Sascha Schneider

Art at the turn of the century - Sascha Schneider, Karl May and Symbolism

Symbolic aesthetics, dreamlike metaphors, hidden messages - this characterised the art style of Symbolism, which spread from France throughout Europe at the end of the 19th century. It found its most diverse expression in literature, the visual arts and music. Karl May's late literary work and the art of the young painter Sascha Schneider are two striking examples. The profound upheavals in society, initiated by industrialisation and modern science, led to the mechanisation of manual labour, inhospitable urban centres and mass production. Poverty and social impoverishment were daily occurrences. A feeling of individual uprootedness and the loss of moral values became widespread. This was portrayed drastically in Gerhart Hauptmann's naturalistic writing, for example, or in Käthe Kollwitz' realistic paintings. Symbolists such as Schneider and May wanted to set themselves apart from this; they were in search of the ideal and the beautiful. However, the idea behind the motif was never to be fixed or explained in concrete terms, giving the work emotional depth and personal imagination. This art movement was not intended to completely overturn existing conditions, but to stimulate reflection and mediate between the different levels of depth of the viewer and reality. Themes such as dreams and hallucinations are visualised, but also physicality, illness and death, as well as poignant emotional states - in the case of visual artists, preferably in painting. Sascha Schneider was a master of this pictorial art. His full name was Rudolph Karl Alexander Schneider and he was born on 21 September 1870 in the German colony in St. Petersburg and died 90 years ago on 18 August 1927 in Swinemünde. He left behind an eventful and skilful life after his diabetes became too serious.

After losing his father at the age of 14, he moved to Dresden with his mother and sister. His talent for drawing was praised there from an early age. Inspired by this, he ventured into the uncertain career path of an artist and studied at the local academy. However, the views on style and form held there were outdated. The new symbolist mode of representation, as it rested in Schneider and wanted to be lived out, had not yet arrived in Dresden. He broke off his studies and pushed to show that a different reality could be created through art, with the ideal human being at the centre. His pent-up potential is released in the community studio. Within a very short space of time, an impressive exhibition of his work is created, which polarises the public in an apt manner. The booksellers' distribution of his artworks contributed equally to his success and fame, which was reflected in major private and public commissions from Florence, Cologne, Jena, Weimar, Dresden and Leipzig, among others. Hermann Hesse states as a representative: "I have never been so suddenly and strongly moved by a piece of visual art." Another writer was also immediately overwhelmed by the power of Schneider's cartoons: Karl May. He had the impression of finally seeing the aesthetic guiding principles of his late work understood and skilfully depicted. And Schneider was showered with honours in many places, in stark contrast to May, who was already entangled in his tragic web of ostracism and exhausting court cases. The ageing poet therefore sought out the enfant terrible in person. The two characters meet with mutual understanding and genius. For some time, the two were each other's missing family member, father and son in spirit. In 1904, they agreed on an artistic collaboration. The painter visualised the author's core message allegorically as a book cover illustration, thus creating a unity of word and symbol. Over 25 drawings were created for the travelogues in 1904/05. Karl May was convinced that this Gesamtkunstwerk would stand the test of time, and he was proved right. Even if the Sascha Schneider edition was not particularly successful at first. He also ordered sculptures in the form of a bust and the Sphinx figures. At the same time, Schneider was under great pressure to work. He was given his own hall for the Dresden art exhibition and endeavoured to impress the public once again. He will create 24 works of art for the exhibition. In general, the years around the turn of the century were among his most creative, with monumental paintings being his favourite. But he was also active in the field of sculpture. Athletic male figures, nudes and models from Greek antiquity or ancient Egyptian mythology can be found in his motifs. His aesthetic focus was on the ideal image of a new, powerful and healthy man. This correlated with the Dresden hygiene culture of Karl August Lingner and was in the tradition of his patron and friend, the symbolist artist Max Klinger. The next highlight and clear sign of his recognition came in the same year when he was appointed professor of nude painting at the University of Weimar. However, time-consuming teaching activities and social constraints prevented him from realising his own interests. In 1908, he fled to Florence, leaving symbolism behind him.

Sascha Schneider had suffered a back injury as a child and was also considered small in stature. The fact that he chose male strength and beauty as his subject should not be equated with his homosexual tendencies. In addition to the programmatic current of symbolism, it is also a processing of stature-related deficits that often made him an outsider. Last but not least, echoes of Karl May can also be felt here. Instead of the strongman "Old Shatterhand", the mirror image actually reflected a petite white-haired man. Both found the self-image they longed for symbolically only in the work of art.

Maren Gündel, City Archive

Published in: Official Gazette Radebeul, August 2017