82.73 Soldier in Insane Asylum (Soldat im Irrenhaus)

1918

Lithograph, 16 x 12 1/2" (40.5 x 30.7 cm)

Signed, ll:Felixmueller; lm: Soldat im Irrenhaus; lr: FM

Part of Die Schaffenden, I. Jg., 2 Mappe; Die Schaffenden stamp upside doen in upper right corner

Provenance: Hauswedell Aucyion, Hamburg, Nr. 820, May 1959

In his autobiographical writings, Felixmueller wrote about his own unwilling participation in World War I. He presents a vivid image of the situation encountered by those who resisted the military’s call-a resistance that became more frequent by 1917, when the realities of war began to affect the morale of the populace. One also recognizes that, while speaking for every man, he is relating his own experiences:

“Everyone sought a way out, everywhere one sensed the approaching military downfall. But some of us managed, simply because of lack of organization, to save ourselves before the war machine grabbed us completely. Simply by passive resistance: by playing that we were stupid, weak, suffering–finally outright refusal to serve, and there were enough among us who did this...Open resistance often meant endangering one’s life: the brig, penal-battalion, the front and usually mass graves. The military penal code was quite clear about the punishment for refusal to serve. The courage to resist was seen as a sign of insanity. Civil resistance was unknown among the bourgeois military doctors–and so anyone who resisted or refused to serve was crazy, ready for the asylum and treatment as mentally ill.

“Once someone sent back the notice to report for duty. The second notice was simply thrown in the stove. After a little while–precious time that one had won–another notice appeared in the mailbox: Report to the district commander on Sunday morning at 9 o’clock! Two emissaries came to the door–or rather, one entered the room, greeted one curtly and escorted one to the train station, and from there, as the guard said, ‘to the crazy house!’

“In order to make this poor guard’s journey pleasant, the delinquent suggested buying some cigarettes. In the story an opportunity to escape through a back door presented itself–while the poor guard stood oblivious at the front door. A sense of compassion for him, however, prevented the escape, and so both traveled, smoking away, to the insane asylum. Here again the curt and angry greeting of the doctor, who, thinking of a Sunday with wife and children, and tying his tie, took a look at the admittance papers and exclaimed: ‘What were you thinking of, to ignore a call to duty–that is refusal to serve!’ ”

There is no doubt that this lithograph, and in his other version of the same subject, Felixmueller wishes to represent himself as the soldier and as the inmate; the fact that the figure holds a letter sent by Felixmueller indicates the artist’s desire to convey compassion for and empathy with every resistor’s plight.

As Rosa Schapire wrote in Das graphische Jahrbuch in 1919, “Moved to his very soul by the revolutionary events of the day, he found in the lithograph Sodat im Irrenhaus...an audacious and brief expression of the pathos of our time and has returned to the words ‘Human’ and ‘Brother’ their original meaning.”

Felixmueller’s method of conveying such sentiments indicates his masterful understanding of Expressionistic technique: the use of jagged diagonals to convey an idea of anxiety, the claustrophobic placing of the figure amid an asymmetrical web of threatening forms. Felixmueller’s own psychic anxiety is revealed at the same time he expresses a general indictment of the inhumanity of war. The Nazis removed this work from all public collections in 1937