Buboes of Europe. Nazi Terror at Concentration Camps, 1939–45
Jörn Wendland on a page from the cycle by Harald Pickert
The struggle of humanity against an overwhelming foe – Harald Pickert took up the banner. Not just as a political prisoner who was interned at several Nazi forced-labor camps, including the Dachau and Mauthausen concentration camps, but also as an artist who, following his liberation, fought to find the right mode of expression to inform and move people who had not been in the camps. We see this kind of struggle in the drafts for his planned cycle of etchings called Pestbeulen Europas (Buboes of Europe). One page depicts a muscular man standing on a steep incline, pushing with all his might against a gigantic swastika. Has the outcome of the fight already been decided? The Nazi symbol looms over the figure, threatening to bury him, but he is still standing, at least for now. According to Pickert, it was decency and humanity that gave him the strength to resist the barbaric dictatorship. As he says in a caption to the picture, “Belief in our rightness is stronger than any burden imposed by Nazi barbarism, since God and the world of culture is [sic] for us.”
Pickert’s image is reminiscent of Sisyphus, the well-known figure from Greek myth, who pushes the same stone up a steep mountain over and over again in vain. Sisyphus has been a popular figure for artists from Antiquity right up to the present day as a metaphor for hard work without any foreseeable end, the epitome of being trapped as an individual. Pickert replaces the massive stone with a giant swastika, as the person is frozen in the struggle against an overpowering threat. There seems to be no way forward, no way back. And yet, the struggle is not a pointless one. After all, his success was having nearly reached the goal without ever being able to reach it completely. According to Albert Camus, we should envision Sisyphus as a happy person. As he writes in his 1942 essay The Myth of Sisyphus: “The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart” (Reinbek 62004, pp. 159–60).
By Jörn Wendland
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Einen weiteren Artikel zur Ausstellung Harald Pickert. Die Pestbeulen Europas. Naziterror in Konzentrationslagern, 1939-45 von Christian Fuhrmeister finden Sie auf dem Blog des Zentralinstituts für Kunstgeschichte.
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![[Translate to English:]](/fileadmin/_processed_/b/f/csm_Nacht-Samborski_200120-Tell-me-about_583_web_76a55a26a2.jpg "[Translate to English:]")
Buboes of Europe. Nazi Terror at Concentration Camps, 1939–45
Jörn Wendland on a page from the cycle by Harald Pickert
The struggle of humanity against an overwhelming foe – Harald Pickert took up the banner. Not just as a political prisoner who was interned at several Nazi forced-labor camps, including the Dachau and Mauthausen concentration camps, but also as an artist who, following his liberation, fought to find the right mode of expression to inform and move people who had not been in the camps. We see this kind of struggle in the drafts for his planned cycle of etchings called Pestbeulen Europas (Buboes of Europe). One page depicts a muscular man standing on a steep incline, pushing with all his might against a gigantic swastika. Has the outcome of the fight already been decided? The Nazi symbol looms over the figure, threatening to bury him, but he is still standing, at least for now. According to Pickert, it was decency and humanity that gave him the strength to resist the barbaric dictatorship. As he says in a caption to the picture, “Belief in our rightness is stronger than any burden imposed by Nazi barbarism, since God and the world of culture is [sic] for us.”
Pickert’s image is reminiscent of Sisyphus, the well-known figure from Greek myth, who pushes the same stone up a steep mountain over and over again in vain. Sisyphus has been a popular figure for artists from Antiquity right up to the present day as a metaphor for hard work without any foreseeable end, the epitome of being trapped as an individual. Pickert replaces the massive stone with a giant swastika, as the person is frozen in the struggle against an overpowering threat. There seems to be no way forward, no way back. And yet, the struggle is not a pointless one. After all, his success was having nearly reached the goal without ever being able to reach it completely. According to Albert Camus, we should envision Sisyphus as a happy person. As he writes in his 1942 essay The Myth of Sisyphus: “The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart” (Reinbek 62004, pp. 159–60).
By Jörn Wendland
[Translate to English:]
[Translate to English:]
Einen weiteren Artikel zur Ausstellung Harald Pickert. Die Pestbeulen Europas. Naziterror in Konzentrationslagern, 1939-45 von Christian Fuhrmeister finden Sie auf dem Blog des Zentralinstituts für Kunstgeschichte.