Max Klinger (1857-1920) was a great, prolific and diverse German artist, graphic artist, printmaker, illustrator, painter, sculptor, designer, theorist, one of the founders of his country's symbolism. Klinger was respected and admired during his lifetime, when he was considered one of the greatest German artists, but after World War I he was somewhat forgotten. Starting in 1970, on the anniversary of Klinger's death, there was a renewed interest in the great artist, which is expressed in the exhibitions held in his honor as well as in the numerous articles and books written about him, including the publication of his letters and diaries. University theses were also not absent.
Max Klinger was one of the most surprising artists of his generation and cannot be confined to just one definition. A symbolist, yes, but much more than that. Klinger was a connecting link between Romanticism and Expressionism, between Symbolism and Surrealism. At the same time, in Belgium, Fernand Knopf developed his own version of Symbolism – a more somber and quiet world, but imbued with the same pursuit of mystery and restraint. Klinger connected Classicism and Modernism, between tradition and revolution, between nationalism and cosmopolitanism. In Germany and abroad, he was worshipped in his lifetime like Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, like Wagner and Beethoven.
Among his admirers are, no less than, Giorgio de Chirico, Max Ernst and Salvador Dali, to name but a few. Klinger was a hero of de Chirico, who drew much inspiration from him and wrote a detailed essay about him that contributed to his fame in Italy. Direct influences from Klinger can also be identified in the works of Max Ernst and Salvador Dali.
On the centenary of his death, the Museum of Fine Arts in Leipzig, which was temporarily closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic and reopened on May 7, is holding a huge exhibition in his memory: “Klinger 2020”, until August 16. On the occasion of the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth, the exhibition will move to the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn, from September 4, 2020 to January 10, 2021. The artist, who was considered “obsolete” after his death, is now celebrated as a pioneer of modernism!
An entire hall in the exhibition with the meaningful name, “Klinger 2020,” is dedicated to prints and sculptures by Auguste Rodin, brought from France, and for good reason. Max Klinger saw the French maestro as a model and was even nicknamed “the German Auguste Rodin.” But before we discuss the nature of Klinger’s connections with Rodin, we will visit an exhibition held in 2012 at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Strasbourg , which was dedicated to the German artist’s prints.
Max Klinger's Print Exhibition at the Strasbourg Museum
The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of the city of Strasbourg held an exhibition in honor of Max Klinger from May 12 to August 19, 2012, which included 14 series of prints by the artist, 144 plates, from 1878 to 1915. The exhibition's title: "Max Klinger, the Theater of the Strange," according to de Chirico, who called Klinger "the genius of the strange."
MAMC, Strasbourg
Musée d'Art Moderne & Contemporain de Strasbourg
Max Klinger, Le Théâtre de l'étrange
May 12 > August 19, 2012
A large part of the exhibits were transferred for the exhibition to the Strasbourg Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art from the city's Cabinet of Engravings and Drawings.
, le Cabinet des Estampes et des Dessins
Which can also be visited today, after making an appointment:
Each series contains between 4 and 50 etchings, all of which tell a story in which the viewer takes an active part in shaping it. The first series is called Opus 1, the second series is called Opus 2, and so on, by way of cataloging musical works. Klinger was a pianist, an avid novelist, and a particular admirer of Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler, Schumann, Liszt, and Wagner.
The exhibition featured the artist's fantastical prints alongside his realistic prints, and sometimes a mix of both styles on the same panel. Centaurs fighting or fainting, Greek gods, scheming princes, nymphs and demons, Medusae and monsters, giant turtles and tritons, mythological fights and rapes fill the images alongside realistic dramas, betrayals, suicides and rapes and murders, some of which Klinger witnessed with his own eyes, in Leipzig, Berlin, Paris and Rome.
In these prints, the artist, an avid reader of Darwin, gives a poignant expression to man's animalistic instincts. With a sharp, sometimes satirical eye, Klinger documents scenes from modern life: armed workers' revolt against government troops, gunfights, prostitution, abortions, domestic violence, alcohol and drug addiction, drowning, suicide, miscarriage of justice, bankruptcy, poverty and distress.
A girl abandoned by her partner degenerates, with no choice, into prostitution when bourgeois society turns its back on her. A desperate mother would rather drown her baby than abandon him to the murderous blows of his father. What is the future of humanity? Is it really getting better, moving towards a utopian future? Sharp questions arise from the images.
The young artist broke free from the principles of perspective, contracting or cutting it at will, imprisoning the figures in confined spaces, squeezing them between rocks, dense vegetation, or walls. Here they rise into the air, hover, suspended in a state of levitation in the heart of the sky, there they plunge into the depths of an abyss, looking like a cutout from a natural history book.
