Lot Essay
Der Rächer is one of Barlach's most celebrated sculptures and has become regarded as one of the most compelling symbols of the German Expressionist Movement. Barlach first created the powerful image of a man striding forward, holding a sword over his head in plaster between September and October of 1914 (S.166). Schult records a bronze version of this 1914 plaster (S.167) and a wooden version of 1922 (S.271).
The entry in his diary of 5 September 1914 reads: "I have been at work at my storming Berserker [Der Rächer] and it begins to be important to me. Could it be possible that a war is being waged and I forget it over a hundred-pound image of clay? To me this Berserker is the crystallized essence of War, the assault of each and every obstacle, rendered credible. I began it once before but cast it aside because the composition seemed to burst apart" (see N. Jackson Groves, Ernst Barlach: Life in Work: Sculpture, Drawings and Graphics; Dramas, Prose Works and Letters in Translation, Königstein im Taunus, 1972, p. 69). Initially, Barlach referred to Der Rächer as Berserker as he regarded the work as the natural development from his earlier sculptures Der Berserker I (S.104-6) of 1910 (fig. 1) and Der Berserker II (Der Schwertzieher) (S.118) of 1911 (fig. 2). Whilst it is easy to reduce Der Rächer to a war symbol, the sculpture is in fact a much more sensitive representation of modern man as a powerful hero charged with extraordinary purpose and a willingness to challenge all that lies before him.
In the wake of the First World War, Barlach returned to Der Rächer, carving a less aggressive but nevertheless heroic wooden version of the sculpture in 1922 (Schult 271, fig. 4). Dr. Eva Caspers of the Ernst Barlach Haus has pointed out the ambiguity of the work, as the fiercesome pose of the subject contrasts dramatically with his reticent face, as if Barlach was at once acknowledging the enormity of the war at the same time as its appalling significance.
Barlach highlighted the difference in sentiment between the two works in a letter to Ernst Hübenthal dated 10 March 1933: "Der Entwurf in Gips hatte eine andere Maske, etwa von Charakter des Flüchtlings, etwa auch des rasenden Barbaren. Diesen Entwurf arbeitete ich, wie Sie vermuten, zu Anfang des Weltkrieges, zu einer Zeit, wo die verschiedensten Stimmen durcheinanderwogten; ausgeführt in Holz wurde das Stück 1923" (see E. Jansen, Ernst Barlach Werke und Werkentwürfe aus fünf Jahrzehnten, exh. cat., Alten Museum, 1981, no. 41, pp. 63-4). The wooden version, however, bears Barlach's own date of 1922. It was singled out for praise by the critic Karl Scheffler in his review of the Spring exhibition of the Berlin Akademie der Künste,: "An Werken der Plastik ist die Ausstellung reich, auch sind die einzelnen Arbeiten gut aufgestellt...Und dann ist da noch als einzelner, einziger der merkwürdige Barlach. Er beherrscht mit seiner Holzskulptur im Munchsaal die Plastik der Ausstellung in einer souveränen Weise. Aber dieses eine ausgezeichnete Werk, das wieder ein aktuelles Zeitgefühl ins allgemein Menschliche erhebt - es gehört zum stärksten, was Barlach gemacht hat" (K. Scheffler, 'Die Frühjahrausstellung der Akademie derKünste', Kunst und Künstler, vol. 21, 1922/23, p. 288 ff).
Barlach's conviction that Der Rächer was amongst his most important bronzes led the reknowned art dealers Alfred Flechteim and Paul Cassirer to cast a numbered edition of ten bronzes of the work, of which the present work is number three. The full edition was never completed. The bronzes were cast by the prestigious founder Hermann Noack in Berlin-Friedenau (later casts made after Barlach's death by the Noack Foundry were not numbered).
