Death, power and paranoia: the painting that shocked German society finally returns to Berlin | art

A massive skeleton, wrapped in an ermine cloak and wearing a spiked iron crown, rests on one foot on a ball and strikes a royal throne with a dramatic flick of his ivory wrist.

This 1887 allegorical painting by German artist Hermione von Preuschen, titled Mors Imperator (“Death Is the Ruler”), was intended to express the transience of fame and power. But the authorities feared that the picture would be seen as mocking German Emperor Wilhelm I, who had just turned 90, and refused to accept it for display at the Berlin Academy of Arts’ annual exhibition that year.

More than 100 years after the painting was rejected and subsequently displayed in a temporary exhibition in the 19th century, causing an uproar in Berlin society, the Morse Imperator is returning to the German capital. From Sunday until mid-November, the painting, measuring 2.5 meters by 1.3 meters, will be on display at a government institution Finally, in the Old National Gallery Museum.

The scandal surrounding von Preuschen’s works illustrates how paranoid autocratic regimes tend to be about hidden meanings in art. According to the Berlin gallery’s curator, insulting the monarchy was neither what the artist intended nor how his supposed target viewed it.

Born in Darmstadt in 1854, von Preuschen was a poet, world traveler, and painter best known for her large-scale, dazzling historical still lifes. At the 1896 International Women’s Congress in Berlin, she made an impassioned speech in which she called for women to be allowed to teach at art academies.

“Hermione von Preuschen was bold, never lacking in self-confidence, and was an early advocate of women’s liberation,” said art historian Birgitte Verwebe. “But she was not a political person, and there is no record of her having any anti-monarchy instincts. After all, she came from the nobility itself.”

She added that in-depth studies of the painting did not yield any signs of a hidden intention to identify the skeleton as the German Kaiser. The coat of arms on the throne was a creative invention, comparable at best to the French royal insignia. Researchers have identified the crown, studded with precious stones falling to the ground in the lower half, as being inspired by the French royal crown located in the Louvre Museum.

Mors Imperator was originally intended to form the first part of a cycle of 10 paintings depicting the themes of life, death and love, and to be shown live in the Academy Gallery with a painting called Regina Vitae, Queen of Life. But the second photo was not completed in time for submission.

Devastated by the rejection, the 33-year-old painter wrote directly to the German Emperor and King of Prussia to explain her intentions. Wilhelm’s secretary responded by saying that the king had no problem with the subject of her painting, and that it was up to those who judged its aesthetic value.

But the Academy later changed its position and said that it rejected the image on the basis of its artistic merit, describing it as “a non-artistic expression of a deviant thought.”

Von Preuschen escalated the situation further, publishing a letter about the issue in a Berlin newspaper and renting a shop room on Leipziger Strasse in central Berlin to display the painting, hiding it behind curtains so it could be unveiled in a dramatic flourish. Despite an entrance fee equivalent to 8 euros today, the exhibition became the talk of the town and made the artist famous overnight.

The Morse Imperator was sold to a Swiss businessman in 1892. After von Preuchen’s death in 1918, her daughters donated her remaining works to a small living museum in the Alt Mariendorf district of Berlin. A 2013 museum retrospective of her work featured a version of the scandalous painting. It was loaned to the Alte Nationalgalerie for the new exhibition.

“Von Preuschen was an intelligent, highly educated person but also a deeply emotional person, who spent his life wrestling with the big questions about life, death and fate,” Verwebe said. “Morse Imperator was an image that came from the heart.”

The painting’s central message—that death overthrows earthly authority—may also prove true; Wilhelm I actually died shortly after the painting was completed, on March 9, 1888. This year is known in Germany as the “Year of the Three Emperors,” because by the time Wilhelm’s son, Frederick III, assumed the throne, he was already ill with throat cancer. He will die in 99 days.