The Artless Word: Mies van der Rohe on the Building Art 9780262640329

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Of related interest Mles van der Rohe

Critical Essays

Mies van der Rohe on the Building Art

edited by Franz Schulze essays by Wolf Tegethoff, Richard Pommer, and Fritz Neumeyer Interview with James lngo Freed Mies van der Rohe: Critical Essays presents four provocative new writings on Mies augmented by 150 illustrations from the Museum of Modern Art's Mies van der Rohe Archive and other sources. Distributed for the Museum of Modern Art, New York Mles van der Rohe

The VIllas and Country Houses

Wolf Tegethoff Tegethoff provides penetrating discussions, augmented by nearly 300 illustrations, of Mies's villas and country houes. These include both the Concrete and the Brick Country House projects, two of the famous Five Projects of the 1920s that made Mies's early reputation; the Lange and

Berlage Institute Library

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Esters houses of 1927-30; the Barcelona Pavilion and Tugendhat house of 1 928-30; and, in America, plans for the Stanley Rasor house in Wyoming and the Farnsworth house of 1946-51

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The MIT Press Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142 NEUAH

0-262- 1 4047-0

Fritz

Neumeye

The Artless Word

Mies van der Rohe

on the Building Art Fritz Neumeyer

translated by Mark Jarzombek

The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England

The Artless Word

Mles

van der Rohe

on the Building Art Fritz Neumeyer translated by Mark Jarzombek

The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England

Contents

Preface to the German Edition Introduction:

Mies van der Rohe in the Historiography of Modern Architecture

ix

xi

The Double Work Field: Architect as Author

II

Philosophy as Patron

I� Ill

29

The View into the Intrinsic

From Accident to Order: The Way to Building

The "Great Form" and the "Will to Style"

This work originally appeared in German under the title Mies van der Rohe. Das kunstlose Wort. Gedanken zur Baukunst, © 1986 by Wolf Jobst Siedler Gmbh, Berlin.

IV

This book was set in Helvetica and was printed and bound in the United States of America. V

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Neumeyer, Fritz. [Mies van der Rohe. English] The artless word : Mies van der Rohe on the building art I Fritz Neumeyer : translated by Mark Jarzombek. p. em. Originally published in German under title: Mies van der Rohe. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-262-14047-0 1. Architecture-Philosophy. 2. Architecture, Modern-20th century. 3. Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig, 1 886-1969-Criticism and interpretation . I. Title. NA2500.N39f3 1991 90-47585 72o-l•tl\ llr lltft 11t,..._lt F1hfllflfll\!ltd r• t•· "''""" IMII" tHru,.'""· .u. r'"""'l• ...r ��otr Sh•"•'"". lotfl'lobltrtn, Mvl'lf •14- dtn Ka��odfft ''"llthlodlgt wruk• llkw• kl rl....,. """'L.rln�lflll f•brihiiOfi�•-'Uit uht rl1• ...... .....,.... wtu.ll ••• �wkrtgh.tr. ...,.. d-. r�ot.. . oht\MOtl 111ft Ill\ Hftf,.alt ,...,_..t-\1. ...... ,, ht !Mo.M ltlttlt, r HM rntrlh"'.Jtll �11b �ron "11111rtt�tll fl�t t l a g b e t & u hl n f ...... .. illfa

(September 27, 1902). Title page of Die Zukunft. no. 52

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tion projects and building tasks on the other. The separation of "art form" ' from "core form" by means of which Carl Boetticher in the middle of the nineteenth century still sought to stem the gradual divergence between

function and representation ended in an eclecticism that could not prevent, J

let alone abolish, the accelerating se�aration of construction from form and

engineer from architect.24 This fissure was only bridgeable by a fundamen­

tal reappraisal. Either function had to be legitimized and had to be viewed as an art form in its own right, as had been advocated by the Deutsche

Werkbund before 1919, or one had to draw the uncomfortable conclusion,

with Karl Kraus and Adolf Loos, that with respect to the serviceable things in life one simply had to suspend artistic demands.25

It became the task of twentieth-century architecture to redefine the interde­

pendence of function and value, construction and form, and stake out a

new base of support. Such an architecture, in the eyes of Mies, could only be realized if architects reformulated their discipline themselves. They had

to display that heroic and "ascetic" frame of mind equated by Mies with the "thirst to partake of the fountainhead of being."26

