Children, Childhood and the Childish in German Cultural Zionist Art

• In Event: Rethinking Childhood

Abstract

This paper examines the recurring presence of children in the visual art produced and disseminated by German cultural Zionists at the turn of the 20th century. I present examples of art works from artists including Max Liebermann, Jozef Israëls and E. M. Lilien, analyzing the figure of the child as a vehicle for commentary upon the state of exile and the constraints that it placed upon Jewish life. I consider this trend of depicting children alongside German cultural Zionist art criticism of the same period, within which numerous writers praised the child-like qualities of artists, arguing that this demonstrated their skill and their ability to produce Jewish art that furthered the Zionist cause.

Representing a cluster of ideas from vulnerability and innocence to future potential and clarity of perception, the qualities of childishness were for the Zionist community neither the exclusive nor guaranteed possession of children. The purported lack of child-like qualities in children demonstrated the need for Zionist intervention in exilic life. At the same time, the privileging of child-like qualities in adult artists reveals that childhood was constructed not just as a condition requiring protection, but an urgent creative force of no small relevance to cultural Zionism as a whole.

Author

• Rose Stair, University of Oxford