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paul
fox
Confronting Postwar Shame in
Weimar Germany: Trauma, Heroism
and the War Art of Otto Dix
Paul Fox
Confronting Postwar Shame in Weimar Germany:
Trauma, Heroism and the War Art of Otto Dix
Paul Fox
1. Dix volunteered at the outbreak of war and

commenced front-line duty in France on
21 September 1915. He became a machine gun
section commander, and, between 24 July and I know that the experience to be sketched in it is very local, limited, incoherent; that it is almost
12 August 1916, defended a location at Monaçu useless, in the sense that no one will read it who is not already aware of all the intimations and
Farm during the Somme battle. Dix took part in discoveries in it, and many more, by reason of having gone the same journey. No one? Some, I
the Third Battle of Ypres in 1917 and, after am sure; but not many. Neither will they understand – that will not be all my fault . . .
spending that autumn on the Eastern Front,
returned to the west. The Armistice overtook I must go over the ground again.
his aspirations to train as an aerial observer. See
Edmund Blunden, Undertones of War
Dietrich Schubert, Otto Dix, Der Krieg, 50
Radierungen von 1924 (Jonas Verlag: Marburg,
2002), p. 101. Close analysis of Otto Dix’s works on the subject of the First World War
2. Samuel Hynes, A War Imagined: the First World demonstrates that he repeatedly – one might say obsessively – ‘went over
War and English Culture (Bodley Head: London, the ground again’ in the years between the two world wars. It is also
1990), p. 425. Hynes argues that the myth of the evident that his war art is autobiographical: Dix intervened in the debate
war that emerged a decade after the Armistice
continues to resonate today. It is characterised
on the memory and meaning of the war in Weimar Germany from a
by the betrayal of youth by the older generation; veteran’s perspective.1 His motivation to tackle this subject in the years
the descent from idealism to disenchantment; immediately after the Armistice points to a distinction between the
alienation from the civilian population; cultures of the victors and the vanquished. In victorious nations artists and
bitterness and cynicism. Mud and blood define
the experience of combat; its meaning is located
writers who sought to question the conduct of the war did not immediately
in the apparently futile nature of the entire employ personal accounts of wartime experience in order to mount a
endeavour. The myth also embraces the postwar critique of prevailing social and political values. When the inclination to
scene. Veterans are portrayed as ruined by an employ literary memoirs to critical effect surfaced around 1929, what
experience that alienated them from society
(pp. 439–40). Henri Barbusse’s Under Fire
Samuel Hynes calls ‘the great myth-making period’ challenged the existing
(1916) is an early exception underwritten by his taboo on the expression of negative responses to the experience of war, not
strong pacifist and, later, communist politics. least through the memoir-fiction of former junior officers and soldiers.2
Edmund Blunden’s Undertones of War (1928) was The shock of defeat experienced by the Central Powers, however, created a
joined in the following year by Robert Graves’s
Goodbye to All That. Vera Brittain’s Testament of different cultural climate. By 1929 German myth-making about the war
Youth appeared in 1933. In a chapter titled had already served various political and social agendas for a decade, long
‘When the vision dies . . . ’ Brittain presents the before the arrival of Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front
reader with an uncompromising account of the (1929) signalled the proliferation of the myth described by Hynes in
battlefield death of her lover, who receives an
agonising gunshot wound to the abdomen, Europe’s wider cultural imagination. As a result, the enduring legacy of a
resulting in a lingering death. Brittain states that myth that is most readily associated with literary modernism – that the
she was motivated to write in order to meaning of the war is located in mud, blood, futility and individual
‘challenge that too easy, too comfortable relapse
into forgetfulness . . . what I have written
ruination – has dogged art-historical inquiry into Dix’s work. Critics and
constitutes, in effect, the indictment of a historians have long sought to ground the meaning of his art in anti-war
civilisation’. Her daughter, Shirley Williams, sentiment. This approach, however, is both anachronistic and simplistic,
considers that the autobiography serves as ‘an because in Germany the memory and meaning of the Great War was
elegy for a generation’. Both mother and
daughter make a claim to what Brittain calls ‘the
contested through a series of complex discourses, which cannot be analysed
exact truth’ with reference to betrayal, satisfactorily with reference to a bipolar reactionary/pacifist model. The
disenchantment and futility: Vera Brittain, aim here is therefore to explore some of the underlying terms through
Testament of Youth (Virago: London, 1978), which the meaning of the war was contested, with reference to the status
pp. 10 and 12. Siegfried Sassoon published his
Memoirs of an Infantry Officer in 1930.
of war veterans in German society and to the politics of trauma.
To achieve this aim, I shall address Dix’s work on the Great War in the
context of German war literature that takes as its subject personal
# The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press; all rights reserved. OXFORD ART JOURNAL 29.2 2006 247–267
doi:10.1093/oxartj/kcl006
Paul Fox
experience at the front. Like Dix, authors who had fought in the trenches
were motivated by the desire to articulate their experience with reference
to their postwar status as veterans. I shall look at three of Dix’s salient
3. Linda McGreevy, Bitter Witness: Otto Dix and
works on the war – The Trench (1920 – 1923), the series of etchings The the Great War (Peter Lang: New York, 2001),
War (1923 – 1924) and the triptych War (1929 –1932) – in relation to pp. 8– 9. Their formal affinity may be perceived
Ernst Jünger’s literary memoir, Storm of Steel (1920). Affinities between by comparing Dix’s representation of
decomposing bodies with Jünger: ‘a sweetish
Dix and Jünger have been observed before. In her comprehensive survey of smell and a bundle hanging in the wire caught
Dix’s war art, Linda McGreevy suggests – in a chapter titled ‘The my attention. In the rising mist, I leaped out of
Structures of Memory’ – that Dix was ‘covertly sympathetic to Jünger’s the trench and found a shrunken French corpse.
powerful language’.3 Both author and artist reveal an inclination to return Flesh like mouldering fish gleamed greenishly
through splits in the shredded uniforms. [. . .]
to the same wartime subject-matter. The multiplicity of works produced Empty eye sockets and a few strands of hair on
by Dix testify to this impulse, while Jünger’s most recent translator points the bluish-black skull indicated that the man was
to the eight different published versions of the book, suggesting that ‘he not among the living’: Ernst Jünger, Storm of
tinkered with it, one would have to say, obsessively’.4 Yet if the affinity Steel 1920, trans. M. Hofmann (Penguin:
London, 2003), p. 25.
between Dix and Jünger is so clear, we need to ask why McGreevy
characterises it as ‘covert’. She writes that Dix’s work creates ‘a memorial 4. Michael Hoffman, Introduction to Jünger,
Storm of Steel, p. xii.
to the dead that would be an admonition to the living’, juxtaposing its
qualities with Jünger’s ‘uneasy mix of valor and chaos’. Jünger’s heroic 5. McGreevy, Bitter Witness, pp. 8–9.
literary style is compared unfavourably with ‘the horrific, the desperate, 6. Richard Cork, A Bitter Truth: Avant-Garde Art
and the unimaginably real’ qualities that apparently characterise Dix’s and the Great War (Yale University Press: New
work.5 McGreevy inclines to the myth of the war promoted by literary Haven and London, 1994), p. 273, my emphasis.
modernists. Her stance positions artists and authors in either the 7. Nierendorf encouraged Dix to complete the
reactionary or the pacifist camp, eclipsing the possibility that a more series by 1 August 1924, in time for the tenth
nuanced analysis of Dix and Jünger’s work might offer greater insight into anniversary of the outbreak of war. 1924 was the
high point of the antiwar movement in
contemporary discourse on the legacy of wartime experience. Germany, and it is perhaps because of its broad
It would nevertheless be too limiting to argue that Dix cannot, or should appeal that Nierendorf promoted the cycle as a
not, be approached with reference to the pacifist movement in Weimar critique of war. Dix never openly endorsed
Germany; nor can one ignore the fact that his work succeeded in pacifism.
provoking right-wing critics. But it is surely a step too far automatically to 8. Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning:
assume that anti-war sentiment necessarily constitutes a primary The Great War in European Cultural Memory
(Cambridge University Press: Cambridge,
motivating influence in Dix’s work. The view that Dix nurtured a wholly 2000), p. 159.
negative attitude to his war experience is nevertheless prevalent:
9. Jay Winter, ‘Otto Dix brülé par l’eau-forte
de la guerre’, in 14–18: la tre`s grande guerre
At the same time, however, This is How I Looked as a Soldier conveys an imprint of
pre´sente´ par le Centre de Recherche de l’Historial de
self-accusation (Fig. 1). [. . .] Whether or not Dix accepted a measure of responsibility for his Pe´ronne (Le Monde editions: Paris, 1994),
metamorphosis into an efficient slaughterer, he certainly admits in his unsettling self-portrait pp. 253–4 (my translation). In a companion
that the military system had betrayed him and, by extension, everyone else caught up in its piece to Winter’s essay, Annette Becker
collective insanity.6 addresses commemorative practices, noting that
‘During the 20’s and 30’s, by dint of an endless
Betrayal, insanity, the humanist image of the universal soldier as hapless commemoration of heroes and martyrs, now
victim of ‘the system’ – is this the meaning Dix proposed in 1924, when transformed into stone and bronze, war and
death were somehow asepticised, and the
his self-portrait appeared with its dedication to his dealer, Karl traditional role of men and women in society
Nierendorf?7 More recently, Jay Winter has suggested that Dix’s war art reasserted. However, the dead were thus also
constitutes ‘complex attempts . . . to imagine the catastrophe of war’.8 resuscitated’: Annette Becker, ‘Le passion de
Elsewhere, Winter affirms that ‘Dix represents every possible manifestation commémorer’, in 14– 18: la tre`s grande guerre,
p. 249 (my translation).
of dehumanisation: madness, mutilation, horrific wounds, putrescent
corpses, rapes, civilian casualties, sexual depravity, wretchedness’.9 Again,
the spectator is encouraged to accede to the view that the meaning of
Dix’s work is ultimately aligned with the myth of ruination. The Great
War was certainly a human catastrophe, but at the personal level it was
experienced, and subsequently remembered, as many other things as well.
Further, one may wonder whether imagining catastrophe was really an
imperative for the German population, which knew only too well the
shame of defeat and its social and economic consequences.
250 OXFORD ART JOURNAL 29.2 2006

Confronting Postwar Shame in Weimar Germany
10. Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette

Becker have argued for the necessity of such a
stance. Writing about the eightieth anniversary
of the Armistice (November 1998), they warn of
the ‘intellectual confusion [caused] by going to
extraordinary lengths to stress the victimisation
of the soldiers: not only were the combatants
depicted as mere non-consenting victims, but
mutineers and rebels were called the only true
heroes . . . the process of victimization has long
impeded thought’: Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau
and Annette Becker, 1914–1918: Understanding
the Great War (Profile Books: London, 2002),
pp. 2–3.
This figure has been intentionally left blank.

