Mythic Themes from the Nibelungenlied, Sturluson’S the Prose Edda

Home , Adalbert Stifter, Alberich, Durer (crater), Gunther, Josef Weinheber, Nibelungenlied

MYTHIC THEMES FROM THE NIBELUNGENLIED, STURLUSON’S THE PROSE EDDA,

AND WAGNER’S RING OF THE NIBELUNGS MADE CONTEMPORARY IN ANSELM

KIEFER’S ARTWORKS

A THESIS

SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS

FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS ART HISTORY

IN THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE

TEXAS WOMAN’S UNIVERSITY

DEPARTMENT OF VISUAL ARTS

COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

LINDSEY DUNNAGAN B.E.D., M.F.A., M.A.

DENTON, TEXAS

MAY 2015

iii

DEDICATION

For my mother and father Patricia and Chuck Dunnagan, my brother Samuel Dunnagan, and my aunt Susie Barber. Thank you for your love and support.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank the many people who have helped me through the process of editing my thesis, including my major professor, Dr. John Calabrese, my committee members, Vance Wingate and Gary Washmon, and the graduate school at Texas Woman’s University.

ABSTRACT

LINDSEY DUNNAGAN

MYTHIC THEMES FROM THE NIBELUNGENLIED, STURLUSON’S THE PROSE EDDA, AND WAGNER’S RING OF THE NIBELUNGS MADE CONTEMPORARY IN ANSELM KIEFER’S ARTWORKS

MAY 2015

The purpose of this study was to explore how Anselm Kiefer resurrects the Nordic myths of Brunhilde and Siegfried by illustrating terrible events from World War II in his artwork. Hitler adulterated the memory of Nordic myth when he used these sources of German pride to further his elitist and hateful ideals. In contrast, Kiefer takes these same myths and casts Hitler and his actions as the villain. Kiefer pushes his art further, however, and questions the assumption of Siegfried’s purity, sometimes depicting this hero as villainous as well. The resulting morass brings into question a larger statement about perception, duplicity, and the impurity of human nature. To study this topic, a total of eight paintings have been chosen for careful analysis and the research for these works has been gathered through scholarly journals, books, and professional online sources.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page COPYRIGHT ……..……………………………………………………………………………………………….. iii

DEDICATION ……..……………………………………………………………………………………………… iv

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ……..……………………………………………………………………………...... v

ABSTRACT ………………..…………………………………………………………………………………….. viii

LIST OF TABLES ……………..…………………………………………………………………...…………….. ix

LIST OF FIGURES ……..…………………………………………………………………………………...... x

PREFACE ……………..……………………………………………………………………………………………. xi

Chapter

I PROSPECTUS ……..…………………………………………………………………………………………….. 1

Problem ……..…………………………………………………………………………………………… 1 Purpose ……..…………………………………………………………………………………….……… 1 Significance ……..……………………………………………………………………………………… 2 Literature Review ……..…………………………………………………………………………….. 3 Methodology ……..……………………………………………………………………………………. 9 Limitations ……..…………………………………………………………………………………….. 10 Definition of Terms ……..………………………………………………………………………… 11

II THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN WAGNER AND THE NAZI REGIME AND ITS RELEVANCE TO ANSELM KIEFER’S WORK ……..……………………………………...………. 12

Nazi Regime and its Relationship with Wagner ……..………………………………... 13 Postwar German Art……..………………………………………………………………………... 18 What Led Kiefer to This Body of Work ……..…………………………………………….. 19 German and American Perceptions of and Reactions to Kiefer’s Artwork .... 21

III THEMES OF BETRAYAL AND THE CLEANSING POWER OF FIRE IN STORIES OF BRUNHILDE AND SIEGFRIED USED IN ANSELM KIEFER’S PAINTINGS TO

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PARALLEL EVENTS IN WORLD WAR II ……..………………………………………………..... 25

Narrative Background and Differences in The Nibelungenlied, Sturluson’s The Prose Edda, and Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelungs Regarding Betrayal in Kiefer’s Paintings ……..……………………………………………………………………………. 25 Paintings that Explore the Cleansing Power of Fire and Death and How This Relates to World War II ……..………………………………………………………...… 32

IV KIEFER’S PAINTINGS OF BRUNHILDE THAT REFERENCE POLAND’S ROLE IN WORLD WAR II ……..…………………………………………………………………………………….. 41

Poland’s Role in World War II ………………….…………………………………………….. 41 Similarities Between this History and the Myth of Brunhilde and Siegfried 42

V COMPLETE ANALYSIS OF GERMANY’S SPIRITUAL HEROES (1973) ……..………….. 52

Analysis of the Painting’s Formal Elements ……..………………………………….…... 52 Analysis of the Painting’s References to Nordic Myth, Specifically the Ring of the Nibelungs. ……..……………………………………………………..………………………. 55 Historical Parallels Kiefer Highlights Between Myth and the History of World War II ……..…………………………………………………………………………………... 58 Kiefer’s Personal Connection with this Painting ……..……………………………….. 62

VI CONCLUSION ……..……………………………………………………………………………………….. 65

Brief Summary of Major Points 1. Kiefer’s Work Attempts to Remove the Negative Stigma Associated with German Myth and Historic Figures that the Nazi Regime Used as Propaganda to Further their Goals ..…………………….. 65 2. Kiefer Parallels the Story of Brunhilde and Siegfried to Events in World War II. ……..……………………………………………………………………….. 65 4. How the Painting Germany’s Spiritual Heroes Demonstrates all of the Major Points Discussed in this Thesis. ……..……………………………... 66 By Reinvestigating Nazi Relationships with Myth, Kiefer Calls into Question the Loss of German Pride Once Associated with these Stories. ……..………….. 66

VII FIGURES ……..……………………………………………………………………………………………… 68

WORKS CITED …....……………………………………………………………………………………………. 76

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LIST OF TABLES

TABLE Page

1. Character Spellings Across Texts …………………………………………………………..…. xi

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure Page

1. Siegfried Forgets Brunhilde, c. 1975, Oil on canvas, 130 x 170 cm …………….. 68

2. Siegfried Forgets Brunhilde, c. 1989, Oil on canvas, 173 x 188 cm …………….. 69

3. Brunhilde’s Death, c. 1976, Oil on canvas, 118 x 145 cm ……….……….…………. 70

4. Brunhilde Sleeps, c. 1980, Mixed Media, 58.5 x 83 cm ……….……….………...... 71

5 . Brunhilde – Grane, c. 1978, Woodcut with oil, 242.5 x 193 cm ……….…………. 72

6. Poland is Not Yet Lost, c. 1978, Oil on Canvas, 170 x 130 cm ……….……………. 73

7. Ride to the Vistula, c. 1980, Oil on Canvas, 130 x 170 cm ……….……….………… 74

8. Germany’s Spiritual Heroes, c. 1873, Oil on Burlap, 307 x 682 cm ………...... 75

PREFACE

When discussing the stories of Brunhilde and Siegfried in The Nibelungenlied,

The Prose Edda, and The Ring of the Nibelungs, many characters have similar roles but different names or slightly different spellings. To lessen confusion, the names from The Ring of the Nibelungs by Richard Wagner will be used throughout this paper. Wagner was revered by Hitler for his use of Norse mythology in his operas.

The characters in The Ring of the Nibelungs were chosen because this historical connection ties directly into the topic of the paper. Direct quotes from The

Nibelungenlied and The Prose Edda will include original spellings. Please refer to the table below to help clarify relationships across texts.

Table 1. Character Spellings Across Texts

The Nibelungenlied The Prose Edda The Ring of the Nibelungs Siegfried Sigurdr Siegfried Brunhild Brynhildr Brunhilde King Gunther King Gjuki King Gunther Kriemhild Gurdrun Gutrune Sister to King Gunther King Gjuki’s daughter Sister to King Gunther Hagen Hogni Hagen No mention of No mention of Half brother to Gunther relationship to King relationship to King Gjuki and Gutrune Gunther N/A Reginn Mime

CHAPTER I

PROSPECTUS

Problem

Richard Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelungs opera, based on The Prose Edda and

The Nibelungenlied (The Song of the Nibelungs), explores mythic themes that appear

in selected artworks by the artist Anselm Kiefer. Kiefer’s transformation of these

stories into contemporary narratives has not been fully examined. Specifically, he

focuses on the struggle between Siegfried and Brunhilde’s doomed love affair and

how it translates to certain events during World War II and the mental state of

Germany once the war ended. Kiefer “explains that themes such as Siegfried and

Brunhilde demonstrate a dismaying conflict between idealism and reality, but in art

the two poles can be synthesized” (Rosenthal, Mark 60).

Purpose

The purpose of this thesis is to examine artworks by Anselm Kiefer that

transform aspects of Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelungs, Sturluson’s The Prose Edda and

The Nibelungenlied into modern subjects. Kiefer “insists on the need to learn from

ancient myths and religions as well as recent tragic events if we are to deal with that

‘terror of history’ that casts its shadow over our lives” (Wood 7). By investigating

Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelungs, Kiefer’s paintings inspired from the opera begin

to reveal hypocrisies and truths that bring enlightenment to modern issues. German themes from World War II such as repression of creativity, the invasion of Poland, and Germany’s relationship with itself are forced into view with this series.

Deborah Wye, who included Anselm Kiefer in her book on master works, says that

“Kiefer has created a large body of work exploring his nation’s identity and the moral and philosophical issues facing post – World War II Germany.”

Significance

Wagner’s 19th Century The Ring of the Nibelungs is based on medieval tales about enduring themes of allegiance, deception, sacrifice, and hopeless love. Kiefer brings these themes into modern context by considering Germany’s past and present. He confronts the ugliness of history that many Germans would rather forget. According to Daglind Sonolet, who wrote an analysis on the artist’s works,

Kiefer’s “project is to evoke, and at the same time distance, the national past in order to recuperate and make certain German intellectual and artistic traditions fruitful once more.”

By using the German opera The Ring of the Nibelungs, the Nordic epic The

Prose Edda, and the Germanic poem The Nibelungenlied, Kiefer shows that themes in history have repeated themselves through World War II and beyond. Wye stated,

“Part of a generation of young German painters dubbed Neo-Expressionists during the 1980’s, Anselm Kiefer has explored German myth and history in his art since the

early 1970s.” Sometimes a critic, other times a passive observer, Kiefer brings these myths into the modern world. Therefore, this thesis will investigate how Kiefer used the 19th century The Ring of the Nibelungs, and the medieval stories The Prose

Edda and The Nibelungenlied to represent terrible actions and after-effects of World

War II.

Literature Review

Born in Germany in 1945, the year World War II concluded, Anselm Kiefer grew up in a culture trying to forget the horrors of its past. Seeking to understand his country’s state of mind, he created artwork that confronted the ugliness of history, juxtaposing nationalism against great suffering and irony. Iconic German myths were used by Kiefer to increase the meaning and poignancy of his images. To his critics, “Kiefer’s deliberate strategy of opening a Pandora’s box of fascist and nationalistic imagery amounted to a kind of original sin of the post-Auschwitz era”

(Alteveer). This confrontation with the past, however, brought him international acclaim.

