Glass! Love!! Perpetual Motion!!! A Paul Scheerbart Reader 9780226203003, 022620300X

Citation preview

Edited by

Josiah McElheny and Christine Burgin

Christine Burgin University of Chicago Press

Frontispiece: Josiah McElheny, Scheerbart Hand-Colors Taut’s Glass House, 2014. Drawing with retouching pencil on silver gelatin photograph, 20 × 16 inches.

Contents Scheerbart, The Unknowable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Josiah McElheny and Christine Burgin

The Crystal Vision of Paul Scheerbart: A Brief Biography . . . . . . . 11 Christopher Turner

I GLASS ARCHITECTURE , 1914 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Paul Scheerbart | Translated by James Palmes Illustrated by Josiah McElheny

Glass Architecture

lass Houses: Bruno Taut’s Glass Palace at the Cologne Werkbund Exhibition , 1914. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 G

Paul Scheerbart | Translated by Anne Posten

Glass House: Cologne Werkbund Exhibition , 1914 . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 Bruno Taut | Translated by Anne Posten

“Kaleidoscope-Architecture”: Scheerbart, Taut, and the Glass House . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 Noam M. Elcott

Glass Architecture, 1921. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 Bruno Taut | Translated by Anne Posten

Fragments of Utopia: Paul Scheerbart and Bruno Taut . . . . . . . . . 123 Rosemarie Haag Bletter

Glass House Letters, 1920 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 Paul Scheerbart | Translated by Anne Posten and Laura Lindgren Selected and introduced by Bruno Taut

Untimely Meditations and Other Modernisms: On the Glass-Dream Visions of Bruno Taut and Paul Scheerbart Hollyamber Kennedy

. .. . ..

145

II LOVE (AND OTHER FICTIONS)

A Strange Bird: Paul Scheerbart, or The Eccentricities of a Nightingale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 Gary Indiana

Selected Short Stories, 1897–1912

Paul Scheerbart | Translated by Susan Bernofsky and Anne Posten Illustrated by Paul Scheerbart

A Trial in the Year 1901: A Novelette of the Future . . . . . . . . . 163 The Colored Moons: A Cosmosophical Scherzo . . . . . . . . . . . 166 The Love of Souls: A Spiritualistic Scene from a Novel . . . . . . 173 Atlas, the Comfortable: A Myth of Humanity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176 The Magnetic Mirror . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180 Transportable Cities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 The Glass Theater . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 An Ornament Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 The Silent Dance of Courtly Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 The Safe: A Marriage Novelette. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196 At the Glass Exhibition in Peking: The Old Baron’s Diary Entries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200

III A DREAM OF PERPETUAL MOTION Perpetual Motion: The Story of an Invention

, 1910 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206

Paul Scheerbart | Translated by Susan Bernofsky Illustrated by Paul Scheerbart and Josiah McElheny

Perpetual Motion: A Summary, 1910 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254 Paul Scheerbart

6

The Invention: A Cinematic Tale

.. .. .. . .. .. .. .. .. . .. .. .. .. . ..

257

Guy Maddin

IV DEATH AND BEYOND

Scheerbart’s Fiftieth Birthday Party: An Interview with Egidio Marzona . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263 Hubertus von Amelunxen | Translated by Anne Posten

On the Birth, Death and Rebirth of Dionysus: A Memorial Wreath for Paul Scheerbart’s Grave, 1919 . . . . . . . . . 267 Anselm Ruest | Translated by Anne Posten

A Letter from Bruno Taut to His Brother Max , 1915 . . . . . . . . . . 272 Translated by Anne Posten

“. . . variants of the seemingly imperfect . . .”: Thoughts on Paul Scheerbart and Walter Benjamin . . . . . . . . . . . . 275 Hubertus von Amelunxen | Translated by Anne Posten

The Gallery of the Beyond, 1907

.. .. .. . .. .. .. .. .. . .. .. .. .. . ..

Text and images by Paul Scheerbart | Translated by Anne Posten

280

V A LIFE IN TITLES

Novels and Novelettes, Rhetorical Essays, and Prophetic Howls: A Bibliographic Poem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299 Josiah McElheny

Credits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318 Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319

7

Josiah McElheny and Christine Burgin

Scheerbart, the Unknowable “When Scheerbart experts gather together and begin to talk, something arises among them — a large collective silence.” Georg Hecht, 1912

brings together for the first time a wide range of work by Paul Scheerbart (1863–1915) in an attempt to present him as the visionary, passionate, funny, inventive, deadly serious yet ultimately unknowable writer, theorist, and literary figure he was. Closely followed by architects, philosophers, scientists, politicians, and artists during the first half of the twentieth century — especially in the years around World War I — Scheerbart and his unique world view have had a far-reaching but often unrecognized influence. He is a writer difficult to define in any coherent way; he can be many things at once. Simple in his language, he spoke of the absurd and the stubbornly technological in the same breath. It is sometimes hard to know when he is joking, but one always feels the desire inside his dreams, however flabbergasting, to make sense of the world. Largely forgotten after his death because his ideas do not cohere neatly with the values of economic and political efficiency that dominated the twentieth century, he is now being rediscovered. But what does he actually say, and what did he propose that gained the trust, faith, and hope of his contemporaries? To some Scheerbart was a visionary, a technocrat avant la lettre, who outlined radical new possibilities for architecture in his book Glass Architecture. To others he is a fanciful figure in the history of science fiction, the strange mind behind a series of hallucinatory astral fantasies featuring intergalactic romances between stars and surrealistic biological “advances” in evolution. Others appreciate him as part of an essential cadre of early modernist writers, such as Robert Walser and Peter Altenberg, who published innovative short fiction in the feuilleton section of the daily papers, making way for future Brechts and other purveyors of the impossible. Some wished that he really was the inventor of a perpetual motion machine, while others, such Glass! Love!! Perpetual Motion!!! A Paul Scheerbart Reader

8

as Walter Benjamin, understood him to be a revolutionary theorist of the politics of culture itself. Finally, in retrospect, we appreciate Scheerbart for his exhilarating ability to predict the coming century of political and technological violence. Rational theorist or fantastic dreamer? Serious writer or spinner of nonsense? Crackpot inventor or revolutionary? Literary innovator for a new world or amateur poet? It was Scheerbart’s burden to be all of these at once, an outsider begrudgingly recognized for both the clarity of his world view and the contradictions of the truths he wished for. He was the writer of a story whose answer is a question. Glass! Love!! Perpetual Motion!!! A Paul Scheerbart Reader includes Scheerbart’s most famous work, Glass Architecture (1914), long out of print in English but arriving in time to celebrate the one-hundredth anniversary of its publication, in 2014; a collection of his short fictions, many of which appear here in translation for the first time; and Perpetual Motion, Scheerbart’s obsessive diary of the pursuit of the dream of endless and costless energy. Extensive documentary material of the period, including Scheerbart’s own little-known artwork, as well as a collection of contemporary essays and responses by historians, critics, artists, and filmmakers, accompanies Scheerbart’s texts. As will be clear from the list of (selected) Scheerbart titles with which this book closes, there is much, much more to choose from. This volume is but a beginning, and we hope that Scheerbart will continue to be translated, read, and fenced with. There are few radicals who were radical in their own time and who remain so today. An audacious statement, to be sure, but if it is true of anyone, it is true of Scheerbart.

9

Christopher Turner

The Crystal Vision of Paul Scheerbart: A Brief Biography Paul Scheerbart was born in Danzig in 1863, the eleventh child of a wellto-do merchant. His early life was marred by tragedy: his mother died when he was four, he lost his father at age ten, and all his siblings had died by the time he was sixteen.1 Little else is known about his early days. Having failed to complete his education, he moved to Berlin in 1887, hoping to make a career as a writer. He lived there for the rest of his life in bohemian chaos and near starvation, publishing books and writing journalism on crime, politics, and culture. The Polish symbolist Stanislaw Przybyszewski once said that Scheerbart would have walked the streets of Berlin naked had it not been for the generosity of a friend who gave him clothes inherited from an uncle.2 Scheerbart’s emaciated frame was often swamped in an antique frock coat several sizes too big, with sleeves so long they hid his knuckles. In the metropolis, Scheerbart was a mainstay of café society, a flamboyant character on the literary scene. Prone to self-mythology, he was a regular at the Café des Westerns and Das Schwarze Ferkel (The Black Pig), where he drank with the likes of August Strindberg, Julius Hart, and Edvard Munch.3 Scheerbart was a notoriously heavy drinker. The poet Alfred Mombert described him as a “celestial reveler”; the anarchist Elrich Mühsam portrayed him, soaked in alcohol and gallows humor and puffing on an ill-afforded Virginia cigar, as a “cosmic scoffer.” 4 Przybyszewski said no one ever heard him utter a serious word. At readings he would stand at the podium and wiggle and snort at his own creations, then roar with laughter, doubled over and unable to continue, until the whole audience was infected with hysterics. But, Mühsam wrote in an obituary, behind the exuberant wit was a serious thinker: “he looked like an Asiatic temple servant” and told strange mystical stories “that seemed like visions.”5 Phillip Kester, portrait of Paul Scheerbart, 1910.

11

CHRISTOPHER TURNER

At the age of thirty-seven, Scheerbart wed his landlady, Anna, eight years his senior, the widow of a postal worker. It may have been a marriage of convenience for someone rarely able to pay the rent. He nicknamed Anna “the bear” (Mühsam characterized her as a “female Sancho Panza” to Scheerbart’s Don Quixote) and dedicated several of his books to her.6 They lived in a southwest suburb of Berlin, close to the Berlin Botanical Gardens with its glass Palm House, a winter garden where Scheerbart found much inspiration for his writings about glass architecture (though he regretted the lack of colored crystal). Though mainstream success eluded him in his lifetime, Scheerbart was prolific and convinced that he would achieve posthumous fame. “My dear sir,” he told a bemused life-insurance salesman who made a house call, only to be exposed to one of Scheerbart’s confabulations (about the aluminum ring around Saturn), “once I am dead, I will be so famous that I already envy my widow.”7 Scheerbart’s first books came out under the imprint of Verlag deutscher Phantasten (Publishing House of German Fantasists), which Scheerbart founded in 1892 using a swiftly spent inheritance. He considered fantasy writing, as he put it, “a specific German art.”8 Over the following decades he produced visionary poetry, novels, and plays — over thirty major works and hundreds of minor works of staggering diversity, some of which feature glass architecture, and a number of which are published here in English for the first time. Scheerbart’s astral fantasies are vivid dreams of hallucinogenic sensuousness, aligning him with several successive avant-gardes. Starting in 1910, Scheerbart’s last writings were published in Herwarth Walden’s radical magazine Der Sturm . Walden referred to Scheerbart admiringly as “the first Expressionist,” though he might equally have been called the first Dadaist or the first surrealist.9 Hans Richter, in his recollections of Dada, cited Scheerbart as an influence on that movement, specifically his abstract poem Kikakoku (1897), a play of nonsense words.10 Walter Benjamin praised Scheerbart as a stylist, deeming his direct, pithy prose “as fresh as a nursling’s cheek” — a natural precursor to Berthold Brecht.11 In 1919 Walter Gropius, who founded the Bauhaus that year, urged a fellow architect, “You absolutely must read Paul Scheerbarth [sic] . . . in his works you will find much wisdom and beauty.”12 Gropius was particularly fascinated by Glass Architecture (1914), a book in which Scheerbart imagined a new, better, crystal world. “If we want our culture to rise to

12

T H E C R Y S T A L V I S I O N OF PAUL S C H E E R B A R T

a higher level, we are obliged, for better or worse, to change our architecture,” Scheerbart wrote. “The new environment, which we thus create, must bring us a new culture.”13 Comprising 111 short chapters, this impassioned manifesto elaborates on the revolutionary potential of glass. Man’s ingenuity would triumph over nature, and the entire planet would be transformed by glass architecture, frosting into a dazzling, festive frenzy of illuminated colored crystal. Splendid glass cities would float on the oceans, and crystalline palaces, linked by bridges of glass and rock, would cover Alpine peaks. “On Venus and Mars,” Scheerbart wrote of this kaleidoscopic utopia, which he imagined illuminated at night, “they will stare in wonder and no longer recognize the surface of the earth.”14 Though Glass Architecture seems to lack Scheerbart’s characteristic humor, the hyperbolic rhetoric is clearly intended to shape it as a literary work rather than as the technical manual for which it is often mistaken, and it is not without a self-reflexive comic edge that belies its apparent sincerity. Scheerbart, who professed his admiration for the work of Jonathan Swift, had an irreverent, insurgent taste for the absurd.15 A beautiful world is conjured up, a teetering tower of monomaniacal reverie that, however inspiring and convincing in its detail, is always threatening to crumble. Scheerbart’s 1910 novel Perpetual Motion: The Story of an Invention has a similar structure to that of Glass Architecture. Some scholars, confusing mirth with earnestness, have suggested that Scheerbart was himself engaged in a hopeless quest to invent such a magical wheel. The narrator claims to have created a free energy machine that will change the world, and from small beginnings (as in Glass Architecture) he imagines that soon nothing will remain untouched by his marvelous invention. It will enable the artificial illumination of the planet; it will power elevators that will allow entire landscapes to be covered in dramatic tower architecture; it will allow the flattening of mountains, the damming of oceans. There are many comic moments of self-awareness that frame the narrator’s fantasy (if only that troublesome wheel on the device would turn in the right direction). Nevertheless, no sooner does the protagonist raise such doubts than he almost immediately discards them to rattle on with his ever more grandiose ideas. Scheerbart’s novel The Gray Cloth and Ten Percent White, published the same year as Glass Architecture , seems to mock the latter’s seemingly tyrannical vision (as does an earlier novella, The Light Club of Batavia). The fiction starts in Chicago, the city to which Berlin — Chicago on the Spree — with its booming high-tech industry, was then so often compared.

13

CHRISTOPHER TURNER

Chicago was also the site of the 1893 World’s Fair, with its celebration of an imagined technological future (the fair’s architecture inspired Frank Baum’s Emerald City in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz). The Glass Architecture manifesto could almost be interpreted as an appendix to The Gray Cloth, a statement of intent written by the novel’s Swiss starchitect hero, Herr Krug, an indefatigable evangelist of glass. Krug eccentrically insists that his future wife sign a contract to wear only gray with 10 percent white so as not to compete with his iridescent glass architecture. However, the novel mocks his absolute sartorial decree, and cracks soon appear in his obsessive earnestness about the liberating effects of glass. Though Scheerbart’s ideas were initially embraced by the Bauhaus school, with which his legacy is often associated, he actually had little in common with the Bauhaus brand of ascending modernism. For Scheerbart, it was in the transcendent stained-glass windows of Gothic cathedrals that he saw the first roots of glass architecture. The early Bauhaus did, of course, follow him in attributing a similar spirituality to glass, and on the cover of the 1919 Bauhaus Manifesto appeared a woodcut by Lyonel Feininger of a medieval cathedral radiating beams of light. The image evoked Gropius’s call for the Bauhaus to “collectively desire, conceive, and create the new building of the future, which will be everything in one structure: architecture and sculpture and painting, which, from the million hands of craftsmen, will one day rise towards heaven as the crystalline symbol of a new and coming faith.”16 But by 1923, when Gropius sought to reinvent the Bauhaus as a technological institute that designed cheap, mass-produced goods, Scheerbart and his utopian mysticism of glass had been all but forgotten. Scheerbart urged his readers to “resist most vehemently the undecorated ‘functional style,’ for it is inartistic.”17 His bejeweled aesthetic sensibility was closer to an imaginary art nouveau — he didn’t think ornament a crime but a necessity; concrete should be hidden behind decorative enamel, niello, mosaic, and majolica, and an array of colored glass would create a shimmering rainbow of refracted light. Transparency for him was not a metaphor for political honesty, as it was for Hannes Meyer, who incorporated open glass conference chambers in his 1926–27 designs for the Palace of the League of Nations. Scheerbart’s friend Bruno Taut, to whom Glass Architecture was dedicated, created a glass monument to Scheerbart, the Glass House, a crystal temple for the Cologne Werkbund of 1914, an exhibition intended to showcase new building techniques. They had met through Herwarth

14

T H E C R Y S T A L V I S I O N OF PAUL S C H E E R B A R T

Paul Scheerbart (far left) in the exhibition hall of the Glass House by Bruno Taut, Cologne Werkbund Exhibition, 1914.

Walden’s Der Sturm group around 1912 and cemented their friendship through Scheerbart’s hope to found a society of “glass architects.”18 The pavilion with its prismatic glass-domed roof (known today only from black-and-white photos) was the sole fruit of their collaboration. Taut’s pavilion, unlike later transparent vivaria, was a sumptuous riot of color in a spectrum ranging from dark blue through moss green to, at the point of the dome, golden yellow. Aphoristic quotes about glass and crystal culture written by Scheerbart were embedded in the exterior concrete frieze, such as “Without a palace of glass, life is a burdensome task” and “Colored glass destroys all hatred at last.”19 After Scheerbart’s death in 1915, Taut sketched out his mentor’s ideas, such as the vision of glass cities in the Alps. He also formed the Crystal Chain, a group of like-minded architects, artists, and poets who sought to keep Scheerbart’s memory alive by further exploring his idealistic visions of the future. They referred to Scheerbart as “Glass Papa.”20 Taut, recognizing the intrinsic conservatism of adults, hoped that their children would one day accept and live in a glass world. To this end, he designed a modular construction toy — Dandanah, the Fairy Palace (1919)21 — with

15

CHRISTOPHER TURNER

sixty-two glass bricks of different bold colors, which children could use to experiment with Scheerbartian architectural schemes. “These master builders see with emotion,” Taut wrote in a review of Glass Architecture, “and when they are grown-ups they will build with and through us, even if ‘we’ are already dead.”22 Unfortunately, after forty-three years of peace in Europe, World War I cut short these crystal fantasies. Scheerbart, with characteristic prescience, had foreseen the horror. In 1909 Zepplins first appeared above Berlin, and the Wright brothers brought their flying machine to Tempelhof, hoping to sell it to the Prussian Ministry of War. That same year, Scheerbart published his pacifist tract The Development of Aerial Militarism and the Demobilization of European Ground Forces, Fortresses,

. The German government, engaged in an arms race with the rest of Europe, rejected the Wright brothers, believing that aerial warfare would be of negligible importance. Scheerbart, by contrast, argued urgently in his text that the airship and the torpedoes it could carry would change the field of battle forever. His underlying theme is the ultimate folly of war, as there could be no defense against airborne armadas. Some have said that Scheerbart starved himself to death to protest the war; others claim, more plausibly, that he died of alcoholism. He was a passionate antimilitarist and, with black humor, ridiculed the Wilhelmine weapons race. Cities could no longer be defended using traditional techniques, and a small state was therefore as militarily powerful as a big one. War was thus futile, and the only option was to demobilize and accept the blurring of national borders. Scheerbart invoked the “much-ridiculed utopia” of the United States of Europe. “Faced with a dynamite war, this utopia becomes a much more realizable thing,” he wrote, “soon losing its comical side.”23 Even in the face of a war to end all wars, Scheerbart, a skeptical visionary of better worlds, saw a silver lining. and Naval Fleets

16

T H E C R Y S T A L V I S I O N OF PAUL S C H E E R B A R T

NOTES 1. Paul Scheerbart and John A. Stuart, The Gray Cloth: Paul Scheerbart’s Novel on Glass Architecture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), xvii. Stuart’s source is Mechthild Rausch’s biography Von Danzig ins Weltall: Paul Scheerbarts Anfangsjahre 1863–1895 (Munich: edition text + kritik, 1997). 2. Quoted in Rosemarie Haag Bletter, “Bruno Taut and Paul Scheerbart’s Vision: Utopian Aspects of German Expressionist Architecture” (PhD diss. Columbia University, 1973), 88. Stanislaw Przybyszewski, Erinnerungen an das literarische Berlin (Munich: Winkler-Verlag, 1965), 129. 3. Bletter, “Bruno Taut,” 93. 4. Quoted in Bletter, “Bruno Taut,” 92. Else Harke, “Nachwort,” in Paul Scheerbart, Dichterische Hauptwerke (Stuttgart: Henry Goverts Verlag, 1962), 730. 5. Quoted in Bletter, “Bruno Taut,” 92. Erich Mühsam, Namen und MenschenUnpolitische Erinnerungen , ed. Fritz Adolf Hünich (Leipzig: Volk-und Buch-Verlag, 1949), 80. 6. “Scheerbartania,” in Mühsam, Namen und Menschen-Unpolitische Erinnerungen, ed. Hünich. 7. Ibid. 8. Quoted in Bletter, “Bruno Taut,” 139. Paul Scheerbart, “Die Phantastik in der Malerei,” Freie Bühne 2 (1891): 290. 9. Quoted in Bletter, “Bruno Taut,” 5. Herwarth Walden, “Paul Scheerbart” [obituary], Der Sturm 6, nos. 17–18 (December 1915): 96. 10. Hans Richter, Dada, Art and Anti-Art (London: Thames and Hudson, 1965), 120. 11. Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, ed. Howard Eiland and Michael William Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Belknap of Harvard University Press, 2003), 387. 12. Walter Gropius in a letter to the artist Herman Finsterlin, April 17, 1919, quoted in Marcel Franciscono, Walter Gropius and the Creation of the Bauhaus in Weimar: The Ideas and Artistic Theories of Its Founding (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971), 124n93. 13. This book, Scheerbart, Glass Architecture, 26. 14. Ibid., 76. 15. Paul Scheerbart, The Development of Aerial Militarism and the Demobilization of European Ground Forces, Fortresses, and Naval Fleets: A Flyer, trans. M. Kasper, Lost Literature Series 4 (Brooklyn: Ugly Duckling Presse, 2007), 12. 16. Barry Bergdoll and Leah Dickerman, Bauhaus 1919–1933: Workshops for Modernity (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2009), 64. 17. This book, Scheerbart, Glass Architecture, 35. 18. Rosemarie Haag Bletter, “Paul Scheerbart’s Architectural Fantasies,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 34, no. 2 (May 1975): 83–97. 19. This book, Scheerbart, “Glass House Letters,” 135–37. 20. This book, Taut, “Glass Architecture,” 121, and Scheerbart, “Glass House Letters,” 142. 21. See illustration, this book, 122. 22. This book, Scheerbart, Glass Architecture, 121. 23. Scheerbart, Development of Aerial Militarism , 17.

17

Glasarchitektur (Glass Architecture) by Paul Scheerbart was published by Verlag der Sturm in late May 1914 two months before the July opening of Bruno Taut’s Glass House at the Cologne Werkbund Exhibition. The translation by James Palmes is reproduced here with British spelling and phrasing retained as published in 1972 in “Glass Architecture” by Paul Scheerbart and “Alpine Architecture” by Bruno Taut, Dennis Sharp, editor, Praeger Publishers (New York). Glass Architecture is illustrated in this book with photographic details of installations by Josiah McElheny, selected by the artist. For a list of works see page 318.

20

Dedicated to

Bruno Taut

Honi soit qui mal y pense

Synopsis of Chapters

page

1

Environment and its influence on the development of culture .

2

The veranda .

.

.

.

.

.

.

26

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

3

The Botanical Gardens at Dahlem

26

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

28

4

Double glass walls, light, heating and cooling .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

29

5

The iron skeleton and the reinforced concrete skeleton .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

30

6

The inner framework of glass surfaces

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

31

7

The avoidance of wood in furniture and interior decoration

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

32

8

The furniture in the middle of the room

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

32

9

The larger veranda and its independence of the main building .

.

.

.

.

.

33

10

Garden houses and pavilions

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

33

11

Stone flags and majolica on garden paths .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

34 34

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

12

Magnesite and the perfect floor covering for the house .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

13

The functional style

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

35

14

The cladding of building materials and its justification .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

36

15

The finishing and plastic treatment of reinforced concrete .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

37

16

Enamel and niello applied to metal panels on reinforced concrete .

.

.

.

.

37

17

Glass fibres in applied art .

.

.

.

.

.

38

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

18

The beauty of the Earth, when glass architecture is everywhere

.

.

.

.

.

38

19

Gothic cathedrals and castles .

.

.

.

.

.

38

20

Ancient Greece without glass, the East with ampullæ and majolica tiles

.

40

21

Glass, enamel, majolica and porcelain .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

40

22

The effects of Tiffany .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

40

23

The avoidance of the quicksilver effects of mirrors .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

41

24

The avoidance of figure-representation in architecture .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

41

25

The landscape architect and the tree and plant world in the

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Rococo period .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

42

26

The door

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

43

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

27

The chair

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

44

28

Metal in art and applied art .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

45

29

Hollow glass elements in every possible colour and form as a wall material (the so-called ‘glass-brick’) .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

45

30

Aschinger’s buildings in Berlin, 1893

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

48

31

Glass mosaic and reinforced concrete

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

49

32

Heating and cooling appliances in special columns, vases, suspended .

.

40

.

50

elements, etc. . 33

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Lighting between the double walls (which does not exclude suspended fittings in the room) .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

23

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

34

The vacuum-cleaner — in the park, too — also as an insect-exterminator .

.

50

35

Ventilators, which are ousting the customary windows .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

51

36

Light columns and light towers

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

51

.

.

.

.

37

Direction-finding for aeronautics .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

52

38

Ukley mother-of-pearl on the concrete wall .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

52

39

Wired glass

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

53

40

The vertical in architecture, and how to overcome it .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

53

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

41

The developments made possible by iron construction .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

53

42

Movable partitions in the home and the park .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

54

43

Overcoming the danger of fire .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

54

44

Vanquishing vermin

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

54 55

.

.

.

.

.

45

Floodlights in the park, on towers and house-roofs

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

46

Getting rid of the usual illumination effects .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

55

47

The end of the window; the loggia and the balcony .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

56

48

Stone mosaic as paving .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

56

49

Models for glass architecture

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

57

50

Mountain illumination

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

59

51

Park illumination .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

60

52

Ghostly illumination

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

60 60

.

.

.

.

53

The solid wall as background for sculpture .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

54

Cars, motor boats and coloured glass.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

61

55

The steam and electric railway lit up in colour

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

61

56

Nature in another light .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

62

57

Reinforced concrete in water

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

63

58

Floating architecture .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

64

59

River and lake shipping in coloured lighting

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

64

60

Aircraft with coloured lights.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

65

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

61

Reinforced concrete and the architecture of fences .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

65

62

Terraces .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

66

63

View-points .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

66

64

Glass in factory buildings .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

66

.

65

Market halls entirely of glass and iron

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

67

66

Churches and temples.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

67

67

Club and sports buildings .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

67

68

Militarism and brick architecture

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

68

69

Parliament buildings .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

68

70

Restaurants, cafés, hotels and sanatoria

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

70

71

Transportable buildings .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

70

72

The future inventor, and the materials which could compete with glass

.

.

70

73

The timelessness of ornamental glass and glass mosaic .

.

.

71

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

24

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

74

Exhibition buildings in America and Europe .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

72

75

Experimental site for glass architecture .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

73

76

A permanent exhibition of glass architecture

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

73

77

The crystal room illuminated by translucent floors .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

73

78

Metal filigree with enamel inlay hung in front of crude reinforced

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

74

79

The aeronaut’s house with airship models on the roof

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

74

80

Soft lighting .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

75

81

Twilight effects .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

75

82

Lighthouses and shipping .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

75

83

Airports as glass palaces .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

76

84

Light nights, when glass architecture comes.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

76

85

The brilliant (diamond) effect in architecture .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

77

86

Three-dimensional and two-dimensional ornament in architecture

.

.

.

.

77

87

The transformation of fireworks .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

78

88

Colour-lit pools, fountains and waterfalls .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

78

89

The discovery of the brick bacillus .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

78

90

The nervous effect of very bright light unsoftened by colour

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

78

91

Railway stations and glass architecture .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

80

92

Uniform street lamps and their elimination .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

80

93

Present-day travel

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

80

94

Future travel .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

81

95

The Doppler and the Zeeman effects

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

81

96

Which spheres of interest are fostered or endangered by glass

concrete .

.

architecture

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

82

97

Heavy industry .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

82

98

The chemical dye industry

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

83

The glass industry

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

99

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

83

100

The influence of coloured glass on the plant world .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

83

101

Art in bridge building

102

The transformation of the Earth’s surface

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

83

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

84

103

The transformation of the official architect .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

85

104

The psychological effects of the glass architectural environment

.

.

.

.

.

87

105

A composed and settled nation, when glass architecture comes .

.

.

.

.

.

88

106

More coloured light! .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

88

107

The main entrance .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

89

108

The monumental .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

89

109

Streets and highways as light-column avenues .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

89

110

Chemistry and technics in the twentieth century .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

90

111

Glass culture .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

90

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

25

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

1 Environment and its influence on the development of culture

We live

for the most

part in closed rooms. These

form

the environ-

ment from which our culture grows. Our culture is to a certain extent

the

product of

our

architecture.

If

higher level, we are obliged, for

architecture.

And

this

closed character from

that by

only

we want

our

culture

better or for worse,

becomes

possible

if

we

to

rise

to

a

to change our

take

away

the

the rooms in which we live. We can only do

introducing glass

architecture,

which

lets

in the

light

of the

sun, the moon, and the stars, nor merely through a few windows, but

through every possible wall, which will be made entirely of glass — of

coloured glass.

bring us a

The

new

environment,

which

we

thus

create,

must

new culture.

2 The veranda

Obviously the first thing to tackle is something quickly done. To start

with, therefore, the veranda can be transformed. It is easy to enlarge

it,

and

to

surround

it

on

three

sides

with

double

glass

walls.

Both

these walls will be ornamentally coloured and, with the light between

them, the effect of the veranda in the evening, inside and out, will be

most impressive. If a view of the garden is to be provided, this can be

achieved by using transparent window-panes.

But is it

better not to

fit window-type panes. Ventilators are better for admitting air.

In

a

modest

way,

it

is

thus

comparatively

easy

for

any

villa-

owner to create ‘glass architecture’. The first step is very simple and

convenient.

26

27

3 The Botanical Gardens at Dahlem

We already have glass architecture in botanical gardens. The Botanical

Gardens at Dahlem near Berlin show that very imposing glass palaces

have

been erected.

But — colour

is

however, the

Palm House

and

that one

a

of what

has

exploited.

good

The

Palm

idea

House

missing.

the

is

Cold

could

In

the

House

evening

look

so

be achieved

particularly

interesting:

iron* construction; inside, the

the

so

iron can

glazing

that

no

rust-water

the

is

not

glass

an

impressive

walls

material.

are single

and

not

worst

double;

in

and

the

in winter, in a

management

single day

recounts

thing,

though,

consequence,

it

of pride.

will

be

unjustified

with a temperature at

centigrade, a load of 300 centners

That,

with

conceded,

Heating expenses

is

†

of its

pride

that

8 am of -10 degrees

of best Silesian coal is consumed.

rather excessive

of this

the

of its imper-

the expenditure on winter heating is simply enormous. In one

guidebooks,

the

framework of

accumulates

The

were

outside,

be repainted again and again. Wood, because

manence,

is that

bars,

magnificent

if colour

seemingly unsupported

wood

sunlight,

sort should

and

not

a

fit

source

have been countered

with double glass walls.

* Throughout the translation of Glasarchitektur as “iron.” †

About 15 tons [Ed.]

28

the German word Eisen

is given

4 Double glass walls, light, heating and cooling

As air

is one

of the worst conductors

of heat, the

double glass wall

is an essential condition for all glass architecture. The

a

metre

apart — or

have

an

even

greater

space

walls can be

between.

The

light

between these walls shines outward and inward, and both the outer

and the inner walls may be ornamentally coloured. If, in so doing, too

much

light is

absorbed by

the

colour,

the

external

wall may be

left

entirely clear; it is then advisable simply to provide the light between

the

walls with

a

coloured glass

evening does not

To place

is in

most

much

dazzle on

heating

cases

warmth

not

and

to

or cold

shade,

that the

wall

light in

the

the outside.

incandescent

be

so

elements

recommended,

is lost

to

the

since

between

by

this

outer atmosphere.

the

walls

means

too

Heating and

cooling elements, however, can be suspended like lamps in the inte-

rior, where

all hanging

light is distributed

In

the

lights are to some extent

by the

first instance

only in

the

temperate

regions

as

a white

reinforced

well;

in

it

is clearly

zones,

the

superfluous, since

walls.

and

warmer

advisable

not

in the

climates

concrete roof, but

one

to build

glass

equilatorial

could

not

and

do

in temperate zones,

houses

polar

without

this

need

does not arise. To provide floor heating and cover, electrically-heated

carpets are recommended.

29

5 The iron skeleton and the reinforced concrete skeleton

An iron

This

skeleton

will

is

inevitably

of course

indispensable

stimulate

an

for

glass

extraordinary

architecture.

upsurge

in

heavy

industry. How to protect iron from rust has not yet been solved in a

satisfactory manner. There are many methods of counteracting rust,

but so far

we do not know

which is the

coating, long in vogue, leaves

best. The

simple protective

much to be desired aesthetically.

The

glass architect must surely think of something better to offer. But we

can confidently leave this to future

developments.

If we are ready to allow larger dimensions to the structural frame,

for not

forced

every

particle of the

concrete

skeleton

is

glass

well

proved itself so admirably as a

house

worth

artistically — either

designs cut with

to

be of glass,

thinking

about,

a

for

it

rein-

has

building material, that nothing more

need be said about its merits here.

handled

has

with

Reinforced concrete can

colour

the chisel.

30

or

to

aesthetic

also be

effect

with

6 The inner framework of glass surfaces

The iron or reinforced concrete skeleton virtually frames the glass, but

the glazed surfaces must have another smaller inner

purpose in the

Botanical Gardens, as

frame. For this

already mentioned,

imperma-

nent wood was used. Instead of wood a durable material must now be

found. Iron is certainly more lasting, but has to be protected against

rust,

which

can

latter, as has

be

done

been said

by

nickelling

before, is

or

coating

it

with

paint.

aesthetically displeasing

The

and has

to be renewed often. Perhaps reinforced concrete is an ideal building

material here,

Various

as it does not take up so

other

new

building

much surface.

materials

might

be

considered,

but

these have not yet been sufficiently tested for them to be thought of

as

entirely

It is

the

answer.

credible

technical

In

any

materials

man’s

case,

suitable

problem,

only

very

and

strong

for

he

framing

will

and

glazed

surely

rust-free

surfaces.

find

the

right

materials

are

potentially appropriate; wood is not durable and in iron constructions

should only

be

used

as

a

last

resort.

Wood is

no longer

used

in

bridges either; they are built entirely of iron and reinforced concrete.

Similarly, glass architecture is half-iron architecture.

has consequently won

raise the

a completely

consumption of iron tenfold.

31

Heavy industry

new market, which

is bound to

7 The avoidance of wood in furniture and interior decoration

Inside the

glass

house,

too,

wood

is

to be

avoided;

it

is no

longer

appropriate. Cupboards, tables and chairs must be made of glass if

the whole environment

is to convey a sense of unity.

urally be a grievous blow

to the wood industry.

of course, have to be decorated

furniture

may create a

striking aesthetic

because

nat-

Nickel-steel would,

with enamel and niello, so

wood-carving and wooden cabinets

is to be avoided,

This will

that the

effect — like extremely fine

inlaid with other woods. Wood

of its impermanence, but

the use of iron

in iron-glass construction lies along the natural line of development.

8 The furniture in the middle of the room

It will surely appear self-evident that the furniture in the glass house

may not be placed against the precious, ornamentally-coloured glass

walls. Pictures on the walls are, of course, totally impossible. Given

the highest intentions, this revolution in the environment is inevitable.

Glass architecture

will

have a

tough fight

on its hands,

but force

of

habit must be overcome. Ideas derived from our grandparents must no

longer be the deciding influence in the new environment. Everything

new has to wage an arduous campaign against entrenched tradition.

It cannot be otherwise,

if the new is to prevail.

32

9 The larger veranda and its independence of the main building

Whoever

on three

thing

has

provided

sides

leads

to

will

his

veranda

soon want to

another,

and

to

with

colour-ornamented

have more

stop

the

glass

process

glass

architecture.

is

One

unthinkable.

So

the veranda continues to grow; in the end it emancipates itself from

the

main

building,

and

may

become

the

main

building

itself.

To

promote this evolution of the veranda will be the chief task of every

glass architect.

10 Garden houses and pavilions

The ancient Arabs lived far more in their gardens than in their castles.

For this

reason garden houses

oped by

them.

and kiosks

Unluckily, since perishable

choice of building material,

were very

wood

quickly

devel-

was their constant

nothing remains of this

Arabian garden

architecture.

The

best

task

iron

of

the

modern

and reinforced

pavilions, and

to

architect,

concrete

encourage

therefore,

materials

double

is

to

use

for garden

colour-ornamented

only

houses

glass

the

and

walls

everywhere in the garden. In introducing glass architecture, it is best

to begin with the garden; every owner of a large garden will want to

have a glass garden house.

33

11 Stone flags and majolica on garden paths

In their gardens, the Arabs had patterned floors of stone and majol-

ica; they thus transferred their taste for carpets to their gardens. The

Dutch have copied this

from the

Arabs.

Modern glass architects will be well advised to pave their garden

paths with stone and majolica tiles, for in this way the splendour of

the glass palaces will be worthily framed.

12 Magnesite and the perfect floor covering for the house

We can now hardly avoid

considering many new building materials,

but only by way of suggestion. Jointless magnesite floors have much

to recommend them; but whether they are equally suited to the house,

with its

colourful glass

walls, is not

many other materials obviously

floor covering — even

like

mosaic.

good.

Inside

But

the

stone

one

should

consisting

be

will have

the floor, in order to achieve a

easily decided.

In

any case,

come into the picture as the perfect

‘parquet’,

magnesite

house

so

very

to

be

of

stones

durable,

sparing

and

with

contrasting effect with the

34

arranged

therefore

colour for

walls.

13 The functional style

The reader might gain the impression that glass architecture is rather

cold, but in warm weather, coolness

me make it

effect,

clear

shedding

to now

takes

resist most

inartistic.

It

that colours

perhaps

on

a

vehemently

has

a

often

the

in glass

new

somewhat

is not unpleasant.

can

warmth.

warmer

adopted

What

has

atmosphere.

undecorated

been

produce a

I

Anyhow, let

most glowing

been

‘functional style’,*

before

in

other

said

should

up

like to

for it

contexts,

is

and

this is happening once again.

For a transition period,

able;

at

all events it

has

the functional style

done

away

with

seems to me accept-

imitations of

older styles,

which are simply products of brick architecture and wooden furniture.

Ornamentation

in

the

glass

house

will

evolve

entirely

of

its

own

accord — the oriental decoration, the carpets and the majolica will be

so transformed that in glass architecture we shall never, I trust, have

to speak

of copying.

At least, let’s hope

* The German word here

is ‘Sachstil’

so!

(author’s quotes)

35

[Ed.].

14 The cladding of building materials and its justification

A housefront

faced with

perishable

plaster

is clearly

reprehensible,

and a single coat of paint, which is not weather-proof, is obviously not

permissible. Architects have therefore declared any cladding unjusti-

fiable and display the brick front completely naked. A ghastly sight!

Brick is

only effective

a ruin — when it looks

brick

pyramids

with

if

it

has

weathered

like a ruin.

smooth

The

granite

and

has

the

character

ancient Egyptians

slabs.

These

of

faced their

have

not

been

destroyed but stolen. If the latter occurs, preservation is naturally out

of the question. A cladding of an inferior material is, in my opinion,

fully justified.

Since, nowadays, there are very many buildings which cannot be

replaced in a day by glass structures, we may reasonably give some

thought

tions,

to

etc.

durable

facing

Enamelled

materials

panels

of

for

iron

factories,

and

harbour

majolica

are

installa-

particularly

suitable. Old walls, brick ‘fences’, stables, and so on, can

be clad

in

this way.

Houses, too, can be given a passable veneer with roof-gardens, if

large numbers of glass pavilions

are erected in them.

36

15 The finishing and plastic treatment of reinforced concrete

Reinforced concrete

is a

weather-resistant. It has

ideal material.

finish

which is

been rightly acclaimed by

very strong and

architects as the

A pity that it is not transparent: only glass is.

But reinforced

smooth

building material

to

therefore much

concrete

reinforced

to be

is unsightly

concrete,

if

left

which

recommended; the

in

is

its natural

perfectly

finish

should

state.

feasible,

also

A

is

be able

to take weather-proof colour. In addition, reinforced concrete should

be provided

with

plastic

decoration;

it

is

as

easy

to

work

with

the

chisel as granite.

Granite is not exactly easy

to work, but it can

be done.

16 Enamel and niello applied to metal panels on reinforced concrete

If thin metal panels can be pressed into the surface of reinforced con-

crete during casting, these can be given an enamel coating — possibly

one of

transparent

cloisonné

enamel.* †

hollowed out and filled with niello,

Small

surfaces

can

also

be

although lacquered niello is only

suitable for interiors. Externally, metal niello would be very effective,

but only precious metals should be used; the patina of bronze would

also be suitable. Glass

mosaic, too, is an obvious possibility.

* A pattern of raised metal

strips, filled in

†

A black

with transparent enamel.

compound worked into a pattern cut

37

into the surface.

17 Glass fibres in applied art

It has been forgotten by many that glass

which can

as fibres

be spun. The story goes back more than forty years, per-

haps further. I am not

new

can be developed

industry

in

sure. These glass

applied

art;

divan

fibres may lead to a

covers,

chair

arms,

etc.,

whole

can

be

made of them.

18 The beauty of the Earth, when glass architecture is everywhere

The face

of

the

earth

would

were ousted everywhere

earth were adorned

with

by

be

much

glass

altered

architecture.

sparkling

jewels and

if

brick

architecture

It would

be as if

enamels.

the

Such glory

is unimaginable. All over the world it would be as splendid as in the

gardens of

the Arabian

Nights.

We should

then have

a

paradise

on

earth, and no need to watch in longing expectation for the paradise

in heaven.

19 Gothic cathedrals and castles

Glass

architecture

Gothic

was

cathedrals

also

tried.

It

is unthinkable

and

was

castles

not

without Gothic.

were

rising,

completely

an

In

the

days

architecture

realised,

because

of

when

glass

iron,

the

indispensable material, was not yet available, and this alone enables

the totally glass room to be constructed.

In Gothic times, glass

was

entirely unknown in most private houses. Today it is a principal factor

in the

architecture

however, will

of

every

house.

come.

38

But

it

still lacks

colour.

Colour,

39

20 Ancient Greece without glass, the East with ampullæ and majolica tiles

In ancient Greece glass was almost unknown. But before the Hellenic

civilisation

there

were

already

many

colourful

glass

ampullae

and

lustrous majolica tiles in the countries bordering the Euphrates and

Tigris,

a

thousand

so-called cradle

years before

Christ.

The

Near East

is

thus

the

of glass culture.

