Research Paper on "Anita Berber Droste and Fritz Lang"

Research Paper 7 pages (2278 words) Sources: 4

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Thus it was that a man with as much vision, national pride, and drive as Adolf Hitler and the members of the Third Reich could sweep to power in the early 1930s by promising to attack the evils of the time and to rid the country to the vice and financial oppression that had addled it for years. The Third Reich brought back to the fore what the Weimar Republic had allowed to be trampled in the mud -- German nationalism and German pride.

Hoch also resorted to painting to express frustration with the superficiality of the times. Paintings such as The Bride (1924-27) and Immortal Life (1924) can be paired to serve as commentary of Weimar insanity. The Bride depicts a matrimonial union that is completely superficial and inhuman -- the bride consists of a woman's body, draped in white with an oversized child doll's head atop the shoulders. The expression of the doll's head is like that of a child, mystified by the surrounding orbs that flutter around the heads of bride and groom. The orbs themselves contain images with wings, a wheel, an eye with a tear falling from it, a baby nursing at a breast, a snake wrapped around a piece of fruit. There is an element of the haunting spectacle of the Baroque artist Hieronymus Bosch in the satirical way that the winged images distract the child-bride from her suitor. But the groom himself is no better, looking like the kind of decoration that one finds atop a wedding cake: he is immovable, plastic, very much the embodiment of the commercialized, catalogue clothing groom, who looks that part but cannot play the role. The painting suggests that these two newlyweds have no idea about the reality of the union they have formed, of the sacrifices that must be made by them if they are to start the family, the building block of society, or if that is even their intention at all. Perhaps they merely think that marriage is an occasion for celebration, for champagne (indeed, the orbs resemble champagne bubbles which ironically encapsulate the underlying realities of domestic life -- sorrow, child-rearing, moving, resisting forbidden fruit). Hoch's painting is terribly suggestive of the way in which Weimar Germany was flaunting its wanton, childish carelessness and tempting fate.

Immortal Life (1924) depicts, in a way, the offspring of this union by representing a small child with a devious, almost demonic, air about it, with arms outstretched over its held and a devilish grin on its face. Beside the child is a flower and in the background is a small, blood-red earth, indicating that the world's offspring is awash in blood and that childrearing is an unholy exercise. The snarling tone of the picture, with its hauntingly red backdrop, like the portrait by Dix of Anita the Dancer, suggests that the Weimar Republic in the 1920s has a horrific secret at its heart -- one which has something to do with innocence, children, and sexuality. It could signify, for instance, the disconnect between natural eroticism and the procreation aspect of sexual intercourse. By commercializing the erotic in cities like Weimar Berlin, through its cabarets and night clubs, expressionist dances and sexualized photography, the sex act had become something produced solely for pleasure, without any hint of its natural end -- the reproduction of children. Here, in Hoch's painting is the missing element -- the forgotten child, unwanted, unraised, unholy -- the future of society.

In conclusion, the cultural and artistic expressions of the Weimar Republic were represented by the decadence embodied by Berlin at the time. The night clubs and cabarets explored the sexually expressionistic dances and skits of men and women like Berber and Droste, and the films, like Murnau's Nosferatu and Lang's Metropolis explored the sordid underbelly and consequences of a lascivious generation out of control. The liberal inter-War years were preceded by the abdication of the Kaiser and followed by that ascendency of Hitler, whose regime put a stop to the liberal decadence, promoting nationalism in its place. The era of vice was essentially the era of wasted youth, as depicted in the surrealistic works of Hoch and in the early deaths of Berber and Droste. As Dix reflected in his portraits, the times were repellant and alluring, as seductive and deadly as a vampire.

Bibliography

Droste, Sebastian; Berber, Anita. Dances of Vice, Horror and Ecstasy. UK: Side Real

Press, 2012.

Gordon, Mel. The Seven Addictions and Five Professions of Anita Berber: Weimar

Berlin's Priestess of Debauchery. LA: Feral House, 2006.

Jiminez, Jill; Banham, Joanna. Dictionary of… READ MORE

How to Reference "Anita Berber Droste and Fritz Lang" Research Paper in a Bibliography

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