Reference to Kiefer’s German background and events that happened during

World War II are seen in his series inspired by Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen

(The Ring of the Nibelungs). Wagner’s inspiration for his opera however, came from

The Prose Edda, a work written in 1223 by the Icelandic politician, historian, and poet Snorri Sturluson and the German poem The Nibelungenlied written around

1200. In The Prose Edda, Sturluson recorded “the myths and legends, the history of poetry, of his race, in a prose that is one of the glories of the age” (Brodeur x-xi).

Although slight differences are found between The Prose Edda, The Nibelungenlied, and Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelungs, the source for much of Wagner’s story is obvious. Mark Rosenthal reiterates this sentiment in his extensive book about

Kiefer, “Like Wagner, Kiefer has been especially interested in treating myths from

The [Prose] Edda, a body of ancient Icelandic literature that remains a major source of German mythology.” (26). The Nibelungenlied is also an important source of

Wagner’s Ring Cycle. It was “composed around the year 1200” and is similar to The

Ring of the Nibelungs and The Prose Edda in that the characters are doomed by their ambitions and vengefulness (Dirda x). Kiefer uses these myths to explore ideas of love, loyalty, pride, sacrifice, ambition, revenge, and betrayal through the story of

Siegfried and Brunhilde.

The Ring of the Nibelungs has four cycles, “Das Rheingold”, “Die Walkure”,

“Siegfried”, and “Gotterdammerung”. In “Das Rheingold”, the dwarf Alberich steals gold from the Rhinemaidens that he finds in the Rhine River and forges it into a ring.

Later, the god Wotan makes Alberich give up the ring in order to pay for the building of Valhalla, a palace for the gods. In anger, Alberich curses the ring and all who wear it. In the second cycle, “Die Walkure”, the twin children of Wotan, Siegmund and

Sieglinde, meet for the first time and fall in love. Their union is illegal, however, so

Wotan sends his warrior daughter Brunhilde to kill Siegmund. Instead, Brunhilde defies her father and hides the pregnant Sieglinde in the forest. As punishment,

Brunhilde is put into a state of sleep and surrounded by a ring of fire, “a prize for any man who finds her” (Metropolitan Opera).

In “Siegfried”, we learn that Sieglinde gave birth to Siegfried in the forest but died. When Siegfried comes of age, birds tell him to go into the circle of fire to wake

Brunhilde from her sleep. Brunhilde and Siegfried instantly fall in love and she

“tries to resist his declarations of passion, realizing that earthly love must end her immortal life, but finally gives in” (Metropolitan Opera). She gives up her powers to be with Siegfried.

Finally, in “Gotterdammerung”, the opera comes to a dramatic climax.

Gunther and Gutrune, the heads of a royal family, want to use Siegfried to help restore glory and power to their dynasty. They trick Siegfried into drinking a potion that makes him forget Brunhilde. Upon learning of Siegfried’s break in their oath,

Brunhilde becomes angry and vengeful that her sacrifice was for nothing.

Meanwhile, Hagen, the son of the dwarf Alberich, has promised his father to win back the ring. Hagen accompanies Siegfried on a hunting trip, gives him the antidote to his curse, and then kills him by stabbing him in the back. “Siegfried remembers Brunhilde with his last words and dies” (Metropolitan Opera). When

Brunhilde realizes Siegfried had been poisoned, “she denounces the gods for their

guilt in Siegfried’s death, takes the ring from his hand and promises it to the

Rhinemaidens” (Metropolitan Opera). She then lights a funeral pyre containing

Siegfried’s body and rides her horse, Grane, into the fire. Hagen is killed by the

Rhinemaidens and Valhalla, the palace of the gods, is engulfed in flames.

Many themes are revealed in Wagner’s opera, but Kiefer is particularly interested in the mortality of the great, the betrayal of loyalty, sacrifice, hopelessness, and idealistic love. He combines these themes with historic actions of the Third Reich such as controlling and restricting ideas as well as specific incidents like “the day the Germans invaded Poland and World War II began” (Ott 832).

Furthermore, Kiefer delves into Germany’s relationship with itself after the war when it has to come to terms with the evils of Hitler’s ambitions. These themes will be examined and analyzed by this thesis in the following works by Kiefer.

In one of his first paintings for this series, Germany’s Spiritual Heroes, Kiefer depicts a wooden attic with the names of “Germanic artists and writers of the nineteenth and twentieth century” written below equally spaced and controlled painted flames (Rosenthal, Mark 26). In Germany during World War Two, modern thinkers were repressed and punished. Certain types of art, music, and theater were considered degenerate and forbidden or censored. Perhaps Kiefer is exploring the

Nazi theme of cleansing their culture through the repression of alternative thoughts.

Siegfried must “redeem the world and purify the Ring of its Curse” so that “the evil

forces in the world will be defeated, and a new world order of noble ideals and elevated conscience will come into existence” (Fisher 76). This parallels the propaganda of Hitler’s Third Reich. He argued that the purification of Germany and the world could only be achieved by exterminating the “racially inferior” and by crushing dissent. According to the United States Holocaust Museum, “Propaganda encouraged passivity and acceptance of the impending measures against Jews, as these appeared to depict the Nazi government as stepping in and ‘restoring order’.”

However, exterminating Germany’s richness of diversity weakened the country.

Mark Rosenthal states that “the similarity of this situation to the Valhalla of

Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelungs, and preceding that, the Twilight of the Gods of The

Prose Edda, is certainly intended” (26). Germany hurt itself by punishing its people and the Third Reich eventually fell, like the gods from The Prose Edda who punished

Brunhilde.

Kiefer also commented on specific events in World War II through the use of imagery from Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelungs. In Poland is Not Yet lost II and

Ride to the Vistula, Brunhilde and her horse Grane are shown riding into Siegfried’s funeral pyre, representing the hopelessness of Poland’s defense against the approaching Nazi army. These paintings are particularly poignant because “at the time of the German invasion, Poland’s only defense was its cavalry” (Rosenthal,

Mark 56). Unlike Brunhilde, however, Poland’s sacrifice did not bring about an end

to the powerful rulers. Instead, Poland appears pitiful and doomed. During the Nazi invasion, “German forces steadily occupied Poland and continued to focus on civilians, imprisoning and murdering thousands of the country’s residents”

(Wielun). In The Prose Edda, Grane belongs to Siegfried, not Brunhilde. In this way,

Kiefer's two paintings can be interpreted as Poland using the belongings of the dead to avenge them.

Many of Kiefer’s works in this series explore the complicated relationship between Brunhilde and Siegfried as a symbol of Germany’s relationship with itself.

Christie’s, an auction site that sells works of renowned artists, made the promotional statement, “Siegfried is shown as fallible and prone to ambition, while

Brunhilde becomes revengeful at her wasted sacrifice.” The Third Reich tried to gain total control over its people by issuing “a decree which suspended constitutional civil rights and created a state of emergency in which official decrees could be enacted without parliamentary confirmation” (United States Holocaust

Memorial Museum). In their ambition to spread a pure race across Europe, The

Third Reich also killed those Hitler determined to be “racially inferior”, including

Jews, Gypsies, the disabled, and many more groups of people. In one version of

Siegfried Forgets Brunhilde, a snowy and barren crop field stretches into the distance. This vast expanse of landscape feels like a discarded wasteland. The Nazis used patriotic propaganda to try to encourage support for their goals and ideals but

left a fractured German culture in its wake. Mark Rosenthal wonders, “whether the artist might yearn to apply this thought [of forgetting] to German history as well”

(56). Perhaps Brunhilde would have been better off to forget Siegfried. She gave up her powers for love and gave up her life to avenge it. Siegfried was certainly not better off forgetting Brunhilde as it brought about his eventual death. Sonolet states, “Dramatically, Kiefer presented himself as the only artist wanting to remember the Nazi period and the holocaust, whereas the rest of the country, willing to forget the Nazi past, ostracized him.” Kiefer seems to allude that the key to wisdom is not forgetting.

Through the use of ancient German myths, Kiefer “has embarked on a personal examination of the troubled legacy of Germany’s past” (Wye). These paintings shed light on some of the terrors Germany experienced during World War

II and its psychological after-effects. Mortality, control, faithfulness, deception, fruitless sacrifice, love, and self-reflection are all motifs Kiefer explores. Kiefer is

“ideally suited to making the present spiritual light of humankind the universal subject of his intensely German art” through his “talent, temperament, and nationality” (Wood 7).

Methodology

1. Works of Art by Anselm Kiefer that contain mythic themes from Wagner’s The

Ring of the Nibelungs, specifically Germany’s Spiritual Heroes, Brunhilde’s Death,

Poland is Not Yet Lost II, Ride to the Vistula, and Siegfried Forgets Brunhilde, will be thoroughly researched. Other works may be referenced for support.

2. The Prose Edda and The Nibelungenlied will be studied for supporting information and deviations from Wagner’s opera.

3. Certain events during World War II referenced in related paintings will be examined.

4. This research will be multidisciplinary and demand investigations into the political, social, and historical state of Germany during and after World War II.

Limitations

1. Artwork Anselm Kiefer created based on the Ring of the Nibelungs will be analyzed in concurrence with events relating to World War II and Germany’s postwar state of mind.

2. Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelungs will be analyzed for symbolic meaning relating to issues in World War II.

3. The Prose Edda and The Nibelungenlied will be examined for further symbolic interpretations and analyzed for areas where the stories differ from Wagner’s opera in conjunction with Kiefer.

4. A comprehensive bibliography will be included.

5. Color reproductions of important works discussed will be provided.

Definition of Terms

Degenerate Art / Illegal Art: A defamatory term used by the Third Reich to describe almost all modern art.

CHAPTER II

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN WAGNER AND THE NAZI REGIME AND ITS

RELEVANCE TO ANSELM KIEFER’S WORK

Even though Kiefer was born “less than two months before the suicide of

Adolf Hitler” and was “far too young to remember firsthand the Fuhrer and his

‘1,000-year Reich,’” Kiefer’s artwork is consumed with the horrors of World War II

(Goetz 314). Hitler was attracted to the roots of Germany’s mythic past and used

Wagner’s music and operas to propagate his goals and attempt to prove the strength

and superiority of the Arian race. Anselm Kiefer revisits myths tarnished by Nazi

appropriation in ironic, sad, redemptive, and contemporary ways, giving the past

new meaning.

Kiefer drew from Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelungs and Wagner drew from The

Prose Edda, but The Nibelungenlied existed first and provides the roots for later

Nibelung stories. Translated from Middle High German, The Nibelungenlied is the

oldest comprehensive recording of Teutonic myth. Because Kiefer continually

comes back to these stories, he is seen as “a self-conscious, deliberately ‘German’

artist [and] as such he is engaged in profound dialogue with his heritage” (Goetz

314). It is appropriate that Kiefer uses Wagner’s mythic interpretations in his

artworks to navigate the atrocities in World War II because Wagner’s works have been closely connected to the Third Reich in history.

Hitler approved “three master composers that represented good German music [including] Ludwig van Beethoven, Richard Wagner, and Anton Bruckner”

(Florida). Supporting Hitler’s nostalgia for greatness from the past, all three men lived before the 1900’s. Out of the three, “Richard Wagner was Hitler’s favorite composer” (Florida). Although the musician died before Hitler was born, Hitler became close friends with Wagner’s family, especially Winifred Wagner, the composer’s daughter-in-law. According to an article in Companion Reading, “there’s nothing mythological about how crucial the Wagner family and its network of cultural elites were to the fuhrer’s rise to power” (71).

