German Expressionism In World War 1

How do the German Expressionists use film to convey the effects of WW1?

Art had an abrupt change during and after World War 1; the portrayal of the world was presented in a distorted and jagged way. For most art in the era of Expressionism, corruption and destruction of society became the main narrative. Although this is conveyed as the ‘reality’ of the world, Rudolf Kurtz (1926, p. 13) states “Expressionism does not represent the object’s tangible reality: it is concerned with a fundamentally different plane of existence”. This explains that, Expressionism deals with new/ fantasy worlds created as an exaggerated reflection of the real world, the play of energies and intensities, portrayed by the artist.

Expressionism reared in 1905, a time just after Germany became a unified state and obtained Emperor Kaiser Wilhelm I as the first ruler of new Germany. During this occasion, Germany underwent a huge social change, gaining new industrialists, a middle class and an expanding urban workforce. This new Imperial Hierarchy was a major influence on art and

Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (Farthing, 2010, p. 379) described this as “abundant in beauty, strangeness, doubt, horror and divinity". Their works focused on landscapes and nudes, very much the post-impressionism style that they were influenced by, however, World War 1 broke out in August 1914 causing the worlds they were depicting to become nightmarish scenes. Dark tones, non-naturalistic colors, distorted figures, razor –like lines, and a palette with the “pallor of death” (Gompertz, 2012, p. 210) had now overcome their works. Themes of death, paranoia, manipulation, industrialization, and contaminated mentalities, consumed their works. The optimism that originally birthed Expressionism was