Lovis Corinth
The Life of Walter Leistikow
A Fragment of the History of Culture in Berlin (1910)
Part One
(review by Francesco Mazzaferro)
[Original version: December 2014 - New version: April 2019]
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| Fig. 1) The original edition of the The Life of Walter Leistikow A Fragment of the History of Culture in Berlin, published by Paul Cassirer in 1910 |
Premise
This article
continues the review of the writings of Lovis Corinth, German painter who lived
in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century. Corinth is considered
one of the three most important German Impressionists, along with Liebermann
and Slevogt. However, he did not only drew inspiration from Impressionism
beyond the Alps, but also offered a synthesis between German naturalism on the
one hand and Italian and French classicism on the other one. In the first
decades of the twentieth century, as part of the Berlin Secession, he inaugurated
a painting style that increasingly offered a personal interpretation of the
classical figurative schemes (which, in fact, he never rejected). Herewith, Corinth
opened the way for the modern, and has indeed influenced the art of the
twentieth century and even the contemporary one, also until the last decades, and
beyond the borders of Germany. We know that he was aware of not being a great
writer, but this did not prevent him to publish, in the early 1900s, an
important series of writings, both autobiographical and theoretical ones. In
our opinion, his best text was the handbook "Learning to paint"
(1908), on which we have already been writing, and the reading of which allows
us to understand - drawing lessons from his teaching method - even the
aesthetic foundations of his art creation. The autobiographical writings (the
"Legends from the life of an artist", of 1909, and the ''Autobiography“, the latter published posthumously in 1926, but actually written in two
intervals, between 1916 and 1917, and in 1925) offer an important testimony both
of the artist's life as well as of how the dramatic events of those years
influenced his artistic production. However, these texts - from a literary
point of view - are not fully effective, in our view. "The Life of Walter
Leistikow. A fragment of the history of culture in Berlin" appeared in
1910, but the first (almost final) version was already ready in December 1908,
a few months only after the suicide of Walter Leistikow (24 July 1908), his
colleague and close friend. So, this was a sort of "instant book",
and like all such writings reveals strengths and weaknesses: it is a direct and
authentic source of the personal relationships between the two artists, but in
many ways an unsatisfactory text in terms of art criticism. Indeed, as we shall
see, Corinth conceived art literature (i.e. the writings of artists on art) as
a form of emancipation of the art creator, of the craftsman and of the owner of
manual artistic knowledge from any art criticism and its abstract theorizing.
Written largely in the form of an eulogy, the text had perhaps a
counterproductive effect, not revealing the full breadth of Leistikow’s art,
and perhaps even helped to ensure that his memory of an engaged intellectual
and a successful painter would evaporate almost immediately after his tragic
death. To understand the role of Leistikow, we read some of his writings including
the secessionist, or Jugendstil-style,
novel entitled Auf der Schwelle ("On
the threshold") of 1896 - and his correspondence. In fact, even more than Corinth,
Leistikow was an artist who tried his hand with literature, according to the
ways of the global art concept (Gesamtkunst)
typical of those years, relying among other things on a dense network of
contacts with leading writers of the German capital. Reading these texts helped
us to interpret the contradictions of Berlin art in that era. This is therefore
an opportunity both to increase our knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses
of Lovis Corinth as a writer on art and art critic as well as to make our
acquaintance with Walter Leistikow as a young provocative intellectual, who subverted
the cultural references of Wilhelmine Germany, but also as a protagonist of
what the Germans call Kunstpolitik,
the politics of art. We will discover Leistikow as fundamental figure, above
all thanks to the initiatives that he put in place between 1892 and 1904, when
he created some associative structures in favour of then contemporary art, some
of which are still active today. It was therefore a Kunstpolitik in the full sense of the term, and helped to make
Berlin an effervescent centre of that art which at the time was considered
transgressive. Corinth and Leistikow were great friends, but the first was
actually much more conservative than the second, and perhaps the book, written
in homage to the artist who committed suicide, shows that Corinth never fully understood
the thought of Leistikow.
