The Flea

Apollinaire - Le bestiaire ou Cortège d'Orphée (1911)

La Puce 

Puces, amis, amantes même,
Qu’ils sont cruels ceux qui nous aiment !
Tout notre sang coule pour eux.
Les bien-aimés sont malheureux. 

Conrad Felixmüller, The Flea, 1928

The Flea

Fleas, friends, lovers too,
How cruel are those who love us!
All our blood pours out for them.
The well-beloved are wretched then.

Peter August Böckstiegel

 Peter August Böckstiegel,Self-Portrait, 1913

Peter August Böckstiegel (1889-1951) was born in Arrode, a village near Bielefeld in Westphalia, into a family of small farmers. He alreday showed artistic talent at an early age. In 1903 he began an apprenticeship as a painter and glazer passing his examinations in 1907. That same year saw the establishment of a school for crafts and decorative arts in Bielefeld, where Böckstiegel studied under Ludwig Godewols until 1913. In 1913 Böckstiegel began to study at the Royal Saxon Academy of Art in Dresden under Oskar Zwintscher and Otto Gussmann. In Dresden Böckstiegel befriended Conrad Felixmüller, whose portrait he painted twice in 1914.  

 Peter August Böckstiegel, Portrait of Conrad Felixmüller, 1914

At the beginning of 1915, Böckstiegel was drafted for military service and completed the picture Farewell, which shows him and his fiancée Hanna - Conrad Felixmüller's sister - whom he married in July 1919. Between 1916 and 1918 he was employed in Russia, Romania and Ukraine, but did not show any enthusiasm for the war. While serving in the army, Böckstiegel had the possibility to continue his artistic work, and he produced numerous expressive watercolours.

Peter August Böckstiegel, Farewell, 1915

During the war Böckstiegel frequently corresponded with Felixmüller, who by then had become active in numerous art projects with leftist political intentions. His return to Dresden in March 1919 relieved him of the nightmarish burden the war had become for him. Böckstiegel, together with Felixmüller, joined the group of artists known as Dresden Secession, but left it one year later. Politically moderate, Böckstiegel joined the Social Democratic Party whereas most of his painter friends sympathised with the Communists.

Peter August Böckstiegel, Departure of the Youngsters for War, 1914

Böckstiegel lived in Westphalia during the summer and spent the winters in Dresden. His choice of motifs was by now concentrated on his immediate surroundings. In the early 1920s Böckstiegel began to approach the working class with his art. Since there was not yet a museum in Bielefeld, he transported his paintings by handcart to factories, where he explained them to the workers.

Peter August Böckstiegel, The Word, 1920

In 1934 Böckstiegel was forced to become a member of the "Reich Chamber of Fine Art". The National Socialists were first ambivalent in their appraisal of Böckstiegel's work. On the one hand, he was not permitted to exhibit in Berlin, on the other, he received a couple of official commissions. Finally, in 1937, his work was officially declared as "degenerate" and more than hundred of his paintings were either sold abroad or burnt in the coutyard of the Berlin Fire Department. 

 Peter August Böckstiegel, Hanna [the artist's wife], 1927

Böckstiegel's studio was destroyed during the bombing of Dresden in February 1945. After the destruction of the city, Böckstiegel moved permanently to Arrode, where he became the first chairman of the "Westphalian Secession 1945". The first comprehensive retrospective of his work was shown between June and August 1950 at the Dresden State Art Collections. Peter August Böckstiegel died at his family home in Arrode on March 22nd, 1951. There is an excellent webpage by the "Friends of Peter August Böckstiegel" where you can see many more of his works.

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. 

Ludwig Meidner

I'm thinking of the most exciting things, apocalyptic swarms, Hebrew prophets and mass grave hallucinations - because the spirit is all, and nature means nothing to me. (Ludwig Meidner)

Ludwig Meidner, I and the City (Self-Portrait), 1913

Ludwig Meidner (1884-1966) was born in Bernstadt, Silesia. Following his parents' wishes the young Meidner began an apprenticeship as a mason, but broke it off. In 1903 he was admitted to the Breslau Academy for Fine Art, which he left after two years to move to Berlin. The instruction he took in etching from the artist Hermann Struck was important for his later career. In 1906 he went for about a year to Paris, where he met Amedeo Modigliani.

