Pictorial Cultures and Political Iconographies: Approaches, Perspectives, Case Studies from Europe and America 9783110237863, 9783110237856

Table of contents :
Contents
Introduction
Why Is There No Political Science of the Arts?
Rubens’s Pictorial Peacekeeping Force: Negotiating through ‘Visual Speech-Acts
Political Iconography and the Picture Act: The Execution of Charles I in 1649
“The Conqueror of Canada” – Benjamin West and the Heroes of Sentimentalism
Nationalism and Truth in Grant Wood’s
Masculinity, Sexuality, and the German Nation: The Eulenburg Scandals and Kaiser Wilhelm II in Political Cartoons
Bauhaus, the Radio, and the Colors of Fascism
Adolf Hitler’s (Self-)Fashioning as a Genius: The Visual Politics of National Socialism’s Cult of Genius
The Grammar of Postrevolutionary Visual Politics: Comparing Presidential Stances of George Washington and Friedrich Ebert
Making the Invisible Visible: The Public Persona of Malcolm X
The New Face of American Anger: Internet Imagery and the Power of Contagious Feeling
Photographing American Indians: An Imaginary Exhibition
The “Other” Country in the City: Urban Space and the Politics of Visibility in American Social Documentary Photography
Taming the Teeming Masses: Visualizing Order at Ellis Island
Replacing the President: Cecil Stoughton’s “Lyndon B. Johnson Taking the Oath of Office" and the Iconography of U.S. American Presidential Inaugurations
Souvenirs from the Landscapes of Modernity: Richard Misrach, Camilo Vergara, and the Visual Politics of Ruin
The Trouble with Atrocity Photography in Gerhard Richter, Robert Morris and Alfredo Jaar, or, Art on the Brink of Failure
Must-See Sights: The Politics of Representing U.S.-American History
Body, Building, City, and Environment: Iconography in the Mexican Megalopolis
Aesthetics and Political Iconography of Money
Notes on Contributors
Index

Citation preview

Hebel · Wagner (Eds.) Pictorial Cultures and Political Iconographies

Pictorial Cultures and Political Iconographies Approaches, Perspectives, Case Studies from Europe and America Edited by Udo J. Hebel Christoph Wagner

De Gruyter

ISBN 978-3-11-023785-6 e-ISBN 978-3-11-023786-3 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pictorial cultures and political iconographies : approaches, perspectives, case studies from Europe and America / edited by Udo J. Hebel, Christoph Wagner p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 978-3-11-023785-6 (alk. paper) 1. Art - Political aspects. 2. Art and society. I. Hebel, Udo J. II. Wagner, Christoph, 1964N72.P6P53 2011 700.1103-dc22 2011013837

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. ” 2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/New York Cover image: Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin walking on the moon on July 20, 1969 (NASA). Printing: Hubert & Co. GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ⬁ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

Contents

5

Contents

Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 UDO J. HEBEL AND CHRISTOPH WAGNER

Why Is There No Political Science of the Arts? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 KLAUS VON BEYME

Rubens’s Pictorial Peacekeeping Force: Negotiating through ‘Visual Speech-Acts’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 ULRICH HEINEN

Political Iconography and the Picture Act: The Execution of Charles I in 1649. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 PABLO SCHNEIDER

“The Conqueror of Canada”: Benjamin West and the Heroes of Sentimentalism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 OLIVER JEHLE

Nationalism and Truth in Grant Wood’s Parson Weems’ Fable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 MARK THISTLETHWAITE

Masculinity, Sexuality, and the German Nation: The Eulenburg Scandals and Kaiser Wilhelm II in Political Cartoons. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 CLAUDIA BRUNS

Bauhaus, the Radio, and the Colors of Fascism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 CHRISTOPH WAGNER

Adolf Hitler’s (Self-)Fashioning as a Genius: The Visual Politics of National Socialism’s Cult of Genius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 WOLFRAM PYTA

The Grammar of Postrevolutionary Visual Politics: Comparing Presidential Stances of George Washington and Friedrich Ebert. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 VOLKER DEPKAT

Making the Invisible Visible: The Public Persona of Malcolm X. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 LISA M GILL

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Contents

The New Face of American Anger: Internet Imagery and the Power of Contagious Feeling. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 MILES ORVELL

Photographing American Indians: An Imaginary Exhibition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235 MICK GIDLEY

The “Other” Country in the City: Urban Space and the Politics of Visibility in American Social Documentary Photography . . . . . . . . 253 KERSTIN SCHMIDT

Taming the Teeming Masses: Visualizing Order at Ellis Island . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273 KLARA STEPHANIE SZLEZÁK

Replacing the President: Cecil Stoughton’s ´/\QGRQ%-RKQVRQ7DNLQJWKH2DWKRI 2IÀFHµDQGWKH Iconography of U.S. American Presidential Inaugurations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291 UDO J. HEBEL

Souvenirs from the Landscapes of Modernity: Richard Misrach, Camilo Vergara, and the Visual Politics of Ruin . . . . . . . . . . 315 ERIC J. SANDEEN

Democratic Vistas: Photography and the Homeland Security State. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335 LIAM KENNEDY

The Trouble with Atrocity Photography in Gerhard Richter, Robert Morris and Alfredo Jaar, or, Art on the Brink of Failure . . . . . . . . . . . . 355 WOLFGANG BRÜCKLE

Must-See Sights: The Politics of Representing U.S.-American History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377 INGRID GESSNER

Body, Building, City, and Environment: Iconography in the Mexican Megalopolis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401 PETER KRIEGER

Aesthetics and Political Iconography of Money . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419 GOTTFRIED GABRIEL

Notes on Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435

Introduction

7

Introduction UDO J. HEBEL AND CHRISTOPH WAGNER

When Gottfried Boehm and William John T. Mitchell proclaimed their respective versions of what came to be known as the iconic turn on both sides of the Atlantic in the early 1990s, they laid the groundwork for lasting changes and substantial revisions of scholarly agendas across a wide range of disciplines. Some twenty years later, Art History has UHGHÀQHGLWVPHWKRGRORJ\DVLWDSSHDUHGQRORQJHUSXUSRVHIXOWRPDLQWDLQ divisions between formal and stylistic approaches, on the one hand, and iconographic interpretations in the wake of Erwin Panofsky, on the other. American Studies, though long interested in the critical understanding of American history and culture in all their diverse manifestations, has seen DQ LQWHQVLÀHG FRQFHUQ ZLWK YLVXDO UHSUHVHQWDWLRQV RI  $PHULFD DQG ZLWK political iconographies and cultural imaginaries related to the powerful, yet always historically and ideologically controversial, construct of ‘America.’ In many respects, Art History now assumes an integrative role in a spectrum of disciplines ranging from philosophy, history, and cultural studies to the natural sciences, information science, and medicine. In a similar vein, the interdisciplinary perspective of American Studies provides for a synthesis of various approaches to the visuality of ‘America’ and to the visual forms productive in U.S. American politics, history, and culture. By means of methodological extension and in view of the transnational turn in large parts of the discipline, the critical paradigms and parameters productive in American Studies present promising options for the analysis of the visual dimensions of histories and cultures beyond both traditional disciplinary limits and geopolitical boundaries. It was in the spirit of such transGLVFLSOLQDU\DIÀQLWLHVEHWZHHQ$UW+LVWRU\DQG$PHULFDQ6WXGLHVWKDWWKH international symposium “Pictorial Cultures and Political Iconographies” was held at the University of Regensburg, April 23–25, 2010. The present volume gathers the original contributions to this conference and newly ZULWWHQDUWLFOHVE\9LVXDO&XOWXUH6WXGLHVH[SHUWVLQWKHÀHOGVRI $UW+LVtory, American Studies, History, and Political Science from Europe and the United States. Pictorial Cultures and Political Iconographies: Approaches, Perspectives. Case Studies from Europe and America positions itself in the wake of the iconic turn in the humanities and social sciences. The volume focuses on the politi-

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Udo J. Hebel and Christoph Wagner

cal power and cultural capital of images and explores the extent to which historical, political, social, and cultural processes and practices are shaped visually. It emphasizes the contextualization of distinct practices of imaging and considers visuality as an important mode of historical and cultural understanding. Individual, collective, and national identities and imaginaries are seen as constituted through systems of knowledge production which DUH WKHPVHOYHV HPERGLHG LQ YLVXDO IRUPV MXVW DV VFRSLF UHJLPHV GHÀQH the boundaries of the physical, social, and psychic subject. The volume’s range of subject matters draws on a notion of Visual Culture Studies that encompasses the historical trajectory of visualizations from the earliest manifestations of human cultural production to most recent media society phenomena, and that embraces a wide spectrum of possible materials and issues for inspection, from the panopticon to the fetish, from the traditional linear perspective to the ocularcentrism of modern abstract painting. Aby Warburg’s replacement of the term art with that of picture opened the path IRU WKH SRVLWLRQLQJ RI  $UW +LVWRU\ LQ WKH ÀHOGV RI  &XOWXUDO 6WXGLHV DQG Visual Culture Studies. In recent years, Bildwissenschaft has become the programmatic basis to engage, from a broad and inclusive, non-hierarchical and non-evaluative perspective, visual and material phenomena as diverse as Indian snake rituals, the feather pictures of South America, the emblems of automobile companies, objects of the crafts and design industry, movLHVFRPPHUFLDOVYLGHRVDQGFRPSXWHUDUW7KHHVVD\VJDWKHUHGKHUHUHÁHFW these theoretical developments and extended scholarly agendas. Pictorial Cultures and Political Iconographies investigates how individual pictures and larger iconographies interpret norms of action, support ideological for mations, and enhance social and moral concepts. The visual rhetorics and particular items of visual production engaged in the following set of twenty-one articles from a variety of different perspectives and approaches are understood as active players in the construction and contestation of the political realm and the public space. The individual contributions to the present volume address concepts and theories for a politics of art and perception, read individual paintings and photographs for their political and cultural power, investigate the national(ist) forms and implications of political representation on both VLGHVRI WKH$WODQWLFDQGLQWHUSUHWWKHLFRQRJUDSKLFUHSHUWRLUHVRI VSHFLÀF cultures, historical time periods, and political systems. In that sense, the opening essay by Klaus von Beyme provides the collection with a conceptual framework, raising principal issues of a political science of the arts and assessing reasons and circumstances for the possible lack of such a GLVFLSOLQH$ÀUVWVHWRI IRXUDUWLFOHVWKHQHxplores the political function and LPSDFWRI VSHFLÀFH[HPSODU\SLFWXUHVIURPWKHVHYHQWHHQWKFHQWXU\WRWKH present and, by theoretical implication and interpretive practice, illustrates the importance of the historical dimension of the study of visual cultures.

Introduction

9

Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin walking on the moon on July 20, 1969 (NASA)

Ulrich Heinen discusses Rubens’s awareness of the diplomatic potential of his paintings. Pablo Schneider analyzes contemporaneous visualizations of the execution of King Charles I in 1649 as ‘picture acts.’ Oliver Jehle examines the reformulation of the codes and conventions of history painting in Benjamin West’s visual interpretation of the outcome of the historical Battle of Quebec in 1759. Mark Thistlethwaite draws attention to Grant Wood’s strategic return to narratives of colonial and revolutionary American history in the depression-ridden 1930s in Wood’s “Parson Weem’s Fable.” 7DNLQJXSDVSHFWVRI SROLWLFDOSRZHUDQGQDWLRQDOVLJQLÀFDQFHUDLVHGLQ WKHÀUVWVHWRI HVVD\VVHYHUDOIXUWKHUFRQWULEXWLRQVDGGUHVVWKHFROOHFWLYH national(ist) implications of iconographic repertoires more explicitly and ZLWKDIRFXVRQWKH*HUPDQVFHQHLQWKHÀUVWGHFDGHVRI WKHWZHQWLHWKFHQtury. Claudia Bruns discusses the caricatures of the notorious Eulenburg

10

Udo J. Hebel and Christoph Wagner

scandal which shook the military elite and political leadership of imperial Germany and made homosexual relations an issue of public debate and national security concerns. Christoph Wagner analyzes iconographies of history in times of political change in his exploration of the historical moment of the German national election of 1924 when time-honored connections in art and history collapsed in the clash between the production of mass media photographs and the handmade avante garde work of art from the Bauhaus. Wolfram Pyta scrutinizes a case of extreme abuse of the popular appeal of visual media in his analysis of the visualization of politics that grew out of the special power structures of the Nazi regime. Volker Depkat’s essay extends the perspectives and opens up a transatlantic route of comparison in its exploration of the emergence, in part intentional construction of a postrevolutionary visual politics of democratic legitimacy in the U.S. in the early national period and in Germany in the early years of the Weimar Republic. The contributions by Lisa Gill and Miles Orvell continue the discussion of national(ist) implications of visual rhetorics and political iconographies and open a sequence of articles on American photography and the U.S. American political, social, and cultural scene from late 19th century to the immediate present. Gill’s and Orvell’s analyses of the emotional power of controversial visual representations focus, respectively, on images of African American activist Malcolm X in the 1950s and 1960s, and on media coverage of the confrontational politics in Washington in the aftermath of the election of President Barack Obama. Going back to the early days of American photography, the contributions by Mick Gidley, Kerstin Schmidt, and Klara Stephanie Szlezák investigate three culturally and politically inÁXHQWLDO ÀHOGV RI  YLVXDO RWKHULQJ DW WKH WXUQ IURP WKH QLQHWHHQWK WR WKH twentieth century. In what he calls an ‘imaginary exhibition,’ Mick Gidley goes beyond well-known readings of the Indian photography of Edward S. Curtis and draws attention to photographs which, in a kind of metavisual gesture, foreground photography and the very act of taking pictures. Kerstin Schmidt argues that social photographers Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine use new orders of space to put the experience of the working classes, immigrants, children, and the poor at the center of popular attention. Klara Stephanie Szlezák explores the scopic regime and politics of immigrant photography which circulated impressions of order and well-functioning administration on Ellis Island to the U.S. American public at the height of mass immigration. In another case study focused on one iconic picture, Udo J. Hebel traces the calculated political impact of the photographic documentation of the emergency inauguration of President Lyndon B. Johnson after the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, LQ &HFLO 6WRXJKWRQ·V RIÀFLDO SKRWRJUDSK RI  3UHVLGHQW -RKQVRQ·V VZHDULQJ WKH RDWK RI  RIÀFH Eric Sandeen and Liam Kennedy take the discussion

Introduction

11

of American photography back to the immediate present. Eric Sandeen presents Richard Misrach’s and Camilo Vergara’s photographic attempts to situate American visions and to anchor American memories in the ruins of modernity, i.e. in the ruins of a U.S. Navy bombing range in Nevada and in the ruins of postindustrial Detroit, MI, respectively. Liam Kennedy’s article focuses on the impact that the war on terror has possibly had on domestic American culture and politics, drawing on examples from the work of documentary photographers and photojournalists Nina Berman, Eugene Richards, and Anthony Suau. The volume is rounded out by four contributions that further demonstrate the diversity, productivity, and innovativeness of the topic under consideration in the volume. Wolfgang Brückle problematizes the power and possible failure of shock images in contemporary culture in his analysis of works by Gerhard Richter, Robert Morris and Alfredo Jaar. Ingrid Gessner and Peter Krieger bring issues of material culture studies and space studies to the discussion of visuality and visual images in their assessments of popular U.S. American national sites of memory and of murals and architectture in public spaces in Mexico City, respectively. Gottfried Gabriel’s presentation of the iconography of coins and bills concludes the collection with a discussion of the currency and capital of visual images and pictorial cultures in a most literal sense. The cover to the present volume shows one of the most prominent illustrations of the political impact and ideological implications of visual images. The picture of U.S. astronaut Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin walking on the moon on July 20, 1969, may be open to different and competing readings; and it may even be a bold attempt of obvious propaganda in the political contexts of the Cold War rivalry between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. Its very position and aura as one of the most powerful pictures of the ‘American century’ only enhances doubts and queries. The mise en abymeUHÁHFWLRQLQ Aldrin’s helmet which allows no view of the human eyes ‘actually’ seeing the surface of moon (or maybe not) extends the space for questions of YLVXDO FUHGLELOLW\ DQG LQWHUSUHWDWLYH UHOLDELOLW\ LQWR WKH LQÀQLW\ RI  WKH XQLverse. Does the NASA photograph ‘really’ freeze for our faith and inspecWLRQWKHPRPHQWRI WKHÀUVWODQGLQJRI KXPDQEHLQJVRQWKHPRRQ²RU is it a deceptive construction of a theatrical performance staged, e.g., in Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho and designed as an evocative reproduction of the visual repertoire of historic moments of supposed glory, conquest, and technological superiority? And what exactly is the function of the Swiss army knife allegedly visible in the photograph and instrumental in the ‘reality’ of the landing on the moon (or maybe HOVHZKHUH ²RUZDVLWDGGHGWRWKHSLFWXUHLQDQHTXDOO\EROGDQGSURÀWable commercial move? Such issues of the visual display of power and the power of visual display guide the articles presented in Pictorial Cultures

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Udo J. Hebel and Christoph Wagner

and Political Iconographies: Approaches, Perspectives. Case Studies from Europe and America as a contribution to the ongoing discussions of visual phenomena DQGWKHLUSROLWLFDOVRFLDODQGLGHRORJLFDOLPSOLFDWLRQVLQWKHÀHOGVRI $UW History and American Studies – and beyond. We would like to express our gratitude to all the people who made this publication possible. The Regensburg conference, which brought the larger number of contributors together for three days of fruitful scholarly exchange and wonderful personal conversations inside and outside the conference venue, was supported by the Regensburger Universitätsstiftung Hans Vielberth. We thank all contributors to the volume for their continued cooperation throughout the editorial process. A special word of gratitude goes to Ingrid Gessner, Oliver Jehle and Klara Stephanie Szlezák whose scholarly competence and editorial skills were indispensable for the success of the publishing project. Jedidiah Becker, Jasmin Beer, Sandra Bessenreuther, Eva Buchberger, Augustus Cavanna, Gerald Dagit, Thomas Hartmann, Theresa Häusl, Philipp Meister, Wolfgang Neiser, Lena Ringleb, Claudia Trotzke and Florian Weinzierl helped with translations, proofreading, bibliographical research, and preparing the illustrations for printing. Jörg Pütz brought his proven expertise in type-setting to the preparation of the camera-ready manuscript. Manuela Gerlof, Susanne Rade, and Susanne Mang from Verlag Walter de Gruyter provided valuable assistance and support IURPWKHHDUO\VWDJHVRI SODQQLQJWRWKHÀQDOSKDVHRI VHHLQJWKHYROXPH through the press. Regensburg, March 2011

Why Is There No Political Science of the Arts?

13

Why Is There No Political Science of the Arts? KLAUS VON BEYME

Introduction Why is there no political science of art? The simplest answer to this question reads: 1. Political scientists have no competence in most periods of history in which the arts and politics were even more intimately connected than today. The competence of political scientists is normally imputed for a period after 1945. 2. Sociology of art is recognized and meets much better the conditions of a great variety of causations between art, society and politics. Political science – according to a silent agreement with historians – is centred around studies on democracies after World War II. More precisely we should say: historians enter into competition with political scientists even LQWKHSHULRGVLQFH²DVVRRQDVWKHRIÀFLDOGRFXPHQWVDIWHU\HDUV are open to research. A new branch ‘contemporary history’ (or Zeitgeschichte) has been developed and works in competition with political science. Political science has changed as well: for contemporary arts there could be a subdiscipline ‘art policy’ which deals with the activities of governmental DXWKRULWLHVLQWKHÀHOGRI DUW0RVWO\LWLVLQFOXGHGLQWKHÀHOGRI ¶FXOWXUDO SROLF\·ZKLFKLVKLJKO\QHJOHFWHGE\SROLWLFDOVFLHQWLVWVDVZHOO%XWWKLVÀHOG can only apply to contemporary policies. Historical patronage is left – with good reasons – to historians of art. In cases where political scientists have interfered in studies of history of arts they got their competence not from the main subject, but from studies in history and history of arts. Most successful were historians in the history RI LGHDVZKLFKLVKRZHYHUZLWKLQFUHDVLQJTXDQWLÀFDWLRQDQGHFRQRPL]Dtion of political science – a subject which hardly plays a major role in the social sciences. Famous political scientists – like Carl J. Friedrich – occasionally wrote books such as The Age of Baroque (1952); Das Zeitalter des Barock, 1954) in which history of arts and history of political ideas were dealt with in close relationship. For a while historians were divided into one school which started from events, and another one which developed a structuralist history of society. Both lines of thinking recently have been united in a new paradigm which made ‘culture’ its central concept. With the cultural turn

14

Klaus von Beyme

in historiography a ‘cultural history of the social’ was demanded. Its application to the arts was called ‘collective representation’ which embraced a study of the genesis of social groups which nourish divergent perspectives of reality, and cultural practices to symbolize their status and value in society and manifest them continuously in the political arena (Chartier 11-12). Recently, the representation of collective demands has turned to collective fashions such as: the historicist search for a classicist Greek idea in German landscapes, and the construction of classicist collective memorial buildings VXFKDV:DOKDOODLQ%DYDULD7UDHJHU RUWKHURPDQWLFLGHQWLÀFDWLRQZLWKWKH symbols of German history in the Rhinelands (Werquet). The political dimension of these collective movements was heightened by the special interests of a ruler, such as Ludwig I of Bavaria, or Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia. Both kings had wide interests in the arts. Friedrich Wilhelm IV left thousands of sketches for his architectural ideas. Both rulers had, however, also interest in their rule and used these public moods and the interest of bourgeois cultural elites also for the stabilization of their political role which had been challenged by the threat or the reality (as in 1830) of revolutions. Historians of political theories have hardly ever worked on art and architecture treaties – even when a theoretician of art like Alberti (1969) wrote a work on the society of his time. On the other hand art historians – before PRVWUHFHQWÀJXUHVVXFKDV+DQV%HOWLQJ&DUOR*LQ]EXUJ0DUWLQ:DUQNHRU Horst Bredekamp – rarely worked on important political thinkers – though metaphors taken from art were important in works from Machiavelli to Hobbes. Only when historians of art like Franz Matsche (1981) concentrated on the symbols of rule and allegorical arts thinkers such as Justus Lipsius were discovered as the founders of a Habsburg ideology of rule. Most frequently thinkers were analysed who wrote on aesthetics as well as on politics, such as Diderot, Rousseau, Burke, Kant, Hegel, Marx or Proudhon. These contacts with the history of political theories remained, however, mostly ‘art history without pictures.’ Political science normally used pictures in an unsystematic way for the purpose of illustration such as Philipp Manow in his seminal work on representation (2008). Even Murray Edelman (1995), who was famous for his analysis of the symbolic use of politics, only occasionally sketched certain parallels between art and politics. Thus the programmatic subtitle of Edelman’s book “from Art to Politics” was hardly put into operation, despite certain hints to art works from Käthe Kollwitz down to Pop Art. The political implications of iconology were rarely studied; most frequently this happened in the lower echelons of graphic arts for everyday use with the production of symbols, emblems and events – from illustrations to Hobbes’ Leviathan down to revolutionary pictures since 1789. %XWWKHUHZDVRQHÀHOGLQZKLFKWKHSROLWLFDOFRQQRWDWLRQVSUHYDLOHGIURP the outset: in the analysis of a relationship between patrons and artists. Long

Why Is There No Political Science of the Arts?

15

before iconology was established a kind of political iconology avant la lettre was applied and sometimes even exaggerated the non-existence of an independent art in works such as the “legend of the artist” (Kris/Kurz). Political science developed increasingly from the decisional system (politics) to the material results of politics in the policies. This lead to a split of VXEÀHOGVVXFKDVHFRQRPLFVRFLDORUFRQVWUXFWLRQSROLFLHV²DGHYHORSPHQW which the neighbouring discipline of sociology had already achieved. Nobody doubts that there existed a ‘sociology of art’ since Arnold Hauser and others – mostly leftist scientists.

Political Iconology ,QDUWKLVWRU\WKHVXEÀHOGRI ¶DUWDQGSROLWLFV·LVPRVWO\UHSUHVHQWHGLQWZR approaches: Iconology and social history of art. Both approaches started from a structural notion of a system combining enormous numbers of details. Both were deductive and started from the notion of a structural system which postulated – occasionally in tautological reasoning such as in Niklas Luhmann’s work – the unity of society which should be proven by empirical research. The quod erat demonstrandum was already present in the formulations of hypotheses. Iconology was sometimes considered as the ‘bourgeois’ equivalent of a Marxist-minded social history of art in the style of Arnold Hauser. Iconology allowed a social interpretation of art without the revolutionary connotations of teleological dialectical theories of historical development. ,FRQRORJ\WRRNXSFHUWDLQLQÁXHQFHVIURPVRFLDOVFLHQFHV,WZDVUHDG\ WRDFFHSWWKDWVFLHQWLÀFGLVFLSOLQHVDUHWHPSRUDU\VFKHPHVRI DIXQFWLRQDO organization of knowledge about certain areas but no ontological entities OLNH VWDUV À[HG DW WKH VN\ 6LQFH .DQW·V HVVD\ The &RQÀLFW of the )DFXOWLHV (1798) there were attempts to create a hierarchy of disciplines. History of DUW DIWHU LWV FRQVROLGDWLRQ LQ WKHVH FRQÁLFWV ZDV LQFOLQHG WR IRUJHW KRZ GLIÀFXOWLWKDVEHHQWRHVWDEOLVKKLVWRU\RI DUWDVDQLQGHSHQGHQWGLVFLSOLQH between the philosophy of aesthetics and historical studies on culture. It had to be accepted that each discipline can serve as an auxiliary discipline for another subject. There is no degradation, but only mutual acknowledgment of the relevance of neighbouring disciplines. Modern art historians like Hans Belting took it for granted that each discipline has only “a short overcoat of competence” (Bild und Kult 13). Nevertheless, “not every discipline is equally close to God” – to change a slogan of the historian Leopold von Ranke. In dealing with pictures, history of arts acquired a priority by developing a systematic method such as iconology: ‡ Political art history is inclined to overemphasize the meaning of pictures by hinting at their political connotations.

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Klaus von Beyme

‡ Iconology – on the other hand – is inclined to underemphasize the political links of pictures. Similar to the Bauhaus, the Warburg school in Hamburg became a kind of international style of art interpretation – especially because it was led by scholars without links to nationalism and national socialism – such as Aby Warburg as the founding father and Erwin Panofsky as a kind of prophet. Panofsky differentiated iconology and iconography. Both approaches are still frequently confused. Iconology is mostly avoided by social historians who do not accept the theoretical dogmaticism in the work of Panofsky. But iconography in a more descriptive sense is widely used by social scientists who look for social and political connotations in the works of art. ‡ “The end of the history of art” was sometimes proclaimed – but it did not happen – just as in the case of the “end of history debates” caused from Foucault to Fukuyama (Belting, Ende der Kunstgeschichte 25). The growing interest in the arts was increasingly caused by extrinsic motivations. ‡ The recent interest in exotic areas in the time of globalisation has caused this development as much as the growing interconnection between a capitalist international market and an art industry caused by the “creative class” (Florida). ‡ Thus the growing interest in the interconnections between art and politics is no longer the hobby of some art-loving social scientists, nor the hobby of some professional historians of art. %RWK DWWLWXGHV ZRXOG KDUGO\ EH EHQHÀFLDO IRU WKH HVWDEOLVKPHQW RI  D sub-discipline: ‘art and politics.’ Since 1968 radicalized students of the history of art have frequently emphasized the necessity to include ‘sociology of art’ as a generalist view on the arts in their curriculum. There was hardly ever a parallel to sociology in one respect that radical students asked for ‘politics of art’ in their curricula – maybe because political science per se was never as radical as sociology during the student’s rebellion. Even famous historians of art, such as Ernst Gombrich who advocated a “history without yawning” (212), warned against the social enlargement of a notion of art as an objective view on the history of arts. Every period will confront the alleged ‘social facts’ with examples which prove that only rather subjective views on aesthetic developments prevailed in this allegedly fresh view on the arts. The self-appointed political-minded generalists who turned to art and politics because they were tired of a professional interpretation of forms which were hardly shared by mass publics. With growing ‘eventisation’ of arts and museums the interest of mass audiences is rather directed towards ÀQGLQJDQVZHUVWRWKHLUSUREOHPVLQLQGLYLGXDOOLIHWKDQWRZDUGVFRQQHFtions between art and politics. In postmodern times no dogmatic Marxist sociology of art antagonizes any more the normal business of art histo-

Why Is There No Political Science of the Arts?

17

rians. There is a growing impact of natural sciences and technical instruments to analyze well-known works of art in a new way and to challenge traditional ascriptions of works to artists. This makes traditional iconology much more complicated than it was in Warburg’s times. Political interests in interpretations of works of arts were frequently biased: ‡ The ‘art of power’ was in the centre of iconological interests. ‡ The ‘counter-power of the arts’ was mostly overemphasized in Marxist history of arts and therefore hardly integrated into conventional art history. The work of art most frequently adapted even by political scientists was certainly Lorenzetti’s frescoes on buon governo and mal governo in the Room of the Nine in Palazzo Pubblico in Siena. Conventional history of arts frequently considered these attempts as trivialisations. This monumental allegory was interpreted by research not so much as a narrative, but as a pictorial variation of an abstract system of mind. Aristotle or Thomas Aquinas were used to depicting the distinctions of distributive and commutative justice (Rubinstein; Smart; Borsook 36). One of the most fertile historians of political ideas intervened: Quentin Skinner shifted interpretation to another source of ideas (85-103). Not so much the ideas of Thomas Aquinas but pre-humanist rhetorical culture was discovered as a source which was developed much earlier than the Latin version of the Nicomachean Ethics around 1250. Historians generally are fond of tracing events back to older sources. Rubinstein as a historian of art mentions even the postglossatores as a source of the Siena iconology. The more esoteric interpretations grew, the stronger was the temptation of political minded scholars to lean back to less distant political sources. The frescoes were reduced to a visual variation of the Sienese constitution and the law books of the city. The pictor doctus, the erudite painter Lorenzetti, did not need any more an iconological director of the program as it frequently existed in religious representation in churches. The sources discovered were open to the understanding even of moderately erudite artisan. This proved that in a quarrel between art historians and political scientists the former (Kempers) was closer to the politics of that time period than the political scientist Skinner. This shows, however, that a fruitful dialogue between the disciplines LVSRVVLEOH,QSRVWZDUDUFKLWHFWXUHWKHÀUVWFROOHFWLYHYROXPHRQUHFRQstructed German cities in both German states was published by representatives of seven different disciplines (v. Beyme et al., Neue Städte aus Ruinen). In this latter case the absence of a hierarchy of disciplines responsible for WKHÀHOG¶UHFRQVWUXFWLRQ·IDFLOLWDWHGFRRSHUDWLRQ$UWDQGDUFKLWHFWXUDOKLVWRU\DUHLQQRVLWXDWLRQZRUVHWKDQRWKHUGLVFLSOLQHV,QRXUÀHOGRI SROLWLFDO ideas the debate on the sources of Machiavelli’s thought was revitalized by

18

Klaus von Beyme

an outsider who relativized certain passages as ‘rhetorics of Petrarchism.’ Speculations on the metaphors of Hobbes’s Leviathan have been traced back to bible interpretations of certain sectarians at the time of Hobbes. All of a sudden distant historical analogies were discarded from the agenda by an outsider. 'LVWDQWÀFWLRQVDQGP\WKVEHFDPHREVROHWHE\KLQWVWRFORVH political or social facts. Political sources of great works of art have frequently been emphasized more explicitly by art historians than by social scientists. Piero’s fresco cycle in Arezzo was interpreted from Warburg to Carlo Ginzburg (43) as a political allusion to the idea of the crusades and the decline of Greece – comELQHGZLWKKRSHVIRUDUHXQLÀFDWLRQRI WKH(DVWHUQDQGWKH:HVWHUQ&KULVtian Churches. Only later this kind of interpretation was challenged as too simple (Lavin 180; Büttner 15-17). Political iconology was easier to develop in studies of ruler’s residences than in churches. But even in residences of princes the political connotations of the painting by Gozzoli in Palazzo Medici or the work of a team of painters in Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrara – so dear to Warburg – were not easily deciphered. Even in churches one can occasionally discover an ‘easy form of political iconology.’ In the Theolinda chapel in Monza the hints at the history of Lombardia and the analysis of the Visconti and Sforza families showed a rather obvious relation to the dynasties involved. Comparative political iconology which does not dig into the details of individual works and follows the specialists into distant niches of originality will concentrate on an ‘easy iconology’ in order to remain on safe ground. The danger is that only second-class arts is chosen for analysis which might hardly interest the professional art historians – unless highlights of art for political use are found in works of Goya, Hogarth or Daumier. Autopoetic system’s theory postulates that only after the French Revolution the religious fundaments of a societas civilis were destroyed. This development led to the existence of special dyadic codes for each subsystem of the society. Politics according to this view was governed by the code: power/non power. Iconology for the nineteenth century showed that political interSUHWDWLRQVSURYHGWREHGLIÀFXOW&DVSDU'DYLG)ULHGULFK·V7HWVFKHQ$OWDU was not easy to decipher because, originally, it was not even dedicated to Count Thun (Chapeaurouge 42-47). Also Friedrich’s “A Ship in the IceSea” found rather controversial perceptions: the shipwreck could stand for “disappointed political hopes,” which corresponds to the political leanings of that artist. But other interpreters took the same picture for a symbol of rather individual disappointments (Rautmann). Sometimes political motives entered even the school books such as Delacroix’s “Liberty Leading the People.” Delacroix himself remained silent. A poem by Auguste Barbier (“La Curée”) was used as a proof for revolutionary engagement of the painter. Detailed analysis showed, however,

Why Is There No Political Science of the Arts?

19

that the man with the hat was hardly a “citoyen” or a “student.” SimilariWLHVZLWKWKHSROLWLFLDQ/DIÀWWHKDYHEHHQSRVWXODWHG%XWWKHFRQWHPSRUDU\ VSHFWDWRUVGLGQRWSHUFHLYHWKLV+DGMLQLFRODRX 7KHZRPDQZLWKWKHÁDJ was recognized as a kind of ‘dirty provocation’ by contemporaries. The iconological interpretation by specialists therefore preferred quite apolitical interpretations. Contemporaries rather saw a symbol of a ‘great mother’ or DÀJKWLQJKRO\ZRPDQ7KHQDNHGEUHDVWRI WKHLQGHFHQWDQGUHYROXWLRQary woman appalled bourgeois society – until the French State sanctioned civilized interpretations by printing the lady on a bill of 100 Francs (1979). Only then it could enter into the school books. This example showed that a sociology of art had to complete the efforts of a political science of art. Many political interpretations were not seen by the contemporaries and therefore a lot of sharp-minded political interpretation remained ex post facto ideas and went astray for the society in which such a painting was perceived by the public. Who then is right? ‡ the social historian who knows contemporary symbols and opinions, ‡ or the sharp-minded intellectual connoisseur who ex post facto creates an intelligent iconological interpretation? Only politicized artists such as Steinlen, Léger, Guttuso, Kollwitz, Grosz, +DUWÀHOG0HLGQHURU'L[GRQRWRIIHULFRQRORJLFDOVHFUHWV%XWHYHQPRGern avangardists who were close to politics like Picasso, Dalí, Max Ernst, Magritte or Beckmann are not open in their complicated visions to a selfevident political interpretation: ‡ That is why a modern trend concentrates on the history of receptions of works of art. ‡ On the other hand every historical discipline has to analyse events which they see different from the actors of a historical time. Otherwise history would be reduced to the compilations and commentaries to memoirs of contemporaries. This shows a dilemma of two approaches: ‡ 6RFLDODQGSROLWLFDOKLVWRULDQVVWLFNWRWKHVXSHUÀFLDOPHDQLQJRI SLFWXUHV ‡ whereas iconologists dig into the depth of meaning of pictures. Religious paintings were never only interpreted in terms of an unsophisticated piety of the masses.