Oxford University Press apologizes for
any inconvenience.‘
Fig. 1. Otto Dix, This is How I Looked as a Soldier, 1924, pen and ink. Galerie Nierendorf, Berlin.
# DACS 2005.
If we are to explore how, and to what end, Dix intervened in the discourse
about the legacy of the war, it is necessary to establish critical distance from
the myth of ruination.10 In order to proceed more inductively – from Dix’s
art – two subjects that played interrelated roles in shaping contemporary
attitudes to the war and to veterans provide a useful analytical framework:
trauma and heroism. Juxtaposing postwar discourse on these two
manifestations of wartime experience usefully reveals voids and
contradictions associated with the politics of shame. For while a discourse
on heroism might safely confine itself to past events remembered
selectively, the evidence of widespread war-related anxiety disorders in
postwar society could not be avoided so easily.
Psychological trauma is today defined as an emotionally harmful event.
Following overwhelmingly stressful incidents, such as combat, trauma may
manifest itself in the symptoms of anxiety disorder or neurosis. Sufferers
may exhibit anxiety, or behaviour calculated to avoid anxiety. Minor
symptoms include shaking, irritability, fatigue and headaches. A serious
emotional reaction to trauma may result in an unconscious conversion
OXFORD ART JOURNAL 29.2 2006 251

Paul Fox
disorder; psychological needs or desires are manifested in conditions such as

blindness, deafness, loss of sensation and paralysis. Post-traumatic stress
disorder is an associated condition in which the sufferer may experience
11. Paul Lerner, Hysterical Men: War, Psychiatry,
the persistent recurrence of images or memories of a traumatic event, as and the Politics of Trauma in Germany, 1890–1930
well as nightmares, insomnia, a sense of isolation, irritability and (Cornell University Press: Ithaca and London,
depression. Paul Lerner has explored how German psychiatric discourse 2003), p. 8.
before, during and after the Great War disputed the pathology of anxiety 12. Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud, Studies in
disorders. Doctors who supported the view that what they labelled Hysteria, 1895, trans. A. A. Brill (Beacon:
‘traumatic neurosis’ was the result of emotionally or physically jarring Boston, 1937), pp. 3 and 7 –8. Freud
subsequently argued that fear – ‘a kind of inner
events were opposed by those who advanced what became the hegemonic state amounting to expectation of, and
view during and after the war – that so-called ‘male hysteria’ occurred in preparation for, danger’ – serves as a protection
men who possessed an inherently feeble constitution. Their pathological against fright, which is characterised by the
minds prevented hysterics from overcoming the predisposition to seek an element of surprise: Sigmund Freud, Beyond the
Pleasure Principle and Other Writings (Penguin:
escape from danger, or from securing a disability pension. This analysis of London, 2003), p. 51.
Dix’s work does not attempt to associate itself with either party in
the historical medical debate, or to judge retrospectively the validity of
the arguments. What is important here is to note the influence of the
discourse on the representation of veterans’ identities in the specific
social, economic and political context of the Weimar Republic.
Three observations on the historical discourse on anxiety disorders are
necessary here. First, the primacy of the male hysteria hypothesis
determined that veterans who were labelled ‘hysterics’ in postwar
Germany were stigmatised not because they had been made ill by the war,
but because wartime service had exposed their unmanly pathological
nature: hysteria was a deeply shaming condition. Secondly, the
historiography of anxiety disorder includes persuasive arguments for
viewing physical symptoms as a means of expressing resistance to the
hegemonic model of masculine behaviour, military authority and wartime
service at the front. However, close analysis of Dix’s war art and Jünger’s
literary memoir suggests that it was possible to accede to the demands of
military service yet still find oneself exhibiting symptoms of an anxiety
disorder in response to (repeated) events that taxed even the hardiest of
constitutions. In a war of unprecedented length and intensity, anxiety
disorders became endemic, even among those who willingly served within
range of the enemy’s weapons. Fear of the possibility of being shamed in
the future was itself a cause of postwar anxiety, when the symptoms of
post-traumatic stress disorder might surface without warning – an
alarming possibility in a society in which an ‘operative opposition lay
between healthy masculinity and a pathological lack of male behaviour’.11
Thirdly, although medical opinion today overwhelmingly discounts
psychoanalysis as a method of treating anxiety disorders – and Sigmund
Freud’s speculations about their origins are not widely accepted – more
enduring aspects of Freudian thinking have nevertheless informed my
theory. During the 1890s Freud developed the view that ‘the active
etiological factor in traumatic neurosis is really not the insignificant bodily
injury, but the affect of the fright; that is, psychic trauma’. Psychological
reactions to frightening events maintain their affective force, he argued, in
circumstances in which they are prevented from dissipating through the
process of ‘reproduction in states of uninhibited association’.12 Lerner
suggests that although Freud had been relegated to the margins of medical
debate since 1900, not least because of his address to sexual development,
his pre-war thinking remained highly influential, particularly the thesis
that neurotic pathology should be understood in terms of the conversion of

unprocessed affect into physical symptoms.13 Freud’s professional wartime

experience led him to advance his belief that memory constitutes the
source of post-traumatic neurosis, and that ‘memory of the occurrence
13. Lerner, Hysterical Men, pp. 185–7.
retains above all an affective accentuation’. Consequently, ‘the patient
14. Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, is . . . driven to repeat the repressed matter as an [emotional] experience in
pp. 5 and 56.
the present, instead of remembering it as something belonging in the
15. The bound editions of the series contained a past’.14 This inquiry into Dix’s work explores the associated idea that the
selection of twenty-four prints (the full edition
contained fifty). As Dix’s inscription makes
contemporary meaning of Dix’s work was grounded not merely in the
clear, the second of the two bound editions representation of wartime sights or the narration of commonplace
included This is How I Looked. battlefield events, but in the emotional responses such images provoked in
16. McGreevy, Bitter Witness, p. 284. His
two audiences: those who had fought in the war and those who had not.
trademark lantern jaw is to be discerned, for This is How I Looked provides a useful point of departure for considering
instance, in three images from The War: artistic intervention in the discourse on veterans. It is Dix’s only postwar
Machinegun Section Advancing, Battle Weary Troops self-portrait that depicts him as a Great War soldier, and was included as
Retire, and Roll Call of Those Who Made it Back.
an addendum to one of the two bound editions of The War. It is therefore
17. James Diehl argues that the creation of the simultaneously integral to the series of etchings and also something
Freikorps, the Civil Guards and the Auxiliary
Volunteer Units in 1818 and 1919, and their
apart – a cipher for the context in which The War was produced, and in
subsequent success against left-wing extremists, which its contemporary meaning is grounded.15 For McGreevy, This is How
demonstrated the utility of armed force in I Looked ‘announces the autobiographical undertone of the entire cycle’,
pursuit of political ends. Left-wing reaction to and there is no question that Dix is well represented in The War.16 Yet
the Kapp Putsch in 1920 proved that this lesson
had been learned across the political spectrum. This is How I Looked functions as more than a testament to Dix’s military
Around one and a half million mainly service; it suggests what being a veteran in Germany might amount to, six
middle-class men were under arms under the years after the Armistice.
operational command of the Freikorps in 1919, Veterans of the Great War, in or out of uniform, were influential in
although their units were not integrated into the
state’s military command structure. See James postwar politics, both as players and pawns. One legacy of defeat in 1918
Diehl, Paramilitary Politics in Weimar Germany was a political climate in which reform was accompanied by profound
(Indiana University Press: Bloomington and distrust and active hostility. Factions across the social and political
London, 1977), pp. 20 –1. spectrum – from communists to monarchist reactionaries, from industrial
18. Prior to the war, the Kyffhäuser-Bund workers to war profiteers – considered themselves to have been betrayed,
comprised Germany’s nationwide veterans’ each by another, as they sought to make sense of the conduct of the war,
organisation. It numbered some three million
members in 1900. its outcome, and the implications for postwar German society. A state of
virtual civil war prevailed between 1918 and 1924 and the goal of a
19. The Deutscher Offiziersbund (The German
Officers’ Association) also endorsed right-wing
coherent, peaceful society remained elusive. The defeat of the
politics, while the Internationaler Bund der Opfer revolutionary left in 1919 and the ‘Ruhr War’ of 1920, in the aftermath of
des Kriegs und der Abeit (The International the right wing Kapp Putsch, demonstrated that the surviving organs of
Association of the Victims of War and Work) Wilhelmine state power – the military, the judiciary and the
asserted its Communist credentials by distancing
itself from the more moderate Reichsbund,
bureaucracy – were able to reaffirm their authority. Yet they did so at a
echoing the political instability caused by the price, for the unprecedented militarisation of politics broke the state’s
rift between radicals and the moderate Social monopoly of armed force. The many paramilitary organisations that sprung
Democratic Party. See Robert Whalen, Bitter up in Germany’s violent postwar society competed in their bids to
Wounds: German Victims of the Great War,
1914–1939 (Cornell University Press: Ithaca mobilise support for or against the prevailing social and political order.17
and London, 1984), pp. 118–27. And so did the new veterans’ organisations, which became overtly aligned
with political parties, even when the founding impulse had been ostensibly
apolitical.18 For instance, the Reichsbund der Kriegsbeschädigten und
ehemaligen Kriegsteilnehmer (the National Association for Disabled Soldiers
and Veterans) attracted the largest number of veterans under the mantle
of the Social Democrats. Conversely, the Zentralverbund deutscher
Kriegsbeschädigter und Kriegshinterbliebener (the Central Association of
Disabled German Veterans and Survivors) aspired to be a political force on
conservative, anti-Social Democratic, lines.19
The War was published in the year in which Chancellor Ebert’s attempts to
honour the memory of the war dead resulted in a spectacle of dissent that
served merely to underline the sense of profound social disunity. The

