Ludwig Hilberseimer: Reanimating Architecture and the City 9781350068049, 1350068047

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LUDWIG HILBERSEIMER

BLOOMSBURY STUDIES IN MODERN ARCHITECTURE Series Editors: Tom Avermaete and Janina Gosseye The Modern Movement was a broad and multifaceted phenomenon which revolutionized the field of architecture. During the twentieth century, modern architects across political, cultural, and geographic divides radically changed the everyday lives of millions of people. However, our knowledge of the Modern Movement remains largely limited to the names of a few famed designers. Bloomsbury Studies in Modern Architecture sheds light on those modern architects who have languished in the shadows of their canonical peers. Placing particular emphasis on the way in which these architects defined the relationship between architecture and modernity in their respective political, cultural, and geographic contexts, this series seeks to construct a more nuanced and fine-grained understanding of the Modern Movement, and the global networks that underwrote it. Previous titles in the series: Ernesto Nathan Rogers, by Maurizio Sabini Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, by Hilde Heynen Kay Fisker, by Martin Søberg Karl Langer, edited by Deborah van der Plaat and John MacArthur John Dalton, by Elizabeth Musgrave Forthcoming titles in the series: Esguerra Sáenz Urdaneta Samper, edited by Maarten Goossens, Hernando Vargas Caicedo and Catalina Parra PAGON, by Espen Johnsen

LUDWIG HILBERSEIMER Reanimating Architecture and the City

Scott Colman

BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2023 Copyright © Scott Colman, 2023 Scott Colman has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on pp. xviii–xix constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design: Eleanor Rose Cover image: Highrise City (Hochhausstadt): Perspective View: North-South Street, 1924 by Ludwig Karl Hilberseimer (1885–1967); 2023 © The Art Institute of Chicago / Art Resource, NY / Scala, Florence All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Colman, Scott, author. Title: Ludwig Hilberseimer : reanimating architecture and the city / Scott Colman. Identifiers: LCCN 2023000357 (print) | LCCN 2023000358 (ebook) | ISBN 9781350068025 (hardback) | ISBN 9781350369412 (paperback) | ISBN 9781350068032 (pdf) | ISBN 9781350068049 (epub) | ISBN 9781350068056 Subjects: LCSH: Hilberseimer, Ludwig–Criticism and interpretation. | Modern movement (Architecture) Classification: LCC NA1088.H52 C65 2023 (print) | LCC NA1088.H52 (ebook) | DDC 720.92–dc23/eng/20230222 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023000357 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023000358 ISBN: HB: 978-1-3500-6802-5 ePDF: 978-1-3500-6803-2 eBook: 978-1-3500-6804-9 Series: Bloomsbury Studies in Modern Architecture Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations  ix Foreword to Ludwig Hilberseimer  xv Acknowledgments  xviii Note on Translation  xx List of Abbreviations  xxi

INTRODUCTION  1 Cultural Work  1 A New Art and Culture  8 Observations and Limitations  11

1 THE INDIVIDUAL  15 Der Einzige  15 Spiritual Materialism  17 Individualist Anarchism  19 Beyond Materialism  22 The Individual and Society  23 Tragic Culture  24 The Aesthetic Foundation of Sovereignty  26 Cultural Critique and Aesthetic Indifference  28 Neutralized Polarization  30 Creative Indifference  34

2 HILBERSEIMER’S THEORY OF ART  39 Polar Structure  39 “The Primitive”  41 Idea and Material  44 Indifference and Form  47 Toward an Artistic Science  51

3 ORGANICISM AND MORPHOLOGY  56 An Artistic Science  56 The Republic of Knowledge  58 Morphology  59 Organicism and Beauty  60 The Natural (Polar) Language of Color  65 A Mystical Language of Art  68 The Artwork as an Organism  70

4 THE METROPOLIS AS AN ORGANISM  75 Metropolis-Architecture  75 The Polar Opposite of Style  79 The Conditions of the Metropolis  81 A Morphology of Metropolis-Architecture  84 The City as an Organism  87

5 THE METROPOLIS AND THE WORK OF ART  90 The Cubic City  90 The Kinesthetic City  92 The Theatrical City  97 The Unmechanical City  98 The Problem of Form  99 Spatial Coherence  101 Architecture and Sculpture  103 Cubic Sculpture  105

6 THE CITY-BUILDING-ART  112 Space Creation  112 Spatial, Plastic, Painterly  114 The Baroque Organism  115 Grown and Laid-Out Cities  118 Schematic and Animate Cities  121 The Centrifugal City  126 The Matter of the Metropolis  128

7 SPIRITUALIZING THE METROPOLIS  131 The Sculptural Art of Space  131 The City as Second Nature  132

vi

CONTENTS

Simultaneity and Dynamism  134 A Baroque Metropolis  136 A Socialist Urban Landscape  143 The Corporeality of Architecture  147 The Law of the Metropolis  153 The Polar Nature of Architecture  156 Spiritualizing the Metropolis  159

8 POLARIZING THE METROPOLIS  161 Urban Organs  161 Mass Dwelling  162 Individuated Dwelling  165 The Primitive Form of Metropolis-Architecture  168 From History to Material to Art  173 The Poles of “American Architecture”  175

9 THE FATE OF THE METROPOLIS  184 The Conventions of Art  184 The Contiguity of Culture  185 Naturalism and Impressionism  187 Convention and Anarchy  188 The Fate of Berlin  191 Formless and Cultureless  192 The Foreign Metropolis  194 The Destiny of the Metropolis  196 Convention and Indifference  198

10 BASSO CONTINUO  203 Concision and Dynamism  203 The Form of the Artwork and Humanity  204 Reanimating Existence  208 The Form of Material  209 The Saliency of Form  211 Index of the Spirit  212 The Search for Form  213 Early Designs for Metropolis-Architecture  215 Nationalism, Localism, Cosmism  223

CONTENTS

vii

11 HILBERSEIMER AND DADA  226 Montage and Metamechanics  226 Magical Realism, Sobriety, and Corporeal Vision  232 The Creator and Grey Magic  235 The Metropolis as Film  237 The Grotesque  239 A Mutual Begging Society  242 Human Marionettes  244 Cultural Reanimation  247

12 THE EQUIVALENCE OF ART AND LIFE  252 Elementarism and Movement  252 Animation of the Mass  254 Equalization and the Indifferent Center  256 Threshold of Constructivism  258 Demonstrative Aesthetics  261 Zero of Art  262 Realization and Equalization of (the) Masses  265 The Rasterized and Cinematic City  268 Constructive Politics  271

13 METROPOLIS-BUILDING  274 The Elements of Metropolis-Architecture  274 Urban Growth  276 Urban Morphology  278 Cosmic Settlement  282 Planet City  285 Metropolis-Buildings  290 Horizontal Buildings  293 Vertical Buildings  297 The Anti-Distraction Machine  300 Notes 304 Bibliography  350 Index  362

viii

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ILLUSTRATIONS

0.1

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (left) and Ludwig Hilberseimer (right) inspecting a preliminary model of their design for the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology, c. 1940. Karl Ludwig Hilberseimer Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archives, Art Institute of Chicago  2

0.2

Ludwig Hilberseimer, Replanned City of Chicago, aerial view, 1940. Karl Ludwig Hilberseimer Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archives, Art Institute of Chicago  4

0.3

Ludwig Hilberseimer, A New Settlement Unit, plan, 1944. Karl Ludwig Hilberseimer Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Archives, The Art Institute of Chicago  5

0.4

Ludwig Hilberseimer, Superblock, residential area, 1944. Karl Ludwig Hilberseimer Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Archives, The Art Institute of Chicago  6

1.1

An indifferent singularity, Ludwig Hilberseimer, outside his Singlefamily Residence at the Weissenhofsiedlung, Stuttgart, 1927. Karl Ludwig Hilberseimer Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archives, Art Institute of Chicago  32

4.1

Cover of Ludwig Hilberseimer, Grossstadtarchitektur (Stuttgart: Verlag Julius Hoffmann, 1927)  76

4.2

Ludwig Hilberseimer, The New City: Principles of Planning (Chicago: Paul Theobald, 1944), 53, with Hilberseimer’s illustration of “Disorder and Chaos”: the American city  78

5.1

The exemplar of the cubic city derided by Sitte: Otto Wagner, “Site plan of the projected XXII district of Vienna,” in Otto Wagner, Groszstadt, Eine Studie über dies von Otto Wagner (Vienna: Von Anton Schroll u. Komp., 1911), 11  93

5.2

The exemplar of the cubic city derided by Sitte: Otto Wagner, “View of the Air Center of the Future XXII district of Vienna,” in Otto Wagner, Groszstadt, Eine Studie über dies von Otto Wagner (Vienna: Von Anton Schroll u. Komp., 1911), 14  93

5.3

Ludwig Hilberseimer, The New City: Principles of Planning (Chicago: Paul Theobald, 1944), 183, illustrating the vertical enclosed space of the medieval cathedral and the closed kinesthetic experience of the medieval city  96

6.1

Ludwig Hilberseimer, The New City: Principles of Planning (Chicago: Paul Theobald, 1944), 53, contrasting static Renaissance and dynamic Baroque urban space (Pietro Perugino’s Delivery of the Keys, c. 1481–2 and Michelangelo’s Campidoglio in Rome, 1536–46)  123

6.2

Ludwig Hilberseimer, The New City: Principles of Planning (Chicago: Paul Theobald, 1944), 174, illustrating Bernini’s Piazza San Pietro, 1656–67  123

7.1

The Cubic City as envisioned by Daniel Burnham and Edward Bennett, plate 122 from The Plan of Chicago. View looking West, of the Proposed Civic Center Plaza and Buildings, Showing it as the Center of the System of Arteries of the Surrounding Country, 1908. The Art Institute of Chicago / Art Resource NY  138

7.2

Ludwig Hilberseimer, Grossstadtarchitektur (Stuttgart: Verlag Julius Hoffmann, 1927), 4, illustrating the competition winning entry for Canberra by Marion Mahony and Walter Burley Griffin, 1911  138

7.3

Ludwig Hilberseimer, Phased disintegration of the Chicago Grid. Marquette Park redevelopment scheme, Chicago, c. 1950. Karl Ludwig Hilberseimer Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archives, Art Institute of Chicago  139

7.4

Ludwig Hilberseimer, Central Railroad Station, Berlin, Perspective, c. 1927. The Art Institute of Chicago / Art Resource NY  141

7.5

An indifferent center in the cubic city: Ludwig Hilberseimer, Opera House, perspective, 1912, the opening illustration of Ludwig Hilberseimer, Grosstadtbauten, Neue Architektur I, published with Merz 18/19 (Hannover: Aposs-Verlag, 1925), 1. (DADA III:2:18/19) Kunsthaus Zürich Library  142

7.6

Ludwig Hilberseimer, The New City: Principles of Planning (Chicago: Paul Theobald, 1944), 189, illustrating the integration of the city with the landscape in Bath  144

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ILLUSTRATIONS

7.7

Ludwig Hilberseimer, The New City: Principles of Planning (Chicago: Paul Theobald, 1944), 29, showing laid-out, geometric urban plans for Selinus, Montpazier, and Philadelphia  145

7.8

Ludwig Hilberseimer, Commercial area flanked by Residential Settlement Units integrated with the landscape, separating pedestrian and mechanical transportation, c. 1943. Karl Ludwig Hilberseimer Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archives, Art Institute of Chicago  146

7.9

Ludwig Hilberseimer, The New City: Principles of Planning (Chicago: Paul Theobald, 1944), 48, comparing a clear rural and polluted urban sky  147

7.10

Ludwig Hilberseimer, Grossstadtarchitektur (Stuttgart: Verlag Julius Hoffmann, 1927), 75, illustrating Henry Van de Velde’s Theater at the Deutsche Werkbund Exhibition in Cologne, 1914  152

8.1

Ludwig Hilberseimer, Grossstadtarchitektur (Stuttgart: Verlag Julius Hoffmann, 1927), 75, illustrating Frank Lloyd Wright’s Lexington Terraces, Chicago, 1901  164

8.2

Ludwig Hilberseimer, Test Pilot Teaching Facility, c. 1916–18. Karl Ludwig Hilberseimer Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archives, Art Institute of Chicago  167

8.3

Ludwig Hilberseimer, Grossstadtarchitektur (Stuttgart: Verlag Julius Hoffmann, 1927), 55, illustrating cubic “Commercial Buildings”: Henry Hobson Richardson, Marshall Field Wholesale Store, Chicago, 1885–7 and Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler, Auditorium Theater, Chicago, 1886–9  169

8.4

Ludwig Hilberseimer, Grossstadtarchitektur (Stuttgart: Verlag Julius Hoffmann, 1927), 56, illustrating department stores in the United States and Europe  169

8.5

Ludwig Hilberseimer, Grossstadtarchitektur (Stuttgart: Verlag Julius Hoffmann, 1927), 65, showing William Symes Richardson, for McKim, Mead, and White, Pennsylvania Hotel, New York, –1919 and Daniel Burnham and John Root, Monadnock Building, Chicago, 1881–91  177

9.1

Ludwig Hilberseimer, with model tower composed of fifteen-story buildings designed for his Welfare City, exhibited in Stuttgart in 1927. Karl Ludwig Hilberseimer Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archives, Art Institute of Chicago  200

ILLUSTRATIONS

xi

10.1

(Upper left) Ludwig Hilberseimer, Design for a Theater and Entry Passage from Max Wagenführ, “Architektonische Entwürfe von L. Hilberseimer,” Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration (July, 1919): 208. Karl Ludwig Hilberseimer Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archives, Art Institute of Chicago  217

10.2

(Upper right) Ludwig Hilberseimer, Design for a Country House, from Max Wagenführ, “Architektonische Entwürfe von L. Hilberseimer,” Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration (July, 1919): 209. Karl Ludwig Hilberseimer Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archives, Art Institute of Chicago  217

10.3

(Lower left) Ludwig Hilberseimer, Designs for a Country House and Embassy Residence with Outbuildings, from Max Wagenführ, “Architektonische Entwürfe von L. Hilberseimer,” Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration (July, 1919): 210. Karl Ludwig Hilberseimer Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archives, Art Institute of Chicago  217

10.4

(Lower right) Ludwig Hilberseimer, Design for an Urban Residence, from Max Wagenführ, “Architektonische Entwürfe von L. Hilberseimer,” Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration (July, 1919): 211. Karl Ludwig Hilberseimer Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archives, Art Institute of Chicago  217

10.5

(Left) Ludwig Hilberseimer, Designs for a Ballroom and Library, from Max Wagenführ, “Architektonische Entwürfe von L. Hilberseimer,” Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration (July, 1919): 212. Karl Ludwig Hilberseimer Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archives, Art Institute of Chicago  218

10.6

(Right) Ludwig Hilberseimer, Designs for a Dining Room and Living Room, from Max Wagenführ, “Architektonische Entwürfe von L. Hilberseimer,” Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration (July, 1919): 213. Karl Ludwig Hilberseimer Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archives, Art Institute of Chicago  218

10.7

Ludwig Hilberseimer, Designs for a Train Station, Market Hall, and City Hall, from Max Wagenführ, “Architektonische Entwürfe von L. Hilberseimer,” Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration (July, 1919): 214. Karl Ludwig Hilberseimer Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archives, Art Institute of Chicago  219

10.8

(Left) Ludwig Hilberseimer, Designs for a Department Store and Office Building, from Max Wagenführ, “Architektonische Entwürfe von L. Hilberseimer,” Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration (July, 1919): 215. Karl Ludwig Hilberseimer Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archives, Art Institute of Chicago  220

xii

ILLUSTRATIONS

10.9

(Right) Ludwig Hilberseimer, Design for a Light Court, from Max Wagenführ, “Architektonische Entwürfe von L. Hilberseimer,” Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration (July, 1919): 216. Karl Ludwig Hilberseimer Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archives, Art Institute of Chicago  220

10.10 Ludwig Hilberseimer, Pitched Roof Houses, Suburban Housing Project, perspective, c. 1920. Gift of George Danforth. The Art Institute of Chicago / Art Resource NY  225 11.1

Hannah Höch, Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany, 1919. Collage, 114 × 90 cm. NG 57/61. bpk Bildagentur, Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen, Berlin, Germany. / Photo: Jörg P. Anders. / Art Resource, NY. © 2022 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn  228

11.2

George Grosz, Jacobstrasse, 1920. Watercolor on paper. Inv. 13484. bpk Bildagentur, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich, Germany / Art Resource, NY. © 2022 Estate of George Grosz / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY  229

11.3

Raoul Hausmann, Der Geist unserer Zeit (Mechanischer Kopf) [The Spirit of Our Time (Mechanical Head)], 1919. Wooden model of a head, mounted with various objects. Inv.: AM 1974–6. Photo: Georges Meguerditchian. Musée National d’Art Moderne / Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France. © 2022 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris  246

12.1

Ludwig Hilberseimer, Arthur Segal (Berlin: Josef Altmann, 1922), 15, with Alfred Segal, Brücke (Bridge), 1921  259

12.2

Arthur Segal, Der Hafen (The Port), 1921. Photo: © Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln, Museum Ludwig, Köln, Inv.-Nr. ML 01316  260

13.1

Cover of Ludwig Hilberseimer, Grosstadtbauten, Neue Architektur I, published with Merz 18/19 (Hannover: Aposs-Verlag, 1925). (DADA III:2:18/19) Kunsthaus Zürich Library  275

13.2

Ludwig Hilberseimer, diagram of a “Trabantenstadtsystem” (“SatelliteCity-System”), from Ludwig Hilberseimer, Grosstadtbauten, Neue Architektur I, published with Merz 18/19 (Hannover: Aposs-Verlag, 1925), 11. (DADA III:2:18/19) Kunsthaus Zürich Library  280

13.3

Ludwig Hilberseimer, Hochhausstadt (Highrise City), perspective view, East-West Street, 1924. Gift of George E. Danforth. The Art Institute of Chicago / Art Resource NY  286

ILLUSTRATIONS

xiii

13.4

Ludwig Hilberseimer, Hochhausstadt (Highrise City), perspective view, North-South Street, 1924. Gift of George E. Danforth. The Art Institute of Chicago / Art Resource NY  287

13.5

Ludwig Hilberseimer, Grossstadtarchitektur (Stuttgart: Verlag Julius Hoffmann, 1927), 17, illustrating his “Schema einer Hochhausstadt” (“Scheme of a High-Rise-City”) with diagram of the scheme overlaid on Berlin (top left)  289

13.6

Ludwig Hilberseimer, Mischbebauung (Mixed-Development) Scheme, with residential buildings of different heights, c. 1930. Karl Ludwig Hilberseimer Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archives, Art Institute of Chicago  290

13.7

Ludwig Hilberseimer, Grossstadtarchitektur (Stuttgart: Verlag Julius Hoffmann, 1927), 33, illustrating his “Schema einer Wohnstadt” (“Scheme of a Residential-City”), c. 1923  292

13.8

Ludwig Hilberseimer, “Mietshausblock II” (Tenement-Block II), perspective, section, plans, and block plan, c. 1923. Karl Ludwig Hilberseimer Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archives, Art Institute of Chicago  294

13.9

Ludwig Hilberseimer, Row Houses for a Residential Satellite City, perspective, plan, and section, c. 1923. Variation on the row house schemes published in Ludwig Hilberseimer, Grosstadtbauten, Neue Architektur I, published with Merz 18/19 (Hannover: Aposs-Verlag, 1925). Karl Ludwig Hilberseimer Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archives, Art Institute of Chicago  296

13.10 Ludwig Hilberseimer, Hochhaus, Fabrikanlage (Skyscraper, FactoryFacility), c. 1923, from Ludwig Hilberseimer, Grosstadtbauten, Neue Architektur I, published with Merz 18/19 (Hannover: Aposs-Verlag, 1925), 19. (DADA III:2:18/19) Kunsthaus Zürich Library  297 13.11 Ludwig Hilberseimer, Chicago Tribune, design competition entry, perspective and plan, and Ludwig Hilberseimer, Hochhaus, perspective and plan 1922. Karl Ludwig Hilberseimer Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archives, Art Institute of Chicago  298

xiv

ILLUSTRATIONS

FOREWORD TO LUDWIG HILBERSEIMER

T

he Modern Movement was a broad and multifaceted phenomenon that revolutionized the field of architecture. Throughout the twentieth century, and across political, cultural, and climatic divides, modern architecture radically changed the everyday lives of millions of people. Yet, to this day, our knowledge of this sweeping and omnipresent occurrence remains largely limited to the names of a few famed designers. In spite of growing research into the Modern Movement and its various actors, most published works focus on a select list of grandmasters. This narrow view restrains our understanding of what the Modern Movement in architecture was, as it limits our insight into the breadth and complexity of the networks that underwrote it, and undercuts the possibility of a more holistic and fine-grained understanding of its impact on architectural culture and the built environment. The “Bloomsbury studies in modern architecture” book series seeks to address this dearth. It sheds light on those who played pivotal roles in propelling the Modern Movement in architecture but who have, nonetheless, languished in the shadows of their better-known (and extensively published) canonical peers. Examining the works and ideas of this “shadow canon,” this book series does not aspire to canonize those to whom it offers a platform, but rather to construct a more detailed understanding of the different actors that propelled the Modern Movement across the globe, as well as the relationships that existed between these different actors, and the ways in which they contributed to the proliferation, recalibration, acculturation, and transculturation of modern architecture. The German-American architect, art critic, and urban planner Ludwig Hilberseimer was a central figure in avant-garde art and architectural circles in the Weimar Republic, an important educator at the Bauhaus and the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in Chicago, and a long-standing collaborator of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. His projects and theories have functioned as a calibration point for critical urban design approaches and manifestoes, including Aldo Rossi’s The Architecture of the City, Mathias Ungers’ “archipelago city,” Christopher Alexander’s “anti-tree-city,” and Archizoom’s “non-stop-city.” At the same time, architectural theoreticians have used his work to address and explain crucial characteristics of modern architecture culture. Manfredo Tafuri, for instance, cited Hilberseimer’s

work in his critique of the assembly line; as did Michael Hays in his analysis of the role of “mass ornament.” Despite being internationally known by architects, urban designers, and theoreticians, Hilberseimer’s legacy has, however, been somewhat overlooked in the historiography of modern architecture. The reasons for this are multiple. Standing in the shadow of Mies, his long-time friend and collaborator, on whom he published an important monograph in 1956, is undoubtedly one of them. While the work of Mies was hailed internationally by a broad public, the projects and approaches of Hilberseimer were known only by a small circle of professionals. The very theoretical character of his work certainly played an important role in this. Although he designed several noteworthy projects such as the single-family house at the Weissenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart (1927) and the Lafayette Park in Detroit (1956–63)—projects that offer a unique insight into his capacity to intervene in the built environment—his main contribution lay in the theorization of the modern city. Hilberseimer was more interested in developing planning ideas than in realizing urban projects. A second reason for Hilberseimer’s obscurity in architectural historiography lies beyond a doubt in his reluctance to subscribe to larger networks or group such as the Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM). For many modern architects, the radicality of their individual positions and the militancy of the collective went hand in hand. This was not the case for Hilberseimer. Rather than joining a group or school, he carved his own position. According to González Martínez Plácido, “when asked about the names of his most influential teachers, Ludwig Hilberseimer did not mention one, but a list of books.”1 The practice of Hilberseimer thus did not define itself in relation to particular architectural teachers, but rather to general ideas. This meant that many architectural historians found his work was difficult to categorize and therefore often excluded it from consideration. The work of Hilberseimer also came with another challenge. While many modern architects and urban designers favored specific stylistic approaches, a tendency that enabled Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson to describe the modern movement as an International Style, Hilberseimer’s work resists being categorized into a clear formal idiom.2 His urban architecture has been described as a “non-figurative approach” that avoids stylistic categories.3 For instance, Hilberseimer’s response to Le Corbusier’s Contemporary City for Three Million Inhabitants (1922), which drew inspiration from typical Parisian classicist squares and the layout of the Palace grounds of Versailles, was the Hochhausstadt (1924); a city composed of only one single building type—a hybrid of blocks and slabs—in which all urban activities were located and which were set out on a grid. The resulting austere urban planning schemes have often been criticized for being overly reductive and exemplars of modernist alienation. However, the non-figurative architecture and the minimal urban structuring principles that Hilberseimer proposed can also be seen as an attempt to overcome the formal crisis of the city, as Pier-Vittorio Aureli has argued.4 xvi

FOREWORD TO LUDWIG HILBERSEIMER

All these elements have cast a shadow on the work of Ludwig Hilberseimer and justify the need for an in-depth investigation of his projects and theories on the modern metropolis, which to this day remain amongst the most extreme, if not the most original, viewpoints in urban theory. Especially the critical character of Hilberseimer’s work stands out. In 1944, for instance, while in exile in Chicago, he published The New City, a book that attempted to move beyond conventional CIAM conceptions. Taking earlier research at the Dessau Bauhaus as his point of departure, Hilberseimer developed a new urban concept based on an intricate and complex relationship between city and landscape. He further elaborated this vision of “the new city” in later books, including The New Regional Pattern (1949) and The Nature of Cities (1955). This innovative thinking on modern urbanity was the impetus for Scott Colman’s critical reassessment of Hilberseimer’s work and writings. This book offers, for the first time, an image of a multifaceted practitioner who provided novel perspectives on the modern city that have lost none of their value today. Tom Avermaete and Janina Gosseye Series editors

FOREWORD TO LUDWIG HILBERSEIMER

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

T

he content of this book is not what I had expected at the outset. Many people have been incredibly patient with me. None more than Kym Tsai and Iain Colman. Without their love, wit, and caring realism I’d be completely untethered. I am indebted to the extraordinary support of Tom Avermaete and Janina Gosseye, the series editors, and James Thompson at Bloomsbury. To them and the anonymous readers of the manuscript and proposal I could not be more grateful. This research has been made possible by the Rice University School of Architecture as an institution and a small group of architects committed to the city. Three deans, Sarah Whiting, John Casbarian, and Igor Marjanović, and the senior faculty at the school, especially Dawn Finley and Reto Geiser, granted me the support and time to complete the project. My thinking has been sustained and greatly improved by hundreds of hours of discussion with Albert Pope, more committed to architecture’s role in the world than anyone else I know. Special thanks to Andrew Colopy, Troy Schaum, and Jesús Vassallo for getting me through the most difficult times. For their unwavering encouragement, I want to thank Neeraj Bhatia, Michelle Chang, Christopher Hight, Carlos Jiménez, Lars Lerup, Brittany Utting, and Mark Wamble. I am extremely grateful to all my colleagues, past and present, for their unceasing insights and friendship, as I am to the non-teaching members of our institution that make our work possible. This research was initiated during my doctoral studies on Mies and Hilberseimer. The acknowledgments in that dissertation are applicable here. I am especially grateful this earlier work received encouragement from Detlef Mertins, Susan Stewart, and Robert Freestone. A 2017 grant from the Humanities Research Center at Rice University permitted further study of Hilberseimer’s archive at the Art Institute in Chicago. The central argument of this study benefited from presentation at the symposium Ludwig Hilberseimer: Infrastructures of Modernity organized by Florian Strob at the Bauhaus in October 2021, an event that prompted excellent presentations and stimulated valuable conversations; thanks to Robin Schuldenfrei, Anna Vallye, and Charles Waldheim for their comments in particular. I want to take the opportunity to thank Philip Goad, Gevork Hartoonian, Glen Hill, Jeff Kipnis, Andrew Leach, John Macarthur, John McMorrough, Adrian Snodgrass,

and Bob Somol for their support of my academic pursuits in general. And to thank K. Michael Hays and Stephen Melville, whose courses were transformative. This book would not exist without the Art Institute of Chicago. Special thanks to Nathaniel Parks and Mary Woolever at the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries. And to Zoë Ryan and Alison Fisher in the drawings department. Thanks to Joyce Faust at Art Resource. I am very grateful to my shepherds Rosamunde O’Cleirigh and Alexander Highfield and the people at Bloomsbury. Finally, but not least, I owe thanks to the students of the Rice School of Architecture, for their willingness and capacity to engage forms of teaching committed to research. Anna Fritz deserves special credit for improving my translations. Thanks to the numerous students who have assisted me over the years, including Jimmy Bullis, Andrew Bertics, Mary Casper, Anna Cook, Rylie Davis, Paul DeFazio, Katherine Gullick, Amelia Hazinski, Keegan Herbert, J. P. Jackson, Michael Kapinus, Yun Koo, Kalen McNamara, Alexandra Nae, Toshiki Nimi, Lauren Phillips, Matthew Ragazzo, Ian Searcy, Maia Simon, Louis Weiss, Rose Wilkowski, and Eileen Witte.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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NOTE ON TRANSLATION

T

exts cited by their German title, even if translated into English, were consulted in the original German. Unless the English title is cited, the translations of these texts are mine. These translations have been greatly improved by the edits and suggestions of Anna Fritz and in some cases Robin Hueppe. I have sometimes rejected this good advice and take full responsibility for errors and idiosyncrasies. The translations are specific to their original context. In general, Gestaltung has been translated as “formation” rather than “design.” The effort to translate passages from Salamo Friedlaender led to neologisms that seemed valuable to retain. Problematically, gendered language has not been altered. Geist has been translated as “spirit,” with the hope that the meanings of “mind,” “intellect,” and “wit” are not lost.

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

AR

Anselm Ruest

AEG

Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft

DE

Der Einzige

IIT

Illinois Institute of Technology

JWG

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

KLHP

Karl Ludwig Hilberseimer Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archives, Art Institute of Chicago

LH

Ludwig Hilberseimer

UR

Udo Rukser

SF

Salamo Friedlaender

SM

Sozialistische Monatshefte

US

United States of America

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INTRODUCTION

Cultural Work Ludwig Karl Hilberseimer (1885–1967) was a central figure in the circles of progressive artists and intellectuals in the Weimar Republic, an important art critic and Bauhaus pedagogue, an influential urban designer, and the longstanding collaborator of leading twentieth-century architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886–1969) in Berlin and Chicago after his emigration to the United States in 1938.1 Although he is most often described as an architect and urban planner, these categorizations fail to appreciate the breadth of his activity, his conception of architecture, and his most important contribution to an understanding of the city.2 Hilberseimer saw his activity—as a critic, theorist, architect, educator, designer, and planner—as cultural work and the built environment, like all manifestations of culture, as the materialization of a spiritual worldview. This is an understanding that our own era, with its isolated preoccupations, has almost entirely forgotten, although few have ever taken this profound idea seriously. It was a hegemonic, spiritless, myopically materialist “unculture” that Hilberseimer rejected, from the time of his very first published writings until his laments about the course of contemporary architecture in his later years.3 Trained as an architect, at the Technische Hochschule (Technical University) in his native Karlsruhe (1906–11), Hilberseimer is developing his independent thinking on architecture and the city before the First World War. But Hilberseimer begins his career as a cultural critic. After moving to Berlin in 1912, his social circles are formed by avant-garde artists and intellectuals, among whom architects, let alone practitioners, are relatively few.4 An understanding of Hilberseimer’s early formation in Berlin, the focus of this book, illumines the importance of this intellectual and artistic context for Hilberseimer’s oeuvre, his understanding of the cultural significance of architecture and the city, and the consistent intention and approach of his theory, criticism, and design. Presenting Hilberseimer’s attitude toward Impressionism, Expressionism, Dada, Elementarism, and Constructivism, the following elucidates a significant

FIGURE 0.1  Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (left) and Ludwig Hilberseimer (right) inspecting a preliminary model of their design for the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology, c. 1940. Karl Ludwig Hilberseimer Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archives, Art Institute of Chicago.

touchpoint in the relationship between progressive art and architecture in the early 1920s. Hilberseimer’s first published essays are works of art theory. Between January 1920 and December 1925, he writes the column on visual art (“Bildende Kunst”) for the Sozialistische Monatshefte (Socialist Monthly) which appears alongside articles on economics, politics, and other cultural criticism for a broad left-wing readership. During this same period, Hilberseimer publishes art criticism in the Berlin newspapers Freie Zeitung and Berliner Tageblatt and in leading and progressive art periodicals of the day: Das Kunstblatt, Kunst und Künstler, Feuer, Die Kornscheuer, and G.

