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Lustmord: Sexual Murder in Weimar Germany
In a book that confronts our society's obsession with sexual violence, Maria Tatar seeks the meaning behind one of the most disturbing images of twentieth-century Western culture: the violated female corpse. This image is so prevalent in painting, literature, film, and, most recently, in mass media, that we rarely question what is at stake in its representation. Tatar, however, challenges us to consider what is taking place-both artistically and socially-in the construction and circulation of scenes depicting sexual murder. In examining images of sexual murder (Lustmord), she produces a riveting study of how art and murder have intersected in the sexual politics of culture from Weimar Germany to the present. Tatar focuses attention on the politically turbulent Weimar Republic, often viewed as the birthplace of a transgressive avant-garde modernism, where representations of female sexual mutilation abound. Here a revealing episode in the gender politics of cultural production unfolds as male artists and writers, working in a society consumed by fear of outside threats, envision women as enemies that can be contained and mastered through transcendent artistic expression. Not only does Tatar show that male artists openly identified with real-life sexual murderers-George Grosz posed as Jack the Ripper in a photograph where his model and future wife was the target of his knife-but she also reveals the ways in which victims were disavowed and erased. Tatar first analyzes actual cases of sexual murder that aroused wide public interest in Weimar Germany. She then considers how the representation of murdered women in visual and literary works functions as a strategy for managing social andsexual anxieties, and shows how violence against women can be linked to the war trauma, to urban pathologies, and to the politics of cultural production and biological reproduction. In exploring the complex relationship between victim and agent in cases of sexual murder, Tatar explains how the roles came to be destabilized and reversed, turning the perpetrator of criminal deeds into a defenseless victim of seductive evil. Throughout the West today, the creation of similar ideological constructions still occurs in societies that have only recently begun to validate the voices of its victims. Maria Tatar's book opens up an important discussion for readers seeking to understand the forces behind sexual violence and its portrayal in the cultural media throughout this century.
213 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
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About the author
Maria Tatar
55 books321 followersMaria Tatar is the John L. Loeb Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures. She chairs the Program in Folklore and Mythology at Harvard University. She is the author of Enchanted Hunters: The Power of Stories in Childhood, Off with Their Heads! Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood and many other books on folklore and fairy stories. She is also the editor and translator of The Annotated Hans Christian Andersen, The Annotated Brothers Grimm, The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales, The Annotated Peter Pan, The Classic Fairy Tales: A Norton Critical Edition and The Grimm Reader. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
December 4, 2025
I had very strong emotions on reading this, so much so that I view it as a transformative, nearly life-changing read. In Lustmord, Maria Tatar examines male fantasies of violence towards women as expressed mainly in artworks from the Weimar era in Germany. She explores how these artists, traumatized by World War I, sublimated their anxieties about war-torn, mutilated soldiers' bodies onto women, especially prostitutes, whom they depicted mutilated and disemboweled in numerous gruesome artworks. Tatar cites numerous sources to back up her claims that these artists resented women, who remained intact at home while the male soldiers were subjected to senseless violence and mutilation. And they were especially resentful and envious of women's life-giving powers, seeking to symbolically destroy the bodies of women in order to create a more meaningful, durable, spiritual life in their canvases, films, and novels.
The reason this book was so important for me is that it linked certain things together in my mind that had hitherto been separate. In my film and writing practice I have been interested in subverting male fantasy in favor of female fantasy in the horror genre, and in resisting the depiction of female bodies as mutilated, humiliated, and debased. I saw this as a response to sadistic slasher films, and a desire for a return to women-in-peril pictures from the classic Hollywood era.
