Rosa Luxemburg

Abstract

Between 1917 and 1919 a radical young German artist by the name of George Grosz was making a painting that would come to be regarded as being amongst his most important works. It was rendered in oil and done on canvas. It was completed in the aftermath of the German defeat and humiliation at the end of the First World War. In the middle of the picture is seated a corpulent middle-class man about to dine, replete with cheese and beer. A copy of the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger is on the dining table—a newspaper whose editorial offices had been briefly occupied in November 1918 by revolutionary workers. Below him—or perhaps they are in front of him, since the perspectives are not naturalistically portrayed—are three figures: a priest, a general, and a professor. These figures of power, order, and privilege are drawn in piercing caricature. They are set against the backdrop of...