21 Glass, enamel, majolica and porcelain

All building materials which are durable and obtainable in weather-

resistant colours, have the right to be used. Brittle brick and inflam-

mable

shatter

wood

by

have

no

explosives,

such

right;

which

a

brick

endanger

building

the whole

is

also

building

easy

to

equally.

This is not the case in a glass-iron building; only partial destruction

can be induced by explosives in the latter.

Wherever

the

use

of

glass

is

impossible,

enamel,

majolica

and

porcelain can be employed, which at least can display durable colour,

even if they

are not

translucent like glass.

22 The effects of Tiffany

The famous American Tiffany, who introduced the ‘Tiffany glass’, has

by this means greatly stimulated the glass industry; he put coloured

clouds into glass. With these

clouds the

most marvelous effects are

feasible — and the walls acquire an entirely new charm, which admit-

tedly

puts

the

decorations

into

the

situations is quite practicable.

40

background,

but

in

particular

23 The avoidance of the quicksilver effects of mirrors

If the

dangers of

are only

Tiffany effects

dangerous,

after

allow the quicksilver

all,

in

may

not

inartistic

effects of mirrors

a

be

wholly

ignored — they

hands — one should

only

utilitarian existence in the

dressing-room. In the other rooms of the house mirror-effects, which

continue to reflect their surroundings again and again in a different

light,

disturb

last. When

the

general

kaleidoscopic

tified. Otherwise

architectural

impression,

effects are wanted,

they

for

they

do

are perfectly

not

jus-

it is best to do without the quicksilver-mirror; for it

is dangerous — like poison.

24 The avoidance of figure-representation in architecture

While architecture is spatial art,

art and

has

no

place

figure-representation is not spatial

in architecture.

The

animal

and human

body

is made for movement. Architecture is not made for movement, and

is concerned with formal composition

and

mineral

kingdoms

should

be

and ornament. Only the plant

exploited — better

still

the

whole

repertoire of free invention — one should not think of the animal and

human body as a design element. The fact that the ancient Egyptians

did so is no reason at all for doing so today; we no longer associate

our gods with

the bodies

of animals and humans.

41

25 The landscape architect and the tree and plant world in the Rococo period

The

Rococo

able clay;

and yew

period

to create

treated trees

perspective

hedges clipped

the architect

ruled the

and plants

effects

if they

were

trees were shaped

into geometrical

garden,

as

which he

figures.

should

At the

do

mould-

like walls

same

time,

today. But

such

laborious treatment of plant and tree material does not pay — because

of the

changing seasons

More

aspect,

glass

linking

latter is glass

walls

the

in

and transitory results.

the

garden

garden

to

the

would

give

architecture

it

of

quite

the

a

different

house,

architecture. It is scarcely imaginable what

if

the

wonderful

effects could be achieved in this way. An occasional mirror-wall close

to pools

is worth considering. But not

42

too many.

26 The door

In our technical age developments occur rapidly; we often forget this.

There is no reason to think that they will suddenly slow

down. Fifty

years ago there

main water

was not a

and drainage. Fifty

a

vacuum cleaner.

strike

us

as

years later

And

utopian,

there

door

in

the

most commonly

one

will

although

glass architecture, should

The

single town in Germany with

glass

cannot

imagine

be many

those

other

which

are

a

home without

things

now

which

now

feasible,

like

never be so described.

house,

for

example,

will

be

unlike

those

found today in brick houses. Self-closing doors

are

commonplace nowadays, but self-opening doors will be equally com-

mon soon.

The

outside

doors

do

not

need

to

open

by

themselves,

but if the inside ones are self-opening, it is like a friendly gesture by

the householder,

although he does not have to make any movement

with his hands. The

on a

sensitive

fully worked

crystal

mechanism is actuated

plate.

out

It already exists

and

patented. The

in

by treading quite lightly

Berlin pubs,

idea

elements — or flashing lights — can

can

be

be set

and has

extended;

been

rotating

in motion in doors;

a friendlier greeting than that of a liveried supercilious servant.

The doors

can be made of transparent glass

with crystal

and of ornamentally coloured glasses. To every room,

particular

entrance.

This

The outside doors can

Cities in their

should

create

a

more

effects,

then, its own

festive atmosphere.

also be of glass.

present

form

are not yet

fifty

years old.

They

can

vanish as quickly as they came. Even the permanent way of the steam

railway is not

immortal.

43

27 The chair

The most

complicated

item in the

whole of applied

The steel chair seems to be an aesthetic

be

made

so

splendid

comparison with

the

with

finest

enamel

and

Venetian

art is the

chair.

impossibility, yet steel

niello

carving.

that

The

it

need

prices

not

of

can

fear

enamel

and niello chairs are far from being higher than carved wood chairs,

for

which

400–500

marks

are

willingly

paid.

Enamel

work

is

so

cheap that enamelled chairs can be produced very well for 100 marks

apiece.

Of

course,

an

industry

which

turns

out

identical

chairs

by

the

score will have to be disregarded. But one can reasonably expect that

an industry which wants to satisfy artistic requirements will stop the

indiscriminate production of identical

The

industry

of the

future

will

objects.

also

turn

eagerly

to glass

fibres.

For only fire-resistant materials will be used — both for divans and for

flooring, where glass

fibres will prove the

44

most important material.

28 Metal in art and applied art

It seems to me that habit lies like a heavy lead weight upon art and

applied art.

Because

facts were made

But

this

should

influence

on

in

grandfather’s

of wood, they

not

be

applied

so.

art

must

Glass

and

art

time

most

continue to be

architecture

in

furniture and

general.

is

made of wood.

also

We

arti-

shall

a

compelling

therefore

be

obliged to give preference in all fields to metal. The æstheticians will

naturally try

to counteract

this,

and the

threatened

timber

industry

will mobilise them.

There

will

be

a

lot

of

talk

about

the

valuable

associative

ideas

inherent in wood. I believe, however, that all the associative ideas

inherent

in

wood

can

artistic potentialities

times. Metal

be

transmitted

of metal — as

to

metal — by developing

I have

already indicated

the

many

is supposed to be cold, whereas wood is supposed to

be warm. These are notions born of habit: we found glazed tiles cold

before the existence of the tiled stove. Majolica only became warm to

us because of this association. The same thing may occur with metal.

29 Hollow glass elements in every possible colour and form as a wall material (the so-called ‘glass-brick’)

So-called glass bricks make a wall material which may well become

an interesting speciality of glass architecture. Large industrial under-

takings

have

Everything

as

a

wall

been

formed

fire-proof

material.

and

Glass

already

which

transparent

bricks

should

superfluous.

45

is

could

have

a

big

aesthetically

make

many

iron

future.

justifiable

skeletons

30 Aschinger’s buildings in Berlin, 1893

If

ideas

are

to

very

many

This

became

editing

the

be

productive,

heads

at

clear

to

the

me

theosophist

they

same

in

must

time — even

1893 or

journal

really

a

little

Sphinx,

if

in

be

a

later.

and

in

‘in

the

air’ — in

distorted

form.

Franz Evers

was

consequence

was

overwhelmed with theosophist, spiritualist and other such literature;

in this wilderness there was a lot to make one laugh. One gentleman,

whose name

escapes

me,

asserted

that glass

was the

source

of

all

salvation; that one must always have a glass crystal near one on the

writing-table, and sleep in a room of mirrors, etc., etc. It all sounded

crazy. But Aschinger’s beer halls, with their frightful mirrors, seemed

to me

an

echo of

that theosophist

rooms. At any rate

I am convinced

heads at

not

the

speak

publication

about

mirrored

bed-

some telepathic influence was at work.

that every constructive idea

same time

carelessly

will appear in many

and quite irrationally; one

about

the

seemingly

should

confused

and

therefore

crazy;

it

generally contains the germ of reason.

In

the

East

the

madman

prophet. But that is by the

is

left

way.

48

at

liberty

and

honoured

as

a

31 Glass mosaic and reinforced concrete

It must be emphasized that reinforced concrete with

a glass mosaic

skin is

which

so

far

probably

the

discovered.

shattered

broken

by

by

nowadays;

People

some

stones

most durable

are

malicious

thrown

stones are

far

building

always

hand.

from

more

the

so

afraid

Now,

street

often

material

that

cases

are

thrown

of

glass

a

may

windows

probably

at

we have

man’s

be

being

infrequent

head

than

at a window-pane. But I have never heard of stones being thrown at

glass mosaic.

During the last century, when telegraph wires were introduced, it

was thought that they should all be laid underground for fear of the

rude populace. Today nobody thinks of destroying the overhead wires.

Therefore

there

is

no

need

to

destroyed by stones flung by the

But that, too, is by the

fear

that

glass

houses

would

be

lower orders.

way.

32 Heating and cooling appliances in special columns, vases, suspended elements, etc.

Although

the

electric

light

commands

the

room

from

between

the

double walls, this is not the place for the heating and cooling because,

as already stated, half the warmth and cold air is uselessly dissipated.

For

this

reason

the

heating

can

be

installed

in

columns,

vases

and suspended elements, and their outer shells can be designed, like

the oriental ampulla, as delightful

49

decoration.

33 Lighting between the double walls (which does not exclude suspended fittings in the room)

I

have

so

often

to maintain

said

the

that

the

temperature

double

of

the

walls

room,

are

but

to

there,

not

merely

accommodate

the

lighting elements. I must ask to be forgiven for repetition but I want

to stress

With

lantern

and underline it.

this

type

which,

of

on

lighting

peaceful

the

whole glass

summer

and

house

winter

becomes

nights,

a

shines

big

like

fire-flies and glow-worms. One could easily become poetic. But light-

ing can also be installed inside the room.

This interior lighting also

illuminates

as

the

walls — if

not

so

strongly

the

light

between

the

double walls.

34 The vacuum-cleaner — in the park, too — also as an insect-exterminator

In

the

near

main water,

future

the

and

will

it

be kept free of ‘dust’.

vacuum-cleaner

be used

The

as an insect-exterminator.

in

will

parks,

vacuum-cleaner

seem

for the

as

important

inlaid

paths

will naturally

It is absolutely horrifying

that

as

must

be needed

today it is

still not used for this purpose. That the vacuum-cleaner has already

been employed for getting rid of street dust, I take to be a known fact.

50

35 Ventilators, which are ousting the customary windows

It will seem very natural that ventilators should have a principal part

to play in a

glass

When

in

I

am

my

house, and will

glass

room,

I

supplant

shall

hear

everything window-like.

and

see

nothing

of

the

outside world. If I long for the sky, the clouds, woods and meadows, I

can go out or repair to an extra-veranda with transparent glass panes.

36 Light columns and light towers

Hitherto,

columns

have

needs fewer supports

in

the

glass

house.

served

than

In

only

as

supports.

masonry; most

order

to

make

the

Iron

of them

columns

construction

are superfluous

in

larger

glass

buildings lighter, they can be equipped with light elements behind a

completely glass surround, so that the light columns do not give the

impression

of

supporting,

and

the

entire

architectural

effect

seems

much more free — as if everything were self-supporting; glass architec-

ture will acquire an almost floating quality with these light columns.

Towns and other places should always be distinguished by towers.

Every effort

by

night.

must naturally be made to lend enchantment to towers

Under

the

rule

of

glass

architecture,

must become towers of light.

51

therefore,

all towers

37 Direction-finding for aeronautics

Aeronautics

All

towers

will

must

undoubtedly

therefore

navigation — every

ent light,

light

signaling

so

tower

towers

impulse

different

from

can

any

informed where he

determined

become

and be fitted with

Uniformity in light

be

will

towers

be

built

conquer

light.

the night.

And — to

differently,

emit

simplify

a

differ-

glass elements of widely differing form.

is consequently

be

of

to

so

other,

simple,

that

and

out

of the

the

tower

the aeronaut

will

question.

itself

The

must

be

immediately

be

is.

38 Ukley mother-of-pearl on the concrete wall

Naturally, transparent walls are not possible everywhere, in particu-

lar because

the householder may not always want to sit or lie down

between transparent walls. For such rooms, however, wallpapers and

wall-fabrics are to be

elling is no

longer

avoided because

appropriate — it

of fire

is as

risks, and wood-pan-

impermanent as

paper and

fabrics, encourages woodworm and is potentially inflammable.

Another

wall

cladding

material

must

now

be

found.

Reinforced

concrete is not easy to handle artistically; it is as hard as granite, and

enamel

and

niello

are

not

all that

cheap,

anyway.

Imitation

pearls

are coated with Ukley mother-of-pearl. This coating is perhaps to be

recommended for

walls as well. It could

easily

be embellished with

semi-precious stones and glass brilliants.

But

an

it

is

uneven

quite

possible

surface,

could

that

do

a

the

mother-of-pearl

job

alone.

coat,

Whether

applied

this

to

artificial

mother-of-pearl retains its colour when daylight is kept away from it

would have to be tested.

Dome-like

undulating

bulges may

regularly and symmetrically.

52

be very

effective if

they occur

39 Wired glass

For the walls, a good glass material is still, of course, the most worth-

while. After glass mosaic,

however, the

most durable glass

material

is the fairly familiar wired glass, which is particularly suitable for the

external wall. Nowadays, wired glass can

that the

be handled in such

wire mesh is scarcely visible. In the external

a way

wall the mesh

does not matter because to an outside viewer it is practically invisible.

40 The vertical in architecture, and how to overcome it

The brick architecture of the past often overcame the problem of the

vertical by

domes,

but

to

escape

from

the

vertical in

walls seemed

impossible. In glass architecture it is quite different. The large Palm

House in the Botanical Gardens in Berlin no longer has vertical walls;

the upward curve begins at

a height

of three

metres.

41 The developments made possible by iron construction

Iron

construction

are no

longer

construction

has to

inevitable.

are

dome effects

to

glance

permits

thus

the

in smaller

importance

such

of

means;

The

quite

sides,

the

the

any

so

desired

developments

unlimited.

up sideways to

also effective for the

results

walls of

that,

One

sitting

form.

made

can

at

a

appreciate them.

Vertical

possible

shift

table,

the

one

which

ground-plan

building’s

are

in

even

53

tied to

architecture

silhouette

than it used to be.

less

will

now

by

iron

overhead

has

only

Curved surfaces

lower parts of walls — it is specially

rooms

walls

will

be

easy to get

verticals.

be

are

The

reduced

more

by

significant

42 Movable partitions in the home and the park

The Japanese constantly changes his living space by dividing it into

smaller

areas

by

partition-screens.

Different

silk

materials

are

laid

over these screens from time to time, so that the smaller ‘room’ can

have a frequently varying appearance.

living-rooms of glass houses

If

one

have to

introduces

be vertical,

tives, and

a

very

movable glass

into a

delicate

The same can be done

by mobile and sliding glass

park,

one

walls,

can

architecture

of

which

create

higher

of

in the

partitions.

course

wonderful

do

not

perspec-

wall-screens

could

give the park a new architectural significance. This novelty would be

perpetually flexible.

43 Overcoming the danger of fire

After what

has been said,

it is probably obvious that glass

architec-

ture makes fire-protection superfluous. By

avoiding all inflammable

materials fire

But the

insurance

can

be abolished.

exclusion

of fire

risks should always be borne in mind in architecture; in the applied

arts and interior decoration, only materials which do not burn should

be permitted.

44 Vanquishing vermin

That

in a

glass

house,

needs no further

if

properly

comment.

54

built,

vermin

must

be

unknown,

45 Floodlights in the park, on towers and house-roofs

As

coloured

too little

glass

electric

thousand

times

greatly

light

as

installed turbines,

at

softens the

the

much,

if,

present

strength of

time.

wherever

as is feasible.

But

there

is

light,

we

we

have

should

running

Given adequate light,

far

have

water,

we can

a

we

have

far more floodlights than before, and night can become day. The night,

indeed,

can

be more

glorious

than

the

day,

quite

independently

of

the splendour of the starlit sky, which when it is clouded, is invisible

to us anyway.

Even

the

private

will be flood-lights

citizen

on

will

have

his

‘park’

all roof constructions

flood-lit,

and

there

and roof-gardens.

And

a tower without flood-lights will then be entirely unfamiliar and look

unnatural. Aeronauts will show

their indignation at unlit towers.

46 Getting rid of the usual illumination effects

Glass architecture will be scornfully called ‘illuminations architecture’

by its opponents, who naturally should not be ignored. This contempt

is unjustifiable, for nobody will want to illuminate a glass house the

way a brick house

is lit up today; when

it is lighted

inside the glass

house is in itself an illumination element. When there are many such

elements,

the

of present-day

effect

cannot

illumination.

be

By

so

harsh

as

the primitive

manipulating

mobile

elements

reflectors,

the

floodlights can project a thousand beams of every conceivable colour

into the

sky.

Mirrors (used

with

discretion) and floodlights together

will oust the usual illumination. The new illumination will be essen-

tially for airship

travel, to guide the

55

aeronaut.

47 The end of the window; the loggia and the balcony

With the introduction of electricity for cooling and heating, the chim-

ney

must

unquestionably

be

abolished.

People claim

that

such

an

introduction would be expensive, but forget that the tempo of techni-

cal development is continually quickening. Admittedly, this happens

in the

workshop

and

the

expert’s

room;

where

talking

a

lot

about

oneself is frowned upon. But the enthusiasm is no less.

When

glass

architecture comes

in, there

will

not

be much

more

talk of windows either; the word ‘window’ will disappear from the dic-

tionaries. Whoever wants to look at nature can go on to his balcony

or into his loggia, which of course can be arranged for enjoying nature

as before. But then it

will not be spoilt

by hideous brick houses.

These are visions of the future, which we must none the less keep

in mind, if the

new age is ever to come about.

48 Stone mosaic as paving

Up to now, we have not adequately discussed how to pave the surface

underfoot.

areas

in

Stone

flags

gardens,

but

are

recommended

inside

the

house

for

only

all

paths

and

magnesite

mentioned for floors, in rooms of secondary importance.

rooms,

stone

mosaic

the floor must

them.

Perhaps

inflammable

alone

is

advisable.

Of

course,

the

has

paved

been

For better

colours of

be made to match the glass walls or to contrast with

a

fibre-glass

materials

must

carpet

be

would

rejected,

not fire-proofed, even if this is difficult.

56

also

and

be

practicable.

carpets

of

But

materials

49 Models for glass architecture

The

most

important objective

glass architecture

to be

would

exhibited.

be

Let

for a

number

us hope

this

of models

happens at

of

the

1914 Werkbund Exhibition in Cologne, for which Bruno Taut has built

a glass house, in which the entire glass industry is to be represented.

It does not seem right to me to produce models of glass architecture

of pasteboard and selenite, but brass and glass models would not be

cheap.

A new

model-building industry

models only for glass architecture,

ought to

be created

to

make

including church buildings, from

good materials. Perhaps it would be advisable to use a different imi-

tation glass

for larger

models.

About

twenty

years ago there

was a

substance called Tektorium — it was transparent, coloured, leather-like

material on wire netting. For model purposes it would be admirable,

but for buildings

it would

not

be durable enough,

always be mended.

57

although

it

could

58

50 Mountain illumination

So

much

sounds

fantastic,

which

actually

is

one suggests applying mountain illumination

not

fantastic

at

all.

If

to the Himalayas, this

is just a ridiculous fantasy outside the realms of practical discussion.

Illuminating the mountains near the Lake of Lugano is quite another

thing. There are so many hotels there which would like to be part of

the scenery, that they

would

be well disposed to glass

architecture,

if the proposition were not beyond their means. Their means are not

inconsiderable, and the illuminations of the mountains by illuminating

the

hotels, if

these

were

built

of glass,

can

no

longer

be

described

as fantastic. The rack-railway, which ascends the Rigi, could also be

illuminated very easily

When

and effectively by flood-lights.

aeronautics

Switzerland

will

have

have

her

conquered

mountains

the

dark,

colourfully

lit

the

up

whole

at

night

of

by

glass architecture.

We constantly

forget how

many things

have

changed

in the

last

century. In the 1830s the aged Goethe did not see the coming of the

railways. Less than a hundred years have passed since then, and the

whole earth

is

encompassed

by

steel

rails.

Mountain

illumination,

which today still seems a fantasy to many, can develop just as quickly.

59

51 Park illumination

But park illumination will develop sooner than mountain illumination.

If only we have more electric light, much will evolve of its own accord.

Above all,

we should

consider

for guiding airships (as

towers of various forms

in the parks

already discussed).

A glass tower should not only be equipped with flood-lights; many

of

the

glass

surfaces

could

be

made

kaleidoscopic effects. Here also the

to

move

and

so bring

about

possibilities are boundless.

52 Ghostly illumination

When

we

speak

of

light,

we

are

generally

thinking

of

the

glaring

light of gas and electricity. In the past fifty years light has progressed

quite surprisingly. It is all happening

so quickly that one can hardly

keep up. But if we had light in greater quantity (and this is perfectly

feasible by using more turbines and dynamos), it would

be harsh in its effect and

could be

softened

by colour.

not have to

It can

be so

reduced by colour that it looks ghostly, which to many people would

perhaps seem sympathetic.

53 The solid wall as background for sculpture

Where one either cannot or will not remove a solid non-transparent

wall, it

may perhaps

need not

be

be suitable

statuary.

as background

Ornamental

work

stands

for plastic art.

out

very

This

effectively

against a wall, and plant motifs are also simple to apply. But painting

should not

be

used.

In

any

case,

it

unity of a building.

60

detracts

from

the

architectural

54 Cars, motor boats and coloured glass

Now let us transfer glass architecture to the world of movement — to

cars

and motor boats.

In

this

way the

landscape

will become

quite

different; it has already been permanently transformed by the steam

train — so

transformed

to the change.

faces,

and

the

so pleasantly

that for

decades people

The coloured automobile, with

glass

motor

that mankind,

boat,

however,

let us hope,

could not

grow

used

its glossy glazed

will

alter

should

the

sur-

landscape

adjust itself

to

the

change more quickly.

55 The steam and electric railway lit up in colour

When glass architecture has once successfully captured the car and

the motor boat,

there will

naturally be no

course open to the other

vehicles, especially those which scorch along rails, except to accom-

modate themselves to it. We shall then enjoy a wonderful impression,

if we see an express illuminated in colour speeding by day or by night

through the countryside. The

natures to start

with,

will

railway, greeted so sourly by

in the

end reach

beyond our present powers of description.

61

a

sensitive

level of artistic

charm

56 Nature in another light

After the introduction of glass architecture, the whole of

nature in all

cultural regions will appear to us in quite a different light. The wealth

of coloured glass is bound to give nature another hue, as if a new light

were shed over the entire natural world. There will be no need to look

at nature through a coloured piece of glass. With all this coloured glass

everywhere in buildings, and in speeding cars and air- and water-craft,

so much

new light

will undoubtedly

emanate

from

the glass

colours

that we may well be able to claim that nature appears in another light.

62

57 Reinforced concrete in water

Reinforced

concrete,

as

is well

known,

has

proved itself

in

water;

it

is practically indestructible. It is therefore suitable for a new Venice,

which must have

foundations that are

non-transparent,

stable, rust-

free and indestructible. Upon this sound base the most colourful glass

architecture can rise and be reflected in the water. A new Venice in this

style will eclipse the old one. Water, because of its intrinsic capacity to

reflect, belongs to glass architecture; the two are almost inseparable,

so that in future water will be introduced wherever there is none at the

moment. If, after the example of the old Venice, a ‘colony’ were to be

laid out with canal-streets, the traditional Venice façade-architecture

would have to be renounced

from the outset;

it does

not agree

with

glass buildings which, when they are to be several storeys high, have

in any case to be built in pyramid shape with terraces; otherwise too

few of the glass walls come in

contact with the daylight.

Should the individual sites be very close to one another, care must

be taken over suitable boundaries. These can

concrete, perhaps

sheltering

a

covered

way,

be walls of reinforced

open on

one

side.

they could be made in plenty of other ways.

Anyone can develop

the theme further, even a non-architect.

63

But

58 Floating architecture

If reinforced concrete, as has often been asserted in many quarters —

even by the State Material-testing Commission* — cannot be attacked

by water,

then

it

is

capable

of

carrying

the

largest

building,

like

a

ship. We can talk in all seriousness of floating architecture. For this,

of course, everything

which was

said in the

previous

chapter holds

good. The buildings can obviously be juxtaposed or moved apart in

ever changing patterns, so that every floating town could look differ-

ent each day. The floating town could swim around in regions of large

lakes — perhaps in the sea too. It sounds most fantastic and utopian,

but it is far from being so, if reinforced concrete, shaped to the form

of an

indestructible

vessel,

carries

the

architecture.

Indestructible

boats have already been built out of reinforced concrete in German

New Guinea. We must learn to accept that

new building materials,

when they really are of unrivalled strength and free from

rust, can

guide the architecture of the whole world into new paths. Reinforced

concrete is one

such material.

59 River and lake shipping in coloured lighting

As soon as there is floating glass architecture, ships — both great and

small — will be fitted out in glass. The rivers, lakes and seas will then

become very

gay.

development

in lake

It does not take

and

river

much

shipping,

perspicacity to predict

once

a

floating

erected and is imitated.

* The German here

is staatliche

Materialprüfungskommission [ E d . ] .

64

this

building

is

60 Aircraft with coloured lights

It is generally known that the aeronauts would

like to take over the

night. That they have not so far done so is easily explained; on the

earth the night

is not yet

light enough.

But

when, thanks to

glass

architecture, it has become light down below, it will also be light up

in the

air;

the

aircraft

will be

equipped

to

project

coloured

lights,

which will also form the vocabulary of a signal-language, understood

everywhere by the light-projecting stations of the earth-towers and

giving a practical value to the colour display both above and below.

Here the elements of progress fit smoothly

together and are slowly

but steadily completely transforming life on the surface of the earth.

The

changes

brought

about

by the

steam

train

have

not

been

so

significant and far-reaching as those which glass and iron construc-

tion is

bound to

produce.

The

crucial

factor

in this

is

undoubtably

reinforced concrete.

61 Reinforced concrete and the architecture of fences

Reinforced concrete can be a few centimeters thick, and is very con-

venient to use for fences. If it is treated artistically, with enamel and

glass

such

mosaic or

embellished

concrete boundary

with

fences

niello

ornamentation,

can easily

be

converted

areas

with

into places

of recreation.

In the architecture of fences

reinforced concrete has

to play.

65

a great part

62 Terraces

In higher glass buildings, where there are several storeys, the terrace-

form is beyond question a necessity, for otherwise the glazed surfaces

do not

and

touch the

not

by

day.

sunlit air but can

These

only fulfil

terrace-form

storeys

their purpose

will

naturally

at night

oust

the

tedious façade-architecture of brick houses.

63 View-points

One imagines

the view-points,

a town or landscape. These

from which nowadays we can survey

view-points will show us quite different

pictures, when glass architecture has become general and all vehicles

(even the

flying

ones) reveal the

full possibilities

of coloured

glass.

One must simply try to make such view-points clear to visualise. It is

not easy, but the imagination soon adapts itself in the

more than isolated

end to giving

details.

64 Glass in factory buildings

To have a comprehensive picture of the glass architecture world, it is

essential also to think of factory buildings in glass. There will be no

question of immediately destroying brick structures everywhere, but

at first the

brick will be faced

with glass

glass garden pavilions will be put on the

66

materials and glazes — and

roofs, etc.

65 Market halls entirely of glass and iron

It is well known that market halls are already being built entirely of

glass

and

colour.

It

iron.

is

Missing

not

only

fanciful,

are

the

however,

double

to

walls

assume

and

that

ornamental

both

these

will

come soon. A total architecture of glass and iron cannot be far off.

66 Churches and temples

In

Europe

executed

the

as

larger towns.

purely

glass

a

larger

church

result

of

Whether

and

iron

it

the

buildings

unnatural

will

be

are

possible

architecture

in

very

well

planned

concentration

in

this

individual

of

field

cases

and

people

to

by

impose

in

a

rejecting

brick, I do not know. But I do know well that the greater cheapness

of glass and iron building must help towards success;

have

this

greater

cheapness

when

a

larger

number

we shall only

of

firms

are in

competition — and for that we must wait. The free churches of America

may well be the first to build glass temples, thus making a good step

forward for glass architecture in the religious sphere.

It ought to be

stressed here

that the

whole of glass

architecture

stems from the Gothic cathedrals. Without them it would be unthink-

able; the

Gothic cathedral is the prelude.

67 Club and sports buildings

Club and sports

buildings are today being erected in large numbers.

As these are almost always the concern of well-to-do societies, glass

architects would do well to pay closer attention to them; the advan-

tages of glass architecture for rooms mainly used for social occasions

are obvious.

67

68 Militarism and brick architecture

So often only the obnoxious side of militarism is alluded to; but there

is also

a

good

advent

of the

one.

It consists

‘dirigible’

aerial

in the

fact that,

torpedo, it

with

inevitably

the

significant

draws attention

to the dangers of brick architecture; if a brick church tower is struck

low down by a torpedo, it will in every case collapse, kill many people

and reduce an entire group

If, therefore, militarism

of buildings

to rubble.

evolves logically, it is bound to bring our

brick culture into disrepute; this is its good side, and one constantly

emphasized, especially by

those tired

of living as

‘brick-dwellers’. A

glass tower, when it is supported by more than four metal piers, will

not

be destroyed

bent,

and

a

by

number

an

aerial

of glass

torpedo;

panels

a

will

few iron members

have

holes

or

will

cracks,

be

but

such damage is simple to repair.

69 Parliament buildings

What has just been said about glass towers applies also to parliament

buildings built entirely of steel and glass. In wartime these,

much more

resistant to damage than the

too, are

old parliament building

of

brick faced with sandstone. To many this claim will seem very para-

doxical,

but

it

is

quite

logical.

Dynamite

can

only

damage

a

glass

house partially; in relation to the whole it is fairly harmless. It needs

a hailstorm of dynamite bombs to destroy

glass and iron.

68

a larger building made of

69

70 Restaurants, cafés, hotels and sanatoria

It seem to me to beyond question that restaurants, cafes and hotels

will be the first to show an interest in glass architecture, in order to

attract a larger public, who always have plenty to spend on anything

new. Sanatoria also will want glass buildings; the influence of splen-

did glass architecture on the

nerves is indisputable.

71 Transportable buildings

Transportable

glass

buildings

can

be

produced

as

well.

They

are

particularly suitable for exhibition purposes. Transportable buildings

of this type

are not

easy to make.

But one must not forget that, in a new movement, the most difficult

step is often the

first.

72 The future inventor, and the materials which could compete with glass

To

earn

same, as

a

I

lot

of

money

am bound

grows daily; while

by

inventions

to concede

many

at

inventors

is

once,

lose all

not

the

exactly

easy.

number

their goods

of

All

the

inventors

and chattels

and achieve nothing, the others are not deterred. Despite everything,

however, the amply provided inventor is, in the long run, a very rare

exception. Failure has its humorous

side, and, so

long as this is so,

things are not so bad. But that is by the way. Nevertheless, it cannot

be

doubted

that

inventors — for

constantly growing — could

their

number,

or should have

70

as

we

have

a great future.

said,

is

73 The timelessness of ornamental glass and glass mosaic

Meanwhile, since we do not yet have the better, we must put up with

the

good,

and this

lead, glass

good

mosaic,

is glass

and

enamel.

and

ornamental glass

These

mounted

glorious materials

have

in

not

been outmoded by time; they have survived hundreds and thousands

of

years.

It

is

regrettable

that

they

have

not

been

protected

from

infamous hands, but tough granite, which was used to face Egyptian

pyramids, has fared

no better, and has also been stolen.

But this is no place for lamentations; our hope is that glass archi-

tecture

will

also

me that this is a

noble

glass

improve

mankind

principal merit

walls.

This

quality

but something very real;

ethical

respects.

It

seems

to

of lustrous, colourful, mystical and

appears

the man

every day cannot have ignoble

in

to

who sees

hands.

71

me

not

just

an

the splendours

illusion,

of glass

74 Exhibition buildings in America and Europe

In the

past

twenty

years

we in

lous tales of American glass

been

only

the

idle

fancies

Europe have

buildings. In

of

reporters,

frequently

part, these

but

there

heard

fabu-

have certainly

may

well

be

a

grain of truth in them. Tiffany plays a great part in America,

and the

Americans

be

are very

well disposed

to

glass

things.

It would

very

interesting to know what is planned in glass for the World Exhibition

of 1915 in San Francisco.

In my opinion the exhibition buildings in America must differ con-

siderably from

at

Niagara

hall,

if

it

those in Europe. The American

Falls

is

are at

built

of

all

iron

events so

and

glass,

bridge constructions

magnificent

should

also

that an

exhibition

reveal impressive

dimensions. Whether it will be double-walled with coloured decora-

tion, we do not yet know.

America is also the

the

Pan-American

chief country

Railroad,

which

for impressive giant

is intended

to

protect

buildings;

the

North

and South against military attacks from East and West, is at present

probably the greatest engineering

A

hope

lies

here

architectural work

on

that

work on earth.

America

earth. May

might

it be

of every colour.

Europe is too conservative

and slow.

72

also

tackle

the

greatest

composed of iron with

glass

75 Experimental site for glass architecture

Glass-painters never fix the glass pieces with lead, without first test-

ing the effect experimentally. This is done with all new designs. The

full

effect

cannot

be

appreciated

in the

imagination.

For

the

same

reason, experiment is also essential for glass buildings. We need an

experimental site

for the

purpose.

It would

be

advisable

for such

a

site to be provided by private enterprise rather than by the state. The

latter brings in its official architects, who unhappily are rarely artists

and are incapable of becoming so overnight.

76 A permanent exhibition of glass architecture

A glass architecture exhibition would have to be linked to the exper-

imental site,

and it would

have to be permanent. Glass

can only be effectively promoted if every new idea

at

the

same

buy on

time,

the spot

and

all those

interested

whatever is best

can

architecture

can be exhibited

constantly

order

or

or newest.

77 The crystal room illuminated by translucent floors

At the exhibition,

particular attention would have to be given to the

lighting tests. We do not yet know, for example, what the effect would

be of

a

room

ever, but

be

lit

things

tested.

In

by

translucent

like flooring,

my

view

a

floors.

One

and many

Glass

Building

could

other

discuss

lights for

ideas, would

Association

would

have to

have

to

make capital available for the site and exhibition. If the interest were

general, the

association would

soon be formed.

73

78 Metal filigree with enamel inlay hung in front of crude reinforced concrete

Many experiments could be imagined; the choice is almost unlimited.

Particular

thought

must

reinforced concrete:

worth considering.

scale.

Much

of

be

filigree

It would

glass

given

to

overcoming

ornament with

look

like

architecture

a

the

enamel

piece

concerns

crudeness

inlay is

perhaps

of jewelry, on

the

jeweler,

of

and

a

large

jewels

should be transposed from necks and arms on to walls. For the time

being,

ladies

losing

their

things

about

are not

share

of

many

going

to allow

adornment.

new

It

this

is

movements,

because

one

that

of

the

they

the

are

most

first

afraid

of

unpleasant

thing

everybody

asks is: can it be harmful to me? The old fear of competition is in all

things a

far from

pleasant phenomenon, even in art.

The oil-colour

manufacturers are undoubtedly opponents of glass-painting, because

they cannot make anything out of it.

79 The aeronaut’s house with airship models on the roof

Let’s turn to something pleasanter! In my opinion, air-navigation will

be eager to build an aeronaut’s house in the restaurant garden of the

exhibition,

to the

at

with

domed

airship

roof.

This

models

would

Bremen. To immortalise

projecting

be

aircraft

a

little

variant

of

mobile

the

models in this

lights

fixed

Seeschifferhaus

way

would

be

of

great interest to the aeronautical profession, and would lie very close

to its heart.

74

80 Soft lighting

It must be repeated that efforts should not be directed towards achiev-

ing greater

brightness

in

lighting,

for we

have

got

that

already.

We

should think all the time of the softening of light in choosing colours.

81 Twilight effects

Incidentally,

we

should

consider

introducing

light

behind

coloured

glass panels into a few corners, even in bright sunshine. It produces

wonderful twilight

effects during

the

dusk

and dawn hours.

A great

many lighting experiments will, of course, be necessary.

82 Lighthouses and shipping

When new lighthouses have to be built, the glass architect must see

to it

that in the

large

scale.

immediate future glass architecture

Since

lighthouses

it is undoubtedly cheaper

generally

than

stand

on

designs in brick,

is adopted on

high

where

a

eminences,

the frightful

labour of lifting such material to the site disqualifies them. Building

will

unquestionably

be

cheaper

with

the

simple

equipment

needed

for carrying up metal and glass. This must be repeatedly emphasized.

75

83 Airports as glass palaces

For the building

to recommend

of airports,

it;

airports

also, glass-iron construction has

must

be visible

and

identifiable

much

from

far

off and this is best achieved by coloured ornamental glass. This will

reach its full effect

a diadem

at

of projected

night,

when the

lights,

also people who have no

entire building is crowned

delighting

airship at

not only

the aeronauts,

by

but

their bidding.

84 Light nights, when glass architecture comes

It seems easy to say that something is indescribable, but of those light

nights which

glass architecture

must

bring us, there

is nothing else

left for us to say except that they are truly indescribable. One thinks

of the lights

and one

shining

from all the

glass towers

thinks of these lights in all their

of the

railway trains all

which

at

night,

too,

the

gaily lighted,

light

shines

and in every

aircraft,

many colours. One

and one

through

adds the

thinks

factories

coloured panes.

in

Then

one thinks of the great palaces and cathedrals of glass and the villas

of glass,

and

water — often

of

the

town-like

structures,

on

solid

land

and

in

the

in movement — and of ever more water in ever different

colours. On Venus and Mars they will stare in wonder and no longer

recognize the

surface of the earth.

Perhaps men will live more by night than by day. Astronomers will

erect

their

observatories

in

quiet

mountain

ravines

and

on

peaks,

because the huge sea of coloured light may disturb the study of the

heavens.

This

is not

thought of it

a

modern

concept — the

first. We must not

great Gothic

forget that.

76

master-builders

85 The brilliant (diamond) effect in architecture

Brilliants

the

are treasured

diamond

effect

is

on

by

the

no

hands and

means

neck,

prized.

but in

I suggest

architecture

that

this

only

happens because the brilliant is too small and architecture is too big.

Large

glass

brilliants,

however,

can be

produced

of pumpkin

size,

without becoming too expensive. Will architecture despise the brilliant

effect, when

glass can be seen everywhere in large quantities? That

seems to me unlikely. It is no

primitive people and small

argument against coloured glass that

children are enraptured by it.

86 Three-dimensional and two-dimensional ornament in architecture

In the Alhambra, we mostly find three-dimensional ornament, but of

perishable plaster-work. Glass architecture

ment, but of imperishable

decoration is

kind

and

made of glass,

of plastic

only be

not

glass materials.

art

for the

considered

merely

a

for

formal

figment

of

often

but it

obliges

one

certainly

to

return

seems

as reflected in particular

glass

rooms;

the

and filigree

wall

there

it

imagination.

should

is

Venice

is

it

later.

that

by the

the

I

do not

blown

This

admittedly

feasible

no

longer

much that

recommend

splendours

orna-

glass.

entirely

although it has contributed

to

to me

The most delicate

even of frosted

ornamental

the pinnacle of glass culture,

can also use such

copies,

of Venetian

glass,

palaces of Isola Bella, are valuable

sources of inspiration. One often forgets that present-day Italy, with-

out glass, really

has very

little attraction.

77

87 The transformation of fireworks

When there is more glass everywhere, fireworks will be transformed;

thousands of reflection effects will be possible. But this chapter must

wait until pyrotechnics

have been further developed.

88 Colour-lit pools, fountains and waterfalls

This chapter shall be left to the landscape architects. They will tackle

the job with great enthusiasm and be determined to offer more than

the rococo period offered us.

89 The discovery of the brick bacillus

Brick

decays.

Hence

fungus.

no great discovery, but

finally ousting the cult

The

now the

discovery

of

the

doctor also has

brick

bacillus

is

a major interest

in

of brick.

In the cellars of brick houses the air is always full of brick bacilli;

glass architecture needs no

cellars beneath it.

90 The nervous effect of very bright light unsoftened by colour

We have to thank very bright lights, in part, for the nervous ailments

of our time. Light softened by colour calms the nerves. In many san-

atoria it is recommended by

nerve doctors as beneficial.

78

79

91 Railway stations and glass architecture

For

station

premises,

which

have

to

be

screened

at

least

partially

against wind and rain, glass architecture is so appropriate that noth-

ing further

needs to be said about it.

92 Uniform street lamps and their elimination

If we must mention

something detestable, this

is, in my view, those

street lamps which in every town look so alike that one cannot help

wondering how mankind can

be capable

of such

monotonous repe-

tition. Happily, this repetition can be quickly eliminated by combina-

tions of coloured glass hanging-lamps, which are adaptable to a vast

number of forms. This elimination will of course come

very soon.

93 Present-day travel

Today people travel from nervous habit: they want to have something

different and although they know that all hotels and towns, mountain

villages and health resorts have a dreadful sameness, they travel there

just the

same. They

better wherever they

travel,

knowing well that they

go.

80

will

find nothing

94 Future travel

In the

future, people will travel

tecture, which will differ

To

travel

meaning;

for

one

look at

widely in various parts

the sake

may

in order to

surely

of

glass

expect

architecture

new

glass

of the

has

effects

One may also assume that nine-tenths of the daily

only on new

glass

effects.

The daily

press

new

at

in

glass archi-

world.

all

events

other

a

places.

press will report

wants novelty — so it

will

not be unfriendly to glass.

95 The Doppler and the Zeeman effects

It has often

In

been said that glass

contrast to

this,

is not

remember

a ‘precious’ commodity.

the

glass

spectrum. In addition, Christian Doppler discovered that light,

Frauenhofer’s

lines

of

when

it approaches or recedes, breaks up Frauenhofer’s lines into infra-red

and ultra-violet.

By using photography it has

been possible

to mea-

sure this, and from these measurements we know precisely whether

stars of weak luminosity are approaching us or receding, and at what

speed. Without glass the Doppler effect would

not be discernable;

should think that this speaks volumes for the importance

The Zeeman

effect occurs through the action

of a

I

of glass.

magnetic field

and a flame; the spectrum then shows Frauenhofer’s lines suddenly

triplicated.

From

magnetic fields,

the

‘triplets’

one

can

determine

which are detectable in sun-storms

the

existence

and explain

of

the

constitution of sun-spots. I believe that the Zeeman effect also speaks

volumes for the

importance of glass.

Thus one can no longer be permitted to describe glass as of little

value; whoever does that has no right to be considered

person.

81

an educated

96 Which spheres of interest are fostered or endangered by glass architecture

The livelihood of masons and carpenters — from what

above — is clearly threatened;

has been said

also that of the whole timber industry,

joiners, turners, etc. But the process will not be so rapid that it will

be

impossible

to

assimilate

those

affected

into

other

trades;

they

will have plenty of time to transfer to the metal and glass industries.