It was not only the monumental sound of Wagner’s music or his use of

German myths in his operas that attracted Hitler; Wagner was a controversial historical figure and a known anti-Semite. Hitler agreed with Wagner and considered him to be a great man who shared his ideals. In fact, “Wagner wrote a violently anti-semetic booklet in the 1850’s called Judaism in Music (Das Judebthum in die Musik) insisting the Jews poisoned public taste in the arts” (Florida). Joseph

Horowitz, the author of “The Specter of Hitler in the Music of Wagner”, paraphrases

Marc Weiner’s point of view on Wagner and anti-Semitism.

For Mr. Weiner, anti-Semitism is a toxin that poisons everything

Wagner touches. He finds the operas populated with a gallery of

odious Jewish villains. Scrutinizing Mime, in the ‘Ring,’ he correctly

observes that every aspect of this hyperactive dwarf -- his odor, his

gait, his high-pitched, screeching voice -- correlates with negative

Jewish stereotypes. In effect, Mr. Weiner divides Wagner’s characters

into bad Jews, embodying a scorned ‘other,’ and good Germans,

embodying the master race.

A broader comparison is drawn from Wagner’s opera and his unflattering view of the Jewish people in the article “Wagner and Hitler” published by the New York

Times: “The ‘Ring’ cycle is basically an account of how a group of dwarfs

(translation: Jews) steal the gold (translation: spiritual).”

However closely the seedy characters in Wagner’s opera seem to relate to a negative interpretation of Jewish people, it cannot be proven that Wagner intended for correlations like this to exist. This topic is much debated for two reasons: First of all, Wagner allowed the premier of his opera “Parsifal” to be conducted by

Hermann Levi, a German conductor and Jew. Secondly, Wagner did not sign a petition of 1881 that would severely restrict Jewish civil rights. Though the ambiguity of Wagner’s incorporation of anti-Semitic views into his music allows room for debate, Hitler certainly saw Wagner as a man who shared his beliefs. This

is part of the reason Wagner’s music was a staple “at party rallies and functions”

(Florida). For Hitler, Wagner was a great man who could be used as a symbol for the future of Germany. Almost mockingly, many of Kiefer’s works in their enormity are “vaguely suggestive of Wagnerian opera sets” (Goetz 314).

Hitler used Wagner’s music to inspire the nation and promote his goals. In particular, Hitler enjoyed Wagner’s “Rienzi” Overture at most of his Nazi gatherings.

Horowitz puts this further into perspective: “Wagner was used by Hitler to legitimize the Third Reich as an organic outgrowth of centuries of German culture and history. Wagner’s operas stirred Hitler to envision reuniting the German

Empire and restoring it to greatness.” His love and use of Wagner has made the Nazi reign seem intertwined with Wagner throughout history. Wagner’s music was inspirational to Hitler, his anti-Semitic views agreed with the Nazi vision, and Hitler appreciated Wagner’s use of Norse mythology.

Using Wagner’s music also made Hitler appear as a sensitive and proud

German instead of a “brutal usurper which sharply deviated from the humanistic traditions of German culture” (Horowitz quoting Dina Porat ). Through Wagner’s music, Hitler united people by way of their shared German heritage.

Hitler also united people through the use of German myths by incorporating them into his argument for absorbing new territory and his belief in Aryan racial superiority. According to Spector, “During the Third Reich the Nazis used [German]

myth to proclaim the racial superiority of the so-called ‘Aryan’ race.” After losing the First World War, Norse mythology made a come back in Germany as a way of re- invigorating the country and boosting moral. The Third Reich “recognized the utility, indeed, the necessity, of appealing to postwar Germany’s desperate ‘longing for myth’ and desire for transcendence in making their amorphous racial and imperial visions a reality” (Kurlander 549).

One of the main people who brought German myth to the Nazi movement was Heinrich Himmler. Himmler was referred to by Hitler as “’Treuer Heinrich,’” or

“‘loyal Heinrich,’ the man who got things done” and was considered Hitler’s right- hand man (Smith, Bradley 1). He was one of the founders of the “The Deutsches

Ahnenerbe, the SS’s Ancestral Research department at Detmold,” a government institution founded on pseudo-science and archeology that focused on proving that mythological Nordic peoples once dominated Northern Europe, therefore verifying the superiority of the German race (Meades). This false rationale helped the Nazis justify their efforts to regain “original” territory. According to Acta Archaeologica,

“Archaeology became a tool in the national-socialist party’s wish to define European prehistory as Germanic” (Ss-Ahnenerbe). One of the strongly held beliefs of the

Ahnenerbe was that “the moon collides with the Earth every 20,000 years and that the only knowledge we retain of the Earth as it was pre-collision is held in myths and legends” (Meades). The stories passed down from generation to generation and

then finally recorded in books like the The Nibelungenlied were being studied as possible truth and evidence of Germany’s claim on territory and superiority.

Turning the country’s heroic myth into fact and comparing it with Hitler’s goals also helped give his message a patriotic feeling. Himmler even renovated the

Wewelsburg Castle as an “ideological center for his SS” (Wewelsburg). High ranking

Nazi officials met here to discuss plans and a concentration camp was developed on site to provide the manpower for the construction. According to the official

Wewelsburg Castle website, “Nordic symbols and other ornamentation were soon adopted in the rooms of the Wewelsburg” as part of the renovation.

Himmler is quoted as saying, “I desire that SS men be convinced of the worth of our own blood and our past, through knowledge of the actual history of our Volk, the prehistory of our Volk, the greatness and culture of our ancestors, so that they will totally root themselves in the value of the past, present, and future” (Steigmann-

Gall 76). Not surprisingly, “the outcome was ‘a feeling of alleged racial superiority that brought about the most criminal actions against others’” (Dina Porat quoted by

Horowitz). After World War II, German myths were associated with the Nazi movement and considered taboo. Because Kiefer uses German myth in his works, his art “has at times been interpreted as an attempt to cleanse the German consciousness by reawakening it” (Smith, Robert).

The Nazi era was far reaching as it grew from fascism in Germany just after

World War I and lingers in modern day where remnants of neo-Nazism still exist.

Because the repercussions of the war years were so powerful, “postwar artists did not isolate themselves from this crisis or treat it as an abstraction around which they could build artistic and architectural cultures of innovation” (Jaskot 8). This subject was an all-consuming topic that continually appeared in artwork. In fact,

Paul Jaskot believes that “all [German] artists and architects after 1945 operated within the context of evolving concepts of the Nazi past” (3).

During this time, Germany experienced a surge in neo-expressionist and conceptual art, perhaps in response to the limiting and anti-expressionist views of the Third Reich who classified it as degenerate art. According to Grace Gluek, a writer at The New York Times, these artists “have emerged from the limbo of a

German art tradition cut off by the Nazis.” The Encyclopedia Britannica gives a concise and comprehensive definition of this movement:

Neo-Expressionist paintings themselves, though diverse in

appearance, presented certain common traits. Among these were: a

rejection of traditional standards of composition and design; an

ambivalent and often brittle emotional tone that reflected

contemporary urban life and values; a general lack of concern for

pictorial idealization; the use of vivid but jarringly banal colour

harmonies; and a simultaneously tense and playful presentation of

objects in a primitivist manner that communicates a sense of inner

disturbance, tension, alienation, and ambiguity (hence the term Neo-

Expressionist to describe this approach).

Kiefer’s work definitely fits into this category and he emerged from Germany labeled by critics as a neo-expressionist. As pointed out by Goetz, “his art depends on passionate internalization of his subject” (314). Kiefer combines the past with the present to navigate their uncomfortable intersection. Goetz also notes that,

“partly under the influence of his great teacher, Joseph Beuys, Kiefer’s art is more historical and more self-consciously ideological than that of most of his expressionist forebears” (314). This touch adds depth, intelligence, and emotion to his work. It also opens a “personal critical dialogue with [his] fathers and mothers and, by extension, a social dialogue that characterized the broader position of the

Nazi past” (Jaskot 95).

Growing up in post-war Germany, Kiefer experienced a disjointed and defeated country trying to forget the terrors of its recent past. However, Kiefer re- created experiences visually from World War II in order to understand what had happened to his country. In her excerpt for the Guggenheim Museum, Nancy

Spector summarizes Kiefer’s experience: “Anselm Kiefer grew up witnessing the results of modern warfare and the division of his homeland. He also experienced

the rebuilding of a fragmented nation and its struggle for renewal.” In order to comprehend the tragedy his country experienced, Kiefer continually revisited the past. This is why his work is “somber, guilt-ridden, accusing, mocking, enigmatic –

Kiefer’s vision of life, religion, ideology, national identity and history has been charred by the flames of the Holocaust” (Goetz 314).

Although Kiefer came to his subject matter through his own experiences, he was greatly influenced by his mentor and teacher Joseph Beuys. In his own artwork,

Bueys showed interest in “deploying an array of cultural myths, metaphors, and symbols as a means by which to engage and understand history [which] inspired

Kiefer” (Collection Online). Bueys influenced Kiefer to use mythical reference in his work. Now Kiefer is famously known to investigate “the interwoven patterns of

German mythology and history and the way they contributed to the rise of Fascism”

(Spector). His works are often dense and cryptic, combining the deep past with events that are more recent, similar to his use of Siegfried and Brunhilde as metaphors for events in the war. This method “of drawing and [using] symbols to expose the many-layered quality of historical processes” incorporates legend and fact (Mann).

As mentioned previously, one reason Kiefer was attracted to the use of

German myth in his work was because by “dealing with subjects that have been virtually taboo for West and East German artists since World War II,” Kiefer could

reclaim his heritage from Nazi association (Kimmelman). Himmler tainted ancient

German legends when he used them to justify Nazi goals. By coming back to these myths Kiefer not only evokes Nazi references, but also Wagner’s mythological opera

The Ring of the Nibelungs. According to Mann, “From 1975 [Kiefer] concerned himself with the Nibelung legends, pointing beyond the German epic to its adaptation by Richard Wagner and to the Nazis’ use of it for nationalistic purposes”

(Mann). These connections remained a large source of material Kiefer incorporated into his paintings for many years. In much of his work, “references abound to the

Nibelung legends and Richard Wagner” (Spector).

The result of combining these subjects leads to a powerful but dismal visual effect. Kiefer’s “determination never for one moment to permit the horror of the

Nazi regime to leave the foreground, leads him to create a pictorial world which is fundamentally without faith, hope, or love” (Goetz 314). In his paintings that reference Brunhilde and Siegfried, he uses images of fire, death, barren landscapes, turbulent skies, and paints with predominantly grays and blacks. In this space, “his constantly interjected reminder that all things are completely subject to the same corruption that Hitler brought upon German culture so overwhelms his visual field that nothing remains” except darkness (Goetz 314).

Anselm Kiefer receives both criticism and praise for his artwork as he dredges up and attempts to understand the evils of Germany’s past. Kiefer’s work

has been “variously interpreted as an unwanted reminder of a very dark moment of

German nationalism, or as a statement of redemption and cleansing” (Auping 90).

Not surprisingly, in the beginning, Kiefer felt the most resistance to his work in

Germany. In Daglind Sonolet’s “Reflections,” Kiefer is quoted as saying, “In 1945, after the ‘accident’ as it is so emphatically put, people thought now we start from scratch. The past was taboo, [my] dragging it up only caused repulsion and distaste”

(Schama 100).

