The Vistula
Anselm Kiefer German
Not on view
In a number of works from the late 1970s, Kiefer referenced the Vistula, Poland’s longest river, which has figured in numerous territorial disputes between Poland and its neighbors Russia and Germany over the past two centuries. The river region was key as a means of expansion in Hitler’s 1939 invasion of Poland. At the time, Poland’s only defense was its poorly equipped and vastly outnumbered cavalry, which rode out to meet the oncoming German tanks. Inscribed across the bottom of this drawing is "Die Weichsel" (the Vistula); another sheet has "Weichsel, Weichsel, weiße Weichsel" (Vistula, Vistula, white Vistula), the lyrics of a song about the subject that was popular during the Third Reich.
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