Prehistory, history, archaeology, from the beginning of time to the artist's own time, feed his prints with scenes from the lives of wild, nomadic tribes, from the Middle Ages, from the Thirty Years' War. His visual memories are supplemented by biblical iconography and allegories of the sacred and the profane, real and imaginary animals, folk legends and popular elements. With complete freedom, the grotesque and satirical lie alongside the noble and sublime, in the same print, a meticulous academic nude next to a bear, Apollo next to an ox plowing.
Klinger's realistic-recruited prints are sometimes enriched with elements of imagination and fantasy, which serve to sharpen the social criticism as well as invite the viewer to follow the artist's symbolist world. In the "Life" series, for example, from 1884, in the panel "Into the Sewer", a crowd of women pushes a prostitute towards a canal of polluted water, with a monkey visible among them.
Klinger's artistic sensibility was intertwined with encyclopedic knowledge. Klinger wielded a brush and a chisel like a writer wields a pen and pencil. A voracious reader of newspapers, magazines, and books, Klinger painted visions of the observed and imagined world, like a poet or writer writing in words. Expressing his abundance of thoughts in pictures was his only way to contain them, and translating them into words, if done, would fill volumes upon volumes.
The series are very diverse, indeed, not only in their subjects but also in their influences. Classicism of antiquity, Renaissance, Baroque, Romanticism, Realism, Darwinism, Eroticism, Freudianism in its infancy, the currents of the late 19th century Europe also strive in the artist's soul, one side by side and the other against each other, burned-fused into an impressive bizarre treatise. This picture is influenced by Japonism, another by Pre-Raphaelite painting, this one from the world of Francisco de Goya, and in unity the influence of Feliciano Rupes and Odilon Redon is evident.
Even when he relies on a tradition of classical motifs, the artist departs from the conventional and the known and breaks out into new, strange, puzzling, and embarrassing directions that challenge the viewer and stimulate his mind and imagination.
Exhibition Catalog
The exhibition catalog, which includes all the series of prints exhibited, as well as written texts, operas, poems, and essays (including Giorgio de Chirico's essay), surrounding the artist's work, is available for purchase.
Max Klinger, le théâtre de l'étrange : Les suites gravées 1879-1915, under the direction of Marie-Jeanne Geyer and Thierry Laps, Mamc Strasbourg, 2012
Klinger's Prints – A Turning Point in Art History
Between 1875 and 1881, the young Klinger devoted himself to the art of printing, a branch in which he achieved intense originality, even more so than in painting and sculpture, which he later pursued. If in his sculptures he deviated only slightly from the rules of the neoclassical style, if in his paintings he surprised more than in his sculptures, then in his prints he completely freed himself from any principle, challenged the laws of perspective and gave complete freedom to his imagination. The series of prints made by Max Klinger, over 400 plates, constitute a decisive and decisive turning point in the history of art, both in terms of the various techniques over which he had absolute control and in terms of the audacity of the subjects.
In 1887, the important Danish cultural critic Georg Cohen Brandes, the father of comparative literature, published the second edition of his work called “Modern Intellectuals: Literary Portraits of the 19th Century” and added Henrik Ibsen and Max Klinger to it. Thus Klinger was added to the distinguished group that included, among others, Hans Christian Andersen, Gustav Flaubert, Ernst Renan, and John Stuart Mill. In an article dedicated to Klinger, who was 30 years old when the book was published, the author praises the originality, imagination, freedom, and audacity of the artist, whose prints were so different from anything done before.
Georg Morris Cohen Brandes, Moderne Geister: Literarische Bildnisse aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, FRANKFURT A/M. LITERARISCHE ANSTALT, Rütten & Loening,
1901
The series “Cassia” did indeed amaze the critics of the exhibition of the graduates of the Berlin Academy and none of them left it indifferent. Madness or originality, the series left its viewers speechless. This was an exhibition that took place in 1878 and where the young Klinger’s works caused a sensation. What a promising start to a career that would not disappoint!
The series “Case” begins with a typical leisure pastime of the Berlin bourgeoisie at a fashionable skating rink that they used to frequent, an ordinary reality, in order to glide from it into the bizarre-fantastic-fetishistic-erotic, which takes place in parallel and ancient virtual worlds, which are increasingly distant from the present. The skating takes on a deep and unexpected meaning of gliding from one state to another. At the end of this article, which focuses on Max Klinger through the French prism, a link will be provided to the complete article on the artist, on my personal blog, where you can read, among other things, a detailed analysis of the series in question.