"The Life of Walter Leistikow - A fragment of
the history of culture in Berlin" (Das Leben Walter Leistikows : Ein Stuck
Berliner Kulturgeschichte) - appears for the types of Paul Cassirer in
Berlin in 1910. As explained in the back cover of this book - one hundred and
thirty pages and with a format 184 x 230 - only 100 copies were printed on real
hand paper, with two original etchings on Japanese paper, twelve drawings by
Leistikow and 52 pasted photographs accompanying the text. The work is, as
obvious to those times, printed in Gothic font. The original copy in my
possession, unfortunately ruined on the spine, is indeed a gem. The one prepared
by Cassirer was therefore a book issue of quality.
The only new edition
of the text - accompanied by a wide and very helpful array of notes and with a
thorough afterword, edited by F. Reimar Lacher - is of 2000 [1]. Adding notes
and afterword leads to a work of 246 pages. The full text of the Life is also available on the site www.zeno.org. [2]
The reasons of the work
Two were the
reasons that led Corinth to publish the volume, two years after the death of
Leistikow, who had taken his life at just 43 years. The artist had committed
suicide due to the aggravation of the syphilis from which he suffered, then at
a terminal stage. Before dropping to the condition of Manet and Toulouse
Lautrec, he took the gun and wanted to get it over with life. He left a wife
and two very young children.
The first reason
was the grief of losing a friend. As explained in the previous posts on him,
Corinth was not a sociable man. He had a taciturn, irritable and edgy character,
compounded by serious problems of chronic depression, and over the years he had
already or would continuously break relations with many of his companions: both
with the majority of the members of the Munich Secession, where he had remained
the last decade of the nineteenth century (there, he had created his own group
of alternative painters to the Secession, called the Freie Vereinigung - Free Association), as well as with his closest
partners in the Berlin Secession, including Max Liebermann and his own
publishers in Berlin, Paul and Bruno Cassirer.
However, to those
painters whom he considered true friends, Corinth had dedicated essays and
articles (in the case of Carl Strathmann and Thomas Theodor Heine) or portraits
(including Otto Eckmann and, again, Carl Strathmann). We already mentioned that
sometimes, on these friends (e.g. Strathmann), Corinth had formulated a praise
in his essays and articles that would later prove, with hindsight, completely
disproportionate, cutting out for them a position in the history of art that
they would be far to eventually gain. Corinth had portrayed Walter Leistikow on
two occasions: once in 1893 (Leistikow wore a black band in mourning for the
death of his father; see the cover of the Life
published in 2000 - fig. 3) and one in 1900 (fig. 4): the painter was caught in the act of
painting en plein air in Agger, a
seaside location of Northern Denmark, where he was passing a full month of
vacation together with Corinth. The two had met in 1887, but they had made
friendship only in 1890.
There is no
doubt that it was a very intense bond, despite the difference in character
(Leistikow was affable, sociable, great weaver of networks among intellectuals,
while Corinth was an unsociable person) and pictorial style (Leistikow only
painted landscapes, Corinth had specialized in paintings dominated by great
figures - often nude - represented in the foreground, even if at the end of his
life, between 1918 and 1925 he discovered landscape as a genre painting of
great commercial success for him). As noted by Lacher in his afterword to the
edition of the Life in 2000, already
to the art historian Werner Weisbach, a contemporary of them, Leistikow and
Corinth seemed antithetical: in the Secession meetings, while the first
animated discussions, the second stood by, devoting himself to drink a glass of
Bordeaux. [3] If Corinth was the
prototype of the cursed and decadent German intellectual, dependent on alcohol,
and always at risk of psychological and physical collapse, Leistikow
corresponded instead to the ideal type of an engaged intellectual, always ready
to challenge the system, to motivate friends and companions to the fight, and to
go with them on the barricades.
