Mimetic Violence and Sacred Performance in Charlotte Salomon’s Leben? oder Theatre?

Abstract Charlotte Salomon’s Leben? oder Theatre? , a collection of paintings arranged into a work of theatre, represents a semi-autobiographical response to the social and aesthetic crisis of German Jewry during the rise of the Nazi party. This article uses a theoretical background in mimesis, performance, and ritual to understand Salomon’s social and aesthetic intervention. Salomon uses structures of doubling and mimesis to emphasize the divergence of German and Jewish society. At the aesthetic level, she embraces Modernist art as an alternative to conservative fascist representational conventions. At the social level, she critiques the conformist character of the bourgeois German Jewish family, exposing its underlying patriarchal violence. Her own project seeks to reconstruct German Jewish society through the artist’s own creative performance of art and family history, constructing a ritual community in solitude.