Fantastic prints vs. realistic prints
Alongside the fantastic mythological-psychoanalytic prints, such as the “Cover” series, there is another section of realistic, socio-political prints. Klinger’s printmaking can indeed be divided into two parts: the fantastic part, in which Klinger was led by the Swiss artist Arnold Böcklin, and the realistic part, in which Klinger was led by the Norwegian artist Christian Krohg.
The imaginative prints draw inspiration from the works of the Swiss artist Arnold Böcklin, who was born thirty years before Max Klinger and, like him, was educated in the lap of German culture. Klinger met Böcklin in March 1887 in Berlin, before settling again in Leipzig in September. Klinger had boundless admiration for Böcklin and dedicated his series of prints “Love” to him that same year.
Bäcklin, whose works are steeped in romanticism and mythology, is considered one of the founders of Symbolism and a pioneer of Surrealism. His famous five-version painting, “Isle of the Dead,” directly influenced Klinger’s prints.
If Klinger's fantastical prints follow the work of Arnold Böcklin, then his realistic prints continue the work of Christian Krug, a Norwegian painter and writer, who was born five years before Max Klinger.
Max met Christian at the academy in Karlsruhe and later shared an apartment with him in Berlin, in the Tiergarten neighborhood, from 1877 to 1878. Through his Norwegian partner, Max met the Danish writer and critic Georg Cohen Brandes in Berlin that same year. Even after Krug returned to Christiania in 1879, he continued to maintain contacts with Klinger.
Christian Krug fought in his works and writings the war of the victims, women, children, the sick and the poor, whom bourgeois society not only failed to help but humiliated and trampled on. Krug was a social activist, an altruist, who denounced the hypocrisy of bourgeois society and the position of power of men who exploited the weakness of women.
These naturalistic works, drawn from humanism, feminism and philanthropism, inspired Klinger’s realistic protest prints. In the famous series, “Life”, Klinger, inspired by the novel “Albertine” by his friend Krug, depicts the drama of a girl who has descended into prostitution. The realistic engravings clearly and unequivocally blame bourgeois society, with its double standards (what is permitted for men is forbidden for women), for the young woman’s tragic fate. Denunciation and ostracism sealed her death sentence.
Other similar engravings show men stoning or drowning women and the crowd, with its mocking gaze, participates in the executions. Klinger's identification with the feminist struggle is strongly expressed in his engravings. Women in childbirth who died in childbirth, elderly women who lost their status, a girl with tuberculosis who is about to die, the gaze of the figures creates hypnotic eye contact with the viewer.
From Becklin, then, Klinger took the seeds of surrealism under the auspices of the ideal of art for art's sake, from Krug he took the militant realism that fought against class oppression (the underprivileged) and gender oppression (women). His fantastic prints may well illustrate Lautramon's writings, while his realistic prints those of Zola.
Paris, Paris, Paris, the capital of love, art and modernism
As he continued to work on his engravings, Klinger sought additional sources of inspiration. Paris , the capital of love, art, and modernism, what could be better?
It's just a shame that the timing wasn't auspicious. The artist arrived in the city in 1883. The French in those years treated Germans who came to their country with great hostility. Germany was an enemy and its citizens were not welcome. As a German, Klinger was not given any concessions. His expression immediately provoked unpleasant reactions. Hence the artist's ambivalent attitude towards the city. He loved and absorbed it, was impressed and nourished by it. But at the same time, he also cursed it and strengthened his German identity and national feelings in it. The years he spent there, from 1883 to 1887, left a deep mark on him, there is no denying that. The first Parisian stay, together with the second stay seventeen years later, sowed seeds in him and shaped his future artistic development. Klinger owed France a great debt...
The young artist settled in Montparnasse, at 9, Impasse du Maine, a private road, which in 1913 was widened, became a public road and renamed rue Antoine Bourdelle, after the famous sculptor, whose studio was located at number 16, which became a museum in 1949:
In Paris, Klinger read the works of Balzac, Zola, Flaubert, Maupassant, Joris-Carl Wissmans. How else did he spend his time in the French capital? In the Louvre Museum, he wandered from hall to hall (not all of them pleased him), studying and researching, with special emphasis on Jan van Eyck, Leonardo da Vinci , Francisco de Goya. Honore Daumier, Puvis de Chabannes, Gustave Doré, and the Pre-Raphaelites also aroused great interest in him.
