tionism. LikeArntz, he sympathized with the antiparliamentarian Allgemeine
Arbeiter-Union(AAUE, GeneralWorkers’Union) and the left-communist KAPD.
At the same time, the emotional habitus thatgave his bodyofwork spiritual in-
tensity and depth is inconceivable without the enduringinfluenceofthe culture
of Catholicism.Suffering for Seiwert was an integralpart of the human condi-
tion, and loving others, expressed throughcaritas(charity) andagape(compas-
sion, love), remainedamoral obligation.It is as part of these traditions thatthe
agitational woodcuts and linocuts made to commemorate the“martyrs”of the
failed 1918/19GermanRevolution,Karl Liebknecht und RosaLuxemburg, draw
on an established Christian iconography of suffering andredemption. Similarly,
Seiwert’scontribution to the memory of the 1920 Ruhr Uprising,Christus imRuhr-
gebiet(1922, Christ in theRuhr Region), enlistsafamiliar chiliastic eschatology to
promoteaninsurrectionist strategyalong the lines of council communism.
Demonstration,the clearest articulation of Seiwert’sbold artistic and politi-
cal vision, mayhaveestablished the terms underwhich therepresentation of the
workingclass could be accomplished through the revolutionary art and politics.
Nevertheless,itwas an actual armed confrontation and itsvery tangible impact
on awork of art–in the form ofabullet–that revealedto him the class-based
nature of bourgeois culture in what has become known as theKunstlump(Art
Scoundrel) debate. During street battles in Dresden between Reichswehr and
striking workers inresponsetothe 1920 Kapp Putsch,astray bullet had hit
Peter PaulRubens’sBathshebain the Zwinger Museum,promptingOskarKo-
koschkatorequest thatall fighting be conducted atasafe distance from the
art treasures.Inresponse, George Groszand John Heartfield wrote an angry po-
lemic in the appropriatelynamed journalDer Gegner(The Enemy). Denouncing
the ideological function of bourgeois art,they mockinglyasked,“Well, what
good does art do the workers?Did the painters give their paintingsthe contents
that correspond to the struggle for liberation of the workingpeople and that
teach them how to throw off theyoke ofathousandyears of oppression?”
Their answerwasadefiant“no”thatallowed for onlyone conclusion:“There
is onlyone task:to accelerate the collapse of this cultureofexploitation with
all meanspossible.”¹⁹ Ignoring accusations of vandalism against Heartfield
and Groszinthe communist press,Seiwert came tovery similar conclusions:
We cannot destroy enough of“culture”in the name of culture.We cannot destroy enough
“works of art”in the name of art.Everythingtrue, everythingauthentic is indestructible.John Heartfield and George Grosz,“DerKunstlump,”Der Gegner,1.10/12 (1920): 48–56;avail-
able at http://www.dada-companion.com/heartfield_docs/hea_kunstlump_1920.php,1March
2017.
Franz Wilhelm Seiwert’sCriticalEmpathy 217