Limits of Competence for Social Scientists in the Field of the Arts (1) Political iconography normally suspects that behind parallel appearance in art and politics there is some kind of ideology or Weltbild. There is a danger that paintings are graded down to applications of aesthetic and/ or political doctrines. Mostly fresco cycles of Early Renaissance in Italy

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were interpreted in a way which found some hidden theoretical message behind the pictures, such as Aristotelism, Thomism or Early Humanism. Only rarely such intellectual speculations were supported by a certain similarity RI VRPHÀJXUHVVXFKDVWKRVHLQ%HQR]]R*R]]ROL·V´3URFHVVLRQRI 7KUHH Holy Kings” in the Medici Chapel (Roettgen 21, 331; Ahl 88-90). The personality of the artist in search of his autonomy sometimes was degraded to an “auxiliary agent of prosaic political interests,” as in Carlo Ginzburg’s book on Piero della Francesca (21, 8). Circular chains of interpretation – which sometimes had been reproached to the iconological orthodoxy of the Hamburg school thus was tamed by ‘obvious’ political messages. In later periods of absolutist rule, art was more obviously put into the service of political power. Emblems, symbols and metaphors were canonized as in Cesare Ripa’s “Iconologia” (edited in 1971 by Edward A. Maser) and were almost mandatory for artists as well as for spectators. In late absoOXWLVPIRUPVRI JRYHUQPHQWZHUHVWLOOÀ[HGLQWKHLFRQRORJLFDOUHSUHVHQWDtion of physiognomies. According to Diderot (66) ‡ Republicans had to be ‘proud and severe.’ ‡ Monarchs had to represent mercy, honour and galanteries. Not all the artists stuck to the theoretical prescriptions. New republics, such as the USA, no longer inspired themselves by the systems of constitutional monarchies. Since they had hardly a traditional iconography of their own they borrowed heavily from ancient Rome. American liberty allowed more quickly to get rid of historical costumes, as in the “Death RI *HQHUDO:ROIHµ ZKLFKZDVKDLOHGDVWKHÀUVWKLVWRULFDOSLFWXUHLQ modern costumes. American paintings of presidents were inspired by various sources such as European (Houdon in France), Europeanized Americans such as Benjamin West, or exclusive Americans such as Gilbert Stuart (Abrams 170). (2) Continuity and discontinuity of artist’s work for rulers after changes of the regime. In oligarchic republics and absolutist monarchies a change RI  WKH UXOHU IUHTXHQWO\ LQÁXHQFHG WKH SRVLWLRQ RI  DUWLVWV DW WKH ¶FRXUW· There were hardly ideological implications in this change but rather changes in personal taste of the rulers. Not before the French Revolution different tastes had also different political connotations. ‘Quality of art’ and specialization made it possible, however, that artists of a former regime survived precisely because the ‘art of power’ was emphasized. Napoleon accepted the court painter of Louis XVI, Antoine-François Callet because of his abilities in painting battles (Surrender of Ulm, Battle of Austerlitz) (Schoch 85). Many revolutionary painters – including David – had worked for the ancien régime. Even the restoration regime, extremely intolerant in political matters, accepted certain artists of the former regime. François Gérard was QRPLQDWHGDVWKH¶ÀUVWSDLQWHU·LQ5REHUW/HIqYUHUHPDLQHGSDLQWHURI  the court and even Gros, the most demonstrative adherent of the toppled

Why Is There No Political Science of the Arts?

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emperor was nobilitated and got important commissions. Even Jean-Louis David could have returned from his Belgian exile if he had been ready to apologize for his alliance with the ‘king’s murderers.’ Louis XVIII bought for the Palais Luxembourg two of David’s paintings – that was more than Napoleon ever did for the painter in one move (Brooker 179). Napoleon III even negotiated with a notorious adversary of the regime, such as Courbet. He painted a picture of his atelier with a visit of the Emperor, an honour which not even Ingres – in high repute at the court - was able to experience. Later dictators such as Bolsheviks (concerning Constructivism) and fascists (concerning Futurism) initially tried to win over the avantgarde. Only Hitler’s Nazi-Regime was so narrow-minded to not accept the vanguard which – at least in architecture with Mies van der Rohe who still in 1937 signed a letter with “Heil Hitler” – might have collaborated. Goebbels tried to save parts of the expressionists as a ‘German style.’ This failed as much as rare attempts to collaborate as in the case of Emil Nolde. Democracies after 1945 were mostly reluctant to accept the artists of the dictator. Arno Breker caused scandals – every time he got a commission – even from private persons. A comparative analysis over time might come to the conclusion that not political conviction of artists but rather the changes of styles and topics led to a neglect of the artists fashionable in the former political system. (3) Political symbols and fashions change even within the same regime. This may have political connotations – such as the change from romanticism to realism in the nineteenth century. Rarely did a revolution, such as the one of 1848, bring a clear caesura in France which promoted realism also for political reasons. But the revolutions of 1830 or 1848 cannot be XVHGWRGHGXFHIURPWKHVHHYHQWVWKHSROLWLFDODWWLWXGHRI DUWLVWV²UHÁHFWHG in their artistic work. The revolution of 1848 which did not have a permanent impact cannot be made responsible for Menzel’s turn to realism. His painting about the dead citizens, killed by the Prussian troops in March 1848 did not gain the importance of some revolutionary paintings of CourEHW·V7KDWLWUHPDLQHGXQÀQLVKHGZDVLQWHUSUHWHGDV´VKDPHDERXWWKHDUWist’s liberal illusions” and the preparation of a turn to political escapism in Prussian history (Hermand 51). (4) Research on art and politics is less interested in the genesis of works, but rather in their contemporary and later impact on the public. Even iconology in the tradition of Warburg was interested in the survival of certain iconological traditions. The approach of receptionist aesthetics in the history of arts was taken over from the history of literature. A work of art was no longer separated neatly from the spectator (Kemp 240). ‡ Architecture and the decoration of churches were open to the public and played a major role in religious propaganda.

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Klaus von Beyme

‡ Art programs in palaces, however, were accessible only for the higher estates which occasionally were invited at the court. Princes increasingly opened their treasures for the public to strengthen an element of iconological propaganda. Paintings left their autopoietic environment in which they served only the pleasure of the prince (Warnke 8). The experts for SLFWRULDOSURJUDPVDWWKHFRXUWVRPHWLPHVWULHGWRÀ[WKHDWWHQWLRQRI WKH prince to a certain program. Their reinforcement was a kind of help for decision-making in order not to leave the decision of a program to the artists themselves – which might lead to heretic iconology. The more unsafe a rule the bigger was the iconographic input for pictorial propaganda, from Emperor Augustus to the ‘usurpers’ and Condottieri in Italian Renaissance or to the Napoleons. The Roman Senate tried to avoid private luxurious buildings, though it had no means to sponsor public buildings of some importance. In this vacuum the self-representation of Augustus became attractive for all the layers of society (Zanker 25, 329). ,QPDQ\UHVSHFWV²IURP$XJXVWXVWREDURTXHSULQFHVUHOLJLRXVUHLÀFDWLRQV were used as an instrument for political propaganda. The painting had an almost sacral function. The claim for identity of the estates was that they were the country and not only represented the country. The revolutionary counter-movements therefore were so furious to destroy physically the monuments and paintings of a toppled ruler or dynasty. This was the negative side of the idea of identity (Brückner; Steinmann 337). Aggression against icons and cult of pictures happened in various waves in European history (Belting, Bild und Kult 18-19). The pictorial cult during the counterreformation was a kind of compensation for the sins of destroying religious and political pictures. Even towards the end of absolutist monarchy, the picture of the ruler sometimes was used in a literal UHLÀHGVHQVH7KHFLWL]HQ·VFRXQFLORI 0XQLFKKDGWRNQHHOGRZQLQIURQWRI  Prince Karl Theodor because it had offended the dignity of the ruler. The Bavarian penal law knew “offenses of the majesty of the second degree,” including mockery, which was easily found in certain paintings (Schoch 12). Power and religion strengthen each other in the pictorial cult of monarchy. Sometimes the impact of pictorial propaganda was even tested. Benvenuto Cellini (90, 503) reported that Grand Duke Cosimo I found his Perseus “molto bella” but insisted on testing the people’s opinion before erecting the monument on the Piazza della Signoria. Even Napoleon made his peace with the church though a latent anticlerical trend remained. Religious art was no longer sponsored and substituted by political cult of icons. The more unsafe the legitimation of a ruler the more the reception of paintings by the public was controlled. In 1808 Gros’ “Napoleon Bonaparte on the %DWWOHÀHOG RI  (\ODX,” celebrating a not very convincing victory over the Russian army, was put next to David’s painting of Napoleon’s coronation. The ironic commentary of the president of the Roman Republic regarding

Why Is There No Political Science of the Arts?

23

the arrangement was “sacre et massacre” (Lindsay 122). The secret service knew about the ambivalent impact of that painting and suspected that this painting might promote the people’s opinions against the war and wanted to remove it. Minutes in the archives showed that the secret police also in RWKHUFDVHVWHVWHGWKHVXFFHVVRI SLFWRULDOSURSDJDQGD/HOLqYUH  When the subsystems of society differentiated and became more autonomous the arts also grew in autonomy. On the one hand this was welcome to most artists – on the other hand the political system did not need the artists any more for its self-representation. Photography and mass media became a much cheaper instrument for state propaganda. Since the artists did no longer get many commissions from state agencies they were thrown into the market. The anti-capitalist writings of many artists show that originally the capitalist market was repudiated. The avantgardes from 1830 to 1930 frequently in a mixture of complaint and pride wrote about the loneliness of the artist in society. Pessimistic individualism of the artists had various consequences: some artists joined political movements, others escaped into a-political esoteric circles (Egbert; Lindey 103; Schilling 32, 194). Syndicalist experiments for self-organization of the artist’s market from Albert Gleizes (v. Beyme, Zeitalter der Avantgarden 181) to Günter Grass failed. Only after 1945, artists fought for the market as did Ad Reinhardt in an article on “Government and the Arts.” But even then a very un-American idea was launched with a ‘government art cabinet’ which should control the market, JXDUDQWHHHTXDOFKDQFHVIRUDOODUWLVWVDQGÀJKWDJDLQVWLOOHJDOSUDFWLFHVRI  an oligarchic art market.

The Dilemma of Democratic Iconology Conservative art historians, such as Hans Sedlmayr, resented the loss of the centre after the Second World War. But this had ambivalent advantages. It led to a post-modern total liberty. Where everything is possible at the same time the legitimacy of political art withers away. Aesthetic experience is profaned. Art is promoted by events. The museum’s shop and specially arranged ‘museum nights’ with the help of the mass media attract more public attention than the collections of art themselves (Zweite 131). “Anything goes” was a device when Paul Feyerabend turned from rigid neo-positivism to post-modern anti-ideology. This created two tendencies which coexist: ‡ Democracy lives on pre-democratic myths and iconological symbols and thus tries to be popular, knowing that most citizens do not accept modern art. ‡ The rise of a new elitism which also leans back to pre-democratic symbols and moods – but uses the language of modern art.

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 2QO\DIWHUWKH6HFRQG:RUOG:DUGHPRFUDF\ZDVVXIÀFLHQWO\FRQVROLGDWed and able to reduce democratic symbolism to rather abstract signs. Eagles were still close to symbolism of older regimes. A Swedish ‘IKEA look’ of a woven landscape in the Stockholm parliament is also traditional and not yet in tune with abstract symbols of ‘constitutional patriotism.’ There was a dilemma: Survey methods allowed very exactly to control the people’s mood – but there was little which could be tested. The rare examples of democratic iconology were not accepted by the people’s majority. When the public was asked whether it prefers the restoration of the paintings of Antoine Pesne or a modern work by Hann Trier in the Palace Charlottenburg, the least innovative solution won. Democracy in its pictorial programs thus remained – against its will – elitist. Political art aimed at the connoisseurs – not at the mass public. This was even recognized by the leading satirical artist in Germany, Klaus Staeck. The vanguard of classical modernity had a certain inclination to push the recipients of art into a defensive role. The arts in classical modernity usurped almost the position of former rulers and demanded submission. Adorno took part in this kind of sacralisation of the arts when he wrote in his Aesthetic Theory that the recipient “has to submit to the discipline of the work and should not demand that the work of art offers him something” (410). The ruling class used to employ the most eminent artists for its representation. In the era of photography this practice became more and more marginal (v. Beyme, Kunst der Macht 120, 144) and was left to the individual taste of a ruler. There is hardly anything like a Staatsportrait (state portrait) any more. Clemenceau detested his portrait by Manet (1879, 1880) and Churchill – himself a hidden painter – never used his portrait by Graham 6XWKHUODQGZKLFKÀQDOO\VHHPVWRKDYHEHHQGHVWUR\HGY%H\PHZeitalter der Avantgarden 417). Queen Elizabeth II by Pietro Annigoni in the Portrait Gallery in London or the Spanish king in the vestibule of the ThyssenBornemisza Collections in Madrid are examples of such old-fashioned representations. Democracies also preserved a good deal of myth and neo-metaphysical thought. Even the order of sitting in a semi-cycle in modern parliaments was not the result of functional ideas about a good political discourse – but rather by a survival of theological elements of representing the “body politic” (Manow 19). Even dictators had to check the impact of their pictorial propaganda. The cultural people’s commissar Lunacharsky had many sympathies for the art of Kubo-Futurism in Russia. But he knew that neither Lenin nor the people valued this kind of art and did not dare to promote it in public (Palmier 477). Only concrete symbols could be promoted such as Tatlin’s Tower as a monument to the Third International. But even in this case Lenin resented its oblique appearance. Dictatorships were able to promote

Why Is There No Political Science of the Arts?

25

their vandalism against the ‘modern art’ of their time because they knew that the petty bourgeois taste of the majority would approve this kind of art policy. Art which was obviously political was hardly accepted by most theoreticians of aesthetics. Only some leftist treatises such as Proudhon in France or Chernyshevsky in Russia hailed a certain political realism in the arts close to the needs of the ‘working classes.’ Art historians frequently thought that the openly political phases of great artists led to the worst of their pictures. Thus David’s portrait of Napoleon was criticized as “clumsy” and “not elegant.” Only a moderate Marxist such as Arnold Hauser thought that Jacques Louis David was best when he openly represented political events (158). In some cases the debate was ambivalent. The aristocrat Delacroix – certainly not a revolutionary – did by his paintings more to undermine the plutocratic kingdom of Louis Philippe in the Monarchy of July 1830 than many leftist realists who were hailed as the forerunners of socialist realism. But even conservative art historians have to admit that Georges Grosz or Dix were best in their period of criticizing the Weimar System than later when the painted nice landscape at Lake Constance or at the New England coast in the United States. Apparently the quality of political arts depends on its authenticity. The debate of art historians was controversial: was the decline of originality in the latest part of their life a consequence of the a-political turn in their arts, or was it just the normal decline of painters in their old age? (Friedlaender 64). Even critics of political engagement in the arts recognize that in some cases, such as David, Delacroix, Courbet, Picasso or Léger, the political messages did not ruin the quality of their work. ‡ Conservative ethnocentric historians of art came up with the idea that governmental art policy is not able to lead to original art – unless it is founded in collective national or regional movements (Malkowsky 19). The papal court and the Prussian court which was hardly rooted in a Brandenburg regional culture would contradict this hypothesis. ‡ Radical and progressive historians of art, on the other hand, developed the thesis that political engagement improved the quality of art. Marxists even claimed that the exuberant temperament of a writer such as Bert Brecht needed a certain discipline by the party doctrine in order to develop his talent (Egbert 736; Lindey 103; Schilling 32, 194). (2) Even under the rule of egalitarian democratic doctrines elitist emphasis on modern art – hardly understood by the voters of democratic leaders – was spreading in the democracies. According to a quantitative study by the periodical Capital (Rohr-Bongard Rohr-Bongard 111) contemporary holders of power positions in politics and economics – 70% of the managers and even 85% of the top politicians – like to show themselves in the surrounding of modern arts. Some representatives of power or money preferred works in blue – in order to produce the feeling of distance and power. Mannerist works were

26

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used as symbols of the capacity to decide and revealed a decisionist understanding of politics (Ullrich, Mit dem Rücken zur Kunst 49, 32). The collection of portraits of German Federal Chancellors in the &KDQFHOORUV RIÀFH LQ %HUOLQ LV DOPRVW D ¶KRUURU SLFWXUH VKRZ· 2QO\ IHZ chancellors selected interesting painters from Willy Brandt to Gerhard Schröder. The latter has compromised himself and his formerly revolutionary painter Jörg Immendorff by a painting in the style of absolutist coins in JROG6FKU|GHUZDVQRWSDUWLFXODUO\NQRZOHGJHDEOHLQWKHÀHOGRI DUWV%XW it is not by chance that he liked to pose with Immendorff, a painter who in 1968 proclaimed political action in a painting “Stop painting” and who later remarked that he now regretted the Maoist nonsense he formerly supported. He claimed already in the early 1990s that he never would use art any more as “a tool of propaganda” for any political opinion (Immendorff 58). Schröder might have been attracted just by a former Maoist because he himself was proud of his leftist past in the SPD youth movement. Schröder now posed as a ‘hero.’ “Neo-aristocratic attitudes” developed and unorthodox politicians showed themselves as “risky alpha animals,” on the one hand, and via symbols such as apes and eagles as a kind of “artifex honoris causa” (Ullrich, Macht zeigen 17, 19) on the other. Political art had always two aspects: ‡ The Art of power, mostly working on portraits of rulers and historical events which were taken as legitimation for modern power. ‡ The Art of Counter-Power. In classical art it had little change and was exercised only in hidden forms – such as the stupid faces in Goyas portrait of the Spanish royal family. It grew, however, in modern art. Picasso in his caricatures of Dictator Franco used his type of pictorial counter-power in the Spanish Civil War and developed the anti-ruler-portrait. The intermezzo of abstract art was hardly open for direct political messages and portraits. But with the end of classical modernity between 1955 and 1960 and the rise of pop art portraits were used to devastate the aura of rulers. Frequently it was open to debate whether Andy Warhol’s paintings of some American presidents – aimed at caricature – or in some cases such as a portrait of Mao Tse Tung – at a form of creating new heroes. The 1968 movement has widely used this type of portrait – even in Germany from Immendorff to Gerhard Richter and Sigmar Polke who later hardly were hailed as ‘political artists.’

Conclusion A systematic political science of the arts would probably dig into the foundations of the legitimacy of political systems and the traditions of art policies in the individual political system. It makes a difference whether political systems do not intervene into the organisation of the arts – as in the United

27

Why Is There No Political Science of the Arts?

States – or try to organize a kind of welfare state for the artists, such as Norway and the Netherlands. For art policy these two models are disappointing. Despite little state help for artists after Roosevelt’s experiment during the New Deal the United States since abstract expressionism is considered a leading arts centre whereas the enormous help for artists in the Netherlands or Norway did not implicate a leading role of these countries in modern art. The political system nevertheless is involved in regulations in countries without a welfare tradition as the following typology shows. Table: Governmental measures for the support and regulation of the arts Regulatory level

Welfare level

restrictive

regulative

extensive

(reducing liberties)

(mediation in FRQÁLFWV

extending liberties

protection

distributive

redistributive

(of groups such as women or ethnic minorities

(distribution of ÀQDQFLDOUHsources)

RI ÀQDQFLDO resources between groups)

Governments intervene in various ways: Acquisition:

Restriction Protection Distribution

Construction of cities, architecture Self-representation of the system by the artists Buying works of arts for museums and governmental institutions Sponsoring political art Museum’s olicies p Exhibition policies State ceremonies with the help of artists Measures against political art Measures against opposition of artists, Measures against pornography or anti-religious art Protection of monuments Preservation of arts Restoration of buildings and cities Foundation of academies, art schools Granting cholarships s Welfare state measures for the artists

Klaus von Beyme

28

5HJXODWLRQ

5HJXODWLRQRI FRQÁLFWVEHWZHHQDUWLVWVJURXSVLQWKH economy or the churches Tax policies for sponsors Guidelines for the aesthetic world in buildings and cities (Kunst am Bau). Not all of these governmental instruments in the arts are of equal importance. Protection of monuments was created only under the impact of historicism in the nineteenth century and welfare measures grew selectively in the twentieth century. Repressions against artists once were common but EHFDPHUDUHDIWHU*URV]·&KULVWZLWKJDVKHOPHWZDVÀQHGKHDYLO\E\ a court decision in the Weimar Republic. Andres Serrano’s “Piss Christ” – which showed Jesus in a bath of urine – aroused antipathy but no longer DQ\ WULDO 3ROLWLFDO SURYRFDWLRQ KDV EHFRPH GLIÀFXOW EHFDXVH WKH IRUPHU bourgeois Puritanism and prudishness withered away. As Karl Kraus once put it, “the true Bohemians don’t make any more the concession to vex the bourgeois” (qtd. in Schlussbericht 230, col. 2).1 In Germany, the Enquete Committee on Culture, which submitted its report in late 2007, since then developed a fabulous program on the arts. It SURYHGWREHPRUHGHWDLOHGDQGUHÀQHGWKDQDQ\DWWHPSWWRVNHWFKDSROLWLcal science of the arts. The promotion of art and culture – Kunst und Kultur LQWKHRIÀFLDOIRUPXOD²LVKRSHGWRHQWHULQWRWKHFRQVWLWXWLRQRI WKH%DVLF Law. This development hopefully one day forfeits my statement that there is no political science of the arts for the time being.

1

“Die wahre Boheme macht den Philistern nicht mehr das Zugeständnis, sie zu ärgern.”

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Works Cited Abrams, Ann Uhry: The Valiant Hero: Benjamin West and Grand-Style History Painting. Washington 1985. Adorno, Theodor W.: Ästethische Theorie. 6th ed. Frankfurt 2003. Ahl, Diane Cole: Benozzo Gozzoli. New Haven 1996. Alberti, Leon Battista: I libri della famiglia (1432-1434 bk. 1-3). Turin 1969. Belting, Hans: Bild und Kult: Eine Geschichte des Bildes vor dem Zeitalter der Kunst. Munich 1990. —: Das Ende der Kunstgeschichte. Eine Revision nach zehn Jahren. Munich 1995. —, and Dieter Blume (eds.): Malerei und Stadtkultur in der Dantezeit: Die Argumentation der Bilder. Munich 1989. v. Beyme, Klaus: Die Kunst der Macht und die Gegenmacht der Kunst. Frankfurt 1998. —: Das Zeitalter der Avantgarden. Kunst und Gesellschaft 1905-1955. Munich 2005. —, et al. (eds.): Neue Städte aus Ruinen: Deutscher Städtebau der Nachkriegszeit. Munich 1992. Borsook, Eve: The Mural Painters of Tuscany from Cimabue to Andrea del Sarto. 2nd ed. Oxford 1980. Brookner, Anita: Jacques-Louis David. London 1980. Brückner, Wolfgang: Bildnis und Brauch: 6WXGLHQ]XU%LOGIXQNWLRQGHU(IÀJLHV. Berlin 1966. Büttner, Frank: “Das Thema der Konstantinsschlacht Piero della Francescas.” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 36 (1992): 23-39. Chapeaurouge, Donat de: Versteckte Selbstenthüllungen moderner Künstler. Weimar 1996. Chartier, Roger: Die unvollendete Vergangenheit: Geschichte und die Macht der Weltauslegung. Berlin 1989. Diderot, Denis: Ästhetische Schriften. Vol. 1. Frankfurt 1968. Edelman, Murray: From Art to Politics: How Artistic Creations Shape Political Conceptions. Chicago 1995. Egbert, Donald D.: Social Radicalism and the Arts: Western Europe: A Cultural History from the French Revolution to 1968. New York 1970. Florida, Richard L.: The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life. New York 2006. Friedlaender, Walter: David to Delacroix. Cambridge, MA 1952. Friedrich, Carl J.: The Age of the Baroque, 1610-1660. New York 1952. —: Das Zeitalter des Barock: Kultur und Staaten Europas im 17. Jahrhundert. Stuttgart 1954. Ginzburg, Carlo: Erkundungen über Piero: Piero della Francesca, ein Maler der frühen Renaissance. Berlin 1981. Gombrich, Ernst H: Die Krise der Kulturgeschichte: Gedanken zum Wertproblem in den Geisteswissenschaften. 1979. Munich 1991. Hadjinicolaou, Nicos: Die Freiheit führt das Volk von Eugène Delacroix: Sinn und Gegensinn. Dresden 1991. Hauser, Arnold: Sozialgeschichte der Kunst und Literatur. Vol. 2. Munich 1953. Hermand, Jost: Adolph Menzel. Reinbek 1986. Hobbes, Thomas: Leviathan [1651]. Transl. Jacob Peter Mayer. Stuttgart 1980. Immendorff, Jörg, and Pamela Kort: Jörg Immendorff im Gespräch mit Pamela Kort. Cologne 1993. Kant, Immanuel: 7KH&RQÁLFWRI WKH)DFXOWLHV[1798]. Transl. Mary J. Gregor. London 1992. Kemp, Wolfgang: “Kunstwerk und Betrachter: Der rezeptionsästhetische Ansatz.” Kunstgeschichte: Eine Einführung. Ed. Hans Belting et al. 3rd ed. Berlin 1988, 240-257. Kempers, Bram: “Gesetz und Kunst: Ambrogio Lorenzettis Fresken im Palazzo Pubblico in Siena.” Malerei und Stadtkultur in der Dantezeit. Ed. Hans Belting and Dieter Blume. Munich 1989. 71-84.

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Kris, Ernst, and Otto Kurz: Die Legende vom Künstler: Ein geschichtlicher Versuch. Frankfurt 1979. Lavin, Marilyn Aronberg: The Place of Narrative: Mural Decoration in Italian Churches 4311600. Chicago 1990. /HOLqYUH3LHUUHVivant Denon: Homme des Lumières, ‘Ministre des Arts’ de Napoléon. Paris 1993. Lindey, Christine: Art in the Cold War: From Vladivostok to Kalamazoo 1945-1962. London 1990. Lindsay, Jack: Death of the Hero: French Painting from David to Delacroix. London 1960. Malkowsky, Georg: Die Kunst im Dienste der Staats-Idee: Hohenzollerische Kunstpolitik vom Großen Kurfürsten bis auf Wilhelm II. Berlin 1912. Manow, Philip: Im Schatten des Königs. Die politische Anatomie demokratischer Repräsentation. Frankfurt 2008. Maser, Edward A. (ed.): Cesare Ripa: Baroque and Rococo Pictorial Imagery. The 1758-60 Hertel Edition of Ripa’s Iconologia with 200 Engraved Illustrations. New York 1971. Matsche, Franz: Die Kunst im Dienst der Staatsidee Kaiser Karls VI: Ikonographie, Ikonologie und Programmatik des Kaiserstils. Vol. 1. Berlin 1981. Palmier, Jean-Michel: Lénine, l’art et la révolution: Essai sur la Formation de l’Esthétique Soviétique. Vol. 1. Paris 1975. Rautmann, Peter: C. D. Friedrich: Das Eismeer: Durch Tod zu neuem Leben. Frankfurt 1991. Reinhardt, Ad: “Government and the Arts.” Art as Art: The Selected Writings of Ad Reinhardt. Ed. Barbara Rose. New York 1975, 179-184. 5RHWWJHQ6WHIÀWandmalerei der Frührenaissance in Italien. Vol. 1. Munich 1996. Rohr-Bongard, Linde: “Bereicherung: Welche Rolle spielt Kunst für die Elite?” Capital 11 (1998): 110-114. Rubinstein, Nicolai: “Political Ideas in Sienese Art: The Frescoes by Ambrogio Lorenzetti and Taddeo di Bartolo in the Palazzo Pubblico.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21.3-4 (1958): 179-207. Schilling, Jürgen: Aktionskunst: Identität von Kunst und Leben? Eine Dokumentation. Lucerne 1978. Schlussbericht der Enquete-Kommission “Kultur in Deutschland.” Deutscher Bundestag. Drucksache 16/7000. 11 Dec. 2007. Web. 12 Mar. 2011. http://dipbt.bundestag. de/dip21/btd/16/070/1607000.pdf. Schoch, Rainer: Das Herrscherbild in der Malerei des 19. Jahrhunderts. Munich 1975. Skinner, Quentin: “Ambrogio Lorenzetti. The Artist as Political Philosopher.” Malerei und Stadtkultur in der Dantezeit: Die Argumentation der Bilder. Ed. Hans Belting and Dieter Blume. Munich 1989, 85-103. Smart, Alastair: The Dawn of Italian Painting 1250-1400. 2nd ed. Ithaca 1980. Steinmann, Ernst: “Die Zerstörung der Königsdenkmäler in Paris.” Monatshefte für Kunstwissenschaft 10 (1917): 337-379. Traeger, Jörg: Der Weg nach Walhalla: Denkmallandschaft und Bildungsreise im 19. Jahrhundert. Regensburg 1987. Ullrich, Wolfgang (ed.): Macht zeigen: Kunst als Herrschaftsstrategie. Eine Ausstellung des Deutschen Historischen Museums Berlin. Berlin 2010. —: Mit dem Rücken zur Kunst: Die neuen Statussymbole der Macht. 4th ed. Berlin 2004. Warnke, Martin: Bildindex zur politischen Ikonographie. Hamburg 1993. Werquet, Jan: Historismus und Repräsentation: Die Baupolitik Friedrich Wilhelms IV. in der preußischen Rheinprovinz. Berlin 2010. Zanker, Paul: Augustus und die Macht der Bilder. Munich 1987.

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Zweite, Armin: “Strategien gegen die Indifferenz: Vier Beispiele heutiger ästhetischer Produktion.” Ikonologie der Gegenwart. Ed. Gottfried Boehm and Horst Bredekamp. Munich 2009, 129-175.

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Fig. 1. Peter Paul Rubens: Peace and War, oil on canvas, 203,5 x 298 cm, London, National Gallery.

Rubens’s Pictorial Peacekeeping Force – Negotiating through ‘Visual Speech-Acts’

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Rubens’s Pictorial Peacekeeping Force: Negotiating through ‘Visual Speech-Acts’1 ULRICH HEINEN

Involved in the Antwerp painter’s peace mission to London, Peter Paul 5XEHQV·V´3HDFHDQG:DUµÀJBaumstark, “Studien” 152-162) and its forerunner, “Venus, Mars and Amor” at the Dulwich College Picture GalOHU\ÀJ+HLQHQ&DWHQWU\ DUHH[FHOOHQWH[DPSOHVIRUWKHKLWKHUWRUDUHO\ noticed function of political iconography in the performative utterance of diplomatic negotiations. The important role of donating and collecting works of art in the diplomatic sphere is well known. Art history also abundantly demonstrated how art was used for presenting more or less sophisticated political arguments or for proclaiming political power. An analysis of Rubens’s “Peace and War” and its predecessor, however, will show how an artist was able to turn his artistic skill into an active instrument of argumentation and negotiation. The painting process will be recognised as a kind of ‘paint act’ in the sense of a ‘visual speech act.’ As propositionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary ‘paint acts’ these pictures must have taken an active part in the success of Rubens’s mission. Therefore, I would like to RXWOLQHWKHZD\LQZKLFK5XEHQVZDVDEOHWRXQIROGWKHVSHFLÀFSRZHURI  WKHYLVXDOPHGLXPE\YLWDOLVLQJWKHVSHFLÀFPHDQVRI YLVXDOUHSUHVHQWDWLRQ and affectation in the conceptual and painterly artistry of his work.

Seeking Peace At the end of his mission in London, Rubens personally handed over his “Peace and War” as a present to the English King Charles I (Millar 2, 4, 229). A likely date for the presentation of the picture could have been the farewell audience on 3 March 1630, at which Rubens was honoured with a knighthood by the English king due to his success in ending the belliger1

This article is a condensed version of a more extensive study on Rubens’s “Peace and War” that will be published later. I am indebted to David Jaffé for critically discussing my suggesWLRQVWR5DLQHU%DUWKRORPDLDQG&RUGXODYDQ:\KHIRUKHOSZLWKWKHWUDQVODWLRQRI WKHÀUVW version of a paper on the topic given in 2003 at Cambridge University, and Karin Weckermann for amending this article.

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ency between England and Spain (Ruelens/Rooses vol. 5, 347-348). The sources of information keep quiet about the more precise context concerning the painting’s origin and the use for which it was intended. But the progress of Rubens’s peace negotiations at the English court is well documented by many letters of Rubens and others (Ruelens/Rooses vol. 5). Thus it is possible to look for closer correlations between Rubens’s artistic and his diplomatic activities. The diplomatic peace mission of Rubens as an envoy of the Spanish king, from 5 June 1629 to 23 March 1630 (Magurn 283-290; von Simson, Humanist 287-325),2 had been the result of Rubens’s and Balthasar Gerbier’s strenuous efforts. The two painter-diplomats had met at the French court in 1625, when Rubens’s Medici cycle was inaugurated at the Palais de Luxembourg and Gerbier was accompanying the legation of George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, for whom Gerbier had worked since 1616 as agent, painter, architect, and Keeper of the Duke’s Collection. These negotiations had been supported from their beginning by the Infanta Isabella, the Governess of the Habsburg Netherlands, who had sent Rubens to the Spanish court in 1628 in order to prepare the London mission. To vest Rubens, who had been knighted in 1624, with an appropriate rank for this mission, the Spanish king had nominated him a Secretary of his Privy Council in the Netherlands on 27 April 1629.3 Only a reconciliation of the superpowers England and Spain would have ended England’s support for the Anti-Habsburg rebels in the Northern Netherlands. This would have re-strengthened Habsburg sovereignty across the entire Netherlands. The Anglo-Spanish-Peace had been shatWHUHGRQFH(QJODQGKDGVHQWPLOLWDU\DQGÀQDQFLDOVXSSRUWWRWKH'XWFK WURRSVLQWKH5RPDQ(PSLUHÀQDOO\LQZKHQ(QJODQGKDGHQWHUHGWKH anti-Habsburg Coalition of The Hague. In a very cloudy situation, Rubens’s instructions of the Habsburg courts in Brussels and Spain were to prevent an imminent anti-Habsburg offensive pact between England and France that would have left the Habsburg Netherlands completely surrounded. Therefore, it was imperative for him to achieve peace by arranging an exFKDQJHRI RIÀFLDODPEDVVDGRUVEHWZHHQ0DGULGDQG/RQGRQ It is uncertain if Rubens could have known at the moment the Spanish king gave permission to his negotiations with England on 1 June 1629, that Spain had already signed a secret treaty with France on 2 March 1629, envisaging invading England, dividing it between Spain and France and reestablishing Catholicism (Healy 153, 206n69). But yet as early as 18 SeptemEHU5XEHQVKDGLQIRUPHG*HUELHUDERXWWKHÀUVWVWHSVRQWKHZD\WR   )RUWKHFRQWH[WVHH*DUGLQHU)RUWKH$QJOR6SDQLVKFRQÁLFWVHHH[SOLFLWO\+HLQHQ´9HUVDtissimus” 297-302. 3 Rubens’s rank triggered confusion at the London court; see the letter of Sir John Coke to Jaques Han, 15 June 1629; Ruelens/Rooses vol. 5, 62; Loomie 62; Betcherman ch. 9, note 25.

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Fig. 2. Peter Paul Rubens and workshop: Venus, Mars and Amor, c. 1630, oil on canvas, 195,2 x 133 cm, London, Dulwich Picture Gallery.

a Spanish-French agreement for an invasion of England, assuring him that this would be only “thunder without ligthning, making a noise in the air without an effect” (Magurn 201-202). Carefully suggesting, reinterpreting, DQGHXSKHPLVLQJWKHIDFWVZHÀQGWKDWDOUHDG\LQWKHSUHSDUDWLRQSKDVHRI  his London mission, Rubens shows all the skills of a promising agent of the Habsburgs’ double-dealings.

Disarming Mars The reconstruction of Rubens’s ‘visual speech acts’ in London has to begin with Rubens’s “Venus, Mars and Amor” at the Dulwich College Picture Gallery. It is widely known that Rubens executed this painting about the same time as “Peace and War.”4 But the common assumption that Venus in the Dulwich painting repeats the top half of the central group from “Peace and War” needs to be refuted. The iconography of the Dulwich painting is very conventional; the evolution of the composition is very clear and com4

See Martin 119. Particularly the very schematic face of Venus seems to have been overpainted by an assistant later.