 Ludwig Meidner, The Suicide (Self-Portrait), 1912

The year 1912 was an important one for Meidner: he painted the first of his compelling self-portraits and Apocalyptic Landscapes. These works anticipate the horrors of the first world war by several years. The series, produced rapidly in a hectic heatwave, are some of the purest expressionist works, portraying the terror of the modern city in catastrophic settings; comets cross the sky like canon shells, fires rage, men scream and flee for their lives, buildings totter on the edge of collapse. 

 Ludwig Meidner, Apocalyptic Landscape, 1912

The years that followed in Berlin saw Meidner haunted by dire financial straits although he intensively experienced expressionist bohemian life. His portraits from 1915 to the end of the 1920s are a gallery of the leading expressionist and Dada writers and poets. Ludwig Meidner also was a habitual self-portraitist producing a remarkable series of self-portraits that provide a vivid illustration to his passing years. 

 Ludwig Meidner, Portrait of the Writer Johannes R. Becher, 1916

Meidner joined forces with Jacob Steinhardt and Richard Janthur to found "Die Pathetiker" (The pathetic ones), a group that showed their works at Herwarth Walden's gallery. There he met Robert Delaunay, whose Cubism, with Italian Futurism, inspired his style. In 1915, he portraied his friend Conrad Felixmüller who occasionally worked in Meidner's Berlin studio.

 Ludwig Meidner, Portrait of Conrad Felixmüller, 1915

Conscripted into the military in 1916, Meidner served as an interpreter and censor at an internment camp for prisoners of war. There he began to write. After the war, in 1918,  he joined the Novembergruppe (November Group) and the revolutionary Genossenschaft für proletarische Kunst (Cooperative for Proletarian Art). Meidner, at that time, had a combination of Jewish Messianism and a somewhat mystical Marxism that sometimes anticipated Walter Benjamin’s later synthesis. He was an evangelical adherent of the Arbeitsrat, writing "we artists and poets should be in the forefront of  the struggle. Socialism should be our new faith." 

Ludwig Meidner, Revolution, 1913

Disappointed at the failure of the Revolution, Meidner  retired to nurse his disillusionment in private, abandoning Expressionism, which by then was so popular that its commercial outlook increasingly brightened. In Autobiographische Plauderei (Autobiographical Chat) he offended companions and friends by repudiating his early work. Religious themes, landscapes, still lifes and more portraits would thenceforth be his dominant genres.

 Else Meidner, Self-Portrait, 1926

In 1927 Ludwig Meidner married Else, née Meyer, who was also an artist. As early as 1932, Meidner expressed his fears concerning growing anti-Semitism in a letter to his fellow painter, John Uhl: “We live in a highly-nationalistic area, are practically the only Jewish family in the neighbourhood and known as such, and might get into very dangerous situations.” After the Nazis came to power, Ludwig and Else Meidner's artistic possibilities became increasingly limited. Exhibitions were now only possible in Jewish cultural institutions such as the Jüdischer Kulturbund (Jewish Culture Association). 

 Ludwig Meidner, Self-Portrait, 1935

In order to escape the growing anti-Semitism in Berlin, Ludwig Meidner and his family moved to Cologne in 1935, where he had been offered a position as drawing teacher at the Jewish school Yavneh. After several other plans to emigrate had come to naught, the couple immigrated to England in August 1939, shortly before the war broke out. In England, the Meidners lived in abject poverty. After the war began, Ludwig Meidner was interned as an enemy alien on the Isle of Man. Many other German  intellectuals were imprisoned in the camp, and Ludwig Meidner considered his situation bearable because now at least his physical survival was ensured. Else Meidner, on the other hand, was forced to take on a position as a servant in order to make a living. 

 Ludwig Meidner, Crowd, c. 1915

Despite a certain degree of success – as, for example, when the Ben Uri Gallery put on a double show of the Meidners' work in 1949 – Ludwig Meidner lacked any prospects for artistic success in London. Even after ten years of living in exile, he had not managed to become established within the English art scene. Practically the only ones to take any notice of his art were other German-Jewish immigrants. He was invited to visit Germany in 1952, and the warm reception by old friends there as well as the outlook for success as an artist led him to return there for good in 1953. In a last, very productive, creative phase he further developed the style of painterly realism he had developed in the 1920s. In 1963 he had his first major exhibitions since 1918 in Recklinghausen and Berlin. Ludwig Meidner died on 14th May 1966 in Darmstadt, aged 82.

