I moved the following May 1914 [sic; 1913] to Berlin. . . . The intense flamelike quality of life there—for things were of course up on their toes and ready to kick off. Such spick and spanness in the order of life I had never witnessed anywhere—not merely because the military life provided the key and clue to everything then—but this sense of order flowed over into common life—and such cleanliness prevailed as hardly to believe—the pavements shining like enamel leather.

I had never felt such a sense of voluptuous tension in the air anywhere. It was all so warm to my long chilled New England nature and provided the sense of home always so needed in my life . . .

—Marsden Hartley, recalling Berlin, from "Somehow a Past," his draft autobiography, 1933

Hartley went to Europe to expand his art horizons with the financial support of his New York dealer and friend, gallery director Alfred Stieglitz. Hartley was briefly in Paris, where he met Gertrude Stein and through her, Pablo Picasso. His closest friends were two young Germans who embraced a joie de vivre and enchanted Hartley—they were Arnold Rönnebeck, a sculptor, and his young cousin, Karl von Freyburg, a member of Kaiser Wilhelm's imperial cavalry. Before long, Hartley tired of Paris and followed Rönnebeck to his family home in Berlin, where the American found that the modern German way of life, under the sway of the Kaiser's splendid and spirited military machine, suited him perfectly. Hartley lived in the imperial German capital from May 1913 to December 1915, a stay that extended well into the period of war in Europe.

The adoration of military men quickly came to occupy the center of Hartley's life and art in Berlin. His long-time American friend Lee Simonson (1888-1967) drew this cartoon of Hartley, showing just how thoroughly German and marshal in spirit he had become. "Of course the military system is accountable for many things, and to some this military element is objectionable," Hartley wrote to American painter Rockwell Kent, "but it stimulates my child's love for the public spectacle—and such wonderful specimens of health these men are—thousands, all so blond and radiant." Hartley's fascination with Germany had little or nothing to do with politics and nationhood and everything to do with sensual delights.

"Berlin is color contrast," Hartley wrote to Alfred Stieglitz of his first impressions of the city in 1913, "owing chiefly of course to the military design which dominates it. From these sensations I hope to produce something in time." In the military regalia and symbols that were everywhere around him, Hartley found the perfect melding of formal abstraction and meaning. In graphic color patterns he re-created the visual sensations of modern military parades while also evoking their heroic tradition in dynamic compositions of simple bold stripes and checkerboard patterns that recall pennants and medals.

Once Germany declared war on France and Russia in August 1914, the character of Hartley's German designs changed, and the proud symbols of the German military had new somber associations for him. The young German soldiers were, in Hartley's view, valiant in their sense of duty and victims of the world's competing imperialist forces. "It is truly heartrending to see Germany's marvelous youth going off to a horrible death," Hartley wrote to Alfred Stieglitz. "This has been the dreadful vision—seeing these thousands simply walk out of homes leaving wives and children and all—never to return—and going too with a real ecstasy . . . one shall not forget these handsome faces going by—waving hands, throwing kisses and shouting auf Wiedersehen. Now already many are silent and will remain so forever—and many are coming back broken wickedly. All this in our modern day!" Hartley honored these young German men with a visionary series on "Himmel" and "Holle," the heaven and hell that are the soldier's fate: to live nobly and die valiantly.

My dear Stieglitz—Doubtless you may have heard . . . of that great grief I have—the loss of one of the dearest friends I ever had—Lieut. V. Freyburg. . . . If there was ever a true representative of all that is lovely and splendid in the German soul and character it was this fellow. At the age of 24, perfectly equipped for a life of joy and strength and beauty.

—Marsden Hartley, in a letter to Alfred Stieglitz, March 15, 1915.

The war in Europe became suddenly deeply personal for Hartley. On October 7, 1914, Hartley's adored friend, Lieutenant Karl von Freyburg, was killed in France. Hartley loved von Freyburg—perhaps they even had a physical love relationship. He certainly loved the ideal of youth and beauty that von Freyburg embodied. Rönnebeck gave Hartley the shoulder straps from von Freyburg's uniform and the Iron Cross that he had been awarded for bravery. Over the next months, Hartley considered the horrors of war through the wasteful death of this one beautiful young German man. His intense grief fed an equally intense surge of creativity as he obsessively worked the elements of the young cavalryman's uniform into a series of deeply moving laments.

