‘”DAUM” MARRIES HER PEDANTIC AUTOMATON “GEORGE”‘ (GEORGE GROSZ, 1920)

1920 represented the inception of the Weimar era in Germany (1919-1933)—a time of unprecedented economic, social and political restructuring from Imperial bourgeois society to a modern, democratic, capitalist state (McElligott, 2009). Berlin was the political epicentre of this transformation (Rowe, 2003). An intensification of gender emancipation reforms, sexual liberalisation and a restructured, feminised economy gave Berlin a “reputation as the bawdiest, most licentious city in Europe” (Whitford, 1997: 1).

George Grosz, a member of the Dadaist movement, located in Berlin, sought to culturally represent a cynical, subversive view of this transforming metropolis (West, 2000). He enjoyed the “oppulancy and poverty, the glitter and grime” of Berlin (Whitford, 1997: 5)—but sought to expose its inequalities, persisting nationalisms, contradictions of bourgeois behaviour, and emasculating tendencies. He believed that Berlin was demoralised, in crisis, and was ripe for subversion: “I am totally convinced that this epoch is sailing on down to its own destruction” (Grosz 1917; in Whitford 1997: 7).

Berlin, specifically in Dadaism, was represented through an objective, masculine gaze. Rowe (2003) identifies a “male urban consciousness that systematically denied access to a female subjectivity in a representational level” (130). Neue Sachlichkeits focus on ‘objectivity’ systematically silenced female work (West, 2000)—privileging the male objective domain and experience of modernity over any other. Berlin become an exclusionary, sexual and gendered representational space (Tatar, 1995).

Grosz explicitly nods to this representational privilege via the mobilisation of the automaton figure (George) (Fig.2). The automaton is central imagery mobilised in Dadaist painting; one suggesting that the male artist (by painting him self as an automaton) should suppress every sign of subjectivity or individualism, to become like a machine. Gaughn specifically refers to this allegoric figure as the “homo-prostheticus body” (2006: 149). Here, man (specifically the artist, Grosz) becomes an “almost mechanical concept” (Gaughn, 2006: 147)—the body becoming instrumentalized by collaging pieces from a mechanic catalogue. The use of collage to create this figure is a compositional principle—blending reality and art to emphasise objectivity. The homo-prostheticus provides an explicit lens to a male objective gaze that sought to systematically subjugate females as objects of masculine aesthetic regression and represent them, and Berlin, in terms of their sexuality.

Grosz mobilises this masculine objective gaze (Rowe 2003)—appropriating the essentialised, sexual image of femininity and juxtaposing it with the homo-prostheticus male (Fig.3). Traditional paint techniques depicting the soft, rounded forms of Daum contrast the rigid collage from which the George is composed (Fig.4). On the surface this nods to gendered discourses of Imperial Germany: the man ’pedantic’ and calculative; the women—constructed as Geschlechtswesen (more physical beings)—embedded in the physicality of her body; less capable of rational thought (Grossmann, 1986).

However, on closer inspection, we see that the photomontage is asymmetrical: Daum commands an imposing position on canvas, in comparison to George who lacks agency. This reversal of traditional patriarchal domination represents proletarian male anxieties, emanating from narratives of ‘patriarchal metaphysical logic’ being subverted by emancipation, modernization and rationalisation. Article 109 of the Weimar constitution, for example, gave men and women equal de jure rights. Further, scientific-work-management (Taylorism) and division of labour (Fordism) institutionalised gender segregation based on efficiency—undermining traditional labour hierarchies. This, combined with female numerical excess (frauenüberschuß) post-WWI (Canning, 2009), created male anxieties over female competition for work (Frevert, 1989). Simmel (1971) argued that division of labour was contingent upon objective male culture. Objective masculinity thus became “alienated, objectified and ultimately fragmented under the conditions of modern global capitalism”, while “the female remains a subjectively unified whole” (Rowe, 2003: 61; West, 2000).

The juxtaposition between George and Daum is mobilised as a critical tool; critiquing capitalisms emasculating effects as well as proletarian male fears over female emancipation. This complements both Grosz’ political orientation (a member of the KPD) and Weimar discursive frameworks regarding the ‘gender crisis’ or Geschlechterkrieg (gender war) (Canning, 2009): whereby “the insecurity of the man in relation to the woman” became “virtually unbearable” (Eggebrecht 1929: 121; in Weitz 2007). We see Grosz’ objective male gaze, embedded within proletarian male anxiety over emasculating polarisation of gender experience in an intensively rationalising city.

Unpacking the construction of the allegorical female figure, said anxieties become perspicuous. Grosz represents Daum as ambiguous: dressed in drawers collaged with lace (Fig.5) as if ready for bed; yet wearing make-up, a hat, with her hair treated to walk the streets (Fig.6). She is framed as erotic and sexually appealing while paradoxically appearing facially crazed and marked by conspicuous signs of sexual degeneration. This represents a discursive blurring and ambiguity of promiscuous female identities following emancipation (Usbourne, 1992).

