The Family, plate eleven from Die Hölle

The last image of Hell depicts Max Beckmann, his grandmother, and his son, Peter, ending the series on a note of equivocation. Peter wears a helmet and smiles gleefully as he plays with toy grenades, while Beckmann’s grandmother sits passively. The artist himself is framed by the Christian image of the cross in the window and also points to heaven, but in an unclear sign of either blame or submission to fate. The clarity of the form of the image dissolves in the confusion of the iconographic message. This encapsulates Beckmann’s view of German society in this moment of postwar disaster.