This initial distaste began after Kiefer showed a body of photographs called

“Occupations” where the artist performed the Hitler-salute wearing military dress in

France, Italy, and Switzerland. In his later works, he continued to use Nazi symbols and metaphors for Nazi actions in his art. This led to criticism that he was

“uncritically reproducing the German fascination with Nazi mythology, thereby aestheticizing the Nazi period without offering an historical analysis or attributing responsibility for the crimes” (Sonolet quoting Friedlander). Bringing up the Nazi past was considered distasteful. By exploring issues of “identity and heritage through art making, he boldly confronted Theodor Adorno’s declaration: ‘To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric’” (Collection Online). Furthermore, revisiting the past felt like slicing open old wounds. Critics posed the question, “How can there be healing when Kiefer is driven by a need to open and ever reopen old sores?” (Goetz

314). This certainly included using Norse mythology as it was also tied to Hitler’s

reign. However, Kiefer “pushed and prodded the myths and taboos of German history into art” (Smith, Robert). Kiefer’s vast body of work almost exclusively deals with issues of the Third Reich, leading him to become the “most prominent postwar

German artist associated with the traumatic working through of the Nazi past”

(Jaskot 83).

This negative response from Germany was matched by a contrasting praise of him in the United States. According to Mann, “The reminders of tabooed historical signs and symbols, as well as the juxtaposition of hero-worship and irony, helped to split reactions to Kiefer into two camps, the enthusiasm his work aroused, above all in the USA, was matched by violent criticism, not least in Germany”

(Mann). German critics “accused Kiefer of sympathies with Nazism and the search for German identity, a reaction which was paradoxically reinforced by the wide recognition and generous praise which his works received abroad, especially in

England and America, but also in Israel” (Sonolet). Once World War II ended in an

Allied victory, Germany faced the humiliation of international defeat paired with catastrophic human atrocities and genocide. Witness to Germany’s violent anti-

Semitism in the Holocaust, the United States came to believe it not only won World

War II, but also defeated evil. In speaking about the praise the United States affords

Kiefer, Goetz states, “There is a certain perverse comfort in assuring ourselves that

while national crimes may be inevitable, nonetheless we are not in the same class as the Nazis” (314).

Germany eventually, however, “came to embrace Kiefer’s art following his international critical success in the first half of the 1980’s” (Jaskot 84). Kiefer is now seen as revisiting an ugly part of Germany’s history to better understand the present and work through those traumatic events. Through returning to the past, “Mr.

Kiefer has sought to surmount that past, to exorcise ghosts, to resurrect German culture” (Kimmelman). The initial shock and rejection to Kiefer’s works in Germany has largely subsided. According to Danto, “It is widely accepted that Kiefer views it as his mission to reconnect Germany with its true heroic past and prod it in the direction of its true heroic future” (Danto 27).

CHAPTER III

THEMES OF BETRAYAL AND THE CLEANSING POWER OF FIRE IN STORIES OF

BRUNHILDE AND SIEGFRIED USED IN ANSELM KIEFER’S PAINTINGS TO

PARALLEL EVENTS IN WORLD WAR II

In his art works, Anselm Kiefer utilizes the major theme of betrayal between

Siegfried and Brunhilde found in The Nibelungenlied, The Prose Edda, and Wagner’s

The Ring of the Nibelungs as a parallel with events in World War II. Additionally,

Kiefer uses the imagery of fire to symbolically cleanse Germany of the evils of this

war, similar to the burning of Siegfried and Brunhilde that destroyed the gods.

In his art, Kiefer uses stories of Brunhilde and Siegfried as a metaphor of the

betrayal of the German people during World War II. This theme shows up

consistently in The Nibelungenlied, The Prose Edda, and The Ring of the Nibelungs. In

The Nibelungenlied and the Prose Edda, Siegfried knowingly misleads Brunhilde, but

in Wagner’s version the hero is poisoned and then tricked into deceiving her.

In The Nibelungenlied, Siegfried falls in love with King Gunther’s sister

Gutrune. In order to marry Gutrune, Siegfried agrees to help the king win

Brunhilde’s hand in marriage. Brunhilde is described as beautiful and strong, only

able to accept a husband who could pass many dangerous games. Siegfried is

athletic and powerful. He agrees to invisibly help King Gunther pass Brunhilde’s tests in exchange for Gutrune’s hand in marriage:

When Siegfried wore the Cloak of Darkness he had strength enow: the force

of full twelve men beside his own. With cunning arts he won the royal maid.

This cloak was fashioned so, that whatsoever any wroght within it, none saw

him. Thus he won Brunhild, which brought him dole.

(Nibelungenlied 45)

Soon after, King Gunther married Brunhilde and Siegfried married Gutrune.

However, Gutrune boasted to Brunhilde that her husband was superior by revealing the truth that he helped King Gunther win Brunhilde’s hand. Learning that her husband was unsuitable and deceitful, Brunhilde became upset. When Hagen, a faithful warrior for King Gunther, discovered Brunhilde had been betrayed, he killed

Siegfried. Eventually, Gutrune avenges Siegfried by killing her brother King Gunther and Hagen. Finally, another knight kills Gutrune, rendering the royal family from

Burgundy extinct.

In The Prose Edda, Siegfried meets and falls in love with Gutrune, the daughter of King Gunther. Similarly, in order win her hand in marriage, Siegfried promises to help the King win Brunhilde as his bride. However, Brunhilde “had made a solemn vow to take none but that man who should dare to ride through the flaring fire” where she slept (Sturluson 155). Only the strongest and most

honorable man could marry this “Amazon-like beauty who possesses astonishing, even supernatural strength” (Burton xxi). The only man who was brave and strong enough to do this was clearly Siegfried, so he and King Gunther switched forms and

Siegfried won Brunhilde disguised as King Gunther. Thus, with the help of Siegfried,

Brunhilde is wed to King Gunther “through trickery and subterfuge” (Burton xxi).

When Brunhilde discovered this deception, she had Siegfried killed and “stabbed herself with a sword” (Sturluson 156). She was then burned on a funeral pyre beside Siegfried.

In 1975, Anselm Kiefer completed Siegfried Forgets Brunhilde (Fig.1). The imagery depicts a farm wasteland. Vertical slithering lines of earth-like crop rows lead to a small rectangular shape in the distance, perhaps a deserted barn or home.

Is Kiefer referencing the imagery of a biblical serpent in the curving rows of crops?

In The Holy Bible, the serpent is synonymous with Satan or the Devil. He is described as “that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray” (Holy Bible Revelation 12:9). Siegfried tricked Brunhilde into marrying a man who was not worthy of her. Similarly, the biblical serpent “was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made” (Holy Bible

Genesis 3:1). Siegfried’s deception was fueled by the appeal of his own personal desires to marry Gutrune. Misleading Brunhilde, his true equal, was an unforgivable

act of evil that brought about death and destruction. The barren crop field could very well symbolically reference the outcome of Siegfried’s selfish choices.

This piece does not pretend that desecration came as a result of a hero under a spell as Wagner’s play describes. The painting clearly shows the treachery of

Siegfried’s choice and alludes to Brunhilde and Siegfried’s cataclysmic ending.

Kiefer’s painting shows that “life in this world is contradictory and brutally unfair”

(Goetz 314).

As mentioned previously, Wagner allows Siegfried to appear more honorable as his duplicity occurs only after being poisoned and put under a spell. In the opera,

Hagen reveals this plan to his family:

(leaning over confidently to Gutrune)

Remember that drink in the chest;

(More secretly)

and trust in me; I know its power.

That hero for whom you long, he can be conquered by you.

(Gunther has again come to the table and, leaning upon it, listens attentively.)

Now let our Siegfried come: we’ll give him the magical drink; he’ll forget all

women but you; the past will fade from his mind; all memory he will have

lost.

(Wagner 288)

After promising himself to Brunhilde, Siegfried comes upon King Gunther’s royal family in his search for glory. According to Christie’s, “Siegfried succumbs to his desire for fame and adventure” and drinks the potion from Gutrune that makes him forget about his oath to Brunhilde.

Kiefer depicts this scene in another oil painting also titled Siegfried Forgets

Brunhilde (Fig. 2). Visually, this piece consists of a blackened swirling atmosphere,

“suggesting the motif of rings of fire that reoccur throughout Wagner’s Ring cycle”

(Christie’s). In the foreground, six white spotted poisonous red mushrooms and a translucent vial line the horizon. The mushrooms depicted are commonly found in

Northern Europe and scientifically known as Amanita Muscaria (Marley 150-151).

The Amanita genus includes mushrooms that are deadly and others that only have psychoactive effects. However, the Muscaria is not deadly. This mushroom only contains “ibotenic acid and muscimol, two closely related compounds responsible for the psychoactive response when this mushroom is ingested” (Marley 162).

Because its toxins are water soluble, the vial containing liquid in this painting would be a perfect way to disguise this poison. Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelungs is not specific about what type of poisonous drink was used to trick Siegfried so Kiefer invoked imagery of poison through common visual symbols. Although he was tricked and poisoned, Siegfried’s betrayal of Brunhilde was the impetus for the death and destruction that followed.

On the back of Siegfried Forgets Brunhilde, Kiefer signed ‘Anselm’ six times

“on six wooden pieces;” the artist is clearly drawing a parallel to his name and the poisonous mushrooms (Christie’s). This conceptual connection, however, is unclear.

Perhaps Kiefer is invoking another biblical reference. With six mushrooms and six signatures of ‘Anselm’ attached to six wooden sections, the 666 reference is hard to ignore. In Revelation 13:18, the number is revealed to be synonymous with Satan:

“Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. That number is 666.” Poison is inherently an evil material and using it to harm or trick another is an evil action. The question, however, persists as to why Kiefer signed his own name in a way that connects with this theme.

Evil is synonymous with Hitler’s actions in World War II and he ties directly into these themes of betrayal. He rose to power because the previous “Weimar

Republic slipped in response to the economic crisis of the Great Depression” (United

States Holocaust Museum). He led the German people to believe that through terrible acts they could rebuild their great country. This fraud is similar to how

Gunther and Gutrune from Wagner's Ring of the Nibelungs deceived Siegfried to save their royal family. The empire of Gunther and Gutrune had lost much of its previous glory similar to Germany after World War I. Speaking to Gunther, his half brother

Hagen remarks, “My wisdom is weak; your fame is not great” (Wagner 285). Their solution was to use deception as a way to bring prominence back to their kingdom.

This act of poisoning Siegfried was the catalyst to their own destruction. Hitler also used a defining act of subterfuge when his deceitful takeover of Poland began World

War II and eventually led to his downfall. Hitler’s occupation of Poland was retaliation for a fake invasion by Poland that Hitler organized, which will be discussed at length in the next chapter. Like Hitler, Gunther and Gutrune used trickery to advance their own objectives.

In reviewing The Ring of the Nibelungs in The New York Times, Anthony

Tommasini introduces the fallen family as “the ambitious Gunther, his timid sister

Gutrune and their manipulative half brother Hagen.” However, The Nibelungenlied and The Prose Edda reveal that Siegfried was also duplicitous. Wagner retained

Siegfried’s heroic identity by making him drink poison before betraying Brunhilde, but in The Nibelungenlied and The Prose Edda, Siegfried deceived Brunhilde for his own selfish goals. His intense desires for power and love poisoned his integrity.

