LIEBERMANN, MAX

LIEBERMANN, MAX (1847–1935), German painter and graphic artist.

Max Liebermann was one of the most prominent figures in German art in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He began his career as an enfant terrible of realism but evolved into the most celebrated representative of German impressionism. As a founder of the Berlin Secession and its first president (1899), he was instrumental in the development of modernism in Germany, both artistically and institutionally; his world-class collection of French impressionist paintings, alongside influential writings on art, such as his monograph on Edgar Degas, augmented his significance as a champion of modern art. Although the early years of his career were marked by controversy, by the time he served as president of the Prussian Academy of Arts (1920–1932), he had become a representative of the artistic establishment. As a Jew, Liebermann has been seen as an exemplary figure for evaluating Jewish assimilation into German society and he has been a focus of debate on the role of Jews in German culture generally and as agents of modernism in particular.

Born into a wealthy Berlin family, Liebermann began his studies with the Berlin horse painter Carl Steffeck and in 1869 enrolled in the Weimar art academy. In 1871 he visited the studio of the Hungarian painter Minhály Munkácsy in Dusseldorf; this encounter inspired Liebermann's first major work, Die Gänserupferinnen (1872; Women plucking geese). The painting's realist depiction of poor people engaged in physical labor, rendered in a somber palette of browns, elicited scathing criticism when it was exhibited, earning Liebermann the epithet "apostle of ugliness." Liebermann's Parisian sojourns (1872; 1874–1878), exposing him to the Courbet and Barbizon school painters, coupled with his yearly trips to Holland, reinforced these tendencies. During the 1870s and 1880s, Liebermann's work was characterized by a naturalistic and sympathetic depiction of working people: the simple life of a community in harmony with nature, the dignity of peasants harvesting potatoes, tending animals, weaving and bleaching linen. These scenes were often set in Holland, a land whose painterly tradition (especially of Franz Hals and Rembrandt) and contemporary communal structure he admired. In works such as Freistunde im Amsetrdamer Waisenhaus (1882; Leisure hour in the Amsterdam orphanage), Liebermann depicted the exemplary way that Dutch social welfare institutions cared for the poor, orphaned, and elderly.

Liebermann settled in Munich in 1878. The following year, Der zwölfjährige Jesus im Tempel (1879; The twelve-year-old Jesus in the Temple) unleashed a storm of controversy when it was exhibited in Munich, eliciting anti-Semitic attacks in the press and prompting a debate in the Bavarian parliament. Liebermann's unidealized depiction of Jesus was criticized as "the ugliest, most impertinent Jewish boy imaginable." Whereas other German artists were presenting New Testament scenes with contemporary realism, a Jewish artist's interpretation of this theme proved to be too much for many Germans to tolerate. In response, Liebermann altered the painting to make Jesus look less scruffy, less unkempt, and less stereotypically Jewish; he mostly avoided Biblical subjects for the rest of his career.

In 1884 Liebermann married Martha Marckwald and returned to Berlin, eventually moving into the house at Pariser Platz 7, next to the Brandenburg Gate, which his father had acquired in 1859. He became part of a circle of early enthusiasts of French impressionism that gathered in the home of pioneering collectors Carl and Felicie Bernstein. The year 1884 also marked his first depiction of the Judengasse (Jewish quarter) in Amsterdam, a subject he would explore obsessively into the next century; it was also the year he introduced freer methods of paint handling and greater movement into his compositions. This change in style accompanied a gradual shift away from depictions of rural working people to representations of Liebermann's own class, the urban upper bourgeoisie, engaged in leisure activities: at the seashore, riding horses, playing tennis, relaxing in

parks and beer terraces. In this choice of subjects, in his penchant for painting out of doors, and in his lightened palette and looser brushwork, Liebermann demonstrated many affinities with French impressionism without adopting the more radical innovations of color, facture, and spatial organization that characterized the French movement.