Cassirer was a great supporter of Barlach's work. In 1907, he offered Barlach, then thirty-seven years old, a contract with a yearly salary which was crucial to his survival as an artist. Five years later, Cassirer published Barlach's first drama, Der tote Tag, illustrated with twenty-seven of his lithographs. Along with Alfred Cold, Cassirer published the 1914 lithograph of Der Rächer (Der heilige Krieg) in the periodical Kriegszeit on 16 December 1914. It was in Cassirer's Berlin gallery in 1917, that the first large exhibition of Barlach's work was ever mounted, when two dozen sculptures as well as numerous drawings, lithographs and plaster models were shown. In February 1926, Cassirer's gallery presented thirty-seven sculptures in an exhibition which established Barlach's reputation, at the age of fifty-six.
By 1937, 381 of Barlach's works had been deemed 'Entartete Kunst' by the National Socialists. The wooden version of Der Rächer was seized in 1937 from the Nationalgalerie, Berlin, where it had been on loan. On 30 June 1939, it was sold for 3,150 Swiss Francs to an American collector as lot 3 in the infamous sale held by Galerie Fischer at the Grand Hotel National, Lucerne. The work remained in a private American collection until it was acquired by the Ernst Barlach Haus in 1975.
As Peter Guenther has commented: "Der Rächer, with its Cubist and Futurist elements, is one of the most dramatic and powerful of Barlach's works" (ibid., p. 60). The stylized rippling of the subject's overcoat and the simplification and use of planar forms in the present work suggest the influence of Futurism and Cubism, though Barlach's awareness of both movements is hard to judge.
"Barlach's works give form to the most fundamental level of human life and suffering, frequently touching upon hunger and misery, death and grief. No accidental or nervous gesture breaks the closed forms; the heavy garments prevent details from disturbing formal unity. The faces, too, avoid specifics, summarizing instead a state of existence. There are, however, no abstract forms in the works of Ernst Barlach. For this artist, only the human form was capable of carrying meaning for man. If the term Expressionism indicates an art which manifests in visible forms the inner life of mankind, then of all Expressionists Barlach must be considered the greatest" (P. W. Guenther, ibid., p. 61).
We are grateful to Dr. Eva Caspers of the Ernst Barlach Haus, Hamburg, for her help in researching this work.
The entry in his diary of 5 September 1914 reads: "I have been at work at my storming Berserker [Der Rächer] and it begins to be important to me. Could it be possible that a war is being waged and I forget it over a hundred-pound image of clay? To me this Berserker is the crystallized essence of War, the assault of each and every obstacle, rendered credible. I began it once before but cast it aside because the composition seemed to burst apart" (see N. Jackson Groves, Ernst Barlach: Life in Work: Sculpture, Drawings and Graphics; Dramas, Prose Works and Letters in Translation, Königstein im Taunus, 1972, p. 69). Initially, Barlach referred to Der Rächer as Berserker as he regarded the work as the natural development from his earlier sculptures Der Berserker I (S.104-6) of 1910 (fig. 1) and Der Berserker II (Der Schwertzieher) (S.118) of 1911 (fig. 2). Whilst it is easy to reduce Der Rächer to a war symbol, the sculpture is in fact a much more sensitive representation of modern man as a powerful hero charged with extraordinary purpose and a willingness to challenge all that lies before him.
In the wake of the First World War, Barlach returned to Der Rächer, carving a less aggressive but nevertheless heroic wooden version of the sculpture in 1922 (Schult 271, fig. 4). Dr. Eva Caspers of the Ernst Barlach Haus has pointed out the ambiguity of the work, as the fiercesome pose of the subject contrasts dramatically with his reticent face, as if Barlach was at once acknowledging the enormity of the war at the same time as its appalling significance.
