otto dix
the great war
Modern memory holds that the First World was greeted with joy in the capitols of
Europe. Perhaps, but a strange elation did drive many your men to the colors. Dix was
twenty-two in the summer the arch duke dies. When was declared in August of
1914, he immediately volunteered. Most thought the was would be over by Christmas
and worried they'd never get to the front. The stalemate lasted four long years.
Dix was originally assigned to an artillery unit in Dresden. In 1915, he was transferred as a
NCO to a machine gun unit. Entrenched automatic rifles helped create the stalemate
in Europe. Machine gunners sprayed bullets at advancing troops and they were very had to
take out. Dix helped defend the line against the great British advance on the Somme.
Siegfried Sassoon, C.S. Lewes and J.R.R. Tolkein were on the other side.
Dix was wounded several ties along the Western Front. In august 1918, he served in Flanders
where he took a nearly fatal wound to the neck. A medic was able to stop the bleeding and
he was moved back to an aid station. The war ended with Dix in a hospital bed. He was
discharged in September 1918.
During the war, Dix kept a diary and a sketch book with which he chronicled his experience.
They would provide material for a major work, of fifty prints called simply, The War.
Dix was profoundly affected by the war. He described a recurring nightmare in which he
crawled through bombed out houses. His experience with war and its aftermath became a
dominant theme in the art that he produced after 1914.