In fact, the author of The Prose Edda, Snorri Sturluson, wrote his masterpiece during a turbulent period in history and may have pulled from his own experiences to embellish themes like betrayal. According to Arthur Brodeur, the author of the introduction to The Prose Edda, “The life of Snorri Sturluson fell in a great but contradictory age, when all that was noble and spiritual in men seemed to promise social regeneration, and when bloody crimes and sordid ambitions gave this hope the lie” (ix). Sturluson lived from 1179 to 1241 in Scandinavia, a place that “felt the

religious fervor of the Crusades, passed from potential anarchy into union and national consciousness, [and felt] the fury of persecution and of fratricidal war”

(Brodeur ix). Sturluson himself became active in politics and in an attempt to become king of Iceland served as King Haakon IV’s vassal. However, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, “His relations with Haakon deteriorated, and, in 1241, by Haakon’s order, Snorri was assassinated.” The dramatic stories he recorded in his prose do not seem distant from his own life experiences. In fact, “the history of the Sturlung house is a long and perplexed chronicle of intrigue, treachery, and assassination, in all of which Snorri played an active part” (Brodeur x).

Betrayal is a major theme in Brunhilde and Siegfried’s story in The

Nibelungenlied, The Prose Edda, and The Ring of the Nibelungs, and also occurs frequently in Germany throughout World War II. Anselm Kiefer symbolically represented nuances of this betrayal in several of his works through imagery of desolate fields and poison.

Another common theme explored by Kiefer is the cleansing power of fire and death. In The Prose Edda and The Ring of the Nibelungs, Brunhilde and Siegfried die, but so do the people who chose their selfish goals over the welfare of others.

With the sacrifice of the innocent, evil was killed in a great fire. Similarly, during

World War II millions of innocent people died but eventually evil was forced out

with Hitler’s dramatic suicide and the fall of the Third Reich. Kiefer investigates these ideas in the paintings Brunhilde’s Death (1976) and Brunhilde Sleeps (1980).

In the oil painting Brunhilde’s Death, a stark color palette displays black, gray, light blue, yellow, and white (Fig. 3). Smoke and ash fill the entire picture plane. In the center of the canvas toward the bottom are wooden logs arranged like a tepee.

They are engulfed in bright yellow flames and invoke the image of a funeral pyre, similar to the image of Brunhilde’s death described in The Prose Edda and The Ring of the Nibelungs. A stray log is further back in space and also consumed in flames.

The ash and fire that fill the picture plane leave no hope for survival.

In The Prose Edda, after Brunhilde learns of Siegfried’s betrayal, Hagan and

King Gunther conspire to kill Siegfried. After the murder, “Brynhildr stab[s] herself with a sword” and “is burned with Sigurdr” (Sturluson 156). This sets in motion

Gutrune’s thirst for revenge against the king for killing her husband. She kills the king, “set[s] fire to the hall, and burn[s] the folk that were within” (Sturluson 156).

Everyone involved in treachery dies. Even Gutrune tries to commit suicide by throwing herself into the sea, but she is saved. Death wiped away the innocent

Brunhilde but also the evil perpetrators who benefited from conspiring to murder

Siegfried.

In The Ring of the Nibelungs, Siegfried is also killed by Hagen. Once news of his murder reaches Brunhilde, she “orders a funeral pyre to be built on the banks of

the Rhine” and then “lights the funeral pyre and leaps into the flames”

(Metropolitan). She knows the ring made of Rhine gold was a main source of her misfortune and talks about how the fire will purify its curse. Her monologue begins in Act Three:

This fire, burning my frame,

cleanses the curse from the ring!

There in Rhine,

the ring shall be pure;

preserve it,

and guard your shining gold

whose theft has cursed all our woe.

(Wagner 359)

Brunhilde seeks revenge upon the gods for allowing so much tragedy to enter her life. She knows that riding into the fire with the ring will bring down Valhalla and end their reign. In Act Three she calls to them:

Fly home, you ravens!

tell your lord the tidings

that here by the Rhine you have learned!

Past Brunnhilde’s mountain

take your flight,

where Loge is burning!

Summon Loge to Walhall!

For the gods’ destruction

soon shall be here.

I cast now the flame

at Walhall’s glorious height.

(Wagner 259)

In The Prose Edda and The Ring of the Nibelungs, Brunhilde’s final act is suicide and then she is burned with Siegfried on a funeral pyre. Brunhilde’s Death is almost a literal translation of the German myth. However, Kiefer did not include

Brunhilde’s body in the painting. Instead, stark images of wood, smoke and fire consume the canvas.

Hagen kills Siegfried in The Nibelungenlied for the same reason he does in

The Prose Edda, to avenge Brunhilde’s sorrow for being deceived into marrying the wrong man. However, in The Nibelungenlied, Gutrune is the one who achieves revenge on the guilty parties. She waits, plotting revenge, and eventually marries

King Etzel who rules Hungary. She then strategically invites her brother Hagen to visit her in Hungary and proceeds to incite unrest between the Hungarians and

Nibelungs. Eventually, a fight breaks out and many Nibelungs are killed. Then

Gutrune “bade the hall be set on fire, and thus they racked the bodies of the knights

with fire and flame. Fanned by the breeze, the whole house burst into flames full soon” (Nibelungenlied 285).

After all of the Nibelungs die, Gutrune cuts off Hagen’s head with Siegfried’s sword as her final act. Seeing this, a Hungarian knight “dealt the queen a grievous sword-blow, the which did cut the high-born dame in twain” (Nibelungenlied 320).

Although this finale does not incorporate fire and there is no mention of Brunhilde’s death, “all lay low in death whom fate had doomed” (Nibelungenlied 320). In the end, all parties involved in Brunhilde’s deception die. Death surrounds the stories of

Siegfried and Brunhilde and Kiefer alludes to this level of destruction in the painting

Brunhilde’s Death. Similarly, death surrounds the Nazi regime and their actions during World War II. During the Holocaust alone “almost a third of the world’s

Jewish population was murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators” (Fischel xii).

Brunhilde’s Death points to this destroyed innocence. In this painting, the inescapable fire is reminiscent of how the Holocaust and Siegfried’s funeral pyre engulf what is good, leaving death and destruction in its wake.

Siegfried used his power to get what he wanted regardless of who was wronged. In The Nibelungenlied and The Prose Edda, he betrayed Brunhilde to marry Gutrune. Even in Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelungs, although Siegfried remains heroic because he does not bear fault in his act of betrayal to Brunhilde, Wagner does allude to Siegfried’s fallible ego. When the Rhinemaidens ask him to return the

ring to them and warn him of its curse, “he decides to keep it as proof of his fearlessness” (Metropolitan Opera). This act of ego and pride leads to his destruction as later that same day he is killed for the ring.

Similarly, Hitler was not satiated with annexing Austria and later, an area in

Czechoslovakia called the Sudetenland which was “inhabited by over three million

German speakers” (Boyle 39-40). In March of 1939, he invaded the rest of

Czechoslovakia and six months later Poland, initiating World War II. According to

Joachim Fest, “Hitler rose to the top in a spiritually broken nation” that allowed human atrocities to further Hitler’s vision (38). Hitler’s poisonous ambition led to his eventual downfall.

On April 30th, 1945 Hitler and his new wife, Eva Braun, swallowed cyanide capsules and Hitler shot himself. According to Donald Miller, the author of The Story of World War II, “The bodies were placed in a Russian shell crater, covered with gasoline, and ignited” (525-526). As their corpses burned, “Hitler’s staff stood at attention and gave their leader a final Nazi solute” (526). The conflagration of Hitler and his wife was the beginning of a cleansing for the German people. Hitler was considered to be “the man who single-handedly destroyed Germany’s identity” and his death ended a great evil (Georgescu 375).

His suicide was also a catalyst to mass death in the bunker where Hitler and his companions were sheltering. On May 1st, Joseph Goebbels, a close associate of

Hitler, killed his six children who were sharing a space in the underground bunker.

He then committed suicide with his wife. On May 2nd, Heinz Krebs and Wilhelm

Burgdorf, men working with Hitler who were also living in the bunker, killed themselves as well. These mass deaths are similar to the death of the gods when

Brunhilde caused Valhalla to burn. Chapter 5 will explore a seminal artwork of

Kiefer’s that analyzes the death of the gods and cleansing by fire in conjunction with the Holocaust and World War II.

Brunhilde’s self-sacrifice ridded the world of evil in The Prose Edda and The

Ring of the Nibelungs. In the artwork Brunhilde Sleeps by Anselm Kiefer, a more serene view of her death is presented (Fig. 4). The piece features a photograph of a peaceful female figure lying on her back. Her eyes are closed as if she is asleep.

Kiefer used acrylic paint on top of the photo to outline and color her hair black. He smudged black around the border of the image as well. White dots of paint and swirling lines compose the rest of the piece. The figure seems to be engulfed in a gray haze of ash.

Brunhilde Sleeps refers to “the final, peaceful sleep of Brunhilde and her ideals” (Rosenthal, Mark 56). Kiefer suggests that Brunhilde can now rest because she remained true to her morals in life. Fire surrounds her in a protective circle in the beginning of the play and now it helps her achieve revenge on the gods. When speaking of Siegfried and Brunhilde, Erdas predicted that these lovers “shall inherit

the earth and redeem the world” (Fisher 89). With her final act of self-sacrifice,

Brunhilde destroys the forces that allowed evil to flourish. Fire also desecrated the body of Hitler after he committed suicide and his absence purged Germany of a great evil.

According to Burton Fisher, the author of Wagner’s the Ring of the Nibelungs,

“Brunhilde will endow Siegfried with her wisdom and love, and nurture the young hero so that he will redeem the world and purify the Ring of its Curse. As such, the evil forces in the world will be defeated, and a new world order of noble ideals and elevated conscience will come into existence” (Fisher 76). Brunhilde’s actions did purify the earth, but mainly through the burning of Valhalla.

Unlike Brunhilde in Kiefer’s painting Brunhilde Sleeps, the countries effected in World War II did not sleep peacefully once the war ended. The reverberations of that conflict were haunting emotionally and physically as much of Europe was destroyed. Perhaps Kiefer is hinting that peaceful sleep is only achieved in death.

From betrayal to a cataclysmic cleansing, Anselm Kiefer used The

Nibelungenlied, The Prose Edda, and The Ring of the Nibelungs in his artworks of

Brunhilde and Siegfried to parallel events in World War II. In these stories, one of the major themes Kiefer uses in his paintings is Siegfried’s betrayal of Brunhilde.

Siegfried knowingly misleads her in The Nibelungenlied and The Prose Edda but is tricked into deceiving her in The Ring of the Nibelungs, when the royal family

poisoned him. Similarly, Hitler betrayed his people by promising greatness but instead leading them to greed and murder. In the end, Brunhilde and Siegfried’s story concludes in a violent extermination as their deaths bring down Valhalla and the gods. Likewise, at the end of World War II, Hitler is destroyed and his body burned. Many of his close friends committed suicide as well, allowing for a new beginning in Germany and the rest of the world. Similarly, Kiefer shows the destruction caused by Nazi Germany in Brunhilde’s Death and the cleansing power of the death of evil in Brunhilde Sleeps.