In the days
before the suicide, Corinth was very concerned about the health of Leistikow. On
July 15 he reported in a telegram to his wife Charlotte (at that time on
vacation outside Berlin) that "Leistikow is very ill. I will catch up
tomorrow with your train." [4] And
one of the last known acts of Leistikow’s life was a birthday telegram, sent
precisely to Corinth on vacation with his wife, on July 21: "We are
celebrating you as a master and as the most faithful of the friends." [5]
Corinth had that day his 50 year birthday.
But, in addition
to the need to pay homage to his friend, the desire also manifested itself (and
herewith we came to the second reason)
to tell what happened in Berlin at the turn of the century, in a young Germany,
newly united since only thirty years and still looking for its own national
artistic identity. These were events that involved emotionally Corinth,
probably caught between conflicting feelings. He was born as a Prussian subject
and - as he wrote in the memories only a few years later, in 1916 - his loyalty
went especially to the Emperor Wilhelm II and to the Prussian military world.
On the other hand, Prussia was an artistically uncultured world, so much so
that the biography of Leistikow quotes - in the first pages - a harsh judgment
of the Swiss painter Karl Stauffer-Bern: "In Berlin there are the best
soldiers and worst painters". [6] And Corinth does not hesitate to mention,
in the same book, nonsense aesthetic judgment by the emperor, who wanted to
intervene several times with derogatory statements against the Berlin Secession
and in particularly against Leistikow, of which he said he had turned the Mark
of Brandenburg into a huge marsh. His disdainful words made Leistikow even more
popular, said Corinth.
Corinth solved
his dilemma by choosing the modern against the ancient, and therefore by siding
against the academic establishment and also against the political power. At the
same time - in my opinion in a very arbitrary way – he gave a national and
nationalist reading of the work of Leistikow. In reality, the latter was the
point of contact between German and Scandinavian art, literature and philosophy.
Leistikow knew very well the Scandinavian world, but had also important openings
also to the avant-garde art movements of the English-speaking world, including
the United States.
So, just weeks
after the suicide of his friend, Corinth decided to write what for him was to
be a biography, and in fact was rather a sort of eulogy, as we shall see. The
first reference to the drafting of the work in the correspondence of Corinth
(published by his son Thomas in 1979) is dated October 1, 1908. [7] On October 19
Corinth sends a letter to the writer Max Halbe, friend of Leistikow and one of
the greatest novelists of that time, to ask for some information on the life of
the deceased. [8] In those days Corinth
was working in parallel to another project, with musician Richard Strauss for
his opera Elektra, and to exhibits that would be held simultaneously in Weimar and Dresden. They had to be hectic work
days, if it is true that the first version of the text was completed very soon,
in December 1908, according to Reimar F. Lacher. In fact, Lacher writes that
the text was substantially completed in just five months after the death of the
painter, and that until the time of publication, in the fall of 1910, it was
only marginally corrected. [9]
On the essence of art literature
One cannot start
the analysis of the volume on Leistikow without devoting a few lines to Corinth’s
views on artistic literature. We are in 1910, i.e. in the same years in which
Julius von Schlosser is conceiving the project to dedicate courses on Art
Literature (Kunstliteratur) at the
Vienna University between 1914 and 1920. Just at the turn of the century, an
explosion of art literature by German artists has taken place, perhaps also due
to the enormous effect that philosophy had on that culture. Also reading the
criticism on art works of that time makes it also quite clear that memoirs and
other writings of the artists were at the basis of any important critical work
of those years.
According to
Corinth, Leistikow was the first of the modern painters (im jungen Deutschland) to have added a wide literary production to
his artistic activity [10]: he mentions not only the novel "Auf der Schwelle" (On the threshold),
but also the whole wide production of essays in magazines of art and
aesthetics, including several polemical texts against the hated Anton von
Werner. For Corinth, therefore, drafting the biography of Leistikow was also an
opportunity to reflect on the role of writing about art by artists.