But this book was like a dark therapy session, because it brought me back to the first artworks I had ever seen depicting female mutilation: namely, my father's art books. I spent hours and hours as a child poring over Otto Dix and George Grosz reproductions, and because of this I developed a staunchly expressionistic style when I later went to art school and studied painting. And I literally sucked in air as I read Tatar's analysis of how these artists thought of women as muses and men as creators (she points to numerous creation myths in which women's bodies are destroyed in order to create a new, male-created universe), because when I was in art school, I once heard a male art professor state outright, "Men are creators—women are muses." And this attitude, widely held by male artists but rarely expressed directly, has oppressed me throughout my life as an artist, especially in an environment in which my father and his friends regularly drew and painted the nude female model, which was considered merely "form." But to read about how the same artists who painted canvases titled "Lustmord" (sexual murder), were the ones who thought of women as base, sensual creatures, in contrast with males, who were highly evolved, spiritual creatures, crystallized for me the whole reason I became an artist.
I loved German Expressionist art as a child (and I still do), because it's strong and visceral, it has great compositional and visual integrity, and it's powerfully evocative. It's "good" art in every sense. And its bright colors and emotional intensity would have obvious appeal for a child (I distinctly remember my sister and I as small children giggling over the obscene nudes). But I discovered, on reading Tatar's book, that Dix and Grosz in fact created self-portraits of themselves as sexual murderers—as Bluebeards! Then I had a dizzying moment where I realized that my interest in this theme didn't come just from the fairy tale; images of dead women had been firing my imagination even before I was able to read. Why do we have a cultural fascination with dead women? Why are images of dead and mutilated women so normalized? This casual attitude about images of dismembered women is accurately summarized by a Brian De Palma quote Tatar uses at the start of her first chapter: "I don't particularly want to chop up women but it seems to work."
One of the most fascinating parts of Tatar's analysis is when she talks about how persistently art historians ignore and efface the graphically brutal depictions of murdered women in artworks, focusing instead on the aesthetic and formal qualities of the work, or on biographical details of the artist. In a gruesome parallel, she recounts how serial murderers at the time were indirectly excused for their crimes by journalists, who focused instead on the killer's poverty or suffering, or on the public's hysteria. Karl Denke, for example, was said to have murdered and eaten his victims because of poverty: "the pots of fat and tubs of preserved human flesh in Denke's kitchen were evidently there because he needed the food." Worse, the victims were often blamed for the crimes committed against them (as Jews were often blamed for the acts of Nazi perpetrators), since murderous rage against loose, vulgar, mothering, or controlling women was seen as normal and natural.
Tatar points out how this logic also applies to Weimar films films, such as Fritz Lang's M, in which the child murderer Beckert, played by Peter Lorre, moves subtly from perpetrator at the beginning of the film to victim of an angry mob of mothers at the end of the film; and to Psycho (Hitchcock was heavily influenced by Weimar cinema), in which Norman disappears as the perpetrator as he is completely taken over by "Mother," who is the "real" killer. And Tatar says of the murders in Alfred Döblin's famous novel Berlin Alexanderplatz:
"The sexual demonization of women in Berlin Alexanderplatz has a function not very different from the racial demonization of Jews in the Third Reich. In both cases, repression and projection operate in such as way as to turn the target of murderous violence into a peril of monstrous proportions, one that threatens to sap the lifeblood of the 'victims' and thereby authorizes a form of unrestrained retaliatory violence marked by frenzied excess."
There is much more in the book that is thought-provoking and startling, which a brief review can't cover; one must read it in full. But it's a truly illuminating and harrowing book which provides a sharp feminist analysis of artworks, films, and novels which depict male violence against women as justifiable homicide because of the inherently awful qualities of the victims, who are in fact seen as perpetrators. This book was published in 1995. This fact seems significant, because her scathing arguments represent a type of critique that would be unthinkable in today's climate, in which any critique a feminist makes about male violence is put under a microscope, and the writer savaged and demonized (much like the examples in the book itself). For this and other reasons, I find Tatar's book to be especially timely, relevant, and valuable.
The reason this book was so important for me is that it linked certain things together in my mind that had hitherto been separate. In my film and writing practice I have been interested in subverting male fantasy in favor of female fantasy in the horror genre, and in resisting the depiction of female bodies as mutilated, humiliated, and debased. I saw this as a response to sadistic slasher films, and a desire for a return to women-in-peril pictures from the classic Hollywood era.
