![Max Beckmann. Hunger (plate 5) [Der Hunger (Blatt 5)] from Hell (Die Hölle). 1919](/media/W1siZiIsIjEyOTYwNCJdLFsicCIsImNvbnZlcnQiLCItcXVhbGl0eSA5MCAtcmVzaXplIDIwMDB4MTQ0MFx1MDAzZSJdXQ.jpg?sha=46bcdfd9fdc7c6ab)
![Max Beckmann. Hunger (plate 5) [Der Hunger (Blatt 5)] from Hell (Die Hölle). 1919](/media/W1siZiIsIjcwMzU0Il0sWyJwIiwiY29udmVydCIsIi1xdWFsaXR5IDkwIC1yZXNpemUgMjAwMHgxNDQwXHUwMDNlIl1d.jpg?sha=50a429ada0639bbf)
Hell conjures the nightmare of social disintegration and violence that gripped Berlin after the end of World War I. Using fragmented city views, compressed interiors, and contorted bodies to convey chaos and claustrophobia, Beckmann composed each scene like a stage set. “If one comprehends . . . the entire war or even all of life only as a scene in the theater,” he wrote, “everything is much easier to bear.” The artist depicts himself in several prints, including The Family, in which his young son Peter mistakes a grenade for a toy. Other images were based on recent incidents, including the January 1919 arrest and murder of the Communist leader Karl Liebknecht, pictured in the foreground of The Street.
Gallery label from 2023
In the portfolio Hölle (Hell), Max Beckmann journeys, Virgil-like, through Berlin. These ten oversize lithographs present an unflinching look at social disintegration and civil violence after the catastrophe of World War I. Beckmann visited Berlin in March 1919, and depicts himself amid the misery in Hölle; his self-portrait appears in five prints and on the front cover, which, in a handwritten note, promises the viewer an entertaining spectacle.
Unlike many of his compatriots, including the disfigured veteran he encounters in the first print, Der Nachhauseweg (The way home), Beckmann came back whole. He presents a fragmented city, with bodies jutting out of the pictures' frames and figures contorted in impossible spaces. In Die Strasse (The street), a thoroughfare is bustling with daytime activity, yet no one notices the man being carried off, arms flailing, by another man. In Das Martyrium (The martyrdom), under the cover of night, communist leader Rosa Luxemburg is about to be murdered. Speeches, songs, and even last stands are futile. No place is safe: Beckmann transforms an attic into a torture chamber in Die Nacht (Night), while quiet desperation pervades his own family's home in Der Hunger (Hunger). In the final print, Die Familie (The family), Beckmann's young son, Peter, mistakes a grenade for a toy. Beckmann brings the hell of war home in these prints. His publisher, J. B. Neumann, did not sell any when he exhibited them in 1919.
Publication excerpt from Heather Hess, German Expressionist Digital Archive Project, German Expressionism: Works from the Collection. 2011.
