The Weimar Repubic 1918-1933

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The Weimar Repubic 1918-1933 Culture and the Arts George Grosz, Damnation, 1922 Art & Architecture • Artists became political (largely leftist) as a result of war and revolution. • Major artists: • George Grosz • Otto Dix • Oskar Schlemmer • Hannah Höch • Kaethe Kollwitz George Grosz Metropolis George Grosz The Regular’s Table Republican Automaton George Grosz A Winter’s Tale Otto Dix Otto Dix, Self-Portrait War Cripples Otto Dix Sylvia Harden Otto Dix Metropolis Otto Dix War is Hell Kaethe Kollwitz No More War! Hannah Höch Cut with A Kitchen Knife Oskar Schlemmer Bauhaus Stairway Architecture • The most famous school of architecture was known as the Bauhaus . Its founders, Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe, believing in “less is more,” flat roofs, little ornamentation, and clean lines. It became an international style in the 1920s and 1930s. Cover from Bauhaus Manifesto The Bauhaus The Bauhaus Designs , 1920s Barcelona Chair Wassily Chair Breuer Chairs Weimar Film Marlene Dietrich, Blue Angel , 1930 Metropolis, 1927 Weimar Theatre • One of the most famous musical plays was the Three Penny Opera, by Bertholt Brecht and Kurt Weill Bertholt Brecht Berlin Cabaret Main tendencies of modernist Weimar culture • Rejection of ornamentation in architecture and design • Politicized art and artists • Thriving film industry • Most of modernist Weimar culture condemned by the Nazis as “degenerate” and banned in the 1930s End of Weimar Culture George Grosz, Art is Eternal Legacy of Weimar Culture • Numerous artists, writers, architects and intellectuals fled Nazi Germany and came to the US • Film: Otto Preminger, Billy Wilder, Marlene Dietrich • Literature : Nobel Prize winner, Thomas Mann • Art : George Grosz • Architecture : Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius • Theatre: Bertoldt Brecht, Kurt Weill • Music: Arnold Schoenberg Emigré Artists & Writers in Hollywood Billy Wilder Thomas Mann Marlene Dietrich.

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Otto Dix (1891-1969) War Triptych, 1929-32
Otto Dix (1891-1969) War Triptych, 1929-32 Key facts: Date: 1929-32 Size: Middle panel: 204 x 204 cm; Left and right wing each 204 x 102 cm; Predella: 60 x 204 cm Materials: Mixed media (egg tempera and oil) on wood Location: Staatliche Kunstammlungen, Dresden 1. ART HISTORICAL TERMS AND CONCEPTS Subject Matter: The Great War is a history painting within a landscape set out over four panels, a triptych with a predella panel below. The narrative begins in the left panel, the soldiers in their steel helmets depart for war through a thick haze, already doomed in Dix’s view. In the right panel, a wounded soldier is carried from the battlefield, while the destructive results of battle are starkly depicted in the central panel. This is a bleak and desolate landscape, filled with death and ruin, presided over by a corpse. Trees are charred, bodies are battered and torn and lifeless. War has impacted every part of the landscape. (This panel was a reworking on an earlier painting Dix had done entitled The Trench, 1920-3. David Crocket wrote: “many, if not most, of those who saw this painting in Cologne and Berlin during 1923-24 knew nothing about this aspect of the war.” The predella scene shows several soldiers lying next to one another. Perhaps they are sleeping in the trenches, about to go back into the cycle of battle when they awake, or perhaps they have already fallen and will never wake again. Dix repeatedly depicted World War I and its consequences after having fought in it himself as a young man.
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1 Fuga Saeculi
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Florida State University Libraries
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