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Weimar Politics and the Theme of Love in Kurt Schwitters' Das Baumerbild

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In the following essay, Nill interprets Schwitters's assemblage Das Bäumerbild in the context of post-World War I German politics, finding in the work symbols of love and war.
SOURCE: "Weimar Politics and the Theme of Love in Kurt Schwitters' Das Baumerbild" in Dada/Surrealism, No. 13, 1984, pp. 17-36.

While the Hanover Dadaist Kurt Schwitters vociferously rejected using art as political propaganda, he did not reject the use of political propaganda in art, as countless political phrases which function as "material" in his literary works attest.1 For example, in his prose poem "Aufruf (ein Epos)" (1921), Schwitters spliced together newspaper fragments, often overfly political, and lines from his sensational love poem "An Anna Blume" (1919):

O du, Geliebte meiner siebenundzwanzig Sinne, ich liebe dir!
Du deiner dich dir, ich dir du mir.—Wir?
(Die letzte Kraftanspannung der Bolschewisten.)
Sechs Zugbeamte wurden verletzt, darunter drei
erheblich, und immer wieder erscholl der Ruf:
"Hoch Hindenburg!" und "Hoch Ludendorff" und
"Nieder mit der Reaktion"! (Das gehört beiläufig
nicht hierher.)2


O thou beloved of my twenty-seven senses, I love thine!
Thou thee thee thine, I thine, thou mine.—We?
(The last effort of the Bolsheviks.)
Six train officials were injured, three of them
seriously, and again and again the cry rang out:

"Hail Hindenburg!" and "Hail Ludendorff and "Down with reaction"! (That by the way does not belong here.)

Juxtaposing right-wing ("Hoch Hindenburg!") and left-wing ("Nieder mit der Reaktion") parlance succeeds in both raising the emotional pitch of the epic poem and in establishing its antithetical method.

During the turbulent early phase of the Weimar Republic, political rhetoric also found its way into Schwitters' visual works. One of these is the small but intriguing assemblage entitled Das Bäumerbild (1920), which, like "Aufruf," places the theme of love into a political context.3 Although Das Bäumerbild has escaped the attention of Schwitters scholars until now, it yields valuable new information on Schwitters' attitudes toward his subject matter, the artistic process and politics generally.

As will become evident presently, Schwitters was quite aware of the political situation in post-World-War-I Germany. However, it will also become clear that he was first and foremost an artist who was intent on creating works of art with lasting values, no matter how fleeting or topical his materials. Thus, a discussion of Schwitters' political stance at the time falls outside the scope of this essay.4

Schwitters' "Bilder" or "pictures" usually received their titles from some key word or image within the work—in a kind of synecdochic or part-for-whole relationship. The ambitious Das Arbeiterbild ("Worker Picture") (1919), for instance, derives its name from the word "Arbeiter" printed in red letters and prominently incorporated into the work. Similarly, Das Bäumerbild was named after the man in the photograph, the writer Ludwig Bäumer (1888-1928).5 This makes the work in one sense a "Merz-portrait," Schwitters' term for a portrait created by the artistic manipulation of nonartistic materials. A comparison of the assemblage to Christian Schad's Neue Sachlichkeit portrait of Ludwig Bäumer (1927) reveals how radically Schwitters departs, on the formal level, from the conventional oil portrait. Schad's representation alludes to Bäumer's erotic nature through the orchid and to his refractory, fragmented state of mind by means of the faceted background. These two characterizations of the writer will also be found in Schwitters' work.

The word "Bäumer" itself has a general connotation, which derives from the expressionist-poetic concentration ("Ballung") of the phrase "einer der sich aufbäumt" ("someone who rebels"). Bäumer himself attributed this meaning to the word in the last line of his poem The Last Judgment:

Wir sind gegeben, dass wir Erde beben
Machen Gott Garten Eden, dem wir Bäumer sind.6
We are charged to shake the earth
to create God's garden, Eden, being rebels.

Thus the ambiguity of the title Das Bäumerbild sets the scene both for a general reading of the work, which can be accomplished without knowing the identity of the man in the photograph, and for a more specific reading, which emerges by identifying the two figures and exploring their relationships to each other and to their context.

To create a work of art with multiple levels of meaning, Schwitters combined verbal and visual elements into a complementary whole, as he had done in 1918 in his earliest extant collage, Zeichnung A2: Hansi,7 where a chocolate wrapper provides both a compositional and verbal basis for the work. In Das Bäumerbild, the drama unfolds on top of a political broadside realistically tacked onto a board. The image or symbolic object that functions as the visual key to this work, as the cross had done in Hansi, is the centrally located table, schematically drawn with heavy black lines on top of the broadside. A black-rimmed red circle and a somewhat faded photograph of flowers create a Cubist-type still life in the plane of the table. Directly beneath it Schwitters has written in cursive script the articles "das" and "der."