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In 1924, Hilberseimer exhibits a suite of architectural and urban designs at Herwath Walden’s (1879–1941) Der Sturm gallery in Berlin and publishes an associated essay in Walden’s journal of the same name, established venues of progressive art in the city. The Dadaist Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948) devotes a special issue of his journal Merz to Hilberseimer’s designs and theory in the following year.5 By the time Hilberseimer takes over the column on the applied arts (“Kunstgewerbe”) at Socialist Monthly from his close associate, the art critic Adolf Behne (1885–1948) in early 1926, architecture has become the predominant focus of his independent publications. But Hilberseimer’s writing and design remain committed to aesthetic and cultural questions, specifically the relationship between worldviews and environmental production. His 1927 book Grossstadtarchitektur (Metropolis-Architecture), in development since 1914, is a critique of the capitalist metropolis and the assertion of principles for its egalitarian transformation.6 The model single-family dwelling he exhibits at the Weissenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart in the same year, one of a number of buildings Hilberseimer realizes during his European period, embodies these principles in the context of suburban development.7 Many of Hilberseimer’s propositions in Metropolis-Architecture were more radical, however. Conceived for a pan-European socialist community, Hilberseimer’s scheme for a Hochhausstadt (High-Rise-City) condenses the various functions of the city into an integrated entity to eliminate uncontrolled urban growth, minimize the need for transportation, and liberate the landscape for agriculture and recreation. Throughout his career, Hilberseimer conceives the realization of a socialist society as coeval with the concise materialization of the built environment as a harmonious work of art. Hilberseimer establishes what he later describes as the “Department of Housing and City Planning” at the Bauhaus in 1928, under the directorship of the socialist architect Hannes Meyer (1889–1954).8 As building production in Germany regains its economic footing after the war and the ideas of a younger generation of architects begin to be materialized throughout Europe, Hilberseimer almost exclusively devotes his writing to the promotion of the new building. In addition to his critical essays, he publishes a visual survey of the new architecture, Internationale neue Baukunst (New International Building-Art) for the Deutsche Werkbund in 1927, a monograph on reinforced concrete construction, Beton als Gestalter (Concrete as Creator) with Julius Vischer in 1928, and a book on interior public spaces, Hallenbauten (Hall-Buildings) in 1931, as part of the Handbuch der Architektur (Handbook of Architecture, 1880–1943), a staple of technical architectural education in Germany.9 Hilberseimer’s writing on the applied arts for the Socialist Monthly, and then the column on design (“Werkgestaltung”) between January 1930 and January 1933, is primarily architectural and urban in focus and his independent essays increasingly appear in building-oriented publications. In parallel with his criticism, Hilberseimer continues to develop his own architectural and urban ideas in the late-1920s and early-1930s, both independently

INTRODUCTION

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and through research conducted with his Bauhaus students. The more technical studies that appear in the journal Bauhaus and the prominent organs of progressive architecture and planning, Die Form and Das Neue Berlin, at this time, reflect the development of Hilberseimer’s theory of metropolis-architecture. They evidence a renewed conception of the integration of the city and the landscape. His published investigations of architectural form—studying density, solar access and orientation, and the integration of vertical and horizontal buildings into new patterns of settlement—are largely the product of his innovative, urban-oriented architectural pedagogy. After Mies assumes the directorship of the Bauhaus in 1930, this study of urban principles forms the essential foundation for the aesthetic, spatial, and material design exercises overseen by Mies in the curriculum’s final year.10 A synthetic presentation of Hilberseimer’s investigations during his Bauhaus period does not appear in print until after his emigration to the United States. Revitalized by his engagement with the vast landscape of North America and his ongoing research on the global history of architectural and urban form, Hilberseimer’s late work progressively develops and expands these earlier ideas. He fundamentally reconceives the centralized, gridlocked, and polluted American city, envisioning its transformation over time into decentralized vineyards of settlement imprinted into the landscape. At mid-century Hilberseimer

FIGURE 0.2  Ludwig Hilberseimer, Replanned City of Chicago, aerial view, 1940. Karl Ludwig Hilberseimer Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archives, Art Institute of Chicago.

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anticipates  the postwar suburbanization of the United States, but envisions it occurring in a way that would have avoided the haphazard and deleterious development that took place. Hilberseimer’s ideas for the late-twentieth-century city, which underwent continuous development in his teaching, research collaborations, and commissioned projects—including projects with Mies, such as

FIGURE 0.3 Ludwig Hilberseimer, A New Settlement Unit, plan, 1944. Karl Ludwig Hilberseimer Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Archives, The Art Institute of Chicago.

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FIGURE 0.4 Ludwig Hilberseimer, Superblock, residential area, 1944. Karl Ludwig Hilberseimer Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Archives, The Art Institute of Chicago.

the design of a new campus for the Illinois Institute of Technology and the partly realized Lafayette Park development in Detroit—are preserved in the publication of three interrelated books: The New City (1944) (in development since the early1930s), The New Regional Pattern (1949), and The Nature of Cities (1955).11

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While Hilberseimer’s pedagogy had a significant influence on a generation of practitioners trained in architecture and planning in Chicago, his cultural conception of architecture and urbanism met significant professional resistance. Hilberseimer’s emphasis on an historical, formal, philosophical, and aesthetic understanding of the city conflicted with the sociological, economic, and administrative conception of planning dominant in the United States at midcentury—in many respects, despite its New Deal associations, the capitalist and materialist worldview he had set out to oppose. Although Hilberseimer, through his position at IIT, is a member of the South Side Planning Board central to the racist redevelopment of Chicago’s Near South Side, pivotal to the history of planning in the United States, his intellectual disagreements with politically connected academics at the University of Chicago integral to these developments marginalized his point of view. Indeed, the architect Walter Gropius (1883–1969), the first director of the Bauhaus, through his position as Dean of the Graduate School of Design at Harvard (1937–52), an important center of the US planning establishment, was more active on prominent commissions in the city than Hilberseimer. Progressive European architects’ engagement with urban planning underwent a process of selective differentiation and transformation in the United States given the prevailing structure of its institutions and discourse.12 Nevertheless, Hilberseimer’s writings and designs have subsequently exercised a profound and outsized impact on a small but influential subset of architects and urban designers. They have contributed to the development of significant new theories, fields, and practices of architectural and urban design, such as Neo-rationalism in the 1960s, “Critical Architecture” in the 1980s, “Landscape Urbanism” at the turn of the twenty-first century, and waves of so-called “generic” and “non-figurative” architecture over the past three decades.13 Moreover, and not unrelated to these earlier developments, interpretations of Hilberseimer’s work have often been central to the critical historical reception of modernist architecture. As Hilberseimer’s work became a football in the increasingly sclerotic “post-modern” debates about modernist architecture, an appreciation for his criticism of the corrupted, colonizing liberalism of European society and his centrality to the progressive artistic discourse of Berlin in the 1920s faded. Hilberseimer’s emphasis on the aesthetic and spiritual aspects of art and culture was ignored by polemicists looking for a straw man to characterize what they supposed to be the cold-hearted rationalism of progressive architecture and urbanism.14 This view remains prevalent. But the notion modernist architecture is intrinsically technocratic, functionalist, standardized, universalist, colonial, or anti-historical can only be forwarded with ignorance of the vitalist cultural critique and vision forwarded by Hilberseimer and his associates. Hilberseimer understood his designs for architecture and the city as aesthetic and expressive. They were fundamentally informed by the material conditions of production and

INTRODUCTION

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the needs of life, and deeply committed to rational concision. But they were thus animated by a spiritual comprehension of contemporary existence. They were the nascent, experimental representations of a clear-eyed artistic science—the creation requisite to a progressive, post-capitalist international community: a harmonious culture of liberated individuals.

A New Art and Culture Primarily concerned with the period between Hilberseimer’s first published statements on art in 1919 and his shift toward a predominant concern with architecture and the city in 1923–5, this book focuses on the creative seed of Hilberseimer’s cultural theory, art criticism, architecture, urban design, and planning. In his late books—Mies van der Rohe (1956), Entfaltung einer Planungsidee (The Unfolding of a Planning Idea, 1963), Contemporary Architecture: Its Roots and Trends (1964), and Berliner Architektur der 20er Jahre (Berlin Architecture of the 1920s, 1967)—Hilberseimer reflects, in ostensibly objective presentations, on his efforts to cultivate these early ideas: through his collaborations with Mies, his writing and practice in Berlin and Chicago, and in his teaching at the Bauhaus and IIT.15 However, the genesis of Hilberseimer’s attitude, in his early writings and design work, remains obscure, intricately tied to the rich and complex praxis of resistance to Wilhelmine society. Integral to a particular subfield of the fecund culture of Berlin before, during, and after the First World War, Hilberseimer’s theory—and the program of his cultural work—drew upon a wealth of philosophical and artistic thinking, condensed and precipitated by the extraordinary social, political, economic, and technological pressures of the day. Displaced and distanced from this culture in later decades, Hilberseimer never quite encapsulated his concept of culture and art for an audience understandably lacking an appreciation of the context from which it emerged. Hilberseimer formulates his commitment to cultural work through his involvement with the varying trajectories of progressive artists and intellectuals orbiting the journal Der Einzige (The Individual, The Only One, or The Singularity).16 The location for Hilberseimer’s first published writings, Der Einzige was edited by the individualist-anarchist Anselm Ruest and the satirist Mynona, pseudonyms for the philosophers Ernst Samuel (1878–1943) and Salomo Friedlaender (1871–1946), the ideas of whom are now recognized as central to Expressionist and intrinsic to Dadaist thought in Berlin.17 Hilberseimer’s theory of culture synthesizes Ruest and Friedlaender’s philosophy with the latest ideas in art history, progressive artistic practice, theories about the visual perception of art, and an appreciation for the artistic expression of non-European worldviews.

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Hilberseimer’s earliest writings on the city and systematically conceived urban designs are drafted in parallel with his early cultural criticism. In the early drafts of Metropolis-Architecture, which Hilberseimer co-authors with the lawyer, art critic, collector, and fellow-contributor to Der Einzige Udo Rukser (1892–1971), Hilberseimer and Rukser argue “metropolis-architecture” is a new genre of art.18 They understand the metropolis as a new medium in the same way Dadaist artists, such as Raoul Hausmann (1886–1971), Hannah Höch (1889–1978), and Hans Richter (1888–1976), who were also under the influence of Friedlaender, saw new technologies, like the phonograph, the illustrated press, and film, as new means of art and Mies—who would also become a member of the Friedlaender circle and was probably influenced by Hilberseimer’s early ideas—would soon explore the potentials of new construction technologies and building programs for a new kind of architecture. Hilberseimer and Rukser conceive of metropolis-architecture as a new kind of art shortly after the new formalist art history of Heinrich Wölfflin (1864–1945), Alois Riegl (1858–1905), and August Schmarsow (1853–1936) had been extended, primarily by Albert Erich Brinckmann (1881–1958) from a consideration of Baukunst (building-art) to Stadtbaukunst (city-building-art). The Viennese architect Camillo Sitte (1843–1903) had popularized the idea of the city as a work of art, but had rejected the prevailing practices of planning and architecture— which expediently laid out new urban districts with a grid of straight streets, rectilinear blocks, and cubic buildings—in favor of historical artistic practices of city-building. Brinckmann uses the new history to provide a less polemical analysis of the historical city and its recent transformation. Departing from Brinckmann’s work and discussions of the contemporary metropolis forwarded by the art critic Karl Scheffler (1859–1951) among others, Hilberseimer and Rukser turn their attention to a formal analysis of the city-building that Sitte, Scheffler, and many others had scorned. They define the new genre of metropolisarchitecture  by differentiating the conditions—the means and purposes—of the  metropolis-building-art from the city-building-art of the past. They argue the metropolis arises from rapid industrialization and a one-sided emphasis on the interests of capital. It is characterized by disorganization, theatrical forms, and specialized building types, such as the tenement building, the urban villa, the department store, the office building, and the industrial plant, from which Hilberseimer and Rukser distill the fundamental constituent elements of a new kind of city-building-art. For Hilberseimer and Rukser, any work of art, like a painting as Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) describes it, is an expression of a spiritual worldview that cannot be reduced to its particular elements and their interrelationships.19 These elements and interrelationships are only meaningful within a specific cultural conception. Identifying the common formal and material

INTRODUCTION

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denominators of existing metropolitan building-types, Metropolis-Architecture articulates the basic elements of the metropolis and their interrelationships under contemporary political economic conditions. Following Friedlaender’s philosophy—which forwards, by reference to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), among others, a rational praxis of neutralized polarization as the basis of an objective grasp of existence— Hilberseimer and Rukser conceive of existing metropolitan types as variations of formal values that are consistent across the architecture of the metropolis as a whole. By thus reconceiving the contemporary cubic city as an indifferent medium of expression, Hilberseimer and Rukser sought to revalue the metropolis, hitherto skewed by capitalist interests. An emphasis on production and profit had produced a chaotic and polluted city at the expense of the quality of life, non-materialistic cultural values, and a healthy relationship to nature. A neutralized re-conception of the contemporary city—the reapportionment of, and the establishment of new, relationships between its various elements— integrated with the landscape, would constitute, were it materialized, the expression of a more egalitarian and sustainable cultural conception and political economic system. By conceiving of the city as a coherent, stable, and even material—which they compared to the lapidary materials preferred by sculptors—Hilberseimer and Rukser argued the consistency of metropolisarchitecture would allow the greatest diversity of individual expression and enhance the collective significance of that expression. Consistent with a thesis offered by Hausmann, Hilberseimer and Rukser understood their work as coeval with the transformation of capitalism, via the equilibrating medium of communism, into anarcho-socialism. Just as Goethe understood natural philosophy as an animating spiritual activity, which through the expansion of our aesthetic capacities allows us to invest phenomenal appearance with lawful coherence, Hilberseimer understood cultural work as an artistic science. By objectively observing given existence, such as the phenomena of the metropolis, and creatively and indifferently investing chaos, such as that of the industrial city, with lawful coherence, the world, including the metropolis and its architecture, gains spiritual significance. Hilberseimer understood the potential realization of such a spiritual materialism—the imaginative recalibration of human nature with nature as a whole—as the dawn of a new, potentially international, culture and community, correspondent with the world-integrating scale of contemporary technics and commerce, equivalent to the coherent worldviews of historical and existing non-European cultures. Hilberseimer saw this communal individualism as a promise latent in Renaissance Humanism, hitherto undermined by a corrupted liberalism: the decadent and possessive, naturalistic and materialistic, colonizing worldview of European civilization.

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Observations and Limitations Although Berlin during the 1920s is one of the most thoroughly studied milieus in the history of art, Hilberseimer’s thinking, thoroughly embedded in the culture of its time and place, is at once surprisingly familiar, given contemporary anticolonial and anti-capitalist discourse, and strikingly strange. Hilberseimer’s conception of culture has such self-contained and self-referential integrity, perhaps the lineaments of his edifice were all but destined to give rise to a manifold of interpretations as the atmosphere of their reception varied with time, geography, and cultural climate. Ranging across different languages, political economies, and physical and cultural contexts, Hilberseimer’s oeuvre, despite its conceptual contiguity, resists synthetic summation. Hilberseimer was constantly revising the way he expressed his fundamental ideas, if not these core ideas themselves. His literary output ranges from the immediacy of art criticism, to the perspective of urban history, the insight of natural history and contemporary social science, the futurism of political program, and the awareness of autobiographical retrospection. He glides between historical archaeology, cultural critique, scientific analysis, and speculative proposition in ways that are discomforting for readers accustomed to narrow disciplinary norms. The majority of Hilberseimer’s literary production remains untranslated, inaccessible to the vast majority of those who have sought to engage his work. His design work integrates architecture, urbanism, and landscape, belying the increasingly specialized perspectives of these fields. His emphasis on constituent principles and elements rather than whole projects, on approaches rather than prescriptions, and on embodied ideas rather than abstract propositions, has made it difficult to precisely pin down particular designs as definitive exempla. Absent a comprehensive and synthetic account, the value of Hilberseimer’s morphological approach to architecture and urbanism is usually approached through a kaleidoscope of interpretations. These complexities of content and reception, not least Hilberseimer’s long-time collaboration with Mies, a towering figure illuminated by architectural history’s most intense spotlights, have thrown, it was said in 1986, Hilberseimer into the shadows.20 It is my hope this attempt to trace the origins of Hilberseimer’s earliest public statements and designs can resurrect the inherent structure of his thought with sufficient clarity that both the particularities of later interpretations and their coherence as various responses to a singular body might begin to become apparent. While few have engaged Hilberseimer’s work in a critical way, those who have done so have often attained significant prominence for their ideas by drawing upon—by developing and transforming—concepts inherent to Hilberseimer’s own thinking. With regard to the most prominent of these concepts, this consideration of Hilberseimer’s early formation suggests the following observations:

INTRODUCTION

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The rationalism of Hilberseimer’s approach, emphasized most prominently by Giorgio Grassi, is understandable as a deliberately applied method of neutralized polarization that, adopted from Friedlaender, became central to the structure of Hilberseimer’s thinking, argumentation, and design.21 The saliency of Hilberseimer’s designs and the formal conceptualization of the city central to Aldo Rossi’s (1931–97) appreciation of Hilberseimer’s work were products of Hilberseimer’s concern, following Goethe, with the nature of architecture as work of art, and, under the influence of the art critic Carl Einstein (1885–1940), with an immediately effective spatioplastic form.22 The apparent and ultimately naïve belief, identified by Manfredo Tafuri (1935–94), that architecture conceived as an urban entity might subsume (and thus manage) the political economic forces of capitalist production, arises from Hilberseimer’s commitment, under the influence of Ruest, to spiritual materialism and anarcho-socialism.23 Hilberseimer was committed to the idea that the cultural and economic aspects of society are ineluctably correlated. This view follows from late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century cultural history, which Hilberseimer embraces in a progressive sense. But while Hilberseimer’s emphasis on urban architectural form (taken up by Rossi, and following him, Pier Vittorio Aureli) has often—quite rightly—been seen as an act of resistance to capitalist speculation (emphasized by Richard Anderson), Hilberseimer was decidedly sober about the prospects of autonomous opposition.24 He sees transformations in urban form as necessarily coeval with cultural (and thus political economic) transformation as a whole. The comportment toward the (metropolitan) crisis in Humanist thought K. Michael Hays identifies as pivotal to Hilberseimer’s theoretical and artistic work in the 1920s is identifiable with the praxis of “creative indifference,” another borrowing from Friedlaender’s philosophy. Friedlaender was supported in his publication efforts by the sociologist Georg Simmel (1858–1918) and influential (in both a positive and negative sense) on theorists such as Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) and Ernst Bloch (1885–1977), to whom, among others, Hays looks to buttress his reading of Hilberseimer’s work.25 Although the following focuses on the prehistory of Metropolis-Architecture rather than the work of the mid-to-late-1920s emphasized by Hays, it affirms Hays’ interpretation. In Hilberseimer’s rationalizing anarcho-socialist faith, the indifferent (truly creative) subject represents—and thereby prompts—the collective act of individual spiritual reconstruction necessary to objectively grasp, mutually shape, and extend the means of production.26 Therefore, the (typological) recognition of the tension between generic and singular architecture—the tension between the polis and its constituent masses (buildings)—in the work of Rossi and following him Rem Koolhaas (and of the association between the metropolis and congestion central to the work of the latter) arises, in part, from Hilberseimer’s envisioned alternatives to the metropolis. Hilberseimer forwards an artistic and political commitment to an

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idea of formal “indifference” (an idea of lapidary consistency), which he shares with Dadaists such as Arthur Segal (1875–1944), also under Friedlaender’s influence.27 The imperative to integrate human settlement with the landscape—identified by Albert Pope in the fundamental, to most invisible, act of urban (and thus social) patterning—developed in different ways by Pope and Charles Waldheim, has its origins in Hilberseimer’s Goethean (re)conception of the (classical idea of the) work of art as an organism and of the neo-Romantic vitalism central to Expressionism and Elementarism.28 Hilberseimer and his circle understood cultural history (in its most-encompassing sense) as inseparable from the history—the morphological transformation—of human nature. While this environmental aspect of Hilberseimer’s thinking becomes more prominent in his design work after Hugo Häring’s (1882–1958) critique of his and Le Corbusier’s (1887–1965) urban theory in 1926, it is nonetheless pivotal to Hilberseimer’s earliest conceptions of the city as a work of art.29 It is, the following will contend, even the basis of projects such as the High-Rise-City, which have generally been interpreted as diametrically opposed to such integration. More pointedly, Hilberseimer’s desire to integrate the city and the landscape is the immediate corollary of his worldview. Hilberseimer sought to calibrate thinking with reality. Out of the chaos of his time, he sought a sense of coherence and collective meaning. He seized an indifferent subjectivity, from which contemporary existence might be comprehended in its breadth and complexity. Following Goethe and Friedlaender, Hilberseimer understood objective analysis as an act of creative synthesis, at once aesthetic and scientific. It is an open question whether Hilberseimer’s diligently skeptical and willfully faithful idea of culture would be considered naïve or promising today. For Hilberseimer, however, forming and ultimately manifesting an affirmative answer to this question—constructing a shared sense of significance—is the very point of artistic and intellectual work, but only if that cultural work is a truly creative, conditioned rather than determined, project.30 This is a work of monographic history, often and understandably criticized today for its focus on individual contributions to culture. I believe the approach is valuable here as an attempt, which I take to be the intent of this series, to nascently illumine an otherwise underappreciated relationship between  architecture and its particular—in this case, highly resonant—cultural context. With this in view, as much of the book is devoted to the constellation of ideas and practices conditioning (and thus as seen by) Hilberseimer as it is with his own creation. Nevertheless, any book is limited in scope, and many threads remain unpursued or undiscussed in what follows. As much as this work tries to give Hilberseimer’s galaxy a center, it does so in the knowledge his singular universe has been affected by and has affected a cosmos of other trajectories. Among these, the orbit of Udo Rukser, a lawyer, art critic, friend of Friedlaender, Richter’s brother-in-law, and,

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most importantly, Hilberseimer’s collaborator in much of what follows, is not much more than glimpsed here, but nevertheless seen to this extent for the first time. It was not possible to fully elucidate Rukser’s and Hilberseimer’s criticism nor to do justice to their writings on non-European art in this book. With regard to the latter, the relationship between Hilberseimer, Behne, the architect Bruno Taut (1880–1938), and the art critic Paul Westheim (1886–1963) seems crucial to a fuller understanding of the course of German architectural thought and its relationship to progressive art in the early-1920s.31 I hope to return to this criticism and these interactions elsewhere, in relationship to which the connection between Friedlaender and Paul Scheerbart (1863–1915) and Friedlaender’s differences with the activist Kurt Hiller (1885–1972), influential on Behne and Taut, are significant.32 The relationship between Mies and Hilberseimer is also not taken up in what follows. Much of Hilberseimer’s early writing reads like a program for Mies’s design activities. In particular, the theorization of American architecture (of Frank Lloyd Wright’s work in particular), the discussions of urban form, and the concepts of architectural massing, patterning, and animation deserve consideration for their relationship to Mies’s experimental projects of the 1920s and beyond. So too the contribution of Hilberseimer’s ideas to the vitalist program of the G circle is only briefly considered. Hilberseimer and Hausmann made important contributions to the journal of that name, published between 1923 and 1926, edited by Richter and supported by Mies. The historians Detlef Mertins (1954–2011) and Michael Jennings have recently described G as central to the broader shift from Expressionism to New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit) in art and architecture. In this respect, this book offers a relatively rare plot of a singular architectural course through a fluid and choppy interregnum—from the war beyond what Mertins and Jennings call the “watershed years” (1922–3) of European artistic discourse—still, surprisingly, a largely unknown territory in architectural culture.33

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1 THE INDIVIDUAL

Der Einzige The first issue of Der Einzige, edited by Ruest, and its literary supplement, edited by Mynona, appears on Sunday, January 19, 1919, two months after the demise of the German monarchy and the armistice halting the Great War.1 The Paris Peace Conference had begun the previous day and Berliners—physically and psychologically brutalized by war, civil strife, and a pandemic, many wounded, hungry, and unemployed—were going to the polls to elect representatives to an assembly that would write the democratic constitution establishing the Weimar Republic. The communist insurgency of the past month had been forcefully quashed by nationalist militias with the knowledge of Friedrich Ebert, head of the Social Democratic Party; a few days earlier Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, leaders of the Communist Party, had been tortured and executed by paramilitary troops. The programmatic statement printed on the back cover of the journal— personifying the two parts of the publication—rejects state administration of the mass mind: The Individual—and the humorous Ex-Emperor—knows no parties. He stands on strictly individualistic ground and fights against all mass-suggestion and mass-psychosis. He is of the opinion that salvation from a confused present into a clear future can only be found again by appealing to the ego, by returning to individualists such as [Max] Stirner and [Friedrich] Nietzsche, whose ideas he will develop and build upon above all others. He will consistently salute every thought of his own, acclaim every honest self-confession, dissolve slogans of the market into their components, disdain expedient action at the expense of truth, evaluate pure bluff as radical evil. Collaborators of the ‘Individual,’ who, after five long years of mass delusion, still have their senses intact and retain their intellect as such, have not thrown away their reason.2

In his inaugural editorial, “Die letzte Revolution” (“The Final Revolution”), Ruest rails against the reduction of humanity to the state, be it monarchic, communist, or democratic. He questions the wisdom of committing to a political order from which one could not choose to withdraw. And he implies the rush to democracy is yet another manifestation of the centuries-long, repeatedly tragic desire for German unity.3 The journal’s epigraph and title are drawn from Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (The Individual and Its Possession, 1845), a book published by the anarchist philosopher Max Stirner (1806–56) in the ferment of the revolutions that engulfed Europe in 1848.4 Ruest was devoted to Stirner’s ideas. Friedlaender and many of the contributors to the journal were far less committed.5 Nevertheless, the frequent appeals to Stirner in Der Einzige, as well as to Friedrich Nietzsche, whose philosophy Ruest considered closely aligned with Stirner’s thought, allowed Ruest to attract a body of followers who shared an abiding resistance to reification and the sense skepticism had undermined the vitality and value of culture. Such was the context for the 33-year-old Hilberseimer’s first published essay, “Schöpfung und Entwicklung” (“Creation and Development”), printed directly after Ruest’s inaugural editorial.6 Through the content of his editorials and the publication of Hilberseimer’s essays alongside his own more philosophical statements, Ruest conjoins Hilberseimer’s effort to liberate creation from the restraints of modern materialism with his program of individualist anarchism. In the coming weeks, Hilberseimer publishes essays in the second and third issues of the journal, and would publish two more in March. Hilberseimer does not mention Stirner in these texts, nor elsewhere. But the basic historical schema and principles of Stirner’s philosophy contribute to a worldview shared by Hilberseimer and his Der Einzige associates, with whom nothing resonates more than the critique of German liberalism: the promise of freedom had been so corrupted over the course of the nineteenth century that it had led millions to their deaths. Liberalism had become a form of illiberalism as the aristocracy and a compliant bourgeoisie shaped all aspects of society in their own interest.7 Stirner’s philosophy had attacked this pseudo-liberalism, looking to demolish the impediments European societies had placed in the way of self-realization. Ruest’s book on Stirner appears in 1906, following the resurrection of Stirner’s thought by the Scottish-German anarchist John Henry Mackay (1864–1933) and the explosion of interest in Nietzsche in the 1890s. It contributes to the intermingling of Stirner’s and Nietzsche’s philosophies as progressive German intellectuals are increasingly expressing muted dissatisfaction with Wilhelmine society.8 With Kurt Hiller, Ruest assists Franz Pfemfert (1879–1954) found the literary and political journal Die Aktion (Action) in 1911, contributing to the prominence of Stirner’s ideas among German Expressionists. Der Einzige, which took up the graphic format of Die Aktion, begins where the prewar avant-garde left off.9 Its attacks on the militarism, authoritarianism,

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nationalism, materialism, cronyism, historicism, and paternalism of Wilhelmine society and its Nietzschean embrace of vitalist aesthetic expression against bourgeois norms were contiguous with the progressive thought of the previous decade. But intervening events had radically changed the reception of Expressionist politics. What had been a bold, albeit measured, rebellion against an oppressive regime found itself confronted with an apparently open prospect, even as visions of communism and democracy were compelling action. The vocation of interpreting nineteenth-century philosophy and prevailing practices of cultural critique now seemed solipsistic. Sociopolitical flux had invested intellectual and artistic activity with newfound urgency. The evident necessity for collective action forced many Expressionists, hitherto engaged in commentary or aesthetic rebellion, to reconsider their political postures. The reconciliation of theory and practice, of the individual and the collective, of culture and politics, and of the intellectual and society were no longer abstract concerns but real and pressing problems.10 Der Einzige stumbles within the year, beneath the financial pressures of postwar inflation and over discord between its protagonists.11 Differences between the editors and conflicts between Ruest and his contributors evidenced tensions affecting the trajectory of German culture in the first years after the war, including the content, course, and form of Hilberseimer’s work.

