Modern Times

Pictures of the 1920s.

Elisabeth Voigt, The Little Drummer, 1926

This blog should have been written long ago, but the fast-moving political events have diverted my attention.

The vernissage of the exhibition Modern Times took place on September 25 last year. I tried to photograph some interesting pictures of the objects presented, but people were standing on each other's feet, so it was in vain. 

Click to enlarge

So I went to the Freiburg Museum of Contemporary Art later and had the exhibition rooms all to myself.

Modern times, everyone involuntarily thinks of the movie with Charlie Chaplin. A scene from it was also shown in an anteroom in an endless loop. 

Charlie runs after a woman with his wrench and tries to twist her skirt's buttons. Red Baron saw the movie as a student. The audience doubled over with laughter.

Walter Jacob, Prometheus 1220

Like another exhibition at Freiburg, Modern Times is on loan from the Altenburg Museums. They could not house their exhibition materials during the renovation of their premises and, therefore, loaned them for two exhibitions in Freiburg.

In the US, the 1920s are also known as The Roaring Twenties, in France as les années folles and in Italy as Anni ruggenti.

George Grosz, Vorm Schaufenster (Window Shopping) 1924

Käthe Kollwitz, Bread! 1924

In Germany, the social situation was anything but fun for most of the population, but during the Goldenen Zwanziger, the bear began to tap too, especially in Berlin.

Erich Haeckel, Zwei Verwundete (Two Wounded Veterans) 1914

The First World War ended with defeat, and Germany was humiliated by the Treaty of Versailles. The bloody war was a trauma that left its marks on people's souls and bodies. 

Gas and Hand Grenades

At a Lost Post

Maltreated Creature

Air Attack on Civilian Targets

Otto Dix, Die Kartenspieler (Cardplayers) 1920

Otto Dix's depictions illustrate the atrocities of the war.

Conrad Felixmüller, Soldat im Irrenhaus (Soldier in the Madhouse) 1918

War cripples were locked away or dominated the streets of Berlin and elsewhere as beggars.

Germany's post-war economic situation was catastrophic. Unemployment was high, money devaluation was galloping, society was torn apart, and the public was polarized, with a tendency towards radicalism. 

Käthe Kollwitz, Gedenkblatt (Memorial Sheet) für Karl Liebknecht 1919

Political murder was the order of the day.

Although it was forbidden, women of all ages who needed money due to hyperinflation prostituted themselves as an unavoidable sideline. Hans Baluscheck was fascinated by their faces and drew a portfolio of portraits of Unsocial Women in 1923.

Straßendirne (Steetwalker)

Vorstadtdirne (Suburban Prostitute)

Rummelnutte (Fairground Hooker)

Kokainistin (Cocaine Addict)

Kupplerin (Bawd)

The Weimar Republic tried in vain to improve the social situation of the population but fell into disrepute over the years.

Franz Xaver Fuhr, Café Kantore 1925

In Germany from 1924 onwards, in the Golden Twenties people lived out their individual freedom in cafés, brothels, and cabarets. Art, culture, and science flourished. 

Hanna Nagel Ein Akademieprofessor zeichnet die Maria
(An Academy Professor Draws Mary) 1931

While few revelled in unbridled wealth, many lived in abject poverty, and some enjoyed little happiness.

Conrad Felixmüller, Schichtwechsel auf Grube Gotteswort
(Shift change at God's Word mine) 1921

It was Germany's emergence into the modern age, with lofty dreams and boundless plans, but simultaneously a dance on a volcano. Because crises (Black Friday) followed one another, escalated immeasurably and, by the end of the 1920s, could no longer be controlled even with Notverordnungen (emergency decrees).

Click to enlarge

The end came in 1933, the triumph of those who despised democracy. Was the slide into the dark Nazi dictatorship avoidable?

Remember Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker who highlighted the rapid dismantling of the Weimar Republic by the Nazis warning his fellow citizens, "It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic."

For Red Baron, the Nazis' Machtergreifung (seizure of power) took only slightly longer. It began on  January 30, 1933, with Hitler's appointment as Reichs Chancellor and was completed on March 23, with the passing of the Ermächtigungsgesetz (Enabling Act). My German-reading friends may read the full stoy here.