 Ludwig Meidner, My Night Visage, 1913

The Ludwig Meidner Archive at the Jewish Museum in Francfort contains many works from the estate of Ludwig Meidner. It comprises oil paint­ings, works on paper, sketchbooks, drawings, prints and works by fellow artists. The archive also holds the copyright to Meidner's oeuvre. Moreover, works from the estates of Else Meidner, Kurt Levy and Arie Goral are also theld here. The archive collects work by Jewish and exiled artists from the period 1933–45. You can see mor works of Ludwig Meidner here in my Flickr set.

The Cooperative for Proletarian Art

 Ludwig Meidner, Brass the Communist, 1920

The Cooperative for Proletarian Art (Genossenschaft für proletarische Kunst), founded in Berlin in 1920 by Friedrich Wilhelm Brass (above), combined the goals of a business venture with an organization of strictly social and political character. Among the members of the Genossenschaft were the already well-known masters of German Expressionism: Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and Otto Mueller (see them here) as well as the artists of the new generation whose artistic career started after the end of the First World War. Among them were George Grosz, Ludwig Meidner, Karl Holtz (below), Erich Godal (below), Conrad Felixmüller, Walter Jacob, Walter Gramatté, Franz Seiwert, Arnold Schmidt-Niechiol (below) and others. 

 Karl Holtz, Unemployed, c. 1920

The Genossenschaft presented the newest trends of modern German art from Jugendstil  (Siegfriend Behrend) and expressionist artists from the group Die Brücke (Schmidt-Rottluff, Heckel) to Dadaism (George Grosz). Despite different artistic views all those artists were united for a short time by the idea of "proletarian" art.

 Erich Godal, Rebellion, 1920

The founder of The Cooperative for Proletarian Art was Friedrich Wilhelm Brass. He was born in the Rhineside province of Prussia in the town of Krefeld in 1873. Brass’s undertaking in Berlin in 1920 was supposed to combine commerce and politics, apparently he hoped that in a situation of revolutionary uprising the new art would be demanded by the general working public. Brass was going to deal in mostly inexpensive printed graphic arts, considerable part of which had political and propagandistic character. However, the lack of substantial financial means had great effect on Brass’s plans. The Cooperative didn’t have its own exhibition premises. Brass managed to publish just the lithograph series Revolution by Erich Godal (above) and portraits of Karl Liebknecht made by Arnold Schmidt-Niechciol:

 Arnold Schmidt-Niechciol, Portrait of Karl Liebknecht, 1920

The Collection of The Cooperative for Proletarian Art  was brought to Russia in November 1920, when a Russian delegation returned to Petrograd from Germany. That delegation was headed by Grigory Zinoviev, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Comintern, who attended the Congress of the German Independent Social Democratic Party. It was the first international trip by any Soviet leader after the Revolution. Zinoviev was accompanied by Ilya Ionovich Ionov (1887-1942), a professional revoluationary who had spent many years in prison and exile. Ionov took great interest in art and literature and was writing poems. Ionov, who had access to Comintern’s money, bought all that Brass had as the property of The Cooperative. This is how the collection ended in Russia. Today, most of the collection is kept in the St. Petersburg Hermitage.

Erich Godal, Dance of Death, 1920

The Cooperative for Proletarian Art of Friedrich Brass was largely forgotten in Germany. During the fight against "degenerative" art the Nazi destroyed most of the Expressionists’ works that were stored in the museums of Germany. The history was also cruel towards the young artists who were cooperating with the Genossenschaft. Their biographies and the destinies of their works were closely intertwined with the devastating events of fascist terror in the field of art and war. They were prohibited, persecuted, their works were mercilessly destroyed by fires and bombings. That is why the value of the Genossenschaft’s Collection, preserved in Russia, is so high. It presents a unique image of the full and diverse artistic life in Berlin in 1920.

