Women in the Fine Arts in Imperial Germany

Käthe Kollwitz (1867–1945) was one of the few women artists to have a successful career in the male-dominated art world of Imperial Germany. In May 1911, she wrote a letter to her son Hans about an incident she had witnessed during her visit to the Berlin National Gallery: 
“While I was standing there and thinking about these matters, I became aware of a conversation between a museum attendant and a young woman painter who was doing copying. I suddenly realized that they were talking about me, and that the museum attendant was praising my work to the sky. But he had no backbone, for when the painter took issue with him, he became more and more timid and finally said, “Yes, that’s so, of course; women ought to stick to their households.”‛1“Käthe-Kollwitz-Archiv, Akademie der Künste Berlin, Nr. 18, 24b–c, Brief von Käthe Kollwitz an Hans Kollwitz v. 20. Mai 1911.

Open media viewer

More information

 

This anecdote is a good illustration of the social position of women artists in the early twentieth century. The young woman painter copying the art on the wall shows that women’s artistic activity was not necessarily seen as contradictory to her primary sphere of activity in the family and the household. There were many ways for a woman to integrate artistic creativity into her life and combine it with her role as housewife and mother. Bourgeois education for girls included the teaching of painting and drawing. Making amateur art to pass the time, usually not in the context of professional training, was common in bourgeois circles in Imperial Germany. 
 

Open media viewer

More information

 

But when women dedicated themselves to painting professionally, they were subject to public ridicule in satires and caricatures. Those women artists who overcame social hurdles to complete professional training and present their work to the public were known as ‘painting gals’ (Malweiber). Among them were, for example, Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907), Dora Hitz (1856–1924), Sabine Lepsius (1864–1942), Ida Gerhardi (1862–1927), Elena Luksh-Makovskaya (1878–1967), and Julie de Boor (1884–1932). Gender was the central category by which women artists and their works were judged at the turn of the twentieth century. It was a widely-held opinion that women could not generate works of creative genius and so were unable to produce ‘true art’. 

The Myth of the Artist

This judgement must be seen against the background of the myth of the artist—a concept custom made for male individuality. The male artist, it was thought, had the talent and the obligation to produce a piece that revealed an ideal—a work of genius that transcended our flawed reality. The genius of this creation was linked not only to the work itself, but increasingly also to the person who made it: the artist. Academies of art, art associations, art critics, and art historians provided the artist a framework for the dissemination of his art, and for showcasing him as an artist. They so reproduced the myth of the artist to cement the elitist position of the male artist within bourgeois culture, legitimizing their own existence in the process.

In this era’s conception of art, only men could produce works of genius and hence only men could be geniuses. Male-dominated art academies and art associations upheld and instrumentalized this narrative to deny women access to the study of art. Women, they claimed, did not have the ability to produce works of genius. Their artistic ambitions were either ignored in public debates, or they were marginalized by the mention of supposed gender-specific attributes such as passivity or an inadequate penetration of the environment. In public discourse, the woman artist was an allegedly inferior subject that should play an insignificant role, if any, in the artistic community.2<p>See Berger, Renate: “Aufstand gegen die sekundäre Welt. Die Biografik zwischen fact und fiction,” in: Fastert, Sabine et al.: Die Wiederkehr des Künstlers. Themen und Positionen der aktuellen Künstler/innenforschung, Köln 2011, 293–301.</p>

The myth of the Woman Artist

Women took different approaches to situating themselves in relation to the norm of the male artistic genius. The painter Marija Baškirceva (1858–1884), for example, adapted the male-connotated myth of the genius to herself, ignoring its gender-specific implications. Unbothered by, if not blind to, male-dominated structures in the contemporary art world, she applied concepts such as authorship, authority, authenticity, originality and innovation, impact and eccentricity to her work as if their use were gender-neutral.3<p>See Raev, Ada: Russische Künstlerinnen der Moderne 1870–1930. Historische Studien, Kunstkonzepte, Weiblichkeitsentwürfe München 2002, 120; Herrmann, Anja: “Notre-Dame der Schlafwagen. Die Maskeraden der Marie Bashkirtseff,” in: Berger, Renate / Herr, Anja (Ed.): Paris, Paris! Paula Modersohn-Becker und die Künstlerinnen um 1900, Stuttgart 2009, 39–58.</p>

Other artists spoke of having talent or a gift rather than genius. Although they are often used synonymously, genius, as the embodiment of the highest good, is clearly above talent: “The general characteristic of G[enius], which distinguishes it from talent … [is the] primeval, definitive creativity of its efficacy and its creations.4<p>“Genie,” Meyer’s Conversations-Lexikon für die gebildeten Stände, vol. 12, Hildburghausen 1849, 399.</p> Women artists deliberately conflated the two terms to bypass the assumed connection between genius and the male sex, at the same time sidestepping any doubts about their ability to produce fine art. The artist and women’s rights activist Rosa Mayreder (1858–1938) took this approach to its logical conclusion and explicitly claimed that art was gender-neutral: “In my opinion, those who are talented see differently than those who are not—sex differences are meaningless in this area.”.5<p>Mayreder, Rosa: “Wie sieht die Frau,”, in: Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration. Illustrierte Monatshefte für moderne Malerei, Plastik, Architektur, Wohnungs-Kunst und künstlerische Frauenarbeiten, vol. 66. 1930, 294.</p>

Open media viewer

More information

 

