Invoking the Crucified after the Death of God:
Christian Iconography in German Expressionist Prints

Ashley E. Jones

 

In his 1882 work, The Gay Science, the German philosopher Friedrich
Nietzsche famously declared: "God is dead" (95). Thirty-seven years
later, writing in the journal Die Rote Erde (The Red Earth), art
historian Rosa Schapire reviewed Karl Schmidt-Rottluff's recent
woodcuts:

The artist's personal relationship with the
divine reveals itself the more profoundly in his work the more, in his
struggle with the ultimate questions of being, he has grasped the
meaning that conceals itself behind all external occurrences and has
drawn a new, mysterious beauty out of the old contents. (qtd. in Long
150)

Schapire refers to Schmidt-Rottluff's woodcuts of 1918-19, begun
while he was still at the Russian front at the end of World War I. Among
these woodcuts are those from the series 9 Holzschnitte (9 Woodcuts),
which depicts scenes from the life of Christ. The relationship between
the philosophy of some German Expressionist artists - avowedly inspired
by Nietzsche - and the Christian iconography that appears
not-infrequently in their graphic works is one that art critics and
historians have long left unresolved, if not unexplored. That artists
who believed themselves to be freeing their "lives and limbs from the
long-established older powers," to paraphrase the 1906 Brücke program,
should continue to produce images inspired by - if not directly
illustrative of - the New Testament into the 1920s is, on the face of
it, extraordinary (Kirchner et al., qtd. in Long 23). Belief in
Nietzsche's famous protagonist from another book, Zarathustra, and
belief in Jesus Christ are presumably rationally incompatible. The work
of German Expressionist artists was informed not only by ideas, however,
but also by personal encounters and world events. In response to their
experiences during and after the First World War, some Expressionists
continued to question and to challenge the "older powers," employing
traditional Christian iconography in non-traditional forms.

When a group of young artists that included Karl
Schmidt-Rottluff came together in Dresden in 1905 to form the artists'
group Brücke (Bridge), they very likely took their name from a passage
in Nietzsche's popular book, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: "What is great in
man is that he is a bridge and not an end: what can be loved in man is
that he is an overture and a going under. I love those who do not know
how to live, except by going under, for they are those who cross over"
(emphasis original 127). Prior to World War I, Expressionists were
invigorated by the hope they saw in their own post-Nietzschean
generation, by the potential they foresaw for a complete break with the
past and the "revaluation of all values" which Nietzsche had called for
in his preface to the Twilight of the Idols (emphasis original 465).
They earnestly believed in the possibility of a cultural and societal
revolution fueled by art. Writing prior to 1912, in Concerning the
Spiritual in Art, a founder of the Munich group the Blaue Reiter (Blue
Rider), Russian-born artist Wassily Kandinsky declares:

When religion, science and morality are shaken
(the last by the strong hand of Nietzsche) and when outer supports
threaten to fall, man withdraws his gaze from externals and turns it
inwards. Literature, music, and art are the most sensitive spheres in
which this spiritual revolution makes itself felt. (33)

The early Expressionist interpretation of Nietzsche is one of
optimism, focused on the life-affirming revolution and renewal they
believed would come after a break with past institutions and values. As
Kandinsky's words demonstrate, the Expressionists attempted to revalue,
among other values, spiritual norms. They perceived art as a spiritual
experience, intensely personal but with the potential to communicate
universally, removed from the constraints of traditional religiosity.

The pre-war Expressionist interest in spiritual liberation
becomes even clearer through contemporary commentary. Paul Fechter was
not only an art critic and a supporter of Expressionism, he was also
personally acquainted with many of the artists, including Brücke member
Max Pechstein, who portrayed him in this 1921 drypoint engraving (Fig.
13). In 1914, Fechter writes of Pechstein that "he slowly ascends from
the sensual concerns of the soul to a general spiritual feeling about
the cosmos from which, perhaps, religious painting - in the contemporary
sense of the word - could emerge once again." He goes on to comment that
"Expressionism in all its different guises, is basically only the
liberation of inherent spiritual energies of the soul from the bondage
of narrow-minded, crude intellectualism" (qtd. in Long 83-84). Fechter
equates Expressionism with an anti-intellectual, and thereby
anti-rational tendency. Throughout his body of works, Nietzsche
identifies two strains in ancient Greek art, which he extends to art in
general. The first is the calm, rational, moderate tendency - what he
calls the Apollonian - and the second is the irrational tendency with
which the Expressionists identified - what he calls the Dionysian
(Kaufmann 10).

