Unfortunately, the context is English:
He handed us a photograph of a man in peasant costume, with a face as completely “made-up” by an aggressive expression as Mussolini’s, standing in a defiant pose in front of some banners bearing Serbian inscriptions of a patriotic nature. “He was a very stern Bosnian patriotic man,” said Constantine; “see, these are the banners of his secret nationalist society. Es musste mit ihm immer trotzen sein, immer trotzen.”
Are there any changes that could be made to the German that would make it mean something relevant to the context?