Almost every evening, Klinger went to see the theater. The lives and status of actresses and dancers served as a source of inspiration for his prints. Klinger praised Degas's paintings of ballerinas, but, unlike the latter's works, the image of the ballerina and the representation of the entertainment world in general in Klinger's works constitute a clear and unambiguous warning sign of the deterioration of German society and its descent into debauchery, which would bring death upon it. In the print “To All” from the “Life” series, the dancer is depicted on stage as an objectified woman, with the heads of her spectators resembling black skulls:
At the Opera Garnier , Klinger dreams of a “total creation,” which will unite painting, sculpture, architecture, set design, music, literature, poetry. What better way than watching a good opera to be inspired by such a grandiose, monumental creation that will shake all the senses, that will detail all the emotions.
In a club in Paris, where he played the piano, he conceived, one evening, in the midst of playing, the nagging idea, which would stick and not leave, of a giant Beethoven statue. Max needed distance from his country to return to his early love of German music. Paris met his expectations, for a certain period, and served as a habitat for his next great works, paintings and sculptures.
Klinger's "Beethoven," and what did Rodin say about it?
Of all the many sculptures that Klinger dedicated to 19th-century musicians, the impressive “Beethoven” sculpture, on which the artist worked from 1885 to 1902, stands out for its size and especially its size. In one of his letters, Klinger relates that the appearance of the sculpture, with all its details and colors, from the pose, the fists, the folds of the robe to the gilded armchair armrests and the eagle, was revealed to him with great clarity that evening in a club in Paris where he played the piano. In Paris, Klinger made the drawing of the sculpture according to his vision. In Paris, he carried out the following steps, which included a reduced plaster model, followed by another reduced plaster model, which he painted and gilded in all the intense shades that the final giant format would reveal.
The famous statue, in its perfected form, can now be seen in the Museum of Fine Arts in Leipzig, but the monumental work was first exhibited in 1902, at the Vienna Secession Exhibition, which was entirely dedicated to the celebrated musician. The organizers of the exhibition at the Secession Palace, as well as Klinger himself, saw Beethoven as the symbol of the suffering, lonely artist who strives for happiness and finds relaxation and rest in art. The work itself symbolizes the fate of humanity and human life, bounded between birth and death, with contrasting experiences of pain and happiness, sadness and joy.
The transfer of the heavy statue from Leipzig to Vienna was a news event even before its unveiling and presentation. The marble effigy of Beethoven was transported in one train car and his throne, made of bronze, was transported in a second. Professor Max Klinger, “the greatest German artist,” the headlines shouted, came in person to supervise the transport operation and to be present at the opening ceremony of the exhibition. Klinger’s “Beethoven” was the highlight of the event, eclipsing the rest of the exhibits. Visitors rushed to the Sessation Palace as if to a Greek temple:
The polychrome installation, made of various materials (marble, gold leaf, bronze, alabaster, emerald, jasper, ivory, ebony, amber, mother-of-pearl, glass), was placed in the famous hall designed by Josef Hoffmann and Gustav Klimt, who painted the mural on Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Klinger's installation was observed in its relationship with its surroundings – “spatial art” (Raumkunst) as well as in its connection to sculpture with as many other disciplines as possible, architecture, music, theater, painting, philosophy, following in the footsteps of Nietzsche and Wagner – “total art” (Gesamtkunst).
The work, which rises to a height of 3.2 meters, presents Beethoven as a bare-chested god from the heights of Olympus, seated on an ornate throne, among portraits of angels, casting a concentrated and determined gaze, philosophical and heroic, mysterious and unknown. (Some say that his pensive gaze actually expresses doubts and weakness.) At the feet of the human being, who reaches the rank of a near-god thanks to his art, rests an eagle, the symbol of Jupiter, looking at him in awe.
As in Julius Albers' villa paintings (which you are invited to read about in the full article on my personal blog), this sculpture also brings together Greek mythology and the Christian religion. On the sides of the throne of honor are engraved Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. On the back of the throne, Eve is expelled from the garden in the presence of Jesus Christ. John the Baptist points an accusing finger at a sensual Aphrodite. Did the musician, in the sculptor's eyes, succeed in reconciling the sharp contrasts between turbulent pagan sensuality and religious prohibitions?
Through his total creation, Klinger fulfilled his dream and reached redemption. In Germany and Austria, he was considered a star, but alongside the many accolades and deep admiration, the installation was also met with indignation and shock, even contempt. Moral judgment, on the one hand, the partial nudity did not please everyone. Aesthetic judgment, on the other hand, a kitsch creation, some turned up their noses. And why present the modern musician in ancient clothing, a robe and sandals, and what is he doing in an Assyrian bath? Auguste Rodin, who was present at the exhibition, also had reservations. “It’s not a sculpture,” he said. And what do you say about it?
