The Belle Epoque in Europe

Berlin: Belle Epoque and Secession

Historism and Wilhelminism

Although the foundation of the Secession took place in 1898 only, one year after Vienna, the separation movement had already begun in 1892, the year of the foundation of the Munich Secession. The motives for a group of progressive artists to separate from the traditionalistic Academy of Arts were also the same: The established members were hardly open to modern ideas and tried to prevent new developments. During the German empire, the "knowledge of art" of emperor Wilhelm II, conventional and historicizing, dominated. He "decorated" the German capital with incredible buildings such as the Gedächtniskirche (Memorial Church, 1891), a neo-roman stone mass, or the Dom (cathedral, 1894-1905), an oversized colossus, and built 32 monumental sculpture groups of the Brandenburg-Prussian history along the Siegesallee (Victory avenue): "Art passing over the laws and bounds defined by Me is no longer art, it is factory work, it is industrial, and art must never be that." By these words, Wilhelm was very exactly aiming at the opposing naturalists and impressionists and their representations of the everyday life. But although, in 1894, the emperor, in order to protest against the public premiere of the sociocritical play The weavers by Gerhart Hauptmann, cancelled his box in the Deutsches Theater (German theatre), the breakthrough of new art forms could no longer be stopped.

Scandals

In February 1892, a group of Berlin artists united in the Free Association to Organize Artistic Exhibitions. At that very moment, the leading initiators Walter Leistikow, Franz Skarbina and Max Liebermann had not yet the intention to leave the established association Verein Berliner Künstler (Association of Berlin Artists) or not to participate anymore at the Große Berliner Kunstausstellung (Great Exhibition of Berlin Art) which was organized by the Verein every year.
A first scandal took place the same year. On November 5th, 1892, in the Berliner Architekturhaus (Berlin architecture house), an exhibition showing paintings by Edvard Munch was inaugurated in presence of the artist himself. During the inauguration, leading members of the Verein Berliner Künstler were so shocked by the paintings that a few days later, they closed the exhibition. The opposing group around Max Liebermann had not the influence to prevent it and was not yet large enough to leave the Verein dominated by its president, an artist preferring historical paintings, Anton von Werner, who at the same time was president of the Academy of art. He paid homage to the Prussian crown by painting enormous oil daubs of the Prussian history and this of course pleased the emperor a lot. Other visitors told that when von Werner and his colleagues saw Munch's pictures, they cried out: "Is that supposed to be art? That is strange, repulsive, ugly, nasty! Out with these pictures!"
As a reaction to the forced closure of the exhibition, a new Group of the Eleven was established where among others Walter Leistikow, Max Liebermann, Max Klinger and Ludwig von Hofmann participated in order to sponsor new young artists on private base.

The Berlin Secession

In the long run, the Verein Berliner Künstler could impede but not stop the changes in art; it had the least success with the emperor's favourite enemy, Max Liebermann, who already was a well-known artist when he returned to Berlin in 1884 after longer stays in Paris and Munich. Although he was ignored by the official institutions, his work was shown often enough during private exhibitions like e. g. by the Group of the Eleven and so he became very popular until the point when the Staatliche Gemäldesammlung (National Art Collection) had to buy some of his paintings. In 1897, he even got a chair on the Royal Academy of Art and so paved the way for modern art, but it was not the triumph of the avant-garde yet. During the Große Berliner Kunstausstellung in 1898, the jury to which Liebermann belonged intended to award a medal to Käthe Kollwitz for her etchings The weavers inspired by Gerhart Hauptmann's play. The emperor refused to approve the medal saying that it would really go to far to award a medal to a woman! Furthermore, the jury rejected a painting of the meanwhile well-known artist Walter Leistikow and the emperor also refused to award him a medal; he said that since he loved the hunt and knew the nature, he knew more about it than an artist who coloured his trees in blue.
This was the moment when the avant-garde had enough of it. It was obvious for them that they had nothing to expect from the conservative side. Therefore, on May 2nd, 65 Berlin painters and sculptors established a new artists association which was called Berliner Secession following the examples of Munich and Vienna. Max Liebermann was elected first president; well-known artists were members, as for example Lovis Corinth, Max Slevogt, Käthe Kollwitz, Heinrich Zille, Ernst Barlach, Max Beckmann and Edvard Munch. The Berlin art dealer and editor Paul Cassirer and his cousin Bruno both having a gallery on Kantstraße specialized in modern arts became executive secretaries.
The first exhibition took place on May 19, 1899 in Charlottenburg. Next to the Theater des Westens (West Side Theatre), they had hurriedly built a new exhibition hall where more than 300 paintings and 50 sculptures were shown. The reaction of the official side was not much surprising: On imperial orders, no member of the army was allowed to visit any exhibition organized by the Secession in uniform; the Secessionists were not allowed anymore to become member of official juries. In 1902, a conservative minority left the Secession. In 1904, Wilhelm, in collaboration with the Deutscher Künstlerbund (German Artists Union), achieved the exclusion of the Secession from the World's Fair in St. Louis. When the ministry of Culture tried to reach out its hand to the Secession by preparing a retrospection of Liebermann's works, the emperor intervened again. But in spite of all these attacks, the Secession developed and became an important and accepted element in German art during the Empire so that in 1907, Liebermann could declare: "Yesterday's revolutionaries are today's classics!"

