Hidden Nazi symbols discovered in famous German artist’s painting
Popular Science...
They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but what about judging a painting by the way it looks? While that sounds much more intuitive, a technique called X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy reveals that what’s on the surface might not be the whole story.
At a first glance, the painting that producer and filmmaker Thomas Schuhbauer found in his parents’ house in Germany seemed innocent enough. It was painted by Erich Mercker (1891–1973), a successful artist from Munich, and it was a wedding present gifted to Schuhbauer’s parents in 1966.
It showcases a motif that is found in some of his other works, too: a view of Munich’s the Feldherrnhalle (Field Marshals’ Hall) monument. The landmark is an arched hall built in the early 1840s in honor of the Bavarian army. However, in 1933, a smaller monument called the Mahnmal der Bewegung was added inside Felderrnhalle. The monument paid tribute to the rebels who died during the failed Nazi coup d’état in November of 1923.
Nonetheless, the painting doesn’t have any blatant Nazi references. The flag waving at the side of the monument is the Bavarian one and not the more familiar Nazi flag. One feature, however, suggests that not all is as it seems. Beneath the closest arch to the viewer is a statue on the pedestal—the top of the Mahnmal der Bewegung. Given that the Mahnmal der Bewegung was destroyed right after World War II, this indicates that Mercker painted it during the Nazi era.
If you look closer at the Bavarian flag’s white and blue colors, you can also find traces of reddish color. Indeed it was the traces of red that made Schuhbauer think there was more than meets the eye, according to Ioanna Mantouvalou, a physicist at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin research center and first author of a study on the painting recently published in Nature Journal Heritage Science..
Schuhbauer thus turned to the research center, where Mantouvalou and a colleague used X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (XRF). It consists of a non-destructive technique that, simply put, reveals the presence of elements in things, and comes in handy when researchers want to study hidden layers.
“I investigated the painting together with Yannick Wagener, a masters student at the TU Berlin, and we found that large areas of the original painting had been hidden,” Mantouvalou tells Popular Science.
Namely, the Bavarian flag hides a red Nazi flag, and someone also covered up soldiers, Nazi salutes by passersby, and wreaths on the Mahnmal der Bewegung monument.
At least one version of this painting in its original Nazi version exists, but did Mercker himself modify the Schuhbauer’s copy? The materials in the painting suggest that it could have been altered. The oil paints used to cover these elements had notable quantities of titanium white, a pigment that isn’t in any other part of the painting. However, a tube of oil paint labelled “Titanium White 10103 Schmincke” came to light among the artist’s paint tubes. What’s more, the back of the painting shows a number code which was deciphered in the project to reveal the year of production—1934.
Mantouvalou explains that the paper presents, “the first definite proof that a painting by Erich Mercker was overpainted in order to hide Nazi symbols. The person who conducted the overpainting probably did it with great haste, as a monument, which was destroyed right after the end of the war, is still visible. We cannot prove unambiguously that Erich Mercker himself did it, but all findings point to this theory.”
After World War II, Mercker also created versions of the same perspective that were free of Nazi symbols. The Nazi-versions were titled “Die Stätte des 9. November” (The Site of November 9), while the post-war versions were titled “Feldherrnhalle” (Field Marshals’ Hall), or “München am Odeonsplatz” (Munich at Odeonsplatz, the square where Feldherrnhalle hall is), among others.
According to the researchers, a significant number of artists that collaborated with the Nazis largely avoided backlash for decades. Once the war had ended, many German artists, including Mercker, carried on with business as usual.
“From a purely monetary point of view, it makes sense to overpaint symbols in an oil painting which are not acceptable due to a change in political systems. The fact implies that moral considerations were not important enough to destroy the painting or completely redo the scene,” says Mantouvalou. “This does shed light on the way people come to terms with history and their personal involvement.”
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