George Grosz (1893-1959)

Rede depicts an angry little rabble-rouser conjuring sumptuous images of the good life before a moronic and impoverished audience all in the name of German tradition. It is the first of a number of drawings on this now auspicious theme that Grosz produced to illustrate the continuing menace of the far-rights persistent mythologizing of Germanness, the Kaiser and the Reich as a kind of idyll of order and plenty. It is also a work that later served as the template for Groszs famous painting depicting a Nazi rabble-rouser adopting the same tired rhetoric Der Agitator of 1928, now in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.
Rede was first published in issue number 5 of the satirical periodical Der blutige Ernst in January, 1920. This fifth number of the periodical edited by John Höxter, Carl Einstein and Grosz himself, was centred on the theme of the restitution of the German monarchy. Its cover depicted Groszs drawing of a violent and oppressive military take-over under the title Rückkehr geordneter Zustände! (Return to Order). An image of Rede appeared inside the periodical above the caption '...und verdammte Pflicht und Schuldigkeit...Seine Majestät der Deutsche Kaiser, König von Preussen und sein erlauchtes Haus, Sie leben: Hoch! Hoch!' (...and damned duty and obligation...; Long live his Majesty the German Kaiser, the King of Prussia and his illustrious house, Hip, Hip, Hooray!)