Very

many

new

skills

are required,

and

nothing

stands

in

the

way

of change.

Admittedly,

become

many

a locksmith;

locksmiths

the

say

locksmith

that

a

mason

only says this

could

because

he

never

fears

competition.

But the spheres which will inevitably be stimulated by glass archi-

tecture are principally heavy industry, the chemical dye industry and

the glass industry.

97 Heavy industry

The

introduction of

bring so

many

iron into

new orders

to

house-building

heavy

will,

industry

that

beyond

it could

question,

continue

to exist even if all cannon-making were stopped. Accordingly, heavy

industry would

this

book too

be

well

lightly;

advised

they

will

not

to

bring it

take

the

ideas

discussed

great pecuniary

in

advantages.

In any case, heavy industry should note that there will be many new

potential clients

because

of glass architecture.

82

98 The chemical dye industry

The same thing applies to the colour industry. Glass architecture will

consume vast quantities of colour.

99 The glass industry

It is undeniable that the glass industry

has the

lion’s share in glass

architecture. The present scale of the industry, however, is inadequate

for the

greater demand; it must expand in proportion. The financial

success which will result

from this is quite incalculable.

100 The influence of coloured glass on the plant world

Glass

architecture

dens;

entirely

will

also exercise

colourless,

plain

an

glass

influence

will

be

on

botanical

gradually

gar-

abandoned.

Coloured glass will only be used externally, where it does not absorb

too

much

light.

coloured light,

The

and

experiments should

plants

the

will

experts

then

be

exposed

may well

not be carried out

have

experimentally

some surprises.

to

The

in haste.

101 Art in bridge building

There have

been times

when

the engineer

has

had the

upper

hand

over the architect; not unnaturally, for the engineer was more needed.

Today

the

his pocket;

engineer

he gladly

no

longer

allows half

apparent in bridge building,

One could wish that these

to

wants

to

stuff

the architect.

all

the

This

will

where there are high artistic

related to glass architecture.

83

fees

into

soon be

ambitions.

102 The transformation of the Earth’s surface

So

many

ideas

constantly

sound

to

us

like

a

fairy-tale,

when

they

are not really fantastic or utopian at all. Eighty years ago, the steam

railway came,

From what

and

has

undeniably

been said

be transformed,

this time

transformed

so far

the

by glass

due

to

the

railway.

we know it

the

future

brick

‘culture’

Glass

goes. It is

of our

of

the

civilization

will

which

this

earth.

once again

comes, a

we

all

only come

clear to all

that

If it

the

meta-

here.

city,

architecture

completely

of

must naturally be taken into

consideration, which cannot be discussed

present

face

earth’s surface will

architecture.

morphosis will occur, but other factors

The

the

if

those who

dissolution

must

deplore,

the

city

is

as

care about

take

place.

To labour the point is useless.

We all know what is meant by

of the

spectrum. But we want to have that part.

violet are not

to

the

colour; it forms only a

perceptible to our

sensory

organs

of ants.

small part

Infra-red and ultra-

eyes — but ultra-violet is perceptible

If

we

cannot

at

the

moment

accept

that our sensory organs will develop appropriately overnight, we are

justified

in

accepting

our grasp — i . e . ,

in with our

that

we

should

first

that part of the spectrum

own

eyes — in fact,

the

reach

which

for

what

is

within

we are able to take

miracles of colour,

which

we are

in a position to appreciate ourselves. In this, only glass architecture,

which will inevitably transform our whole lives and the environment

in which

we

live, is

going

to

help

architecture will indeed transform

us.

So

we

must

hope that

the face of our world.

84

glass

103 The transformation of the official architect

When the

private client

tect. When

wants to

build, he

looks for the

best

archi-

the state wants to build, government architects are at

its

disposal — not the best architects, who are generally freelancers. This

is a deplorable situation, and it is the state that one chiefly deplores.

These official

cracy (hence

architects, who are always hamstrung

their

inhibitions

and

conservatism),

by

must

the

bureau-

once

again

become free; otherwise they will hinder future architectural progress.

One sees from the buildings produced by official architects that they

are

scared

of

colour;

shyness stems

do with

In

of

ridicule.

This

remarkable

from old Peter Cornelius who would

colour-

have nothing to

colour.

the

botanical

house. This

result. Heating by

supposed

to

gardens

at

Dahlem

is bound to be a glass

already assigned

be

to government

(ceramic)

to

there

palace. Its

architects.

stoves

better-suited

not know whether the

to a

scared

government master-potter.

85

as

yet

am curious

than

of the

no

orchid

construction must be

has been proposed,

orchids

construction

I

is

central

stoves

to see

the

for they

are

heating;

I

do

is being entrusted

86

104 The psychological effects of the glass architectural environment

The peculiar

to

influence

the priests

exploit

the

of

of

ancient

coloured

coloured

Babylon

glass

glass

and

hanging

light

Syria;

lamp

in

was

they

the

already

were

the

temples,

known

first

and

to

the

coloured glass ampulla was later introduced into churches throughout

Byzantium

and

in Europe.

From

these

glass windows of the Gothic period;

were developed

the

stained

it is not to be wondered at that

these make an especially festive impression, but such an impression

from

effect

coloured

on

the

glass

is

human

inevitably

psyche

inherent

can

in glass

accordingly

only

architecture;

be

good,

its

for

it

corresponds to that created by the windows of the Gothic cathedrals

and Byzantium glass ampullæ. Glass architecture makes homes into

cathedrals, with

the same

effects.

87

105 A composed and settled nation, when glass architecture comes

When home life has reached the stage where even the wildest fancies

appear

to

be

people will

realized,

travel

the

only

longing

to learn

for

about

something

a

different

particular

type

ceases;

of glass

art

and possibly to bring it home — to be able to reproduce it in a similar

design.

Perhaps

fibres

like

somewhere

brocade,

so

one

may

that the

discover

fibres,

the

viewed

art

of

from

making

different

glass

angles,

will show different colour effects. Perhaps somewhere they can make

a lace-like

fabric from glass fibres and

one colour; an intimate

a

homey

appearance,

effect would

out

effect might result, and

which

be created.

about new

glass

fix it to a darker glass wall of

one

Perhaps

crafts;

would

then

much

leave

one

that

was

this would make

reluctantly;

would only

new

a

travel

for

curtain

to find

might emerge

from

old designs. But the entirely new is also to be expected from the great

inventors of

our own and

future times.

106 More coloured light!

We

must

already

worth

not

too

strive

strong

striving

for.

to

and

Not

increase

no

the

longer

more

intensity

endurable.

light! — ‘more

the watchword.

88

of

But

light — today

a

coloured

gentler

light!’

it

is

light

is

must

be

107 The main entrance

In my

opinion,

the

entrance

open hall of many glass

like

the

petals

of

an

to a

great

palace

should

walls, gathered together

exquisite

flower.

The

always

be an

one upon another

best

architects

should

devote themselves particularly to entrance-hall construction, and then

invite the interior designers to surpass the complicated architectonic

effects. This should create a splendid challenge; and it would simply

be necessary for the client to bear the cost and not come to the end

of his financial resources

too quickly.

108 The monumental

The pyramids are monumental. Cologne cathedral, too, is monumen-

tal — the

idea

Eiffel

of what

tower

is

also

is monumental

often

will

so

be

described

changed

by

nowadays,

glass

Glass towers will be built deep in the sea, creating a

but

the

architecture.

special kind

of

luxury architecture, cool and very peaceful. Many people might think

of giant

windmills,

with

sails over a

hundred metres

long; but town

hall and powder-magazine towers might not be suitable for windmill

purposes; brick architecture

would not stand

up to a severe storm.

109 Streets and highways as light-column avenues

The

verges

trees,

of streets

which

are not

and

high

highways

enough

will

for

no

the

longer

purpose,

be

planted

but

with

columns

of

light, provided with festoons of lights and shedding constantly chang-

ing coloured light,

would be highly appropriate

89

for verges.

110 Chemistry and technics in the twentieth century

We are not at the end of a cultural period — but at the beginning. We

still have

extraordinary

isty, which

should

not

marvels

be

forgotten.

encouragement. Unsplinterable

which

a

celluloid

sheet

to expect

is

from technics

This

glass

ought to give

should

placed between

be

two

and chem-

us constant

mentioned

sheets

here,

in

of glass

and

culture.

The

joins them together.

111 Glass culture

After

new

all

the

glass

have

to

wish

opponents.

ever

a good

we

environment

remains only

many

above,

fewer

thing;

It

can

will

that

is

to

way at

speak

completely

the

be

opponents;

in this

indeed

new

to

cling

any

rate

a

glass

transform

glass

hoped,

of

culture

in

fact,

to

the

the

that

old

old is

is

mankind,

will

glass

not

and

it

find

too

culture

will

in many

preserved.

matters

We, too,

want to cling to the old — the pyramids of ancient Egypt should most

certainly not be abolished.

But

at our

we also want

to strive

after

the

disposal; more power to them!

Translated by James Palmes

90

new,

with

all

the

resources

T H E C R Y S T A L V I S I O N OF PAUL S C H E E R B A R T

“Glashäuser: Bruno Taut’s Glaspalast auf der Werkbund-Ausstellung in Cöln” (Glass houses: Bruno Taut’s Glass Palace at the Cologne Werkbund Exhibition) by Paul Scheerbart was originally published in the March 1914 issue of the journal of technology, culture, and life, Technische Monatshefte: Technik für Alle (Engineering monthly: Technology for all), Franckh’sche Verlagshandlung, Stuttgart. Taut’s model for the Glass House is reproduced on the opening page of Scheerbart’s article. This preview of the Glass House was based only on the model and architectural drawings from Taut’s office, as the actual building would not be completed until the official opening of the Glass House four months later. Scheerbart had hoped that his book Glass Architecture would be published by Technische Monatshefte , but perhaps due to its construction as a kind of modernist “novel” it was instead published by the artistic imprint of the magazine Der Sturm (The storm).

92

Paul Scheerbart

Glass Houses: Bruno Taut’s Glass Palace at the Cologne Werkbund Exhibition

Iron and ferroconcrete are the two building materials that are truly suitable for architecture today. Along with these, another material has recently gained favor in the building industry: glass — the extensive use of glass has already become typical in modern industrial building. At this year’s Werkbund Exhibition in Cologne, new possibilities for glass’s use in architecture will be revealed. Bruno Taut, builder of the iron monument at the Leipzig Architecture Exhibition, will build a “monument of glass” for the Werkbund Exhibition. The illustrations included here show what it will look like. This glass palace is designed above all to prove that glass can be used for much more than just windows; walls, too, can be built of glass. Glass’s translucence (not transparence) makes it unparalleled for walls, since no other building material can achieve such magnificent effects. Taut’s Glass House has an agenda. It is meant to herald a new era of architecture in which glass will be on par with iron and ferroconcrete as a building material, both of which are also naturally indispensible for the glass house’s framework. Thus, the glass palace will demonstrate all of the architectural possibilities of glass and will inspire new perspectives for future “glass architecture.” The incorporation of glass into architecture will have incalculable effects on the glass industry as a whole. Entirely new branches of the industry will open for development. The use of glass will also have a considerable effect on interior design and the applied arts. To support this view, let me first explain that in a colorfully ornamented glass room comprised of colored glass in an iron or ferroconcrete skeleton, furniture can no longer be placed up against the walls. This is obvious, since the glass walls are the most beautiful and precious elements in the whole room. This development will necessarily have a transformative effect on the applied arts, which will gradually have to adapt to glass and iron architecture.

95

PAUL S C H E E R B A R T

Furthermore, the steel furniture industry will have to be developed, as steel furniture belongs in a glass house. Of course a nickel-plated glass chair cannot simply be placed beside an old-fashioned carved wooden chair. Steel furniture has to become at least as artistic as the old wooden furniture. This is no utopian demand, either: much can be done with enamel and niello inlay, and I have no doubt that imaginative artisans will easily be able to create steel furniture so aesthetically flawless that it can compete against wooden furniture, which is not only flammable but lacks durabilty. In the foreseeable future steel may fully replace wood as a material for furniture. At this point the nonflammable spun glass known as glass hair can also be considered for the interior decoration of the house. Glass hair can be very inexpensively and finely produced; a million meters weigh no more than a kilogram. Glass hair can also be made malleable with india rubber or collodion coating. A patent has already been obtained for such clear coating. Glass hair can be put to good use in carpets, blankets, and curtains. This will open many new branches of industry. In addition, glass hair, which as mentioned is very inexpensive to produce, can be used as an ersatz filling material for mattresses and pillows. It cannot be denied that the use of such nonflammable materials in interior decorating could make completely fireproof furnishing a possibility. At first, practical concerns stand at the forefront of glass architecture. Initially, it will be a field for engineers. It is not fantastical future plans that are at stake here, but rather ideas that could fundamentally improve construction. If, for example, it were merely possible to remove all flammable materials from living spaces, rendering firefighters practically superfluous, something very tangible would be achieved, which couldn’t be criticized for being “fantastical” or “dreamlike.”

Taut’s domed hall, whose rhomboid form is reminiscent of the Mameluke graves of Cairo, has “double” glass walls. This too is a “practical” matter. Air conducts heat poorly, so having an insulating layer of air, as occurs between glass walls, is a simple way of heating and cooling every room, that is to say, of making the space livable. The two glass walls may also be spaced a meter or two apart. The glass house can therefore look very different from the outside than from the inside, as any desired form may be fused into the walls. This gives architects valuable artistic perspectives, which must not be forgotten when judging the value of glass architecture.

96

G L A S S H O U S E S : BRU NO T A U T ’ S G L A S S P A L A C E

Wire-glass is recommended for the exterior walls. The wire-glass industry will therefore also greatly develop. In his Glass House, Taut has used Luxfer Prisms for the exterior walls. The lighting elements are housed in the space between the two walls. This achieves wonderful effects of light both from outside and inside the house. . . . The heating and cooling mechanisms can also largely be suspended or placed overhead. This idea will necessarily reshape the heating and cooling industry, which until now has really been quite unartistic. Today’s crude-looking radiators can’t be used in a glass house. The exhibition space in the Cologne Glass House will display a collection of all the existing types of glass — wire glass, frosted glass, filigree glass, glass blocks, enamel, enamel plates, glass mosaic, glass hair, tiffany glass, etc., in order to demonstrate the revival of the glass industry. The included illustrations only show the Glass House from outside. The main room of the house — the large glass domed hall — is 10 meters wide and more than 7 meters high. Opaque colored glass covers the surface of the walls in the ornament hall, which is on the lower level; many new materials are used in this room. The middle of the hall contains a waterfall, which is illuminated by a moving kaleidoscope. The kaleidoscope employs glass in a magnificent and rich variety of colors. Glass architecture will also greatly enhance the significance of ornamentation. Ornamentation is usually preferable to figuration, as can be seen in the great Rhenish cathedrals. Glass architecture strives for a cathedral-like effect, which in my opinion can also lead to positive moral effects. The subject of glass architecture has only been lightly touched upon here. I hope I will have more frequent opportunity to write on glass architecture for the

T.M. There is so much to discuss

that an exhaustive investi-

gation cannot be offered in only a few pages. Even addressing just the technical aspects, which play a very important role, since many new materials for the glass industry haven’t yet been investigated, takes up a lot of space. It is precisely this which must be further discussed here.

Translated by Anne Posten

97

“Glashaus Werkbund-Ausstellung Cöln 1914” (Glass House Cologne Werkbund Exhibition 1914) by Bruno Taut, was published to accompany Taut’s Glass House at the 1914 Cologne Werkbund Exhibition. The Glass House was still under construction when the exhibition opened to the public in May 1914. The building was finished most likely around July 1914, in the time for the annual Werkbund meeting. Taut begins the brochure with an epigraph quoting Scheerbart’s Glass Architecture and uses a Scheerbartian aphorism on the cover: DER GOTISCHE DOM IST DAS PRÄLUDIUM DER GLASARCHITEKTUR (The Gothic cathedral is the prelude to glass architecture). In this example preserved at the Baukunstarchiv in Berlin, Bruno Taut’s penciled note on the front cover reads: Best wishes! You really must come to Cologne. T[aut]

98

We live for the most part in closed rooms. These form the

environment

from

which our culture

grows. Our culture is to a certain extent the product of our architecture. If we want our culture to rise to a higher level, we are obliged, for better or for worse, to change our architecture. And this only becomes possible if we take away the closed character from the rooms in which we live. We can only do that by introducing glass architecture, which lets in the light of the sun, the moon, and the stars, nor merely through a few windows, but through every possible wall, which will be made entirely of glass — of coloured glass. The new environment, which we thus create, must bring us a new culture.

100

Bruno Taut

Glass House Cologne Werkbund Exhibition 1914

The Glass House has no purpose other than to be beautiful. It is intended purely as a structure for exhibition and should be a beautiful source of ideas for “lasting” architecture but is not itself intended as such. According to the poet Paul Scheerbart, to whom it is dedicated, the Glass House should inspire the dissolution of current architecture’s far-too-restricted understanding of space and should introduce the effects and possibilities of glass into the world of architecture. May it, in its own way, help to foster a transformation of building toward the light and grace that it currently sorely lacks. The Glass House illustrates the architectural possibilities that lie hidden in glass, which until now has been used either sparingly or not at all. The house attempts to display a comprehensive variety of ways that glass can be used as a material for walls, ceilings, and floors, along with several decorative effects and some unique manufactured glass items. The success of this kind of building depends not only on designing the entire weight-bearing structure to be as light as possible, but also on making the supporting elements in each section as minimal as possible. The former is achieved with a roof-framework that departs from the typical geometry. This lightness is a result of the fine craftsmanship of the General Concrete and Iron Company LLC of Berlin, which alone of all the companies consulted for the project undertook the calculations and the practical realization of the structure. Despite terrible storms in March, the company was able to erect the entire reinforced concrete skeleton in five weeks. It should be noted particularly that the ribs of the dome are reduced to

12

⁄20 cm and that the sheathing of the concrete framework was therefore

seldom difficult or complicated. Visitors to the building proceed along the following path: first, a concrete staircase leads to the terrace. Walls made of Luxfer Prism glass (German Luxfer Prism-Syndicate) enclose the house, and in fact one of the aforementioned company’s patents, for Keplerian Reinforced Concrete-Glass (very thin reinforced concrete ribs between the pieces of glass), was put to good use here. The dedication plaque embedded in the wall exemplifies a

101

BRU NO T A U T

particular method of electrolytic glass bonding. Two Luxfer-glass glazed iron staircases lead upward from the terrace to the hall of glass. The inner surface of the dome consists of very costly Luxfer Prisms, some of which are made of solid colored glass, but otherwise all of which are backed by colored glass panels mounted in galvanized copper. New arrangements and even new shapes have been developed for the glass prisms. The German Luxfer Prism-Syndicate is the only company in Germany that manufactures this type of beautiful prism glass for architectural use. In order to protect this precious inner shell from dust and rain, the dome is externally glazed with large plate glass panes. The outside gives the visual impression of a crystal made up of rhombi, while the plate glass also serves a crucial temperature-controlling function by dispersing the sun’s warmth through the layer of air between the panes. Luckily, the sirocco winds ventilate the house well enough to overcome the greenhouse atmosphere one might justifiably fear in a glass house. The floor of the glass hall is also comprised of a rhomboid pattern of Luxfer Prisms combined with yellow and white glass circular panes. An opening in the floor looks into the basement of the Glass House, where the waterfall and the kaleidoscope are located. Two Luxfer-glass staircases lead downward between Luxfer-glass walls. The walls of the upper circular section of the basement are made of silver smalt. Silver or gold smalt is the name for glass that has a sheen of silver or gold yet is translucent. This product is made by the Puhl & Wagner company of Treptow in Berlin, which is the only company to hold a patent for and manufacture such glass. A number of artistic lead-glazed windows are embedded in the motherof-pearl-like walls, foremost among which is a large window designed by the painter Franz Mutzenbecher and realized by J. Schmidt-Berlin. All of the other windows also demonstrate special effects of glass. The ceiling of the room is tapered and consists of luminescent red flashed glass and gold smalt mounted in lead. The J. Schmidt and Gottfried Heinersdorf companies of Berlin, who hold a deservedly high reputation for stained glass, are responsible for the execution of the walls and ceiling. A waterfall bubbles forth from a round pool in the center of the ornament room, forming ever-changing shapes as it pours downward over five terracelike levels. This cascade is made of ornamental and plate glass mounted on a strong backing of unpolished glass and is lit from behind with Osram lamps. The construction of the cascade posed serious difficulties, as the large glass sheets and the strength of the light sources behind them made it difficult to make the structure sufficiently watertight. The rim of the fountain

102

GLASS HOUSE

has a border of black glass tiles. The United Zwiesel and Pirna Colored Glassworks Corp. of Munich was responsible for the construction of the waterfall, as well as for all glass materials used in its construction, including the unusual-looking “slag glass” (a waste-product of the glassmaking process from the hearth of the furnace), with the exception of the precious glass beads scattered throughout. The same company also made and installed the aforementioned glass tiles for the cascade’s rim and for the walls. This tiling is particularly noteworthy, as it exhibits an exceptionally rich range of colors arranged in painterly compositions. The Zwiesel and Pirna Colored Glassworks make tile in a wide variety of colors that cannot be found elsewhere, for example gold-red, iridescent black, and the like. These two factories are the only ones in Germany that make this kind of solid colored glass tile. The same company made the glass ceiling of the cascade room, making the company responsible for the entire inner casing of this room, right down to the floor. The floor does not depart from the house’s uniformity of materials. It contains a beautiful glass mosaic of blue and black glass pebbles made by N. Rosenfeld & Co. of Berlin. The cascade’s downward trail leads the eye to a purple fabric-lined niche with a screen, upon which rhythmically shifting kaleidoscopic images are projected. The beauty of the images reminds the viewer of childhood. Until now, what the eye sees in a kaleidoscope had never been successfully projected onto a screen, since in the projected image the mirrored parts of the image are usually obscured by the opacity of the tube that holds them. This is the first time that such clear kaleidoscopic images have been projected. The contents of the kaleidoscope itself were composed by various artists and are displayed in rotation. Even if the image created by the system of mirrors is a result of chance, the artistic choice and arrangement of colors and forms inside the tube can create very individualized results. Once a visitor has enjoyed the effects of the various rooms, from the light-filled colored glass hall to the mother-of-pearl and gold smalt room and finally the cascade and the impressive kaleidoscope, two doors at ground level lead back into the open air. In the evening, the illuminated building attracts the gaze. In a glass house there is no need for the external “illumination” of arranged lightbulbs or the like. One needs only to light the rooms of a glass house, and it will be beautifully illuminated outside as well. Large white spheres hang from the ceiling of the dome — seven, the holy number — each one as bright as a thousand candles. Made of precious English frosted glass, these fixtures drench the entire building in a strong light that reflects on the prisms and makes them sparkle magnificently. In

103

BRU NO T A U T

the middle of the circle formed by these seven spheres hangs a large cluster of colored lightbulbs, which, in contrast to the white light of the spheres, complement the colors in the building. As in the glass hall, the cascade and the kaleidoscopes are illuminated by Osram lamps made by the Auer Company. All of the participating companies and the Werkbund deserve thanks for their contributions to the realization of the Glass House. I hope that it will win many new supporters of the intimate charm of glass and glass architecture. To complement the effect of the house, several designs for other glass buildings are displayed in the glass hall, along with examples of old German, Venetian, English, Tiffany, and handcrafted glass. Max Taut’s model for a botanical museum (made by Weinert-Steglitz), several of my own sketches, and Leberecht Migge’s design for a glass garden show that Paul Scheerbart’s poetic and wonderful proposal cannot be dismissed as mere utopianism. In fact, there is a well-founded hope that viewing glass architecture will awaken an enthusiasm for its more subtle charms. Current architecture desperately needs to be freed from depressing, immobile, clichéd monumentality. This can only be achieved by flowing, artistic lightness.

Translated by Anne Posten

104

Contributors Construction management: Franz Hoffmann (Taut Brothers & Hoffmann, architects, Berlin W 9. Linkstraße 20

Construction Allgemeine Beton- und Eisengesellschaft m. b. H.,

All concrete work

Berlin W 57, Bülowstr. 55 Deutsches Luxfer Prismen-Syndikat, Berlin SW 68,

Ceiling and floor of the domed hall, outer walls of the basement, glass stairs

Friedrichstr. 204 Vereinigte

Zwieseler und Pirnaer

Farbenglaswerke

Walls and ceiling of the cascade room, cascade and border

A. G., Munich, Briennerstr. 9 J. Schmidt, (Official purveyor to the Kaiser), Berlin

Inner wall and ceiling of ornament room in basement

W, Genthinerstr. 3 Vereinigte Werkstätten für Mosaik und Glasmalerei, Puhl

& Wagner, Gottfr.

Inside walls of ornament room in basement

Heinersdorf, Berlin-

Treptow N. Rosenfeld & Co., Berlin W 8, Mohrenstr. 11

Floor and stairs of cascade room

Deutsche

Installation and lighting with Osram half-watt lamps

Gasglühlicht

A.-G.

(Auergesellschaft),

and Osram color-reflect lamps

Berlin O 17, Rotherstr. 8-10 Master

Glassmaker

Adolf

Baltrusch,

Berlin

N,

Mirroring in dome

Bornholmerstr. 76 Robert

Oertling,

Fabrik

kompletter

Geschäftsein-

Glass display cases

richtungen für alle Branchen, Cottbus H. Scharrer & Koch, Bayreuth, Bavaria

Colored glass beads for cascade

Ed. Liesegang, Fabrik optischer Apparate, Düssel-

Kaleidoscope and projection equipment

dorf, Volmerswerterstr. 21 Jakob Ochs, Gartenbau, Hamburg, Bieberhaus

Glass spheres

J. G.

Balustrades

Sauter,

Metallornamentenfabrik,

Kupertrei-

berei, Cologne-Sülz E. de la Sauce & Kloß, Eisenkonstruktion, Berlin-

Lattice grating

Lichtenberg, Herzbergstr. White,

Child & Beney, Siroccowerk,

Berlin NW,

Ventilation system

Dorotheenstr. 35 Weise Söhne, Halle a. d. Saale, Berlin branch, Kaiser

Centrifugal pump for cascade

Wilhelmstr. 59 Dr. Max Levy, Fabrik elektrischer Maschinen und

Motors for pumps and kaleidoscope

Apparate, Berlin, Müllerstr. 30 Deutsches

Metallwarenwerk

G.

m. b.

H., Berlin,

Light fixtures in dome (not including lamps)

Lindenstr. 106

Artists Franz Mutzenbecher, Berlin W, Eisenacherstr. 103

Main glazing in ornament room

Professor Emanuel Margold, Darmstadt

Glazing in ornament room

Professor Arno Körnig, Bromberg Richard Schischke, Berlin Charlotte Leyden, Berlin Willi Titze, Hamburg Hans Unger, Berlin Emil Weinert, Berlin-Steglitz, Hardenbergstr. 36

Wall decorations in cascade room

Franz Mutzenbecher, Berlin

Contents of kaleidoscope

Professor Adolf Hölzel, Stuttgart, and others

Exhibitors in Glass Hall Georg Leykauf, Nuremberg, Kunstgewerbehaus

Tiffany Glass

Richard L. F. Schulz, Berlin, Bellevuestr

Venetian, German, and English Glass

Vereinigte

Handcrafted Glass

Werkstätten

für

Kunst

im

Handwerk,

Berlin, Bellevuestr. 5 a Emil Weinert, Berlin-Steglitz, Hardenbergstr. 36

Model of botanical museum

Firms that participate in construction

Glass construction materials and samples

105

The rhyming couplet that closes this brochure, OHNE EINEN GLASPALAST IST DAS LEBEN EINE LAST (Without a palace of glass / Life is a burdensome task), is one of the Paul Scheerbart mottoes encircling the base of the dome of the Glass House. Scheerbart’s letters to Taut regarding these mottoes were later published by Taut in Frühlicht (Early light) magazine in 1920 and are included in this book (pages 130–43).

Overleaf: The Glass House by Bruno Taut, Cologne Werkbund Exhibition, 1914. Note the last few words of the Scheerbart motto from the brochure opposite just below the dome on the left-hand side of the building.

107

BRU NO T A U T

T H E C R Y S T A L V I S I O N OF PAUL S C H E E R B A R T

NOAM M . E L C O T T

Noam M. Elcott

“Kaleidoscope-Architecture”: Scheerbart, Taut, and the Glass House “The Glass House has no purpose [ Zweck] other than to be beautiful.”1 With these words the architect Bruno Taut commenced his promotional pamphlet for his glass industry promotional pavilion. Where stained glass once propagandized church teachings and divine light, Taut’s Glass House showcased a host of new, often proprietary construction materials, not least Luxfer Prisms, an innovative type of glass tiles that, as their name announced, carried light into the dark recesses of rooms. 2 Purposelessness — to adapt Kant’s famous definition of beauty — acquired purpose as exhibition architecture. Taut’s portentous prose and industry backing notwithstanding, the architect had his sights set on goals loftier than patented building materials or even a universal sense of beauty. For the structure was dedicated to Paul Scheerbart, that inscrutable evangelist of glass, and was emblazoned with the poet’s maxims: rhyming couplets — “Colored glass / destroys all hatred at last” was inscribed above the entrance — too direct to be mystical and too romantic to be functionalist. In its debt to Scheerbart, the Glass House oriented its temporary inhabitants toward the uncharted utopia of glass architecture.3 Beauty and functionality were but facets of this new prismatic culture. Taut and others described in detail one’s passage through the Glass House. Concrete steps led to a terrace; walls of Luxfer Prisms enclosed the interior; two iron staircases, outfitted with Luxfer glasses, ascended The Glass House by Bruno Taut, Cologne Werkbund Exhibition, 1914. Interior view showing the domed exhibition hall and the railed oculus opening into the cascade room below. An exhibition including historical Venetian, German, and British glass; contemporary examples of Tiffany and German glass; a model of a botanical museum inspired by Scheerbart’s writings; and samples provided by the glass industries involved in the construction of the Glass House of the most recent developments in glass architectural materials were showcased in the vitrines surrounding the oculus. The dome of the Glass House was constructed of colored and clear glass, but little is known about the colors themselves except that, as Taut described, there were “reflections of light whose colors began at the base with a dark blue and rose up through moss green and golden yellow to culminate at the top in a luminous pale yellow.”

111

NOAM M . E L C O T T

The Glass House by Bruno Taut, Cologne Werkbund Exhibition, 1914. Interior view from the lower part of the cascade room with the oculus to the exhibition hall visible at the top of the cascade. Taut’s brochure credits the many artists, artisans, and companies that provided the experimental construction materials, glass prisms and brick, stained glass, metalized ceramic tiles, glass globes, and other new uses of glass and concrete documented in the installation views illustrating this essay (see page 105).

to the Glass Hall or cupola; an opening in its floor descended into a basement with walls of silver and gold glass furnished by the firm Puhl & Wagner, a cascade waterfall assembled by United Zwieseler and Pirnaer Colored Glass Works, and, strangely, a darkened niche for kaleidoscopic projections. The commercial and utopian aspirations of glass industrialists and evangelists culminated paradoxically in an obscure niche whose dark drapery swallowed the light carried inward and downward by Luxfer Prisms so as to enhance the brilliance of the infinitely variable and variegated forms rear-projected onto a milky glass screen by a giant projecting kaleidoscope.4 The inclusion of a milky glass screen was sensible on commercial and aesthetic grounds. The glass industry was promoting dulled and silvered plate-glass projection surfaces — in short, mirror-screens! — as a more luminous alternative to painted canvas or plaster film screens.5 And Scheerbart himself had recently announced the imminent arrival of glass theater, featuring glass sheets of no more than 2 to 3 meters [61⁄2 –9 feet] in width.6 (The Glass House’s glass screen measured a tolerable 120 cm

112

“ K AL E I D O S C O P E - A R C H I T E C T U R E ”

The Glass House by Bruno Taut, Cologne Werkbund Exhibition, 1914. Interior view showing the upper part of the cascade room. Among the list of collaborators are a number of electrical and technology companies (including the famous Osram Lighting Corporation) and the companies providing the motors and pumps for the cascade, whose rushing water formed a soundtrack for the artistic images displayed by the kaleidoscope.

[4 feet] across.) The curiosity lay instead in the kaleidoscope, which produced the last images consumed by visitors before they exited the Glass House. Why crown a glass pavilion with projected, abstract moving images? A first answer might again be gleaned from Taut’s pamphlet: “The Glass House has no purpose other than to be beautiful.” The glass bead filling of the kaleidoscope was assembled by artists — not least Franz Mutzenbecher and Adolf Hölzel, both significant, if not highly successful artists; Hölzel, in particular, was an influential teacher of younger abstract painters. Here, perhaps, was the fulfillment of purposive purposelessness: even though chance played a role, artists could still create individualized works. Alternatively, the achievements were of a technological kind. As Taut avowed, visitors might remember the kaleidoscope from childhood, but here was a larger projection version, indeed the first successful projection kaleidoscope. The assertion was, at best, half right. Earlier attempts at projection kaleidoscopes may have met with varying degrees of success, but they date back to the invention of the apparatus.

113

NOAM M . E L C O T T

Sir David Brewster, a nineteenth-century scientist who vastly improved the stereoscope and invented the kaleidoscope, enumerated its application to the magic lantern, solar microscope, and camera obscura: “It is by no means difficult to fit it [the kaleidoscope] up in such a manner as to exhibit them [the pictures] upon a wall to any number of spectators.”7 Once again, Taut’s exploits cannot easily be restricted to artistic whimsy or techno-commercial utility. A third way was initiated by Scheerbart. Scheerbart had long admired kaleidoscopic effects and peppered his prose with the moniker. Comets and stars, color and light-plays, appeared like “a perpetually spinning kaleidoscope.”8 A fictional World’s Exposition in Melbourne boasted “kaleidoscopic ornamentation.”9 But in the years just prior to the Werkbund Exhibition that hosted the Glass House, Scheerbart described in detail a fictional glass exhibition in Peking that closely anticipated the kaleidoscopic ensemble produced by Taut and company. “To begin, a hall with kaleidoscopes on the walls. Everything else black velvet. In the middle of the sixteen walls, however, appeared a large circle with kaleidoscopic effects. The kaleidoscope transformed every minute. Always different. Every magic lantern overhead, above the black velvet ceiling.”10 With the perfunctory shift from front to rear projection, Scheerbart’s 1912 fantasy described almost perfectly the disposition of elements at the terminus of the Glass House circuit. A dozen years prior, at the turn of the century, Scheerbart had named this disposition with a terminological precision matched only by Taut’s later design: “kaleidoscope-architecture.”11 For Scheerbart, kaleidoscope-architecture was but one of many half-rhymes for the glass architecture he systematically and devoutly prophesied. But it behooves us to take the term seriously and literally in regard to Taut’s Glass House. Already Brewster, the inventor of the kaleidoscope, had envisioned kaleidoscopic images enlarged with the help of magic lanterns and other devices. Taut and Scheerbart recognized the power and potential of expanding not only the image but also the apparatus, so as to create a kaleidoscope one could enter. The raked steps, darkened niche, luminous screen, and moving images channeled nineteenth-century attractions like the diorama and Rear view of the Glass House by Bruno Taut, Cologne Werkbund Exhibition, 1914. Note the last words of the Scheerbart motto DAS LICHT WILL DURCH DAS GANZE ALL UND IST LEBENDIG IM KRISTALL (Light passes through the universe / And comes to life in crystal) beneath the dome, as well as the epigraph to Scheerbart’s Glass Architecture, Honi soit qui mal y pense (Shamed be he who thinks evil of it), inscribed beneath the row of mirrored glass globes.

114

“ K AL E I D O S C O P E - A R C H I T E C T U R E ”

coincided with the emergent architectural form of cinemas. The Glass House, in short, was kaleidoscope-architecture in its most literal — that is, etymological — sense: καλός (kalos, beautiful), εἶδος (eidos, a form), and σκοπέω ( skope¯o, to see).12 A machine for seeing, the Glass House did not oppose purpose and beauty. Rather, to amend Taut’s declaration, the Glass House had no purpose other than the viewing of beautiful forms. NOTES 1. Bruno Taut, “Glashaus: Werkbund-Ausstellung Cöln 1914” (1914). This book, Taut, “Glass House Cologne Werkbund Exhibition,” 101. 2. The Luxfer Prism Company was founded in Chicago in 1897 and quickly established locally owned syndicates in several countries, including Germany. Among its first designers was the young Frank Lloyd Wright. The German Luxfer Prism Company produced the glass prisms for Taut’s Werkund project and for The Fairy Palace (1919–20), his children’s game in glass. 3. See, most immediately, Scheerbart’s contemporaneous treatise: Paul Scheerbart, Glass Architecture, trans. James Palmes (New York: Praeger, 1972). This book, 22–90. 4. Taut later described the apparatus as a “großprojizierten Kaleidoskop,” a description from which “projecting” was inexplicably dropped in the contemporaneous English translation. Bruno Taut, Die neue Baukunst in Europa und Amerika (Stuttgart: J. Hoffmann, 1929), 28; Bruno Taut, Modern Architecture (London: Studio, 1929), 56. 5. See, for example, Frank Herbert Richardson, Motion Picture Handbook (New York: Moving Picture World, 1916), 173. These glass screens were for front, not rear, projection. Accordingly, the promotional value of the milky glass screen in the Glass House, which employed rear projection, was admittedly nominal. 6. See Paul Scheerbart, “Das Glas-Theater,” Die Gegenwart 78 (1910): 914. This book, Scheerbart, “The Glass Theater,” 187. 7. David Brewster, The Kaleidoscope: Its History, Theory, and Construction, 2nd ed. (London: John Murray, 1858), 117. 8. Paul Scheerbart, Kometentanz: Astrale Pantomine in Zwei Aufzüge (Leipzig: InselVerlag, 1903), 42. 9. Paul Scheerbart, Münchhausen und Clarissa (Berlin: Oesterheld, 1906), 29. 10. Paul Scheerbart, “Auf der Glasausstellung in Peking,” in Das große Licht: Ein Münchhausen-Brevier (Leipzig: Sally Rabinowitz, 1912), 94–95. This book, Scheerbart, “At the Glass Exhibition in Peking: The Old Baron’s Diary Entries,” 200. 11. Paul Scheerbart, “Die wilde Jagd: Ein Entwicklungsroman in acht anderen Geschichten,” in Rakkóx der Billonär und Die wilde Jagd (Berlin: Insel-Verlag, 1900), 97. Enticing precedents for kaleidoscope architecture include the improbable convergence of “Oriental” and glass architecture in a replica of the Alhambra’s Hall of Abencerrages, presented in the Crystal Palace at Sydenham; according to contemporary sources, both the replica and its glass container were experienced as giant kaleidoscopes. See Arnaud Maillet, “Kaleidoscopic Imagination,” Grey Room 48 (2012): 46. 12. Brewster, The Kaleidoscope: 1. Hand-drawn plan of Bruno Taut’s Glass House. Note the custom-built kaleidoscope and motorized projector at the rear of building, the 4-foot (1.2 meter) screen just in front of the projector, and the special recess used to darken the viewing space in front of the screen. The Glass House projector has previously been misidentified as a cinematograph but was a possibly unique motion-producing kaleidoscope with a lamp for projecting the images created by artists, a visual program commissioned by Taut specifically for this project.

117

“Glasarchitektur” by Bruno Taut was published March 1921 in Die Glocke (The bell), the German socialist journal edited by the historian and economist Max Beer from 1919 to 1921. Writing in response to the growing interest in architecture made of glass, Taut attempted to record the history of his collaboration with his “Glass Papa,” Paul Scheerbart. Taut hoped to remind people of the central historical importance of Scheerbart’s ideas, especially as a source of inspiration for his own group of architects and writers, the soon to disband Crystal Chain. Published in the midst of the German Revolution, with the country on the brink of a civil war, Taut’s essay can also be seen as a defense of the political ideals inherent in Scheerbart’s vision for a translucent, colored glass architecture, a world view central to the work of both Taut and Scheerbart.

118

Bruno Taut

Glass Architecture

Dear Editors:

You seek from the notorious glass architect an historical account of glass architecture, this “foible” for which all are so eager to take him to task. Glass architecture: seemingly a matter of materials, comparable to wood or stone architecture. But this is a complete misunderstanding: from a spatial perspective, architecture or building is nothing other than the bringing of light. Glass is light itself, and wood and stone architecture have always striven to bring light, so “glass architecture” is nothing more than the final link in the chain of building. The history of glass architecture is therefore the history of architecture itself. For us, the prominent use of glass and its preeminence among materials is so obvious that it hardly bears discussion. But today –isms are the fashion, and nothing can happen without being a “school” or a trend. In the last centuries, concrete and iron have provided easy ways to play with form, and yet now, when the most exquisite of all materials is in ready circulation, such play is called a foible. The Gothic masters worked in the glass crucibles of huts and experimented with the ultimate possibilities of flow and had no concrete or iron, only stone, and they stretched light between grids of stone.