Spiritual Materialism Constituting his foundational statement on art and culture, it is possible the five essays Hilberseimer publishes in Der Einzige in the first months of 1919 were conceived together. The first three, “Creation and Development,” “Umwertung in der Kunst” (“Revaluation in Art”), and “Form und Individuum” (“Form and Individual”), surely were, published in consecutive issues over the span of just three weeks. “Der Naturalismus und das Primitive in der Kunst” (“Naturalism and the Primitive in Art”) and “Kunst und Wissen” (“Art and Knowledge”) appeared within the next two months.12 Written in a context Hilberseimer describes as the “collapse of the European world” and hopes is the dawn of international community, Hilberseimer’s essays in Der Einzige assert the fundamental equality of global and historic cultures.13 Europeans had perpetuated an erroneous understanding of culture, Hilberseimer scolds. Valuing development, which they equate with technical advancement, they dismiss the artworks of non-European societies as “primitive.” Yet, despite this desire for technological achievement, they hold up ancient Greece and Rome as the height of civilization and imitate their artworks in a self-conscious effort to attain beauty. They forget that the art they celebrate had its origin in primal creativity. They make art into an analytical method by praising archaeological felicity and a technique by favoring naturalistic imitation. Europeans mistake the

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possession of knowledge and skill for culture because they confuse a capacity to record and effect the physical world for a unified spiritual understanding of nature and creation. In the Der Einzige essays, Hilberseimer argues art is the material expression of a spiritual idea, for a people, humanity, and eternity. Despite its great diversity, all art is born of a universal capacity for creativity, even as the works of different times and places are independent and original. Creativity is not born of detached reflection on reality, but from the compulsion to invest existence with meaning. Art expresses understanding in the face of chaos, embodying the organizing metaphysics of a people. Creative form is the expression of an idea, a statement of self-conception, and therefore a means of self-realization. All cultures rise and decline in a struggle between will and material. Their summits—the highpoints of style—are constituted by the greatest correspondence between meaning and form; but their decay, the waning of culture, comes as form and virtuosity are used unconditionally and the significance of culture is questioned, even lost. Architecture, as an abstract art and the product of society as a whole, is the clearest indication of a society’s metaphysical strength or weakness. The cultures Europeans call “primitive” were commonly societies with a unified worldview like those that once existed in Europe but were gradually undermined by the skepticism that, seeded in ancient Greece, took root in the Renaissance. The secularization that came with the growth of humanist doubt progressively liberated creation from the bonds of the church but drove a wedge between the conception of the arts and the inquisition of the sciences. Creativity was no longer whole—analytical and synthetic faculties were separated—nor guided by a common metaphysics. Moreover, in the interests of church and state, the Renaissance fascination with antiquity and the self-conscious idealism of Enlightenment Romanticism were used to fetter humanist liberties with a classicizing and naturalistic ideology. Art and science were bound to material despotism. The circulating forms of aesthetic and empirical knowledge were drained of spiritual significance as the indigenous value of culture and the liberal coinages of humanism were replaced by the paper promises of a stultifying capitalist civilization. Hilberseimer cast his worldview against the myopic intellectualism of modern European civilization in which accidental impressions rather than essential expressions were the expected product of art and science. The disciplined analysis and imitation of historical and natural fragments, rather than a synthetic conception of the whole, had become celebrated activity. Creativity—which gives validity to work but departs from expectations and accepted knowledge —was being questioned. Distributed through the conduits of state education, learning had become formulaic and knowledge rote, producing not a vital community but a deadened mass indignantly convinced of their superiority. Rather than cultivate imagination and curiosity, modern civilization rewards commodified beauty and

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specialized training; it replaces collective feeling with the stability of convention, the comfort of expectations, and the luxury of convenience. Civilization takes its own laws and its own representations as natural, forgets art and science are symbolizations, blinds itself in superficial devotion to an assumed reality. When a vital culture looks to the constitution of reality to create lawful works of art and science, Hilberseimer believes it adapts its imagination and curiosity to the world, humanizing what can never be fully grasped by investing material existence with transcendental import. Creativity, the primal capacity for expression, is always innately present, available to be exercised at any moment.14 The great surveys of non-European culture that emerged in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries did not just bring to view the insights of societies hitherto overlooked or unseen by Europeans, they contributed to the revival of the intuition that could give rise to a post-“European” future. Hilberseimer sought the re-affirmation of creativity and the re-creation of community. Freed of the stultifying expectations of modern European civilization, Hilberseimer believed a renewed engagement with the material world would inaugurate a new kind of culture, a new aesthetics, and a new rationality: a spiritual materialism that would invest knowledge and technical capacity with creative significance and “absorb and annihilate capitalism.”15

Individualist Anarchism In “Creation and Development,” the first in this series of essays, Hilberseimer suggests renewed community—the corollary of a reinvigorated spiritual materialism—would be the product of individual creativity (a belated realization of modern [Renaissance] agency): Its [skepticism’s] consequence: the abrogation of community, its replacement with the mass [of individuals]. But the gain: the development of individuals [Einzelnen] who succeed in creating the new community again. What the Renaissance intended, but at the time had to forego, because of the confusion of the essential with the inessential, may be rendered possible today. There are indications of it. Perhaps the coming new community may absorb and destroy capitalism insofar as it finally learns that acquisition is not an end in itself—as has, unfortunately, been assumed until now—but is only a means to an end. And the purpose of life: humanity. Perhaps the new form of existence will be found that will put limits on material and help the spiritual regain its rights.16 This sense of a revitalized spiritual materialism is at the core of Ruest’s philosophy, inextricable from his interpretation of Stirner and his commitment to individualist anarchism. In Max Stirner. Leben—Weltanschauung—Vermächtnis (Max Stirner.

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Life—Worldview—Legacy, 1906), Ruest presents Stirner’s call for self-realization as the crucial inflection point in nineteenth-century German thought between a naturalistic and materialistic rejection of idealism and Nietzsche’s affirmative assertion of human will as a vitalist form of practical reason.17 Eschewing the fancies of idealism, Stirner grounds metaphysics without miring it in materialism. In his principal work, The Individual and its Possession, Stirner offers a theory of human development built around two fundamental transitions. In the first: with the endeavor to understand the forces that lie behind appearances, the child’s empirical comprehension passes into the youthful constructions of “intelligence.” Original insights are formalized a posteriori as concepts that thenceforth govern action a priori. Childlike access to the immediacy of experience is lost. The manipulation of objects is replaced by the creation of thoughts. A tension develops between expansive self-realization (an internal spirit) and self-imposed inhibition (an external spirit); ideal conceptions prejudice action as we construct a perspective that looks back upon ourselves.18 Stirner often equates the tyranny imposed on us by others with this self-imposed oppression. Beyond this tension between interests and ideals, Stirner outlines a second transformation, between the self-conscious youth and the pragmatic adult—a transition from abstract to embodied interest in which we realize our reified concepts are egoistically selfconstructed. Stirner maps this theory of individual development onto cultural development. In the first transition, which Stirner associates with both Socratic skepticism and the rise of Christianity, “The Ancients” reject the immanent truth of appearances and embrace the conceptualization of eternal concepts. In the second, “The Moderns” loosen conceptual bonds through Humanism and then in the Reformation erode formalized intelligence with “the love of Man, the consciousness of freedom, ‘selfconsciousness.’”19 Previously reified concepts are realized to be self-constructions; Christianity delivers “the true man” and in effect dissolves itself.20 However, writing in the early 1840s, Stirner felt freedom remained only a promise. So long as the dualism of mind and body remains, the spirit is believed to be the truer part of humanity. Self-sacrifice for a higher concept (ethics, religion, patriotism, law, etc.) perpetuates dualism and retards humanity. Stirner parodies the Enlightenment split between rationalism and romanticism: the enlightened thinker believes truth sacred and eternal; self-realization, misunderstood as devotion to a higher calling, remains “self-dissolution.”21 “[I]f you cannot transform yourself each instant, you feel yourself fettered in slavery and benumbed,” Stirner writes.22 Devoted to essences, you are possessed by ideas rather than the possessor of ideas—a loss of will Stirner frequently presents with mechanical metaphors of the kind common to Romantic critique: “you have wheels in your head!”23 We should be determined by neither body nor mind, appetites nor concepts, open to newly realize ourselves in the present. “You are yourself a higher being than you are, and surpass yourself, […] you are not only

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creature, but likewise your creator,” Stirner writes, making the kind of claim Ruest will consider proto-Nietzschean.24 On the eve of the 1848 revolts, Stirner indicts the state as the principal impediment to the full realization of self-possession. Ignorant of true freedom, the bourgeois subject devotes themselves to the nation in disinterested subservience.25 Bourgeois virtues had become enslaving morals, propagated by regimes of power and imposed by subjects on themselves. Stirner rejects both the prescribed equality of communist egalitarianism and the democratic forfeiture of personal sovereignty (the latter, he thinks, commits the individual to the majority and the present to the past). To political and social liberalism, Stirner contrasts what he calls “humane liberalism,” born of the expressive, creative, mutable, self-conscious, and unprejudiced subject. Rather than offering a definition of human being a priori, Stirner understands each of us to be vital and intrinsically singular, but thereby no less human in general.26 Being human does not require meeting certain standards or overcoming limitations, but realizing one’s unique limits by ridding oneself of “everything alien.”27 Liberation and freedom are ultimately negative terms, always unrealizable desires. I can never be unburdened by reality. “Ownness, on the contrary, is my whole being and existence, it is I myself ” Stirner enthuses, “[…] My own I am at all times and under all circumstances.”28 Absolute self-possession constitutes for Stirner the ultimate possibility of a liberal society.29 No longer governed by prejudicial ideals, or driven by appetites and self-interest, our access to experience and our interaction with others have an immediacy that is uniquely self-affirming. “Only when you are single can you have intercourse with each other as what you are,” he asserts.30 The humane liberal, Stirner writes, exercises their (self-)critical faculties, not for themselves or the state, but “for humanity and its progress.”31 For Stirner, self-possession and self-composure just are the possession and composition of humanity. But for Karl Marx (1818–83) and Friedrich Engels (1820–95)—who had been members of the small Hegelian [Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)] circle Die Freien (The Free Ones) with Stirner— Stirner’s book exemplified the characteristic naïvety of early-nineteenth-century German socialism. Their withering critique of his thinking constitutes the greater part of Die deutsche Ideologie (The German Ideology, 1845) and plays an important role in their development of historical materialism. Marx and Engels argue Stirner’s teleological formulations abstract history to the point of absurdity, ideologically dissociating the subject from its social and material context.32 Stirner’s bourgeois individualism ludicrously supposes a transformation in consciousness is sufficient to effect social transformation. Stirner “forgets,” they write of his efforts to overcome (Hegelian) idealism, “that he has only destroyed the fantastic and spectral form assumed by the idea of ‘Fatherland’ etc. […;] he has still not touched these ideas, insofar as they express actual relations.”33

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Beyond Materialism Although The German Ideology is not published until 1932, the politician and theorist Eduard Bernstein (1850–1932) prints portions of Marx and Engels’ critique of Stirner in his Dokumente des Sozialismus (Documents of Socialism) in 1903 and 1904.34 In his defense of Stirner two years later, Ruest argues Marx and Engels’ perspective is incommensurable with Stirner’s. Stirner’s individual is neither Hegel’s “spirit” nor the product of empirical forces as Marx and Engels suggest. “When we are told I am only the product of this or that economic cause,” Ruest asks, “What does that fundamentally have to do with my present inner feeling of being?”35 Ruest thinks Stirner’s argument that your stomach ache is your own no matter what society you find yourself in shows the inviolable nature of self-possession.36 Stirner’s—and Ruest’s—concept of the individual is just the embodied experience of human existence independent of social conditions. But it was central to Ruest’s argument that while Stirner had turned material existence against idealism, he did not wholly reduce human being to physiology. “[I]t is not positively asserted that only the body creates thinking,” Ruest writes of Stirner’s book, “it is only said that the spiritual never exists without the ‘person,’ therefore that mind and body always correspond to one another.”37 So too, Stirner retains metaphysics insofar as his assertions about the individual are claims about the ego in general. Most importantly, Stirner’s rejection of external determination is not reducible to negative critique. Stirner asserts our inherent capacity for self-legislation. Ruest felt Marxism, bogged down with material concerns, ignores this ever-present sovereignty. “[I]nstead of the outstanding individual,” Ruest complains, Marxism “moves the milieu and economic conditions to the foreground.”38 Of particular importance for Ruest’s interpretation of Stirner was Albert Lange’s (1828–75) Geschichte des Materialismus und Kritik seiner Bedeutung in der Gegenwart (History of Materialism and Critique of Its Significance in the Present, 1866).39 Lange affirms the great value of materialism for empirical understanding but, comprehending its limitations, asserts the need to return to and complete Immanuel Kant’s (1724–1804) epistemological project. In a passage central to Ruest’s philosophy, Lange laments that “a second, positive part” was not included in Stirner’s book, “since, out of the boundless ego, I can also recreate as my will and my representation any kind of idealism.” Lange interprets Stirner’s suggestion “the will of the masses appears as the basic force of human being” as the “flip side” of Arthur Schopenhauer’s (1788–1860) pessimism.40 Schopenhauer locates the origins of will in the body (desire); stresses the irreducibility of reality to concepts; views conceptualization as concealing the remorseless tragedy of human existence (our indifferent will-to-live despite miserable suffering); and believes the driving forces of history are predominantly “enmity, appetite and dominion” rather than “freedom, dignity and comfort.”

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He  transforms the Hegelian “idea” into “desire,” the Humanist into “a helpless puppet of the will,” and history into fatalism.41 As the inversion of Hegel’s absolute idealism, Schopenhauer’s philosophy embodies the point of absolute materialism that, following Lange, Ruest thinks Stirner inflects.42 (Under the influence of eastern religion) Schopenhauer suggests the best we can hope for, thrown as we are into the midst of suffering, is a (Buddhistic) negation of the determinations of natural will. Through disinterested aesthetic creation and experience, compassionate sociality, and an ascetic resignation to existence (a willed will-lessness) we can momentarily attain limited insight into our natures.43 The possibility for this objective indifference depends on Schopenhauer’s claim the individual is the two-sided nexus of physiological will and psychological representation, the former natural and the latter transcendental. Only the individual has immediate knowledge—the sense—of will as objectification (such as the feeling of voluntarily raising an arm), on the basis of which the will in others (and other objects), and thereby our fundamental indifference from them, is inferred.44 In Ruest’s view: that Schopenhauer takes freedom from natural will (albeit negative) as possible in any degree at all, opens the prospect of positive freedom: the self-conscious capacity, despite natural suffering, to “legislate” our attitudes and behavior. While, in Schopenhauer’s thinking, the highest aesthetic and ethical achievement would negate our egoistic nature, Ruest emphasizes that Schopenhauer’s ethics is dependent on individual intuition and decision, and that his philosophy harbors the possibility of an affirmation of will without which his emphasis on an ethics of negation would lack significance.45

The Individual and Society The final third of Ruest’s book on Stirner considers this affirmative will in the philosophy of Stirner and Nietzsche. Both claim the ancient affirmation of life had been eclipsed in Europe, initially by Socrates (as the founder of an idealist ethics) and ultimately in the victory of Christianity. Both claim the resurrection of vital culture promised by the Renaissance had been thwarted by the Reformation.46 Both see dualism as the debilitating ruse of idealist faith.47 Both reaffirm our intuition, convinced of the rectitude of “the basic psychophysiological nature of man.”48 And both, in Ruest’s view, are “naturalists and positivists,” who recognize the value of plumbing reality without prejudice, but who identify “a metaphysical core” at the heart of that truth.49 Nevertheless, Ruest does not think Nietzsche’s philosophy is reducible to Stirner’s.50 Stirner does not contemplate the difficulties of gaining or exercising self-possession, only the problem of recognizing our extant power.51 For Nietzsche it is also necessary to consider the question: “free for what?” Stirner remains indifferent to questions of good and evil, and maintains a somewhat fatalistic commitment to the innate wisdom of the individual.52 In his

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idea of “the eternal return of the same,” Nietzsche reintroduces the moral question of what one does with free will.53 Moreover, in his notion of the Übermensch and his Darwinian (Charles Darwin, 1809–82) commitment to life, Nietzsche emphasizes self-development, an idea only latent in Stirner’s recognition of the self-legislative capacity to willfully change one’s constitution.54 Nietzsche supposes we should work to increase rather than just assert our power.55 Where Stirner neutralizes history, Nietzsche reclaims it. Nietzsche’s aesthetic disposition leads him to take the feeling of the exercise and expansion of power as a moral good.56 He thus rejects altruistic instincts as a slave-morality undermining the full realization of individual capacities, even if this idea of the good would ultimately benefit all.57 Nietzsche sees the complete grasp of free will as a future prospect. Where Stirner writes of power, Nietzsche writes of the “will to power.”58 In his discussion of Schopenhauer, Stirner, and Nietzsche, then, Ruest affiliates three assertions of individualism with differing psychophysiological emphases, all stemming from a materialist rather than idealist conception of human being. Schopenhauer’s ethical individual is all but slavishly altruistic; Nietzsche emphasizes self-development. Ruest locates Stirner at the neutral turning point between altruism and egoism.59 While Schopenhauer is sickened by our selfish natures, yet can only fancy an antidote, and Nietzsche affirms our egoistic drive toward moral ends, Stirner indifferently holds the subjective and objective in perpetual interrelated suspension.60 Instead of returning to Kant, as Lange had recommended, Ruest takes Stirner as the dawn of a new metaphysics erected on the foundation of the natural sciences, comparing his philosophy to the epistemic breach of David Hume’s (1711–76) skepticism.61 In effect, Ruest argues, Stirner begets Nietzsche as Hume gives way to Kant. From Stirner’s self-recognition and affirmation come Nietzsche’s aesthetic self-creation and objective command.62

Tragic Culture In the first issue of Der Einzige, Ruest recasts his thoughts on Stirner and Nietzsche in terms of an equation between philosophy and art. He emphasizes the importance of the aesthetic sense of Nietzsche’s “will to power”: “The work of art, which has become master of its material in an absolute way, is nothing but triumph and joy.” It is not the nature of the content that gives the work its quality, but the absolute sovereignty of the artist over this content. Just as “the most powerful artist only has to attain and assert one point of view towards his object and material,” the philosopher makes themselves “the Archimedean point of the world” from which they grasp its truth. Like the artist, the (natural) philosopher must learn to “balance the true [… to] hold it in suspension [… to] dance, to float with the truth.” Truth, for Ruest, be it an artistic, philosophic, or scientific representation, is “a consummate work of art,” embodying an openness to the

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world, a synthesis—“that product which is completely dissimilar to the sum of the parts”—born of creative action, the consummation of which he compares to release in Shakespearean tragedy: “a recognition, a penetration of something entirely luminous, fine and clear: victory, overcoming, exhilaration, triumph.”63 Ruest positions his essay on the relationship between Stirner and Nietzsche directly following Hilberseimer’s “Creation and Development.” His claim for the sovereignty of the artist implicitly glosses Hilberseimer’s vision for the creative renewal of spiritual community. In the conclusion of “Creation and Development,” in an obvious reference to Nietzsche’s Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik (The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music, 1872), Hilberseimer suggests Nietzsche broached the possibility of a new aesthetics and a new community by resurrecting the ancient (and Renaissance) promise of life-affirming art. Ruest echoes Hilberseimer in his commentary on Stirner and Nietzsche, citing The Birth of Tragedy as evidence for Nietzsche’s deep artistic knowledge and profound aesthetic intuition.64 Bracketed by Ruest’s call (against democracy and communism) for the “The Last Revolution” and Ruest’s equation between the mastery of the artist and the individualism of Nietzsche and Stirner, Hilberseimer’s effort to liberate creation from the fetters of modern materialism was embedded within Ruest’s program of individualist anarchism. Although Hilberseimer offers his presentiment of a post-capitalist society in primarily aesthetic and cultural terms, the profound political-economic ramifications he associates with a liberated creativity clearly resonate with Ruest’s conception of aesthetic sovereignty. When, as his American student Jacques Brownson later recalls, Hilberseimer refers to his worldview as “The Republic of Hilberseimer,” he is asserting a commitment to objectivity, selfrealization, and integrity (unburdened by preconceptions). “Ja, in the Republic of Hilberseimer, when you’re born you get a doctor’s degree,” Brownson paraphrases his mentor, “Then if you work real hard you can get rid of it.”65 Hilberseimer’s critique of modern European society conceives mutual, uninhibited, creative selfrealization, as the very constitution of community. The fourth in the sequence of texts constituting the first issue of Der Einzige is a statement by Nietzsche himself, an extract from the second volume of Menschliches, Allzumenschliches (Human, All Too Human, 1879), in which Nietzsche rejects the notion a standing army is justified by self-defense, arguing this “presupposition” of “inhumanity” impedes “The means to true peace.”66 Spiritual materialism and consummate (self-)creativity are advanced as a philosophy of life in the pages of Der Einzige under the banner of “tragic culture.” As editors of the journal and its supplement, Ruest and Friedlaender cosign a manifesto in the tenth issue asserting the “lofty goal” of the publication is the realization of “that tragic culture, desired by the best since [Friedrich] Schiller [1759–1805], which had its greatest prophet in Nietzsche.”67 Nietzsche defined “tragic culture” in The Birth of Tragedy as capturing the ancient artistic spirit

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he felt all but lost to the modern world. There and in the first and second of his Untimely Meditations, written in the midst and immediate aftermath of the Franco-Prussian war, Nietzsche makes “tragic culture” the fulcrum of a withering critique of modern science and art, an attack on the contemporary state of German society and its Bildungsphilister (“learned philistines”) that clearly resonates in Hilberseimer’s criticism a half century later in the wake of yet another FrancoGerman conflict.68

The Aesthetic Foundation of Sovereignty In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche challenges the influential characterization of ancient Greek culture established by the art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–68) a century earlier.69 Winckelmann, who had taken up the idea that art attains beauty by imitating the beautiful in nature, advocates the modern imitation of ancient Greek art with the supposition its beauty exemplifies the unequaled freedom and joyousness of Greek society. Winckelmann’s thesis renewed hand-wringing comparisons between modern and ancient culture, while his efforts to systematically study ancient art contributed to the impetus of German philhellenism, the gravitational center of the rigorous and specialized scholarship (Wissenschaft) that would become the pride of nineteenth-century German academic culture and the focus of Nietzsche’s devastating critique.70 Winckelmann argues the uninhibited exercise of body and mind, born of the temperate Mediterranean climate and the liberal sociopolitical conditions of Hellenic society, is embodied in the athletic figures and virtuous, soulful gestures of its sculpture, enhanced by the “noble simplicity and quiet grandeur” of its artistry.71 Thus, he describes the sculpture of what he takes to be the highpoint of Greek art, from the mid-fifth to the late-fourth century (BCE) (the period from Phidias to Praxiteles to Lysippos).72 Winckelmann argues the Apollo Belvedere— which, due to belief in its perfection, he erroneously supposes a creation of this period—more than an imitation of nature and the genial animation of matter, appeals to a religious ideal: The mind of a rationally thinking being has an innate inclination toward and desire to rise above matter into the mental realm of concepts, and its true satisfaction is the production of new and refined ideas. The great Greek artists […] sought to overcome the hard objectivity of matter and, if it had been possible, to animate it. Their noble effort to achieve this even in the earlier periods of art gave rise to the fable of Pygmalion’s statue. For from their hands came the objects of sacred veneration, which, to inspire veneration, had to appear to be images taken from higher forms.73

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Moreover, Winckelmann demotes, according to his theory, the art of other periods, such as “the dark hyperboles and lurid dramatic effects” motivating the tragedies of the early fifth-century artist Aeschylus, which, in his view, exemplify the immaturity of pre-Socratic Greek culture.74 By contrast, Nietzsche holds up this pre-Socratic culture as the pinnacle of art, not by asserting its conceptual ideality, but by arguing the tragedy of Aeschylus affirms life in the midst of irrational human suffering. The core of Nietzsche’s thesis is the assertion all art is born of two antithetical “instincts” or “elements,” which he represents by the Greek gods Apollo and Dionysus.75 He respectively connects these impulses to the “art of the image-maker or sculptor” and “the imageless art of music” and identifies their combination (as drama and music) in the art of tragedy.76 Moreover, he gathers a cloud of extended associations around each. Among other things, Dionysus is the god of nature, fertility, and wine and Apollo is the god of civilization, law, and light. In Nietzsche’s argument: the ecstatic Dionysus embodies an immersive disorder, chaos, instability, and boundlessness and the dreamwrapt Apollo stands for contemplative order, clarity, stability, and boundedness.77 Behind these broad distinctions lies Schopenhauer’s argument that our conceptualizations are illusions that one can only hope to defer by aesthetic absorption. Nietzsche describes this latter state as our release from the Apollonian veil of symbolization into Dyonisian self-abandonment, an intoxicated oneness with the oceanic chorus of being.78 Moreover, following Schopenhauer’s assertion of its particular capacity to directly express the vital will underlying our intellectual representations, Nietzsche reserves special status for music. In Nietzsche’s discussion of Greek theater, the musical mood of the chorus is Dionysian; the visual and literary images of the actors and their dialogue Apollonian.79 The core of Nietzsche’s argument is the claim Greek theater underwent a profound transformation in the late-fifth century (BCE) when the complex of interactions between the Dionysian and Apollonian elements of tragedy gives way to an emphasis on the latter. Nietzsche argues the chorus in the Attic tragedy of the early- and mid-fifth century, in the works of Aeschylus and Sophocles, stirs the enchanted audience to empathetically experience the actor appearing on stage as a figure emerging from their orchestral unity (from the “Dionysiac mass”) as a “perfection” of themselves.80 Hilberseimer quotes the relevant passage in Der Einzige: “Now the dithyrambic chorus is given the task of investing the mood of the audience with Dionysiac excitement to such a pitch that, when the tragic hero appears on the stage, they see not some grotesquely masked human being but a visionary figure, born, as it were, of their own ecstasy.”81 When Euripides diminishes the role of the (lyric) chorus in his (epic) drama, he dissipates this unity between absorbed audience and actor, encouraging a more naturalistic, spectacular, and calculated theatricality, consistent with what Nietzsche—after Kant’s critical philosophy and Schopenhauer’s anti-idealism—takes to be Socrates’ optimistic

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emphasis on the capacity of reason to improve reality and society.82 Rather than an imminent experience of vital wisdom, the intellectualized (moral) life is an object of pity or emulation. The mythic gives way to (religious) contemplation.83 Instinctive action and natural pathos are subjugated to an Apollonian (and proto-Christian) ideal, epitomized for Nietzsche by Socrates’ calm in the face of death. Art becomes a matter of detached serene intellection rather than immediate aesthetic experience.84 As Hilberseimer puts it in “Creation and Development,” Nietzsche breaks the hold of Apollonian classicism on European art by resurrecting the complex interaction of Dionysian and Apollonian elements in pre-Socratic tragedy: “In place of the greatly overestimated Apollonian side of Greek art,” Hilberseimer writes, “he [Nietzsche] directed attention toward the greatly underestimated and disregarded Dionysian; [and] shocked the world with the barbarism of the supposedly aestheticizing Greeks.”85 Nietzsche unearthed the primitive vitalism of ancient culture—its capacity to encompass the breadth and strength of ecstasy and suffering—which had been reduced to a one-sided caricature in Winckelmann’s Apollonian aesthetics and the idealizing rationality of SocraticPlatonic philosophy.86 With its musical rather than dramatic poetics, Nietzsche suggests Attic tragedy places emphasis on the aesthetic appearance (the coming into being) and undoing of phenomena rather than their ethical significance and thereby shows the dependence of the latter upon the former. Moreover, Nietzsche argues the suppression of this aesthetic emphasis on the individuation of the primordial chorus inaugurates a focus on intellection (the Alexandrian-Socratic) and vision (the Hellenic-artistic) in Western culture.87 Preoccupied with their scientific and artistic representations of the world, Europeans, “shrouded in a veil of illusion,” had lost touch with the ceaseless flux of life, “for only as an aesthetic phenomenon,” Nietzsche writes, “is existence and the world eternally justified.”88

Cultural Critique and Aesthetic Indifference In The Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche sought to shake Europe from its dreamworld of pastoral images and reawaken it to the primal creative will of (our) nature. Unimaginative visions were the corollary of faith in “correcting the world through knowledge,” of the inability to grasp the world beyond established analytical and conceptual frames.89 Even the powers of industry could do no more than routinely execute isolated tasks. The optimism of science was rapidly becoming “tragic resignation and a need for art.”90 But an emphasis on effect had reduced art to cheerful and superficial imitation—an harmonious and reassuring “tone-

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painting.”91 Europe had imprisoned itself beneath a heaped pyramid of learned literature and the inherited forms of great works, such that “the spectator no longer senses myth at all, only great fidelity to nature and the imitative skills of the artist.”92 This diagnosis is at the core of Hilberseimer’s criticism, as is Nietzsche’s prescription. Nietzsche argues the resurrection of undeceived wisdom, an aesthetic sense of the world, is the path to a new society. He describes “tragic culture” as a “pessimism of strength”—“beyond good and evil”—that faces the absurdity and suffering of life without falling into resignation or fearful escapism.93 Nietzsche’s discussion of Greek tragedy is an effort to reinvest European culture with the mythic capacity to give life sense.94 Calling attention to the “wondrous [Dionysian-Apollonian] self-division” of Greek tragedy, Nietzsche argues “dissonance” gives us the sense of “what is meant by the justification of the world as an aesthetic phenomenon.” In “dissonance”— which belies expectant longings—we confront the “eternal and original power of art which summons the entire world of [individual] appearances into existence.” Dissonant creation “reveals to us the playful construction and demolition of the world of individuality as an outpouring of primal pleasure and delight, […] the force that shapes the world [… like a] playing child […] who builds up piles of sand only to knock them down again.”95 While Christianity presumes solace in the afterworld, science a better future, and Apollonian art an idea of beauty, a tragic aesthetics indifferently embraces the creative and destructive tumult of the world.96 In Nietzsche’s later works, the aesthetic indifference underlying “tragic culture” evolves into the concepts: “become who you are,” the subtitle of his autobiographical Ecce Homo (1888), and “amor fati” (love of fate).97 The recognition our judgments are often born of prejudice, Nietzsche writes in Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (The Gay Science, 1882), requires us to interrogate ourselves about their (often external) origin. This self-critique fosters “human beings who are new, unique, incomparable, who give themselves laws, who create themselves. To that end we must become the best learners and discoverers of everything that is lawful and necessary in the world,” Nietzsche asserts, suggesting self-realization requires unequivocal clarity about what is essential to life.98 “My formula for human greatness is amor fati,” he states in Ecce Homo, “Not just to tolerate necessity, still less to conceal it […] but to love it.”99 Self-realization (“a great and rare art!”) is a devotion to self-destruction and clear-eyed self-construction—a fearless willingness to perpetually engage existence as it is, imbuing it and oneself with “an artistic plan.”100 The aesthetic indifference of “tragic culture” is Nietzsche’s primordial insight into the motivation of the will. Not the Olympian ideal of a perfected physical and social milieu, as Winckelmann asserts, the work of Nietzsche’s self-creating artist is a struggle with life—the vital expression of a fate that, after Schopenhauer and Darwin, could no longer be understood as idealization, but only as the eternal effort to invest the flux of reality with a law.101

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Neutralized Polarization In the context of the enthusiasm for Nietzsche in the first two decades of the century, Hilberseimer’s claim that Nietzsche’s philosophy constituted a fundamental turning point in the course of European history is not surprising. But his choice of the word “Polarität” (polarity)—“the young Nietzsche discovered the polarity (Dionysian-Apollonian) of Greek art”—to capture Nietzsche’s accomplishment is particular.102 It is most certainly a reference to the philosophy of Der Einzige editor Salamo Friedlaender, which gives a carefully defined praxis of neutralized polarization a central role in the revival of creativity. Friedlaender’s Schöpferische Indifferenz (Creative Indifference, 1918), usually considered his magnum opus, is published the year before Friedlaender joins Ruest’s project as editor of the satirical supplement to Der Einzige.103 Long in development, and substantially complete by 1915, the majority of the book’s content had been disseminated in essays that were “a ubiquitous feature of Expressionist periodicals” in the decade before its publication.104 Friedlaender, who has been described as the philosopher of Expressionism, wrote for both Walden’s Der Sturm (The Storm) and Pfemfert’s Die Aktion—the movement’s most prominent organs (Pfemfert dedicated the first issue of Die Aktion to Friedlaender in 1913)—and participated in associated groups, such as Hiller’s Neopathetisches Cabaret, Cabaret Gnu, and Der neue Club.105 His wit was well-recognized among the progressive artists and intellectuals—such as Hilberseimer—who regularly gathered in the cafés of Berlin. The ideas Friedlaender expresses in these forums develop thoughts initially posed in his dissertation on Kant and Schopenhauer, but first presents in a substantial way in Friedrich Nietzsche: Eine intellektuelle Biographie (Friedrich Nietzsche: An Intellectual Biography, 1911).106 As much commentary as exposition, Friedlaender’s “biography” presents Nietzsche’s oeuvre as a step toward his own philosophy of “indifference.”107 By “indifference” Friedlaender means not only what we usually take the word to convey in English (“no particular interest”; “neither good nor bad”) but also, following Romantic philosophy, “non-difference” (i.e., in-difference), “identity” or “oneness.”108 He uses the term to emphasize the singularity (the generative substance) of existence and our own “indifference” from the universe.109 He argues philosophy is not just an effort to understand one’s position relative to others; it is the “motive” to gain absolute “orientation” to “infinity.”110 By “infinity,” Friedlaender means existence without formalization, spatialization, temporalization, or objectification—those inherently finite (Apollonian) manifestations that by attempting to grasp and fix the continuity of reality ineluctably schematize and veil it.111 Rather than moving, as Plato did, from idea toward embodiment, Friedlaender thinks Nietzsche offers a “reverse idealism” born of his “reverence for naked

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reality.”112 Unlike Kant’s philosophy, which opens up a “pathos of distance” between us and the world, Nietzsche begins with immediate experience.113 And because reality is always in a state of transformation, Nietzsche embraces chance and becoming. In place of “Kant’s intelligible guarantees,” Nietzsche takes up empirical experimentation: “once again value belongs in the midst of reality” Friedlaender emphasizes.114 With Nietzsche, philosophical insight into the universe is born of our vital involvement in the flux of the world, with a “dithyrambic feeling of the immeasurable.”115 Embracing this vitalism, Friedlaender argues philosophy begins with our personal aesthetic experience of the immense continuity of the universe—“one grasps one’s own being infinitesimally” he asserts—even as he acknowledges the difficulty of coming to grips with our indifference from the world.116 “Without value, reality would be unreal,” Friedlaender reflects, “And yet, precisely because of this experience of value, […] it has become very difficult to experience reality unimaginatively.”117 Since the unity of existence can only be experienced, anything (any concept, object, reflection) we make of it can only be a division of reality—a “polarization”—which Friedlaender describes, in Creative Indifference, as “the emergence of difference from the in itself identical.”118 Moreover, because any assertion of value inevitably supposes its opposite (e.g., good supposes bad, to give Nietzsche’s example in Beyond Good and Evil), every valuation is in itself both polar and relative, gaining its absolute correspondence with the world by virtue of our infinitesimal indifference from—our pointed attachment to—being.119 “Without the attachment of the fulcrum, no pair of scales can function” Friedlaender explains, “without the self-discovery and creative activity of [our] personal indifference [from the world], there is no precise and orderly existence.”120 Friedlaender uses this notion of polarization to avoid the problem of dualism. He understands our self-conception as the polarization that allows us to imagine we are apart from, even as we remain a part of, the world. Rather than our self-definition continuing to be a source of angst—the sense of an unbridgeable gap between subject and object that so concerned Kant— Friedlaender argues our inherent awareness of our primary indifference from the universe is fundamental to our self-worth and creative power.121 It wards off skepticism with a “feeling of truth,” our sense for the correspondence between conception and reality.122 In this way, Friedlaender also combats the opposite philosophical problem, wherein reflection tends to defective speculation. By not losing the sense of our immanent existence in the world, Friedlaender argues we can bring our imagination “into an equilibrium” (a “concordia discors”) with the cosmos.123 While materialists quash value and idealists are unable to positively locate value in the world, a polar philosophy, centered on our infinitesimal unity with being, holds metaphysical value and physical reality in charged and productive tension.

