- Dates
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Karl Arnold. Seventy-four Illustrations from ‘Simplicissimus’
From 1918 to 1933, Karl Arnold published one of his weekly caricatures in the satirical magazine Simplicissimus, as well as writing an accompanying text for it. Seventy-four out of more than 700 pages have been selected for this exhibition, which clearly show Karl Arnold’s artistic mastery and also give an idea of the Weimar era, the period of the First German Republic, which lasted only fourteen years. Karl Arnold took a decisive stance on the political, social and cultural events of his time, but he was first and foremost an artist who was extremely concerned with accuracy, a quality that gave his drawings a great deal of authenticity.
Karl Arnold felt no obligation to any party or ideology. His criteria were truth, reason and humanity. He was outraged by lies and contempt for human dignity, even when they were concealed by various forms of social obfuscation. He exposed them with the clear outlines of his drawings, or also very often with the sharp language of his texts. He attempted to ridicule them when he exposed them, in the belief that laughter was more destructive than hatred. This is perhaps most evident in his caricatures of Hitler, which always express the mediocrity, stupidity and primitiveness of this demagogue. Karl Arnold did not want to contribute to transforming the figure of Hitler into something demonic, powerful and ‘uncontrollable’. Many of his caricatures of petty bourgeois characters likewise show the stupidity and faith in authority typified by latent fascism.
F. A. Krummacher described Karl Arnold as a ‘liberal humanist’: ‘He was committed to “man” not as a “historian” but as an observant chronicler and commentator who held up a mirror to his contemporaries and recorded what moved, delighted or disturbed them at the time, thereby getting to the heart of the matter with extraordinary perspicacity. He wanted to entertain, not to preach: a highly sensitive “reporter”, never bitter, always surprising, not a hammer but a foil. To caricature is to leave something out, but for Karl Arnold it was never to distort; he had a special gift for noticing situations early, both positive (Saviour Stresemann, 1923) and negative (Munich Man, 1923; SOS German National Party, 1929). This set him apart from other caricaturists as a portraitist of his time who did not fall prey to the illusions and self-deceptions of his contemporaries. If Karl Arnold had been a representative of the German bourgeoisie, there would have been no “seizure of power”.’
This exhibition does not attempt to give a complete picture of the Weimar Republic or to chronicle the most important events of the period. Some key events are missing from Karl Arnold’s caricatures because they were covered by other contributors in the relevant issues of Simplicissimus. On the whole, however, the exhibition – at least we hope so – may offer a physiognomic impression of the period, a ‘portrait of the 1920s’, which were not as golden as many would like to believe today. During which fundamental political decisions were made – not only for Germany – and during which probably more scientific and artistic ideas were disseminated than in any other period of comparable length in our history.
Visitors to the exhibition unfamiliar with the internal situation in Germany may not always be able to understand to which event a caricature refers. Nonetheless, we have refrained from commenting on each page, as we trust that its lines have sufficient expressive power. This is an exhibition by an artist, not a politician. But the chronological tables in this catalogue will make it easier to understand. They provide an overview of the political and cultural events of the time. The exhibition as a whole is intended to be a portrait of an independent artist, in his hope and despair.
Fritz Arnold