34

35

2

The rapport that existed between Mies and his first client is evident from

r: Fro m Ac cid en t to Or de

a single, inconspicuous pencil entry made by Mies. On the occasion of

Riehl's eightieth birthday on April 27, 1 924, a printed invitation had been

Th e Wa y to Bu ild ing , are In themselves, as It withstand the forces of time Art works, provided they . gical nature can kill them ress of a merely technolo were, always there. No prog rical histo an valuable In that Is truly historical and They are alive, and, like all their effectiveness and inue cont they s; ze themselve sense, they continually reali d. The thoughts of the n with each successive perio enter Into a new Interactio ared to such art works. great thinkers can be comp der Gegenwart. 1908 Alois Riehl. Philosophle

issued "to a limited circle of 1 00 friends and pupils" to "honor the revered

man on April 27 by means of a speech and an honorary gift to convey their

feelings of loyal devotion." That Mies belonged to this circle is proven by the circumstance that the invitation was among his papers. Donations­

"even those that correspond to present German conditions"-should enable

the celebrant to have, "besides a good book that might delight him, also a good old wine and some cigars on his birthday table" in those difficult

times.

est requirements of by extracting from the mod The Baumeister forms a task form and movement Into content, thus releasing Its the basic givens a spiritual ­ t and thereby renews crea cts the wall to the firmamen space, and then he proje absorbs the- world Into his Is /Ike the true scholar who tion. In many respects he larger than the cosmos, e consciousness thus Is contemplative soul and whos wraps his soul. space around which he which only provides the van der Rohe ," 19111 Rudo/1 Schwarz. ''An Mies

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have led the nces and sympathies that rr;a The particular set of circumsta to com­ essor of philosophy an� hiS Wife renowned sixty-three-year-old prof oa er neith "architect," who could pdint . mission the twenty-one-year-old own. The professional or a l tlc unkn ains rem tice, prac a to diploma nor deCISIVe do not seem to have played a qualifications of the young Mies ons, who able to convince his future patr role. Apparently Mies had been rtheless eaning undogmatic-but wh� neve were "idealistically oriented"-m also and ity onal guin ea pigs,2 by his pers did not want to play the role of spo�sor f. That the patron also liked to . through the proposed project itsel the financing of an Italian tnp by en prov is itect arch g youn the career of his Popp, the rtook in the company of Jose of six weeks' duration Mies unde family dly relations between the Riehl assistant of Bruno Paul.3 The frien endured construction period presumably and Mies that arose during the ted for erec 1924 , in the house Mies had until Riehl died on November 21 tary dam.• Possibly it was his testamen him in Neubabelsberg near Pots ral memoriaLs wish that Mies also build his fune

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friends and pupils is not known. Possibly it was an accidental oversight, or perhaps Mies had neglected to send in his donation in good time. What

matters is that Mies counted himself in the circle of friends. In the margin

of his copy of the congratulatory address, at the place where, in alphabeti­ cal order, his name should have been listed among the choir of congratu­ lants and friends, he retroactively added a handwritten omission sign and

discovery of had begun in Aachen with the The chain of circumstances that he very er continued in Berlin in 1907 : philosophy in a drawing table draw own his r as architect and executed unde first commission Mies obtained her. The ution was the house of a philosop . responsibility from design to exec Mied­ the at hy sop Riehl, professor of philo . Geheime Regierungsrat Alois m 844 Mies's first client. Born In 1 was in, Berl at y ersit Univ elm rich Wilh was called z, Freiburg, Kiel, and Hall� and Bozen, Riehl had taught in Gra in-where Berl for r in which Mies departed to Berlin in 1 905-the same yea he was active until 1 9 1 9.1

Why Mies was not mentioned on the printed congratulatory address listing

his name "Ludwig Mies v. d. Rohe, Berlin."6

Through the Riehls, Mies gained access in 1 907 to that new world of which he had first learned by reading

Die Zukunft.

The Riehls opened for him the

doors to those circles out of which his later patrons were to come, intellec­ tuals and artists, as well as men of industry and finance? In Riehl's house Mies came in contact with the intellectual world of Berlin. Here he met

among others Walther Rathenau; Werner Jaeger, the philologist of classical

languages;6 the art historian Heinrich Wolfflin-and also the latter's fiancee

Ada Bruhn, whom Mies married in 1g.13;9 the philosqpher Eduard

Spranger; and presumably also the philosopher of' religion Romano Guar­

dini, who noticeably influenced Mies's thoughts toward the end of the

twenties.

cniCto'i.f,1iir o��nfe�ai"� e u a t e r, orrree�elm.c.Bafet @ e r a rb cf) e l) m a n l! , @r?R�ngen I cf> a n l! cf) e l) f e, �er!tn 19l4,d)arb cf) ll n I gUn a l b, �rdlau