Let the fall of the Weimar Republic be a lesson to us and a warning to recognize and prevent the destruction of freedom in good time. Although the Golden Twenties are long gone, they are still highly topical.

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A Letter from Afterlife

Frequently Red Baron rips out a few feathers of other people in his writings but does not use them to adorn his blogs. The following, however, is an exception where I feature a translation of a letter from Napoleon to Trump. Der Spiegel author Evelin Ruhnow guided the French emperor's pen. I added some illustrations and footnotes.

Detail from the well-known painting by Jacques-Louis David
Premier Consul franchissant les Alpes au col du Grand Saint-Bernard
 with Trump in the saddle instead of Napoleon (©Der Spiegel)

In his letter, Napoleon dissuades the US president from emulating him.

Dear Mr. Trump,

For some time now, I have been following your efforts to claim the top position among history's greats with increasing displeasure. Mon cher ami, let me tell you: This place has already been taken. And although you have a reputation for incorrigible attitude, I am sending you these well-meant objections in the hope of dissuading you from your mission impossible.

"The career is open to the talented," I always say; and I am convinced of that, after all, I am living proof of it. However, I would like to express some doubts about you.

Très bien, you have made it to the presidency for the second time. That may be a more remarkable achievement than some would have given you credit for.

Napoleon's privates (©Tony Perrottet)

1. For me, it is instead a testimony to the failure of your people, who once dared to equate my severed penis with a shriveled eel and put it on public display. Quels crétins!

Nevertheless, I am surprised that this once proud nation could elevate a questionable homme d'affaires like you to office. It is often only a step from the sublime to the ridiculous.

2. I may be less familiar with today's times. Nevertheless, it seems at best risqué to me when a self-declared "king" bases his wisdom on the trials and tribulations of TV réalité. Voltaire, Goethe, Rousseau - these are the names he should be studying, Caesar, Alexander the Great and Hannibal, the heroes he should strive to emulate. And by the latter I don't mean that psychopath dérangé you so deliberately mention.

3. I cannot help but attest a lack of consistency in your foreign policy affairs that is not befitting of a truly great ruler. Take, for example, your efforts to start a tariff war. That may be a clever move to turn the nations against you, bien sur. But if it is, then please do it properly.

In my time, I set up a continental blockade that almost brought the whole of Europe - including my own empire - to ruin. If you do stupid things, they must at least succeed.

4. Success makes great men, but what notable successes may you show? The path to true greatness requires great deeds and titles.

I was First Consul and crowned Emperor. I became King of Italy and holder of the Order of the Elephant. People have erected statues of me, written books about my life and named plants after me. And you?

©dinarchronicles

So far, you have only fantasized in front of tasteless gold statues bearing your visage.

©The White House

And a patched-up picture with a crown doesn't make an aristocrat. Not everyone masters the art of declaring himself autocrat.

The fake citation (©Stephen Colbert)

5. I take particular offense at your attempt to appropriate my fame. Using a false quote and putting on your own crown, elevating your closest family members and followers to positions of power*, infiltrating the media with systematic "press work" and presenting yourself as a chosen savior - all just to emulate me? Pathétique!
*Don't run your mouth too full here, Napoleon. His older brother Joseph Bonaparte was first King of Naples and later King of Spain. Napoleon's younger brother Louis became King of Holland and his youngest brother Jérôme was King of Westphalia.

Apart from the fact that there can only be one original - and that's me - I intensely dislike being associated with your questionable practices and manners. And your attempts to reach out for things beyond your reach sometimes seem clumsy as your hand.

Finally, if my letter does not dissuade you from your fruitless efforts to climb the steps of glory, I would like to issue two warnings. They are based on painful experiences that I am reluctant to talk about.

Firstly, if you put all your trust in Russia, you may end up like me. I too, generous as I was, made a peace that the ungrateful Tsar broke only a short time later.

And secondly, the people's anger is awakening faster than you can imagine.* Your second term of office may not yet last a hundred days like mine, but I assure you: The voices wishing for your abdication can already be heard loud and clear. As soon as the luck changes, the mob will become ungrateful.

*After the lost Battle of Leipzig, Napoleon resented, "Conquests have made me what I am. Only conquests can keep me in power."

