The Germans Have Gone Away

The Germans Have Gone Away (c. 1870-1871) belongs to Forain's early engagement with the Franco-Prussian War and its aftermath—the national trauma that shaped French political culture for the half-century preceding World War I. The title's mixture of relief and uncertainty—.Germans have gone, but what have they left?—captures the emotional complexity of the war's end: the occupiers' departure did not restore what their occupation had destroyed. Forain, who was born in 1852, was too young to have fought in the Franco-Prussian War, but the conflict's aftermath—the loss of Alsace-Lorraine, the Paris Commune, and the revanchist sentiment that shaped the Third Republic—profoundly influenced his generation. The painting likely depicts the scene after German troops withdrew from a French town or village—the destruction they left behind, the relief of the remaining civilians, and the uncertainty that the departure created. Forain's treatment of the wartime subject demonstrates his ability to find satirical and emotional significance in the same subject: the Germans' departure is simultaneously a relief and an indictment of the destruction that the occupation produced. The 1870-71 date places this during the war itself, when Forain was beginning to develop the observational method that would make him one of the most incisive commentators on modern French life.

Forain's Franco-Prussian War paintings influenced how the war's aftermath was represented in French art, documenting the destruction and uncertainty that the occupation produced. The paintings influenced later French artists who similarly engaged with the war's legacy, connecting national trauma to artistic expression. The Germans Have Gone Away influenced how the relationship between occupation and liberation was represented in French visual culture.

This painting matters because it captures the emotional complexity of the Franco-Prussian War's aftermath—the relief of liberation mixed with the uncertainty of what the occupation has left behind. Forain's title, with its mixture of relief and anxiety, articulates the emotional state of a nation that had been both defeated and resilient.