"Compose
images, painter, and do not write!" (Bilde
Künstler, rede nicht). [11] This is
the invitation - Corinth writes - that all artists who want to put their
thoughts into writing always receive from professional art critics, who have
never had the writings of a Leonardo or a Dürer, of a Delacroix or a Whistler close
to their heart. But the answer of Corinth is: "The word is free, why should
we be excluded from it?" [12]
For Corinth,
writing about art is an act of emancipation of the practical artist from the
theoretical critic: the artist as a craftsman, as one who produces art
manually, finally dares to entry into the privileged world of writing, reserved
to professionals of aesthetic theory. He dares it in order to assert his own
identity on the one hand and to narrate his life on the other one. And in fact,
the entire literary output of Corinth is characterized by practical, not
theoretical tones. Even Renate Hartleb had noted: "His writings do not
deal with the spiritual in art, but with life, a life in art, indeed in fact a
life through art." [13]
Thus, you would
seek in vain in the Life any
systematic dwelling on the artistic theory of Leistikow, but also on the
ultimate reasons of the artistic innovation of those years. For Corinth, writing
about art means above all marking the more or less positive personal qualities of
people, emphasizing their emotions, describing characters, recounting episodes
and analysing the relationships between artists. Leistikow is the great friend who
had passed away dramatically: on him we can only speak well. However, there is
no ability to fully identify the role he played in the art of his time. And
indeed, it is very rare that instant books would be able to provide, in
addition to more immediate information, deep critical evaluations.
Structure of the work
If the title
refers mainly to the biographical aspect and the cultural life of Berlin, the
volume actually tries to combine two dimensions. The first is the chronological
narrative of the events of the life of the painter, novelist and designer
Walter Leistokow. He was born in 1865 in Bromberg, today Bydgoszcz, in the
current Poland, and committed suicide in 1908 in Berlin, as already said. This
is actually not a real biography in strict terms; as we will see, large
intervals of the painter's life are left uncovered; it is clear that Corinth
had no time for, and perhaps he even did not feel the need of, a real
biographical research.
This first
dimension, linked to the chronology of events, covers the first four chapters
and the last one: (i) Character and youth; (ii) The Association of XI, art and
decorative arts and crafts; (iii) Paintings of the Mark of Brandenburg and the
creation of the Berlin Secession; (iv) The disease, the last few years and the
creation of the League of German artists; (last) Death, burial and conclusions.
Within this chronological sequence, Corinth opens a long parenthesis,
introducing a second dimension: the author dwells on Leistikow’s ability in a
series of executive techniques beyond oil painting (watercolors, pastels and
graphic art) and as a writer: the idea is therefore to describe Leistikow as homo universalis.
Walter Leistikow: a young intellectual disrupts the artistic Berlin in 1892
At a first glance, one could do nothing
else but just to admire the artistic production of Leistikow based on images
published in the Life by Corinth and
interpreting his artistic career as the (quite traditional) evolution of a
nineteenth-century naturalist, who is first increasingly influenced by
symbolist motives and then finds a neo-romantic vein. This would however be a quite
simplistic conclusion. Leistikow was by no means a secondary personality for
German art, even if today he is almost forgotten and his works are concentrated
almost exclusively in the museum of his hometown Bydgoszcz (http://www.muzeum.bydgoszcz.pl/) and
at the Bröhan museum in Berlin (http://www.broehan-museum.de/en_index.html).
To try to understand the importance of
Leistikow, just compare two pictures, both of 1892: one is the Melancholy of Edvard Munch, the second
is the Congress of Berlin, by Anton
von Werner.
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Leistikow had
married Anna Mohr, a very educated Danish woman (she would translate into Danish
some classics of symbolist literature) and already before the marriage he knew
very well the Scandinavian art, having completed his studies with the Norwegian
landscape painter Hans Fredrik Gude. It was Leistikow – at just 27 years - to
discover the existence of Munch in Copenhagen, to invite him to Berlin and make
him known through a solo exhibition, organized in 1892 at the Association of
Arts (Kunstverein) of the capital.