In the Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche argues that "if there is
to be art...one physiological condition is indispensable: frenzy" (518).
He goes on to describe the "Dionysian state" as one in which "the whole
affective system is excited and enhanced: so that it discharges all its
means of expression at once and drives forth simultaneously the power of
representation, imitation, transfiguration, transformation" (519). In
his 1916 essay "Expressionism," in which he attempts to define and
explain the Expressionist movement, critic Theodor Däubler uses language
strongly reminiscent of Nietzsche's description of the Dionysian state:
"The preconditions of this style are speed, simultaneity, and intense
concern with the interconnectedness of what has been seen. The style
itself is the expression of the idea" (qtd. in Long 85). Nietzsche
contrasts the Dionysian not only with the Apollonian, however, but also
with the Christian. At the end of Ecce Homo, he states the contrast
quite clearly: "Have I been understood? - Dionysos versus the Crucified"
(335). A brief glance at the oeuvre of many Expressionist artists,
however, indicates that, in their iconography at least, they did not
utterly cleave to Dionysos, forsaking the Crucified.

Art historian Donald Gordon identifies the introduction of
overtly Christian iconography into Expressionist art with one-time
Brücke member Emil Nolde's election to the Berlin Secession in 1909.
Gordon suggests that this new direction in Nolde's art was prompted by
the artist's annoyance at the casual, secular way in which religious
themes were treated by Secessionist painters. Despite its Christian
content, then, Nolde's art still opposes the immediate past. Gordon
argues convincingly that he "rediscovered an atavistic or 'primitive'
impulse within himself" (39). This primitive (Dionysian?) impulse, which
Gordon perceives in Nolde's pre-war work, can be discerned in much of
the religious art produced by Expressionists during and after the war.

The most striking examples of Expressionist print series
employing Christian iconography were produced and published in the years
between the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 and the early 1920s.
Ernst Barlach began to provide Christian-themed lithographs for the
journal Der Bildermann (The Picture Man) in 1916 (Guenther 10). Ernst
Ludwig Kirchner published his Absalom portfolio in 1918 (Barron and Dube
228-31). Karl Schmidt-Rottluff's 9 Holzschnitte were first printed in
1918-19 (Barron and Dube 241-45). Max Pechstein's portfolio illustrating
the Lord's Prayer, Das Vater Unser, appeared in 1921 (Barron and Dube
236-40). What prompted these artists to produce such a large corpus of
Christian prints? Was it, as different historians have suggested, simply
the desire to employ "Christian symbolism and biblical metaphors to
convey both disillusionment and hope" (Rigby, "Revival" 46); or was it
"part of a turn to 'spiritual' values...religious subjects emphasizing
apocalypse, resurrection, and redemption" (Weinstein 35)?

In its early days, many Expressionists actually rejoiced in and
supported the war as a cleansing force necessary to clear a path for the
coming revolution (see Cannon). At the same time, the popular attitude
in Germany towards Nietzsche was dramatically transformed. No longer was
Nietzsche merely a prophet for the disaffected artist, but he became a
nationalistic messiah for all of German culture. Historian Steven
Ascheim even records that "[a]bout 15,000 copies of a specially durable
wartime Zarathustra were distributed to the troops" (135). Ascheim goes
on to comment on the experience of Expressionists who were initial
proponents of the war, but became pacifists as it progressed:

Prior to 1914 their Nietzsche was the artistic
creator who was a law unto himself and quite removed from conventional
social and patriotic considerations.... Expressionists of this ilk came
to regard the Great War as a capitalist enterprise, not the Nietzschean
one they had anticipated. (139-40)

Ernst Barlach was among these early supporters. By the time his
lithograph Selig sind die Barmherzigen (Blessed Are the Merciful, Fig.
14) was published in 1916, however, "Barlach too saw the war
differently," as Peter Guenther has noted (10). The plea of Barlach's
print, a direct response to the horrors of war, is a human plea couched
in biblical terms. The image is ambiguous: the draped figure on the
left, his hands grasping the other figure's neck, seems to be the
aggressor, but the figure on the right clutches an object in his
outstretched left hand, as though he is poised to strike the other. Who
is pleading with whom is unclear; the caption seems to be directed at
both parties, assigning blame impartially. Neither Barlach's wartime
disillusionment, nor his turn to the language of Christian iconography
were unique among the Expressionists, however. After the war,
Schmidt-Rottluff and Pechstein translated the Christian idiom in even
more radical ways.

