George Grosz: Der Schriftsteller Uhl [The Writer Uhl], 1958
![Collage: George Grosz, Der Schriftsteller Uhl [The Writer Uhl]](/KIE/Content/EN/SpecialExhibitions/UlrichBecher-en/Images/Objects/grosz-collage-01.jpg?__blob=normal&v=1 "Collage: George Grosz, Der Schriftsteller Uhl [The Writer Uhl]")
George Grosz: Der Schriftsteller Uhl [The Writer Uhl], 1958
Zennks anniway for your f[riendship]. It’s extremely difficult to have an f. with Germans. Apart from 2 exceptions (you & me), they have no sense of humour. (ed. trans.)
George Grosz in a letter to Ulrich Becher, February 1948
The collage created by George Grosz in 1958, one year before his return from exile in the U.S. and his death in Berlin, adorns both the title page of the novel Das Profil [The Profile], published in 1973, and the frontispiece of the essay collection SIFF. Selektive Identifizierung von Freund und Feind [SIFF. Selective Identification of Friend and Foe], published in 1978.
In Das Profil, Becher created the eccentric grotesque painter Albrecht Altdorfer, who lived in Long Island, in tribute to his teacher and friend George Grosz, who had already inspired the character of Theodosi Boem in the New York Novellas.
SIFF is an extensive collection of essays originally published between 1942 and 1970, some of which appeared in magazines. The companions and ‘friends’ portrayed include his father-in-law, the k.u.k cabaret artist Alexander Roda Roda, the painter George Grosz, the sculptor Fritz Wortruba, the theatre director Heinz Hilpert, the publisher Ernst Rowohlt, who was responsible for Becher’s first publication Männer machen Fehler [Men Make Mistakes], and the writer and dramatist Ödön von Horváth, who was killed by a falling branch while in exile in France. The ‘foe’ in the essay collection is Ernst Glaeser, who turned his back on anti-Fascist emigration to publish texts that were used as Nazi propaganda in Germany. He is just as much the target of Becher’s vehement criticism as his former exile country Switzerland; the author takes issue with the country’s restrictive asylum policy and alien police under Heinrich Rothmund in the essay In der Alpenkatakombe [In the Alpine Catacomb].
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