Ludwig Meidner, Apokalyptic Scene, 1912
Ludwig Meidner, Apokalyptic Scene, 1912
I hurtled along the road. Where it opened out my being erupted and a clamorous thought of death suddenly overcame me. It hauled itself up, a matrix of bane and adversity multiplied a thousand-fold. With ghoulish laughter it flung its strangling fingers toward me. It disgorged its filthy saliva at my feet. Its piercing gaze –twitching around its rigid mouth – its breath singed me like a tree of fire.
from: Ludwig Meidner, Twilight Discourse with Death (Rede [im Zwielicht] an den Tod), aus: Die Weissen Blätter. Jg. 6, Nr. 3, März 1919
This tumultuous scene was produced in 1912, when Meidner painted the first images in the series that became known as the "Apocalyptic Landscapes." Here everything is in movement and it is initially difficult to make out individual objects amidst the mass of dynamic lines: a tottering house, a bursting tree trunk, billowing clouds. A closer look, however, reveals a lacerated torso hurtling through the middle of the image and, to the lower right, a disembodied head tumbling downwards.
Meidner's apocalyptic scenes were subsequently interpreted – not least by the author himself – as presentiments of the First World War. In fact the period in which they were painted was generally pervaded by an apocalyptic mood, one fuelled by events such as the return of Halley's Comet in 1910, the Moroccan Crisis in1911 and the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. This sense of impending Armageddon also had an impact on literary Expressionism, as exemplified in the poems "Weltende" (World’s End) by Jakob van Hoddis and "Umbra vitae" by Georg Heym. Many of Meidner's close friends were expressionist poets, a fact that suggests mutual influence.
Further reading:
Gerda Breuer und Ines Wagemann: Ludwig Meidner. Zeichner, Maler, Literat. 1884-1966. 2 Bde. (exhibition catalog Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt), Stuttgart 1991.
Carol S. Eliel (Ed.): The apocalyptic landscapes of Ludwig Meidner (exhibition catalog Los Angeles County Museum of Art), Los Angeles 1989.
Thomas Grochowiak: Ludwig Meidner, Recklinghausen 1966.
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