Iron rolling mill (Modern Cyclops)

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Iron rolling mill (Modern Cyclops) (Adolph von Menzel)
Iron rolling mill (Modern Cyclops)
Adolph von Menzel , 1872–1875
Oil on canvas
158 × 254 cm
Old National Gallery , Berlin

The Eisenwalzwerk (Modern Cyclops) is a realistic painting by Adolph von Menzel from the years 1872 to 1875. It is one of his main works from a time when the painter mainly deals with contemporary issues and the social question as a result of the unrestrained technical progress during the industrialists Revolution busy. The picture caused a sensation and is now part of the collection of the Berlin Old National Gallery .

description

The painting measures 158 × 254 cm, is executed in oil on canvas and bears the signature Adolph Menzel on the lower left . Berlin 1875 . It was bought in 1875 by the banker Adolph von Liebermann for 11,000 thalers , but in November, after Liebermann's bankruptcy, it was sold to the Berlin Nationalgalerie for 30,000 thalers under the direction of the director Max Jordan , who made a request to buy it because of the high price judged the Prussian Ministry of Culture, where he praised the picture as a "poignant work of heroism of duty", a new type of "history painting with moral effect" and as "glorification of the rough work of modern cultural life" in his letter.

The work shows the factory hall of the Upper Silesian Königshütte , a rolling mill for railroad tracks that had been privately owned by Carl Justus Heckmann after several mergers since 1871 and employed around 3,000 workers at that time. In the smoky factory hall, over 40 workers can be seen, some of them barefoot in wooden clogs and without protective gloves, using tongs to push the incandescent so-called rag with tongs and by tilting an iron handcart into the profile rollers. On the right edge of the picture there is a hand-operated crane with gear transmission and chain hoist. At the front lower right edge, exhausted workers sit next to a press. During their lunch break they have a meal brought by a young woman in a basket. On the left you can see men who wash with bare chests after the end of their shift.

In the upper left half of the picture there is a man in a coat and bowler hat , who strolls through this hall seemingly uninvolved and directs his gaze to the upper part of a puddle oven. The art historian Werner Busch wrote :

“But the vanishing point itself is noted very specifically in the iron rolling mill , it can be found in the head of the conductor. As far as he is in the background, not only do the shortening lines run towards him, but he differs from all other staff in two ways. He is not wearing work clothes, but bourgeois street clothes with a «bowler hat», his non-working hands behind his back, strolling through the hall while the workers are tense in every way. "

History and background

Menzel found himself in a contradicting situation in the 1870s. On the one hand his personal artistic intention, on the other hand he was committed to the demands of the society of the time, namely the continuation of his well-known series of pictures about Frederick the Great , which he canceled. Menzel was already famous and people expected a certain kind of painting from him, even if he was now economically independent of commissions. Menzel's personal concern was to depict the working people, and with the iron rolling mill he created a masterpiece that was sensational when presented at a time when the unreserved belief in technical progress was already being questioned. The unrestrained industrial revolution after the founding of the German Empire in 1871 soon showed its social consequences after an initial economic boom after the war against France , which Menzel depicts in this painting. It is the first picture in Germany that reveals the inhuman and precarious consequences of Bismarck's industrial policy. Menzel relentlessly shows the shift work in his work . The term Modern Cyclops for steel workers was coined in 1852 by the art historian Friedrich Eggers , when he recommended new motifs from industry and everyday life for the visual arts in an article in the Deutsches Kunstblatt , albeit in an uncritical idealizing way. Later the term was also used by Karl Marx in his I. Volume of capital used. Menzel did not choose the heavy industry of the Ruhr area for his picture, but the area in Upper Silesia, where the working conditions were harsher than in the Ruhr. From 1871 until the crisis of 1873 there were uprisings and controversies between the Catholic Polish and German Protestant workers. Menzel was aware of the social upheavals and depicts the subject from its explosive side, the human being, in his picture. Here the painter anticipates the monstrosity of the expected mass and machine age and shows how the rhythm of the working machines in the people Makes your movements hectic. The worker has become a degraded part of the machine.

