Imagine life as a citizen of a country whose entire national identity was obliterated in five years? Centuries of belief in Teutonic superiority, and common ideals like order, discipline, and heroism are wiped out because you are defeated in a war that you started. More than just buildings crumbled in Germany during WW1. The collective unconscious disintegrated along with everything else, and the centerpiece of the purge of the old Germany was the abdication of it's hereditary imperial figurehead, Kaiser Wilhelm II.
All was chaos, but out of the smoke emerged a new Weimar Republic intent on building something meaningful out of the rubble. Berlin was then the center of this great shift and artists like Christian Schad, George Grosz, Otto Dix, Jeanne Mammen, Karl Hubbuch, Rudolph Schlichter and many others used their skill and talent to express in paint, pen, pencil, ink, metal, wood and other materials what words could not possibly capture. Through the extraordinary works they left behind we can see through their eyes what life during this thrilling and turbulent period was really like, not just for the celebrities and the wealthy, but for the millions of war widows, orphans, disfigured and disabled veterans, and the millions of others struggling to make a living while trying to make sense of this new uncertain world.
ICH BIN EIN BERLINER: Verist Portraits of the Weimar Era
On view at Galerie Glitzern und Schicksal
1920s Berlin Project Sim, Second Life
NOTE: Painting Credit: Artist Christian Schad, Agosta the Winged Man and Rascha, the Black Dove, 1929