The essay “Drawing and Drawing”
In Paris, Klinger wrote his short essay “Painting and Drawing” (Malerei und Zeichnung) and published it in 1891, in Germany, in a limited self-publishing, for friends and colleagues only. The book, contrary to his expectations, was a great success and was republished, in eight further printings before World War II and seven more after. The essay was translated into English and Italian and is still quoted in articles and books on art.
In this essay, Klinger states that painting is suitable for color images that reproduce external nature, while prints are suitable for black-and-white images that express fantasies as well as social criticism. And these, like music and poetry, express the “dark side” of life, the ironic, the grotesque, the hybrid, the jarring. The unclear, the blurred, the boundless, the one that one tries to hide, repress, deny.
The absence of color gives them the distance needed to document the painful reality of disappointments, failures, contradictions, limitations, of the struggle with ugliness and horror, which is at the basis of all forms of poetry. The printmaker, who, according to Klinger, grapples with the gap between desire and ability, plan and execution, must accept a world of irreconcilable opposing forces. The artist's role is to use irony, satire, and caricature to point out weaknesses, everything that is hard, sharp, and bad, in an act of protest: The world doesn't have to be this way! From here, from the scream, from the scream, will emerge the beauty that the artist initially sought.
The book emphasizes the importance of the printing arts as a suitable medium for experimentation and original expression, true, but behind the glorification of the industry, which was so dear to Klinger, another powerful meaning emerges. In this work, Klinger shows, against the backdrop of the increasing German adherence to academism and the nationalist tendency hostile to the achievements of French art, the golden path between tradition and innovation, between nationalism and cosmopolitanism.
Klinger was closely connected to German culture and at the same time strove to renew it through other influences, borrowings and dialogues. In addition to his years in Paris and his years in Rome and Florence, he would frequently return to visit Italy and France even after settling in his country. He also traveled to Spain and Greece, constantly searching for various foreign sources of inspiration. It should be noted that from the very beginning, while still studying, Klinger established strong and lasting connections with foreign artists, who introduced him to key figures in the field of art in their regions (Scandinavia, Belgium, Switzerland).
This is why Klinger left Paris after a first and long stay there. The artist needed innovations. His enthusiasm for Zola and naturalism was gradually waning. Klinger had exhausted “journalistic reports,” as he put it, and aspired to move to a more subjective art, expressing a worldview. Out of suffering and ugliness, the artist must bring out beauty and harmony. Symbolism’s turn had come. Klinger’s next destination was Rome, via Carrara. At the end of July 1887, he left Paris. You are invited to read about Klinger’s adventures from the moment he left the French capital in the full article, which goes beyond the boundaries of the French angle, on my personal blog.
Second stay in Paris
Meeting with Elsa
After a stay in Rome, which ended in 1893, Klinger returned to Germany, crowned with fame, a successful and sought-after artist. Five years after his return, he met in Leipzig the one who would be his partner for the next fifteen years – Elsa Oznehoff, ten years his junior, a beautiful Viennese, an intellectual, a feminist, a rising star in Leipzig's cultural salons.
Every year Elsa published a new book. In her diverse writings, Elsa discussed intellectualism, eroticism, sexuality, spiritual love, abstinence, mysticism, and creative freedom. Elsa wrote reviews of literature, theater, and cinema in newspapers and magazines, gave lectures in which she read excerpts from her writings, and corresponded with important people, doctors, neurologists, psychologists, intellectuals, entrepreneurs, and businessmen. Beautiful and young, an impressive and extravagant celebrity, Elsa dominated the salons of Leipzig. Her writings and opinions, revolutionary for the time, caused a sensation. Courted and admired, intellectuals, writers, poets, and artists flocked to her.
It is said that the poet and playwright Frank Wiedekind, who passionately courted Elsa Aznighef, was rejected no less passionately when she pulled a sharp dagger from her dresser and put an end to his attempts at intimacy.
In 1898, at a literary festival in honor of the rejected poet Frank Wedekind and his colleague Detlev von Liliencron, Elsa Oznichoff met Max Klinger. Max was 41 years old, Elsa a decade younger. Max housed his new lover in a luxurious 270-square-meter apartment in the prestigious music district, Schwägrichenstraße 11, Hochparterre, where she lived alone and took care of all her needs. The couple talked about art, literature, philosophy, the status of women, love, all the topics that were on the agenda of the world, traveled a lot, especially to buy marble, organized social events where they hosted all the who's who of the German cultural world.
During their fifteen-year relationship, Max Klinger never stopped drawing inspiration from Elsa. He sculpted her body and face in stone, cast them in bronze, and drew and painted them in many different versions, for example, Elsa in a sculpture from 1900 (Neue Pinakothek, Munich):
And another example, Elsa in an oil painting from 1904 (Museum of Fine Arts in Leipzig):
Elsa was his lover, model, muse, intellectual interlocutor and supportive partner, but Max Klinger never married her or officially sealed their relationship. The couple lived, as mentioned, in separate apartments. Elsa was divorced and Max hid his relationship with her from his family and circle. Klinger opposed bourgeois values in his views and art, but in his private life he was a prisoner of their chains.