Barlach highlighted the difference in sentiment between the two works in a letter to Ernst Hübenthal dated 10 March 1933: "Der Entwurf in Gips hatte eine andere Maske, etwa von Charakter des Flüchtlings, etwa auch des rasenden Barbaren. Diesen Entwurf arbeitete ich, wie Sie vermuten, zu Anfang des Weltkrieges, zu einer Zeit, wo die verschiedensten Stimmen durcheinanderwogten; ausgeführt in Holz wurde das Stück 1923" (see E. Jansen, Ernst Barlach Werke und Werkentwürfe aus fünf Jahrzehnten, exh. cat., Alten Museum, 1981, no. 41, pp. 63-4). The wooden version, however, bears Barlach's own date of 1922. It was singled out for praise by the critic Karl Scheffler in his review of the Spring exhibition of the Berlin Akademie der Künste,: "An Werken der Plastik ist die Ausstellung reich, auch sind die einzelnen Arbeiten gut aufgestellt...Und dann ist da noch als einzelner, einziger der merkwürdige Barlach. Er beherrscht mit seiner Holzskulptur im Munchsaal die Plastik der Ausstellung in einer souveränen Weise. Aber dieses eine ausgezeichnete Werk, das wieder ein aktuelles Zeitgefühl ins allgemein Menschliche erhebt - es gehört zum stärksten, was Barlach gemacht hat" (K. Scheffler, 'Die Frühjahrausstellung der Akademie derKünste', Kunst und Künstler, vol. 21, 1922/23, p. 288 ff).
Barlach's conviction that Der Rächer was amongst his most important bronzes led the reknowned art dealers Alfred Flechteim and Paul Cassirer to cast a numbered edition of ten bronzes of the work, of which the present work is number three. The full edition was never completed. The bronzes were cast by the prestigious founder Hermann Noack in Berlin-Friedenau (later casts made after Barlach's death by the Noack Foundry were not numbered).
Cassirer was a great supporter of Barlach's work. In 1907, he offered Barlach, then thirty-seven years old, a contract with a yearly salary which was crucial to his survival as an artist. Five years later, Cassirer published Barlach's first drama, Der tote Tag, illustrated with twenty-seven of his lithographs. Along with Alfred Cold, Cassirer published the 1914 lithograph of Der Rächer (Der heilige Krieg) in the periodical Kriegszeit on 16 December 1914. It was in Cassirer's Berlin gallery in 1917, that the first large exhibition of Barlach's work was ever mounted, when two dozen sculptures as well as numerous drawings, lithographs and plaster models were shown. In February 1926, Cassirer's gallery presented thirty-seven sculptures in an exhibition which established Barlach's reputation, at the age of fifty-six.
By 1937, 381 of Barlach's works had been deemed 'Entartete Kunst' by the National Socialists. The wooden version of Der Rächer was seized in 1937 from the Nationalgalerie, Berlin, where it had been on loan. On 30 June 1939, it was sold for 3,150 Swiss Francs to an American collector as lot 3 in the infamous sale held by Galerie Fischer at the Grand Hotel National, Lucerne. The work remained in a private American collection until it was acquired by the Ernst Barlach Haus in 1975.
As Peter Guenther has commented: "Der Rächer, with its Cubist and Futurist elements, is one of the most dramatic and powerful of Barlach's works" (ibid., p. 60). The stylized rippling of the subject's overcoat and the simplification and use of planar forms in the present work suggest the influence of Futurism and Cubism, though Barlach's awareness of both movements is hard to judge.
"Barlach's works give form to the most fundamental level of human life and suffering, frequently touching upon hunger and misery, death and grief. No accidental or nervous gesture breaks the closed forms; the heavy garments prevent details from disturbing formal unity. The faces, too, avoid specifics, summarizing instead a state of existence. There are, however, no abstract forms in the works of Ernst Barlach. For this artist, only the human form was capable of carrying meaning for man. If the term Expressionism indicates an art which manifests in visible forms the inner life of mankind, then of all Expressionists Barlach must be considered the greatest" (P. W. Guenther, ibid., p. 61).
We are grateful to Dr. Eva Caspers of the Ernst Barlach Haus, Hamburg, for her help in researching this work.