Others believed there was a female genius commensurate with male genius. “I do not want to be a male artist, I am a woman artist and it gives me the deepest pride that my art is feminine,”6<p>Wygodzinski, Vally: Briefe und Aufzeichnungen. Als Handschrift für ihre Freunde gedruckt, Leipzig 1908, S. 51, quoted from: Heitmann, Margret / Kaufhold, Barbara: „… mein höchster Stolz ist, dass meine Kunst weiblich sei“. Vally Cohn und ihre geretteten Briefe, in: Kalonymos, Beiträge zur deutsch-jüdischen Geschichte aus dem Salomon Ludwig Steinheim-Institut, vol. 5., 2002, no. 4, 5–9, here 8.</p> wrote Vally Wygodzinski (1873–1905), placing herself beyond any competition with her male colleagues.7<p>Biermann, Ingrid: Von Differenz zu Gleichheit: Frauenbewegung und Inklusionspolitiken im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, Bielefeld 2009.</p>

The idea that art by people of different genders had specific characteristics was transported by the myth of the female artist. This developed in the early twentieth century as a counterpoint to the myth of the male artist. The contemporaneous debate on the role of woman in society also furthered discussion of this concept. It was not unusual for representatives of the bourgeois women’s movement to make use of such arguments.8<p>Schaser, Angelika: Wahre Kunst und künstlerisches Frauenschaffen. Zur Konzeption des Künstlers bei Gertrud Bäumer, in: Kessel, Martina (Ed.): Kunst, Geschlecht, Politik. Geschlechterentwürfe in der Kunst des Kaiserreichs und der Weimarer Republik, Frankfurt a. M. 2005, 85–101.</p> Following the philosopher Georg Simmel and others, the myth of the woman artist was founded on the idea that women made an equal cultural contribution to social progress. The core idea of this concept was that motherhood was a creative source of artistic performance.9<p>Simmel, Georg: Weibliche Kultur, 13th edition (1902) 504–15; Christian Köhnke, ed., Georg Simmel. Schriften zur Philosophie und Soziologie der Geschlechter (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1985); Muysers, Carola (Ed.): Die bildende Künstlerin. Wertung und Wandel in deutschen Quellentexten 1855–1945, Amsterdam 1999.</p>

Women Artists’ Networks 

Women artists promoted their beliefs and ambitions with the help of professional networks. From the mid-nineteenth century, women artists’ associations began to be founded in the major cities of Imperial Germany. The first such professional association, the ‘Verein der Künstlerinnen und Kunstfreundinnen zu Berlin’ (Berlin Association of Women Artists, and Female Friends of Art) was founded in 1867. It was followed by the ‘Künslterinnenverein München’ 1882 (Munich Association of Women Artists), ‘Bund deutscher und österreichischer Künstlerinnenvereine’ 1908 (the Union of German and Austrian Women Artists’ Associations), and the ‘Frauenkunstverband’ 1913 (Women’s Art Society). All these institutions worked toward the recognition of women’s artistic production in public and, concurrently, improvements in professional education and public exhibition opportunities for women artists. Academic education in the arts, artists associations, and established galleries were all either completely closed to women or admitted them only in exceptional cases. Women artists therefore established their own networks within the art world, including schools, exhibitions, and associations for women artists.

Art Academies

When equal rights for women and men became anchored in the constitution of the Weimar Republic, art academies opened their doors to female students10<p>Muysers, Carola: Einleitung, in: Die bildende Künstlerin, 13–35, cit. 30.</p> But women were only equal in the eyes of the law; within the art world, they did not enjoy the same social standing as men. Women were at first treated the way they had been traditionally: In the reform institutions of the Bauhaus, for example, women were mainly accepted into arts-and-crafts classes and were underrepresented in the fine arts.11<p>Ruppert, Wolfgang: Der moderne Künstler. Zur Sozial- und Kulturgeschichte der kreativen Individualität in der kulturellen Moderne im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert, Frankfurt a. M. 2000, 167.</p>

The personnel decisions of the Prussian Academy of the Arts are another example of discrimination against women artists in favor of their male counterparts. In 1919, the academy named Käthe Kollwitz as professor; she remained the only woman in the art department in that role until Renée Sintenis (1888–1965) was hired in 1931. Nevertheless, Kollwitz’s appointment signified a break with the systematic exclusion of women from the public art establishment, as it set “an important socio-political signal of a new culture of the academy in the young republic.”12<p>Kratz-Kessemeier, Kristina: Kunst für die Republik. Die Kunstpolitik des preußischen Kultusministeriums 1918 bis 1932, Berlin 2008, 90.&nbsp;</p>

Open media viewer

More information

In Imperial Germany, the admission of women to study art at institutes of higher education and, in general, the securing of professional training in the arts had been a central demand of women artists’ organizations. Their first aim was achieved when art academies opened their doors to women in the Weimar Republic, which changed how women thought of themselves. It also led to a reorientation and reformation of these institutions and, in 1926, their cooperation in the ‘Gemeinschaft Deutscher und Österreichischer Künstlerinnenvereine aller Kunstgattungen’ (League of German and Austrian Women’s Artists Associations of all Art Genres). 

Equal, Not the Same

From the mid-1920s, public critiques of women’s art centered around themes of femininity and maternity. The artists Käthe Kollwitz, whose son died in World War I, and Paula Modersohn-Becker, whose daughter died a few days after birth, became symbols of the myth of the woman artist. Numerous exhibitions presented so-called feminine art, honing in on the issue of women’s contribution to art that had entered the discourse at the turn of the century. Women artists and the initiators of exhibitions performed the distinctive nature of art by women, that stood equal to but not the same as their male colleagues’ work. As in the period around 1900, this represented a strategy for women artists to assert themselves in the male-dominated art world. 

Open media viewer

More information