Left and Right: Politics and Images of Motherhood in Weimar Germany
Author(s): Michelle Vangen
Source: Woman's Art Journal, Vol. 30, No. 2 (FALL / WINTER 2009), pp. 25-30
Published by: Old City Publishing, Inc.
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40605296
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Left and Right: Politics and
Images of Motherhood in
Weimar Germany
By Michelle Vangen
the end of the nineteenth century, the concept of
motherhood was gaining increasing importance in the
German social consciousness. Entwined with theories
of German nationalism and linked to contemporary population
debates, politics, and concerns over women's changing social
roles, the subject came to hold great political, social and cultural
significance by the time of the Weimar Republic. Paralleling this
growing public concern during the opening decades of the
twentieth century was the burgeoning interest the subject was
afforded in the visual arts. Representations of mothers and
children appeared frequently in the work of artists active during
the Weimar period, between 1918 and 1933. Despite displaying
a great diversity of style and intent, many of these artists had in
common a tendency to use the figure of the mother as a means
to address a variety of issues, so that during the 1920s, it became
the bearer of multiple political and social meanings that were
often contradictory.
During the years of the Weimar Republic, the image of the
mother was appropriated by both the political left and right.
Left-leaning artists such as Otto Dix and Georg Schrimpf used
the trope of the mother as a tool to engage with contemporary
social and political issues, while Paula Modersohn-Becker's
earlier representations of motherhood were appropriated by
some on the political right to promote a nationalist cultural
agenda. This discussion expands upon an issue within the
Weimar discourse on which little has been written.1
The focus on motherhood during the opening decades of
the twentieth century was in part the result of an upsurge of
nationalistic sentiment following Germany's unification in
1871. Entwined with this sense of nationalism was the concept
of the "health of the nation/' which depended in large part
upon a steady production of newborns to increase the
population.2 The effects of industrialization as well as the
increasing availability of contraceptive devices had caused
Germany to experience a declining birth rate. Seen together
with the high death tolls of first the Franco-Prussian War and
then later World War I, this decline was viewed by many as a
serious threat, a "population crisis." So deep was the concern,
that attempts were made to bring motherhood under state
control and to encourage women to bear multiple children.3
The issue of motherhood was also intricately intertwined
with debates on women's changing social roles. By the 1920s
women had made major advances toward greater equality.
Throughout the war years women had infiltrated the work force
in great numbers and, with the establishment of the Weimar
Republic they were given the right to vote. Inevitably, their
increasing public presence called into question the traditional
domestic order which placed women in the private roles of wife
and mother. As many women began to advocate their belief that
motherhood was a choice and not their natural purpose in life,
there was widespread public reaction and debate.
During the Weimar era motherhood became highly
politicized. Polarized by issues such as the population crisis and
the need for welfare and child care services, political parties of
all stripes appropriated the figure of the mother for their own
ends. The parties on the right, believing in the need to battle
against their perceived notion of the sexual "immorality" of the
times, championed the image of the mother as preserver of
morality and the family. For those on the left, it provided a
useful tool in their battle for improved welfare services as well
as in their critique of the capitalist system.4
Rife with political and social significance and a multiplicity
of meanings, the trope of the mother proved well suited to the
art being produced during the Weimar years, when the
predominant artistic trend was a return to figuration after years
of experimentation with abstraction. Much of this
representational art has been grouped together under the
blanket term Neue Sachlichkeit (most commonly translated as
The New Objectivity), coined by the art critic and director
Gustav Hartlaub for the 1925 exhibition bearing that name. He
went on to divide the Neue Sachlichkeit into two main
categories - a right-wing classical branch consisting of works
devoted to timeless imagery, and a left-wing or verist branch
consisting of political and socio-critical art.5
Clearly, several of the artists included in the first Neue
Sachlichkeit exhibition were interested in various left-win
concerns. In their hands the trope of the mother became
political tool used to address many of the social issues tha
dominated the Weimar years. Otto Dix, one of the most prolifi
producers of images of mothers in the early twenties, is ofte
placed within this left-wing branch. Although his specifi
politics are still widely debated by scholars (he never joined a
political party), he was involved with a number of
revolutionary art groups, including Berlin Dada with its strong
FALL / WINTER 2009 ^%
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Fig. 1. Otto Dix, Mother and Child (1921), oil on canvas, 47" x 32".