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FIGURE 1.1 An indifferent singularity, Ludwig Hilberseimer, outside his Single-family Residence at the Weissenhofsiedlung, Stuttgart, 1927. Karl Ludwig Hilberseimer Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archives, Art Institute of Chicago.

One of Friedlaender’s primary models for polarization is Nietzsche’s discussion of tragedy.124 Understanding the Dionysian and Apollonian as “analogous” to Kant’s distinction between the “thing-in-itself and appearance,” Schopenhauer’s “will and representation,” and the medieval notions of natura naturans (nature naturing) and natura naturata (nature natured) taken up by Baruch Spinoza (1632–77), Friedlaender argues that Nietzsche, by asserting the fundamental “equivalence” of the Dionysian and Apollonian aspects of pre-Socratic tragedy, shows the way in which all—physical, conceptual, spatial, temporal, etc.—forms are recognizable as polar divisions of the unity of being.125 Nietzsche’s polarization, he asserts, “is the philological-mythological formula for all human problems, from the organic to the technical, even the mathematical.”126 It was no accident, Friedlaender thinks, that Nietzsche begins his philosophical activity with tragedy, the aesthetic means for dealing with fear of reality—the artistic problem of pleasure in displeasure.127 For Nietzsche, “Tragedy […] means the triumph, not the defeat of life.” Unlike Schopenhauer, who could not bring himself to remain morally indifferent to tragedy, “Life, the will to live, is not subject […] to either optimistic or pessimistic appreciation.”128 Friedlaender, like Ruest, sees in Nietzsche’s indifference a vigorous sense of playful creativity. “Here the spirit

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of life, art, music no longer seem serious, moral, deep and heavy,” Friedlaender waxes, “but tragic: exuberantly cheerful, aesthetic, artistically light and high, like the play between fearfulness and courage.”129 Nietzsche embraces a perpetual oscillation between the Dionysian and Apollonian, the infinite and the finite, reality and imagination, creation and destruction: “Left to itself, the Dionysian spirit would destroy all life, all limits, everything individual,” Friedlaender argues, “Just as the Apollonian dream, the restrained, individual entity, would by itself solidify into lifelessness.”130 Only by maintaining correspondence between reality and imagination can we propagate a vital culture. It was precisely the lack of this polar tension—specifically, the valuing of the Apollonian over the Dionysian—that Nietzsche felt so problematic. Modern culture is nothing but tragedy in the false, post-Socratic sense—the habitual view of reality through a distorting mask. “That modern man conceives culture primarily as science and Bildung [education],” Friedlaender writes, echoing Nietzsche’s critique of nineteenth-century German society, “is nothing but a symbol of his good-natured optimism, with which he conceals the terribleness and superhumanity of nature from himself.” Modern culture harbors itself in learned forms, overemphasizing the apparent truth of its representations, in an effort to escape the vital flux of reality. By bursting these pompous—“degenerate,” superficial, stultifying, and “pampering”—formalizations, Friedlaender explains, “Modern culture, lost in its dream to the point of scholarly schematism, was reminded by Nietzsche of art and life, of plasticity and intoxication.”131 In the polarity of Greek art, Nietzsche renews aesthetic sense for reality. He puts culture back in touch with the primitive source and means for the creation of all value.132 Nevertheless, Friedlaender concludes, Nietzsche ultimately fails to reestablish the correspondence between intuition and formalization his resurrection of preSocratic Greek culture promises. Between The Birth of Tragedy and his last writings, Nietzsche moves, in Friedlaender’s opinion, from a feeble preoccupation with the melioration of modern culture to a full-throated exploration of his insights. But, burdened by his disdain for the prejudices of civilization—a form of resentment he had so brilliantly identified in his discussion of the origins of morality—the power to shape his perceptions escapes him. Nietzsche’s polemics against the dogmatism of the “Platonic-Christian” worldview become oppositional and thus themselves fatalistically dogmatic.133 Nietzsche had discovered, with an insight owing to extreme skepticism, that we differentiate the indifference of reality. But, by asserting the soul follows the body, Nietzsche becomes a counter-Plato, enslaved to a negative Christianity.134 Nietzsche’s critique swung back too far, Friedlaender laments, and thus “he fell just short of the final step to indifferentism.”135 His criticism of modern culture led him to defer mastery of fate into the future, when he only had to recognize we can seize it at any moment. Nietzsche puts “historical method in place of the infintessimal.”136 For once one has recognized intuitive experience, Friedlaender argues, one “still has to know how to destroy his

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ego” in order to be able to exercise their insight into reality. Rather than confuse indifference with passivity we must understand indifference requires discipline: “the more self-assured it [the will] is, the less it is the weathervane of foreign winds, the freer [it is] from the superstition of false differences.”137 But, placing truth in sense, Friedlaender thinks Nietzsche tended to reject formalization as so many empty signs. “[I]n order to draw, to create, one must not merely negate, destroy, but set both [yes and no] in the purest, most neutral harmony!” Friedlaender writes, “Whomever experiences the pathos of distance must be its mediator, its equalizer, and indifferentiator, zero on the negative-positive number series of values.”138 For Friedlaender, who embraces both our animality and our superhumanity, we need logical formulation to stabilize our indifference, to algebraically equilibrate the senses and thereby register and harmonize our intuitions.139 Nevertheless, Friedlaender argues Nietzsche is the first to glimpse an “artistic science,” “science as Dionysian wisdom!”140 By emphasizing the fundamental indifference of existence and recognizing the polar moment of aesthetic creation and destruction as the essential motor of vital culture, Nietzsche not only renews the post-Kantian philosophical understanding of aesthetics—as the crystallization (and dissolution) of form within our perpetual bath of sensory experience—he seeks to live aesthetically.141 “Science,” Friedlaender declares, “will soon unlearn its optimism and become art itself!”142 But Nietzsche did not go far enough for Friedlaender. If—as a damper on speculative errancy and the wit of our forming authority—our aesthetic sense gives us access to the indifference of existence, it is the strength of our intuition and the degree to which we can give logical ratio to those insights that limit our creative dominion over the vital will. With his philosophy of “creative indifference” and his praxis of neutralized polarization, Friedlaender set out to cultivate this aesthetic power.

Creative Indifference Friedlaender’s use of terms like “indifference” and “polarization” throughout his biography betrays his effort to give Nietzsche’s vitalism a sense of measure. Like Nietzsche, Friedlaender sees reason, logic, and mathematics as human creations, representational tools of an empirical practice in the service of power.143 Friedlaender rejects the possibility of purely abstract thought—“the pure mathematician,” he explains, “whether he realizes it or not, only attains knowledge of […] lawful conditions empirically.”144 But, more than Nietzsche, Friedlaender sought to complement vitalist philosophy with a logic—specifically, a mathematics of polarization. Seeking to avoid untethered idealism and stultifying materialism, Friedlaender argues a disciplined will expands our aesthetic capacities just as the materiality of existence disciplines the metaphysical imagination. Creative Indifference is the sketch of a metaphysical discipline that can both cohere and expand experience. Friedlaender understands “creative indifference” as a vital 34

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praxis providing orientation to existence, ultimately making existence coeval with our creation. Creative Indifference is composed of numerous circling returns that seem to evidence Friedlaender’s determination to resist linear explication or reduction to a methodology.145 Nevertheless, there is an evident drift in emphasis from primary experience to creative materialization that, if we remain conscious of the risks of schematization, might be outlined as follows: To become creatively indifferent, we must become individual (Individuum), by which Friedlaender means an undivided (i.e., in-dividual) being. Like Stirner and Nietzsche, Friedlaender believes we are susceptible to given impressions and learned formalizations. Imprinting themselves upon us and structuring us from within, given articulations eliminate our inherent indifference. They articulate (for) us and divide us from ourselves. “If the world person is to begin,” Friedlaender writes, “this pseudo-person must erase himself.”146 Rid of internal divisions, the indifferent individual receives the imprint of the senses without metaphysical distortion. We must overcome our passivity and eliminate external determinations in order to be able to indifferently open ourselves to existence.147 To become creatively indifferent, we actively become our own creator, regaining the capacity to legislate and re-legislate, constitute and reconstitute ourselves. Like Ruest, Friedlaender believes we can grasp our sovereignty at any instant, an idea he calls “presentism,” central to Hilberseimer’s and Raoul Hausmann’s understanding of creativity.148 We always already possess “the world-creating principle” and in this way we are, in a sense, already divine.149 “The free, the individual will, the inseparably whole person,” Friedlaender writes, “is just the creator themselves.”150 With the realization of our personal individuality we open ourselves to the individuality—the singularity—of the universe, for the universe is itself undivided. This sense of our inherent indifference from being is fundamental to our creative freedom. This identity between the personal and the universal is not just allegorical. It is not a logical connection, but hinges upon the pure Dionysian ecstasy of feeling at one with the world. So long as we remain centered by this aesthetic sense of our absolute indifference from the world, we can be assured of the correspondence between experience and reality. Our inherent capacity to realize our individuality resists dogmatism, just as our inherent capacity to realize our indifference from the universe resists skepticism. Moreover, our capacity to polarize ourselves—to be at once individual and integral to the universe—constitutes our capacity to neutralize, by balancing, dogmatism and skepticism. The infinitesimal coincidence of our self-conception and worldlyexistence constitutes the moment of our personal and universal indifference. It is the shared point at which we personally comprehend the commonality of all things. It is a “universal conscience” and an “absolute sovereignty over the whole of relativism.”151 “The heart, properly integrated, properly divested of all differences,” Friedlaender writes, “is the heart of the world.”152 THE INDIVIDUAL

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To be open to the world in this way, however, also leaves us impressionable. We can lose ourselves in the universe if we mechanically accept the testimony of the senses and allow our immediate intuitions to rule without reflection. “Intuition offers evidence at most,” Friedlaender writes, stressing the need for us to develop lawful means by which we give order and measure to the chaos of sensory experience.153 We must complement our physical capabilities with metaphysical capabilities. If our conceptualization on the basis of sensory experience is given logical rigor through a disciplined praxis of neutralized polarization, we can maintain our indifferent relationship to the world. By articulating (self-dividing) ourselves in correspondence with sensory experience—i.e., anchored by the centrality of our infinitesimal oneness with being—we can achieve more than a localization of the will, we can objectively differentiate ourselves into forms (organs) congruent with the world. Moreover, if we conceptualize in a polar way and articulate a reciprocity between opposites, we actively maintain ourselves at the indifferent center or balance point of logical perception; we formalize experience in a way that is “a subjective neutralization of everything objective.”154 Friedlaender argues the most felicitous polarization requires “an eye for the extremes.”155 The greater the range between the polar oppositions we take as the coordinates for any articulation of the world, the more neutral we are and the more stable our conceptualizations. By polarizing the chaos of the universe we harmonize the cosmos. Here we have the basis of Friedlaender’s supposition that the evolution of our metaphysical and physical capacities is mutually intertwined. The more logically polar our conceptualization of the world, the more we train our sensory faculties to expand the limits of our perception, and the more we extend the limits of our perception, the greater the range and stability of our conceptualizations of the universe. Indeed, the more we develop this logical-aesthetic complex of powers (our “artistic science”), the further our range of perception and our realm of creation radiates into the universe; the more we make ourselves into the cosmos.156 We do not discover laws, we create them. As we play with our representations of the universe, we stimulate our sensory capacities and our imagination. In the negotiation between empiricism and logic we exercise and advance our powers of intuition and reason. From the Archimedean point of our indifferent infinitesimal relationship to existence, through the creative development of our logical-aesthetic powers, we evolve our capacity to articulate and re-articulate ourselves and the universe. Moreover, oriented by indifference, we are not merely creative, but creatively indifferent. When we construct qualities of the world as neutral symbolic magnitudes, we synthesize sensory experience into absolute expressions. Exercising our personal sovereignty, we become sociological, developing ourselves in correspondence with the sensus communis. Moreover, with the indifferent exercise of creative freedom we transform our humanity and become superhuman, “an ‘angel’ [who] would […] designate the absolute equilibrium of interests.”157 Through artistic-scientific play we creatively leverage personal indifference toward omnipotence. 36

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We not only have the capability to create and recreate our conceptions of reality; through the development of an artistic science of creative indifference we advance our powers to make and remake the universe. Beyond indifference and the logic of polarization, the veracity of our representations is ultimately verified by their materialization. In order to express ourselves purely, we seek to become identical with the vital will, not symbolically but manifestly. The realization of our individuality is nothing but us subjectively taking possession of our body as the organic apparatus through which we feel and express ourselves, and in doing so transform ourselves objectively. Indifference without creative materialization is indistinguishable from the imagination.158 In order to fully exercise the extent of our freedom, we must strive to give polar balance—rule, order, measure, law—to the universe. Our capacity to artistically transform reality is the ultimate corroboration of our indifference and check on our fantasy, the object of a spiritual materialism. Aesthetics and art are the origin and end, empiricism and logic the means, of an artistic science.159 If Friedlaender’s philosophy begins with the way we can avoid an untethered idealism and a stultifying materialism, it is ultimately drawn by the prospect of us harmonizing the chaotic flux of existence into a dynamic self-equilibrating cosmos. Influenced by the primacy afforded music in Schopenhauer’s and Nietzsche’s philosophy, Friedlaender frequently considers the materialization of our spiritual development in musical metaphors. “[T]he spirit that confused itself with its mere instrument, the human being, was like the violinist who considered himself to be the violin”; he writes, adding “with virtuosos this identification easily goes so far that they appear to be of one piece with their instrument; but that is not yet mastery.”160 In part this statement is a critique of empiricism, which confuses knowledge for creation, and an inverse critique of idealism, which can imagine creativity without limitation. But it would be just as erroneous, in Friedlaender’s view, for us to presume even the most accomplished conjunction of musician and instrument, art and science, is true mastery. Because the arbitrariness of the musician is disciplined by the nature (the law) of their instrument (such as the articulated keys of a piano or strings of a violin), even the most lawful art can become rote (instrumental) without constant creative reflection. To the extent that we can create at all, we must have a certain objective capacity. But without the perpetual exercise of our creative freedom, we fall into uncritical acceptance.161 Against this unreflective practice, Friedlaender asserts the vigilant exercise of the will. We must subjectively use our “objective definitions” of the world, “like the composer the orchestra.”162 The material world does not furnish us with instruments, we give the material world its objective limits in correspondence with our free will, which is most vital when it is in constant development. It is in the essence of vital artistic work that in its engagement with reality it expresses and transforms it. This flux in our relationship to the world is perpetuated by the aesthetic pleasure we take in creation, especially the pleasure we feel when the world appears before us as a new form of our will. “It is the triumph of one’s own THE INDIVIDUAL

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creation when it genuinely, objectively, as if from the outside, acts back on its creator,” Friedlaender waxes. “That precisely the most successful objects bear for the subject the character of an undivinable surprise for the subject is sufficiently explained by the fact that they are the translation of the indifferentiation of the subject into the differentiated language of the object.”163 Constantly faced with the limits of given instruments, by which we can only articulate ourselves “artificiallymedially,” we strive to exercise our creativity “immediately-naturally.”164 With the desire to become gracefully one with the vital will, we play with our mediums, denature and renature existence, propelled by the revelatory joy of (our) creation. In this way, a truly free art embraces (our) eternal transformation. Given the vital will and constant unfolding of (human) nature, we cannot maintain the equilibrium of creative indifference passively. But while creative indifference can be thrown off balance, its grace is never irretrievable. We can never entirely forget the law is our creation. Nevertheless, keeping creative indifference alive requires actively balancing our vanity with counterweights. We need to cultivate a lively indifference, even to our own creations, to avoid the stultification of the mediocre norm. We need to polarize to extremes to expand our capacities, lest we become habitual. We avoid the exhaustion of values with vital forms of criticism, art, and science. Faced with the flux of eternity, we endeavor to maintain our alignment with the shifting axis of the universe: a constant reorientation to existence, a perpetual play with the plasticity of the world. There is no just milieu, only a constant recalibration of value to the absolute. Our inevitable failure to maintain our balance within the eternal flux of the universe is the constitution of history, the eccentric relaxation of an otherwise tense comportment toward the neutral axis of creative indifference. Insofar as we are indifferent from nature, Friedlaender argues, we have a vital and immediate relationship to the cosmos. If we can overcome our Bildung (education), the learned formalizations that prejudice our worldview by imprinting themselves upon us and structuring us from within, we can become in-different: both integrally singular and open to—which is to say undivided from—the world. Free of established preconceptions we possess the sovereign capacity to creatively form and reform, constitute and reconstitute, ourselves in correspondence with experience. By cultivating our aesthetic capacity (our powers of sensorial observation and discrimination), our power of reason (our capacity to organize sensations into a logical worldview), and our artistic means of material expression, Friedlaender argues we extend our comprehension of the universe and thus extend our imagination in creative correspondence with existence. Through the development of our spiritual insight into the universe—which is indistinguishable, in Friedlaender’s philosophy, from both our aesthetic experience and scientific understanding of nature—we constructively cultivate our ability to willfully materialize our creative conceptions.

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2 HILBERSEIMER’S THEORY OF ART

Polar Structure Aside their obvious focus on art, the central motive of the five essays Hilberseimer publishes in Der Einzige in the first three months of 1919 is Nietzsche’s distinction between a vital Dionysian-Apollonian culture and a deadening one-sided Apollonian civilization. It is the basis for the differentiation between “Creation and Development” Hilberseimer announces in the title of his first essay, a title probably understood in the context of the journal as a reference to Friedlaender’s Creative Indifference. The title of Hilberseimer’s second essay, “Revaluation in Art,” is an obvious allusion to Nietzsche’s call, in his effort to overcome the mores of nineteenthcentury German society, for the “revaluation of all values.” The title of the third piece, “Form und Individuum” (literally: “Form and Individual”) gains significance when it is understood the term “Individuum” is synonymous in Friedlaender’s philosophy with creative indifference. “Creative indifference, Individuum—please do not immediately misunderstand this first word,” Friedlaender pleads in the opening of Creative Indifference, “It does not mean a single person, also not the humanity consisting of such particulars; nothing individual at all, but the whole; not objective, but subjective; a creative pathos, the will; the determination, freedom, exemption of ‘the interior’ from all isolation, all dividuality—since only this freedom enables one to govern everything separate; creatively vital identity.”1 Therefore, a better translation for Hilberseimer’s title is “Form and Indifference,” in which the relationship between the finite and the infinite—form and the oneness of being—becomes salient. It is noteworthy that in “Creation and Development” Hilberseimer uses the plural of “Einzelne”—which Ruest and Friedlaender reserve for the determined or “divided” (rather than indifferent and creative) subject—to describe the bourgeoisie.2 Hilberseimer sees the renewal of culture and community as primarily a problem of realizing the subjectivity that Ruest, following Stirner, calls “sovereign,” and Friedlaender “indifferent.”

The other two essays Hilberseimer publishes in Der Einzige—“Naturalism and the Primitive in Art” and “Art and Knowledge”—also map polar distinctions. Moreover, each of Hilberseimer’s Der Einzige essays has three parts. The first two emphasize one of the poles and the third their equilibrated relationship. For example, “Creation and Development” focuses on vital culture in its first section and decadent civilization in its second. In the third, Hilberseimer suggests Nietzsche’s discussion of the Dionysian and Apollonian provides the model by which the relationship between culture and civilization can be comprehended. Employing Nietzsche’s terms and Friedlaender’s praxis of neutralized polarization, these essays expound a fundamental distinction between vital and enervated cultural phases. In vital phases, “creation,” will, indifference (“Individuum”), “the primitive,” and “art” are in a tense, mutual interrelationship with “development,” material, “form,” “naturalism,” and “knowledge,” the poles that dominate one-sided enervated phases. Oscillation between the spirited evolution and indolent instrumentalization of artistic-scientific powers provides the rhythm of Hilberseimer’s cultural history. Hilberseimer believes the thresholds between these phases—which he describes as “peaks” of spiritual materialism—constitute the guiding landmarks of art history. In this way, Friedlaender’s interpretation of Nietzsche’s polarization gives Hilberseimer’s criticism and design its charge. Interleaved with Hilberseimer’s Nietzschean theory of the eternal waxing and waning of creative vitality is a dialectical conception of European history that takes cues from Stirner’s and Nietzsche’s cultural criticism, but is no doubt energized by his own sociopolitical commitment. Hilberseimer’s activity is buoyed by the notion the European idolization of progress can be overcome and modern society can be transformed into a vital, post-capitalist community. Beneath these polar and dialectical movements, Hilberseimer recognizes an atomic dynamic in the course of the individual life, which is charged in Hilberseimer’s thinking, following Ruest and Friedlaender, by the ever-present possibility of self-realization (“presentism”). Ruest could bring Stirner and Nietzsche together because of their critique of German society, their histories of skepticism, and their shared rejection of (especially Christian) idealism. But, above all, Ruest thinks Stirner and Nietzsche slice through the gordian knot of history. “I excavate no dead man, I can awaken no mummy, but I can awaken myself at any time,” Ruest claims in “The Last Revolution.”3 Asserting the ever-present dawn of individual liberty, Ruest deemphasizes, if not discounts, sociopolitical and material impediments to selfrealization. While Hilberseimer was far more committed to acknowledging and factoring those constraints, his work is driven by that same sense of possibility at a moment in which the conceptual and institutional forms of modern Europe had been thoroughly discredited if they had not already collapsed. Moreover, the art historical perspective Hilberseimer brings to Der Einzige contains its own mixture of polar schemas and dialectical histories. Hilberseimer’s criticism is a remarkably deft synthesis of discourses and temporalities. He draws

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upon the philosophical writings of Nietzsche and others, as mediated by Ruest and Friedlaender, on the one hand, and recent developments in art history, theory, and practice, many of which had their own Nietzschean inflections, on the other.

“The Primitive” The departure point for Hilberseimer’s mediation between philosophy and art is the equation, central to Expressionist theories of art, between the Dionysian impulse and “primitive” culture. By 1919, “the primitive” in German art discourse signified creative artistic volition unrestricted by accreted formal prejudices, be that demonstrated in the non-European artworks that had influenced the last decades of avant-garde production, the art of children and the insane, or the creations of what were taken to be originating periods of European history. For example, in Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe (Principles of Art History, 1915), Wölfflin refers to the Quattrocento as the “primitive” Italian Renaissance, preceding its maturation into the “High Renaissance” at the turn of the fifteenth century.4 Although the concept of the “primitive” often had an emancipatory sense after Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–88), the idea gains currency through the racist Eurocentric worldview of colonization. While the adoption of the notion by progressive artists in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries is usually part of an effort to invert and undermine presumptions of European superiority, their effort perpetuates echoes of these deplorable claims.5 Like many of these artists, Hilberseimer included, Kandinsky, following the work of art theorist Wilhelm Worringer (1881–1965), embraces what he calls “the primitive” with an acute sense of his own alienation from hegemonic European values.6 In Über das Geistige in der Kunst (Concerning the Spiritual in Art, 1911), which Hilberseimer later upholds as the defining text of the time, Kandinsky makes the case that the art of every “cultural period” is unique and inimitable.7 Kandinsky asserts it is impossible to recreate the feelings of others; the imitation of past art can only result in superficial similarity. Nevertheless, Kandinsky supposes artists at certain times and places will turn to similar forms out of a sense of spiritual correspondence or “need.” Kandinsky and his circle assert their “inner kinship” with non-European artists who “sought to convey only the inwardly essential in their works.”8 By contrast, Kandinsky argues, modern Europeans, rather than understanding art as an expression of the spirit, were preoccupied with the artwork’s “practical purposes” (his example is portraiture) or the “interpretation” it conveys (his example is Impressionism).9 Kandinsky parodies contemporary art as a meaningless system of production and consumption for its own sake, the satiation of prevailing tastes and demonstrations of material skill for material reward.10

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Franz Marc (1880–1916) extends this argument with striking economy in “Spiritual Goods,” the opening contribution to Der blaue Reiter, a compendium of essays and images he edits and first publishes with Kandinsky in 1912. Hilberseimer will cite the almanac alongside Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Wilhelm Uhde’s (1874–1947) 1914 monograph on Henri Rousseau (1844–1910) and Carl Einstein’s Negerplastik (African Sculpture, 1915) as the “books that not only shaped the spirit of that generation but also influenced it by giving it direction.”11 “It is strange that people should value spiritual treasures so completely differently from material ones,” Marc reflects, equating an appreciation for the latter with the acquisitive drive of colonialism. “On the other hand, if someone should think of giving his country a new purely spiritual treasure, it is almost always rejected with anger and irritation.”12 When territory, materials, technology, or people are acquired for their mensurable value, or artistic works are rejected on the grounds of nationalism or acceptable taste, the relevant qualities of that and those appropriated or rejected comport to expectations. Kandinsky and Marc ridicule prejudicial and schematic evaluation.13 Once the (colonizing) beholder has calculated his interest, openness to creation is foreclosed. Hilberseimer echoes these arguments in the opening paragraphs of “Creation and Development.” He acknowledges “the word ‘primitive’ already contains a value judgment,” the “negative one” that “looks down on primitive things.” But he distinguishes between judgment in “matters of civilization”—where one is differentiating an “automobile” from a “stagecoach” or “a simple old and a new, comfortable, grand house”—and “matters of art.” In the latter, he argues, such distinctions are “senseless.” The “pure [work of art], which is the sole concern here, is always perfect. Incapable of development,” he asserts, “For example: Did Egyptian sculpture develop into Greek sculpture?” “On the contrary,” he answers. Deftly leveraging the pervasive esteem for classicism, Hilberseimer suggests it would be ridiculous to understand Greek as merely derivative of Egyptian sculpture. Such a view would overlook the work’s intrinsic sense. “The most primitive works of art are the purest,” he declares, “because they have not yet descended to the civilizing striving toward beauty. Are free of everything Apollonian.”14 In Hilberseimer’s distinction between creative culture and materialistic civilization, the desire for “beauty” is definitive. Striving for “beauty” erroneously imposes an external and prejudicial standard upon creation, because conceptions of beauty can only be derived in the wake of creation.15 Hilberseimer supports this claim with a quote from Goethe’s (1749–1832) 1772 essay on the Strasbourg cathedral: “Art is forming long before it is beautiful, and, indeed, such true, great art is often truer and greater than the beautiful itself.”16 In this panegyric for (what he believed to be) Erwin von Steinbach’s (–1318) gothic façade, Goethe ridicules prevailing faith in a classical ideal, suggesting valuable aesthetic expression is not restricted to certain given styles. Goethe’s early writings were appreciated for their departure from convention by the following generation of artists who consciously sought means to speculate on aesthetic possibilities.

