An Artist of The Frontline - The Works of Hans Liska

 HANS LISKA (1907 - 1983)

Austrian-born Hans Liska is one of the most well-known and prolific WWII Axis illustrators, who served with the German Armed Forces (Whermacht) during the war from 1940 to 1944.

In 1942 and 1943 German publishing house Carl Werner in Reichenbach, sponsored by Junkers Flugzeug und Motorenwerke AG, published 2 albums with Hans Liska's sketches and color illustrations "to please the frontline soldiers and the workers of the weapon factories" in Germany.

Liska convincingly demonstrates that he has an eye for the real war drama, with all its pain, suffering, desperation, hard work, endurance, sense of duty, and courage for yet one more push to the utmost, which all participants are likely to share, no matter under what colors they fought and died.

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Here are some photos of Liska in duty and also some of his scetches. 

More info, works etc about Hans Liska you`ll find at the end of this post.

At the frontline at Leningrad, October 1942

 

 

 

 

 

 

Info, photos and scetches taken from official Hans Liska website:

 https://www.hansliska.com

There you`ll find more about his life and several other of his works

The King in Thule - The Painting, The Poem and a Song

- The Painting -

- The Poem -

There was a king in Thule,
Was faithful till the grave,
To whom his mistress, dying,
A golden goblet gave.

Nought was to him more precious;
He drained it at every bout;
His eyes with tears ran over,
As oft as he drank thereout.

When came his time of dying,
The towns in his land he told,
Nought else to his heir denying
Except the goblet of gold.

He sat at the royal banquet
With his knights of high degree,
In the lofty hall of his fathers
In the castle by the sea.

There stood the old carouser,
And drank the last life-glow;
And hurled the hallowed goblet
Into the tide below.

He saw it plunging and filling,
And sinking deep in the sea:
Then fell his eyelids for ever,
And never more drank he!

 ...and a Song -

 

THE PAINTING:
Pierre Jean Van der Ouderaa - The King of Thule (1896)

THE POEM:
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - Der König in Thule (1774)

THE SONG:
Taken from film FAUST (1960)

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 SEE ALSO:

Sturm und Drang

Faust's Arcadian Elegy

The Italian Cantos of Ezra Pound - Faith, Heroism and Deathskull's Return!

 

 

 "...A skull lies bleaching in the desert sand
& SINGS
Tireless, strident, sings, & sings, & sings:
– Alamein! Alamein!
We shall return!
We shall return!"

By the end of the year [1944] he had written Cantos 72 and 73 in Italian ... Full of vigor and images, exalting his old friends ... Marinetti, the founder of the Futurist movement, who, true to himself and his “interventism,” had gone to fight in Russia. And Admiral Ubaldo degli Uberti, whose phrase chi muore oggi fa un affare – untranslatable: dying today is a good bet – sums up the state of mind of the loyal Italians as defeat inevitably approached. Idealism and heroism were by no means all on the side of the partisans. [Pound] was infected by a desperate fighting spirit and faith. It is hard these days to define that faith or that spirit; it no longer seems a component of the air one breathe

Mary de Rachewiltz - Discretions (1971) 

 

 "...Where the skull sings our soldiers
Will return, those banners will come in."

SEE ALSO:

Ezra Pound (1885 - 1972) 

The Rider From a Dream

 Aesthetics of War

The Kantele That Sang for Ahnenerbe

 

A documentary film about Finnish student, Yrjö von Grönhagen, who decides to leave University of Sorbonne and walk from Paris to Helsinki in the spring of 1935. On his way, in Germany, he meets Heinrich Himmler, who is attracted by a traditional Finnish instrument, kantele. Himmler employs Yrjö as researcher to the Ahnenerbe institute to find the Aryan roots from the runic singing culture of Finnish Carelia.

 Source : akicederberg.com/  

PS. Unfortunately, at the moment the documentary is nowhere to be found online in its entirety. Perhaps a search in torrent will work...

 

SEE ALSO:

Heinrich Himmler - The Decent One

 

The Other Side Speaks

 

"A Second World War historical documentary, following the story of French volunteers who signed up to fight for the Axis alliance. In a France, traumatised by such a rapid defeat, follow these youngsters in their unusual and very different journeys, which led them to volunteer for the Reich. Through previously unreleased interviews from some of the last survivors, relive their experiences, from the defeat of France in 1940 to the Waffen SS, from Resistance to the Charlemagne Division, from the maquis to the defense of Berlin..."

Storm at The House of Treason

 

Lo, I hear the fighters coming
Over hill and dale and plain.
With battle cry of ages
In a Rebel World again.

Who'd forge their swords to plow-shares.
Shall sweat in bitter yokes.
The free-born race and fearless
Must deal out battle strokes

Thus Spoke Ragnar Redbeard

 

Unrepentant Beauty - Lady Diana Mitford Speaks...

"She was the nearest thing to Botticelli's Venus that I have ever seen"

James Lees-Milne

An interview with Lady Diana Mitford-Mosley about her wedding with Oswald Mosley, meeting Adolf Hitler, her time in prison and more....

 

 

More info about Diana Mitford here:

Diana Mitford on Metapedia

Sir Oswald's Remarkable Lady