ART REVIEW : Impassioned Posters Changed the Face of Postwar Germany

Nov. 9, 1918. Kaiser Wilhelm abdicates power of a bruised and battered Germany. Within hours, a new republic is declared. A coalition of socialists forms a provisional government and announces a January date for the country’s first democratic elections. Suddenly, the war-weary nation awakes.

Censorship rules lapse, a paper shortage eases and posters swathe the urban landscape in fiery political rhetoric. The bold color used by German artists “transformed the cities into pyrotechnic tapestries,” according to historian Ida Katherine Rigby. Between the November Revolution and the January elections, wrote a contemporary observer, “Berlin’s streets rioted in color orgies, the houses exchanged their gray faces for an agitated mask.”

A selection of these impassioned posters now hangs on the spare white walls of the Photowest/W. Bradley Lemery gallery downtown. Tamed somewhat by the new surroundings, many of the works nevertheless refuse to be declawed, their fierce color and searing imagery stretching resolutely over the vast chronological and geographical divide.

An image of a bony, ashen hand poised over a quiet village portends impending danger. The poster’s caption links the threat to Bolshevism and urges Germans to protect their homeland from the forces that assumed power over Soviet Russia the year before. Determined to prevent Germany’s November Revolution from veering toward the anarchism and extremism associated with Soviet Russia’s October Revolution, the provisional government launched a fervent campaign to instill order, to cease agitation in the streets and appeal to workers to return to their jobs.

Posters became instrumental in this campaign, and those commissioned by the government’s publicity committee took their places on the streets beside those issued by political parties and private anti-Bolshevik leagues. The Novembergruppe, a band of artists and writers committed to upholding the values of the socialist-led revolution, carried out many of the commissions with the same Expressionist fury they brought to their paintings and prints.

More intelligible, perhaps, were posters in the style of O.H.W. Hadank’s “Work Is Deliverance.” The bold red block letters confirm the image below, of a monumental sower, spreading seeds across the new Germany. While the old nation stands in flames and ruins beneath a stormy sky, the new gleams in the light of the rising sun, a common symbol of the nascent republic. Radiant and orderly, the new world thrives through the labor of its citizens, the workers in distant, churning factories, and the strong, stern-faced sower.

Whether drawn in the violent black shards of Expressionism, in an older, more staid style of illustrational realism, or a melodramatic mode in between, the posters here state their case with bold insistence. The contemporary viewer, however, is faced with a challenge similar to that imposed on the German worker of 1918-19. While the worker could read the words but not the imagery of the more innovative posters, the present audience can grasp the power of the images but not the words. The gallery has provided only sporadic translations, and without these, the posters shout in a muffled voice, commanding in tone but elusive in meaning.

The richness of this material, historically as well as visually, deserves a more thoughtful approach than it has earned here. Thematic groupings and more precise information about the social and political contexts from which the work emerged would help it do what it meant to do--communicate and not just decorate.

Though the show is named “Novembergruppe,” it is doubtful that all of the work here was made by members of that group. Many of the posters bear the torch insignia of the Werbedienst, the government’s publicity office, but many do not. A campaign poster for the German National People’s Party, for instance, a faction that remained loyal to the conservative values of the Kaiser’s Germany, seems an unlikely Novembergruppe commission.

This eclectic selection of posters, culled from three private collections, nevertheless reflects the extraordinarily fickle nature of German politics between the wars. Even in retrospect, the period refuses a fixed definition. Its 17 different governments in 15 years suffered contradictions, clashes and dangerous ambiguities--problems that this show, too, cannot overcome.

“Novembergruppe” continues at Photowest Gallery (744 G St., Suite 205) through April 30.