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Hilberseimer also echoes the Romantic appreciation for Goethe in another way. When Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) republishes Goethe’s Strasbourg essay in the Sturm und Drang manifesto Von deutscher Art und Kunst (On German Nature and Art, 1773), Goethe’s praise for the cathedral is identified with a conception of art rooted in national feeling, an association Goethe would affirm.17 Romantics embrace the notion every society has its own distinctive art. Although Hilberseimer is decidedly internationalist in outlook, he also associates vital culture with an integral community.18 “The so-called primitive people commonly have the highest culture: unity of attitude, desire and action,” he explains, “What one does, he does for himself as well as for the whole, for humanity.”19 Like Stirner and Nietzsche, Hilberseimer understands the creative individual as the constitutive element of an organic community, their mutual sovereignty the necessary condition of a true society.20 In such a culture, Hilberseimer argues, the artist (whom Hilberseimer describes as “naively divine”) has retained or regained the capacity to intuitively grasp the infinite. A spiritual comprehension of reality fosters the collective integrity that reliance on Bildung (learned formation) undermines. Beauty, for Hilberseimer, is an Apollonian precipitation of intuitive Dionysian experience. But emphasis on its possession (the attainment of beauty) blinds the insight that gives form significance. It incites “individualism”—“the discrepancy between individuality and humanity”—and the “chaotic” character of civilization.21 It is symptomatic of modern European civilization, Hilberseimer contends, that Europeans had taken exactly the wrong lesson from their exposure to other societies: The scientific result of the nineteenth century, the acquaintance with the cultures of all peoples and times, also expanded the metaphysical understanding of the artistic creation of primitive peoples. And led to the remarkable realization of the equality of all cultures. What initially appears essential to the so-called high cultures, is their civilizing impact. And the mistake follows: to in any way see in [this civilizing impact] the culture of an epoch. Yet the aspiration of all civilization is to make what has been acquired by the individual’s capacity for experience accessible to the masses through education [Bildung]. In a sense, to enable and keep up the appearance that everyone really possesses the things over which he believes he has command. As if they were his spiritual property. Through seizure of the superficial, snobbism, and aestheticism.22 Rather than understand non-European societies and their works of art as exempla of creation, the colonizing European had sought to appropriate and commodify the cultural products of these societies, just as they sought to imperially dispense privileged wares to their own citizens through mass education. Central to Hilberseimer’s theory of art is the supposition that modern European states

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had been more concerned with the acquisition, possession, and exploitation of knowledge than with the cultivation of learning and creation. Hilberseimer rationalizes this distinction between culture and civilization into a series of polar oppositions (creation and imitation, spiritualism and materialism, quality and quantity, internal and external, depth and superficiality, liberty and idealism, community and mass society, belief and skepticism), which he calibrates with an interpretation of European history organized around the epistemic turning points—Socratic Greece and the Renaissance—recognized by Stirner and Nietzsche. While Hilberseimer understands the Renaissance as a rebirth of creativity, he also recognizes its incongruous legacy. He laments the subsequent course of European society, which slowly suffocated the promise of liberty beneath the conservative weight of civilized development. “The consequence of the Renaissance—the freedom of art, of artistic creation—foundered on a calamitous romanticism, the idealism that entered into art and life,” he bemoans in his characteristically aphoristic style: “One wanted to appear as others were. Antiquity should be reborn. Renaissance. Rebirth! Literary intentions intruded into art. Use of the already-created became the tendency. Commercialization of art the consequence. The idea of a possible development of art became conscious for the first time.”23 Here Hilberseimer equates idealism, literalism, derivativeness, and civilization. The dawning realization that each society has its own art had been nullified by prejudice, vanity, and greed. Such was the modern European’s one-sided appreciation of classicism—the “one-sided over-estimation […] of its least valuable parts” promoted by figures such as Winckelmann, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–81), and even (the later) Goethe—that Hilberseimer credited Nietzsche with overturning. In Nietzsche’s rejoining and rebalancing of  the  Dionysian and Apollonian impulses, Hilberseimer sees the promise of a (post-colonial) society that would reconstitute liberty as a mutual value.

Idea and Material Kandinsky had supposed cultures with a spiritual affinity might produce similar forms. In “Revaluation in Art” Hilberseimer argues the similarity of forms in the artworks of different places and times “unequivocally indicates a common basis [Urgrund] from which all creation departs.”24 The concept of the Urgrund is the invention of Friedrich Schelling (1775–1854), an obvious influence on Friedlaender. In his so-called Freiheitschrift (Freedom Essay, 1809), Schelling argues: there must be a being before all ground and before all that exists, thus generally before any duality—how can we call it anything other than the original ground

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[Urgrund] or the non-ground [Ungrund]? Since it precedes all opposites, these cannot be distinguishable in it nor can they be present in any way. Therefore, it cannot be described as the identity of opposites; it can only be described as the absolute indifference [Indifferenz] of both.25 In Hilberseimer’s theory of art every culture articulates (pronounces and divides) the absolute indifference of existence, but does so in a particular way, allowing cultural expressions to be understood as equivalent in their genesis, yet interpreted for their particular significance. “Art brings the metaphysical to view,” Hilberseimer believes, “Since cultures are reflections, reflexes of the arts, the different cultures show only variations of the same theme.” Hilberseimer attributes those variations to the temperament of the cultural producer and their spiritual attitude (their comportment toward a transcendental idea). However, Hilberseimer laments, this cultural distinctiveness is often lost, overridden by external determinations, such as the colonizing naturalism and idealizing formalism of modern European civilization, with its skilled and mannered appropriation and development of artistic forms. Therefore, he supposes, “The essential is not shown in the extremely sophisticated formations of the so-called ‘high cultures’ […], it shows itself in the primitive formations, which still arose in complete lack of self-consciousness, where there was nothing but the idea and the material, not yet any models, and therefore not yet any inhibitions.”26 Hilberseimer looks to primitive works of art in the belief they are documents of pure creation—the interrelationship between idea and material—untouched by the affected mind and the practiced hand. As example of the former, Hilberseimer cites the formalism of Raphael’s (1483–1520) tapestries, which, he writes, “transfer […] the possibility of the fresco into the impossibility of weaving.” With respect to the latter, he articulates his fundamental thesis of art history: “A style attains its highest point whenever material no longer offers resistance to the will to form. Decline, caused by imitation and the ability to play with form, occurs as a result, because tension cannot be maintained without resistance.”27 When the artist is struggling to materialize their ideas, the practiced hand is an impossibility. But once those ideas have taken shape in material, the exercise of this accomplishment can become proficient, even rote, as material no longer constitutes an impediment to realization. Moreover, the practiced hand buttresses an affected mind, as developed technical capacity allows forms to be taken up without concern for significance. Without a compelling cultural significance, art is merely a commodified product. Only spiritual motives invest material with cultural value, construct rather than propagate a worldview. In Hilberseimer’s theory of history, art oscillates between periods of cultural creation, when there is a prevailing “tension” between the spiritual ambition of artists and their capacity to materialize that ambition, and periods of “relaxation” when cultural ambition is overwhelmed by the civilizing efforts to replicate the formed ideas and exercise the skills

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fashioned for given accomplishments, be those accomplishments historically, geographically, or self-destructively appropriated. The inflection points between these phases constitute, in Hilberseimer’s view, the landmarks of any cultural history—“The different cultures are comparable to a mountain range from which arise many peaks,” he writes, “The heights reached are absolute.”28 As his prime example of such an acme, Hilberseimer repeatedly turns to the Renaissance, which he found replete with the ambivalence that accompanies inflections between culture and civilization. In Raphael’s Sistine Madonna (1512–14), he asserts, “the spirit of the Renaissance found its clearest formal expression.” Yet Raphael had, in his tapestries, also overstepped. Similarly, Hilberseimer describes Michelangelo’s (1475–1564) Piazza del Campidoglio and Porta Pia as the “best” and “worst” of the Renaissance. The latter initiates the long decline “from the Roman St. Peter’s to the Berlin Cathedral.”29 After the great accomplishments of the early Cinquecento, the mastery of material leads to what Nietzsche, and following him Wölfflin, calls “decadence.” Although he rejects a priori ideals (classicism), Hilberseimer has no doubt Renaissance art embodies a classical idea. Renaissance art arose at a particular time and place, embodying a specific spiritual attitude. As a singular, irreducible cultural conception, and thus a manifestation of the eternal essence of creation, it is timeless. In “The Revaluation of Art” Hilberseimer offers a non-teleological thesis of artistic creation in which form is not the governing end of art, but the necessarily imperfect outcome of the always-conditioned effort to materialize an idea. “Ideas are absolute,” he writes, “Their manifestation in the artwork, however, is only relative. The concretization of the idea results in impurity.”30 The materialization of an artistic idea can be improved but never perfected. The artwork can offer only mediated access to the truth of art. In this way, Hilberseimer identifies the realm and ambition of artistic activity. Seeking the immediacy of ideation, artistic creation is the effort to overcome (the mediation of) material. These implications are present in the lengthy quote from Goethe that Hilberseimer offers in the essay, which reads in part: for it is not the form latent in art which comes across into the stone [sculpture]; the form stays there and another lesser and derived beauty emerges which does not persist purely in itself, nor even as the artist would have wished it to be, but exists only to the extent to which the material has complied with the art that fashioned it. […] For, by entering into material, form is already extended; thus it is weaker […]. For that which suffers a distancing from itself departs from itself: strength from strength, […] thus also beauty from beauty. Therefore, the effecting must be more splendid than the effected. For it is not the ‘un-music’ [Unmusik], but the music, which makes the musician, and supersensible [übersinnliche] music generates music in sensible sound.31

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Following Goethe, Hilberseimer’s theory of art places emphasis on the moment of creation and the experience of art as creation, rather than the work created. It is no accident, then, that the three parts of “The Revaluation of Art” move from the metaphysical conception, to physical materialization, and then reception of the work of art. The quote from Goethe presents this trajectory as an attenuation of “beauty,” which Hilberseimer equates with the attenuation of the “idea” of art. But in Hilberseimer’s polar schema, this trajectory is also, from the perspective of the beholder, an intensification of the materiality of the artwork. In the third and final section of the essay, Hilberseimer is concerned with the way in which the beholder’s confrontation with this materiality can impede their experience of the work as creation. In doing so, he begins with Goethe’s argument that it is only as sensuous form (as music rather than “un-music”) that works of art come into being. “An artwork is a Spannungsverhältnis [a ‘charged relationship’ or ‘ratio of tension’] brought to harmony,” Hilberseimer states.32 Following Goethe, Hilberseimer takes the existence of a “tension” between idea and material as the very definition of a creative culture. And following the emphasis on the intuitive primacy of music that runs from Schopenhauer, through Richard Wagner (1813–83) and Nietzsche, to Kandinsky—he presents this “ratio of tension” as a specific articulation (division and apportionment) of material existence. In the context of prevailing conventions, he explains, the emerging aesthetic harmonies of a culture are unrecognizable. True creation cannot repeat an extant articulation of material. If so, it would not be creation. “The creator […] is free from the law, insofar as he co-creates, at the same time, the new lawfulness along with the new work.” But departures from known relationships between idea and material inevitably seem “dissonant.”33 In this way, pure creation demands hermeneutic engagement by—and thus transformation of— the artist and the beholder: “the new can never be judged according to the old,” Hilberseimer argues, “Even far less can the creator make use of existing laws. He does not know them at all. And even if he knew them, he would first have to overcome them.”34 In the case of creative works of art, evaluation is, by necessity, revaluation and growth. If “The Revaluation of Art” is an ethical demand, it is so by necessity. For in Hilberseimer’s thesis, revaluation constitutes the very essence of creation. Given the flux of the world, art is a constant assertion of value: a perpetual materialization of our conception of existence in the present.

Indifference and Form In an unpublished typescript dated 1922, Hilberseimer supports his claim for the equality of cultures and the notion of dissonance by citing Spätrömische Kunstindustrie (Late-Roman Art-Industry, 1901), Riegl’s seminal revaluation of a cultural period and artistic mediums hitherto judged as inferior.35 Moreover, in a

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draft of Metropolis-Architecture, Hilberseimer and Rukser contrast their spiritual conception with Gottfried Semper’s (1803–79) emphasis on the functional, material, and technical genesis of art, echoing Riegl’s reductive criticism of Semper’s thought.36 And in “Form and Indifference,” Hilberseimer equates the “idea” of art with “will,” implicitly employing Riegl’s notion of “Kunstwollen” (artistic will). “Idea and will are identical,” he writes, “The artistic will, like the will in general, is not subject to any development. It is just the will of an artist or an epoch. Another artist, another epoch disposes another will. The expression of this will as form is just the work of art.” Hilberseimer argues the artistic will is not subject to development in the same way the skills of art can be subject to practiced execution. The latter is “a matter of virtuosity and systematization, which has nothing to do with the purely artistic.”37 While skills might be advanced in correspondence with the creative will, it is an error to consider the isolated perfecting or evolution of technical capacities advancements in art. Recalling his description of the threshold between creative and derivative artistic phases as a peak, in the first section of “Form and Indifference” Hilberseimer characterizes the aspects of this summit as “periods of volition” and “periods of relaxation.” In cultural ascent, as the will struggles to realize itself in material, advancements in technique align with the effort to manifest a spiritual conception. (“In primal creation skill is thoroughly congruent with the will. One can do as much as one wills.”38) In the descent of culture, technical capacity, unmotivated and undirected by creative will, is employed to systematize extant creation, a process in which individual creativity is reified in the reproduced and distributed products of civilization.39 Consistent with the politics of Der Einzige, Hilberseimer describes this latter process as democratization—“Schematizing, democratizing, is the particular intent of all civilization.”40—and polarizes the respective phases in terms of the: Dionysian and the Apollonian; the “unconscious” and the selfconscious; aesthetics and “aestheticism”; “radical” expression on the one side and “tradition,” “serene enjoyment,” “luxury,” and “decadence” on the other.41 In Hilberseimer’s conception of art history, then, every work of art makes sensible a particular relationship between will and material—even, in a negative sense, decadent works. In this way, every artwork embodies the individual and collective will of its time (both the temperament of the producer and their socially informed spiritual attitude). In works such as the Pyramid of Cheops, the Hagia Sophia, and the Hutheesing Jain Temple, Hilberseimer argues, “one will obtain an exceedingly clear image of what was wanted in the respective cultures.”42 As an abstract art and the material accomplishment of society as a whole, Hilberseimer claims architecture is the most salient visual indication of a culture’s metaphysical strength or weakness. Cultural will only appears clearly in works unencumbered by affectation. Although architecture like music is

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not as prone to “contamination with naturalism” as other arts, it is just as susceptible to prejudicial conception. Both formalism and naturalism isolate form from its motivation. “For form is always only what it is within the totality of the artwork: means for expression,” Hilberseimer stresses, “made independent, it has become useless.” Integral to nature or an artwork, form is the contingent appearance of an inspiration, the result of creation, only evident in retrospect. To suppose form precedes creation is to foreswear will under the belief form is isolatable and possessable. That this presumption can be shown to be erroneous, Hilberseimer argues, “also settles by itself the question: Abstract or natural form? This question is entirely subordinate,” he writes, “because the artist is entitled to any means that suits him, and it is ridiculous to let one’s productive power atrophy through programs and slogans.” Hilberseimer refuses to accept the distinction between natural and abstract form: “Because a form,” he argues, “is tied to perception by the senses, then it must necessarily be sensible in order to be perceived by the senses.”43 Form only exists in the expression of an idea; it is ridiculous to think reality itself possesses (abstract) forms. Therefore, Hilberseimer not only understands works of art as embodiments of individual and cultural conceptions, he also understands the artwork, like nature, as an organization of the material world. The first section of “Form and Indifference” concerns the distinction between willful creation and slavish beauty. The second rejects the misguided understanding—the formalism and naturalism—upon which this slavishness is based. The final section of the essay considers the political motivations for this slavishness. In particular, Hilberseimer critiques the appropriation of art “by the state and the church as a means of power,” arguing these social institutions condition art by demanding it perform tasks “beyond its sphere.” Echoing Nietzsche, he implores his readers to remember the state and the church are “human, all-too-human” institutions that have “the intention [of] holding down humanity.” The effort to direct art for “corporate purposes” enacts the materialism that encourages imitation. The corporate artist “is against new creation, [and] for the cliché, [which is] easily-tradeable because already effective.” Convention leads people to believe “so-called tradition” is “cultural” when, in fact, it “is the greatest inhibition to the assertion of the purely artistic-creative.” A focus on ideological communication rather than individual expression burdens the artist with platitudes and produces a pseudo-culture. And yet, Hilberseimer points out, despite the ideological ambitions of the state and the church, the “purely artistic” arises nonetheless, which is “only more evidence for the divinity of artistic creation.” “The artistic will, […] is radical in its expression, a constant threat to tradition,” Hilberseimer declares. “The purely artistic only ever begins beyond the required purpose. A cult image can serve very well as such, yet does not thereby

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need to be a work of art. In order for it to become such, everything purposeful must be overcome by the creator as merely extrinsic.”44 Hilberseimer argues this creative ambition was “the actual intention” of Renaissance artists; they sought “to break with all these preconditions and establish pure relations.” But it was an intention undermined, Hilberseimer thinks, by the adoption of antique forms in the Renaissance, an effort he describes as “Seeking to reincarnate something dead.” In his own time, however, Hilberseimer thinks the principal impediment to creation is not so much the stranglehold of conventions sanctioned by the authority of powerful institutions (although much of his writing is critical in this vein), but the lack of a spiritual worldview: “Genuine religiosity was lost as the result of an all-decomposing skepticism, destroying much of value. But perhaps only to now accomplish what the Renaissance intended,” Hilberseimer hopes, “For today there are again works full of the innermost world-feeling and deepest religiosity, entirely beyond anything experimental.”45 If it was possible to now glimpse the presentiments of a renewed spirituality, it was both because and in spite of skepticism. Hilberseimer begins his trilogy of essays with a distinction between a DionysianApollonian culture and a one-sided Apollonian civilization and a critique of the latter as misrule by prejudice. Then he asserts creative work is necessarily a process of revaluation. Now, in conclusion, he argues that so long as the artistic production of a society constitutes expressions of its time, unfettered by the conventions of the past and liberated from the formalizations peddled by the state, the church, and capitalism, then a renewed primitivism, a new culture, could be realized. “So long as the religiosity of the creator coincides with that of his time, there can be no talk of dependency,” he writes, “Through the accord of the metaphysical all inhibition is lifted, as the works of all genuine primitives show. Dualism only then occurs, when the creator succumbs to skepticism, when his worldview [Weltbild] sustains a rupture.”46 Skepticism had introduced a debilitating self-consciousness into modern life, dividing subjects from themselves and artists from society. The very appearance of form betrayed the demotivation of the artist. Modern institutional powers had cynically exploited artists for their own ends. But the real issue for Hilberseimer was the internalization of this skepticism. His suggestion that even with the restrictions placed on art by the state and the church, great art could nevertheless arise, places the ultimate responsibility for spiritual motivation on the individual themselves. The title of the essay—“Form und Individuum”—said as much. For readers of Friedlaender, “Individuum” connoted a particular kind of individual: an indifferent subject, neither divided from themselves nor the world. This is a comportment in which, through recognition of one’s indivisibility from existence—a conscious overcoming of skepticism—one embraces and extends their liberty aesthetically, through the observation, conceptualization, and transformation of the material world.

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Toward an Artistic Science Five weeks later, in his essay “Naturalism and the Primitive in Art,” Hilberseimer is explicit about the role skepticism plays in isolating and reifying form: “With the genuine primitives, form and content coincide. The reproducers detach form from content and use it purely as form. […] Formalism denies the identity of form and content. [It] advocates the apriority of form and ends in pure arbitariness.”47 Overcoming formalism meant remotivating creation, renewed emphasis on the spiritual understanding by which artistic motives gain significance. Hilberseimer’s discussions of form were not naïve paeans for the immediacy of a lost primitivism. Writing after Friedlaender, Hilberseimer begins with an acutely self-conscious awareness of the relationship between representation and experience, an awareness that is the very consequence of modern skepticism. With an acute sense modern civilization was coming to an end, Hilberseimer’s sense of a newly dawning spiritual motivation for art is a self-conscious and willful commitment to overcoming skepticism through indifference.48 Writing in Ruest and Friedlaender’s journal, at the end of the war and the beginning of his career as a critic, Hilberseimer proclaims the possibility of realizing a new creative spirit: a rational artistic science. The prominence of the Renaissance in Hilberseimer’s thinking suggests his theory and practice can be understood as an effort to overcome modern art— specifically its longstanding ambivalence, originating in the contradiction between Humanist agency and Renaissance formalism. While Hilberseimer notes certain artists were able to avoid this contradiction, he laments the great majority of artists remain burdened by conventions. In “Naturalism and the Primitive in Art,” Hilberseimer is concerned that in striving to revive primitive creation, contemporary artists were rehearsing modern pitfalls. To make this argument, Hilberseimer now clearly differentiates Renaissance formalism into two kinds. On the one hand, rather than embracing experience directly, the majority of modern artists were convinced the path toward great art was established by their forebears. “It was believed that the work of art develops, rises out of a series, culminating toward perfection,” Hilberseimer explains, “Perfection, however, is independent of tradition. It exists in itself. It may arise under the most primitive as well as under the most refined conditions.” This was the problem of emphasizing existing formal conventions rather than directly engaging the matter of art. “The forms of the Renaissance did not originate primarily, not by overcoming material (only the matter that binds the artist lends him support), but were in large part adopted from antiquity.”49 On the other hand, even though a number of important and early Renaissance artists prioritized the direct experience of nature, the majority of modern artists tended to overemphasize the appearance of nature rather than their insightful

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comprehension of it. Hilberseimer describes this as a shift from “experience” to “rhetoric” in which “The elementary is lost, indeed, even rejected as barbaric” and the desire to bring creation into “harmony with nature” gives over to a pervasive “naturalism.” Under the misconceptions of civilization, he argues, citing Nietzsche’s discussion of the shifting role of the chorus in Greek tragedy, “Naturalism, a result of skepticism, rejects everything somehow magical-transcendent, and believes that it must behave in a purely imitative way toward the environment.”50 Rather than seek to give form to the wonder of experience, the civilized artist represents only the surface appearance of the world and substitutes for the exercise of their creative intuition preoccupation with the effect of representation: “Since everything of principle has been lost, the imitation of nature however, like everything mechanical, is very capable of development, it is escalated toward virtuosity,” Hilberseimer theorizes, “In this way, one arrives, by endless detours, at what, since the invention of photography, has been the matter of an instant.”51 As mechanical (analytic) rather than organic (synthetic) understanding, Hilberseimer implies, taking up a common trope of Romantic theory, naturalism is an automated and superficial activity. By contrast, in primitive societies, “Man, striving to adapt to the earth, seeks to humanize through art the skittish-magical of his metaphysical experience.”52 Here we glimpse, in Hilberseimer’s earliest writings on art, and his humility before the mysteries of experience, the theoretical seed of his later efforts to integrate human settlement with the natural landscape. Furthermore, Hilberseimer distinguishes between two strains of mechanical imitation. He suggests the naturalistic tendency, originating with Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), culminates in Impressionism, while the stylistic tendency—a second-order naturalism, in which art becomes second nature— descends in a lineage from Michelangelo to Françoise Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) culminating in certain kinds of aberrant Expressionism. Hilberseimer calls this contemporary second-order naturalism “fabricated primitivity” and describes its contemporary manifestation as “The exploitation of the ethnographic museum for ‘new art.’” Artists such as Max Pechstein (1881–1955), Erich Heckel (1883–1970), and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (1884–1976), all members of the Die Brücke group, were rhetorically affecting rather than embracing the attitude of non-Western artists, an attitude that would require them to recognize themselves. “Study trips to the South Seas are no substitute for creative power,” Hilberseimer scolds, “[… These artists] want to be primitive in creation without being primitive,” a practice he calls “the most monstrous aberration” and the “most vile decorative art.”53 If “Naturalism and the Primitive in Art” is a critique of contemporary pseudoprimitivism, “Art and Knowledge,” published just three weeks later, reasserts the possibility of authentic primitive creation. In this last of his Der Einzige essays, Hilberseimer extends his critique of modern culture to a discussion of the historical interrelationship between art and science, now presenting skepticism as the consequence of modern secularization, a worldview that, by the midnineteenth century, comes to exclusively associate knowledge with specialized 52

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scholarship. Misconceiving the relationship between knowledge and experience, Hilberseimer argues, scientists—and following them, artists—mistake analytical representation for synthetic insight. Nevertheless, even as Hilberseimer recommends contemporary artists cultivate a critical relationship to scientific knowledge, he also supposes they have no choice but to take up that knowledge: “Scientific man provides material. Creative man forms with this material. The first is analytic, the latter synthetic,” he asserts, “Creative man intuitively takes possession of the material provided by science. But he must have overcome this [material] in order to come to creation.”54 That Hilberseimer begins with the artist’s relationship to scientific knowledge, rather than their immediate experience of reality, qualifies his earlier assertion (in “The Revaluation of Art”) that “Art brings the metaphysical to view.” Hilberseimer supposes the artist cannot but take the collective sense of their place and time into account; the artist must begin with the worldview of their society, even if, to be creative, they cannot reflexively represent that worldview. The artist errs if they accept modern scientific representation as experience; they have a responsibility to understand knowledge as a conception of experience. In the present circumstance that meant understanding the kind of representations characteristic of modern science. “Analyzing-scientific man believes with the parts to already possess the whole,” Hilberseimer warns, “forgetting that he will only ever be a specialist and, as such, can never arrive at the unity which alone matters.”55 Far more often than not, however, under the influence of science, the artist had betrayed the promise of culture. Influenced by an analytical science, Hilberseimer argues the late-nineteenth-century artist had provided isolated and incoherent observations. “Instead of realizing his visions, giving a synthetic worldview, the painter, unaware of his responsibility, infected by the analytic of science, dissects the world,” Hilberseimer laments, “With the ‘beautiful snippet’ as the goal of his intentions, he completely surrenders to the demands of his time, in which the masses demand from art entertainment and sensation, but the connoisseur, at best, pleasure. It then no longer matters what is painted but how.” While Hilberseimer tempers this attack—the Impressionists still understood themselves as “pantheists,” who, “as sensual beings, conscious of their powerlessness before the natural universe, try to give the whole in the part”—he nevertheless argues Impressionists end up “banishing wholeness,” precisely because they fail in their endeavor to capture the whole in the part.56 “Impressionism sets out from incidental, the merely seen; leaves the chaos in the chaotic; is formless and arbitrary. Exhausts itself on the surface of things, contents itself with the so-called ‘beautiful appearance’.”57 Like these naturalists, Hilberseimer contends, stylists such as Anselm Feuerbach (1829–80) and Hans von Marées (1837–87), with their pretension for classicism, also betray “boundless disbelief.”58 So too the “neoprimitives,” in their mimicry of non-European artforms and their enthusiastic proclamations of a “new world,” had turned away from reality. They “have already fabricated an academy!” he exclaims. Hilberseimer parodies these various, HILBERSEIMER’S THEORY OF ART

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expedient attempts at fashioning the new: “Nothing is cheaper than imitation, in which we have happily advanced so far as to be able to do everything. Today we are Egyptians or Greeks, tomorrow Gothics or exotic primitives,” he mocks, “Berlin with its memorial church, its cathedral, its renaissancist and mystical cafés, the Marble House with the exotic cinema, etc., offers a gleaming picture of our time, so overabundant with ‘progress.’”59 Naturalism, stylism, and neo-primitivism were just means to manufacture the trinkets of civilization. Contemporary artists and scientists were no longer able to invest material with synthetic value. Skepticism had denatured culture. Yet Hilberseimer did not see modern science and art as uniquely aberrant. Here Nietzsche’s idea of “eternal return”—his equation of Socratic Greece and modern Europe—was definitive. Hilberseimer understands modern secularization not as a particular historical development but as a polar phase in the dialectical development of human nature. “Internalization and externalization are the two principal currents of old as well as new art,” he asserts, “the expression of waxing and waning cultures.”60 In his own time, Hilberseimer identifies this eternal oscillation with the polar relationship between Impressionism and Expressionism: Internalized is the expressive form of the primitives, whose works are based on faith, wealth of ideas, strength and will. Their creation [Gestalten] is always the expression of their vision, independent of external things. Today it has been called Expressionism. Like art, Expressionism is neither old nor new, but an artistic form of expression, in which all times can reveal themselves. An artwork has no age. It can be a day or millennia old; it is beyond time, eternal. The creator draws from primal consciousness [Urbewußtsein]. And primal consciousness is not subject to fashion. The art of the primitives has a thoroughly synthetic character; is creative, Dionysian, perfect; is the expression of a rounded world-picture [Weltbildes].61 In the early months of 1919, then, Hilberseimer, in his nascent art criticism, argues that Expressionism, clarified to exclude an aberrant neo-primitivism, can be understood as the contemporary manifestation of an eternal spirit of creation. Moreover, in “Art and Knowledge” Hilberseimer draws a parallel between this expressionism in art and an alternative science that is capable of articulating “a rounded world picture” (a metaphor found throughout Friedlaender’s writings).62 He suggests modern analytical science is not the only kind of scientific knowledge by citing a passage from Goethe’s Zur Farbenlehre (Theory of Colors, 1810): Since in knowledge as well as in reflection no whole can be brought together, because the former lacks the inner, the latter the outer, we must necessarily

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think of science as art, if we expect from it any kind of wholeness. Namely, we must not seek this [wholeness] in the general, in the exuberant, but like art presents itself always whole in every single work of art, likewise should science also prove itself each time whole in every single topic.63 Goethe had envisioned a science that goes beyond isolated observations, to synthetic propositions about, phenomena. Yet, Goethe understands that conceptual totality as ineluctably presented to our experience in particulars. Goethe sought a science not of isolated and independent observations about nature, but a natural philosophy that comprehends these observations as a whole. It is in this Goethean sense that Hilberseimer understands scientific knowledge as potentially consistent with the metaphysical claims of earlier- and non-European cultures that knew no distinction between (analytical) science and (synthetic) art. Hilberseimer could critique the analytical tendencies of modern science and the naturalistic and stylistic tendencies of modern art because he held the view they were particular manifestations—and, in his view, civilizing distortions— of culture in general. Culture is just that effort to imbue vital experience with sense. Precisely because the contemporary artist could not but begin with the knowledge of modern science, they should recognize that its representations are only isolated reflections of physical experience, at best preliminary to the creative, metaphysical synthesis that is the essence of cultural work. In a comment in 1918 on (what was probably a draft of) Hilberseimer’s “Creation and Development,” Friedlaender stresses to Hilberseimer that formalization per se is not in itself bad. He does so by distinguishing a direct and vital expression (a first order Apollonization) from the kind of derivative, schematic formalism that he associates with the applied arts, calling the latter “reproductive […] Apollonism in the second degree.”64 “The Apollonian should not be considered schematically objectionable, not per se,” Friedlaender tells Hilberseimer, “but only its mechanical reproduction and refinement.”65 No doubt Friedlaender felt Hilberseimer’s rhetoric tended to reduce Nietzsche’s distinction to a crude opposition; Hilberseimer’s writings frequently lapse into a shorthand in which the Apollonian is misleadingly equated with this second-order formalization. But it would be bad faith to suppose Hilberseimer misunderstands Nietzsche’s and Friedlaender’s philosophy.66 Rather, Friedlaender’s comments are entirely consistent with his longstanding effort to focus attention on formalization. Friedlaender gives Hilberseimer the kind of advice he wishes he could have given Nietzsche. After modern skepticism, Friedlaender advocates a creatively indifferent formalization, cultivated by a rationalizing artistic science of neutralized polarization. With creative indifference—a renewed artistic science—Hilberseimer and Rukser face (human) nature as it is: they seek to formalize, to give expression (significance) to, the matter of the metropolis.

