'My biography is the biography of Germany.' Speaking in 1988, Anselm Kiefer highlighted the fact that Germany's 'year zero' (1945) was also the year of his birth. This recognition of the connection between personal and national history reflects the importance of history both in Kiefer's work, and as a subject for art. Kiefer's works are nourished by the symbolism and intrinsic power of a number of historical episodes and heroes, and their subsequent reappropriations.

From Germania to Germany: the quest for a unifying symbol

Like any nation seeking to construct a national identity on the basis of a shared history, Germany turned to historical motifs to federate its people. From 1969 to 1993, Anselm Kiefer's work focused on Germany's traditional symbols, its history and heroes – the distinctive iconography of a country constantly searching for a sense of identity. An understanding of Kiefer's work in this context also helps us to a better understanding of German identity. In the 19th century, as the Holy Roman Empire and the German Confederation moved towards unification, Germany strove to assert its historical and symbolic legitimacy as a nation state. Germany's identity as a coherent federation of peoples was traced back to the Hermannsschlacht or “Battle of Hermann” at which the Germanic tribes defeated the Romans in 9 AD  – a symbolic event explored by Kiefer in his work.
Hermannschlacht – an early Germanic victory

In the 1st century AD, Roman military might was seemingly invincible. Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar had conquered Gaul and extended Roman influence eastwards across the Rhine. Arminius (Hermann), the Germanic tribal chief of the Cherusci, was one of many Germanic auxiliaries in the pay of the Roman army. Returning to his home country circa 7 BC, he exploited the trust of the Roman governor Varus to plan a rebellion. The revolt finally took place in 9 AD, led by a vast alliance of Cherusci and other northern tribes. Three Roman legions (18,000 men) were decimated in the Teutoburg forest around the city of Detmold in northwest Germany, between the rivers Ems and Weser. The victory forced the Romans to re-establish their frontier on the Rhine, and halted the Latinisation of Germany for several centuries. Arminius was hailed by Tacitus as the 'liberator of Germania'. The Hermannschlacht became part of Germany's national legend. Anselm Kiefer is particularly interested in the Cherusci revolt – a central pillar of the construct of German unity – and has often depicted the story in woodcuts, following a well-established German artistic tradition.

Varus, 1976.
Oil and acrylic on canvas, Stedelijk Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven.

Hermannsschlacht, 1977.
Oil and acrylic on canvas, 305 x 195 cm, Ströher, Darmstadt.

A monument to Arminius (the Hermannsdenkmal ) was erected in 1875, south of the city of Detmold – a tribute from the German nation state to its early liberator from foreign oppression. Hermann was, then, a central figure in the construction of the idea of German nationhood. Anselm Kiefer, exploring his own German identity in the aftermath of the Second World War, found a rich source of visual inspiration in this historical material. The resulting works are subversive and tormented, focusing on the Hermannschlacht's multiple identity as a symbol, an historical fact, and an object of cultural deformation.

The Middle Ages: Alaric's tomb

Kiefer's historical references are not confined to the battle hero of the Teutoburg forest. Alaric, King of the Visigoths from 395 to 410 AD, has also exerted a significant, 'historic' influence on the artist. Works created by Kiefer between 1969 and 1989 explore the theme of Alaric's tomb. As king of the Visigoths – a barbarous tribe of savages in Roman eyes – Alaric was directly responsible for the fall of the Roman empire and the Eternal City of Rome itself. In 410 AD, the Visigoths marched on Rome and sacked the city, carrying off untold riches. When Alaric died on the way home, his soldiers buried his body in the bed of the river Busento, to protect it from the furious vengeance of the Romans. The river was diverted from its course, and channelled back once the burial was complete. The Roman captives who accomplished this Herculean task were killed to protect the secret.  


Alarichs Grab (Alaric's Tomb), 1975.
Emulsion on unprepared canvas, 220 x 300 cm, Neue Galerie Collection Ludwig, Aachen.

Chivalry and the Rhine: Parsifal and Nothung

The Rhine is central to German culture. More than a river, Vater Rhein ('Father Rhine') is endlessly invoked by the German Romantic movement, and in works by Anselm Kiefer. The Rhine marks the place where German history and mythology come together. It forms a natural frontier, and references to it recur throughout Wagner's operatic cycle, the Ring of the Nibelungen. Chilvaric tales and medieval legends, such as the story of Parsifal and his magic sword, Nothung, constitute another set of references supporting a common sense of German identity – hence Wagner's exploration of this important body of myths and stories in his celebrated opera Parsifal. The worst excesses of German nationalism were founded on these same legends and heroes: their wholesale reappropriation by the Nazis fascinates Anselm Kiefer, whose own work explores German identity through its worst transgressions, and examines the nature of the new Germany, freed from the demons of its recent past, and its own misappropriated mythology. The task confronting Germany even today is that of reconstruction – the reconstruction of a symbolic national legend capable of repairing the irreparable.               


Parsifal I, II and III, 1973
Oil on paper mounted on canvas, 324 x 219 cm, 300 x 533 cm, 324 x 219 cm, Tate, London.

Responding to modern history

Modern German history has proved an especially fertile source of material and ideas for Anselm Kiefer. His work confronts a range of burning issues, exploring a double quest for identity – his own, and that of his country. Paintings, photographs and sculptures are harnessed to the cause; the outcome is far from certain, and the solutions often disturbing, but Kiefer's sincerity is beyond question.