The cropped photograph of a man in uniform who gazes intensely out of the picture partially overlaps the table on the left; the man's stick-figure body recalls Schwitters' watercolor drawings of the period. He appears to be holding a red triangle at waist height, and he has a black button-like object attached to his chest. On the right, the table is flanked by a woman whose head and hand holding a flower are also rendered photographically. Her skirt, somewhat displaced to the right, is made up of a red hoodlike shape and newspaper fragments. A tax stamp, pieces of stamp selvage, and a black square add a constructivist quality to a work that appears almost painterly in its richness, an effect partially created by the Gothic script and the green stains in the area around the female figure.

The verbal key to the work, which is insistently pointed out by another red triangle, is the phrase "Vereinigung für ("union for") printed in large, boldface black letters at the bottom of the broadside. Like the word "ade" in Hansi, "Vereinigung für" has a double meaning.8 Its public connotation derives from the partially obscured name of the association that published the broadside "Vereinigung für den Rechtsfrieden" ("Association for a Just Peace"). Its other connotation involves Schwitters' manipulation of the above phrase to read "Vereinigung für .. . eden": thus, the word "eden" is created by truncation from "Frieden," as "ade" was created from "Schokolade."

Weimar Politics in the Context of the Treaty of Versailles

In Das Bäumerbild only the man in uniform alludes directly to World War I. But the message of the "Vereinigung für Rechtsfrieden" must be read in relation to the consequences of that war.9 The broadside's polemic can be reconstructed from a few salient words and phrases that Schwitters left uncovered. Its major subject is peace, as the word "Frieden" appears three times in the text: in the upper righthand corner, directly under the revealing word "Frankreich"; between the man's legs on the left, above which the words "entschiedenen" and "[u]ns weig[ern]"; and underneath the table, partially obscured by the words in cursive and prefaced by the word "[uner]träglichen." This seems to add up to a rejection of an unacceptable peace treaty. But by the same token an appeal is made for "unser Volk" to be patient ("Stunde heisst Geduld"), and not to allow insurrections ("Putsche dürfen uns nicht . . . den wahren") to ruin the chances for a true peace.10

These urgent issues, and that of "Rechtsfrieden," had been considered in the debate surrounding the Paris Peace Conference, which began on January 18, 1919. World War I had ended in 1918 with the unexpected and disastrous defeat of Germany, which had transformed it from an empire into an uncertain republic under the tentative leadership of the Majority Socialist party. This new government found itself in the awkward position of having to negotiate the peace terms of a war for which it had been only indirectly responsible.11 On June 28 at the conclusion of the Paris Peace Conference, under considerable duress, the Germans signed the treaty at Versailles, the very place where Wilhelm I had arranged his coronation as emperor of Germany in 1871 in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War.

In 1920, the year of Das Bäumerbild and in response to the Versailles Treaty, Schwitters produced a collage, Merzzeichnung 170, which indicts the Majority Socialists of Berlin by cleverly insinuating that "Versaille[s]" belongs to them. The newspaper clipping of May 13, 1919, reports a mass gathering on the "Königsplatz" in support of the already lost "Rechtsfrieden."12 The work's title, Leere im Raum ("Void in Space"), expresses the total despair of the situation. The Majority Socialists and the political right most vociferously invoked the concept of "Rechtsfrieden" against Article 231, the "Kriegsschuldthese" ("war-guilt clause"), which placed the responsibility for the war solely on Germany. This clause was perceived as a violation of the Wilsonian armistice agreement, which would have allowed Germany to pay reparations without a guilt clause.

In Das Bäumerbild Schwitters addresses the Versailles issue with less pathos and more irony. Visually, he symbolizes the Paris Peace Negotiations, which produced the unacceptable document, by the centrally placed conference table. Directly beneath the table the phrase "[uner]träglichen Frieden" creates a visual-verbal pun on an insupportable peace, induced by the (super)imposed "articles."

In the context of the Paris Peace Negotiations, however, the concept of a conference table at which opposing parties sit down to negotiate their differences was highly ironic, since the Allies, especially the "big four," France, England, the United States, and Italy (referred to as "Allierten" and "vierm[ächte]" in the newspaper fragment on the bottom right and perhaps symbolized by the black square), indeed sat around the conference table to discuss their ever-increasing demands ("Die Forderung immer mehr") for reparations ("Die Wiedergut[machungen]"), but they never invited the German delegation to join them. Instead, the "negotiations" consisted of a series of notes or memoranda (mentioned in the newspaper fragment on the right). The cover-notes of the final written exchange achieved notoriety under the term "Mantelnoten." The German "mantle note" of May 28 was a reply to the May 7th draft of the Allied treaty that had caused the original uproar. On June 16th the Allies replied with a "mantle note" of their own, which severely reprimanded the Germans for questioning Article 231 and other matters.13 In keeping with Schwitters' visual-verbal manipulations, the "skirt" or "mantle" of the female figure doubles as a "mantle note," because it is composed of a series of newspaper notices or notes that refer to the negotiations.

