Willy Jaeckel’s representations of soldiers as victims during the First World War in Germany

Purpose This paper explores German artist Willy Jaeckel’s representations of the soldier as a victim of war within the context of German visual culture of the First World War. The paper draws attention to Jaeckel’s groundbreaking role within the German avant-garde, where he was among those earliest voices that actively challenged the morale-preserving, even jingoistic images of the war, which promoted a narrow dialogue of both the modern front experience and the human ability to endure it. Design/methodology/approach The analysis is based on careful examination of German wartime and postwar art and visual culture, to include art exhibited in galleries, artists’ periodicals and popular print media. Jaeckel’s wartime letters and contemporary critical reviews were consulted to provide insight to the artist’s intentions and the works’ reception respectively, while the position of Jaeckel’s images of soldiers among the war-related work of Germany’s revolutionary avant-garde is also considered. Findings Jaeckel’s work is shown to be among the very earliest and most unique of the entire war in its singular focus on the suffering of soldiers. Within the sociopolitical and artistic environment in Germany during the war years, it was courageous – and remains relevant – in its contestation of the popular image of the front experience, which worked to conceal the shattering impact of the war on soldiers’ bodies and minds. Originality/value In addition to drawing attention to the artist’s pivotal role in challenging the dominant language of wartime art, the paper addresses significant lacunae in Jaeckel scholarship, including analysis of the artist’s important body of works for the high-quality wartime arts periodicals Der Front (virtually absent from the literature), Kriegszeit and Krieg und Kunst, as well as critical responses to the exhibition of his confrontational portfolio of lithographs Memento 1914/15 and the major war picture Sturmangriff.