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Bertha Wegmann - Femme en train de coudre dans un intérieur (1891)
Bertha Wegmann - Nähende Frau (1891)

Karl Marx: But, the transformation — either into joint-stock companies and trusts, or into State-ownership — does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. In the joint-stock companies and trusts, this is obvious. And the modern State, again, is only the organization that bourgeois society takes on in order to support the external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against the encroachments as well of the workers as of individual capitalists. The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine — the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers — proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is, rather, brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State-ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution. This solution can only consist in the practical recognition of the social nature of the modern forces of production, and therefore in the harmonizing with the socialized character of the means of production. And this can only come about by society openly and directly taking possession of the productive forces which have outgrown all control, except that of society as a whole. wordsmith.social/protestation/…

Bertha Wegmann

Bertha Wegmann (1847-1926) est une portraitiste danoise d'origine suisse, première femme à occuper une chaire à l'Académie royale des beaux-arts du Danemark.

Lorsque Bertha Wegmann a cinq ans, sa famille déménage à Copenhague, où son père devient marchand. Amateur d'art, il consacre une grande partie de son temps libre à la peinture. Elle s'intéresse très tôt au dessin, mais ne reçoit aucune éducation formelle jusqu'à l'âge de dix-neuf ans, lorsqu'elle commence à prendre des leçons avec Frederik Ferdinand Helsted, Heinrich Buntzen et Frederik Christian Lund.

Deux ans plus tard, avec le soutien de ses parents, Wegmann s'installe à Munich, où elle vit jusqu'en 1881. Elle étudie d'abord avec le peintre d'histoire Wilhelm von Lindenschmit le Jeune, puis avec le peintre de genre Eduard Kurzbauer, mais elle n'est pas satisfaite d'apprendre dans une atmosphère d'atelier et décide d'étudier directement d'après nature.

Elle se lie d'amitié avec la peintre suédoise Jeanna Bauck, avec qui elle fait plusieurs voyages d'étude en Italie. En 1881, elles s'installent à Paris, où Wegmann expose dans plusieurs salons et reçoit une «mention honorable».

L'année suivante, elle retourne à Copenhague, où elle est déjà connue pour les œuvres qu'elle expose au palais de Charlottenborg depuis 1873. Un portrait de sa sœur reçoit la médaille Thorvaldsen en 1883.

Quatre ans plus tard, Wegmann devient la première femme à occuper un fauteuil à l'Académie royale du Danemark. De cette année-là à 1907, elle est membre du conseil d'administration de la « Tegne- og Kunstindustriskolen for Kvinder » (école industrielle de dessin et d'art pour les femmes).

Elle continue d'exposer largement et représente le Danemark à plusieurs expositions universelles, dont l'Exposition universelle de Chicago.

Wegmann meurt subitement alors qu'elle travaille dans son atelier.

Agathe Röstel - La brouette à jouets (non daté)
Agathe Röstel - The Toy Barrow (non daté)

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Always be on the alert against trotskyism, reformism and revisionism / Soyez toujours en alerte contre le trotskysme, le réformisme et le révisionnisme / Seid immer wachsam gegen Trotzkismus, Reformismus und Revisionismus

Cesare Beccaria: The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes…. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man. wordsmith.social/protestation/…

Karl Marx: We see then, that, apart from extremely elastic bounds, the nature of the exchange of commodities itself imposes no limit to the working-day, no limit to surplus-labour. The capitalist maintains his rights as a purchaser when he tries to make the working-day as long as possible, and to make, whenever possible, two working-days out of one. On the other hand, the peculiar nature of the commodity sold implies a limit to its consumption by the purchaser, and the labourer maintains his right as seller when he wishes to reduce the working-day to one of definite normal duration. There is here, therefore, an antinomy, right against right, both equally bearing the seal of the law of exchanges. Between equal rights force decides. Hence is it that in the history of capitalist production, the determination of what is a working-day, presents itself as the result of a struggle, a struggle between collective capital, i.e., the class of capitalists, and collective labour, i.e., the working-class. wordsmith.social/protestation/…

Friedrich Engels: It is to the capitalist's interest to make the working day as long as possible. The longer it is, the more surplus value it produces. The worker correctly feels that every hour of labour which he performs over and above the replacement of the wage is unjustly taken from him; he learns from bitter personal experience what it means to work excessive hours. The capitalist fights for his profit, the worker for his health, for a few hours of daily rest, to be able to engage in other human activities as well, besides working, sleeping and eating. It may be remarked in passing that it does not depend at all upon the good will of the individual capitalists whether they desire to embark on this struggle or not, since competition compels even the most philanthropic among us to join his colleagues and to make a working time as long as theirs the rule. wordsmith.social/protestation/…

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Che Guevara: Democracy cannot consist solely of elections that are nearly always fictitious and managed by rich landowners and professional politicians, but rather it lies in the right of the citizens to determine their own destiny. wordsmith.social/protestation/…

Stalin: Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics does not regard the process of development as a simple process of growth, where quantitative changes do not lead to qualitative changes, but as a development which passes from insignificant and imperceptible quantitative changes to open' fundamental changes' to qualitative changes; a development in which the qualitative changes occur not gradually, but rapidly and abruptly, taking the form of a leap from one state to another; they occur not accidentally but as the natural result of an accumulation of imperceptible and gradual quantitative changes. wordsmith.social/protestation/…