Schwitters also casts doubt more directly on the validity of the conference table by giving it a prominent green leg. This is a pointed reference to the German saying "etwas vom grünen Tisch aus entscheiden" ("to rule something from a green table"), which is a figurative way of alluding to decision-making based on theoretical considerations rather than on the reality of a situation.

Even the meaning of the female figure is perverted. As a veritable personification of peace, she holds and smells a flower, and is surrounded by the fresh green of hope and associated with the word "Frieden." But upon closer examination, Schwitters may be seen to have manipulated a word directly above her flower, which reads as "rüchig" followed by the word "Frankreich." This pungent commentary refers to the peace, negotiated with and in France, land of perfumes, as "stinking."

As noted earlier, a warning against allowing insurrections ("Putsche") to interfere with obtaining genuine peace is the other message of the broadsheet. Even as the Allies negotiated in Paris, many German cities were in a state of civil war. The Social Democrats supported the concept of parliamentary democracy and called for elections for a national assembly on January 19, 1919. For taking this proparliamentary position the party was regarded as having betrayed the ideals of the November Revolution by the protocommunist Spartacists and the Independent Socialists, who sought to radicalize the worker and soldier councils that had formed spontaneously during November, 1918, and to establish soviet republics ("Räterepubliken").14 They were successful in creating temporary but true soviet republics in Bremen and Munich, but most attempts remained on the level of putsches. All leftist revolutionary activity was quickly put down by the government's defense minister, Noske, with the help of the infamous "Freikorps" ("free corps"). These threats of "Bolshevism" did not go unnoticed by the Allies, who were further alarmed by the developments in central Europe. Although the German government attempted to use the Allies' fear of communism to obtain a more favorable treaty, it also felt obligated to put down any insurrection from the left.15

The warning expressed in the broadside includes all these developments. To complement the female personification of "Frieden" in Das Bäumerbild, Schwitters gave visual expression to the violent overthrow of the government by a male personification of "Putsch." Instead of a flower, his attribute is a bomb, frequently a sign of anarchy. The bomb's smoky effluvium is directed toward the state, represented by the tax stamp in the upper left corner and by the postage stamp selvage just below it.16 The black and red colors associated with the figure bespeak death and violence.

In 1919 the Russian artist El Lissitzky used a red wedge and a white circle to represent the conflict between the Bolsheviks and the counterrevolutionaries in his famous poster Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge.17 Similarly, by using red triangles Schwitters is commenting on the causes and consequences of the military-controlled counterrevolution known as the "Kapp-Putsch."18 The small red wedge near "Putsch's" waist is aimed across the table at the red and black hoodlike object, or "Kappe," on the "right." A larger red wedge, emanating from the direction of the "hood," hovers threateningly over the "Vereinigung" ("union").

The military leadership had tried to exonerate itself for its vast defeat in 1918 by blaming the revolution at home. This tactic sought to make the revolutionaries directly responsible for the Treaty of Versailles, which had punished the military particularly severely by demanding drastic reductions in the armed forces. In March, 1920, a small group of military leaders attempted a coup d'etat, which became known as the "Kapp-Putsch" after the name of one of its leaders. The defenseless government fled the capital and called for a general strike by the workers, which effectively ended the takeover. The successful workers, however, recalling their earlier revolutionary activities, began a new revolt centered primarily in the industrial Ruhr district. Again the government stepped in, and at its behest the uprising was crushed by the military, the very forces from whom the workers had earlier saved the government.19 Small wonder that "Treu[e]" ("loyalty") is in a tenuous position, caught as it is between the table and the "Kappe," symbolizing respectively the Treaty of Versailles and the counterrevolution. Schwitters sums up the transitory nature of political power by invoking the German proverb "ein Keil treibt den andern" which, substituting "wedge" ["Keil"] for the nail in the analogous English proverb, translates idiomatically as "one nail drives out another."

Schwitters has thus created a political portrait of the Weimar Republic in the context of the Paris Peace Negotiations through a sophisticated interplay of verbal and visual elements. The table with the still life of the "green" flowers of peace and the black-rimmed red circle, echoing the bomb of "Putsch," succinctly summarizes the content of peace and violence in a part-for-whole relationship. One is tempted to call Das Bäumerbild on this level a "history painting" entitled, according to Schwitters' sense for reversals, The Consequences of Peace.

Love and Strife in Worpswede and Bremen

The key to the other level of content of Das Bäumerbild is the identity of the two figures and their relationship to each other. But another important element in its meaning is Bäumer's political involvement with the Bremen Soviet Republic, which serves as a case history for the themes of revolution and peace, and therefore links the public and private levels of the work's meaning.

Although the Schwitters literature is silent concerning the name Ludwig Bäumer, one has not far to look in the circles of the Hanover avant-garde to identify him as the author of Das Wesen des Kommunismus ("The Nature of Communism"), published in 1919 as Nos. 25-26 in the "radikale Bücherreihe" (radical book series) Die Silbergäule of Paul Steegemann Verlag. Steegemann, who had fought on the barricades in Hanover during the November Revolution of 1918, had also published works by and about his friend Kurt Schwitters, including the famous Anna Blume Dichtungen (Die Silbergäule, 39-40). Perhaps one can assume that Paul Steegemann played a role in the Bäumer-Schwitters association.20

Schwitters depicts his friend in Das Bäumerbild with a bomb and places him in a context of political strife. Such a portrayal has a certain basis in fact. When, on January 10, 1919, the Socialist Republic of Bremen was proclaimed with music and red flags, Ludwig Bäumer, a member of the communist party, had been one of nine men voted into the "Rat der Volksbeauftragten" ("Council of the Peoples' Representatives").21 His position of responsibility, however, was short-lived: by February 4th, the strong right arm of the socialist government, Noske, had crushed the "Räterepublik."22 Thirty workers and soldiers lost their lives and Bäumer landed in jail.

A proclamation ("Aufruf!") by the majority Socialists describes the Bremen Soviet Republic from their ruling perspective:

Dieser Miss- und Gewaltherrschaft war es vorbehalten, das erste Blutvergiessen in Bremen heraufzubeschwören. Damit nicht genug, haben sich die Gewalthaber offen gegen die Reichsregierung aufggelehnt, unbekümmert um die Gefärdung der deutschen Einheit, unbekümmert darum, dass unsere Feinde einem bolschewistischen Deutschland weder Frieden noch Brot gewähren werden, unbekümmert auch um die Zukunft Bremens, das vom In-und-Ausland als Hochburg des Terrors, als Feind der Freiheit geächtet, dem wirtschaftlichen Untergang entgegen ging. . . .23

This false and totalitarian rule was left to precipitate the first bloodshed in Bremen. Not satisfied with that, the ruling power openly rebelled against the Federal Government, indifferent to the fact that our enemies will grant neither peace nor bread to a Bolshevik Germany, unconcerned also for the future of Bremen, which, proscribed at home and abroad as a stronghold of terror and enemy of freedom, was headed for economic ruin. . . .

This sensitivity to the opinions of the "Feinde" ("enemies"), i.e., the Allies meeting in Paris, helped defeat the revolution. The Bremen Soviet Republic had the added liability that Bremen was a port city; after the war, when the entire German population depended absolutely on food imports for survival, the Berlin government exerted itself to keep Bremen and other key ports out of the hands of the "reds."

Although in Das Bäumerbild Schwitters gave Bäumer the attribute of a bomb, it was obviously only symbolic of his involvement in the Bremen revolution and of his syndicalist and left communist leanings.24 Bäumer's real weapon was the word, written or spoken. He had won notoriety for preserving the unity of the communist party in a crisis by making a fiery speech, and he anticipated great results from his Marxist polemic Das Wesen des Kommunismus.25 In his introduction to the work written in jail, Bäumer thanks the postrevolutionary Socialist government of Bremen for providing him with the leisure to formulate his ideas and for thus helping to bring about its own demise.

Ein kurzer aber darum nicht weniger ehrlicher Dank sei hier ausgesprochen der Bremischen Regierung and dem Walten ihres herkulischen Armes der Stadtkommandantur. Meine unter Beugung allen bestehenden Rechts erfolgte Verhaftung und Verhängung einer wochenlangen Schutzhaft hat mir die Musse, Ruhe und Geschlossenheit nicht gefunden in der aufreibenden Arbeit meiner auswärten Propaganda. Hilft also dies under "gütiger, selbstloser" Mitwirkung Allerhöchster Bremischer Stellen entstandene Werk die Klärung revolutionärer proletarischer Bestrebungen bringen, so hilft as auch an der Beseitigung "Allerhöchstderselben" Stellen und ihrer brutalen Vergewaltigungen. So verhelfen sich diese Allerhöchstdieselben Regierungsstellen letzten Endes selbst zu ihrem Schicksal eines gerechten Zusammenbruchs. Grund genug zu danken.

Bremen, Schutzhaft—Worpswede

Ludwig Bäumer26

Brief, but not for that any less sincere gratitude is here expressed to the government of Bremen and the sway of its herculean arm of the garrison headquarters. My arrest and condemnation to weeks of preventive detention, which resulted from the bending of all existing laws, provided me with the leisure, peace, and unity of thought I needed to compose the present text. I would not have found this leisure, peace, and unity while engaged in the demanding work of my outward-bound propaganda. If this work, created with the "charitable, selfsacrificing" cooperation of the supreme authorities of Bremen, helps to bring about a clarification of revolutionary proletarian aspirations, it will also help to bring about the elimination of the "most high" authorities and their brutal oppression. These most high ruling authorities thus finally procure their own fate of a justified collapse. Reason enough for thanks.