The prostitute, the quintessential example of this, became politically mobilised (kontrollmadchen) in the social democratic party following democratic reform. Kontrollmadchen were registered and subject to regulation. Some prostitutes, however, avoided this regulation. Competition between legal and unlicenced prostitutes surfaced; the prostitute became “ubiquitous but also elusive” (Roos 2010: 59). The boarders that separated respectable society from the demi-monde became uncertain (Roos 2010). Rather than entrenching boarders, regulation blurred them. Anxieties previously constructed around the allegorical prostitute (in the work of Kirchner, for example) were no longer anchored by her ambivalence (Roos 2010). Feminine identities, instead, just as gender identities, became blurred and equivocal. This is shown in Grosz’ representation of Daum, satirically drawing multiple constructed identities into one ambiguous, promiscuous wife: a divisive symbol of sexual disorder, becoming a ubiquitous symbol of Weimar Berlin and endemic of its crises; the symbol and agent of change.

More broadly, imaginations of Berlin became conflated with sexualised rhetoric of the “voracious and devouring female” (Rowe 2003 pp.91). As Zuckmayer conjectures: “some saw her [Berlin] as hefty, full breasted, in lace underwear, others […] with boyish legs in black silk stockings […] she enticed all” (1970 pp.311 my emphasis). Gender experience in Berlin thus saw intra-gender fluidity with inter-gender polarisation: confusion over identity and dominance became ubiquitous, conflating into ambiguous imaginations of the city.  

Grosz draws critiques of modernity, sexuality and gender in Berlin into one critical representation of bourgeois marriage. Via the critical tool of juxtaposition, Grosz critiques marriage for relying on traditional gender and class dominance. Herzfelde (in Tatar 1995) argues that mobilisation of “homo-prostheticus” (Gaughn 2006 pp.149), in context of marriage, represents man making concession to society (a machine), becoming one of its many components. The picture of his actual wife, Eva, in the top left represents the woman occupying the corner of the male consciousness (Fig.7): the person Grosz loves is separated from the one marriage assumes her to be. Daum looks past the automaton, with an astonished glare, contemplating lacking sexual fulfilment. The background looks to be a private bedroom, however, sharp geometry problematizes this distinction (Fig.8). The binary distinction between the public (masculine and objective) and the private (feminine and domestic) engrained by marriage becomes destabilised by gender polarisation and modernisation. Women, for example, introduced factory rationalisation into the domestic sphere (Grossmann 1986). Marriage was no longer fit for the rationally fragmented male or emancipated female, who rejected it as an affront to personal freedom and sexual pleasure (Grossmann 1983). Discourses of ‘marital misery’ and ‘crisis of the family’ (Canning 2009) perpetuated; manifesting in increasing divorce rates, contraception usage and abortion. To counter this, liberal sex reformers (such as Velde and Reich) focused on marriage – improving sexual satisfaction by educating on contraception and technique (Weitz 2007). Grossmann (1983) sees this as an attempt to re-domesticate the emancipated woman: “refreshing tired and boring marriages” (Grossmann 1983) and stabilising the nuclear family. Ideas that “the woman should be the soul of the home and must recognise sacrificial love as her lifes ideal” (Weitz 2007 pp.387), embedded in patriarchal discourses of nationhood, persisted.

Lamenting marriage, Grosz paradoxically represents a modern institution as the solution of the gender crisis, simultaneously being embedded in persisting, traditional patriarchal discourses of dominance (Frevert 1989). This manifests a wider debate in Berlin between the old and new. The photomontage represents proletariat working male resistance to traditional bourgeois society, while equally fearing alternative future modernity. Grosz represents a Berlin in disrepute, tediously negotiating discourses of new and old; of inclusion and exclusion; of dominance and identity.

Grosz mobilises his male gaze, navigating a complex dialectic between suppression and projection, to objectively represent deep-rooted anxieties and tensions surrounding moderninsation in Weimar Berlin. He employs the destabilising, intersectional nexus of gender, class and sexuality as the pivot of this debate (Bohan 2012); culminating in a critique of bourgeois marriage.  The promiscuous female becomes ubiquitous with Weimar Berlin; becoming endemic of its crisis and a symbol and agent of change. For Grosz, polarisation and ambiguity of gender and sexuality become a lens through which to portray proletariat, male disillusionment with modernity and capitalism. This lens allows him to represent pervasive narratives such as fearing the city, but also seeing it as a salvation; hating the old but fearing the new. Grosz represents tensions between new and old, male and female, fear and salvation – portraying Berlin as a city of juxtaposition and negotiation.

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