‘Im Chaos wandeln’: The Vienna School of Art History and the First World War

Machine Gun Jesus. A gloss between literature, theology and art history In order to explain a mysterious sentence in an article by Jerzy Stempowski on Józef Wittlin’s novel (published in the present issue of “CL”) about a sermon on Jesus at a German machine gun, the author makes a survey of several sermons delivered and published in protestant Switzerland during the First World War (including one by the future famous theologian Karl Barth). Another possible source for this phrase by Stempowski is an article published in 1930 in “Berliner Tageblatt” during a lawsuit for blasphemy against the painter George Grosz, the author of a drawing representing Jesus on the Cross with a gas mask. The gloss ends with some remarks on the later use of the terms “Machine Gun Jesus” or “God’s Machine Gun” (Johannes Leppich, Billy Graham, Ryszard Kapuściński, Sam Childers).

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“A work of art is an object that necessitates contemplation”. Latency of visual studies within the Vienna School of Art History?

10.31338/2657-6015ik.30.1 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 9-29

Author(s):

Tomáš Murár

Keyword(s):

Art History ◽

Research Method ◽

Visual Studies ◽

First World War ◽

World War ◽

The First World War ◽

Pieter Bruegel ◽

Pieter Bruegel The Elder ◽

Relationship Of ◽

First World

This article investigates a research method of the so-called Vienna School of Art History, mainly its transformation by Max Dvořák around the First World War. The article suggests the possible influence of Georg Simmel’s philosophy on Dvořák in this time, evident mainly in Dvořák’s interpretation of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s art, written by Dvořák in 1920 and published posthumously in 1921. This another view on the Vienna School of Art History is then researched in writings on Pieter Bruegel the Elder by Dvořák’s students Hans Sedlmayr and Charles de Tolnay when Tolnay extended Dvořák’s thinking and Sedlmayr challenged its premises – both Tolnay and Sedlmayr thus in the same time interpreted Bruegel’s art differently, even though they were both Dvořák’s students. The article then suggests a possible interpretative relationship of the Vienna School of Art History after its transformation by Max Dvořák with today’s approaches to art (history), mainly with the so-called visual studies.

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