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.

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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