Anton von
Werner, president of the Prussian Academy of Fine Arts and a sworn enemy of
Leistikow, tried to impose the immediate closing of the exhibition; when he
realized that a forced closure was not possible under the Articles of the
Association, he immediately called together all the members for an
extraordinary assembly and, albeit with a narrow majority (120 to 105), he did
amend the statute and closed the show on the same day. All in all, the
exhibition of Munch had lasted only a week. Corinth entrusts the description of
the events to Leistikow himself, who in a stinging article written under a
pseudonym - reproduced in its entirety in the Life - says triumphantly that since then the representatives of the
modern art ("junge Kunst"
or "young art" in German terminology of those years) were able to
present themselves to the public as true martyrs.
With his action, von Werner also led to the fortune of Munch, who became - after the closure of
the exhibition - the best known painter of Wilhelmine Germany. The paintings no
longer exposed in Berlin were immediately greeted in Munich, and from there in
many German cities. Munch not only sold a lot, but established his residence in
Berlin for four years, influencing the German art scene. After all, one cannot
understand German expressionism if does not take note that in Germany - thanks
to Leistikow - Edvard Munch was known at least four years before all the French
Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. It was he - with his Scandinavian
poetic universe -to have a significant impact on the generation of painters
immediately after Corinth: the Bridge group (die Brücke) by Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Karl
Schmidt-Rottluff and Max Pechstein and the violent colourism of Emil Nolde.
In truth,
exhibitions of impressionists had already been held in private galleries in
Berlin since 1883, for instance by Fritz Gurlitt. However, the giants of French
art as Manet, Monet, Courbet, Degas, Rodin and Cezanne, but also other
protagonists of the second half of the nineteenth century (the Belgian Meunier,
the Swedish Zorn and the Italians Boldini and Segantini) entered the National
Gallery in Berlin only in 1896, when the Austrian Hugo von Tschudi took its direction.
Van Gogh was exhibited in Berlin for the first time only at the first Secession
exhibition, also organized by Leistikow, in 1899: Corinth writes in the Life that he was a Dutch on whom nobody
knew anything, and that the same Paul Cassirer had never heard of him.
Leistikow had instead seen some works of him in Copenhagen and had identified a
cultural affinity with him, making possible to expose him in the German
capital. [14] It was a bolt from the
blue: Van Gogh immediately became the darling of the German bourgeoisie.
If Munch
determined the new aesthetic addresses in Germany, however, there is a comment
in the Life that should not go
unnoticed, because it reveals the real aesthetic preferences, the deepest moods
of Corinth. The Life is written in 1910,
the year in which Corinth expels Emil Nolde from the Berlin Secession. Nolde
and the movement of the Bridge (Die
Brücke) will create the New Secession in Berlin, and thus begins the
divergence between the Impressionists (Secession) and expressionists (New
Secession) in the capital. Corinth observes that if Leistikow had been still
alive, maybe this would not have happened. [15]
He adds that - with hindsight - the influence of Munch on young German painters
had even gone beyond what was reasonable, in his view. [16] The reality is that the new generation –
the one that criticizes Corinth - now refers to Munch and considers German
impressionism like a conservative movement. Perhaps Leistikow and Corinth -
although bound by fraternal friendship - were really different types. The first
had initiated the art revolution in 1892, the second - in a few years – will find
himself representing conservative aesthetic positions, assuming the presidency,
in 1915, of the final phase of the Berlin Secession, now devoid of any modernizing
design.
Leistikow and
Munch remained in contact for long. Ten years after the show, in 1902, Munch
produced a lithography of Leistikow and his Danish wife Anna Mohr. It is, for
once, a conventional portrait. But Munch would not have been Munch if he had
not drawn a little ghost in the background, perhaps one of the two children of
Leistikow, or a sad omen of his tragic end.
