For more on these nineteenth-century ideals and their political consequences in the twentieth century, see Fritz Stern, “The Political Consequences of the Unpolitical German,” in The Failure of Illiberalism: Essays on the Political Culture of Modern Germany (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 3–25.ġ4. Raymond Geuss, “Kultur, Bildung, Geist,” History and Theory 35, no. This is to suggest a correlation between Menzel’s turn toward realism and the ideals of Prussia’s Bildungsbürgertum (educated middle class), who, like Schiller before them, advocated-contra revolutionary liberalism-for “a self-regulating aesthetic society” as the key to realizing gradual sociopolitical progress within the existing authoritarian state. Kolloquium anläßlich der Berliner Menzel-Ausstellung 1997,” suppl., Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen, n.s. Claude Keisch, “Menzel, die Toten, der Tod,” in “Adolph Menzel im Labyrinth der Wahrnehmung.
For more on the etymological connection between Werk and Wirklichkeit, see Christian Fuchs, Reading Marx in the Information Age: A Media and Communication Studies Perspective on “ Capital Volume I” (New York: Routledge, 2016), 28.ġ2. For more on Menzel’s technical process and its connection to drawing, see Françoise Forster-Hahn, “Authenticity into Ambivalence: The Evolution of Menzel’s Drawings,” Master Drawings 16, no.
For more on the events leading up to and influencing this reorientation, see Marie Riemann-Reyher, Adolph von Menzel: Reiseskizzen aus Preußen (Berlin: Nicolai, 1992), 103–24.ġ0.
Carola Kleinstück-Schulman (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2017), 171–217. For more on Menzel’s departure from history painting in the late 1860s, see Werner Busch, Adolph Menzel: The Quest for Reality, trans. For more on the outwardly apolitical cultural ideals of the late nineteenth-century Bürger, and their connection to Friedrich Schiller’s aesthetic humanism, see Constantin Behler, “The Politics of Aesthetic Humanism: Schiller’s German Idea of Freedom,” Goethe Yearbook 20 (2013): 223–46, 238.ĩ. For more on Menzel’s self-identification as Bürger, see Paul Meyerheim, Adolph von Menzel: Erinnerungen (Berlin: Gebrüder Paetel, 1906), 149. For more on the concept of Bildung, see Rebekka Horlacher, The Educated Subject and the German Concept of Bildung (London: Routledge, 2016).Ĩ. Vormärz (literally “before March” or “pre-March”) refers to the historical period prior to the German Revolutions of 1848–49, the first of which erupted in March 1848.Ħ. Rebus-Almanach, erster Jahrgang (Leipzig, Germany: J. While Keisch and Riemann-Reyher reference this part of Menzel’s persona in various publications, Lammel published the only book on the subject: Gisold Lammel, Adolph Menzel: Blätter mit Esprit, Humor und Satire (Hanau, Germany: Werner Dausien, 1987).ģ. Keisch, Riemann-Reyher, and Lammel are among the few scholars to recognize the artist’s affinity for jokes and puzzles. Gisold Lammel’s collection of reminiscences about the artist is also an invaluable resource Lammel, ed., Exzellenz Lassen Bitten: Erinnerungen an Adolph Menzel (Leipzig, Germany: Reclam, 1992).Ģ. (Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2009) and see Hans Wolff, ed., Adolph von Menzels Briefe (Berlin: Julius Bard, 1914). In 2009 Claude Keisch and Marie Ursula Riemann-Reyher heroically transcribed and published a four-volume compendium of the artist’s correspondence, building on an earlier compilation of Menzel’s letters from 1914 Keisch and Riemann-Reyher, eds., Adolph Menzel: Briefe, 4 vols. Unless otherwise indicated, translations are mine.ġ. Finally, I want to thank Andreas Heese and the staff at the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin, Karin Rhein at the Museum Georg Schäfer, and Michaela Pens at the Hamburger Kunsthalle Kupferstichkabinett for supporting my research on Menzel over many years. To Soffia Gunnarsdottir, Philippe Halbert, Sophie Duvernoy, Michael Lesley, Robert Vogt, and Gregor Quack, thank you for your intellectual generosity. I am also grateful to the anonymous reviewers and to The Art Bulletin’s coeditors for their helpful feedback, as well as to Nick Geller for his assistance with this publication. I would like to thank Tim Barringer, Nicola Suthor, Paul North, and Carol Armstrong for their guidance and support throughout the writing of this essay.