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3 ORGANICISM AND MORPHOLOGY

An Artistic Science The references to Goethe in Hilberseimer’s earliest published writings are unsurprising in the context of Der Einzige. The nineteenth-century polymath is Friedlaender’s primary exemplum of creative indifference. In his intellectual biography, Friedlaender suggests Nietzsche should have followed Goethe’s understanding of the interrelationship between physics and metaphysics.1 Whereas Schopenhauer sought to negate, and Nietzsche affirm and cultivate, the will, Friedlaender recommends Goethe’s disciplined praxis for arbitrating materialism and idealism, synthesizing science and art. Goethe’s Theory of Colors best exemplifies this countenance for Friedlaender.2 Central to Goethe’s findings is a critique of reified theory and a search for the vital formulation and expression of knowledge. Arguing Isaac Newton (1642– 1727) had been misled by an erroneous hypothesis, Goethe rejects Newtonian models that account for color solely by a theory of light.3 By direct, patient, and careful observation combined with meticulous description, Goethe identifies manifestations of color irreducible to Newtonian accounts. The experience of color imbricates objective phenomena with our subjective response to that phenomena.4 Goethe is a recurring subject of Friedlaender’s writings, appearing as frequently as Kant, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche in Creative Indifference. Friedlaender argues Goethe was a great man, not because he overcame but because he accepted and embraced his humanity.5 Fundamental to Goethe’s natural philosophy was an exhaustive practice of empirical observation and acute self-awareness. Beyond analytical felicity, Goethe argues, the synthesis of empirical impressions requires the scientist, by means of practical reason, to discern the typical from a manifold of particulars.6 This demands attention to the conditions of observation: “the observer never sees the pure phenomenon with his own eyes”; Goethe writes,

“rather much depends on his mood, the state of his senses, the light, air, weather, the physical object, how it is handled, and a thousand other circumstances.”7 The positing, verifying, and describing of natural phenomena require an exhaustive series of observations, in which the observer, attentive to their own physical and psychological being, distinguishes objective from accidental and subjective impressions. As Goethe’s disciple Jan Purkinje put it, the scientist ought develop the capacity to bracket preconceptions and experience visual phenomena as raw phenomena.8 Goethe exemplified the cultivated self-control Friedlaender believes necessary to the emancipation and growth of humanity as a whole.9 Acceptance of the limitations of humanity allows humanity to go beyond itself, Friedlaender explains, suggesting no one “felt as imperiously summoned to superhumanity” as the author of Faust.10 Through the disciplining of our senses we cultivate our capacity for primary experience. “Seeing, hearing, etc. are not, as ontology makes believe, mere fatalities; these fatalities are simultaneously disciplines,” Friedlaender explains, “Every sense instructs itself, all each other, there is critical interaction among them; their coordination and synthesis with all their division of labor is an organizational work of art and no brute fact.”11 Moreover, Friedlaender argues, Goethe’s literary and scientific texts offer immediate access to vital experience. “Life, spirit, […] are so incomparably more essential than the works”; Friedlaender writes, “[…] It is an indescribable event when man creates something from his innermost soul and places it before everyone in concentrated form.”12 This commitment to the priority of experience is central to Friedlaender and Hilberseimer’s thought, as is a theory of representation that values communicative immediacy. Friedlaender accepts the constructedness of representation—we, not nature, create laws—but rejects the notion our signifying systems are arbitrary. If our representations appear arbitrary, it is because they are the product of a prejudiced, inattentive empiricism or flawed rationality, a failure to actively (re)calibrate our concepts with the flux of existence. In Friedlaender’s worldview, art is dependent on a science founded in aesthetic discipline and creative intuition, rather than prejudicial suppositions of learned theory and appropriated knowledge. Friedlaender’s 1911 essay “Goethe contra Newton” (“Goethe versus Newton”) uses Goethe’s critique of Newtonian theory to condemn the false pedagogy of a pseudo-liberal society more interested in its own knowledge than truth.13 “There is indeed an altogether substantial difference,” Friedlaender argues, “whether one […] personally experiences color; or […] brings a dead mechanical subject to it.”14 Like Goethe, Friedlaender warns against empiricism for its own sake, which leads to “industrious idleness” and “academicism.” We lose ourselves and our commitment to life when we stray toward idealism or empiricism exclusively. In Goethe’s work, Friedlaender praises, “theoretical and factual appear to gain life from one another.”15

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The Republic of Knowledge Goethe had no doubt about our capacity for indifferent observation. Nor did he question the “creative independent power […] through which evidence is grasped, collected, ordered, and developed.” Nevertheless, in the application of these powers Goethe believes the scientist is prone to envy and isolation when science is inevitably a communal activity spanning centuries. Goethe envisions a science in which intercourse naturally regulates observation and dampens speculation. It is easier to practice the “calm exercise of our powers of attention” in everyday life than in science, Goethe observes, because in acting on our observations “life corrects us at every step.” Indifference is requisite but not sufficient to knowledge, because intellection, unlike action, is the representation rather than transformation of the world. Unconditioned by the material realities of practical action, a veracious natural philosophy is a “hypothetical impossibility.” Nevertheless, mediated by collective discourse, natural philosophy enhances its virtues and abates its vices.16 The products of empirical investigation, even those of the purely indifferent witness, are only ever isolated observations. Too-readily celebrating the “sovereignty” of the intellect, we suppress contradictory evidence or lack of knowledge, thereby conceal mysticism, and science becomes, Goethe writes, presuming an anarchic relationship between its constituents, “more like the court of a despot than a freely constituted republic.”17 Believing the elements of the universe mutually conditioning, Goethe argues scientists fall short when they fail to account for the interrelationships between phenomena. He stresses the empiricist’s responsibility to draw observations into a coherent explication. From isolated observations, the natural philosopher is obliged to reconstruct the interactions that constitute the whole. Once the analytical evidence and its synthetic formulation are established, Goethe argues “our intellect, imagination, and wit can work upon it as they will; no harm will be done, and indeed, a useful purpose will be served.”18 The singular findings of the physicist underpin the speculations of the metaphysicist. There is no danger in false hypothesis, so long as theory is not reified. In his Theory of Colors, Goethe stresses that he is not asking the philosopher to become an empiricist, nor vice versa. Ideally, one should be both, or, pragmatically, open to the other, intent on maintaining a direct correspondence between the empirical and conceptual hemispheres of being.19 Goethe thus envisions the articulation of principles as the shared currency of physics and metaphysics. By principles, Goethe means not abstract philosophical premises, but prevalent, if not universal, processes, observable in reality and often reproducible in experiment. With a grasp of these “archetypal phenomena,” he argues, the physicist can be satisfied they have reached an “empirical summit” and the metaphysicist “will now be justifiably indifferent to phenomena.”

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Goethe’s Theory of Colors had this goal “to present the principles of color to the philosopher.”20 Indeed, Goethe supposes all intellectual activity is undertaken in search of synthetic principles. He worries the eighteenth-century emphasis on analysis had led scientists to inadequately develop, consider, and test hypotheses—they “failed to restore to the human spirit its ancient right to come face to face with nature.”21 From our own sense of singularity, he argues, we have the basic intuition there are inherent organizing principles in nature: “we experience the fullest sense of wellbeing when we are unaware of our parts and conscious only of the whole itself.”22 Goethe believes organic nature is self-evidently coherent: “What higher synthesis is there than a living organism?” he asks.23 In Goethe’s organicism, singularity has the vital primacy it has in Ruest’s individualist anarchism and in Friedlaender’s creative indifference.

Morphology Goethe undertakes the study of natural coherence under the rubric of “morphology,” which he describes as the most synthetic and vital of scientific disciplines, the study of the “principles of structured form and the formation and transformation of organic bodies.”24 By structure, Goethe means the organization of the constituent parts of a system that maintains coherence over a period of time. In his morphology of plants, Goethe goes beyond anatomy and chemistry to consider phenomena in their vital being. Only morphology is concerned with the “higher principle of the organism,” he states.25 It has both physical and metaphysical aspects, corresponding to our comprehensive sense of existence. Moreover, the synthetic ambition of morphology, requiring the incorporation of specialist knowledge, demands collaboration. Goethe understands the structure and transformation of knowledge as itself organic, intimately related to the vital exercise of being. The “scientific minds of every epoch,” he claims, “have […] exhibited an urge to understand living formations as such, to grasp their outward, visible, tangible parts in context, to see these parts as an indication of what lies within and thereby gain some understanding of the whole through an exercise of intuitive perception.”26 Goethe supposes an understanding of the inherent vitality of nature (beyond the world of appearances) is essential to human development. In our “mutual interaction” with the diversity of existence we exercise our “potential for infinite growth through constant adaptation,” adjusting our “sensibilities and judgment to new ways of acquiring knowledge and responding with action.”27 Indeed, Goethe believes we realize an essential pleasure when we express ourselves in correspondence with the vitality of nature. His morphology is an attempt to overcome the erroneous belief ideas are an encumbrance to or above practice.

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Often “we cannot know, but must act,” Goethe writes, “Nature has given us the chess board; we cannot and should not work beyond its limits. She has carved our pieces; gradually we will learn their value, their moves, and their powers.”28 “[I]f we look at all these forms, especially the organic ones,” Goethe points out, “we will discover […] everything is in a flux of continual motion.”29 Goethe conceives morphology as a “quick and flexible” science that intuitively animates appearance into a “living perception of nature.”30 Pivotal to this animation is Goethe’s observation that prime among the reified concepts limiting the progress of natural philosophy is the functionalist “conception that a living being is created for certain external purposes.” Being a scientist requires a “renunciation” of this anthropocentric narcissism: a disinterested consideration of “nature’s objects in their own right and in relation to one another.”31 Goethe recognizes and accepts the nature of human being and yet, Friedlaender notes, calls upon humanity to look upon the world with “godlike” indifference.32 Rather than determined beings, Goethe argues organisms are conditioned by their environment, their existence only comprehensible within a particular milieu. The entirety of nature transforms (through reciprocal conditioning) as an interconnected and continuous (spatial and temporal) whole. Goethe believes this to be true of both environmental systems and singular organisms, which are themselves constituted by a plurality of elements. All living entities are part of a continual process of differentiation and convergence. In less cohesive creations, the parts of an entity are more homogeneous and heterarchical; more cohesive creations are more heterogeneous and hierarchical. Moreover, in his “theory of encasement,” Goethe argues every organism realizes an outer protective covering that establishes its singularity and maintains its coherence “against the raw elements of its environment.”33 While transformations in environmental conditions may affect the external form and internal structure of the organism, the nature of those transformations is equally conditioned by the internal being (the law) of the organism itself. Hence the external appearance of organisms, while affected by environmental conditions, also indexes their internal organization and integrity, a claim central to Goethe’s supposition that the disciplined visual observation of phenomena is requisite to the insightful perception of nature.

Organicism and Beauty In a short text, written in 1785, based on the philosophy of Spinoza, also a source for Nietzsche and Friedlaender, Goethe describes the organism as infinite, unfathomable to external measure, stating “if it must be measured, it must provide its own gauge. This gauge, however, is highly spiritual, and cannot be found through the senses.”34 In its irreducible being, the organism spiritually articulates itself in

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response to external conditions. “Thus all of existence and totality must be made finite in our minds so that it conforms to our nature and our way of thinking and feeling,” Goethe writes, “Only then will we say that we understand something, or enjoy it.”35 Essential to understanding and pleasure—to both science and art—is a finite structure that comprehends by development and adaptation the perceivable aspects of existence. In active response to external conditions, the organism expresses within itself, according to its “own nature” (conatus), a coherent body of relationships—it draws, shapes, and proportions its organs and concepts into a specific composition. However, the vitality of physical and intellectual life, which is nothing but this ongoing self-realization in response to given and changing conditions, can both wax and wane. Goethe captures this idea, in a discussion of the organic expression of plants, in a distinction between “regular” (or “progressive”) and “irregular” metamorphoses—in Hilberseimer’s terms: periods of tension and relaxation. In the former, Goethe explains, “with irresistible force and tremendous effort,” nature is creative, but in the latter it “seems to grow slack, irresolutely leaving its creation in an indeterminate, malleable state often pleasing to the eye but lacking in inner force and effect.”36 For Goethe, only progressive metamorphoses give rise to beauty. Beauty emerges when the organism organizes itself (in the context of a particular milieu) such that it can satisfy its needs and voluntarily devote energy to purposeless expression. Therefore, while beauty indicates harmonious internal organization, beauty is not reducible to that organization. The study of beauty “elevate[s] the concept of proportion […] to more spiritual principles.”37 Nor does organic harmony mean perfected organization by some external measure. It means the organs of an organism “are so related that none hinders the action of another.” The organs themselves develop independently. But so long as they remain conditioned by their manifold relations to the other elements of the organism, the organism as a whole appears in “perfect balance,” such that it “seems free to act and work just as it chooses.”38 Goethe associates beauty with this appearance of grace, which in human being manifests as a willful “expression of the mind.” Rather than the exercise of this capacity, however, Goethe associates the appearance of beauty with the sense of potential.39 Goethe conceives the organism, like knowledge, as a republic of autonomous, mutually conditioned elements, tensely poised for synthetic action, a formation that in the exercise of its capacities goes beyond the impression of beauty to the willful and coordinated expression of an idea. Goethe takes it as the ambition of natural philosophy to invest the analytical knowledge born of disciplined observation with this synthetic potential. He understands this ambition as entirely consistent with the historical ambition of art and supposes his natural philosophy could extend to the consideration of human creation. This convergence between Goethe’s conceptions of natural history and art history is clearest in “Simple Imitation, Manner, Style” (1789), an essay penned just prior to his work on the Theory of Colors (1791–1807), in which he makes

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the basic distinction between the artist’s direct imitation of nature and their development of the capacity to discern and represent the “unifying harmony” apparent in a “multitude” of examples. While the former requires simply a “capable and limited talent,” “basic techniques,” and the presence of specimens, the latter —which expresses “the general character of the whole”—requires developed abilities of observation and representation and can occur, after sufficient direct experience, in the absence of exempla. Goethe calls this developed formation of existence, the spiritual capacity to intuitively apprehend and draw attention to the salient generalities of phenomena, “style.” The artist “invents his own method, creates his own language to express in his own way what he has grasped with his soul,” Goethe theorizes, “And just as anyone who thinks for himself will order and formulate his ideas on moral issues differently from others, so any such artist will see, apprehend, and imitate the world differently.”40 In Goethe’s conception of style, the characteristic and the general coexist in a charged relationship. Practiced imitation combined with a developed “manner” can lead to “noble, great, and admirable” works, but an overemphasis on “manner” at the expense of content can lead to mannerism. The necessity to produce a synthetic artistic language can result in either the divergence of reality and representation or their convergence as style. The relationship between art and nature—between the evolution of culture and the environment—can be congruent or incongruent. Science and art, depending on their method, given form in language, have the polar potential to either unify or separate the physical and the metaphysical, experience and imagination. Style betrays a cohesive (spiritual) organization of material for a period of time. Recurrent in Goethe’s discussions of art is an emphasis on the artist’s choice and presentation of subject. Just as the scientist is concerned with selecting the most representative exempla and depicting the essential principles of nature, the judicious selection and presentation of artistic content is a crucial aspect of artistic style. Like the natural philosopher, the artist should be committed not to the details of existence, but to a synthetic comprehension and representation of the inherent principles of phenomena, requiring a grasp of their subject sufficient “to find the best moment to be portrayed.”41 In particular, Goethe recommends the artist’s presentation should evince a comprehensive understanding of the morphological transformations and various manifestations of their chosen subject. Given the inherent coherences of (especially organic) bodies are only externally discernable in movement, Goethe argues art is most powerful when it employs its static means to animate a natural (or historical) essence by conveying a sense of its immanent potential and underlying coherence in growth, development, or motion. Understanding the external expression of an organism as an index of its internal organization, Goethe supposes the promise of a theory of colors for natural philosophy is that color could be used as a visible sign of invisible processes and become an integral tool of morphology. But more than this, “to the extent that it

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appears as a constant effect,” Goethe argues, the “mutability” of color would “serve as a criterion for the mutable qualities of life.”42 Seen as integral to “the general, dynamistic flow of life and activity,” color offers an aesthetic bridge between physics and metaphysics.43 Through an understanding of color—and thus the capacity to develop “true intuitive perceptions”—Goethe sought to invest analytical science with synthetic beauty.44 Reconciling skepticism and action, the implicit promise of Goethe’s artistic science is that phenomena can be grasped with such immediacy that epistemology becomes immanent to a vital praxis. Goethe’s interest in art and science is driven by this promise of a knowledge integral and immediate to life. Just as the natural philosopher in Goethe’s view should seek to express with utmost lucidity and directness the archetypal principles of nature, Goethe recommends the artist set out to render the world in an “imaginative” arrangement of forms that have an immediately perceptible consonance. The artist ought to produce an “aesthetically graceful” composition according to a “law of spiritual beauty” such that the carefully selected content becomes “beautiful to the eye.”45 In this way, Goethe conceptualizes the successful work of art as itself an organism, that, conditioned by external phenomena, develops its own coherence. With consonance, the work of art, like the organism, becomes beautiful—“supranatural” says Goethe—and, like a living body, “its own micro-world in which everything follows certain laws—a world which must be experienced on its own terms.”46 It follows from an organic conception of art that the study of art ought itself be an empirically grounded science. “A great work of art is a work of the human mind, and thus also a work of nature,” Goethe explains.47 Like organisms, individual works of art are vital spiritual formations. The history of art is a cultural morphology articulating the synthetic principles of human creation through exempla representing distinctive forms of cultural practice, each conditioned by their particular milieu, but nevertheless exemplary of human creation as such. A (natural) philosophy of art is the intent of Die Propyläen (Propylaea), a journal edited by Goethe in Weimar, between 1798 and 1800. Writing on behalf of Johann Friedrich Meyer (1742–1849), Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835), Friedrich August Wolf (1759–1824), Schiller and himself, Goethe presents the periodical as a venue for discourse, that, like the gate to the Acropolis in Athens, would serve as the threshold to the “inner sanctum” of great art.48 Goethe supposes a public discourse on art, as with science, could provide an objective check upon the empirical validity of aesthetic observations and the speculations, both literary and artistic, formed on their basis. Such a discourse would disseminate ideas and constitute an historical record of their formation, mediate “dissonant” viewpoints, draw together specialists and the public, and have a didactic function for emerging artists and scholars. Goethe thus presents the journal as an effort to realize the “harmony and continuity” evidently lacking in a fickle culture.49 One of the essential functions of

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Propylaea was to postulate principles that could be tested by artists in practice. Goethe conceives of works of art, like scientific experiments, as sensible demonstrations of ideas. In particular, he took it as “the duty, task, and worth of the true artist” to clarify the specific nature of artistic mediums. This meant identifying the “principles” by which each realm of art attains “artistic truth,” whereas to proceed by “blind instinct,” prioritizing external appearance over intellectual insight, is nothing more than a desire for “realism.” “The former leads art to its highest peak, the latter to its lowest level,” Goethe argues, in a phrase echoed by Hilberseimer, directly or by way of Nietzsche. When artists are concerned with the principles of artistic depiction itself, art becomes more than a mere recording mechanism and habitual connoisseurship. Goethe argues the better understanding of artistic mediums is not only valuable for artistic training and practice, it elevates the historical appreciation of art, because “these are the very principles that can be deduced from the works of art themselves.”50 With concern for the speciation of art, art becomes a mode of creative research attentive to its own (morphological) history. Goethe advocates epistemological virtues that permit artists and scientists, through a provisional suspension of judgment and an unmediated engagement with a range of quality exempla, to develop their powers of intuitive perception. For only with the precision of an acutely refined perception, Goethe argues, can discourse develop beyond the platitudinous “generalities” and self-perpetuating conventions of taste that too-often pass for judgment.51 Rather than merely adopting “principles which suit his talent, inclination and convenience” Goethe recommends the artist “assimilate as far as he can, what is contrary to his nature” in order to overcome his limitations, refine his perception, and develop his aesthetic range. “Every art demands the whole man, the highest form of art the whole of humanity,” he waxes. Great artistry requires not a myopic, dilettante-like focus on “technical skills,” but an intuitive perception cultivated by broad experience.52 Writing in the lingering aftermath of the quarrel between the ancients and the moderns, Goethe argues it is irrelevant whether a work is old or new. In the manner of its creation, every work is spiritual expression.53 Although Goethe, in Hilberseimer’s Nietzschean-inflected view, uncritically affirms the grandeur of classical art, Goethe rejects the idealization of artistic precedents. Goethe holds up Greek art, not to replicate its forms, but to admire the attitude of its artists. “Let everyone be a Greek in his own way,” he advocates, “but let him be a Greek!”54 Goethe supposes these works embody a “clear perception of nature” and a developed capacity and confidence in expressing that perception. With this knowledge and confidence, he suggests, there comes an expression of the artist’s individuality.55 While mannerists feel compelled to develop their own “pictorial language” and circumvent a patient creative development of their insights and talents, the development of artistic principles and languages is ultimately a communal affair, he argues. The accomplishments of individual artists are at once a product of their individual talents and the artistic environment of their time.56

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The Natural (Polar) Language of Color Goethe critically engages science and art with the ambition to develop practices that foster the articulation and elaboration of artistic and scientific principles. In doing so, he presents the meticulous sequential reasoning of mathematical proof as a model for mediating physical and metaphysical conceptions in a way that thwarts wayward leaps of theory. Well aware mathematical formulations can “transform living things into dead ones,” he rejects reckoning detached from empirical observation. But he defends mathematical rigor against rhetorical arguments that offer only the semblance of synthesis.57 Above all, Goethe praises mathematical exposition for recapitulating existing findings as a consecutive whole. Noting scientists had already begun to employ multiple registers in recognition no single language is yet adequate for science as a whole, Goethe provisionally advocates specialized languages, modeled on mathematics, derived from the “simplest phenomena” under investigation.58 Underlying this search for a language is the supposition, asserted in Theory of Colors, that natural philosophy had attained “such a high level that it now seems possible to relate the endless realm of empirical phenomena to one central method.”59 Influenced by recent studies in “magnetism, electricity, and chemistry,” Goethe and the German Romantics understand polarity as the most universal law of nature.60 Using the “concepts of plus and minus”—but stressing “this symbolism always [be] accompanied by the intuitive perception belonging to it”—Goethe believes “the formula of polarity” had obvious resonance in other fields, most obviously music.61 “[A]nything that appears and meets us as a phenomenon necessarily implies an original division capable of union or an original unity capable of division,” he writes.62 In a note on “Polarität” (“Polarity,” 1799) penned during work on his theory of colors, Goethe reflects on the processes of nature that “produce the widest variety of things while restricted to only a few basic principles”: Whatever appears in the world must divide if it is to appear at all. What has been divided seeks itself again, can return to itself and reunite. This happens in a lower sense when it merely intermingles with its opposite, combines with it; here the phenomenon is nullified or at least neutralized. However, the union may occur in a higher sense if what has been divided is first intensified; then in the union of the intensified halves it will produce a third thing, something new, higher, unexpected.63 Goethe understands his interrelated practices of exhaustive observation and reasoned reflection, analysis and synthesis, as consistent with this polar development.

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In his Theory of Colors, Goethe presents “light, shadow and color” as instances of the “archetypal phenomenon” of polarity.64 Tone and color, he argues, “are general, basic effects acting in accord with universal law (separation and tendency to union, rising and falling, weight and counterweight), but in quite different directions, in quite different ways, through different media, on different senses.”65 Contrary to Newtonian theory, Goethe’s empirical observations led him, among other things, to revive the Aristotelian notion that color results form a mixture of light and dark and to recognize that in the wake of experiencing one color, we perceive its compliment as an after-image. The careful study of color further convinced Goethe that polarity was a basic tendency of existence.66 Influenced by Goethe’s discussions of polar visual phenomena in particular, Friedlaender supposes the polarization of reality—our division of its continuity into form—is intrinsic to human experience, cognition and action, our continual drawing of correspondences between observation and conception encapsulated in Goethe’s phrase “sight is judgment.” Goethe’s Theory of Colors, Friedlaender waxes, is with its “first statement already as superior to the Newtonian, as an organism to a machine. This statement says: there is a pair, a polarity: light and non-light! ‘And what places itself between the two?—Your eye as well as corporeality.’”67 Indeed, the seminal title for the work eventually published as Creative Indifference—Die lebendige Indifferenz der Weltpolarität (The Living Indifference of World Polarity)—captures Friedlaender’s belief polarity is fundamental not just to human but to all nature. While Friedlaender’s discussion of polarity drew upon sources as diverse as Heraclitus, Nicholas of Cusa, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, the thinking of Goethe and the German Romantics is central to (Nietzsche’s and) Friedlaender’s philosophy and the backdrop to Hilberseimer’s appeals to Goethe’s statements on art.68 Friedlaender’s emphasis on neutralized polarization can be understood as an effort to generalize and deepen Goethe’s suggestion there is an organic correspondence between empiricism and philosophy.69 Friedlaender understands all conceptualization as polar formalization, and thus the mathematical rationalization of being.70 Spinoza had described the particular coherence of each modality of being as a ratio and this sense of proportion is carried into both Friedlaender’s philosophy of polarization and Hilberseimer’s discussion, after Kandinsky, of the artwork as a particular “ratio of tension” or law. For Friedlaender, magnitude is not in itself substantial but an abstraction drawn by reference to zero. As the constitutive possibility of any magnitude, the zero point (±0) is an infinitesimal balance point, at once intrinsic and extraneous to the infinite. It is self-evidently incongruent with the continuous infinitude of reality (metaphoric) yet extant in this continuity (metonymic). As the sign for the self-conscious possibility of all abstraction in Friedlaender’s philosophy, zero corresponds to an ideal subjectivity—the objectivity Friedlaender calls “indifference”—wherein the subject is fully cognizant of their constitutive role in finitely articulating the

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infinitude of reality.71 Unlike the barren practices detached from experience that civilization had made of them, Friedlaender sees logic and mathematics as practical and critical faculties that, giving ratio, harmonize the senses, and thus, by a “law of life,” touch the infinite.72 In the concluding section of the Theory, Goethe reflects on the significance of his observations for art. In an earlier remark, later taken up by Kandinsky, Goethe had lamented the lack of a basso continuo, a general basis, for painting.73 He supposes his rigorous empirical investigation of color offer the artist, rightly skeptical of theory, a newfound scientific footing for practice.74 Goethe argues color has a “sensory-moral effect” because, regardless the form of the surface bearing it, color directly “acts on man’s inner nature through the mediation of the eye.” He believes there is an intrinsic pleasure in the experience of color, a feeling as necessary to human being as light. Moreover, because the experience of color integrates objective and subjective phenomena, Goethe supposes color could be deployed as the natural basis of a visual language.75 Surveying artistic applications of color, Goethe distinguishes between its “symbolic” and “allegorical” uses. In the former, color is used naturalistically.76 In allegorical or “conventional” usage, color is understood according to its culturally imbued meanings. Goethe conceives a third—“mystical”—use of color, a polarized balance of the other two, which he compares to the mathematician’s use of the triangle to depict certain objective numerical relationships. Using the predictable aspects of color experience, Goethe suggests it is possible to depict the “archetypal relationships” between colors. He concludes, for example, that our propensity to see the complement of a color in its after-image is born of an innate compulsion to (re)assert a totality or harmony.77 By reproducing (just as an experiment does), the divergent and convergent effects that are manifestations of the polarity of color, Goethe suggests color could be deployed as a language that at once demonstrates and explicates polarity as such, thereby imbuing our “mystical and intuitive perception” with “spiritual meaning.”78 When, for example, Goethe defines yellow as “positive” (“light”) and says positive colors are vibrant and defines blue as “negative” (“dark”) and says negative colors are enervating, he is relying upon allegory to evoke the distinction in sensation between yellow and blue, but he is also simultaneously—in his “mystical” sense—calibrating the particular visual sensations of these colors (and their conventional meanings) with a polar terminology.79 For example, the musical term “tone,” rather than being used conventionally to refer to a range of phenomena, which Goethe describes as a mixture of “practical, accidental, mathematical, aesthetic, and creative impulses,” would obtain, through Goethe’s mystical language, empirical acuity beyond allegory.80 It is this correspondence that Goethe takes as the foundation for a scientific language of color. In calling this demonstrative use of color “mystical,” Goethe means a form of aesthetic representation—of particular interest to the Romantics in their efforts to amend

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Kantian philosophy—neither reducible to concepts nor linguistically explicable, that nevertheless communicates a synthetic appreciation of fundamental phenomena.81

A Mystical Language of Art A participant in the neo-Romantic reaction against scientific materialism in Germany in the first decades of the twentieth century, Kandinsky rhetorically transforms the subjectivity of Goethe’s rigorous empiricist into a quasi-divine seer. Nevertheless, Kandinsky’s “mystical” painting, constructed according to Goethe’s polar logic and his own observations on material expression, sought to build a visual language grounded in the direct experience—the “inner necessity”—of color and form.82 “Thus, gradually,” Kandinsky writes, the “different arts set out to say what they can say best […] through the means [of direct experience] that each of them possesses exclusively.”83 These primary means, Kandinsky calls the “elements” of art, the consideration of which had advanced farthest in music. “Hence today’s search in painting for rhythm; for mathematical, abstract construction; today’s appreciation for the repetition of color tones; of the way in which color is set in motion; and so on.”84 Kandinsky, like Goethe, under the linguistic burden of theory, resorts to allegorical description in his effort to draw attention to the “inner sound”—the “elementary effect”—of primary aesthetic experience uncorrupted by psychological association. But acknowledging such “association […] does not seem sufficient” to capture the sense (“the principle of inner necessity”) in which “color is a means of exerting a direct influence on the soul,” he motivates allegory to describe this direct experience: “The color is the key. The eye is the hammer. The soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand, by which this or that key ‘purposively’ sets the human soul into vibration.”85 Indeed, with the claim numerous diverse thinkers had recognized the “deep kinship of the arts in general and music and painting in particular,” Kandinsky suggests comparisons between music and painting were more than allegory. Of particular importance to Kandinsky is Goethe’s suggestion there are common principles of development and experience inherent to all species of art: “Goethe’s thought, that painting must receive its basso continuo, was certainly constructed on this striking kinship,” Kandinsky observes. “This prophetic statement of Goethe’s is a presentiment of the situation in which painting finds itself today.”86 Offering these observations in a discussion of the “Language of Forms and Colors,” Kandinsky took it as his goal to explicate the fundamental principles of painting. Such was an exercise in theory. But Kandinsky also took it upon himself to articulate a “mystical” language of art in his own painting—to produce compositions that, constructed from polar elements of primary aesthetic experience, were also demonstrative of underlying aesthetic structures, simultaneously works of art and theoretical explications.

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Kandinsky dissects his principal polarity—form-color—into other divisions. As pure poles, form can be “material” (figural) or “abstract,” color “literal” (representational) or “purely artistic.” Their combination in composition is charged between “individual forms” and their constitution of the “whole picture.”87 Kandinsky believes art was tending toward the latter terms in these polarities, overcoming the material with the spiritual. He argues an emphasis on abstraction, artistic means, and composition as a whole focuses attention (in Kantian terms) on the purposiveness (the inner structure) of the work of art rather than any purposeful (referential) content, and “the purer and thereby more primitive it [the artwork] sounds.”88 As artists strive to express their “artistic goal” (born of the “principle of inner necessity”), “the more the artist uses these abstracted or abstract forms, the more at home he becomes in their realm,” Kandinsky prophecies, “And in the same way, guided by the artist, the spectator collects more and more knowledge of the abstract language and finally masters it.”89 Kandinsky thus conceives the mystical work of art as a didactic program, its principal means the use of “purely graphic ‘counterpoint’”—the “co- and counter-resonance” of a composition’s manifold parts.90 Kandinsky argues the purposiveness of a work of art is the product of the individual artist, their cultural conditioning, and the nature of art itself. Factoring the first two of these three “elements,” he argues, “lays bare” the latter. “Then one sees,” he explains, “that a ‘crudely’ carved Indian temple column is entirely animated by the same soul as a living work, however ‘modern’ it may be.”91 Explicating the purposive language of art (in any medium) meant overcoming the individual and cultural significance of artistic expression in order to identify the eternally vital will of creation. “An Egyptian sculpture certainly shocks us today more than it was able to shock its contemporaries,” Kandinsky explains, because its “characteristics of time and personality” no longer resonate with us. Kandinsky thus imbues human creation with a sense of vitalism. “It is clear the inner spiritual force of art makes out of today’s form only a stage to reach further ones,” he writes, “the development of art is a progressive expression of the eternal-objective in the temporal-subjective.” But the “form we recognize today,” he continues, “is a conquest of yesterday’s inner necessity.” Formalism colonizes the free creation of others, sustaining itself on the basis of “external necessity” rather than liberating the inner freedom that would allow the artist to use any means of expression.92 Kandinsky argues the personal and cultural aspects of expression are incidental to primal creativity (“the mystical content of art”).93 His artist is blind to extant form and “deaf to the teachings and desires of the time,” just as Goethe’s scientist looks beyond surface appearances and defies prejudice. And just as an empiricist is attentive to the organic expressions of nature, the artist must indifferently attune themselves to the purposive means of creation. Be they a natural philosopher or artist, the patient student of sensible phenomena must

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be attentive to and cultivate their subjective aesthetic capacities by mystically calibrating them to “the great objective scale.”94 Since art acts on feeling, it can also only act through feeling. With the most certain proportions, with the finest scales and weights, the correct result never follows from mental calculation and deductive weighing. Such proportions cannot be calculated and such weights cannot be found ready. The proportions and scales are not outside the artist, but within him, […]. In this sense is also to be understood the possibility, prophesied by Goethe, of a basso continuo in painting. Such a grammar of painting can only be anticipated for the moment and, when it finally comes about, will be built less on the basis of physical laws […] but on the laws of inner necessity, that one may as well call spiritual.95 Kandinsky understands the irreducibility of sensible experience as the “the possibility of monumental art.” Moreover, he argues, “the same inner sound [i.e. the same sense] can […] be brought about in the same moment by different arts, whereas each art will present, beside this general sound, its own appropriate, essential surplus and thereby add a wealth and a power to the general inner sound that cannot be attained by ‘one’ art alone.”96 This claim was the basis for Kandinsky’s vision of performances (“stage composition”) combining movements in music, painting, and dance.97 The basso continuo integrating each art would provide the measure for calibrating all human creation.