Paul Fox
inauguration of a national cenotaph, to be dedicated in the Königsplatz on

Sunday, 3 August 1924, was conceived as a vehicle for promoting national
unity. During the planning stage, concern had been expressed as to
20. Whalen, Bitter Wounds, p. 33.
whether this was achievable in so febrile a political climate. During the
service of commemoration such fears proved well founded. The official 21. Admiral von Trotha in Wolfgang
Schivelbusch, The Culture of Defeat: On National
two-minute silence was interrupted by Communist demonstrators, who Trauma, Mourning and Recovery (Granta: London,
viewed the event as an endorsement of the aims and conduct of the war, 2003), p. 201.
of contemporary Social Democratic ideology, and of the post-Wilhelmine 22. Richard Bessel points to the gulf between
bureaucracy. Right-wing elements responded in kind, and the event the myth of ‘unparalleled immortal German
degenerated into a spectacle of violent public disorder to the heroism’ and the reality of an army that
accompaniment of the ‘Internationale’ and ‘Die Wacht am Rhein’.20 effectively staged a strike in late 1918: Richard
Bessel, Germany after the First World War
Events such as this demonstrated that even a semblance of cohesion was (Clarendon: Oxford, 2002), pp. 75 and 263.
unattainable, for the humiliation of military defeat had been compounded Bessel estimates that half a million men deserted
by the consequent destabilisation of German society. Instead of the in the weeks after the Armistice.
face-saving manifestation of a collective desire for retaliation and revenge 23. Seltzer defines wound culture as ‘a
against the external aggressor, the Republic teetered on the brink of civil collective gathering around shock, trauma and
disorder and revolution. Germany society was ‘seized by the horror of the wound’. Self-reflexive awareness of trauma
shame’.21 offers a psychological means of locating the
subject in the public sphere: Mark Seltzer,
In these circumstances, the dominant myth of the war – that Germany had ‘Wound Culture: Trauma in the Pathological
mobilised in self-defence – provided a bulwark against the need to accept Public Sphere’, October, vol. 80, Spring 1997,
responsibility for the initiation of offensive operations. Denial of war guilt pp. 3–4.
encouraged further myths of defeat calculated to overcome shame, for 24. The image of German society as
example that Germany’s soldiers had demonstrated none of the fracture traumatised and in continuing pain was central
and mutual antagonism that characterised contemporary society. They had to the formulation of a collective identity
predicated on victimhood. For instance, Ernst
fought bravely and honourably; they had affirmed their moral superiority; von Salomon wrote that ‘the men who left the
the army had remained undefeated on foreign soil, but had been stabbed in trenches in 1918 . . . came – still believing in
the back by hostile factions at home.22 An address to victimhood and their country – and found it was as it were an
martyrdom stood to salvage a vestige of dignity from the debacle. The open festering wound, at whose edges rough hands
were pressing’: Ernst Salomon, The Outlaws,
broad appeal of this mythology influenced ways in which the war could be trans. I. F. D. Morrow (Jonathan Cape: London,
imagined, including taboos that determined what might – and what might 1931), p. 96, my emphasis.
not – be said about the conduct of German soldiers. And it did so with 25. Dix’s attention to military detail operates
immediate effect. Unlike, for instance, the British experience, where to confirm his status as a combat veteran. This is
social tensions caused by the war appeared to subside in the wake of the particularly evident in Machinegun Section
war’s victorious conclusion, German memory of the conflict tended to the Advancing, in which the roles performed by
members of a machine gun section are
other extreme. What Mark Seltzer terms a ‘wound culture’ prevailed.23 exemplified. Behind their commander some
The social and political consequences of defeat ensured that memory of the soldiers carry parts of the weapon, others boxes
war lived on in the national psyche as an open wound into which German of ammunition. Dix represents the effort
society gazed obsessively in the search for meaning. In such circumstances required to carry awkward, heavy weights over
uneven terrain, as well as the teamwork
the profile of veterans – the values they claimed to embody, or which necessary to bring a machinegun into action.
were projected onto their image – resonated to political effect. After all, Such glimpses of closely observed ‘reality’
no other social grouping could stake a higher moral claim to embody the amount to a truth claim on Dix’s part. For the
contemporary organisation of German machine
legacy of the war in the public sphere.24 gun companies see War Office, German Army
With This is How I Looked, Dix, the former machine gun section Handbook, April 1918 (Arms and Armour Press:
commander, invites his spectators to gaze at a self-portrait that affirms London, reprinted 1977), pp. 54 –5.
his status as a veteran. Located close to the picture plane, the profile of
his upper body dominates the available space. Dix’s sketchy drawing, scant
modelling and undifferentiated background flatten the image. The
pared-down yet distinct details of his uniform, equipment and physiognomy
are consequently conveyed in an immediate, unambiguous manner,
emphasising their rhetorical potential. The stubble on Dix’s face testifies
to a protracted tour of duty in the line. He holds the body of a machine
gun firmly across his chest, while in his belt are grenades employed to
defend machine gun positions in the event of close-quarter battle.25

Dix broadcasts his status as a long-serving soldier. The ribbon of the Iron
Cross, Second Class, is visible in the buttonhole above his weapon. His
dented helmet and torn tunic affirm that he has very recently served within
26. Approximately thirteen million men served
in the wartime German army. By no means all of range of the enemy in an environment in which obstacles present a hazard
them were employed in combat duties at the to those who manoeuvre in haste. The crudely repaired tear on his upper
front. The category ‘veteran’ was therefore right sleeve implies that this is not his first exposure to such conditions.26
itself contested. Evidence that ‘true’ veterans
felt compelled to assert their status abounds.
The fixity of his gaze and the resolute set of his jaw suggest a resolve
For instance, Adolf Hitler characterised the unshaken by the experience of battle.27 Dix’s representation of his wartime
revolutionaries whom he observed while persona conveys an attitude of physical and moral preparedness to meet any
convalescing in November 1918 thus: ‘Sailors eventuality. It signifies the manifestation of an iron will to self-control,
arrived . . . and proclaimed the revolution [. . .]
none of them had been at the front. By way of a
which, according to right-wing reactionary discourse, affirmed the moral
so-called ‘gonorrhoea hospital’, the three superiority of the selfless German hero, an embodiment of the indomitable
Orientals had been sent back home from their warrior spirit of an army undefeated in the field – but only if the
second-line base’: Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, spectator accedes to heroism imagined on such terms. The contested status
trans. R. Manheim (Pimlico: London, 1992),
p. 184.
of veterans in German society in 1924 suggests another possibility
associated with the politics of shame.
27. Dix’s set features may conform to a
typological trope. Consider, for instance, the
Although the circumstances attending the war’s conclusion occasioned
way one of Remarque’s veterans sees a comrade widespread feelings of national shame, large numbers of veterans waged a
in the moments before going into action: ‘his is personal battle against the loss of face. Lerner points out that in 1922 half
the same cold, deathly expression as everyone’s of all military pension claimants suffered from anxiety disorders, and
here, the front line face. A fierce tension has
frozen it’: Erich Maria Remarque, The Road
Germany’s medical institutions were treating 200,000 war neurosis
Back, 1931, trans. A. W. Wheen (Mayflower: patients.28 The widely accepted medical view that an innate pathological
London, 1979), p. 12. condition accounted for ‘male hysteria’ was particularly telling in German
28. Becker considers that ‘we should not rule society, for since the late nineteenth century, ‘hardness’ characterised the
out the possibility that almost half of the masculine ideal in German culture.29 Men who presented symptoms
survivors sustained more or less serious associated with post-traumatic stress failed the ultimate moral test. As Dix
psychological disturbances’: Annette Becker, explores in works such as The Matchseller and Prager Strasse (1920), in a
1914-1918: Understanding the Great War (Profile
Books: London, 2002), pp. 25-6. climate in which postwar social instability induced a preoccupation with
typology, the traumatised and the maimed comprised a social group that
29. The cult of hardness reflected a manly ideal
that was actively promoted in the Wilhelmine conflated inherent weakness and the shame of defeat. The traumatised
state. Physical fitness accompanied by an iron casualties of war stood as a metaphor for Germany itself. Emblems of an
will defined the ‘true’ man. George Mosse notes unpalatable reality, public reaction to their visibility was characteristically
how self-confidence, perseverance and courage ambivalent.
were qualities promoted by German pedagogy
before the war. According to this discourse, the Brigid Doherty has analysed how George Grosz represented his experience
warrior represented the ultimate manly ideal: a of an anxiety disorder to rhetorical effect. In his poem ‘Kaffeehaus’, she
figure whose physical and moral fitness equipped notes, Grosz’s traumatised subject describes himself (in Freudian terms)
him for the ultimate task – the defence of the as, ‘a machine whose pressure gauge has gone to pieces!’ Until those
nation. The nervous type acted as a foil to this
cultural construct; lack of physical or moral memories that are the site of repressed emotion are resolved, Grosz
strength was to be deplored. See George Mosse, suggests, pressure remains high and the mechanism consequently rotates
The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern out of control; all those living with the legacy of a traumatic event are, to
Masculinity (Oxford University Press: New York
and Oxford, 1996), pp. 47 and 107–9. The
a greater or lesser degree, ‘prisoners of repetition’.30 Grosz’s metaphor
enduring socio-political impact of this prewar echoes the tendency to obsessive recall that marks the work of Dix and
paradigm is indicated by post-war yearning for Jünger. Their return to the same motif suggests an undeclared – perhaps
the heroic conceived on such terms. For unconscious – motivation to employ narrative techniques to recall
instance, when the body of Manfred von
Richtofen – the Red Baron – was returned to
traumatic events in order gradually to discharge unresolved affect. Yet
Germany in November 1925: ‘the thousands of unlike Grosz, Dix and Jünger sought to affirm their status as war veterans;
people who streamed out to greet our Manfred the challenge was to adopt narrative techniques that invited neither shame
saw him as the representative of the nor ridicule. Two issues are therefore in play here. Are we able to observe
self-sacrificing German hero’: Bolko von
Richtofen, quoted in Whalen, Bitter Wounds, signs of latent trauma in Dix’s work? And, if so, is it possible to perceive
p. 34. the stratagem he employs to deflect, or even resolve, it? This is How I
30. Brigid Doherty, ‘“See: We Are All
Looked offers an address to both questions.
Neurasthenics!” or, The Trauma of Dada Helmut Lethen has argued that a code of ‘cool conduct’ emerged in
Montage’, Critical Inquiry, vol. 24, Autumn postwar Germany, comprising a series of masking and concealing ploys