But this book was like a dark therapy session, because it brought me back to the first artworks I had ever seen depicting female mutilation: namely, my father's art books. I spent hours and hours as a child poring over Otto Dix and George Grosz reproductions, and because of this I developed a staunchly expressionistic style when I later went to art school and studied painting. And I literally sucked in air as I read Tatar's analysis of how these artists thought of women as muses and men as creators (she points to numerous creation myths in which women's bodies are destroyed in order to create a new, male-created universe), because when I was in art school, I once heard a male art professor state outright, "Men are creators—women are muses." And this attitude, widely held by male artists but rarely expressed directly, has oppressed me throughout my life as an artist, especially in an environment in which my father and his friends regularly drew and painted the nude female model, which was considered merely "form." But to read about how the same artists who painted canvases titled "Lustmord" (sexual murder), were the ones who thought of women as base, sensual creatures, in contrast with males, who were highly evolved, spiritual creatures, crystallized for me the whole reason I became an artist.
I loved German Expressionist art as a child (and I still do), because it's strong and visceral, it has great compositional and visual integrity, and it's powerfully evocative. It's "good" art in every sense. And its bright colors and emotional intensity would have obvious appeal for a child (I distinctly remember my sister and I as small children giggling over the obscene nudes). But I discovered, on reading Tatar's book, that Dix and Grosz in fact created self-portraits of themselves as sexual murderers—as Bluebeards! Then I had a dizzying moment where I realized that my interest in this theme didn't come just from the fairy tale; images of dead women had been firing my imagination even before I was able to read. Why do we have a cultural fascination with dead women? Why are images of dead and mutilated women so normalized? This casual attitude about images of dismembered women is accurately summarized by a Brian De Palma quote Tatar uses at the start of her first chapter: "I don't particularly want to chop up women but it seems to work."
One of the most fascinating parts of Tatar's analysis is when she talks about how persistently art historians ignore and efface the graphically brutal depictions of murdered women in artworks, focusing instead on the aesthetic and formal qualities of the work, or on biographical details of the artist. In a gruesome parallel, she recounts how serial murderers at the time were indirectly excused for their crimes by journalists, who focused instead on the killer's poverty or suffering, or on the public's hysteria. Karl Denke, for example, was said to have murdered and eaten his victims because of poverty: "the pots of fat and tubs of preserved human flesh in Denke's kitchen were evidently there because he needed the food." Worse, the victims were often blamed for the crimes committed against them (as Jews were often blamed for the acts of Nazi perpetrators), since murderous rage against loose, vulgar, mothering, or controlling women was seen as normal and natural.
Tatar points out how this logic also applies to Weimar films films, such as Fritz Lang's M, in which the child murderer Beckert, played by Peter Lorre, moves subtly from perpetrator at the beginning of the film to victim of an angry mob of mothers at the end of the film; and to Psycho (Hitchcock was heavily influenced by Weimar cinema), in which Norman disappears as the perpetrator as he is completely taken over by "Mother," who is the "real" killer. And Tatar says of the murders in Alfred Döblin's famous novel Berlin Alexanderplatz:
"The sexual demonization of women in Berlin Alexanderplatz has a function not very different from the racial demonization of Jews in the Third Reich. In both cases, repression and projection operate in such as way as to turn the target of murderous violence into a peril of monstrous proportions, one that threatens to sap the lifeblood of the 'victims' and thereby authorizes a form of unrestrained retaliatory violence marked by frenzied excess."
There is much more in the book that is thought-provoking and startling, which a brief review can't cover; one must read it in full. But it's a truly illuminating and harrowing book which provides a sharp feminist analysis of artworks, films, and novels which depict male violence against women as justifiable homicide because of the inherently awful qualities of the victims, who are in fact seen as perpetrators. This book was published in 1995. This fact seems significant, because her scathing arguments represent a type of critique that would be unthinkable in today's climate, in which any critique a feminist makes about male violence is put under a microscope, and the writer savaged and demonized (much like the examples in the book itself). For this and other reasons, I find Tatar's book to be especially timely, relevant, and valuable.