As early as 1855, when the artist visited the Paris World Exhibition , he had been making drawings of blacksmiths working on an anvil or a steam hammer . Menzel was also familiar with the painting Die Steineklopfer from 1849 (Gemäldegalerie Dresden, loss of war) by Gustave Courbet , which confirmed his intention. Another inspiration could have been provided by the lithographer François Bonhommé's industrial pictures, which were commissioned by the factory owners and for the first time depicted the workers as individuals. Before that, the so-called industrial vedutas only dealt with imposing machine systems, people were secondary. Menzel also had an influence on other artists himself. It can therefore be assumed that Paul Friedrich Meyerheim did not depict his six-part picture cycle The Life Story of a Locomotive for the Villa Borsig at that time as an allegory , as originally planned , but executed it in a realistic manner like Menzel's iron mill . Menzel's picture is closer to reality, Meyerheim, on the other hand, transfigured genre-like and idealized his portrayal.

Preliminary studies

There are over 100 pencil-drawn preliminary studies for the iron rolling mill in the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett . Movement studies show the individual work steps in steel processing in the rolling mill, as well as overall views of the blast furnace plant in different light, individual machines and tools. Menzel also created a gouache with the title Self-Portrait with a Worker at the Steam Hammer (Leipzig, Museum of Fine Arts , No. 1972/6) where Menzel sketches the man at the steam hammer in the background of a machine shop. The iron rolling mill was finally created in the studio with the help of models for the different postures.

Selection of exhibited and published preliminary studies:

  • A worker in the middle of the picture.
  • Study sheet with movement studies for the men at the stove (worker in the center of the picture).
  • Charcoal drawing, preliminary study, around 1875, re. and signed Kön. Iron foundry.

The publisher Wilhelm Spemann writes about this work:

“In this description of the iron forge from Königshütte in Upper Silesia, the highest degree of naturalistic observation is combined with a virtuoso performance and a strong feeling for a painterly effect. The scientific accuracy in the description cannot be carried further, the liveliness in expression cannot be increased. The drawn studies that Menzel made for this picture of modern Cyclopes are numerous, in the work itself the drawing takes a back seat to the mastery with which the enormous difficulties of air and light painting have been overcome. "

reception

The work received literary appreciation in Peter Weiss ' novel The Aesthetics of Resistance . The first-person narrator looks at the picture in detail on the occasion of a visit to Berlin's Alte Nationalgalerie and feels how fascinated he is by the portrayal of Menzel. His thoughts then revolve around the “culture of the workers” and finally he arranges it together with the painting hanging in the room to the left, Menzel's departure of King Wilhelm I for the army on July 31, 1870 (1871), and the painting The Ballsouper hanging on the right (1878) in a triptych on recent German history . He formulates a mental criticism: “The description of this incessant, sweaty interlocking said nothing else than that the work was done hard and without contradiction. The praise for work was praise for submission. The woman [note: front right in the picture] could be seen that she was at home in a basement hole [...]. [...] the men, with their furrowed faces and their eyes narrowed against the embers, their fists clenched around their tools, were detached from the social knowledge, documentation and organizations [...]. [I saw] whom Menzel's mastery had put in front of an admiring audience, the German laborer from Bismarck's and Wilhelm's empires, undisputed by the Communist Manifesto , in his sole authority to be brave and loyal. "In this triptych, Peter Weiss sees the" whole Fraud committed against the working class. ”Menzel's sensational picture was always controversially discussed, condemned and heroized, but never in a factual manner.

Exhibitions (selection)

  • 1876: Berlin Academy Exhibition , Academy of Arts, Berlin
  • May 1 to November 10, 1878: Exposition Universelle (World's Fair), Paris
  • 1879: 3rd international art exhibition Glaspalast, Munich
  • December 8, 1885 to 1886: Exhibition on the occasion of Adolph Menzel's seventieth birthday in the Royal Academy of the Arts, Berlin
  • January 4 to May 10, 1896: Exhibition by the Cooperative of Fine Artists Vienna, Künstlerhaus, Vienna
  • 1952: Iron and steel art exhibition
  • 1958: Treasures of world culture saved by the Soviet Union National Gallery, Berlin (East)
  • March to May 1976: Modern Cyclops: 100 Years of the “Eisenwalzwerk” by Adolph Menzel National Gallery in Berlin
  • March 13th to May 23rd 1985: World treasures of art - preserved for humanity. Exhibition on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the victory over Hitler fascism and the liberation of the German people, Altes Museum, Berlin (East)
  • February 7 to May 11, 1997: The labyrinth of reality in Berlin's Alte Nationalgalerie and in the Kupferstichkabinett
  • June 22nd to September 2nd, 2007: Views of Europe. Europe and German painting in the 19th century Neue Pinakothek, Munich