All well and good, but my Russian campaign may not have been strictly a success. Looking back, perhaps I should have been satisfied with my petty kingship on Elba (you call yours Mar-a-Lago) - but who can predict that?

And before you know it, you end up on a lonely, barren island. Alone. Quelle farce!

Last but not least: I heard you once remark during a visit to France that things didn't end well with me. But if you think you could follow in my oversized footsteps without sharing a similar fate, all that remains for me to say is: Bonne chance.

With disdainful regards

Napoleon Bonaparte (the real one)

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Between Poetry and Reality

An exhibition at Freiburg's Augustinermuseum titled Zwischen Poesie und Wirklichkeit commemorates the centenary of the death of Hans Thoma (1839-1924), a painter from Bernau in the Black Forest. He is known and appreciated for his unmistakable landscape and genre paintings but was recently criticized for his closeness to ethnic and nationalist positions.

The exhibition focuses on Thoma's graphic work. After discovering printmaking, he became a master in this technique, culminating in his breakthrough as late as 1890.. The highlight of his career was his appointment as director of the Grand Ducal Picture Gallery and the Academy of Art in Karlsruhe in 1899.

But let's start with two paintings. The first one is a realistic portrait of Grand Duke Frederick I, the liberal ruler of Baden, who had supported Thoma from early on.

Frederick I, Grand Duke of Baden (1909). As usually, click to enlarge.

The oil painting, begun during the duke's lifetime, was only completed two years after his death. Frederick wears a uniform decorated with the Iron Cross. In the background, looking through a window, the landscape of Lake Constance is shown.

Ocean Awakening (Sea Lark, 1893)

The next painting shows a female fish centaur welcoming the day with a morning song like a lark. The hybrid creature has a human torso, horse legs, and a fish tail. Thoma gave the centaur the facial features of his wife, Cela.

Let us continue chronologically. As many of the Germans of his generation, Thoma venerated Richard Wagner.

Valkyrie (Brunhilde 1895)

Cosima Wagner commissioned Thoma to design the costumes for the 1896 performance of Wagner's Ring des Nibelungen. The costumes were intended not to reconstruct the early Middle Ages but rather underline the myth's timelessness. So Brunhilde is dressed in Thoma's costume and wears a whimsical dragon helmet.

Siegfried, 1898

Siegfried presents his glistening sword. He just killed the dragon lying at his feet. Brightness exaggerates the hero's body.

Christ and Peter on the Water (Wall Decoration, 1901)

While Jesus walks safely on the water, Peter, doubtful, threatens to sink. This episode from St. Matthew's gospel encourages Christians to hold on to their faith even in high waves.

Birth of Christ, 1903

In this scene Thoma draws on old German models by Cranach and Hohlbein. Christ is the light of the world, The mice in the straw are the artist's addition.

The Wanderer, 1903

Portray of a sweaty wanderer climbing the heights of Thoma's beloved Black Forest.

A Pair of Reapers, 1903

A farmer and his wife walk through a cornfield. The two reapers stare ahead, carrying their working tools on their shoulders. Such Blut und Boden (blood and soil) depictions recently placed Thoma in the vicinity of Nazi art, although the Third Reich only came into being in 1933. Red Baron still remembers pictures of this kind in his school reader.

The Sower (1897)

An even earlier graphic, from 1897, presents sowing as a sacred act. The sower's figure becomes monumentalized and staged as a model of a national ethnology, a symbol of new Germanness.

Evening Calm (Master Sheet, 1907)

In the twilight of the evening sun, master and dog observe their surroundings.

Old Age and Death, 1915

There is a reaper called Death. Thoma presents the unpredictability and omnipresence of death in the classical form of a skeleton wearing a scythe. The Old Reaper has not yet come for "Thoma" passing him, but does he hurry after the child?

Thoma's Portrait Photo (1925) autographed by the artist.