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bines only a few sources: Rubens replaced the woman of Titian’s “Allegory RI WKH0DUFKHVHGH9DVWRµÀJ:HWKH\+HLQHQ&DWHQWU\ 5 E\DUHYHUVHGYHUVLRQRI KLV´9HQXVDW+HU7RLOHWµÀJ:HWKH\ 6 There are no indications at all that this painting presupposes the much more complicated and sophisticated “Peace and War.” On the contrary, the Dulwich painting must have preceded the painting in the National Gallery. The theme is extremely well suited to the context of a peace-mission. The locus classicus for the goddess of love attracting Mars and bringing up WKHLUPXWXDOFKLOGLVWKHVDOXWDWLRQLQWKHÀUVWOLQHRI /XFUHWLXV·V´'H5HUXP Natura”: “Mother of the descendants of Aeneas, delight of Gods and men, nurturing Venus” (1.1-2; Baumstark, “Studien” 160-161). Lucretius’s hymn on Venus praises the goddess as the origin of love, lust, fertility and creativity, and even as mother of the Roman Empire and as the origin of peace. The concept of the nurturing Venus incorporates principles of natural history, poetry, ethics and political thought. Therefore, Rubens’s painting sets the eternal world of this myth as a framework for his negotiations. In the Dulwich painting not only Venus but even Mars is completely focused on the shared obligation of bringing up their little son. Together the caring gods are looking tenderly upon the young god of love.7 Even the god of war is converted to peace. Lucretius describes Mars and Venus LQKLVÀUVWFKDSWHUDVDQXQHTXDOFRXSOHLQORYH7KHDQWLTXHDXWKRUVWDWHV WKDWWKHORYLQJXQLÀFDWLRQRI 9HQXVDQG0DUVJXDUDQWHHVSHDFH$VORQJDV Venus succeeds in keeping Mars bound to her, peace prevails (Lucretius, “De Rerum Natura” 1.28-40). As a conventional emblem of union, Amor’s XQLÀHG DUURZV V\PEROLVH WKH SHDFHIXO XQLÀFDWLRQ RI  0DUV DQG 9HQXV LQ Rubens’s painting.8 The Dulwich painting, however, interprets this story in a special way. 7LUHGRI ÀJKWLQJ5XEHQV·V0DUVVHHPVWRKDYHUHWXUQHGIURPZDU7KHWZLlight in the background accentuates this mood. Furthermore there are some revealing pentimenti particularly visible to the naked eye. Pentimenti (Murray 114) show that the armour of the Dulwich Mars must have reached to his wrist in an early state of painting. Then it must have been cut down to the elbow, and now it only covers the upper arm.93UREDEO\LQDÀQDO 5 6 7 8 9

For a copy of a similar composition in Rubens’s possession see Wood, Rubens vol. 1, 287290. For Rubens’s copy of this painting see Wood, Rubens vol. 1, 190-197. For other sources see Martin 123n18; Baumstark, “Studien” 158; Hughes 157-165, esp. 162. For a similar caring man at Venus’s side see the Vulcan in Jacopo Tintoretto, “Vulcan, Venus and Amor,” Firenze, Galleria Pitti; Pallucchini/Rossi vol. 1, 164. For Rubens’s comment on the representation of this symbol in another painting see Heinen/Büttner 160. Apparently the overpaint is by Rubens, but further technical investigation seems useful to FRQÀUPWKLVREVHUYDWLRQ

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Fig. 3. Titian: Allegory of the Marchese de Vasto, c. 1530– 1535, oil on canvas, 121 x 107 cm, Paris, Louvre.

step, Rubens painted the putto behind Mars’s back – the red colour of the drapery just shimmers through the putto’s body. More and more Mars is now willing to be disarmed. The god of war has laid down his shield at the feet of his beloved. After taking off the armour from Mars’s arms, one of Venus’s little helpers is loosening the clasps of the harness (Baumstark, “Studien” 227n409). In a moment, the god of war will sit naked on the bed of his beloved. Possibly some visible pentimenti in the face of Mars and Venus may indicate that suitable to this disarming, Rubens changed the facial expression of his actors. The whole painting and the pentimenti indicate that Rubens must have performed the old iconographical concept of ‘Mars disarmed’10 as an impressing step-by-step performative ‘visual speech act.’ This process is directly aligned to Rubens’s peace negotiations. The colours that are related to the two unequal gods may be recognized as the heraldic tinctures of the negotiating parties England and Spain. Blue is the colour of the wrap 10

See for example Jacob Matham: “Mars and Venus,” c. 1611, engraving, 47 x 34,6 cm; Dlugaiczyk 110, 348.

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Fig. 4. Titian: Venus at Her Toilet with two Cupids, c. 1552–1555, Washington, National Gallery of Art.

on Venus’s lap, and the same blue is the colour of the English king’s Most Noble Order of the Garter.11 Red is the colour of the drapery behind Mars, and the same red is the colour of the Habsburgs and of the Spanish king’s banner.12 As a result, it must have been easy to understand Rubens’s stepby-step disarming of Mars as a visual peace overture of Spain, open for WXUQLQJLWVPLOLWDU\SRZHUWRSHDFH7KHLGHQWLÀFDWLRQRI WKHSHDFHIXO9HQXV with England must have been not only a sophisticated attentive compliment to Rubens’s negotiating partners. It even coincides with Rubens’s general description of the English people as “rich and happy in the lap of peace” in his letter to the French courtier Pierre Dupuy from 8 August 1629 (Ruelens/Rooses vol. 5, 147-148). 7KH LGHQWLÀFDWLRQ RI  6SDLQ ZLWK 0DUV EHLQJ ZLOOLQJO\ GLVDUPHG DQG FRQYHUWHGWRWKHSHDFHIXO(QJOLVK9HQXVÀQDOO\FRUUHVSRQGVZLWKWKHLPportant main argument in Rubens’s mission, preserved in one of his letters to Olivarez from 22 July 1629: 11 12

For this order see Raatschen 56. For the heraldic colour of the Habsburgs see Klecker “Purpura.”

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I was to assure the King of England that His Catholic Majesty had the same good wishes for an agreement as he did, etc., and that ‘whenever the King of England should send to Spain a person authorized to negotiate the peace, our King, in turn, would send someone to England,’ etc. (Ruelens/Rooses vol. 5, 120)

Akin to the negotiations the interaction between Venus and Mars in the Dulwich painting appears as a question of mutuality in a step-by-step process: If the English king – like Venus – shows himself as peaceful, how could there be any doubt that the Spanish king for his part would be gladly turned to peace like Mars in this painting. Consequently, the Dulwich picture could have accompanied Rubens’s negotiations perfectly, especially at the initial stage. In this phase, the paintLQJFRXOGKDYHKHOSHGGHÀQHWKHVXEMHFWRI WKHQHJRWLDWLRQVDQGFRQYLQFH the English court of the Spanish king’s willingness to respond to London’s readiness for peace. With its sensual opulence and the smooth spirit of the scene as well as with the complex implications of transferring the actual concerns into terms of mythology, Rubens’s painting should have been the SHUIHFWWRROWRLQVSLUHFRQÀGHQFHWRWULJJHUWKH6SDQLVKLQWHUHVWVJHQWO\DQG WRVHWQHJRWLDWLRQVLQWRDKDUPRQLRXVDQGSUROLÀFDWPRVSKHUH0RUHRYHU a picture like this can inspire a pleasant conversation even about serious WKHPHVDVLWDYRLGVWKHULVNRI VHULRXVFRQÁLFWIRUWKHUHDVRQWKDWLWLVPRUH GLIÀFXOWWRFRQVWUDLQDVSHFLDOPHDQLQJLQLPDJHVWKDQLWLVLQZRUGV)LQDOO\ the visual medium makes it easy to test different viewers’ approaches to the negotiations through their reactions to the painting. Hence the step-by-step evolution seems to prove that Rubens brought himself carefully closer to the different players at the foreign court by performing a perlocutionary ‘visual speech act.’

Encouraging Venus Rubens continued this gradual process by then transferring the upper part of his Dulwich composition to a new canvas. The complex evolution of “Peace and War” needs closer examining. In the support of this painting VHYHQSLHFHVRI FDQYDVZHUHLGHQWLÀHGE\WHFKQLFDOLQYHVWLJDWLRQ7KH\ZHUH VHZQWRJHWKHULQWZRRUPRUHGLVWLQFWVWHSVÀJ0DUWLQ5R\  All in all Rubens must have begun his “Peace and War” by transferring the outlines of his “Venus and Amor” from the Dulwich painting as well as their compositional position to the vertical canvas piece that now is the largest of the preserved “Peace and War” (Heinen, “Loyalität” 26-27). After visualising the conversion of Mars in his Dulwich painting, Rubens now has changed the whole scene. Without Mars but next to a satyr with fruit, 9HQXVLVEHLQJWXUQHGLQWRWKHFHQWUDOÀJXUHRI WKHZHOONQRZQPRWLI RI 

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‘Venus freezing’ obviously alluding to the very popular moral ‘Sine Cerere et Baccho friget Venus.’13 To overcome an atmosphere of suspicion between the enemies EngODQGDQG6SDLQZDVWKHÀUVWSXUSRVHRI 5XEHQV·VPLVVLRQ7KHUHLVDUHSRUW from Sir Isaac Wake to Lord Dorchester from 4 July 1629, that even allied negotiators at the London court were “beginning to suspect their [the Spaniards’] coldnesse.” Rubens for his part is said to have “complayned […] of ye little satisfaction he hath receaved in England” (Ruelens/Rooses vol. 5, 95). And yet some months later Rubens reported back to Olivarez on 21 September 1629 that he had to dissipate new doubts of the English Lord Treasurer, Baron Richard Weston, of the seriousness of the Spanish olive branch (Ruelens/Rooses vol. 5, 202-203). Dinners must have been a perfect opportunity to inspire familiarity and sympathy between Rubens and the English negotiators. For example it is mentioned in a letter of Sir John Coke to Jacques Han, 15 June 1629, that the Earl of Carlisle invited Rubens to dine with him and that Rubens dined with the Lord Treasurer and other important persons (Ruelens/Rooses vol. 5, 62-63). By switching “Venus and Mars” to the tempting motif of ‘Sine Cerere et Baccho friget Venus,’ Rubens obviously promoted the creation of a visual incentive for a climate of sociability in this sense. The iconography of affection, being encouraged by food and wine, could have been very useful to contribute to an atmosphere of pleasant conversation that could establish a basis for gaining the English courtiers’ trust.

Promising Abundance The further evolution of Rubens’s “Peace and War” continued the chain of distinct visual messages from the Dulwich painting. By expanding the small painting on the right-hand side into a horizontal format and adding the expulsion of Mars in the background as well as some nosy kids on the attached piece of canvas, Rubens gradually, but radically changed the whole FRPSRVLWLRQDVZHOODVWKHVHQVHRI HYHU\ÀJXUHPDNLQJWKHZKROHDWPRsphere more and more cheerful. What it represented now was that war had to be expelled at all costs in order to save peace and wealth. This central DUJXPHQW ZDV LQWHQVLÀHG ZKHQ 5XEHQV FRPSOHPHQWHG WKH SUHFLRXV JLIWV of abundance and the appearance of luxury on the left, a peaceful leopard EHORZDQGDÁ\LQJ3XWWRDERYHE\JUDGXDOO\DGGLQJVRPHPRUHVWULSVRI  canvas around the central horizontal format. Probably as a separate and last step he added the companions of Mars and the broader landscape on the small right-hand side. 13

For this motif in other paintings of Rubens see Heinen/Büttner 311-314.

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Fig. 5. Peter Paul Rubens: Peace and War, diagram showing the construction of the canvas support; from: 5R\QRWH ÀJ

In order to understand the intention of these late alterations it would be XVHIXOWRFRQVLGHUWKHÀQDOSLFWXUHFORVHU2QO\QRZWKHZKROHFRPSRVLWLRQ that started in the painting’s nucleus with the intimate mutual entanglement of mother and child is transformed into an overall wavelike rhythm. In a wide swinging motion two Maenads are dancing into the picture. One of them looks with ravished attention to heaven, beating a rhythm with castanets and a tambourine, which gives a forward drive to the whole picture. The contrapostic dance move of her companion enhances the tempo and leads to the centre of the picture. This dancer balances a golden basin overloaded with pompous gold cups and jewellery. She is resting these treasures loosely on her hip – just to swing them round her body and to present them to the group in front of her at the next moment. In her ecstatic dance her silken clothing slides down to below her hip revealing her gleaming white skin. Her golden girdle only very loosely holds the precious cloth. This swing of the fabric moves downwards thus continuing the musical motion into the contours of the squatting satyr’s back. This creature of nature – as part of the entourage of Bacchus crowned with wine-leaves – has bent his goat-like knees only to transfer the verve of the dance to the Horn of Plenty. The music present in the picture seems to resound in the middle D[LV7KHZLQGLQJRI WKHRYHUÁRZLQJ+RUQRI 3OHQW\SLFNVXSWKHUK\WKP IRUDODVWWLPHDQGSRXUVLWRXWLQDPRUHWKDQULFKÁRZRI DSSOHVSHDUV peaches, lemons, pomegranates, white and black grapes and other tempting

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fresh fruit. Like an incoming wave breaks in a foaming spray and multiple ZKLUOV 5XEHQV SOD\V DURXQG WKH RYHUÁRZLQJ +RUQ RI  3OHQW\ ZLWK VRIWO\ intertwining curves. In front of the satyr a leopard, the companion of Bacchus, is ragging on the ground. Peacefully the beast is listening to the muttering satyr and is playing with curly wine tendrils. The motif of predators lying next to children and playing without any aggression with fruit characterises an eternal world of peace. This sign of paradise or the Golden Age pertains to the Old Testament and to Vergil and other antique authors (Baumstark, “Studien” 144). The tail of the big cat is sensuously fondling the ankles of the scantily clad woman. Its body is bending elegantly in the curve it has taken up from the blessings of the Horn of Plenty on one side. On the opposite side the cat’s body prolongs the energizing compositional line that has evolved from the contour of the satyr’s back over his waist cloth downwards – and is continued in the twirled tip of the Horn of Plenty. )URP WKH OHIW D JORZLQJ OLJKW LV VWUHDPLQJ LQWR WKH VFHQH $W ÀUVW LW brightly lightens the bare backside of the dancer. Then it falls directly onto WKHVKDSHRI WKHPRWKHUÀJXUHSUHVLGLQJLQWKHPLGGOHRI WKHSLFWXUH,Q DVXEWOHZD\WKLVÀJXUHZKLFKLVWRZHULQJXSEHKLQGWKHVDW\ULVWDNLQJXS the vigorous energy of the composition culminating in the Horn of Plenty. The upward motion, in which the infant on her lap is reaching greedily for the breast offered by her, as well as the mother’s crossed arms are conQHFWHGWRWKHVHSRZHUIXOFXUYHV)LQDOO\WKHJHVWXUHRI WKHÀQJHUVLQZKLFK the mother offers her nourishing breast and lets a thin stream of milk shoot into the drooling mouth of her baby, echoes the satyr’s arm and the curve of the Horn of Plenty with the cascade of fruits. Thus the nurturing breast of the mother, the milk dripping down the mouth of her baby and the RYHUÁRZLQJ+RUQRI 3OHQW\EHFRPHNH\V\PEROVRI QRXULVKPHQWLWVHOI 5XEHQVFRPSRVHGWKLVFLUFOHRI ÀJXUHVE\PHDQVRI ZKLUOLQJPRYHments as a comprehensive symbol of natural powers. Before you even begin to understand the meaning of the picture you are already being caught by the musical verve, in which all the treasures unfold before your eyes. Even to the curved tail of the peacefully playing predator, the delicate windings of the grape branches protruding from the Horn of Plenty, and to the twine ornament on the silken gown of the dancing woman, Rubens has dispersed the vigorously pulsating powers of the rhythm all over this part of the painting. This whirl only comes to a standstill when the viewer’s eye suddenly meets the eyes of a shy girl next to the Horn of Plenty. Two young boys KDYHOHGKHUDQGKHUHOGHUVLVWHU²ERWKWKHRQO\ÀJXUHVLQWKHSDLQWLQJWKDW are clad in contemporary clothing – to the well of blessing and bid them welcome to the land of plenty. A winged putto, who seems to have been luring the group to this place, has picked a shimmering grape for the little

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child, which she now seems to be moving shyly towards her mouth. Reluctantly she has come to a standstill as if being caught red-handed by the viewer at pinching a bit and wanting to ask now belatedly: “May I?” Her small clumsy hand seems to try to cover up the fruit in her apron, which she held stretched out to catch some more fruit in it just a moment ago. More courageous than the little girl is her elder sister. She is not paying any attention to the apple that the right hand of the putto is holding out for her, but is focussing her look on the masses protruding from the Horn of Plenty, which the putto is offering to her with his left hand. Behind her one RI WKHER\VOHDGVWKHJLUOVZLWKDWRUFKE\ZKLFKKHFDQEHLGHQWLÀHGDV Hymenaeus, the god of marriage (Martin 123n28). He and his companion DUHVSHDNLQJJHQWO\LQDIÀUPDWLRQ:LWKKLVULJKWDUPZKLFKLVLQWLPDWHO\ placed around the elder girl’s shoulder, one of the boys is leading her towards the mountain of fruits from the satyr’s cornucopia, while with his other hand he is pulling the grapes in her direction over her little sister’s head. She is a bit reluctant in her approach to grip the fruit, and for a moment it seems as if the elder girl was about to kneel down in reverence. But the hem of her skirt has already been lifted by her in order to collect the treasures of nature in it. For her subtle combination of courage and respect she is being rewarded twice in the picture, as the other boy is crowning her ZLWKDZUHDWKRI ÁRZHUVMXVWDWWKHPRPHQWZKHQVKHLVUHDG\WRDFFHSW the present. Like in a mirror the viewers, attracted by the gifts of nature, are confronted with their own insecurity in the face of such overwhelming promises by meeting the look of the widely opened eyes of the little girl. But then again viewers focus back on the promised fruits guided by the determined SURÀOH RI  WKH ROGHU JLUO (DFK EHKROGHU ZKR LV VWLOO NHHSLQJ KLV GLVWDQFH when standing in front of the picture, is certain to be seduced by the offered delights in a similar manner as the little girls. Immediately connected with the viewer by their contemporary clothes and the little girl’s direct gaze out of the picture, the children demonstrate how you can overcome shyness and mistrust towards such superabundant gifts. In the foreground of the picture Rubens hereby opens up a seductive invitation to unrestricted enjoyment. Just looking at his scene the viewer is convinced to imagine KLPVHOI IDURI DQ\FRQÁLFWVEHLQJLPPHUVHGLQWRWKLVHFVWDWLFHWHUQDOSDUDdise of wealth, peace and delight, where even dangerous predators turn their animally instincts to bunches of grapes.

Introducing Hymenaeus It is remarkable that it is the god of marriage who directs the way to the world of Pax and Plutus. Indeed the initiative for a wedding played an im-

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portant role in Rubens’s peace negotiations. In a letter from 30 June 1629 Rubens reported to Olivarez that discussions are still being held here, and the King himself told me in a friendly way that it would be advisable to propose some marriage between the children of the Count Palatine and the brother of the Duke of Bavaria. No one has any idea of the ages and qualities of these young people, but if there is any conformity between them, all would approve the alliance. (Ruelens/Rooses vol. 5, 191; see also 88)

Such a marriage had already been discussed in Madrid in 1621 with the addition that the son of the Duke Palatinate should be educated as a Catholic (Gardiner vol. 4, 328-329, 368-369). Indeed this marriage could possibly have resolved the main barrier in the Anglo-Spanish peace negotiations and FRXOGKDYHSDFLÀHGWKHPDLQWURXEOHVSRWRI WKH7KLUW\@ZKHQZHEHJLQWRULGLFXOHWKHVWRU\ of George and the cherry tree and quit teaching it to our children, [...] something of the color and imagination has departed from American life [...] it is this something that I am interested in helping to preserve. (Wood)

To counter this loss of history, reanimate the past, and reinstate nationalistic values, Wood chose to revitalize history painting, a mode of art considered outdated by modernists because of its historical, didactic, and narrative qualities. Through Parson Weems’ Fable, the artist-as-history painter aimed to re-inculcate and perpetuate fundamental American values of honHVW\LQWHJULW\DQGUHVSRQVLELOLW\DVSHUVRQLÀHGE\*HRUJH:DVKLQJWRQDQG transmitted to generations by the cherry tree anecdote that sprang from Mason Locke Weems’ imagination. Parson Weems prefaces his tale by describing the elder Washington’s efforts to inspire his son “with an early love of truth” (10). To prove the father’s success in achieving his goal, Weems offers an anecdote “too valuable to be lost, and too true to be doubted [...]” (11-12). The story begins with young George being “the wealthy master of a hatchet! of which, like most boys, he was immoderately fond, and was constantly going about chopping everything that came in his way” (Weems 12; emphasis in the original). Unfortunately, a young cherry tree favored by his father came his way. When asked, no one could tell the elder Washington who had cut his tree, then George and his hatchet appeared: George, said his father, do you know who killed that beautiful little cherry-tree yonder in the garden? This was a tough question; and George staggered under it for a moment; but quickly recovered himself; and looking at his father, with the sweet face of youth brightened with the inexpressible charm of all-conquering truth, he bravely cried out, “I can’t tell a lie, Pa; you know I can’t tell a lie. I did cut it with my hatchet.” – Run to my arms, you dearest boy, cried his father in transports, run to my arms; glad am I, George, that you killed my tree, for you have paid me for it a thousand fold. Such an act of heroism in my son is worth more than a thousand trees, though blossomed with silver and their fruits of purest gold. (Weems 12)

Weems’ tale of truthfulness became a staple of American collective memory and national iconography, appearing in a myriad of popular visual culture forms, including prints, postcards, magazine illustrations, and newspaper editorial cartoons. Weems’ anecdote was recognized as fabular well before Wood’s Parson Weems’ Fable entered into the tradition of cherry tree images. As a 1938 writer, who expressed concern about the “inexcusable” perpetuation of

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fables like that of Washington and his hatchet, lamented: “But, in spite of modern research, in spite of the fact that the truth has been told again and again, a surprising number of these old wives’ tales and mythic legends persist, even in the most recent public-school histories” (Schachner 420; 414). Grant Wood, however, feared that modern historical research was contributing to the demise of such tales and mythic legends, and that they would soon be written out of the narrative of American nationalism and identity.

III. The artist’s painting of the Weems tale was generated by a desire to reassert American mythology after reading a 1938 Atlantic Monthly article by Howard Mumford Jones. In his essay, Jones queried: “Why has American democracy mislaid its mythology and lost its glamour?” (Jones 586). He answered his own question by claiming: “we have had our own grand opera until, under the combined attacks of ‘progressive’ educators, debunking biographers and social historians, we grew shamefaced about it” (Jones 586). Jones lamented that while Americans possess “a picturesque and romantic past, [...] we seem bent on making [it] as dull and modern as we can” (Jones 591). In a passage that clearly captured Grant Wood’s imagination, Jones wrote: I do not propose that on a given date all Americans shall devoutly believe that Washington cut down the cherry tree, cheerfully remarking, “Father I cannot tell a lie.” But what seems to have happened is that in our enthusiasm for social forces we have omitted the thrilling anecdotes [...] and human drama. (591)

Parson Weems’ Fable appeared the year after Jones’ article. Wood’s ambitions were not, however, driven solely by nationalistic and historical nostalgia. He was not only attempting to rescue the past from the present, but also to resuscitate the past in order to address the present. This is evident when he stated: I sincerely hope that this painting will reawaken interest in the cherry tree and other bits of American folklore that are too good to lose. In our present unsettled times, when democracy is threatened on all sides, the preservation of our folklore is more important than generally realized [...] while our own patriotic mythology has been increasingly discredited and abandoned, the dictator nations have been building up their respective mythologies and have succeeded [in Jones’ words] in “making patriotism glamorous.” (Wood)

Weems’ anecdote served as Wood’s antidote to what he perceived to be the GLPLQLVKLQJYLYLGQHVVDQGVLJQLÀFDQFHRI QDWLRQDOP\WKRORJ\ With Parson Weems’ Fable being completed at the end of 1939 – a year Life magazine described as “fear-ridden” (“Fascism in America” 57) – it is easy to read (as recent scholars have) the distant storm clouds as signaling not only the anger of the elder Washington, but also the increasingly unsettled world that concerned Grant Wood and to which he addressed his painting.

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Fig. 2. Otto Hagel photograph, Life March 7, 1938: 17.

In visualizing a historical narrative deeply embedded in American collective memory and identity, Parson Weems’ Fable embodies historian Eric Foner’s claim that “like many other peoples, we have always looked to history for a VHQVHRI QDWLRQDOFRKHVLYHQHVVµDQG´KDYHORQJEHHQREVHVVHGZLWKGHÀQLtions of ‘Americanness’” (150-151). With, as Wood noted, democracy being threatened on all sides, the painting offered a reminder of a core American value – the power of truth – as a means of assuaging national anxiety and bolstering collective resolve in the face of impending crisis. Wood likely encountered magazine photographs that showed American fascists “making patriotism glamorous” by usurping ‘the’ image of George Washington ÀJ  . By his inclusion of the same Gilbert Stuart portrait in Parson Weems’ Fable, Wood not only appropriates an American icon, but also reclaims Washington’s national identity from fascist exploitation. As Cecile Whiting noted, Wood “restored a folktale about Washington’s youth for the sake of fortifying American patriotism in the face of the fascist threat” (100).4 Ironically, however, Life magazine reported in 1940 that his composition 4

See also Biel.

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Fig. 3. Charles Willson Peale, The Artist in His Museum, 1822, Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Gift of Mrs. Sarah Harrison (The Joseph Harrison, Jr. Collection).

raised the dander of literal-minded patriots all over the country [...] [who] bombarded Wood with angry letters because he depicted the cherry-tree story frankly as a fable invented by Parson Weems, and accused him of “debunking” Washington. (“Parson Weems’ Fable” 33)

Nevertheless, the painting was purchased by the writer John P. Marquand for the substantial sum of $10,000, the day after it arrived at the artist’s New York gallery in late December 1939.

IV. 7KHÀJXUHRI 3DUVRQ:HHPV²QRWEDVHGRQDSRUWUDLWRI :HHPVEXWUDWKHU modeled on John Briggs, a professor of political science at the University of Iowa – has been continually and correctly linked to Charles Willson Peale’s self-portrait of 1822, titled The Artist in His Museum ÀJ 

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*UDQW :RRG QHYHU LGHQWLÀHG WKLV ODUJH RLO RQ FDQYDV SDLQWLQJ DV KLV VSHFLÀFVRXUFHRULQVSLUDWLRQEXWKHGLGVD\WKDW´RQHRI WKHWKLQJVDERXW the old Colonial portraits that has always amused me is the device of having a person in the foreground holding back a curtain from or pointing at a scene” (Wood). In fact, this curtain-holding motif is rarely seen in American Colonial or Early Republic portraiture. Wood clearly had Peale’s 1822 painting in mind, but what has not been pointed out in the literature on Parson Weems’ Fable is the reproduction of Peale’s work published in Life on June 19, 1939, just when Wood would have been commencing work on his painting. Peale’s portrait, part of a popular exhibition titled “Life in America” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, hung in one of “nine cool galleries >@LQZKLFKYLVLWRUVWRWKH>:RUOG·V@)DLUFDQÀQGUHIXJHIURPWKH:RUOG of Tomorrow” (“Life in America” 26). No doubt Wood, like millions of Americans, read Life; he was even pictured twice in an article on the University of Iowa art school that the magazine published two weeks prior to its issue with Peale’s painting (“The Flowering” 54-55). In its commentary on the Metropolitan Museum’s exhibit, Life magazine singled out the American spirit of Peale’s painting. While scholars have rightly surmised that Wood was referencing Peale’s painting, its reproduction in Life FRQÀUPVWKDWVXSposition and suggests the magazine image served as the artist’s immediate compositional source. Wood’s adaptation of the Peale portrait was felicitous, for Charles Willson Peale was a showman not unlike Parson Weems. In his self-portrait, the entrepreneurial Peale (who continually promoted his museum and lobbied for the federal government to acquire it) pulls back the curtain to reveal his Philadelphia museum, a site that he declared offered the world in miniature. Appropriating Peale’s pose, Grant Wood depicts the parson-turned-bookseller-turnedauthor unveiling his world of fable. The theatricality of Peale’s composition – with its master of ceremonies and melodramatic gestures – undoubtedly appealed to Wood’s longstanding interests in and connections to the theater.5 When living in Cedar Rapids, Wood participated in the community theater, mainly by designing sets, but he had also, on one occasion, co-authored a play. His studio featured a space designed as a theater, set off with curtains. He also decorated a wagon he owned with a landscape framed with painted theater-like curtains. When in Iowa City in the mid-1930s, Wood helped produce what could only be called a theatrical environment to entertain visiting VSHDNHUVEHIRUHDQGDIWHUOHFWXUHVVSRQVRUHGE\DORFDOFOXE2QDÁRRURYHU a restaurant, the artist, who had once worked as an interior designer, created a Victorian parlor and dining room. On the walls hung old photographs and chromolithographs, and on a table was an old red velvet-covered album of 5

As I write this essay, an exhibition (“Theatrical Productions: Grant Wood’s Vision of History”) focusing on connections between the artist and his interest in the theater is being organized by Shirley Reece-Hughes of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art.

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photographs – not truly vintage ones, however, but rather images of the artist and his cohort dressed up as Victorians. Among the artist’s good friends in Iowa City was Vance Morton, a professor of drama at the university, who played the role of Washington’s father when Wood painted Parson Weems’ Fable. Morton’s son, James, acted as George Washington.6 7KHDUWLVW·VLQWHUHVWLQSOD\DFWLQJDQGDUWLÀFHOHDGVWRDQLQWULJXLQJDVpect of Parson Weems’ Fable – its relationship to the concept of kitsch. In ZKDWEHFDPHDQLPPHQVHO\LQÁXHQWLDOHVVD\²´$YDQW*DUGHDQG.LWVFKµ published in 1939, the date of Parson Weems’ Fable – the critic Clement Greenberg condemned kitsch as being ersatz culture that offers only vicarious experiences and faked sensations. Without doubt Greenberg would have regarded Parson Weems’ Fable, with its theatrical narrativity and historicism, as kitsch. For Greenberg, kitsch represents the rear guard to the modernist avant garde. The avant garde serves as the only living culture, while kitsch is the false culture of comics, Hollywood movies, popular literature, and advertisements. Kitsch is easy, sentimental, and commercial. The compositional correlation between Parson Weems’ Fable and a prevalent type of DGYHUWLVLQJOD\RXWRI WKHVÀJ ZRXOGLQ*UHHQEHUJLDQWHUPVIXUther solidify the painting’s kitsch-like status. Modern advertising practices were well known to Grant Wood, whose prints published by the Associated American Artists reached a mass audience through magazine ads and mail-order catalogues. The artist also pitched his own self-designed lounge chair in ads. Grant Wood peddled furniture, while Parson Weems, who was dubbed a “salesman without a peer” in a 1928 biography (Kellock 191), peddled books and American mythology.

V. Ironically, both Greenberg’s essay of 1939 and Wood’s painting of the same year were produced for fundamentally the same reason – in response to the specter of war and totalitarianism. Grant Wood’s concern that “democracy is threatened on all sides” resonated with Greenberg’s belief that the encouragement of kitsch’s debased standard of quality was one way in which totalitarian regimes sought to ingratiate themselves with their subjects. Despite their different attitudes toward kitsch, Greenberg’s essay and Wood’s painting share an essential political concern and motivation. Nevertheless, as a kitsch-informed object, Parson Weems’ Fable would, in Greenberg’s 6

It is serendipitous that the boy who conveyed the moral character of Washington in Wood’s composition would in later life become the Very Reverend James Parks Morton, Dean of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. It is ironic that in 2006, vandals chopped off the head of the statue of George Washington near the high altar of the Cathedral.

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Fig. 4. Cast Iron Pipe Research Association advertisement, Time December 11, 1939: 70.

scheme of things, be inherently anti-modernist. Yet the painting exhibits a surprising number of qualities that are modernist, if not avant-garde. Compositionally, the painting’s highly exaggerated perspective – what might be called its expressive distortion – calls to mind the paintings of Giorgio de Chirico and the Surrealists, as do the strikingly harsh, odd shadows cast E\WKHÀJXUHV6WUDQJHWRRLVWKHREVHVVLYHDJLWDWHGKDWFKLQJWKDWPDNHVXS WKHODZQDQGWKHSDUVRQ·VFRDW6W\OL]HGDQGVLPSOLÀHGFRPSRVLWLRQDOIRUPV link the painting to modernist interests in abstraction, while the rendering’s immaculate clarity and streamlining echoes essential attributes of Machine $JHDUWDQGGHVLJQ7KHSDLQWLQJUHÁHFWVDVPRGHUQLVWIDVFLQDWLRQZLWK folklore and, as mentioned, the composition resonates with that most modern phenomenon – advertising. The incongruous juxtaposition of the mature Washington’s head to the body of a child employs one of the basic modernist techniques: collage, a form closely associated with the avant-gardism of cubism and the anti-establishment, playful and satirical attitude of Dada. By

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utilizing the ‘ready-made’ Athenaeum portrait, along with the Peale-derived image of Weems raising the curtain to reveal his invented world, Grant Wood SRNHVIXQDWEXWDOVRUDLVHVVHULRXVPRGHUQLVWFRQFHUQVDERXWZKDWGHÀQHV ‘the authentic’ and how modes of representation mediate reality. The Stuart SRUWUDLWDWRSWKHER\·VERG\ERWKSHUVRQLÀHVDQGVSRRIVWKHROGDGDJHRI  the child being the father to the man. Further, because Stuart’s Athenaeum OLNHQHVVPRUHWKDQDQ\RWKHU:DVKLQJWRQSRUWUDLWSHUVRQLÀHVWKHLPDJHRI  the ‘Father of His Country,’ the boy with the hatchet is depicted as being the older of the two fathers. In a remarkable twist, Grant Wood conjures the child Washington as father to the man he became, as father of his country DQGDVIDWKHUÀJXUHWRKLVRZQIDWKHU$QGORRPLQJRYHUDOOLV3DUVRQ:HHPV the father of the cherry tree story. Given the picture’s ironic character, its compositional and metaphorical circularity, its nod to modern advertising, streamlining style and collage, it is not surprising that Grant Wood referred to himself as a “modernist” (Corn, “Lecture”).7

VI. 0RGHUQLVWDPELJXLW\DQGKXPRULQIRUPWKHSDLQWLQJZLWKLWVÀFWLYHVWDJH like representation of the man who falsely claimed to be rector of Mount Vernon Parish in order to gain credibility to support his fabricated story about the importance and Americanness of telling the truth. Beginning with Weems’ awkward underhanded way of lifting the curtain, the style and composition of Parson Weems’ Fable HPSKDVL]HZLWW\DUWLÀFLDOLW\$V:DQGD Corn has astutely noted: Weems and Grant Wood are alter egos, both creators of lore, both enriching the national imagination with colorful stories about America’s heritage. Fables, the painting makes clear, are inventions; they are based on history but transformed by the artist into colorful tales. (Corn, Grant Wood 120)

By combining tradition and modernism, Parson Weems’ Fable credits and celebrates the cherry tree myth’s power and its rootedness in and ongoing contribution to American identity and nationalism. How ingrained the cherry tree legend is in the national memory and identity is evident by the many visual representations of the story that continue to be part of the visual culture of the late twentieth and the early WZHQW\ÀUVWFHQWXULHV6XFKLPDJHVZHUHSDUWLFXODUO\DEXQGDQWGXULQJWKH presidencies of William J. Clinton and George W. Bush, when editorial cartoons were deployed to depict both leaders satirically in numerous “I can’t tell a lie” situations. For example, in 1998 editorial cartoonist Etta Hulme 7

Numerous references to Regionalism as a style of modern art appear throughout Doss “Catering.”

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Fig. 5. Book Jacket, University of Virginia Press, 2010.

published an image titled “William Jefferson Clinton/The Early Years,” in which the young Clinton, hatchet in hand, stands by the cut down tree and declares to his scowling father, “I cannot make a misstatement. But I do have some talking points [...]”; a 2003 editorial cartoon by Mike Luckovich depicts an axe-wielding George W. Bush asserting “The CIA approved it [...]” as the chopped cherry tree falls.8 Parson Weems’ Fable itself has secured its own place in the tradition of representing the cherry tree mythology by being reproduced in newspaper articles and on the covers of books concerning honesty and lying in AmerLFDÀJ 97KHIUHTXHQWDSSURSULDWLRQRI WKHSDLQWLQJDIÀUPVLWVSRZHUDV a work of art and as potent visualization of American nationalism. In truth, Grant Wood succeeded in promoting Americanness by reinvigorating one of the nation’s foundational myths. 8

The Hulme cartoon appeared in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Dec. 16, 1998, while the Luckovitch cartoon was published in the Dallas Morning News, July 19, 2003.   )RULQVWDQFHWKHSDLQWLQJDSSHDUVRYHUWKHWLWOH²´,&DQQRW7HOOD/LH)URPDQ$PSOLÀFDtion)” – of an article by Richard Siklos in the New York Times, Feb. 5, 2006, and on the cover of Benjamin Ginsberg’s 2007 book The American Lie: Government by the People and Other Political Fables.

