Visiting an art fair in Cologne, Germany, a couple of weeks ago, I came across an artist of whose existence I had never been aware. He was Adalbert Trillhaase (1858-1936), a retired merchant and amateur painter who did his best work during the late 1920s. Normally he is classified as “naïve.” To me, however, he is anything but; rather, seeing him using crude forms and apparently poking deliberate fun at the world around him, I would call him an expressionist. Another hint pointing in the same direction is provided by the fact that he was close to the much better known Otto Dix, who at one point did a painting of Trillhaase and his family. If so, that would explain why the Nazis, classifying him as a “degenerate” artist, placed him under a so-called Malverbot (prohibition to paint). But this is a point the reader should judge for him- or herself.

The painting that struck me most carried the title, “A Meeting of the Court.” It shows four judges, each wearing a different expression but all of them men and all of them mustachioed, sitting at the bench. To the left is the scrivener, also a man, who appears be resting from his labors or fallen asleep. There is a male lawyer who has thrown his arm over the shoulder of a woman, presumably either a witness or the defendant. Judging by the number of judges present, the issue at hand must have been quite serious. Completing the painting are five women who form the audience.

Just what stage the proceedings have reached is by no means clear. The lawyer may be leading the woman towards the black volume lying on the table in the foreground, presumably a Bible, in order to make her swear on it. Or what we see may be a recess, or else the woman may already have been convicted. In that case her lawyer may be trying to console her. Or he may not.

Anyhow. The painting made me think, the best thing a work of art can do. First, judging by the way they are dressed, the ladies in the audience seem to be middle class. All five have ample bosoms; obviously the idea that they should starve themselves so as to achieve as slim a figure as possible has not yet occurred to them. Nor is there any reason why it should have. After all, this was the immediate aftermath of World War I. Inflation was gathering steam and many Germans were almost literally starving. Having enough to eat was a blessing, not a shame.

Next, the lawyer. Not only is he male—at that time, female lawyers were almost as rare as unicorns. But he is making the sort of gesture which, today, might cause him to be charged with sexual harassment. And four—four—men sitting in judgment of a single woman? Who has heard of such a thing?

Briefly, what the painting told me was that the world has changed. Follow a few of the changes which, judging purely by what we see, it has undergone:

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First, as I just said, in our day and age a court made up entirely of men, mustachioed men what is more, sitting in judgment over a woman would have been all but inconceivable. Except in places like Saudi Arabia, Iran, and some Israeli rabbinical court, of course. Long before the first judge would have opened his mouth for the first time, such a court would have been condemned for being male chauvinist, incapable of understanding women, oppressive of their rights, and generally unfair and unworthy.

Second, the scrivener would almost certainly have been a woman. A young one dressed very differently from the ladies we see. And instead of writing up the record by hand, as he seems to be doing, she would have used some kind of computer or other electronic gadget.

Third, the lawyer would as likely have been female as male.

Fourth, the ladies in the audience, besides being slimmer-looking, would be very unlikely to wear hats indoors. Interestingly enough, except for the fact that they are spectators what they are doing there is anything but clear. Almost certainly they have cleaning ladies to look after the household. Probably they do not hold paid jobs, or else they would hardly have leisure to attend the court. Yet they do not look as if they are oppressed or discriminated against in any way, do they? To me at any they look quite self-conscious, ready to take on anyone and anything.

What Trillhaase is providing us with, quite unintentionally of course, is a door into a different world that has long since passed away. Like the one in which my late grandmother, who was born in 1893, might have lived in while busy having one child after another (she ended up by having six). Was it worse than the one in which we live today? Or, perhaps, better? Who is to say?