“But, before the glass is made, the architect, by his knowledge of arrangement, makes the stone framework like a filter in the waves of God’s Light and gives to the whole edifice its individual lustre, as to a pearl.” (Paul Claudel:

L’Annonce faite à Marie)

This is where the history of real glass architecture begins. Paul Scheerbart called the Gothic cathedral the prelude to glass architecture. In truth: what we want is more than the mounting of panes in a framework. The most magnificent example of that to date was London’s Crystal Palace of 1853. Giant greenhouses are also beautiful, and I should

119

BRU NO T A U T

in no way be counted an opponent of greenhouse cultivation. What beckons us, and what Scheerbart anticipated, however, is actual construction with glass — an uncomfortable prospect that “we” will nonetheless make into a comfortable reality. Concrete and iron as a framework will not disappear, but this “framework” will shrink in proportion to the glass prisms — thick, stonelike forms bound with a little cement and thin iron bars into a honeycomblike tissue, creating a wall truly made of glass. Stones can be thrown at such a wall and only the proverb breaks; here the full reality of glass architecture is born. It is an unpleasant idea for skat players in their cozy hideaways. But this is the full reality of the idea, and it is with this idea that the history of glass architecture begins. Writing this history means writing poetry. Scheerbart’s writings, and his

Glass Architecture

in particular, are this history and my utopias. This

history of what is to come is no more a fantasy than our hindsight into a past on which the lamp of the present casts only a small beam of light. Cogito ergo sum. I am what I think; what I think is my present. And this present can do anything, it can move mountains! Therefore onward! Down with the ghost of the past and its lead “weight,” up with our will. “O thoughts of men accurs’d! Past and to come seems best; things present, worst.” The present: not what we’ve built, but what we build, and if at this moment we cannot physically build that which we desire (which, by the way, is a blessing for us), it is nonetheless building in us and will therefore eventually have to manifest itself in material. What has already been built of glass is legion: buildings for exhibitions, huge glass walls in industrial buildings, warehouses, and all the merry, colorful glass kitsch of verandas, stores, Aschinger taverns, pastry shops, etc. Both inside and outside the Werkbund there are two distinct paths in current building that lead toward the architecture of light: the practical industrial dictate of plentiful light, and the blithe sensual thrill of colorful kitsch and multifaceted glitter. I have tried to unite both these trends in the Glass House in Cologne; I have tried to replace the cold light of a greenhouse with the warm, lively light of architectural space. Of course, the Glass House was only a small stepping stone. In order to depict the richness of the light-sounds — from organ fugue to the most delicate solo capriccio — in the endless variations of wall forms: straight, cambered, by no means always vertical, I would need many sizes of bells, likewise to discuss the various technical problems that they create. But we do not wish to proselytize, nor can we; we too are building and sitting at our glass crucibles. In glass we lay our souls and capture yours, they fly to this mystery of creation, which knows no back or

120

GLASS ARCHITECTURE

front but sparkles from all sides, ever anew, like moths to a flame. Be captured! “The more thou art a prisoner, the more wilt thou be freed.” Being captured is painful. But pain is the creator. Each new creation hurts, and it hurts the true artist the most, since he can do nothing but create anew, draw from the well of “creation.” “It is unfamiliar, therefore it is disturbing.” These are the words of a reviewer who is rarely honest and just as rarely humble, on my proscenium for “The Maid of Orleans.” And that was only latticework, panes between slats, hardly very new and yet — unfamiliar! Yes, that dear comfortable familiarity! But that too must be, that too is “willed by God.” The stone of difficulty only creates livelier sparks. And we have a “great” ally here: in children. Children rejoice in the festival of light, and women with them — perhaps not always, but whenever the umbilical cord isn’t quite broken. And we win over children, who have been thrust into this cold, joyless life, through play. Our building is play: “our goal is the play of style.” And we make children into our master builders with real playthings (for example my glass construction kits with colorful, nearly unbreakable glass blocks). These master builders see with emotion, and when they are grown-ups they will build with and through us, even if “we” are already dead. Dear editors, do not take all this “seriously.” I wish the same for the readers. It is really unimportant whether this is said and written. Things are only truly important when they are said for the fun of it. And therefore all should read the works of our “Glass Papa,” Paul Scheerbart. Yours most faithfully, Bruno Taut

Translated by Anne Posten

121

Rosemarie Haag Bletter

Fragments of Utopia: Paul Scheerbart and Bruno Taut Paul Scheerbart’s direct impact on the arc of modernist architectural history — especially through his friend the architect Bruno Taut — is indisputable. During the early 1960s, the proliferation of utopian architectural groups like Archigram and the Japanese Metabolists marked a reemergence of an antirationalist undercurrent of modernism that had been completely displaced by the emphasis on rationalism in the work of historians such as Sigfried Giedion.1 The widely varying interpretations of the new aesthetic concepts across the arts in the years leading up to World War I — many of them inspired by anarchist and poetic ideals — were later subsumed under a category mostly associated with expressionist painting. Marxist critics have tended to dismiss these explorations as primarily self-expression and, for this presumed reason, not meaningful socially. But especially in architecture, these developments and visionary proposals were in fact often focused on social ideals. At the outset I also need to distinguish my understanding of Scheerbart from that of the British critic Reyner Banham, who in his early appreciation of the writer’s importance for architecture, “The Glass Paradise” (1959), concentrates exclusively on his technological visions rather than his quirky fantasy. 2 In fact, most of Scheerbart’s work provides an untamed blend of symbolist mysticism and synesthesia combined with dry wit, satire, and irreverent brevity. Most important, Scheerbart underscores the sensuous, emotive experience of architecture, while at the same time he narrates his topics with Bruno Taut, Dandanah — The Fairy Palace, 1919–29. A set of colored glass building blocks. These hand-cast, rough-surfaced glass blocks in clear, red, blue, green, and yellow, were manufactured by the same company that produced the prismatic glass tiles of the Glass House of 1914, the Deutsches Luxfer Prismen-Syndikat, a franchise of The Luxfer Prism Company in Chicago (originally called The Radiating Light Company). With child-friendly edges and charming dappled refractions from marks made by the metal molds, these glass blocks match the soft color palette of Taut’s watercolors for his portfolio and book Alpine Architecture of 1919 and likely reflect as well the palette of colors used in the original Glass House prism tiles.

123

R O S E M A R I E H A AG B L E T T E R

a sharp sense of irony and a political skepticism typical of the anarchist groups active in Berlin before World War I. 3 Because most of his novels and short stories depict an architect or architectural fantasy as the central catalyst for a new society, his import for the utopian phase of architectural design just after World War I, when there were few commissions to build, is understandable. In order to suggest a transformed society, Scheerbart uses imagery of mobility and ever-changing translucent polychrome effects. This is not the clear glass associated with rationalist modernism but glass that incorporates mysterious, dislocating qualities, produced by a multiplicity of reflective surfaces and settings that can be colored glass, gold, moving water, or even precious stones. Although Scheerbart’s architectural conceptions seem modern in their mutability, some relate to art nouveau’s interest in the ephemeral as a critique of the commercial, materialistic, and technocentric culture of the second half of the nineteenth century. Contributing to Scheerbart’s preoccupation with glass is a long literary prehistory rooted in an ancient Judeo-Arabic tradition (Scheerbart had studied Arabic culture) that was indebted to one of the apocryphal biblical accounts of the queen of Sheba when she was invited to visit King Solomon’s palace in Jerusalem. In addition to having great power and wealth, the queen was rumored to have magical powers, and in order to reveal that, Solomon had a glass floor built in his throne room so that she would mistakenly perceive this as a pool of water and lift her skirt, exposing her legs. A sorceress was assumed to have hairy legs (a sign of the occult, but in reality also a sign of male power), and lifting her skirt would betray the hidden reason for her exceptional might as a ruler. In this suggestively eroticized tale, King Solomon, widely renowned for his wisdom, absorbs Sheba’s magical prowess for himself. Solomon is said to have then created an underwater dome of glass and an aerial city of crystal.4 This fantastical tradition is carried on in Arabic architecture and poetry. It enters medieval stories associated with the search for the Holy Grail and becomes reified in actual buildings with the stained-glass windows of the Gothic cathedral. By contrast, the courtly literature of the later Middle Ages depicts the quest for the Stone of Wisdom and courtly love as a personal transformation. The imagery of architecture as a social agent disappears, replaced by a luminous, usually transparent stone that is discovered in the depth of a cave or a mountain. The allegory is used in this reduced form, as a translucent pebble that stands for the self, in the

124

F R A G M E N T S OF U T O P I A

romantic literature of Novalis, in Nietzsche, and in the symbolist work of Alfred Jarry. In Jarry’s Exploits and Opinions of Doctor Faustroll (1895), the philosopher’s stone is located in Vincent van Gogh’s brain. This fable, inspired in part by Rosicrucian mysticism, also uses the story of the queen of Sheba and King Solomon, demonstrating that these apocryphal biblical stories had regained currency in the 1890s. 5 In Scheerbart’s works and later in the designs of Taut, and other underrecognized architects such as Wassili and Hans Luckhardt, or Wenzel Hablik, the symbolism becomes less personal and again more social: the imagery returns to the architectonic realm. Among Scheerbart’s longer texts, The Gray Cloth and Ten Percent White: A Ladies Novel is more characteristic of his allegorical style than is the better-known Glass Architecture, both of 1914.6 It depicts the world transformed by a master architect through colored glass structures together with the gradual liberation of the architect’s wife, who is in the end freed from the prenuptial contract that required her to wear only gray dresses with a few white details so that she did not clash with her husband’s polychrome buildings. In a sense, Gray Cloth is a sly protofeminist novel. Several of Scheerbart’s works demonstrate his integration of mobility as social alternative: “Transportable Cities,” “Dynamite War and Decentralization,” and The Development of Aerial Militarism and the Demobilization of European Ground Forces, Fortresses, and Naval Fleets, all of 1909.7 In these short stories he suggests the decentralization of cities into smaller garden-cities as a pacifist, defensive gesture. In place of the old standing armies and their “fronts,” he foresaw (and feared) the use of aerial bombardment of major cities behind enemy lines. For this reason Scheerbart proposed that the madness of war could be avoided through the dissolution of old urban centers. In this he follows the anarchist Peter Kropotkin, who proposed the decentralization of cities. In a more facetious vein, he proposes confusing the enemy by renaming Paris “New Berlin” and Berlin “New Paris.” The quintessence of Scheerbart’s ironic attitude toward technology is his satirical novel of 1910, Das Perpetuum Mobile, in which he purports to invent a perpetual motion machine. 8 He was as familiar with the laws of physics as anyone, but the project’s special attraction for him was precisely his effort to contradict them: “There’s something dilletantish about always needing to see everything brought to fruition in reality. Ludwig II, who insisted on sailing around his artificial lake dressed in Lohengrin

125

R O S E M A R I E H A AG B L E T T E R

armor to take full advantage of the Lohengrin ambience, always struck me as insufferable.” 9 His book is a running diary of false starts, assumed progress, subsequent failures, and fresh tries. There is a foldout sheet with myriad interlocking cogwheels and mathematical formulas to match. He expected nothing less than a miracle machine: it would tap the secrets of unlimited cosmic energy that could be harnessed to clear up the world’s problems. He wrote: “And so finally the social question can be put to rest. I wonder what the Social Democrats will have to say about this great Revolution of Work!”10 The free energy of the perpetual motion machine was also to be used to reconstruct the landscape in a manner that anticipates post–World War II land art and for “house building plants,” detailed in an essay of 1910.11 He adds in an ironic manner: “I think the best thing would be just to use the Harz mountain range in its entirety. You can dig up the whole place as much as you like and exhibit large-scale plans in smaller formats. . . . The Bode Valley in the Harz can be left just as it is — for the sake of contrast.”12 The total mobility of all inhabitants would become economically feasible. As a result, there would be a complete dissolution of national borders. The perpetual motion machine thus becomes the anarchist’s sine qua non. At the same time, Scheerbart is afraid that the military would appropriate his powerful invention. And he continues more pessimistically: “Of course these are all fantasies. Actual reality is always quite different.”13 Through his friendship with Taut, Scheerbart’s ideas about the transcendent effect of glass architecture took on visible form in architectural drawings and designs in Taut’s prewar Glass House at the Werkbund Exhibition in Cologne (1914), which was dedicated to Scheerbart, just as Scheerbart’s Glass Architecture of the same year was dedicated to Taut. While the Glass House still suggests elements of the romantic and symbolist crystal brain, Taut’s postwar utopian books such as Alpine Architecture (1919), The Dissolution of the Cities (1920), and The World Building Master (1920) apply Scheerbart’s social, anarchist, pacifist, and synesthetic concepts about the transformative power of a mobile and flexible glass architecture.14 Through the Art Soviet, begun in 1918, and the Crystal Chain, started in 1919 — both groups of architects and artists initially led by Taut — Scheerbart’s writings were further disseminated among socialist postwar artists and architects. Proposals for polychrome glass projects that dwell on sensory perception and emotive power rather than

126

F R A G M E N T S OF U T O P I A

on technology distinguish Scheerbart’s and the expressionists’ notions from mainstream modernism of the later twenties. That is, technology is not overtly displayed, nor is it abandoned, but is subsumed in service to a changed culture. During the tense years following the war, hopes for a new society had been raised, but almost no construction was economically possible. Taut, like Scheerbart before him, described his visionary books as mere fantasies. On the title page for The Dissolution of the Cities Taut wrote wistfully, “It is naturally only a utopia and a little amusement even if it is supplied with proofs in the literary appendix.” After 1923, when the German economy stabilized, Taut produced a large number of housing estates in Berlin (more than Gropius or Mies) that reflect his earlier utopian ideas. These are decentralized garden suburbs built for a housing cooperative association that had been established for white-collar workers. The larger of these settlements contain a mix of apartment buildings and row houses. In place of colored glass, too impractical and expensive in this context, bright polychrome stucco is used to organize the buildings urbanistically and psychologically.15 Thus Scheerbart’s and Taut’s colored glass architecture is a utopian tradition that is possible only in literary and architectural proposals. It functions as a metaphor for social transformation but could not be applied literally. Because Taut’s designs — along with those of many of his compatriots such as the great Hans Scharoun — did not fit comfortably with the later rationalist and technocentric notion of modern architecture, these explorative efforts were omitted from the standard histories of modernism. Herwarth Walden referred to Scheerbart as the first “expressionist,” but with his technological musings he might also have been called a “poet of the future,” and Dada writers considered him influential.16 These are not mutually exclusive interpretations. They simply reflect differing attitudes to cultural meaning. After 1920 even the most committed followers of Scheerbart had ceased to produce utopian fantasies. Walter Benjamin appreciated Scheerbart’s work in the later 1920s, but he radically reinterpreted his glass architecture; Benjamin was affected by Giedion’s materialist approach as well as by his own conviction that glass has no “aura” and his belief in a deliberate “impoverishment” of experience in order to resist the culture industry. Scheerbart’s and Taut’s fantasies are by no means the complete, self-sufficient systems one finds, for instance, in Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) or William Morris’s News from Nowhere (1890). Rather, they are fragmentary proposals that can be understood in light of the Marxist

127

R O S E M A R I E H A AG B L E T T E R

philosopher Ernst Bloch’s The Spirit of Utopia (1918).17 Bloch suggested that utopias were still possible as fragments that could spring from quite diverse sources — even fairy tales and the everyday — and be collaged into a partial rather than a fixed reality. It might even be said that Bloch believed in the participatory potential of utopia. NOTES 1. My dissertation, “Bruno Taut and Paul Scheerbart” (1973), was done with George Collins at Columbia University. Collins, together with his wife, Christiane Crasemann Colllins, had published a translation and expanded edition of Ulrich Conrads’s Architecture of Fantasy (New York: Praeger, 1962; the German version had appeared in 1960). This renewed concern for antirationalist trends had been reinforced by the Museum of Modern Art’s Visionary Architecture exhibit of 1960. A similar attitude was also evident in The Anti-rationalists , ed. Nikolaus Pevsner and J. M. Richards (New York: Harper and Row, 1973). 2. Reyner Banham, “The Glass Paradise,” Architectural Review, February 1959, reprinted in Reyner Banham, Design by Choice, ed. Penny Sparke (New York: Rizzoli, 1981), 29–33. 3. Rose-Carol Washton Long, “Occultism, Anarchism, and Abstraction: Kandinsky’s Art of the Future,” Art Journal 46 (Spring 1987): 38–45. 4. Rosemarie Haag Bletter, “The Interpretation of the Glass Dream: Expressionist Architecture and the History of the Crystal Metaphor,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 40 (March 1981): 20–43; Bletter, “Scheerbart’s Architectural Fantasies,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 34 (May 1975): 83–97; an updated, abbreviated application of Scheerbartian crystal symbolism is in Bletter, “Mies and Dark Transparency,” in Mies in Berlin , ed. Terence Riley and Barry Bergdoll (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2001), 350–57. Recent studies of the queen of Sheba have clarified her position as a female ruler of a commercially powerful country and the condemnation of her as a witch in later histories. See, for instance, Jacob Lassner, Demonizing the Queen of Sheba: Boundaries of Gender and Culture in Postbiblical Judaism and Medieval Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), and St. John Simpson, ed., Queen of Sheba: Treasures from Ancient Yemen (London: British Museum Press, 2002). 5. Selected Works of Alfred Jarry, ed. R. Shattuck and S. W. Taylor (New York: Grove, 1965), 236. Jarry’s Dr. Faustroll was published in part in 1895; the complete work was published posthumously in 1911 — Jarry had died in 1907. During Faustroll’s travels in search of knowledge, the hero encounters nearly all the symbols of spiritual transformation current at one time or another. His eclecticism takes us all the way back to the probable origins of this mythology, Solomon’s glass palace, as is clear from this passage: “His female retainers, whose dresses spread out like the ocelli of peacock’ tails, gave us a display of dancing on the glassy lawns of the island; but when they lifted their trains and walk upon this sward less glaucous than water, they evoked the image of Balkis [the Arabic name of Sheba], summoned from Sheba by Solomon, whose donkey’s feet were betrayed by the hall’s crystal floor.” Ibid., 209–12. 6. John A. Stuart translated The Gray Cloth with an introduction that correctly stresses Scheerbart’s feminist themes, among other topics (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001). 7. “Transportable Cities” (this book, 185); “Dynamitkrieg und Dezentralisation,” Gegenwart 75 (November 27, 1909): 905–6; The Development of Aerial Militarism and the Demobilization of European Ground Forces, Fortresses, and Naval Fleets: A Flier, trans. M. Kasper, Lost Literature Series 4 (Brooklyn, NY: Ugly Duckling Presse, 2007). Among other essays that employ mobility to achieve an altered social structure are

128

F R A G M E N T S OF U T O P I A

8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

15. 16. 17.

the following: “Das Automobil-Theater,” Der Morgen 1 (December 13, 1907): 871; “Die Stadt auf Reisen” [The traveling city], Das Blaubuch 5 (September 29, 1910): 929–32; “Das Luft-Sanatorium” [The aerial sanatorium], Gegenwart 76 (October 16, 1909): 781–82; and “Aviatik und Baupolizei” [Aviation and building inspectors], Gegenwart 71 (August 7, 1909): 582. This book, Scheerbart, Perpetual Motion: The Story of an Invention, 206–53. Ibid., 213. Ibid., 236. Paul Scheerbart, “Hausbaupflanzen” [House building plants], Gegenwart 77 (January 22, 1910): 77–79. This book, Scheerbart, Perpetual Motion, 214, 219. Ibid., 251. Bruno Taut, Alpine Architektur (Hagen, Germany: Folkwang Verlag, 1919); Die Auflösung der Städte (Hagen, Germany: Folkwang Verlag, 1920); Weltbaumeister (Hagen, Germany: Folkang Verlag, 1920). All three books are reproduced and appear with an English translation in F. Borsi and G. K. König, Architttura dell’Espressionismo (Genoa: Vitali & Ghianda, 1967). A better translation of Alpine Architecture can be found in Dennis Sharp, ed., “Glass Architecture” by Paul Scheerbart and “Alpine Architecture” by Bruno Taut (New York: Praeger, 1972). This book, Scheerbart, Glass Architecture, 22–90. For a more detailed discussion of this transition from utopias to designing housing estates, see Rosemarie Bletter, “Expressionism and the New Objectivity,” Art Journal 43 (Summer 1983): 108–20. Herwarth Walden, “Paul Scheerbart,” Der Sturm 6 (December 1915): 96. Ernst Bloch, Der Geist der Utopie (Munich: Duncker & Humblot, 1918). See also Bloch, The Spirit of Utopia, trans. Anthony A. Nassar (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000). Bloch engaged in a spirited debate about the correct Marxist response to expressionism with the communist literary critic Georg Lukács (by the 1930s a Stalinist). Today Lukács’s harsh criticism is better known than Bloch’s more measured response. Bloch’s and Lukács’s essays on this topic appear in translation, together with critiques by Bertolt Brecht, Benjamin, and others, in Aesthetics and Politics, Afterword by Fredric Jameson, trans. and ed. Ronald Taylor (London: NLB, 1977). For a further discussion of this debate — its political context and influence on contemporary art critics — see also Bletter, “Mies and Dark Transparency,” 355–56.

129

“Glashausbriefe” (Glass house letters) appeared in the February 1920 issue of Frühlicht (Early light), a supplement to the Berlin journal Stadtbaukunst Alter und Neuer Zeit (Urban architecture ancient and modern) edited by Bruno Taut. These letters were selected by Taut, and the comments in parentheses within the letters are Taut’s comments as published. The illustrations are unattributed yet appear very similar in style to drawings by Bruno Taut, who is known to have illustrated other issues of Frühlicht. Frühlicht was subsequently published as stand-alone issues, the final issue appearing in the summer of 1922, including essays by Scheerbart.

130

Finish the European! finish him! finish him! finish him off! (Paul Scheerbart)

Glass House Letters by Paul Scheerbart

Let anyone who doesn’t already know be told that in 50 years he will be a German classic. The only poet of architecture, born in Danzig, who died “of the war” on October 15, 1915, age 52.

1

Berlin-Lichterfelde 4, Marschnerstraße 15 24 December 1913 Dear . . . ! Many thanks for the little China book and for your lovely letter. Müller sent

Glass Architecture back.

And now I have to rest a bit, so I can’t come

to the Glass House on Saturday. Maybe Saturday a week from now! I have 2

some glass hair here (so-called fairy hair).

And they’re warm! Another

problem. So — merry Christmas and a happy New Year. And cheerful glass greetings from my house to yours. And I am Your old Paul Scheerbart. By the way, ten years ago Bruckner was pitted against Wagner — or maybe it was longer ago. I’m very glad that you want to dissociate yourself from such truly antiquated partisan squabbling. And so — no enmity whatsoever! Long live Siegfried and Tristan!

• • •

132

Berlin-Lichterfelde 4, Marschnerstraße 15 8 February 1914 Dear . . . ! I just read B.’s article in the

Hartungsche [Zeitung] and

now I under-

stand the dedication. (The Glass House in Cologne bore a dedication to P.S.) It is absolutely wonderful, and I’m touched. Thank you. I will try to repay you for it. At first I thought the dedication should be incorporated into the model. That too would be very nice. But on the big house, it’s wonderful. I can’t find the words for it. Congratulations on the accomplishment. I hope now too that my Glass Architecture will find a publisher. When that finally happens, we’ll have to get together. Let us hope! Millions of Sunday greetings from my house to yours, and I am Your old grateful Paul Scheerbart.

With great pleasure I read your story about necessity (proposition for an art house in

Sturm

in 1913); in my opinion land on Lake Schwielow must

be purchased. I’ll go there as soon as I can. Glafey’s “The Raw Materials

of the

Textile Industry”

(Quelle &

Meyer, Leipzig, 1.25 M) discusses glass as well; collodion and rubber can 3

give glass hair flexibility. Do you know about this?

• • •

Berlin-Lichterfelde 4, Marschnerstraße 15 10 February 1914 Dear . . . ! On Sunday I wrote down: 28 words per motto. But that was my mistake. You surely meant “letters.” But 28 is a little too few. Anyway — I tried. But it wasn’t completely successful. I’m including a few that are too long. But — maybe they would work using smaller letters. Or on the other hand, 2 m 50 cm with bigger spaces — or use different sizes of letters. 4

These must be hand drawn, correct? The order here is random.

Composing mottoes is no easy matter. Some of them sound a little banal. I wanted to give them all the feeling of improvisation — effortlessness. It would make me very happy if these bring you pleasure. It is a pleasure that

133

GLASS HOUSE LETTERS

must be long lasting. That’s why I didn’t write immediately. Please take some time with each verse. And then in the end say what you have to say. I have a numbered copy too, so you can refer to them that way. Spring greetings from my house to yours. And I am your old Paul Scheerbart.

I don’t think I can fit more thought or purpose in such a short space.

Mottoes for the Glass House

5

1. Good luck without glass — Balderdash!

Glück ohne Glas — / Wie dumm ist das! 2. Brick shall pass Colorful glass will last.

Backstein vergeht, / Glasfarbe besteht. 3. Colored glass Destroys all hatred at last.

Das bunte Glas / Zerstört den Haß. 4. Joy through color Is the realm of glass culture.

Farbenglück nur / In der Glaskultur. 5. Without a palace of glass Life is a burdensome task.

Ohne einen Glaspalast / Ist das Leben eine Last. 6. A glass house won’t go up in smoke Even if the extinguisher’s broke.

Im Glashaus brennt es nimmermehr; / Man braucht da keine Feuerwehr. 7. There is no vermin so small That can invade a glass house at all.

Das Ungeziefer ist nicht fein; / Ins Glashaus kommt es niemals rein.

135

BRU NO TAUT A N D PAUL S C H E E R B A R T

8. Materials flammable Are an absolute scandal.

Brennbare Materialia / Sind wirkliche Skandalia. 9. Grander than a Diamond Is a house with double-glazed walls.

Größer als der Diamant / Ist die doppelte Glashauswand. 10. Light passes through the universe And comes to life in crystal.

Das Licht will durch das ganze All / Und ist lebendig im Kristall. 11. The prism is brilliant; It makes glass magnificent.

Das Prisma ist doch groß; / Drum ist das Glas famos. 12. If from color you do flee, Nothing of the universe will you see.

Wer die Farbe flieht, / Nichts vom Weltall sieht. 13. Glass makes everything bright, Build with it on this very site.

Das Glas Bringt alles Helle, / Verbau es auf der Stelle. 14. Glass heralds a new tomorrow; The culture of brick brings only sorrow.

Das Glas bringt uns die neue Zeit; / Backsteinkultur tut uns nur leid. 15. Balloons may be light, But ferroconcrete’s right.

Preise nicht mehr den Luftballon, / Preise doch mal den Eisenbeton! 16. What would construction become Without ferroconcrete?

Was wäre die Konstruktion / Ohne den Eisenbeton? • • •

136

GLASS HOUSE LETTERS

Berlin-Lichterfelde 4, Marschnerstraße 15 12 February 1914 Dear . . . ! You never believed that I too could be in a bad mood sometimes. Thank you very much for the orchids. I’m gradually feeling a little better. But — I still can’t read your manuscript today. Soon — I hope.

beautiful greetings from my house to yours. And

Many

I am your

old Paul Scheerbart.

• • •

Berlin-Lichterfelde 4, Marschnerstraße 15 13 February 1914 Dear . . . ! Thanks for your friendly letter. But I can’t seem to get anywhere with the circular motto. It’s impossible. They all seem forced, and that won’t do. 10, 12, 9, and 1 seem like a good selection. I’d be very happy if you stick with these. As long as the letters are really clear. At the moment I’m nego-

three publishers. I hope that in fourteen days or three weeks, Glass Architecture will be a “done deal,” “Done deal,” that’s good, isn’t it?

tiating with

Double Glass House greetings! Your old Paul Scheerbart.

• • •

Berlin-Lichterfelde 4, Marschnerstraße 15 13 February 1914 Dear . . . ! This week has seen so many developments and I’ve gotten so many assignments, I’m

nearly

crushed under all the correspondence. I’m sup-

posed to write about your Glass House for the 6

Stuttgart; here?

Technische Monatshefte,

I’ve already agreed to write about the model. When will it be

I’m writing from illustrations

(photographs),

prints. Could you perhaps lend it to me?

137

perhaps

stereotype

GLASS HOUSE LETTERS

I’d be very grateful for your prompt reply. And for your thoughts on the mottoes. With big spring greetings from my house to yours I am Your old Paul Scheerbart.

Wait! There’s something in the

T. M. about glass that doesn’t break. Have

you heard about it? By the way, I’m also supposed to write about glass architecture in general for the

T. M. • • •

Berlin-Lichterfelde 4, Marschnerstraße 15 17 February 1914 Dear . . . ! First, congratulations! Long live the Kladow Prize. I also like the area very much. And that’s why it has to be completely rebuilt. One can’t rebuild enough.

7

Second, condolences! (for the models of the Glass House poorly packed in Cologne and as a result broken). Those damned Colognians* — they’re giving me a stomachache too. I can well understand your anger. You should have insured the thing. Yes — in this earthly life one cannot be too careful. Please pardon my trite wisdom. But it’s ten in the morning and I’m

almost in a good mood. I guess so, anyway. I’m really looking forward to going to W. with you someday. But I want to write the article right away, so I would be very grateful if you’ll send the photographs. I composed lines all day yesterday for the lord of ferroconcrete. Finally I came up with this:

Balloons may be light But ferroconcrete’s right!

Preise nicht mehr den Luftballon, Preise doch mal den Eisenbeton!

* They’re

local patriots! Cologne should be renamed New-Berlin.

139

BRU NO TAUT A N D PAUL S C H E E R B A R T

If you and the lord of ferroconcrete like it, I’ll be very glad. I do know, by the way, that “Beton” [concrete] isn’t meant to be pronounced nasally. But the nasal pronunciation is already commonplace. These verses took me a lot of work. I’m already doubting myself. And if the “Glass Palace” gets into it, I’ll be very happy. Now, don’t forget the photographs. And — long live the Maecenas of the Rhein! I am wholly your Paul Scheerbart.

• • •

Berlin-Lichterfelde 4, Marschnerstraße 15 18 February 1914 Dear . . . ! Thank you very much for both of the photographs; they’re already on their way to the

Technische Monatshefte

in Stuttgart with the article. I’ve

also promised to send the drawings by Herr W. Surely you’ll be good enough to let me know when you hope to be in possession of the drawings. Glass House greetings! And I am your old Paul Scheerbart.

• • •

Berlin-Lichterfelde 4, Marschnerstraße 15 20 February 1914 Dear . . . ! Thank you very much for your card. Stressing * “ferroconcrete” also strikes me as better. How do you like:

What would construction become Without ferroconcrete?

Was wäre die Konstruktion / Ohne den Eisenbeton?

* Sorry!

A distressing pun!

140

8

BRU NO TAUT A N D PAUL S C H E E R B A R T

I’d be delighted if that works, but I’ll not kid myself— I don’t think anything really good can come of it. which actually has

That’s why I wanted to put in the balloon,

nothing to do with it.

9

Hearty greetings Your Glass Papa

• • •

Berlin-Lichterfelde 4, Marschnerstraße 15 11 March 1914 Dear . . . ! Thank you for your kind letter. We’ll be at your office tomorrow, Thursday, so long as nothing pressing interferes (my health is a bit shaky), around half past five. Then we can just talk.

Glass Architecture is finally almost home.

With many greetings from us both I am your old Paul Scheerbart.

Technische Monatshefte in Stuttgart is taking the T. article and would Glass Architecture. Müller’s Ladies’ Novel will come out in 3 or 4 weeks.

The

also like

10

11

Translated by Anne Posten and Laura Lindgren

142

GLASS HOUSE LETTERS

NOTES 1. This statement about Scheerbart, presumably by Taut, opens the section of the magazine where the letters appear. 2. “Fairy hair” or “glass hair” is discussed by Scheerbart at length in his essay “Glass Houses: Bruno Taut’s Glass Palace at the Cologne Werkbund Exhibition” published in Technische Monatshefte: Technik für Alle (this book, page 96). “Glass hair” is drawn glass fiber, similar in some ways to fiberglass, which Scheerbart imagines will be useful throughout the house, woven into everything from carpets to curtains. 3. This book, Scheerbart, “Glass Houses,” 96. 4. Mottoes by Paul Scheerbart were inscribed around the base of the dome of Taut’s Glass House at the Cologne Werkbund. See illustrations, this book, 108–9, 115. 5. The original rhyming German mottoes appear beneath each translation. Six mottoes — 1, 3, 10, 13, and 14 — and a motto about concrete that Scheerbart sent to Taut ten days later (see note 9) were finally chosen for inscription. 6. This book, Scheerbart, “Glass Houses,” 96. 7. Scheerbart is referring to a design competition for the Kladow district in Berlin. 8. This motto was one of the six chosen to be inscribed on the Glass House. 9. Scheerbart’s humorously rhyming couplet celebrates the use of steel-reinforced concrete (ferroconcrete) in the Glass House. Although known as an example of the innovative uses of glass, the Glass House was also a demonstration of new concrete technologies. 10. This book, Scheerbart, Glass Architecture, 22–90. Despite Scheerbart’s reaching out to Technische Monatshefte and other publishers, Glass Architecture was in the end published by Verlag der Sturm, Berlin, soon after these letters were written. 11. Paul Scheerbart, The Gray Cloth and Ten Percent White: A Ladies Novel (Munich and Berlin: Georg Müller, 1914). Both of Scheerbart’s major “glass” novels were published in time for the May opening of the Werkbund; The Gray Cloth in April, and Glass Architecture in late May 1914. With Scheerbart’s mottoes inscribed on the building and included in the brochure, one can surmise that both books were discussed by at least some of the visitors to the Werkbund upon completion of Taut’s Glass House in July 1914.

143

Hollyamber Kennedy

Untimely Meditations and Other Modernisms: On the Glass-Dream Visions of Bruno Taut and Paul Scheerbart

In 1920 the German architect and editor Bruno Taut dedicated the third issue of Frühlicht to his friend and collaborator Paul Scheerbart.1 “Let anyone who who doesn’t already know be told that in 50 years he will be a German classic,” Taut wrote, praising him as “the only poet of architecture . . . who died ‘of the war’ on October 15, 1915, age 52.”2 The entire issue, in fact, was given over to the poet, whom Taut venerated as prophetlike, a weeping philosopher of dynamic change and cosmic flux. In Scheerbart Taut discovered a modern Heraclitus whose world was engendered and devoured by glass. In memory of the vital role that Scheerbart’s ideas had played in his life, Taut reprinted in Frühlicht ten letters Scheerbart sent to him from December 1913 to March 1914. These “Glass House Letters,” as Taut called them, chart, in the playful and passionately messianic voice of Scheerbart, the construction of their shared glass-dream modernism. Scheerbart — Taut’s self-professed Glaspapa — cultivated a life of paradox, like the curious astral characters of his novels. His peculiar anarchist humor — trained on the cosmos and its perpetual motion — and his belief in the generative power of the unfamiliar gave cause to his embrace of the decentralized text, body, and image, and gave rise to a new generation of architectural thought and experiment, most poignantly embodied in (The building materials of the future) by Paul Scheerbart, 1893. Front cover of a prospectus. Other than this incomplete example in a private collection, no other copies of this prospectus or of a related book or manuscript have been located. The contents page lists twenty-four chapters of the planned book, but the summaries of the second half of the list are missing. The proposed book would have presented, in 1893, some of the same revolutionary ideas that were to be outlined in Glass Architecture more than twenty years later. Die Baumaterialien der Zukunft

145

HOLLYA M B E R K E N N E D Y

the early work of his close friend, anarchist ally, and collaborator Bruno Taut. Scheerbart’s spectral, hallucinatory stories speak of the transcendent release of estrangement, as extraordinary and relevant today, in their Nietzschean “untimeliness,” as they were a century ago. With a clarity of vision empowered by revolt, Scheerbart crafted images, all prismatic and refracting, of another world, different from ours by minor degrees, yet full of miraculous curiosities: genderless bodies, floating concrete towns, ships made of glass, nights so bright with electricity they become the day. Perhaps nowhere is Scheerbart’s desire for a synthetic transformation of the ecology of life more legible than in his novel Glass Architecture, published in 1914 — a fantastically strange manifesto of a novel whose principal concepts were outlined by the author nearly twenty years earlier, in his 1893 prospectus titled The Building Materials of the Future, a remarkable document whose remaining fragments have only recently come to light. 3 In his prospectus Scheerbart described the architecture of the future in the language of dictums. The new regime of building, he wrote, will bring an end to the “tyranny of right angles” and to the tectonic constraints of brick, stone, and wood. “Free lines, complicated curves, and color” will define new modes of dwelling among “domes and balconies, hanging stairs and high towers.”4 Windows will become walls of glass — this in 1893! In an article published in Die Glocke in 1921, Taut returned to the theme of the “untimely” modernity of Scheerbart’s glass imaginaries: “What beckons us, and what Scheerbart anticipated . . . is actual construction with glass — an uncomfortable prospect that ‘we’ will nonetheless make into a comfortable reality. . . . It is with this idea that the history of glass architecture begins.”5 The Gothic masters, like modernist primitives, “stretched light between grids of stone” — the great prelude to the “full reality of glass architecture” born in Scheerbart’s work.6 Both his prospectus and the novel that followed, written on the eve of the Great War, whose technological horrors Scheerbart foresaw, unfold like prophecies of a new technical age, a cosmic era guided by the humanizing properties of a cosmopolitan glass culture. In the reconfigured landscapes of Scheerbart’s texts, architectural boundaries vanish as we are expelled from our quotidian lives, our linear geometries, and our brick houses; we (The building materials of the future) by Paul Scheerbart, 1893, chapter list (see translation on page 148). Note the evocative titles, prefiguring various themes from Scheerbart’s future oeuvre, specifically Glass Architecture.

Die Baumaterialien der Zukunft

146

1.

The end of street architecture.

2.

The meaning of freestanding houses.

3.

The future of gardens.

4.

Polychromatism and light in architecture.

5.

Iron versus stone.

6.

Reinforced glass and mica.

7.

Glass bricks.

8.

Glass mosaics.

9.

Glass painting.

10.

Imitation glass.

11.

Anthracite.

12.

Glass — coated.

13.

Lacquer.

14.

Majolica.

15.

The architect as healer.

16.

The architect as artist.

17.

Comparative pricing of new building materials.

18.

The new building regulations in Berlin’s suburbs.

19.

The Parisian World Exposition of 1900 and its City of the Future.

20.

The architectural mission of today.

21.

Bookselling markets.

22.

Exhibition palaces in Helgoland.

23.

Theater palaces in Rugia.

24.

The aesthetic treatment of electrical railways.

148

UNTIMELY MEDITATIONS AND OTHER MODERNISMS

are sent back into the garden to begin anew. The profound irony of this shining, brave new world of enlightened engineers and alien architectures is a perfectly Scheerbartian conceit — a luminous and curative utopia of tomorrow, nailed to the doorpost beyond which lay global war. Ironic utopias aside, both of these texts, separated by twenty years, introduced new ways of thinking about glass construction that found material expression in the architectural experiments of Taut, who was introduced to the poet in 1913, and whose work stands as a representation of the often overlooked influence of Scheerbart’s aesthetics on the many modernisms that took shape in the metropoles of early twentieth-century Europe. With revolution on his mind, Taut followed Scheerbart through the looking glass. The magical vernacular of the poet’s colored-glass visions deeply inspired Taut, who in turn gave form to Scheerbart’s desire to fuse the synthetic and the biological, to forge a new “biotechnical” nature.7 The following year, in 1914, they marked their alliance in an act of cocreation: at the behest of Taut, Scheerbart penned fourteen aphorisms, deviously playful apothegms on the totemic power of colored glass. Taut inscribed several across the frieze of his glass pavilion, built for the 1914 Werkbund Exhibition in Cologne. Sponsored by the German glass industries, Taut’s pavilion embodied Scheerbart’s concept of glass architecture to its core. Indeed, the house, with Scheerbart’s text blazing across its surface, spoke the language of the novel, and the novel the language of the house. In a pamphlet on the pavilion written for the Werkbund Exhibition, Taut remarked: “Current architecture desperately needs to be freed from depressing, immobile, clichéd monumentality. This can only be achieved by flowing, artistic lightness.”8 Like a modernist rite of passage — reform by light! baptism by glass! — Taut’s house and Scheerbart’s novel would show the way. As a prototype for a new regime of glass construction, Taut’s pavilion was meant to test the limits of its form (much like Scheerbart’s novel-manifesto) and to demonstrate a radicalized form of dwelling — a courageous, phantasmagoric house, an example of industrial possibility, electrifying and lighting up the silent, ascetic voids of an already sanitized modernism. Here is Scheerbart’s voice, in colored, crystallized form: “mehr Farbenlicht!” As Taut wrote in Die Glocke, “We do not wish to proselytize, nor can we; we too are building and sitting at our glass crucibles.” 9 Although their collaboration was brief, it had a profound bearing on the development of German architectural modernism and its international diaspora. Their shared ideas helped shape a movement whose contours

149

HOLLYA M B E R K E N N E D Y

and arcs demarcate what might be described as an alternative polychromatic modernity, a counterpath to the more canonical culture of glass architecture dominated by the tropes of transparency and whiteness, such as we find in the built work of Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and the later Walter Gropius. For Taut, writing this history of glass architecture meant writing poetry. “Scheerbart’s writings, and his ‘Glass Architecture’ in particular,” Taut recalled, “are this history, and my utopias. This history of what is to come is no more a fantasy than our hindsight into a past on which the lamp of the present casts only a small beam of light.”10 The architectural critic and historian Adolf Behne, a longtime friend of Taut’s from his Choriner Kreis (Chorin Circle Group) days, and an early acolyte of Scheerbart’s glass vision, once remarked that for Taut “the constant desire was to get from earth to heaven.”11 With this disavowal — of the centralizing forces of homeland and the mass tenement city, of the bodily traumas of industrial modernity — came a sublime, almost religious experience of disembodiment described by Behne as “the ultimate resolution.” If Taut’s gaze truly did seek the cosmos in hope of salvation, it was to Scheerbart’s Technicolor night skies that he looked. Taut’s cult of the “Beyond,” as he called it, was an aggregate of many sources, but its beating heart was the aporia that Scheerbart spent a lifetime articulating — the impossibility of utopia, which one must nevertheless attempt to construct, in perpetuum. Or, as Taut described it, “The echo comes back from the forest according to how you shout.”12

150

UNTIMELY MEDITATIONS AND OTHER MODERNISMS

NOTES 1. It should be noted that Taut launched Frühlicht first as an insert within the bimonthly circular Stadbaukunst alter und neuer Zeit, whose board he joined in 1920. Frühlicht appeared in the first fourteen issues of Stadbaukunst, after which it ran for four issues as an independent journal. 2. Bruno Taut, introduction to “Glashausbriefe von Paul Scheerbart,” Frühlicht 3 (February 1920), in Stadbaukunst alter und neuer Zeit 1, no. 3 (February 1920): 45. This book, 132. 3. See Paul Scheerbart, Glasarchitektur (Berlin: Verlag Der Sturm, 1914). Reprint, with an afterword by Wolfgang Pehnt, Munich: Rogner und Bernhard, 1971. Reprint, with an afterword by Mechtild Rausch, Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 2000. Translated into English by James Palmes, in Dennis Sharp, ed., “Glass Architecture” by Paul Scheerbart and “Alpine Architecture” by Bruno Taut (New York: Praeger, 1972). This book, 22–90. See also Paul Scheerbart, Die Baumaterialien der Zukunft (Berlin: Technischer Verlag für Kunst und Kunstgewerbe, 1893). This book, illustrations, 144, 147. 4. Scheerbart, Baumaterialien, 11. 5. Bruno Taut, “Glass Architecture,” Die Glocke, March 1921, 1374–76. This book, 120. 6. Ibid., 119. 7. Here I am drawing on Detlef Mertins’s reading of the emergence of what he calls a “bioconstructivist” and “biotechnical” aesthetics in the work of Taut, Lásló MoholyNagy, El Lissitzky, and Hannes Meyer, which, he argues, was heavily indebted both to Scheerbart’s vision and to Taut’s postwar endeavors to keep the Scheerbartian line alive. Mertins writes: “For Taut, as for Scheerbart, glass architecture represented a new stage in the development of technology that promised to reintegrate humanity with nature. Taut’s aim was not a naïve return to pre-modern craft but a return forward to a new nature, a second and synthetic nature achieved by humanity but in accordance with nature’s laws. . . . While Scheerbart did not use the term ‘biotechnics,’ it may be apt for any architecture that aspires to the status of a second nature.” Detlef Mertins, Modernity Unbound: Other Histories of Architectural Modernity (London: Architectural Association, 2011), 17, 18. 8. Bruno Taut, “Glashaus Werkbund-Ausstellung Cöln 1914” (Berlin: Buchdruckerei Albert Nauck, 1914). This book, 104. 9. This book, Taut, “Glass Architecture,” 120. 10. Ibid. 11. Adolf Behne, “Bruno Taut,” Neue Blätter für Kunst und Dichtung 2 (April 1919): 15. 12. Bruno Taut, from “Mein Weltbild,” a letter to the Crystal Chain group, written October 19, 1920, reprinted in The Crystal Chain Letters: Architectural Fantasies by Bruno Taut and His Circle, ed. Iain Boyd Whyte (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985), 159.