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden.
ties to anarcho-Communism, and many of his paintings from
this time deal with left-wing subject matter and were intended
as critical commentaries on life in the Weimar Republic.6 Two
paintings titled Mother and Child (1921; Fig. 1, and 1923; Fig. 2)
can be viewed in this light.7 Although both works take
maternity as their subject matter, the greater issue is a critical
examination of the economic inequality suffered by many
during the Weimar years.
The critical edge to both of these works is immediately
apparent through an analysis of the type of mother Dix
portrayed. Their simple clothing and the industrial settings
proclaim their status as members of the poor, urban working
class. Both are haggard and sickly and stare off into the distance
with vacant expressions. Neither painting extols the bliss of
motherhood. Rather, these mothers appear worn out by the
physical hardships of working class life and exhausted by the
stress of raising children in such dire circumstances.
Such portrayals were not uncommon during the years of the
Republic. By the early twenties the suffering, working class
mother was a standard trope frequently used by the German
Communist Party (KPD) to symbolize the repression of the
proletariat. Following the idea that such women were doomed
Fig. 2. Otto Dix, Mother and Child (1923), oil on plywood, 31 3/4" x18".
Galerie der Stadt Stuttgart.
to suffer under a tyranny of childbearing (denied as they were
the contraceptive devices and medical information and
procedures available to women of the middle class), these
images symbolized class repression and the inhumanity of
capitalism. They were employed by many artists, including
Käthe Kollwitz (1924: Fig. 3) and Rudolf Schlichter, to create
political propaganda, often for the KPD' s fight against the
abortion laws that existed during the Republic.8
While Communist artists used images of motherhood for
the straightforward political purpose of attacking capitalism,
Dix' s mothers were intended to draw attention to the living
conditions of the urban, working class poor. The difference can
be seen in their manner of representation. Artists such as
Schlichter tended to create generalized images of poor mothers
in non-specific settings whose power was derived chiefly
through the contrast between the proletarian mother and her
bourgeois oppressors. Dix, on the other hand, drew the
subjects for his two paintings from actual working class
women. According to one of his students, the artist preferred
to base his paintings on real people, particularly those who
were "marked by their lot in life."9 Additionally, Dix has
placed them in specific settings, with run-down buildings.
WOMAN'S ART JOURNAL
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Thus the two works appear as actual portrayals of the
experience of being a destitute mother in one of Weimar
Germany's many big cities.
Dix' s intention to create social criticism rather than matterof-fact
transcriptions of reality is made evident by his
characteristic use of exaggeration to draw attention to these
mothers' plight. In both works the figures are ghastly, with
unnatural coloring, furrowed skin, protruding veins, and
shriveled bodies. The artist's exaggeration of detail causes
every physical defect and sign of malnutrition and poverty to
command the viewer's attention. Dix also has altered the
physical characteristics of his figures somewhat to emphasize
particular qualities. An initial pencil sketch for the 1921 Mother
and Child shows a short, squat woman, obviously pregnant
and exhausted. In the final painting, however, Dix lengthened
the woman's body, giving her a more painfully malnourished
look, and added a child on top of her pregnant belly, thus
rendering her situation even more desperate. In these works
Dix used the trope of the mother as social criticism: the
exhausted, downtrodden mother serves to symbolize the poor
urban working class and the terrible conditions of their life.
Georg Schrimpf, whose art appears to have been aimed
more at creating romantic, timeless imagery than at directly
engaging with politics, is often placed within the right wing or
classical branch of the Neue Sachlichkeit. Still, Schrimpf was a
member of the German Communist Party and one of the
founders of the Action Committee, a group of revolutionary
artists established in Munich in 1919.10 Much of his post-1919
work appears to engage the contemporary political and social
theory of Gustav Landauer, whose Call to Socialism, first
printed in 1911 and republished in 1919, called for a pacifist
revolution through spiritual and economic renewal, for society
to escape the evils of modern capitalism and to attain the state
of an agrarian utopia.11 Many of Schrimpf's works of the
twenties and thirties repeat the mother-and-child motif,
intended to symbolize the peace and contentment possible in
Landauer's vision of rural working class bliss.