This document was produced on the occasion of the City of Freiburg commemorating Thomas' death. In addition to Hugo Erfurth's portrait photo, the facsimile shows an excerpt from Thomas' handwritten letter from 1919, in which he expresses his thanks for being awarded honorary citizenship:

Freiburg, the Black Forest capital

In the future, the city of Freiburg will be a pearl among German cities, a safe haven of German style and custom, a rallying point of the Black Forest, a center of the Allemannic tribe, where religion, science and art flourish, filled with the German spirit that will imperishably outlast time. It lies on a gorgeous spot on earth, close to the kingdom of heaven. God will protect it,

Hans Thoma

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Wahlrechtsreform

Following our recent federal election, calls for a reform of the electoral law become louder. Why that call? Hadn't we just changed our electoral law?

While the United States has a House of Representatives with 435 members for a population of 340 million, the previous Bundestag had 736 members for 86 million.

Instead of the initially planned 598, there were 736 MPs before the recent election.

A new electoral law in Germany applied in the recent federal election capped the number of seats in the Bundestag at 630. This is still too high for many citizens, but it nevertheless means a savings of 125 million euros of taxpayers' money annually.

I briefly described the German electoral law in a previous blog. The law is schizophrenic because we try to square the circle by mixing proportional representation with a majority vote system. Let's get it straight.

In its purest form, a majority vote elects the person obtaining most of the votes in a constituency. The number of seats in parliament equals the number of elected deputies. This system has the advantage that the person elected is known and regarded as the representative for the people living in the constituency. With this bonding, the citizen knows whom to address when needed.

On the other hand, minority opinions and parties are ignored. So, Churchill said of the majority vote as practiced in the UK and the USA, where the winner takes it all, "It isn't one hundred percent democratic," adding, "but it works."

Proportional representation is more democratic since it allows the presentation of smaller parties in parliament. However, this leads to a fragmentation of votes, making it challenging to find majorities to form stable governments. In addition, the representatives in parliament do not feel responsible for a constituency and, therefore, remain "invisible" to the voter.

The negative example of a pure proportional voting system was the Weimar Republic. Due to the poor economic situation (mass unemployment), the share of votes for parties on the extreme right and left wings in the Reichstag increased from election to election. This made it increasingly difficult for the moderate center-left to collect the many small parties under one democratic umbrella and form viable governments. Ultimately, it was possible to govern the Republic only by Notverordnungen (executive orders). So eventually, the Nazis gave the collapsing Republic the death blow with the Ermächtigungsgesetz (Enabling Act) of 1933.

This is why the electoral law of the Federal Republic of Germany has the so-called five percent hurdle. Only parties that receive at least 5% of the votes are represented in the Bundestag, although this is not 100% democratic either.

In Germany's initial electoral law, half of the MPs, i.e. 299, were elected in constituencies according to the majority system, the other half were determined proportionally to the percentage of votes a party obtained in the election.

Additional direct mandates gained than the percentage to which a party was entitled gave rise to Überhangmandate (excess seats). To correct for the proportionality of the votes received, other parties were compensated with Ausgleichsmandate (leveling seats). With this praxis, Germany ended up eventually with a bloated Bundestag.

Constituencies where directly elected candidates did not get their seats.

The fixation to 630 MPs at the recent federal election led to the situation that some candidates elected as deputies in a constituency could not take up their mandates.
Christian Democrats lost most of the direct mandates and were outraged about the "undemocratic electoral law reform." While reducing the size of the Bundestag was "necessary," it should not have been "at the expense of democracy." However, the CDU/CSU cannot yet say how a more democratic model in the future should look.

If we decide to retain our schizophrenic election system, the only way to keep the number of MPs small would be to reduce the number of constituencies. One would end up with a variable number of deputies, but the Bundestag would be smaller than 730 MPs.

My question at the end is why we don't adopt the French electoral system? In France there are constituencies with one MP each. Whoever obtains the absolute majority of votes for his party in a constituency is elected.

If none of the candidates gets 50% of the votes in the "premier tour" there is a run-off election between the two best-placed candidates or even a "triangulaire" with the best three. In this "second tour", the candidate with the highest relative number of votes wins the constituency.

 A classic example of a "triangulaire" in Germany would have been constituency 281 Freiburg with Chantal Kopf, Klaus Schüle and Ludwig Striet.