Found among Hartley's personal papers, this photograph likely shows Karl von Freyburg.

Possibly the first of what would be a series of war time elegies is the canvas Hartley titled Portrait of a German Officer. The complex arrangement of symbols might refer generally to any German cavalryman, but the painting includes elements that identify von Freyburg specifically. We see the Iron Cross, details of a uniform, a helmet, and a cavalryman's spur. Von Freyburg's initials are inscribed on a kind a breast plate. There are still undecipherable numerological symbols in the painting, but the number 24 relates to von Freyburg's age at his death. This emblematic portrait is constructed like an ancient Germanic armorial or heraldic device on a field of black, the color of mourning.

Hartley's close friend from Berlin, Arnold Rönnebeck, once wrote that he had seen Hartley at work on the Portrait of a German Officer in the winter of 1914-15. He explained the obscure motifs:

There is a very personal and emotional connection between this picture and myself, because I am partly symbolized in it. I am one half of the Prussian Officer. The other half is a cousin of mine. . . Rather dominating is the Iron Cross. My cousin was killed in action in France on the 24th of October, 1914 (24). He was an active officer in the 4th regiment of the Kaiser's guards (center) 4 on blue ground (of shoulder straps). He received the Iron Cross a day before his death. Next to the 4 is an E and I am certain that it. . . stands for Queen Elisabeth of Greece or the patroness of the third regiment of the grand-grenadiers in which I then served. The E appears again in the lower middle right on my "full-dress epaulettes" and the long tassels next to 24 represent the heavy silver-wire tassels I wore as an aide-de-camp in the guards. In the lower left corner we distinguish the initials K.V.F. My cousin's name was Karl Von Freyburg. The triangle symbolized the friendship and the understanding between three men: Hartley, Karl V. Freyburg and myself.

—Arnold Rönnebeck, in a letter to collector Duncan Phillips, after 1943.

Hartley mysteriously called the painting in SAM's collection simply Painting Number 49, Berlin—his numbered canvases had more to do with numerology than with a chronological or programmatic sequencing of the German paintings. In the painting are many of the same elements that appear in Portrait of a German Officer, but they have been arranged in a composition that is now cruciform. The helmet is suspended at upper center above the Iron Cross, and above the helmet is a halo-like sunburst surrounding a thorny red crownlike ball. The composition is richly colored a blood red. The whole is set against a field of dazzling silver white—this is the only canvas in Hartley's series of elegies to von Freyburg that has a white and not a black background. Possibly this canvas has its basis in a dream vision that Hartley said he had wherein von Freyburg appeared to him in an aura of brilliant white light wearing a soldier's uniform, but one purged of all military significance, a uniform of white.

On May 7, 1915, Americans witnessed the worst act of terrorism that the modern world had ever known: the sinking of the British luxury liner the Lusitania by a terrifying new weapon, a torpedo from a German submarine. The Lusitania had been en route from New York to Liverpool with some 2,500 passengers and crew on board, and it was hit without warning off the coast of Ireland. The victims were noncombatants-men, women, and children—and 127 of them were Americans. In the aftershock of the tragedy, many Americans immediately pushed for entering the war against Germany, while many others wanted nothing at all to do with further violence. In between these two extremes lay the majority of Americans, who, as one contemporary historian has described them, "felt shock and anger which they wished to express as loudly as possible so long as it did not lead to war."

There were important reasons why the American flag was a potent symbol of solidarity during the increasingly tense months following the sinking of the Lusitania. The United States was then, as now, a nation of immigrants, and it was difficult for many to harbor resentment of their German-born countrymen. Also in the air was a very real fear that war in Europe would tear America apart at home, as national allegiances among immigrant groups were tested. To a diverse population the American flag was a visible reminder of its shared identity.