Paul Fox
applied by individuals ‘seeking escape from the heat of shame’.31 The model
that Lethen sets up may be tested with reference to This is How I Looked. The
self-portrait is set in the past: its true subject is therefore memory itself – the
1997, p. 94-97. Berlin physician Ernst Simmel,
site of contemporary neurosis. Dix the artist, his presence affirmed by his who supported the view that psychoanalysis
handwritten dedication, gazes at a highly contrived representation of Dix offered opportunities to cure traumatic
the soldier; Dix negotiates the present with reference to his past. There is neurosis, endorsed the Freudian view that
neurotic symptoms were evidence of the body’s
a performative quality – the acting-out of an identifiable role – about This attempt at self-healing. Recalling repressed
is How I Looked, suggested by its formal ambiguities: Dix’s oversized head; events – ‘rolling the film again’ – provided a
his emphatic frown; the machinegun drawn approximately to scale, yet means of resolving the underlying complex:
oversized in relation to his body; the grenade handles twisted out of Lerner, Hysterical Men, p. 172-3.
alignment; the theatrical rendering of dents and rips. The qualities that 31. Helmut Lethen, Cool Conduct: The Culture of
Dix seeks to convey by this performance are antithetical to shame. Dix’s Distance in Weimar Germany, trans. D. Reneau
heroising pose presents an alert, mobile and latently violent outlook. His (University of California Press: Berkeley and
London, 2002), p. 10.
narrowed eyes and set features convey the will to dominate. However, his
set physiognomy combined with the weapons and accoutrements of war 32. Lethen, Cool Conduct, p. 74.
held ready for action also function as a barrier, behind which the 33. Lethen, Cool Conduct, p. 23.
psychological impact of his wartime experience lies undisclosed. Dix 34. McGreevy, Bitter Witness, p. 201.
engages in what Lethen calls the ‘rhetoric of visible behaviour’ in
pursuance of impression management.32 This is How I Looked functions as an 35. Keith Hartley and Sarah O’Brian Twohig,
in Otto Dix 1891–1969 (Tate Gallery
acutely self-reflexive masquerade; its meaning lies as much in what is Publications: London, 1992), p.152.
concealed as in what is revealed. The refusal to reveal psychological
36. Dennis Crockett, German Post-Expressionism:
insights, the purpose of cool conduct, nevertheless functions to leave the The Art of the Great Disorder 1918–1924
work open to unintended interpretations, particularly when cultural shifts (Pennsylvania State University Press:
over time efface the meanings integral to its contemporary mode of Pennsylvania, 1999), p. 72.
address: Cork considers that Dix is brutalised and disgusted by war; 37. Frank Whitford, ‘The Revolutionary
McGreevy that his work simply affirms ‘I was there’. Alternatively, Dix Reactionary’, in Otto Dix 1891–1969 (Tate
represents himself in accordance with the received masculine ideal of Gallery Publications: London, 1992), p. 17.
hardness. Only the last of these determinations appears appropriate to the
reading of the work as a masquerade, as an image in which ‘the icons of an
armoured ego go on parade’, blocking the supervisory gaze of a spectator
disposed to associate trauma with the veteran population.33 Indeed, viewed
through the lens of Lethen’s notion of cool conduct, even the title of the
work functions as a mask; the image Dix dedicates to Nierendorf and his
spectators might more appropriately be labelled ‘this is my façade as a
veteran’.
Evidence that Dix confronted traumatic memories of the war permeates
his oral testimony. Speaking about his motivation to paint The Trench
(1920 –1923), Dix affirmed that ‘all art is exorcism . . . I painted many
things, war too, nightmares too, horrible things . . . Painting is the effort
to produce order; order in yourself. There is much chaos in me’.34 In a
widely quoted passage, Dix noted that, ‘for years afterwards I kept getting
those dreams, in which I had to crawl through ruined houses, along
passages that I could hardly get through. The ruins were constantly in my
dreams’.35 Dennis Crockett points out that in 1919 Dix presented himself
in Dresden as an ‘uncompromising, frenzied . . . artist bursting with savage
energy’.36 Frank Whitford notes that Conrad Felixmüller was not alone in
believing that Dix’s work ‘betrayed neither horror nor disgust but rather a
morbid delight in suffering, violence and death’. Meanwhile, Dix mocked
Felixmüller’s political idealism, juxtaposing it with the less high-minded,
but implicitly more satisfying, pleasure to be had from ‘sticking a bayonet
in someone’s guts and twisting it around’.37 In the years immediately
following demobilisation, it seems, Dix relied heavily on the attributes of
a veteran who had experienced the war in its most acute manifestation in

order to affirm his identity. Whitford considers that the war set Dix apart
from other artists in postwar Dresden. However, his other conclusion –
that Dix relished the war – cannot be inferred so easily from Dix’s
38. Whitford, ‘The Revolutionary
Reactionary’, p. 16. postwar behaviour.38 Rather, the evidence of restless energy, of recurring
nightmares, of attempts to bolster self-esteem with reference to the
39. Lloyd points out that postwar journeys to
former battlefields were frequently described as
memory of ‘heroic’ acts, and of satisfaction derived from imagining the
pilgrimages to a sacred place. The concept of aftermath of acts of violence signal at least a self-conscious awareness of
pilgrimage served to perpetuate the divide the pathology of what today is understood as post-traumatic stress disorder.
between soldiers at the front and the remainder If it is possible to associate the consequences of psychic trauma with Dix’s
of the population, because the received cultural
values of pilgrimage encouraged the view that
postwar persona, what stratagem does he employ to cope with its affective
veterans’ memories amounted to a prized legacy? Dix is seemingly compelled to undertake a series of cathartic
possession. Blunden’s address to the exclusivity battlefield pilgrimages.39 Each one of Dix’s major works depicting the
of the memory of others who have ‘gone the same Western Front functions as a return journey to the site of memory. They
journey’ – and who are thereby in a position to
understand – engages directly with this view. are all located within, or in close relation to, a frontline trench – the site
See David Lloyd, Battlefield Tourism: Pilgrimage of greatest danger. To view The Trench on public display, for instance, was
and the Commemoration of the Great War in Britain, to undertake a journey directly back to the front line (Fig. 2).40 Spectators
Australia and Canada, 1919–1939 (Berg: Oxford
and New York, 1998), pp. 13 and 24.
were confronted with a scene depicting the immediate aftermath of
effective shelling. The body parts of freshly killed soldiers mingle with the
40. The Trench was purchased by Cologne’s decaying remains of former casualties, revealed by collapsed trench walls.
Wallraf-Richartz Museum in October 1923. It
was included in the Prussian Academy of Arts Dix’s concern for ‘authenticity’ extends beyond his painstaking
spring exhibition in 1924, where it proved so interpretation of the texture and sheen of internal organs. Although it is
controversial that the Wallraf-Richartz returned impossible fully to recover the visual impact of The Trench from
it to Nierendorf in January 1925. Nierendorf photographic evidence, contemporary criticism is illuminating. Willi
capitalised on its notoriety, placing it in the
League for Human Rights’ Nie Wieder Krieg Wolfradt suggested that its ‘unaesthetic’ qualities signalled Dix’s former
exhibition that toured Germany in 1925. status as a Frontschwein. Alfred Salmony noted ‘that is how it was on those

Fig. 2. Otto Dix, The Trench, 1920 – 3, oil on canvas, location unknown. (Photo: Rheinisches Bild
Archiv, Köln.) # DACS 2005.