Schrimpf's depictions of motherhood, as seen in Midday
Rest (1922; Fig. 4) are idyllic. A mother and child lie in a loving
embrace, sleeping peacefully in a serene, idealized landscape.
From the tranquil figures and napping dog to the sunny skies
and meandering stream, the work exudes a sense of calm and
contentment. Humanity and nature coexist in harmony
reflecting an agrarian utopia founded in part upon Landauer's
theories.12 This becomes more apparent through the emphasis
on the issue of class. The mother in Midday Rest wears a simple
peasant dress and headscarf. Such attributes are readily
apparent in many of Schrimpf's mother-and-child images
from the twenties, which sometimes include barns and other
rural buildings in the background.13
Analyzed in the context of Germany's increasing urbanization,
works such as Midday Rest can be seen as illustrating the
possibility of an alternative Germany, one favoring agriculture
and rural living over industry and urban life. Using the trope of
the mother to symbolize the bliss of an agrarian utopia, Schrimpf
did not draw upon actual experiences of maternity as Dix did in
his paintings. Rather, he developed a type of mother and child FALL
/ WINTER 2009
Fig. 3. Käthe Kollwitz, Down with the Abortion Paragraph (1924),
lithograph poster made for the German Communist Party.
Fig. 4. Georg Schrimpf, Midday Rest (1922), oil on canvas, 24" x 21 3/4".
Kunstmuseum im Ehrenfeld, Düsseldorf.
characterized by plump, healthy bodies, idealized features, sweet
expressions, and an air of contentment - whose appearance
varies little throughout his work. As artists such as Dix and
Schrimpf explored the political and social potential of the figure
O
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Fig. 5. Paula Modersohn-Becker, Kneeling Mother with Child at Her
Breast (1906), on canvas, 44 1/2" x 29". Nationalgalerie Berlin.
of the mother, art critics and collectors also became interested in
the subject. The Weimar years saw a renewed interest in earlier
representations of motherhood, which critics then reexamined
within a contemporary context in an attempt to imbue them with
new cultural meanings. One artist whose work was reinterpreted
in this manner was Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876-1907).
Modersohn-Becker, a member of the artists' colony at
Worpswede, died at a young age, and her art appears to have
received little critical response until the 1920s. Ironically,
Modersohn-Becker was first known for her writing rather than
as a painter - her letters and journals were published
posthumously, in 1917 ', in book form.14 Their immense
popularity was partly responsible for the renewed interest in
her art. By the midyears of the Weimar Republic, ModersohnBecker's
work had become quite well known. She was
acknowledged as one of Germany's pioneering modernists,
and her work was promoted by important art dealers such as
J.B. Neumann and Alfred Flechtheim.