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Works Cited Biel, Stephen: “Parson Weems Fights Fascism.” Common-Place 6.4 (July 2006). Web. 3 July 2008. http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/cp/vol-06/no-04/biel. Corn, Wanda M.: Grant Wood: The Regionalist Vision. New Haven, London 1983. —: “Lecture on Grant Wood.” National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 24 July 1995. Dennis, James M.: Renegade Regionalists: The Independence of Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton, and John Steuart Curry. Madison 1998. Doss, Erika: Benton, Pollock and the Politics of Modernism: From Regionalism to Abstract Expressionism. Chicago, London 1991. —: “Catering to Consumerism: Associated American Artists and the Marketing of Modern Art, 1934-1958.” Winterthur Portfolio 26 (Summer-Autumn 1991): 143-167. Evans, R. Tripp: Grant Wood: A Life. New York 2010. “Fascism in America.” Life 6 Mar. 1939: 57-63. “The Flowering of the Valley: Iowa Trains Creative Artists.” Life 15 June 1939: 54-55. Foner, Eric: Who Owns History? Rethinking the Past in a Changing World. New York 2002. Greenberg, Clement: “Avant-Garde and Kitsch.” Partisan Review 6 (1939): 34-39. Jones, Howard Mumford: “Patriotism – But How?” Atlantic Monthly 162 (1938): 585592. Kammen, Michael: Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture. New York 1991. Kellock, Harold: Parson Weems and the Cherry Tree. New York, London 1928. “Life in America.” Life 19 June 1939: 26-31. Marling, Karal Ann: George Washington Slept Here: Colonial Revivals and American Culture, 1876-1986. Cambridge, MA, London 1988. Neal, John: Randolph: A Novel. Vol. 2. Philadelphia 1823. “Parson Weems’ Fable.” Life 19 Feb. 1940: 32-33. Rydell, Robert W.: World of Fairs: The Century-of-Progress Expositions. Chicago, London 1993. Schachner, Nathan: “Do School-Books Tell the Truth?” American Mercury 45 (1938): 414-420. “Washington Peruke.” Life 6 Feb. 1939: cover, 37. Weems, Mason L.: The Life of Washington. Ed. Marcus Cunliffe. Cambridge, MA 1962. Whiting, Cecile: Antifascism in American Art. New Haven, London 1989. Wood, Grant: “A Statement from Grant Wood Concerning his Painting Parson Weems’ Fable.” Unpaginated transcript dated January 2, 1940. Amon Carter Museum of $PHULFDQ$UW)RUW:RUWKFXUDWRULDOÀOHV

Fig. 1. “Einst. Jetzt, ” Der Floh 39.40 (Okt. 1907): 4.

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Masculinity, Sexuality, and the German Nation: The Eulenburg Scandals and Kaiser Wilhelm II in Political Cartoons1 CLAUDIA BRUNS

Introduction Between 1907 and 1909 the German public was regaled with daily revelations about the allegedly abnormal and effeminate sexuality displayed by the Kaiser’s circle of friends and advisers, the generals, and the Imperial Chancellor. More than 350 political cartoons and substantially more detailed trial reports were placed in the public domain and were key to the development of certain discursive associations between masculinity, (homo)sexuality, and the nation. “What happened in camera in the courtroom at 1.30 p.m.,” wrote the medical expert witness Magnus Hirschfeld in his court report, was transmitted next day, with elaborations, to a large section of the left-wing and right-wing press. [...] It eventually ended up in innumerable local rags, was [...] taken up by the gutter press and thus [...] developed an immense power of suggestion among all circles of society. (Hirschfeld 4)2

It was not only in Germany that people poked fun at the allegedly homosexual tendencies of Germany’s aristocracy and leading generals. All over Europe they became the butt of jokes. For example, an Austrian cartoon in the magazine Der Floh, published 6 October 1907, depicting two pairs of riding boots outside a closed door, suggested that a rendezvous was taking place here between two men. In a less decadent but apparently far distant SDVWWKHUHKDGRQFHEHHQDKHWHURVH[XDOSDLURI VKRHVÀJ ,QIDFWDFcording to Hirschfeld, “nothing annoyed so many people as the circumstance that, in connection with [the trials], a slur was cast on the honour of our army and the discipline on which its greatness and reputation is based” 1

2

Translation by Angela Davies (GHIL) / Jani Fulton. A shorter German version of this article was published in: Brunotte, Ulrike, and Rainer Herrn (eds.): Männlichkeiten und Moderne. Geschlecht in den Wissenskulturen um 1900. Bielefeld 2008, 77-96. Unless indicated otherwise, the quotations from Hirschfeld, Harden, Tägliche Rundschau, and von Bülow were translated by Angela Davies.

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(Hirschfeld 20). Germany’s view of itself and its reputation seemed to be at stake. Obviously the honour of the nation was tied to particular forms of male behaviour which, over the course of the trials, were described in detail while being sexualized at the same time. The exposure of homosexual desire in the leading circles around Wilhelm II served to criticise a particular unparliamentary political style, strongly associated with the Kaiser personally and his aristocratic circle, in terms of sexual codes as an expression of the state’s lack of masculinity. The lack of real masculinity was not only linked with the decadent aristocracy but also presented as a pathological sexual abnormality and a sign of ill-health. Conversely, the bourgeoisie came to be seen as the guarantor of a soldierly, healthy masculinity and morality, and was promoted to the role of saviour of the fatherland. The prototypical counter-model was not just WKHDULVWRFUDWEXWDOVRWKHÀJXUHRI WKHKRPRVH[XDOZKLFKRYHUMXVWDIHZ years, came to symbolize the threat of a feminization of the state and the German nation (zur Nieden, “Freundesliebe” 329-337; Baumgardt 21). As a medical concept, homosexuality had not had a long history. For a long time, sodomy was regarded more as a sin and a vice than as a medical deviation from the norm. Not until the last third of the nineteenth century did medical men (working with homosexuals) attempt to establish their particular competence in distinguishing between healthy and unhealthy masculinity. The majority of doctors saw homosexual love as a pathological and perverse deviation from the norm. However, around 1900 Magnus Hirschfeld, a doctor from Berlin, actively advocated more tolerance for what was known as the third sex – in his view, a natural and innate condition for which one should be pitied, not punished. Incidentally, Hirschfeld set up the Wissenschaftlich-humanitäre Komitee in direct response to Oscar Wilde’s conviction in London in 1895 and his imprisonment with hard labour for his infringement of the Criminal Law Amendment Act. In Germany, paragraph 175 of the penal code made immoral acts between men liable to punishment. Hirschfeld had launched a relatively successful petition against this paragraph, and his campaign found many sympathizers among bourgeois intellectuals. Yet despite the widespread effect of Hirschfeld’s initiative and DQH[SORVLRQLQWKHSURGXFWLRQRI PHGLFDODQGVFLHQWLÀFOLWHUDWXUHRQFRQtrary sexual feeling around 1900, it was really the trials around the sexual scandals that precipitated the public breakthrough of the modern concept of homosexuality. Instead of being a concealed sin, homosexuality became a widely discussed social topic.

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* From the start, in the eyes of the German public, homosexuality was associated in a highly concrete and lasting way with high politics and a sort of conspiratorial male bonding, based on the assumption of a close connection between the political, social, and sexual order. Contemporaries found this plausible, largely because it was developed by a number of newly HPHUJLQJÀHOGVRI GLVFRXUVHDWWKHVDPHWLPHLQFOXGLQJVH[RORJ\HWKQROogy, and psychoanalysis.3 The position of ethnologist Ferdinand KarschHaack may be seen as typical of this trend. In 1911 he wrote: “Sexual love may not only [...] have a social impact [...] rather it must.”4 Thus, the type of sexual love practised says something about the sort of social organization that a group has imposed on itself. This article tries to show how a discursive connection was built up historically between the construction of the collective and the individual subject in which masculinity and sexuality were central links. Caricatures played an important role in the process. In the fragmented German Confederation, political satire was subject to numerous censorship laws, its acuity and artistic qualities developing only slowly, in contrast to France and England. This changed after the foundation of the German Empire in 1871. By the end of the nineteenth century, magazines with a humorous or satirical bent were blossoming anew. This was in part due to the gradual loosening of censorship restrictions: by 1897, the number of prosecutions resulting from MajestätsbeleidigungOqVHPDMHVWp EODVSKHP\LQGHFHQF\RUgrobem Unfug (general mischief) sank continuously, to a total of only 14 in 1909 (Rebentisch 58-60). Caricatures appear as spontaneous public reaction to public events which have not yet been fully processed (Steakley, Freunde 18), they expose elements of the cultural unconsciousness, allowing inferences about dominant mentalities and common attitudes regarding political and social events. Caricatures often claim to represent common sense positions, which, however, upon closer examination reveal themselves as being tied to contemporary moral attitudes or social and political beliefs and are subject to historical change. The caricatures related to the Eulenburg scandal have in common that while they appear to critique the aristocracy, they nevertheless uphold values such as national pride and security. They also appear to criticise the undermining of military discipline, but in doing so, retain an unquestioning, uncritical view of Prussian traditions. In mocking and ren-

3 4

On the connection of sexual and social order also cf. Coward 9-12; Bruns. Karsch-Haack – in contrast to Benedict Friedlaender – did not assume that same-sex love could be explained by the general social predisposition of human kind (Karsch-Haack, Das gleichgeschlechtliche Leben 8, 659-660); on the controversy with Friedlaender cf. Karsch-Haack, Beruht die gleichgeschlechtliche Liebe auf Soziabilität?

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dering problematic the modernist erosion of gender construction, they are also calling indirectly for its restitution (Steakley, Freunde 22). In addition to allusions to male homosexuality, the cartoons which accompanied the scandal trials also reveal anti-Semitic reactions. This suggests a connection between the two exclusion strategies and shows the extent to which the categories of race, class, and gender permeated even WKHUHDOPRI KLJKSROLWLFV,QWKHIROORZLQJDUWLFOH,ZLOOÀUVWGHVFULEHWKH attacks of the bourgeois journalist Maximilian Harden on the Liebenberger Tafelrunde, a group surrounding Prince Philipp von Eulenburg-Hertefeld (1847-1921). Thereafter I shall analyse the course taken by the trials, and, ÀQDOO\H[SORUHWKHLUDPELYDOHQWLPSDFWRQDQGFRQVHTXHQFHVIRUDVVRFLDtions between masculinity, sexuality, and politics.

Harden’s Attacks on the Liebenberger Tafelrunde From 1902, the Berlin journalist and publisher of Die Zukunft, one of GerPDQ\·VPRVWLQÁXHQWLDOSROLWLFDOZHHNOLHV0D[LPLOLDQ +DUGHQ UHDOQDPH Maximilian Witkowski) (1861-1927) began deliberately collecting material to discredit Prince Eulenburg and his circle. Like Bismark, Harden had long FRQVLGHUHG (XOHQEXUJ·V LQÁXHQFH RQ WKH .DLVHU SROLWLFDOO\ TXHVWLRQDEOH In November 1906 Harden criticised the fact that Eulenburg took part in PDNLQJDSSRLQWPHQWVWRKLJKSROLWLFDORIÀFH+DUGHQ´3UlOXGLXPµ  that he encouraged the Kaiser’s tendency to favour an absolutist policy of personal rule (Harden, “Dies Irae” 302; Harden, “Präludium” 266), and that he contributed substantially to the Kaiser’s pursuit of reckless, paciÀVWDQG)UDQFRSKLOHSROLFLHV,QIDFWGXULQJKLVWLPHDVDVWXGHQWDQGGXULQJWKHPLOLWDU\FDUHHUREOLJDWRU\IRURQHRI KLVFODVVWKH*XDUGVRIÀFHU Philipp Friedrich Karl Alexander Botho Fürst zu Eulenburg and Hertefeld Graf von Sandels (1847-1921), son of a Prussian major and landowner in Königsberg, had already collected a circle of aristocratic friends which TXLFNO\EHFDPHLQÁXHQWLDOEHFDXVHRI LWVFRQWDFWVZLWK&URZQ3ULQFH:LOhelm Viktor Albert (later to be Kaiser Wilhelm II). In addition to Axel von Varnbüler, later to become embassy secretary, General Kuno von Moltke was among those at the heart of the circle.5 All of its members belonged to the Prussian aristocracy and had pursued a military or diplomatic career. Moltke was aide-de-camp of the Emperor until 1902, and then town major of Berlin from 1905 to 1907. The men were linked by an extremely emotional and romantic friendship which, on their own testimony, differed from the socially dominant ideal of masculinity.6 Taking romantic notions 5 

On the members of the circle of friends cf. Hull, “Kaiser Wilhelm II.” 194-195. ,QWKLVYHLQ$[HOYRQ9DUQEOHUGHOLEHUDWHVRQWKHÁDZHGVRFLHWDOLGHDORI PDVFXOLQLW\LQD letter from 1898, an ideal that the sensitive, literary-educated men like e.g. Dostojewskij may not be able to conform to (Hergemöller 707).

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of friendship as a model, they played music and wrote poems together,7 and used tender nicknames for each other, as the trials later revealed. When Wilhelm II came to power in 1888, Eulenburg became one of .DLVHU·V PRVW LPSRUWDQW DGYLVHUV DQG KLV SHUVRQDO FRQÀGDQWH 5|KO  +XOO´.DLVHU:LOKHOP,,µ +HKDGDQLPSRUWDQWLQÁXHQFHRQWKH Kaiser’s worldview, not least on his anti-Semitism (Hull, “Kaiser Wilhelm II.” 215), and he succeeded in having his friends appointed to important political posts. Thus, he supported Bernhard von Bülow’s appointment as Imperial Chancellor. Eulenburg entertained the Kaiser at his estate, Liebenberg, near Templin (north of Berlin), providing hunting, singing, and theatrical performances which often degenerated into travesties. Burgrave (from 1900: Prince) Eberhard zu Dohna-Schlobitten (1846-1905) frequently played women’s parts +HUJHP|OOHU DQGWKHRIÀFHUDQGWKHDWUHPDQDJHU*HRUJYRQ+Osen-Häseler (1858-1908), one of the Kaiser’s former gambling partners, entertained the group with his performances as a prima ballerina in a tutu. In letters exchanged between the friends in this group, the Kaiser was often chummily called das Liebchen (sweetheart), as Harden’s articles were to reveal to the German public.8 Isabel V. Hull suspects that the Kaiser was seeking nourishment for his sensitive, cultivated side among the Liebenberg circle, while for outward show he liked to surround himself with the brilliance of soldierly masculinity (Hull, “Kaiser Wilhelm II.” 204). From 1906, Harden tried to increase the pressure on Eulenburg by publishing a series of articles in which he pointed to his so-called abnormal tendencies by calling him Phili, an allusion to the customs of the Liebenberg circle (Harden, “Präludium” 264-266). According to his own testimony, Harden was not interested in pursuing and exposing criminal offences DJDLQVWSDUDJUDSK,QIDFWLQKHZDVWKHÀUVWSXEOLVKHUWRVLJQ the petition of the Wissenschaftlich-humanitäre Komitee lobbying for the paraJUDSKWREHUHSHDOHG6WHDNOH\´,FRQRJUDSK\µ ,QKLVÀQDOVWDWHPHQW at the Moltke-Harden trial, however, he distanced himself in principle from Hirschfeld’s view of the equality of homosexuals: Where several of them gather, they may cause harm unawares, especially at court, where normal men have a hard enough time. And if, as has become the fashion nowadays, the abnormal ones are praised as better, more noble human beings, then the healthy ones are driven to ruination. (Harden, “Schlussvortrag” 185)

In claiming that ‘any man who has any feminine inclinations at all is absolutely unsuited for politics (cf. Harden, “Schlussvortrag” 185),’ Harden was 7

8

Eulenburg’s Rosenlieder (songs of roses) made him famous in Germany in the 1880s and 1890s. Moltke composed music for orchestra and regiment. Görtz and Hülsken staged dramas and comedies (Hull, “Kaiser Wilhelm II.” 86). This, for instance, was done in a letter by Axel von Varnbüler to Kuno von Moltke on 15 April 1898 (Röhl 128-129).

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Fig. 2. “Neues Preußisches Wappen,” Jugend 45 (1907): 1028.

alluding to the theory of the third sex (a female soul in a male body) and was in tune with the anti-feminist consensus in Germany at the time. Harden saw it as his patriotic duty to liberate the Kaiser from the unmanly, weak and womanly advisers who were keeping him from reality and thus preventing him from pursuing active Realpolitik (cf. Harden, “Schlussvortrag” 196). “In Germany our politics are much too soft and sweet,” Harden wrote in the journal Zukunft. He demanded: “The German Kaiser should and must have healthy men around him!’ (Harden qtd. in Sombart 40). Eulenburg was to be politically emasculated, and should “disappear from the limelight of German politics” (Harden, “Schlussvortrag” 192). The Munich weekly journal Die JugendIRXQGHGLQZDVLQÁXHQWLDO in literary and artistic circles, with satirical and critical texts featuring promiQHQWO\$FDUWRRQÀJ GHSLFWVWKH/LHEHQEHUJYHUVLRQ RI  WKH3UXVVLDQ coat of arms, alluding to the feminizing impact on the state of Eulenburg’s FLUFOH7ZRFKHUXEOLNHDQJHOVÁDQNLQJWKH3UXVVLDQFRDWRI DUPVWLFNOH tease, and cuddle each other. They are naked except for garlands of roses. 7KHÀJXUHRQWKHOHIWKDVDKDUSLQLWVKDQGDQDOOXVLRQWRWKHURPDQWLF cult of friendship among the Liebenberg circle, where Eulenburg himself was often represented as the harpist. Below the coat of arms is a bande-

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Fig. 3. No title, Fantasio 2.32 (1907): 473.

role on which the nicknames of the circle are inscribed: ‘my soul, my dear old fellow, my only pup.’ The image points to both the (violated) norm of soldierly masculinity and Prussian virtues such as austerity, harshness, and discipline. Harden’s political critique coalesced in the image of the effeminate homosexual that he developed more and more explicitly in a series of articles. The abnormal men around Eulenburg, he claimed, were forced “to hide their true nature from the world under a mask,” and therefore suffered from a disturbed relationship with reality (Harden qtd. in Sombart 42). Their distorted perceptions and close contact with the French diplomat Raymond Lecomte, who was also, allegedly, sexually abnormal, left them incapable of recognizing the real extent of the threat which other European powers posed to their own nation and made them react aggressively abroad, as the Morocco crisis, for example, showed. In addition, members of the Liebenberg circle, it was claimed, surrounded the Kaiser on the inside, cutting him off from other advisers and encouraging him in a new absolutism. When, in the most visible part of the state, men of abnormal feeling form a ring and attempt to encircle a soul not warned by experience, then this is an unhealthy

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Fig. 4. “Der Retter des Vaterlandes,” Der Wahre Jacob. Illustrierte Zeitschrift für Satire, Humor und Unterhaltung (1908): 671.

situation; indeed, a highly dangerous one if a representative of foreign interests has been included in this encirclement. (Harden, “Schlussvortrag” 201)

Right before the eyes of an astonished public, the idea of an erotically motivated friendship circle heading the state was transformed into political reality in the Kaiserreich. This also attracted interest abroad. In the Paris journal FantasioÀJ WKH*HUPDQPDOHFLUFOHZDVUHSUHVHQWHGDVDVDPHVH[ couple getting married. Naked angels wearing military helmets were playing music at their wedding. One year later, in the most widely-read Social-Democratic satirical newspaper Der Wahre Jacob, which had a circulation of 286 000 in 1910 (with continuously increasing readership until the First World War; Reben-

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tisch 52), Maximilian Harden was to be mockingly proclaimed ‘the saviour RI WKHIDWKHUODQG·ÀJ LQWKHJXLVHRI DVWULFWDUURJDQWWHDFKHUZKRWULHG to pursue politics not with (Social Democratic) social criticism, but through scandalous revelations in his journal Die Zukunft.

The Scandal Trials The insinuations published in Die Zukunft immediately became the topic of conversation in the salons of the Berlin aristocracy. The reputation of court VRFLHW\DQGWKHRIÀFHUFRUSVVHHPHGWREHVHULRXVO\HQGDQJHUHG$IWHULQLtial hesitation on the part of the Imperial Chancellor, von Bülow, the Kaiser was informed about the accusations directed against his closest friends, – but not until early May 1907 (Hull, Entourage 140-143; Mommsen 282). He ZDVKRUULÀHGDQGVRPHZKDWKDVWLO\GHPDQGHGLPPHGLDWHUHPHG\HYHQEHIRUHWKHPDWWHUKDGEHHQFODULÀHG,QFRQVHTXHQFHWKHWHPSRUDU\GLVPLVVDO of Moltke and Eulenburg was ordered. If we believe Harden’s report, this LVZKDWÀUVWGUHZZLGHSXEOLFDWWHQWLRQWRWKHPDWWHU And now the opinion was quickly formed that something very strange must have come to light, something quite outrageous; otherwise these favourites, these respected JHQWOHPHQ ZRXOG QRW KDYH EHHQ IRUFHG WR OHDYH RIÀFH >@ 1RZ WKLQJV PRYHG DW breakneck speed, and we experienced a real hullabaloo. A hundred newspapers proclaimed that these gentlemen were 175s [an allusion to paragraph 175] and similar. Suddenly, everyone had known everything all along. (Harden, “Schlussvortrag” 200)

Eulenburg and Moltke were ordered by the Kaiser to restore their damaged honour in an appropriate manner. After some hesitation, Moltke challenged Harden to a duel, but Harden declined (Röhl 129). Thereupon, Moltke brought private action against Harden for slander, whereupon the sensational trial Moltke v +DUGHQ JRW XQGHUZD\ (XOHQEXUJ ÀUVW DWWHPSWHG WR restore his impugned honour more carefully by publishing a voluntary declaration in his home town of Prenzlau. As was to be expected, this brought no results at all (Mommsen 283). The popular, conservativist, satirical Berlin weekly Kladderadatsch, which had a circulation between 40 000 and 50 000 at the turn of the century, regularly published caricatures of Wilhelm II. The magazine promptly featured a drawing of Themis – the Greek goddess of strict, incorruptible justice and law, who later was allegorised as Justitia with sword, scales and blindfold. In this caricature, however, she is tearing off her blindfold – which is to protect her from issuing partisan judgement – in amazement. The independence of the judiciary was so evidently in question, that the goddess of justice considered the wearing of the blindfold of non-partisanship as children’s game (blind man’s buff), and removed it in order to keep an eye on things, ironically by betraying her own principles. The caption read “Themis (removing her blindfold at last). Children, with

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Fig. 5. “Themis (reißt sich die Binde von den Augen),” Kladderadatsch. Humoristisch-satirisches Wochenblatt 60.44 (1907): Supplementary Sheet 1, 1.

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Fig. 6. “Non sara un gran male se…,” Pasquino. Revista umoristica della settimana 52.44 (1907): 4.

the eternal racket of the scandal trials, I won’t let blind man’s buff be played with me any more!” On 23 October 1907, the case of Moltke v. Harden opened in the court of lay assessors in Berlin-Mitte. During the course of the trial, Moltke’s divorced wife seriously incriminated him, and, as an expert witness, Hirschfeld WHVWLÀHGWKDW0ROWNHKDGD´KRPRVH[XDOSUHGLVSRVLWLRQof which he himself was unaware”(Hirschfeld 8).9 During the taking of evidence, it also came out 

7KHIDFWWKDW+LUVFKIHOGPDGHDQHIIRUWWRGUDZDÀQHGLIIHUHQFHEHWZHHQWKH´pronounced emotionally-ideal character” of Moltke’s “homosexuality” and physically conducted sexuality was hardly perceived (Hirschfeld 8).

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that sexual acts had taken place between men in certain regiments of the Guards. When, on 29 October 1907, Harden was acquitted of having slandered Moltke as a homosexual, the scandal was complete, and the excitement was great not only among the aristocracy of Berlin (Mommsen 283). The Kaiser himself became the target of foreign cartoonists. On 2 November 1907, the Turin newspaper Pasquino published a cartoon depicting Wilhelm II ZUDSSHGLQDORQJFRDWUXQQLQJXSDÁLJKWRI VWDLUVÀJ %XWDVPDOOIDW pig in military uniform sitting on the emperor’s long coat-tail and soiling it prevents his rapid progress. His Majesty is forced to tug at the coat, which is now irretrievably dirty. Underneath it we read: “Not such a bad thing [...] if the emperor’s coat, so mucked up on the stairs to the throne, is shortened. The Tägliche Rundschau commented as follows: Rarely has the administration of justice in a modern state conducted a case that has poisoned public morals, destroyed the trust that the lower classes have in the upper classes and even in the throne, and exposed its own country to relentless pillorying from abroad to such an extent as Moltke v. Harden. (Tägliche Rundschau qtd. in Rogge 234)

Thus, in a speech he delivered to the German Reichstag on 28 November &KDQFHOORUYRQ%ORZFRQVLGHUHGLWQHFHVVDU\WRGHÁHFWWKHDWWDFNV of the parliamentary deputies and to clearly distance the German Empire from conditions in ancient Rome in times of decay: I reject any imputation that the German people and the German army are not completely healthy in their innermost core. Just as nobody can doubt the moral integrity of our imperial couple, whose family life provides such a wonderful model for the whole country, the German people is no Sodom, and conditions in the German army do not resemble those in the declining Roman Empire. And you can be sure that our Kaiser will not hesitate to sweep away anything that does not conform to the purity of his nature and his house (von Bülow qtd. in Hötzsch 66).

Public indignation, paradoxically, was directed at the decadent upper classes and, with an anti-Semitic thrust, at the messengers bringing the bad news, Harden and Hirschfeld, who were both of Jewish background (Steakley, “Iconography” 242). Perhaps it is no coincidence that the Austrian press, which was more openly anti-Semitic (Steakley, Freunde 112), published a drawing in the satirical Viennese journal Kikeriki on 10 November 1907 identifying Harden as Jewish (he had converted to Protestantism in 1878) and suggesting that he wanted to reforge the previously honourable German male group into a JURXSRI -HZVÀJ ,QWKHWRSSDUWRI WKHLPDJHZHVHH+DUGHQDOLWWOH elevated, with folded arms and a strict expression on his face, as the centre and wire-puller controlling a group of aristocrats who are dancing around him. The caption underlines the allusion to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories: “This is the ring that he has smashed –.” Harden is thus presented as destroying a previously intact German world. In the lower part of the draw-

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Fig. 7. “Die Politik des Juden Harden,” Kikeriki. Humoristisch-politisches Volksblatt 47.90 (1907): 2.

ing, bearing the caption: “now he [Harden] wants to forge one like this,” the German aristocrats have been transformed, and now bear the stereotyped negative Jewish features: hooked noses, curls, and pouting lips. Moreover, they are wearing dressing gowns, which additionally sexualizes them. While WKHDULVWRFUDWVLQWKHXSSHUSDUWRI WKHLPDJHDUHQRWLGHQWLÀHGDVKRPRsexual, the way in which the Jews are represented in the bottom part is associated with sexual deviance from the norm. The link between Jewishness, sickness, and (sexual) perversion – in the context of the relatively recent medical concept of homosexuality – is thus reinforced and modernized. At the same time, its negative consequences for the German state, which supposedly the (depraved) Jews alone will soon rule, are demonstrated. Given the increasing gravity of the crisis, Kaiser Wilhelm took action. He ensured Moltke’s rehabilitation by personally ordering the judgement to EHTXDVKHGDQGGHPDQGLQJDUHWULDOWKLVWLPHDVDFULPLQDOFDVH2IÀFLDOV

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DFFHSWHGWKDWWKLVÁDJUDQWYLRODWLRQRI WKHODZZKLFKZDVDWWDFNHGDVVXFK LQFDUWRRQVVHHÀJ ZDVMXVWLÀHGLQWKHLQWHUHVWVRI WKHFURZQDQGLW produced the desired result as the judgment went to appeal. During the two-week trial, which began on 18 December 1907, the main (female) witness was declared hysterical and therefore unreliable. Moltke and Eulenburg defended the spirit of male friendship (Steakley, “Iconography” 244), and Albert Moll, a medical doctor from Berlin, was retained as a new expert witness. He wrote a forensic report that cleared Moltke of the charge of homosexuality, whereupon Hirschfeld revised his own report.10 This time Harden was sentenced to four months’ imprisonment and he had to pay the costs of the trial. To prevent Harden from appealing, Chancellor von Bülow stepped in and persuaded Moltke to make a public, formal statement in Harden’s defence, claiming that he had acted only in the national interest. The cost of the trial, 40,000 marks, which Harden was meant to pay, was covered by the Imperial Chancellery. In the eyes of the Kaiser, General Kuno von Moltke was fully rehabilitated. In the meantime, the publisher Adolf Brand had grasped the opportunity and also accused Chancellor von Bülow of homosexuality in an attempt to create support for the abolition of paragraph 175 of the penal code.11 In his own words, Brand, a pioneer of homosexual emancipation who was inspired by fantasies of masculinity from antiquity, did not see his statement as a slur on von Bülow’s honour because he had a positive opinion of men who, like himself, advocated erotic love between men. While Hirschfeld’s sophistry had produced a system of sexual stages which ruled out any innocent friendship, Eulenburg’s vision of ideal friendship between men, according to Brand, should be admired (Steakley, “Iconography” 243). Yet Brand’s plea did not have the desired effect. In the meantime, the mood had changed and had turned against the bringers of bad news, who were seen as troublemakers.12 Thus, the proceedings which von Bülow launched against Brand were wrapped up on a single day, 6 November 1907, by the Berlin regional court, which ruled in favour of von Bülow. Brand was the only person in the whole legal saga who was sentenced to prison, receiving an eighteen-month sentence (Steakley, “Iconography” 243). 10

Hirschfeld’s contradictory reports on Moltke’s homosexuality provoked public ridicule (Hirschfeld 4, 6, 21). 11 Brand claimed in court that von Bülow was to be made responsible for the persecution of the Liebenberger Kreis (Liebenberg circle) because von Bülow was prone to being blackmailed since he had maintained a homoerotic relationship with a subordinated chancellery clerk named Scheefer whom he had kissed during gatherings at Eulenburg’s (Mommsen 285). 12 ´7KH%UDQGY%ORZWULDOPDGHDPRFNHU\RI MXVWLFHEXWWKHQDWLRQZDVJUDWLÀHGE\LWVRXWcome and little inclines to scrutinize the procedure. [...] His [Brand’s] Guilty verdict suggests that public opinion was beginning to rally around the established order and to turn against those Jewish and homosexual publicists who were increasingly perceived not as saviors but DVUXPRUPRQJHUVDQGSXUYH\RUVRI ÀOWKµ6WHDNOH\´,FRQRJUDSK\µ 

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Eulenburg had been called as a witness during this case, and had taken the chance to emphatically endorse romantic friendship between men, – only to deny, under oath, any obscenities or infringement of paragraph 175. Thus, in the eyes of aristocratic society he was rehabilitated, at least for the time being. Harden, however, did not abandon his pursuit of Eulenburg, and on 12 April he provoked another court case in Munich. This trial was beyond the ImpeULDO&KDQFHOORU·VLQÁXHQFHDQG+DUGHQ·VLQWHQWLRQZDVWRFRQYLFW(XOHQEXUJ RI  SHUMXU\ +DUGHQ DFWXDOO\ PDQDJHG WR ÀQG WZR SHDVDQWV IURP 6WDUQEHUJ ZKRWHVWLÀHGWRKDYLQJKDGKRPRVH[XDOUHODWLRQVZLWKWKHSULQFH0RPPVHQ 287). Thereupon, the case against Eulenburg was resumed in Berlin on 29 June 1908, and he was only able to avert imminent conviction by presenting DPHGLFDOFHUWLÀFDWHFHUWLI\LQJSHUPDQHQWLQFDSDFLW\7KHFDVHZDVVXVSHQGHG on 17 July 1908 and, after an unsuccessful attempt to revive it the following year (7 July 1909), during which Eulenburg suffered a heart attack in court, it was closed. Eulenburg, irrevocably discredited and isolated politically, retired to his estate in Liebenberg (Röhl 132).

The Impact of the Scandals During the scandals, the impugned masculinity of Germany’s highest governing circles – the symbolic representatives of the German nation – had become a politically pressing problem. Sales of Harden’s journal Die Zukunft sky-rocketed. In France, homosexuality was now jokingly called vice allemand, the German vice. In the international press as well as in Germany, numerous satires and cartoons were published alluding to the subject and contrasting a healthier past with the decadent present.13 The creeping effeminization of the army and the threatened emasculation of the state became the central themes of Wilhelmine society. Moreover, the scandal trials and their depiction in caricatures contribXWHGVLJQLÀFDQWO\WROLQNLQJWKHWKUHHGLVFXUVLYHÀHOGVRI SROLWLFVKRPRVH[uality, and male bonding. Initially marginal discourses, such as that concerning male bonding and homosexuality, which had been developed mainly in academic circles and by those affected, were now charged with greater importance for the nation and became a part of everyday political knowledge. The new awareness of homoerotic men’s associations was given an unprecedented degree of reality and material substance by the court cases ZKHQ 3UXVVLDQ MXVWLFH RIÀFLDOO\ FODVVLÀHG SROLWLFDOO\ LQÁXHQWLDO DULVWRFUDWV as homosexual individuals. The power of such political bundling seemed to derive directly from the abnormal sexuality of the men involved. The

13

Steakley (2004) and Jungblut (2003) offer a large selection of other caricatures.

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fundamentally sexual structure of the social and political order thus seemed highly plausible. 7REHVXUHWKHGLVSODFHPHQWRI SROLWLFDOGLVDJUHHPHQWVWRWKHÀHOGRI  normality, biology, and sex did not have the effect Harden wanted in all areas. While it was successful in stripping the politically disagreeable adviser Eulenburg of his power, Harden’s advocacy of a more progressive constitution, which in 1906 had been making headlines in the daily press (e.g. Harden, “Dies Irae” 291-292), was increasingly overshadowed by the scandals. The main objective was now the restitution of a weakened monarchy. In terms of binary sexual logic, the national danger of effeminization had to be countered by a remasculization of politics. The public pressure strengthened the hardliners among the military advisers around Kaiser Wilhelm II (Hull, “Kaiser Wilhelm II.” 212) and contributed to the consolidation of an aggressive political style in which a demonstration of militant masculinity was required as other forms of politics were delegitimized and associated with the suspicion of latent feminization (Hull, Entourage 296; Steakley, “Iconography” 233-236; Röhl 140). 0RUHRYHUWKHVFDQGDOWULDOVUHYHDOHGWKHÀHUFHFRPSHWLWLRQEHWZHHQWKH ERXUJHRLVLHDQGWKHDULVWRFUDF\IRUSROLWLFDOLQÁXHQFHZKLFKZDVSOD\HGRXW in antithetical codes of masculinity and constructions of identity (Mosse 27-36). As the historian Marcus Funck has shown, court etiquette, which DULVWRFUDWLFRIÀFHUVZHUHH[SHFWHGWRREVHUYHLQFOXGHGIRUPVRI EHKDYLRXU which, in bourgeois society, were explicitly described as feminine. These included, for example, the ability to dance perfectly, a dainty walk, dressing VPDUWO\GLVWLQFWLYHIRUPVRI SROLWHQHVVDQGWKHXVHRI UHÀQHGODQJXDJH What could be interpreted as unmasculine, homosexual, and in any case unwarlike behaviour in terms of the morality of bourgeois society, was for DULVWRFUDWLFRIÀFHUVLQPDQ\FDVHVQRWKLQJEXWSDUWRI WKHWUDGLWLRQDOEHhaviour required at court and of the aristocratic etiquette which had to be observed in the same minute detail as the military code.14 Rather than focusing on the genealogy of blood like the upper classes, the bourgeoisie had developed its growing social aspirations vis-à-vis the aristocracy (and the lower classes). Bourgeois criteria of sexual morality such as purity, controlling urges, and good behaviour contrasted with the excess’ and sexual amorality of the aristocracy (Steakley, “Iconography” 253). From this perspective, the bourgeois journalist Harden’s exposure of DVH[XDOO\DEQRUPDOOLDLVRQEHWZHHQDQDULVWRFUDWLFRIÀFHUDQGDSHDVDQWZDV to underline their own moral superiority and claim to power. Harden was well aware that his exposure of just “half a dozen degenerates” from the 14 7KXVDURXQGLWZDVQRWH[FHSWLRQDOWKDWGDQFLQJOHVVRQVWRRNSODFHDWRIÀFHUV·PHVVHV of royal regiments in which two men danced together. In those luxurious regiments of aristocratic imprint the male body could be displayed among equals, but not in public (Funck 73-75).