The Artwork as an Organism Inflected by Goethe’s scientific studies, the ideas of organicism inherent in classical art theory gain new meaning.98 Following Herder’s distinction between vital primitive cultures and ossified academic civilizations, Goethe’s understanding of creative human expression in spirited correspondence with its environment—his naturalization of culture and his historicization of nature—propels an integrated conception of art and science untethering in other worldviews.99 Nevertheless, to exclusively emphasize Goethe’s influence on Friedlaender’s philosophy would be reductive. In addition to Goethe and Nietzsche, Friedlaender’s vitalism drew upon the work of Simmel, Henri Bergson (1859–1941), and others.100 In Hilberseimer’s early publications, however, it is primarily Goethe’s statements that unify the philosophical and artistic discourses of his formation. Goethe supposes intellectual activity originally emerges with a shift in focus from the basic satisfaction of material needs to a consideration of phenomena as creations, a shift from an exclusive concern with external appearances to a consideration of inherent processes. Cognizant of the ultimate irreducibility of the universe to human comprehension, he understands the insightful, imaginative

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animation of phenomena as the origin of a spiritual worldview in both its philosophical and poetic dimensions. While this understanding had passed through various, more theological (idealizing sacred reason) or more intellectual (sensible philosophical skepticism), phases, Goethe worries the spiritual worldview is ultimately threatened by a “prosaic” attitude that “vulgarizes” previous knowledge.101 In this attitude “the value of any mystical idea is destroyed, and even primitive faith is desecrated,” Goethe fears, “Qualities that formerly diverged naturally in their development, now interfere with each other as hostile elements. And so, chaos has returned.”102 The revitalization of a mystical worldview, at once artistic and scientific, is the essence of Hilberseimer’s oeuvre. His concern with the metropolis constitutes an effort to apprehend human nature in the present, to indifferently recalibrate art to the given state of creation in its broadest possible extent. By investing the prosaic and chaotic, crisis-ridden existence of industrial capitalism with conceptualphysical coherence, Hilberseimer hopes to reanimate an otherwise positivistic and materialistic civilization. Following Goethe, Hilberseimer is preoccupied with morphology, distinguishing between a regular or progressive (tense) unfolding and an irregular or retrogressive (relaxed) development of culture, the one vital, propagating, the other morbid, dissipating creation. Hilberseimer’s Nietzschean distinction between cultural phases absorbs Goethe’s art theory, conceiving the “pinnacle” of art as the neutral mediation of slavish realism and mannered schematism, physics and metaphysics.103 Goethe, like Ruest and Friedlaender after him, saw the world naturally articulated into discernibly coherent singularities, a claim premised on the sense of our own coherence and the apparent wholeness of other beings.104 Like Goethe, Hilberseimer believes the constituent parts of a coherent body (be it a creature, artwork, or city) are not determined but conditioned by their given context. Within any particular milieu, manifold possibilities of formal organization— the purposive relationships inherent to the work of art—are possible. Creative formations can only be judged—and their external appearance and functional performance understood—with insight into their inherent spiritual order. Hilberseimer’s anarcho-socialist worldview cultivates the equality and mutual autonomy—the graceful cohesion—of the various organs of a social and material body. But Hilberseimer gets more than this from Goethe. As with many lateeighteenth-century critics, Goethe’s considerations of artistic form, like his considerations of natural form, emphasize the importance of the direct experience of phenomena.105 In this respect, Goethe’s early essay, “On German Building-Art” (1773), offers remarkable insight into Hilberseimer’s concerns. Hilberseimer cites the essay in “Creation and Development,” asserting the “young Goethe in Strasbourg, before the minster, had intuitively sensed correctly” that the “most primitive works of art are the purest.”106 That Hilberseimer places Goethe in front

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of the cathedral is no accident. A central aspect of Goethe’s essay concerns his experience and unfolding understanding of the cathedral façade and, by extension, a new appreciation for Gothic architecture. Goethe stresses that his preconceptions did not match his experience.107 He contrasts his own receptivity with that of classicists, who, dismissive of the Gothic, “scramble over ruins” measuring, so they might imitate, the proportions of historic buildings. “If you had rather felt than measured,” he advises, “[…] you would not simply have imitated […]; you would have made your plans because of truth and necessity, and a living, creative beauty would have flowered from them.” Opposing the superficial appreciation for the external forms and specific proportions of buildings with insight into the creative spirit embodied in the work of art, Goethe rails against learned formulas that “fetter all power of perceiving and acting.”108 In particular, Goethe set his sights on French neoclassicism and Marc-Antoine Laugier’s (1713–69) theory of the primitive hut, which advanced a model rather than principles of architecture.109 Goethe thinks Laugier’s theory academic; its emphasis on the free-standing column flew in the face of extant practices of living and building (such as the need for walls). Unlike Erwin’s architecture, Laugier’s preconceived formula prohibits creative development. Rather than observing and appreciating works of art, classically minded architects approach them with blind prejudice.110 Goethe would soon exercise this critique against Newton in his Theory of Colors. It seems entirely reasonable to say “On the German Building-Art” had the significance for Hilberseimer Theory of Colors had for Friedlaender. The first part of Goethe’s essay establishes the value of experience; the second part recounts his experience of the building itself. His initial “impression” is vague and inexplicable, “composed of a thousand harmonizing details,” he recalls, “I could relish and enjoy, but by no means identify and explain.” He reports that he has repeatedly returned to the building, observing its changing appearance under varying conditions and from different perspectives and distances. One particular evening, however, at the moment Goethe stops looking intently, the total composition comes into focus: “How often has the evening twilight, with its friendly quiet, soothed my eyes, tired-out with questing, by blending the scattered parts into masses which now stood simple and large before my soul, and at once my powers unfolded rapturously to enjoy and to understand.”111 At this moment, Goethe mythologizes, Erwin speaks to him from the grave, “All these shapes were necessary ones, and don’t you see them in all the churches of my city? I have only elevated their arbitrary sizes to harmonious proportions.” Then, returning the next day, Goethe comprehends the building in the morning light: “I could stretch out my arms towards it and gaze at the harmonious masses, alive with countless details,” he raptures, “Just as in the eternal works of nature, everything is perfectly formed down to the meanest thread, and all contributing purposefully to the whole.”112

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Goethe stresses that so long as they are necessary it is not the particular forms of the artwork that are significant—Erwin borrowed rather than invented them; it is the manner of their proportioning, their organic interrelationship, that is critical. Erwin had taken up given material and “welded the scattered elements into a living whole.” These were not the proportions of classical architecture, Goethe affirms, but that of a specific artist and culture, valuable in themselves. To Goethe, who had come, through repeated observation, to understand the innate qualities of the work, this Gothic building was beautiful. Art should not be concerned with attaining some preconceived (classical) ideal, as theorists such as Laugier might propose, but with the integrity of objects themselves: “Art is formative long before it is beautiful, and it is still true and great art, indeed often truer and greater than the beautiful itself.”113 Hilberseimer quotes this sentence in “Creation and Development.” It is the basic thesis of his essay. Art arises not from an ambition for beauty or art per se, but out of a fundamental desire to give existence integrity, to spiritually animate the material world. “For in man’s nature there is a will to create form which becomes active the moment his survival is assured,” Goethe writes, in the passage that follows, “As soon as he does not need to worry or to fear […] he casts around for a material into which he can breathe his spirit.”114 Hilberseimer departs from Goethe only in the sociology of his argument. Following a lineage that includes Schiller (his discussion of naïve and sentimental poetry), Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Worringer, Hilberseimer supposes the effort to spiritually invest the cosmos with significance is not born of contentment, but forged in the face of chaos. In Worringer’s argument it is classical art that arises from contentment (and abstract art that emerges from fear).115 Hilberseimer implicitly qualifies this claim. For Hilberseimer, all art is by degree both naturalistic and abstract and all art is subject to the prospect of an enervating decadence born of contentment. Moreover, Goethe’s argument points to particular characteristics of the work of art itself. Goethe conceives the artwork as a “living whole” that, like natural organisms, cannot be comprehended from its details.116 If the beauty of the artwork lies in its integrity, and the character of its “different natures and individuals” consists in its integral relationships, then the artwork can only be fully appreciated as a self-contained vital body.117 Goethe’s comprehension of Erwin’s façade coheres when the details recede and the overall mass becomes salient. This grasp of the whole constitutes the threshold of Goethe’s understanding, from which the detailed relationships then unfold. Goethe’s account parables the ability of the critic to attune themselves to the given work. In his conclusion, Goethe points out that the youthful, uncorrupted by prejudice, more easily adapt themselves to new phenomena and asserts the experience of nature, because it provides the greatest “diversity of situations,” is the “better teacher” for expanding the range and agility of the senses.118 Nevertheless, despite this emphasis on the receptive capacity of the beholder, Goethe’s essay harbors the suggestion that reception would be more immediate if the artwork, rather than requiring the beholder to build understanding

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from particulars, offers the viewer an overall impression unencumbered by distracting detail. By drawing attention to a salient mass, from which the proportional measure of the parts can be clearly derived, the diversity inherent to the object can be appreciated for its contribution to this overall coherence and thereby prolong the immediacy of the work. In returning to Erwin’s facade, forty years later, Goethe makes this aspect of his earlier interpretation explicit: If the vast is not to terrify us when we encounter it as mass, if it is not to confuse us when we try to investigate its detail, it must undergo an unnatural, a seemingly impossible union with the agreeable. […] […] For a work of art whose ensemble is conceived in large, simple, harmonious parts certainly makes a noble and worthy impression, but the peculiar pleasure of charm can only be found where all the developed details are in unison with each other. Here the building we are considering satisfies us in the highest degree, for we see each and every ornament appropriate to the part it decorates, subordinate it to it as if growing out of it. Such variety gives us great enjoyment in that it derives from what is appropriate, and hence at the same time arouses a feeling of unity. Only in such cases is the treatment prized as the highest peak of art.119 The singular integrity of the whole gives sense to its manifold diversity. Such is the basic thesis motivating Hilberseimer’s consideration of the interrelationship between the landscape and the city, the metropolis and its architecture, the building and its elements. In early 1919, Hilberseimer’s reference to “young Goethe in Strasbourg” is loaded with significance. The longstanding Franco-German disputes that sent the city oscillating between possessions, languages, and identities lent Goethe’s essay its political force in the nineteenth century. In the immediate wake of yet another long-entrenched battle between the two nations, Strasbourg had again become a symbol of Franco-German conflict and the fate of German society.120 Hilberseimer’s essay is published only weeks after French forces brutally suppress the self-proclaimed soviet government that had formed in the region after the armistice. Hilberseimer’s explicit references to youth and the city implied more than the longstanding question of national character was at stake. His statement links personal artistic emancipation to a broader human fate. In this framing of Goethe’s remark, Hilberseimer detaches Goethe’s well-known aesthetic theory from its nationalist cause and places it in the service of post-national self-determination, concerns central to the conception of Der Einzige and Hilberseimer’s own internationalist, pan-cultural politics.

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4 THE METROPOLIS AS AN ORGANISM

Metropolis-Architecture The development of Hilberseimer’s early urban theory unfolds in a series of published and unpublished texts and design projects, beginning at least as early as 1914 and culminating in the publication of, what is arguably his most wellknown individual work, the book Grossstadtarchitektur (Metropolis-Architecture) in 1927.1 The first of these published texts did not appear until 1923. Of the three unpublished drafts of Metropolis-Architecture in Hilberseimer’s papers, the earliest, a collection of notes (seventeen pages), dated 1914, is in Hilberseimer’s own, oftenillegible hand.2 The other two—referred to as the first and second drafts below— are more developed and extensive (thirty-eight and seventy-two pages), clearly consecutively written typescripts, co-authored with Rukser, who also contributes essays to Der Einzige in early 1919.3 Hilberseimer and Rukser publish the essay “Amerikanische Architektur” (“American Architecture”) in Kunst und Künstler in September 1920, and their independent writings evidence overlapping concepts and subjects in the years immediately after the war.4 The first draft of Metropolis-Architecture contains references to works published in 1916 and was perhaps written as late as the end of 1918. It forwards ideas consistent with the aesthetic theory Hilberseimer outlines in his Der Einzige essays. The argument of the second draft is buoyed by the revolutions in Russia in October 1917 and Germany in November 1918. The historian Richard Pommer has suggested the text was probably written in late 1918 or early 1919 when the political future of Germany was an open question.5 This may be. But other factors indicate the text might have been written as late as 1920. The discussion of the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright corresponds with the essay Hilberseimer and Rukser publish that year and a reference to the integration of streets with topography in the English city of Bath seems indebted to remarks by Brinckmann in his book Stadtbaukunst (City-Building-Art) also published in 1920.6

FIGURE 4.1 Cover of Ludwig Hilberseimer, Grossstadtarchitektur (Stuttgart: Verlag Julius Hoffmann, 1927).

Connected with these writings, difficult to precisely align with them chronologically, are architectural designs authored by Hilberseimer, published in July 1919, accompanied by a commentary credited to the Berlin architect Max Wagenführ.7 These typological studies—two country houses, an embassy, urban villa, train station, market hall, city hall, department store, office building, and theater—demonstrate the ideas articulated in the drafts of Metropolis-Architecture were explored in both textual and graphic forms.

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These early drafts of Metropolis-Architecture argue it is possible to reconceive the city as a work of art formed on the basis of the material conditions underlying the rapidly growing capitalist city or “metropolis” and that the realization of such an artwork would be coeval with the political-economic transformation of society. Hilberseimer and Rukser believe the physical manifestations of culture express its spiritual values. They seek an evident sense of equality and coherence in the future city that developed by its individual constituents would embody the harmonious diversity of an anarchist-socialist community. With a view toward the realization of such a community, Hilberseimer and Rukser conceive Metropolis-Architecture as an illustrated essay. Through word and image, they sought to provide urbanarchitectural principles for a society of individuals acting with mutual autonomy. In the conclusion of the second draft, they write: Today, the metropolis as an artform does not yet exist; as such we know it only from sketch designs. Therefore, even the following illustrations cannot give an accurate idea of it. Since the buildings reproduced here require completion by the imagination of the beholder, because metropolitan building can only attain its complete logical significance in the organism corresponding to it, in the metropolis-artwork, where the whole corresponds to the individual just as the individual reflects the idea of the whole. Therefore, ultimate artistic perfection cannot be sought in these works; the beholder must adapt them himself as their integration into a correspondingly coherent organism would require.8 Hilberseimer and Rukser hold and assert a conception of art and politics that, consistent with Goethe’s natural philosophy, conceives the polis and the polity as an organism constituted according to its own laws (spiritual values) within given material conditions. Disabusing their readers of prevailing and inhibiting preconceptions about art, architecture and the city, they set about articulating the principles that could integrate the metropolis under the conditions produced by international capitalism, which, hitherto guided by disenchanted logics of positivist materialism and crisis-inducing cycles of accumulation and overproduction, had given rise to the chaotic, inorganic forms of the major industrial cities and the delirious, nerve-fraying psychology of contemporary life. Conceptions of the city as a work of art and of urban and social forms as cultural products were by no means new. But Hilberseimer and Rukser’s commitment to observing and analyzing the conditions and forms of the metropolis, their emphasis on the synthetic comprehension of given conditions as a basis for future environmental practice, was a novel and ambitious application of Goethe’s natural philosophy—interpreted by Friedlaender as “creative indifference”—to the new nature of the industrialized environment. Hilberseimer and Rukser approach the contemporary city like natural scientists, examining a body of phenomena that, comprehended as a vital (if unhealthy) totality, betrays its inner processes and relationships in every detail of its appearance.

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FIGURE 4.2 Ludwig Hilberseimer, The New City: Principles of Planning (Chicago: Paul Theobald, 1944), 53, with Hilberseimer’s illustration of “Disorder and Chaos”: the American city.

That Hilberseimer and Rukser articulate this position in 1918–20 places them at the forefront of artistic practice in Germany, central to the rejection of the Expressionist escape from civilization and the pure embrace of abstraction. In alignment with the acceptance of new materials, technologies, and representational constructs by Dadaists such as Hausmann, Höch, and Einstein, all of whom 78

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were also under the influence of Friedlaender, Hilberseimer, and Rukser were representatives of the Dada worldview in what they considered to be a new kind of technical-artistic practice, no longer traditional architecture but metropolisarchitecture.

The Polar Opposite of Style In the opening of their first draft, Hilberseimer and Rukser express skepticism of much art historical practice. Until recently, they argue, the interpretation of artistic phenomena had been limited to an analysis that emphasized, not the cultural history of art, but certain canonical points in that history seen as culminating forms: Through the exaggerated schematization of art-historical doctrine, the different styles of especially fruitful eras are represented as spiritual summits separated from one another by dead intervals. Therefore, it was not sufficiently emphasized that the ups and downs of economic life also have effects on matters of the spirit, so above all on art. Thus, what is commonly called a style, represents the sum of the features of a spiritual occurrence of varying intensity. Viewed graphically, this yields a curve with a rising and descending line.9 Hilberseimer and Rukser draw attention to the formation of style and its intrinsic relationship to the unfolding course of human existence. They suggest an exclusive focus on stylistic highpoints overlooks the transitional—the revolutionary— periods of culture underlying the moments (and forms) subject to privileged identification as cultural models. With the apparent intent to emphasize culture in formation, they point to artists in the previous generation whom they evidently held in high regard: the painters Paul Cézanne (1839–1906), Marc Chagall (1887–1985), Henri Rousseau, and Richard Janthur (1883–1956); the poets Gustave Flaubert (1821–80), Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–81), Theodor Däubler (1876–1934), and Ferdinand Hardekop (1876–1954); the musicians Erwin Lendvai (1882–1949) and Ludwig Rottenberg (1865–1932); the designer Peter Behrens (1868–1940); and the architects Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) and Daniel Burnham (1846– 1912).10 Although they distance themselves from any deterministic notion of the rise and decline of the arts—that “contemporary art creation leads upwards” still needed to be proved, they acknowledge—Hilberseimer and Rukser believe this theoretical framework remained useful if limited to a “retrospective summary of […] temporally-adjoining and-juxtaposed facts.”11 Consistent with Hilberseimer’s essays in Der Einzige and Goethe’s notion of regular and irregular morphology, Hilberseimer and Rukser conceive stylistics as the study of artistic form that, in its broadest sense, rationally polarizes cultural phenomena into organizing and disorganizing phases. Guided by the self-evident THE METROPOLIS AS AN ORGANISM

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landmarks of culture—the singular “organisms” constituting a “prosaic clarity of form”—they describe the polar vectors of culture as an “ascending line,” which has “concentration and integrity [Gebundenheit] of form as its characteristic,” and a “descending line” in which “the sober clarity of form thus gained” finds “its fulfilment in decorative dissolution and differentiation.” By understanding the contrapuntal development of style as a movement between the formation and dissolution, comprehensibility and incomprehensibility of form, Hilberseimer and Rukser eschew transhistorical claims of predictable melodic pendulation, valuing stylistic analysis solely as a retrospective means to account for the development of a particular body of artistic production. They offer the transition from early Egypt to the Old Kingdom, from Hellenistic art to Hellenism, and from early to late Gothic, as examples of movements “from form to formal schema.”12 Historical interpretation of artistic phenomena built around a preoccupation with the recognizable pinnacles of art implicitly supposes its polar antithesis, the existence of artistic genesis. Hilberseimer and Rukser’s suggestion that contemporary artistic production is on the upswing is not a positivist claim. Given the retrospective logic of stylistic analysis and the general incomprehensibility of art during its upswing, the emergence of style is only discernible upon its decline. Rather, their claim is a logical inference, following Friedlaender’s urge to comprehend experience with polar indifference. The negative state of established art implies the existence of its positive opposite. “This is most clearly proven at present in architecture,” they claim, “since here the contrast to the preceding epoch is most acutely visible. And within architecture, metropolis-architecture, least oppressed by the inheritance of the past, has become the exponent of a stylistic genesis, which is tentatively sketched in the following.”13 They present the nascent architecture of the metropolis as the antithesis of convention. In architecture, more than any other aspect of culture, the polar extremes of a dissolving and generating art are most apparent. Artistic divergence is antithetical to the stylistic height of organic culture, which subsumes polar antitheses into unity. Through the lens of Ruest’s spiritual materialism and Friedlaender’s philosophy of creative indifference, Hilberseimer and Rukser invert the analytical and retrospective methodology of art history into a synthetic and projective art, reorienting a view of the past toward the future. “The science and history of art routinely concern themselves with something finished, existent; here something developing is the object of consideration,” they explain in their introduction to the second draft.14 Hilberseimer and Rukser are not advocating a new style. Theirs is a demonstrative claim for a new kind of creative theory, a counter-history, implicitly wed to history, as all polarities belong to their opposite, in which the past (and the future) is encompassed and brought to a point, in the present—the point of creation, wherein the (polar) analysis of existence as it is precipitates a (prospective) synthesis.

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The Conditions of the Metropolis If the “sum of the artistic creation of a period” is understood as its style, and style is understood as conditioned by underlying material givens, then the style of contemporary creation is quintessentially metropolitan. The large-city (Grossstadt), Hilberseimer and Rukser note in their first draft, is not in itself a new phenomenon. As examples, Hilberseimer and Rukser offer Rome, Alexandria, Byzantium, Venice, and Genoa at their respective peaks. “What is striking about the current situation is the astoundingly high number of metropolises,” they explain, “From this it must be concluded that the modern metropolis has become the general urban type corresponding to today’s economic development.”15 The metropolis as a typical condition was “a creation of almighty anonymous capital,” they explain, emphasizing its “impersonality”: “the large-bank [Großbank] and the metropolis [Großstadt] originate from the same economic relationships.”16 In the second draft, they argue the metropolis: is the economic form of the trusts, of imperialism, of the large banks, of the great powers, of the large enterprises of all kinds—organizations, characterized significantly less by spatial extent, high numbers (the metropolis is not the same as the large city) or hyperextension of external conditions, than by an excess of intensity, of energy, which, no longer satisfied by production for its own need, presses toward overproduction hostile to its neighbors, originating less from fulfilment than from stimulation of desires. Thus, the metropolis [Großstadt] appears primarily as the creation of massive, omnipotent largecapital [Großkapital], as an expression of its anonymity, as an urban type with peculiar economic, sociological, and collective-psychological foundations, allowing in equal measure the greatest isolation as well as the most cramped aggregation of inhabitants. Thus the local and individual disappears more and more from it; metropolises resemble each other in certain features to such an extent that one can speak of an internationality to their visage. They are not, like cities (the capital cities) related to a certain dominion, the physiognomy and the portrayal of their country and their nation.17 The metropolis is not the characteristic urban form of a place and its people but of contemporary capitalism’s mercantilist and imperialist expansionism. This correspondence explained why most metropolises were to be found in the most developed countries, such as the United States and Germany, rather than the lessindustrialized economies of eastern and southern Europe, where there were “few such concentrations of capital […] and the proletariat.”18 Significantly, Hilberseimer and Rukser felt the need to account for the curious case of England, which, despite possessing the most developed economy, showed,

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in their view, relatively minor evidence of the metropolitan condition. England’s “economic life […] matured over centuries of steady development,” they argue, “by contrast, Germany and America evolved by leaps and bounds.”19 Hilberseimer and Rukser understand the definitive metropolitan condition morphologically, as the socio-physical forms—the evident values—brought by this rapid politicaleconomic transformation.20 They sought to address the disjunction between systematically volatile accumulation and over-production and the spatial and temporal contiguity of cultural significance, understanding this required a reconception of society as a whole: It is important to realize that the metropolis, therefore, is not a change in which historically-grown city types become large; it differs from these in kind not size. Only by the occurrence of certain economic events, above all through the accumulation of capital and people, does a city become a metropolis, and it dissolves when these conditions cease to exist, which will perhaps occur in Germany and Russia in the not-too-distant future, provided a transformation of cities into communities and settlements takes place.21 Identifying the elimination of capitalist socioeconomic crises with socialism, and supposing such a cultural revaluation would manifest a new kind of settlement, Hilberseimer and Rukser see their analysis of the metropolis and its architecture and their conception of the principles of post-metropolitan settlement as coeval with the realization of sociopolitical revolution. The reformation of settlement according to collective rather than capitalist values meant transforming the (dysfunctional) metropolis into another (coherent) entity and the cultivation of a new (human) nature. It is clear Hilberseimer and Rukser did not see the metropolis as the manifestation of material conditions per se, nor, given their comments on England, even of certain forms of contemporary capitalism. Their ostensible concern is the disorder that accompanies rapid urban growth and the inability within such conditions to develop social forms capable of accommodating the forces giving rise to these transformations. The present inability to equitably shape the international economy and the city is just the failure to invest the extant system of production with a cultural order. That they give England a special status in this regard is not an endorsement of English liberalism, but the suggestion there is a relatively controlled form of imperial capitalism manifest in the English (colonial) city as developed traditionalism. Just as Hilberseimer, in “Creation and Development,” envisions the elimination of capitalism and the formation of community, in the second draft of MetropolisArchitecture Hilberseimer and Rukser imagine a collective organization of the economy. Their desire to realize socialism and eliminate the extant metropolis

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is neither an ambiguous claim, giving urban reform the same weight as political revolution, nor the suggestion urban reform is a politically sufficient social transformation. Rather, Hilberseimer and Rukser suppose: political-economic transformation necessarily materializes as urban transformation; the present form of settlement (the metropolis) is the manifestation of a cultural crisis; and the anarchic-organic (collectively sovereign)—rather than imperially determined (monarchically sovereign)—correspondence between the content and form of society is the very definition of a socialist culture. “The intention” of their efforts, Hilberseimer and Rukser explain in their introduction to the second draft, “is to help the artist recognize, using the example of the metropolis-artwork, the physical, economic, and artistic foundations from which a new artwork can grow.”22 With the notion the form of any organism is conditioned (rather than determined) by its given milieu, Hilberseimer and Rukser set out to examine the characteristic features of contemporary architecture with the sense they are traits born of the atmosphere of international capital and the contemporary conditions of production. Through an investigation of these given forms, they sought to identify the underlying material conditions within which a new kind of art and society could be formed: Since the metropolis, like any other city can be a work of art, that is to say artistically formed material, the problem lies—as in general—in the relationship of substance and form and both to the whole. These elements are therefore to be investigated; material substance at first without regard to artistic formation [Gestaltung], because only thus can it be evident what the artist forms in the first place, which material givens he has to consider with his design [Gestaltung].23 The task of identifying the material conditions of any future art requires the clarification of given forms into their material and spiritual aspects; only the latter is open to transformation at any moment. They thus sought to identify “the conditions and problems peculiar to the architecture of the metropolis” and what aspects of those conditions were metaphysical rather than physical: “the determination of what in the metropolitan (conceptually) conditions the architecture of the metropolis in general.” Hilberseimer and Rukser were particularly concerned with the conditions giving rise to metropolitan architecture of varying kinds: “in what ways it [the metropolitan condition] stamps the individual types of metropolis architecture.”24 This last question went to the heart of their ambitions, because it concerned the degree to which, under existing material conditions, buildings of a certain kind are independent species, and thus the degree to and way in which they might be conceived as organs within a larger organism, the metropolis conceived as a work of art, as a whole.