Flag waving became more fervent through the early spring of 1916 as the country faced the first anniversary of the sinking of the Lusitania, still with no restitution for lives lost. Adding to the overwhelming frustration of a population whose patience with Germany was wearing thin was the increasing fear that such an act would surely occur again if Germany could not be made to acknowledge its murderous act and swear off any further acts of aggression against noncombatants on the seas. Americans believed they could not be safe at sea, and with that feeling resentment toward Germany grew ever stronger and more public. So volatile was the atmosphere in New York on the eve of the first anniversary of the Lusitania tragedy that nervous officials cancelled the long-planned memorial service for the ship's victims that was to be held at New York's Carnegie Hall on the night of May 7, 1916.

Flag waving became more fervent through the early spring of 1916 as the country faced the first anniversary of the sinking of the Lusitania, still with no restitution for lives lost. Adding to the overwhelming frustration of a population whose patience with Germany was wearing thin was the increasing fear that such an act would surely occur again if Germany could not be made to acknowledge its murderous act and swear off any further acts of aggression against noncombatants on the seas. Americans believed they could not be safe at sea, and with that feeling resentment toward Germany grew ever stronger and more public. So volatile was the atmosphere in New York on the eve of the first anniversary of the Lusitania tragedy that nervous officials cancelled the long-planned memorial service for the ship's victims that was to be held at New York's Carnegie Hall on the night of May 7, 1916.

Preparedness—and specifically Preparedness Day, set for New York on May 14, 1916—was President Woodrow Wilson's plan to calm fears and defuse anger as the anniversary of the Lusitania sinking approached. He fired up citizen soldiers with the idea of preparedness—with the idea that all would prepare for any assault on their home turf, for the U.S. would not engage Germany unless Germany attacked first. Even in a city famous for parades, the New York Preparedness Day Parade surely must stand as possibly the largest ever mounted there. More than 137,000 people marched—laborers, businessmen, teachers, mothers, engineers. (We see the engineers here, with Thomas Edison marching at the center.) The Preparedness Day parade lasted almost thirteen hours. For all the diversity of interests represented among the marchers, there was to be no sign of individual or group identity shown; official regulations stipulated that, "there will be no display of banners and no advertisements of any sort carried—only the American flag." This was a show of unity, and with nearly 140,000 marchers and well more than a million on-lookers compressed into one stretch of Fifth Avenue, there was understandable fear of what might happen with even the slightest provocation.

The photographer and art impresario Alfred Stieglitz probably watched the Preparedness Day Parade from his place on the top floor of the unremarkable commercial building that was 291 Fifth Avenue. Here were the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession, as Stieglitz had named his enterprise, but the gallery came to be known best simply by its address, 291. Stieglitz would have had a great view of the Preparedness Day event—his gallery was located right above parade central, on Fifth Avenue between Thirtieth and Thirty-first Streets, just three blocks south of the Waldorf-Astoria hotel, the American flag-draped entrance of which was painted by Child Hassam at this same time.

In what has to be one of the worst cases of timing for any artist in history, Stieglitz had on view at his gallery, 291, from April 4 through May 22—running concurrently with the world observance of the anniversary of the Lusitania tragedy and the Preparedness Day Parade—an exhibition of the new German paintings by his friend Marsden Hartley, who was just back in New York from his two-year sojourn in Berlin.

Hartley's German paintings were obscure. These abstractions represented Hartley's private visual language. Realizing that his art was not welcome in the United States in 1916 as anti-German sentiment was building, and that he was forced by social pressures to hide the joy of life and joy of the love that had inspired these tributes to a fallen German officer, Hartley decided to do the expedient thing and walk away from them: he chose not to make any personal association with them, even though they had been inspired by a deeply held personal love and loss. His catalogue introduction for the show at 291 gallery offered this matter-of-fact statement about the paintings on view—a statement that denied any hidden meaning within the compositions:

The Germanic group is but a part of a series which I had contemplated of movements in various areas of war activity. . . . The forms are only those which I have observed casually from day to day. There is no hidden symbolism whatsoever in them; there is no slight intention of that anywhere. Things under observation, just pictures of any day, any hour. I have expressed only what I have seen. They are merely consultation of the eye. . . my notion of the purely pictural.