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67

For Berlage the question of honesty lay at the center and furnished the

key words that were to reappear in Mies's statements in regard to building (Bauen) in the early twenties, unconditionally endorsing Berlage's prime

rule. Mies probably did not get acquainted with Berlage's Gedanken ilber

den Stil in der Baukunst-already published in 1905 and reissued in

enlarged format in 1908 under the title Grund/agen und Entwicklung der

Architektur-until his stay in Holland in 1912. The reading of this work left

a long-lasting impression on him.

spirit . . . and stands on one and the same ground with religion (in the

stricter sense of the word) and philosophy."22

Influenced not only by Plato and Hegel but also by Schopenhauer,23 Ber­

lage categorically rejected all art that does not pursue an objective idea as

"pseudo-art." The "factual, rational, and therefore clearly constructed" con­ stitutes for architecture that particularly Hegelian "region of honesty" that

should form the foundation for the new art. If the modern movement follows this interpretation of reason, then it functions "also with a religious ten­

Berlage pointed to order as the "fundamental principle of style" and, refer­

dency, with a religious longing, until finally longing becomes reality and a

runner for "rational construction." It was held out as example for the new

that it is religious, but with an ideal of this earth. But would the ultimate aim

foundation. 1 3

not also be served?"24 The two "great aestheticians" Gottfried Semper and '

ring to Viollet-le-Duc, promoted the anonymous medieval cathedral as fore­

art, for which the artist, as interpreter of the Zeitgeis�. should lay the

new world is born . . . not with a teleological idea, that is, not in the sense

of all religions thereby not also move closer and would the Christian idea ..

Mies sometimes followed Berlage's arguments verbatim.14 Positions that ,,

the latter had advanced, against the background of the nin�)eenth cen-

tury-the "century of ugliness"-echoed in Mies's pronouncements of

1922-23. Berlage's disgust with the "luxury buildings" and tpe "boulevards with the competition fac;ades,'' the "villa quarters" and the "villa parks,"15

found its parallel in the condemnation of buildings on the Kurturstendamm

and in Dahlem, that "total lunacy in stone" that Mies-no different from, say Bruno Taut or Le Corbusier in their estimation of the building art of the

nineteenth century-called "dishonest, stupi? , and insulting."16 '

When Mies, concluding this invective, raised "absolute truthfulness and

rejection of all formal cheating" to the uppermost moral prerequisite, 17 he revealed himself as a loyal follower of the apostle of truth Berlage, who

had preached: "The lie is the rule, truth has become the exception. So it is in spiritual life, so it is in art. . . . This pseudo-art, this lie, must be fought

against so that we will again arrive at the essence of archit �ture rather .. than its appearance. We want this essence, this truth, and once more the truth, for in art, too, the lie has become the norm, truth th� exception. We

architects must therefore attempt to find our way back to the truth; that means we must understand again the very nature of architecture."18

Mies viewed Berlage's almost obsessive desire for intrinsic honesty with

Viollet-le-Duc were called upon to legitimize objectivity. The principles of

construction were canonized and became the embodiment of those great

and simple laws of "true art" that control form and remain timelessly valid, a precondition of all formal beauty. If art and architecture, in particular,

detach themselves from these fixed principles that are practically a law of nature, to enter upon a path to the arbitrary, then, according to Berlage's

theory of salvation, "all is lost."25

And this is how Mies saw it almost fifty years later: "For over a century

one has attempted, by thought and deed, to come to a closer understand­ ing of the nature of the building art. In retrospect it becomes clear that all

attempts to renew the building art from the formal direction have failed.

Wherever important things occurred, they were of a constructive, not of a

formal nature. This is doubtless the reason for the conviction that construc­ tion has to be the basis of the building art." Building, so it is noted in

handwriting in the same document, is identical with the "simple deed,'' the

"simple work process and clear building structure." "He who wants a build­

ing art must decide. He must subordinate himself to the great objective ' demands of the epoch. Give construcJi� form to them. Nothing more and nothing less. Building was always linked to a simple deed, but this deed has to hit the nail on the head. Only in this sense can one understand Berlage's saying BUILDING IS SERVING . . . . Let us not deceive our­

total sympathy. Berlage, who believed that religious energy forms the foun­

selves. Many modern buildings will not stand the test of time. They may

upright piety"19 to be taken over by "love for an ideal."20 Whereas Behrens,

mental one of 'building' [Bauen] and it is this last demand that will seal

dation of all creatures, wanted the void created by the "disappearance of

the "architect of Zarathustra" (Buddensieg), saw the reev�luation of values

as the specific task of modern man (according with Nietzsche's pronounce­ ment "where one can no longer love, one should pass by!"21, Berlage

called for_ what Hegel-in reference to the relationship of art toward religion

and philosophy-had described as an essentially rational theology: a phi·

losophy that has to be understood as a "perpetual holy rite in the service of

truth." For, according to Hegel, art, which occupies itself "with truth as the

absolute object of consciousness . . . belongs to the absolute sphere of the 68

conform to all the general rules of the building art except the most funda­ their fate. "26