Liebermann was a passionate defender and collector of French modernism at a time when deep-seated anti-French sentiments in Prussia branded enthusiasm for French culture as antipatriotic. Although Liebermann was suspect in certain circles for his cosmopolitan and francophile tastes, by the late 1890s he had achieved official recognition. For his fiftieth birthday, in 1896, he was honored with a retrospective exhibition at the Berlin salon, received the Great Gold Medal, and was awarded the title of professor; the following year he was elected to the Royal Academy. Yet in 1898 he became one of the founders of the Berlin Secession, that major break with the officially sanctioned academic art establishment.

Liebermann had already demonstrated his organizational talents: he spearheaded (unofficial) German participation in the 1889 Paris Exposition and co-founded the independent exhibition group called the Eleven, in 1892. He was elected first president of the Berlin Secession, which was founded in 1898 as an alternative to the conservative exhibition and patronage policies of the state's art associations. Throughout central Europe at this time, artists were forming secessions in order to organize their own exhibitions, establish their own galleries and publications, and nurture a more progressive art public. Conservatives condemned the Berlin Secession's cosmopolitan values and its exhibition of foreign artists as reflecting the subversion of German culture by alien influences, namely French-influenced Jewish artists and dealers. Liebermann remained president until 1911, by which time his resistance to including the younger generation of expressionists showed that he was no longer in the vanguard. In 1920 Liebermann reached the apogee of artistic public life, becoming president of the Prussian Academy of Arts.

Liebermann's late work focused on the garden of his country home on the Wannsee, a wealthy area of villas surrounding a lake on the outskirts of Berlin. In addition, he was much in demand for his sensitive and insightful portraits of the leading figures of German society. Self-portraits constitute a large part of Liebermann's oeuvre, as they do of Rembrandt's, and they range from the slightly comic and symbol-laden Selbstbildnis mit Küchenstilleben (1873; Self-portrait with kitchen still life) to the debonair and self-confident artist holding a cigarette and surrounded by paintings in his studio (1909–1910), to the late self-portrait with paint brushes revealing the anxieties of old age and the political realities of Nazi Berlin (1934).

On his eightieth birthday, in 1927, Liebermann's career was celebrated with an exhibition and he was made an honorary citizen of Berlin. By 1932 Nazi attacks prompted his resignation as president of the Academy of Arts. The Nazi ascent to power in 1933 inspired a classic example of Liebermann's legendary Berlin wit: "I could not possibly eat as much as I would like to throw up." Liebermann was ostracized from public life and his art banished from Nazi Germany's museums; only a few non-Jews had the courage to attend his burial on 11 February 1935. Liebermann's widow, Martha, committed suicide in March 1943 to avoid her imminent deportation to the Theresienstadt concentration camp.

See alsoAnti-Semitism; Berlin; Impressionism; Jews and Judaism; Modernism; Painting; Realism and Naturalism.

bibliography

Achenbach, Sigrid, and Matthias Eberle, eds. Max Liebermann in seiner Zeit. Munich and Berlin, 1979.

Bilski, Emily D. ed. Berlin Metropolis: Jews and the New Culture 1890–1918. Berkeley, Calif., and New York, 1999. Especially the essays by Bilski, Paret, and Schütz.

Eberle, Matthias. Max Liebermann 1847–1935: Werkverzeichnis der Gemälde und Ölstudien. 2 vols. Munich, 1995–1996.

Frenssen, Birte, and Jenns Eric Howoldt, eds. Max Liebermann: Der Realist und die Phantasie. Hamburg, 1997.

Gay, Peter. Freud, Jews and Other Germans: Masters and Victims in Modernist Culture. New York, 1978.

Janda, Karl Heinz, and Annegret Janda. "Max Liebermann als Kunstsammler." Forschungen und Berichte der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, 15 (1973): 105–148.

Natter, G. Tobias, and Julius H. Schoeps, eds. Max Liebermann und die französischen Impressionisten. Vienna, 1997.

Paret, Peter. The Berlin Secession: Modernism and Its Enemies in Imperial Germany. Cambridge, Mass., 1980.

Wesenberg, Angelika, ed. Max Liebermann: Jahrhundertwende. Berlin, 1997.

Emily D. Bilski