Response Essay: Caspar David Friedrich and "The Stages of Life"

Upon watching the presentation on Caspar David Friedrich, I was absolutely fascinated with the incredible paintings that he created. Unfortunately, I was too engrossed in a lot of the paintings to really take in a lot of the information. I ended up spending the rest of that afternoon looking at a lot of his paintings, and with each one, I fell more and more in love with his work. I decided to read more about his life and what other things he contributed to Germany and the Germanic people aside from such beautiful paintings.

He is known as one of the largest figures in Romantic painting, so I decided to start with that. German Romanticism was the dominant style in Europe around the late 1700s and early 1800s, right around the time that Friedrich lived. Born out of the German Enlightenment of the late 1700s, Romanticism also focused on the individual and their place in the larger world. There was a greater interest in folklore and legends of the middle ages. This was evident in Friedrich’s paintings as he painted vast landscapes and waterscapes.

I was actually surprised to see that Romanticism was a much larger movement. I had taken a few art history classes prior, and for some reason, Romanticism was always passed over as if it wasn’t as important. We did see some paintings, such as Friedrich’s own Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, his most famous work. However, a lot of this period is glossed over. It seems my professors favored the Baroque or Expressionist periods. Which is dumb, because I have found a lot of interest and beauty in these Romantic photos. I was also very surprised to see that the Romantic movement expanded beyond paintings, and that there were some very significant names that were attached to the movement. I had already been aware of and had loved some artists that were mentioned to have been involved in the movement, such as Ludwig van Beethoven, Richard Wagner, Heinrick Heine, and even Goethe.

If I had to pick a particular favorite piece that spoke to me, it might have to be Friedrich’s last painting, The Stages of Life, which is posted below. The staging of the painting alone is enough to stare at for a few minutes, but the lighting and color choices are so intricately made. The beauty of the yellow and blue clouds is very calming, suggesting the thought of an afterlife heaven. The ship and boats suggest the death, coming for the old man who is in the foreground.

Each character represents another stage of life as well. The two children represent the youth, obviously in their age, but also in the fact that they focus mostly on the tiny flag in their hands. They’re more focused on the immediate life around them rather than some of the much larger things happening in the world around them. The adults, presumably the parents, represent the young adults to the middle age. They represent two things felt by many of people their age. The woman looks on to her children, representing the nostalgia for childhood, a time when things were fresh, new, and simple. The man looks towards the old man, his father. This possibly suggests him looking out into the world around him, but I see him looking at his father, the man he is going to become. Both of these adults are focused on the past and the present, like I feel a lot of people my age and only a few years my senior feel. The old I also think it’s interesting how none of these characters are looking at the boats, suggesting that we never truly accept death in most of life’s stages. The children simply are not aware of the boat, and the younger adults are clearly aware of it, but are choosing to not look at it. This suggests that while they’re aware of their deaths, they choose to ignore it, either because it scares them or because they feel it does not concern them.

The  one man that can see the whole picture is the old man in the foreground. He is taking it all in. The ships, the clouds, his younger family, and the world around him. He is walking toward the ships, accepting his death. He’s lived his life, and he’s ready for what’s after, whatever it may be.

It’s beautiful, and this is just one of his many artworks. He produced so many works, some which contain just as many ideas and interpretations as just this one. I fully intend to look more in depth at his other works. They’re all so very personal and still so vast and larger than life. I think Caspar David Friedrich is one of, if not my new favorite artist.

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Response Essay: Maus and Maus II

I have always had a soft spot for graphic novels, and was excited to learn that we would be reading the Maus books for this class. I had seen them and had been interested, but hadn’t yet read them. This was a really good push for me to do so, for obvious reasons.

As much as I loved book II of Maus, it was book I: My Father Bleeds History that really drew my attention and fascination. Most Holocaust stories that I’ve read would cover mostly what happened after the Jews were in the concentration camps, and this narrative spent a lot of time around Vladek’s journey evading the Nazis. That, combined with the other narrative of Art learning all this from Vladek made the presentation of the story very fresh. This did continue on to book II, as well, but I feel that a lot of the narrative’s strength was in this first half. As a lot of the book is Vladek narrowly evading capture right under the German noses, it creates a tension that is not usually seen in Holocaust stories. In particular, the scenes that place Vladek in ornate hiding places. Seeing how these were laid out visually and not just having to infer from words was really helpful. These claustrophobic scenes just made the whole story much more horrifying.

