Gerhard Rossbach

An interesting figure among the military Freikorps leaders during the Weimar Republic. He led his own army, he and his men made an epic march from Berlin to Riga and helped the Iron Division out of a deadly siege. They took also a significant part in the battles in Silesia where, at Annaberg the Germans met their first victory after World War I. Hugely controversial, he was both a determined anti-intellectual first time Nazi, and a prominent protector of intellectuals at the same time. He later took a substantial part in the organization of the Bayreuth Festival. The philosopher and novelist Ernst Jünger served in Freikorps Rossbach, as some of the subsequently most infamous men of the Reich, as Rudolph Hoss who was in charge of the Auschwitz extermination camp. This portrait shows an enhanced expressionist technique, Rossbach’s original sharp features are deconstructed in an ironic way, his gaze to the observer is a sort of a benevolent one. His Freikorps’s emblem, the Hubertus Cross, is also featured. The Hubertus Cross is a Leitmotiv in several other paintings, like a trace to be followed.