literature

  • Konrad Kaiser: Adolph Menzel's iron rolling mill (=  publication by the German Academy of the Arts ). Henschel, Berlin 1953.
  • Werner Schmidt: Adolph Menzel's iron rolling mill . Berlin 1958, OCLC 255638326 .
  • Nationalgalerie (ed.): Modern Cyclops: 100 Years of "Iron Rolling Mill" by Adolph Menzel . The gallery, Berlin 1976.
  • Françoise Forster-Hahn: Ethos and Eros: Adolph Menzel's “Eisenwalzwerk” and “Atelierwand” . In: Yearbook of the Berlin museums . tape 41 , 1999, ISSN  0075-2207 , pp. 139-163 , doi : 10.2307 / 4126032 , JSTOR : 4126032 .
  • Sigrid Achenbach: Modern Cyclops. Preparatory work for Adolph Menzel's “iron rolling mill”. In: Museum journal. Reports from museums, castles and collections in Berlin and Potsdam. Notebook. 3, Volume 18, July 2004, pp. 45–47.
  • Werner Busch: The iron rolling mill - heroism of modernity? In: Adolph Menzel: Life and Work . CH Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-52191-6 , p. 104–114 ( books.google.de - reading sample).
  • Hans Michael Kloth: A picture and its story: Stroke of genius of a possessed . In: Der Spiegel Online . February 20, 2007 ( spiegel.de ).
  • Stephan E. Hauser: Adolph von Menzel, "The Iron Rolling Mill (Modern Cyclops)" . In: Ferrum . tape 79 , 2007, ISSN  1422-9137 , pp. 121-132 .
  • D. Haberland: Adolph Menzel: The iron rolling mill (modern cyclops) . In: Steel and Iron . tape 132 , no. 5 , May 16, 2012, p. 121-122 .
  • Stefan Lüddemann: Painting by Adolph von Menzel: "The iron rolling mill": the epoch of the social question . In: New Osnabrück Newspaper . January 6, 2016 ( noz.de ).
  • Gottfried Knapp: Hell heat . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . September 9, 2016 ( sueddeutsche.de ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Eisenwalzwerk (Modern Cyclops). Staatliche Museen zu Berlin-digital, accessed on November 12, 2019 (title).
  2. ^ Adolph Menzel, Eisenwalzwerk (Moderne Cyklopen) 1875. German history in documents and images, accessed on November 13, 2019 .
  3. ^ Draft letter from Max Jordan to the Ministry. Central archive of the State Museums in Berlin. Signature: Specialia Menzel I, Journal 169/75.
  4. ↑ From Menzel's description of the picture for the National Gallery at the subsequent request of Max Jordan, 1879. Central archive of the State Museums in Berlin. Signature: Specialia Menzel AI.
  5. ↑ "Conductor" was used to refer to the engineer on duty
  6. ↑ Werner Busch: The iron rolling mill - heroism of modernity? In: Adolph Menzel: Life and Work . CH Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-52191-6 , p. 112 ( books.google.de - excerpt).
  7. ↑ Marie Ursula Riemann-Reyher: Adolph von Menzel 1815-1905 - The labyrinth of reality. Exhibition catalog, DuMont, Berlin / Cologne 1996, ISBN 3-7701-3960-7 , p. 288.
  8. ↑ The entrepreneurial family built their villa on the factory premises on Stromstrasse.
  9. ^ Nicholas Turner: Masterpieces of the J. Paul Getty Museum Drawings . Getty Publications, 1997, pp. 68-69 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
  10. ^ German drawings of the XIX. Century, hand drawings by old masters of the XV. – XVIII. Century, German graphics of the early XIX. Century . CG Boerner, Leipzig 1939, p. 19 , illustration no.173, panel XVII ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
  11. ↑ Adolph Menzel: iron foundry, charcoal drawing by Adolph Menzel. Siegerlandmuseum - museum-digital: westfalen, accessed on November 13, 2019 .
  12. ^ Wilhelm Spemann: 101. Menzel: The iron rolling mill . In: Richard Graul, Richard Stettiner (Hrsg.): The museum: a guide to enjoying works of fine art . Wilhelm Spemann, Berlin 1896, p. 81 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
  13. ↑ Peter Weiss: The Aesthetics of Resistance. Volume 1. Suhrkamp Frankfurt / M. 1975, p. 353 ff.
  14. ^ Marie Ursula Riemann-Reyher: Adolph von Menzel 1815–1905 - The labyrinth of reality. Exhibition catalog, DuMont, Berlin / Cologne 1996, ISBN 3-7701-3960-7 , p. 283 ff.