I was drawn to many things in these book, but if I had to choose one particular thing that drew me in, it would be the art style and visual metaphors. There is the obvious visual metaphor between cat and mouse, but the way Spiegelman draws these characters and scenes adds a lot of atmosphere to the books. The angled and simplified character designs contrast with a lot of the scenes of brutality depicted in the book. The scenes give a very distorted look that barely looks real, as if these horrors were simply imagined. These horrors were, of course, not imagined at all, but seeing these almost cute characters go through horrible events, as pictured in page 72 and 95 of Book II seem even more brutal. The hatching and heavy shadows are raw, haunting, and shocking, managing to be easy to interpret without losing any of the horror that the scenes depicted should have.

The biggest section of art that stood out to me was the Prisoner on the Hell Planet, the short comic that Art made discussing how his mother’s suicide still grips him. I’m sure that this is his real artwork, but seeing such a vastly different drawing style helped bring this particular section of narrative ahead of the rest of the story. It shows how big of an affect Anja’s suicide had affected her son. The different drawing style, while showing a neat shot of how Art’s drawing style evolved, also symbolized how this one emotion was so big and daunting, and how it had such a distinct effect on him emotionally.

Overall, these books were incredible and I would recommend them to anyone without a second thought. The attention to detail, the simple yet powerful storytelling, the subject matter, and even the empty themes of family and loss are universal, and this is one of the most unique and brilliant ways of conveying a story that is told so often it almost doesn’t bite as hard.

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11/11: Fictional Bio

On February 16, 1929, Anja Kraus was born to parents Ernst and Emma Kraus in southern Berlin. Her family was neither particularly rich or poor, but they survived pleasantly. As the Nazi Party rose to power and eventually started to threaten the world around them, the family did nothing out of fear. Ernst managed to avoid conscription into the Wehrmacht, but in 1943, he could no longer and was sent out to the Western Theatre, where he was killed by advancing Allied forces in late 1944. Anja and her mother managed to survive the war and bombings of Berlin, but once the war ended, both were asked to join the Trümmerfrauen. While both were not exactly eager to join, the Trümmerfrauen got the one of the highest-valued ration cards, and as there was no one at home anymore who could provide work, the two decided to join up with them.

Anja specifically worked in organizing the materials gathered by other Trümmerfrauen, separating piles of bricks and other building materials. It was rough work, but she was glad she didn't have to actually get the materials, which was her mother's duty. She worked to help rebuild the Southern parts of Germany for about nine years. During that time, the restrictions on women labor workers were lifted throughout Germany, allowing her to continue her work in the streets and even getting her more rights as a worker once she finally finished around age 25.

When she had finished, Anja was glad for the break, and while she never truly enjoyed her hard work in the rubble, and she was a little resentful that she lost the first half of her 20s for rebuilding, she still had a small sense of pride in knowing that what she did was for a great cause and that thanks to her and her fellow Trümmerfrauen, she would be able to secure a better job.

Response Essay: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

I love film. One of my favorite things to do is just sit and talk about movies that I like or that I have seen. I feel like a have a unique vantage point in comparison to other people my age, as I tend to look at the artistic setup of the shot. That being said, I still have yet to see a lot of silent films, and I have never seen a German Expressionist film, or any film that is similar to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

Watching this movie was really interesting, to say the least. On one hand, some of the visuals were really striking, but on the other hand, the format of a silent movie is not one that has necessarily aged well. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is no exception. Perhaps it’s just because I’m used to the newer, fast-paced, crisper sounds and visuals, but the first few minutes were a little hard to get into. But once the movie hit the ten-minute mark, the slightly-off visuals, distorted sound, and eerie faster-paced movements actually made the film seem creepier, possibly more creepy than originally intended.

