The Martyrdom, plate four from Die Hölle

The single woman tortured in this image can be none other than one of the cofounders of the German Communist Party, Rosa Luxemburg. She was murdered in January 1919 by rightwing vigilantes, groups acting with the support of the ruling liberal party. This suppression of the Left highlighted the fundamental contradiction of the Weimar Republic: though it was a democracy, it began its history with the use of undemocratic, extralegal means. The presence of the bourgeois man along with other social types makes it clear that Max Beckmann saw this as an affair that encompassed society as a whole.