A dense web of references to German culture and history is the basis for Anselm Kiefer’s vast artistic oeuvre. This photograph is one of a series entitled 'Heroische Sinnbilder (Heroic Symbols)', which show the artist posing in various indoor and outdoor locations during the summer and autumn of 1969. The series is particularly known for pictures in which Kiefer gives the Hitler salute. Here we see Kiefer lying barefoot on the floor of his Cologne studio, surrounded by pieces of scribbled-on paper and holding a large twig before a white canvas to invoke the German Romantic tradition. The image was seen as a provocative artistic gesture in the Federal Republic of the late 1960s, which was striving towards a self-critical national identity. After their appropriation by the Nazis two decades earlier, visual icons of German cultural tradition had by this time become taboo.