Leistikow
as as Kunstpolitiker, art politician and
engaged intellectual
Already on the
first page of the Life [17], Corinth
emphasizes the three main aspects of Leistikow’s activity: beyond painting, the
commitment in the organization of the artistic life of Germany (Kunstpolitik, or the politics of art)
and the interest in literature. So, Leistikow is considered as a Kunstpolitiker, albeit in the sense in
which today we speak of a committed intellectual engaging in the build-up of
institutions (he never entered in politics). There is no doubt, however, that
he had a clear idea of his own preferences. Corinth - which was deeply
conservative - does not tell us, for example, that the first step of Leistikow
in Berlin was to have been part - in 1890, and then at only twenty-five – of the
poetic-literary group Friedrichshagen, of a socialist and anarchist print (of
which he was the only painter). The circle met in the countryside of the Mark
of Brandenburg. It was already there that he had become an intimate friend of Berlin
writers, well before expressing its interest prevailing for painting. The
members shared a common contempt for everything that was bourgeois. [18] And it was there that the love for that
campaign was born in him. In the group came together also about a dozen
Scandinavian intellectuals. On that occasion Leistikow also met his future
wife, Anna Mohr.
The Group of XI - 1892
The repressive
action performed by von Werner in 1892 was the straw that broke the camel. Times
- it must be said - were now ripe. In 1889 a group of Berlin painters had
challenged the ban of the imperial government and had gone to Paris - in the
hands of the anti-clerical left, at the time of the Third Republic - to attend
celebrations to mark the first centenary of the French Revolution. The reaction
to the repressive action by von Werner was therefore the creation of the Group of the XI (Vereinigung der XI) in 1892, which was
the first organized group of dissident painters in Germany. A few months later
comes to light the Secession of Monaco; the Vienna Secession is of 1897.
The model for the
Group of the XI was that the Group of the XX, created in Brussels by
James Ensor a few years earlier. Here appear the true limits of the Life. Perhaps for the haste with which
the volume is drafted, or perhaps because of a general difficulty to trace a
systematic redline in the history of art, Corinth cannot explain the
programmatic vision of Leistikow and the XI. It is true that the Group, rather than for a single programmatic
address, was characterized by a common intimate tone and the absence of any
reference to officialdom. Leistikow writes, in a passage not quoted by Corinth:
"We just wanted to stay among us. From this idea we expected fun and maybe
even a little of renewal for the art of the capital, and in doing so: Living
". [19] However in the text by Corinth - if there is a clear reference to
the contribution of Scandinavian culture - the vitalistic and individualist
effect which the philosophy of Nietzsche had on Leistikow (who himself wrote on
it) is not understood fully, while the influence of Japanese art and French Art Nouveau is ignored. The accession of
Leistikow to the Jugendstil is
only attributed to a decorative aspect of exclusive Nordic derivation.
On the other hand, this is an art far from the sensitivity of Corinth, who is
linked to Impressionism: on Leistikow’s painting in those years, Corinth
writes, "he made use only of ‘local colour’, that is the colour that
objects have in and by themselves, regardless of the impact that air and light
have on them." [20] For those who
have read the manual "Learning to paint" in the eyes of Corinth painting
like this is a serious mistake.
The next step is
the creation of the Berlin Secession in 1898. Here too, the narrative by
Corinth is - after all - very simplistic. The author combines two arguments. On
the one hand - writes Corinth - Leistikow is now back on the right path: he
moves away from the symbolism of the previous years and - as a subject -
discovers the magic melancholy (melanchonischer
Reiz) of the nature of Brandenburg, and in particular of its lakes and
forests. Although several aspects of decorative art remain, including in
particular the effect of large colour surfaces in the picture (die breite Flächenwirkung), Leistikow
"learns to cultivate the tones that are dependent on air and light"
and becomes an "interpreter of a harsh nature ", in the literal sense
of the' translator ' (Dolmetsch) of nature in painting. [21] Also here, the
terminology of the manual "Learning to paint" is used, but this time
to express the attainment of perfection. On the other hand, Corinth adds that
Leistikow paints - for the pavilion of exposures at the train station Lehrter
Bahnhof in Berlin- which hosts major art exhibitions since 1895 - a new
painting in this new style, which is however rejected by the jury. The painting
will be then bought by a wealthy collector and donated to the National Gallery,
where after its exposure attracts great attention from the public. During a visit,
it will nevertheless attract a disparaging comment by the Emperor.
