ART IN WEIMAR TIMES by Eva Meinhof

The period between the abdication of Kaiser Wlhelm II in November 1918 and Adolf Hiters seizure of power in January 1933 was one of great creative ferment in Germany. Expressionism which dominated the avant garde before the World War I, survived into the early 1920's. The Dada movement, founded in 1916 by expatriot artists disgusted with the war effort, brought its free-form iconoclasm to bear on the postwar German political situation. Dire social and economic circumstances seemed to demand a more pragmatic and realistic aesthetic, and by 1925 the Neue Sachlichkeit (new objectivity) was widely hailed as the principle mode of the decade.

The new Germany presented a compendiumof its worstfailings, which were dutifulcatalogued by the nation's many artists. As unempyment and inflatiion skyrocketed, the streets grew crowded with beggars and crippeled war veterans, who sereved as inescapable reminders of society's inequities.

The war itself as depicted by Otto Dix , was a metaphor for the moral and spirutal debasement of humankind.