Der Teufel zeigt das Weib dem Volke (The Devil Presents Woman to the People)

Otto Greiner, Der Teufel zeigt das Weib dem Volke (The Devil Presents Woman to the People). 1898.

530 × 455 mm; 700 × 550 mm. Pen lithograph on China paper. Minor browning and defects at the margins, but a magnificent impression, splendidly and sharply inked, of one of the rarest and most sought-after prints of Symbolism.

The Devil and Woman: Otto Greiner’s powerful symbolism in the “Das Weib” cycle

At the heart of late nineteenth-century German Symbolism, few artists explored the sublime tensions between desire, sin, creation and destruction with as much intensity and technical mastery as Otto Greiner (Leipzig 1869 – Munich 1916). A painter and, above all, an exceptional lithographer, Greiner left an indelible mark on Symbolist printmaking through his precise, almost surgical line and a vision of the world steeped in myth, literature and fin-de-siècle unease. Of all his works, the “Das Weib” (Woman) cycle, made between 1896 and 1900, represents his most ambitious and personal project: the only graphic sequence he ever conceived and completed. “Das Weib”: a cycle devoted to the essence of womanhood. Comprising five prints, the cycle draws explicitly on the great graphic series of Max Klinger. Deeply influenced by Klinger, Greiner adopts the same Symbolist language: a narrative in images that combines classical myth, biblical allegory and contemporary social criticism. Its unifying theme is Woman, understood not simply as a figure but as a primordial, ambivalent force, capable of generating life and, at the same time, unleashing ruin. In an age marked by debate over the “woman question”, fear of decadence and an obsession with the femme fatale, Greiner does not merely celebrate or condemn: he questions. The third print in the cycle, Der Teufel zeigt das Weib dem Volke (The Devil Shows Woman to the People), is widely regarded as the masterpiece of the series and one of the high points of German Symbolist lithography. Der Teufel zeigt das Weib dem Volke: the triumph of desire and danger.

Made in 1898 using the federlithographie (pen lithography) technique on China paper, the work measures approximately 53 × 45.5 cm. The scene has an irresistible theatrical force: a grinning devil, dark and muscular, lifts up and presents to the people a naked young woman wearing nothing but elegant black silk stockings. Beneath them is a shouting crowd of men, their faces distorted by excitement, lust and a kind of collective frenzy. The image is striking in its profound ambiguity. The Devil does not hide the woman: he displays her. He does not possess her, but offers her as the ultimate object of desire, as a splendid, decisive weapon. The woman does not appear frightened or victimised: her body is perfect, seductive, almost statuesque. She is the instrument through which evil enters the world. This lithograph is closely connected to a literary scandal of the period: Oskar Panizza’s play “Das Liebeskonzil” (The Council of Love), a blasphemous, anticlerical work confiscated by the Bavarian censors. In Panizza’s text, God, Christ and the Virgin, bored in Heaven, decide to punish corrupt humanity by sending syphilis (the “French disease”) through sex. Greiner transforms this grotesque satire into an image of extraordinary symbolic force. Its many layers of interpretation. Religious and biblical symbolism: the work evokes original sin, but reverses it. Eve does not yield to the serpent: the Devil himself stages Woman as a universal temptation.

Social criticism and fin-de-siècle fear of sexuality: the shouting crowd represents ordinary man, enslaved by his instincts. The woman becomes a projection of male fears: a seductress, a bearer of disease and moral decline. Erotic power: despite the moralising tone, Greiner draws a female body of rare sensuality. The silk stockings accentuate her nudity, turning the image into a masterpiece of Symbolist eroticism. Woman’s ambivalence: as in many works of the period (from Moreau to Klimt, from Munch to Rops), she is at once creator and destroyer, victim and perpetrator, angel and demon. Greiner does not pass a single, clear-cut judgement: he shows the mechanism at work. The Devil laughs because he knows humanity will always fall into the same trap. Technique and graphic mastery. What makes “Der Teufel zeigt das Weib dem Volke” an absolute masterpiece is the extraordinary precision of its line. Every line is sharp, every shadow calculated.

Trained as a lithographer in Leipzig, Greiner here achieves a technical perfection that allows him to convey both the physicality of flesh and the grotesque horror of the faces in the crowd. The contrast between the woman’s ideal beauty and the men’s distorted ugliness creates an immensely powerful dramatic effect. Greiner today: an artist who remains relevant. More than 125 years after its creation, this work continues to disturb and fascinate. It speaks of desire, power and male projection onto the female figure, and of how sexuality can be used as an instrument of domination or ruin. These themes remain surprisingly modern, even as their contexts have changed. With “Das Weib”, and especially with this third print, Otto Greiner, a refined and visionary artist, gives us a masterpiece that reaches beyond Symbolism: an archetypal image of the powerful and irrepressibly ambivalent nature of human desire. No one who looks at “Der Teufel zeigt das Weib dem Volke” can remain indifferent. And you: do you laugh with the Devil … or recognise yourself, with a shiver, among the shouting crowd?