This charcoal drawing by Meidner shows the persecuted prophet Jeremiah in great distress. Because he prophesied the conquest of Jerusalem by the Babylonians he was thrown into a cistern. The drawing shows Jeremiah praying to God to rescue him. The direction of his gaze upwards and the light coming from above indicate the presence of God and suggest that the prophet’s prayer is being heard.

The tendency in the literature on Meidner’s religious imagery to interpret it almost exclusively in terms of the artist’s own biography needs to be treated with a certain degree of caution. Nevertheless, in the case of Meidner’s Jeremiah it would seem that the autobiographical aspect cannot be overlooked. In 1932 Meidner was already feeling threatened by the increase in anti-Semitism. In a letter to the painter John Uhl he gave vent to his fears:

"... I assume that you will not object, or at least not much, if I suddenly turn up with a towel, a piece of soap and similar articles and ask you to accommodate me in your studio for a day. We are living in a highly nationalistic area and are almost the only Jewish family around here. We are already known as such and could therefore potentially find ourselves facing very dangerous situations." (Letter from Ludwig Meidner to John Uhl from 11. March 1932, in: Ludwig Meidner - Briefe an John Uhl, Herbert Fritsche und Lambert Binder [typescript], Berlin 1968, p. 7)

Further reading:
Ljuba Berankova and Erik Riedel (Ed.), Apokalypse und Offenbarung. Religiöse Themen im Werk von Ludwig Meidner (Schriftenreihe des Jüdischen Museums Frankfurt am Main Bd. 5), Sigmaringen 1996.
Heuberger, Georg/Riedel, Erik, Malerei als Gebet. Ludwig Meidner und sein Judentum, in: Im Nacken das Sternemeer. Ludwig Meidner - ein deutscher Expressionist, ed. by Tobias Natter (exhibition catalog Jüdisches Museum Wien), Vienna 2001, pp. 31-39.