Splits and decline

But this was exactly the new problem because younger artists even more modern had come to Berlin fighting against the established members of the Secession as they had fought against the Academy only a few years ago. In 1910, the Secession divided in two after the jury presided by Liebermann had rejected 27 painting of expressionist artists like Max Pechstein. Leaded by Pechstein, they established the Neue Secession (new secession) and organized in May an exhibition called "Those rejected of the Secession Berlin 1910".
Besides Munich where in 1911, Kandinsky founded the Blauer Reiter (Blue Rider), Berlin became a centre of the German expressionism, especially because of the arrival of artists from the Dresden association Die Brücke (The Bridge) such as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and Erich Heckel. This new avant-garde had its forum in Herwarth Walden's magazine Der Sturm (The Tempest) where besides fine arts artists wrote authors and literary men like Else Lasker-Schüler, Kurt Hiller, Arno Holz, Jacob van Hoddis, Alfred Döblin et Paul Scheerbart.
After Emil Nolde's violent attacks against Max Liebermann, the famous president was excluded from the Secession. Shortly afterwards, Liebermann and his closest colleagues resigned from all their functions. His successor as president was Lovis Corinth whom followed Paul Cassirer in December 1912.
In summer 1913, the last successful exhibition of the Secession took place, but there was another split because when choosing the exhibits, the work of 13 members was rejected. As a result, those 13 organized their own exhibition and attacked the Secession's direction. In vain, they were urged to leave, so it was Slevogt, Cassirer and 40 more members leaving the Secession. In spring 1914, they established the Freie Secession (Free Secession) with Max Liebermann as honorary president. During the twenties, after the First World War and all these splits, the Secession dissolved.

Jugendstil in today's Berlin

As everybody knows, during the last World War, large parts of the ancient capital of the German Empire have been devastated. If you walk in our days through Charlottenburg, Wilmersdorf, Schöneberg, Friedrichshain, and especially Tiergarten and Mitte, everywhere in these quarters you see streets where there is left only one isolated building erected before 1939 which looks like an alien element in the context of post-war architecture. Nevertheless, all that is left from before the war - in the east as well as in the west - and that survived the GDR is a lot and still impressing. Yet you nearly do not see, besides some rare jewels, pure Art Nouveau, Berlin was no Jugendstil centre - here, historicism and eclecticism of the so-called Gründerzeit (founders' era) dominated as much as the strange style mixture of the Wilhelm II era becoming even more showy and ponderous the nearer to First World War. Still you will see that Jugendstil had a great influence on the Berlin architects at that time; you will hardly find buildings after 1890 without Art Nouveau elements or obviously having chosen Art Nouveau as model. Very remarkable are the industrial constructions of the Belle Epoque some of them already showing the future development to the Bauhaus style, especially the AEG buildings by Peter Behrens.