As for the visuals in the film, my first thoughts were that the movie took place in a black-and-white version of Whoville. I really liked the visuals though. The jagged lines of the set, as well as the crazy offset between black and white really added to the surreal feel of the movie, especially considering that it all takes place in the head of Francis really tie in well together with the tone the movie is going for.

One of the biggest parallels that critics draw with this movie is how it treats figures of authority and power, and how the film is a commentary to how the militaristic ideals of WWI-era German leaders were such a toxic influence on the German people. It also shows effect of Germany’s thoughts towards authority: not just that it was bad, but also that it was malevolent, and considering how Dr. Caligari “wins” in the end, possibly even suggests that the force of the government was all-too powerful, even unstoppable.

In regards to most other aspects of the movie, I really don’t have too much to compare the film too. As I stated before, I really don’t have a whole lot of experience with movies from the silent era, so while I think that this is a great example of a movie from its time, most of that comes from reading about how highly it was and still is praised as such a wonderful movie. The music, while good, was not as particularly memorable as the music in, say, Star Wars. It was simple, yet effective. The cinematography was pretty subpar, but film at this time was still a very new medium, and a lot of things we take for granted in a film today were not even thought of at this time.

Overall, I did really enjoy the film. It was a fun story, sort of spooky, and while very dated, I can still see the educational value of this film, both in terms of studying film and studying German history. I do see it having more use in film studying, as a lot of fun techniques used in film today are definitely in use here, and history classes rarely spend a lot of time deconstructing art, literature, or film. Either way, it was a worthwhile watch, and while I don’t feel like it taught me anything particularly about the time or even expressionism, it got me curious enough to check out expressionism more as a whole anyway, so it gets another check in the “win” column for me.

Reflection Essay: How German is American?

One of the main reasons I originally took this class was because I was interested in German culture. Aside from some traditional German foods, I really didn’t know a whole lot about the German culture. I never really had a chance to experience any distinctly “German” events or celebrations, and I never really had even heard of any big ones, save for Oktoberfest. Because of this, I was quite eager to delve into the “How German is American” text. It was surprising that German traditions would also be American Traditions.

One of the biggest surprises came rather early in the text when I read about the German fascination with Native American culture. German settlers were not the first in the Midwest, but they still managed to make and maintain contact with the Native American populations. The pamphlet provided only glosses over David Zeisberger’s writings, but what really struck me as interesting were the amount of fictionalized depictions of Native Americans during the late nineteenth century, most notably Karl May and his works.

Just this statement alone made me think of some parallels that the American people went through, specifically the romanticized Western dramas and films of the mid-20^th century. The Native peoples must have seemed almost surreal to the Germans over in Germany. Interestingly enough, Karl May’s “Cowboys and Indians” books were actually from the Native American viewpoint. I wonder if the way Americans had historically treated Native Americans and the way the people in Germany had no say in the culture of the Native Americans had anything to do with their depictions of them.

Another big surprise I had was the impact of the Turners association on the American School system. To find out that the first Physical Education teacher and superintendent of Physical Education was a member of this association was a really exciting thing. In fact, seeing that a lot of German immigrants had a hand in shaping much more progressive thoughts such as women’s suffrage and anti-slavery was really cool. To think that the German mindset helped influence and shape the American mindset not only in the mid-1800s, but also today, fills me with a lot of pride as someone with German heritage.

That being said, I would say the most interesting and surprising thing I’ve heard about how German heritage was being held by the Old Order Amish, which is almost the exact opposite of the mentality shown by the Turners and the Freethinkers. I’m not sure why exactly I was so surprised that the Amish were of German descent; to be fair, the only thing I knew about the Amish before this reading were that they didn’t use technology. To think that this specific group of people came from the same part of Europe as the Turners and Freethinkers is almost mind-boggling, and I think that Germany’s diversity in terms of its American immigrants matches perfectly with the “melting pot” that America as a whole strives to be.

Overall, I found this reading to be very informative and it sparked a lot of questions and desires to learn more as I read it. I managed to find more reason to be proud of my German heritage as well, aside from just wanting to eat a little more sauerkraut. To think my ancestors played such a prominent role in the shaping of the country I live in today is really exciting, and I’m eager to find out about more ways they have shaped this nation.