Amiable Octogenarians

Eighty-one is the age of President Paul von Hindenburg of Germany; and famed Max Liebermann, President of the Prussian Academy of the Arts is also 81.

Last week President Liebermann told correspondents what he thinks of President von Hindenburg, whose portrait he recently painted:

"I met him for the first time at a dinner he gave "soon after his election. Somebody asked me that evening what I thought of Hindenburg. 'I didn't vote for him,' I replied, 'but I find he is a really great man.'*

"He's an awfully clever fellow, besides being extremely goodhearted. He is so thoughtful, too. One rather chilly day as I came to the executive palace to work on his portrait I was pleasantly surprised to find the room heated. His servant then said to me, 'Oh, that was done at the President's personal order. He thought you might find it disagreeable to work in a cold room.'

"Another time he asked me when he should sit for me next. I named a date. He consulted his note book, in which every fifteen minutes of his day are accounted for, and observed that on that day he had really intended to go out to the Presidential hunting lodge in the Schorf meadow for a holiday. Of course I offered to change the date, but he insisted on keeping the appointment. He would not for anything in the world have had his pleasure interfere with my convenience. Imagine the Emperor being so considerate!"

To top off the interview Painter Max was asked to state the secret of his success. Replied he with a twinkle: "Thrashings. In my youth my father thrashed me and later the critics. The best thing that ever happened to me was that I got so many hidings. Art must be the expression of personal experience."

Since this statement still seemed a trifle cryptic, smart reporters decided to look in their office encyclopaedia and see what Old Max had painted. Persons of superior culture know that he chose to paint subjects lashed and gored by Fate--the poor, the orphaned, the aged and desolate. For years Max Liebermann haunted the orphanages, asylums and old people's homes of Amsterdam and later the great German cities. A decade passed while critics flayed his canvases. Then slowly it was realized that Liebermann was doing for German art what Millet had done for French. Today Old Max may be labeled and pigeonholed as the "German Millet," an essentially bygone master, whom screeching modernist-art has left behind. Millet painted The Angelus, and The Gleaners. Old Max Liebermann has done Women Plucking Geese, An Asylum for Old Men, The Flax Spinners--and recently The Polo Team.

*Shrewd Max Liebermann did not say whether he voted at all. The other candidates (TIME, April 27, 1925) were: Ex-Chancellor Wilhelm Marx; Stevedore Herr Ernst Thaelmann.