson, Woodrow, 33 Wollheim, Gert, 24 Wood, Francis Derwent, 4 World War One, x, 1, 4, 5, 6, 11, 14, 16, 31–33, 38, 40, 46, 55, 59–62, 72–74, 83. See also Great War World War Two, xii, xiii, 1, 27, 40, 71–74, 83–85 “Wounded at the Collection Point” (Schubert), 141

X “Xmas greeting 1916 from the Salonica Army,” 15

Y “Young Frenchwoman” (Schubert), 137

Z Zehder, Hugo, 60, 62, 65 Ziegler, Adolf, 42 Zörner, Ernst, 71

Index

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