Paul Fox
autumn days in the trenches south of Soissons’.41 The inclination to tie

memory to time and place is significant. Close analysis of Dix’s works on
the Great War suggests that he repeatedly returns not just to the front
41. Alfred Salmony, ‘Die Neue Gallerie des 17.
line, but to the same locality: to the memory of the same event. His first bis 20. Jahrhunderts im Museum
protracted experience of combat at its most intensive was in August 1916, Wallraf-Richartz in Koln’, Der Cicerone, vol. 16,
near the Somme River, during the defence of a strongpoint named Monaçu Jan 24, p. 8, my translation.
Farm.42 The Trench presents its spectators with the memory of such an 42. For the military context see McGreevy,
experience. In the left foreground, a belt of machine gun ammunition, Bitter Witness, p. 59.
Dix’s autobiographical motif, lies in the twisted remains of the trench 43. McGreevy, Bitter Witness, p. 231.
wall. To the centre right of the picture the spectator’s eye is drawn into
44. William Miller, The Anatomy of Disgust
pictorial depth by a vertical line – the corner of a brick built structure (Harvard University Press: London, 1997), p. x.
silhouetted against the fume-filled void of the trench. Those with wartime
45. The controversy attending Erich Maria
service in the front line might recall heavily defended strongpoints Remarque’s war record illustrates how veteran
constructed around the reinforced cellars of ruined farm complexes – status assumed political significance for those
tactically significant and therefore keenly contested localities. Entente who sought to intervene in debate about how
offensive operations targeted such locations, such as the one Dix had the war should be remembered. Remarque was
discussed at cabinet level in 1930. At issue was
defended on the Somme, generating conditions conducive to the onset of whether his service record entitled him to
psychic trauma. represent veterans. See Modris Eksteins, Rites of
Yet only war veterans were capable of approaching The Trench with Spring: the Great War and the Birth of the Modern
reference to personal memories, as Salmony, for instance, does. Art critic Age (Black Swan: London, 1990), pp. 372– 3.
Julius Meier-Graefe, who had championed Impressionism in Germany in 46. Salmony, ‘Die Neue Gallerie’, p. 8.
the years before the war, deplored Dix’s literal treatment of the human Salmony implies that Dix’s factual accuracy
extends to soldiers’ affective state: nerves of
body, which he found nauseating. Dix’s representation of body parts, he steel – the armouring of the mind against
suggested, was calculated to ensure that ‘all of one’s animal reactions are sudden frights – were, he suggests, a front line
charged with high voltage’.43 By prompting feelings of aversion and commonplace, a phenomenon that non-veterans
disgust, The Trench breached the boundaries of an aesthetically conditioned were incapable of understanding.
response, or of mere sentiment. As William Miller notes, ‘the disgusting
can attract as well as repel’, and spectators were drawn to the work in
large numbers, where they discovered that Hans Secker, the director of
art at the Wallraf-Richartz, had placed it behind a screen.44 Individuals
were thereby prompted to believe that they must steel themselves – they
should adopt the psychic defence mechanism of fear or dread – before
confronting The Trench. The sensibilities of the spectator who chose to
‘enter’ The Trench were assaulted twice over: once by Dix’s hyper-real
depiction of individual body parts, and then again by his uncompromising
representation of the impact of high explosive on soldiers’ bodies. The
power of modern technology, the vulnerability of the human body,
undignified death, its random nature – the sublime affect the scene
inspires – was calculated to stimulate an acute affective reaction. Fear,
fright and moral disgust shaped the work’s meaning in the social and
political orderings of postwar Germany.
At play here are complex issues of spectatorship and agency. The Trench
addressed two audiences: veterans and those who had witnessed, or even
participated in, the war but had not served in the front line.45 Notice how
Salmony applies himself directly to the overall veracity of Dix’s
representation. His testimony underlines his own apparent status as a ‘true’
veteran. Conditioned by experience to fear the front line, he professes
neither shock nor disgust, but praises Dix’s ‘exact factual description: that
is war . . . one cannot comprehend those nerves of steel’.46 The Trench’s
apparent capacity to jolt the moral sensibilities of the non-veteran
spectator dominated issues of curatorship during its brief public existence
(Secker was compelled to resign over the succe`s de scandale he and Dix
generated). Dix’s glimpse of front-line action challenged narratives about

the war that portrayed wartime experience – including death – in affirmative

terms. However, equally telling is the manner in which The Trench functions to
affirm the status of the veteran. Disgust functions to order social and moral
47. Breuer and Freud had proposed that ‘every
experience which produces the painful affect of hierarchies. If civilians were frightened and disgusted by The Trench, and
fear, anxiety, shame or of psychic pain may act veterans were beyond such emotion, this allowed veterans to accord
as a trauma’: Breuer and Freud, Studies in themselves superior status on moral terms. After all, they had experienced
Hysteria, p. 3.
combat and had summoned the will to overcome its horrors. Superior status
48. Jünger, Storm of Steel, p. 9. served to armour egos that felt themselves vulnerable in postwar society.
49. Jon Glover and Jon Silken point to the The meaning of The Trench is therefore contingent on apprehending the
defining journey from recruit training to death contrasting reactions of two audiences conditioned by their very different
or ruin. The pathos of war conceived on such experiences of the war. Disgust operates to underline their different
terms risks overshadowing the intervening
narrative. This was problematic for veterans
reactions to sudden, undignified, violent death. Veterans were conditioned
who emerged by and large unscathed, and who by the wartime habit of living with fear – of controlling it, of exploiting its
sought to come to terms with their ambivalent capacity to act as a shield against fright – while civilians were not. Fright
responses to a complex experience in a more signalled civilians’ naı̈ve response, which could result in trauma.47
nuanced manner. Glover and Silken usefully
suggest how the war’s ‘brutally enforced
The interventionist quality of The Trench therefore resides in leading the
actions’ also ‘provided experiences of non-veteran spectator towards the boundary of the taboo concerning the
extraordinary challenge that were physically and neurosis that dogged the veteran population. If so, a question remains: does
morally repeated innumerable times and, in The Trench also function to allow its veteran audience to negotiate this
effect, shared’: J. Glover and J. Silken, eds, The
Penguin Book of First World War Prose (Penguin: taboo, albeit necessarily in a more circumspect manner?
London, 1990), p. 10. Dix’s focus on the front line is telling. His representation of a trench in the
aftermath of overwhelming violence exemplifies the type of shocking
experience, the memory of which veterans might still repress, along with
its unresolved affect. Replaying such a scene (deliberately imagining,
painting or viewing it) mimics the recall of traumatic events that,
according to Freud, characterises the mind’s attempt to recover and vent
the repressed affect it harbours: memory is the site of post-traumatic
anxiety. How was the pathology of trauma experienced by soldiers on
active service? Where and when were such events likely to be replayed?
Life in the front line (the trenches) – within range of the enemy’s
weapons – was accompanied by fear conditioned by danger, exhaustion
and the effects of hard living. But activity at the front – which included
the extensive area to the rear of the trenches in which units trained,
prepared and were logistically sustained – was defined by the battle
rhythm of military operations. Postwar memoir-fiction is reliant on
establishing in the lay reader’s imagination a cycle of experience (the
battle rhythm) typically lasting around two weeks. Jünger’s Storm of Steel
provides multiple examples from the outset. After a brief four-page
introduction, the reader accompanies the narrator on an uneventful tour of
front-line duty. Jünger goes up into the line (experiencing for the first
time ‘that strange mood of melancholy exaltation!’), occupies a trench,
maintains and improves it, eats, sleeps and performs sentry duty, is shot at
and shelled, hands over to a relieving unit, and retires to the rear to
recuperate.48 This cycle was the common experience of veterans who saw
front-line service. Unsurprisingly, it provides the narrative framework of
many literary memoirs. Overall, the entire war was experienced not so
much as a linear journey, but as a series of concentric cycles: the routine
of the twenty-four-hour battlefield day; the tours of duty in the line;
alternate switches from defensive to offensive operations; transfers from
Eastern to Western fronts; even a heightened awareness of the changing
seasons. The myth of the war associated with literary modernism conceals
this narrative under a linear one: the trajectory of the journey from
idealism to ruination.49 But Jünger’s Storm of Steel demonstrates how

Paul Fox
fundamental the idea of cyclical experience is to veterans’ memory of the

war. Jünger’s narrative ends with convalescence, the award of the Pour le
Me´rite, and, significantly, the company of a ‘tall and fearless’ pilot from
50. Jünger, Storm of Steel, pp. 288–9, my
Manfred von Richtofen’s legendary squadron (motto: ‘Hard – and crazy emphasis.
with it!’).50 Jünger’s resolve to return to battle is frustrated by the
51. Lerner notes that emotional shock becomes
Armistice, after which the cycle of wartime experience is reactivated in trauma after the event in specific contexts.
the framework of his memoir. Jünger, it seems, is impelled to go over the During the war, it was noted that symptoms
ground again. Even Erich Maria Remarque’s archetypal memoir fiction more often arose behind the line, as an
reflects this tendency. All Quiet on the Western Front (1929) ends with the expression of the anxiety induced by the
prospect of returning to the front line: Lerner,
death of its central character, Paul Bäumer, immediately prior to the Hysterical Men, pp. 69–70.
Armistice. But Remarque cannot leave the war behind. In The Road Back
52. McGreevy, Bitter Witness, p. 59.
(1931) his veterans return to negotiate the postwar world with reference
to their wartime experience. The road back is a two-way street linking 53. McGreevy, Bitter Witness, p. 60. A series of
past and present, a cycle of memory and experience that echoes the battle red cones signalled an impending enemy attack:
‘red lights bursting into two like cherries on a
rhythm of the front. This battle rhythm is relevant to discourse on stalk’ (Blunden). Artillery and machine guns
wartime trauma because trauma’s pathological consequences were more would immediately engage killing areas in front
likely to manifest themselves when out of contact with the enemy, rather of the German defensive positions. Useful
than in the front line where team discipline was essential to survival, representations of this aerial effect are located in
C. R. W. Nevinson, The Harvest of Battle, 1919
where body and mind stood on alert.51 Dix’s testimony on the experience and William Roberts, Gunners: Turning Out for an
of front-line service unwittingly offers an insight into this phenomenon: ‘If SOS Battery Action at Night, 1918. See Sue
one was entirely at the front [i.e. in the front line], in one place, one Malvern, Modern Art, Britain and the Great War:
Witnessing, Testimony and Remembrance (Yale
really had no fear any more’.52 Paradoxically, the imminent prospect of University Press: New Haven and London,
combat served as the ultimate release. Again, Dix offers supporting 2004), pp. 96 and 127.
testimony: ‘There was a feeling of freedom each time the red cones shot up’.53
54. Bertolt Brecht, ‘Northsea crabs’, Über die
Bertolt Brecht’s ‘Northsea crabs, or the modern Bauhaus home’ explores bildenden Künste (Suhrkamp: Frankfurt am Main,
the bridge between wartime and postwar experience and offers insights that 1983), pp. 50, 57 –9. An insight into Müller’s
illuminate the relationship between trauma, time and place. Kampert, the outlook is provided by Jünger in a passage that
proud owner of a new Bauhaus apartment, is described by his fellow also provides a narrative context for Dix’s The
Trench. Jünger describes his admiration for his
veterans in terms that suggest the mutual surveillance that accompanied soldiers who repeatedly found the resolve to
anxiety about the onset of anxiety disorders among veterans during and leave the shelter of their bunkers during heavy
after the war (as well as affirming the protective virtues of fear): ‘when he bombardment, when it appeared likely the
enemy was about to assault: ‘nor did the men
was frightened it was that acceptable fear which simply bore witness to his have very much to do, only cover the very small
intelligence’. If Kampert’s conduct is marked by an absence of the amount of ground, from the entrance of the
pathology of war neurosis, his former comrade, Müller, tends to the shelter to the sentry posts. But these few steps
opposite extreme. During a reunion in the apartment, the irritable, needed to be taken in the instant of a great
crescendo of fire before an attack [. . .] The dark
restless, drunken Müller takes exception to Kampert’s assertion that wave that so many times in those nights welled
‘harmony must be paramount in a flat’. Piling the contents of the up to the traverses through raging fire . . .
apartment into a (trench-like) corner, Müller associates himself with a remained with me in my heart as a personal
‘fearful whirlwind which restores all creation’s splendid diversity and yardstick for human trustworthiness. Especially
strongly marked is the memory of the position,
admirable discord’, subsequently attempting to exculpate himself by broken and still steaming . . . here and there, the
suggesting that ‘my home is my castle’. For Müller, the ideal home was sentry posts were covered with dead’: Jünger,
located in the memory of the all-consuming daily rhythm of life in the Storm of Steel, p. 85.
front line, where a castle-like affective shield, erected in the face of the 55. Jünger, Storm of Steel, p. 5.
whirlwinds and discord generated by the enemy and the environment,
protected the psyche from the discomfort associated with dwelling too
long or too hard on trauma and its consequences.54 In the context of
postwar discourse on heroism and the avoidance of shame, this is
significant. Trauma was experienced in the line, and its consequences were
manifested in the onset of symptoms against which the individual must
fight in order to maintain self-control. However, this struggle was likely to
occur not in the front line, but elsewhere in the cycle of events, notably
in the period of anticipation preceding a tour of front-line duty, when the
distant ‘breath of battle’ signalled the imminent return to danger.55 The

