Walter Rheiner - Cocain

 Conrad Felixmüller, Death of the Poet Walter Rheiner, 1925

Walter Rheiner (1895-1925) was born in Cologne. He began a training as a businessman in Liege, Paris and London which gave but little success. Already at the age of sixteen, he was active as a writer. When Rheiner was called up for military service in 1914, he admitted to take drugs, thus trying to escape the draft. Despite this, he was sent with the start of World War I to the Russian front. After a rehabilitation failed and his earlier deception attempt came to light, he was suspended from duty in 1917 and moved to Berlin. There, constantly plagued by money worries, Rheine lived like a literary nomad staying with friends or seeking shelter in cheap flophouses. He spent much time begging in the legendary Romanischen Café where he met with well-known artists such as Claire and Ivan Goll, Else Lasker-Schüler, Ludwig Meidner and Theodor Däubler.

 Heinrich-Maria Davringhausen, The Poet Däubler, 1917

 Theodor Däubler, Giganten (1919, First Stanza)

Träume fassen langsam meine Hand
Oder nehmen etwas flugleicht von den Schläfen.
Sie geben mir den Teppichschritt zu andern Häfen.
Durch das Geträume hüpft, verknüpft sich blau ein Band.

 

Some of Rheiner's lyric works were illustrated by his friend Conrad Felixmüller. He also wrote some articles for Franz Pfemfert's radical magazin Die Aktion. His addiction to cocaine and morphine worsened, and, temporarily declared incapacitated, he was sent to a closed mental institution in Bonn. At this point, his wife left him, his artistic creativity was dwindling, and, impoverished and isolated, he spent his final years in a nomadic existence. In 1925 Rheiner committed suicide in a flophouse in Berlin's Kantstraße by taking an overdose of morphine. His friend Conrad Felixmüller later dedicated to him his famous painting "The Death of the Poet Walter Rheiner" (shown above).

Frieda Riess, Gottfried Benn, 1924

 Gottfried Benn, Kokain (1917)

Den Ich-zerfall, den süßen, tiefersehnten,
Den gibst Du mir: schon ist die Kehle rauh,
Schon ist der fremde Klang an unerwähnten
Gebilden meines Ichs am Unterbau.

Nicht mehr am Schwerte, das der Mutter Scheide
Entsprang, um da und dort ein Werk zu tun
Und stählern schlägt --: gesunken in die Heide,
Wo Hügel kaum enthüllter Formen ruhn!

Ein laues Glatt, ein kleines Etwas, eben -
Und nun entsteigt für Hauche eines Wehns
Das Ur, geballt, Nicht-seine beben
Hirnschauer mürbesten Vorübergehns.

Zersprengtes Ich - o aufgetrunkene Schwäre -
Verwehte Fieber - süß zerborstene Wehr -:
Verströme, o verströme Du - gebäre
Blutbäuchig das Entformte her.

Rheiner's only work ever reprinted is the 1918 short novel "Cocain". In this insightful study of a cocaine psychosis he described the misery of a drug addict, his life of hallucinations, and the increasingly strong urge for injections. In the end, the protagonist sees no way out of his misery and commits suicide. "Cocain" has recently been published as an eBook (in German language only); you can download it free of charge here. 

Murderer, The Hope of Women

 Oskar Kokoschka, Murderer, The Hope of Women, 1909

How can a murderer be the hope of women - or of men, for that matter? And what have hope and murder of women to do with art? In his memoir Oskar Kokoschka, who was known more for his visual art than for his theatrical experiments, tells us that "art gives renewed hope as often as the world fails"; and insists that the answer is not in words per se but in the experience of the performance. 

 Oskar Kokoschka, Poster for "Murderer, the Hope of Women" (Vienna Summer Theatre), 1909

Originally staged in Vienna in 1909, Murderer, The Hope of Women is generally regarded as the first Expressionist play. Its obsession with sex and death is expressed in grand gestures and archaic language, while its physical risks, and its chants and screams, so vividly presaged the theories and plays of Antonin Artaud that it could almost be called a paradigm of the Theatre of Cruelty. 