According to the Platonic-Hegelian concept of the objective idea one can­ not obtain self-knowledge without a prior understanding of the order of

things. The immanent guarantees the only valid model of eternal truth, the kernel from which the order of things reveals itself. The ultimate aim of

architecture, as of all art, lies in an absolute value, detached from all that is

subjective and temporal, embodying in its unsullied purity, as "objective

69

demand" (Mies), the universal and eternal. This was the basis for that con­

spirit loved by the Greeks; and if we have love expressible by a corre­

gruence of adaequatio intellectus et rei to which, as "identity of thought

sponding concept of construction, then it must by necessity be totally differ­

ship."27 This identity of subject and object, idea and matter, that reconciles

different forms."33

and thing," Mies, leaning on Thomas Aquinas, attributed a "truth relation­ belief and reason leads to an idea of beauty that transcends eternal law

and objectivity. The words of Augustine in regard to the revelation of

beauty as the "radiance of truth," to which Mies referred again and again,

point to this type of congruence that he called by the scholastic terms ordo

and adaequatio.

Basing himself on these principles, Mies followed his mentor Barlage into

the exemplary Middle Ages, held synonymous with all-powerful truth. Con­ struction, interpreted as a metahistorical category of universal lawfulness,

was declared to be the architectural principle of medieval building. With

Viollet-le-Duc, such a factual, rational, and clear idea of construction had

been established as the basis for a new art. Viollet-le-Duc's "Toute forme,

qui n'est pas ordonnee par Ia structure, dolt etre repoussee" was copied by Mies in capital letters. Here was the basis for a "truthful attitude" on which

one could found the building art.28

Much as Julien Guadet, who in his Histoire de /'Architecture of 1 899

declared constructive premises to be the precondition for architecture,

Barlage differentiated between "genuine" and "inauthentic" architecture.

Against a norm that gives primacy to constru:tion, the Renaissance had to appear as a "weak copy" of an original Roman art, in itself already "in a

certain sense . . . suspect" because it "merely mirrored the formal values of the Greeks and not their spirit."29

How much more then were the nee-styles of the nineteenth century per­

ceived as a dilution. This style architecture deserved, in the eyes of Bar­

�

ent from theirs and consequently its expression must assume totally

Hegel, too, pointing to both classicism and the Gothic, had warned in his

Asthetik against any well-meaning resumption of past artistic styles: "No

matter how excellent we find the statues of the Greek gods, no matter how

we see God the Father, Christ, and Mary so estimably and perfectly por­ trayed: it is no help; we bow the knee no longer."34

Barlage furnished Mies with the basis for a simple theory of the building

art, from which persuasive arguments for a critique of Peter Behrens's

architecture could be launched. How strongly Mies identified with these

thought processes is here particularly explicit: the same reproaches Bl3r­

lage leveled in his writings against Gottfried Semper now appear, this time

in reference to Behrens, in Mies's words. It seemed easy to transfer the

accusation of a "fatal sympathy for the High Renaissance,"35 aimed at

Semper, to the aristocratic Renaissancism of Behrens's architecture. Even

the mixture of approbation and criticism Mies entertained in respect to his teacher Behrens was typical of Barlage's attitude toward Semper. On the one hand, he admired the lucidity of Semper's theory, which gave full

scope to function and construction; on the other, he reproached him for not having "applied this consequentially to architecture."36

Mies entertained similar ideas with respect to Behrens. In the eyes of Mies,

Behrens had achieved a considerable historical feat by having broken the spell nineteenth-century art had exercised over industry and construction

and for having upgraded functional builflings into modern art objects; his

limitations consisted in not having applied the new icnur.uon unCI kh t>tttn,(:tl\0 �te 1!11'11 o•ne" FOtl�h,.tt nat\ tl•cun

ization. Furthermore, the assembly character of today's

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ture and the interior finishing have been executed by the same methods since time immemorial and are of pure

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