The ninth linocut marks the beginning of ‘the interrogation’. The next cut shows a man being led into a glaringly lit, windowless room. The man’s hands are tied. Whatever it is that he sees before engenders panic in him and robs him of all his strength. An SS officer with his face in shadow is showing him the way, and in the background we see his henchman preparing to go to work.

This cut is an homage to Honoré Daumier. As a graphic artist, Clément Moreau had been introduced to Daumier’s work by Eduard Fuchs. This work is a reference to the lithograph captioned ‘You have the floor, explain yourself, you are free to do so!’, published in 1835. The expressive hand and arm gestures in Clément Moreau’s work are borrowed from this lithograph. Outrageous oppression and the assault of individuals by representatives of the state are the themes depicted in both artworks. 

The eleventh linocut shows the exhausted henchman in the foreground of the image, wiping the sweat from his brow. Clément Moreau does not show explicitly what has taken place between these two images. He leaves the intervening scene to the imagination of the onlooker. This technique of drawing the observer into the story is characteristic of the entire cycle. Clément Moreau learned this technique in Berlin. His teacher, Käthe Kollwitz, was instrumental in his acquisition of the technique.

Thomas Miller, Stiftung Clément Moreau, Zürich