May 7, 2015
The period of German history between the World Wars is one that most Americans, myself included, really know nothing about. There are the basic facts of inflation and the economic hardship that get mentioned when professors are explaining the raise of the Nazi party to a class. But that’s about it. While Tater’s book is more of a study of art (film and painting) and literature, it does add another level to that knowledge for the layman and perhaps allows the reader to see connections between the two wars.
The connection to Nazi Germany isn’t very strong, and it is more of something that Tater’s comments about violence towards women in the paintings she discusses gave rise to the view of where woman should be in the Nazi society.
Tater focuses on a few German artists who were known for their art depicting women in various stages of murder or decomposition. She ties this art to the murders that gripped the country in between the wars, and discusses the effect that the First World War would have had on the artists.
I can’t evaluate her conclusions, she does a good job of making connections and proving her thesis, but I am neither an art major nor a specialist in German history, and perhaps someone who is one of these two things would see an error in the argument that I cannot.
The connection to Nazi Germany isn’t very strong, and it is more of something that Tater’s comments about violence towards women in the paintings she discusses gave rise to the view of where woman should be in the Nazi society.
Tater focuses on a few German artists who were known for their art depicting women in various stages of murder or decomposition. She ties this art to the murders that gripped the country in between the wars, and discusses the effect that the First World War would have had on the artists.
I can’t evaluate her conclusions, she does a good job of making connections and proving her thesis, but I am neither an art major nor a specialist in German history, and perhaps someone who is one of these two things would see an error in the argument that I cannot.
September 6, 2015
Men suck. Well, really they beat, cut, eviscerate, murder, etc. I should know, I’m a man. But I’m also an artist, so I get to direct all that masculine rage at the power of femininity on the canvas, or the page, or whatever. Don’t fuck with me! I’m mad!
Maria Tatar takes a look at that male rage within a small window of time in her great book LUSTMORD: SEXUAL MURDER IN WEIMAR GERMANY through case studies of serial killings and artists of that era. It’s a unique and disturbing view.
Whether it’s the public and media reaction to serial killings and how they differ if the victims are children (the perpetrator is an incomprehensible monster) or women (these murders of prostitutes are understandable because of their mommy issues or frustrations with the opposite sex) or the preponderance of acceptable violence towards women in the art of Otto Dix and George Grosz, the film “M” and the novel BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ, Tatar’s theme is eye-opening.
Women have served as boogiemen for millennia and have suffered for the male gaze that shoots knives. Where does all this anger come from. Mostly sex and power. Tatar writes about the lust part of her title and how men blame not their penises but the women who have turned them into beasts with their intoxicating breasts and behinds. That these urges are subjugated through art is better than the latter half of her title, but she doesn’t endorse it as a productive vehicle to transfer abhorrent thoughts into something cathartic. It just carries on the corrupt myths.
Maria Tatar takes a look at that male rage within a small window of time in her great book LUSTMORD: SEXUAL MURDER IN WEIMAR GERMANY through case studies of serial killings and artists of that era. It’s a unique and disturbing view.
Whether it’s the public and media reaction to serial killings and how they differ if the victims are children (the perpetrator is an incomprehensible monster) or women (these murders of prostitutes are understandable because of their mommy issues or frustrations with the opposite sex) or the preponderance of acceptable violence towards women in the art of Otto Dix and George Grosz, the film “M” and the novel BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ, Tatar’s theme is eye-opening.
Women have served as boogiemen for millennia and have suffered for the male gaze that shoots knives. Where does all this anger come from. Mostly sex and power. Tatar writes about the lust part of her title and how men blame not their penises but the women who have turned them into beasts with their intoxicating breasts and behinds. That these urges are subjugated through art is better than the latter half of her title, but she doesn’t endorse it as a productive vehicle to transfer abhorrent thoughts into something cathartic. It just carries on the corrupt myths.
September 26, 2016
I had some general familiarity with Maria Tatar, based on a class I previously took on Hausmarchen (German fairy tales) that included her essays alongside works by Jack Zipes and Bruno Bettelheim.
