Out of the Display Case:
Watercolour "§ 218" by Carl Marx

// Object Talk
Thu, 19 Jan 2022, 6 pm
Bauhaus Museum Dessau
Open Stage

The Bauhaus student and later painter Carl Marx chose § 218 as the subject for a watercolour in 1932. The history and the disputes about the legal regulation of a ban on abortion not only runs unbroken through German history from the founding of the German Reich in 1871 to the present day. It is also a fundamental question worldwide about the right of unborn life and the self-determination of women. When Carl Marx painted his watercolour in the 1930s, § 218 had taken on existential significance in the face of the first world economic crisis and mass unemployment in the provision for children and families.

This explosive topic found and still finds its way into many artistic and socially critical productions – then as now. On this evening, Werner Möller (Bauhaus Dessau Foundation) will talk about the work of the Dessau painter Carl Marx and also about the artist himself.