As with the Hermannschlacht, Anselm Kiefer frequently punctuates his work with representations of emblematic figures from German history. The medieval mystic Mechtild of Magdeburg (1207-1282), the painter Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840), the Austrian poet Nikolaus Lenau (1802-1850), the writer Adalbert Stifter (1805-1868), the composer Richard Wagner (1813-1883), the German poet Theodor Storm (1817-1888), the Swiss painter Arnold Böcklin (1827-1901), the painter Hans Thoma (1839-1924), the lyric poet Richard Dehmel (1863-1920), the writer Robert Musil (1880-1942), the Austrian novelist Josef Weinheber (1892-1945) and the artist Joseph Beuys (1921-1986) all appear more or less recognisably in Kiefer's work The Ways of Worldly Wisdom, constituting a pantheon of Germanic heroes – a pantheon tainted by the Nazis' appropriation of some of its most notable figures, hopeful of a chance to bask in their reflected glory. Kiefer's Ways of Worldly Wisdom and another work, Germany's Spiritual Heroes, address the fate of these cultural icons, so often used and abused.

The uses of history: in support of remembrance

Since the 19th century, Hermann has become one of the 'founding fathers' of German national identity. By associating Germany's ancient hero with other famous figures, Anselm Kiefer revisits the history of the construction of this identity. The very idea of nationhood and the 'fatherland' has been polluted by Fascist regimes throughout Europe, and by Germany's Third Reich in particular. By appropriating the myths underpinning Germany's sense of nationhood, and key historical episodes, the Nazi regime secured its enduring association with every aspect of German history, from its earliest beginnings. This is the recurrent theme of Kiefer's series devoted to Germany's Spiritual Heroes.         

Occupations (Bezetzung): Kiefer's controversial graduation piece, and the use of architecture

In 1969, Anselm Kiefer presented his graduation work at the Karlsruhe Academy of Fine Art, provoking an extraordinary scandal. The piece used photography to record a performance enacted during the summer and autumn of 1969: Anselm Kiefer is seen making a Nazi salute in a succession of European cities. Kiefer's professors disapproved strongly, judging the work unacceptable, and lacking in 'distance'. The only person to speak in Kiefer's defence was the painter Rainer Küchenmeister, himself a survivor of the concentration camps. The critics' response to the work supported his view. The piece was vilified by the public when it appeared in the avant-garde review Interfunktionen in 1975, but it had touched a raw nerve in the German conscience. Kiefer's individual initiative was soon followed by a collective move to explore the same issues. Interviewed by Steven Henry Madoff for the review Art News in October 1987, Kiefer explained that the photographs were a way of asking himself the question 'Am I a Fascist?' Anyone, he argued, might recognise themselves as authoritarian, competitive, with a sense of superiority – including himself. [LR: J'ai préfèré paraphrasé cet extrait, plutôt que d'essayer de chercher l'originel en anglais]. The series eventually drew unanimous critical praise for its courage in tackling the question of the collective guilt and behaviour of the German people, the posturing of totalitarianism, and its use of symbols.

From 1980 to 1983, Anselm Kiefer created a series of works revisiting the Nazis' monumental architectural schemes (finished buildings and plans). These works crystallise the artist's struggle with the unbearable imagery of a fundamentally evil regime, culminating in Shulamith, a work combining architecture – based on Wilhelm Kreis's 1939 design for the Hall of Soldiers in Berlin – with Paul Celan's poem of the same name, and the menorah, the symbolic seven-branched candelabrum of Judaism. In a subtle reversal of the Hall's original purpose, Kiefer transforms a building dedicated to the memory of Germany's fallen soldiers into a memorial to the victims of the Shoah.

Shulamith, 1983.
Oil, emulsion, woodcut, acrylic, shellac and straw on canvas, 290 x 370 cm, Private collection.

The Shoah: a profound source of inspiration

Anselm Kiefer confronts the difficult question of the pursuit of art and creativity after the tragedy of the Shoah. More than any other artist, his work draws on Jewish tradition, with references ranging from the Kabbalah, to the poems of Paul Celan. Kiefer's landscape paintings introduce a multitude of highly ambivalent references, from the fundamental German concept of Land (a profound sense of identity connected with the native soil) to the subsequent  depiction of landscapes in art. [? = "celle du paysage ensuite"?] Kiefer's landscape series has a quasi-cinematographic quality. The use of railway lines associates it explicitly with the landscape of the Nazis' 'final solution'. The series invokes Paul Celan for the first time in Kiefer's work, with the repeated inclusion of his most celebrated poem, Death Fugue. The poem's contrasting muses, Margarethe and Shulamith, are respectively symbols of a kind of natural force emanating from the German Land, and part of the burnt wreckage of its identity. Kiefer's paintings during this period are characterised by a profound change in his handling of the medium, and matter itself. Straw is stuck directly onto the canvas, as if to mourn the passing of traditional artistic practises and techniques, and bury the notion that German history and culture must remain associated with Nazi ideology forever. History and culture can be reborn, free of the long shadows of Fascism.         


Margarethe, 1981
Oil, acrylic, emulsion and straw on canvas, 280 x 380 cm, private collection.

Your golden hair, Margarethe – Midsummer Night, 1981.
Oil, acrylic, emulsion and straw on canvas, 130 x 160 cm, Sanders Collection, Amsterdam.

By reappropriating his country's foundation myths, Kiefer mixes form and narrative to invent a new kind of 'history painting'. From 1963 to 1993, he explicitly addressed the stigma of his status as a post-war German artist working in the mainstream of German and international contemporary art. Germany's past is fundamental to Anselm Kiefer's art, not as a source of redemption but as an unavoidable truth – a  burden to be acknowledged, and carried.     
 

Bibliography:
 
-    Anne-Marie Le Gloannec, 'On German Identity', in Daedalus, January 1994, published by American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
-    Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory, Alfred A. Knopf, 1995
-    Daniel Arasse, Anselm Kiefer, Harry N. Abrams, 2001.
-    Andrea Lauterwein, Anselm Kiefer/Paul Celan: Myth, Mourning and Memory, Thames & Hudson, April 2007