151

Gary Indiana

A Strange Bird: Paul Scheerbart, or The Eccentricities of a Nightingale Reading Paul Scheerbart’s fiction instantly summons a period rich in aesthetic eccentricities and unforgettable eccentrics, roughly spanning 1890 to the start of the Great War: a longueur of late symbolist decadence and Arctic expeditions, imagist poetry and hot air balloons, angst-ridden Nordic theater and the first Parisian car crashes. For all but one year of his life, Scheerbart lived in a world often dismissively described as frozen in the minute before the disaster, the placid eternity of Chekhov’s Three Sisters and Bernard Shaw’s Misalliance , spiced by Le sacre du printemps and the duchesse de Guermantes’s bal musettes. It was actually the same world that Céline’s embittered, brawling alcoholic families inhabited in the Passage Choiseul, their adolescent sons soon to turn into cannon fodder, the same human swarm busy going crazy in Broch’s Sleepwalkers and Musil’s Man without Qualities , its festering pathology brilliantly depicted in Michael Haneke’s 2009 film The White Ribbon. The First World War is usually thought to have been “unexpected.” Certainly its savagery and massive scale were beyond anything the human race had attempted previously. But it would be hard to look at Munch’s Scream of 1908, or the paintings Kokoschka exhibited in 1910, without inferring a contemporary sense that something large and terrible was about to happen. In Scheerbart’s Berlin, the sudden capital of frantic modernity, his generation of artists was spooked by the pointless butchery of late nineteenthcentury Europe’s cabinet wars, leery of the new century’s official optimism and society’s myriad efforts at self-perfection. Scheerbart’s ebullience over novel technologies of the period — the audiovisual components of mass media — invariably sounds its own troubled echo. Stories reveling in scientific marvels often betray apprehension that the same fabulous Illustration by Paul Scheerbart, nd.

155

GARY INDIANA

innovations making life more interesting would likely make death more ubiquitous, bloody, and communal sooner or later. It’s rare that a Scheerbart story omits any mention of war or fails to strike a worried note about it. In “Atlas, the Comfortable: A Myth of Humanity” (this book, 176–79) several philosophers visit the god Atlas (who has licked the problems involved in holding up the world by placing it on columns) with the urgent question of how to end war forever. Atlas advises that “you have to get rid of rich people.” This seems straightforward enough. The philosophers benignly choose to ask the rich to get rid of themselves. The rich, improbably, recognize the public benefit of this idea but keep “postponing the whole business.” In the meantime they enrich the philosophers by donating to the cause; the philosophers finally “become more patient.” War continues. The greater our despair — the closer we are to the gods. The gods want to compel us to draw ever closer to the grandiose. And the only means they have to achieve this is — misery. Only misery can give rise to great hopes and great plans for the future. (Paul Scheerbart, Perpetual Motion: The Story of an Invention)

The imaginary contexts of Scheerbart’s fables and novellas distance reader and author from direct confrontations with interhuman violence, as Scheerbart’s fictions are designed to go down gently and impart their improving messages with the mildness of vitamin pills. His work engages the mind rather than the heart, though the innocent candor of his style is itself touching. At times it suggests the pathos of a writer clinging to naiveté and phobic avoidance of adult reality, but this subtracts nothing from his work’s exemplary artistry. Like Walser, Scheerbart is blessed with congenital refinement and an impeccable instinct for delighting his readers. It was believed among his friends that Scheerbart’s death in 1915 resulted from self-starvation, a despairing protest against the global carnage that had commenced the year before. This singular writer whose strongest suits are whimsy and an adolescent enthusiasm for bright, hallucinatory futures deserves to be taken seriously, as his alter persona is Cassandra, who didn’t warn the Trojans about nothing. That said, Scheerbart is proof of Jack Smith’s aperçu that much of the best art treats existence and its problems with a delicate, nuanced, unpretentious touch — and is relegated to obscurity because Western

156

A STRANGE BIRD

culture trains us, insensibly, to equate bombast, heaviness, and Wagnerian overkill with importance and seriousness. Scheerbart merits far more respectful attention than the quirky footnote literary history has reduced him to. It’s the luck of the draw and a few PhD theses, I suppose, but his disappearance down the memory hole seems a howling critical injustice, in light of the innumerable festschrifts and revivals lavished on less gifted contemporaries like Raymond Roussel, who enjoys the high esteem of a writer whose work nobody actually reads but whose ingenious publicity stunts ensured his inscription in the literary histories written in his time. On 27 December 1907 I was thinking about little stories in which something new — astonishing — grotesque — would play a part. I was thinking about the future of cannons, which struck me as having great potential as instruments of transport; goods shot into the air with automatically opening parachute attachments would, it seemed to me, return quite comfortably to earth. (Paul Scheerbart, Perpetual Motion: The Story of an Invention)

The expressive freedom of Scheerbart’s writing is uncanny. His imagination ranges over mythic earthly kingdoms, sentient minerals, ancient gods, future cities, Baron Münchhausen’s visit to China, and talking planets in distant reaches of the cosmos, with the childlike brio of Jules Verne; his verbal peregrinations are gracefully informal and indifferent to convention. Scheerbart’s morally attractive sentiments, sly humor, and infectious curiosity radiate from impeccably limpid sentences which, like those of Patricia Highsmith, have the authentic poetry of plainness. Scheerbart’s voice is utterly natural, unshowy, and, in its unassuming way, addictive. Like the antirealist works of Alfred Jarry, Oskar Panizza, and S. I. Witkiewicz — and, centrally, Franz Kafka — Scheerbart’s stories, novels, plays, and poems have stronger affinities to folklore, fables, and fantastic tales of every period than to fin-de-siècle and later Mitteleuropean naturalism. They elude genre categories, hybridizing poetry with prose, fiction with scientific treatise, fantasy with reportage. To extravagantly pataphysical tales Scheerbart attaches dry ironies of “visual proof” in the form of diagrams, schematics, and drawings, subtly blurring the line between oneric reverie and documentary reality. Scheerbart’s stories suspend quotidian space and time, evoking the dream world of origin myths and epic, episodic tales such as the Arabian Nights, The Manuscript Found

157

GARY INDIANA

, the Icelandic Sagas — narratives nested in other narratives like Russian dolls. Set in the allegorical, indeterminate “once upon a time” of the Brothers Grimm, Scheerbart’s texts have the floating effect of Klee watercolors or Sufi proverbs. Their metaphysical, synchronous universe is unmoored from historical contingency. The recurring vagaries of the human condition are in one sense “hypostatized as Fate” (as Marcuse, in another context, characterized Heidegger’s concept of technology); in a different sense, what Adolf Loos referred to as humanity’s “private mess” is subject to improvement in Scheerbart’s stories when the private mess is placed in the right containers. at Saragossa

Later, I imagined the entire atmosphere of the earth crisscrossed by cable cars. Cable cars descending from high mountain peaks struck me as particularly appealing. I thought about how hot air balloons might serve to keep these cable cars aloft when journeying to the North Pole and then imagined enormous Ferris wheels that, in my judgment, might roll through all kinds of terrain much faster than the small wheels that now are customary. (Paul Scheerbart, Perpetual Motion: The Story of an Invention)

Such works, even when nominally self-contained as stories or essays, announce themselves as fragments of didactic, visionary projects whose discrete parts accrue greater significance considered in relation to each other. A utopian artist, Scheerbart was most fiercely concerned with making the case that social reality and its outcomes are primarily determined by the constructed environment. Uniquely among the arts, this is the raison d’être of theoretical architecture, and Scheerbart is more readily associated with architecture than with any other art, including literature. This is partly because, at least in the English-speaking world, he is known solely for one book, Glass Architecture (this book, 22–90), a brilliantly speculative, playfully insistent manifesto expounding the limitless possibilities of glass in architectural design. (Glass Architecture is dedicated to a fellow utopian, Bruno Taut, whose extraordinary Glass Pavillion in the Cologne Werkbund of 1914 exemplified Scheerbart’s theories, a “futuristic” dome that was at the same time entirely functional, its ornament devoid of anachronisms.) But Glass Architecture is merely the best-known item in Scheerbart’s prodigious bibliography. Despite Glass Architecture ’s frequently ecstatic

158

A STRANGE BIRD

tenor, a casual reader might not glean from its passionate advocacy of an already popular building material Scheerbart’s obsessive, fanatical preoccupation with glass environments reflected (forgive me) in his fiction. Architectural manifestos — especially those published shortly before World War I until the late 1930s — customarily strike a tone of shrewdly calculated hysteria. For Scheerbart, however, the urgent desire to improve the world (or at least alter the way it looks) implicit in all architectural writing serves as a motor for fictional narratives, a theme, a folly of one or many characters, an unmistakably and sometimes hilariously romantic fixé. Architecture and glass are to Scheerbart’s work what food and cooking are to M. F. K. Fisher’s: lenses through which all reality is filtered, producing a radically shifted, revelatory perspective. Scheerbart and Taut were virtually collaborators; both mirrored the powerful influence of Loos’s polemics on functional design and his rejection of useless ornament in the commissions he realized in Vienna. Like the great Viennese gadfly Karl Kraus, Loos saw humanity sinking into mental torpor and affectlessness under an ever-growing accumulation of meaningless physical and linguistic artifacts, epitomized by caryatids on modern buildings and the vapid catch-phrases of politics and advertising. In this connection, Scheerbart considered glass construction the least gratuitous, least physically obtrusive, most honest feature of the manmade world, and he tirelessly proposed expanding its use: ideally, it would eventually make the manmade world itself less obtrusive and destructive of the natural order. Remarkably, Scheerbart frequently lampoons his own earnest fetishes, bestowing them on obviously cracked and deluded narrators and other characters. In stories like “The Magnetic Mirror” (this book, 180–84) and “The Glass Theater” (this book, 187–88) Scheerbart undermines his cherished materials and pastimes by basing increasingly absurd rituals on them, fashioning them into garishly precious objects, and putting them to work in insanely overelaborate Rube Goldberg appliances that expend more time and labor than they can possibly save. Unlike Roussel, whose books articulate similar technical obsessions in humorless, sludgelike prose, Scheerbart displays the winning charm of an artist perfectly aware of his own ridiculousness. As I pursued this train of thought, it struck me that it would be perfectly natural to place the vehicle inside the wheel. This was something new. (Paul Scheerbart, Perpetual Motion: The Story of an Invention)

159

GARY INDIANA

He is a quintessential artist-inventor of a kind that flourished in the first two decades of the twentieth century, when seismic effects of new technologies rippled through the industrialized West and inspired the science-smitten to devise bizarre flying machines, implausible urban renewal projects, and mechanically driven Fourier-like theories of how to save the world. Like the raucously satirized inventor Courtial of Céline’s Death on the Installment Plan , Scheerbart was a flume of ideas for labor-saving devices as well as less credible contraptions to relieve ennui and eliminate aesthetic revulsion. Like Jarry, he incorporated his designs for living into works of literature where they appear at a skeptical remove from their overheated point of origin, stories that continue to dazzle the imagination and communicate a very human, humane, and ultimately moving sensibility.

160

Paul Scheerbart

Selected Short Stories Illustrated by Paul Scheerbart

A Trial in the Year 1901: A Novelette of the Future The Colored Moons: A Cosmosophical Scherzo The Love of Souls: A Spiritualistic Scene from a Novel Atlas, the Comfortable: A Myth of Humanity The Magnetic Mirror Transportable Cities The Glass Theater An Ornament Museum The Silent Game of Courtly Society The Safe: A Marriage Novelette At the Glass Exhibition in Peking: The Old Baron’s Diary Entries

A Trial in the Year 1901: A Novelette of the Future

Adolfine, daughter of the rich industrialist Beisel, sits calmly at the window, playing the harmonica. The girl has already been making music for two hours but she hasn’t grown tired. Suddenly, a cry for help rings through the streets. Adolfine stops her tooting for a moment, turns her dainty little head, and says in astonishment: “Ah! Ah! Now, haven’t I heard that voice before?” The good young lady hurries to the window, opens it and — beholds — — beholds — — — Friedrich Schumm, one of her dear father’s former bookkeepers. ’Fine muses — really considers — and gradually recalls that once upon a time she — loved — Friedrich — loved him! This had confused her beloved to such a degree that he soon became useless as a bookkeeper. Accordingly, Friedrich had been dismissed a few months earlier, for Papa Beisel did not mess around where business was concerned. And no — merciful heavens! — now Friedrich was being “arrested” right on the street in broad daylight. The young lady sees the constable pulling her beloved Friedrich by the ear, clapping handcuffs on him and frisking him angrily. The young lady turns away, filled with displeasure — indeed almost offended. Little ’Fine returns to playing the harmonica, simply to avoid looking at the unsightly scene below. Brutality is frowned upon in the genteel Beisel household. “Ugh!” cries Beisel’s little daughter, “How nauseating!” The sun beats down on the cobblestones. The constable and Friedrich disappear.

First published as “Eine Gerichtssitzung im Jahre 1901: Zukunftsnovellette” in 1897 as a story within the novel Ich Liebe Dich! Ein Eisenbahnroman mit 66 Intermezzos (I love you! A railway novel with 66 intermezzos), Schuster and Loeffler, Berlin.

163

PAUL S C H E E R B A R T

The dulcet tones of the harmonica resound throughout the genteel Beisel house.

A few days after this embarrassing performance, Friedrich Schumm finds himself in the dock. The judges’ faces show exasperation. With a snort of anger, the public prosecutor throws his pen down on the green table for the fifth time, because the industrialist’s testimony concerning the accused Schumm is very peculiar. The wealthy Beisel concludes his testimony — in which he has thoroughly maligned Friedrich Schumm, called him a foolish, lovestruck creature, dressed him down for his delusions of grandeur, and given Friedrich a piece of his mind about his brazen immorality — with the following terrible words: “And he made miscalculations twice a day. Unscrupulous Friedrich, can you deny it?” Friedrich cries and shakes his head wistfully. The public prosecutor rises and says in a thunderous voice: “The defendant is under arrest for indigence without cause. On the fifteenth of July, Constable Knillke requested to see your wallet, as is required of all suspicious parties. What did Constable Knillke find in your wallet? The defendant answers tearfully: “One mark and fifty-five pennies.” Public prosecutor: “And you were going to live on that for another three months? Until October? Sir, what were you thinking? Surely you are aware that every citizen is required to keep his means of subsistence for the next three months on hand at all times. Defendant, do you know this?” Defendant: “Yes, sir!” Public prosecutor: “Very well then — how were you planning to live? How? Just tell us! How were you hoping to defray the cost of living? Can you answer that? Well?” Defendant: “Oh, Mr. Public Prosecutor, I thought surely I could get a new position. I’m a bookkeeper, you know.” Public prosecutor: “Whether you are a bookkeeper or a chimney sweep is of no consequence before the law. You are required to possess money. You seem to know nothing of life. Surely you know that the number of vacancies is steadily decreasing. I move for three months imprisonment with intensified fasting — for indigence without cause. My dear fellow, we’ll soon break you. I simply don’t understand how a reasonably well-educated person could dare to walk the streets without the necessary change — what completely unthinkable insolence!”

164

S E L E C T E D SHORT S T O R I E S

The public prosecutor rests his case and sits down. The court convicts the defendant according to the public prosecutor’s recommendation. The defendant breaks down in tears in the dock and sobs: “Oh God, what will my poor mother say? Her son Friedrich — a criminal!” Loud howling echoes through the courtroom. But the chief magistrate remarks severely: “Defendant Schumm! What are you howling and crying for? Don’t make a fool of yourself, you ridiculous man! Be glad we are depriving you of the opportunity to commit theft for a good three months. You must know that theft is punished with daily beatings!” Defendant: “Yes, Your Honor, thank you for the three months. Please don’t take my tears amiss. I only wanted to show that I’m no ‘hardened’ criminal! But Your Honor, when I come out, will I be immediately punished again?” Public prosecutor: “You are a stupid, cheeky boy! I move for a month of beating for asking questions without cause!” The defendant looks around him in astonishment — sits down — and says slowly, as if a new feeling were coming over him: “Gentlemen, I think you have all — truly — lost your minds.” Luckily for defendant Schumm, after he says these words, another revolution breaks out in the streets. The magistrate and the judges immediately run home — and the public prosecutor and the other officials follow suit. Schumm sits in the dock, dumbfounded. He is now completely alone in the courtroom — truly alone — forgotten! He has no idea what to do. Meanwhile, the revolution proceeds purposefully and according to plan. Later, Schumm crouches down in the dock, since the revolutionaries’ bullets whiz through only the upper part of courtroom.

Meanwhile, Adolfine Beisel thinks kindly of her beloved Friedrich; she forgives him inwardly and returns to blowing on her harmonica. She finds this August revolution just as boring as the previous April revolution.

Translated by Anne Posten

165

The Colored Moons: A Cosmosophical Scherzo

Ten moons orbit a huge planet. Each is a different color. All at once, they begin to ponder — all of them together. A soft moaning issues from their craters. The ether whistles. The moons’ limbs creak. Their ice poles get warmer. Storms course more fiercely over the wrinkled skin of the moons, so the ether whistles louder. The moons ponder. — — This is what the moons think: “What could he want? He, the great one — our beloved — what could he want — he, the great star that we orbit?” “What could he want?” “He just wants —” “Well, what does he want?” “Should we get closer to him? Should we go back out into the lonely night? Doesn’t he love us anymore? Does he wish us different than we are?” “Should we turn, as he does? Should we be dark like him? Should we shake off our radiance — our shine — our colorful, shining air?” “What could

he

want?

He,

the

great

one — our

beloved — what

could he want?” “Will we never know?” “We just have to try to find out!” “Hm! Yes! Hm!” — —

First published as “Die farbigen Monde: Kosmosophisches Scherzo” in 1897 as a story within the novel Ich Liebe Dich! Ein Eisenbahnroman mit 66 Intermezzos (I love you! A railway novel with 66 intermezzos), Schuster and Loeffler, Berlin.

166

S E L E C T E D SHORT S T O R I E S

Meanwhile, the crimson moon, who had wandered off quite a ways, begins to tremble — to tremble so violently that the ether shakes — to tremble like a crazy comet. Steam rises from the crimson moon’s craters. By trembling and steaming, the crimson moon tells the other moons that they can’t just start seeking the answer to their question right away; instead, they have to sing a song in chorus — — — in moon language, naturally. — — The moons understand and agree. A sweet swishing sound swings solemnly through outer space. A moon orchestra blows strange, fantastical sounds out into the universe. Some of the sounds are shrill, others hollow, many full like giant trombones, and some are as strong as big, powerful suns. The sounds race through each other, thundering and whistling, ringing and rattling. The moons want to “test” their rusty voices first. But then the moon orchestra begins — in its own special way — with long tones — this is how it sounds: Always — in the same old rounds — It continues — through the empty stretches — What do we want? Huge, gruesome, inscrutable space, Are you just a deserted whirling dream? The moon orchestra shrills its lament into the empty void . . . . between the whirl of crackling sounds. And after a while, after things have quieted down, it continues — again — whispering — softly — almost cozily: Without an aim, without desire We toddle as if batty Through the world’s huge endless night. At this, everything gets quiet. Only the ether keeps whistling as usual. But suddenly the concert of the great moon orchestra begins again — like a passionate whisper — not too loud — but glowing hot like the breath of craters: And he — And he — We stare at our beloved Always Always at him. Eternally, we cling to him.

167

PAUL S C H E E R B A R T

We never turn away From our dearly beloved star. We stare at him, the great one Like ten colorful phantoms Ghostly Always Always at him. And the God we so ardently orbit — He will never cry with agony — He will never laugh with joy — He will only turn — eternally — Only turn — only turn We only toddle, batty, Without an aim, without desire Through the world’s huge, endless night.

Moaning, glaring ghoulishly, the great moon orchestra pounds on, bawling out its gruesome sounds. The voices crackle and burst — they tear away from each other — and then the world-music falls silent. — — — — — — — — — — — — — — The central star turns fifty times. When he starts to turn for the fifty-first time — he notices that his moons are a slightly different color, in places. The central star, turning, is not surprised, yet he finds it somewhat curious. After the dearly beloved has turned a few hundred times more in contented, peaceful coziness, without looking any more closely at his moons’ changed color spots, when he becomes aware of the intoxication his eternal turning has caused him, he, the great one, notices that the moons — his ten moons — have changed colors. The crimson one is now moss green, the blue one is violet, the silver one is vermillion, the pink one glows snow white, and the yellow one is a shade of ultraviolet. The other moons have new colors too. But the dearly beloved isn’t surprised this time either. He takes no notice and keeps turning. And the moons are waiting — ever waiting! For a long time they keep hoping that he, the great one, will comment. But he, the great one, says nothing . . . The moons want terribly badly to know what he, their dearly beloved, wants.

168

S E L E C T E D SHORT S T O R I E S

But he just turns — turns without the slightest change — on and on — just as before. The colored moons, who have already changed colors, are not at all pleased with this. — — And again the moons ponder . . . . . . . After a little while the now moss-green moon says, “Let’s try something else!” He suggests: changing their orbits a little. But the other moons waggle their ball-round bodies dubiously, expressing a very distinct “no.” Changing their orbits seems far too dangerous . . . . they could so easily bump into each other . . . . . . and just one collision would cost any of them their lives. But the moss-green one meets this objection. He says he’d like to go a little farther out into space, all on his own — what harm could that do? Now — after a little reluctance, the other moons agree. And so the moss-green moon goes a little farther out into space. This perplexes the dearly beloved, of course — he almost forgets to keep turning. But at the same time he says to himself that such behavior is unbecoming — surprise is for young comets — a central star who leads an orderly life should in no circumstances allow himself to be surprised. So once again, he takes no notice. — — A long, long time passes. The dearly beloved keeps turning, just as before. Eventually the moss-green moon comes back and sighs — and the other moons sigh too. Such

huge clouds puff

out of their

craters that

their

colorful air

darkens . . . . . But this doesn’t help either. The dearly beloved remains completely impassive. He keeps silent. — — But the moons can tell that he’s thinking. He isn’t stupid. “Wait and see,” says one of the smaller moons. “That seems best. Perhaps our big friend just wants us to watch him quietly, as we did before.” The others grumble but don’t contradict him. And so they are quiet — for several long millennia.

169

PAUL S C H E E R B A R T

The moons are so quiet that one might think they were dead. But their curiosity doesn’t sleep. Finally they make another attempt to provoke their friend into saying something. They get their old colors back, so that eventually they look just as they once did. — — — Of course, this doesn’t help, either. The moons nearly despair. The moon who is now crimson again is the most curious because he was the last of the moons to gravitate toward the middle star — he really doesn’t quite belong with the other nine moons — once upon a time he had been a big, big comet. After pondering long and hard, the crimson one says: “Brothers, we must try a different way of discovering the thoughts of our dearly beloved. We must train our feelings. We must learn to sense what he, the great one, is thinking. If we want to learn his thoughts, we too will have to ponder.” This makes sense to the brothers. And with much effort over the long millennia, they train their feelings — and they think

a great deal. This naturally makes them much

cleverer. And now that they’ve grown so much cleverer — yes — finally, they think they are beginning to notice some things. The central star seems to be talking. One night the blue star says: “You know, I think our dearly beloved just wants to say. . . .” “What?” the others cry stormily, steaming out huge clouds. “He’s telling us,” the blue one says slowly, “to keep orbiting just as we’re orbiting right now.” There is a dull silence. And they all hope that the central star will confirm the blue moon’s words. But once again, he does not. He is incomprehensible. — — After another few years the silver moon thinks that he, the dearly beloved, is saying: “My dear moons, one thing is just as good and just as bad as another thing.” Another pause. . . .

170

S E L E C T E D SHORT S T O R I E S

And again, in vain! The moons would have laughed if they had learned to laugh. Unfortunately, they never learned. Suddenly, the ultraviolet moon cries: “I know! I know! He’s saying: You don’t get drunk enough — you’re too sober for me!” And all of them think — finally they’ve figured it out . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ............ The dearly beloved, on the other hand, remains silent, even now — as silent as the invisible phantoms. — — — — — — — — — — — — — — Finally, after seven times a hundred thousand years, the crimson moon cries: “Our dearly beloved says: “Moons, just watch me turn!” The other moons are indignant; they think this is a bad joke. But now the crimson moon cries out for the second time: “That wasn’t his last word. He wants to know why we don’t turn, too.” At that — yes — then — all of the moons are — completely stumped. And they remark angrily that they’re used to getting drunk in other ways. Not everyone gets his thrills in the same way. But — on the dearly beloved central star — finally the bright, joyful flames of having been understood begin to flash and flicker. — — What the crimson moon said is really what the dearly beloved had been thinking all these many million years. He didn’t want to say so because stars never speak their innermost thoughts but, rather, hope that others will reach these innermost thoughts through their own efforts. Only then can the innermost thoughts be of use to others. “Why don’t you just turn around yourselves?” This was the dearly beloved’s great question. The crimson moon had understood him. And so immediately he starts to turn — he spins out into outer space — and just keeps turning, orbiting only himself. Soon he too will be a central star, with moons orbiting around him without ever turning themselves. And the crimson one will ask his moons the same riddle that the dearly beloved asked them. “Why don’t you just turn around yourselves? Oh yes, the dearly beloved’s nine remaining moons still don’t understand their friend — they stare at him, the great one, more wildly than ever.

171

PAUL S C H E E R B A R T

They simply cannot understand that stars can only be happy when they turn around themselves. The crimson one — he’s happy — he says to himself: “There is only one thing that makes life bearable — and that one thing is intoxication — and intoxication, if it is to last, is created only when one moves his whole body — his whole being — constantly in the same way. For round stars, this movement is turning around oneself — it is the only movement that one can keep up constantly and without change. For a star, there is no other way to maintain eternal intoxication, eternal happiness.” The crimson one sings, puffing happy crimson clouds out of his craters: Joyfully we spin ourselves Through the giant universe. We are always glad and cheerful, No dream of longing gets us down. For we live in intoxication! Always — the same intoxication! Yes, we should — wish for nothing more! — — — — — — We toddle as if batty Without an aim, without desire Through the universe! — — Through the universe’s gleaming night!

Translated by Anne Posten

172

The Love of Souls: A Spiritualistic Scene from a Novel

Carriages rattle through the streets — clattering. . . . It’s twelve at night. I’m lying very still on the sofa, smoking. There is a lot of smoke in the room. A lamp is burning — over on the cupboard in front of the mirror — the lamp with the red lampshade. — — For many years I have been thinking of a woman every day — when I am alone, I think of this woman even more often — It often seems as if she must be about to come to me. Yet I am not surprised when she doesn’t. But today I’m feeling so peculiar. It seems as if she really will come to me today — right now — now . . . . . . . — — Next to the door — right by the oven — what is that? Such a delicate, airy image — like smoke. No — it’s a very delicate,

light bluish cloth — see-through — soft —

sparkling, delicate . . . I dare not move . . . But now — incredible — oh! It’s true — it’s an arm — a soft, delicate arm — the arm is very white. And to the left? — to the left are only garments — a great mass of them — — — There — there — above the garments — dreadful! — ghastly! — a pale countenance with deep, deep, sea-green eyes! Those are her eyes — that is her face — her face. She wants to speak. She wags her finger.

First published as “Seelenliebe: Spiritistische Romanscene” in 1897 as a story within the novel Ich Liebe Dich! Ein Eisenbahnroman mit 66 Intermezzos (I love you! A railway novel with 66 intermezzos), Schuster and Loeffler, Berlin.

173

PAUL S C H E E R B A R T

It almost looks teasing. Now she speaks — everything is hazy! I cannot hear her yet. But now — yes — I can hear quite clearly — she says: “Why should I always be physically with you? Is that necessary? I love you still! Isn’t that enough for you? No? Look at me!” A quiet horror comes over me, but I fight it. I want to stand up — but I cannot. Am I dreaming? — no — my cigar is still burning — I am awake. After a while I say, very softly: “I long for you so often! And I love you still — there’s no one I love more than you.” It looks as though she is beginning to cry when I say this — yet she answers immediately — more fervently, and not quite as clearly: “Do you know that I am a mother?” “Yes!” I say loudly, startling myself. “That’s why,” she continues more calmly, “I have to stay far from you. My two children cannot live without me. Yes — I know — you love me! But — — — do you love my children too? I say nothing. She continues: “You have to love them. I will bless you for it. I beg you with all my heart — see! — love my two children too! . . . . . . . Let me stay far away — with my children. Physical love doesn’t bring happiness. You know that. And I — alas — you know that I know it too. I want to be with you invisibly!” The clouds of smoke move, and the apparition seems to waver, it seems to press against the oven. I say loudly: “Yes, and amen!” A sigh of relief sounds through the room. And suddenly I can’t see anything anymore. But soon I hear her voice again — she speaks urgently: “Your soul’s wife greets you! Go to bed and sleep! Don’t drink so much! Dream of me! Dreams are — don’t leave! Look at me!” “I can’t see anything!” I cry. But she doesn’t seem to hear me. She speaks in a firm, metallic voice. “You are mine! Yes, you are mine! Now live — write — become a messiah!” I want to jump up, open my eyes — go to her: But I cannot.

174

S E L E C T E D SHORT S T O R I E S

— — After

a

long

time

I

see

her

light,

bluish

garments

down

by

the

oven — with her two feet below them — white and shining. I see nothing of the rest of her body. And again she says to me: “I believe in you! But do not wish for me to come to you physically — later — someday — someday — someday — perhaps! But first you must complete your life’s work. Physical love is . . . . . . . . . .” Incomprehensible noises fill my ear. Loud, hot, piercing sounds suddenly fill the smoky chamber — I think I understand the sounds — they sound — like: “Become a messiah! Become a messiah!” I turn my head. Now I can move. I see — yes — my cigar is still burning in my left hand. I jump up. I don’t know what’s going on. I’m very agitated. Yet I ask myself: “Did I dream it? With the cigar burning in my hand? Is it possible? — how? — but how? You can’t smoke if you’re asleep!” The piercing sounds keep booming in my ears — hotly: “Become a messiah! Become a messiah!” —— Carriages rattle through the streets — clattering. . . . The clock has stopped.

Translated by Anne Posten

175

Atlas, the Comfortable: A Myth of Humanity

Many hundreds of years ago, there lived in ancient India a group of graybearded philosophers — they wanted to do away with war. They had long pondered how this might be accomplished. Yet they could not agree. Finally, a hunchbacked philosopher suggested that they visit Atlas the Greek and boldly ask him for advice. Atlas lived at the edge of the earth and held up the great dome of the heavens. The Indian philosophers listened quietly to their hunchbacked friend, considered a while, and came to the conclusion that the hunchback’s idea wasn’t half bad, and they were indeed inclined to grace Atlas with a visit — particularly since even in those days Atlas enjoyed a reputation as a very comfortable and hospitable fellow. Accordingly, the philosophers rented a small boat, stepped aboard, and saw that the wind was favorable so that they would be face to face with hospitable Atlas in just a few months. Atlas lived on a mountain, and he came right down as soon as the philosophers called his name. At first the philosophers thought the heavens would immediately fall onto their heads, since Atlas hadn’t brought the dome down with him — they cowered in fear. But the comfortable giant reassured the wise Indians, pointed to two tall columns rising into the clouds from the summit of the mountain, and said with a smirk: “Don’t be alarmed, dear friends! A long time ago I set the dome of the heavens up there on a pair of strong columns. The columns will hold, never fear! Holding the heavens on my shoulders forevermore was just too much of a bother. I bore it long enough. I bore the heaviest possible weight.

First published as “Atlas, der Gemüthliche: Ein Humanitätsmythos” in 1897 as a story within the novel Ich Liebe Dich! Ein Eisenbahnroman mit 66 Intermezzos (I love you! A railway novel with 66 intermezzos), Schuster and Loeffler, Berlin.

176

S E L E C T E D SHORT S T O R I E S

Now I just have to watch that no one approaches the columns — watching is much more comfortable than endlessly standing still, hunched over with that weight on my back. The philosophers nodded knowingly, got out of the boat, and told Atlas what they wanted. — — When Atlas had heard and understood, he looked completely puzzled. Then he cried, very loudly: “Children! Children! You’re not comfortable yet! No — how silly! You want to do away with war? You? I hardly know what to say! Look — do you know what you have to do if you want to do away with war? — It’s actually very simple: You have to get rid of rich people, and then war will disappear all by itself. But — but —” The philosophers looked at each other wide-eyed, thought for a bit, put their left index fingers against their left nostrils, and, after a little while, nodded their old gray heads. The hunchback was the first to speak — he acted as if he had solved the problem all by himself and said the following: “Look here! Look here! Now we finally know what we have to do! Atlas, I completely agree with you! Believe me — you’re far cleverer than I expected! What you’ve said — is just exactly what I always wanted to say. We’ll go right home and get rid of rich people — and that will do the trick! Yes — yes — that will do the trick. Because when the money disappears, war disappears too. Of course, of course!” The others agreed with the hunchback and they all wanted to board the boat immediately. But suddenly the comfortable giant said unctuously: “Dear friends! It’s not quite that easy! Wait! Wait! What are you trying to do? Have you no sympathy? You haven’t gotten comfortable yet! You haven’t borne the great dome of the heavens! You really want to get rid of rich people? Ugh, no! Look here! They’re all living so calmly and pleasantly. How could you be so cruel as to want to disturb rich people living calm, pleasant lives? You want to hurt the rich people! Oh! Oh! Be comfortable, be agreeable and don’t do such a thing! In the name of the peace that you love so dearly, don’t do such a thing! — — The old Indian philosophers looked at each other as helplessly as before and didn’t know what to say. Meekly, the hunchback said:

177

PAUL S C H E E R B A R T

“Then how should we do away with war, if not by getting rid of rich people? Atlas, I’m very confused!” Taking no notice of the hunchback, the comfortable giant went on to say: “Dear friends! Be humane! Anyone who has learned to bear the heaviest possible weight, as I have, always stays comfortable. Learn from me! Go home and tell the rich people in the name of peace to do away with themselves — then you won’t have to do it — and just like that, war will disappear. Be comfortable! Practice bearing and enduring — then you’ll grow comfortable!

Humanity’s greatest representatives — among whom

you should count yourselves — have to be comfortable!” After a little while — very gradually — almost against their wills — the philosophers understood. At which point they sailed pensively home and wrote long letters to the rich people and distributed thick new books about war and peace to the leisure class, thereby surprising the whole world. They were very busy, those philosophers. Well — the rich people cordially accepted the thick books and the long letters that invited them to get rid of themselves — or at least their riches. The philosophers grew famous and well respected! And a monument was soon erected in India to Atlas, the comfortable — a monument! And a few rich people even gave some of their riches to the clever philosophers!!! And this pleased the philosophers greatly. And in exchange for this money, the philosophers wrote many more books about war and peace, because for their part they wanted to do all they could to wipe out wealth . . . . . . . . soon there was no more money to make war with, and war ended all by itself. War was then naturally — as Atlas had said — impossible. Money couldn’t be dumped into book writing, book printing, agitation, advertising, and the like fast enough. Meanwhile the philosophers waited patiently for the rich people to get rid of themselves. Naturally — that was the whole plan! But over time the old wise men learned to be patient, to bear and endure, and gradually they too became comfortable — almost as comfortable — as old Atlas. — — — — —

178

S E L E C T E D SHORT S T O R I E S

Naturally, the rich people often considered getting rid of their worthy selves and their even worthier riches. They could never quite make up their minds, however. So of course they kept postponing the whole business of getting rid of things. With time, they too had become more patient. They too had learned to bear and endure. “Everyone has his portion!” the good rich people thought. And everything remained as it was. And in the meantime the old gray heads — the philosophers — the supporters of peace — died in peace. May their ashes, too, rest in peace. . . .

Translated by Anne Posten

179

The Magnetic Mirror

Many years ago, while journeying through Scotland, I stopped off at an old castle where I discovered, along with other curiosities, a manuscript written in German in a delicate hand, and for a long time I paid it little heed. The manuscript contained a meticulously precise account of the manufacture of magnetic mirrors. Naturally I considered these notes merely a graphological curiosity and gave them no further thought — either in a positive or a negative sense. But several years later I had the opportunity to observe a minor earthquake, and as chance would have it, I happened to take up this old Scottish manuscript once more. And now I read that magnetic mirrors can be used only in regions in which seismographs play a role. Out of boredom, I began to construct a mirror with magnetic properties. And I actually succeeded . . . No doubt you’re going to think this is all just a fairy tale. But if you suppose you might in this way coax me to reveal a few details concerning the manufacture of magnetic mirrors, you are mistaken. Let me cast cold water on the hopes of those who suppose they might be allowed to glimpse the most powerful secrets of our time in exchange for a slice of bread and butter, by briefly relating how effortlessly I can turn down the most remarkable offers: an American millionaire had heard that I’d discovered a “new art” with the help of this magnetic mirror, and since this American adored new art, he offered me ten American free states in exchange for my mirror secret. I, however, sent word to him as follows: You can keep your free states, my art is worth a bit more to me than your United Beefsteaks. The man was not a little vexed by my uninhibited rebuff, yet at the same time he couldn’t help gaining an infernal respect for my new art. And this is exactly what should and will be experienced by anyone impudent enough to try to possess this new art in exchange for just a few free states — the new art or the magnetic mirror — which amounts to the same thing . . .

First pubished as “Der Magnetische Spiegel” in 1904 in Kunst (Art), the short-lived Viennese magazine “for art and everything else,” edited by the writer Peter Altenberg. The illustrations by Paul Scheerbart that accompanied the original publication are reproduced here.

181

PAUL S C H E E R B A R T

Yes — but if you wish to gain an approximate idea of this magic mirror, you need only think of the magnetic mirrors so often invoked in the Romantic period. Seen objectively, these mysterious mirrors are nothing more than mere reflective metal plates. But when a metal plate that has been produced according to specifications is placed in just the right position during an earthquake, observing the plate with a specially prepared magnifying glass will reveal an exceptionally riveting image. And anyone who is capable of copying these images more or less correctly will have discovered the “new art.” There’s just one problematic aspect to all this: the mirror can only be made use of in a region susceptible to earth tremors. And since additionally the mirror shows its mysterious properties only at critical junctures, this new art, as all will quickly agree, is connected with constant mortal danger. But I did not hesitate to put my life on the line in this matter, and until now I’ve had no cause to regret it. When the image that is reproduced here as Number 1 appeared in my mirror, my first thought was that it was some sort of joke. Soon, however, I was shown the error of my assumption: the lips of the head whose eyes were fixed on me began to tremble, and then very faint words reached my ear, often interrupted by rustling, crackling sounds. Our conversation went approximately like this: THE HEAD: If only I could get my moustache to turn up! ME: But the tips have turned into balloons; the balloons must exert a

lifting force. (I too was speaking quite softly.) THE HEAD: I live in another sphere, where the law of gravity doesn’t

apply. ME: Well — why don’t you try a moustache guard? THE HEAD: My balloons are very delicate and sensitive to pressure. ME: Could you perhaps tell me why you are so intent on having your

moustache turn up? THE HEAD (quite hastily): But homunculus, do you really not see that

I am being attracted by the Earth’s atmosphere and thus made to suffer all those things terrestrials have to suffer right now? I am merely a sort of human barometer for you — wasn’t that obvious immediately? ME: How am I supposed to take that? Nowadays nearly everyone wears

his moustache pointing up. THE HEAD

(again quite hastily): But homunculus, have you really

not yet noticed that outer appearances almost never correspond to inward

182

S E L E C T E D SHORT S T O R I E S

states? On the outside, filled with courage — on the inside cowering with fear! That’s so often how it is. ME: In other words, you symbolize our time? THE HEAD: But homunculus, do express yourself more precisely and

say that I am a symbol to you. The state being forced on me at present is only temporary. Everything passes — your life too will pass. ME: Not much of a consolation! THE HEAD: But homunculus, do you really consider your current state

so enviable and admirable that it ought to last forever? You are mistaken, however, if you suppose me to be an old philosopher — I am merely a traveling salesman in the shoe business — hence the moustache. ME: So there are shoes in your sphere? But you don’t have a body. THE HEAD (harshly): Sir, I have no ears either, for that matter — you

can see what I look like — so stop asking about things that go beyond your sphere. ME: So what should I ask? THE HEAD: You have no courage either. On the outside, filled with

courage — on the inside cowering with fear! After this I perceived lightning flashes in all the extremities of this apparition — then there was a loud bang, and I fell off my chair onto the floor; another strong seismic shock had hit — and my mirror had shifted from its position and now showed only my own head when I looked into it rather than that of the traveling shoe salesman. But I had copied the gentleman during our conversation. The other images came about under similar circumstances. Numbers 2 and 3 were powerful fury demons, 2 inveighed against the stupid, and 3 against scholars. Unfortunately these conversations cannot be reproduced, as the language they Nr. 4

Nr. 2 Nr. 3

183

Nr. 5

PAUL S C H E E R B A R T

contained was so strong; such words as “knave,” “balderdash,” and “dunderpate,” etc. did not appear in our conversation; the curses uttered in the mirror were at least one hundred times stronger than the above-mentioned epithets. The two furious gentlemen also claimed to symbolize the mood of great hordes of people. Number 4 made the same claim and told me she was a symbol of the modern artist. She could easily pull her fur hat all the way down over her face, and you’d think she didn’t have a head at all — but she did. Number 5 claimed she was compelled to be silent all the time — yet she was constantly crying out: “I shall say nothing more!” “I shall say nothing more!” I shall allow myself to fall in with this sentiment and act in accordance with it, although I find it rather difficult, seeing how many secondary matters I have not yet touched on and considering my fear that I may not have made the symbolic character of the “new art” sufficiently clear. Meanwhile — Number 5 is having such a powerful effect on me that I cannot help acting and speaking as she does. Let us hope her influence will not last long.

