Das Neue Chaos 1917

Ludwig Gies

Cast Iron, 141.6mm, 141g, incuse reverse, VZ, Ernsting WVZ163a, Unique

This medal exhibits a comprehensive description of a disrupted world view unique among other medals of the war period. In common with other artists of the Munich School, Gies adopted the medieval images of the Dance of Death , and in another medal of 1917 he depicts a weary group of German soldiers being led into battle by a skeleton. Here ‘The New Chaos’ surpasses these pieces in many respects.

The scene is a landscape formed out of the folds of the robe of a giant figure. Fate, as a Norn, spins the thin and fragile thread of life, whose essence is derived from the masses at the bottom right. Death, having propped his scythe against the distaff, stretches out his arms over the crowd of victims-to-be. The giant figure bows her head, radiating light, to look upon the factory buildings and machinery in her lap, symbols of the armaments industry whose lethal products – guns and tanks – are being poured onto the battlefields in the foreground. The groups of crosses to the left and to the right sides evoke the graves of the countless victims, the mass graves of extinguished hopes of happiness and fullfilment. At the bottom we are shown the consequences of war: A ruined church, with an all but overthrown crucifix; a huge pile of corpses; and an angry mob toppling the throne and the old Order with it.

A world-view is disrupted; illusions and plans for the future are destroyed. An entire generation has had its awareness of life profoundly changed by the horrors of the Great War. Fate, personified in the overpowering figure of the Norn, is enigmatic and implacable. Gies with his sensitive nature was conscious of this crisis, so it is not mere chance that his talent for story-telling was able to unfold so richly here in particular. In addition, the staging of a war and its effects within the confines of a medal, moreover whose planes are defined by the folds in the garment of a single figure, is at the apex of Gies’ art.

"Ludwig Gies: The Munich Years", Bernard Ernsting