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Fig. 8. “Das Bildnis des Dorian Gray,” Lustige Blätter. Schönstes buntes Witzblatt Deutschlands 22.28 (1907): 1.

aristocracy could, in bourgeois public opinion, “speak against the health of a whole class” (Harden, “Schlussvortrag” 201). For Eulenburg and Moltke, close emotional ties between men had been compatible with the codes of behaviour of an aristocratic society for as long as chivalrous behaviour towards married women was permitted while sexual partners were drawn from members of the lower classes (Steakley, “Iconography” 253). Eulenburg could not and would not see himself in terms of modern categories as a homosexual individual because he did not recognize a concept of identity based on sexual orientation as applicable to himself. This becomes clear in a passage from a letter which Eulenburg wrote to Moltke on 10 June 1907: In the moment when the freshest example of the modern age, a Harden, criticized our nature [Wesen], stripped our ideal friendship, laid bare the form of our thinking DQG IHHOLQJ ZKLFK ZH KDG MXVWLÀDEO\ UHJDUGHG DOO RXU OLYHV DV VRPHWKLQJ REYLRXV and natural, in the moment, the modern age, laughing cold-bloodedly, broke our necks. [...] The new concepts of sensuality and love stamp our nature as weak, even unhealthily weak. And yet we were sensual [sinnlich], not any less so than the moderns. But this area was strictly segregated; it did not impose itself as an end in itself. (Eulenburg qtd. in Hull, “Kaiser Wilhelm II.” 199)

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The coding of male identity in terms of sexual orientation had achieved such normative power around the turn of the century that even high status and aristocratic background could not protect Eulenburg from being judged unmasculine and abnormal in terms of the new categories. The scandals, too, clearly demonstrated this. A cartoon alluding to Oscar Wilde’s life and work published in Lustige Blätter of July 1907, a liberally-oriented German weekly magazine of humour and satire, shows an aristocrat sinking to the ground, sword in hand, in the attempt to wrestle down an image RI KLPVHOI WKDWKDVEHFRPHXQEHDUDEOHÀJ $PRUHDSSURSULDWHLPDJH of the defeat of the aristocracy can hardly be found. Male homosexuality – now visible to large sections of the population – mutated into a sickness which threatened society with cultural and political defeat (Steakley, “Iconography” 253-254). People complained that QHZVSDSHUDUWLFOHVIRUWKHÀUVWWLPHDFTXLUHGDSRUQRJUDSKLFTXDOLW\ZKLFK was seen mainly as a threat to the morality and purity of the youth. Many cartoons not only illustrate how strongly homosexuality was associated with treason and degeneration, but also contributed to the evocation and distribution of this connection themselves (see further ills. in Steakley, “Iconography” 258-263). This also had an impact on the movement to emancipate homosexuals, which suffered serious setbacks. Instead of the repeal of paragraph 175 of the legal code, it was suggested to make it more stringent and to extend it to apply to women as well. The morality movement emerged strengthened from the trial years, and attacked attempts to emancipate not only homosexuals, but also women, more strongly than ever.15 A Berlin cartoon RI 1RYHPEHUÀJ VKRZV+LUVFKIHOGLGHQWLÀHGDVD-HZDVWKH anti-hero of the day. Depicted as a child with a large drum – rather like a mechanical toy – he is canvassing support for the repeal of paragraph 175. In addition, the Eulenburg scandal encouraged men and women to reÁHFWXSRQWKHPVHOYHVLQWKHOLJKWRI WKHQHZNQRZOHGJH/LOLYRQ(OEH&RXQW Moltke’s divorced wife, spoke for many when she said that at the beginning she would not have suspected her husband of homosexuality because she had known nothing about the existence of such a phenomenon. The BavarLDQÀVKHUPDQ-DNRE(UQVWWRRVDLGWKDWKHKDGQRUHDOQDPHIRULW)RUPV of behaviour and attitudes which had previously been personal secrets or regarded as sins now appeared in a completely new light. They not only became known to many people, but were also highly suspect (Steakley, Freunde 170-171, 174-175). Parents suddenly had second thoughts about sending their sons to the army, or allowing them to move from the country to the city. In a cartoon published in the Berlin illustrated paper Ulk ÀJ   ZKLFK LQ 15

Close to end of the series of scandals the sentiments of the very left had shifted as well to the disadvantage of the homosexuals (Steakley, “Iconography” 254-255).

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Fig. 9. “Helden des Tages. III. Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld,” Lustige Blätter. Schönstes buntes Witzblatt Deutschlands 22.48 (1907): 3.

contrast to Lustigen Blätter and Kladderadatsch was not a stand-alone publication, but was distributed free with the liberally-oriented newspaper Berliner Tageblatt, the army, once a school of life, became an institution offering opportunities for unusual sexual experiences with men, as the ambiguous reply of the young military serviceman indicates: “Wat ick da allens jelernt habe!!” [Berlin dialect for: “Was ich da nicht alles gelernt habe!” (All the things I have learned!)]. In a similar vein, the Austrian magazine Der Floh caricatured the homosexual aspects of “German family life,” with young men being warned of the “temptations of the big city” by their mothers (Der Floh, 39.40, 1907). Despite the campaign for moral renewal, anti-Semitic undertones, increased ed military discipline, and concerns about national decline and bourgeois morals, this experience was based on a subtle dialectic (Steakley, “Iconography” 257). The new restrictions multiplied the possibilities of creating RQHVHOI DVDKLJKO\VH[XDOVXEMHFW7KLVZDVUHÁHFWHGLQDYDULHW\RI QHZ

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Fig. 10. “Garde du corps,” Ulk. Illustriertes Wochenblatt für Humor und Satire 36.45 (1907): 1.

publications in the discipline of sexology and in subjectivization practices, particularly in the context of the reform movement. The young Wandervogel movement, too, became more vigilant about possible homosexual behaviour in its own ranks, especially as, in the wake of the Eulenburg scandal trials, it had publicly been described as a pederasts’ club. Reversing the negative social assessment of homosexuality, the Berlin writer, Hans Blüher, interpreted the patriotic youth movement as a homoerotic phenomenon in 1912 – a scandalous view which was widely GLVFXVVHG LQ SXEOLF DQG ZKLFK VWURQJO\ LQÁXHQFHG WKH DVVRFLDWLRQ PRYHment (Bruns, 267-386). Critics and opponents of the erotically charged PDOHJURXSPRGHODJUHHGWKDWLQLWVKLGGHQODZVWKHVWDWHFRXOGEHLQÁXenced by male homosexuality. This explosive link between homosexuality and the state found a bloody echo in the Röhm putsch of 1934. The Nazi SA leader Ernst Röhm was murdered, along with more than 200 other people, by enemies within his

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own party acting in the name of Hitler who had accused him of having planned a homosexual conspiracy (zur Nieden, Homosexualität 7-16, 147192). For a generation that still remembered the Eulenburg scandals, this was entirely plausible, especially as, at the end of the Weimar Republic, the German Social Democratic Party and the left did not tire of attacking the National Socialists as a danger to the state because of their allegedly homosexual tendencies. The various caricatures of the Eulenburg scandal were widely circulated both in Germany and internationally. They turned the idea of a homoerotic male group model into a political issue that was idealized by a minority and rejected as a national danger by the majority. However, the close discursive nexus between sexual and political order, which would remain powerful throughout the twentieth century, was not questioned.

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Works Cited Baumgardt, Manfred: Magnus Hirschfeld. Leben und Werk. Ausstellungskatalog aus Anlass seines 50. Todestages, veranstaltet von der Magnus-Hirschfeld-Gesellschaft. Hamburg 1992. “Das Bildnis des Dorian Gray.” Lustige Blätter. Schönstes buntes Witzblatt Deutschlands 22.28 (1907): 1. Brunotte, Ulrike: Zwischen Eros und Krieg. Männerbund und Ritual in der Moderne. Berlin 2004. Bruns, Claudia: Politik des Eros. Der Männerbund in Wissenschaft, Politik und Jugendkultur 1880–1934. Cologne 2008. Coward, Rosalind: Patriarchal Precedents. Sexuality and Social Relations. London 1983. “Deutsches Familienleben” und “Am Land”. Der Floh. Vereinigt mit Das Leben im Bild. Wien (1.1869 – 1919). 39.40, 1907. Duberman, Martin, Martha Vicinus and George Chauncey (eds.): Hidden From History. Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past. London 1991. “Einst. Jetzt.” Der Floh 39.40 (Oct. 1907): 4. Funck, Marcus: “Entwurf und Praxis militärischer Männlichkeit im preußisch-deutVFKHQ 2IÀ]LHUNRUSV YRU GHP (UVWHQ :HOWNULHJµ Heimat-Front. Militär und Geschlechterverhältnisse im Zeitalter der Weltkriege. Ed. Karen Hagemann and Stefanie SchülerSpringorum. Frankfurt/Main 2009, 69-77. “Garde du corps.” Ulk. Illustriertes Wochenblatt für Humor und Satire 36.45 (1907): 1.Hagemann, Karen and Stefanie Schüler-Springorum (eds.): Heimat-Front. Militär und Geschlechterverhältnisse im Zeitalter der Weltkriege. Frankfurt/Main 2001. Harden, Maximilian: “Dies Irae. Momentaufnahmen.” Die Zukunft 57 (24 Nov. 1906): 287-302. —: “Enthüllungen. III. Bismarcks Entlassung.” Die Zukunft 57 (3 Nov. 1906): 169-198. —: “Präludium.” Die Zukunft 57 (17 Nov. 1906): 251-266. —: “Schlussvortrag.” Die Zukunft 61.9 (Nov. 1907): 179-210. “Helden des Tages. III. Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld.” Lustige Blätter. Schönstes buntes Witzblatt Deutschlands 22.48 (1907): 3. Hergemöller, Bernd-Ulrich: Mann für Mann. Ein biographisches Lexikon. Frankfurt/Main 2001. Hewitt, Andrew: “Die Philosophie des Maskulinismus.” Zeitschrift für Germanistik, Neue Folge 1 (1999): 36-56. Hirschfeld, Magnus: Sexualpsychologie und Volkspsychologie. Eine epikritische Studie zum Harden-Prozess. Leipzig 1908. Herrn, Rainer: “Ein historischer Urning. Ludwig II. von Bayern im psychiatrisch-sexualwissenschaftlichen Diskurs und in der Homosexuellenbewegung des frühen 20. Jahrhunderts.” “Ein Bild von einem Mann.” Ludwig II. von Bayern. Konstruktion und Rezeption eines Mythos. Ed. Katharina Sykora. Frankfurt/Main 2004, 48-89. Hötzsch, Otto (ed.): Fürst Bülows Reden. Nebst urkundlichen Beiträgen zu seiner Politik. Bd. III: 1907-1909. Berlin 1909, 65-71. Hull, Isabel V.: The Entourage of Kaiser Wilhelm II 1888–1918. Cambridge 1982. —: “Kaiser Wilhelm II. and the ‘Liebenberg Circle.’” Kaiser Wilhelm II. New Interpretations: The Corfu Papers. Ed. John C.G. Röhl and Nicolaus Sombart. Cambridge, New York 1982, 193-220. Jungblut, Peter: Famose Kerle. Eulenburg – Eine wilhelminische Affäre. Hamburg 2003.

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Karsch-Haack, F[erdinand]: Beruht die gleichgeschlechtliche Liebe auf Soziabilität? Eine begründete Zurückweisung [Benedict Friedlaenders]. Munich 1905. —: Das gleichgeschlechtliche Leben der Naturvölker. Mit sieben Abbildungen im Text und sieben Vollbildern. Munich 1911. Kotowski, Elke Vera and Julius H. Schoeps (eds.): Der Sexualreformer Magnus Hirschfeld (1868–1935). Ein Leben im Spannungsfeld von Wissenschaft, Politik und Geschichte. Berlin 2004. Lautmann, Rüdiger and Angela Taeger (eds.): Männerliebe im alten Deutschland. Sozialgeschichtliche Abhandlungen. Berlin 1992. Mommsen, Wolfgang J: “Homosexualität, aristokratische Kultur und Weltpolitik. Die Herausforderung des wilhelminischen Establishments durch Maximilian Harden 1906–1908.” Große Prozesse. Recht und Gerechtigkeit in der Geschichte. Ed. Uwe Schultz. Munich 1996, 179-288. Mosse, George L: Das Bild des Mannes. Zur Konstruktion der modernen Männlichkeit [1996]. Frankfurt/Main 1997. “Neues Preußisches Wappen.” Jugend 45 (1907): 1028. Nieden, Susanne zur: “Die ‘männerheldische, heroische Freundesliebe’ bleibt ‘dem Judengeiste fremd.’ Antisemitismus und Maskulinismus.” Der Sexualreformer Magnus Hirschfeld (1868–1935). Ein Leben im Spannungsfeld von Wissenschaft, Politik und Geschichte. Eds. Elke Vera Kotowski and Julius H. Schoeps. Berlin 2004, 329-342. Nieden, Susanne zur (ed.): Homosexualität und Staatsräson. Männlichkeit, Homophobie und Politik in Deutschland 1900–1945. Frankfurt/Main 2005. “Non sara un gran male se….” Pasquino. Revista umoristica della settimana 52.44 (1907): 4. “Die Politik des Juden Harden.” Kikeriki. Humoristisch-politisches Volksblatt 47.90 (1907): 2. Rebentisch, Jost: Die vielen Gesichter des Kaisers. Wilhelm II. in der deutschen und britischen Karikatur (1888-1918). Berlin 2000. “Der Retter des Vaterlandes.” Der Wahre Jacob. Illustrierte Zeitschrift für Satire, Humor und Unterhaltung (1908): 671. Röhl, John C.G.: “Fürst Philipp zu Eulenburg. Zu einem Lebensbild.” Männerliebe im alten Deutschland. Sozialgeschichtliche Abhandlungen. Ed. Rüdiger Lautmann and Angela Taeger. Berlin 1992, 119-140. Rogge, Helmuth: Holstein und Harden. Politisch-publizistisches Zusammenspiel zweier Außenseiter des Wilhelminischen Reiches. Munich 1959. Schultz, Uwe (ed.): Große Prozesse. Recht und Gerechtigkeit in der Geschichte. Munich 1996. Sombart, Nicolaus: Die deutschen Männer und ihre Feinde. Carl Schmitt – ein deutsches Schicksal zwischen Männerbund und Matriarchatsmythos [1991]. Frankfurt/Main 1997. Steakley, James D.: Die Freunde des Kaisers. Die Eulenburg-Affäre im Spiegel zeitgenössischer Karikaturen. Hamburg 2004. —: “Iconography of a Scandal. Political Cartoons and the Eulenburg Affair in Wilhelmin Germany.” Hidden From History. Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past. Ed. Martin Duberman, Martha Vicinus and George Chauncey. London 1991, 233-263. “Themis (reißt sich die Binde von den Augen).” Kladderadatsch. Humoristisch-satirisches Wochenblatt 60.44 (1907): Supplementary Sheet 1, 1.

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Fig. 1. Foto (John Graudenz, Vossische Zeitung) from the “1924 18/V” portfolio for Walter Gropius, Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin.

Fig. 1a. The weekly supplemental Zeitbilder, part of the newspaper Vossische Zeitung, May 11, 1924.

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Bauhaus, the Radio, and the Colors of Fascism CHRISTOPH WAGNER

Within great spaces of historical time, humanity’s entire collective mode of being changes and with it humanity’s manner of sensory perception. The lines along which this human sensory perception is organized – the vehicle through which it is carried out – is not contingent merely upon nature but upon history as well. (Benjamin 478)

I. Images Between Artistic Uniqueness and Mass Media In the handful of years that elapsed between the 1919 establishment of Bauhaus in Weimar and its subsequent relocation to Dessau in 1925, an extensive and historical transformation took place in the realm of media that was not without consequences for the pictorial forms and political iconography of Bauhaus (see Wagner, Itten). While Walter Gropius had had a reproduction of a xylograph from Lyonel Feininger reproduced on the Bauhaus movement’s founding manifesto in 1919 – a symbolic image of a gothic cathedral that was comparatively traditional in both form and artistic WHFKQLTXHÀJ ²E\SKRWRJUDSK\DQGRWKHUIRUPVRI PDVVFLUFXODWHGLPDJHVKDGFRPHWRWKHIRUHIURQWRI WKHVFKRRO·VDUWLVWLFDFWLYLWLHVÀJ 1). Like Oskar Schlemmer’s speech on the manifesto’s title image as representing the “Cathedral of Socialism” or Johannes Itten’s various politically oriented artistic activities, Gropius’s battle cry that Bauhaus was not to ‘educate artists’ but rather to ‘shape a new kind of men’ clearly demonstrates the degree to which the members of Bauhaus attempted to realize their political visions even in the conservative Weimar era.1 Undoubtedly, the utopian program that unfolded in the early years of the Bauhaus school can be counted as one amongst the vast variety of this period’s social-utopian 1

Cf. Walter Gropius, “Ansprache an die Studierenden des Staatlichen Bauhauses” (Juli 1919), qtd. in Hans M. Wingler, Das Bauhaus. 1919–1933 Weimar, Dessau, Berlin und die Nachfolge in Chicago seit 1937 (Bramsche 1962, 21968), Köln 2002, 45-46. Regarding Gropius’s political activities during this time see Isaacs 188-202.

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Fig. 2. Lyonel Feininger, Cathedral, Cover of Bauhaus manifesto, 1919.

and early-socialist ideological currents, the roots of which can be traced back to the nineteenth century (see Lethen). Yet in October and November of 1918, it was the specter of a Europe that appeared to be coming apart at the seams in the wake of the First World War and the ensuing revolutionary turmoil that provided Gropius, Itten, and a host of other artists with the impetus for a utopian new beginning in some form or another. “After the war it dawned on me […] that it was over with all the old junk,” (Gropius qtd. in Isaacs 188) Gropius would later recount of his own changing perspective; “More or less overnight, an abrupt internal transformation took place, and that which had previously been conservative became progressive” (Gropius qtd. in Isaacs 188). 7KHDYDQWJDUGHDUWLVWVRI WKHWLPHDOVRDVVHUWLYHO\UHÁHFWHGWKHVKLIWVWDNing place in visual culture in the 1920s. Thus, Kazimir Malevich attempted in his work The Non-Objective World, published in the eleventh volume of the Bauhaus series, to distinguish the “inspiring setting of the Futurists,” which still bore a resemblance to the world of familiar experience, from the more DEVWUDFWYLVXDOSDUDGLJPVRI WKH6XSUHPDWLVWVÀJVDE 0DOHZLWVFK ,Pages of futuristic faith in progress based on technique, industrialization, and speed converge on the higher degree of abstraction of Suprematism’s areal photo images. Compared with these the traditional images “of the academ-

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Fig. 3a-b. Kazimir Malevich, The Non-Objective World (1927): a. “inspiring setting of the Futurists” (21) / b. “inspiring setting of the Suprematists” (23).

ics’ […] inspiring environment” remained on the same level as the hopelessly outdated rustic idyll painting of the nineteenth century (Malewitsch 20). VaryLQJFRQFHSWLRQVRI UHDOLW\DUHSURJUDPPDWLFDOO\À[HGLQWRGLIIHUHQWSLFWRULDO forms; each represents a visual cipher that served as a sort of artistic signature for the diverse avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century. This paradigm shift in forms of visualization and political iconography that took place in the course of the 1920s can be studied in one of the cenWUDOZRUNVRI %DXKDXVFXOWXUH7KHSRUWIROLRWLWOHG´9µÀJV  can be found preserved in the Berlin Bauhaus Archive along with a number of other surprisingly shabbily handled Bauhaus historical sources. The commemorative portfolio was dedicated to Walter Gropius on his fortyÀUVWELUWKGD\LQ0D\E\WKHVL[%DXKDXVPDVWHUV/iV]Oy0RKRO\1DJ\ Lyonel Feininger, Paul Klee, Oskar Schlemmer, Georg Muche, and Wassily Kandinsky.2 It contains six works on paper as well as a photo cut out of a 2

Portfolio for Walter Gropius “1924 18/V,” 47.5 x 32.4 cm, Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin Inv.-Nr. 7440/1–8. The authoritative contribution regarding the historical origins of these individual works comes from Klaus Weber, who has put forward precise descriptions and analyses for each of the images (Weber, “Malerei am Bauhaus”). Cf. also Weber, “Mappe für Walter Gropius ‘1924 18/V.’” The few subsequent contributions have also been based on Weber’s work; see Hahn, “Ein glücklicher Augenblick.” For previous literature see Bayer/Gropius/Gropius 196-197; Giedion 36; Hahn, “Ein Portfolio” 47–49 A ÀUVW version of this paper on this topic was given in 2009 in Weimar, Münster, and Munich: Wagner, Christoph: “‘Subtexte’: Die Mappe für Walter Gropius ‘1924 18/V’ – Bauhauskommunikation zwischen künstlerischem Unikat und Massenmedium.” Bauhauskommunikation: Innovative Strategien im Umgang mit Medien, interner und externer Öffentlichkeit. Ed. Patrick Roessler. Berlin: 2009, 160-170 (Neue Bauhausbücher; Vol. 1); Wagner, Christoph: “Bildgebende Verfahren am Bauhaus zwischen Kunst und Geschichte: Die ‘Geburtstagsmappe’ für Walter Gropius von 1924.” Ed. Urte Krass. Was macht die Kunst? Aus der Werkstatt der Kunstgeschichte. München 2009, 161-186 (Münchner Kontaktstudium Geschichte; Vol. 12).

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Fig. 4. László Moholy-Nagy, Cover of the “1924 18/V” portfolio for Walter Gropius, Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin.

Fig. 5. Oskar Schlemmer, Sheet from the “1924 18/V” portfolio for Walter Gropius, Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin.

Fig. 6. Paul Klee, Sheet from the “1924 18/V” portfolio for Walter Gropius, Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin.

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Fig. 7. László Moholy-Nagy, Sheet from the “1924 18/V” portfolio for Walter Gropius, Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin.

QHZVSDSHUÀJVD ZKLFKDWWKHVXJJHVWLRQRI /iV]Oy0RKRO\1DJ\ was intended as the motivic inspiration for all the other works to be included in the portfolio.3 Taken from the May 11, 1924 edition of the weekly supplemental Zeitbilder, part of Berlin’s liberal newspaper Vossische Zeitung, the photograph is both a political and historical document. According to captions below the image, the picture portrays the situation immediately “[a]fter the Reichstag elections [of May 4, 1924]: A view of the crowds that gathered at Potsdamer Platz to hear the results of the election broadcast from a loudspeaker” ÀJ D  7KH H[WUHPH ULJKWZLQJ SDUWLHV KDG JDLQHG D PDMRULW\ RYHU WKH SUHYLRXVO\ UXOLQJ SDUWLHV LQ WKLV HOHFWLRQ ² D VLJQLÀFDQW SROLWLFDO GHYHORSment on the national stage that had already been a reality at the state level in Thuringia since earlier that year. This event signaled the beginnings of a 3

Klaus Weber (“Malerei am Bauhaus” 384) indicates that a contribution provided by Gerhard Marcks is “for unknown reasons not included.”

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Fig. 8. Lyonel Feininger, Sheet from the “1924 18/V” portfolio for Walter Gropius, Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin.

precarious political trajectory that would eventually lead to National Socialism, fascism, and the Third Reich – and the end of Bauhaus – in less than ten years time. As will be shown in the following article, the portfolio can be seen as a key work for understanding the question of imaging techniques on the borders between art and (contemporary) history.

II. The Iconography of a Historical Media Event 7KHVLJQLÀFDQFHRI WKHSRUWIROLR·VSKRWRJUDSKLFSURPSWIRUPHGLDKLVWRU\ has received only marginal attention (Weber, “Malerei am Bauhaus” 384). Yet it can hardly be considered a coincidence that Moholy-Nagy chose a photograph reproduced for the mass media as the point of departure for this artistic project, nor was it an accident that the picture paradigmatically put into focus the historical rupture in technique and media practices for various forms of visualization. The radio in the picture’s foreground

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Fig. 9. Wassily Kandinsky, Sheet from the “1924 18/V” portfolio for Walter Gropius, Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin.

constitutes the image’s iconographic leitmotif and ‘individualized agent’. 7KH VLJQLÀFDQFH RI  WKH UDGLRPRWLI  LQ WKLV LPDJH ZLWKLQ WKH GRPDLQ RI  PHGLDKLVWRU\EHFRPHVDSSDUHQWZKHQRQHUHFDOOVWKDWWKHÀUVWSXEOLFUDGLR program in Germany had been broadcast scarcely a half year earlier from %HUOLQDQGWKDWWKH0D\5HLFKVWDJHOHFWLRQUHVXOWVZHUHWKHÀUVWWREH made public over the radio.4 With this picture, which connects the radio in the foreground with the listening masses in the background, the photographer managed not only to capture a key frame within a historical paradigm shift in media practices. He was also able to have the image immediately publicized with the help of the new reproduction technologies used by photo agencies and the press. As the accompanying newspaper text and VLPLODULPDJHVUHYHDOWKLVPRWLYLFFRQVWHOODWLRQZDVUHÁHFWLYHRI WKHSROLWLFDOLFRQRJUDSK\RI DQHZHYHQWLQWKHKLVWRU\RI PHGLD)RUWKHÀUVWWLPH humans were being addressed as masses with the help of new communication technologies. “Radio in the service of the campaign” was the title of 4

For an overview of the event’s technical history see Daniels 131-132.

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the May 15, 1924 edition of the Berlin magazine Das Echo which featured a similar picture (Weber, “Malerei am Bauhaus” 384). Viewed from an iconographic perspective, Moholy-Nagy had chosen an image that represented a key frame in the nascent phenomenon of mass communication, a phenomenon that would become one of the central themes of his time. 7KHZRUOGRI DUWKDGHDUO\RQEHJXQWRUHÁHFWWKLVKLVWRULFDOWXUQLQ WHFKQLTXHDVH[HPSOLÀHGE\ZRUNVVXFKDV0D[(UQVW·VFROODJHViolon renversé ÀJ RU.XUW*QWKHU·VSDLQWLQJRadionist ÀJ :KLOH Max Ernst thematizes the mysterious technical transformation of musical sound waves in his surreal pictorial constellation, Kurt Günther displays the magic realism of technical equipment by using a radio and headphones. Just KRZHDUO\DQGLQWHQVHO\WKHPHPEHUVRI %DXKDXVKDGEHFRPHHOHFWULÀHG by the idea of communication via radio raysLVH[HPSOLÀHGE\/iV]Oy0RKRly-Nagy’s TelefonbilderÀJ LQZKLFKDEVWUDFWYLVXDOFRPSRVLWLRQVZHUH transmitted via telephone and then converted into the technical medium of an enamel picture. In place of the artistically creative individual is a piece of technical communication equipment that serves to convey and disseminate QHZYLVXDOUHSUHVHQWDWLRQV(YHQ-RKDQQHV,WWHQÀJ EHJDQWRXVHradio rays” as a metaphor for ‘artistic transmission’ in a presentation manuscript that appeared immediately before he crossed over to the Weimar Bauhaus school in February 1919.5 Under the expansive title “The Progress of Mankind, the Progress of Art: The Power of Concentration” Itten addressed the goal of “electromagnetic concentration” (qtd. in Wagner, “Johannes Itten und die Esoterik” 138-139) and of the “longing of man for an inWHQVLÀFDWLRQRI WKHYLEUDWLRQVRI OLIHUDGLRHWF IRUDFRQFHQWUDWLRQLQ WKHKLJKHVWSRWHQF\IRUXQLÀFDWLRQRQHQHVVZLWKJRGµDQGVRRQTWGLQ Wagner, “Johannes Itten und die Esoterik” 141). This application of the new medium was undertaken by Itten under the auspices of an esoteric metaphorization of radio rays, albeit years before radio broadcasting had become a universally established phenomenon. Soon thereafter, these goals ZRXOGEHLQFRUSRUDWHGLQWRKLVÀUVWPDMRUZRUNLQ:HLPDUTurm des Lichts / Turm des Feuers. In this work of art, a spiral-shaped tower tapers upwards, symbolizing for Itten the concentrically rising “path of human evolution” (qtd. in Wagner, Johannes Itten: Alles in Einem 32). It is possible that he took his inspiration from Nikola Tesla’s Wardenclyffe Tower, a utopian project for the wireless transfer of electrical energy erected on Long Island in 1900 ÀJ   7KH H[WHQW WR ZKLFK WKH WRZHUPRWLI  LWVHOI  FRXOG EH SROLWLFDOO\ loaded in this time is prominently documented by Vladimir Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International ÀJ ZKLFKZDVFRQVWUXFWHGLQ1RYHPEHU 1920 under communist auspices and conceived as a symbol of socio-polit5

For more on this newly discovered source see Wagner, “Johannes Itten und die Esoterik” 137-143. Daniels (98-103) offers an overview of the historical background of radio broadcasting prior to 1923.

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Fig. 10. Max Ernst, Violon renversé, 1921, Collage.

ical utopia. The fact that Itten’s initial sketches for Turm des Lichts were alUHDG\FRPSOHWHGLQWKHÀUVWZHHNVRI -DQXDU\GHPRQVWUDWHVKRZHYHU that his project was not directly derived from Tatlin’s famous tower.

III. The Political-Historical Dimensions of the Image $VLJQLÀFDQWPHDVXUHRI KLVWRULFDOGHSWKUHJDUGLQJWKHSROLWLFDOGLPHQVLRQV of Moholy-Nagy’s motivic photograph is provided by the photographer’s QDPH´*UDXGHQ]µZKLFKLVSULQWHGEHVLGHWKHSKRWR7KHSLFWXUHÀJ  was taken by John (Johannes) Graudenz, a Danzig-born press photographer who was executed on Hitler’s orders at the Berlin-Plötzensee military prison on December 22, 1942. Accused of being a member of a resistance movement, Graudenz was, in fact, involved with the so-called Red Orchestra network (Die Rote Kapelle).6 From the early 1920s on, Graudenz had made a name for himself as a prominent political partisan: in 1920 he KDGOHGWKHLQIRUPDWLRQRIÀFHLQRSSRVLWLRQWRWKH.DSS3XWVFKDQGDVRI  6

All of the following biographical information has been taken from Kerbs 74-76; von Dewitz 117, 303; and Rosiejka 55, 77.

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Fig. 11. Kurt Günther, Radionist, 1927.

1921, he was also a member of the Communist Workers Party of Germany (KAPD). In 1924 he had returned to Berlin to work with his photo agency “Defot” and expand his activities as a press photographer. There can be little doubt that the eminent name Graudenz was well known to cosmopolitan Bauhausers like Gropius, Kandinsky, or Moholy-Nagy. Thanks to *UDXGHQ]·V SURPLQHQW LQWHJUDWLRQ LQWR %HUOLQ FXOWXUDO OLIH ² H[HPSOLÀHG for instance, in his connection with the dancer Oda Schottmüller, Gret Palucca’s teacher – as well as his alternating residence between Berlin and 0RVFRZ KH KDG FRPH WR EH SHUFHLYHG VSHFLÀFDOO\ DV D SROLWLFDOÀJXUH LQ public life. In this regard as well, the selection of his photograph for the portfolio cannot be understood along the lines of purely ‘aesthetic’ criterion. By taking into account the personality of the photographer himself, it must rather be understood in terms of the image’s political subtexts, which are themselves remarkable for their simultaneous discreteness and clarity. Cloaked in the public character of a generally accessible press photograph ²RQHZKLFKDWÀUVWJODQFHZRXOGVHHPXQDVVDLODEOHDVOLWWOHPRUHWKDQD neutral visual documentation of a historical political event with far-reaching

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Fig. 12. László Moholy-Nagy, Telephonbild EM 2 (Construction in Enamel 2), 1923, New York, The Museum of Modern Art.

import – the members of Bauhaus were able to communicate subtexts in a manner similar to the way in which they were able to perceive the import of Schlemmer’s title “Cathedral of Socialism” for Feininger’s xylograph imDJHRQWKH%DXKDXVPDQLIHVWRÀJ 7KXVLWZRXOGEHVKHHUQDwYHW\ to believe that the political undertones of the Graudenz photograph were not taken into account when the Gropius’s colleagues set about to work on their contributions for the commemorative portfolio.7 The question then is how the artists went about incorporating Moholy-Nagy’s inspired challenge LQWRWKHLURZQZRUNV$VWKHSKRWRZDVÀUVWSXEOLVKHGDPHUHZHHNEHIRUH Gropius’s birthday, the masters of Bauhaus had but a few days to spontaneously respond to the historical image. 7

Klaus Weber points to an undated letter from Manon Gropius kept in the Bauhaus-Archiv in Berlin in which it emerges the extent to which Walter Gropius’s birthday celebration was organized as a “demonstration of solidarity between master and pupil for their director” in a year full of political turmoil (“Malerei am Bauhaus” 384).

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Fig. 13. Johannes Itten, Turm des Lichts/Feuers (missing), 1920, Itten-Archiv Zürich.

IV. ‘The Medium is the Message’: The Contest between Photography and Painting For the Gropius portfolio Moholy-Nagy produced an original work executed in aquarelle, pencil, and tusche – a technical fact that is worth noting since his 1925 publication 0DOHUHL ² )RWRJUDÀH ² )LOP had been conceived nearly concomitantly in the summer of 1924 and had radically emphasized the competition between painting and photography (Fiedler 1990). For Moholy-Nagy, the end of this contest meant the ‘death of the panel image’ and the transformation of the painter into an ‘artistic engineer’. Following convictions of Russian avant-gardists like Alexander Rodtschenko, Moholy-Nagy was convinced that the “traditional image had been conscribed to history” and that its place was being taken by “work using captured light” (Moholy-Nagy 43). The “photographic apparatus would not only be able RYHUFRPHWKHYDULRXVGHÀFLHQFLHVRI PDQXDOGHVLJQPHGLD>VXFKDV@SHQFLO brush, etc.” but it would even be able to “perfect our own optical instrument, the eye” (Moholy-Nagy 26). To be sure, the concept of the ‘death of the panel image’ was not new however, Moholy-Nagy sharpened the edge of the painting-photography contest thesis with new arguments: According to him, the medium of photography made it possible to purge the

Bauhaus, the Radio, and the Colors of Fascism

Fig. 14. Nikola Tesla, Wardenclyffe Tower, Long Island, 1900.

155

Fig. 15. Vladimir Tatlin, Monument to the Third International, 1920.

DUWLVW·VVXEMHFWLYHIRUPDWLYHLQÁXHQFHVIURPKLVZRUNWKXVRIIHULQJIRUWKH ÀUVWWLPHDQ¶LPSDUWLDOYLVXDOSHUVSHFWLYH·FI0RKRO\1DJ\ 2QWKDW score, it was also no coincidence that Moholy-Nagy’s recommendation for the artistic launching point for contributions to Gropius’s portfolio was a printed photo from the mass media and, moreover, one that corresponded so closely with his own photographic experiments at this time (cf. MoholyNagy 60). While it seems clearly inconsistent that he would contribute a KDQGFUDIWHGZDWHUFRORUWR*URSLXV·VSRUWIROLRÀJ LWLVSRVVLEOHKRZever, that this move can be seen as a concession to his colleagues, who did not show much enthusiasm for the radical position expressed in Malerei – )RWRJUDÀH²)LOP. Moholy-Nagy saw the superiority of photographic images over paintLQJDVJURXQGHGLQWKHIDFWWKDWSKRWRJUDSK\ZDVDEOHWR´À[DPRWLRQLQLWV essence” (Moholy-Nagy 5). An additional decisive enhancement that he believed was offered by photographs was their ability to visualize the insides of things and organisms, for which x-ray images served as exemplary evidence (Moholy-Nagy 67). The fact that Moholy-Nagy struck a generational nerve with his new ‘photographic worldview’ is attested to by the numerous contemporary publications that came out of the 1920s such as Tristan Tzara’s “Photography from the Flipside” (1922), Ossip Brik’s “Photography Ver-

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Fig. 16. Deutschnationale Volkspartei, DNVP, Election Poster, 1924.

sus Painting” (1926), Alfred Renger-Patzsch’s “Objectives” (1927), Salvador Dali’s “Photography, Pure Creation of the Mind” (1927), Ernst Kallái’s “Painting and Photography” (1927), Alexander Rodtschenko’s “Against the 6\QWKHWLF3RUWDLW)RUWKH6QDSVKRWµ RUÀQDOO\WKHLPSRUWDQWFRQtribution of art historian Wolfgang Born, “Photographic Weltanschauung” (1929).8 Early on, this “Photographic Weltanschauung” was met with artistic resistance amongst the Bauhaus masters. Lyonel Feininger, for example, wrote to his wife in March 1925 regarding Moholy-Nagy’s artistic thoughts: only optics, mechanics, the abandonment of the ‘old’ static painting […] but why [describe] this mechanization of all optics […] as the sole art form of our time and even more so for the future? […] Klee was thoroughly anguished yesterday when he spoke of Moholy. (Hess 106)

/\RQHO)HLQLQJHU·VDTXDUHOOHFRQWULEXWLRQWRWKHSRUWIROLRÀJ FDQDOVR be understood as an anarchic refusal to earnestly engage Moholy-Nagy’s motivic photograph and its political content. Feininger contrasts the view from a Berlin window with a romantic-phantasmagoric seascape depicting a steamship cruising towards rocky cliffs in the silver moonlight. In his regular sojourns to the coast, Feininger had come to view the sea as the epitome 8

See also the commendable anthology 7KHRULHGHU)RWRJUDÀH,,by Kemp (139-142). :ROIJDQJ%RUQ·VFRQWULEXWLRQÀUVWDSSHDUHGLQ)RWRJUDÀVFKH5XQGVFKDX1929, 141-142.

