Full Name: Fuchs, Eduard
Other Names:
- Eduard Fuchs
Gender: male
Date Born: 1870
Date Died: 1940
Place Born: Göppingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
Place Died: Paris, Île-de-France, France
Home Country/ies: Germany
Subject Area(s): French (culture or style) and painting (visual works)
Career(s): activists and art collectors
Overview
Political activist, cultural historian and Daumier scholar; art collector. Fuchs’ father was a shopkeeper. Early on the younger Fuchs developed socialist and Marxist political convictions. In 1886 he joined the outlawed political party Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei (the precursor of the modern SPD, Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands). Fuchs received a doctor of law degree and practiced as an attorney. In 1892 he became editor-in-chief of the satiric weekly Süddeutscher Postillon and later co-editor of the Leipziger Volkszeitung. His inflammatory articles in newspapers–one accusing the Kaiser of being a mass murder–resulted in periodic jail sentences. During his periods of confinement, Fuchs wrote various social histories utilizing images as one of his primary sources. The first of these was his Karikatur der europäischen Völker (Caricatures of European Peoples), 1901. He moved to Berlin that same year were he edited the socialist newspaper Vorwärts. The following year he began his magnum opus, an examination of moral practice, Sittengeschichte, eventually running to six volumes by 1912. While engaged in this series, he followed up his interest in caricatures with one devoted to the representation of women, Die Frau in der Karikatur, 1905 (3 vols). Another book documenting the stereotypical representations of Jews appeared in 1912. Fuchs traveled with the artist Max Slevogt to Egypt in 1914, shortly before the outbreak of World War I. He was a pacificist during the War. Lenin’s government put him in charge of prisoner exchange with Germany after the war; he was among the leaders of the German Comintern in Berlin in 1919. His interest in societal concerns in caricature led to a research interest in Daumier. Beginning in 1920, Fuchs published a catalogue raisonné on the artist in three volumes. He resigned from the party in 1929, following the expulsion of several stalwarts. At Hitler’s ascension to power in Germany in 1933, Fuchs moved to France. Fuchs was a Marxist and his interpretation of culture conforms to that theory.
Selected Bibliography
Illustrierte Sittengeschichte vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart. (3 vols.) Munich: Langen, 1909-1912; Die Karikatur der europäischen Völker vom Altertum bis zur Neuzeit. Berlin: Hofmann, 1901; Honoré Daumier: Lithographien. 3 vols. Munich: A. Langen, 1920-22; Der Maler Daumier, no. 283, Munich: Langen, 1930.
Sources
Benjamin, Walter. “Eduard Fuchs, der Sammler und der Historiker.” Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung 6 (1937): 346-381, English, “Eduard Fuchs: Collector and Historian.” Knut Tarnowski, translator. New German Critique, no. 5. (Spring 1975): 27-58; Huonker, Thomas. Revolution, Moral und Kunst: Eduard Fuchs, Leben und Werk. Zürich: Limmat-Verlag, 1985; Biographical Dictionary of the Comintern. 2nd ed. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1986, p. 130.