Throughout her brief career Modersohn-Becker was a
prolific producer of images of mothers and children, and it
was these representations that were most frequently singled
out for examination during the Weimar years.15 Walter MüllerWulckow,
in the introduction to his 1927 catalogue of
Modersohn-Becker' s work, wrote that, although the artist's
subjects ranged from still lives to landscapes, her true power
lay in her depictions of people, particularly women and
children. It was these works that offered the viewer the most
intense expression of the artist's psychological richness.16
Some critics attempted to read Modersohn-Becker 's mother
and child images within the context of the contemporary debates
on motherhood. Specifically, much of these writings aligned her
and her work with the belief that motherhood was women's natural
role and highest purpose in life.17 Her paintings, they wrote,
revealed "the fervor of motherly love" and expressed a "deep
womanly quality."18 Critics tended to dwell upon what they saw
as Modersohn-Becker's fascination with motherhood and her
tragic death in childbirth, letting such biographical information
color their readings of her work.19 The artist, thus, "fulfilled her
fate as a woman when she gave birth to her daughter," and her
work possessed "womanly-motherly" qualities.20
The most extreme reinterpretation of Modersohn-Becker's
work at this time, however, had little to do with the issue of
motherhood but, rather, was the result of the nationalist
cultural theories of the entrepreneur and art enthusiast
Ludwig Roselius,21 whose interest in art stemmed in part from
his personal cultural vision. An extreme nationalist and later a
Nazi sympathizer, he believed in the superiority of the
Germanic civilization and culture.22 In the wake of Germany's
humiliating defeat in 1918, it became Roselius' lifelong goal to
bring about a renewal of the German people and to reignite
their sense of cultural and spiritual superiority. In particular,
he wished to reinvigorate the Nordic artistic tradition and to
initiate a renaissance of "authentic" German culture, one free
from foreign corruption. Toward this goal, he engaged in a
major architectural and cultural project in the city of Bremen
during the 1920s. He purchased all of the buildings along the
medieval Böttcherstrasse, turning many into artist workshops
and museums intended to display his collections of German
art and artifacts. The street was converted into a cultural center
and propaganda set piece intended to acquaint the public with
his nationalistic cultural vision.23
Among the museums on the Böttcherstrasse was the Paula
Becker-Modersohn Haus, which opened in June of 1927.
According to recent accounts, Roselius began collecting
Modersohn-Becker's work around 1920.24 Most likely he was
initially drawn to the artist for her involvement with the
Worpswede artists' colony and her depictions of the north
German peasantry. He may have been influenced by Bernhard
Hoetger, an expressionist sculptor and architect who
collaborated with Roselius on the Böttcherstrasse project and
who had been a personal friend of the late artist. The museum
promoted Modersohn-Becker as the creator of a new kind of
art. Roselius praised her stylistic innovations, particularly her
use of simplicity to create monumental imagery. While other
critics of the time also focused on Modersohn-Becker's stylistic
achievements, calling her one of Germany's pioneering
modernists, Roselius had different interests in line with his
nationalistic intentions. Through a series of public talks and
publications, he held up Modersohn-Becker as an example of a
WOMAN'S ART JOURNAL
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true Nordic artist, one whose work represented the beginning
of a new and superior Germanic artistic tradition.25 His
message of the dawn of a new era of German art was further
conveyed through the design of the museum itself. From its
cast-iron railings to its decorative brickwork, the building was
covered in disks representative of the sun whose light was
meant to symbolize the cultural renaissance of Germany.
Within this context, Modersohn-Becker's images of
mothers, among the best-known of her works at this time (and
already linked to a conservative agenda) took on new
meaning. Although Roselius himself never singled these
works out for discussion, he owned several of the artist's most
innovative representations of motherhood, including Reclining
Mother and Child of 1906 (PI. 1) and Kneeling Mother with Child
at Her Breast (1907; PL 10 and Fig. 5).26
Kneeling Mother and Child lent itself particularly well to
reinterpretation according to Roselius's cultural theories.
Although not a direct reference to the German people, the
innovative painting could be read as an example of a new
direction in German art. With its lack of detail, limited use of
modeling, and flat planes of color, the painting stylistically
broke free from past artistic traditions. More importantly,
Modersohn-Becker's manner of depicting motherhood was
itself highly unconventional at the time she created the work.
Unlike a more traditional painting of the subject, such as Fritz
Mackensen's Madonna of the Moors of 1892 (See p. 9, Fig. 10)
with its peasant mother and child posed in a manner
reminiscent of the Virgin and Child, Modersohn-Becker's
painting presents figures who are blatantly naked, entirely
lacking in Christian significance, and possess a more
anonymous, timeless quality. Regardless of what the artist
herself had originally intended with such works, in Roselius's
hands her images of mothers became powerful symbols of a
new direction in Nordic art, signifying the reinvigoration of the
Germanic cultural tradition.
