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Grosz/Stolzenau Miniessay

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I. The time of the Great Inflation just after World War I was unpresidented and responses varied enormously. What some felt was desperately needed to properly treat contemporary ills was a poultice -- the assurances of the past, the comfort of distance, the knowledge that as bad as things were, they were worse elsewhere. The imagery and message on Notgeld   circulated in the countryside of Stolzenau (1921) laments the avalanche of debts, but offers comfort by using the imagery and verse of cartoonist/humorist Wilhelm Busch. Even the pastoral scene which everyone using the currency would recognize seems to offer a way out. What others believed needed was a more radical cure -- a cold shower, a dose of strong medicine, a sense of how bad things could become everywhere. An image of foreclosure by George Grosz, who documented urban life during the Weimar Republic, suggests that for some there would be no comfort, no way out. These two responses represent the differing perspectives of a Stolzenauer and a Berliner, a country Burgher and a city dweller, the comic and the tragic, the public face of a crisis and its private desperation.

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"Foreclosure," ca. 1928.
Pen and ink by George Grosz.

Notgeld   from Stolzenau, 1921.
Printed in Berlin by August Scherl, Ltd.