German Expressionism: Documents from the End of the Wilhelmine Empire to the Rise of National Socialism

Documents of Twentieth-Century Art

by Rose-Carol Washton Long

German Expressionism, one of the most significant movements of early European modernism, was an enormously powerful element in Germany's cultural life from the end of the Wilhelmine Empire to the Third Reich. While the movement embraced such diverse artists as E. L. Kirchner, Wassily Kandinsky, Käthe Kollwitz, and George Grosz, all the participants shared an almost messianic belief in the power of art to change society. Rose-Carol Washton Long has drawn together over eighty documents crucial to the understanding of German Expressionism, many of them translated for the first time into English.

Genres: Art, History, Art History

408 pages, Paperback

First published November 6, 1995

Reviews

[Tom Brannigan · Rating 5 out of 5]

One gets a view by contemporary critics, artists, politicians, and publishers on what was called Expressionist art in the first decade of the 20th century. Unlike painters in France, there was a strong political-ideological aesthetic for artists in Germany. Their harsh anti-naturalism that identified the art they produced was a response to the decadent materialism that repulsed them. As one might expect the book is filled with vitriolic dialogues between parties of all sides. It clearly reveals the cultural divide between leftist artists, the intellectual elite, and the conservative elements within Germany. The Wiemar Republic failed to keep all the parties under the same tent. National Socialism would take care of that problem quickly in brutish fashion.