CHAPTER IV

KIEFER’S PAINTINGS OF BRUNHILDE THAT REFERENCE POLAND’S ROLE IN

WORLD WAR II

In several of his paintings, Anselm Kiefer addresses Poland’s history in World

War II through visual narratives relating to the stories of Brunhilde and Siegfried.

In fact, the myth of Brunhilde and Siegfried and the history of Poland in World War

II share many similarities.

The Nazis used Poland to further their goals similar to the way Gunther and

Gutrune used Siegfried. The day before Germany’s invasion of Poland, “Nazi

operatives had posed as Polish military officers to stage an attack on the radio

station in the Silesian city of Gleiwtz. Germany used the event as the pretext for its

invasion of Poland” (Wielun). This deception is similar to how Gunther and Gutrune

from Wagner's Ring Cycle deceived Siegfried to save their royal family. Germany

retaliated against this fake attack and easily overcame Polish defenses. David Boyle

writes an account of this event in his book World War II: A Photographic History:

At 4.45 am on 1 September 1939, Hitler’s troops crossed the Polish border in

a pitiless demonstration of ‘lightning war’. First Stuka dive-bombers hit

communication lines and military strongpoints; panzers and motorized units

rumbled across the flat Polish countryside, meeting only weak resistance. An

hour later, a wave of German Heinkels and Dorniers were droning over

Warsaw.

(46)

Because of a promise to support Poland, Britain decided to intervene. B. H.

Liddell Hart, author of History of the Second World War, outlined the series of events that lead to this declaration of war:

On Friday September I, 1939, the German armies invaded Poland. On

Sunday, the 3rd, the British Goverbent declared war on Germany, in

fulfillment of the guarantee it had earlier given to Poland. Six hours later the

French Government, more hesitantly, followed the British lead.

(16)

The British involvement initiated World War II. In the words of Bill Ott, a writer for American Libraries in 1989, “As the Nazi tanks rumbled across the Polish border on the morning of September 1, Western civilization took a tragic wrong turn” (832). By the end of the war, a fifth of the Polish population had been murdered.

There are many parallels like this between Poland’s role in World War II and the story of Brunhilde and Siegfried. Kiefer draws upon their similarities in several works. The artwork Brunhilde – Grane (fig. 5) is a woodcut that has been printed with oil on thirteen sheets of paper and mounted on linen. According to Nancy

Spector, a Guggenheim curator since 1989, “Kiefer’s selection of medium here is closely calibrated to the subject: woodcutting is a traditional technique deeply associated with German art, from the great Renaissance artist Albrecht Durer to 20th

-century Expressionists, like Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, who self-consciously revived it.” In the image, a translucent horse stands in the center, facing left. Its bones are visible and yellow, the same color as the fire that surrounds it. Kiefer drew this internal structure to illustrate the melting flesh and gruesome death of the horse.

According to Mark Rosenthal, “An iconlike horse stands in the middle of a flaming inferno, its ribs resembling tree rings” (56). The words “Brunhilde’s Grane” are written above the horse to connect the work to German myth. Black and white smoke swirls around the center. Dead tree branches are scattered along the ground, feeding the fire. Again, the “theme of spiritual salvation by fire, an ancient belief perverted by the Nazis in their quest for an exclusively Aryan nation,” is evoked in this work by Kiefer (Spector). It is a hopeless and all-consuming image. In this work, “Kiefer renders the suicidal sacrifices of Brunhilde and Poland into something pathetic and deeply sad” (Rosenthal, Mark 56).

Grane is the name of Brunhilde’s horse in The Ring of the Nibelungs and

Kiefer uses her horse as a metaphor for Poland’s weak defense system. One famous military tragedy came from Polish commanders who sent their cavalry to battle the

Germans. According to O’Brien Browne, author of the article Polish Cavalry vs.

German Panzers, “Poland’s cavalrymen – wielding rifles, machine guns, and antitank guns – played an important role in just about every major battle of the September

Campaign.” The cavalry was highly utilized in the defense of Germany’s invasion.

However, “they were no match for tanks” (Lightbody). Kiefer uses Brunhilde’s

Grane as a clear parallel for the Polish cavalry. Their futile defenses ended in self- sacrifice; Germany’s tanks swept “Polish cavalry ‘out of the way like rubbish’”

(Browne).

Poland and Brunhilde are heroic and brave, but to what ends? Brunhilde was able to destroy Valhalla when she rode into the fire, but with it her father Wotan and her warrior sisters. In Poland, “Warsaw bravely held out until 27 September, but after enduring 18 days of continuous bombing finally surrendered at 2.00 pm that afternoon” (Lightbody). The destruction Poland experienced was vast and merciless. By the end of the war, “Warsaw lost 700,000 citizens – more than the combined war losses of the United Kingdom and the United States of America”

(Piotrowski 24). Hitler took Poland’s resistance to Germany personally. According to Jan Karski, author of The Great Powers and Poland: 1919-1945, during the invasion and occupation of Poland, Hitler responded with a vengeance: “He was spurred on not only by his political calculations but by emotions, and among his emotions, hatred was the strongest. Now, as if in self-hypnosis, he focused all his

hatred on the Poles” (Karski 279). Poland experienced vast loss of life because of their unwillingness to acquiesce to Germany.

Like Poland’s fate, the painting Poland is Not Yet Lost (Fig. 6) depicts impending devastation. On the bottom right is a horse that represents Poland and on the left is a German tank. Both objects are coming toward each other and will converge at a dividing line in the center of the canvas. In the top of the painting, a dark flying beast cuts through the center at an angle. It has wings and could be interpreted as an angel of death or a demon. Its form is outlined in white against a black cloud. Swirling black lines emanate from the arms of the beast and seem to be pulling the tank toward the horse. At the bottom of the canvas, Kiefer has written noch ist Polen nicht verloren II which translates to “Poland is not yet lost II”. The text is hand written in black paint without much consideration of spacing. It begins far from the left and as the sentence comes to an end it almost runs off the canvas. In the word “Poland” the letters “Pol” almost disappear into the black paint in the background. These letters are only visible because of a thin white highlight Kiefer painted along their contours. The image seems to imply that dark forces are aiding in the rapid demise of Poland.

The flying beast could be seen as representative of the gods who sentenced

Brunhilde to her fate. First, Wotan surrounded her in fire because she disobeyed his orders and protected Sieglinde. Then, once she found happiness with Siegfried, the

gods took away her powers and allowed Siegfried to fall into a trap with Gunther and Gutrune’s royal family, leading to his death. Fate did not seem to favor their union or allow her happiness. The German tank in the painting is like the impending destructive force that was heading their way. In the end, Brunhilde fought the forces against her and ran her horse into Siegfried’s funeral pyre, destroying

Valhalla and herself. She was unwilling to accept the future the gods gave her.

There is something deeply honorable about being outmatched by an enemy but facing him anyway. Before Germany attacked Poland, Hitler’s desire to overtake them became evident. Because of Poland’s 6,650,000 acres of arable land and other resources, Germany viewed Poland as its Lebensraum, a territory needed for the development of Germany (Karski 279). However, Hitler did not make this reason known. Instead, he spread lies about Poland’s hostility toward Germany. Hitler reported that Poland and England had “encircled Germany, and Poland had undertaken obligations toward Great Britain that were clearly contrary to the spirit and letter of the Polish nonaggression pact of 1934” (Karski 277). In response, Jozef

Beck, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Second Republic, gave a powerful speech:

Peace is a valuable and desirable thing. Our generation which has shed its

blood in several wars, surely deserves a period of peace. But peace, like

almost everything in this world, has its price, high but definable. We in

Poland do not recognize the conception of “peace at any price.” There is only

one thing in the life of men and states which is without price, and that is

honor.

(Karski 278)

The title of Kiefer’s painting Poland is Not Yet Lost II is ironic and full of hopeless optimism as Poland is in fact lost to the Nazis at a great cost. The title is also the name of Poland’s National Anthem. Maja Trochimczyk includes a translation of the anthem in her essay for the University of Southern California’s

Essays in Polish Music series:

Poland is not yet lost

while we live

We will fight (with swords) for all

That our enemies had taken from us.

Hitler’s attack came at a great cost to Poland. His aim was the “elimination of living forces” (Karski 281). His goals manifest in the form of what was called the

Extraordinary Pacification Action. Shortly after Poland’s surrender, Hitler began systematically killing people who he feared might be sources of dissent. This list included people in educated professions and priests in the Roman Catholic Church.

By the end of the war, Poland had lost “45 percent of her physicians and dentists, 57 percent of her attorneys, more than 15 percent of her teachers, 40 percent of her professors, 30 percent of her technicians, and more than 18 percent of her clergy”

(Piotrowski 23). The majority of journalists in Poland were also killed. Some may argue that both the country and the essence of Poland was lost in this war.

In the painting Ride to the Vistula (Fig. 7), Kiefer paints a turbulent scene with wild ribbons of white over a blackened canvas. The ribbons undulate like water and symbolize the Vistula River in Poland. On the left, a horse’s head emerges from the white foam, its face pale and charred with red, blue, brown, and black. In the distance, another horse runs across the canvas. These animals look as if they are fleeing pursuit. Barely perceptible, in the right bottom corner is the haunting and ghostly portrait of a woman. Her mouth is open as if frozen in a scream and her hair intertwines with the white swirling paint. Perhaps she embodies the smoky water.

In the middle of the canvas, the words Ritt an die Weichsel (the title of this work in

German) follow one of the white ribbons. At the bottom of the canvas, the words

Weichsel, Weichsel, weibe Weichsel are painted. Apparently, this phrase is “from a song popular during the Third Reich, which Kiefer found in a secondhand bookshop”

(Rosenthal, Nan 67). Translated to English, the song goes like this: “Vistula, what are you whispering? You come from the quiet mountains of Silesia and bring the tears of beautiful young women with you” (Rosenthal, Nan 67).

The Vistula is a river in Poland and considered a “principal waterway”

(Rosenthal, Nan 67). It was the site of many territorial disputes between Germany and Poland even before World War II. Located west of the Vistula were important

resources including the Silesian coalfields and the main industrial zone. According to B. H. Liddell Hart, author of History of the Second World War, “it would have been wiser for the Polish Army to assemble farther back, behind the broad river-lines of the Vistula and the San, but that would have entailed the definite abandonment of some of the most valuable parts of the country” (27). The decision to instead spread

Polish forces thinly across its boundaries allowed Germany to quickly invade and gain advantage. As the invasion pursued, soldiers and civilians fled east to the river.

However, “the largest remaining part of the Polish forces was trapped before it could withdraw over the Vistula” (Hart 30). This greatly hurt the Polish military as

“only a small proportion ultimately managed to break out” (Hart 30).

According to Nan Rosenthal, author of Anselm Kiefer: Works on Paper in the

Metropolitan Museum of Art, the woman’s face “evoke[s] one of the Rhine maidens in the first opera of Wagner’s Ring cycle” (67). In Scene I of The Ring of the Nibelungs,

Alberich steals the Rhinegold and denounces love. As he tears the gold from the rock, he falls into the water and sinks into darkness. The Rhinemaidens frantically swim after him but to no avail. In parenthesis, Wagner describes the scene: “the whole stage is filled from top to bottom with billowing water, which for some time seems to be continually sinking” (20). This accurately describes the image of a woman surrounded by black swirling water in Kiefer’s Ride to the Vistula. Sinking

into black depths with a thief who renounced love and accepted evil also sounds like a metaphor for Poland’s experience with a maniacal Hitler.

