On the long list of artists to suffer the fatal derision of Nazi Germany was one of Germany's greatest sculptors, Ernst Barlach. He died in 1938, shunned by his townspeople, condemned (falsely) as a Jew and Bolshevik. His work, based on the centuries-old tradition of wood carving and German Gothic art, was banned as "degenerate" and typical of "the passive Slav soul."
Since World War II, the very quality the Nazis detested most in Barlach's work —its expression of human striving and religious aspiration—has restored his work to the forefront of German 20th century art. In Germany today his war memorials in Magdeburg, Kiel and Hamburg, torn down by the Nazis, have been restored. Last week Barlach was being honored at Harvard's Busch-Reisinger Museum with his first comprehensive showing in the U.S., a traveling exhibition of 176 of his sculptures, drawings and prints.
"Donnerwetter!" The son of a physician in the small market town of Wedel, Holstein, young Barlach early learned to respect the mute suffering of the peasant as well as his unexpected guffaws of humor —both of which he later incorporated into his work. But it was not until his mid 30s that he found himself as an artist, after years of academic art courses at Hamburg and Dresden, followed by an unproductive trip to Paris.
Two events finally gave direction to Barlach's groping. In Florence he sat at the feet of Poet Theodor Daubler, whose rhapsodic verse, mystically urging man to free his spirit from the pull of Earth, appealed to Barlach's own yearnings. Even more important was a two-month trip to southern Russia, where Barlach, on first sighting the sturdy peasant figures against the limitless perspective, exclaimed: "Donnerwetter! There sit bronzes!"
In the Vanguard. To Barlach the peasants became "symbols of the human situation between Earth and Heaven." In giving the symbols form, Barlach again turned his back on Paris, chose instead to model his peasants in terms of their own traditional wood-carved figures and the Gothic sculpture of his native town. The result, far from seeming a throwback to a bygone style, rapidly placed Barlach in the vanguard of German expressionists.
Barlach summed up his disgust with the first World War with his famed Avenger, whose headlong, sword-slashing figure was later to arouse Adolf Hitler's wrath. For a group of 16 figures commissioned for the Gothic niches of Liibeck's St.
Catherine's Church, Barlach sculpted The Crippled Beggar, face raised as he rests on crutches, feet barely touching the ground, in a gesture that echoes back to the works of Brueghel. Singing Man shows Barlach at his most joyous. The figure, despite the ecclesiastical appearance of his garb, could as well be yodeling as singing God's praise.
Hitler's bitter dislike of Barlach led to a rapid banning of Barlach's work. What broke Barlach's heart was the removal in 1937 of his bronze Angel from the cathedral at Giistrow, where he had lived and worked for 27 years. He died the next year, at 68. Today the Angel is suspended once again in its old place within Giistrow Cathedral, a symbol that Sculptor Barlach has returned with a message of enduring faith.