Who is Oskar Panizza in the title Dedication to Oskar Panizza of George Grosz's 1918 painting?

Answer 1

Oskar Panizza (1853-1921) was a German physician and avant-garde author of plays, poetry, fiction and essays. He is best known for his play Das Liebeskonzil (The Love Council: A Heavenly Tragedy in Five Acts), published by Schabelitz in Zurich in 1894. The play deals with the origin of syphilis in 1495 at the court of Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia). Panizza was subsequently charged and convicted on 93 counts of blasphemy. He was sentenced to twelve months in prison, the severest punishment meted out to any artist in Wilhelmine Germany. He later lived in Zurich and Paris before returning to Germany, spending the last seventeen years of his life in a sanatorium in Bayreuth.

For more information:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oskar_Panizza

www.newpaltz.edu/~brownp/panizza/OP-lifeandworks.htm

www.newpaltz.edu/~brownp/panizza

Peter D.G. Brown

SUNY New Paltz