ODD MAN OUT: HEINRICH VOGELER AND FIN DE SIÈCLE WORPSWEDE
A study of an artist little known outside Germany whose career, artistic evolution, and tragic life are emblematic of European history from the 1890s to the Second World War.
Shortly after I retired from the Department of Romance Languages at Princeton University, I developed an interest in Heinrich Vogeler, a German artist little known in the U.S.A. or the U.K. Partly, this was inspired by my discovery in Princeton’s Firestone Library of a great number of books, from the years 1890 to 1914 approximately, that he had designed and illustrated in his then characterstic Jugendstil or art nouveau style. Around the same time I discovered similar work by two other German artists and book illustrators, “Fidus” (Hugo Höppener) and E.M. Lilien. All three were contributors to the well known avant-garde journals Pan and Jugend. I thought I might write a short book about the three of them, focusing on the way their ideological positions and hitherto largely shared Jugendstil artistic practices diverged in response to the shattering experiences of WWI, the difficult post-war period in Germany, and the coming to power of Hitler and the National Socialists in 1933. In brief: Vogeler became a revolutionary anarcho-socialist, then a Communist, finally emigrating to the Soviet Union in 1931; “Fidus” became a supporter of various “völkisch” movements and joined the National Socialist Party; and Lilien embraced Zionism, settled in Palestine and helped to found Bezalel, the Jewish art school in Jerusalem. The artwork of all three underwent similar changes. . .