The very fact that Modersohn-Becker's representations of
motherhood were used as propaganda to promote nationalism
while those of Dix and Schrimpf functioned as a form of leftist
social commentary is indicative of the political, social, and
cultural significance these images came to acquire during the
years of the Weimar Republic. As artists and critics on the
political left and right actively explored the potential of the
subject in visual culture, it became the bearer of a multiplicity
of meanings. The trend continued into the National Socialist
era, where Nazi art abounded with images of buxom, blondhaired,
blue-eyed mothers and their children as symbols of
Aryan racial superiority. Ironically, by 1935 ModersohnBecker's
mothers, once championed as examples of a new
Nordic art, were derided as lacking a "sensitive, maternalwomanly
quality"27 and were lowered to the status of
"degenerate" art, thus exemplifying the constant reinterpretation
of representations of motherhood. •
Michelle Vangen is a doctoral candidate in the Art History
Program at The Graduate Center, CUNY. She is an adjunct
lecturer in the Art Department at Kingsborough Community
College, CUNY.
FALL / WINTER 2009
Notes
1 . The most thorough examination of the trope of the mother in Weimar
art can be found in Marsha Meskimmon, We Weren't Modem Enough:
Women Artists and the Limits of German Modernism (Berkeley: Univ.
of California Press, 1999), 75-119. Meskimmon's discussion, however,
focuses on women artists and thus ignores representations of
motherhood by male artists of the day.
2. According to Cornelie Usborne "At this time national fertility
became the yardstick by which the Wilhelmine authorities measured
national health and vitality." Cornelie Usborne, The Politics of the
Body in Weimar Germany: Women's Reproductive Rights and
Duties (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1992), xii.
3. It is important to note that during the Weimar era, quality, not just
quantity, was emphasized in government population policies,
compared with earlier Wilhelmine policies, which were aimed at
increasing the birth rate.
4. Such a division into left- vs. right-wing attitudes is, of course, greatly
simplified. In some instances, approaches to the concept of
motherhood varied within individual political parties, and at times
attitudes on the left and right might even converge.
5. See G. F. Hartlaub, "Zum Geleit," Neue Sachlichkeit: Deutsche Malerei
seit dem Expressionismus (Mannheim: Städtische Kunsthalle, 1925);
trans, and quoted in Rose-Carol Washton Long, ed., German
Expressionism: Documents from the End of the Wilhelmine Empire to
the Rise of National Socialism (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of
California Press, 1993): 290-92. The term Neue Sachlichkeit remains a
source of scholarly contention, as does Hartlaub's classification of artists
and their work. Some Marxist scholars have associated Neue
Sachlichkeit art with the acceptance of a ruthless capitalism as well as
the rise of fascism in the thirties. One of the most thorough discussions
can be found in Dennis Crockett, German Post-Expressionism: The Art
of the Great Disorder 1918-1924 (University Park: Pennsylvania State
Univ. Press, 1999), 1-6.
6. Beginning with Hartlaub, Dix has been considered a leading
member of the left wing branch of the Neue Sachlichkeit. The
problem that so many scholars have grappled with, then, is not Dix's
classification as a verist, but rather how his work relates to party
politics. His lack of membership in the Communist party as well as
his professed disdain for party politics have led scholars such as
Linda McGreevy, in The Life and Works of Otto Dix: German Critical
Realist (Ann Arbor, Ml: UMI Research Press, 1981) to discuss Dix as
a "critical realist" whose work reveals an ethical - not a political outrage.
This stands in contrast to the ¡mage of Dix as a politically
radical artist. Further complicating the issue is Dix's somewhat
conservative approach to the craft of painting during the twenties.
See Frank Whitford, "The Revolutionary Reactionary," in Otto Dix:
1891-1969 (London: Tate Gallery Publications, 1992), 11-23.
7. Scholarly interpretations of these two works differ in regard to
political vs. sociocritical intent. A discussion of the 1921 Mother and
Child in the Tate Gallery catalogue for the 1992 Dix retrospective
presents the painting as a "biting political statement"; see Otto Dix:
1891-1969, 106. Brigitte Reinhardt describes the 1923 Mother and
Child as realistically characterizing the situation of the socially
disadvantaged, in her, "Dix - A Painter of Facts," in Otto Dix:
Bestandskatalog/lnventory Catalogue (Stuttgart: Galerie der Stadt
Stuttgart, 1989), 36.
