ROSE-CAROL WASHTON LONG

GEORGE GROSZ, OTTO DIX, AND THE PHILISTINES: THE GERMAN-JEWISH QUESTION IN THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC'

The relation of anti-Semitism to the rise of National Socialism and its subsequent systematic destruction of European Jewry has been one of the most troubling issues of the twentieth century. While the overt representation of anti-Semitic stereotypes displayed by right-wing racist groups in Germany and France has been studied and depicted by numerous scholars,' less overt representations of anti-Semitism, especially in Germany, still remain rela- tively unexplored, hidden from both the public and the scholar trying to come to grips with the Holocaust. The ambivalent attitudes of intellectuals and art- ists of the center and the left toward "the Jewish question,"2 as discussions about the relationship between Judaism and nationalism have been frequently labeled, have been overlooked. A dissection of these attitudes held by major artists who not only achieved both critical and commercial success in the years before the National Socialist takeover - that is during the Weimar Republic famed for its experimentations in the visual arts - but who also wanted to change the status quo and develop a nation open to ideas from Western and Eastern Europe and the United States, will allow a starker

*Portions of this article were first presented at the Thirteenth World Congress of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem, August 13, 2001. 1. See, for example, N. L. Kleeblatt, ed., The Dreyfus Affair: Art, Truth, aud Justice (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1987) and Zwischen Hauj3e und BaiJ.fe Boorse und Geld in der Karikatur, catalog of exhibition at Deutsches Museum fur Karikatur (Hannover: Wilhelm- Busch Museum, 1987). 2. I am using the term "the Jewish Question" to refer to general issues of how Jewish identity was perceived in Germany. Although Jews made up only about 1 percent of the population in Germany before 1933, Jews and those of Jewish origin tended to reside in urban areas and were dominant in the cultural life of the Republic. According to the historian Sarah Gordon, in 1930 Berlin, more than 75 percent of the plays performed were developed by Jews (see S. Gordon, Hitler, Germans and the "Jewish Question" [Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1984], p. 14 and also passim for a survey of the occupations of Jews and their comparative relations to those of other Germans). For further information, see D. L. Niewyk, Socialist, Anti-Semite, and Jew: German Social Democracy Confronts the Problem of Anti-Semitism, 1918-1933 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana Sate Univ. Press, 1971) and his The Jew.s in Weimar Germany (Baton Rouge: Louisi- ana State Univ. Press, 1980). picture of the conflicts Jews aroused even among the cultural and intellectual elite.33 This article will discuss the controversial attitudes toward Jews that are re- flected in the visual works of George Grosz and Otto Dix, two of the most well-known of Weimar artists. Not only were these two acclaimed during the period under discussion, but they believed they were supporters of those out- side established circles and actively searched for a modern dynamic style to make their social message easily accessible to ordinary people. Both Grosz and Dix were featured in a number of prominent exhibitions held during the Weimar years. The 1920 Dada International Fair in Berlin and the 1925 Neue Sachlichkeit debut in Mannheim are just two that helped to make their reputation in Germany and elsewhere. Both were associated with the Left and believed the work of art should, as Grosz explained, "break out of its narrow and shallow confines" and "become a great stream capable of nourishing all of working humanity."4 Grosz had joined the Communist Party late in 1918, and although he grew disenchanted with the battles within the Party over ar- tistic decisions, he remained a Party member until he left the country in 1933. Dix never belonged to the Communist Party but moved from a radical stance during the early years of the Republic to a more generalized left and pacifist- oriented position. Neither Grosz nor Dix was associated in any way with right-wing nation- alist groups, and both made derogatory references about the rabid anti-Semi- tism of their times in their works. Both had Jewish friends and worked with many intellectuals of Jewish origins. Yet, both resorted to crude stereotypes of Jews in depicting patrons as well as recording ordinary citizens. In recent years, art historians have not hesitated to point out the anti-Semitic features emphasized in Dix's portrait of the dealer Alfred Flechtheim,5 but few have commented on Grosz's use of these stereotypes. Christopher Clark's com- parison of Grosz's depiction of an overweight industrialist with National Socialist stereotypes is rare.6 In her 1997 insightfully written study of Grosz

3. Fruitful comparisons could be made with attitudes of these intellectuals to women, blacks, gypsies, and other outsiders, but at present this study is confined to discussing the complexity of the "Jewish question." 4. G. Grosz, "My New Pictures," Das Kunstblatt (Berlin), No. 1 (1921), pp. 11-14, as reprinted in R.-C. Washton Long, ed., German Expressionism: Documents from the End of the Wilhelmine Empire to the Rise of National Socialist (New York: G. K. Hall, 1993; paperback ed., Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1995), p. 277. 5. See S. West, The Visual Arts in Germany, 1890-1937: Utopia and Despair (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press, 2001), pp. 166-67 for a survey of the period that makes reference to the use of the stereotyped Jew in this portrait. 6. C. Clark, "Weimar Politics and George Grosz," in The Berlin of George Grosz: Drawings, Watercolours, and Print, 1912-1930 (Catalog of exhibition at Royal Academy of Arts, London; New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press, 1997), p. 27.