Art: Eternal Tug of War

Night after night, the once renowned sculptor would wander about the streets of the North German town of Güstrow —”a short, slim, miserable man,” one fellow townsman wrote, “with a sparse beard and clad in a coat that needed mending. But what eyes! I shall never forget those large, sad eyes.”

The sad sculptor with the large eyes was Ernst Barlach, one of the artists whom the Nazis condemned as degenerate and set out to destroy. Today West Germany has restored these artists to their proper place, but few seem to have won such wide affection as Barlach. Not only are his works put constantly on display; the West Germans take delight in performing the plays that he wrote as a sideline. Last week he got an additional accolade—a museum in Hamburg devoted entirely to his work.

Hamburg Haven. In pre-Nazi days, the last thing Barlach needed was a patron, but he was fortunate in finding one thereafter: Hermann Reemtsma, the Hamburg tobacco tycoon (“Ernte 23” cigarettes). Reemtsma met Barlach in 1934 and bought a sculpture called The Ascetic.

In time he added other works, until he had built up the best private collection of Barlach in the world. He was always generous in lending out his pieces when Barlach exhibitions resumed after World War II. “They belong to the world,” he said. But in 1960, a year before his death, Reemtsma began to worry that the collection would be broken up and scattered. And so he gave it to Hamburg, along with enough money to build the museum.

Figures from Heaven. In a museum full of Barlach’s works, his obsession with the endless tug of war between earth and heaven is evident throughout. He could be the earthiest of artists, and at times his eyes seemed restricted to the everyday—a woman holding an infant in her arms, two old people kissing each other farewell. At other times he would transform wood or bronze into hovering angels or soaring god-figures. But it was all consistent. In gesture and expression, even in the rhythms of their robes, his earth-bound figures reach out to heaven, while the figures from heaven wait to embrace them.

It was in 1906 while on a trip through Russia that Barlach became aware of “the prototypes of humanity that were everywhere in the street—the beggar, the workman, the peddler, the peasant, the merchant.” These could express “every human emotion from gentle piety to wild rage,” but for Barlach they were never individuals. He began to simplify his sculptures: “I omitted everything that was not essential. Instead of portraying persons, I tried to strip my human beings down to symbols, symbols of poor struggling humanity.” In this effort, Lutheran Barlach’s style became more and more religious in feeling: his cloaked peasants had far less to do with his own time than with the timeless figures that adorned the churches of the Middle Ages. “My teachers,” he said, “are the anonymous artists of the 13th and 14th centuries.”

Spittle & Scorn. That so tradition-minded an artist could ever have offended anyone is difficult to understand,” but the Nazis hounded him to the end. One by one his public monuments disappeared from view, and his statues were exiled en masse to the cellars of the museums. Once, when a courageous dealer asked for some prints and drawings, Barlach sent the poignant reply: “I am afraid I must decline. The collections of drawings that I sent to one of your colleagues came back soiled with spittle and torn to pieces.”

In time, he no longer dared to venture from his home during the daytime: “Small crowds are now gathering almost daily outside my garden fence. They stare at me with a hostile look in their eyes. Some have even started to throw stones through my windows. What have I done?” In 1938, just before he turned 69, Barlach’s heart gave out. The German papers, which had been under orders for years not to mention his name, were allowed to print an obituary notice “not to exceed ten lines.”