8. Atina Grossman, "Abortion and Economic Crisis: The 1931
Campaign against Paragraph 218 in Germany," New German
Critique 14 (Spring, 1978): 119-37; Meskimmon, We Weren't
Modern Enough, 106-112; Usborne, The Politics of the Body in
Weimar Germany, 156-201.
9. Otto Dix: 1891-1969, 106.
10. Schrimpf's interest in alternative modes of living and a new social
order led to his involvement with the Life Reform Movement,
centered in Ascona, Switzerland, and to his membership in groups
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such as the anarchist Gruppe Tat and the Action Committee. It is
through these activities that he would have become aware of
Landauer's theories. See Crockett, German Post-Expressionism, 98-
104; and Ulrich Gerster, "Kontinuität und Bruch. Georg Schrimpf
zwischen Räterepublik und NS-Herrschaft," Zeitschrift für
Kunstgeschichte 63 (2000): 532-35.
1 1 . For more on Landauer, see Eugene Lunn, Prophet of Community:
The Romantic Socialism of Gustav Landauer (Berkeley and Los
Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1973).
12. A recent interpretation reads the painting as showing the
impossibility of the unity of man and nature, i.e., the formal
separation of the monolithic form of the woman from the
miniaturized landscape setting reveals that the idyllic harmony of
man with nature is a construction and is no longer possible. See
Gerster, "Kontinuität und Bruch/' 540-41.
1 3. That more apparent markers of class appeared in Schrimpfs work of
the twenties may reflect a shift from a more general desire for social
change to one more firmly grounded in Landauer's concept of an
agrarian utopia. His Maria's Dream/The Miracle (1917) depicts a
naked woman and child in a generalized tropical paradise, while
Woman and Children with a Bird (1922) portrays a peasant family, as
indicated by the clothing and rural setting.
14. Excerpts from Modersohn-Becker's letters and journals were initially
published in the periodical Die Güldenkammer, appearing in five
different issues between January and May of 1913. They were
published in book form beginning in 1917, with the expanded and
definitive edition, edited by Sophie Dorothea Gallwitz, appearing in
1920. The 1920 edition became a bestseller and went through
numerous printings during the following decade.
15. Gillian Perry, Paula Modersohn-Becker: Her Life and Work (New
York and London: Harper & Row, 1979), 62.
16. Walter Müller-Wulckow, Die Paula Becker-Modersohn-Sammlung
des Ludwig Roselius in der Böttcherstrasse in Bremen (Bremen:
Anaelsachsen-Verlaa. 1927Ì. 17.
17. This may have been in part due to the publication and subseque
popularity of Modersohn-Becker's letters and journals. Adina Lerner
has argued in her thesis "Profiting from the Legacy of Paul
Modersohn-Becker: the Paula Becker-Modersohn Haus on the
Böttcherstrasse" (MA thesis, Univ. of Michigan, 1990) that the first few
published versions of Modersohn-Becker's letters and journals were
highly abridged and carefully edited in order to present an ¡mage of
Modersohn-Becker as a patriotic and dutiful wife and mother.
According to Lerner, in a time when traditional notions of motherhood
were under attack, the conservative editor of the letters and journals,
Sophie Dorothea Gallwitz, purposefully shaped Modersohn-Becker's
writings to focus on her thoughts about children and her longing for
motherhood, and deleted references to her marital troubles in order
to create a personality who reflected the "proper" role of a young
German woman. As the letters and journals were responsible for the
interest Modersohn-Becker's art received during the twenties, it is not
surprising that art critics presented a similar ¡mage of ModersohnBecker
as a more traditional woman who lovingly created ¡mages of
mothers and children.
18. "The fervor of motherly love" was used by Müller-Wulckow in his
introduction to the 1927 Böttcherstrasse catalogue, and "deep
womanly quality" was used by Oscar Schürer in "Paula ModersohnBecker,"
Der Cicerone (1923).