Leistikow
realizes that the time has come to create a safe space where one can practice
the art without the risk of any administrative and financial dependency upon
academic circles, and - following the experience of Monaco and Vienna -
organizes an independent circle, with its own exhibition spaces and forms of
mutual solidarity in the management of the revenues from sales. He was able to
obtain the support of some important bankers and to find exhibition spaces. 65
artists answered the call. Leistikow and Paul Cassirer organized the first
exhibition in 1899. And here happens a real first class cultural event: the
first Berlin Secession exhibition manages to combine three strands of art for
sale to the public: the first is that of the European impressionists and
post-impressionists (Monet, Manet, Cezanne, Gauguin, van Gogh and all the
others); the second is that of the great Germans of the late nineteenth century
(Böcklin, Leibl, Thoma, Uhde), with only Menzel opposing to that any of his
paintings is exhibited; the third is the one of the German Impressionists, who
form the Secession in strict sense (Corinth, Liebermann, Slevogt and the
others). The Secession becomes the place where the great collectors from the
German bourgeoisie therefore have a threefold opportunity of choice. On
Leistikow, Corinth writes: "Leistikow was the most industrious of all,
when it came to acting for the best of the Secession. He knew how to talk to
the President Max Liebermann, was skilled in affecting the wealthy, a very rare
ability, and convincing them to invest money for the endeavour of the
secession. He encouraged artists, taking the trouble to convince them to sell
their paintings to his maecenas friends. Fate had kissed him at that time with
the greatest luck. His paintings were welcomed and best sold everywhere;
galleries bought them. He was represented at the National Gallery [editor's
note: of Berlin], in the museums of Dresden, Leipzig, Magdeburg and Krefeld.
Also the owners of private galleries bought many of his paintings. These
private galleries were creations of rich merchants. When the industry brought
to Berlin patrimonies which had never been seen, part of those profits was used
by the lucky owners for founding artistic initiatives." [22] "I am Swimming in the money" he
wrote to Corinth in the fall and convinced him to move to Berlin, where Corinth
went to live in his old flat.
These are the
years - writes Corinth - where the atelier of Leistikow became the reception
hall of the Secession, around which now revolved the most established
intelligentsia in the capital: the new director of the National Gallery
Tschudi, the publisher Samuel Fischer, the great literates Halbe, Hauptmann and
Wolff, and important guests from Scandinavia: Munch, Strindberg, Ibsen, Zorn
and many others. Leistikow was constantly on the road, between Northern Europe,
France and Italy. In 1903 the fate delivered him, however, a tremendous
surprise: he discovers falling ill with syphilis, at that time a deadly
sexually transmissible disease. The martyrdom started that will lead him to
suicide five years after. Despite this, the art activity of Leistikow
continued.
Deutscher Künstlerbund – The League of German Artists - 1903
The final step
in the activity of Leistikow as Kunstpolitiker,
art politician, is the creation of the League of German artists in Weimar in
1903, along with the tycoon and Archduke Harry Kessler. The league still exists
and is now headquartered in Berlin
(http://www.kuenstlerbund.de/english/projects/deutscher-knstlerbund/index.html), but the site does not mention anymore Leistikow, who is now
virtually fallen into oblivion. From the beginning, the League has awarded
scholarships for residences of German artists at the Villa Romana in Florence (acquired
by Max Klinger with the help of the Secession), an institution which is also
still operating (http://www.villaromana.org/front_content.php?idcat=17&lang=3). Also in this case there is no longer any mention of Walter
Leistikow in the website.
The
affirmation of Berlin as the capital of artistic transgression
We already
mentioned that, in the few years when Leistikow established himself at the
heart of the artistic world of Berlin, Germany experienced - almost without any
interruption and indeed in parallel - all stylistic passages that France had
seen in a 40-50 year time frame. Everything happens at the same time: Jugendstil (and therefore the
secessionism inspired by symbolism and naturalism), impressionism,
expressionism and even the transition to abstract art, in a race to immediately
overcome every new art stream which runs at the same hectic pace as
modernization of urban life. Berlin is certainly one of the symbols of this
acceleration.