I knew she was a thoughtful scholar and a talented writer, but "Lustmord" easily outstrips the shorter works of hers that I previously read as an undergrad.
Ms. Tatar does a wonderful job in this work of synthesizing, examining, and investigating the concept of Lustmord ("passion murder") in Weimar Germany as represented in fiction, artwork, film, and in real life. A central theme of much "high art" in the 20th century has been either the aesthetic disfigurement of females (as in Picasso's cubist works) or the literal mangling or murder of women depicted on the canvas, as in the works of Otto Dix and George Grosz. It takes a certain disposition to fairly evaluate this kind of work, and I was repeatedly impressed by how Maria Tatar refused to condemn (like many women) or praise (like many male art critics reflexively do) art involving violence against women.
Those with a general interest in history, art, film, or thought-provoking, quality writing will find this book a joy to read. It takes a certain talent to think deeply and write perceptively on a subject without alienating the layman, but Tatar has the gift. As for those engaged in more scholarly and rigorous pursuits, this secondary source is the perfect launching pad for any project specifically related to German Studies/Germanistik. I will definitely seek out more longer form works by this author. Highest recommendation.
I knew she was a thoughtful scholar and a talented writer, but "Lustmord" easily outstrips the shorter works of hers that I previously read as an undergrad.
Ms. Tatar does a wonderful job in this work of synthesizing, examining, and investigating the concept of Lustmord ("passion murder") in Weimar Germany as represented in fiction, artwork, film, and in real life. A central theme of much "high art" in the 20th century has been either the aesthetic disfigurement of females (as in Picasso's cubist works) or the literal mangling or murder of women depicted on the canvas, as in the works of Otto Dix and George Grosz. It takes a certain disposition to fairly evaluate this kind of work, and I was repeatedly impressed by how Maria Tatar refused to condemn (like many women) or praise (like many male art critics reflexively do) art involving violence against women.
Those with a general interest in history, art, film, or thought-provoking, quality writing will find this book a joy to read. It takes a certain talent to think deeply and write perceptively on a subject without alienating the layman, but Tatar has the gift. As for those engaged in more scholarly and rigorous pursuits, this secondary source is the perfect launching pad for any project specifically related to German Studies/Germanistik. I will definitely seek out more longer form works by this author. Highest recommendation.
October 30, 2024
This book is masterful in its writing, research, and analysis. Tatar has written a theoretically rich study of the cultural and sociological phenomenon of "Lustmord" (sexual murder) in Weimar Germany. I found it to be a profound and insightful read.
She examines male fantasies of violence towards women as expressed in various artworks and real-life case studies from the Weimar era in Germany.
Tatar's analysis reveals how male artists, traumatized by World War I, sublimated their anxieties about the war-torn, mutilated bodies of soldiers onto women, particularly prostitutes, whom they depicted in a grotesque and brutalized manner.
Desecration and defilement of the body was the only way for these artists to capture the spirit of the age. The same psycho-social dynamic is analyzed for the serial killings that were rampant during this time as well, showing a frightful aspect of masculine desire.
As gruesome as the nature of the study is, I found the book itself spellbinding. Couldn't put it down. I devoured it. My fascination with German history, particularly the art, literature, and film of the Weimar era, made me a perfect reader of this book. But I also attribute my engagement to Maria Tatar's exceptional scholarship. Highly recommended, if you've got the stomach for it.
She examines male fantasies of violence towards women as expressed in various artworks and real-life case studies from the Weimar era in Germany.
Tatar's analysis reveals how male artists, traumatized by World War I, sublimated their anxieties about the war-torn, mutilated bodies of soldiers onto women, particularly prostitutes, whom they depicted in a grotesque and brutalized manner.
Desecration and defilement of the body was the only way for these artists to capture the spirit of the age. The same psycho-social dynamic is analyzed for the serial killings that were rampant during this time as well, showing a frightful aspect of masculine desire.