19. Schürer even opened his article on Modersohn-Becker with a few
comments on her death in childbirth.
20. Müller-Wulckow, Die Paula Becker-Modersohn-Sammlung, 18;
Ludwig Justi, Von Corinth bis Klee (Berlin: Verlag von Julius Bard,
1931), 96.
21. The wealthy Roselius, founder of Kaffee Hag, developed the first
patented process for decaffeinating coffee.
22. Although not a member of the National Socialist Party; Roselius
openly supported its leader, Adolf Hitler, and its nationalist agenda.
23. The Böttcherstrasse project also served Roselius's international
business interests - his Kaffee Hag headquarters as well as a branch
of the German-American Bank were located on the street. See
Susan Henderson, "Böttcherstrasse: The Corporatist Vision of
Ludwig Roselius and Bernhard Hoetger," The Journal of Decorative
and Propaganda Arts 20 (1 994): 1 65-81 .
24. It is not known exactly when Roselius started collecting ModersohnBecker's
work, though 1920 is the date suggested by Maria
Anczykowski in her essay "Ludwig Roselius, das Paula-BeckerModersohn
Haus und seine Sammlung," in Paula ModersohnBecker
in Bremen: Die Gemälde aus den Sammlungen der
Kunsthalle Bremen, der Paula-Modersohn-Becker Stiftung, und der
Kunstsammlung Böttcherstrasse (Bremen: Paula Modersohn-Becker
Stiftung, 1996), 20-29.
25. See Ludwig Roselius, "Rede zur Einweihung des Paula-BeckerModersohn-Hauses,"
in Reden und Schriften zur Böttcherstrasse in
Bremen (Bremen: Verlag G.A. v. Halem, 1932), 41-53.
26. Roselius financed several publications on the Paula BeckerModersohn
Haus, written by Walter Müller-Wulckow, who discussed
Modersohn-Becker and her work as maternal and essentially
feminine. Installation photographs reveal that the exhibition layout
also focused attention on her representations of mothers and
children. Works such as Kneeling Mother and Child and Self-Portrait
on Her 6th Wedding Day (which Müller-Wulckow interpreted as
revealing the artist's longing for motherhood) were isolated in
niches and lit dramatically by overhead lighting.
27. Das Schwarze Korps, (21 August, 1935).
^ WOMAN'S ART JOURNAL
FRONTIERS
A Journal of Women Studies
An Interdisciplinary
and Multicultural
Feminist Journal
HhH
HjKÌ|j|m
Does your library subscribe to Project Muse?
If so, you may have access to the electronic
version of Frontiers. Consult your library for
more details. Back issues of Frontiers aie also
available on JSTOR.
University of Nebraska Press
P.O. Box 84555 • Lincoln, Nebraska 68501-4555
800.755.1105 or 402.472.8536 • www.nebraskapress.unl.edu
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PI. 1. Paula Modersohn-Becker, Reclining Mother and Child Nude (1906), on canvas, 32 5/8" x 49".
Kunstsammlungen Böttcherstrasse/Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum, Bremen.
PI. 1A. Paula Modersohn-Becker, detail (shoulder) of
Reclining Mother and Child Nude (1906).
PI. 2. Paula Modersohn-Becker,
Three Boys Bathing in the Canal (1901),
on cardboard, 21 1/3" x 15 1/2".
Private collection.
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PL 10. Paula Modersohn-Becker, Kneeling Mother with Child at
Her Breast (1906), on canvas, 44 1/2" x 29". Nationalgalerie Berlin.
PI. 11. Paula Modersohn-Becker, Mother with Child at Her Breast, Half
Nude (1906), on cardboard, 29 1/3" x 20 1/2". Von der Heydt
Museum, Wuppertal.
PI. 12. Paula Modersohn-Becker, Portrait of Werner Sombart (1906), on
canvas, 19 1/2" x 18". Kunsthalle Bremen.
PI. 13. Paula Modersohn-Becker, Portrait of Rainer Maria Rilke
(1906), on cardboard, 12 3/4" x 10". Private collection.
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