A similar word portrait was written for the scientist Ernst Haeckel, whose crow’s feet were limned rapturously as a “rune script.” “How beautiful and pronounced was the ear,” a George admirer declaimed as he detailed. Germans were accustomed to “head-based bodily hagiographies” of notable figures, such as Stefan George, perhaps the most described and photographed German poet. Schmölders, who lectures at Berlin’s Humboldt University. “No face bears more eloquent witness to the desire for and the impotence of physiognomic interpretation than this face,” says Ms. In turn, responses to Hitler’s countenance by both those repulsed and those entranced are set in the history of a longstanding German fascination with physiognomy, the practice of reading character in facial features. Instead of visual elements being used to illustrate a life, here the visual is the starting point.
Schmölders reverses the usual character of biography. Mining that imagery for Hitler’s Face: The Biography of an Image (University of Pennsylvania Press), Ms. Even later, when Hitler allowed Heinrich Hoffmann to become his personal lensman, the staged portraits - in dapper suit or lederhosen, uniform or trench coat - that appeared through the years hid as much as they revealed. He had forbidden all photography of himself at gatherings. In that era, says Claudia Schmölders, it was easier to hear Hitler speak than to see his photograph. “Wie sieht Hitler aus?” asked the German journal Simplicissimus in May 1923 “What does Hitler look like?” In answer it offered 12 caricatures, none of which resembled the Nazi leader. Yet during the rise and even the rule of Adolf Hitler, his face was something of a cipher. We think we know the face, among the most recognized in history.
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