Translated by Susan Bernofsky

184

Transportable Cities

In Colombo I made the acquaintance of the American architect Cashling. He regaled me with marvelous tales of America and did not fail to remark from time to time, looking at me with pity: “After all, you’re just a European and still a bit behind in world history.” Every time he said that, I blushed. Above all I was impressed by what he told me about transportable cities. This is what Mr. Cashling had to say about them: “In Europe, people have a totally false idea about America; all the things European newspapers say about us are mere trivialities — we were never much interested in Cook or Peary — and the North Pole doesn’t concern us. The Northern Lights with their magnetic storms did recently arouse a flurry of excitement among our scholars. But we don’t really care about sports. On the other hand, we’re all ears when major scientific or artistic developments emerge. And our millionaires pay huge sums for things of this sort. And so two years ago I was asked to construct a transportable city. What a commission! Fifty millionaires provided the funding. By no means a paltry sum. Once we have finally gotten our hands on lightweight building materials, and with the help of the automobile and dirigible industries, a transportable building will be easy to produce. All you need are three large automobiles. With three hundred automobiles, then, a city of one hundred buildings can be constructed and then relocated again and again. This, of course, will be modern nomadic culture. At the beginning of culture, man was a nomad, and in the end he will be a nomad once more. This is probably how Richard Wagner would put it if he were still alive.” After this, Mr. Cashling showed me a series of small photographs in which his transportable city could be seen in various landscapes. And as he did so he went on: “After all, nowadays it’s obviously no fun waking up every morning and seeing the same old garden. This is no longer in keeping with this rapid

First published as “Transportable Städte” in November 1909 in the literary magazine Gegenwart (The present), Berlin.

185

Die

PAUL S C H E E R B A R T

age of ours. In the twentieth century, people have acquired a cometlike nature — which explains all the traveling about and the boom in industries involving vehicles of transport. But doesn’t it seem rather odd to you that in Europe no one has yet hit on the idea of constructing transportable cities? I find that very odd indeed! Well — we in America are a bit farther along in world history. We already have somewhere around one hundred transportable cities. And all of them are well-armed — especially with machine guns — so they’ll be able to defend themselves against robbers and Indians. In less than half an hour, my city would always be built up again in some new terrain. Most of the automobiles could serve as building material without having to be

entirely

dismantled. And gardens with

fountains and terraces would be set up right away. And you should see the practical, lightweight furniture!” I have to admit I was seized with envy — envy made me turn quite green — Mr. Cashling told me I was turning quite green.

Translated by Susan Bernofsky

186

Glass Theater

“We have shadow plays, and motion pictures are light plays. But

plays are something

color

we have never before seen on stage, unless you count

the kaleidoscopic tales of the Laterna Magica; color can be shown to its full advantage only by diamonds and glass.” These words were spoken not by a master glazier, as you might imagine, but by the well-known theater director Roderich Bäcker. “What you’ve just said,” I now replied, “is not particularly clear. We’ve seen diamonds on the stage by the thousands. I believe there is not a single diamond anywhere on Earth that hasn’t sparkled on a stage on at least one occasion. And glass appears on stage quite frequently as well. And — without glass no color? No doubt the oil painters will be delighted to hear this news. And you’re saying there are no colors in moving pictures either?” The director slammed his fist down on the table, knocking over a champagne glass that burst into pieces on the smooth black tabletop. “Goodness me!” I exclaimed. “Are you hoping to make me appreciate the extent of your fixation on glass by smashing one?” He smiled and said hurriedly: “Don’t be so

dreadfully thick-witted. In

the moving pictures

you’ve

seen, do colors really play much of a role? You yourself don’t believe that. And — with all due respect to the colors used by a Makart or a Böcklin — color as such is shown to far greater advantage in glass painting than in all the oils in the world. That’s just my view, and nothing can dissuade me. And to this day, the diamonds worn on actors’ bodies have never once been incorporated into stage design. Please don’t jest about such matters. I wish in all seriousness to put glass on stage as a representational element — it should be more than just a decorative by-product. Do you still really not understand what I am after?” “Not in the least,” I replied mournfully. The director whacked the table with his cane and in the deepest bass tones ordered the waiter to clear away the shards of glass, after which, leaning toward me, he quietly but with extreme haste went on:

First published as “Das Glas-Theater” in 1910 in the literary magazine present), Berlin.

187

Die Gegenwart

(The

PAUL S C H E E R B A R T

“Just imagine so-called shadow plays performed with transparent and opaque glass plates. These glass plates, which can display any color, can have the shadows of colored glass projected on them. This will instantly give you shadow plays

in color. What more could you ask? Won’t these col-

orful shadows produce the most extraordinary atmospheric effects? Won’t this give a completely new direction to the theatrical arts, one in which glass plays a dominant role? What more could you ask? I pity you if you are still incapable of seeing the perspectives I see. Glass theater will be the greatest event of the season. The glass walls don’t even have to be all that big — two or three meters across should be plenty.” He said a great many other things as well. The first glass theater production should be having its premiere soon.

Translated by Susan Bernofsky

188

An Ornament Museum

This was in Potsdam at eight in the morning. I was speaking with the Privy Government Councilor Dr. von Birkenbork about ethnology and the study of ornaments when suddenly the old gentleman exclaimed: “No! Really now! It seems you don’t yet know about our very, very extensive Ornament Museum — is that true?” “First I’ve heard of it!” I replied. “Where in the world is it? I’ve never even heard of an ornament museum. Where is it located?” “It’s at Lake Schwielow,” replied the Privy Councilor jovially. “I can take you there at once. But — the museum is not open to the general public. It is only for gentlemen from the government. At any given time, one hundred government officials are there — pursuing their studies of ornamentology — which is the same thing as the ethnographic study of souls. In the ornament, the soul of a people is revealed. This is something you really ought to know about. Of course — it is not in our interest to open up the study of the national soul to the populace. That would allow the people to attain self-knowledge. And people who have knowledge of themselves are not so easy to govern. So, as you can imagine, we do not speak publicly of our museum. I am counting on your strict discretion if I take you there. You’ll have to let the concierge dress you in a large barber’s coat and a tall, white, pastry chef’s hat so that the studious gentlemen from the government will know at once that you do not yet have any idea how to govern.” “With the greatest delight,” I replied amicably, “I shall don the barber’s coat and pastry chef’s hat. Let us pay a visit to Lake Schwielow. I’m terribly curious. You can count on my discretion.” We made the trip by motorboat. And immediately I was dressed in white. And as soon as I went in, I saw hordes of government officials. In a small automobile I rode through the rooms with Herr von Birkenbork. We must have driven through more than a thousand rooms. This Ornament Museum is indeed a most imposing creation. Apparently there

First published as “Ein Ornament-Museum” in 1911 in the literary magazine Die Gegenwart (The present), Berlin.

189

PAUL S C H E E R B A R T

are some gentlemen who go into government only so that they can engage in the study of ornaments in the new Ornament Museum, which cost the Reich far more than fifty million — in other words: almost as much as the Reichstag building. The influence of China and India on the great European periods of the Renaissance, the Baroque, and the Rococo is instantly made clear in this museum — as well as the fact that the Chetiters are nothing more than Mongols; in fact, the Chetiters’ pointed shoes with turned-up tips and their braids are evidence enough of this Mongolian lineage. Every ornament in the museum is always displayed in conjunction with the ornaments that bear an apparent relation to it. Ornaments originated in script, and, in point of fact, all they are is writing. And so the study of ornament is in a sense the study of the graphology of a people. And in this way many things become instantly clear — such as the fanatic Enlightenment zeal of the Persians and ancient Greeks — and then the fact that Europe, by comparison with Asia, is actually in possession of relatively little national soul — while Peru and Mexico, on the other hand, have far more. In general it appears that Enlightenment leanings do not suit a national soul terribly well. Meanwhile — I promised to be discreet and therefore, unfortunately, must end here.

Translated by Susan Bernofsky

190

The Silent Dance of Courtly Society

In the middle of the eighteenth century, in the Nymphenburg Palace near Munich, there lived a prince named Wolfgang. The prince lived completely alone — and naturally he moped. His parents were off traveling. The Munich Residence was inhabited only by the many footmen, grooms, coachmen, porters, chambermaids, and scullery girls. At the Nymphenburg Palace it wasn’t much different. Except that at Nymphenburg the footmen and other palace functionaries were hardly to be seen, as Prince Wolfgang didn’t like to be disturbed. He was happier to see the servants leaving than coming — both in the park that surrounded the castle and in the castle itself. Everywhere at Nymphenburg, the prince’s wishes counted as the strictest orders. Suddenly the prince decided he wanted to become — a painter. And so an old painter, Dahlmann by name, turned into an important presence in the prince’s life. Dahlmann was meant to be the prince’s master teacher. He took his position very seriously and explained to the prince in long, carefully worded speeches that the first and most important step in painting was learning how to draw. This didn’t sit well with the prince, however, and as they sat on a park bench near a hunting Diana, a long white meerschaum pipe in the teacher’s mouth, the prince said the following: “But I’ve been to Holland. I saw painters just start painting — right away, without a drawing. That’s how I want to do it. I don’t want to be a draftsman. I’ll never learn to draw. I want to work with color immediately. I can only become a painter with color. And I shall favor blue, yellow, and red. Don’t argue, Herr Dahlmann! Let’s begin!” And so a studio was prepared in the castle with the greatest pomp and circumstance, and a huge, almighty canvas — carefully stretched in a frame — was placed on the easel. Herr Dahlmann and several pages ground the paint and prepared the brushes, and then Prince Wolfgang wanted to paint a marvelous seascape.

First published as “Das stumme Spiel der Hofgesellschaft” in 1911 in the art and literature magazine Die Jugend (Youth), Munich.

191

PAUL S C H E E R B A R T

“Very white,” he said. “That’s how the seascape should look. There will be clouds, too — white clouds. Let’s begin with the top half of the picture.” “Yes,”

ventured

Herr

Dahlmann

submissively,

“Shall

I

begin?

Or — would your Highness prefer to begin yourself? Everything shall proceed just as your Highness deigns to command. The brushes are lined up here. If it should be your Highness’s pleasure to take one. Painting is a very delicate, capricious, and entertaining diversion.” His Highness began. But his hand did not obey him; the clouds turned into disgusting clumps, and he soon stopped and stormed out alone — into the park. Thus it continued for days and weeks and months. The prince would listen to no one. His painting was unsuccessful. The lakeshores grew ever more desertlike. The painter himself was displeased with his paintings. Again and again he would scratch everything out. Dahlmann always sat quite calmly nearby, smoking his long meerschaum pipe and not daring to say a word. “He’ll soon realize how to help himself!” thought the old man. With this thought he smoked one pipe after another. The meerschaum soon turned quite brown. By the time autumn arrived the prince had begun to look rather unwell. He suffered violent fits of emotion. He started to realize that painting was quite a difficult thing. And so the prince grew seriously ill, coughed a lot, arose very late in the day and slunk laboriously around the wide park, leaning heavily on a walking stick. Despite the diligence of the valets, his powdered wig always had a disorderly look, as the prince loved to sit on a park bench and tear his hair, vehemently cursing the gods of ancient Greece who had bewitched his hand. Herr Dahlmann wrote to the royal doctor of Munich and begged him to come to Nymphenburg disguised as a painter to make sure everything was in order. The old man depicted the misfortunes at the palace in the most lurid of colors and did not neglect to mention that everything would change when it pleased his Highness to leave aside the confounded, obstructing, accursed colors blue, yellow, and red. The royal doctor, Kröcker by name, placed the golden ball that topped his walking stick first against his left nostril, then against his right nostril — and then looked in the mirror, laughed merrily, and said cheerfully: “We are adequate to this task.” He drove to Nymphenburg in his finest carriage and introduced himself as a painter from Holland who had suffered a malady of the right hand and had now come to proffer good advice.

192

S E L E C T E D SHORT S T O R I E S

Sitting on a quiet bench in the park, he then said: “Your Highness! You don’t need to paint! I’ve figured it out. All that’s needed is to drink a good glass of wine or a few mugs of good Munich Hofbräu every day.” His Highness was thereupon overcome by misery and said tearfully: “But there’s nothing wrong with my right hand. Why can’t I learn to paint?” “That,” Kröcker replied, “is precisely the secret of the right hand. One cannot paint without the right hand — one would have to train the left hand — or the feet, which is very difficult. There must be some witchcraft at work.” “That’s what I thought!” cried his Highness with great animation. “Yes,” Kröcker continued, “all that is needed is to trace the cause of the bedevilment. How did his Highness come upon the picturesque idea of becoming a great painter, of all things? If his Highness should care to give account of this, it will be no trouble at all for me to ferret out the cause of the dratted hand curse. I am often called upon to advise in cases where there is debate and conference over the maladies of the so-called human hand — which is called a paw, in animals.” Kröcker took a pinch from a golden gemstone box and gave it to the prince. He, however, thanked the doctor and said weakly: “Ah, you see,

Mynheer, the

impressions of youth are the strongest impressions. I am now

over twenty-six years old. I grow older every day. I am approaching death. But my strongest impression — I was barely eight years old — was when the royal nurse told me a tale from

The Thousand and One Nights.

I no

longer even remember how it actually went. But in it, a prince came to a large bright lake. And in the lake swam blue, yellow, and red fish. I think there were white ones as well — and later they turned into royal huntsmen, confectioners, pastry cooks, and the like. But — these yellow, blue, red, white fish — in the sunlight — they were exquisite. This was the greatest, most intense impression of my youth — and of my whole life. Oh, you must not laugh. I saw all of this only in my imagination. But I saw it nonetheless. And it is for this reason that I wanted to become a painter, to paint a picture that looks like what I once saw in my mind. But the oil paints make everything wrong. It makes me so sick.” “Was the red of the red fishes,” Herr Kröcker asked with the gold ball laid aside his nose, “more crimson or more vermilion?” “More crimson,” the prince replied, “but it was bright. The yellow too was very bright and luminous. Only the blue was a bit dull — as one often sees in Dutch landscapes.

Mynheer, if only you could help me!”

193

PAUL S C H E E R B A R T

“Prince,” Kröcker replied, “you must not call me

Mynheer.” I

am the

royal doctor Kröcker from Munich and I am pleased to have met your Highness. But if your Highness should deign to grant us with continued life, you will require the strictest rest. To bed, immediately! Warm covers! And all must be quiet — very quiet. I shall cure your Highness.” And Kröcker forgot about his sprained hand, thrust it under the prince’s left arm, led him back into the castle, gave countless instructions, personally put the prince to bed, closed the green silk curtains, and wrote out two dozen prescriptions. The couriers flew on nimble steeds to the apothecary in Munich, to the main palace, and to the Hofbräu cellar, for Kröcker loved Hofbräu beyond measure; he had to have four mugs every day — for him there was no other way to live. Kröcker spoke to Herr Dahlmann for a long time by the light of ten glowing candles and drank Hofbräu and smoked a meerschaum pipe and let the sick prince sweat it out. Then he walked to the window, looked out into the moonlight in the park, and saw — that it had begun to snow. In two hours the park was very white. “Ah,” Kröcker cried, “If only we had red, blue, and yellow fish in this snow lake!” Dahlmann said, “Perhaps we will find them in Munich.” “Ah!” Kröcker cried again, “Colorful fish in Munich? Yes, a little fun, a masked ball! A snow party for courtly society. They must dance to make the prince well again, in blue, red, yellow, and white. Heavens, it’s getting cold. The pond outside is freezing up. Next Sunday afternoon, here: an ice-skating party in Prince Wolfgang’s colors. We’ll arrange everything. But the performance must be silent! No music! Not a sound!” And in the middle of the night the couriers flew again on their nimble steeds into Munich. Most of them fell on their way, as it had grown very icy. But neither horse nor man came to serious harm. On the next Sunday, all of Munich’s courtly society arrived at Nymphenburg, their demeanor very serious, in sleighs drawn by white horses — blue, yellow, and red snow blankets fluttered atop the horses. The vanguard, the cavaliers, and the entire noble company bore only the prince’s four colors — on flags and sashes, and feathers. Prince Wolfgang and his doctor: above in a great hall with exquisite ceiling paintings. His Highness, pale in an invalid’s chair, old Kröcker on his right, old Dahlmann on his left. The sleighs drove all the way to the back of the park and then very slowly,

194

S E L E C T E D SHORT S T O R I E S

with the horses at a walk, came forward across the huge pond — blue, red, yellow — the colors glowed in the afternoon sun. When the prince saw this, tears filled his eyes. In front, the cavaliers leapt from the sleighs and helped the blue, red, and yellow ladies down, fastened their ice skates, and arranged polonaises and contres on the long pond. Everything moved silently. Prince Wolfgang pressed Kröcker’s hand.

La main is growing stronger!” said the doctor.

“

Then it grew dark. And the footmen lit lamps to the right and left of the pond. Up above, over the artificial waterfall, blue, yellow, and red fireworks rose into the sky. The courtly society floated across the ice in graceful arcs. And the colors burned in Prince Wolfgang’s eyes. And he groaned loudly and sank back into the pillows. The footmen brought lanterns shaped like fish — the cavaliers took the fish in their left hands — and a fish dance began. Again, fireworks in Prince Wolfgang’s colors rose over the artificial waterfall into the dark winter sky. The stars seemed very small compared to the huge fireworks. His Highness fell asleep. And the courtly society was silent. Eight days later, Prince Wolfgang was completely well. He said: “This celebration was even more glorious than the experience of my youth. Now the painters may go on painting without me!” Prince Wolfgang grew very old, lived through the whole French Revolution, and said: “If the Jacobins had seen the silent dance of courtly society a few years ago, they would never have allowed the discord and the scaffolds to have happened.”

Translated by Anne Posten

195

The Safe: A Marriage Novelette

“You would never believe, Aunt Kitty,” said Frau Thekla Softstep, “How often Gottfried reminds me to have patience. We’ve been married for three months now. And now he’s gone to France for eight days again. I’m often so impatient, he’s quite right about that. But now I want to show you my reading gallery. You’ll be amazed.” The two women got up and crossed a small lakeside terrace to the reading gallery. Herr Softstep’s villa was located at the edge of Lake Schwielow,

near

Potsdam.

The

villa

of

his

father-in-law,

Commerce

Councilor Scratch, lay two kilometers to the south; Aunt Kitty was the councilor’s sister, recently arrived from Australia. She looked at the rather extensive annex and shook her head. Black velvet covered the floor of the rectangular reading gallery, to which Frau Thekla said: “As you can see, the two longer walls are broken by strips of blue glass. These strips are a mosaic of various blue tones, with many rosette windows. Every possible type of glass has been used. Electric light, heating, and cooling is used behind all of them. Awnings made of white canvas can also be set up outside at the touch of a few buttons from inside. The glass strips, which are double-paned, of course, are fifty centimeters wide and continue into the ceiling. The two shorter sides are windowless, but they have hidden air-vents at the top. Between each of the blue strips is a seventy-five-centimeter-wide section of wall; the wall is made of imitation ivory — smooth as glass. There’s nothing for the vacuum cleaner to clean off them. The books, as you can see, stand or are stacked on little ivory étagères. So: blue — white — black! The woven blue silk on the divans and armchairs, like the rosettes in the glass, is made according to special draw-

First published as “Der Geldschrank: Eine Ehenovelette” in 1911–12 in the satirical magazine Simplicissimus (Munich). Named after the main character of a 1668 picaresque novel by Grimmelshausen, Simplicissimus was renowned for its bold graphics and daring political caricatures. Among its many important contributors were Peter Altenberg, Hermann Hesse, Thomas Mann, Rainer Maria Rilke, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Robert Walser, and the artists John Heartfield and George Grosz.

196

S E L E C T E D SHORT S T O R I E S

ings. Gottfried hasn’t seen to that short wall yet — a special surprise is supposed to go there.” Aunt Kitty said calmly: “It’s an oasis of culture amid the Märkisch sands. Yes — we don’t have anything like this in Australia yet. You must be very happy living here.” “Let us smoke!” said Frau Thekla, and she pulled over a smoking table, upon which everything was made of a fine, ivorylike material. The ashtrays had a border of beads made of lapis lazuli. The cigar stands were adorned with turquoise. The ladies smoked, and Aunt Kitty was very happy to see her niece Thekla was so tastefully done up. The latter said: “And just think, Aunt! Gottfried is always saying to me that he’s a crude and tasteless man — and he asks me again and again to have patience with him — he says that he can be inconsiderate sometimes.” “That,” cried Aunt Kitty, “is simply impossible: anyone who could build his wife such a reading gallery as this — such a person has taste. I find the whole villa exceptionally tasteful.” “I’m looking forward to Gottfried’s surprise,” said Frau Thekla. “It’s supposed to come early tomorrow morning and is to decorate that wall over there.”

The next morning, the aged valet Ibach came into the breakfast room with a distraught look upon his face and said in a husky voice: “The locksmiths crept into the reading gallery in slippers and set up the gracious lord’s surprise; I beg you please to come right away.” “How does it look?” cried both of the ladies. But Ibach just shrugged, and the ladies followed him in great haste. A terrible cry was soon heard from the reading gallery: Frau Thekla fell into a faint upon her favorite divan. A baroque safe made of iron and painted brown — decorated in several places with bronze leaf — stood before the empty white ivory wall. Aunt Kitty stood speechless before it. Ibach stood near the door and wept. Frau Thekla lay wailing upon the divan. “It’s completely tasteless!” she cried. “Is there supposed to be a lot of money in it?” asked Ibach. But Frau Thekla jumped up from the divan like an enraged cat and cried: “That would be a Chimborazo-sized act of tastelessness. My papa gave me plenty of pocket money. I don’t need any money.”

197

PAUL S C H E E R B A R T

Twenty-four hours later, during which time she had remained silent, Aunt Kitty finally spoke: “Your Gottfriend was trying to insult you — it’s not just an issue of tactlessness or tastelessness. He intended specifically to provoke and insult you — to mock you — to torture you. As a young wife, you must by no means tolerate such a thing.” “Then what shall I do?” asked Frau Thekla. “I,” Aunt Kitty opined after a while, “would pack up my most important clothes and such and go to my father’s house immediately.” “And so it shall be! Right away!” cried Frau Thekla. And they packed until sunset. As the moon rose over Lake Schwielow, the two ladies, along with old Ibach, who always had tears in his eyes, took a slow motorboat to Commerce Councilor Scratch’s house. When the colorfully lit motorboat (it too had double-paned walls with electric light between them) arrived at the Commerce Councilor’s villa, all was dark. Herr Scratch was in his study, the servants explained. The ladies were led through a hall where three magnificent vase-shaped central pillars gave off violet and chrysolite-green light; the floor was covered with a brightly colored carpet. A crimson glass wall with a pattern of yellow lilies gleamed from the end of the room. The study was behind this wall. There sat the Commerce Councilor behind his great desk. Just behind the red wall, on which, on the study side, black cuneiform text weaved among the lilies — the black looking mysterious against the red background — stood a black velvet divan. On the desk, a low green lamp was burning. The Commerce Councilor turned around reluctantly and said softly: “Why have you come here so late? What do you want from me?” Weeping and sobbing came as the only answer. Then out it came: “Herr Gottfried Softstep,” Aunt Kitty said, “has put a safe in his wife’s reading gallery — obviously to remind her that the luxury of the reading gallery came at a high cost, and that she ought to be grateful.” At this the old Commerce Councilor slammed his fist against the ebony table and cried: “The man has clearly gone crazy. I’ll get in touch with my neurologist immediately. It’s simply outrageous. A safe in a reading gallery? Ha! I’ll teach him some manners. Wait till he meets me!” Just then the bell of the telephone sounded — and who should be calling but Gottfried Softstep!

198

S E L E C T E D SHORT S T O R I E S

He said to his father-in-law hastily: “I shall be back at Lake Schwielow tomorrow. I beg you to dine with us. After dinner I’ll show you a safe. You’ll be astonished. I won’t say anymore. Goodbye!” The Commerce Councilor was stunned. The packing of things recommenced, and the Councilor ordered Ibach to take everything back — and to erase any trace of the nocturnal excursion. The dinner was on the next day. The mood was somewhat subdued. Finally the father-in-law said: “We’re so curious to see the safe.” “Ah, yes!” cried Herr Gottfried with pleasure, thereby knocking over a wineglass with his left hand. He excused himself for his eternal taste- and tactlessness; Ibach smiled at these words. And then the solution came in the reading gallery. Gottfried Softstep pressed a small knob in the middle of the safe — and the safe immediately split in two halves, each of which rolled slowly aside on four wheels. And with an audible jolt, a lovely ivory writing desk fell out onto the black velvet carpet. Herr Gottfried pulled out the drawers and the writing surface — and look — the ivory was inlaid with the finest cloisonné enamel — translucent melted glass in blue, red, and green. A little blue, red, and green lamp illuminated the miniature work of art from above. It was simply enchanting. Aunt Kitty trembled. The Commerce Councilor looked somewhat askance at his son-in-law. Herr Gottfried once again begged forgiveness for the tasteless packaging. But Frau Thekla sat down at the desk, shaking with emotion, and wrote: Dear Gottfried, Thank you! You have taught me patience! I shall never again be impatient. Your faithful Thekla. She gave the letter to her husband. And then two feminine and two masculine handkerchiefs were put to use. All were greatly moved.

Translated by Anne Posten

199

At the Glass Exhibition in Peking: The Old Baron’s Diary Entries

The old Baron Münchhausen has just returned from China’s interior. He writes the following diary entries while in Peking:

10 September 1910 Those who are always sober cannot write amusing stories. But that is just by the by. In the last fourteen days there have been colossal snowstorms and . . . What I have seen here in Peking far overshadows, as they say, all my other experiences. Actually, “overshadow” is one of those wretched words that always make me a bit nervous. Doesn’t come close to what I mean, this business with the overshadowing. But — let us not digress! This summer, in barely three months, Peking has organized an international glass exhibition . . . Merciful heavens! What the Chinese are capable of! As I’ve always said: One day the Chinese will rule the world.

11 September 1910 First, to describe the general impression! Well — but it’s hardly that easy. Outside, far from Peking — easily a mile and a half outside the city — a huge glass city springs abruptly from the earth. Of course, it doesn’t actually spring. My enthusiasm makes me write the most blatant absurdities. But that goes to show how excited I really am. All this in three months! At first, all one sees are giant walls made of mirrors all around. They frame the whole thing. But it’s not just a simple square. No — the footprint of this little city is actually quite irregular. Again, “little” is obviously quite wrong. The dimensions are actually sizeable. One mirror wall is fifty meters high and eight hundred meters long. Iron rods support the whole thing. The rods are painted crimson or

First published as “Auf der Glasausstellung in Peking: Tagebuchnotizen des alten Barons” in 1912 as part of the novel Das große Licht: Ein Münchhausen-Brevier (The great light: A Münchhausen breviary), Sally Rabinowitz, Leipzig.

200

“enameled. And the mirror wall juts in and out: deep inwards toward the city and then far out again. The perimeter includes three thousand right angles. And the mirror walls contain terraces and overhangs supported by rectangular mirror columns. Hard to imagine. But such is the exterior. I arrived this very morning. The sky was very blue. And the upper half of the mirrors also seemed blue, so that at first one doesn’t even notice that there is a glass city here. The glass was only visible on closer approach. A multitude of mirrored surfaces shone dazzlingly. First, I rode three times around the entire exhibition. The sharp angles, where one glass surface joins another, had the greatest effect here. Everything at right angles. On this side the square reigns supreme. Mainly terraces on the next side. I don’t know the precise number of sides — certainly a very large number. Everything always blue above. Yellow fields of grain surround the exquisite city, so that the lower half looks completely yellow — as if the fields just continue into this paradise. Paradise! When one is excited, one still can’t break the habit of using the usual hackneyed words. No human could ever imagine a paradise like this, in any case. I stayed in a restaurant outside, in the middle of a field of grain. There, I marveled at the sunset — in the mirrors. It was splendid. Immediately thereafter I went to my room, wrote this down, and now I’m looking out again. The moonlight in the mirrors! Stars in the mirrors, too. Everything a hundredfold, a thousandfold. What human hands can create! A hundred thousand people built this in three months. And I’ve only seen the outside.

12 September 1910 Today I was inside. All I can give are notes. First, a hall with kaleidoscopes on the walls. Everything else black velvet. But in the middle of the sixteen walls is a huge kaleidoscopic orb. The kaleidoscope revolves once a minute. Constantly changing images. This magic lantern over a sea of black velvet. This is just a little welcoming entertainment.

201

PAUL S C H E E R B A R T

Lots of Chinese — all in silk garments, woven in bright colors. Myself in Chinese garb as well. I rented these clothes from the innkeeper outside. They’re bright blue and bright green. I’m bored by the very paper I’m writing on. I write only for the benefit of Europeans, so that they realize how far behind they are in terms of exhibitions. I am surprised that there are no Europeans here besides myself, although many have exhibited here. Those who worked here are all in the city, being entertained by the emperor in princely fashion. The attendants in the hall are all dressed in silk — a blaze of color . . . Next I saw the Tiffany glass hall. I looked back out. Moonlight again! And the stars are mirrored in the mirrors. One almost begins to understand infinity.

13 September 1910 Today I came inside only after sunset. The emperor of China had been there with his retinue during the day. Now he has left. I didn’t see him, because unfortunately I’m European. I saw hanging lamps today — hanging glass lamps. I saw at least a hundred thousand of them. With electrical light burning in each one. All of the exhibition palaces adjoin the mirror wall that encloses the whole thing. In the center, terraces lead downward. Glass terraces! Colored glass terraces! And these are — colorfully illuminated — by the countless hanging glass lamps! A pond below, in the center — but no swans. The pond, too, has the appearance of glass, and mirrors the heavens and all the lamps that surround it. Someone else must describe this. I cannot.

14 September 1910 I keep thinking I’ve reached the end. But then there’s more, better. Today there was stained glass. All ornamental.

202

S E L E C T E D SHORT S T O R I E S

I was glad that it was only ornamental. It didn’t remind me of Europe. This ornamentation is different, related to Tiffany glass. Everything is reminiscent of the kaleidoscope in the entrance hall. But here the rigidity looks quite delicate. I was also shown wire-glass houses. The wire in the glass makes the glass itself invulnerable to fire. And I saw enamel houses — both opaque and transparent enamel! Pieces of pure jewelwork! Someone else must describe this.

15 September 1910 I thought there could be nothing more. But look: suddenly there are glass crystals as big as a fist, a head. Every possible shape of crystal. And the colors! Real diamonds were displayed next to them. And their colors shone no stronger or brighter — than the glass crystals. Indeed — these were mostly lit with electric light. But the effect is the same.

16 September 1910 Venetian glass today. I don’t actually know where these were made. They just remind me of Venetian pieces, but their size lends them new and different effects. Soon I will give up taking notes. Such things cannot be captured.

17 September 1910 Glass domes today. More than a hundred.

18 September 1910 Today, since it is an important Chinese holiday, instead of fans, glass crystal rods were set out everywhere. They twinkled. They turned and swayed in every direction. They are still doing so — in the moonlight. Poor Europe! How poor you seem now in comparison — how poor!

Translated by Anne Posten

203

(Perpetual Motion: The ) by Paul Scheerbart was published in 1910 by Ernst Rowholt Verlag, Leipzig. The diagrams accompanying the following translation appeared in the original edition on a single large sheet folded and tipped into the back cover of the book. The cover of the first edition, reproduced opposite, is by Ottomar Starke, who also created the cover illustration for the first edition of Kafka’s Metamorphosis published by Kurt Wolff in 1916. In this publication of Perpetual Motion , additional illustrations are by Josiah McElheny, each a unique photogram created using specially blown, ground, and polished glass parts. For a list of works see page 318. Das Perpetuum Mobile: Die Geschichte einer Erfindung

Story of an Invention

206

Paul Scheerbart

Perpetual Motion: The Story of an Invention

“The greater our despair — the closer we are to the gods. The gods want to compel us to draw ever closer to the grandiose. And the only means they have to achieve this is — misery. Only misery can give rise to great hopes and great plans for the future.”

For a long time I clung to these words as if to a creed. But one day this creed was shaken to its core. And here is how it came to pass: On 27 December 1907 I was thinking about little stories in which something new — astonishing — grotesque — would

play

a part.

I was

thinking about the future of cannons, which struck me as having great potential as instruments of transport; goods shot into the air with automatically opening parachute attachments would, it seemed to me, return quite comfortably to earth. Later, I imagined the entire atmosphere of the Earth crisscrossed by cable cars. Cable cars descending from high mountain peaks struck me as particularly appealing. I thought about how hot air balloons might serve to keep these cable cars aloft when journeying to the North Pole and then imagined enormous Ferris wheels that, in my judgment, might roll through all kinds of terrain much faster than the small wheels that now are customary. As I pursued this train of thought, it struck me that it would be perfectly natural to place the vehicle

inside

the wheel. This was something new.

I imagined the large double wheel

a

as spokeless, and suspended the

K from the double wheels b and c that were attached to the double rod f g (Fig. 1). The wheels d and e were there for safety, so that b and c could not fall off a. When force was exerted on a, the smaller wheels would turn

cab

as well. All these wheels might of course also be replaced by cogs.

208

If, however, I now suspended from lighter than

K (Fig.

f

a weight

L

that was not much

2), all the wheels would move in the direction of the

arrows. Indeed, the entire system would be in motion simply because of the application of weight — as far as I could see, my perpetual motion machine was complete.

“Cog Driven by Weights” is the title I gave this story. I said to myself: the Earth’s steady exertion of gravitational force is a form of perpetual work, and this perpetual work of attraction can be translated, using a series of wheels placed one on top of the other, into perpetual motion. I was quite aware that any physicist would object. But this was one of the main advantages of my project. I’ve always abhorred physicists. What was Robert Mayer and his law of conservation of energy to me? Admittedly I did at first have my doubts as to whether wheel

c

would

also turn in the direction of the arrow. But I didn’t give the matter any further thought — surely

c

would be carried along by the movement of all

the other parts. Placing

a

on top of two other fixed wheels

v

and

w

(Fig. 3) sufficed

to complete my weight-driven excavating machine. This machine could be used to construct canals — all you would have to do is to set 100,000 such wheels in motion — and in three days’ time you’d have completed a canal linking Berlin to Paris. This explained the doubling of the canals on Mars: the Martians must already have discovered perpetual motion.

209

I worked out all these thoughts over the course of several hours — and then my imagination began to run wild. And for the time being I wasn’t able to check the three drawings more carefully. I thought: Well, surely in the end it won’t be quite so simple — but work it will. And although I woke up each morning feeling skeptical, by evening I would be filled with confidence again. Over the next few days, I drew several hundred wheels — or, if truth be told, I kept drawing the same ones over and over. At times I found the whole thing quite amusing. “Who would have thought,” I often said, “that I would invent the perpetual motion machine all over again! This invention will relieve mankind of all its labors. The star Earth will work on our behalf. The misery I’m always harping on will come to an end.” I had a tinsmith fabricate a pair of metal wheels for me, and I purchased some others as well. But the model was so small that the wheels would not all turn properly. And I didn’t even get as far as attaching weights. I was all thumbs and just couldn’t manage it. These first unsuccessful attempts did not, however, prevent me from dreaming of many further consequences of my great discovery, which, as I said before, I always doubted in the morning and felt sure of by evening. Wheel

c often struck me as problematic.

A few notes dating from this period should serve to illustrate my frame of mind:

7 January 1908 All those squabbling potentates are nothing compared to this wheel business. It makes everything possible — especially electrical lighting at night,

210

which will astound all who behold it. This light business can scarcely be imagined in all its glory. It makes it possible to be wasteful with electricity and constantly illuminate everything in many colors — everywhere we go.

8 January 1908 How the airship pilots will rejoice at these great masses of light! All the church towers can be flooded with light from top to bottom. Huge mountains can be illuminated as well. And then all the luminous vehicles and roofs of buildings and great lighted streets — and the banks of canals . . . . Add to this the illumination of the water itself, which can be lit up so clearly that the fish won’t believe their eyes. And what will the inhabitants of other planets say when they see the night side of the Earth so fabulously illuminated! There’ll be no denying that this is a major event in our solar system! In the end we won’t even need the sun . . . . . . . . .

9 January 1908 Day and night I have visions of wheels before my eyes — regardless of whatever else I might be thinking — nothing but wheels — wheels — it’s quite eerie. I no longer believe I’m the one doing all of this — someone else inside me is making it happen. I’m simply preoccupied, against my will, with the same old problem. Perhaps this passivity is the best state for all artists and inventors — it makes it easier for the Other in us to act. What’s more, I am now constantly preoccupied with the big buildings that are in store for us. Giving sections of mountains architectural treatment need no longer count as utopian — — — if the wheel works. Funny how this “if” keeps coming up! In any case, all utopias will fall by the wayside — if it works. Besides which, mankind has already made a bit of a fool of itself with this utopia business — a couple of wheels can stir up more of a revolution than all of mankind’s greatest intellects put together. I wonder if anyone would want to write a utopia that was set a hundred years after the final discovery of perpetual motion? Someone might be brash enough to venture it; there’s certainly no lack of audacious souls who have never once showed the slightest fear of ridicule . . . . .

212

12 January 1908 My model is a failure. But that doesn’t stem the tide of my imagination in the least. I regret only that my creed regarding the usefulness of misery as an aid to development has been so thoroughly shaken.

13 January 1908 Building canals in the Sahara could make the whole desert fertile. And in general, if one could instruct all the rivers on Earth to adopt advantageous new courses, a tremendous increase in terrestrial fecundity could be achieved. In other words: Desert culture on a grand scale. Compared to this, the Panama Canal is a bagatelle. It’s scarcely worth mentioning . . . . How I shall laugh — if it works . . . . But I may not be laughing. There’s something dilettantish about always needing to see everything brought to fruition in reality. Ludwig II, who insisted on sailing around his artificial lake dressed in Lohengrin armor to take full advantage of the Lohengrin ambiance, always struck me as insufferable. There’s something pathetic about people who have to have everything.

14 January 1908 Once — in former days — people used to move house. Now — people can move mountains. This may no longer be just a metaphor—if the wheel works — which hasn’t yet been determined. For the time being, it’s at a standstill. But once it’s been set in motion, anything will be possible. Perhaps the Martians have already used their Perpets to dig up all their mountains. Perhaps — we shall do the same. Of course, it wouldn’t be too good if all the mountains on Earth were to vanish — on the contrary — I’m appalled at the very thought of it. But — it just might be doable. This would make it possible to build dams right down the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and right through the Pacific. Then the Baltic and Mediterranean could be exploited. All these things are absolutely

not

impossible if the wheel works . . . .

213

15 January 1908 People once thought about carving the lines of the Pythagorean Theorem into the sands of the Sahara on a colossal scale so as to give the Martians a sign they could understand — maybe people will now consider inscribing the lines of the Perpet in the form of seven-mile-thick bands of light in the Sahara. But the funny thing is that these lines have not yet been determined with any certainty — wheel

c is becoming ever more problematic.

And I’d just laugh if nothing at all were to come of all this. That would prove yet again that our only salvation lies in the imagination. And my creed based on the development-enhancing properties of misery would once more gain recognition . . . .

18 January 1908 I spent three days thinking about a large architecture park. It kept getting bigger and bigger. Beyond all doubt, architecture must be elevated to greater heights before it can approach the colossal tasks of the Perpet future. Right now we are no longer satisfied with just putting up buildings. More and more novel building materials must be tried out. And then — how can we go on confining ourselves to simple, rectangular architecture? But even architecture of this sort would be nicely advanced by the construction of larger models. All of this can be achieved, but only by means of a permanent architecture exhibition. At first I thought any old tract of land would do. But in fact it won’t, since the first thing the architect of the future must tackle is how to handle colossal stretches of terrain. How can this be communicated by using tiny models? At first I thought of the Spree Forest outside Berlin, and then I wanted to buy up the Black Forest for exhibition purposes. But now I think the best thing would be just to use the Harz mountain range in its entirety. You can dig up the whole place as much as you like and exhibit large-scale plans in smaller formats. This is all rather grandiose. But it only seems that way. Ordinary, everyday human beings have difficulty adjusting to grand schemes. But all of this is going to change — once the wheel is working — which in all honesty is not yet the case.

214

23 January 1908 This story keeps leaving so much out. It is unfortunately quite certain that to start with everybody will go traveling — whether using their smaller or larger Perpets. The affluent man will also have his vegetable gardens and his pigsties and cattle stables driving along behind him — after all, the Perpet is quite affordable — it keeps on moving as long as the wheels hold up. In the early phases, accordingly, we’ll have to reckon with the complete dissolution of our various fatherlands. Things will also take a curious turn where languages are concerned. But I certainly hope that the culturally most significant languages can be preserved. The German language must be saved in any case, otherwise my books will become utterly incomprehensible. And that would drive me stark raving mad.

But once people have settled down a bit, they will come to see traveling as a nuisance and turn their thoughts to more stately pastimes — unless all of humanity turns imbecilic and can think of nothing beyond bowling and dealing out rounds of Skat — which unfortunately is far from unlikely. And there’s the rub. It’s generally the case that when people no longer have to concern themselves with life’s necessities, their intelligence fails to improve — rather, they act more and more as if their mental capacities have deserted them somewhere along the way . . .

25 January 1908 Yesterday once again I spent the whole day wrestling with this model and wound up with half of the brazing rods broken. I don’t know the first thing about metalworking, and this attempt at craftsmanship seems absurd on my part. In any case, enormous observatories must be built — I’m planning to invest all the Perpet’s profits in observatories immediately — and they certainly won’t bring in a cent — so no one can accuse me of greed if I build them. But the astronomers and opticians will rejoice. If you build several observatories at once, you can’t make them all the size of Cologne Cathedral, but I would like each one of them to be three times the size of Cologne Cathedral — with huge, cathedral-sized conference rooms and imposing libraries.

215

If people no longer have to even think about the basic necessities of life — and we won’t have to, once we have Perpets to take care of everything without our lifting a finger — then of course people will have to concern themselves with more distant matters — you can’t keep on admiring the things of this earth forever. And so people will have no choice but to concern themselves with astral affairs. And this is what I’m finding most delightful in this entire fantastical wheel business . . . .

27 January 1908 Of course, it will also be necessary to found a major newspaper right away. Founding the paper, in fact, will take precedence over all other projects. A daily, of course!

The United States of Europe is what I’d like to call it — politics, being a commercial matter, will appear in the classifieds section — the local section will be dropped. And all its pages will be filled with literature, technology, art, and science. This will be a good starting point for discussing major plans — while incidentally providing energetic support for literature.

I’m afraid, however, that literature is the last thing that can be supported with money. And this depresses me. I’d almost like to hope the wheel

doesn’t

work. Literature would be

helped more by the wheel’s not working than by its working — this I know for a fact. I simply do not believe that a period of economic upswing can have a beneficial effect on literature. Just look at the vibrant development of literature in the first half of the nineteenth century — and then its decline in the second half when everything was on the rise economically. I’m thinking only of German literature here. In other countries, the very same phenomenon can be observed in similar eras when other factors are not involved — as in the Italian Renaissance . . . .

216

29 January 1908 There might also be a large new publishing house with enormous capital holdings devoted only to the

design of a book — not what is meant to be read.