 Heinrich Maria Davringhausen, Der Lustmörder (The Ripper), 1917

When Kokoschka’s play was performed, it was met with considerable criticism and controversy. Its extreme visual aspects, with its dramatic and disturbing costumes and violent imagery, made it the first expressionist drama for many critics. The playwright Paul Kornfeld praised the revolutionary drama as a breakthrough art form, calling it a “verbally supported pantomime”. Similarly, drama critic Walter Sokel admired the work’s departure from traditional realism and its exploration into the surrealism underlying its biblical and mythical allusions. 

 George Grosz, John, the Lady Killer, 1918

Many interpreted the play as an effective theatrical portrayal of Otto Weininger’s idea of gender relations as a battle between man and woman. According to Weininger, Sexuality was a conflict between superior male spirituality and debased female bestiality. Otto Weininger was widely read at that time, and it might well be that he also had some influence on this early Otto Müller painting:

 Otto Müller, Standing Nude with Dagger, 1903

By the way, there is a nice song by Momus with the same title. Don't miss it.

Heinrich Maria Davringhausen

 Carlo Mense, Portrait of Heinrich Maria Davringhausen, 1922

Heinrich Maria Davringhausen (1894-1970) spent his youth in Aachen and studied sculpture at the Düsseldorf Art Academy in 1913-14, where he met Carlo Mense. Rhenish Expressionism, with its leanings towards Fauvism, Cubism and Futurism, exerted a formative influence on Davringhausen's palette and composition.

Heinrich Maria Davringhausen, The Dreamer, 1919

In the years that followed, Davringhausen travelled constantly and met Georg Schrimpf at the Monte Verità artists' colony near Ascona. Several portraits were done of him in a realistically overpainted manner which show the artist against a coloured Futurist background. The loss of an eye in his childhood ensured that Davringhausen was spared military service when the first world war broke out. Heinrich Maria Davringhausen returned to Germany, moved to Munich in 1918 and joined the group of Düsseldorf artists known as Das junge Rheinland. 

Heinrich Maria Davringhausen, Der Akrobat, 1920 

Under the influence of the Cologne "progressives", Davringhausen now painted primarily abstract pictures with colour surfaces, some of them conceived in series. Between 1924 and 1925 the artist lived in Toledo, Spain, but chose to settle in Cologne in 1928, where he founded "Gruppe 32" with Anton Räderscheidt et al. 

Heinrich Maria Davringhausen, Der Lustmörder (The Ripper), 1917

After he married Lore Auerbach, the daughter of a Jewish industrialist, Davringhausen emigrated with his wife to Cala Ratjada on Mallorca in 1933. The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 compelled Davringhausen to flee to Ascona via Marseilles and Paris. A year later his work was shown in the exhibition of Degenerate Art. In 1939 Davringhausen was expelled from Switzerland and moved with his family to Haut-de-Cagnes near Nice. After managing to escape from Les Milles, where he was interned in 1939-40, Davringhausen hid with his wife in Auvergne, returning to Haut-de-Cagnes after the war.

Heinrich Maria Davringausen, The Black-Marketeer, 1920

Most of Davringhausen's work was lost during the war due to his being outlawed by the National Socialists and being continually on the run. In the postwar years Davringhausen exhibited his work, which reveals a close affinity with "Neue Sachlichkeit", at many galleries across the world. 

 Heinrich Maria Davringhausen, Dirne (Whore), 1921

By the close of the 1950s art history was beginning to take notice of the New Objectivist style. As a result, Heinrich Maria Davringhausen's early work was shown at numerous exhibitions and was included in publications dealing with the "Neue Sachlichkeit" movement. The artist's comprehensive body of late work is primarily geometric and abstract yet it did not win much recognition. Heinrich Maria Davringhausen died in Nice on 13 December 1970.