About the Work
Between 1965 and 1967, working not on commission but of his own accord, Tübke produced 11 paintings, 15 watercolours, and some 65 drawings and studies on Nazi injustice. At the centre of the complex series “The Life Memories of Doctor of Law Schulze” is a fictitious judge with the common name Schulze. This figure represents the Nazi judicial officers who continued practising their professions after the war’s end in Western and Eastern Germany alike. The cycle was inspired particularly by the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials.
Thematically, this series—Tübke’s most important contemporary-historical work—was in line with the GDR ideology concerning Western Germany. Yet it also echoed the critical all-German remembrance climate. As an ‘allegory of injustice’ (Tübke), it applied equally to the circumstances in the GDR—and was officially condemned as a result.
The “Life Memories of Doctor of Law Schulze” series begins with the small-scale painting “Requiem” (Albertina, Dresden). That work depicts three corpses shrouded in black in a vacant prison yard. Tübke later returned to the motif in this almost monumental-looking brush drawing. A strip of wash along the upper edge alludes to the ‘black wall’ in Auschwitz that served as a backdrop for the executions of concentration camp inmates and others. Because it reduces the focus to the three figures, the drawing is more forceful than the painting.