testimony of veterans suggests how fear of anxiety disorders promoted a

self-monitoring regime. For example, Jünger reflected on returning from a
trench raid: ‘It was only afterwards I noticed that the experience had taken
56. Jünger, Storm of Steel, p. 88.
its toll on my nerves, when I was lying on my pallet . . . with teeth
57. Thomas Nevin, Ernst Jünger and Germany: chattering and unable to sleep’.56 Overall, Storm of Steel contains multiple
Into the Abyss 1914–1945 (Constable: London,
1997), p. 50.
overt, if glancing, references to the psychological consequences of
traumatic experiences, a factor that makes a key contribution to what
58. Robert Whalen has stressed the importance
of the idea of redemption in the heroic ideal.
Thomas Nevin calls the ‘equipoise of horror and exhilaration’ that is
Decisive victory, he notes, is everything. When central to the meaning of Jünger’s text.57 It was in this context that art
the nation is saved, so too is the hero – even in and literary memoirs had to negotiate the delicate subject of trauma.
death. Defeat, however, denies redemption on Failure to address the impact of trauma on the soldier’s mind was
traditional terms. Whalen, Bitter Wounds,
pp. 25– 30.
problematic. Stripping out a significant element from the narrative
compromised any claim to articulate the ‘true’ nature of war experience.
59. Joseph Roth exemplifies how discourse on But how was emotion associated with trauma to be imparted to the
the nature of heroism was a feature of postwar
society. In The Radetzky March, Trotta, the hero spectator, when heroism was traditionally articulated through epic
of the battle of Solferino, is subsequently narratives in which the will of the heroic persona consigned fear to
incensed to discover that the factual account of oblivion? The epic style focussed on exemplifying the valorous deed, not
his action has been displaced in a school primer its affective consequences, and the meaning of such deeds was grounded in
by an alternative narrative in the epic style. His
moral outrage is compounded when he the telos of the triumphal return, or of a glorious death at the moment of
subsequently discovers that the state is victory.58 Whatever the outcome, the deeds of heroes, not their
concerned more with promoting identity psychological reactions to combat, were commemorated by a grateful
affirming myths than historical facts. Locating
these events in the Habsburg era, Roth suggests
nation.59 But November 1918 was marked by the absence of triumph.
the obsolescent nature of epic heroism, points National shame induced by defeat could not be deflected with recourse to
to the role it played in promoting popular myths of heroism conceived and articulated in traditional terms. War
support for the war in 1914, and invites a veteran artists and writers seeking to make sense of their experience
comparison with contemporary culture. Joseph
Roth, The Radetzky March, 1932,
during the immediate postwar years were compelled to negotiate heroism
trans. J. Neugroschel (Everyman: London, on unprecedented terms.
1996), pp. 7– 8. The Trench functions as the first of Dix’s cathartic battlefield pilgrimages.
60. McGreevy, Bitter Witness, p. 234. Yet as soon as it was over, Dix set out again to retrace his steps, producing his
portfolio of fifty etchings, The War (1923 – 1924). For McGreevy, this reflex
61. Bennett draws a distinction between
‘ordinary’ memory and ‘sense’ memory. indicates that the war was ‘an experience too complex for a single image’.60
Ordinary memory is the domain of thinking With this broad proposition in mind, it is now possible to address The War in
processes and words in which events are made the light of my analysis of The Trench, contemporary discourse on trauma, and
intelligible within a framework that a general of evidence of attempts to redefine heroism on terms that transcended
audience can understand. Sense memory, after
Charlotte Delbo, is defined as the imprint of an the shame of defeat. The manner in which the war was mythologised in
event registering a level of bodily affect. It is pursuit of meaning in Weimar society was, as we have seen, complex and
always present, but not continuously felt. Thus contested. In particular, veterans might nurture feelings of superiority that
the sense memory of a traumatic event may were nevertheless symptomatic of a latent insecurity. Further, the cyclical
resurface, in which case, although it is the
property of a past self, it nevertheless triggers rhythm of the front, which was central to the narrative structure adopted
emotion in the present. Sense memory cannot by so many former combatants, provided a dynamic framework for
be ‘thought’, but must be represented visually: constant self-testing, with identified stress points built into the cycle.
it produces a form of ‘seeing truth’, registering
the pain of memory and its level of bodily affect.
Against this background, I want to argue that the battle rhythm of the
In order to function successfully, art that seeks front is replayed in Dix’s art, as it was in the salient war literature of the
to articulate sense memory requires an explicit period – and this for two reasons. For veterans, the cycle provided a
social context and makes demands on the narrative framework in which what Jill Bennett calls ‘sense memory’ could
cultural knowledge of the spectator: Jill
Bennett, ‘The Aesthetics of Sense-Memory:
be represented in order to affirm the integrity of a psyche that knew itself
Theorising Trauma through the Visual Arts’, in to be dogged by a traumatic past.61 For non-veterans, the cyclical
Franz Kaltenbeck and Peter Weibel, eds, Trauma framework offered a clear narrative that affirmed the heroism of the
and Memory: Cross-Cultural Perspectives (Passagen Frontschwein, with reference to the will to endure.
Verlag: Vienna, 2000), pp. 82 –3.
If The Trench could not adequately embrace the experience of the war, it
was not that its subject-matter was somehow eccentric, or its ambitions
too narrowly defined. Rather, The Trench appears limiting because,
although it might shock the civilian spectator, it cannot fully represent the

Paul Fox
experience of veterans because it depicts no living figures upon whom to

project the sense-memory of combat. With The War, however, Dix’s mode
of representation assumes the performative quality that characterises This is
62. McGreevy employs three categories: the
How I Looked. His narrative about wartime experience at the front is set in daily degradation of trench life (dugout life, No
cyclical motion; the ordinary memory of heroism and the sense memory of Man’s Land and off-duty carousing); the grim
traumatic events cohere to generate the series’ meaning. Each portfolio experience of actual combat; and the corruption
and confusion of civilians: McGreevy, Bitter
comprises a loosely arranged sample of battlefield motifs. For instance, the Witness, pp. 288– 9.
second portfolio contains four images of soldiers about their front-line
duties, three of corpses, and three of the war-torn landscape.
Art-historical treatment of The War has conventionally grouped the
etchings according to generic subject type.62 This is useful, because it
illustrates the extent to which Dix casts his eye over the battlefield and its
hinterland. But this also erects barriers that disrupt the narrative content
central to the series’ meaning.
A broad survey of Dix’s war art reveals the coordinates of a consistent
narrative structure. For instance, Abandoned Strongpoint near Neuville and
Collapsed Trench rework the general visual schema of The Trench. And so
does Flare Lights Up Monaçu Farm, whose title locates the spectator in the
fortified ruin Dix defended in 1916 (Fig. 3). In order to explicate this less
obvious connection it is necessary to look to Dix’s third major battlefield

Fig. 3. Otto Dix, Flare Lights Up Monaçu Farm, War, Portfolio 2, No. 7, 1924, etching. Galerie Nierendorf, Berlin. # DACS 2005.

pilgrimage, the triptych War (1929– 1932) (Fig. 4). In War, Dix conflates
visual elements of The Trench and Monaçu Farm, and it is productive to note
the terms on which he does so. In War’s central panel, the wheels of a
63. It was difficult to maintain geographical
orientation in the shellscape and the signature destroyed wagon – the signature feature in Monaçu Farm – are picked out
features of surviving landmarks became in pictorial depth by the artificial light of an illuminating shell.63 The
important aids to navigation. Soldiers at the converging lines of the gable ends of farm buildings are mirrored in the
front gazed inwardly at themselves, and
outwardly at each other and their environment
inverted ‘V’ shape of the collapsed trench walls in the foreground.
in a constant quest to affirm their mastery over The horizontal extending across the base of the farm wall, just below the
events that threatened to spiral out of their cart wheels, demarcates the visual dynamics of the panel; above the line,
control at any time. The will to control was the rays of the suspended light, together with the converging lines of the
constantly in play. In 1915, for instance, the
artist Franz Marc wrote from the front: ‘I see
roofs, draw the eye skywards, and below the line, evidence of organic
myself entirely objectively, as if it were some decay, deep shadow and darker tones pull the spectator into the ground.
stranger’: Whalen, Bitter Wounds, p. 52. Monaçu Farm sits at the epicentre of the dynamic tension established
between sky and subterranean matter. The remainder of the triptych
similarly coheres around the base of the farm; all of the work’s figures are
lit up by the light that burns directly above it, the horizon lines of the
side panels coincide approximately with the base of the ruins, the
turbulent clouds echo the rhythm of the roofs, and the predella draws
the spectator down into the earth around the farm’s foundations,
suggesting the war’s inexorable tendency to pull combatants in this
direction. As in The Trench, a belt of machine gun ammunition towards the
lower left corner of the central panel signals the autobiographical basis of
the work. Dix’s war art continuously returns to his experience in a trench

Fig. 4. Otto Dix, The War, 1929 – 32, oil and tempera on wood, central panel 204 !204 cm, side panels 204 !102 cm each. Staatliche
Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Galerie Neue Meister. # DACS 2005.