In Act III of The Ring of the Nibelungs, the Rhinemaidens warn Siegfried of the ring’s curse and beg him to return it to them.

You die today:

unless you obey

and give the ring to our care.

(Wagner 341)

The Rhinemaidens’ curse comes true and Siegfried is killed that same day.

Eventually, Brunhilde heeds their warning and ends the curse by sacrificing her body and returning the ring. After Brunhilde rides Grane into Siegfried’s funeral pyre, “the Rhine over-flows its banks in a mighty flood which pours over the fire. On the waves the three Rhinemaidens swim forwards and now appear over the pyre”

(Wagner 360). They joyously take the ring back into the water and play with it as

Valhalla is engulfed in flames.

This stolen treasure could be interpreted as the Nazi invasion. Both lead to cataclysmic devastation in the lives of the perpetrators and victims. Finally, the curse in Wagner’s opera ended when the gold was returned to the Rhinemaidens.

However, the devastation experienced by all of the characters was irreversible.

Even when Poland regained its freedom it took many years for them to rebuild and heal.

The horse in Kiefer’s works Brunhilde-Grane, Poland is Not Yet Lost II, and

Ride to the Vistula represents “Poland, its vulnerability, and perhaps its valiance”

(Rosenthal, Nan 67). Although it is not true that the cavalry actually charged

German tanks, the cavalry was involved in many skirmishes and the swift aggression of the Nazis practically wiped out this military division. As Nan

Rosenthal recounts, “Polish troops, many of them poorly equipped cavalry, were vastly outnumbered and soon succumbed to German tanks and aircraft” (67). The imagery of “dead horses and riders litter[ing] the fields” has remained a vivid account of the Polish confrontation with the Nazis on September 1, 1939 (Browne).

The three works of art discussed in this chapter, Brunhilde-Grane, Poland is

Not Yet Lost II, and Ride to the Vistula, make parallels between Poland’s role in

World War II and the story of Brunhilde and Siegfried. Ideas of Gunther, Gutrune,

Wotan, the Rhinemaidens, Alberich, and of course Siegfried and Brunhilde are evoked in Kiefer’s imagery. He uses this imagery to illuminate ideas about Hitler’s actions in Poland. Paradoxically, these Nordic myths reveal Hitler and his Nazi movement to be the villains in these old stories instead of the heroes Hitler believed he emulated. It is interesting to see Kiefer contrast the true meanings of these stories against Hitler’s actions and ideals.

CHAPTER V

COMPLETE ANALYSIS OF GERMANY’S SPIRITUAL HEROES

Considered “the most monumental work of 1973,” Germany’s Spiritual Heroes

(Fig. 8) is a massive oil and charcoal painting on burlap (Rosenthal, Mark 26). This

piece depicts a large wooden hall modeled after Kiefer’s own attic and studio. Inside

the hall, five closed windows line the right side of the canvas. An ominous ball of

fire floats at the base of each window. On the left side of the picture plane there are

also five balls of equally spaced fire. The careful symmetry of this wooden hall gives

the effect of formal doom. Kiefer chose a limited color palette, focusing on yellows,

browns and blacks. The focal points in this work are easily identifiable. Amidst a

homogenous yellow, brown, and black room, red pockets of fire and the hints of blue

in the glass windows stand apart, emphasizing that there is no escape. Kiefer’s

combination of charcoal and oil creates smudged areas that give the wood a singed

look. The fires seem to have been burning for a long time and the entire hall

appears ready to combust. At the top of the painting are the words “Deutschlands

Geisteshelden” which translates to “Germany’s Spiritual Heroes,” the title of the

work. The words are written by hand in cursive. They blend into the background

because their color and width match the wood grain, and yet stand out because of

their large size. Upon closer inspection, handwritten names are revealed at the base

of each flame. These names are also black and written in cursive but they are much less noticeable because they are small. From left to right, the “heroes” listed include

Richard Wagner, Joseph Beuys, Caspar David Friedrich, Friedrich II, Robert Musil,

Hans Thoma, Theodor Storm, Nikolaus Lenau, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Arnold

Bocklin, Adalbert Stifter, Josef Weinheber, and Richard Dehmel. All of the people listed have a historical relationship with Germany and have made significant contributions to society.

These individuals all lived between 1208 and 1986. The first person listed,

Richard Wagner (1813-1883), has been discussed at length previously. He authored the Ring of the Nibelungs as well as many other famous German works. Wagner is celebrated for creating “total artworks,” that is, works where Wagner himself served as “poet, composer, designer, director, and conductor all in one” (Grey x). Joseph

Beuys (1921-1986) was a German artist and Kiefer’s teacher. According to the world-renowned Gagosian Gallery, Beuys “is universally celebrated as one of the most important and revolutionary European artists of the last century” (Joseph).

Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) was an important German Romantic painter.

He is idolized by many German contemporary artists, including Kiefer, “who grapple with their cultural heritage through him” (Koerner 293). Frederick II (1712-1786) was King of Prussia from 1740 until his death in 1786. His leadership not only gained Prussia expanded territory and a stronger military, but “Frederick also

espoused the ideas of enlightened despotism and instituted numerous economic, civil, and social reforms” (Frederick II). Robert Musil (1880-1942) is considered one of the great twentieth century novelists and has been recognized as one of the

“pillars of modernism” (Thiher 356). According to Andreas Gailus, author of How

Literature Thinks: Robert Musil and the Writing of Modernity, no other “twentieth- century writer has done more to unearth the ‘silent’ history of ideas and the

‘anonymous constraints’ that invisible structures of thought exert on modern individual and collective life than Robert Musil” (1-2). Through his works, he greatly contributed to modern writing and ideas. Hans Thoma (1839-1924) was another German painter. He is most remembered for his “realistic studies of

German landscape” (Thoma). German born Theodor Storm (1817-1888) was a romantic poet and novelist. His later works are characterized by a “deepening and a simplification” that “reach perfection in his final work: his Stimmungskunst” (Silz

762). Nikolaus Lenau (1802-1850) was a romantic poet who pushed boundaries with his writing and is “considered Austria’s chief lyric poet” (Lenau). Mechthild of

Magdeburg (1208-1282) was a German female medieval mystic, poet and novelist.

Her work is based on “’greetings’ and visions” she is said to have received from the divine (McGowin 607). Arnold Bocklin (1827-1901) was a Swiss painter. In the late

19th century, “he was the most influential artist in the German-speaking world” for his dark mythological subjects (Bocklin). Adalbert Stifter (1805-1868) was an artist

and “Austrian narrative writer whose novels of almost classical purity exalt the humble virtues of a simple life” (Adalbert). His novels were very popular in the

German-speaking world. Josef Weinheber (1892-1945) was also an Austrian writer.

He first achieved fame with his book Nobleness and Extinction. According to

Merriam Webster’s Encyclopedia of Literature, “His belief that poetic language embodies the essence of the Volk (“people”) rather than of the individual made him a favorite poet of the Nazis” (Weinheber). Perhaps it is not just Weinheber’s writings that interest Kiefer, but also, like Wagner, the Nazi’s relationship with

Weinheber’s works. The last name written in the wooden room in Germany’s

Spiritual Heroes is Richard Dehmel (1863-1920). Dehmel was a German poet who expressed a “revolt against extreme naturalism” while “dealing with societal problems” in most of his works (Dehmel). Clearly, this group of people does not have “an obvious organizing principle” except, presumably, “considerable interest to the artist” (Rosenthal, Mark 26). However, all of these people left a mark on history and contributed to modern culture and thought.

Perhaps Kiefer views these people as noble warriors and gods. That would explain the similarities between the burning within the formal hall in Kiefer’s painting and the mythical Valhalla. In Norse mythology, Valhalla was a great hall built by the giants for gods and those who bravely fought in battle. As The Prose

Edda explains, “all those men who have fallen in battle from the beginning of the

world are now come to Odin in Valhall” (50). Valhalla is “a place of honor, glory, or happiness” (Merriam Webster Dictionary). According to myth, the men cook a great bore every day. It regenerates over night so they never have to search for food.

They also drink mead that flows from a goat’s udders. Because this hall is eventually destroyed in conflagration, Kiefer’s painting Germany’s Spiritual Heroes could be alluding to the fact that glory and honor are temporary.

In the Ring of the Nibelungs, Brunhilde causes the destruction of Valhalla when Siegfried is murdered. His unjust death invokes her revenge upon her father,

Wotan, and the royal family of Gunther and Gutrune. First, Brunhilde demands that a funeral pyre be built for Siegfried.

Sturdy branches,

building his pyre

now bring to the shore of the Rhine!

Bright and clear,

kindle the flame:

let the hero blaze

in splendour and radiance on high.

His horse bring to my side;

he and I together must join him.

I shall share that pure, holy flame

with the hero;

we both shall blaze in the fire.

(357)

Once the pyre is constructed, Brunhilde “denounces the gods for their guilt in

Siegfried’s death” and rides into the fire with Siegfried’s horse, Grane (Metropolitan

Opera). This sacrifice leads to Hagen’s death, the restoration of the Rhinegold to the

Rhinemaidens, and the fall of Valhalla. Wagner describes the heavens burning in the last paragraph of the Ring of the Nibelungs: When the fire “reaches its greatest brightness, the hall of Walhall is seen, in which gods and heroes sit assembled”

(361-362). Finally, “when the gods are entirely hidden by the flames, the curtain falls” (362). Brunhilde’s actions have restored order. The heroes Brunhilde and

Siegfried die to cleanse the wrongs of the guilty. Similarly, in Germany’s Spiritual

Heroes, Kiefer selects important people from the past to sacrifice. He chose people who brought pride to German heritage and contributed to the world. This offering is significant. Perhaps he believes he must eviscerate the good in order to eliminate the evil of Germany’s role in World War II. In order to begin anew, his country must release everything that came before, the good must go with the bad. In order to eliminate Germany’s infamy during World War II, he must also forgo the great men and women from his country whose contributions positively affected the world.

In Germany’s Spiritual Heroes, however, Kiefer is not only drawing a comparison between his selected heroes and those of Valhalla, he is also drawing a similarity to the Holocaust in World War II. Rosenthal supports the parallel between the painting and history, commenting, “The interior [of the painting] is at once a memorial hall and crematorium” (26). In an effort to carry out “The Final

Solution” in Germany, Nazis’ annihilated “between 5,291,000 and 5,933,900” Jews

(Fischel 87). The doctors involved in gassing and cremating Holocaust victims

“believed that they were ‘cleansing the Fatherland’ of disease, much as one operates on a cancer” (Fischel 32). One Holocaust survivor recalls his first experience with the crematorium in Stuart Jeffrie’s article, Memories of the Holocaust:

The first thing Zigi noticed when he got off the train at Auschwitz was that

the sky was hazy. Then he noticed the terrible smell. “From a distance we

saw chimneys with smoke coming out. Rumours started spreading that it

was a crematorium. I still didn’t know what that meant.”

