An anti-conformist ?

Lederer at work. Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-2005-0827-501

We have a tendency to imagine Weimar Berlin as populated by revolutionaries from the left and from the right, and by artists who painted either workers in struggle against arrogant and bloodthirsty officers, or scenes of debauchery with prostitutes and fat bourgeois. This is indeed the case for painters like George Grosz and Otto Dix though they did paint other subjects too. But it is especially their most risqué or crude paintings that one finds on the Internet.

But Berlin was a metropolis of several million inhabitants. Although political extremists were many, they were far from a majority. And even if artists were constantly looking for new ways to represent a reality they saw as decadent and chaotic, there have always be
We have a tendency to imagine Weimar Berlin as populated by revolutionaries from the left and from the right, and by artists who painted either workers in struggle against arrogant and bloodthirsty officers, or scenes of debauchery with prostitutes and fat bourgeois. This is indeed the case for painters like George Grosz and Otto Dix though they did paint other subjects too. But it is especially their most risqué or crude paintings that one finds on the Internet.

But Berlin was a metropolis of several million inhabitants. Although political extremists were many, they were far from a majority. And even if artists were constantly looking for new ways to represent a reality they saw as decadent and chaotic, there have always been more traditional artists in Berlin.

I am not thinking now of "völkisch" artists, who painted folkloric scenes and loathed the avant-gardes, which they labeled as Bolsheviks and jewish. No, I'm thinking of an artist like the sculptor Hugo Lederer. His style was classic, clearly influenced by Greek art. He was the author of beautiful statues and received prestigious awards. He was director of the Berlin Academy of Arts during the Weimar years.

Practicing a classical art which didn’t excite much interest in those years, not revolting against traditional styles or struggling to invent new expression forms, Lederer didn’t have many admirers among modern art lovers. And, not being politically active and having declined to sign a manifesto for Nazi art, he wasn’t appreciated by the new masters either, after 1933. He didn't get any more commissions from the state.

Among his disciples, many were considered « degenerate » artist by the Nazis. But ironically, one of them, Josef Thorak, became one of the official sculptors of the Third Reich.

Lederer was born in the Austrohungarian empire in 1871. He died in Berlin in 1940.

Bust of Gustav Stresemann.

Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-08657