Secret birth and meeting with Auguste Rodin
In 1900, with the pregnant Elsa by his side, Max Klinger returned to Paris for a second stay in the French capital . The goal was to hide the birth from the eyes of bourgeois society in Leipzig and leave the baby in Paris.
This stay served not only Max's personal interests but also his art. In Paris, Max Klinger met the great sculptor Auguste Rodin and a deep friendship developed between the two. In the same year that he arrived in Paris, Klinger participated in the important Rodin retrospective in the pavilion on La Place de l'Alma, on the margins of the Universal Exhibition.
After Klinger returned to Germany, he continued to correspond with Rodin and maintain contacts with him. In 1904, he was one of the organizers of Rodin's exhibitions in Weimar and Leipzig. Klinger made his connections in Germany and his large studio in Plagwitz, a suburb of Leipzig, available to Rodin, where he exhibited his works.
Klinger was nicknamed “the German Rodin” because of the scope of his work as a sculptor, but it should be noted that his style was very different from that of the French maestro. And the latter, who came to the Vienna Secession exhibition, did not like, as mentioned, his friend Klinger’s “Beethoven”… One way or another, Klinger admired Rodin and did much for him.
In 1900, the same year that Rodin presented his famous retrospective on the Place de l’Hamlet, Elsa gave birth to Max’s daughter in Paris, Désirée. The baby’s name meant “desirable.” How ironic for a baby whose parents, unanimously, sought and found a suitable way to get rid of her! Max and Elsa left the newborn, in the French capital, under the care of a foster mother and the assistance of a doctor, and returned to Leipzig without her. Klinger abandoned his daughter to protect his good name in the bourgeois society of which he was a member. The ties with the daughter, who would later be called Désirée Ottima and who lived for seventy years (1900-1970), remained extremely tenuous. Of Désirée, only one sketch by her father remains after her birth:
Elsa, who had already abandoned a son when she divorced her first husband, had she been married, now abandoned a daughter, in the name of freedom. Elsa wanted to be free to do as she pleased with her life, to steer it as she pleased, without being hindered. She would not be deprived of freedom, as society imposes on women – adherence to principles that would prove to be extremely destructive later on.
Elsa Aznighef / Camille Claudel – Similar Fate
After twelve years of fruitful happiness as Max Klinger's partner, Elsa Aznighef knew a tragic fate, thirty years of forced hospitalization in asylums until historical events sent her to her death. This unexpected fate is quite reminiscent of the fate of her contemporary, Camille Claudel , who, after twelve happy, fruitful, and turbulent years with Auguste Rodin, was forcibly hospitalized in mental institutions for thirty years until her death from malnutrition due to the same historical background.
Max Klinger – German Auguste Rodin, Elsa Aznighef – Viennese Camus Claudel? To understand the sequence of events that led to the destruction of Elsa's life, while she was still halfway through it, let's move on to the moment when Klinger established his residence in a picturesque village called Grosiana.
Grosiana, a new life
Max Klinger was tired of the cultural salons and bourgeois social life in Leipzig. In 1903 he purchased a country house with a vineyard in Großjena, near the city of Naumburg. Starting in 1909, Klinger began work on expanding and renovating the modest country house, which became a comfortable and refined mansion, in a typical Art Nouveau style. With the help of craftsmen from the city, Klinger renovated both floors of the house. The winegrowers' house on the ground floor became a spacious and light-filled workshop, with a magnificent view of the Saale River, the Onstrut tributary that flows into it, and the cityscape. The shepherd's house on the first floor was converted into comfortable living quarters.
The country house, initially intended as a place of relaxation and recreation on weekends, became the permanent home of the famous artist. From 1903 until his death, seventeen years later, Klinger created many works in this house, engravings, drawings, watercolours and oil paintings in abundance, as well as bookplates (ex libris). What a pleasure to have breakfast under the pear tree and admire the picturesque landscape, to continue enjoying it on long walks while planning the next works! As usual, the artist sought new inspiration.
Elsa is cast out, Gertrude is crowned.
Max settled on the ground floor while Elsa, who had become irritable and resentful over the years, occupied the first floor. The relationship between the two gradually deteriorated. Young women in their twenties, who were used as models by the artist, frequented the house and walked around naked. Elsa's jealousy sparked fights between her and Max.
