I’m delighted to be able to present at the conference, The Soldier as Victim, taking place on 24 April 2024 at Birmingham Newman University. I am also looking forward to attending a great series of presentations offering a range of contexts on a very important topic.
My presentation will focus on a group of German artists who were among the earliest to depict the harsher aspects of the soldier’s experience of World War I. It will include the work of the remarkable Willy Jaeckel, whose unflinching but emotive pictures of the suffering of soldiers were among the very earliest exhitbited works that represented the harsher truths of the soldier’s experience. I will also look at the work of Gert H. Wollheim, who served as a soldier on the eastern and western fronts, and through a series of pictures and poems, recorded the trauma of frontline experience, including his own serious injury. The talk will also include discussion of some works by the most famous German artist who served in the war, Otto Dix (the subject of my new book), specifically his pictures that consider the fate of disabled veterans. Conference website
Dr Ann Murray 