30 January 1908 Next thing you know, someone will be telling me he wants to found theaters. Theaters don’t develop well beneath the gleam of gold either — gold is better for developing variety houses. I’m really getting tired of thinking up all these big plans — suddenly I can’t help thinking of the drawbacks of this new era. And all at once I am surrounded by darkness and shadow — where for so long there was only light. After all, the Age of Satire has not yet come to an end. But if

after the invention of the Perpet things were to become even more

humdrum than before — then one should beware of actually completing the invention. For this reason, I am rather glad that the thing still doesn’t work today. And it’s not going to be working tomorrow either — I’d bet on it. This reassures me a little.

• • • These notes make it clear how violently I was gripped by this idea; it just wouldn’t let me go. True, I often saw the comical in all of this, but sometimes the comical aspects eluded me. My experiments with the primitive model proved inconclusive; I hadn’t the faintest notion of craftsmanship. And fortunately I lacked the money to charge others with the task of implementing all the things I was dreaming up. Had I been in a position to do so, I might have given up the whole idea rather quickly, for wheel

c

did in fact obstruct the whole thing, being un-

able to move in the direction of the arrow and at times bringing the entire system to a halt. Of all this, however, I still had only the vaguest inkling; I hadn’t yet grasped it, and so my imagination went on working, “against my will.” I kept trying to do away with wheel

c

altogether but had no idea how this

could be managed. What’s more, the technical side of the thing did not interest me at all, since I had never in my life been much concerned with technical matters and had never taken any interest in mechanics. Although I kept drawing the wheel system, at least fifty times a day, in all its possible variations and kept thinking about it, my imagination kept

217

soaring off in other directions, assuming as finished something that was far from complete. The slanted orientation of the carriage within the wheel gave me particular pleasure, and I populated all the highways with fabulous vehicles that seemed to me far more fun than automobiles and carriages with their primitive little wheels down below. And then the exhibition park kept me busy for almost all of February. Here are a few notes on that:

7 February 1908 In the garden, if we set up freestanding walls made of wire and cover them with climbing plants, we can produce avenues similar to the ones created with square-pruned trees during the rococo period. Vine-covered walls of this sort can serve to create arbors and terraces in the villa style. How strange that no one has ever thought of employing such easily produced horticultural devices. Large-scale terrace architecture can thus be — simulated — by means of climbing plants on wire walls — the effect will be magnificent when applied in hilly terrain.

11 February 1908 A garden with rearrangeable parts. Transportable hedges. Transportable terraces. And above all: transportable flowerbeds. Evening illumination by means of glass plates lit from below. Flower baskets hanging from chains. Enormous masts covered with blossoming flowers in baskets of earth that can be moved — hoisted up and down — and also rotated slowly around the mast. The flowers should dangle far down out of these baskets. Adjustable flower walls made of wire. Walls to provide shelter from the wind. Everything that can be moved must be given pride of place in the garden: plants on large pedestals that can be driven around — with Perpets. “Moveable” lighting. Floating flowerbeds in the ponds. Large mechanical fans with glittering glass insets. Etc. etc. etc.

•

218

13 February 1908 When you have machines that can function in perpetuity through the application of weights, you can undertake changes to the terrain in the grandest possible style — then you will truly have acquired the ability to organize the greatest mountain chains any way you like — according to rhythmic relationships, lowering and elevating them. Colossal spatial art can be created in this way. And the Harz is very well suited as a place for erecting small-scale models. Of course, these models will have to be larger than anything we have ever seen in the field of architecture; the pyramids in the land of the pharaohs will look like toys compared to these models in the Harz.

15 February 1908 Large canal and dam projects should of course not be undertaken without forethought. This is why model constructions for the “large” projects of the future are to be put on view in the Harz. The finest of what the architectural spatial arts have to offer must be included. Enormous streets — gigantic terraces — And ravine architecture . . . .

17 February 1908 The Bode Valley in the Harz can be left just as it is — for the sake of contrast — and perhaps the Brocken as well. As for the rest, we’ll be able to demonstrate the effect produced by 400-meter-high vertical walls. And these walls can be sculpturally ornamented. And within these sculptural ornaments, villas can be built that can be reached only by elevator. Entire landscapes should be reserved for dramatic tower architecture. And of course machines must be invented for constructing buildings. These machines will then build the largest towers without a single human hand having to stir. Only the wheels will work — without pause. It is somewhat wearying and enervating to imagine such a construction process; this alone could easily provide material for several thousand utopian novels.

•

219

19 February 1908 Everything that the regal garden architecture of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries was aiming to achieve can now be produced in entirely new dimensions — even sweeping curves will be given their due — not only rectangular shapes — and crystalline forms as well . . . . Countless models for buildings and villas must be created — along with model cities, of course — the cities that were not created by using models will be converted to storage sites for goods and raw materials. Anyone who supposes that my architecture park in the Harz might seem in any way strange to me, is very much in error — the only things I think of as odd are the so-called “modern” cities — their demise will be balsam for my soul.

• • • As you can see, in sketching out these fantasy constructions I gave both Europe and America short shrift; constructing a Panama Canal struck me as a pure bagatelle — a few months should suffice for this — in my estimation. February 1908 was rather a serious month; within me, a sort of fanaticism was already taking root, and being contradicted by anyone at all was more than I could bear. Nevertheless my sense of humor did not entirely abandon me, as evidenced by the following little scene:

The Barbarian General In the year 2050

A . D.,

there lived in the land of Germania a general who

was wickeder than all the other generals of his time put together. At that time, the Europeans were waging a major bombing war against the Americans. Modern military science was able to celebrate the most spectacularly explosive victories. And the Americans merrily went on living all the same. Naturally this circumstance was quite vexing to the wickedest general of his time, who was commander-in-chief of Germania’s armed forces. And what did this cruel man, who went by the name of Kuhlmann, proceed to do? Kuhlmann devised a plan to inundate all of America. It was his intention to surround all of Europe with enormous floodwalls and then use two billion Perpets to squirt the Mediterranean and Baltic Seas into the Atlantic Ocean.

220

To this barbaric plan the response he received was a great outcry of horror; at once Germania made peace with America. Kuhlmann just sat there, utterly perplexed. Then an enterprising young impresario came into his room and said: “Your Excellency! Let us go on tour in America, where you can present your plan along with maps and full models. We’ll hit the jackpot, I guarantee it! Let’s set off at once.” The general did as the impresario suggested, and the Americans greatly enjoyed Kuhlmann’s performances. If only the impresario had not vanished along with the cashbox right after the last stop on this lecture tour, General Kuhlmann would have returned to Europe filthy rich.

• • • But I digress. Given that it no longer appeared possible to me that our native lands and borders could go on existing — because everyone would constantly be tooling around in Perpets — militarism was destined to become defunct as well — its only significance, it seemed to me, would be as a figure of fun in comic strips . . . . It struck me as a matter of far more serious concern that someone might undertake major drilling projects that could produce internal injuries to the star Earth. But when I considered how splendidly the Earth has heretofore managed to shield its two polar lands, I thought: “Surely she knows what to do to prevent the worms creeping about on her surface from becoming a danger to her.” All at once, however, I realized how impossible it would be to prevent all the mischief that would be made possible by Perpetua. That militarism would, first off, mount all its cannons on Perpetua — this much was clear. Eventually the wheels would be trained to wage war all on their own, without human crews. And all this terrible mischief would no doubt be tolerated with amusement. But what about all the things that could be overturned by means of these perpetual machines? My God! Contemplating this, I began to feel a bit queasy. “And in consequence,” I said to myself, “won’t the inventor of this device be dealt with rather summarily? Suffering the wrath of all these threatened lands will not be a trifling matter. The best thing would be

221

for me to withdraw in a timely fashion and live out the rest of my life incognito.” The most innocuous development, it seemed to me, would be the revolution in the horological industries. And yet — even there — A good ten thousand utopian novels could be penned about these immanent revolutions; the material could certainly not be covered in a mere

one thousand novels. When I thought of the poor physicists, I was almost seized with pity; for so long they’d been such braggarts, putting on airs as the elucidators of the universe — and declaring with such vehemence that perpetual motion “violated the laws of nature” . . . And here I was composing long speeches intended to make it clear to these detested gentlemen once and for all, as gently as you please, that I found their conduct most peculiar, given that materialism, after all, had long since been debunked as “philosophically impossible” — meaning that the “cosmic significance” of the physicist had been debunked along with it. “All the physical things known to us,” I said, “are ‘psychic’ properties of the star Earth — including gravity — gravity above all, in fact. It is utterly improbable that these psychic properties of the star Earth are to be found anywhere else in our planetary system.” The Physicist, in other words, is to be attacked by the Psychicist — and slain. Let us not devote any more time to this matter.

• • • Physicists are constantly insisting that we do not know what electricity is — but they forget to mention that gravity is also utterly incomprehensible to us. The most amazing miracle of all time is that we are able to walk, sit, and lie down without flying out into space. It is

not at all

natural for two

bodies to attract one another; and whether they also do so in the space that lies beyond the atmosphere of our Earth is something we don’t yet know. It certainly isn’t correct to speak of a cosmic gravitational force. In short, the word “force” ought to be confiscated from the physicists — they’ve certainly done enough harm with that word. And yet — for the moment I wish to speak only of what is relevant to the further development of the so-called invention — which of course,

222

like all inventions, ought instead to be referred to as a “discovery”: all this uncovering and inventing is surely not primarily the doing of us humans. Unfortunately, I gradually moved away from the first notion without having sufficiently investigated its value or lack thereof. And immediately a great deal of confusion ensued, so I dropped the spokeless wheel and instead thought about a composition corresponding roughly to Figure 4. That this configuration would

not

work became clear to me soon enough,

and I was growing tired of occupying myself with this business.

Throughout March 1908 I wrote astral novelettes that were set on the asteroids, where “gravitational force” is neither as grave nor as forceful as on Earth. The possibility that on other stars there might be a completely different force or astral quality than gravity at work — it didn’t even cross my mind; shaking off deep-seated “prejudices” can take time. This purely artistic activity, however, did not entirely erase the trains of thought left over from January and February, and by the end of March I was again drifting on the same current — but now it finally occurred to me to attach the carriage ( now that pesky wheel

c

K ) outside the spokeless wheel (Fig. 5). And so

was eliminated.

That the construction still involved a sort of balancing act — since the weights of

K and L had to be adjusted in such a way as to prevent the con-

struction from tipping to one side — did not worry me overmuch. And so in April

1908 I arrived at Figure 6 — which I submitted

on 15 May 1908 to the Patent Office — not because I believed that I had now solved the entire business — but in the hope of spurring further development.

223

And in this I was not deceived; someone drew my attention to the considerable frictional resistance, for which reason I added to the system a heavily weighted wheel

s

that simply sat atop the construction (Fig. 7).

Unfortunately I also added wheel

d,

which was not only superfluous — it

was also a major hindrance, as become clear later on.

The construction as a whole was now rather shaky — but I nonetheless packed it all off to an engineer. He declared the system unstable, and so I immediately rendered it stable (Fig. 8) by attaching riage

M and,

g to

a separate car-

for factory applications, to a fixed bar (Fig. 9).

I handed this in to the Patent Office — and breathed a sigh of relief. This was on 2 June 1908. “Either it will work,” I thought, “or it won’t work — there probably isn’t a third option.” And I was very glad that I would now “for the time being” not have to concern myself any longer with this wheel business. I even succeeded in nearly forgetting the whole affair for all of June and

225

July; I wrote a large number of astral tales that all played out on other stars or else in subterranean environments. This was certainly one of the most delightful periods of my life; I’d almost forgotten about Earth. My pecuniary state was wretched; but I didn’t even feel it. I just kept explaining to my wife that our meager circumstances were a sign of better things to come. To be sure, I didn’t always manage to convince her. But I was so happy — happy as one can only be when constructing and dreaming up new worlds . . . . For almost all of August I kept on writing my astralica, for I was still waiting to hear back from the Patent Office and the engineer. But now the wheels began to stir once more. And I dug out the old model and began to work with it again. I had said before that the thing could only be made using cogwheels. Meanwhile — I thought it might work even without cogs, and I tried it out with four very heavy wheels that I set into the double sheet-metal wheel

And now I was holding

a as b and d (Fig. 10).

g in my hands — and saw that

the thing really

was moving — and in my opinion was moving perpetually. This transpired on 14 August of the year 1908. It seemed to me that finally I had won.

• • • Naturally, I wanted to try out Figure 11 right away. I sawed up a bunch of egg crates. In the merriest of spirits I gave myself the title “Head Mechanic” — but it didn’t help — Figure 11 refused to work — and I didn’t know what to do about it. Larger weights broke everything in two, and when I was merely applying weight, the question was constantly present: “Are you sure you aren’t pushing?” And if I was honest with myself, I had to confess that merely applying weight was not enough — you couldn’t help pushing involuntarily, just as with table turning.

226

Most unfortunately, someone happened to remark that I could also just leave out wheel

a—b

positioned on top of

d

ought to work just as I’d

envisioned it. And thus Figure 13 came about. But I still clung in principle to the spokeless wheel and went on to draw Figure 12 for ships and airships.

This too I turned in to the Patent Office, and I was mightily pleased that gravity could

possibly also power the engine of a “balloonless airship.”

A new method for executing the condemned occurred to me: the criminal would be bound to an aeroplane of this sort with a gravity-driven engine — the criminal would rise into the clouds, never to return — never again — rising higher and higher for as long as the Earth’s gravitational force remained in effect. This might also be a practical way to dispose of corpses. But now I began to have doubts about the effectiveness of gravity in the higher reaches of the Earth’s atmosphere — and suddenly it appeared to me as clear as day that it was never permissible to speak of gravity in the cosmic sense. It is a hypothesis that the planets and suns exert a gravitational pull on one another — we do not, however, know how the stars relate to one another. All we know is that the apple falls to the ground when it breaks off its twig. The mysterious nature of gravity became “clear” to me. Yes — clear! The only thing that wasn’t clear to me was how physicists had been speaking of a physical gravitational force in the cosmos for centuries on end.

229

A sort of religious zeal surrounding this perpetual gravity exerted by Earth began to blossom within me.

• Figure 13 was then built by the engineer, with heavy iron wheels (and with

b and d as single to work.

wheels, and the wheel beneath

g

double) —

and it failed

At first I was quite surprised and thought there must be some detail obstructing it. This was on 26 October 26 1908. Then, however, I flew into a rage, and it seemed to me that my excitement was driving me to the point of outright frenzy — I cursed all manner of things and comported myself in a manner not at all reasonable. After twenty-four hours, this uproar subsided of its own accord. And then I began in earnest to examine the entire wheel business from all sides — day and night, I saw nothing but wheels before me — and besides them, nothing at all. I had already turned the thing over and over in my mind for all of September and October. But only now, after the complete debacle, did my real work begin. I began to produce better models with smaller wheels, rods, and screws — and worked as a craftsman does — incessantly. Figure 14 was executed quite correctly by me at the beginning of November — and this model also

failed to work.

But my despair lasted only a few hours, after which I had a sheet-metal version made of Figure 15 — only to see my hopes dashed yet again.

230

• • • By the end of November 1908 I had already spent three months occupied exclusively with these wheels, and I realized that this was truly enough to drive a person mad; I was no longer capable of applying my thoughts to any other object. The sufferings my wife endured during this period were at times quite ghastly. Whenever a model failed to work, fits of rage ensued, and in the end I was forced to sketch my eternal wheels

in secret.

“Listen, I can’t stand to hear the word wheel anymore,” my wife often said; “I feel sick whenever you utter the word.” And in truth the whole business was rather depressing, and I could certainly empathize with her, but I just couldn’t escape the grip of these “wheels.” And it was

most peculiar that I couldn’t figure out why the models failed

to work. I put no store in any of the speeches made by the physicists and engineers, since they offered me nothing solid to hang on to; their talk of forces was simply incomprehensible to me. I found it thoroughly unedifying to be groping about in an atmosphere utterly foreign to me. But I wasn’t expecting any help from physicists. I imagined

that despite

it all I

would still manage

to

unravel the

knot — with blind fanaticism I was gradually coming to believe in the success of my endeavor. And so I kept leaping over every obstacle, indulging in the most cheerful visions of the future, which were starting to seem

quite cheerful.

I shall attach a few sketches dating from this period; the first ones were probably written in September:

The Millionaire Uncle People are always telling me that my entire system keeps failing because of the “fasteners”; they say that if I didn’t have to “fasten”

g

to a carriage in

accordance with Figure 10, everything would work. I am, however, by no means convinced of the correctness of this view. Probably everything is quite different. The wheels in Figure 10 were perpetually pushing — and so they must be able to push a carriage. Surely I’ll figure it out. In any case, I shall be a millionaire uncle if it works. Twenty nations will surely be able to deliver an average of thirty million a year to the inventor — at least for the customary fifteen years. Twenty times thirty million makes six hundred million — this would be the sum

231

for the Earth’s national institutions, particularly for the national rail and steamer routes. Somewhat more — approximately

eight hundred

million — could be

delivered to the inventor by the collectivity of private institutions on Earth. This would “represent” an income of fourteen hundred million for the inventor. A handsome sum! If you consider that the Czar of Russia has only thirty-six million a year to “consume,” you can easily imagine what importance I would soon acquire — if it works. They would have to call me Super-Millionaire Uncle. No doubt a pretty little utopia could emerge if one were to imagine the life of a supreme potentate of this sort; but I shall

not

write this uto-

pia — because even here I can see only the downside; I would be a distributor of money — and nothing more. And in point of fact I cannot see why I should be expected to find the role of glorified pay-clerk particularly edifying; besides which — it just wouldn’t suit me. The pleasures I would be able to buy myself for fourteen hundred million a year strike me as rather paltry. These enormous sums would “chain” me to the others, after all. And I don’t like to be pinned down. Besides which, all these pleasures look quite childish to me. Being eager to chase after pleasures is most definitely the sign of a dilettante — a person of that kind always needs to be enjoying something or other — since try as he might, he cannot bring himself to actually create something (which counts for a bit more than mere pleasures). True, I could found, support, and cultivate a great number of observatories, superior theaters, superior publishing houses, superior newspapers, and superior architectural exhibitions, along with other superior institutions. But — then I wouldn’t be able to write another line — or pursue any of my own projects — I’d have to spend sixteen hours a day just listening to the discourses of my advisors — and soon I would no doubt be in such a state as to be unable to differentiate between red and blue. In this way, miserably, I would be done in. And everyone I “supported” with the help of these comfortably flowing masses of money — they too would soon be “done for” — as it turns out that “enjoyment” is exhausting. Amen! To be sure, some great larks could be arranged — for instance, it has already occurred to me that I might entrust to my wife the task of overseeing

234

central kitchens in which everything would be dished up for free — — — but only to “natives.” In the Grunewald district on the outskirts of Berlin, for example, a central kitchen of this sort would not find many takers — nor would it in Monaco. These are mere larks — of course they are! For the life of me, I don’t see why they should be put into practice in naked reality — truly I don’t!

But Now Comes the Great Calamity Financial institutions are institutions with which, strictly speaking, I am utterly unfamiliar. If, however, my wheel works, I shall make their acquaintance. But — this acquaintance will not be a pleasant one. The reception I expect to receive will not be benevolent. For — I’m quite used to this — whenever I show my face anywhere, massive bankruptcy is never far behind. And assuming the wheel works, all financial institutions — every last one of them — will beyond a shadow of a doubt be subject to a devastating crash. When dough becomes worthless overnight, the banks lose billions. — — — Even the pricey automobile industry will lose all value. And then the most enormous social upheavals must follow. All the revolutionaries will cry hurrah and huzzah and get terribly drunk. And every arch-revolutionary will proclaim with great ceremony: “From the ridiculous to the sublime is but a step.” It will be a great revolution for gold. Gold isn’t important just because children, savages, and ravens always grasp at shiny things — gold is important because it is very strongly attracted to the Earth and is therefore excellently suited to weight a Perpet system. A revaluation of gold is therefore certain to occur, and no one will be willing to work any longer for this shiny, artistically so utterly worthless, unappealing metal. And so it might well come to pass that you will scarcely be able to buy a glass of beer for twenty marks. And there will be a great deal to laugh about — which I find

highly

appealing, since laughter always appears to be quite well suited to promote digestion. Above all it pleases me that my income of four million a day will be — a chimera.

235

Who’s supposed to pay me if all the financial institutions declare bankruptcy? This “sublime” revolution! Many, many novelists will want to lose no time depicting it. I myself shall refrain from doing so, since I have never yet done what a great many others are already doing . . . . .

Antiquated Work For as long as humankind has existed, work has always been highly prized. And the worker has always been quite proud of all his labor and activity. The do-nothing artist and the impractical poet have always been looked down on by bona fide workers. Now this is all going to change. The worker will unfortunately be forced to realize that all his laborious humdrum activity is utterly superfluous, since Earth can provide for all our needs without assistance, thanks to its perpetual work of attraction. The pride of the worker, then, will also be a thing of the past. And so finally the social question can be put to rest. I wonder what the Social Democrats will have to say about this great Revolution of Work! Oh — the stuff of comedies wherever you turn. But I feel sorry for the satirists, for they too will suddenly be faced with their own superfluity. The

Perpet

would

also

constitute

an

enormous

humiliation

for

humankind. The star Earth, after all, is — — — oppressively magnificent. “Everything” speaks to us in its own language, we just have to learn to understand that language. And this is what the star Earth will say to mankind: “What are you getting so worked up about? There’s no need for you to wear yourselves to the bone performing simple labor. You will no longer have to inveigh against the sorrows of life on Earth. Nor do you have the right any longer to feel proud of the work of your own little hands. Now that you have ‘discovered’ the Perpet, you have no choice but to realize that I am the one who does Everything for you. Before, you never even noticed that for millennia on end I have been uninterruptedly performing the most monstrous plethora of labors. And now finally you have the chance, for once, to be something more than indifferent beasts. You can create a world

236

in your imaginations just as the gods do. What I have done for you — is more than you even suspect. Worship me. I am the godhead to whom you owe everything — everything — everything!”

The Great Disruption There is no doubt whatever that the Perpet will, among other things, constitute a major disruption in human life. One might well ask: Is this good fortune not showing up too soon? Are we ripe for this new life of artists and gods? Our imagination has not yet progressed to the point of being able to grasp the consequences of this discovery even in general terms. But — we must accept this in its entirety — as we would a natural phenomenon, and we must also make our peace with any unfortunate side effects. The thing will make the same sort of impression as a colossal earthquake — and a great deal — a very great deal — will collapse beneath its force.

The Ceremonious Silence And a ceremonious silence will set in once people have recovered from the initial shock. And all our religious views will be subjected to a thorough revision. And people will no longer speak of the infinite, universal God — he’s much too big for us. And people will say that even the godhead “Earth” is too big for us in the end. And then the great silence will be filled with religious awe.

Wheels and Rings Wheels already hold great significance for us — for it is to the railway we owe the dangerous centralization of human beings in our major cities. Steam and electricity, too, have brought us many ills — including the bewilderment of almost our entire intellectual lives, as it can no longer be denied that all the traveling done in this age of ours has produced a paucity of thought in the human mind and, in consequence, a decline of culture. And so the Perpet will not be just another bit of progress with no further repercussions.

237

How priceless it seems to me that the spokeless wheel, which after all lies at the heart of the whole discovery, is actually a ring. Thus we have ring symbolism foreshadowing the Great Perpet . . .

The Astral Direction It’s clear as day that the only point of my experiencing this entire wheel business was to have the significance of the star Earth made clear to me. This significance will remain unshakeable — even if the wheel turns out

not to work perpetually. Heat, steam, electricity, and magnetism are also part of the star Earth’s perpetual output — this must

never

again be forgotten. Henceforth the

physicist must formulate his wisdom differently; ways and means will be found to compel him to do so. Alas, there’s no getting around it. But — since I have been speaking more and more of other stars — and with this was hoping to bring forth an astral direction in literature and art — — I find myself suddenly standing here crestfallen and, though it pains me, must admit: I was on the wrong track. There is no need for us to suppose that life on other stars is any more pleasant than our life here on Earth. The star Earth, now that the Perpet has been discovered, is in fact entirely pleasant. All paradises are nothing compared to life on Earth after the discovery of the Perpet. This astral direction is already, like so

many other things, “highly

superfluous.” And in fact this makes me very sad . . . .

The “Star” Earth The enormous gravitational labors performed by Earth without interruption over millions of years are impressing themselves on me more and more keenly. Earth itself is a perpetual motion machine. Putting waterfalls to work is already a means of making use of so-called gravitational force — and steam power is itself really nothing more than a specific variety of “gravity.” I do find it strange, though, that humankind persists in considering work extremely important — without even realizing that

actually,

its

even in

the case of steam engines, it is the star Earth doing all the work. “Man, be more humble!” one wants to shout again and again. In any case, I have finally come to appreciate just how huge this star

238

Earth is. The fact that it is almost six times as heavy as water — this should no longer be just casually remarked on. It just won’t do anymore. The general notion of gravity should be abolished. Even William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) wanted to attribute gravity to atmospheric pressure — an odd way to go about it — insisting on presenting Earth as a “nonparticipant” . . . The first commandment is now: Live in harmony with your star! But — what are the desires of this star Earth? It wishes to keep moving further out — out into this great world — and it revolves around itself — four miles every second! — From this we must conclude that it is always capable of getting a good look at everything that is going on around us in the solar system. And so if we wish to live in harmony with our star Earth, we too must do what it is doing — namely: we must constantly gaze out at the planetary system and the sun. And — — — this would show my astral direction to be quite correct — the star “Earth” doesn’t want our thoughts to adhere constantly and forever to its terrestrial plane. The star Earth also desires the astral — after all, it is itself a star. And — — — this would seem enough to “salvage” my astral direction. Well — thank God! One shouldn’t be so quick to give up on an idea — and I mustn’t forget the “spokeless” wheel either . . . . This “ring”!

The Nourishment Aria It has always embarrassed me to think of the ridiculous way in which people on the star Earth “nourish” themselves. What can this be if not a mockery of humankind? And I believe that eventually it will be possible to manufacture wafers that offer us all the nutrients we require in highly concentrated form. Pure protein already exists. Whereby it remains regrettable that we cannot simply live on air. But — there is no doubt a good reason for this bothersome circumstance: things shouldn’t be so comfortable here on Earth’s epidermis that we forget the existence of the other stars. I’ve been pointing this out for years, a good hundred thousand times so far . . . .

239

The Elixir of Life

That we should have to “die” has never struck me as particularly “divine.” Meanwhile — are we really quite certain that we are “living”? We can’t even observe the moment when we fall asleep. “To earth thou shalt return!” This sentence might well have the following meaning: for a certain length of time we are permitted to believe that we are leading independent lives — but in truth we are not. We are merely leading the lives that the star Earth allows us to live. The more we are one with it — the happier we are. And when we die, we become fully one with it again. Then we will go on leading astral lives. Our human lives are not as important — as our astral lives are — this, in my opinion, is the wisdom that this endless dying on the epidermis of our star is constantly preaching to us in the most insistent terms. And for this reason there is surely no cause to describe human dying as lamentable. Anyone who lives in harmony with his star Earth will most assuredly have no more fear of dying.

• • • Whether the wheel now worked or failed to work — after what has been said above, this could be of only secondary interest to me. Really, did it matter? This did not, however, stop me from continuing to work with the models. For all of November I kept perpetually at my labors, screwing and sawing until my fingers ached, as they were not accustomed to such work. The ideas described in the last little articles on the pages above were probably formulated only in November, I’m no longer quite sure. In any case I gradually calmed down and accepted it with philosophical equanimity when a model failed to function. The most important thing from my point of view had already been determined: the perpetual work performed by the Earth could no longer be put in question. And this insight was surely worth my having filled my imagination with “wheels” for over a year. Whether humankind or I myself succeed in translating the perpetual work performed by our star into perpetual motion cannot be considered of particular importance; we are already partly in a position, in the use of steam, for example, to utilize the Earth’s activity for our own purposes.

240

For the time being, I shall pay no particular attention to the “Principle of Conversation of Energy,” since I am, after all, attacking the basic premises of physics; we don’t know whether the atoms in outer space attract one another — we don’t know whether stars do — we are in no position to recognize universal laws. And we must energetically object when physicists have the colossal nerve to speak of “universal laws.” I’ve included only a few of the models that were built in November and the first half of December 1908 among the illustrations. In Figure 16, I placed the system on top of two free-floating tracks and attached

g f in such

a way as to make this rod perpendicular to the line connecting the two midpoints of

b and d.

b above d g (Figure 17).

Then I attempted to place wheel midpoints were equidistant from

in such a way that their

In Figure 18 I reverted to the metal guide (see shaded area) and suddenly

KL d — all

realized — this was 17 December 1908 — that although the weight of was making the small wheel

b exert

steady downward pressure on

the wheels touching the ground (including

d)

were at the same time being

b was being pushed to the left, with the result d moved not in the direction of the arrow but rather the opposite way.

pushed to the right even as that

At this point I realized why none of the models worked: in every one of them,

d moved not

in the direction of the arrow, no matter how I attached

it; in other words, placing one wheel on top of the other didn’t work.

241

I had a good laugh over the fact that I hadn’t understood this simple matter much earlier. And I abandoned the entire perpetual motion project. I wasn’t even sad about it. This lasted only a few days though. Even though I wanted to abandon the wheels, they wouldn’t abandon me. And as early as 20 December I pulled out the old “spokeless” wheel again.

d mounted within a most certainly did the arrow — precisely because the lower

And I soon saw (Figure 19) that have to move in the direction of

rods were being moved to the left in the direction of the arrow. The entire system, therefore, had to move to the right — compelled by the constant motion of

a to

the right.

The only thing wrong with the model of Figure 19 was that celed out if it was not heavier than

KL .

a was can-

In January 1909 I had a model built of Figure 20 in which the midpoints of

a, b,

and

d

all lay in a single line;

d

might, of course, also be

placed on the “dotted” track. Unfortunately I failed to construct the model with sufficient accuracy that it could be weighted. Nonetheless, I saw that I had not deceived myself.

242

On 8 January 1909 I submitted this last version to the Imperial Patent Office in Berlin. It’s not my business to use the power of suggestion to force my beliefs on anyone who doesn’t believe any of this; belief alone will not suffice to set anything in perpetual motion.

d must be mounted inside a in such a way that it rolls down a slanting plane within a. Of course — d can’t roll down anything, since the rotation of d is immediately translated into the rotation of a; a is held on either side by b and d and is forced to rotate by the necessary rotation of b and d. In any case, wheel

Whether or not this will wind up working only if executed with cog

KL — b and d, despite

wheels I just don’t know. But the setup as a whole is perfectly clear. this calamity — perpetually exerts downward force — and

their constant rotation, can’t move even a fraction of a millimeter closer to the midpoint of the Earth — — — — and thus the system keeps on running without any further action on our part as long as the wheels remain intact. No question, this wheel activity will stir up a lot of dust. In any case, we now know that everything depends upon the will of the star Earth.

None of us

“deserves” the perpetual motion machine.

But we do have to acknowledge that

our

work cannot be considered

significant, since our star is so much more and works so much more — than we do . . . . . . Once we have acknowledged this, we’ll have done enough acknowledging; we’ll just have to be careful not to go back to thinking about infinite space right away. And we should give up, once and for all, speaking of “universal laws”; all theories pointing to such laws (such as so-called monism) should no longer be taken seriously.

Zehlendorf (Berlin), 4 March 1909

A tinsmith put together a model in which the wheels were arranged as in drawing 21. The wheels turned so haltingly that I was unable to see whether the thing worked or not. On the ground, to be sure, there were three points of frictional resistance to overcome. And naturally there was a bit of jamming where

b and d exerted

pressure on spokeless wheel

243

a.

But I thought the problem had nonetheless been resolved.

• • • Still, at this point I left the entire business alone and did nothing more. The drawing of this model remained lying on my desk for a full year — while I occupied myself with other things — particularly with aerial matters and with grandiose air militarism, which in my opinion would certainly be dealing a death blow to all land and sea militarism quite soon. People were not so swift to see my point — I often found myself writing the same thing with different words. And in the process I recognized how absurdly cumbersome human thought was — which began to disgust me. And in the end I wasn’t surprised that scholars of the star Earth hadn’t the slightest idea how to approach gravity; they kept emphasizing that a mass approaching the center of the Earth would have to be raised up again. And all of them believed it axiomatic that this circumstance would render a perpetual motion machine impossible. But as soon as the mass did

not

approach the center of the Earth, as in drawing 21 — all these lovely “scientific” speeches would have to be tossed on the scrap heap . . . . In short: the drawing in question, as I’ve said before, sat on my desk for a full year, and nothing new occurred to me. But all of a sudden, on 30

d mustn’t d atop the freely rotat-

January 1909, I took a closer look at drawing 13. And I thought: be allowed to touch the ground. Hereupon I placed

z — and the thing will run perpetually, as d can exert the full force of its weight on z. ing cog

The result is a weighted pressure motor capable of powering a vehicle; the construction can be set in motion by the axis of

z (see

drawing 22).

Contrary rotation of the bottommost wheel, frictional resistance, and jamming — these three obstacles were hereby overcome. All at once I had discovered a fixed weighted pressure motor that could also work when suspended or mounted in a vehicle. Three little wheels had solved the entire problem. Now the whole thing looked like a toy.

246

And for a full year I had failed to hit on the utterly simple idea of turning drawing 13 into a “fixed” system. That’s all there was to it! Let me tell you: I couldn’t help finding my human intelligence hideously inconsequential. After all, for one full year it hadn’t even occurred to me to consider that something that didn’t work as a vehicle might still merit consideration as a fixed system. I just didn’t think of it.

z is

d d will simply

the most important component in drawing 22. When the axis of

is fixed and unobstructed beneath the axis as in the drawing, exert pressure on

b,

and no rotation at all will occur — neither wheel will

have any cause to rotate — neither to the right nor the left. It takes

z

to

bring the entire construction into perpetual motion, provided that the axis of

d

remains unobstructed below, and so

z

is the capstone of this entire

structure, which is so crucial “for mankind.”

Friedenau (Berlin), 24 February 1910

It was now clear to me beyond all doubt: once

z began to

turn,

b, d and z

would naturally no longer be able to stop turning. But now the question presented itself of whether

z would

ever begin to

turn. And in the end I was finding this more and more improbable. Finally I decided it was out of the question that

z would ever turn at all. And then

of course I had to laugh at my own gullibility. Nonetheless, the matter still had me in its thrall. And quite soon I said to myself: What cannot be accomplished by weight pressing down can perhaps be achieved by tensile load. And after several detours I arrived on 11 March 1910 at drawings 23

d in drawing 22 gave me the idea for the guide rails. I placed and d c in rails. When I removed the support St beneath wheels e d c were compelled to turn upward in the direction of

and 24. The the axes of

ZL,

the

e

the arrow. I was able to demonstrate this by means of a simple experiment. So this was where rotation began.

247

Naturally I was triumphant, thinking that finally I had achieved what I’d been aiming for. To be sure, after all my bad experiences I did not have complete faith in the correctness of my calculations — but I did believe in any case that I was finally on the right track.

c (drawing 24) met the toothed chain encircling a b above, the rotation of c was necessarily translated to a b in the direction of the arrow. Of course — the axis of e had to be shifted to the right, as it could not When

be allowed to contact the vertical guide rail. This was easily achieved by

e larger than the other wheels. So now e was the main wheel — and I began to label it a. making

And with this the most interesting period began: I kept combining the rails, axes, and chains in different arrangements. And I suddenly realized that infinitely many combinations could be produced in this way. Where for such a long time I had been staring at bare walls, now I suddenly saw doors and windows opening before me — — — new perspectives everywhere I looked — letting me peer into the most glorious park landscape. I must have drawn a few hundred combinations — each of them slightly different. And on 1 April 1910 I arrived at drawing 25. An April Fool’s joke! But I took it quite seriously and did not allow the ominous date to concern me overmuch. I aligned the axis of

a

with the edge of a box. This box could also be

bottomless. In any case, this produced a “portable” tensile load motor. I was hugely impressed by

ef

sideways.

dc

could not rise any higher, since

the intermeshed teeth of the chains encircling

248

dc

and

e f

were always

correspondingly intermeshed. The teeth of

e f slowed down d c,

but at the

same time kept perpetually giving way. And on 5 April 1910 came the final touch — drawing 26. Here too I set

e f

in guide rails and used the same tensile load with

which I was pushing up

c d — to push e f down.

Now at least the construction as a whole did not appear so simple — on the contrary.

e f could not sink down on the left, since the teeth were always correspondingly intermeshed. On the right, however, the wheels c d Wheels

were prevented from rising for just the same reason. And so the system remained at a constant height. It appeared to me impossible for sink down.

250

ZL

to

In the month of March it sometimes seemed to me as if I were about to invent an entire series of Perpetuies. But eventually I conceded that merely finding a single solution should be enough to satisfy me completely. Theoretically, there are scarcely any objections to be made to the solution I am presenting here. The toothed chains prevent the rising up of the right-hand side of the system and the sinking-down of the left side. At the same time, however, the chains are perpetually giving way, and there is nothing stopping them from turning. I think that

now

finally there is no

longer any frictional resistance, jamming, or contrary wheel action. Now the specialists are saying: but perhaps when the model has been built, an entirely new factor will appear — and destroy everything. Perhaps! I don’t know what such a new factor would look like. If the thing now works, it is beyond all doubt the greatest wonder of the world to be found on Terra — an unsettling Wonder of the World. If the thing

doesn’t work, though, then we shall

have before us, beyond

all doubt, an even greater wonder of the world. In any case it is now the job of technology to translate this matter into practical terms. We can construct cogwheels 20 meters in height. This small Perpetuum would accordingly be strong enough to overturn the largest Houses of Parliament — along with other, even heavier things. Assuming that all of mankind were to die out some day, countless Perpetua would imperturbably go on turning. And that would certainly have a quite unsettling effect. All the clocks would imperturbably go on displaying the hours, and no one would hear that they were continuing to strike. And that could continue on in this way for millennia, for the Perpetuum incorporated into the clockworks would no doubt be quite durably crafted . . . . Of course these are all fantasies. Actual reality is always quite different and destroys a great many fantasy realms. And so in the end I must honestly confess that I am not particularly eager to see practical applications developed for this perpetual motion machine. Practical experience will destroy many of my fantasies — of this I am quite sure. Perhaps things will turn out entirely differently. One should think twice before saying anything about the immediate future. If the unknown factor arrives that will destroy the entire system, then a great deal will remain as it was before. If however, which is the more probable scenario,

no unknown

factor arrives, then we shall experience upheavals whose prodigious effects

251

cannot yet be properly evaluated. We would then find ourselves standing before a cultural earthquake. A great many venerable institutions would perish. Traffic would increase so dramatically that after twenty years it would become impossible to distinguish one country from another. All national constitutions

would then have to submit to

extremely

detailed

reforms. Scholarly institutions, too, couldn’t prevent the world treating them rather unkindly. For more than 60 years, all the “authorities” of science have been insisting that perpetual motion is impossible. And yet every mill-wheel in an ice-free river is a veritable perpetual motion machine. The great Earth also revolves perpetually, as does the sun. All these things have been forgotten and . . . . . Human wisdom is a comical story. Even more comical is anyone getting worked up over human wisdom . . . .

Friedenau (Berlin), 2 May 1910

One perpetual

motion machine, in any case, has now been definitively dis-

covered — the old mill-wheel in the ice-free river that never runs dry. This machine is not, however, portable.

On the other hand, at least for the time being, Science can no longer proclaim that a direct translation of the Earth’s gravitational force into perpetual motion has been shown to be “impossible.” This translation by no means contradicts the law of conservation of energy, if the weight load can successfully be suspended at a constant height while this weight can simultaneously be used to set wheels in perpetual motion. This is most certainly

not

impossible.

Science must adjust its views accordingly. Robert Mayer also spent three full years vainly pursuing a great perpetual motion machine. And when he couldn’t figure it out, he said: now No One will be able to accomplish this, for if I cannot do so, then it cannot be done — No One can be cleverer than I am. Physicists should not speak in such a way, since it is conceivable that they might be called to account some day for their

theories.

propagation of false

In recent months I have spoken with a great many machinists and engineers about this business and have noticed, to my astonishment, that

252

every machinist and every engineer was applying himself to the problem of perpetual motion with the greatest seriousness, although Science in its wisdom perpetually declares a solution to this problem to be impossible; certain machinists have even told me about

several

perpetual motion

machines. If this isn’t a humorous story, then I truly do not know where

more humor can be

found.

How queer it is that Everything on planet Earth always proves to be so comical. In any case we should never forget all this comedy that is to be found at every turn — and then we won’t lose our sense of humor so easily . . . . .

Friedenau

(Berlin), 16 June 1910

On 12 July of the year 1910, after introducing a new factor, I succeeded in solving the problem flawlessly; unfortunately I must keep silent about my discovery, since this would invalidate the applications I have submitted to the patent offices of various countries. But I did reach a satisfactory conclusion.

Translated by Susan Bernofsky

253

Hubertus von Amelunxen

Scheerbart’s Fiftieth Birthday Party: An Interview with Egidio Marzona The collector and publisher Egidio Marzona heard the story of Paul Scheerbart’s fiftieth birthday and subsequent death from Marzona’s close friend the architect and designer Heinz Rasch (1902–1996). In the following interview conducted by theorist and curator Hubertus von Amelunxen in Berlin, January 2014, Egidio Marzona relates this Scheerbart anecdote and suggests that the rumors that Scheerbart starved himself to death in protest over World War I are true. HUBERTUS VON AMELUNXEN .

Who was Heinz Rasch, and how did he

know Paul Scheerbart? He was my “teacher,” a mentor, and role model, and I visited him twice a week during the last twenty years of his life. At the time I was commuting between Bielefeld, where I lived, and Düsseldorf, where my publishing house was. In Bielefeld, Rasch was the editor in charge of promoting and supervising all the books. But on the subject of Scheerbart: naturally over the course of our friendship and collaboration we discovered our mutual love of Scheerbart. Rasch had a small collection of Scheerbart’s books, and Scheerbart was one of our most important, and most frequent, topics of conversation. Once he told me the story of Scheerbart’s death and about Scheerbart’s fiftieth birthday party; I understood that he attended as an eleven- or twelve-year-old boy. The most interesting part of the story was who was there: he said that of course all the cultural luminaries were there, but so were the biggest gangsters in Berlin and the chief of police too, so it really would have been quite a colorful gathering. And they sat on orange crates or banana boxes, Scheerbart was so poor.

EGIDIO MARZONA .

Oskar Kokoschka, Portrait of Paul Scheerbart, 1910.

263

H U B E R T U S VAN A M E L U N X E N

HVA. EM.

HVA. EM. HVA. EM.

HVA. EM.

HVA. EM .

HVA. EM.

