encouraged a cohesive outlook and style (Ibid. 11).
German Expressionism was prevalent in literature of the time, expressing conflict between generations, a conflict which dominated the cultural sphere (Joachimides). Expressionist writers which influenced the painters embraced views and attitudes tending toward the melancholy, fixation on death and feelings of hopelessness and alienation, yet also including rapturous affirmation of life and celebration of the earth and humanity. These influences resulted in paintings leaning toward the style of abstraction, intense color, and Primitivism (Ibid.). The expression of emotion was of primary importance in this work. Literature and the visual arts were more closely linked than they have been in any other period since that time. Expressionism represents a universal spiritual and psychological awakening of the young Germans of the early twentieth century. They launched a critical onslaught against the bourgeois order, the authority of the state, and the industrialization of the economy. Young people attacked the schools, the church and the military. They were angry at the contradictions of feudal aristocracy, overly-indulgent nationalism, and an irrational global mission of world power. Expressionism, therefore, was synonymous with criticism of political and cultural conditions in Germany (Ibid.).
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff founded Die Brncke in 1905 with several other artists, all of whom had originally gone to Dresden to study architecture. Die Brncke, which means "The Bridge," which was intended to signify a search for a new inward-searching type of art and a common quest for a new type of life. They wished to break away from the conventional notions of respectability and pursue a creative and intellectual freedom that Architecture did not permit (Uhr 11).
Tn 1906 Kirchner regarded himself as spokesman of Die Brncke. He fashioned a woodcut of t...