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Fig. 17. El Lissitzky, Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge, 1919.

of freedom, a motif which he employs in this work as a dream-like counterimage to the dismal political realities of his time while simultaneously giving back to the traditional medium of painting its artistic dignity vis-à-vis the photographic image.9 As early as 1923 Paul Klee had also contradicted Moholy-Nagy’s interpretation of traditional artistic media when he emphasized in his contribution to the Bauhaus Festschrift Wege des Naturstudiums that today’s artist is more than a sophisticated camera; he is more intricate, luxurious and multidimensional. He is a creature on the earth, a creature within the whole, which means that he is a creature on one star amongst many others stars. (Klee 124)

Against this backdrop, Klee points out the fundamental difference between artistic images, on the one hand, and optical images under new auspices, on the other: all paths converge in the eye and from there lead to the synthesis of external seeing and internal looking. From this point of convergence in the eye, artworks as manual constructs are formed which deviate entirely from the purely optical image of the object itself. (Klee 125)

9

Klaus Weber has additionally suggested that the ship “which is obviously cruising full speed towards the towering wall, is [perhaps] to be understood allegorically” (“Malerei am Bauhaus” 386). In such an interpretation, the ship would no longer be read as the antithesis of reality, but rather as its symbolic embodiment in the sense that the ship represents, for example, Germany’s body politic.

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With this in mind, Klee’s dictum that art should use allegory to make visible that which is hidden can be read anew; namely, it does not involve the nebulous metaphysics of some artistic creed, but rather a precise directive to draw out and make visible the functional relations from art’s various compositional possibilities. Klee also tried to realize this in his tempera painting for the portfolio ÀJ   ZKLFK IRUPV QRWKLQJ OHVV WKDQ WKH DEVWUDFWV\PEROLF FLSKHU RI  D communicative process. Klaus Weber has convincingly described this “concise schema for the transmission of information”: Out of the yellow funnel a massive, luminous red arrow points upwards as a symbol of information being sounded out towards the radial center of a fragile, lilac-colRUHGÀJXUHODEHOHGZLWKWKHOHWWHUV´2+5µ´($5µ $WWKHXSSHUHQGRI WKLVFKDLQ of action appear the results: The information has arrived on the other side of the human sensory organ condensed into a green exclamation point which represents the perception that has been thereby released. (Weber, “Malerei am Bauhaus” 388)

Whether the change from red to green is to be interpreted as “Klee’s ironic commentary” (Weber, “Malerei am Bauhaus” 388) remains anyone’s guess. At any rate, the piece is annotated with the memo “Answer ‘ee’ to the birthGD\DVVLJQPHQWµÀJ ZKLFKFDQQRGRXEWEHVHHQDVDJOLPSVHLQWRWKH typical ironic distance with which Klee discharged Moholy-Nagy’s ‘didacticpedagogic’ exercise. On yet another point, Klee appears to have artistically contradicted Moholy-Nagy’s thesis. If Moholy-Nagy believed that painting “was [not] DEOHWRÀ[DPRWLRQLQLWVHVVHQFHµ0RKRO\1DJ\ .OHHDWWHPSWHGWR make the temporal dimension visible via the artistic medium. In Klee’s abstract geometric composition, at the center of which the red arrow ascends upwards to ultimately meet the green exclamation point above the top of the ear, the procedural genesis of a communicative process is rendered immediately comprehensible and perhaps even clearer than in the momenWDULO\À[HGVFHQHVRIIHUHGE\SKRWRJUDSKLFUHSURGXFWLRQV2VNDU6FKOHPmer operated even more assertively than Klee with his watercolor and ink GUDZLQJÀJ RIIHULQJDGLDJUDPOLNHUHQGHULQJRI WKHSKRWRJUDSKLFUHIerence provided by Moholy-Nagy. He juxtaposes the technical equipment of the radio at the bottom of the image – which he has schematically dissected into its individual parts and labeled with the word “RADIO” – with the instructive chart-like medical illustration of the human auditory canals along with the Latin caption “Auris.” Under the mathematical formula 1x1 = 1, the communicative connection in the image is staged in a manner that is almost didactically over-encoded. By way of contrast, Wassily Kandinsky ÀJ VKLIWVWKHWDVNRI DUWLVWLFLQWHUSUHWDWLRQRI WKHSKRWRJUDSKLFUHIHUences entirely into the realm of an abstract composition in his own artistic media. Within the framework of an abstract composition, lines radiate from a yellow trumpet-like triangle at the lower right, creating a cosmic spatial

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HIIHFWDVWKH\DSSURDFKDFRQVWHOODWLRQRI DSSDUHQWO\IUHHÁRDWLQJFRORUHG lines and circles. In keeping with the comprehensive analysis presented in his 1926 work Punkt und Linie zu Fläche (Point and Line to Plane), all of the shapes in this work are carried by dynamic processes of motion (see Kandinsky 106). Nevertheless, there is no perceptible connection between cause and effect to be found in the compositional relation between colors and VKDSHV2QO\WKHFXUWDLQRQWKHOHIWKDQGVLGHZKLFKDWÀUVWJODQFHDSSHDUV to inconspicuously frame the dollhouse-like scenario, remains stationary. It alone has the potential to draw a close to the whole dynamic scene. In a previously unnoticed visual reference, his rigidly divided black, white, and red horizontal stripes make a play on the colors of the German National People’s Party’s (Deutschnationale Volkspartei'193ÀJ ÁDJRQHRI WKH victorious political parties in the 1924 elections that would pose a decisive threat to the Bauhaus school (Weißmann 36-38). /HWPHUHWXUQEULHÁ\WR/iV]Oy0RKRO\1DJ\·VODUJHO\DEVWUDFWLQJDQG FRQVWUXFWLYLVW LQWHUSUHWDWLRQ RI  WKH SKRWRJUDSKLF UHIHUHQFH ÀJ   7KLV work has long been considered as a “purely formalistic production […], the actual content of which should in no way be taken into consideration” (Weber, “Malerei am Bauhaus” 386). However, if one also gives attention to the peculiarly threatening combination of the portentously prominent black cross with the accompanying colors in abstract forms, then another reading likewise arises in the form of a political subtext: The prominent tones of black, white, and red in both the window parapet and the square representing the radio, again invoke the chromatic composition of the extreme right DNVP party which from this point on constituted part of the controlling majority bloc. The fact that such a political statement appealing to the political chromatics of mass culture was not unusual at this time in the context of an abstract-constructivist work is evidenced by El Lissitzky’s legendary 1919 poster bearing the political message “Beat the Whites with WKH5HG:HGJHµÀJ $VDQLPPHGLDWHO\UHFRJQL]DEOHSROLWLFDOV\PERO the red wedge iconoclastically invades the white circle (Lissitzky-Küppers, ÀJ   ,Q WKH WHQVH VSDFH EHWZHHQ PDVV PHGLD DQG DUWLVWLF XQLTXHQHVV Moholy-Nagy uses the political iconography of a color theory of everyday culture in a new form in order to charge his work’s message. Using available artistic media, all six Bauhaus masters attempted to erect a monument to artistic freedom in the dawning age of mass media. The commemorative portfolio entitled “1924 18/V” that was given to WalWHU*URSLXVRQKLVIRUW\ÀUVWELUWKGD\VKRZVWKDWWKHTXHVWLRQVVXUURXQGLQJ Bauhaus’s procedures for creating images and visualizations are not sufÀFLHQWO\DGGUHVVHGZKHQRQHDWWHPSWVWRLQWHUSUHWWKHPDVPHUHLGHDOLVWLF plays on abstract systems of form and shape which deviate from reality. On the contrary, when considered in the context of their contemporary visual culture a subcutaneous political iconography full of innuendo begins to

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unfold, one which ought to be read as the artists’ ideological confession. By the time the portfolio appeared in 1924 the romantic-utopian phase of Bauhaus art had long since drawn to a close, and the new guidelines of the rationalistic turn in Bauhaus art was at this time already clearly discernable. With an eye on the evolution of Bauhaus, Oskar Schlemmer spoke as early as 1922 of the ideological “renunciation of utopia,” which he soberly analyzed with the following words: We are able and allowed [to strive] only for that which is superlatively real; we strive for the realization of the idea. Instead of cathedrals, the modern tower bloc. A renunciation of medievalism and the medieval concept of craftsmanship […]. (Schlemmer 132)

This paradigm shift can also be seen in the constellation of various images in the portfolio that offer illuminating insight into the historical developments in media that were taking place at this time. Nevertheless, as the works in the portfolio show, beneath its surface, artistic work was informed by political and ideological convictions which the artists encoded as subtexts into their respective pieces. If in the early phase of Bauhaus the artists had ebulliently attempted to counter the monumentally catastrophic experiences of the First World War with nothing less than the utopian vision of a ‘new man,’ they would later come to remove the emphasis from these ethical demands while still leaving intact the ethos itself. For a long time, Bauhaus art was mainly considered as a formalistic experiment in the wake of the increasing autonomization of abstract art. A fresh look at the experiential and contextual dimensions of artistic work illustrates, however, to which extent even abstract works anchored themselves in their historical contexts and social communicative processes by means of implicit political iconographies. Thus, the Bauhaus school continued to be political and to profess its political colors right up until its self-dissolution.

Works Cited Bayer, Herbert, Walter Gropius, and Ilse Gropius (eds.): Bauhaus Weimar 1919-1925. Dessau 1925-1928. The Museum of Modern Art. New York 1938. Benjamin, Walter: “Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit” [1936]. Gesammelte Schriften. Vol. 1/1. Frankfurt/Main 1974, 431-508. Bothe, Rolf: “Der Turm des Feuers.” Das frühe Bauhaus und Johannes Itten: Katalogbuch anlässlich des 75. Gründungsjubiläums des Staatlichen Bauhauses in Weimar2VWÀOGHUQ5XLW 1994, 73-82. Daniels, Dieter: .XQVWDOV6HQGXQJ9RQGHU7HOHJUDÀH]XP,QWHUQHW. Munich 2002. von Dewitz, Bodo (ed.): Kiosk: Eine Geschichte der Fotoreportage. 1839–1973. Göttingen 2001.

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Fiedler, Jeannine (ed.): )RWRJUDÀHDP%DXKDXV. Ausstellungskatalog BauhausArchiv Berlin u. a. Berlin 1990. Giedion, Siegfried: Walter Gropius: Mensch und Werk. Stuttgart 1954. Hahn, Peter: “Ein glücklicher Augenblick. Die Gropius-Mappe zum 18. Mai 1924.” Modell Bauhaus. 1919-2009. Ed. Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin, Klassik Stiftung Weimar, Stiftung %DXKDXV'HVVDX2VWÀOGHUQ5XLW --: “Ein Portfolio von 1924. Walter Gropius zum 41. Geburtstag gewidmet.” Preziosen: Sammlungsstücke und Dokumente selbständiger Kultur-Institute der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. (G*QWKHU3ÁXJ9RO%RQQ Hess, Hans: Lyonel Feininger, Stuttgart 1959. Isaacs, Reginald R.: Walter Gropius: Der Mensch und sein Werk. Vol 1. Berlin 1983. Kandinsky, Wassily: Punkt und Linie zu Fläche. Beitrag zur Analyse der malerischen Elemente [1926]. Bern-Bümpliz 1973. Kemp, Wolfgang: 7KHRULHGHU)RWRJUDÀH,,. Munich 1979. Kerbs, Diethart: “John Graudenz 1884-1942.” Die Gleichschaltung der Bilder. Zur Geschichte GHU3UHVVHIRWRJUDÀH². Ed. Diethart Kerbs, Walter Uka, and Brigitte Walz-Richter. Berlin 1983, 74-76. Klee, Paul: Schriften. Rezensionen und Aufsätze. Ed. Christian Geelhaar. Cologne 1976. Lethen, Helmut: Verhaltenslehren der Kälte: Lebensversuche zwischen den Kriegen. Frankfurt/ Main 1994. Lissitzky-Küppers, Sophie: El Lissitzky: Maler, Architekt, Typograf, Fotograf. Dresden 1992. Malewitsch, Kasimir: Die gegenstandslose Welt [1927]. Ed. Hans M. Wingler. Mainz, Berlin 1986. Moholy-Nagy, László: 0DOHUHL²)RWRJUDÀH²)LOP [1927]. Ed. Hans M. Wingler. Berlin 1986. Rosiejka, Gert: Die Rote Kapelle: “Landesverrat” als antifaschistischer Widerstand. Hamburg 1986. Schlemmer, Oskar: Briefe und Tagebücher. Ed. Tut Schlemmer. Munich 1958. Wagner, Christoph: Itten, Gropius, Klee am Bauhaus in Weimar: Utopie und historischer Kontext. Ed. Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin. Neue Bauhausbücher. Vol. 2 (neue Zählung). With a preface by Annemarie Jaeggi. Berlin 2011. --: Johannes Itten: Alles in Einem – Alles im Sein2VWÀOGHUQ5XLW --: “Johannes Itten und die Esoterik: Ein Schlüssel zum frühen Bauhaus?” Esoterik am Bauhaus: Eine Revision der Moderne? Ed. Christoph Wagner. Regensburger Studien zur Kunstgeschichte. Vol. 1. Regensburg 2009, 108-149. Weber, Klaus: “Die Malerei am Bauhaus.” Experiment Bauhaus. Das Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin [West] zu Gast im Bauhaus Dessau, Ausstellungs-Katalog. Berlin 1988, 384392. --: “Mappe für Walter Gropius ‘1924 18/V.’” Schätze aus Berliner Museen. Erwerbungen aus Lottomitteln 1975-1995. Ausstellungs-Katalog Altes Museum. Berlin 1995, 134-137. Weißmann, Karlheinz: Schwarze Fahnen, Runenzeichen: Die Entwicklung der politischen Symbolik der deutschen Rechten zwischen 1890 und 1945. Düsseldorf 1991.

Photo Credits © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2011: Max Ernst (Fig. 10), Lyonel Feininger (Fig. 2, 8), Kurt Günther (Fig. 11), Johannes Itten (Fig. 13), Wassily Kandinsky (Fig. 9), El Lissitzky (Fig. 17), László Moholy-Nagy (Fig. 4, 12).

)LJ+LWOHUDWEULHÀQJZLWKKLVJHQHUDOVDWFührerhauptquartier, August 1941 (Keitel, von Brauchitsch, Hitler, Halder) (Herz 1994, 306)

163

Adolf Hitler’s (Self-)Fashioning as a Genius

Adolf Hitler’s (Self-)Fashioning as a Genius: The Visual Politics of National Socialism’s Cult of Genius 1

WOLFRAM PYTA

This article pursues two aims. First, I LQWHQGWRVKRZWKDWWKHVSHFLÀFIRUP of Hitler’s rule demanded a certain kind of visual politics. The visualization of politics grew out of the special power structures of the Nazi regime. Secondly, I wish to make some general remarks about the aestheticization of politics under Nazism. In doing so, I want to draw attention to the VLJQLÀFDQFHRI WKHYLVXDOVWUDWHJLHVRI SROLWLFVDQGWRVHWWKHYLVXDOLQUHODtion to other aesthetic forms of expression. This approach is based on the premise that Hitler promoted the synthetic convergence of the arts. Hitler understood art in Richard Wagner’s sense as a Gesamtkunstwerk to stage and to legitimize state authority. To make these claims I shall leave my intelOHFWXDOFRPIRUW]RQHDVDKLVWRULDQDQGYHQWXUHLQWRWKHÀHOGVRI WKHDWHU studies, literature, musicology, and art history.

I Which concept captures the essence of Nazism best? Very few historians would dispute the claim that Nazism was a leader-centered centered form of authorLW\ÀWWLQJDFRQFHSWZKLFK0D[:HEHUGHÀQHGDV¶FKDULVPDWLFDXWKRULW\·2 Hitler occupied a central position in the system and its visual representation. What is charismatic authority? According to Weber’s reading it derives its power from the social interaction between a ‘leader’ and his ‘followers.’ The latter bestow power on their leader by investing him with the authority to set political and cultural trends. The accompanying visual politics are central to the exercise of that authority because they give shape to cultural and political ideas. Charismatic leaders must therefore possess sym1 2

I would like to thank my colleagues Hans Ulrich Seeber, Renate Brosch, and Rüdiger Görner for instructive comments. See Wehler 542-563, 603-683; Kershaw, Hitlers Macht 24-30; Kershaw, Hitler-Mythos 21-23.

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bolic qualities, that is to say the ability to tie concepts of order to their RZQSHUVRQDDQGKHQFHJLYLQJWKHPV\PEROLFVLJQLÀFDQFH3\WD´*HWHLOWHV Charisma” 47-50). This symbolic task can only be accomplished by visual means – charismatic rulers generate symbolism by presenting political culture in a visual manner. +RZHYHU WKH FRQFHSW RI  FKDULVPD GRHV QRW VXIÀFH WR H[SODLQ WKH source of Hitler’s legitimacy. To be sure, it explains why the majority of Germans supported some of his symbolically-charged objectives. These included, above all, the creation of a cohesive völkisch community (‘Volksgemeinschaft’) as well as the restoration of Germany’s strength in foreign policy matters through the gradual repeal of the Treaty of Versailles. Yet, we should not forget that World War II accounted for a full half of the GXUDWLRQRI WKH1D]L(UD+LWOHUZDQWHGWKLVFDWDFO\VPLFFRQÁLFWKHGHOLEerately started it. War and destruction informed his entire political outlook. At the same time, the war confronted Hitler with a serious legitimacy problem since he assumed the role of oberster Kriegsherr or supreme commander. Hitler directed the war. Unlike Roosevelt and Churchill, Hitler was both a political and a military leader.3 However, Hitler was not fully prepared for this position. In his ideological writings he never depicted himself as a military leader. From 1941, though, that was exactly the role he claimed for himself! This confronted him with a fundamental problem, namely how to justify his active involvement in military planning to his generals and the German people. Hitler’s training in the art of war was limited, having experienced World War I as DVLPSOHSULYDWHÀUVWFODVV&DUYLQJRXWDYLVXDOVSDFHIRUKLVQHZSRVLWLRQ posed a corollary dilemma.

II It is here that the concept of the genius comes into play. Hitler’s self-promotion as a genius offered him two advantages. On the one hand, it gave KLPWKHOLFHQVHWRH[SDQGKLVVSKHUHRI LQÁXHQFHEHFDXVHWKHQRWLRQRI  genius implies unlimited creative powers which encompass all areas, including the military. On the other hand, genius, like charisma, is projected onto a person: only individuals whose admirers see them as such can claim for WKHPVHOYHVWKHVWDWXVRI JHQLXV+LWOHUIRUKLVSDUWSURÀWHGIURPDWUDGLtion of hero-worship which was deeply rooted in Germany’s political culture. Hitler’s ‘cult of genius’ drew on certain aesthetic role models. Great artists such as Johann Wolfgang Goethe or Richard Wagner paved the way by claiming that art has the power to recreate the world (Schmidt, Vol. 1, 3

Keegan 235-310; Carr, Hitler; Förster 149-192.

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193, 348-353). By exploiting the language of genius for his own political purposes, Hitler gave his authority an aesthetic dimension which harkened back to the work of these other ‘geniuses’ in German history and culture (Pyta, “Charisma”). Let us return once more to the meaning of visual politics. What characterizes genius as an aesthetic concept is that the person exalted to superman-status claims the ability of bringing together the hitherto separate disciplines of art and to create a new totalizing worldview. The genius wants to transcend the fragmentation of knowledge through synthesis. Hitler’s program is essentially aesthetic. We need, therefore, to explore the following questions: What are the visual implications and strategies of his cult of genius? Which visual media in particular were instrumental in promoting popular acceptance for Hitler’s charisma and his claim to a military genius?

III Hitler’s public presence decreased during World War II.4 The dictator transferred his attention to military strategy and, as a result, spent most of his time at his army headquarters, the Führerhauptquartier. His public appearances became rare. He reduced his communication with the German people for the most part to radio broadcasts. Hitler could afford to be reclusive because he had successfully consolidated his political power, claiming credit IRUWKHLQWHUQDOXQLÀFDWLRQRI WKHQDWLRQDIWHUORQJLQWHUQDOVWUXJJOHV7KH military genius Hitler no longer needed to woo the masses and to draw emotional sustenance from popular acclaim. In this reinvented capacity he could cut himself off from followers without negative consequences for his prestige since solitude seemed to stimulate the creativity of the genius. To put it bluntly, his claim to be a genius put a literal visual barrier between him and the German people.5 The dictator’s visual abstinence had other reasons which had to do with WKH VSHFLÀF DHVWKHWLF WHFKQLTXH RI  YLVXDO OLQJXLVWLF DQG DFRXVWLF PHGLD One is inclined to give image and sound pride of place in the visual representation of his military authority. Both media convey subtleties of expression that wrap an aura of pithiness around the object or person that is being represented and hence make the greatness of the object/person seem all the more real. The images that are evoked prevail with special intensity and leave a memorable impression (Mersch). The auratic effect which accompanies the broadcasting of sound and LPDJH DW ÀUVW JODQFH SULYLOHJHV WKH ODWWHU WZR PHGLD LQ WKH GLVVHPLQDWLRQ 4 5

See Fest 923-927; Kershaw, Hitler - Mythos 221-225; Echternkamp 235-238. Cf. the speech by Joseph Goebbels in honor of Hitler’s 53rd birthday (Heiber 112-119).

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of Hitler’s ‘war charisma.’ Indeed, Nazi media policy focused mainly on WKHVLOYHUVFUHHQDQGUDGLRWRLQÁXHQFHSXEOLFRSLQLRQ6HJHEHUJ  Whereas literary production declined after the 1920s, radio and cinema enjoyed unprecedented popularity with consumers. Even during the war the movie audiences continued to increase – from 623 million in 1939 to 1.062 billion in 1942 (Zimmermann 198). In these years, the cinema industry tested new techniques to capture the war for viewers in order to give the home front an allegedly authentic but propaganda-infused impression of the events at the front (Paul, Bilder 225-235; Hoffmann, “Mythos”). Newsreels – the Deutsche Wochenschau – were shown before the start of every movie. The public relations section of the military high command, Goebbels’s propaganda ministry, and the staff at Hitler’s military headquarters co-produced these highly affective images, texts, and sounds. Aiming at a similar, also seemingly authentic effect, documentaries produced between 1940 and 1942 tried to draw audiences into the war, which the strategic employment of innovative stylistic devices depicted as the triumph of technology in a war of precision (Paul, Bilder 234-240). $WÀUVWLWVHHPVWKDW+LWOHU·VSK\VLRJQRPLFVWUDWHJ\ZDVLQGHHGWRXVH the medium of the image to represent himself as the commander-in-chief. Hitler steered those visually curious towards his face; and he established his face as a physiognomic trade mark. Indeed, his favorite photographer Heinrich Hoffmann exercised rigorous control over the media’s reproduction of Hitler’s face (Herz, “Medienstar”). The appeal and importance of Hitler’s charisma also rested upon the overlap between his emergence as a political ÀJXUHDQGWKHJHQHUDOJURZWKRI WKHSK\VLRJQRPLFZD\RI ORRNLQJDWWKH human body after World War I (Schmölders, Hitlers Gesicht; Schmölders, “Hitlers Physiognomie”). However, a closer examination of the images we have of Hitler appearing as the supreme commander of the Wehrmacht SXWV WKLV ÀUVW LPSUHVsion into doubt. After Hitler took the position of supreme commander of the armed forces, his self representation via the media of photography DQGÀOPEHFDPHOHVVVWULNLQJ+HU]´0HGLHQVWDUµ $OWKRXJK+LWOHU maintained a lively interest in the contributions of the Deutsche Wochenschau and continued to be actively involved in its production until the summer of 1942, including at times reprimanding the work of Goebbels, Hitler’s appearance as supreme commander in the Wochenschau became limited and restricted. Despite requests from Goebbels, Hitler refused to give his speeches in his own voice in the Wochenschau. Instead, Hitler’s words were read by a newsreader whose voice paraphrased Hitler’s statements (Moeller 378-379). The image of Hitler also appears less frequently in the Deutsche Wochenschau. Crucially, when it does appear, Hitler is only shown in shots taken with a wide-angle. Thus, his face, which used to be the most important part of his visual representation, no longer appeared (Moeller 393-394). It is further-

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Fig. 2. Stuka meets Tank during the Battle of France (Hoffmann, Mit Hitler im Westen, n. pag.)

more remarkable that although German war propaganda produced a great deal of cinematic imagery of the war and its major battles, as far as we know no images were circulated which show Hitler as a witness to a battle (Schmölders, “Hitlers Physiognomie” 149). Is there a theoretical explanation for this absence? Might we interpret Hitler’s absence from these representations as a result of the fact that the visual representation of World War II mirrors a process of de-individualization? By de-individualization I mean the way in which cinematic representation especially in military documentaries showed a technically perfect mobile warfare. Human-machines, such as Stuka airplanes – complete with the sound of its unique howl as it dived – and tanks, became the symbols of war as a technically-mediated experience (Paul, Bilder 234-238). From this SHUVSHFWLYHÀJKWLQJVROGLHUVXQGHUVWRRGWKHG\QDPLFRI ZDUDQGWKHPRYHment of war as its most important feature (Paul, “Feuertaufe”). As a result, leadership and the decisions which determined the military course of events take a secondary role, as does the part of the supreme commander. 7KHFRQÁLFWZKLFKDURVHRYHUWKHSURGXFWLRQDQGGLVWULEXWLRQRI WKHPRY-

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Fig. 3. Hitler visiting Strasbourg Cathedral on June 28, 1940 (Hoffmann, Mit Hitler im Westen, n. pag.)

ie Sieg im Westen shows how competition and rivalry evolved between the Oberkommando and the supreme commander as a result of the cinematic representation of Blitzkrieg. With this military documentary the armed forces wanted to claim fame for the most crucial acts of the German campaign in Western Europe. The Press Group of the Army, led by Oberst .XUW+HVVHVXFFHVVIXOO\XVHGWKHÀOPWRFRPPXQLFDWHDQHZW\SHRI VROGLHU WR WKH ÀOP·V DXGLHQFH6 This new soldier showed perfect mastery of the modern weapons of mobile warfare, culminating in his use of the tank which stood apart from traditional soldiering (Brandt; Hesse; Graham) and especially countered the expectation that the war in the west would repeat WKHVWDJQDQWWUHQFKZDUIDUHRI :RUOG:DU,7KHÀOPZDVDOVRDSLRQHHULQJ document in its use of advanced aesthetic means to create the sensation of movement and war including quick changes of scenery, montage and sound effects. Sieg im Westen was released on 31 January 1941 and quickly 6

Cf. the personal papers of Kurt Hesse in Bundesarchiv – Militärarchiv Freiburg: NL 558, Nr. 34, 35, 45, 76 and 126.

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found an exceptionally responsive audience.7 Hitler himself had seen the ÀOPSULRUWRLWVUHOHDVHDQGKDGDSSURYHGRI LWVFRQWHQWEHLQJHVSHFLDOO\ SOHDVHGZLWKWKHZD\WKHÀOPUHSUHVHQWHGWKHHYHQWVRI WKHZDU+HVVH 186; Ertl 55). This enthusiasm diminished in the spring of 1941 and was UHSODFHGE\DJURZLQJVFHSWLFLVPWRZDUGVWKHÀOPRQKLVEHKDOI8 Hitler’s GLVDSSURYDOJUHZIURPWKHIDFWWKDWKLVIXQFWLRQLQWKHÀOPZDVQRWWKDWRI  the military leader whose will and determination, despite the opposition of the Generalstab, was enough to secure victory because of his decisive intervention in the German strategy of the Sichelschnitt-Plan. Instead, the fact that KLVPRVWLPSRUWDQWDSSHDUDQFHLQWKHÀOPZDVKLVYLVLWWRWKH&DWKHGUDORI  Strasbourg made him appear out of place among the armed forces’ senior commanders. Oberst Kurt Hesse, the creative father of the concept of the “new soldiertum,” was removed from his position in March 1941. If for a moment we accept the suspicion that Hitler could not use visualization to support his claim to mastery of war, we are thus faced with the question whether there was another medium which would have been better suited for this purpose. This question is particularly important in relation to discursive media and whether or not they may have had a structural advantage over visual media (Mersch 17-18). As a discursive medium, a text aims to create meaning by using the medium of language. In this way, the verbal means of expressing the concept of genius became Hitler’s chief method of legitimizing his military leadership. A claim to genius in the tradition of the classics disconnects the carrier of genius and frees it from the necessity of visualization. The dissemination of Hitler’s image as military leader as represented by the media has to take into consideration the interaction of text, image, and sound. At this point it is important for historians to remember that literary and media studies offer a set of methodological tools which allows us to interpret the dynamic way in which words and images interact (Brosch 7-23). The degree to which an aesthetically demanding narrative of war was shaped by the requirements of photography, which in a certain way freezes the decisive moment, may be seen for example in the narrative style of Ernst Jünger (Encke). Functionally, press, image, and sound are complementary forms of media. In this way their work should be understood as the product of a combination of media (Zimmermann 5-23). It is thus important, to examine reading and listening habits, forms of perception with which readers, spectators and listeners engaged with media outlets (Fluck). One must take into consideration the way in which social and culturally embedded practices of reading, seeing, and listening 7 8

Cf. the SD-Reports “Meldungen aus dem Reich” Nr. 170, 13 March 1941, Bundesarchiv Berlin, R 58/ 158, fol. 77-84. Hesse - Papers, Bundesarchiv – Militärarchiv Freiburg, NL 558, Nr. 35; also Graham.

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SURGXFHGIRUPVRI VLJQLÀFDQFH+LVWRULDQVPD\SURÀWKHUHIURPDGDSWLQJ DSSURDFKHVIURPZLWKLQWKHWUDGLWLRQDOO\GLVWLQFWÀHOGRI FXOWXUDOVWXGLHV Such approaches outline ways in which a historian may analyze the dynamic interaction between observers and the formal aspects of texts, images, and sounds. Cultural studies also offer methods with which the cultural technologies of a given medium and its thematics may be emphasized. When we approach visual sources, we obviously should use the tools developed LQWKHÀHOGRI YLVXDOVWXGLHV7KLVDSSURDFKLVFRQFHUQHGZLWKH[DPLQLQJ the processes an image triggers when it is confronted with viewers: in other words, this approach seeks to understand the image as a cultural historical act (Mitchell; Bachmann-Medick 346-348). For experts in visual studies and image analysis, these may seem rather basic points. Historians, however, are yet to generate a great deal of knowledge about visual practices during World War II. So far historical analysis has left questions about visualization largely unanswered.9 An approach using questions and theories developed in literary and visual studies should enable historians to gain a much clearer picture of how images were perceived during this period. In this context, the following questions seem especially important to me: Which visual technologies, strategies, and practices were available at the time for the purpose of observing and representing the war? How did such an ensemble communicate Hitler’s role as supreme commander? May we identify an order of visualization which transmitted the war to media audiences? How was Hitler’s role communicated within this system? Given the length of time during which the war was visually represented and the resulting overstimulation caused by the excess of images, another question is whether or not Hitler was able to establish an image of himself as Feldherr. What kinds of selective representation practices were necessary to allow a clear attribution of functions in relation to Hitler? What was the role of possible physiognomic image strategies (Schmölders, Hitlers Gesicht; Leo)? IV Hitler’s understanding of art might be a starting point for understanding the visual aspects of his rule and their realization in the media. As Birgit Schwarz and Frederic Spotts recently pointed out, Hitler’s (self-)fashioning as a genius was deeply rooted in his aesthetic concept (Schwarz, esp. 85-97; Spotts). I will take as an example Hitler’s reception of Wagner’s musicdramas that characterizes his aesthetic favors (Fest 73-75). Hitler shared Wagner’s view that in the music-drama the isolation of the arts should be abandoned. Indeed, Wagner’s genius was mirrored by his attempt to reestablish the strongest possible impact of one work of art based on unify9

This is even true for the important studies of Gerhard Paul (cf. Paul, “Krieg und Film”).

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ing its expressive components. Through the fusing of different art forms including poetry, sound, dance, architecture, and scene-painting Wagner brought forward an aesthetic synthesis of such a performative staging. By amalgamating the arts Wagner’s concept of Gesamtkunstwerk intended to produce synaesthetic effects: the audience should be transformed in a comPXQLW\XQLÀHGE\WKHHQFKDQWLQJKDUPRQ\RI WKHGesamtkunstwerk (Hiß 9, 74-85, 92-95; Großmann-Vendrey 13-19; Görner 98-100). As far as we know, already the young Hitler in Vienna professed deep admiration for Wagner’s art (Hamann, Hitlers Wien; Kubizek 85-98). There is no evidence that the political writings of Wagner, i.e. his antisemitic pamphlet on “Das Judentum in der Musik,” played a decisive role in the formation of Hitler’s antisemitism. Hitler regarded Richard Wagner not as his ideological mentor but as the creator of an aesthetic concept that implied a strategy of aestheticization of politics (Friedländer; Proat; Carr, WagnerClan 254). Already the Wagner expert Thomas Mann (in his famous article ´(LQ %UXGHUµ IURP   GLVFRYHUHG WKLV VSHFLÀF instrumentalization of the cult of Wagner as deeply embedded in the German political culture (Mann 222-227; Martynkewicz 406-407). Hitler took the function of the highest patron of the Wagner festival in Bayreuth. His personal connection with the Wagner family was so close that it is not an exaggeration to say that the four children of Winifred and Siegfried Wagner provided Hitler with something like an ersatz family (Hamann, Winifred Wagner; Karbaum 86-93; Strunz; Carr, Wagner-Clan). On the other hand, Hitler had little interest in the theater, and literature meant almost nothing to him. Hitler’s preferences imply a hierarchy of art, in which the image ranked high above the Logos. Hitler chose a visual means of accessing Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk. 7KHUHIRUHKLVVSHFLÀFDGPLUDWLRQIRU:DJQHU·VDUWZDVGHYRWHGWRWKHVFHQery. Since 1933 he revitalized his knowledge of stage design acquired during the time he had spent in Vienna (Carr, Wagner-Clan 252). It was Hitler who recommended Alfred Roller to Winifred Wagner. Roller was an advocate of scenic art and had cooperated closely with Gustav Mahler at the Hoftheater LQ9LHQQD,Q$OIUHG5ROOHUVXSSOLHGWKHVWDJHGHVLJQIRUWKHÀUVWQHZ production of Parsifal since 1882 (Hamann, Winifred Wagner 271-275). By the order of Hitler, Roller, after his death, was replaced by his son Ulrich, who represented an identical artistic opinion (Hamann, Winifred Wagner 318). Were there political reasons, why Hitler thought the visual was more important than the discursive? Did the visual offer Hitler a better means of achieving his political goals? That texts must be understood in a hermeneutic way is the basic starting point of philosophical hermeneutics since Gadamer (Gadamer; Grondin 152-172). At the same time this means that the reader gives meaning to the text in a sort of a conversation with the text. The structure of a text may, of course, guide certain aspects of this process, but in the end reading

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a text remains an individual act of the subject who allocates meaning to the text through the subject’s own understanding. Hitler did not want enlightened subjects; he did not want citizens. For him art was always something which possessed a fascinating value – and this meant, that he privileged all art forms which could have a collective impact (Martynkewicz 461-464). Art should not be understood by the subject; rather it should overpower the subject. The aesthetic of overpowering, however, prefers the image over the word. This observation leads us to a conclusion which should be regarded as the starting point for further research concerning the dynamic relations between politics and aesthetics in the ‘Third Reich’: the inherent tension between the concept of military genius communicated by primarily discursive media and the Wagner-oriented concept of an aesthetics of owerpowering that privileges the visual. 7RFRQFOXGHDQGVXPPDUL]HÀUVW+LWOHUSUHIHUUHGYLVXDOSROLWLFVEHcause the visualization of politics was perfectly suited for the purpose of creating a community in an emotional way. Secondly, Hitler’s visual politics are part of a large-scale and wide reaching aestheticization of the political, by which Hitler wanted to produce stunning shared experiences. In that respect, images had a certain priority over word and sound. Thirdly, the use of the visual to legitimize Hitler as military commander had its limitations. Accordingly, Hitler returned to logocentric, language-based methods of communication to present himself as military genius.