His fiftieth birthday, so that would have been in 1913. Scheerbart was already talking about the coming war at the birthday party. Scheerbart had come to a decision. He already had the feeling then that the war was going to happen, and when war actually broke out in 1914 he went on a hunger strike. So he died in 1915, after consuming only liquids? Only beer — he was severely alcoholic and drank mostly beer. And Rasch told you this part too, about Scheerbart’s death? Yes, Rasch told me, because even then I was interested in creating a complete Scheerbart collection. I wanted to bring all the materials together, and already I had a great deal, but he helped me a lot. I got a number of other documents from him about the collaboration between the Taut brothers and Scheerbart. Scheerbart was very important, a great visionary. Back to the party: why were both the gangsters and the chief of police at Scheerbart’s fiftieth birthday party? Yes, well, it was a colorful group — everyone from Indians to blind drunks was there. He had a bizarre circle of friends and acquaintances. He wasn’t just interested in the cultural scene — other writers, architects, Adolf Behne, and that circle; there was always quite a colorful group of other figures around him. Do any other contemporary witnesses tell this story of his death? I just know that Rasch used to tell me the story. But I have never come across any other authentic report in my later research. As a boy Rasch was probably quite fascinated by such a colorful scene, so that is maybe why he remembered it. When did Rasch tell you all this? It must have been in the 1980s that he told me.

Transcribed by Jonathan Larson and translated by Anne Posten

264

Letter from Anna Scheerbart, Paul Scheerbart’s widow, to the critic, activist, and Scheerbart supporter Adolf Behne. Paul Scheerbart died on October 14, 1915.

Lichterfelde, October 17, 1915 Marschnerstraße 15.1 Dear Doctor, The Waldners were here with me and let me know that you already know of Paul’s sudden death. I thank you kindly for your deep sympathy. The burial will take place Thursday at 4:00 at the Park Cemetery of Lichterfelde West. To get there, go to Händelplatz, then to Anglitznerstraße, where at the corner of Gündelplatz there’s a tram that goes to the cemetery. I will be very glad if you can be present. With best wishes, Sincerely, Anna Scheerbart

Transcribed by Erika Schrewe and translated by Laura Lindgren

265

Anselm Ruest

On the Birth, Death, and Rebirth of Dionysus: A Memorial Wreath for Paul Scheerbart’s Grave

“The one truly real Dionysus appears in a multiplicity of forms. . . .” Nietzsche,

The Birth of Tragedy

The fifteenth of October — it is a date that will long be remembered by future generations: the birthday of Nietzsche and the death-day of Paul Scheerbart. In 1888, the year of Nietzsche’s derangement, Scheerbart began for the first time to sound Dionysian, as if something were just then dawning — oh, I know that to most people this will still seem like the most disparate pairing! — From “Paradise, the Home of Art”:

The glow of heaven flows, Burning, destroying thought Round my world! Swing of wonder, lift in rapture All my longings, all my dreams To the realm of magnificence! Rock me into sweet sleep! Bring me eternal bliss!

“Von Geburt, Tod und Wiedergeburt des Dionysus: Ein Gedächtniskranz auf Paul Scheerbarts Grab” was published in the Dresden journal Neue Blätter fur Kunst und Dichtung (New pages for art and poetry) April 1919. Undated newspaper article, c. 1920–29. A remembrance of Paul Scheerbart by the critic and activist Adolf Behne. Behne, Scheerbart, and Taut were involved with political activism and radical aesthetic projects together, which Taut and Behne continued after Scheerbart’s death. This led to a number of collaborations, including the book Die Stadtkrone (The city crown) published in 1919, which included writing by Taut, Behne, and Scheerbart and described a vision of a secular, nongovernmental, noncorporate building designed to mark the center of a city.

267

ANSELM REUST

Dionysus cannot die. Again and again he is crucified, only to rise again. Greek: again and again the boy Dionysus is torn apart by Titans, and we have earth, water, fire, air, the individual, man — whose greatest hope of bliss can only consist of a restored unity with all. “Somebody, I do not know who, has claimed that all individuals, taken as individuals, are comic and hence untragic” (Nietzsche) — the prevailing mood in all of Paul Scheerbart’s work; “art as the joyous hope that the spell of individuation may be broken” (Nietzsche) — Paul Scheerbart’s essential achievement in two dozen texts. Always depicting the impossible as possible, creating a feeling of boisterous freedom, “as if man were rising up on tiptoe and simply had to dance out of inner pleasure” — Paul Scheerbart was truly a man after Nietzsche’s own heart! Nietzsche, who saw such reincarnations of Dionysus returning again and again — “We set our gaudy puppets amid the clouds and then call them Gods and supermen . . . ” This last Dionysus died and left us, left Europe, four years ago now: crucified, torn apart once again — this time by the war of the earth. (Here it must not be called a World War.) He was hit by no bullet, by no grenade nor bomb from the airships he so feared — and yet the titanic destructive power of this war had already sapped and undermined him far earlier than was visible to others. Indeed, Scheerbart had a last dream for humanity, a dream of the future like Victor Hugo’s: the expanses of the heavens added to those of the earth — the abolition of all borders — one people of the world — the earthly paradise, whose seed would be rescued by the first “dirigible!” But the new “heavier-than-air” principle brilliantly triumphed before Scheerbart’s very eyes, though he saw the terrible interregnum of chaos, the horrifying age of destruction and the unbearable deserts that lay beyond and between with more prescience and foreboding than any of his contemporaries. Like the mythical rain of sulfur and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah, now dynamite rained unsparingly down from the heavens: the triumphal arches of centuries turned to dust at lightning speed, pyramids and temples pulverized, the Raphaels and Michelangelos unshielded amid the rubble. Already ten years before the great war, this made the “good” Paul Scheerbart, who actually did not love culture but who rather — like only Friedrich Nietzsche before him in Europe — was himself a part of it, extraordinarily “nervous.” It did not make him shake in his boots or tremble with sympathy like some sentimental apostle of peace — the “frightfully vulgar” affects do not touch one whose nature is true: rather it would resonate in every fiber and breath, he would feel it in his blood when all of existence threatened to turn radically into its opposite. He always felt his

268

ON T H E B I R T H , D E A T H , A N D R E B I R T H OF D I O N Y S I S

culture-nature as a star among stars — illuminating, whirling, cosmic — not as terrestrial and separate; but suns fear nothing more than darkening and destruction, holocaust, the twilight of the gods. Zarathustra too knew only light and darkness. Already in Scheerbart’s writing, “Rakkóx, der Billionär,” who wants to use his billions to gradually turn the earth into a shimmering architectural palace, perishes miserably in a war that he unsuccessfully tries to prevent through the “commingling of all races.” And in fact back then — in 1900 — a huge increase in personal steam travel was supposed to see to the “flushing out of national elements.” Ten years later there was “The Aviator’s Dream,” a strange air-spectacle with the same goal: countless aviators, whirring around and among each other, gradually give up, change, and switch “fatherlands” — they no longer see each other as Scandinavian or Chinese but as “passengers” — — — “air-uncles.” Five years before the war, this was only the external, seemingly innocuous, and carefree reflection of events that could no longer fully hide their sinister, “nervous-making” character under a seemingly spotless surface. Certainly there were hints — “who would want to lead revolutions or make wars,” when a few hundredweights of dynamite dropped from above could now easily destroy any major city — “it’s now far too easy . . .” But Scheerbart had already grown uneasy over one thing: that the darkening of the luminous might occur not according to laws or rules written in the stars, but arbitrarily, at any time, by accident; that the devastation of beauty could happen suddenly — irrevocably — with a childish senselessness. Was he now trying to appeal to humanity? Culture and humanity: like Nietzsche, he saw these things as far from the reality of the world. Culture is the religion of the strong, rock-solid and benevolent; humanity, the instinct of the weak, the sniveling, and therefore often anarchic. And so by 1909 he had

The Development of Aerial Militarism and the Demobilization of European Ground Forces, Fortresses, and Naval Fleets, written the utopian pamphlet

a text already pregnant with all the volcanoes of the future. Here, on the wide fields on which the terrible new catastrophes are played out, everything dies: animals, humans, and all civilization. Only the air fleets remain and continue to flourish magnificently — and yet somehow there were still illogical people somewhere on the earth who lacked complete sympathy for this charming technological toy! But by 1910 Halley’s comet had come streaming across the sky — undeflectable, unavertable, in accordance with natural law — this was what finally brought the gathering tensions to the point of explosion. “Orchids, snowdrops,” — cried Scheerbart — “trigger quite particular emotions, have effects on the soul — and a gleaming

269

ANSELM REUST

comet . . .” Halley’s comet had previously appeared just before 1789; and now once again we were visited with revolutions, convulsions, and commotions of the most terrible kind. The steerable airship — that is the new revolution, the new — terrible epoch. So said Paul Scheerbart. Since then he lived in a state of terrible “nervousness.” He withdrew from society. Got drunk. “Now do you understand why I’ve become so gloomy?” he asked his last friends. But his tremendous, truly inspired mind was nonetheless able to invent two more engines of fantasy powerful enough to fly away from the dreaded “dirigibles,” inventions which in fact forced them temporarily into service:

Perpetual Motion

and

Glass Architecture.

Here it was again: the ideal star, a dancing star, all turmoil and light . . . Perpetuum mobile: the ultimate machine, the one that finally makes all others superfluous, a likeness of the infinite, a planet: how can one understand this bold bacchanalian dream, conceived as a bulwark, continually making the little wooden crutches and paltry wheels it constantly needed, weighing itself down only in order to launch itself higher and farther — leaving only the self-important philistines to their awkward smiles and refutations . . . ? And

Glass Architecture — it

was ultimately the most profound bulwark

against the storm that came smashing everything to shards from above that was ever conceived . . . ! Or — was it ironic? What breaks more easily than glass? Wait and see. A few rattling panes won’t do it. But — the effects of light! Sparkling palaces, the interplay of colors, millions of glimmering, sparkling, spinning sparks — an intoxication of color! The whole earth — a glittering, flickering crown of pearls! And here it is again: only light and darkness. But the darkness will not come. The earliest light of dawn and the latest sunset shimmer in glass palaces. And then the illuminated walls, the colorful domes, the gay colored lights. Even flowers are different under colored glass, their souls change — greenhouses. Behind colored glass, people will not be so evil. They will be more religious — like in the colored half-light of Gothic cathedrals — — Culture! Culture! — So that it won’t be shattered again and again: we will build it out of glass, awe-inspiring glass . . . Truly, this Scheerbart — if only Europe had heard his voice, if only it had been able to — because, like all true originals, he spoke an untranslatable language — it would have laughed more and become — more awestruck, more reverent. And if only Scheerbart had been awarded the Nobel Prize, as the only real and true apostle of peace in Europe, as I continually pleaded between 1911 and 1914 . . . ! Then perhaps his voice would have been echoed — since most people need external signs and signals in order to take notice and listen . . .

270

ON T H E B I R T H , D E A T H , A N D R E B I R T H OF D I O N Y S I S

Certainly, he knew better than anyone that he could not hold back the approaching destiny: and so in 1913 he wrote

Lesabéndio — a last will and

testament bequeathing comfort to the peoples of the world: “Do not fear pain — but do not fear death, either!” Who knows — perhaps the most terrible pain was needed for the final culture, for our highest development. And still he experienced the reality — the war. The first reality, however — that was lethal to this great mind! The total darkening of this star. Eclipse of the sun. Death. His little “Perpet” models (as he called the machine) were never even dimly realized, as mentioned above; neither was his Glass Palace, despite the “real” one built for him by Bruno Taut — : rather, the Glass Palace worked like protective goggles to shield such bright inner vision — and therefore Paul Scheerbart was so grateful to Taut — for keeping the unfathomable depths of his inner vision from blinding him. But the war — that was the first reality that really horrified him . . . not from fear or cowardice. Oh no — — . Only culture — culture! Dionysus was once more torn apart by titans. Dionysus is dead. But he must rise again.

In whom? When?

Translated by Anne Posten

271

A Letter from Bruno Taut to His Brother Max, October 30, 1915

Zehlendorf. Oct. 30, 1915 My dear Max. You haven’t written for quite some time. I hope you have been well. You’ll have some rest now that the offensive is over. Please write. There’s not much new here — except for something very sad: since 14 Oct. our dear Star Papa Paul Scheerbart is no longer with us. He had a stroke, struggled in a coma for 24 hours, and then passed away. We went to the funeral, which was dreadful: it was organized by the self-proclaimed association of “poets” and the speeches were awful. Everyone was terribly upset.

([Planc?] Nov. 5) That was now quite some time ago, which is what it makes it so difficult to tell you and Mutz about it. One cries one’s eyes out not to have him here anymore. I still feel like I have been orphaned. But Paul Scheerbart lives — not just in his work — but in all his humanity. I don’t know of anything else new. I’ve long been waiting for news from Hoffman, who’s in the trenches in east Galicia. You write too and — at least say that you are there. We won’t lose hope. Brotherly greetings! Your Bruno

Transcribed by Hubertus von Amelunxen and translated by Anne Posten

A letter from Bruno Taut to Max Taut, his brother and fellow architect in the firm Taut & Hoffman, on the death of Paul Scheerbart. Taut wrote the first half of the letter from the Berlin neighborhood of Zehlendorf two weeks after Scheerbart’s death. Max appears to have been on the Western front at the Battle of Loos in France, which concluded on the same day as Scheerbart’s death, October 14. Taut was probably writing from the offices of Taut and Hoffman, on what was then the Berlin-Potsdamer Chaussee. In the second half of the letter, Taut notes that he is writing about a week later, no longer from Zehlendorf but from “Planc.,” an abbreviation possibly for Planckstraße in the nearby Mitte neighborhood. Taut explains his difficulty and delay in sending Max the sad news and is anxious about their architectural partner Franz Hoffmann, who was a cavalryman at the German eastern front at the time.

272

Hubertus von Amelunxen

“. . . versions of the seemingly imperfect . . .” Thoughts on Paul Scheerbart and Walter Benjamin “I became a humorist out of rage, not out of kindness,” wrote Paul Scheerbart.1 His friend Stanislas Przybyszewski , echoing this, said that Scheerbart possessed “the desperate grief and nobility of a great man,” one who “smothered life’s hellish pain with laughter.”2

The act of reading a text by Scheerbart inevitably induces a laughing dream-state or perhaps a dreamy laughter. It is not hearty laughter, as our writer delicately upsets the ordering of things of this earth, rearranging them within cosmic space and expanding the earth’s finitude outward with fantastical interstellar possibility. “The earth,” says Knéppara in Scheerbart’s “moon novel” The Great Revolution, “is really a very boring and disagreeable star.”3 Thus the character Mafikásu is able to convince the moon-men to turn their gaze from the earth, end their millennia-long observation of humankind’s drive toward self-destruction, and instead look at the other side of the moon using a telescope equal in length to the diameter of the moon itself. Hundreds of years in construction, allowing the discovery and excavation of all the moon’s crystalline treasures, this Walter Benjamin manuscript 836. This manuscript is one of the few surviving examples of Benjamin’s exploration of Scheerbart, a set of notes on Scheerbart’s novel Münchhausen und Clarissa (Münchhausen and Clarissa), which Benjamin bought in winter 1922 and probably read in 1922 or 1923. Other examples of Benjamin’s interest in Scheerbart appear in two essays associated with his Arcades Project, a collection of essays and fragments initially inspired by the glassed-in shopping arcades of Paris: “Experience and Poverty,” which discusses Scheerbart and glass architecture and “On Scheerbart,” an essay on Scheerbart’s novel Lesabéndio. Benjamin’s planned book “The True Politician,” which was to contain an extensive exploration of Scheerbart’s work, is lost or was never completed.

275

H U B E R T U S VON A M E L U N X E N

telescope opens up a vista so big and wide that the moon-men—in fact the moon itself — become “all eye.” Stanley Kubrick might have been reading Scheerbart. As in Scheerbart’s novels, the timeless flight through opalescent nebulae at the end of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey presents the end of a history of humanity, and of a humanism that understands all persons in proportion to their similarity to the world of humans. As Kubrick presented us his realization of the computer HAL or envisioned a reverse cosmic time leading to the birth of a “new” man, Scheerbart turned away from humankind and from humanity’s civilizing activities, emphatically welcoming “the great revolution” in the moon-men’s renunciation of Earth. In 1914, the year before his death, Scheerbart protested vehemently against the very idea of a “world war” and was an oracle for an interstellar peace, in contrast to war on earth. In a brief, late essay on Scheerbart (written in French), Walter Benjamin wrote that Scheerbart’s great achievement was to call on the stars for aid in the preservation of humankind’s creation here below (“La grande trouvaille de Scheerbart aura été de faire plaider par les astres auprès des humains la cause de la création.”)4 Benjamin’s first essay on Scheerbart was written between 1917 and 1919, a commentary about Scheerbart’s asteroid-novel Lesabéndio, which Benjamin received as a wedding present from Gershom Scholem in 1917. Benjamin had a long-standing fascination with Scheerbart’s work and was familiar with many of the misfit writer’s novels, stories, and miscellanea. Gershom Scholem describes another great essay, probably finished in 1920 but regrettably now lost, titled “The True Policitian,” in which Benjamin draws on Scheerbart for his political theories, which he later linked to Brecht’s ideas of epic theater at the end of the 1920s. Notably, the essay “Experience and Poverty,” published in December 1933, also makes substantial reference to Scheerbart. In that essay Benjamin compares Scheerbart to the artist Paul Klee and the architect Adolf Loos, saying no one had greeted the arrival of the “naked man of the contemporary world who lies screaming like a newborn babe in the dirty diapers of the present . . . with more joy and hilarity” than Scheerbart. 5 At the heart of Benjamin’s sympathy toward Scheerbart is the latter’s turning away from earthly naturalism, to turn instead toward the “arbitrary, constructed” 6 — toward Glass Architecture — as well as Scheerbart’s renunciation of what Benjamin here simply refers to as “human-likeness.” As a term, this human-like-ness resonates with Benjamin’s overall program, in which it means the liberation of language and its subtext

276

“. . . V E R S I O N S OF T H E S E E M I N G L Y I M P E R F E C T . . .”

from magic or enchantment. Scheerbart gives his characters names like Lesabéndio, Biba, Sofanti, Knéppara, Rasibéff, Zikáll, and Mafikâsu, which onomatopoetically hint at other worlds: “ ‘dehumanized’ names,” like those given after the October Revolution, with the goal of “changing reality instead of describing it.” 7 No one, it seems to me, has more explicitly freed Paul Scheerbart from the easy label of humorist than Walter Benjamin. He saw in Scheerbart instead a trailblazer whose humor — like the irony of the early romantics — was the form through which present society could be overcome. Only a telescopic eye could show us the shape Scheerbart would have wanted this future to take, but undoubtedly it was made of glass: built of a glass architecture free from secrets and darkness, where nothing is set in stone, all tracks are erased, and the “aura” is overcome. Included in Scheerbart’s Münchhausen collection is a short story in which he extols “humor as the elixir of life.”8 The hundred-and-eighty-year-old Baron von Münchhausen prescribes humor to the Emperor of Anam, who worries that he won’t live long enough to sufficiently change and improve social conditions among his people: “Humor destroys trouble and boredom. And since those shorten one’s life, humor, by destroying these two life-shorteners, has the power to lengthen life.”9 According to Benjamin, art is useless in a utopian society, but humor outstrips art and makes of Scheerbart’s works “a spiritual testimony”10 that already brings us closer to the fulfillment of utopia. Gershom Scholem recounts an argument with Benjamin over several of Berthold Brecht’s texts, in particular the Versuche and Threepenny Novel, both of which Benjamin wrote about extensively. Scholem recalls a letter of 1938 in which Benjamin wrote, regarding Scheerbart: “You couldn’t praise him enough, and you were certainly right to. And now, when I recommend Brecht to you, the man who did the most to complete what Scheerbart started, namely to write a thoroughly and completely unmagical language, a language purged of all magic, you reject him and fail in yourself.”11 Benjamin’s answer to Scholem’s accusation that in comparison with Scheerbart, Brecht lacked a “joy in infinity,”12 which again we have only in Scholem’s later report, is astonishing: “It is not an issue of infinity, but rather of the elimination of magic.”13 And in a note to his essays on similarity (“The Doctrine of the Similar,” “On the Mimetic Faculty”) Benjamin remarks: “The sacred lies nearer to the profane than to the magical. The way to a language purified of all magical elements: Scheerbart, Brecht.”14 Scholem understood Benjamin’s dilemma: on the

277

H U B E R T U S VON A M E L U N X E N

one hand to cleave to a theological philosophy of language and on the other hand to eliminate magic and aura.15 In Scheerbart’s exclusion of any linguistic similarity to humankind’s culture Benjamin saw this very elimination of magic. Supporting Benjamin’s argument is the fact that Scheerbart wrote in Glass Architecture that humanlike or animal-like ornamentation is to be avoided.16 Nor did Scheerbart understand infinity as something transcendental but rather as a moment that occurs within and around the insurmountable finitude and imperfection of Earth. Paul Scheerbart’s understanding of what it is to be human is contained in his prologue to the “Arabian stories” in Machtspässe: “Of course we won’t be able to grasp the essence of time completely. But striving to do so leads us onward: in this way one becomes gradually convinced that the art of comprehending the world and time is an art that cannot be mastered during our earthly existence. And of course this is an excellent thing — since the perspective of infinity offers more than any seemingly conclusive comprehensive vision.” 17 And then Scheerbart adds: “On the other hand, our ever-changing milieu encourages in our consciousness the awareness that the perfect circumstances — which always have a quality of finitude, or conclusiveness! — that sometimes occur on our earth are not in fact the result of an intentionality that guides our lives more than we ourselves do. The versions of the seemingly imperfect are in fact richer and more interesting than the versions of the seemingly perfect.”18

Translated by Anne Posten

278

“. . . V E R S I O N S OF T H E S E E M I N G L Y I M P E R F E C T . . .”

NOTES 1. As quoted in Vera Hauschild’s afterword to Paul Scheerbart, Die große Revolution: Ein Monroman & Jenseitsgalerie (Leipzig: Gustav Kiepenheuer Verlag, 1983). 2. Scheerbart, Die große Revolution, 198. 3. Ibid., 136. 4. Walter Benjamin, “Sur Scheerbart,” ca. 1935–39, in Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, ed. R. Tiedemann und H. Schweppenhäuser, vol. 2, pt. 2 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1977), 632. 5. Walter Benjamin, “Experience and Poverty,” in Selected Writings, vol. 2, pt. 2 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999), 733. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid. 8. Paul Scheerbart, “Der Humor als Lebenselixier” from Das Große Licht: Ein Münchhausen-Brevier (Leipzig: Sally Rabinowitz, 1912). 9. Ibid. 10. Benjamin, “Sur Scheerbart,” 632. 11. Gershom Scholem, Walter Benjamin: Die Geschichte einer Freundschaft (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1975), 258. 12. Ibid., 258. 13. Ibid., 259. 14. Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 2, pt. 3, 956. 15. “Magic,” “unmagical,” and “aura” are common and complex terms that appear throughout Benjamin’s oeuvre. 16. This book, Scheerbart, Glass Architecture, 41. 17. Paul Scheerbart, Machtspässe: Arabische Novellen (Berlin: E. Eisselt, 1904), 2. 18. Ibid.

279

Jenseits-Galerie (Gallery of the beyond), a portfolio containing ten lithographs and two short texts (“Autobiographisches” and “Jenseits-Galerie”) by Paul Scheerbart was published by Oesterheld & Co., Berlin, in 1907.

280

Paul Scheerbart

Gallery of the Beyond

As is generally known, it is only in the twentieth century, according to our accounting of time, that microscopic study of the photographic plates provided by the great astronomical observatories has begun to yield some results. Until now, these results have never been made available to the general public, in an effort to avoid possible misinterpretation; it is undeniable that sometimes what the microscope revealed was only a factor of the photographic material itself. But this is of course not the place to go into questions that lie within the purview of specialists. This much is already certain: the plates taken in the region of the heavens near Neptune, an area characterized by a remarkable brightness, present new views of our world that are nothing less than exhilarating — that these are cosmic images can no longer be doubted. The following ten drawings are reproductions of what we have discovered beyond the orbit of Neptune. This Gallery of the Beyond therefore shows only the Beyond that lies beyond Neptune; it remains entirely within our spatial sphere and is part of our solar system in every way. These images are in no way beyond space and time. Of course — the ten drawings that follow present only a miniscule portion of the beyond that lies past the orbit of Neptune in our solar system; only the beings whose facial forms are similar to the human facial form have been selected. But such a facial form is in fact abnormal beyond Neptune; most of the cosmic beings that live there possess no such face. In any case, the recently discovered beings of the beyond have taught us that our sun is orbited not only by round planets, but also by planets on whom we can discern a plethora of massive external limbs. We must therefore assume that the round planets too are thoroughly independent, sentient living creatures, even if their organs are not visible to us. Herein lies the essential significance of these new astronomical discoveries: the great beings beyond Neptune prove to us that our solar system consists of “living” beings — that all planets are living creatures of a higher

283

order. And — we will also never again be able to assume that our sun is only a desolate conglomeration of burning material. In answer to the question of whether the surface of the large being shown in plate 5 is populated by smaller creatures, we can now deem it highly likely — although at the moment such questions really cannot be answered. First, we must search for an explanation for the fact that these huge new satellites of the sun are comprised of so many tiny parts that are seemingly completely unconnected — but which together form a whole. Such a bodily structure becomes quite comprehensible when compared with the three rings of Saturn, which are known to consist of millions of small stars. On the other hand, we must not forget that an uncountable number of meteors are also whizzing around on this side of Neptune, many of which taken together may also form organic bodies. The fact that we have not yet discovered meteoric beings on our side of Neptune is due on the one hand to the imperfection of our astronomical instruments and on the other hand to the fact that the space between the sun and the orbit of Neptune has thus far not been thoroughly searched for such beings. We cannot yet specify the distance of the planets beyond Neptune from the sun, but the fact that they do not lie much farther from Neptune than Neptune lies from the sun is already certain. Plates 3, 4, 6, and 9 display many cometlike limbs, which look as if they could easily be detached from the main body. This detachability suggests that all the comets heretofore seen from earth could in fact be component beings that have detached themselves from the creatures beyond Neptune. This hypothesis should be taken into serious consideration, as it is well known that our telescopes have never revealed a single comet beyond the orbit of Jupiter. This hypothesis would also explain the formidable number of comets, which according to Kepler are as numerous in the ocean of the universe as the fish in the sea. We must now refrain from any further attempts to meet the newly discovered creatures beyond Neptune with further attempts at explanation; we must first seek slowly to familiarize ourselves with them. The magnificent and marvelous life in our solar system that is just now becoming visible to our eyes is so vast that for now a long, admiring silence seems the best course. The dimensions of the creatures presented in these ten plates are huge; the form on plate 7 seems to surpass Jupiter considerably in size. These ten pages naturally ought not to be judged from a purely aesthetic standpoint, as such aesthetic judgments can only proceed from our habituation to the appearance of earthly beings.

284

The scientific world’s reticence to publish these new discoveries is quite understandable; they so deeply affect the basic long-held beliefs of astronomy that such hesitation can really only meet with approval. The artist, however, luckily has no obligation to such reserve — even if the details may later require slight correction.

Translated by Anne Posten

285

PAUL S C H E E R B A R T

286

T H E C R Y S T A L V I S I O N OF PAUL S C H E E R B A R T

287

PAUL S C H E E R B A R T

288

T H E C R Y S T A L V I S I O N OF PAUL S C H E E R B A R T

289

PAUL S C H E E R B A R T

290

T H E C R Y S T A L V I S I O N OF PAUL S C H E E R B A R T

291

PAUL S C H E E R B A R T

292

T H E C R Y S T A L V I S I O N OF PAUL S C H E E R B A R T

293

PAUL S C H E E R B A R T

294

T H E C R Y S T A L V I S I O N OF PAUL S C H E E R B A R T

295

Josiah McElheny

Novels and Novelettes, Rhetorical Essays, and Prophetic Howls: A Bibliographic Poem

Scheerbart tells stories with titles alone: absurdity as salvation, imagination as iconoclasm. Of course each of these titles points to a real text, often short, but also many that are quite long. Each line here, with the exception of the category headings in bold, is the title of a text by Scheerbart: short stories, novels, stories within stories, essays, or poems. I have taken each title as a story in ten words or less and organized them into categories of my own making. I encourage anyone who can to translate more of these fables and prophesies for us in the English-speaking world. Those in the German-speaking world can simply go read them! Be warned: many are strange and we don’t know enough about humor — Scheerbart’s or otherwise — to always understand the point. This is not a traditional, chronological, or comprehensive bibliography, but an introduction to the breadth of Scheerbart’s thinking.

299

THE FANTASICAL

Ever Courageous! A Fantastical Hippopotamus Novel with Eighty-Three Unusual Stories

Atlas, the Comfortable: A Myth of Humanity The Delicate Skin: Sensitive Woodland Story The Sparkling One: A Pedagogical Scherzo Krietze and Kratze or the New Vegetables: A Fairy Tale The Flaming Sword: A Gigantic Poem

Modern Gods: A Telepathic Capriccio

Uncle Nepomuk from Celebes: A Completely Crazy Castle Novelette The Faun: A Final Vignette The Clever Frog: A Meadow Fable The Blue Flower: A Witching Tale Behind the Mountains of the Ordinary: Scherzo

Stubbornness: A Moral Tale

301

LOVE AND EROS

“Yes . . What . . All Don’t We Want!”

I Love You! A Railway Novel with 66 Intermezzos The Midnight Visit: An Aesthetic Story The Soft Limbs: A Garden Dream Narcissus, Love-Madness and Lady The Doll and the Cured Sausage: A Social Drama

The Hermit: An Eros Novelette

The World Swing: A Salvation Burlesque The Bite: A Rivalry Vignette Woeful Lotte The Old Priests and the Boys: A Temple Fantasy Heavenly Marriage! Cosmic Novelette

The Goal of Longing: A Vision of Salvation

Once! A Sentimental Atmospheric Tableau Poison: A Moonlight Comedy The Safe: A Marriage Novelette Münchhausen and Clarissa: A Berlin Novel The Foolish Children: A Mythical Burlesque

Don’t You Love Me Any Longer? A Strange Story

302

ARCHITECTURE

Transportable Cities

The City Journeys Abroad An Ornament Museum The Three Monuments The Architects’ Convention: A Parliamentary Story The Mother-of-Pearl City: A Chinese Story

New Garden Culture: A Gloss

House Construction Plants The New Life: Architectural Apocalypse The Canal The Gray Cloth and Ten Percent White: A Ladies’ Novel Swallows: A Window Study

The Dead Palace: An Architectural Dream

303

STARS

The Astropsychological Dithyramb

Foggy Stars Bursting Comets The Night Was Great: A Star Story The Stupid Hussy: A Jupiter Drama The Hasty Cyclops: A Crater Story

The Great Revolution: A Moon Novel

The Big Trees: A Juno Novelette The Colored Moons: A Cosmosophical Scherzo The Factory of Fun-Loving Creatures: A Cosmic Existential Comedy Head Air Waiter, Sacks of Coal and Astronomical Advertising Maneuvers: A Hotel Story

The Contented Ones: A Mercury Novelette

Helmsman Malwu: A Vesta Novelette The Wild Talon: A Rocket Scherzo Staircase to the Sun: A Household Tale The Dark Side of Venus The Cosmic Postillions: A Marionette Theater Story

Cosmic Theater: An End-of-the-World Novelette

304

LIGHT

The Great Light: A Münchhausen Breviary

Ghost Castles: A Light Haunting The Light Club of Batavia: A Ladies’ Novelette The Incomprehensible Sun: A Seal Story Light Miracle The Black Night

Laughing Giraffes: A Shadow Play

305

GLASS

The Glass Monstrosity

The Magnetic Mirror At the Glass Exhibition in Peking: The Old Baron’s Diary Entries Glass Architecture The Glass Sphere: A Solar-Ring Novelette The Clear Head: A Rosette

Flora Mohr: A Glass Flower Story

306

MUSIC AND DANCE

The Fried Flounder: A Dance-Poem of “Profound” Orientation

Never Before Seen! A Romantic Symbolist Song The Old Dervishes: A Parable Dancing Plants — Dancing Forests The New Ballerina: A Tragic Pantomime The Meadow of Earthly Delights: A Friendship Song

Clean! Clean! A Crown Song

Sawiga, the Loving Fairy: A Song of Reconciliation The New Concert House Hey! Dance with Me! A Daydream Secrets: A Pantomime without Music Sophie: A Marriage Pantomime with Music and Dance

Far! Far! A Love Song

307

WHILE DRINKING

Hangover Poetry

Morning Notes Hop! Hop! Hop! I Have an Eye . . . My Ink Is My Ink: A Blotosophicum Delirium! Delirium! A Decadent Tableau

Bottoms Up: A Fantastical Royal Novel

The Little Fly: A Winter Idyll Smoke and Fumes: A Night Piece The Greedy One Loscha: A Resignation Fantasy Holy Crap!

The Curious One

Kikakokú! Ekoraláps! Lompûschek: A Vision of a Loafer The Seventeeen Cusps or The Square of the Ellipsoid Brüllmeyer’s Treasure: The Tiny Fortress: Head Vignette The Uncleared Table: A Conundrum

308

A Sensible Motto

Oh, That’s Right! Singing Snakes A Drunken Dream The Roast Pigeon The Worm

You Are with Me? An Alcoholic Dream

Bring Me Wine! A Despotic Piece The Vulture: Portrait of a Temperament The Wicked Fellow: A Villainous Silhouette He Was Vexed: An Irritable Tiger Brilliant Intoxication: A Dream

The World Is a Cowshed! A Hangover Scene

309

POLITICIANS

Something Must Be Done . . .

Rakkóx the Billionaire: A Boastful Novel Huge! Oceanic Fortune: A Grotesque The Satirical Magazine Editors The Baron as Organizer: A Factory Story

The Downside of Work

The Future Revolutions: A Sylvan Story The Dependent Ones The Furious Hedgehog: Wisdom Idyll The Earth’s Commodities: A Power Amusement The End of Barbarian Revolutionary Garb

The Ruby Chamber: A Luxury Novelette

General von Baz: An Airborne Amusement The Dangerous Millionaires The Good King: A Cloister Story Temples and Palaces: Babylonian Court Novelette Audience with the King: Assyrian Morning Idyll

310

Fresh Human Meat: A Contemporary Proposal

Two World Creators: Sketch The World of Iron: A Loud Grumbling Red as a Crab! A Gentlemen’s Scherzo The Hooligan Angel: A Nihilist Prank The Gallant Robber or The Pleasant Manner: A Garden Scherzo

Münchhausen in African Slavery: A Story in Letter Form

The Workers of the Future The Swindled Witch: A Capital Joke The Fanatical Mayor: Cosmic Drama in Four Acts The Genteel Robber Chief: A Stage Entertainment in Three Acts The Silent Game of Courtly Society

The Roasted Ant: A Labor Amusement

Potentatehood and Secret Police The Jolly Robbers: A Play in Five Acts The Roots of Prosperity: A Simpleton Play in Five Acts The Comfortable Society The Giant’s Work: Philantropic Titanomachy

The Jackpot: A Capitalist Fairy Tale

311

PROPHESY AND OUTRAGE

Laughing Is Prohibited . . .

Human Blood: A Social Fable The Great Battle: A Dualisticum The Development of Aerial Militarism and the Demobilization of the European Ground Forces, Fortresses, and Naval Fleets Humor as the Elixir of Life: An Anamitic Story

The Rough Path: A Brutality Farce

A Modern Kassandra: A Story of the Future Professor Grobleben on the “World War” Militarism in the Time of Revolution: A Debate for Generals Flying Dynamite: Department Store Novelette The Idols Are Growing Old: A Misery Tableau

Not Laughing Anymore? Well?

A Dangerous Invention We, the True, Great People! The Sport of Stripping-Bombing Who Is Killing Them? A Society Fable Of People Who Lost Their Heads: Palmyran Torch Dance Novelette

Satirist Burnt at the Stake

312

GHOSTS

Liwûna and Kaidôh: A Novel of Souls

The Great-Grandmother: A Tragicomedy in One Act Ghost Dance: A Motion Study The Realm of Eternal Torment The Love of Souls: A Spiritualistic Scene from a Novel Question Mark: An Immortality Capriccio

Laughing Ghosts: A Play Between Black Walls

313

HOPE

Audacious: A Morning Study

The Broken Windowpane: A Mournful Mood Among Wild Animals: A Story of Despair In All Seriousness! Air Jellyfish: Story of a Discovery The World Is Loud . . .

That Way!

Nightmares: A Tormented Mood Banner Song of the Neoanarchists The Great Longing Question Mark: An Immortality Capriccio The Miracle: A Dramatic Scene

Be Gentle and Scornful! A Character Cycle

Fire Flowers: A Ruins Amusement The Good Sheep: An Exhausting Poem The Ocean Sanatorium for Hay Fever: A Telegram Novelette The New Abyss: A Transformation Novelette The Roast Pigeon: Legend of a Painter

The Boldest Ones: An Emancipation Novelette

314

PERPETUALLY FAR AWAY

Gallery of the Beyond

Perpetual Motion: The Story of an Invention Lesabéndio: An Asteroid Novel Behind the Mountains of Resentment: A Prose Rondel The Journey to the Beyond: A Speculator’s Novelette Laughing Gods: Novelette of the Future

The World Perishes: A Tableau

315

Josiah McElheny, Scheerbart Hand-Colors Taut’s Stairway to the Exhibition Room , 2014. Drawing with retouching pencil on silver gelatin photograph, 20 × 16 inches.

Credits Cover: Illustration by Ottomar Starke, from the first edition of Das Perpetuum Mobile: Die Geschichte einer Erfindung (Perpetual Motion: The Story of an Invention) by Paul Scheerbart (Leipzig: Ernst Rowohlt Verlag, 1910). Page 10: Münchner Stadtmuseum, Sammlung Fotografie, Archiv Kester Page 21: Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York Pages 27 and 79: Josiah McElheny, Three Screens for Looking at Abstraction (detail), 2012. Aluminum, low-iron mirror, projection cloth, film transferred to video (variable program), video projectors with stands, wood and metal hardware, dimensions variable. Page 27 photograph by Mark Steele; page 79 photograph by Charles Mayer Photography Pages 39, 86, and 91: Josiah McElheny, The Alpine Cathedral and the City-Crown (detail), 2007. Handblown molded glass, metal, wood, metal hardware, Plexiglas, and mechanically animated colored lighting system, 168 × 96 × 117 inches. Photographs by Robin Holland Pages 46–47: Josiah McElheny, Bruno Taut’s Monument to Socialist Spirituality (After Mies van der 3 Rohe) (detail), 2009. Handblown molded glass, wood, and metal hardware, 105 ⁄4 × 75 × 55 inches. Photograph by Jason Mandella Page 58: Josiah McElheny, Crystalline Landscape After Hablik and Luckhardt III (detail), 2011. Handblown molded glass, colored sheet glass laminated to low-iron mirror, two-way mirror, glass diffuser, electric lighting, birch plywood and steel display structure, 56 × 57 × 30 inches. Photograph by Tom Van Eynde Page 69: Josiah McElheny, Model for a Film Set (The Light Spa at the Bottom of a Mine) (detail), 2008. Handblown molded glass, painted cement, mortar, and wood, 37 × 68 × 37 1⁄2 inches. Photograph by Jason Mandella Pages 93, 99, 106, 108–109, 110, 112, 113, 115, 116,122, 265, 266, 273: Baukunstarchive, Akademie der Künste, Berlin Page 115: Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal Pages 131, 134, 138, 141: Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University Pages 144, 147: Archive Marzona, Berlin. Photograph Marcus Schneider, Berlin Pages 211, 224, 226, 228, 232–33, 244–45, and 249: Josiah McElheny, silver gelatin photograms from handblown, ground and polished glass, 2014, 11 × 14 inches. Page 211: Scheerbart’s Diagrams for Perpetual Motion Machine Number 1 (detail) ; page 224: Scheerbart’s Diagrams for Perpetual Motion Machine Number 6 (detail); page 226: Scheerbart’s Diagram for Perpetual Motion Machine Number 10 (detail); page 228: Scheerbart’s Diagram for Perpetual Motion Machine Number 11 (detail); pages 232–33: Scheerbart’s Diagram for Perpetual Motion Machine Number 13 (detail); pages 244–45: Scheerbart’s Diagram for Perpetual Motion Machine Number 19 (detail); page 249: Scheerbart’s Diagram for Perpetual Motion Machine Number 26 (detail). Page 255: Kurt Wolff Archive, Yale Collection of German Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University Page 262: Archive Marzona, Berlin. Photograph Marcus Schneider, Berlin Page 274: Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Walter Benjamin Archiv, WBA Ms 836 Pages 290, 286–95: Archive Marzona, Berlin. Photograph Marcus Schneider, Berlin

318

Acknowledgments First, our gratitude to Paul Scheerbart himself, our inspiration, for being so big. A special thanks to: John A. Stuart, translator of The Gray Cloth by Scheerbart, without his book, this edition would never have been started. We thank our many collaborators for their tireless work on this project: Susan Bernofsky and Anne Posten for their new translations; Jason Burch and Mark Shortliffe for extensive work on the images; Susan Bielstein, Anthony Burton, Ruth Goring, Helen Graves, and Margaret Mahan for extensive (and sympathetic) editing and literary guidance; Purtill Family Business and Conny Purtill for the hand-drawn cover lettering and other aspects of the design; finally, our gratitude to Laura at Laura Lindgren Design, for editorial and translation support, design, layout, and composition, and the magic of bringing the book together. We could not have laid out this history without the help of these fantastic (and generous) scholars: Rosemarie Haag Bletter for her boundless knowledge of historical dates and Scheerbart’s oeuvre; Hollyamber Kennedy for bringing the Frühlicht Glass House Letters to our attention; Noam Elcott for discovering the architecture of the kaleidoscope; Chris Turner for making Scheerbart both strange and not; Gary Indiana for placing Scheerbart within the history of letters and humor; Guy Maddin for reminding us of the cinematic nature of Perpetual Motion and Bill Horrigan, for incisive commentary on Guy Maddin’s work and writing; Hubertus von Amelunxen for his knowledge of and introductions to the archives of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, and the collection of Egidio Marzona; and Egidio Marzona himself for sharing his memories and allowing us access to his unparalleled collection of Scheerbart material. For their expert assistance with historical documents and their respective collections, thanks to Dr. Petra Alprecht of the Baukunstarchiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin; Louise Désy and Caroline Dagbert of the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal; Jason Escalante and Janet S. Parks at the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University; Nancy Kuhl and Kevin Repp at the Beinecke Library, Yale University; and Dr. Erdmut Wizisla from the Walter Benjamin Archive, Berlin. With special thanks to William Wegman and Susanne DesRoches for their unflagging support whenever we were off in the uncharted wilds of Scheerbartland, and in gratitude to Donald Young for encouraging and inspiring our collaboration. We are all Scheerbartians now.

319