Stalin: Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics holds that internal contradictions are inherent in all things and phenomena of nature, for they all have their negative and positive sides, a past and a future, something dying away and something developing; and that the struggle between these opposites, the struggle between the old and the new, between that which is dying away and that which is being born, between that which is disappearing and that which is developing, constitutes the internal content of the process of development, the internal content of the transformation of quantitative changes into qualitative changes. The dialectical method therefore holds that the process of development from the lower to the higher takes place not as a harmonious unfolding of phenomena, but as a disclosure of the contradictions inherent in things and phenomena, as a "struggle" of opposite tendencies which operate on the basis of these contradictions. wordsmith.social/protestation/…

Stalin: It is easy to understand how immensely important is the extension of the principles of the dialectical method to the study of social life and the history of society, and how immensely important is the application of these principles to the history of society and to the practical activities of the party of the proletariat. If there are no isolated phenomena in the world, if all phenomena are interconnected and interdependent, then it is clear that every social system and every social movement in history must be evaluated not from the standpoint of "eternal justice" or some other preconceived idea, as is not infrequently done by historians, but from the standpoint of the conditions which gave rise to that system or that social movement and with which they are connected. The slave system would be senseless, stupid and unnatural under modern conditions. But under the conditions of a disintegrating primitive communal system, the slave system is a quite understandable and natural phenomenon, since it represents an advance on the primitive communal system. wordsmith.social/protestation/…

Stalin: Everything depends on the conditions, time and place. wordsmith.social/protestation/…

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Karl Marx: Our task is that of ruthless criticism, and much more against ostensible friends than against open enemies; and in maintaining this our position we gladly forego cheap democratic popularity. wordsmith.social/protestation/…

Gerhart Eisler: Since the moment for butchery had arrived, the Nazis seized the opportunity to do away with other adversaries of Hitler from the most diverse circles. Thus General von Schleicher and his wife, General von Bredow, and several leading Catholics were assassinated. Von Papen himself barely escaped a similar fate. Hitler had checked the danger of the 'second revolution.' Big business, the generals, and Hindenburg personally congratulated him. By moving swiftly and relentlessly against the Storm Troop leaders he had removed the possibility of a conflict between the Reichswehr and the Nazi private army, a conflict which might have been exploited by various other adversaries of the government. He had shown the stupid petty bourgeoisie, who had taken his demagogic promises seriously, who was master of Germany. wordsmith.social/protestation/…

Jonathan Swift: When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him. wordsmith.social/protestation/…

James Baldwin: I’m not anti-Semitic at all, but I am anti-Zionist. I don’t believe they have the right, after 3,000 years, to reclaim the land with western bombs and guns on biblical injunction. wordsmith.social/protestation/…

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John F. Kennedy: Palestine was hardly Britain’s to give away. wordsmith.social/protestation/…

Mao Zedong: Military action is a method used to attain a political goal. While military affairs and political affairs are not identical, it is impossible to isolate one from the other. wordsmith.social/protestation/…

Che Guevara: There are no borders in this fight to the death. We cannot remain indifferent to what happens anywhere in the world. A victory of any country over imperialism is a victory for us, just as the defeat of any nation is a defeat for all. wordsmith.social/protestation/…

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Enver Hoxha: By denigrating Stalin and the social system for which he fought and worked throughout his life, reaction and all the anti-communist scum wanted to destroy not only the greatest and most powerful base of socialism, the revolution was not conquered, Marxism-Leninism was not eliminated, and socialism was not snuffed out. wordsmith.social/protestation/…

George Habash: The enemy can destroy our cities and refugee camps, kill our women and children, leave no brick on top of another—but he can't kill our desire to fight back. wordsmith.social/protestation/…

Vincent van Gogh: Normality is a paved road: It's comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow on it. wordsmith.social/protestation/…

Otto von Bismarck: One day the great European War would come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans. wordsmith.social/protestation/…

Otto von Bismarck: The social insecurity of the worker is the real cause of their being a peril to the state. wordsmith.social/protestation/…

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Heinrich Lauenstein - Frères et sœurs dans le parc du château (1888)
Heinrich Lauenstein - Geschwister im Schlosspark (1888)

Heinrich Lauenstein

Heinrich Lauenstein (né le 28 septembre 1835 à Hüddessum, mort le 16 mai 1910 à Düsseldorf) est un peintre prussien.

Avant d'aller à l'académie des beaux-arts de Düsseldorf en 1859, Lauenstein est peintre décorateur. Il étudie ensuite auprès de Heinrich Mücke, Andreas Müller, Karl Müller, Karl Ferdinand Sohn et Rudolf Wiegmann. En juin 1863, il rejoint la classe de peinture d'histoire et de genre, devient l'élève d'Eduard Bendemann et à l'automne 1867 d'Ernst Deger. En 1864, il est nommé professeur assistant en classe élémentaire qu'il dirigera en 1881. En 1897, il est professeur de peinture d'histoire et religieuse à l'académie des beaux-arts de Düsseldorf ; il y a notamment pour élève Johann Georg Dreydorff.

Lauenstein est fortement influencé par les nazaréens de Düsseldorf. Il vient à la peinture religieuse et historique grâce à Ernst Deger qui établit une nouvelle génération dans ce genre. Lauenstein aide Andreas Müller pour les fresques du musée ouvert en 1867 au château de Sigmaringen, vingt-six portraits de peintres et sculpteurs du Moyen Âge. En outre, Lauenstein fait plusieurs retables pour les églises néo-gothiques, en particulier à Düsseldorf et dans la Rhénanie.

En plus des œuvres sacrées, Lauenstein est connu pour des portraits et des scènes d'enfants.

Otto von Bismarck: Not by speeches and votes of the majority are the great questions of the time decided — that was the error of 1848 and 1849 — but by iron and blood. wordsmith.social/protestation/…

Alexander Rossi - La jeune artiste (non daté)
Alexander Rossi - The Young Artist (non daté)
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