Demented Soldier (Irrer Soldat)

1914

Volunteers at the outbreak of war, but is turned down

When war breaks out in 1914 Heckel volunteers for service in Berlin and undergoes a brief training, but the army ultimately rejects him as too old.

1914

An exhibition in Cologne

Heckel takes part in an art exhibition in Cologne.

1915

Meetings with Max Beckmann and James Ensor

In Flanders Heckel finds himself in the same hospital train as Max Beckmann, at Roeselare, and he befriends James Ensor, who invites him into his house and studio.

1915

Marries Milda Frida Georgi (“Siddi”)

Heckel marries Milda Frida Georgi, known as “Siddi”.

1915

A medical orderly on a hospital train in Flanders

In March 1915 Heckel joins a Red Cross hospital train in Flanders as a medical orderly (other accounts say he went to the front as an orderly as soon as the war began); the train is stationed in Roeselare, Ostend and Ghent. The platoon was assembled by Walter Kaesbach, a curator at the National Gallery in Berlin, and included the painters Max Kaus, Otto Herbig and Anton Kerschbaumer and the poet Ernst Morwitz.

May 1915 – November 1918

The Ostend hospital: an artists’ colony

From May 1915 until the end of the war in November 1918 Heckel serves in the Ostend emergency hospital, housed in the railway station and home to a true artists’ colony: the orderlies paint, make woodcuts, read and discuss literature and poetry, and adorn the building with murals and window decorations. As a painter, he is most deeply impressed by the Flemish landscape and the North Sea, especially sunlight penetrating the unusual cloud formations.