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Works Cited Bachmann-Medick, Doris: Cultural Turns. Neuorientierungen in den Kulturwissenschaften. 3rd ed Reinbek 2007. Brandt, Hans-Jürgen: NS-Filmtheorie und dokumentarische Praxis: Hippler, Noldan, Junghans. Tübingen 1987. Brosch, Renate (ed.): Ikono/Philo/Logie: Wechselspiele von Texten und Bildern. Berlin 2004. Carr, Jonathan: Der Wagner-Clan. Geschichte einer deutschen Familie. Hamburg 2008. Carr, William: Hitler. A Study in Personality and Politics. London 1978. Echternkamp, Jörg (ed.): Die deutsche Kriegsgesellschaft 1939 bis 1945. Munich 2005. Encke, Julia: “Wahrnehmungspolitik. Ernst Jünger und das Lichtbild.” In: Die Medien der Künste. Beiträge zur Theorie des Darstellens. Ed. Dieter Mersch. Munich 2003, 191-209. Ertl, Hans: Hans Ertl Als Kriegsberichter 1939-1945. Innsbruck 1985. Fest, Joachim: Hitler. Eine Biographie. Frankfurt/Main 1973. Fluck, Winfried: “Aesthetic Experience of the Image.” In: Iconographies of Power. The Politics and Poetics of Visual Representation. Ed. Ulla Haselstein, Berndt Ostendorf, and Peter Schneck. Heidelberg 2003, 11-41. Förster, Jürgen: Die Wehrmacht im NS-Staat. Eine strukturgeschichtliche Analyse. Munich 2007. Friedländer, Saul: “Hitler und Wagner.” In: Richard Wagner im Dritten Reich. Ein Schloss Elmau-Symposium. Ed. Saul Friedländer and Jörn Rüsen. Munich 2000, 165-178. Gadamer, Hans-Georg: Wahrheit und Methode. Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik. Tübingen 1965. Görner, Rüdiger: “Über die ‘Trennung der Elemente.’ Das Gesamtkunstwerk – ein Steinbruch der Moderne?” Maske und Kothurn. Internationale Beiträge zur Theaterwissenschaft 29 (1983): 98-122. Graham, Cooper: “‘Sieg im Westen’ (1941): Interservice and Bureaucratic Propaganda Rivalries in Nazi Germany.” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 9 (1989): 19-44. Grondin, Jean: Einführung in die philosophische Hermeneutik. 2nd ed. Darmstadt 2001. Großmann-Vendrey, Susanne: Bayreuth in der deutschen Presse. Beiträge zur Rezeptionsgeschichte Richard Wagners und seiner Festspiele. Vol. III/1. Regensburg 1983. Hamann, Brigitte: Hitlers Wien. Lehrjahre eines Diktators. Munich 1997. —: Winifred Wagner oder Hitlers Bayreuth. Munich 2002. Heiber, Helmut (ed.): Goebbels Reden. Vol. II: 1939 - 1945. Düsseldorf 1972. Herz, Rudolf: Hoffmann und Hitler. Fotographie als Medium des Führer-Mythos. Munich 1994. —: “Vom Medienstar zum propagandistischen Problemfall. Zu den Hitlerbildern Heinrich Hoffmanns.” In: Führerbilder. +LWOHU0XVVROLQL5RRVHYHOW6WDOLQLQ)RWRJUDÀHXQG)LOP. Ed. Martin Loiperdinger. Munich 1995, 51-64. Hesse, Kurt: Der Geist von Potsdam. Mainz 1967. Hiß, Guido: Synthetische Visionen. Theater als Gesamtkunstwerk von 1800 bis 2000. Munich 2009. Hoffmann, Heinrich (ed.): Mit Hitler im Westen. Geleitwort Generalfeldmarschall Keitel. Berlin 1940 (n.pag.). Hoffmann, Kay: “Der Mythos der perfekten Propaganda. Zur Kriegsberichterstattung der ‘Deutschen Wochenschau’ im Zweiten Weltkrieg.” In: Augenzeugen. Kriegsberichterstattung vom 18. zum 21. Jahrhundert. Ed. Ute Daniel. Göttingen 2006, 169-192.

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Karbaum, Michael: Studien zur Geschichte der Bayreuther Festspiele (1876-1976). Regensburg 1976. Keegan, John: The Mask of Command. A Study of Generalship. London 1987. Kershaw, Ian: Hitlers Macht. 'DV3URÀOGHU16+HUUVFKDIW. Munich 1992. —: Der Hitler-Mythos. Führerkult und Volksmeinung. Stuttgart 1999. Kubizek, August: Adolf Hitler. Mein Jugendfreund. 3rd ed. Graz 1966. Leo, Per: “Der ‘fremde Andere.’ Zur Sichtbarkeit des Einzelnen in den Inszenierungen der modernen Großstadt.” In: Ordnungen in der Krise. Zur politischen Kulturgeschichte Deutschlands (1900–1933). Ed. Wolfgang Hardtwig. Munich 2007, 261-291. Mann, Thomas: Ausgewählte Essays in drei Bänden. Vol II: Politische Reden und Schriften. Frankfurt/Main 1977. Martynkewicz, Wolfgang: Salon Deutschland. Geist und Macht 1900-1945. Berlin 2009. Mersch, Dieter: “Einleitung: Wort, Bild, Ton, Zahl – Modalitäten medialen Darstellens.” In: Die Medien der Künste. Beiträge zur Theorie des Darstellens. Ed. Dieter Mersch. Munich 2003, 9-49. Mitchell, William J. T.: Picture Theory. Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation. Chicago 1994. Moeller, Felix: Der Filmminister. Goebbels und der Film im Dritten Reich. Berlin 1998. Paul, Gerhard: “Krieg und Film im 20. Jahrhundert. Historische Skizze und methodologische Überlegungen.” In: Krieg und Militär im Film des 20. Jahrhunderts. Ed. Bernhard Chiari Munich 2003, 3-83. —: Bilder des Kriegs – Krieg der Bilder. Die Visualisierung des modernen Kriegs. Paderborn 2004. —: “‘Feuertaufe’ – Der ‘Blitzkrieg’ als Erlebniskino und die Maschinisierung des Sehens.” In: Medien im Nationalsozialismus. Ed. Bernd Heidenreich and Sönke Neitzel. Paderborn 2010, 145-160. Porat, Dina: “‘Zum Raum wird hier die Zeit’: Richard Wagners Bedeutung für Adolf Hitler und die nationalsozialistische Führung.” In: Richard Wagner und die Juden. Ed. Dieter Borchmeyer, Ami Maayani and Susanne Vill. Stuttgart 2000, 207-220. Pyta, Wolfram: “Geteiltes Charisma. Hindenburg, Hitler und die deutsche Gesellschaft im Jahre 1933.” In: Das Jahr 1933. Die nationalsozialistische Machteroberung und die deutsche Gesellschaft. Ed. Andreas Wirsching. Göttingen 2009, 47-69. —: “Charisma und Geniezuschreibung – Strategien der Herrschaftslegitimation Hitlers.” In: Herrscherkult und Heilserwartung. Ed. Jan Assmann and Harald Strohm. Munich 2010, 213-234. Schmidt, Jochen: Die Geschichte des Genie-Gedankens in der deutschen Literatur, Philosophie und Politik 1750-1945. 3rd ed. Vols. 1 and 2. Heidelberg 2004. Schmölders, Claudia: Hitlers Gesicht. Eine physiognomische Biographie. Munich 2000. —: “Hitlers verteufelte Physiognomie. Zur Geschichte des Charisma.” In: Hitler darVWHOOHQ=XU(QWZLFNOXQJXQG%HGHXWXQJHLQHUÀOPLVFKHQ)LJXU. Ed. Rainer Rother. Munich 2008, 145-156. Schwarz, Birgit: Geniewahn: Hitler und die Kunst. Vienna 2009. Segeberg, Harro: Literatur im Medienzeitalter. Literatur, Technik und Medien seit 1914. Darmstadt 2003. Spotts, Frederic: Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics. Woodstock 2003. Strunz, Holger R.: “Hitler und die ‘Gleichschaltung’ der Bayreuther Festspiele. Ausnahmezustand, Umdeutung und sozialer Wandel einer Kulturinstitution 1933–1934.” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 55.2 (2007): 237-268. Wagner, Richard: Das Judenthum in der Musik. Leipzig 1869.

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Wehler, Hans-Ulrich: Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte. Vol. 4: Vom Beginn des Ersten Weltkriegs bis zur Gründung der beiden deutschen Staaten 1914-1949. Munich 2003. Zimmermann, Clemens: Medien im Nationalsozialismus. Cologne 2007.

Fig. 1. General Washington, painted by Gilbert Stuart (1797) and engraved by C. Goodman and B. Piggot (Philadelphia 1818). Courtesy American Antiquarian Society – R 54 B dr 6.

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The Grammar of Postrevolutionary Visual Politics: Comparing Presidential Stances of George Washington and Friedrich Ebert VOLKER DEPKAT

North America in the late eighteenth century and Germany in 1918/19 witnessed the revolutionary founding of democracies. While the American democracy was the result of a Declaration of Independence and a victoriRXVZDU*HUPDQ\·VÀUVWGHPRFUDF\ZDVERUQIURPGHIHDWLQZDUDQGWKH ensuing collapse of monarchy. While the American Declaration of IndeSHQGHQFHKDGGHÀQHGQDWXUDOULJKWVOLEHUDOLVPDQGSRSXODUVRYHUHLJQW\DV the key principles upon which the new political order was to be based, the foundation of a democracy in Germany was not driven by the desire to create a new political order that would bring about a new and better world for the whole of mankind. Rather, the transition from monarchy to democracy in Germany was initiated by the military and political elites of Wilhelmine Germany to let democrats liquidate a war begun, led and lost by monarchy.1 As different as the origins and the histories of the American and the ÀUVW*HUPDQGHPRFUDFLHVDUHWKH\ZHUHERWKLQQHHGRI KDYLQJWROHJLWLmate themselves against the backdrop of a very powerful monarchic traGLWLRQWKDWKDGGHÀQHGWKHVRXUFHVRI OHJLWLPDF\EHIRUH,QWKLVFRQWH[W the foundation of democracies in America and Germany was not only a question of how to make a constitution and set up institutional procedures, how to structure the decision-making process and execute laws, or how to organize political parties and electorates for them. Just as crucial for the founding and stabilization of the postrevolutionary orders was the creation of a political culture supportive of a democracy. By ‘political culture,’ I mean the ensemble of those cultural values and practices which - in providLQJIRUPHDQLQJDQGRULHQWDWLRQ²HQYHORSHSROLWLFDOLQVWLWXWLRQVDQGGHÀQH the normative ideas upon which a system of rule is based.2 While politi1

2

For general accounts of the American Revolution see Middlekauff; Wood, Radicalism; Wood, Creation; Cogliano; Countryman. For general accounts of the German Revolution 1918/19 see Kluge; Winkler, Von der Revolution; Winkler, Weimar 13-142; Kolb; Bernstein. On the cultural history of the political see Landwehr; Frevert/Haupt; Stollberg-Rilinger; Bösch/Domeier.

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cal orders in general can claim legitimacy only if they possess a normative idea of their own existence, and while all systems of rule must make these claims visible to generate acceptance and following, the need to visualize legitimacy and the validity of its institutions is particularly strong under the conditions of popular sovereignty.3 One major manifestation of political culture is the realm of the visual, which of course encompasses much more than just pictorial cultures, but pictorial cultures is what this paper focuses on.4 It aims at analyzing portrait paintings and prints of George Washington and Friedrich Ebert, who ZHUHERWKWKHÀUVWHOHFWHGKHDGVRI VWDWHDIWHUD UHYROXWLRQDU\WUDQVLWLRQ from monarchy to democracy in the United States and Germany, as visual arguments in the overarching social debates about what is right and wrong, good and bad, legitimate and illegitimate. The focus on Washington and Ebert is motivated by the fact that the “age of democratic revolutions” ushered in by the American and French Revolutions at the end of the eighteenth century forged an alliance between liberalism and nationalism which WXUQHG WKH KHDGV RI  VWDWH DQG JRYHUQPHQW LQWR SHUVRQLÀFDWLRQV RI  ERWK the political system and the nation.5 Therefore, it is crucial to ask, how the two democracies in the United States and the Weimar Republic went about creating a political iconography supportive of their order from the visual traditions of monarchy and aristocracy. This question the following essay will investigate by analyzing the visual grammar of presidential stances of Washington and Ebert, i.e. portraits ofÀFLDOLQFKDUDFWHUUHSUHVHQWLQJWKHPDVKHDGVRI VWDWHWRFRPPXQLFDWHOHJLWimacy and authority.6 The argument will be developed in three steps: First a general overview over the forms and mediums of representing Washington and Ebert visually will be given. The following section unearths the visual 3

Wolfram Pyta made this point in his paper “Visualizing Democratic Legitimacy and Authority: The Case of the Weimar Republic” given at the 2009 conference of the Bavarian American Academy “Visual Cultures – Transatlantic Perspectives.” A conference volume is in preparation.   )RUUHFHQWRYHUYLHZVRYHUWKHUDSLGO\JURZLQJÀHOGRI YLVXDOFXOWXUHVWXGLHVVHH0LU]RHII Introduction; Mirzoeff, Reader; Kromm/Bakewell; Rawlinson. 5 The idea of an “age of democratic revolution” was formulated by R.R. Palmer; it in many respects pioneered the concept of an “Atlantic History.” Palmer; Godechot; Klooster; Bailyn; Greene/Morgan. 6 While much has been written about the political portraiture of the Early American Republic, similar studies seem to be lacking for the Weimar Republic. On the history of the presidential stance in the United States see Cunningham 130-163. Especially on George Washington see Thistlethwaite, Image; Mitnick; Barratt/Miles 133-190; Evans 60-73; Schwartz; Fitz. While there is a lack of systematic studies on the political portraiture of the Weimar presidency, Walter Mühlhausen has included a chapter on the presidential politics of representation into his magisterial biography of Friedrich Ebert and published a separate piece investigating into Friedrich Ebert’s relationship to photography and the photographers. Mühlhausen, Ebert 775-791, 809-848; Mühlhausen, Visier.

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grammar of an emerging democratic iconography in the United States by comparing Allan Ramsay’s coronation portrait of King George III and Gilbert Stuart’s Lansdowne portrait of George Washington. Finally, the study will move to the German context to discuss the visual politics of the early Weimar Republic on the basis of two Ebert photographs from 1918 and 1925.

1. The Visual Presence of the President :KHQ*HRUJH:DVKLQJWRQWRRNWKHRDWKRI RIÀFHDV$PHULFD·VÀUVWSUHVLdent, he was visually very well-known to the American public.7 The most important media for popularizing the image of Washington were portrait paintings and prints based on them. Washington was painted from life many times and by many artists, and the results vary widely. However, all of Washington’s life portraits communicate a sense of dignity and seriousQHVV DQG WKH\ DOO ´UHÁHFW WKHLU FUHDWRUV· FRQVFLRXVQHVV RI  WKH PDQ DV D hero” (Meschutt 35). Washington’s charismatic heroism rested on his performance as victorious general and commander in chief of the Continental Army. By far the most of the visual representations of George Washington depict him as general in uniform and with a broad variety of military attributes. The series of military portraits began as early as 1772, when Charles Willson Peale painted “George Washington in the Uniform of a Colonel in WKH9LUJLQLD0LOLWLDµZKLFKLVFRQVLGHUHGWREHWKHÀQHVWSUHUHYROXWLRQDU\ portrait of Washington (Meschutt 25). In May 1776, John Hancock, then SUHVLGHQW RI  WKH 6HFRQG &RQWLQHQWDO &RQJUHVV ZDV WKH ÀUVW WR FRPPLVsion a portrait showing George Washington as commander in chief of the Continental Army, which at that time was already engaged in an increasingly ÀHUFHEDWWOHDJDLQVWWKH%ULWLVKDUP\$JDLQ3HDOHZKRLQWKHFRXUVHRI KLV life painted altogether seven life portraits of George Washington, got the job, and in December 1776 he delivered the painting to John Hancock, who hung it in his Boston mansion (Meschutt 26). This not very well-crafted portrait stands at the beginning of a long list of life portraits representing George Washington as general and military hero. Among the many artists who visited Washington while he was LQWKHÀHOGZLWKWKH&RQWLQHQWDO$UP\RUDWKLVSULYDWHUHVLGHQFHDW0RXQW Vernon or serving as President of the United States in New York, Charles :LOOVRQ3HDOH-RKQ7UXPEXOODQG*LOEHUW6WXDUWÀJXUHSURPLQHQWO\+RZever, also lesser known artists like Joseph Wright, Robert Edge Pine, and 7

The visual presence of Washington’s likeness is discussed by Meschutt; Ayres; Robinson; Thistlethwaite, Image. For the broader context of Washington in the visual and ceremonial politics of the Early Republic and its Washington cult see Wills; Waldstreicher 117-126; Rhodehamel 115-145; Cope/Penderson/Williams.

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Edward Savage made Washington sit for them to have his portrait taken (cf. Meschutt). While there were some portraits depicting Washington as a civilian, most artists chose to represent him as a general, and this, interestingly enough, well into the 1790s, when Washington fashioned himself as WKHÀUVW3UHVLGHQWRI WKH8QLWHG6WDWHVLQDQRVWHQWDWLRXVO\FLYLOLDQPDQQHU8 Until 1777, the portraits of Washington were commissioned by private persons, who wanted to display them in their homes. Beginning in 1779, however, the Washington likenesses increasingly served public and commercial purposes. Peale’s famous “George Washington at Princeton” was commissioned by Pennsylvania’s governing body, the Supreme Executive Council, to be put on display in the State House in Philadelphia in 1779 (Meschutt 26). In 1783 the College of New Jersey commissioned Peale to execute a life portrait of Washington for its main building (28). Other institutions that ordered Washington likenesses to be hung in public buildings were the State of Maryland, the State of Virginia, Harvard University, the City of New York, and the City of Charleston, South Carolina (28, 30, 32). Reproduced as replicas, engravings and lithographs, Washington likenesses circulated widely in America and also Europe. Charles Willson Peale engraved and published a mezzotint of his 1779 life portrait of Washington as early as 1780, and he was still painting bust-length replicas of it in the 1790s (26). In 1782, Peale opened a gallery in Philadelphia showing portraits RI 5HYROXWLRQDU\:DUÀJXUHVIURPZKLFKVWDUWLQJLQKHPDGHDVHULHV of mezzotint engravings, which of course included Washington (30). At the same time, his brother James Peale made enlarged copies of Charles’s 1787-Washington portrait, “which in turn served as the model for the more WKDQÀIW\SRUWUDLWVE\&KDUOHVDQG-DPHV·VQHSKHZ&KDUOHV3HDOH3RONµ  Also Gilbert Stuart, from the start, intended to make copies of his famous Athenaeum portrait for income, and his depiction of Washington generated such demand, that Stuart referred to the scores of copies he made from it as his “hundred dollar bills” (Mason 141). Washington likenesses thus sold, and this not only in America. In 1779, the Swiss-born artist Pierre (XJqQHGX6LPLWLqUHGUHZ:DVKLQJWRQLQSURÀOHDQGKHWKHQVHQWWKHSRUtrait to France for engraving and sale on the European market (Meschutt 27). In Germany, where, next to Benjamin Franklin, George Washington was widely seen as the representative of all Americans in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, the widely read historico-political magazine Minerva carried a Washington engraving based on Stuart’s Vaughan portrait as its frontispiece in 1796.9 8

9

On the ostentatiously civilian air of George Washington’s presidency centering on the ideas RI WKHYLUWXRXVFLWL]HQWKHSDWULRWOHDGHUDQGWKH&LQFLQQDWXVÀJXUH'HSNDW´(UÀQGXQJµ 737-741; Ketcham 91-93; Wills. Blome/Depkat 192-199; Barratt/Miles 136-140.

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Washington’s likeness, therefore, was highly popular in the early AmeriFDQUHSXEOLF+HZDVUHYHUHGDVYLFWRULRXVJHQHUDODQGÀUVWFLWL]HQRI WKH state he had helped to found. He was represented as a charismatic leader, whose charisma originated in the Revolutionary War and his personal service to the cause of liberty and democracy. Images of Washington, as Mark E. Thistlethwaite has argued, became “the face of the incipient nation,” a “symbol of national unity” and a “crucial means of establishing, constructing and perpetuating an American identity,” which - and this is an important difference to the Weimar Republic - was inseparably tied to America’s democracy.10 Washington himself seems to have been well-aware of the importance of visual politics in the revolutionary founding situation. Despite the fact that he repeatedly complained of having to go the painter’s chair again, to the painter’s chair he went time and again complying with many an artist’s wish for a sitting. He received portraitists at his home in Mount Vernon, while he was traveling the country and passing through cities, and even in WKHPLGVWRI WKHZDUZKHQKHZDVLQWKHÀHOGZLWKKLVDUP\2Q2FWREHU 3, 1789 he even sat for two artists on one single day. He allowed painters to correct their portraits in additional sittings, and let sculptors take facemasks. He commented on the results of the artists’ endeavors and was obviously well aware of the power of images (cf. Meschutt). In contrast to George Washington, Friedrich Ebert was visually largely unknown outside of socialist circles when he was elected president of the Weimar Republic in February 1919.11 Furthermore, unlike Washington, he FRPSOHWHO\ODFNHGV\PEROLFDQGSROLWLFDOFDSLWDOZKHQKHHQWHUHGKLVRIÀFH DQGWKHSROLWLFDORUGHUKHSHUVRQLÀHGZDVHQYHORSHGE\WKHDXUDRI PLOLWDU\ defeat, national humiliation, and social turmoil. Ebert was of low birth, had a working-class background, and was a Social Democrat, i.e. the representative of a decidedly anti-bourgeois and anti-monarchic socialist party, which the political elites in Wilhelmine Germany had successfully excluded from the national consensus. Bismarck and his political friends had declared 6RFLDO 'HPRFUDWV WR EH RXWVLGHUV DQG HQHPLHV RI  WKH QDWLRQ XQLÀHG XQder the Hohenzollern dynasty in 1871. In the German Empire hatred and contempt of Social Democrats, who were widely seen as “Vaterlandslose Gesellen,” functioned as a social cement holding an otherwise very fragile political order and national consensus together.12

10

11 12

Mark E. Thistlethwaite stressed this point in his paper “The Face of the Nation: George Washington’s Image and American Identity” given at the 2009 conference of the Bavarian American Academy “Visual Cultures – Transatlantic Perspectives.” A conference volume is in preparation. Mühlhausen, Visier 19; Mühlhausen, Ebert 776. Wehler 96-100, 107-110; Groh/Brandt 20-30, 39-53.

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However, Ebert’s problem was even bigger as he was also highly controversial within the socialist camp, which had split into Social Democrats, Independent Social Democrats and Communists in the course of the First World War and the Revolution of 1918/19.13 The radicals within the socialist spectrum were altogether unhappy with the outcome of the Revolution of 1918/19, they abhorred parliamentary democracy as an instrument of oppression in the hands of the capitalists, and they charged Ebert with having betrayed the socialist revolution of 1918 by selling out to the bourgeois classes (Mühlhausen, Ebert 150-164, 809-815). Instead of being a symbol RI  QDWLRQDO XQLW\ ZKHQ HQWHULQJ RIÀFH (EHUW ZDV PRUH RI  D PLUURU UHÁHFWLQJWKHPXOWLSOHDQGGHHSGLYLVLRQVRI *HUPDQVRFLHW\DIWHUDPLOLWDU\ defeat. Yet, things were not lost for the Weimar Republic from the start. Initially, there were majorities for the democratic order, and the future of WKHUHSXEOLFZDVGHÀQLWHO\RSHQ,QWKLVFRQWH[WDPRUHGHWHUPLQHGHIIRUW in visual and symbolic politics by the leading representatives of the new RUGHUWRDQFKRU*HUPDQ\·VÀUVWGHPRFUDF\LQWKHKHDUWVDQGPLQGVRI WKH population could most certainly have helped to establish an emotional bond between the Germans and their republic that would have helped to stabilize the order. When Ebert was sworn in as president of the Weimar Republic on August 21, 1919, the new era of mass press and modern photojournalism had reached maturity. Compared to Washington’s time, the media landscape KDG FKDQJHG VLJQLÀFDQWO\ 7KH HUD ZLWQHVVHG WKH ULVH RI  PDVVFLUFXODWLRQ daily newspapers, tabloids and illustrated magazines, which increased the importance of visual politics tremendously. At the same time, the Revolution of 1918/19 had forged a new visual interest in politics and politicians. In this media context, photographs moved to the center of political communication.14 While photographs began to determine the public images of politicians in Germany, Ebert and his staff, just like the Weimar democrats in general, did not embark on a determined effort to use the new medium to popularize the president and the political order he represented (Mühlhausen, Visier 19-28). In Ebert’s staff, there were no experts on public relations, and a clear strategy of representational and visual politics never materialized during his presidency. Generally, Ebert did not like to be photographed, and he only half-heartedly used the medium for purposes of self-representation. Therefore, the number of Ebert-motifs is very limited. Many photographs were full- and half-length portraits showing him as statesman in formal dress, either in a statue-like standing pose or sitting at his desk working. The majority of these pictures appearing in newspapers and magazines showed 13 14

Miller; Groh/Brandt 158-173; Grebing 28-31; Winkler, Von der Revolution 34-44, 114-133. Mergel; Fulda.

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(EHUWRQRIÀFLDORFFDVLRQVPRVWO\LQDJURXSRI SHRSOH7KHUHZHUHRQO\ very few photographs depicting a ‘private Ebert’ in a relaxed mood, and his wife Louise was hardly photographed at all. Thus, the ‘man’ behind the president remained largely in the dark. The private was not yet political (Mühlhausen, Visier 29-56). It is doubtful, however, whether there would have been a market for presidential prints and memorabilia in the Weimar Republic coming even close to the booming pictorial industry revolving around George Washington and his successors to the presidency in the United States.

2. Representing Legitimacy Part I: The Case of George Washington 2. 1. Allan Ramsay’s Portrait of King George III Allan Ramsay’s full-length portrait of King George III in his coronation UREHVÀJ SDLQWHGLQZDVWKHRIÀFLDOVWDWHSRUWUDLWIURPZKLFKDOO future replicas for ambassadors, governors of the provinces, various institutions and wealthy private persons were made. The huge portrait measures 98 by 64 inches (248.9 x 162.6 cm), and it represents George III as a powerful monarch of divine right in full regalia.15 The king, elevated on a dais, is positioned in the center of the painting. Resting his left hand on the table next to him and having his right hand on his hip, he does not stand erect, but is slightly bent to his left. His head is turned to the right; he does not look at the viewer but rather gazes beyond and above him at something that is outside of the painting. The king’s slim face is symmetrically shaped and evenly proportioned. It is angel-, even godlike and conveys benevolence, good naturedness and friendliness but also wisdom, determination and force; a beautiful head suggesting, in the physiognomic tradition, a beautiful mind.16 +RZHYHUÀJXULQJPRUHSURPLQHQWWKDQWKHNLQJ·VIDFLDODQGFRUSRUDO features is the king’s wardrobe in this representation of legitimate rule. The king is dressed in a long cloak made of blue velvet, which is edged with large gold embroidery and ermine. The cloak, whose complete inside is covered with ermine, is tied together with a white bow, probably made of silk, directly under his white tunic. He wears a noble necklace, which con15

16

The remarks in this section are indebted to Barbara Bauer’s B.A.-Thesis. For further references to Ramsay and his painting art see: Smart, Ramsay: 1713-1784; Smart, Ramsay: A Complete Catalogue 111-112; Smart, Ramsay: Painter, Essayist and Man of the Enlightenment 161-166, 214-216. On the physiognomic tradition see Goritschnig/Stephan; Krätz 32-43.

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Fig. 2. Allan Ramsay, George III (1761/62) The Royal Collection © 2010 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II - RCIN 405307.

sists of alternating gold and blue links, with the blue ones surrounding a red center. In addition to this long blue velvet cloak, George III wears two similar cloaks beneath, consisting of gold embroidery on the outside and ermine on the hem as well as on the inside. Underneath his heavy coronation robes of blue velvet, gold embroidery and ermine the king is dressed in gold breeches and a gold coat, unbuttoned from the belt buckle downwards, with large sleeves. The golden hilt of a dress sword can be seen concealed behind his body and cloak. It points to the monarch’s role as commander of the army and his authority as a military leader. The king wears white silk stockings, white shoes with square gold buckles on their tops as well as a ZKLWHVKLUWZLWKVOHHYHVPDGHRXWRI ODFHUXIÁHV7KHZKROHDWWLUHLVJODPRURXVRVWHQWDWLRXVDQGH[SHQVLYH$UXIÁHGODFHULEERQKDQJVGRZQRQKLV chest, under which a small, unobtrusive badge, showing a man on a white horse with a lance in his hand, is pinned onto his coat. This probably is his

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family’s coat-of-arms; it stands for the dynastic principle, thus alluding to ‘blood’ as one of the two sources of monarchical authority. George III props his left hand on a small table next to him on which rests a golden crown on a lavish cushion. This, of course, is the most explicit reference to his monarchical authority. Next to ‘blood’ and the dynastic principle, the act of coronation was the second source of legitimacy in a monarchy. Through coronation the heir to the throne was anointed king and thereby endowed with divine grace. Anointment removed the monarch from this world and positioned him somewhere between God and mankind. In the back we can see a classical column draped with a red curtain. The column, which symbolizes the state, the res publica, the body politic, stands parallel to the king’s body. The king, therefore, appears as both the pillar DQGWKHSHUVRQLÀFDWLRQRI WKHVWDWHKHUXOHVRYHU All in all, therefore, Ramsay’s coronation portrait of King George III represents the monarch as a strong, powerful, and self-assured ruler, who represents authority, force and wealth, dignity, grace and divinity. The individual person of George III is largely dominated by the external signs of power, i.e. the ostentatious coronation robes, the lavish display of wealth, the sword and the crown. The color gold is ubiquitous. The fact that George III is dressed almost exclusively in gold makes him look like a supernatural being, somebody chosen by God. The dais on which he stands DOVRUHSUHVHQWVKLVHOHYDWHGVWDWXVMXVWLÀHGE\WKHGLYLQHIDYRUKHDSSDUHQWO\ obtained. The painting suggests that the king’s claim to legitimacy rests not so much on his personality and individual character but rather on external regalia and visible material artifacts that visualize the invisible, i.e. ‘blood’ and divine grace, as sources of monarchical legitimacy. 2.2. Gilbert Stuart’s Lansdowne Portrait of George Washington *LOEHUW6WXDUW·VÀUVWIXOOOHQJWKSRUWUDLWRI WKH$PHULFDQSUHVLGHQW*HRUJH :DVKLQJWRQ ² WKH IDPRXV /DQVGRZQH SRUWUDLW ² ZDV WKH ÀUVW DWWHPSW WR visualize the legitimacy of a postrevolutionary, democratically elected head of state and chief of government. Stuart painted it in 1797 and made several replicas of it afterward. In the form of prints, like the one engraved by &KDUOHV*RRGPDQDQG5REHUW3LJJRWLQÀJ WKH/DQVGRZQHSRUtrait circulated widely in antebellum America.17 It already contained some of the most central elements and motifs of the democratic iconography connected to the American presidency. Like King George III, Washington is located at the center of the canvas, with his body placed slightly to the right in order to leave enough space 17

See Barratt/Miles 166-183; Evans 60-73; Cunningham 130-139; Bauer 25-33.

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for the outstretched right hand held up in an oratorical manner as if he was addressing someone. In the other hand, Washington holds a dress sword SRLQWLQJGRZQZDUGVWRWKHÁRRU7KHVZRUGKLQWVDWKLVPLOLWDU\DFKLHYHments as revolutionary war general, but it only hints at it. While the ‘general’ Washington thus is still present in the president Washington, the military charisma connected to the person is clearly subordinate to the civilian authority of the magistrate and the constitutional order he presides over. Washington is dressed in a black velvet suit whose long coat has a standup collar and reaches down to his knees. In addition, he wears black silk VWRFNLQJVEODFNMDSDQQHGVKRHVXSRQZKLFKVTXDUHVLOYHUEXFNOHVDUHÀ[HG DQGDZKLWHVKLUWZLWKDWXQLFDQGODFHUXIÁHVDWWKHEUHDVWDQGWKHZULVWV altogether, discreet and sober clothes, but of high quality, distinguished but not lavish or glamorous. Washington’s black hat with a black cockade on one side lying on the table to his right completes his formal suit. The citizen’s hat has replaced the king’s crown. Washington stands erect, while his massive, statue-like body faces only slightly to the viewer’s left. Similarly, his head is turned to the left side of the canvas. Washington does not look directly at the viewer but beyond KLP ´ZLWK WKH PRUH À[HG VWDUH ² DV LI  LQWR WKH IXWXUH ² RI  D YLVLRQDU\µ (Evans 67). His face is based on Stuart’s famous Athenaeum portrait (Barratt/Miles 147-153). Just like King George III’s face, Washington’s face is symmetrically shaped and evenly proportioned. The forehead is ample, the nose aquiline, the mouth regular and persuasive. George Washington’s face appears also godlike. It is reminiscent of a classical statue betraying mildness and force alike. Again, it seems to visualize the invisible, namely the ¶JRRG·DQGPRUDOO\VRXQGFKDUDFWHURI WKHÀUVW$PHULFDQSUHVLGHQW,WLVWKH expression of virtue in the context of the classical republicanism that was crucial for America’s political culture in general and Washington’s thinking DERXWSROLWLFVLQSDUWLFXODU'HSNDW´(UÀQGXQJµ  :DVKLQJWRQ·VVLPSOHDQGVREHUDSSHDUDQFHLVLQRSSRVLWLRQWRWKHÀFWLtious setting surrounding him. The furniture is richly adorned in neoclassical style. The gold armchair with red velvet upholstery behind him has rich carvings on its legs, arms and around the upholstery. The oval medallion on the top of its back is draped with laurel, a symbol of victory. Its VKLHOGFRQWDLQLQJDEOXHKRUL]RQWDOÀHOGZLWKWKLUWHHQVWDUVDERYHWKLUWHHQ alternating red and white vertical stripes refers to the national colors of the United States. Another reference to both union and nation are the two eagles carved into the top of the only visible leg of the table to Washington’s left. Under the table, over which a large red piece of cloth is draped, there are several books lying about in disorder. Three of them are entitled General Orders, American Revolution and Constitution & Laws of the United States, whereas the two books on the table are the Federalist Papers and the Journal of Congress (cf. Barratt/Miles 169). These books look used; Washington ap-

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pears to have been working with them. In addition, on the table one can see two documents, partly unfolded, a silver inkwell and a quill pen. This conveys education as well as erudition, and suggests that Washington is personally working to govern the state. In a democracy, therefore, the indiYLGXDOFKDUDFWHURI WKHRIÀFHKROGHUDQGKLVSHUVRQDOLQGXVWU\WDOHQWPRUDOity, judgment, and knowledge are important sources of legitimacy. The whole setting, i.e. the furniture, the Turkish rug in the foreground as well as the background, is reminiscent not only of Allan Ramsay’s portrait of King George III in coronation robes, but corresponds to the tradition of portraiture for aristocrats and royalty in general. The column symbolizing the state is still there and parallelized with Washington’s body. Finally, there is another remnant of aristocratic symbols: The inkwell, which is shaped OLNHDQDUNDQGERUQHE\ÀJXUHVRI GRJVDWLWVFRUQHUVLVHQJUDYHGZLWKWKH Washington family coat of arms. Despite the continuing presence of these aristocratic and monarchic traditions, it should be stressed that Gilbert Stuart chose to represent the American president as a bourgeois character and citizen of the state he governs. Stuart did away with much of the aristocratic pomp and external regalia symbolizing power, authority, and legitimacy in the visual tradition of monarchy, and he replaced them with symbols of citizenship, middleclass respectability, education, achievement, talent, and personal morality. The democratic head of state and government no longer stands on a dais EXWGLUHFWO\RQWKHÁRRU7KHUHLVQROLQHVHSDUDWLQJWKHUXOHUIURPWKHUXOHG anymore; the American president has grown out of the society that elected KLPLQWRRIÀFHDQGHYHQZKLOHLQRIÀFHKHFRQWLQXHVWREHDPHPEHURI LW 3. Representing Legitimacy Part II: The Case of Friedrich Ebert In Wilhelmine Germany, the emperor as both institution and person had been the unquestioned object of respect, source of authority and center of attention. The emperor’s claim to legitimacy rested on his birth, the institutions of monarchy and their traditions, although many of them were invented traditions, as well as on a highly popular cult celebrating the emSHURUDVWKHXQLÀHUDQGIDWKHURI WKH*HUPDQQDWLRQ18 Ebert’s predecessor as head of state, Emperor William II, had been excessively representational. He had constantly been seen in public, had permanently delivered speeches and addresses, had worn lavishly decorated, colorful uniforms and other exWUDYDJDQWFRVWXPHVDQGKHKDGPDGHZLGHXVHRI SKRWRJUDSK\DQGÀOPIRU

18

For the transformations of German nationalism in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the place of the monarch in concepts of German national identity see Nipperdey 595609; Winkler, Der lange Weg 213-265; Röhl; Wienfort; Mühlhausen, Ebert 775-776.