As gruesome as the nature of the study is, I found the book itself spellbinding. Couldn't put it down. I devoured it. My fascination with German history, particularly the art, literature, and film of the Weimar era, made me a perfect reader of this book. But I also attribute my engagement to Maria Tatar's exceptional scholarship. Highly recommended, if you've got the stomach for it.
February 18, 2012
Meh. I understand that Ms. Tatar's areas of expertise are primarily to be found in fairytale dissection and various other literary fields. As such, she is a folklorist, perhaps even a sociologist, but what she is NOT is a historian. I do not doubt her enormous talent, and I have noted that she is highly respected in her fields of study-- but writing a historical analysis is an altogether different animal. In approaching a historical subject, it is important not to project any hindsight analyses, or to draw inferences where there is no corroborating documentation. Most of the evidence to support her thesis is based on pure conjecture, or the analysis of literary works and movies as if they were factual accounts of actual cultural conditions/practices/values/norms, which is inaccurate.
Altogether it feels like a work that started out promising and with an interesting hypothesis, which went off the rails at about 4 chapters in and turned out almost impossible to prove, but it was thrown together, cleaned up and published anyway. It was very well-written, I will say.
Altogether it feels like a work that started out promising and with an interesting hypothesis, which went off the rails at about 4 chapters in and turned out almost impossible to prove, but it was thrown together, cleaned up and published anyway. It was very well-written, I will say.
September 2, 2015
An excellent study of sexual murder in Weimar German that discusses both the actual serial killers who were active during that period as well as those artists who chose (or were driven) to represent the phenomenon in their work. Tatar rightly relates the artistic endeavors to the social and political climate of Germany during that time.
The paperback edition would have benefited greatly by better reproductions of the artworks under discussion.
The paperback edition would have benefited greatly by better reproductions of the artworks under discussion.
January 28, 2024
I expected this book to be of great interest to me, however I received a more or less one-dimensional feminist critique of a small handful of artists, half of whom were not even active during the Weimar period. Depictions of violence against women were described as tacit approval or suggested homicidal urges by the artists involved, which seemed a bit heavy-handed, and most of the final criticisms seemed to rest on “what was wrong with this male artist who gets off on drawing or writing about dead women?” which is not really providing an analysis. Any cultural connections made to society at large comes either from World War I or the oncoming Nazi regime, but very little from Weimar itself. It’s hard to understand the unflattering perception of prostitutes and women’s sexuality if you ignore the context of an economically broken and politically jaded Germany where even teenaged children engaged in casual sexual transactions- perhaps this seems sinister and disturbing because it was a somewhat sinister and disturbing time in history? An interesting thing to study, but this book didn’t seem to get into the meat of the issue by half, and I was left overall feeling dissatisfied that instead of a true deep dive into the culture at play, we got a half-assed treatise on misogyny.
May 12, 2025
Incredibly well-written treatise studying how cultural anxieties present in Weimar Germany were expressed almost obsessively (for some) through representations of violence against women. I thought the most compelling case studies were Otto Dix and Alexander Doblin, but I was less convinced by the essay on Fritz Lang and the film "M". Psychosexual pathologies abound in the book, and Tatar does a very convincing job at showing how all of these, in the last analysis, were warped and molded into latent or not-so-latent attitudes of violence against women. Really makes me wonder: what pathologies will surface in the art from the freaks of the modern age?