Bremen, Preventive Detention—Worpswede

Ludwig Bäumer

Although in fact he languished in preventive detention in Bremen, Bäumer gives his address as "Worpswede," known to the art world as an idyllic artists' colony that had flourished around the turn of the century in the moors outside Bremen. Artists who sought the simplicity of country life, such as Fritz Mackensen, Otto Modersohn, Fritz Overbeck, Hans am Ende, and Heinrich Vogeler were associated with it, as well as the now well-known Paula Modersohn-Becker and, as poet in residence, Rainer Maria Rilke. The Barkenhoff, the beautiful Biedermeier home of the Jugendstil master Heinrich Vogeler, provided an appropriate setting for the group. Vogeler captured the somewhat elegiac mood of those days in his painting of 1905 entitled Sommerabend (Konzert auf dem Barkenhoff), which depicts his wife, Martha, standing alone in the center framed by friends listening to and playing music.

It is less well known that after the war Worpswede became the experimental communist community of a group of "Edelkommunisten."27 Again, the Barkenhoff provided the locus and Heinrich Vogeler the soul of the movement. Many came to hear what Heinrich Vogeler had to say, although the message, brotherly love and mutual aid, sounded more like the Sermon on the Mount than a communist manifesto.28 Kurt Schwitters was among the visitors to Worpswede at this time.29

Heinrich Vogeler later recorded his feelings about the old Barkenhoff with a certain amount of nostalgia:

Zwanzig Jahre hatte ich wohl an einer Heimat gebaut. Und sie bekam Gestalt als innigste Umwelt einer Frau und ihrer Kinder. Haus, Zimmer und Garten waren aus der Wildernis zu einem kleinen fruchttragenden Paradies erwachsen. Mein Pflug hatte den unberührten Heideboden umgeworfen, meine Hände hatten die Saat zum Keimen versenkt, mit den Kindern hatte ich Bäume und schattige Plätze gepflanzt; Fremde kamen und nahmen teil an unserem Legen. Feste bereitete ich ihnen, konnte sid aber selber nicht feiern. . . .30

I had worked at the creation of a home for perhaps twenty years. It took the shape of the intimate surroundings of a woman and her children. House, chamber, and garden had grown from wilderness into a small, fertile paradise. My plow had turned over the untouched soil, my hands had sunk the seed for sprouting, with the children I had planted trees and shady places; strangers came and shared in our life. I organized festivals for them, but could not celebrate them myself. . . .

Vogeler turned the Barkenhoff into a "paradise," giving every detail his careful attention. This "Gesamtkunstwerk" ("total work of art") even included a girl from the village, Martha Schröder, whom Vogeler carefully groomed to be his wife and muse. The idyll lasted until 1909, when the young, somewhat unstable, aimless law student Ludwig Bäumer arrived and stayed. He and Martha fell in love. And, rather than lose his inspiration and his three daughters completely, Vogeler tacitly allowed Bäumer to live on the Barkenhoff estate.31

Without question, Martha Vogeler and Ludwig Bäumer were deeply attracted to one another. Although through Heinrich Vogeler's encouragement Martha had learned to appreciate the finer things in life, she always remained close to the earth, natural and uncomplicated. Bäumer's directness appears to have been better suited to her temperament than was Vogeler's tentative nature. Through Bäumer she experienced love for the first time and abandoned herself to it. Older than he, she could provide him with a refuge for his restless, searching soul. On his part, Bäumer needed to feel that Martha belonged to him. The feeling of possession gave him strength, as he wrote her in a letter: "Das Gefühl, dass Du zu mir gehörst, dass Du an mich gekettet bist, wie mit tausend Fäden, das macht mich immer von neuem stark, froh und glücklich. . . . "32 ('The feeling that you belong to me, that you are chained to me as with a thousand bonds, makes me again and again strong, glad, and happy.")

There is little doubt that the woman whose photograph appears in Das Bäumerbild is Martha Vogeler. The resemblance between the photograph of Martha Schröder taken years earlier at an amateur performance and the woman in Das Bäumerbild is convincing, when one allows for the age difference of about twenty years. Furthermore, the setting into which the figure has been placed, the flowers and the green, suggests the Barkenhoff, although Schwitters surely also used them symbolically. Martha's attribute in this context is a symbol of love: "Flower," after all, is the last name of the protagonist of Schwitters' famous love poem "An Anna Blume. And green, not red, is the color of love in German folksongs, as Schwitters also seems to know. Anna Blume's admirer loves her both "red" and "green."

Das Bäumerbild thus becomes an homage to Ludwig and Martha's love. United as they are in the picture, Schwitters makes the point verbally as well, by directing attention to the word "Vereinigung." The "union" is for "eden" Schwitters decrees, and underlines the word created from "Frieden" in orange-red. "Eden" on one level clearly refers to the Barkenhoff, the lovers' home until 1921/22. But on another level, Schwitters is probably referring to the "natural state" of their relationships, a condition opposed to the state-sanctioned matrimonial bond, as perhaps indicated by the stamp selvage running above their heads, which unites the lovers visually.

