The Paths of World Wisdom: Hermann’s Battle

The Paths of World Wisdom: Hermann's Battle (Wege der Weltweisheit: Die Hermannsschlacht, 1982–93) depicts a tangled pantheon of historical German figures, whose portraits are set within a forest and connected by the superimposed rings of tree trunks. It belongs to a series of similar large woodcut collages that Kiefer created in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The title alludes to Hermann—also known by his Roman name, Arminius—who successfully led the Germanic tribes against the Romans at the Battle of Teutoburg Forest in 9 CE, thereby ensuring that Germania remained independent from the Roman Empire. Hermann became a powerful symbol for 19th-century German nationalists, and during the Third Reich the Nazis used his myth to proclaim the racial superiority of the so-called "Aryan" race. The figures represented here range from 18th- and 19th-century intellectuals, poets, and composers, to Prussian leaders and industrialists, to Nazi military leaders. The portraits were largely based upon those in a 1937 book, Face of the German Leader: 200 Portraits of German Fighters and Pioneers across 2000 Years, which presented a legitimating genealogy of Nationalist Socialism.[1] In Kiefer's composite woodcut, the heads of these various figures are densely and roughly interposed without any seeming order, and a sinister bonfire expands from the work's center, just below the portrait of Hermann himself.

Kiefer's selection of medium here is closely calibrated to the subject: woodcutting is a traditional technique deeply associated with German art, from the great Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer to 20th-century Expressionists, like Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, who self-consciously revived it. Kiefer has used composite woodcuts in a number of his works, including another piece in the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao collection, Untitled (The Rhine) (Ohne Titel [Der Rhein], 1982).