Third Reich Military Art: HANS LISKA

Liska's war paintings are striking. They catch the attention even of someone totally ignorant about art .

LIFE SKETCH OF HANS LISKA

Liska wanted as a boy to be a draftsman, but first he attended trade school and then worked as an office boy. Besides, he played piano in a dance school. There, at a big event, he replaced a failed musician and was hired by the popular singing group. Now, he was earning more than before, and he began to realize his old dream.

Liska attended the Vienna School of Applied Arts at Alfred Roller , where he was student of Berthold Löffler. He then worked as a commercial artist in Switzerland. He then attended the School of Applied Arts in Munich , where he was a pupil of Emil Praetorius and Walther Teutsch. From 1933 to 1944 he served as apprentice for the cartoonists Berliner Zeitung Illustrirte newspaper and propaganda sheet Signal.  Liska was promoted by the Ullstein company. In 1933, he attended the United School of Fine and Applied Arts as a student under Ferdinand Spiegel . In 1939, he was drafted as a soldier and an artist in a propaganda unit and special squadron. His drawings of the various war fronts appeared in many newspapers, even in neutral countries. Two of his sketch-books from the years 1942 (Junkers) and 1944 (Hans Liska) are now a rarity.

After the war Hans Liska stayed at Schesslitz near Bamberg in Germany, married in 1948 and resumed his drawing for the magazines Quick and Hörzu . He worked for many years in the advertising creating drawings for the automotive industry, Daimler-Benz, Cologne Ford and Mühlens were his clients. 

Hans Liska had always been an avid lover of Mozart operas, and in 1982, came  his book "Magic of the Stage". On 26 December 1983 Hans Liska suffered a heart attack, he died shortly afterwards.

In an autobiography in the picture book Picturesque Kulmbach. Liska declared himself as an admirer of Oskar Kokoschka , Pablo Picasso and Max Ernst .

Below are some of Liska's drawings depicting the Second World War.....

The German "Katyusha", Nebelwerfer in action

German soldiers on a railway train fire at the enemy. Partisans?

Removing mines in Sevastapol. 

Each white stripe on the barrel 88-mm cannon, the "Tiger" - the destroyed enemy tank

Morser heavy gun fires. In the foreground, radio operators at work (apparently talking to artillery fire spotters)

A Panzer 4 and German Grenadiers attack

"Attack"

Supply vessels

Dieppe beachhead, 1942. The strangest British operation during all of World - an attempt to land troops and capture the French port of Dieppe, launched August 19, 1942.

Fighting in the woods

SdKfz 250 armored personnel carriers in the attack

Ju-52 transports - "Aunt Jumo," as the Germans called them

JU-87. Stuka Dive Bombers

German planes over Athens

"Mountain Arrow"

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German Military Paintings During WW2

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MORE HANS LISKA PAINTINGS

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Military Art In The Third Reich: Part 1

Grenadiere 1943. Will Tschech

As you know, Hitler in his youth used  to make a living by drawing the sights of Vienna. Even during the First World War, as a corporal of the 16th Bavarian Reserve Regiment, in between fights, he painted landscapes in Flanders. When this former street artist and retired corporal was appointed chancellor of Germany,  there were internationally renowned artists in the country - the avant-garde and Expressionism. Such as Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee. The work of such artists was declared "degenerate art", and their pictures were taken out of the exhibition halls, and the artists themselves had to flee Germany. In Nazi Germany there was only one direction of painting - realism. 

Before the war, German artists diligently painted rural landscapes, German workers and peasants, naked Germans. Pornography in the Third Reich was banned, but there was an easy sensuality in classical painting style. 

With the start of the war, German painters, of course, began to paint battle scenes.  - because one of the first salvos of the new World War were volleys 280-mm guns.The German ship Schleswig-Holstein fired the first shots of World War II when she fired at the Polish base at Westerplatte in the early morning hours of 1 September 1939..  Submarines too were painted - the initial period of the war, German U-boats beat all records of the tonnage of ships sunk - 420 thousand tonnes in the first four months of the war, and 14,119,413 tons in the whole war! 

In one of the pictures we see a ship of the line " Bismarck "- a symbol of the German Kriegsmarine.  50,000 900 tons full displacement, 8 guns caliber 380 mm. To his credit - the British battle cruiser "Hood" (46 480 tons full displacement, 8 guns caliber 381 mm - the enemy of equal "weight category"). On May 27, 1941 "Bismarck" was destroyed in an unequal battle with the British fleet during the attempts to break into the vast Atlantic. 

In the  later paintings other combat arms - infantry, tanks, aircraft, artillery were fully represented. 

Of course, German artists painted just soldiers, and war. Mass executions, burning of villages, and other "exploits", which became a pretext for carrying out numerous trials after the war, was not a source of inspiration for German artists.

Most of the artists whose works are shown below, are long and well forgotten.

German U-Boat. 1941. Painting by Claus Bergen

Stalingrad. 1943. Painting by K. Bush

U-Boat returning from a trip. Painting by Claus Bergen von Feindfahrt Zurück

Submarine U-003. Claus Bergen

Waffen SS 1943. Will Tschech

Kameraden, 1940. Will Tschech

Engineers in Assault Boat May 10, 1940 by Mathias Padua. (Click here to see in large size)

A Messerschmitt 110 covers German storm troopers

German planes over England

The big German transport plane,"Focke-Wulf-200"

The Stuka Dive Bombers  (JU 87) attack

German motorised infantry. Hans Liska

Victory in an air battle

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German Military Paintings by HANS LISKA

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