How does one recover after five years as a prisoner of war in Siberia? How do you find your way in Austria after 1918 or 1920, not only a shrunken version of the former Habsburg empire, but also in poor condition and supply after the war? Where does one find hope in the bleak everyday life after the war?
These are not easy questions in view of the many activities Wacker turned to after coming back from Siberia. Benefiting from the support of his family in the Austrian province Vorarlberg he managed to finance his travels and extended stays in Berlin. In the bustling metropolis, he sought success as an artist and also found distraction in the artistic circles. Yet, memories of the war were always present, despite or precisely because he never addressed the events directly in his art.
R. Wacker, Self-Portrait 1918)
Unlike many other artists such as Otto Dix (1891–1969) or Max Beckmann (1884–1950), who depicted the horrors of war, he found other coping strategies. Therefore, an often-overlooked aspect of his aesthetics will be the focus here. It is the praise of inconspicuous things, the joy of everyday objects, of nature, the world of flowers and the garden, which Wacker formulates in the wake of Romanticism and other influences. These aspects appear in his diaries and are visible mostly in his landscapes and still lifes, but it pervades his entire oeuvre. How he came to terms with the war period after his return in 1920, how he remembered the war and how he recovered, will be the focus of the article following a brief biographical overview.
Wacker was born in 1893 in Bregenz in Vorarlberg, the westernmost province of Austria. He strongly oriented himself to the German art world. In his landscapes, portraits and still lifes, he analysed his close surroundings in Austria utilizing a razor-sharp realism. He took drawing lessons at an early age at his local school and later studied in Vienna. When the Tyrolean painter Albin Egger-Lienz (1868–1926) became a professor at the art academy in Weimar in 1911, Wacker followed him and studied with him until 1914. However, he soon distanced himself from his teacher, whom he accused of an opposition to modern art. In 1913, Wacker began to write a diary in which he critically commented on his experiences as an artist. (1) Soon after the beginning of the First World War, he enlisted for military service. In 1915, he fell into Russian captivity in Poland and spent five years in a prisoner-of-war camp in Tomsk in Siberia – a formative time for him. The war interrupted Wacker’s youth and his development as an artist. As a graduate of an art academy, Wacker ended up in a rather comfortable officers' camp and could spend his time with creative work. Yet, he only found his way back to art after some time of struggle. The landscapes, the alien feel of the region and the lively exchange with other prisoners and local Russian officials helped him pick up his artistic production. (2) After returning from captivity, he lived alternately in Bregenz and Berlin from 1921 to 1924. He was very much aware of current discussions in the German art scene and tried to position himself, debates that revolved around the search for a new style of art. Around 1923, having focused mostly on drawing in a broadly Expressionist vein in the POW camp, Wacker began painting and choosing an idiom closer to that of German New Objectivity, of which he is regarded today as the main representative in Austria. New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit) was a neologism created by the museum director Gustav F. Hartlaub (1884–1963), who used it in response to realist trends in German art after 1918 and presented them in a major exhibition in Mannheim in 1925.
R. Wacker, The Window (1931)
The sober style was also seen as a sign of stabilisation in the country. Wacker saw only moderate success as an artist in Germany or Austria, and if so, it was mostly bound to his home region Bregenz and around Lake Constanz. He had to keep his head above water as a drawing teacher and by selling flower still lifes and simple landscapes. He remained as an engaged intellectual and repeatedly studied Marxism, and professed his support for the peace movement. With the rise of National Socialism, his political pronouncements became increasingly critical. (3) He gained late success as an exhibitor in the Austrian pavilion at the 1934 Venice Biennale, but this did not lead to a professorship in at the Art Academy in Vienna, as he had hoped. That honour was awarded instead to the painter Herbert Boeckl (1894–1966). Wacker later openly criticised the Degenerate Art exhibition staged by the Nazi regime in Munich in 1937. After the Anschluss in 1938, events came to a head. Following a house search and interrogation by the Gestapo, Wacker suffered two heart attacks and died shortly afterwards in 1939. An eventful and also troubled life came to a sudden end.
R. Wacker, Still Life with Sprats (1931)
As literary historians have shown, a broad recollection of the First World War took place during this period in the late 1920s, starting with writers such as Ludwig Renn (1889–1979) and Erich Maria Remarque (1898–1970). (11)
Wacker again recalls his experiences in the war by reading Dwinger's, which then triggered the described reflection on the aesthetics of inconspicuous things two weeks later. This constant back and forth between remembrance and relief was an essential part of his coping strategy. For artists who did not explicitly depict war scenes, this strategy of coping in silence is still little explored.
If Wacker is thus following a general strand in the late 1920s, the recollection of the war, his work was linked with nature and inconspicuous things since the days in Siberia. His drawings from the prison camp in Tomsk are characteristic of this interest, and of his expressionist style. The drawing style, working with billowing lines, captures not only his volatile ego, but also the picturesque sunflowers in the camp (and trees in the surrounding area and landscapes). After his return from captivity in 1920, he continued in this style, setting the stage for a new beginning in Berlin. Yet, he never directly addresses the war and violence like Otto Dix or many others. In this way, Wacker is close to other artists in Austria after the war, such as Anton Kolig (1886–1950) or Fritz Schwarz-Waldegg (1889–1942), who often expressed inner feelings rather than thematizing the war directly. These differences in depicting the war can only be touched upon briefly here, as Wacker preferred to move his struggles into his diary.