The French way of voting comes closest to my understanding of democratic voting, as the candidate elected represents a constituency in which he/she is known to the people. At the same time, such an election procedure still reflects the balance of votes between the parties quite well. Although the system is not 100% democratic, it would work.
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Germany Voted

The Reichstag in Berlin, seat of the Bundestag (parliament) (©Joerg Carstensen/dpa)

The early federal election is history. As always, there were winners and losers, but the biggest winner was democracy. 82.5% of those eligible to vote cast their ballots, which means voter turnout was 6.1% higher than in the last federal election.

  

The number of parties that stood in the federal election shows the fragmentation of German society.
 Click on the graphic to enlarge

Here is the preliminary official final result.

The parties of the last federal government, which broke up last November on the day President Trump was elected, were punished.

The once-great People's Party SPD only received 15.6% of the votes, the worst result in its long democratic history. The Greens could limit their losses, but the big election losers were the Liberals (FDP). They lost 7.1% of their voters and are no longer represented in the Bundestag, with only 4.3% of the votes cast. The party leader, Christian Lindner, has already announced his departure from politics. As an expectant father, he would like to take more care of his family in the future.

The election winners are on the right and left edges of the party spectrum. The right-wing AfD more than doubled its vote share, and the left-wing Die Linke, which was thought to be dead, is entering the Bundestag with a share of the vote well above the five percent hurdle.

An analysis of the election shows that both parties were particularly successful with young voters due to their activities on social media channels. Young people are correctly worried about their future and thus often believe the populist and financially unfounded promises of both the right and the left without reflection.

Five parties are represented in the new Bundestag. The government will probably be a black-red coalition, but it does not deserve the name GroKo (Great Coalition) since it has only a majority of 26 seats in the new Bundestag. At its peak, the GroKo's majority-to-opposition ratio was 503/127. 

At the penultimate federal election in November 2017, when the AfD won 12.3% of the vote, my blog ended with: Germany moved to the right. It is time for the democratic parties to fight back.

My appeal must have borne fruit because in 2021, the party, which the German Office for the Protection of the Constitution has classified as right-wing extremist, lost 2%.

This time, however, the AfD more than doubled its vote share to 20.8% and, with 152 seats in the new Bundestag, announced a strong opposition, "We will drive them before us."

The future government has been warned that if it cannot resolve Germany's reform backlog, the AfD could win an absolute majority in the 2029 election.

Indeed, Germany faces many problems, and the change of front by the American president has exacerbated them. There are 

- the high social benefits, not least because of the continuing migration; therefore, 

- the need for easier and faster deportations of bogus refugees and criminals, 

- affordable health care, including nursing care for the aging population, 

- reasonably priced housing with increased climate protection requirements for new buildings, 

- the climate crisis and renewable affordable energies, 

- the stagnating economy in the face of more difficult export opportunities, 

- the strengthening of the Bundeswehr (military) due to the threat from the east and the
  quasi-termination of the American protective shield, and 

- therefore pursuing closer cooperation in the European Union, including the United Kingdom.

Where to start?

All of this costs a lot of money, and with no economic growth in sight, it can only be achieved by taking on new debt. But Germany's hands are tied by the debt brake enshrined in the constitution. This can only be changed with a constitutional amendment requiring a 2/3 majority in the Bundestag.

Quo vadis Germany?

On the map of Germany showing voter majorities, the east of the republic is dominated by blue (AfD), with islands of purple (die Linke). In contrast, the West is dominated by black (CDU/CSU) with a few red (SPD) and green splotches, including Freiburg.

In my street, campaigners anticipated the election result when hanging up posters.

So, how was the result of the election in Freiburg in Constituency 281 with three strong candidates?

Chantal Kopf defended the Green direct mandate with 32.5% and gained 3.7% compared to 2021.

The result of the "second vote" (Zweitstimme) for Constituency 281, which determines the strength of the individual parties in the Bundestag, shows that many voters split their votes to ensure that Chantal regained the direct mandate.

Compared to the overall result, the FDP remained below 5% in Freiburg, too; the AFD only reached 10.4%, but Die Linke achieved an astonishing 13.9% of the votes. Could Bernie Sanders' constant criticism of social inequality in the US have rubbed off in Freiburg?

This time, I will close my election blog with the modified leitmotif of the Communist Manifesto, "Representatives of all parties of the center unite in the fight against populism and right-wing extremism."

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