At the moment I am reading “The Haunted Screen” by Lotte Eisner, which is considered to be one of the two most important books on the topic of German Cinema in the 1920′s, so the next couple of weeks will be focused around ideas from the book. The image above is based on a play called Der Butler which was released in the 1910′s.
The German are odd people, all the same. What with their profound thoughts and the ideas they are forever pursuing and introducing all over the place, they really do make life too hard for themselves. Oh, have the courage to yield your impressions and do not always think that everything is not the same idea or abstract thought must be vain
– Goethe Eckerman “Conversations” 1827
German Expressionism stemmed from the ideas of Romanticism, which is based around “mysticism and magic”. These ideas flourished after the war, as German’s were finding themselves connected to the dark forces and ghosts of this idea. Expressionism and Romanticism are not only related through the interest in the dark, but also in the werden (becoming). Expressionism then differs from Renaissance periods, where are the idea of sien (being). Therefore, by looking at the becoming and being, Expressionism represents what the world/society is turning into, not what they are.
Below is a Romantic painting titled “Death of Sardanapalus” by Eugene Delacroix (1827), and when looking at this painting and ideas of Expressionism, it is easy to see similarities between the two. One of the similarities is the distorted body movements. This can represent physical pain, or a mental state in which darkness prevails.
Caligari and Metropolis: The Language of Weimar 