As Karl Schmidt-Rottluff completed his 9 Holzschnitte in
1919, the hope for a new society that he and his companions had
expressed in 1906 was tempered by the experience of war. Decimated both
in human and in financial terms, Germany was still reeling from the
November Revolution, which had replaced the old Wilhelmine Empire with
the new, socialist, Weimar Republic in 1918. The optimistic
Nietzscheanism the Expressionists once celebrated had been coopted by
the militant Nietzscheanism of German nationalism. The theme of
Schmidt-Rottluff's 9 Holzschnitte portfolio can be read as one of
lessons in forgiveness. In Christus und Judas (Christ and Judas, Fig.
12), the artist presents the ultimate scene of betrayal and forgiveness.
The two faces are dominated by long noses, full lips, and wide eyes,
mask-like features that are reminiscent of African and Oceanic art. The
pursed lips of both subjects strongly invoke the story of the betrayal
as related by the apostle Luke: "But Jesus said unto him, Judas,
betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss?" (Luke 22:48). The moment
depicted in the woodcut, however, is one of silence rather than of
speech. Schmidt-Rottluff's Jesus confronts Judas with his eyes rather
than with words. And in his eyes, gouged into the wood in simple shapes
- concentric circles, slightly curving triangles - the viewer is
confronted by Christ's terrible knowledge: that he is about to be
betrayed, and is already in the act of forgiving. Schmidt-Rottluff's
primitivizing images fly in the face of the traditional European church.
His iconography may be reminiscent of the gothic past, but the broad,
abstract planes of his woodcut, their bold, graphic forms connote
non-Western art more than German gothic images. By making his figures so
blatantly non-Germanic, Schmidt-Rottluff highlights just how far removed
traditional Christian culture is from his sense of true Christianity,
and how far removed traditional German culture is from the "humane
culture, which is the basis of true art" that Kirchner had described in
the "Chronicle of the Brücke" (qtd. in Long 25).

Unlike Schmidt-Rottluff, who reputedly contemplated studying
theology before turning to architecture and then art (Barron and Dube
352), Max Pechstein was never a devout Christian, nor did he greet the
end of the war with complete despair. In 1919, the co-founder of the
Arbeitsrat für Kunst (Working Council for Art) looked forward with joy
and hope towards the future of the new republic in an essay for An alle
Künstler (To All Artists):

For us the realm of creative fantasy replaces
the antiquated dogmas of diverse religions: creation brings us nearer to
God than could the Catholic religion, which is directed at the
gratification of childish, natural fantasy...or the Protestant religion,
which is itself devoted to reason. (qtd. in Long 216)

Clearly, in 1919, Pechstein still carried the fervor of early
Expressionism. He was more heartened by the revolution than disheartened
by the war, and he still believed in an obvious anti-religiousness as
being the most effective break with the past. Within two years, however,
Pechstein had left Berlin for the fishing village of Nidden, as the
promises of the new state failed to materialize. It was not with the
horror of facing actual death during wartime, but with the horror of
facing the death of a dream that, in 1921, Pechstein created his Das
Vater Unser (The Lord's Prayer) portfolio. Reinhold Heller theorizes
that this portfolio, for Pechstein, "represents a loss of this secular
faith as he turned toward the central, archetypal prayer of traditional
Christianity, using Luther's translation" (Brücke 227). Heller
identifies the figures in these prints as "North Sea fishermen, revealed
in the characteristics of their clothing" (Brücke 227). In Dein Reich
Komme (Thy Kingdom Come, Fig. 15), Pechstein's figures are embraced not
only by the rays of light that emanate from above, stretching down to
touch the men on forehead and lips, but also by the words of the verse,
which do not just explode from heaven, but which also, in the line "Wie
im Himmel also auch auf Erden [On Earth as it is in Heaven]," form the
foundation, the very ground on which the three men stand. The fishermen
in this print are surrounded by the faith that is literally their heaven
and their earth. For Pechstein the disillusioned agnostic, it is
important not so much what these fishermen believe as that they believe.
The faith depicted in these woodcuts is primitive, in opposition to a
modern society in which true faith has become impossible. Pechstein sees
these fishermen as inhabiting a primitive utopia, as seductive and
remote as that inhabited by the Palau islanders he had traveled to paint
before the war (Lloyd 199). They live in a place where faith is still
possible - to Pechstein it must have seemed the most unattainable utopia
of all.

German Expressionist artists did not abandon their early
Nietzschean ideals after the First World War, but their ideas about life
had been transformed by exposure to death. They used Christian
iconography not to reinstate traditional religion, but to revalue it. By
employing traditional scenes in untraditional forms, they called
attention to the distance society had traveled from its own professed
beliefs. They used images conveying the mercy, the forgiveness, and the
faith possible in the New Testament to suggest just how impossible such
things seemed to them in the twentieth century. Yet by depicting not the
absence of these qualities, but their presence, the Expressionists
crossed over from disillusionment into hope. In the wake of the war and
its aftermath, these artists fulfilled Nietzsche's description of his
would-be disciples (from his 1887 notes) better than they ever could
have during their idealistic youths:

To those human beings in whom I have a stake I
wish suffering, being forsaken, sickness, maltreatment, humiliation - I
wish that profound self-contempt, the torture of mistrust of oneself,
and the misery of him who is overcome, not to remain unknown to them: I
have no pity for them because I wish them the only thing which can prove
today whether one has worth or not - that one holds out. (qtd. in
Kaufmann 456)

The Expressionists held out, and by revaluing old ideas in new
images, they held out hope for a kinder world.