“A Substratum of Unprejudiced Art History”

Abstract

This essay investigates questions of Jewish art in early twentieth-century Germany, the motivations and contexts for such questions, and the methods used to understand them. Focusing on the 1907 “Exhibition of Jewish Artists” in Berlin and its critical reception as a primary case study, the essay grounds the discourse of Jewish art within its own particularities of production. It concludes with a brief analysis of the first major publication to present a history of Jewish art. The discourse of Jewish art in early twentieth-century Germany grappled with the challenges of determining a distinctly Jewish art using the tools of art history. Notions of Jewish artists and Jewish art, however, also presented challenges to the modernist structures of art history with its claims of secular universality and reason, exposing the contradictory assumptions of national and religious particularities.

Notes

1 On the concept of ‘not yet,' see Chakrabarty (2000, 6–11).

2 ‘[A]rt history is … a mode of writing addressed … to the fabrication and maintenance of modernity. As a social and epistemological technology for framing modernity, the discipline has served as one of modernity's central and definitive institutions and instances' (Preziosi 1992, 378).

3 More specifically on the anti-Semitic structures of art history, see Olin (2001).

4 Although this text has been recently translated by Anthea Bell, in some cases, such as this, I prefer to use my own. These and other translations are my own unless otherwise indicated. My thanks to Reinhold Heller and Jens Stenger for their assistance with various translations.

5 All of these examples were noted in the Berlin exhibition's catalogue introductory text (Das Ausstellungskomitee 1907, v).

6 The exhibition remained on view through sometime in late December; I have been unable to locate an exact closing date for the exhibition. A 2009 exhibition at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Fragmented Mirror: Exhibition of Jewish Artists, Berlin, 1907, represented and reevaluated the 1907 Berlin exhibition. The accompanying catalogue includes a scholarly essay, reproductions of the works exhibited, and a full reprint of the 1907 catalogue with English and Hebrew translations (Ida 2009). Further translations in English of some of the press reviews can be found on the exhibition website (http://www.tamuseum.org.il/Data/Uploads/Press%20Reviews%20I%20English.pdf). Translations from the 1907 catalogue and press reviews used in this essay are my own, unless otherwise noted.

7 When reprinted in Ost und West, authorship is credited to the sculptor Alfred Nossig (1907).

8 Wilhelm laid out his ideas on art in his oft-cited speech from 1901 celebrating the completion of monuments on the Siegesallee. On this speech in particular and for a broader discussion of Wilhelm's role in German art, see Paret (1980) and Lewis (2003).

9 For an overview of these artistic debates and their participation in questions of the nation, see Forster-Hahn (2001).

10 Artists included the painters Jules Adler, Moritz Gottlieb, Samuel Hirzenberg, Josef Israëls, Isidor Kaufmann, Maurycy Minkowski, Käthe Münzer, Josef Oppenheimer, Leonid Pastkernak, Camille Pissaro, Leopold Pilichowski, Simeon Solomon, Eugen Spiro, Max Stern, Lesser Ury, Alfred Wolmark, and sculptors Mark Antokolksi, Henryk Glicenstein, Alfred Nossig, Boris Schatz, Siegfried Wagner, among many others.

11 Run by Herr Alstfalck, the Galerie für alte und neue Kunst was founded in December 1906 and officially opened on 1 March 1907. Located at Wilhelmstraße 45 the gallery featured c. 700 square-meters of exhibition space over two floors. According to its business plan, the gallery proposed to exhibit and sell antique and modern art of any kind. “We do not take any party position on the question of art” (Der Kunstwart 1907). Instead, it promoted quality and sought to build an art market open for all.

12 On the role of market discourse in aesthetic modernism, see Jensen (1994).

13 A few papers announced that profits would go to scholarships for Jewish artists.

14 Interestingly, a review in the Israelitisches Familienblatt argued that Jewish artists were driven not by the market like their non-Jewish colleagues, but by higher ideals. This supposedly explained their smaller levels of patronage. ‘Because neither museums or galleries, nor rich merchants, bankers, etc. (even if they otherwise are likely to support the arts) buy pictures with representations of synagogues, fervently praying and chastened old men on Yom-Kippur, etc.' (Israelitisches Familienblatt 1907, 11).

15 A total of 60 painters and 12 sculptors displayed 187 works according to the exhibition catalogue, in addition to the listed antiquities and decorative arts. The exhibition's catalogue provides the most comprehensive information about exhibited works and the organizers' intentions, including an introductory text, a written list of works (divided into sections by media and arranged by artist in alphabetical order), an illustrated selection of works, a list of artists who donated works, and a few advertisements in the back.

16 Batsheva Goldman Ida discusses the selection of artworks and the predominance of portraits and landscapes in relationship to contemporary bourgeois interests in art (Ida 2009, 167).

17 Certain graphic artists significant to the growing discourse of Jewish art, particularly among the Zionists like E.M. Lilien and Hermann Struck, were not represented.

18 This included both the Jewish and mainstream German press. Helene Vollmar, writing for the Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, described the gallery's location as favourable and the rooms as tasteful and well lit (excerpted in “Urteile der Presse” 1908, 28).

19 These comments in the press are noted and briefly discussed in Ida (2009, 170–169).

20 Officially titled Ausstellung Deutscher Kunst aus der Zeit von 1775–1875, but frequently referred to as the ‘Jahrhundert Ausstellung.'

