We have called our collection of Hegemann drawings Frauen an der Spitze (Women in Charge) because female domination and male punishment is clearly one of the artist’s major preoccupations, an interesting response to a period of German history known on the one hand for social repression and on the other (especially in Berlin) for sexual decadence and experimentation.

We can only guess how these contradictions played out in the mind of a reasonably talented artist, who a couple of sources suggest was in psychotherapy in the late 1920s. The same sources point out that while spanking was still an acceptable punishment for recalcitrant children, spanking fetishism was considered a sexuality disorder that needed therapy. They go on to suggest that the psychologist he was seeing talked him into entrusting him with any drawings he had, persuading some of his spanking art friends to do the same. If there is any truth to the story, what were the motivations of the psychologist?