Political Art: Portrait of Konrad Heiden

My general approach has been to paint and draw images more subtle in their political and psychological implications. However, there are times when subtlety is inappropriate to the urgency of the day and a two-by-four-to-the-head approach is necessary. I’ll be posting my political art in the six weeks preceding a historical election in the United States that will determine if we remain for now a democratic republic.

Konrad Heiden was a Munich-born journalist who authored three books that eventually combined into "Der Fuhrer", a definitive documentation of the rise of Adolph Hitler and the Nazi party. He first witnessed Hitler at a Nazi rally in 1921. As a university student, Heiden was a member of the Social Democratic Party, whose members engaged in protests and street fights with a growing Nazi movement. He witnessed first-hand scenes strikingly familiar in the political landscape today: disillusioned, disgruntled veterans and middle-class young men all too eager to hear a charismatic, mentally unbalanced demagogue promise to "Make Germany great again", who assigned blame for Germany's economic woes on a demonized Other: Jews, communists, Romani gypsies, and soon after that “homosexuals” “the congenitally deficient" "racially inferior" and "subhuman".

Even more alarming was the acquiescence of much of the German population, who elected the Nazi party to the majority in the German Parliament. Conservative representatives of industry, agriculture, and finance demanded that Hindenburg, the President of Germany appoint Hitler as Chancellor, which occurred on January 30, 1933. In fear for his life, Heiden was forced to flee into exile at that point.

Even then, there was unfounded confidence that a Germany proud of "freedom of speech and thought" had sufficient guardrails to prevent dictatorial rule by a "mediocre" copy of Mussolini. As Konrad Heiden and history were to show, they were wrong. Do Americans hold the same illusions today?

"Portrait of Konrad Heiden" is a 20 x 16 pastel painting I created in September 2018 that references two events:

1) Hitler's March 23, 1933 address to the German Parliament. The Reichstag would grant his request for emergency dictatorial powers, only for him to dissolve it soon after.

2) February 27, 2017 address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress by then-President Donald Trump, another mediocre copy of Mussolini.