In 1914, inspired by his love for Martha and possibly piqued by a certain amount of guilt for not being able to make her his legal wife, Bäumer wrote what amounts to a diatribe against marriage. In "Das imaginäre Porträt eines 25 jährigen" ("The Imaginary Portrait of a 25-Year-Old"), he calls marriage an erotic relationship and concludes, therefore, that every erotic relationship is a marriage.

Die Ehe ist ein erotisches Verhältnis, und da der Egoismus die Moral der Erotik ist, so hat die staatliche Ehe mit der wirklichen Ehe nur dann mehr als den Namen gemeinsam, wenn sie ausschliesslich auf erotischen Egoismus aufgebaut ist. Erlischt der sexuelle Wille zweier Ehegatten einseitig oder gleichzeitig zu einander, so hört die Ehe auf zu existieren, und dies Aufhören macht die Staatliche Institution sofort unmoralisch . . .

Die Ehe ist ein erotisches Verhältnis. Die Schlussfolgerun, dass jedes erotische Verhältnis eine Ehe ist, liegt also nahe und ist eine Tatsache, die nicht zu wiederlegen ist. Und somit erledigt sich der Ehebruch als eine haltlose Fiktion.33

Marriage is an erotic relationship, and as egotism governs the morals of eroticism, marriage sanctioned by the state shares with true marriage more than the name only, when it is exclusively based on erotic egotism. If the sexual pleasure of the two spouses extinguishes on one side or simultaneously on both, the marriage ceases to exist, and this cessation immediately causes the civil institution to become immoral . . .

Marriage is an erotic relationship. The conclusion that every erotic relationship is a marriage is obvious and a fact which cannot be denied. And thus the concept of adultery discharges itself as an untenable fiction.

Six years later, under similar circumstances, Heinrich Vogeler too was inspired to advocate free love publicly. His pamphlet Die Freiheit der Liebe in der kommunistischen Gesellschaft (1920) is dedicated to his lover Marie Griesbach, "die rote Marie" from Dresden, who taught Vogeler that to be pure, love must be free of possessive feelings with regard to the loved one.34

Exactly those feelings of possessiveness had caused Vogeler so much suffering when Ludwig Bäumer drove a wedge between him and Martha, as suggested by the threatening aspect of the large red wedge over the "Vereinigung" in Das Bäumerbild. But Schwitters' use of the proverb "ein Keil treibt den anderen" also gains new currency in this context, since Bäumer displaced Vogeler as Martha's lover. The small red wedge immediately below Bäumer's photograph has unmistakable sexual connotations here. The analogy to the succession of political takeovers discussed earlier is clear and helps to form a link between the public and the private content of the work. The fact that the small wedge is pointing across the table at the word "Treu[e]" ("fidelity"), left showing on the broadside in the area of Martha's waist, adds a certain instability to the virtue of constancy. Fidelity is relativized, if not made the object of irony.

The table, which in the general, political context of the work represented a questionable conference table, also figures in the more private meaning of the assemblage. The table at once physically separates the lovers and symbolizes their union, according to the general expression "Tisch und Bett miteinander teilen" ("to share bed and board").35 And one could say that the original table setting emblematic of peace and violence has been overlaid with love and passion.

But Schwitters also puts his formal cards on the table by causing this Tafel, a word which in German means both "table" and "picture," to stand, by synecdoche, for the work in which it appears. By unifying the geometric circle and the organic flowers on the "Tafel," he is uniting abstract and representational forms, the two elements with which he composed his work. Finally, in its celebration of the union of opposites, Das Bäumerbild becomes a metaphor for the union of form and content.36

Schwitters' portrait of Ludwig Bäumer is one of passion and rebellion. So when he places Bäumer in the company of Martha Vogeler personified as Love, and clearly states that their union is for Eden, is he alluding to the classical myth so popular during the Renaissance of strife and love begetting harmony? If so, the creator of Anna Blume and Franz Müller has succeeded in creating a fresh icon of Mars and Venus, timeless symbols of war and love.

NOTES

1 Schwitters clarifies his position vis-à-vis art as politics through his distinction between the Kern- and the Huelsen-dadaists in "Merz," Der Ararat 2 (1921), 3-9. The discussion was prompted by Huelsenbeck's En Avant Dada: Eine Geschichte des Dadaismus, published in 1920 by Schwit-ters' friend Paul Steegemann in Die Silbergäule 50/51.

The author thanks Drs. Linda Dalrymple Henderson and T. D. Kelly of the University of Texas at Austin for their helpful suggestions and criticism of this essay.