In 1910, a mother and her two daughters, Gertrude and Ella Bock, made a pilgrimage to the famous artist's house in Leipzig. The 53-year-old Max was struck by the beauty and innocence of 18-year-old Gertrud Bock, and adopted her as a companion, model, and muse. He soon settled her in a house in Grossein. The humiliated Elsa, twenty-five years older than her successor, left the paradise that had become hell for her about six years later.
A new place, a new woman, a new life, a renewal of creativity. The ground floor of the house became a spacious workshop where Max returned to the love of his youth, the beginning of his path – making prints. The aging Max's art was cleansed of the secrets of the radiant Gertrude and received an unexpected creative impetus. Max Klinger was reborn. His paintings from this period are full of vitality and eroticism. The beautiful Gertrude was the model for most of his works, until the day of his death, which was not long, however, to come.
In a charcoal drawing from 1910, for example, Gertrude is revealed in all her glory (Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf):
On October 12, 1919, Klinger suffered a stroke that left him paralyzed on his right side. Time was running out, his wife needed protection. On November 22, he married Gertrude in a private emergency ceremony. She, who had been his partner for about a decade and had supported him until the end, was granted official status. With great courage, the artist continued to renovate the second tile oven (he had already finished the first one) using his left hand. On July 1, 1920, he traveled again to Saalfeld to bake them in the oven. This trip was his last. On July 4, 1920, he was found dead on the glass-walled veranda, sprawled on a lounge chair. Another stroke this time finally defeated him.
Max Klinger left all his wealth, property, and works of art, both his own and those of other artists, to his wife Gertrude. He ordered his daughter Desiree to receive an annual allowance of 7000 marks. He ordered his student and friend, the sculptor Johannes Hartmann, to assist his widow in the management of the estate.
Elsa, a slow descent down the slopes of hell
The separation from Klinger in 1913 left Elsa a lonely, homeless, and destitute woman. From the moment she left Grosjena, Elsa continued to slowly descend the slopes of hell for thirty years, until she met her death in particularly dramatic circumstances.
World War I put an end to Elsa's literary plans and severed her extensive connections with Germany's leading writers and artists. Elsa was left completely alone, without any connections – not with her mother in Vienna, not with her two sisters, one in Linz and the other in Sarajevo, not with her son or daughter.
After Klinger's death, Elsa claimed her share of the house in Grossein in court but was rejected. Her writings were no longer sold and did not bring her any profits. Only one private address is known of her, a residential apartment in a decent building in the center of Leipzig, Dufourstraße 18, and after that, biographical research shows, starting in 1917, Elsa moved from one cheap boarding house to another.
In 1921, she was officially declared incompetent and committed to a psychiatric institution. In vain did she claim to be a great writer, in vain did she even manage to publish several collections of poetry. Elsa was bounced from institution to institution. The valuable works of art she owned were looted, her personal belongings and drafts of her writings were stolen or lost.
The irony of fate – there is no clearer example of it than the life of Elsa. Fate proved to be ironic in the cruelest way when it carved a gap between her feminist ideas and activities and her dependence on the rich man, Max Klinger, who abandoned her to her doom. The glamorous successful woman, the queen of Leipzig’s cultural salons, who claimed to be a guide for young girls, fell into the deep pit that had led so many women of her time astray.
On April 5, 1941, the Nazis executed the residents of the homeless shelter in Bernsdorf, near Freiburg. 74-year-old Elsa Oznehoff was among them. In 2007, a memorial was erected in their memory in the local cemetery.
It is impossible not to think of Camille Claudel. In vain she claimed to be a great sculptor, her mother strongly opposed her release from the closed institution. With the outbreak of World War II, the conditions of the inmates at the hospital where she was hospitalized were worsened and Camille breathed her last, probably from malnutrition, on October 19, 1943, at the age of 78. Only the staff of the institution attended her funeral. Camille's body was buried in a temporary grave and then transferred to a mass grave and from there to an unknown location. No one knows today where the brilliant sculptor is buried, but her works, autobiographical-universal, like those of Max Klinger, after being forgotten for a certain period of time, stand forever.
A museum named after and dedicated to Camus Claudel was opened in 2017 in Nogent-sur-Seine, a town where Camus spent three years of her childhood. The museum is an architectural complex and includes at its entrance the house where the Claudel family lived from 1876 to 1879.
Link to the Camille Claudel Museum website
The house in Grosseina, near which Klinger was buried, at his request, became a museum in memory of the artist, after many upheavals and long overdue, in 2006. In the house-museum, one can get a comprehensive overview of the life and work of the great artist, see works and documentaries, and be impressed by the two magnificent porcelain kilns, which contain his spirit. The museum also holds artistic workshops, and it is possible to learn the art of printing and print the works on site.
