the life and works of sascha schneider - ETD - Louisiana State ...

Schneider began his work with May by creating images to fit with May’s Middle Eastern
odysseys. By reading travelogues, Schneider felt he was better able to obtain a sense of
the places he was to depict. In a letter to May he wrote, “I have now read very interesting
journeys through the desert, Kurdistan, Baghdad, Istambul, and the Balkan gorges. My
head is crammed with stuff, and there is a fabulous delight in the works.” 45
One of the
more popular works depicting the Orient was Durchs wilde Kurdistan (1892) [Fig. 14]; a
novel detailing the religious conflicts between Muslims and Christians in Kurdistan. The
figure on the cover is nude, typical of Schneider’s work, with his back turned to the
viewer. The figure is pulling back a curtain of thorny vines to step foot into the forested
land. In the foreground of the greenery is a cross with radiating light. Schneider depicts
the male figure as he most always does, in the classical sense, and incorporates familiar
and symbolic Christian overtones since they fit with May’s story.
In 1892, May wrote another Middle Eastern fantasy novel titled Vom Bagdad
nach Stambul. For this novel May touches upon the issue of death, as he details a
pilgrimage of those who are carrying the remains of their loved ones to the Shiite shrine.
A hollow-eyed nude figure stands with his hands clasped in prayer while the other nude
male buries his hands in his face. Above the two men are skull-faced crows, birds that
symbolize death. The novel touches upon the issues of illness and plague that were fresh
in the minds of many Europeans, and Schneider’s images play off of the fear and
grotesque nature that is inherent in diseases such as tuberculosis, cholera, typhoid, and
others to which so many lost their lives [Fig. 15].
45 Range, Zwischen, 68.
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