Conrad Felixmüller - Dresden and Berlin

Conrad Felixmüller, Postplatz - Dresden im Schnee, 1933

Even before the Nazis seized power, Conrad Felixmüller was in a difficult position. He was vilified for his socio-critic and expressionist works of the twenties, and in 1933 40 of his works were shown in the exhibition "Degenerate Art" in the atrium of City Hall in Dresden. Due to the increasing hostility and lack of orders, the artist found himself compelled, to move with his family to Berlin in 1934. The above work, painted in January 1933, is a kind of farewell picture of his hometown.

Conrad Felixmüller, Berlin, 1934

In Berlin, the Felixmüller family moved into a flat in Charlottenburg (Rönnestraße 18), from where he painted this view in direction of Wilmersdorf and the Funkturm. We also see the Berlin S-Bahn (City Train) in its typical yellow-red pattern. The flat was destroyed during a bombing raid in 1941. Back to Dresden: In happier times, 1927, Felixmüller produced the following work, called "Lovers in Dresden", depicting himself and (hopefully) his wife in front of the Augustus Bridge:

 Conrad Felixmüller, Lovers in Dresden, 1927

Conrad Felixmüller

 Conrad Felixmüller, Soldier in the Madhouse, 1918

Conrad Felixmüller (1897-1977) was born in Dresden as son of a factory worker. After attending drawing classes at the Dresden Kunstgewerbeschule for one year, (where he  became a close friend of Peter August Böckstiegel) Felixmüller first attended the private school of the artist Ferdinand Dorsch in 1912 and the same year he entered Professor Carl Bantzer's class at the Königliche Kunstakademie in Dresden, to start training as a painter.  In 1915 Felixmüller left the academy and studio of. He now worked as a freelance artist in Dresden, but often went to Berlin, where he painted in Ludwig Meidner's studio:

 Ludwig Meidner, Bildnis Konrad Felixmüller, 1915

 Felixmüller also contributed to the journal Der Sturm (The Storm), published by Herwarth Walden. In 1917 Felixmüller founded the art and literature journal MENSCHEN (Men) together with the book dealer Felix Stiemer, with Felixmüller being responsible for the graphic design like he was in Der Sturm. At the same time he had exhibitons at Hans Goltz's in Munich and at the Dresden Galerie Arnold together with Heckel, Kirchner and Schmidt-Rottluff. 

 Conrad Felixmüller, Workers Returning Home, 1920s

In 1918 Felixmüller moved to Dresden, where he became the founder and chairman of the Dresdner Sezession and joined the November-Gruppe as well as the revolutionary Genossenschaft für proletarische Kunst (Cooperative for Proletarian Art). At the same time Felixmüller worked for various newspapers (e.g. Die Sichel in Regensburg and Rote Erde in Hamburg) and published several literary texts such as his autobiography Mein Werden (Kunstblatt) or his thoughts on Künstlerische Gestaltung. Felixmüller's early creative work was strongly influenced by Expressionism, which he interpreted in a socio-critical way and soon transformed into his own form of expressive Realism. He was also a member of the KPD (Communist Party of Germany) since 1919. 

 Conrad Felixmüller, The Agitator, 1920

In 1933, 40 of  Felixmüller's paintings were shown at the Dresden exhibition of  Degenerate Art. In 1934 he moved to Berlin-Charlottenburg, hoping to be able to work more freely there. (see my related blog). In 1937, 151 of his works were confiscated from public collections. In 1941 his Berlin home was destroyed by bombs, and Felixmüller sought refuge in Damsdorf in the Mark. 

Conrad Felixmüller, Portrait of Raoul Hausmann, 1920s

In 1944 Felixmüller moved to Tautenhain. That same year he was called-up for military service. After a short time in Sovjet captivity, Felixmüller returned to Tautenhain in 1945. In 1949 he was appointed professor at the Martin-Luther-Universität in Halle, where he taught drawing and painting at the faculty of education. After his retirement in 1961 Felixmüller returned to Berlin. Before his death in 1977 numerous exhibitions took place in East and West Germany, Paris, Rome, Bologna and Florence.

Conrad Felixmüller, Self-Portrait, 1920 

You can see more works of Conrad Felixmüller here in my Flickr set.