Link to the Max Klinger Museum website
At the entrance to the tomb mansion, near the museum, stand two marble figures, one in the form of Max's face and the other in the form of Gertrude's face, a creation of Johannes Hartmann, Klinger's friend and the second husband of his widow Gertrude. Max and Gertrude, sculpted in marble, gatekeepers, watchtowers, commemorate their connection beyond death and symbolize the redemption embodied in art.
Over the years, Klinger's vision of the dark has somewhat softened. From a Schopenhauer-style pessimism, from the consciousness that death lurks in the human race and may strike unexpectedly, from the gloomy despair that emanates from the engravings, Klinger has moved over time to the more optimistic belief in the power of exceptional individuals, geniuses and artists, intellectuals, writers, poets, and athletes to transcend the limitations of their precarious situation and bestow their greatness on those who are near them and sheltered in their shadow. This is, apparently, what Max and Gertrude, sculpted in marble, would whisper to us if we got closer and closer to them, as close as possible, and stared into their faces for a long time.
If you would like to read about the rest of Max Klinger's stories, his legacy and legacy, I warmly invite you to go to my personal blog, to the full article, called Max Klinger, Art Above All, in Twenty Chapters . To move from chapter to chapter, click on the up arrow (or the caption next to it), on the left side.
More on the subject
Those interested in continuing to see similarities and differences between Elsa Aznighef's story, in relation to Max Klinger, and Camille Claudel's story, in relation to Auguste Rodin, are invited to read my article on Camille Claudel at the following link:
https://www.francophilesanonymes.com/paris/camille-clodelle-itinerary/
Those interested in delving deeper into the Symbolism movement, of which Klinger is one of its most prominent representatives, are invited to read my article on Fernand Knopf, a Belgian artist, also a Symbolist, who was born a year after Klinger and died a year before him. Knopf is similar, in certain respects, in his life and works, to Max Klinger. It is very interesting, with the help of the article on Knopf, to examine the similarities and differences between the two artists. Link to the article:
https://www.francophilesanonymes.com/%d7%a4%d7%a8%d7%a0%d7%9f-%d7%a7%d7%a0%d7%95%d7%a4%d7%a3-%d7%a4%d7%98%d7%99-%d7%a4%d7%90%d7%9c%d7%94/
An informative lecture. I had never heard the name Max Klinger. I learned a lot of new things.
And thank you again, Dr. Orna Lieberman, for another instructive and enriching article that you generously repeat and provide on this site and other sites.
Ruthi Shimoni
What a wonderful post – from the creative studio of Orna Lieberman.
How fun it is to become acquainted with these articles – with creative characters – who are described with such depth, precision, interest, and knowledge.
How true is the multi-layered combination between their personal stories, the spirit of their times
And the uniqueness of their creation…
A real pleasure. High level.
Thank you Orna, thank you Zvi.
I really liked Ruth Shimoni's response, so I copied it from the flourishing and disappearing comments on Facebook to a more permanent place on the site.
Amazing article makes me want more and more
The video clips are excellent and contribute greatly to understanding the article and illustrating the topic.
I will continue to follow and read.
Ruthi Shimoni
Orna Lieberman
Your articles should be revisited frequently.
This way you can enjoy them to the fullest.
Your involvement in the characters’ story – echoes from the description…
A true poem.
Another response from Ruth Shimoni.
https://liebermanorna.wordpress.com/2020/08/13/%D7%9E%D7%A7%D7%A1-%D7%A7%D7%9C%D7%99%D7%A0%D7%92%D7%A8-%D7%94%D7%90%D7%9E%D7%A0%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%9E%D7%A2%D7%9C-%D7%9C%D7%9B%D7%95%D7%9C/
Once again, a link to the full article
Hannah Sharon's response:
An instructive post on art history.
Thank you, Orna.
Orna
Great, fascinating and interesting article.
Thanks
Twasa
Thank you very much, Einat, Frida Lieberman, Twasa Abramowitz. I was glad the article enriched you. All the best and Happy New Year.
Hello Orna,
I understand you are writing about the book of Deuteronomy. Where on the internet?
I came to you in search of a translation of Verlaine's poem "Drink" and found your simple and wonderful translation (yes, as simple as simple and as wonderful as wonderful)
I would be happy if you could guide me to things; Paul Verlaine.
Thanks in advance, Rami Yuval
Thank you very much for the compliment. It’s very nice to receive comments like this. I write about the entire Bible, not necessarily about Deuteronomy. Type in my name and you’ll find it. Or contact me privately on Messenger and I’ll guide you more precisely.