Read
April 18, 2024for Modern Europe class
March 6, 2008
"I had a date with a girl that I had met at the lake, but I wasn't in the mood to see her. Soon love would no longer be love, and sex no longer sex. Wasn't Picasso just then cutting women into pieces in his cubist pictures, as if they were just pieces of a toy for children." ~Richard Huelsenbeck, Journey to the End of Freedom
"At eighteen, this girl has already known the highest wealth, the lowest misery, men at all levels. She holds a magic wand with which she unleashes the brutish appetites so violently curbed in men who, while involved in politics or science, literature or art, are not without hearts. There is no woman in Paris who can so effectively say to the Animal: "Out! . . ." And the Animal leaves its cage to wallow in excesses." ~Balzac, A Harlot High and Low
"For him marriage is not just a personal, but a society resembling a machine which unfailingly makes a man into one of its components, into a little cog in its wheel mechanism, so that marriage really signifies a moving away from the bride in favor of community. At the same time moving away from eroticism and sexuality. It is different for the woman. For her, marriage stands everything on its head. If the symbol of the young girl is a naked figure who is concealing her private parts with her hand or some sort of tassel, then in marriage this denial of sexual needs is removed, is indeed emphasized. And yet from the first hour of marriage there falls like a shadow between man and wife the fact that, at the moment when the woman gives vent to all her secret desire and can freely reveal her body, the man turns his attentions to other, sober and pedantic problems of calculation." ~ Wieland Herzfelde (when talking about George Grosz)
"At eighteen, this girl has already known the highest wealth, the lowest misery, men at all levels. She holds a magic wand with which she unleashes the brutish appetites so violently curbed in men who, while involved in politics or science, literature or art, are not without hearts. There is no woman in Paris who can so effectively say to the Animal: "Out! . . ." And the Animal leaves its cage to wallow in excesses." ~Balzac, A Harlot High and Low
"For him marriage is not just a personal, but a society resembling a machine which unfailingly makes a man into one of its components, into a little cog in its wheel mechanism, so that marriage really signifies a moving away from the bride in favor of community. At the same time moving away from eroticism and sexuality. It is different for the woman. For her, marriage stands everything on its head. If the symbol of the young girl is a naked figure who is concealing her private parts with her hand or some sort of tassel, then in marriage this denial of sexual needs is removed, is indeed emphasized. And yet from the first hour of marriage there falls like a shadow between man and wife the fact that, at the moment when the woman gives vent to all her secret desire and can freely reveal her body, the man turns his attentions to other, sober and pedantic problems of calculation." ~ Wieland Herzfelde (when talking about George Grosz)
February 20, 2014
If you are into Weimar era art, especially Dix, Grosz, Doblin, and Fritz Lang, I would very much recommend this book. As I read this work, it seemed to me that the level of violence expressed against women in the arts during this time and place is much less remarked upon than it should be by historians and afficionados of Weimar Germany. This is especially disturbing, since the violence comes from people usually thought of as politically progressive in one way or another.
Tatar also discusses some of the murderers of the time.
I have often had the suspicion that just as the radical Left in Weimar was subjugated to a very compromised "Left" in the form of the Ebert managerial/bureaucratic mindset, so there may have been a more radical Left art edged out by a Left more acceptable to post-Weimar bourgeois preoccupations with "decadence" and such, leaving us with the cynicism of "Mack the Knife" and co. But I do not know enough about the art and culture of this time to prove this hypothesis.
Tatar also discusses some of the murderers of the time.
I have often had the suspicion that just as the radical Left in Weimar was subjugated to a very compromised "Left" in the form of the Ebert managerial/bureaucratic mindset, so there may have been a more radical Left art edged out by a Left more acceptable to post-Weimar bourgeois preoccupations with "decadence" and such, leaving us with the cynicism of "Mack the Knife" and co. But I do not know enough about the art and culture of this time to prove this hypothesis.
June 18, 2015
I really wanted to like this book more than i did? The first half is a really interesting history of sexualized murder in Germany as it relates to German print culture, German artwork and post-war anxiety. Especially interesting is how paranoia about the subject became tied to sensationalized understandings of current events and reactionary political conservativism. This is a really interesting monograph and i really enjoyed it; then, Tatar moves to talking about the particular compositions and productions of some artists *in particular* and how this relates to this background and i basically checked out. Sadly, i simply don't really understand or particularly care about art and while its maybe a good medium for unpacking this particular set of events and anxieties i would've preferred if the first half of the book ate the second and was more rounded out?
October 3, 2012
Maria Tatar addresses the important issue of gender in Weimar art production by looking at cinema and two well know artists George Grosz and Otto Dix. This book is gripping, disturbing, and eye opening!
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews