print;
portfolio
- Museum number
- 2001,0930.24
- Title
- Series: Hintergrund (Background)
- Description
-
Series of seventeen offset-lithographs of drawings of the production 'Schwejk' by the Piscator Company, their subjects including surreal compositions, soldiers and violent episodes, each numbered and with caption; published by Malik-Verlag, Berlin, 1928; housed in yellow-ochre paper wallet with title-page and additional lithograph on cover
- Production date
- 1928
- Dimensions
-
Height: 170 millimetres (each sheet)
-
Width: 260 millimetres (each sheet)
- Curator's comments
- This portfolio, published by Wieland Herzfelde's Malik Verlag, contains Grosz's illustrations for Jaroslav Hasek's play 'Schwejk'. In 1928, Grosz and Herzfelde were charged with blasphemy and sacrilige for two 'offensive' plates from this portfolio, one portraying the crucified Christ in a gas mask and the other showing a German pastor balancing a cross on his nose. Though both were found guilty and charged 2000 reichsmarks each, the conviction was overturned the following year. In its decision, the state court in Berlin claimed that the artist 'had made himself the spokesman of millions who disavow war, by showing how the Christian Church had served an unseemly cause that it should not have supported'. The print of Christ with the gas-mask was also deemed 'degenerate' by the Nazis and included in their Entartete Kunst exhibition.
- Location
- Not on display
- Associated titles
Associated Title: Schwejk
- Acquisition date
- 2001
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 2001,0930.24