Page 32 - Studio International - February 1972

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although from around 1916 onwards drawings
of Old Testament prophets appear in their
hundreds. They show old, grey-bearded men in
billowing robes declaiming in the desert or
striking attitudes of despair, joy or wisdom.
They are nowhere near as satisfactory as earlier
work. The visions had gone and the orthodox
beliefs which had taken their place never again
produced the irresistible pressures necessary for
the creation of work like that Meidner produced
before the war.
Even in this respect Meidner was a typical
Expressionist, for most artists and writers of his
generation were, like him, burned out early, or
else did not survive the war. None of the
Brücke artists produced anything after 1919
which could compare with earlier work.
Kokoschka's painting declined soon after, and
it was the same with the poets. It was as though
the constant search for extremes, the continual
exaggeration of feeling for the sake of more
convincing expression had to be paid for by a
shortening of the creative life. Meidner, too,
was a dragonfly. His best work dates from 1912

to 1916, four years into which he packed a group Expressionists thought important to emphasize These writers allied themselves after the war
of visionary cityscapes, penetrating portraits in 1919, at a time when the November either with the Independent Socialists or with
and searching likenesses of himself, and after Revolution had already failed and Germany was the newly-founded Communist party, and many
which he plunged into self-parody, into the beginning slowly to slip into the mediocrity of of them took an active part in the Revolution
cultivation of mannerisms and the adoption of the Weimar Republic. One section of the of 1918.
subject matter so obscure that his images and anthology is called Aufruf und Emporung Meidner seems always to have been a
symbols become meaningless. (Exhortation and Rebellion) and another Love Socialist, and to have regarded the artist as the
of Man. The most obvious thing about the lap-dog of the aristocracy and the middle-classes
AFTER THE APOCALYPSE poems in this section is their political and in his way as exploited as the manual
Most of those Expressionists who had engagement, typical of the work of that group labourer. As early as 1913 he had even painted a
welcomed the war were less enthusiastic when, of Expressionists centred on Franz Pfemfert's picture of revolution, of a bloody fight at the
after it had begun and had become as horrifying journal Die Aktion, and usually known barricades with himself at the centre, a red rag
as the most horrifying of their visions, they therefore as Activists. Hasenclever's The around his forehead, holding the red flag high
realized that even a total collapse of the political Political Poet includes the stanza : surrounded by gun-fire, exploding shells and
system would not necessarily lead to the Stand up and kill; storm-attacks rage. burned out buildings."
establishment of a new order. They had longed High from the vaults the chains fall down. When the real revolution came, the tragic
for war partly as the precursor of revolution and On river-banks parliaments brood silently fiasco of November 1918, Meidner did not take
had written of the new spirit of brotherhood . . . already songs of freedom ring. part in it. After his demob he returned for
which would replace the hatred, the exploitation and reminds its readers that the poet no longer several months to his native Bernstadt in
and the crass materialism which had prevailed spends his time dreaming but 'His foot descends Silesia. But his views had not changed. In 1919
for so long. Once again Kurt Pinthus's upon the corpses of villains, his head is raised he wrote: 'We must choose Socialism, choose
Menschheitsdämmerung makes it clear what the to accompany peoples.' the general and complete socialization of the
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