UM DIE WICHTIGEN FRAGEN ZU STELLEN: How can Germany be so bizarre and so boring?
When I lived in Berlin a decade ago, I was struck by the contrast between the dullness of young Germans and the incredible weirdness of everything else. Only in German could the word for “gums” (Zahnfleisch) mean “toothflesh.” And only in fleisch-mad Germany (the word for “meat” is the same as “flesh,” which is somehow incredibly disgusting) would people snack on raw pork, a dish known as mett. Mett, also known, rather curiously, as Hackepeter, is sometimes offered at buffets in the shape of a hedgehog (what else?) with raw onion spines. It simply doesn’t get stranger.
While musing on such things, I would cycle slowly around the bizarre gigantist ministries of the Nazi period near Checkpoint Charlie (itself a relic of a truly bonkers, menacing portion of the past), or past the Stasi headquarters in the almost mind-bendingly drab Lichtenberg. Or I’d drive down south with my then-boyfriend to Munich or Heidelberg and observe the particularly blood-curdling hedonism with which older West Germans took refreshment. All very odd.
Germany is still just as dull and just as mad. Bar some standout characters like Sahra Wagenknecht, of the populist party of the same name, and the knicker-twisting rise of the AfD, the political landscape is preternaturally boring – in part a function of its hopeless and labyrinthine proportional electoral system.
A week and a half ago, I visited the “Modern Art and Politics in Germany 1910-1945” exhibition at the Kimbell Museum in Fort Worth, which runs to June 22nd, before moving onward to other American museums. Assembled by Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie*, take two guesses why this exhibition is touring the States in 2025. Of the exhibition, Judith H. Dobrzynski of the Wall Street Journal notes:
Contrary to much popular belief, all art is not political. But in the first half of the 20th century—when Germany was experiencing rapid industrialization and militarization; the rise of nationalism and socialism; the defeat of World War I; the creation and swift fall of the liberal Weimar Republic; and a totalitarian Nazi regime that enforced its artistic taste by persecuting, exiling, even killing artists—German art certainly was.
From Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Christian Schad to Max Beckmann and Paul Klee, artists drew inspiration from the turmoil, turning out paintings and sculptures that commented overtly or slyly on modern life and politics. Alas, beyond these marquee names, many have had little to no exposure in the U.S.
(In contrast, a Fort Worth alternative weekly author lets his TDS run rampant in his review of the exhibit.)
What’s fascinating is how terrifying German expressionism appears, especially when compared to infinitely more cheerful French impressionists of the 19th century. German expressionism was dark, angry stuff – and these artists were the good guys! But much of the interwar art on display here has an ominous foreboding quality to it. Perhaps it was simply the unease and the terrible economic strains of the worst of the Weimar years, but in retrospect, much of this troubling artwork seems to preview far worse times ahead for Germany.
Speaking of which, to return to the topic at the start of this post, as to making 21st century Germany less boring, things in 2025 should be heating up quite nicely:
Auf Wiedersehen https://t.co/V3sPV15esj
— Jim Hanson (@JimHansonDC) May 25, 2025
* The Neue Nationalgalerie, an incredible exercise in engineering which functions quite poorly as an actual museum, was the last building that architect Mies van der Rohe played a major role in designing, before he passed away at age 84 in 1968. Yes,that Mies van der Rohe.