2 Kurt Schwitters, Lyrik, Vol. I of Das literarische Werk, ed. Friedhelm Lach (Köln: M. DuMont Schauberg, 1973), pp. 60-63.

3 The work measures 6 × 8¼ in. or 17.6 × 21.1 cm. It is signed and dated and belongs to an unidentified collector in Europe. It was most recently exhibited in October 1982, at the Fundación Juan March of Madrid. The catalog of the exhibition includes a color reproduction.

4 The issue of Schwitters' politics will be considered at length in my forthcoming dissertation on Schwitters' iconography (University of Texas at Austin).

5 During an interview in Hanover with the author in the summer of 1982, Hilde Bäumer verified the identity of her brother Ludwig in the photograph in Das Bäumerbild and attested to a Schwitters-Bäumer friendship. From the available evidence this appears to be the first instance in which Schwitters used real photographs in his work, although he was familiar with the photomontage technique as early as 1918. The use of photographic portraits in art works was quite popular in self-conscious Dada circles in Berlin, and was very much in evidence at the First International Dada Fair (1920), which Schwitters attended.

6 Ludwig Bäumer, Das jüngste Gericht, Vol. 16 of Der rote Hahn (Berlin-Wilmersdorf: Die Aktion, 1918), p. 40.

7 See Annegreth Nill, "Rethinking Kurt Schwitters, Part One: An Interpretation of 'Hansi,'" Arts (January 1981), 112-17.

8 In Schwitters' Hansi the word "ade" is used to make two sentences that establish the two readings of the collage. The literal meaning is conveyed by the sentence "Ade Hansi Schokolade" ("goodbye, Hansi chocolate"). The more personal meaning is conveyed by the sentence "Ade Witzgrund, Dresden," in which Schwitters is saying farewell to the academic formation he received in Dresden. See Nill, p. 114.

9 All attempts so far to identify the organization have failed. Agnes F. Peterson of the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, Stanford, Calif., suggests that the organization may have been very small and located near the seat of government (letter dated May 2, 1984). I would like to thank Mrs. Peterson for her considerable effort in this endeavor. I would also like to thank Mrs. E. Möpps at the Deutsche Presseforschung, Universität Bremen, and Mr. Werner Heine at the Stadtarchiv, Landeshauptstadt Hanover, for their attempts to identify the organization in question.

10 The German words in this paragraph in the order in which they appear mean "peace," "France," "determined," "we refuse," "unbearable," "our people," "hour means patience," and "insurrections may not . . . the true," and "just peace."

11 Although basically a peace party, the Social Democrats had, under the concept of the "Burgfrieden," voted en masse for war credits on August 4, 1914. They had done so out of a sense of patriotism based on their belief that the war was one of defense rather than aggression. See Karl Friedrich Erdmann, Der Erst Weltkrieg, Vol. 18 of Gebhardt, Handbuch der deutschen Geschichte (München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1980), pp. 165-75.

12 The Allies had presented the German delegation with the finished treaty on May 7, 1919. On May 12, addressing the national assembly, prime minister Scheidemann proclaimed: "Der Vertrag ist unerträglich und unerfüllbar. Welche Hand müsste nicht verdorren die sich und uns in solche Fesseln legte!". Quoted in Hagen Schulze, Weimar Deutschland 1917-1933, Vol. 4 of Die Deutschen und ihre Nation: Neuere deutsche Geschichte (Berlin: Severin und Siedler, 1982), p. 196.

13 For the text of these notes see Materialien, betr. die Friedensverhandlungen, ed. Auswertiges Amt (Charlottenburg: Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft für Politik und Geschichte, 1919).

14 See "Rätestaat oder parlamentarische Demokratie," in Karl Dietrich Erdmann, Die Weimarer Republik, Vol. 19 of Gebhardt, Handbuch der deutschen Geschichte (München: Deutsche Taschenbuch Verlag, 1980), pp. 28-52.

15 For a detailed discussion of this issue, see Arno J. Mayer, Politics and Diplomacy of Peacemaking (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967), pp. 753 ff.

16 Raoul Hausmann expressed antigovernment sentiments in his photomontage The Art Critic of 1919 by having a shoe step on a 10-Pfennig "Deutsches Reich" postage stamp.

17 The forms of the El Lissitzky poster recalled military maps and the terminology "Reds" and "Whites" was in common usage. See Alan C. Birnholz, "Forms, Angles, and Corners: On Meaning in Russian Avant-Garde Art," Arts (February 1977), p. 101. One can only speculate as to whether Schwitters knew of the Lissitzky poster in 1920. The Russian artist Iwan Puni, who moved from Vitebsk to Berlin late in 1920, could provide a link. Puni was familiar with El Lissitzky's work because in 1919 both men taught at the academy in Vitebsk, which was headed by marc Chagall. Perhaps at the suggestion of longtime "Sturm-artist" Chagall, Puni established contact with Herwarth Walden's Sturm Gallery upon his arrival in Berlin. Schwitters had close ties to Der Sturm at this time; he would undoubtedly have heard about the newcomers from Russia.

