TITLE

Confronting Postwar Shame in Weimar Germany: Trauma, Heroism and the War Art of Otto Dix

AUTHOR(S)

Fox, Paul

PUB. DATE

June 2006

SOURCE

Oxford Art Journal;2006, Vol. 29 Issue 2, p247

SOURCE TYPE

Academic Journal

DOC. TYPE

Article

ABSTRACT

This article explores the terms on which Otto Dix intervened in discourse about the memory and meaning of the First World War in Weirnar Germany. Specifically, it deals with how Dix exploited the taboo on trauma that constrained the manner in which the war was addressed in the public sphere. It analyses how Dix's work problematised the debate on the meaning of the war by affirming the virtues of heroic endurance, while simultaneously pointing to the legacy of trauma that was its inheritance. The argument points to the myth of the war that emerged in the 1930s, grounding the war's meaning in the values of mud, blood and futility. It is suggested that the myth has unduly influenced art-historical approaches to Dix's art. Instead, this analysis engages with contemporary concerns about the status of veterans in Weimar culture. It aligns German literary memoirs — particularly Jünger's Storm of Steel — with Dix's art, because close analysis suggests that the typical narrative structure of war memoirs is also to be discerned in Dix's work. It is argued that Dix deliberately and repeatedly trod the boundaries of a politicised social taboo by addressing trauma in the context of typical front-line experience. It is argued that although, in an increasingly reactionary political climate, Dix's work came to be interpreted as a deliberate affront to the heroic memory of the German army, Dix continued to argue for an inclusive approach to the memory of the Great War — one that pounded its meaning in both heroism and its psychological consequences.

ACCESSION #

33920997

Tags: TRAGEDY (Trauma);  WORLD War, 1914-1918;  DIX, Otto, 1891-1969;  WAR;  PSYCHIC trauma;  COURAGE;  HEROES

 

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