Paul Fox
in the vicinity of Monaçu Farm. The farm represents the site of psychic
trauma and the consequent threat of shame-inducing anxiety disorders.
Monaçu Farm signifies the wound in which sense memories fester. Yet
64. Seven images delineate the cycle: Company
Monaçu Farm also operates as the location where veterans paradoxically at Rest depicts deployment into the line; Dugout
might feel most free from the affect of trauma. It represents the defining occupation of a bunkered position; Machinegun
experience of the true veteran, the pivot around which the battle rhythm Section Advancing, manoeuvre in contact with the
enemy; Transport of the Wounded in Houthulst
of the front revolved; it functions as the anchor around which Dix’s visual Wood, casualty evacuation; Number 2 Company
narrative rotates. will be Relieved Tonight, handover to a relieving
In order to explore how Dix’s autobiographical etchings address the unit; Battleweary Troops Withdraw, withdrawal;
postwar construct of heroism and the legacy of trauma, I want to apply the Roll Call of those Who Made it Back, recovery and
regeneration. The systematic orientation of
affective values associated with Monaçu Farm – the site of trauma – to The Dix’s etchings, all of which portray activity
War. Before doing so it is necessary to put to one side those etchings in unfolding from left to right, assists in identifying
which representations of the dead take centre stage, such as Dead Sentry, these etchings as elements of a coherent
after noting their threefold impact. As with The Trench, images of death sequence.
and decay block any inclination to take refuge in romanticised myths of 65. Nevin points out that in Homer’s Iliad,
war experience. The disgust they are calculated to provoke amongst martial violence and performing excellence are
valued properties: the act of waging war
non-veterans affirms the moral superiority of former soldiers whose will obscures the aim of the conflict. The protracted
sustained them in the face of such experience. And, in the specific context nature of the Great War and the demands of
of The War, their stasis throws into relief the activity of Dix’s living trench warfare tested the endurance of soldiers.
subjects. Contemporary spectators with an understanding of the battle Performing excellence thereby came to be
equated with sheer endurance – a triumph of
rhythm of the Great War might relate each of Dix’s etchings depicting a the will (see Nevin, Ernst Jünger and Germany,
specific type of activity to its wider military context, thereby permitting p. 41). Nevertheless, the influence of the
them to splice together elements of a coherent narrative. Indeed, historical European discourse on chivalry was
spectators are assisted by the specificity of Dix’s titles, such as Company at not entirely supplanted by the virtues of
endurance. As Allen Frantzen observes, ‘The
Rest. The salient narrative that Dix sets in motion is the routine cycle of genre of the manual of chivalry, with its
occupying, defending, and then withdrawing from a defended locality in carefully calibrated scales of perfection . . .
the line.64 The performative aspect of the cycle – of soldiers acting out culminating in the position of the self-sacrificer,
roles in accordance with the imperatives of the narrative – is fundamental who follows the example of Christ’ remained
highly influential: Frantzen, Bloody Good:
to the determination of its meaning. The cycle enables non-veterans to Chivalry, Sacrifice and the Great War (University of
imagine the experience of front line service in a manner that addresses the Chicago Press: Chicago and London, 2004),
psychological need of a nation that had incurred two million war dead, p. 116. George Mosse points out how front-line
was humiliated by defeat, and yet could not assume responsibility for the service was conceived as a sacred experience.
Myths of martial prowess served to ‘glorify the
conflict. The myth of defeat served to erect a shield against reality by very will to do battle as the highest good’:
affirming the heroism of Germany’s soldiers, who had not been vanquished George Mosse, Fallen Soldiers. Reshaping the
in a ‘fair’ fight, but had been overwhelmed by the weight of the enemy’s Memory of the World Wars (Oxford University
materiel, crushed by the inexorable will of a cruel aggressor. The selfless Press: New York and Oxford, 1990), p. 176.
Received notions of martial conduct appear
act of valour in pursuit of a high-minded ideal – the defining trope of the eminently adaptable to shifting circumstances:
romantic hero – was inflected by the virtues of the will to endure in what chivalric self-sacrifice, the will to battle and the
Nevin characterises as ‘an oblique performance of Homeric deeds’.65 The capacity to endure comprise elements of a
package of desirable characteristics. Frantzen’s
repeated enactment of the cycle that Dix depicts supports this viewpoint: study of plural moral justifications for chivalric
like This is How I Looked, soldiers emerge battered but undefeated, ready codes of conduct and Nevin’s address to
and willing, in the imagination, to go again. Yet by 1924 the reactionary performing excellence suggest an enduring
lobby – those on the right who viewed a return to conflict as necessary if cultural need to reinvent martial virtues as a
key indicator of moral superiority.
Germany was to repudiate the Versailles Treaty and recover from the ‘stab
in the back’ – was already reworking the myth in the manner of heroic
deeds imagined in the traditional idiom. The images of death, mutilation
and decay, previously set to one side, now play an important function. In
the context of Dix’s cyclical narrative, they intervene to place constraints
on the reworking of the myth of endurance, denying the ability selectively
to promote heroic self-sacrifice and thereby efface the war’s inhumanity.
Veterans could, of course, also accede to the association of heroism with
endurance. However, the performative aspect of the cycle offers further
meaning for those whose memories of the war were accompanied by

post-traumatic symptoms that compromised their desire to view their past in

such terms. For those who struggled to cope with such symptoms, the myth of
tenacity and endurance might promote feelings of inferiority, for it
66. Dix’s propensity to challenge taboos is
apparent elsewhere. Nierendorf declined to represented an ideal that denied its corollary – the traumatic type. Dix’s
include an image of rape (Soldier and Nun) in the cycle presents a cognitive scheme in which the prospect of anxiety disorders
series. Allegations of German war crimes during can be recalled in an affirmative manner. The cycle portrays the very
the war’s opening offensive in Belgium in 1914
were the subject of much Entente propaganda
conditions in which the legacy of trauma was likely to be felt: in periods
during the war: see John Horne and Allan immediately before, or after, a period of duty in the line. Company at Rest
Kramer, German Atrocities, 1914: A History of and Battleweary Troops Withdraw, for instance, depict self-absorbed individuals
Denial (Yale University Press: New Haven and behind the front line. But in Machine Gun Section Advancing, Dix’s troops are
London, 2001). Moreover, Dead Sentry depicts a
corpse with one boot removed and the rifle
totally taken up in the execution of a demanding collective task in the face
barrel close to the face. All the attributes of a of danger. If the psychological consequences of trauma were often manifest
typical trench suicide are codified here. Worms in the margins of this type of acute experience, the representation of
emerging from the rear of the helmet suggest an soldiers returning to the front line signifies a triumph of self-overcoming
unseen exit wound. A toe was required in order
to operate the trigger of such a long weapon
that affirms the psychological dimension of heroic tenacity and endurance.
when the barrel was placed in the mouth, On these terms, The War offered a sophisticated critique of the postwar
necessitating the removal of footwear. Again, taboo that suppressed public debate on anxiety disorders.
Dix’s title suggests an ironic slippage: the Dix probes the boundaries of the taboo on trauma in order to add force to
optimal time to commit suicide was when one
stood alone on sentry duty. Stéphane
his intervention. Its subtlety rests in recalling the ever-present threat posed
Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker have by battlefield trauma, without compelling his audience to tackle head on the
analysed this etching to similar effect, but their prohibition on openly acknowledging the issue. For instance, Night Encounter
conclusion is somewhat different. For them, with a Madman demonstrates Dix’s considered use of titles to address taboos
Dix’s strategy comprises ‘the transgression of a
rarely transgressed taboo in the combatants’ (Fig. 5). Titles employed in The War serve to clarify the nature of events
memory’. However I suggest that if ‘at least Dix depicted and to establish the autobiographical nature of the work; they
lifted part of the veil’, the veil was drawn not reinforce Dix’s authority to assert the ‘true’ values of front-line
over the veterans’ (repressed) memories, but experience. In Night Encounter, however, a slippage occurs. The spectator,
over the admissibility of such discourse in the
public sphere: Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and moving down a trench towards a ruined windmill, is confronted by a
Annette Becker, 1914–1918: Understanding the grimacing figure in a military tunic. The lack of helmet, weapon and
Great War (Profile Books: London, 2002), equipment signal that the man is no longer an effective soldier. Silhouetted
pp. 42– 3.
by moonlight, he shakes and quivers, presenting unequivocal symptoms of
an anxiety disorder. However, by associating him with madness, Dix is
able simultaneously to assert and to sidestep the issue of trauma. Slippage
permits spectators safely to interrogate The War with or without reference
to the legacy of trauma.66 Yet, for veterans, the figure who confronts the
spectator face-to-face, as in a mirror, functions allegorically. Night
Encounter addresses the affective properties of sense memory: Dix’s
madman exemplifies the pathology veterans feared each time they faced a
cycle of front-line duty, a condition rooted in their recent past that could
loom up out of the darkness at any time. The War thus provides a narrative
structure in which trauma and its consequences are codified. Dix’s
etchings offer veterans a memoir-fiction in which control plays a defining
role. The performative quality of the narrative promotes a sense of
psychological self-mastery that echoes the hegemonic discourse on will,
endurance and heroism. Further, its nuanced address to problematic
subject-matter offered veterans discrete grounds to lay claim to a positive
wartime experience unacknowledged in the postwar public sphere.
Dix’s triptych War builds on the performative values of The War. Its
central panel echoes the form and content of The Trench, but its dissimilar
address to time and space is telling. Compared with The Trench, it
propounds the virtues of endurance, rather than the affective quality of a
traumatising moment in time. The aerial effects of recent bombardment
are now absent. Its corpses bear the signs of advanced putrefaction, after
Matthias Grünewald, rather than the ephemeral sheen of newly severed

