Art of the Weimar Republic (Germany 1919-33)by Gabriel Tordjman, Winter 2011

Warning: Some of these images contain graphic depictions of violence

Art of the Weimar Republic(Germany 1919-33)

Timeline• World War I (1914-1918)• German Revolution (1918-1919)• Weimar Republic (1919-1933)• Nazis elected to power (1933)• World War II (1939-45)

World War I (1914-1918)

Trench Warfare http://www.harris-academy.com/departments/history/Trenches/GillianR/Gillian%202.htm

World War I (1914-1918)

Battle of the Somme: Trench Warfare [1916]http://www.freeinfosociety.com/media.php?id=3655

World War I (1914-1918)David Swanson, “Abandoning Torture But What About War?”, LA Progressive, 10 Feb,. 2009.http://www.laprogressive.com/war-and-peace/abandoning-torture-but-what-about-war/

Metal on Metal, http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_O0ch3ABb3L4/TD6yDveCN5I/AAAAAAAAB1M/dTq32PIb21s/s1600/attachment.jpgOtto Dix, Stormtroopers Advancing

Under Gas (1924)

Otto Dix, The Trench (1920)

Metal on Metal, http://metalonmetalblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/otto-dix-horror-of-war.html

Kathe Kollwitz, Killed in Action (1921)http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/ARTkollwitz.htm

Kathe Kollwitz, Deutschlands Kinder Hungern! (1924)

Alexander B. Downes (dept. Pol. Sc. Duke) http://www.duke.edu/~downes/courses.htm

George Grosz, Grey Day (1921)

ABC Gallery http://www.abcgallery.com/G/grosz/grosz-9.html

George Grosz, Dusk (1922)

Ineedartandcofee, http://ineedartandcoffee.blogspot.com/2010_10_01_archive.html

Otto Dix, The Skat players (aka Card playing war cripples) (1920).

Ordinary Finds, http://i12bent.tumblr.com/post/266751631/herr-otto-dix-goes-grotesque-the-skat-players

Weimar RepublicHyperinflation (1923)German children playing with worthless money

In 1922 a loaf of bread cost 163 marks. By September 1923 a loaf of bread cost 1,500,000 marks.

Madame Pickwick Art Blog http://madamepickwickartblog.com/aesthetics-of-nihilism-death-as-a-ready-made/

George Grosz, Eclipse of the Sun (1926)

George Grosz, Pillars of Society (1926)

George Grosz, The Agitator (1928)

ABC Gallery http://www.abcgallery.com/G/grosz/grosz-2.html

Weimar RepublicHitler during the “Beer Hall Putsch” (1923). This was the Nazis first (failed) attempt at seizing power.

Weimar RepublicAfter years of political instability and economic problems, Germany, along with much of the world suffered through a devastating Great Depression beginning in 1929.

http://econ161.berkeley.edu/tceh/Slouch_Purge15.html

The Great Depression

Famous photograph by Dorothea Lange of Florence Owens and her children outside a migrant workers’ camp in California during the Great Depression.

Nazis Come to PowerIt was under these conditions, when huge numbers of people lost their jobs, that Hitler and the Nazi party came to power in Germany in 1933. Nazi electoral propaganda posters for the 1932 German election.

"Workers: The Brain and the Fist! Vote for the frontsoldier Hitler!" (source: The Rise of the Dictators: 1919-1939 by Peter Banyard. Gallery Books, New York City. 1986, p. 18.)

"Fight hunger and despair! Vote for Hitler!" (source: "An Exhibition of German Posters," May 8 through June 15, 1963, New School for Social Research, New York City.)

http://www2.facinghistory.org/Campus/weimar.nsf/ID/A50A6DC98BE7438885256CDE00581D88?OpenDocument

Nuremberg, Germany, April 1945

In 1939 World War II broke out.

World War II

Kathe Kollwitz, Nie wider Krieg! [Never again War] (1924)

The End