Mary LeGierse

Breker�s Army and The Fate of the Individual within the Authoritarian State

Breker’s Army embodies the kind of “cultural exaltation” Herbert Marcuse denounces because it demands “that the individual’s happiness [. . .] disappear completely in the greatness of the folk” (129). One of the statue’s distinctive features is its lack of facial characteristics and expression. By extenuating the contours of the muscles in the legs and arms, Breker creates a figure proudly demonstrating its physical strength. Although this demonstration of strength and fitness testifies to a personal effort and commitment to a disciplined way of life, the statue’s facial expression appears ignorant or oblivious of the condition of its body; there is a disconnect between the face and the rest of the figure. Ultimately, the readiness to engage in combat present in the body overshadows the personality of the face and thus the identity of the subject.

This statue’s valorization of the combat-ready man symbolizes the nature of humanity and society advocated by such writers as Ernst Jünger. Although Breker’s monument and Jünger’s philosophy mark “[the beginning] of the self-abolition of affirmative culture,” Marcuse argues that this new system does not solve societal problems and inequalities present in the earlier bourgeois period, but merely transfers oppression from one conceptual framework into another. (124) While the bourgeois discourse on the soul tolerated sensual pleasure and ideas about utopia chiefly in the realm of art, i.e. within a context outside of the reality of everyday life, the period marked by “Total Mobilization” involves the employment of art in order to solidify the myth of collectivity within the context of “race, folk, blood, [or] soil.” (125) Although these frameworks may appear contradictory at first glance, they both serve a “social order to which the individual is [. . .] completely sacrificed” (129). Both restrict individuals by advocating ways of life deemed essential to the welfare of the state, community, or economic structure.

Individuals in the bourgeois system are only permitted freedom in an abstract context and must “rediscover themselves through a leap into a totally other world.” (99) Within the “heroic cult of the state,” this leap into a totally other world in reinserted into the realm of everyday life for political purposes. (129) Marcuse comments: “The festivals and celebrations of the authoritarian state, its parades, its physiognomy, and the speeches of its leaders are all addressed to the soul.” (127) Positioning the soul as the recipient of these celebrations exposes the fact that they “[are] not oriented toward critical knowledge of truth” (112). In the hands of the authoritarian state, celebrations encourage individuals to proclaim their membership in a collectivity and to confirm their willingness to preserve it at any cost. Breker’s soldier manifests the state ideals of “technical and military perfection” (129) through its articulation of of physical fitness.

The sword held by the figure in Army takes on a double meaning in light of Marcuse’s assessment of the power dynamics that dominate life in the authoritarian state. While the sword seems to impart agency onto the figure because it reveals that the figure is able to defend himself, his community, his ideals, it also signifies the figure’s (and the living subject’s in society to whom it refers) dependence on the state’s approval of the assertion of agency in combat. Marcuse points out that this dependence on the will of the state, manifested through art and spectacle, undermines the individual’s ability to live reasonably. The authoritarian state acts in its own interest, and any kind of communal atmosphere it creates for the individual functions to facilitate the attainment of its goals of state security (128).

Due to the state’s placement of its ends above the personal welfare of the citizens, the sword held in the hand of the statue’s figure emerges as a weapon bearing the potential for self-mutilation and self-destruction. I interpret the sword’s position as slightly tilted towards the figure a metaphor for the possibility of injury or death the individual caught up in the frenzy of “Total Mobilization” might willingly cause himself, although Breker probably did not intend for the weapon to be interpreted in this manner. Marcuse’s conceptualization of the employment of propaganda seeks to inform the reader that any individual who harms himself by participating in the wars of the state in order to safeguard a collectivity to which he believes he belongs is actually carrying out the work of a regime uninterested in his safety and identity. In this way, Breker’s piece can be understood as both a glorification of war for the sake of a “race, folk, blood, or soil” and as well as an example of the “[self-]destruction [of the individual] [framed] as an aesthetic pleasure.” (Benjamin, “Epilogue: The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” 242)