I find it
interesting that both Corinth and Leistikow, yet so different in style, never
confronted themselves with the urban reality of their city, highly modern for their time:
the first painted historical, mythological or religious themes, the second
depicted only lakes, ponds and forests. The bourgeoisie of Berlin – the largest
buyer of both painters - was excited by the achievements of modern life and the
new media (Berlin had 150 cinemas in 1910), but searched in Corinth and
Leistikow the reassurance that, amid so much progress, the ‘new’ could still
married with the ‘old’, the renewal with the elegy. Please consider the fact
that just twenty years after the disappearance of Leistikow, in Berlin was
shown for the first time the film Metropolis by Fritz Lang, the symbol of an
urban humanity facing for the first time the challenge of a dehumanizing
technology modernization. Well, the painting of the two artists seemed to offer
to the bourgeoisie Berlin, a few years before, the (false) guarantee that any
nightmare like this would never materialize.
Even in his
monothematic concentration on lakes and forests, the intellectual Leistikow has
anyway a merit for the city. He gave start, with his initiatives, to the life
of Berlin as a centre of transgression in the visual arts, anchoring it to the
already intense literary life that existed in the city. The photos of the jury
of the Secession can now make you smile, but you could not understand the role
that the German capital played in the art of the twentieth century without that
group of artists, each invariably with a hat, a bowler or a cylinder. Yet that
was the form of rebellion at the time: it was the German civil society that
rebelled in the world of ancient militarized Prussia, basically represented by
the hooked Prussian helmet.
And from the contradictions of the capital Berlin, in the last decade before the First World War, we will start for the second part of this article.
NOTES
[1] Corinth, Lovis – Das Leben Walter
Leistikows. Ein Stück Berliner Kulturgeschichte, Berlin, Gebr. Mann Verlag,
2000, pp. 246. All references to quoted pages refer to this edition.
[3] Lacher, Reimar F., Afterwards to
Corinth Lovis – Das Leben … (quoted), p. 207. See also: Lehnart, Ilona: Wein,
ich bin ganz wild auf Wein. Lovis Corinth prostet Walter Leistikow zu, in: Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung, 14.11.2000, page L24. See: http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/buecher/rezension-sachbuch-wein-ich-bin-ganz-wild-auf-wein-11317394.html
[4] Lovis Corinth, Eine Dokumentation,
Tübingen, Verlag Ernst Wasmuth, 1987, p. 121
[5] Lovis Corinth, Eine Dokumentation
…, quoted, p. 122
[6] Corinth, Lovis – Das Leben …,
quoted, p. 17
[7] Lovis Corinth, Eine Dokumentation
…, quoted, p. 123
[8] Lovis Corinth, Eine Dokumentation
…, quoted, p. 124
[9] Lacher, Reimar F., Afterwards to
Corinth Lovis – Das Leben … (citato), p. 206
[10] Corinth, Lovis – Das Leben …,
quoted, pp. 101-114
[11] Corinth, Lovis – Das Leben …,
quoted, pp. 101
[12] Corinth, Lovis – Das Leben …,
quoted, pp. 101
[13] Hartleb, Renate – Afterwards to:
Corinth, Lovis – Selbstbiographie , Lipsia, Gustav Kiepenheuer, pp. 246
[14] Corinth, Lovis – Das Leben …,
quoted, p. 61
[15] Corinth, Lovis – Das Leben …,
quoted, p. 11
[16] Corinth, Lovis – Das Leben …,
quoted, p. 54
[17] Corinth, Lovis – Das Leben …,
quoted, p. 11
[18] See the novel “Seine Cousine” (His Cousine) published
in 1893.
[19] Margrit, Bröhan - Walter
Leistikow, Berlin, Nicolaische Verlargsbuchhandlung, 1989, p. 34. The quoted
text is of 1896.
[20] Corinth, Lovis – Das Leben …, quoted,
p. 40
[21] Corinth, Lovis – Das Leben …,
quoted, p. 57
[22] Corinth, Lovis – Das Leben …,
quoted, p. 62
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