Many years lie between the young student Wacker, who sketched in nature, and the renowned artist of the mid-1920s. In the meantime, he has been able to establish himself as an artist, albeit mostly on a modest level, with occasional sales in his hometown of Bregenz, not in Berlin. Nevertheless, he feels himself to be an accepted, middle-class artist. He liked to present himself in a Russian shirt, which was reminiscent of his time in Siberia. Classic still lifes continue to alternate with landscapes or flower bouquets, which Wacker has to sell to keep his head above water. The pleasing landscape paintings depicted life in the provinces, the Bregenz hinterland on Lake Constance. The once sharp and sober New Objectivity had turned to uncritical tranquillity latest in the 1930s. The inconspicuous things have not become a grand critical theory, just a way of dealing with oneself and one’s own stuff in the garden. Wacker withdrew, even if he remained a critical reader and diarist. The truth of things in his paintings, their 'Verism,' saved him from the horrors of the world. Finally in the 1930s, the mushroom picker Wacker follows nature with his dog Seppl.
E. E. Dwinger, The Army Behind Barbed Wire – Siberian Diary (1929)
1. Wacker, R. (1990). Tagebücher 1913–1939. Vaduz: Topos Verlag.
2. Rudigier, A., & Thaler, J. (Eds.). (2018). Wacker im Krieg. Erfahrungen eines Künstlers. Salzburg: Residenz Verlag.
3. Krivdić, E. (2018). Künstlerschicksale: Artur Nikodem, Rudolf Wacker, Johannes Troyer, Alfons Walde und Leo Putz. Fünf Ausnahmesituationen. In W. Meighörner (Ed.), Zwischen Ideologie, Anpassung und Verfolgung. Kunst und Nationalsozialismus in Tirol (pp. 296–308). Innsbruck: Tiroler Landesmuseen.
4. "Ich habe das Feuer, Henry Barbusse gelesen. In diesem Buch ist der ganze Krieg. Die Kameradschaft der Männer, die Not u. Erniedrigung des Soldaten, die Menschlichkeit u. die Bestialität der Kämpfenden, das Unsinnige u. Scheußliche des Krieges. Alles alles! Es wühlt alles wieder auf und es ist so wahr, auch so überzeugend, daß darnach jeder Mensch sagen müßte "nie wieder!" […]" Wacker, R. (1990). Tagebücher (Vol. 2, p. 433). Vaduz: Topos Verlag.
5. Racine, N. (1967). The Clarté Movement in France, 1919–1921. In W. Laqueur & G. L. Mosse (Eds.), Literature and Politics in the 20th Century (pp. 187–200). New York: Harper & Row.
6. "Ich sah das Bild, das in den Augen des Teichhuhns sich bricht, wenn es untertaucht: die tausend Ringe, die jedes kleine Leben einfassen, das Blau des flüsternden Himmel, das der See trinkt, das verzückte Auftauchen an einem anderen Ort – erkennt, meine Freunde, was Bilder sind: das Auftauchen an einem anderen Ort." Wacker, R. (1990). Tagebücher (Vol. 2, pp. 433–434). Vaduz: Topos Verlag.
7. "Bilder auf denen die Gegenstände von jener erschreckenden Dinglichkeit sind, die etwas Mystisches hat." Wacker, R. (1990). Tagebücher (Vol. 2, p. 442). Vaduz: Topos Verlag.
8. Wacker, R. (1990). In Tagebücher (Vol. 2, p. 451). Vaduz: Topos Verlag.
9. "Ich erinnere mich wie wir uns zu Kriegsbeginn oft an die ganz kleinen Dinge geklammert haben. Wie viel Trost das Glitzern eines Tautropfens an einem Grashalm in dem maschinellen Leben des Exerzierplatzes gab oder an der Front mitten in aller Unmenschlichkeit der Anblick eines Käfers. – Wir haben lange den Zusammenhängen des Weltgeschehens nachgegrübelt – aber wieder kehren wir zurück zu dem Leben der unscheinbaren Dinge, es tut unsern Augen, unserer Seele so wohl. Wir finden eine Wirklichkeit von reicher Ordnung, vieler Schönheit und einer wundersamen Beständigkeit in ihnen." Wacker, R. (1990). Tagebücher (Vol. 2, p. 577). Vaduz: Topos Verlag.
10. "Ich habe an den Festtagen Dwinger „Die Armee hinter Stacheldraht“ gelesen. Es hat sich eingeführt, daß sich mir um diese Zeit zu den Gedanken an die Kindheit die Erinnerung an Sibirien gesellt. – Ich habe bis gegen Morgen gelesen und Schnaps dazu getrunken. Ein Buch kann nicht alles enthalten, dieses enthält fast alles Wesentliche unsres Erlebnisses von 1915-18 – und was da ist, das ist wahr u. echt. Ich möchte dass es so viel gelesen würde als Remarques Im Westen nichts Neues – denn sicher ist hier der Krieg noch scheußlicher." Wacker, R. (1990). Tagebücher (Vol. 2, p. 576). Vaduz: Topos Verlag.
11. Müller, H.-H. (1986). Der Krieg und die Schriftsteller. Der Kriegsroman der Weimarer Republik. Stuttgart: Metzler.
Tuesday, the 10th of January 2023, saw the passing of the German scholar Hans Belting (1935–2023), one of his generation's most important art historians. This had a particular significance in Brno, since the Department of Art History was one of three institutions to benefit from donating his personal library (the other two were the Freie Universität in Berlin and the Danube University in Krems).
The autumn's 2022 first SMArt Talks hosted two art historians who are currently working on the theme of the visual strategies of the Central European nations when presenting themselves abroad and at World’s fairs during the late 19th and the first half of the 20th century.