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Fig. 3. Der neue sozialistische Reichskanzler Friedrich Ebert (1918). Courtesy Reichspräsident-Friedrich-Ebert-Gedenkstätte, Heidelberg.

his public self-fashioning as Germany’s emperor.19 Although not as excessive as Emperor William II, all the other monarchs and princes in Germany had done more or less the same, and we know from many accounts that it was exactly this ceremonial and representational aspect of monarchy that let most of the contemporaries embrace the institution as an integral part of their national culture (e.g. Brecht 361). Notions of authority, legitimacy, leadership, and power, therefore, were to a considerable extent shaped by the symbolic and representational aspects of Emperor William II’s rule – and these aspects were visually communicated through all kinds of parades and other public ceremonies, and most importantly through photographs in the emerging mass press with its newspapers and rising number of illustrated magazines. The visual grammar of the photographs depicting Friedrich Ebert as political leader and head of state has to be understood against this backdrop of a highly developed media awareness among the Hohenzollern monarchs. The pattern of this grammar will be revealed by the following 19

See Kohlrausch; Loiperdinger; Petzold; Pohl.

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DQDO\VLVRI WZRRIÀFLDO(EHUWSKRWRJUDSKVRQHWDNHQLQWKHIDOORI  when Ebert was emerging as the leader of the democratic revolution from the turmoil of the immediate postwar situation, and one taken in February 1925 shortly before his death. The picture postcard showing Friedrich Ebert in half-portrait with a caption reading “Der neue sozialistische Reichskanzler Friedrich Ebert” ÀJ ZDVWKHÀUVWSRUWUDLWRI (EHUWFLUFXODWHGLQ*HUPDQ\DIWHUWKHFROlapse of monarchy, and it is very likely that for most Germans this photoJUDSKZDVWKHÀUVWSLFWRULDOHQFRXQWHUZLWK(EHUWWKH\KDGHYHUKDG,WZDV distributed when the Social Democrat became the last chancellor of the German Empire on November 9, 1918, and although Ebert only served LQWKLVRIÀFHEXWRQHVLQJOHGD\VLQFHWKHUHYROXWLRQVZHHSLQJRYHU*HUmany let the imperial order collapse like a house of cards, this photograph foreshadowed much of the visual politics that Ebert later would pursue as Reichspräsident under the Weimar constitution of August 11, 1919. The photograph shows the half bust portrait of a sitting Ebert looking directly at the viewer, which establishes equality between the political leader and the beholder. This democratic egalitarianism is reinforced by the fact that there is no frame enveloping Ebert. His left arm is only partly in the picture; the rest of it reaches outside of the photograph and into the sphere of the viewer. There are no visible signs of power whatsoever. The EDFNJURXQGLVXQGHÀQHG(EHUWLVZHDULQJDGDUNVXLWDZKLWHVKLUWDQGDWLH +LVFORWKHVDUHREYLRXVO\RI JRRGTXDOLW\DQGSHUIHFWÀW²ZKLFKIRUKLP being a tailor’s son was important throughout his life (Mühlhausen, Visier 29). Yet his garments are plain and simple. There is nothing extravagant or pompous about them. The cuff-links are the only ornamentation that Ebert allows for, and even they serve a pragmatic function. Ebert’s face is prominent but so are his hands lying bare and folded on a table. Thus, the claim to authority and legitimacy communicated by this picture postcard rests solely in the individual and his personal talents, moral integrity, and virtue. These are expressed, on the one hand, by the face serving as a screen visualizing inner values and the character of a person, and, on the other hand, by the bare hands; hands you work with, hands you hold books and papers with, hands you sign contracts and laws with. Thus, this representation of Friedrich Ebert as the German chancellor radicalizes the individualization of authority and legitimacy that could already be observed in the Lansdowne portrait. However, while Stuart still added many external symbols of power, achievement, and charisma enveloping the person and RIÀFHKROGHU*HRUJH:DVKLQJWRQWKLVSKRWRJUDSKUHOLHVVROHO\RQWKHLQGLvidual Friedrich Ebert and his private and public integrity to communicate legitimacy and authority. It is noteworthy that Ebert’s appearance is demonstratively bourgeois. Only the caption indicates that he is a socialist. The visual communication

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of this photograph, therefore, runs counter to the textual one, and this was not simply the result of photographic conventions requiring that politicians wear formal dress. It is rather a manifestation of Ebert’s self-conception and self-fashioning as republican politician and statesman. As the representative of the republican state, Ebert was keen on eliminating all traces of his being a socialist and member of the working class. While serving as Reichspräsident, Ebert refrained from any kind of party politics, and in all of his public appearances he ostentatiously cultivated a habitus of non-partisanship because he wanted to be the president of all Germans.20 Already during the Revolution and then later as Reichspräsident Ebert understood himself to be the head RI D´5HSXEOLFDQ9RONVJHPHLQVFKDIWµWKDWWUDQVFHQGHGVRFLDOFRQÁLFWVDQG class-antagonisms in a commonly shared consensus that was both nationalist and democratic (Mühlhausen, Ebert ,QWKLVFRQWH[WLWLVVLJQLÀFDQWWKDW in trying to hide the socialist in him, Ebert cast himself in a bourgeois mould, ZKLFKIRUKLPZDVREYLRXVO\WKHLFRQRJUDSK\EHÀWWLQJDGHPRFUDWLFUHSXEOLF In doing that, however, he broke with many proletarian visual traditions. Socialists in Germany liked to represent themselves as blue-collar workers wearing caps and torn working clothes negating all notions of bourgeois respectability (cf. Klant 97-112). The bourgeoisie for its part felt that socialists were exactly like that.21 Thus, the blue-collar worker as revolutionary socialist was both a socialist self-depiction and a bourgeois enemy image. In opting for a bourgeois iconography, Ebert and his political friends most certainly wanted to soothe many anxieties relating to socialists in power in the bourgeois camp. By communicating legitimacy through bourgeois selffashioning, however, the visual grammar of the picture postcard also contributed to alienating Ebert from his own political milieu, and this alienation grew in the course of the Weimar Repulic (Mühlhausen, Ebert 809-815). The second photograph I want to analyze for its visual grammar is the ODVWRIÀFLDOSRUWUDLWRI )ULHGULFK(EHUWVKRZLQJKLPVLWWLQJDWKLVGHVNLQWKH 5HLFKVSUlVLGHQWHQSDODLVLQ:LOKHOPVWUDVVH%HUOLQÀJ ,WZDVWDNHQE\ an unknown photographer on February 15, 1925, eleven days after Ebert’s 54th birthday and thirteen days before his sudden death. Again Ebert is facing the viewer directly, and again is he wearing a dark suit, a white shirt, and a tie. He is represented as a working president. In his right hand he is KROGLQJDSHQZKLOHKLVOHIWKDQGUHVWVRQDÀOHPD\EHDODZWKDWKHKDVMXVW signed or is about to do so. In any case, he seems to be caught in the middle of work, and rather surprised by it. Still, his desk is well-ordered. All things KDYHWKHLUFOHDUO\GHÀQHGSODFHQRWKLQJLVO\LQJDURXQGHYHU\WKLQJDERXW this desk communicates order and rationality, but also individual dignity and moral integrity. 20 21

Mühlhausen, Ebert 815-817; Adenauer. Depkat, Lebenswenden 383-385; Klant 142-161; Winkler, Weimar 285-292.

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Fig. 4. Friedrich Ebert (Feb. 15, 1925). Bundesarchiv – Bild 102-01111.

While all these visual patterns are familiar by now, there are two features WKDWDSSHDUWREHVLJQLÀFDQWDQGVSHFLÀFIRUWKHDOWRJHWKHUSUREOHPDWLFYLVXalization of democratic legitimacy in the German context of the 1920s. The ÀUVWDVSHFWFRQFHUQVWKHDPELJXLW\RI FORVHQHVVDQGGLVWDQFH,WLVREYLRXV that the camera here captures a very intimate moment. In advancing into the privacy of Ebert’s study the photographer penetrates the seclusion and secrecy this center of political power and decision making had under monarchy. This representation of Ebert as the head of state caught in the act of governing denies all monarchic notions of arcana imperii and celebrates democracy as a system of rule based on transparency. Yet, despite the intimacy and privacy of the moment captured by the camera, this photograph at the same time visualizes an enormous distance between the president and the viewer. While Ebert is still looking directly at the viewer, he is removed from him through PXOWLSOHIUDPHVWKHGHVNLQIURQWRI KLPWKHFORVHWWRKLVULJKWWKHÁRZHUV WKHFORFNDQGWKHOLWWOHWUD\WRKLVOHIWÀQDOO\WKHSDLQWLQJKDQJLQJEHKLQGKLV EDFNRQWKHZDOO²DOOWKHVHREMHFWVGHÀQHIUDPHVWKDWOLWHUDOO\VHHPWRFDJHWKH Reichspräsident. The distance between the head of the republican state and the people he presides over appears to be almost unbridgeable. Furthermore, Ebert is sitting in a closed room. While there is light coming from windows to Ebert’s left, the room itself is closed. The Reichspräsident appears to be shut off from the outside world, a marked difference to the openness of the

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ÀFWLWLRXVVHWWLQJLQWKH/DQVGRZQHSRUWUDLW,WKDVUHSHDWHGO\EHHQQRWHGWKDW the Weimar Republic lacked an emotional grounding in the German people.22 Photographs like the one of Ebert sitting at his desk did nothing to change this. Quite contrary, the complete lack of national symbols in this photograph only underlines the divorce between the political order and the nation, but WKHQWKHQDWLRQDOV\PEROVRI WKH:HLPDU5HSXEOLFPRVWLPSRUWDQWO\LWVÁDJ ZHUHKLJKO\FRQWHVWHGLQWKHÀUVWSODFH23 7KHVHFRQGUHÁHFWLRQRQWKHYLVXDOJUDPPDURI WKLVSKRWRJUDSKLVWULJgered by the light coming from the viewer’s right. If we accept Gunther R. Kress and Theo van Leeuwen’s argument, that in analyzing the composition RI DQLPDJHRQHFDQGLVWLQJXLVKEHWZHHQYDULRXV]RQHVDQGDWWDFKVSHFLÀF informational values to them, then the left-right-axis in this case becomes VLJQLÀFDQW$FFRUGLQJWR.UHVVDQGYDQ/HHXZHQ:HVWHUQVHPLRWLFVWHQG to represent elements on the left as given while elements on the right represent the new. Translated into temporal terms, the left-right-axis can be read as past (left), present (center) and future (right) (194-201). Light coming from the right, therefore, suggest the future. If we apply this reading to the visual communication taking place in this photograph, it becomes plausible to suggest that the claim to authority and legitimacy of Weimar’s political order rested on the radical break with the imperial past and visions of a better time to come. Weimar’s legitimacy, therefore, centered not in a glorious past but in an anticipated future. This, however, was only the view of the democrats themselves, who ever since WKHHOHFWLRQVRI ZHUHLQWKHPLQRULW\DQGHQJDJHGLQDÀHUFHXSKLOO battle against monarchists and totalitarian anti-democrats on the radical right and left. At the same time, even the democrats were not too sure as to when this ideal future would have materialized, if it ever materialized (Depkat, Lebenswenden 300-317, 370-394, 465-484). All in all, therefore, there was no ‘German Dream’ connected to Weimar’s democracy, and the visual communication in pictures like the ones analyzed in this chapter did not do anything to change this.24

Conclusion $W ÀUVW VLJKW WKH YLVXDO JUDPPDU RI  WKH :DVKLQJWRQ DQG (EHUW LPDJHV appears to be following a similar pattern. In both cases the claim to le22 23

24

Brecht 309-318; Depkat, Lebenswenden 300-317, 370-394; Winkler, Von der Revolution 343-370; Sontheimer. For a further discussion of the problems of national symbols and rituals in the Weimar Republic see Artinger; Ziemann; Buchner; Lehnert/Megerle, Politische Identität; Lehnert/Megerle, Politische Teilkulturen. In this, I am indebted to Wolfram Pyta’s paper “Visualizing Democratic Legitimacy and Authority: The Case of the Weimar Republic”; cf. footnote 3.

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JLWLPDF\DQGDXWKRULW\UHVWVLQWKHRIÀFHDQGWKHSHUVRQDOLQWHJULW\RI WKH RIÀFHKROGHU,QWKHWUDQVLWLRQIURPPRQDUFK\WRGHPRFUDF\UHJDOLDDQG other visible signs of authority largely vanished from the visual household of power, and from the eighteenth to the twentieth century the visual individualization and personalization of legitimacy seems to have become more and more radical. Together with it went a cult of simplicity, sobriety, and humbleness which was to mark the break between monarchy and democracy. Both the American Founding Fathers and the founders of the :HLPDU5HSXEOLFIHOWWKDWVLPSOLFLW\ZDVDGHTXDWHIRUWKHRIÀFHKROGHUVRI  a democracy, while pomp, ceremony, and personality cult were deemed to be monarchic and therefore anachronistic after new times had been ushered in by a revolutionary break with the past. Underneath all these similarities there are marked differences, however, since both democratic iconographies functioned under the conditions of UDGLFDOO\GLIIHUHQWFRQWH[WV7ZRDVSHFWVVHHPWREHSDUWLFXODUO\VLJQLÀFDQW First, while Washington indeed came to personify both the American nation and American democracy, visual representations of Friedrich Ebert WHQGHGWRYLVXDOL]HWKHXQVROYHGVRFLDOFRQÁLFWVDQGFOHDYDJHVLQ*HUPDQ\·V SRVWZDUVRFLHW\:DVKLQJWRQWKHUHIRUHGHYHORSHGLQWRD¶FRQVHQVXVÀJXUH· while with Ebert just the opposite was the case. The second aspect is conQHFWHGWRWKHÀUVWDQGKDVWRGRZLWKWKHVWDELOL]LQJIXQFWLRQRI PLOLWDU\ charisma in democratic founding situations. While the victorious general continued to be present in most of the pictorial representations of George Washington even in civilian garb, Ebert completely lacked this kind of charisma and could not even claim it, because the order he represented was the result of a lost war and an unwanted revolution, the results of which were RSHQWRÀHUFHDQGPLOLWDQWGLVSXWHVZLWKLQ*HUPDQVRFLHW\

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Works Cited Adenauer, Konrad: “Gedenkrede für den verstorbenen Reichspräsidenten Friedrich Ebert.” Konrad Adenauer: Reden 1917-1967: Eine Auswahl. Ed. Hans-Peter Schwarz. Stuttgart 1975, 51-53. $UWLQJHU.DL´¶)ODJJHQVWUHLW·'HU6WUHLWXPGLH1DWLRQDOÁDJJHDOV6SLHJHOHLQHUJHVSDOtenen Kultur.” Paul 244-251. Ayres, William: “At Home with George: Commercialization of the Washington Image, 1776-1876.” Mitnick 91-107. Bailyn, Bernard: Atlantic History: Concept and Contours. Cambridge, MA 2005. Barratt, Carrie Rebora, and Ellen G. Miles: Gilbert Stuart. New Haven 2004. Bauer, Barbara: “Painting the First American President: A Comparison of the Visual Representations of George III, Frederick the Great and George Washington.” MS B.A.-Thesis. Regensburg 2007. Bernstein, Eduard: Die deutsche Revolution von 1918/19: Geschichte der Entstehung und der ersten Arbeitsperiode der deutschen Republik. Ed. Heinrich August Winkler and Teresa Löwe. Bonn 1998. Blome, Astrid, and Volker Depkat: Von der “Civilisirung” Rußlands und dem “Aufblühen” Nordamerikas im 18. Jahrhundert: Leitmotive der Aufklärung am Beispiel deutscher Rußlandund Amerikabilder. Bremen 2002. Bösch, Frank, and Norman Domeier: “Cultural History of Politics: Concepts and Debates.” European Review of History 15.6 (2008): 577-586. Brecht, Arnold: Aus nächster Nähe: Lebenserinnerungen 1884-1927. Stuttgart 1966. Buchner, Bernd: Um nationale und republikanische Identität: Die deutsche Sozialdemokratie und der Kampf um die politischen Symbole in der Weimarer Republik. Bonn 2001. Cogliano, Francis D.: Revolutionary America, 1763-1815: A Political History. 2nd ed. New York 2009. Cope, Kevin L., William S. Penderson, and Frank Williams (eds.): George Washington in and as Culture. New York 2001. Countryman, Edward: The American Revolution. Rev. ed. New York 2003. Cunningham, Noble E.: Popular Images of the Presidency: From Washington to Lincoln. Columbia 1991. Depkat, Volker: Lebenswenden und Zeitenwenden: Deutsche Politiker und die Erfahrungen des 20. Jahrhunderts. Munich 2007. ³´'LH(UÀQGXQJGHUUHSXEOLNDQLVFKHQ3UlVLGHQWVFKDIWLP=HLFKHQGHV*HVFKLFKWVbruchs: George Washington und die Ausformung eines demokratischen Herrscherbildes.” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 56.9 (2008): 728-742. Evans, Dorinda: The Genius of Gilbert Stuart. Princeton 1999. Fitz, Karsten: The American Revolution Remembered, 1830s - 1850s: Competing Images and &RQÁLFWLQJ1DUUDWLYHV. Heidelberg 2010. Frevert, Ute, and Heinz-Gerhard Haupt (eds.): Neue Politikgeschichte: Perspektiven einer historischen Politikforschung. Frankfurt/Main 2005. Fulda, Bernhard: Press and Politics in the Weimar Republic. Oxford 2009.

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Godechot, Jacques Léon: France and the Atlantic Revolution of the Eighteenth Century, 17701799. Trans. Herbert H. Rowen. New York 1965. Goritschnig, Ingrid, and Erik Stephan (eds.): Johann Caspar Lavater: Die Signatur der Seele. Jena, Dessau 2001. Grebing, Helga: Die deutsche Arbeiterbewegung zwischen Revolution, Reform und Etatismus. Mannheim 1993. Greene, Jack P., and Philip D. Morgan (eds.): Atlantic History: A Critical Appraisal. Oxford 2009. Groh, Dieter, and Peter Brandt: “Vaterlandslose Gesellen”: Sozialdemokratie und Nation 1860-1990. Munich 1992. Ketcham, Ralph: Presidents Above Party: The First American Presidency, 1789-1829. Chapel Hill 1984. Klant, Michael (ed.): Der rote Ballon: Die deutsche Sozialdemokratie in der Karikatur. Hannover 1988. Klooster, Wim: Revolutions in the Atlantic World: A Comparative History. New York 2009. Kluge, Ulrich: Die deutsche Revolution 1918/1919: Staat, Politik und Gesellschaft zwischen Weltkrieg und Kapp-Putsch. Frankfurt/Main 1985. Kohlrausch, Martin: “Der Mann mit dem Adlerhelm: Wilhelm II: Medienstar um 1900.” Paul 68-75. Kolb, Eberhard: Die Weimarer Republik. 7th ed. Munich 2009. Krätz, Otto: Goethe und die Naturwissenschaften. 2nd ed. Munich 1998. Kress, Gunther R., and Theo van Leeuwen: Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. 2nd ed. London 2006. Kromm, Jane, and Susan Benforado Bakewell (eds.): A History of Visual Culture: Western Civilization from the 18th to the 21st Century. Oxford 2010. Landwehr, Achim: “Diskurs – Macht – Wissen: Perspektiven einer Kulturgeschichte des Politischen.” Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 85.1 (2003): 71-118. Lehnert, Detlef, and Klaus Megerle (eds.): Politische Identität und nationale Gedenktage: Zur politischen Kultur in der Weimarer Republik. Opladen 1989. — (eds.): Politische Teilkulturen zwischen Integration und Polarisierung: Zur politischen Kultur in der Weimarer Republik. Opladen 1990. Loiperdinger, Martin: “‘Kaiserbilder’: Wilhelm II. als Filmstar.” Geschichte des dokumentarischen Films in Deutschland: Band 1: Kaiserreich 1895 – 1918. Ed. Uli Jung and Martin Loiperdinger. Stuttgart 2005, 253-268. Mason, George C.: The Life and Work of Gilbert Stuart. New York 1879. Mergel, Thomas: “Propaganda in der Kultur des Schauens: Visuelle Politik in der Weimarer Republik.” Ordnungen in der Krise: Zur politischen Kulturgeschichte Deutschlands 19001933. Ed. Wolfgang Hardtwig. Munich 2007, 531-560. Meschutt, David: “Life Portraits of George Washington.” Mitnick 25-37. Middlekauff, Robert: The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789. Rev. and expanded ed. New York 2005. Miller, Susanne: Burgfrieden und Klassenkampf: Die deutsche Sozialdemokratie im Ersten Weltkrieg. Düsseldorf 1974. Mirzoeff, Nicholas (ed.): The Visual Culture Reader. 2nd ed. London 2002. —: An Introduction to Visual Culture. 2nd ed. London 2009.

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Mitnick, Barbara J. (ed.): George Washington: American Symbol. New York 1999. Mühlhausen, Walter: Friedrich Ebert 1871-1925: Reichspräsident der Weimarer Republik. 2nd ed. Bonn 2007. —: Im Visier der Fotografen: Reichspräsident Friedrich Ebert im Bild. Heidelberg 2009. Nipperdey, Thomas: Deutsche Geschichte, 1866-1918: Band II: Machtstaat vor der Demokratie. Munich 1992. Palmer, R.R.: The Age of Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760-1800. 2 vols, Princeton 1959-1964. Paul, Gerhard (ed.): Das Jahrhundert der Bilder: 1900-1949. Göttingen 2009. 3HW]ROG'RPLQLN´¶0RQDUFKLVFKH5HNODPHÀOPV"·:LOKHOP,,LPQHXHQ0HGLXPGHU Kinematographie.” Das “lange” 19. Jahrhundert: Alte Fragen und neue Perspektiven. Ed. Nils Freytag and Dominik Petzold. Munich 2007, 201-220. Pohl, Klaus D.: “Der Kaiser im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit: WilKHOP ,, LQ )RWRJUDÀH XQG )LOPµ Der letzte Kaiser: Wilhelm II. im Exil. Ed. Hans Wilderotter and Klaus D. Pohl. Gütersloh 1991, 9-18. Rawlinson, Mark: American Visual Culture. Oxford 2009. Rhodehamel, John: The Great Experiment: George Washington and the American Republic. New Haven 1998. Robinson, Raymond H.: “The Marketing of an Icon.” Mitnick 109-121. Röhl, John C. G.: Kaiser, Hof und Staat: Wilhelm II. und die deutsche Politik. 4th ed. Munich 1995. Schwartz, Barry: George Washington: The Making of an American Symbol. New York 1987. Smart, Alastair: Allan Ramsay: 1713-1784. Edinburgh 1992. —: Allan Ramsay: A Complete Catalogue of his Paintings. Ed. John Ingamells. New Haven, London 1999. —: Allan Ramsay: Painter, Essayist and Man of the Enlightenment. New Haven, London 1992. Sontheimer, Kurt: Antidemokratisches Denken in der Weimarer Republik: Die politischen Ideen des deutschen Nationalismus zwischen 1918 und 1933. Munich 1962. Stollberg-Rilinger, Barbara (ed.): Was heißt Kulturgeschichte des Politischen? Berlin 2005. Thistlethwaite, Mark E.: The Image of George Washington: Studies in Mid-Nineteenth-Century American History Painting. New York 1979. Waldstreicher, David: In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American Nationalism, 1776-1820. Chapel Hill 1997. Wehler, Hans-Ulrich: Das Deutsche Kaiserreich 1871-1918. Göttingen 1973. Wienfort, Monika: “Kaisergeburtstagsfeiern am 27. Januar 1907: Bürgerliche Feste in den Städten des Deutschen Kaiserreichs.” Bürgerliche Feste. Ed. Manfred Hettling and Paul Nolte. Göttingen 1993, 157-191. Wills, Garry: Cincinnatus: George Washington and the Enlightenment. Garden City 1984. Winkler, Heinrich August: Der lange Weg nach Westen: Erster Band: Deutsche Geschichte vom Ende des Alten Reiches bis zum Untergang der Weimarer Republik. Munich 2000. —: Von der Revolution zur Stabilisierung: Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung in der Weimarer Republik 1918 bis 1924. 2nd ed. Berlin 1985. —: Weimar 1918-1933: Die Geschichte der Ersten Deutschen Demokratie. Munich 1998. Wood, Gordon S.: The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787. Chapel Hill 1969.

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—: The Radicalism of the American Revolution. New York 1992. Ziemann, Benjamin: “‘Gedanken eines Reichsbannermannes auf Grund von Erlebnissen und Erfahrungen’: Politische Kultur, Flaggensymbolik und Kriegserinnerungen in Schmalkalden 1926: Dokumentation.” Zeitschrift des Vereins für Thüringische Geschichte 53 (1999): 201-232.

Fig. 1. Still from The Hate That Hate Produced (1959).

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Making the Invisible Visible: The Public Persona of Malcolm X LISA M. GILL

Introduction: Original Image(s) The public persona of Malcolm X underwent a major transformation when KHEHFDPHDUHFRJQL]HGÀJXUHLQWKHPRGHUQGD\&LYLO5LJKWV0RYHPHQW Catapulted into the national scene by the quasi-documentary The Hate That Hate Produced (1959), the television special produced and narrated by reporter Mike Wallace, Malcolm X became one of the most publicly visible ministers of the black nationalist, Islamic organization, the Nation of Islam (NOI). Far from trying to construct a true image of Malcolm X, this article aims to explore the black nationalist/black supremacist and the radical/ Pan-Africanist images of the slain leader. These two symbols of Malcolm X coalesced into two distinct yet connected images. The angry, violent black nationalist image was often connected with words like “black supremacist,” “demagogue,” and “black nationalist” – most prominently displayed in The Hate That Hate Produced (Powell/Amundson 35-45). The radical, politically active, citizen of the world image of Malcolm X was linked to words like “revolutionary,” “militant,” “socialist,” “radical,” and “Afro or African American” (Booker 14). The image was visible mostly in the letters that Malcolm X wrote to the press on his travels, meetings about and for the formation of the Organization of Afro American Unity (OAAU), and his political activity in New York. To understand how these images operated and contributed to representations of Malcolm X that existed after his assassination, it is necessary to explore each sign and its material representation during the late 1950s through the early 1960s. Because of his membership in the NOI and his position as the national representative of that organization, Malcolm X maintained distinct public personalities. According to John Henrik Clarke, “the many dimensions in WKHSHUVRQDOLW\RI 0DOFROP;PDGHKLPDGLIÀFXOWSHUVRQWRXQGHUVWDQG and interpret. He was a person always in the process of growth and change” (Clarke 81). To members of the NOI, he was a minister and teacher of Islam who led by example, forsaking the life of a hustler and small-time gangster. Members of his immediate family saw another side of Malcolm. His

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sister, Ella Little Collins, and his wife, Betty Shabazz, maintained close relationships with him and often described Malcolm as friendly, witty, playful, while acknowledging his ability “of making people feel relaxed and close and at the same time […] holding them at a distance” (Clarke 132). The press presented another image of Malcolm. Armed with what can be construed as sensational NOI tenets, Malcolm X took to the airwaves and was LQWURGXFHGWRWKH$PHULFDQPDLQVWUHDPLQIRUWKHÀUVWWLPHRQThe Hate That Hate Produced3ULRUWRKLVÀUVWH[SRVXUHRQQDWLRQDOWHOHYLVLRQ Malcolm X was already recognized as a minister with an unprecedented ability to attract people to the growing Islamic sect. The world would soon become familiar with the charismatic leader.

The Image of Malcolm X in the Nation of Islam 7KH ÀUVW LPDJH WKDW 0DOFROP ; PDLQWDLQHG ZDV WKDW RI  D 1DWLRQ RI  ,Vlam (NOI) minister from 1955 to 1963. In this role, X was the public and mediated representation of the NOI. As the most publicly sought after minister in the Nation, X maintained a schedule that had him ministering to his temple, speaking at different colleges and churches, debating the major civil right leaders of the day, including Constance Baker Motley, Kenneth Clarke, James Farmer, Roy Wilkins, and Bayard Rustin (Ogbar 52-53), and traveling around the country to mitigate NOI issues. X was popular with the media, according to Mike Wallace, because of his articulation of NOI ideology and his ability to present the information in a charismatic manner, DVRSSRVHGWR(OLMDK0XKDPPDGZKRKDGGLIÀFXOW\ZLWKSXEOLFVSHDNLQJ as evidence in The Hate That Hate Produced. As a chief orator for the NOI, Malcolm X honed his skills in front of the masses of blacks who came to hear him “proclaim the divinity of the black man and systematically curse and blame the devilish nature of the white man for the plight of the black man” (Lomax 16), in his teachings and speeches. As a minister for the NOI, Malcolm X was described often as an authoritative speaker that was all but hypnotic (Lomax 21). According to Wyatt Tee Walker, Malcolm “brought whitey down front” and men who had cowered inwardly and outwardly in the presence of the nameless white face in whose world he moved admired his spunk and grit. Vicariously through him, some Negro men got up off WKHLUNQHHVIRUWKHÀUVWWLPHLQWKHLUOLYHVDQGWRXFKHGWKHLUPDQKRRGDVLI LWZHUH a new Christmas toy. (67)

From his place as head of temples in Detroit, Boston, Philadelphia, and eventually New York City, Malcolm X garnered quite a reputation as an orator on par with some of the best speakers of the day. According to Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar,

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Fig. 2. Still from The Hate That Hate Produced (1959).

the NOI spokesman “slew” John Davis, another college professor; Rev. Milton Galamison (organizer for NY public school integration), and Gloster Glover of WKH 8UEDQ /HDJXH DW WKH VDPH GHEDWH KH ÀJXUDWLYHO\ PXUGHUHG .HQQHWK &ODUNH (Ogbar 52-53)

Moreover, Martin Luther King, Jr. refused to accept any debate with Malcolm, despite ample opportunity, even going so far as to threaten to cancel his appearance on The David Susskind Show after a ‘Malcolm-King Talk’ was proposed. (Ogbar 53)

Prior to the airing of The Hate That Hate Produced, Malcolm X had already crafted an image of himself that held most of its basis in black nationalism. As a minister in the NOI, Malcolm X became somewhat of an anomaly. Given that Wallace Fard and Elijah Muhammad fashioned NOI ideology to incorporate basic tenets from Christianity, the Ahmadiyya Islamic sect, Noble Drew Ali’s incorporation of Islam, and their own beliefs, the space for new information was limited at best. Yet, Malcolm X incorporated his own brand of preaching and his instruction on African/Afro-American history. According to Malcolm X in his autobiography, as an incarcerated QHZ FRQYHUW WR WKH 12, KH FRQWLQXHG WR ÀQG HYLGHQFH WKDW VXSSRUWHG Muhammad’s view about the nature of race relations in the United States. This one reason why Mr. Muhammad’s teachings spread so swiftly all over the United states, among all Negroes, whether or not they became followers of Mr. Muhammad. […] You can hardly show me a black adult in America – or a white one, for that matter – who knows from the history books anything like the truth about the black man’s role. In my case, once I heard of the “glorious history of the black

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man,” I took special pains to hunt in the library for books that would inform me on details about black history. […] I found books like Will Durant’s Story of Civilization. I read H.G. Wells’ Outline of History. Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois gave me a glimpse into the black people’s history before they came to this country. Carter G. Woodson’s Negro History opened my eyes about black empires before the black slave was brought to the United States, and the early Negro struggles for freedom. […] Mr. Muhammad’s teaching about how the white man had been created led me to Findings in Genetics by Gregor Mendel. […] Reading it over and over, especially certain sections, helped me to understand that if you started with a black man, a white man could be produced; but starting with a white man, you never could produce a black man – because the white gene is recessive. And since no one disputes that there was but one Original Man, the conclusion is clear. (X, Autobiography 177-178)

Although in Malcolm X’s past there were points where he wanted to either assume the tropes of whiteness – for example his conked hair during the 'HWURLW5HGSHULRGRI KLVOLIH²RUSDUWLFLSDWHPRUHDFWLYHO\LQWKHEHQHÀWV² his interactions in his eighth grade class – he never let go of the assumption that the white power structure, in the form of the state welfare agency, destroyed his family. Similarly, X sought the companionship of men like Mr. Micheaux (owner of the Africa National Memorial Bookstore in Harlem), Dick Gregory, and Robert Williams. Dr. James E. Turner, when speaking about his introduction to Malcolm at Micheaux’s bookstore noted that the more I listened, the more their broad analysis in terms of our lack of power, our people having no sense of their history, all those basic nationalist tenets – internal self-contempt, lack of ability to cooperate – began to resonate. (Collins/Bailey 93-94)

Despite his strong adherence to the philosophy of Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X continued to develop a repertoire of knowledge that aided in his teachings, sermons, and his support for his readings of the foundational truths of black nationalism. In addition to pushing a black nationalist’s view of black leadership to aid in the struggle against second-class citizenship in the United States, Malcolm X continued to organize around the ideology of black humanity instead of black civil rights primarily based on a connection to a historic past that was grounded in the African continent. Malcolm X’s theory concluded that: 1.

Negroes were considered “not human” because they lacked an identity. Identity is made-up of a nationality – a language, culture; a history. Negroes - just a savage, wild animal.

2.

The removal of human characteristics or the lack of evidence of humanity was a tactic to kill the Negro – spiritually, mentally, morally, socially, economically, politically, etc.

3.

By destroying the history (cultural roots) of people (Negro people), they would die. That death would result in Negroes being cut-off from the human family making it possible for white supremacist ideology to continue and thrive. It would also help Negroes to remain in constant separation from the freedom that all citizens were afforded by the state. (X, Speech Notes)

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Although Malcolm X continued to accredit the idea of linking an African past and present to a black struggle against American apartheid to the NOI or Elijah Muhammad, there is no evidence to suggest that either the NOI or Elijah Muhammad developed any depth concerning the connection to Africa before Malcolm X began making speeches and teaching. After X established the precedence (and the material), it became standard NOI practice to use historical evidence to establish a basic African history of greatness and translate this greatness as promise of the potential of black Americans WRRYHUWKURZWKHLURZQFRORQLDOIRUFHVDQGFODLPWKHLUVWDWXVDVÀUVWFODVV citizens. Furthermore, Elijah Muhammad’s brand of black nationalism was similar to many separatists who desired a black physical space but no real solution as to where this land would be or how blacks would actually lay hands to this area. Unlike Martin Delaney, the NOI did not establish back to Africa plans. In fact, Elijah Muhammad had as many reservations and complaints about Africa as did many black Americans of his time (Evanzz 214). With Malcolm as the leading public face of the NOI, the NOI entered the debate about black civil rights with a television program that tried to capture the spirit of the movement by offering an alternative to the nonviolent notions of Martin Luther King, Jr.

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