Paul Fox
67. It is probable that Dix does not depict a

trench at all. German defensive tactics
underwent a significant evolution, beginning in
late 1916, in reaction to the increasingly
destructive power of artillery. Martin Samuels
notes that in the summer of 1916 ‘Under the
constant Allied bombardment, the German
positions were rapidly reduced to a mass of
shell-holes, which garrisons hurriedly linked
together to form ad hoc trenches. Obstacles,
communication trenches and dug-outs ceased to
exist in this zone of desolation. A number of
units . . . chose . . . to live in separate
This figure has been intentionally left blank. shell-holes, covered by waterproof sheets’:
Martin Samuels, Command or Control? Command,
Oxford University Press apologizes for Training and Tactics in the British and German
any inconvenience.‘ Armies, 1888–1918 (Frank Cass: London,
1995),p. 173. Jünger also provides ample
testimony that combat during the years 1917 –
1918 was often deliberately conducted from
within the contours of the shellscape; see, for
instance, Storm of Steel, p. 231.
68. A reading of the figure as a sentry, on duty
while his comrades sleep, reinforces the notion
of a cycle of endurance, and of the role of the
veteran as witness.
Fig. 5. Otto Dix, Night Encounter with a Madman, War, Portfolio 3, No. 2, 1924, etching. Galerie
Nierendorf, Berlin. # DACS 2005.
organs. The trench is more collapsed than constructed, the spectator’s

viewpoint more elevated.67 Monaçu Farm appears in the middle distance,
as if the affective experience of the traumatic event, which the farm
represents, is located in the past. Significantly, this pictorial space is
occupied by the living. A soldier in helmet, gas mask and cape sits with
hunched shoulders within it, Monaçu Farm over his shoulder, corpses in
front. Weathered figures, resting but ready for action, fill the predella.
A continuum of experience is suggested: a feat of endurance in which
soldiers are prepared again to face overwhelming firepower and the
presence of death.68 The central figure’s masked face frustrates an attempt
to interrogate the work with reference to a close reading of his
psychological state. Dix thereby forces the spectator to look beyond the
trench to the side panels, which replay the battle rhythm he represents in

The War. Here, however, the frieze-like orientation of events proceeding

from left to right in The War is replaced by a dynamic that sets the entire
triptych in circular motion around the figure in the trench – projecting
69. The example of Grünewald is unmistakable.
The Isenheim alter elicits moral disgust with its the cycle back to Monaçu Farm, and extending it out into the space
uncompromising depiction of rotting flesh, occupied by the spectator. Dix’s address to trauma and its consequences is
man’s brutality to man and the pervasive again congruent with the hegemonic myth of heroism that valorised the
presence of death. Dix relocates Grünewald’s
dark landscapes and unnaturally clear lighting to
will to prevail in the face of overwhelming (terrifying) odds. In the
the trenches, as he simultaneously transposes left-hand panel, soldiers advance towards the line; on the right, Dix
Grünewald’s representation of man’s capacity to portrays himself carrying a casualty back towards the spectator.69 Soldiers
endure. As Gottfried Richter notes, confront the psychological legacy of past experience as they return to the
Grünewald’s representation of the dignified
suffering of the saints commands neither pity
trenches – signified by the soldier who looks out of the picture over his
nor the quality of victimhood. Saints who have shoulder, thereby completing an affective cycle in which the spectator is
experienced physical and psychic trauma, like imbricated – and they carry the psychological imprint of their latest tour
Dix’s veterans, represent ‘the friend who of duty, even as they withdraw. The heroism and the trauma of the war
knows’. By exemplifying the virtues of
endurance with reference to the promise of
are thereby united in a circular narrative that links the site of trauma and
redemption, the Isenheim altar functioned as a its consequences to the postwar world.70
Heiltum – a healing agent: Gottfried Richter, If the narrative structure of Storm of Steel has informed my reading of Dix’s
The Isenheim Alter: Suffering and Salvation in the scenes of war, it is illuminating to conclude by noting how Jünger and Dix
Art of Grünewald (Floris Books: Edinburgh,
1998), p. 25. It is useful here to note
part company in the context of Weimar Germany’s wound culture. In the
O. K. Werckmeister’s interpretation of Dix’s final scene of Storm of Steel, the convalescent Jünger receives his wound
Flanders. Setting the work in its contemporary stripes. Worn to indicate a body ruptured yet made whole again, they
cultural circumstances, and noting its connote heroism, resilience and recovery – and, by implication, psychic
art-historical provenance, Werckmeister argues
that the meaning of Flanders is grounded in the closure. Having repeatedly signalled the presence of trauma and its
concept of resurrection: O. K. Werckmeister, consequences, Jünger seeks to confine the issue to the past. Overall, his
‘Radical Art History’, Art Journal, vol. 42, literary memoir seeks to impose a linear trajectory, but his attempt to
Winter 1982, pp. 285–8. draw a line under his wartime service is denied by his tendency to
70. Dix’s determination to link the site of obsessive revision. In contrast, Dix’s major works on the war insistently
trauma to the postwar world is evident in one of return the spectator to the front line. Treading the boundaries of a
his earliest works on this subject, War Cripples
with Self Portrait (1920), which featured in the politicised social taboo, his cycles of experience generate a context in
First International Dada Exhibition. Doherty has which the long shadow of trauma is integral to his meaning. Confronting
argued that the exhibition provided a platform the psychological legacy of the war, it seems, also necessitated an obsessive
on which George Grosz and John Heartfield project: Dix is also compelled to go over the ground again. In an
assumed the persona of ‘hysterics’, deliberately
collapsing any distance between their public increasingly reactionary political climate, which reinforced the taboo on
image and a shame-inducing neurotic condition trauma and affirmed the virtues of the traditional heroic persona, Dix’s
in order to assert their opposition to the work came to be interpreted as a deliberate affront to the memory of the
political order, the war and the prevailing German army. Yet Dix, the veteran, continued to appeal not directly to
doctrines of medical science. Dix takes a more
ambivalent approach. Seen in profile, his pacifist sentiment, but to an inclusive memory of the Great War that
disembodied head is located in closest proximity upheld the courage of soldiers, while simultaneously demanding that
to that of the shaking figure in the parade of society address the war’s psychological consequences with honesty and
veterans. Hovering opaquely in the space
between the figures and the shop frontages in
compassion.
pictorial depth, Dix assumes a seemingly
ambivalent attitude to his duel status as a I wish to thank Frederic Schwartz and James Beach for their advice and
spectator of this social reality, and as a war encouragement.
veteran. Representing his persona as an opaque
skull – the embodiment of an unresolved
attitude of mind – suggests an indeterminate
empathy. See Doherty, ‘“See: We Are All
Neurasthenics!” or, The Trauma of Dada
Montage’, Critical Inquiry, vol. 24, Autumn
1997.

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paul

1. Dix volunteered at the outbreak of war and

250 OXFORD ART JOURNAL 29.2 2006

10. Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette

This figure has been intentionally left blank.

OXFORD ART JOURNAL 29.2 2006 251

disorder; psychological needs or desires are manifested in conditions such as

252 OXFORD ART JOURNAL 29.2 2006

unprocessed affect into physical symptoms.13 Freud’s professional wartime

OXFORD ART JOURNAL 29.2 2006 253

inauguration of a national cenotaph, to be dedicated in the Königsplatz on

254 OXFORD ART JOURNAL 29.2 2006

OXFORD ART JOURNAL 29.2 2006 255

256 OXFORD ART JOURNAL 29.2 2006

This figure has been intentionally left blank.

OXFORD ART JOURNAL 29.2 2006 257

autumn days in the trenches south of Soissons’.41 The inclination to tie

258 OXFORD ART JOURNAL 29.2 2006

the war that portrayed wartime experience – including death – in affirmative

OXFORD ART JOURNAL 29.2 2006 259

fundamental the idea of cyclical experience is to veterans’ memory of the

260 OXFORD ART JOURNAL 29.2 2006

testimony of veterans suggests how fear of anxiety disorders promoted a

OXFORD ART JOURNAL 29.2 2006 261

experience of veterans because it depicts no living figures upon whom to

This figure has been intentionally left blank.

262 OXFORD ART JOURNAL 29.2 2006

This figure has been intentionally left blank.

OXFORD ART JOURNAL 29.2 2006 263

264 OXFORD ART JOURNAL 29.2 2006

post-traumatic symptoms that compromised their desire to view their past in

OXFORD ART JOURNAL 29.2 2006 265

67. It is probable that Dix does not depict a

organs. The trench is more collapsed than constructed, the spectator’s

266 OXFORD ART JOURNAL 29.2 2006

The War. Here, however, the frieze-like orientation of events proceeding

OXFORD ART JOURNAL 29.2 2006 267

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