21 Instead, the 1901 Zionist Congress exhibition and the 1906 Whitechapel exhibition offer the two obvious models. Both served as important precursors for the conception and display of works by Jewish artists and have been cited as such both at the time and in more recent sources on the Berlin exhibition. For discussions of these exhibitions as models, see, for example, Straughn (2007). Batsheva Goldman Ida focuses on the Whitechapel exhibition and the later Copenhagen exhibition (Ida 2009).

22 Organizers included Hugo von Tschudi, Alfred Lichtwark, Woldemar von Siedlitz and Julius Meier-Graefe. For an insightful analysis of the ‘Centenary Exhibition,' see Beneke (1999).

23 Also paraphrased in ea. 1907, 503. The Jüdische Rundschau also clearly pronounced the exhibition ‘a fundamentally Jewish-national undertaking.' The paper further criticized Horwitz's statement that the exhibition's goal was to ‘show the anti-Semites that we can also paint.' The reviewer retorted: ‘We have a higher ambition than to show the anti-Semites that we have culture' (ea. 1907, 503). Interestingly, however, a letter published after the closing of the exhibition specifically thanked Horwitz for his help with the material security of the exhibition and a large part of its ‘moral success' (Das Ausstellungskomitee 1908, 46). Max Horwitz was an attorney and active member of the Association's honorary committee.

24 A good portion of this Israelitisches Familienblatt review specifically addressed—and implicitly questioned—the organizers' proposed objective methodology in which the artists and works were judged according to general aesthetic questions. According to this reviewer, such judgements were necessarily subjective as they depended on a viewer's likes and dislikes (“Jüdische Künstler” 1907, 2).

25 Anna Brzyski argues that in the case of asserting a Polish national art, “an objective standard of quality … allowed Poles to compete on equal footing with other European artists.” She further claims that the national significance of an independent modern Polish art was “determined not by its subject matter or style, but by its artistic quality” (Brzyski 2003, 73, 75).

26 Inka Bertz further characterizes Eigenart as a fashionable catch-phrase of the Berlin moderns with a specifically national connotation (Bertz 2003, 150–152).

27 Accepting that if art-historical notions of race are to be recognized in works by Jewish artists, the exhibition committee asked: “[W]herein exists the racial particularity of the Jews in art?” (Das Ausstellungskomitee 1907, vi). In her essay on the 1907 exhibition, Ida further explores the issue of race as an ethnographic consideration and places the discussion within the context of Hippolyte Taine (1828–1893), a French historian and critic referenced in the 1907 exhibition catalogue (Ida 2009, 162–161). On concepts of race in Wilhelmine Germany, in particular in relation to anthropology, ethnology and museums, see, for example, Evans (2008) and Penny (2003).

28 On the trope of the wandering Jew in art, see, for example, Braillon-Philippe (2001).

29 A review in the Breslauer Jüdisches Gemeindeblatt, observing that notions of Jewish art were already known to the public through special exhibitions, books and journals, proclaimed Cohn-Wiener's art history ‘important for German Jewry' as a means of instruction (Buchholz 1930).

30 A student of Heinrich Wölfflin's, Cohn-Wiener taught art history as a Dozent at both the Jüdische Volkshochschule and the Humboldt Hochschule in Berlin; he was also renowned as a lecturer on a wide range of art historical subjects.

31 An art historical concept in use at the time, Stilwollen relates to Alois Riegl's concept of Kunstwollen (artistic volition). On Riegl, his ideas and influence, see Olin (1992).

32 ‘The more abstract the religious concepts become, the deeper the meaning of the art work … ' Cohn-Wiener argued that Jews since ancient times have turned to more abstract forms of music and literature. In order for Jewish art to achieve a more intellectual, spiritual content, it relied on the abstract and symbolic (Cohn-Wiener 1929, 4–5).

33 This emphasis on a religious content, rather than form, as the source for a Jewish art, is also important for Cohn-Wiener's conception of Islamic art. Like Jewish art, Islamic art does not derive its meaning from the creation (Schöpfung) of basic forms (Grundformen), because Islam unifies people from diverse nations and with diverse national art histories. Cohn-Wiener described Islamic art as a true blending of multiple art forms (Verschmelzung und Vervielfachung), producing a world of forms (Formwelt) that becomes richer, more colourful and more brilliant (Cohn-Wiener 1930b, 7).

34 The very brief review in the Israelitisches Familienblatt derisively commented that Cohn-Wiener's book did not clarify the question of Jewish art, and further remarked that the question that needed answering was ‘What is Jewish art?' (h. 1930).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Celka Straughn

Celka Straughn currently serves as the Andrew W. Mellon Director of Academic Programs at the Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas. In addition to her museum work, she teaches courses in the Honors Program and Undergraduate Studies, and is affiliate faculty in German Studies. She received a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago; her dissertation examined Jewish art and expressionism in early twentieth-century Germany. In support of her research she received fellowships from the Leo Baeck Institute/German Academic Exchange Service, the Fulbright Commission, the Rifkind Center for German Expression at LACMA, Hebrew University and the University of Chicago. Current research interests include modern European art and artist networks, global museum discourses, exhibition and collecting histories and practices.