Degree Year

2016

Document Type

Thesis - Open Access

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

History

Advisor(s)

Leonard V. Smith

Keywords

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Self-Portait as a Soldier, Degenerate art, Entartete Kunst, Oberlin College, Allen Memorial Art Museum, WWI, World War I

Abstract

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, a globally renowned German Expressionist, painted one of his most famous works, Self-Portrait as a Soldier, in 1915. Today it hangs in Oberlin College's Allen Memorial Art Museum and is greatly sought after around the world for loan exhibitions. Yet the painting did not always have such a great demand; painted during Kirchner's experience as a World War I Soldier and publicly denounced by the Nazis, the painting realized a complicated journey to the United States and its eventual global fame. So how did it arrive at where it is today and why? This paper will examine in-depth the path of this painting and along the way its failures and successes, its popularity and its defamation; it will attempt to unlock the mystery of German Expressionism's relationship to politics and ultimately project a key understanding as to why reception of contemporary German culture in the United States was much better received after World War II than before. It will demonstrate how Self-Portrait as a Soldier's political identity changed with the context of its varying environments. Most importantly it will demonstrate the ability of art to tell history in a way that politics never could.

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