18 See Erdmann, Weimarer Republik, pp. 136 ff. for the "Kapp-Putsch" and its consequences. I am assuming that Schwitters meant the "hood" to be read as a "Kappe," a mantle with hood.

19 For another point of view, see Schulze, pp. 213-21.

20 Jochen Meyer, Der Paul Steegemann Verlag (Stuttgart: Fritz Eggert, 1975), p. 14.

21 Peter Kuckuk, Revolution und Räterepublik in Bremen (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1969), pp 103-6.

22 Kuckuk, p. 30.

23 David Erlay, Worpswede-Bremen-Moskau: Der Weg des Heinrich Vogeler (Bremen: Schünemann, 1972), p. 103 (emphasis added).

24 In the conclusion of Das Wesen des Kommunismus (Die Silbergäule, Vols. 25-26 [Hanover: Paul Steegemann Verlag, 1919), p. 26), Ludwig Bäumer calls conventional weapons outmoded bourgeois-capitalist war material: "Es liefert den Nachweis, dass die rückständigen Methoden der bürgerlich-kapitalistischen Kampfmittel, hinterlistiger Mord, Maschinengewehre, Hand- und Gasgranaten, Kanonen, Flammen- und Minenwerfer untaugliche Mittel sind im Kampf um die politische Macht der Zukunft. . . . " ("It furnishes the proof that the antiquated methods of the bourgeois-capitalist means of combat, perfidious murder, machine guns, hand and gas grenades, cannons, flamethrowers, and trench mortars, are unsuitable means in the contest for the political power of the future"). For a detailed discussion of Bäumer's political beliefs, see Lothar Peter, Literarische Intelligenz und Klassenkampf (Köln: Prahl-Rungenstein, 1972), pp. 109-15.

25 Erlay, Worpswede-Bremen-Moskau, p. 136.

26 Bäumer, Kommunismus, p. 3.

27 The Worpswede communists, especially Heinrich Vogeler, were called "Edelkommunisten" (noble communists) on account of their great, almost otherworldly idealism. See David Erlay, Vogeler, Ein Maler und seine Zeit (Fischerhude: Atelier im Bauernhaus, 1981), p. 160.

28 Heinrich Wiegand Petzet, Heinrich Vogeler: Von Worpswede nach Moskau. Ein Künstler zwischen den Zeiten (Köln: M. DuMont Schauberg, 1973), p. 126.

29 personal interview with Erika Vogt, Worpswede, in the summer of 1982. I would like to thank Professor Ernst Nündel for drawing my attention to the connection between Worpswede and Schwitters. My gratitude also extends to the Fulbright Commission, which not only supported this research financially, but also organized an excursion to Worpswede.

30 Heinrich Vogeler, Erinnerungen (1952), as quoted in Sigrid Weltge-Wortmann, Worpswede (Worpswede, 1979), p. 109.

31 Erlay, Worpswede, p. 54 and Petzet, p. 97. In 1914 both Ludwig Bäumer and Heinrich Vogeler went off to war. Both spent some time during the war in mental institutions, and both were committed communists when they returned to the Barkenhoff after the war.

32 Petzet, p. 97.

33Die Aktion, 4 (June 1914), 518-23.

34 Reprinted in Heinrich Vogeler, Das Neue Leben, ed. Dieter Pforte (Darmstadt und Neuwied: Hermann Luchterhand, 1972), pp. 92-100. "Die rote Marie" was the name given to Marie Griesbach-Hundt of Dresden on account of the color of her hair and her political views. She was for a time Vogeler's mistress. Schwitters dedicated a poem published in Der Sturm, 10 (January 1920), 141 to "Die rote Marie." It provides the only concrete evidence besides Das Bäumerbild of Schwitters' Barkenhoff connections.

35 The converse proverb, "Trennung von Tisch und Bett" ("separation of table and bed"), meaning a judicial separation, also achieves a certain validity when viewed in the context of the Vogeler-Bäumer-Martha triangle.

36 Schwitters first concerned himself with abstract art in 1910 while attending the Dresden Academy. He recorded his thoughts and readings for a theoretical treatise he planned to write on the problem of abstraction. One of the quotations he copied from Alfred Köppen's Die moderne Malerei in Deutschland (Bielefeld, 1902), p. 25, states: "Es ist die Harmonie der Form und des Inhalts, die die Grösse des Kunstwerks ausmacht, das ist das wiederentdeckte Schönheitsgesetz Menzels." ("It is the harmony of form and content that constitutes the significance of a work of art; that is the principle of beauty rediscovered by Menzel.") Kurt Schwitters, Werk, Vol. 5, p. 398. Schwitters surely subscribed to the idea that the harmony of form and content determines the value of a work of art, and he strove to achieve that harmony in Das Bäumerbild.

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