The great painter of historical panoramas created a four-part work on the 1871 Paris Commune: The Army Restores Peace and Order…. Already in its title the painting is provocative. It represents one of the outstanding works of the Leipzig school’s repeatedly appointed rector—an indulged figure of the GDR art scene, but as rector, also heavily criticized. The painting embodies Bernhard Heisig’s entire ars poetica: as he himself formulated, he could only truly paint well with anger and about anger. Unlike his contemporary Werner Tübke, the grand master of battle scenes, whose art was marked by refined elegance, Heisig found spiritual kinship rather with Otto Dix and Max Beckmann, representatives of Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity). His artistic vision was also close to Lovis Corinth and Adolph Menzel. Heisig avoided entirely the avant-garde movements of the second half of the 20th century, continuing instead with passionate devotion the traditions of 19th-century German history painting. The Paris Commune proved to be a fortunate subject, since its 19th-century character provided the artist with an opportunity to display the full breadth of his painterly skills. Heisig’s works consistently reflect the adversities of his life, rooted in his dual role as both soldier in Nazi Germany and later intellectual in socialist East Germany. The Paris Commune painting also confronts this dilemma: the crowd, the bloodshed, the violence, and the tragic presence of women amid the chaos of war are not celebrations of revolution. The trauma of war, coupled with the antifascist expectations of the GDR’s social system, pushed the politically burdened artist into making a stand. Yet Heisig could not celebrate the Commune according to the socialist demand; instead, he sought to reveal its Janus-faced nature rather than glorify the cult of destruction. He first read Prosper-Olivier Lissagaray’s Histoire de la Commune de 1871 in 1956, and soon after produced his first works in response. These were not official commissions, but rather efforts to come to terms with his own life. Heisig even asked himself why no expressive paintings of the Paris Commune had emerged, comparable to David’s Death of Marat in relation to the French Revolution. We do know that Édouard Manet, a committed republican, painted a watercolor titled Barricades—today in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest—which reflects a very different patriotism than Heisig’s bitter war painting. His 1962 work Communards bore the inscription “Vous êtes travailleurs aussi” (“You are workers too”). This act already pointed to the lengthy preparation and inner struggle that culminated in the 1978 painting. In fact, the Commune paintings must be regarded as central works within Heisig’s oeuvre. At the 1971 Party Congress, Boris Ponomarev once again proclaimed the Moscow socialist value system the heir of the Paris Commune. In this light, Heisig’s adaptation could easily have been interpreted as decadent and dangerous.