That terrible smell was the stench of burning bodies. After selected Jews were killed in the gas chambers, “their corpses were then collected by Sonderkommandos, or

Jewish prisoners, assigned to the crematoriums, who were responsible for collecting the bodies and bringing them to one of the ovens” (Fischel 82). The juxtaposition of

Brunhilde’s sacrificial cleansing through fire and the burning of bodies in the

Holocaust again points out Hitler’s adulterated reenactment of Nordic myth. His

actions plunged Germany into darkness instead of causing the positive change he envisioned. In the words of Goetz, “From the living timber of stark, impenetrable nature comes the raw wood of human cruelty” (314).

This work emphasizes another point Kiefer often makes. He laments “a shattered Vaterland, a recall to the myths of triumph and heroic will and summons to fulfillment of some Nordic promise” (Danto 27). The history of Germany, its myths and heroes, were corrupted by the Nazis and turned into propaganda to support evils. According to Jonathan Meades, author of The Devil’s Work; Unholy

Relics of Nazi Germany, “the Nazis blithely co-opted a vast galere of dead Germans in their pursuit of validation.” For example, Hitler identified with Ludwig van

Beethoven because they both possessed “that heroic German spirit” (Florida). Time and again he used important German historical figures to promote his corrupted goals. Almost in opposition, “Kiefer still credits myths and popular art with an original strength lying buried under the rubble of Nazi culture” (Danto 27). Perhaps once this great hall carrying the load of Germany’s greats in Germany’s Spiritual

Heroes has burned, great German myths can be reclaimed without the bitter aftertaste of Nazi corruption. However, Kiefer’s “works seem much of the time to be about the impossibility of overcoming the past” (Kimmelman).

During World War II in Germany, modern thinkers were repressed and punished. Rosenthal points out that “Kiefer considers historical figures instead of

fictional or religious personages” for this work (26). As mentioned earlier, during the Third Reich, certain types of art, music, and theater were considered degenerate and forbidden or censored. According to Goetz, author of Anselm Kiefer: Art as

Atonement, “Modern artists, Hitler argued, are either the victims of appalling defects of vision, or they are genetic mutants, or perhaps simply criminal frauds” (314).

Perhaps the reason for his disdain stemmed from the fact that modern expressionism revealed internal turmoil and he “could not face the self that their art exposed” (Goetz 314). The room in Germany’s Spiritual Heroes is presented as a fragile sanctuary to house the greats, emphasizing the fact that even heroes are vulnerable. This wooden room “is perpetually in danger of burning, and with it

Germany and its heroes will be destroyed” (Rosenthal, Mark 26).

Kiefer’s painting could have another layer of meaning. The title of the work,

Deutschlands Geisteshelden,“ is taken from an elementary school text” by Richard

Sier and published in 1901 (Rosenthal 30). When viewed in that light, the title seems to be mocking the seriousness of the subject. Mark Rosenthal notices, “These great figures and their achievements are reduced to just names, recorded not in a marble edifice but in the attic of a rural schoolhouse” (30). Heroes are fallible and corruptible. Richard Wagner is one of the names listed as a spiritual hero for

Germany and he was a known anti-Semite who propagated those views in his writings. In Judaism in Music, he “takes for granted a sense of repellence or dislike

which is ‘naturally’ expected” when discussing Jewish people (Yan 349). When speaking about the Jewish people again, Wagner even makes what seems like a shocking hint toward genocide: “But bethink ye, that one only thing can redeem you from the burden of your curse: the redemption of Ahasuerus – Going under!” (Librett

256). For all of the incredible contributions to music Wagner made, he is unarguably a complicated historical figure, someone who contributed positively to the world but also harbored evil, misguided beliefs. Similarly, “in Wagner and the

Edda, most heroes are in reality power-hungry and deceitful, and if they do stand for ideals, their legacy is a cloudy one” (Rosenthal 30). Kiefer’s work has layers of symbolism and meaning. Goetz believes that “Kiefer has not found the real truth of the human situation, and so there is a basic contradiction running through all his work” (314). While searching for truth, Kiefer instead continually finds and paints layers of gray. In many ways, Kiefer’s “art is post-Holocaust, post-Hitler” (Goetz

314). There is no resolution, no way to right the injustices of the past or protect the future. Only the cataclysm of fire and destruction can truly reset the course for those who proceed us. This is the bleak assessment Kiefer leaves us with.

The wood grain in Germany’s Spiritual Heroes evokes ideas of Yggdrasil, the world ash tree. Similarly, in the Ring of the Nibelungs, Yggdrasil provided kindling for the burning of Valhalla because Wotan surrounded the great hall with chopped pieces of the tree. Mark Rosenthal notes that the “cyclical quality [of the renewing

growth of Yggdrasil] reinforces and restates the characteristic replacement of one set of heroes by another” (30). Kiefer was in many ways not just mocking false Nazi ideals but also the predictable fallibility of heroes. This was Kiefer’s “personal way of coming to terms with German history” and reconnecting it with the world as a whole (Mann). Kiefer’s work evokes the question, “Is the German war guilt merely a peculiarly intense manifestation of the universal blood guilt of the human race?”

(Goetz 314).

It is also significant that the hall was modeled after Kiefer’s studio, the scene in the painting matching the “wood-grained attic of his home” (Collection Online).

This small but poignant detail brings the myth into modern day, beyond World War

II and its consequences. The Museum of Modern Art in New York remarks, “The cavernous attic is a metaphor for the artist’s mind, a universe in which conflict and contradiction are resolved through creation” (Collection Online). In his article

Images of Space in German Art in the Twentieth Century, Walter Grasskamp comments on Kiefer’s personal relationship with Germany’s Spiritual Heroes:

Does this mean that Kiefer’s attic studio is located as the place of forbidden memory, banished tradition? Is the painter therefore like the impatient hero, Siegfried, who will pull out the bloodstained sword and take up the challenge to cleanse ‘the nationalistic mythology of the nineteenth century … which fascism had disfigured’? (139)

Siegfried casually defeats his grandfather, Woton, when he blocks Siegfried’s path to

Brunhilde. In Act Three, Scene Two of the Ring of the Nibelungs, Wagner describes their brief fight: “Siegfried with one blow strikes the Wanderer’s spear in two : a flash of lightning darts from it towards the summit, where the flames, glowing dully before, now break out more and more brightly” (254). This brash hero easily defeated his “father’s foe” (254). Similarly, Kiefer’s father lived through World War

II in Germany and was influenced by the ideas of the grand, reclaimed country Hitler proposed. Kiefer recalls, “My father was not a Nazi, but of course he was infiltrated by the ideology” (Wroe). In his work, Kiefer breaks down and dismantles Hitler and his flawed ideals, much like Siegfried and his sword Nothung.

The painting Germany’s Spiritual Heroes compares myth with reality, idealism with disappointment. It juxtaposes the sacrifices of Brunhilde and Siegfried with historical figures and the crematoriums in the Holocaust. The work even goes beyond these issues and brings to light the cyclical nature of life. Destruction and rebirth are part of a human pattern where it is not always clear who is guilty. Kiefer hints that the sacrifice of the innocent is required for the death of evil. But these sacrifices are never ending; both evil and good take root again after the fire. Instead of declaring absolutes, Kiefer leaves more questions.

The names written on Germany’s Spiritual Heroes have all contributed to the

German legacy. However, Kiefer seems willing, eager even, to sacrifice their

memories in order to atone for the villainous actions of the Third Reich. Kiefer entertains the idea that, like the sacrifice of Brunhilde and Siegfried, this gift of conflagration will eliminate evil as well as good. At the same time, however, Kiefer knows that life does not mirror myth. His offering is meaningless. Similarly, no peace was found from the ovens in the Holocaust. Innocents who died there did not remove evil with their passing. Kiefer is almost acting on a childlike fantasy.

Nothing but time can bring healing, but Kiefer still searches for a way to undo a wrong so immense that even a boy born at the end of the war feels the oppression of guilt.

CHAPTER VI

CONCLUSION

Anselm Kiefer interweaves myths from his German heritage into his

paintings and uses those stories to address certain aspects about the history of

World War II. Through the stories of Brunhilde and Siegfried in The Nibelungenlied,

Sturluson’s The Prose Edda, and Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelungs, Kiefer

reinvestigates Nazi relationships with German history and calls into question the

loss of German pride that was once associated with them. He also questions ideas

about heroes and villains and brings into focus the lack of absolutes. In Kiefer’s

paintings, even idols like Siegfried and Wagner have a darker side. Siegfried tricked

Brunhilde into marrying a lesser man in the Nibelunglied and The Prose Edda and

Wagner infamously believed Jews to be inferior. In these works, Kiefer appears to

be posing a dilemma: Can these men be adulated in myth and history when they are

also duplicitous and racist?

According to Daglind Sonolet, Kiefer has a “hidden fascination with an

imagery discredited by its association with the National Socialist mythology.”

However, when examining paintings such as Siegfried Forgets Brunhilde, Kiefer does

not appear to be hiding this fascination. Tales of betrayal and the cleansing power

of fire and death in Nordic myth effortlessly mirror events from World War II and

Kiefer uses this juxtaposition to demonstrate Hitler’s corruption and, at the same time, question ideas about the fallibility of heroes.

The last painting explored in this paper, Germany’s Spiritual Heroes, brings all of the elements discussed together in one massive work. Kiefer writes the names of specific historical figures, including those with controversial legacies, in a heroes’ list that is offered for sacrifice. However, as the past proves time and again, these sacrifices do not cleanse the world of evil. Kiefer’s work does not have a moral and it does not lead us to peace; instead, it illuminates the cyclical destruction and regeneration of human nature.

An initial analysis of Kiefer’s paintings that depict scenes of Brunhilde and

Siegfried seems to be calling attention to the discrepancy between the meaning of these myths and Hitler’s actions. In other words, Hitler corrupted the pure German myths when he aligned them with his goals. However, a deeper examination reveals that these myths are also flawed. They reflect human imperfection and mistakes rather than ideals. In The Nibelungenlied, Siegfried talks to King Gunther about their plan to deceive Brunhilde: “Now hide thou my arts; tell them not to any man; then can the queen win from thee little fame, albeit she doth desire it” (61). The virtuous

German myths that Hitler used to promote his goals were not paradigmatic to begin with. Kiefer’s work illuminates the darkness in everything, from proud German myths to the Third Reich. A full analysis of these pieces does not allow for the

illusion of purity to become a reality and triumph fully since there is always the present nagging and painful recurrence of evil.

CHAPTER VII

FIGURES

Figure 1. Siegfried Forgets Brunhilde, c. 1975, Oil on canvas, 130 x 170 cm

Figure 2. Siegfried Forgets Brunhilde, c. 1989, Oil on canvas, 173 x 188 cm

Figure 3. Brunhilde’s Death, c. 1976, Oil on canvas, 118 x 145 cm

Figure 4. Brunhilde Sleeps, c. 1980, Mixed Media, 58.5 x 83 cm

Figure 5 . Brunhilde – Grane, c. 1978, Woodcut with oil, 242.5 x 193 cm

Figure 6. Poland is Not Yet Lost, c. 1978, Oil on Canvas, 170 x 130 cm

Figure 7. Ride to the Vistula, c. 1980, Oil on Canvas, 130 x 170 cm

Figure 8. Germany’s Spiritual Heroes, c. 1873, Oil on Burlap, 307 x 682 cm

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