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A Morphology of Metropolis-Architecture Hilberseimer and Rukser set themselves the task, not of mechanically recording impressions or willfully speculating on a future style, but, like Goethe, of carefully observing, clarifying, and describing extant phenomena—in their case, architecture evolved under metropolitan conditions—with the notion this intellectual labor could provide a common understanding for the future formation of society. In order to create a basis, first the premises from which to judge are stated, and the judgments themselves justified as far as possible. This is an attempt to enable a critical review of the representation, and to provide more than the usual unverifiable impressions. More postulating than establishing, more animating than assessing, we strive to present the path from aloof isolation to fruitful community work as a necessity.25 Both drafts of Metropolis-Architecture include references to images of buildings Hilberseimer and Rukser intend to present following the text.26 They conceive the book as an illustrated essay furnishing the reader visual evidence by which their textual appraisal could be judged. Hilberseimer and Rukser offer these images, now unknown, as an incomplete and subjective survey of “the most remarkable metropolis buildings,” but, nevertheless, a nascent attempt at “establishing the basis of a collection of material for the views presented.” They emphasize a volume of metropolitan architectural specimens—which we might consider comparable to scientific atlases—was preferable to forwarding the “unverifiable ‘impressions’” various writers had offered of these works.27 They understand impressionistic descriptions of the city as a contingent response to phenomena lacking organic insight. Like the analytical perspectives of specialists, isolated and contingent impressions are insufficiently synthetic—too materialist—to be able to give an adequate sense of the metropolis as a whole. In the book Hilberseimer eventually publishes on the basis of these drafts, demonstrative images are included within the text. Though interspersed with his own designs, the intent of their publication remains the same. This attempt to look at the city organically and scientifically—indifferently, without preconceptions, and insightfully—is a conscious departure from the technically focused studies of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, which tended to see the city through determined professional lenses, such as legal regulation, aspects of infrastructure, or distinct cultural or sociological phenomena.28 By contrast with these specialized perspectives, Hilberseimer and Rukser understand their aesthetic and formal approach, like Goethe understood morphology, as a means of comprehending complex vital phenomena both synchronously and diachronously. Moreover, this investment in the power of formal interpretation to capture the vitality of phenomena rather than their

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superficial appearance or isolated details, underlies Hilberseimer and Rukser’s critique of the prevailing focus on canonical models of style. Hilberseimer and Rukser had no sense their view to the future might undermine their objectivity. They were at pains to objectively verify their claims under the belief their ambitions required them to grasp reality more concretely and exactly. The materialization of the imagination only proceeds at the mercy of existence as it is. Without an understanding of the metropolis, the most comprehensive manifestation of the extant intellectual and physical processes of society, any vision of the future would be fantasy. For this reason, Hilberseimer and Rukser are explicit about the irreducibility of experience to discourse, and, therefore, the limitations of art theory: “Since it is not possible in the specific case to explain the artwork’s essence with words, to dissolve the magically bound by pure intellect, the most important [phenomena] remain reserved to the individual’s experiential capability.” Nevertheless, they argue a “logicizing representation” has the value of pointing out the “conditions and prerequisites” of art, the study of which they believe necessary to creative work. They list these as: “the person of the artist,” “temporal and spatial circumstances (culture/civilization),” the material “means of expression,” and “formal problems as modes of expression.” While the first two, external factors, influence the purposeful content of art, the latter internal factors Hilberseimer and Rukser think definitive in the purposive formation of that content. “Their investigation is of greatest importance,” they write, “because it clarifies the relationship between material and form [in each] of the genres of form [Formgattungen] to each other.”29 Hilberseimer and Rukser are explicit the particular material conditions and formal issues faced by architects in the contemporary city constitute a new set of artistic questions; metropolis-architecture demands a new conception of architecture and thus the development of a new genus or genre [Gattung] of art: In today’s architecture, that which corresponds to the life form of modern man, the truly new and invigorating, is metropolitan architecture. It is a newly discovered province of the building-art in general, with its own forms and laws. This fact has not yet been recognized in its full significance: hence all around an unsure groping and experimenting without inner coherence. From this lack of coherence, by conceptual analysis and artistic synthesis, a new kind of independent genre of architecture [Architekturgattung] must be won, the new possibilities of which become discernible from a concise collection of examples of achievements so far.30 Hilberseimer and Rukser endeavor to establish an objective discourse about the form of the metropolis as precursor to its transformation. Just as Goethe understood morphology as a contribution to the collective and verifiable understanding of

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nature, Hilberseimer and Rukser see their morphological investigation of the metropolis—the question of its formation and what exactly constitutes the material to be formed—as a discourse on (present) human nature. And just as, in the morphological study of natural phenomena, it is necessary to understand the way in which we perceive phenomena, so in art. Like Goethe in Propylaea, Hilberseimer and Rukser are concerned with the nature of the work of art, with the way in which the architecture of the metropolis is and could be perceived, and thus with what kind of artistic form metropolis-architecture is. Their assertion metropolis-architecture is a different kind of architecture than that hitherto found in the city has to do with both the different nature of metropolitan architecture itself and with the different conditions of aesthetic experience in the metropolis. Moreover, like Goethe, Hilberseimer and Rukser commit themselves to the notion theoretical discussion of artistic morphology “opens up the only way to achieve a style, a common artistic will, in which creators thus point to definite formal problems, the formulation of which only becomes possible through such analysis, even if imperfect.”31 Hilberseimer and Rukser think discourse about art contributes to the shared understanding by which artistic creativity is interpreted and individual creation conceived. They compare this discursive collective to medieval tradition, which, by education of the artist, focused creation into “a tool of the church, by concentrating all artistic-creative forces on a limited domain (problem),” a concentration that led to “a significant formation of style.”32 Read alongside Hilberseimer’s critique of state and church in the Der Einzige essays, this statement suggests theoretical discourse, uncorrupted by despotism, has liberating power, an ambition entirely consistent with Goethe’s republic of knowledge. While Hilberseimer and Rukser evidently understand Metropolis-Architecture as a contribution in this sense, they are emphatic discursive production can only ever be an imperfect representation, an abstraction from and secondary to the work of art as such. Like all representation, the theory of art is a futile if necessary attempt to apprehend flux; it only remains relevant by constant correspondence with the vitality of human creation. All theory is a practice of typification drawing parallels and similarities between phenomena that are by nature singular entities. Thus, they warn, in what amounts to a critique of ideology: abstraction must not be carried too far here; because every equation, comparison, and simplification is ultimately falsification, oversimplification, and misunderstanding. Since there is no exact equality, but every phenomenon, due to the active or passive nature of its concatenation down to the last detail, is necessarily unique, values are regularly equated that are perhaps resemble each other but are essentially alien to each other due to their different organization. The necessity for abstraction and concept formation, grounded in the human way of thinking, which, by the frequency of the process, makes one forget its imprecision, is the only explanation and justification for this.

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Therefore, only with the reservation that every abstraction and general expression is an imperfection which is only ever justified and completed by the particularity of inner and outer relations and conditions is it possible to subject a majority of artworks to a consistent [einheitlich] perspective.33 Given the absolute singularity of existence, any representation is a spiritual abstraction, eluded by reality. Yet these caveats about theory point to the vitalist ethic intrinsic to the philosophy of creative indifference. The veracity of representation is underpinned by the immediacy of our existence and our aesthetic capacity for experience. Creative indifference is the effort to intensify the relationship between observation and creation, material and spirit, reality and art, into an absolute correspondence. To practically overcome mediating theory is the self-evidently unrealizable motive of a constructive worldview. For Hilberseimer and Rukser rationality differs from belief only in the degree to which it can more constantly and presently materialize its truth.

The City as an Organism Hilberseimer and Rukser do not believe the future metropolis can be discerned from an account of extant metropolitan conditions, nor that it could be methodologically figured from discourse about the “metropolis artwork” as a genre. As deft as aesthetic observation and theoretical insight might become, all phenomena—all creations, be they nature or art—are irreducibly singular. In a statement Hilberseimer and Rukser quote in the introduction to their second draft, Goethe says “the highest and exclusive operation of nature and art is formation, and […] the specification such that each becomes, is, and remains particularly significant.”34 “Since the capacity ‘to be able to express and communicate [a vision, less conscious] than experienced—that is, to be able to place his state of feeling into an object—constitutes the essential quality of the artist,’” Hilberseimer and Rukser write, offering an unsourced quotation that appears to have been derived from an exchange between Schiller and Goethe, “the design of an ideational or sensible content must be an essential feature of the artwork.”35 Hilberseimer and Rukser emphasize the “metropolis artwork” can only arise as a matter of art, as a singular creative manifestation, at once sensible idea and spiritual materialization, reducible to neither concept nor matter. They conceive of the artwork as a selfcontained organism that, while conditioned by its spiritual and material context (the intellectual and natural laws that constitute it), is an eternally autonomous cosmos with its own laws: That which puts the content of the artwork into some piece of matter and thus makes it perceptible means the shaping of the material substance according

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to this idea and, at the same time, the shaping of the ideational substance, the content, according to the laws of matter. Through the integration of these two effects in a single form the artwork comes into being. […] It absolves the material substance as well as the ideational [substance] from all previous correlations, makes both autonomous, by binding them according to certain laws, into a coherent, in itself finished, complete organism of a new kind. Each artwork is therefore a spatio-plastic or temporal boundedness.36 While Hilberseimer and Rukser offer this theory of the formal autonomy (selfcontainment) of the artwork, they stress this inherent law is in correspondence with external law. “With this emphasis on the formal, the meaning of the ‘content’ and other themes is not reduced,” they assert, “Since content and the like are precisely what is represented by the design in perceptible real existence, a form can only then be perfect, when it is in accord with the content in every respect.” Hilberseimer and Rukser thus make a distinction between the external and internal content of the artwork. While the former, what they call the “ideal substance,” might be the cause of the work of art—its “object of formation”—the latter is content residing in the work itself. It would be, they write, “incompatible with the essence of the artwork as a self-contained organism to demand that it must fulfil a purpose lying outside of itself.”37 The connection between the ideal and manifest content of the work of art exists nowhere but in the act of creation. Put otherwise, it is the condition of belief giving rise to (the moment of) the work of art that constitutes this bond. Hilberseimer and Rukser point out that in architecture, unlike the other arts, the object of design is “almost always” conceived as external purpose rather than the internal form of the work.38 While typological designations in other arts denote a formal function—for example, “sonnet, epic, sonata, [or] symphony”—in architecture typological designations are programmatic. Nevertheless, they point out, purposetypes are also “formal types.” Consistent with Kandinsky’s theory, they consider external utilitarian and symbolic purposes as internal formal functions. “Therefore, in the following, when the designations ‘residential-building’, ‘department-store’, and the like are used,” they warn their readers, “these ambiguous terms are only to be understood in their formal sense, for which another clearer relation is still lacking.”39 Hilberseimer and Rukser’s conversion, for example, of a department store understood as a purpose in the city into a department store thought as a formal function within the city conceived as a work of art, allows them to reform not just the conceptual boundaries of typologies but the limits of architecture itself. Within this approach, it becomes more important to consider the formal similarities and differences between buildings than to consider their utilitarian distinctions. Understood as purposive formal functions of the metropolis, not just as purposeful utilitarian expressions, buildings become organs of the “metropolisartwork,” not just “architecture” but “metropolis-architecture,” a term in which the equivalence of the elements of the city and the city as a whole (under present

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conditions, i.e., the metropolis) is held in tension. “The specificity of an organism only shows itself through the fact that its individual organs embody this specificity,” they explain, “The general law, only presented in its generality by the whole organism, manifests in individual buildings as an applied case.”40 Hilberseimer and Rukser’s theory encases architecture within the metropolis, such that buildings become the organs of the city and their particular formal functions constitute the organization of the metropolitan organism under particular spiritual and material conditions. In their effort to exercise and extend their artistic capacities, the city-building-artist experiments with the laws of metropolis-architecture, just as a composer experiments with the laws that constitute a sonata or a symphony.

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5 THE METROPOLIS AND THE WORK OF ART

The Cubic City In their concern with the city as a work of art, Hilberseimer and Rukser were responding to recent developments in the history and theory of art, and of the city-building-art (Stadtbaukunst) in particular. While the conception of the city as a work of art is ancient, the idea becomes synonymous with Sitte after his publication of Der Städte-bau nach seinen künstlerischen Grundsätzen (CitiesBuilding according to Artistic Principles, 1889).1 Sitte presents the realization of the city as a work of art, especially its most important public spaces, as the ultimate achievement of a vital culture. Amidst the rapidly transforming and expanding European city, Sitte sought artistic principles to guide future urban development. Through first-hand examination of the historic fabric of central Europe, he draws a litany of exempla from the past.2 Sitte’s work successfully undermines the planning orthodoxy canonized in popular planning manuals such as those of Reinhard Baumeister (1833–1917) and Joseph Stübben (1845–1936). Until Sitte’s intervention, German planning is focused on technical matters, such as water and sewage systems, formulaic solutions to the arrangement of open space and building regulations, such as the codification of streets, building lines, and housing.3 Sitte, by contrast, emphasizes both physical and psychological needs.4 In the context of a planning practice dominated by surveyors and engineers, he renews appreciation for the threedimensional form of the city and the role of the architect in crafting the image and perceptual experience of the public realm.5 In the context of the dramatic redevelopment and growth of his native Vienna, Sitte is particularly concerned with the “monotonous” results of contemporary urban planning.6 Isolated at their drafting boards, he argues, modern planners had systematically divorced the practice of urban formation from the contingencies of

reality.7 By contrast, the historic “city builders” of Northern Europe were “judging and arranging everything right on the spot for its actual effect.” Rather than empirically engaging conditions and anticipating the experience of the beholder, the modern designer is content to place a “mechanically produced project, conceived to fit any situation, into the middle of an empty place without organic relation to its surroundings.”8 Historical praxis encouraged variation through inherent understanding, modern orthodoxy rigid commitment to learned conventions.9 In the contemporary European city, Sitte observes, seemingly endless straight streets run for miles without regard for terrain, incessantly interrupted by crosssreets.10 To produce blocks “convenient” for residential plans, urban design had been reduced to “mathematically […] striving for the maximum of frontage line.”11 Sitte felt the contemporary block system, lacking spatial enclosure, could not be “comprehended sensorily.”12 “The larger the city, the bigger and wider the plazas and streets become, and the higher and bulkier are all structures, until their dimensions, what with their numerous floors and interminable rows of windows, can hardly be organized any more in an artistically effective manner,” Sitte worries, “the constant repetition of identical motifs is enough to dull our senses to such an extent that only the most powerful effects can still make any impression.”13 Meanwhile, the “regular parceling of lots based on purely economic considerations” seems unavoidable.14 “The high price of building lots leads to their utmost utilization, as a result of which a number of effective motifs have been abandoned in recent years,” he laments, “Completely building up each lot always tends to produce the characteristic cubic mass of modern times.”15 The “modern city-block system” yields buildings that are little more than “an unarticulated cube,” Sitte concludes.16 With the increased scale of building, the art of architecture, as Sitte saw it, had withdrawn to the privatized interior, impoverishing the public realm.17 Even more egregious, contemporary block-planning had led architects to conceive public buildings as monuments isolated from their surroundings.18 In this regard, Sitte set his sights on Baumeister, who, in his popular handbook of planning, recommends historic monuments be “disengaged and restored” and set “in the middle of plazas and on the axes of streets.”19 Contending “older monuments were especially designed to integrate with their settings,” Sitte critiques this penchant to disencumber historic works from surrounding fabric.20 The ills of contemporary orthodoxy—symmetrical, unenclosed squares; sculptures or fountains centrally placed therein; freestanding public buildings on urban axes; “uniformly empty space” around monuments lacking “diversity of effect”—were being thrust upon historic works. In the conclusion of his book, Sitte offers proposals for Vienna that reject these practices. While he found the new public buildings of the city, free-standing in large

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open spaces, well-designed, they were a cacophony of styles. The visual porosity of the urban setting exacerbated their differentiation and isolation.21 Sitte envisions a series of enclosed plazas incorporating these buildings into a contiguous urban fabric, “in accordance with the teachings of history and the model of beautiful old towns.”22

The Kinesthetic City Sitte’s concern with the lack of a contiguous urban image harbors nostalgia for a traditional social order. Although he argues the city is a public good, Sitte’s critique of urban planning is also, in its Viennese context, a critique of bourgeois liberalism.23 He blames, “downright laziness, a lack of imagination and of good intention” for the monotony of “formless mass housing.”24 Lack of imagination and democracy are equivalent in Sitte’s thinking. The rectangularity and repetition of the street grid and the cubic building betray a deficient system of architectural education and the loss of traditional hierarchies.25 The integration of cultural, commercial, and ecclesiastical functions apparent in traditional town squares, and thus the significance of urban space maintained in many cities to the present, had been threatened by contemporary developments.26 In a comment that may have influenced Hilberseimer’s Hallenbauten (Hall Building, 1931), Sitte notes the major public spaces of the city, once plein air, such as the meeting place of the city council and the market in antiquity, had been interned in “covered halls.”27 He reminds his readers that Vitruvius (first century BCE) discusses fora alongside basilicas, theaters, palestra, colonnades, and public baths and conceives of these urban spaces as public rooms.28 Yet the use and value of urban squares had become unclear and the functions of buildings were no longer characteristically expressed. Houses were being treated like palaces and traditional typologies hybridized. These statements carried the unconscionable undertone that hierarchies of class, nation, and race were being eroded. “Ideas and stylistic tendencies mingle variously as soon as peoples themselves intermix,” Sitte writes, “a feeling for the simple prototype becomes more and more lost.”29 Against these trends, Sitte puts before his readers a wealth of ideas harvested from the pre-industrial city, not, he argues, with the “intention to recommend that every picturesque beauty of old town plans be used for modern purposes,” but in order to “determine with certainty what might still be salvageable, and retainable as a heritage, of the beauties of old town planning.”30 While Sitte recognizes modern necessities, he supposes there is an “innate conflict between the picturesque and the practical.”31 Railing against the status quo, he feels confronted by the demands of the contemporary city. Beginning with his antagonist in Vienna, Otto Wagner (1841–1918), many in the generations that follow Sitte, Hilberseimer and Rukser among them, seek to derive artistic potentials from emerging life conditions.

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FIGURE 5.1  The exemplar of the cubic city derided by Sitte: Otto Wagner, “Site plan of the projected XXII district of Vienna,” in Otto Wagner, Groszstadt, Eine Studie über dies von Otto Wagner (Vienna: Von Anton Schroll u. Komp., 1911), 11.

FIGURE 5.2  The exemplar of the cubic city derided by Sitte: Otto Wagner, “View of the Air Center of the Future XXII district of Vienna,” in Otto Wagner, Groszstadt, Eine Studie über dies von Otto Wagner (Vienna: Von Anton Schroll u. Komp., 1911), 14.

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Sitte focuses on preserving the meaning and function of existing forms. He sets tradition against contemporary practices, seeking to preserve the contiguity of the city and reuse historical motifs wherever possible. He is particularly concerned when the original correspondence between function and form seems lost, and the meaning of form is devalued. The disjunctions he sees in the contemporary city are often born, in his view, from ignorance of the historical relationship between the form and life of the city. He frequently appeals to, often speculating on, the purposeful origin of urban forms to justify their value and continued use in the present.32 The effort to realize the contemporary city as a work of art is an ineluctable compromise in Sitte’s view. There is little to be done, he supposes, about the fact that much of the public function of buildings had been taken up by the media, that less commerce takes place in the marketplaces, that works of art are increasingly designed for museums and not public squares, that urban life had withdrawn to the interior.33 Sitte acknowledges any attempt to recreate the Acropolis would lack the necessary “philosophy of life.”34 That the significance of public space had diminished was the result of “mathematically precise modern life,” Sitte bemoans, “Man himself has become almost a machine.”35 City-building had become a predominantly technical concern.36 Sitte’s discussion held no more promise than the possibility it might revive sufficient capacity to apply certain historical principles.37 “Modern city planning is obliged to forgo a significant number of artistic motifs,” he concludes, as though the storehouse of artistic forms was finite.38 But not only did contemporary ways of life and building preclude “the faithful imitation of old townscapes,” the conceptualization of the city “intellectually on the drawing board” impedes the vital feeling necessary to their manifestation.39 Cities were no longer gradually and contingently developed, but laid out in an instant, as was the longstanding norm for colonial cities, a European practice Sitte now associates with America.40 The “innate, instinctive aesthetic sense” possessed by the “old masters” had been replaced by “narrow aesthetic dogma.”41 Lacking faith the “natural sensitivity” for creativity could be “instinctively” revived, Sitte abstracts from historical creations artistic principles that could be applied as contemporary conventions.42 Most consequentially, Sitte contrasts the de facto uniformity of contemporary urban planning with the “irregularity” of medieval streets and town squares that he supposes the consequence of “gradual historical development,” the accumulation of innumerable decisions, each practical in itself.43 He celebrates the creativity, born of cultural contiguity, unavailable to the rational mind. Sitte consistently interprets historical phenomena, hitherto considered “subartistic or accidental,” as the embodiment of “deep-seated, intuitive creative drives.”44 For example, he argues sculptures and fountains were traditionally placed out of the way of traffic giving each square a different appearance.45

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In this regard, he praises the placement of Donatello’s (1386–1466) equestrian statue Gattamelata (1453) adjacent the Basilica Sant’Antonio in the Piazza del Santo in Padua, stressing its alignment with streets entering the square did not contravene practical concerns. Moreover, locating sculptures at the edges of squares, Sitte explains, allowed numerous modest works to be displayed, and provided an architectural ground against which they could figure in relief. By contrast, he argues, the contemporary square is unsuitable for sculpture. In these larger, traffic-dominated plazas, often oriented to distant views, peripheral locations are unbecoming. Public spaces were now dominated by single, centrally located works that, unlike their humbler predecessors, were expected to fulfil, but seldom could, the prominence of their location.46 Sitte was especially critical of dogmatic symmetry. Axiality had become a false idol, codified in regulations with deleterious effects, such as the unusable triangular spaces that were the byproducts of modern planning orthodoxy.47 In historic cities and buildings, leftover spaces were incorporated as spatial opportunities. The facades of church buildings, he points out, which were usually encased by ancillary spaces, rarely aligned with axes.48 From his survey of churches in Rome, he concludes “churches were never erected as freestanding structures.”49 Sitte identifies this aspect of historic urban squares as the principle of “enclosedness” fundamental to urban aesthetics.50 Enclosure—undermined by roads meeting at a corner, or the absence or isolation of a building on one side of a square—was nearly always ensured, even if by the use of porticos, arcades, and loggias.51 Although he frequently offers functional explanations for the idiosyncratic spaces and characteristics of the historic city, he considers their value aesthetic: “they enhance naturalness, they stimulate our interest, and, above all, they augment the picturesque quality of the tableau.”52 While rectilinear arrangements require consistency, lest irregularity appear problematic, the planning of old towns “developed gradually in natura, allowing for all that the eye notices in natura and treating with indifference that which would be apparent only on paper.”53 In the Piazza della Signoria in Florence and the Piazza S. Marco and Piazetta in Venice, Sitte praises, an astonishing legacy of aesthetic talent, invention, and investment had accumulated, initially prompted by the particularity of the situations, then gradually enhanced by creative aesthetic engagements attracted to the previous work.54 He argues the specificity and variety of such historically developed ensembles create a perceptual effect of constant change in movement, “creating ever new impressions.”55 In a 1902 essay, included within later editions of his book after its French translation, Sitte asserts the irregular medieval urban street, like the medieval urban square and city as a whole, does not develop arbitrarily, but through a series of intentional decisions that “complied with the configurations of the terrain.”56 Sitte also supposes curved and crooked streets manifest the conscious aesthetic intention to “interrupt an infinite perspective vista by displacing the axis or by

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breaking it.”57 Sitte, who had written on perspective, asserts the meandering medieval street produces an unfolding sequence of closed impressionistic images.58 Referring to the aesthetics of the medieval city as “malerisch [painterly] planning,” he argues the street, like the urban square, offers the most comfortable perceptual effect when “the gaze cannot be lost in infinity.”59 This occurs best when the experience is continuous, unbroken by cross-streets, yet courses in a way that the streetwall closes distant perspectives.60 The design of street networks as a whole is “of no concern artistically, because they are inapprehensible in their entirety,” Sitte writes, “Only that which a spectator can hold in view, what can be seen, is of artistic importance.”61 It was above all this address to the perambulating individual that Sitte understands as the overriding aesthetic of the traditional city, lost to the massive scale and incessant regularity of contemporary planning. In the straight street and the gridded array of cubic building masses, the eye is neither comforted

FIGURE 5.3  Ludwig Hilberseimer, The New City: Principles of Planning (Chicago: Paul Theobald, 1944), 183, illustrating the vertical enclosed space of the medieval cathedral and the closed kinesthetic experience of the medieval city.

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by a transforming series of enclosing tableau nor guided from one characteristic architectural detail to another, but lost to the openness of the horizon, disoriented by the unmodulated field of discontinuous buildings, and fatigued by the repetitive persistence of architectural elements.

The Theatrical City Concluding, unlike his followers, that the possibility of reviving the kinesthetic urban experience of the medieval pedestrian is naïve given contemporary demands, Sitte invests hope in the city-building practices of the Baroque.62 In Baroque urban planning, perspectival experience is taken up at a large scale in designs conceived as “one piece on the drawing board.”63 Looking back to the straight-streets of the Romans, Renaissance street-design, Sitte notes, is “primarily dependent on good proportion between its length and width, on the kind of edifices of which it is composed, and on its monumental termination.”64 In Baroque planning, however, an intensification of theatricality and emphasis on the beholder leads to a range of new urban forms, based on the “calculation of perspective effects.” “A space resembling a stage set, enclosed on three sides and open on the fourth side (that of the spectator),” he writes, “became the basic motif of all arrangements.”65 While Sitte acknowledges the economic imperatives of contemporary block development are antithetical to this conception—“art demands concavity, but exploitation of the building site, convexity”—he hopes to bring these opposing forces into balance.66 Sitte thus looks to Baroque Rome as a city of both great “expanse” and “artistic excellence”—the ensembles of which he describes as “precociously modern in their ability to handle great masses of people”—and to Paris for its subsequent development of Baroque models.67 Based on these observations and critical of schemes for expanding his native Vienna—such as Ludwig Förster’s prize-winning submission of 1857 and Wagner’s proposal for the twenty-second district—Sitte advocates a contemporary approach to planning in which public spaces are formulated a priori as positive entities that resist the forces of speculative building.68 In effect, Sitte divides the city into artistic (concave) and inartistic (convex) components, picturesque and cubic forms, public and private realms, a theatrical front and back of house. He compares the building approvals process in such an approach to “the strong hand of [… an] architectural stage manager” charged with realizing the vision of the theater director.69 Only after placing the squares, public buildings, and garden complexes (surrounded by continuous rows of houses) would the planner consider the communication routes. Then the surrounding residential areas would be opened to the inevitable speculation.70

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Sitte describes this approach as wresting control of city planning from the traffic engineers, placing authorship back into the hands of the artist.71 Although he believes the great cities of the past had been created from a vital, unselfconscious tradition of building, he rejects the notion this praxis could be revived.72 Rather, principles based on historic precedents had to be legally enforced, in what amounted to a regulated market. What was once living tradition would be mandated in legislation, ensured by the public ownership of land and control of development.73 But even these measures, he concedes, would be insufficient without the cultivation of a culture committed to these conventions.74

The Unmechanical City In Sitte’s wake, German planning is largely divided between those that remain adherent to the technical approach and advocates of his views.75 That advocacy spans from a literal, historicist interpretation of his ideas, such as represented by the teacher and practitioner Karl Henrici (1842–1927), to more progressive positions developing his formal principles.76 Sitte’s three-dimensional consideration of the city indirectly contributes to the development of building regulations policing the heights and elevations of buildings. His criticism of standardized planning led to greater concern with the specificities, such as the terrain, of new urban sites.77 But Sitte’s discourse, in particular his essay on streets, also prompts the willful laying out of urban districts inspired by the pattern of medieval cities. This essay, George and Christiane Crasemann Collins (1917–93; 1926–2018) explain, reinforces “the somewhat exaggerated romantic and medieval ideas about planning that took root among Sitte’s followers, especially as regards the issue of whether city streets should be straight or crooked.”78 Although Sitte concludes Baroque forms could accommodate the scale of contemporary development, his praise of medieval settlements gives rise to urban planning practices that instantiate these historic forms.79 In the 1907 revision of his Handbuch and subsequent texts, Stübben incorporates some of Sitte’s ideas, critiquing others. While Sitte saw irregularity as a consequence of contingency, Stübben points out, his followers were imposing irregularity; unlike Sitte, they were forwarding aesthetic ambitions at the expense of practical concerns.80 Stübben’s debate with Henrici, in the wake of Henrici’s winning entry to the Munich expansion competition of 1893, leads to a dispute between advocates of straight and crooked streets. For many German planners, kinesthetic painterly effects had become the essence of the city-building-art. Like Sitte, Hilberseimer and Rukser embrace the notion urban form materializes a Lebensphilosophie. And like Sitte and his followers, they see the contemporary city—with its unrelenting straight streets and repetitive cubic forms—as the product of uncreative mechanical schematism. But they cannot accept the prescription of

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yet more dogmas and conventions conceived in opposition to prevailing material realities. In Hilberseimer and Rukser’s view, what Sitte calls “artistic principles” and “compositional ideas” entrench a mistaken understanding of the historic city. Sitte and his followers reify historically contingent and anachronistic forms that inhibit vital expression. For Hilberseimer and Rukser the solution to a mechanized culture is to encourage the indifference to see reality—the cubic city—as it is and the creativity to artistically form that condition.

The Problem of Form Hilberseimer and Rukser view contemporary debates on urban design through a lens crafted by recent developments in art history and theory. In their embrace of the cubic city, Hilberseimer and Rukser are evidently informed by the writing of the art theorist Carl Einstein. In a 1922 typescript that combines and revises his 1919 Der Einzige essays, Hilberseimer quotes Einstein, who he later lists with Rousseau and Kandinsky as the primary exponents of the new art.81 But we can suppose Hilberseimer is familiar with Einstein’s work before the original publication of these essays. Only a few months older than Hilberseimer and, like him, a native of Karlsruhe, Einstein moves to Berlin a decade earlier, where he attends lectures by Riegl, Simmel, and Wölfflin and participates in avant-garde circles, such as Der neue Club and the Neopathetisches Cabaret, where he is introduced to Friedlaender. The drafts of Metropolis-Architecture evidence the influence of Einstein’s theory of cubic sculpture, a pointed response to the writing and practice of the sculptor Adolf von Hildebrand (1847–1921). Hildebrand advocates what Einstein considers an unnecessary painterly approach to sculpture and there are evident parallels between Sitte’s urban and Hildebrand’s art theory. Indeed, Sitte’s comments on sculpture appear to be informed by Hildebrand’s ideas. In Das Problem der Form in der bildenden Kunst (The Problem of Form in the Fine Arts, 1893) Hildebrand asserts the artistic value of relief-sculpture, critiquing the practice of placing monuments in the center of urban spaces where they are isolated from architecture and viewed in the round.82 Sitte’s book, published six years later, has the placement of public sculpture—and, by extension, monumental architecture—as a central theme.83 Hildebrand is particularly concerned with the problem that emerges for the artist when they realize the same object can give rise to “different appearances.”84 He argues we build up our objective knowledge of space and form by distinguishing what is necessary from accidental in numerous impressions. The artist, however, intending “to elicit a clear idea of form,” but unable to know or rely upon the previous experience of the beholder, “must […] supply the factors on which our imagination depends.” In doing so, Hildebrand theorizes, the artist relies upon the structure of vision as such. This has led artists, he claims, to be universally

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concerned with “a basic kind of artistic appearance.”85 His argument rests on a distinction between two kinds of vision: the distant view of an object, in which its overall form is salient as a two-dimensional impression, and the close view of an object, in which this overview is impossible. In the latter, Hildebrand argues, the viewer scans their eye across the surface of the object from detail to detail, to build up an understanding of the object in depth. In Hildebrand’s argument, these two kinds of vision—“Gesichtsvorstellungen” (visual-ideas) and “Bewegungsvorstellungen” (movement-ideas or kinesthetic-ideas)—are absolute poles of visual experience, the theoretical asymptotes of actual experience in which we employ the two modes together.86 Crucially, Hildebrand stresses that our only “coherent image” of a three-dimensional object is the distant impression; our conception of depth is a fabrication of many images in the imagination.87 It is the vocation of the visual artist, Hildebrand explains, to be consciously concerned with the impressions we receive from form. Art is “the activity that seeks to bridge the gap between ideas of form and visual impressions and to fashion both into a unity.”88 Both the sculptor and the painter seek to provide “a specific surface impression” (in either a two-dimensional or three-dimensional object) that will give the viewer “a specific idea of form.” To do so, they provide an “intrinsic law” governing the relationship between the visual and kinesthetic aspects of representation, the relationship between the overall form and its constitutive details.89 To define this “intrinsic law” Hildebrand distinguishes between the “inherent form [Daseinsform]”—“that factor of the appearance which depends solely on the object”—and the “effective form [Wirkungsform]” which is “a joint product of the object […] and of its lighting, surroundings, and our changing vantage point, on the other.” Within the “effective form,” Hildebrand argues, all aspects of appearance have value relative to the “overall impression,” not an absolute value. It is impossible to establish “an adequate overall impression” from the assembly of kinesthetic details.90 Hildebrand’s thesis, philosophically neoKantian, is intrinsically Romantic, concerned with an organic conception of art.91 The visual and kinesthetic aspects of representation can be related in two kinds of ways, as mechanical (absolute) or organic (self-referential) ideas of unity, only the latter of which Hildebrand took to constitute authentically artistic coherence. While raw details “have significance […] for scientific analysis,” art is not a “positivistic,” “exact record” of perception, and a “purely mechanical act.”92 Only through its intrinsically lawful relations (its relative values of proportion, color, etc.), does the work objectively resist its varying conditions of appearance and the effective form consistently convey an inherent form.93 To evaluate this organic coherence, Hildebrand concludes, it is necessary to perceive the work at a distance, where the “visual elements appear similarly and simultaneously.” Through its own intrinsic lawfulness, organically investing value in the parts by virtue of their relationship to the whole, the artwork offers a closed visual impression of an idea of experience.94

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What invests this arrangement of elements with a sense of cohesion, Hildebrand stresses, is that it is “emphatically” spatial. He argues everyday experience is intrinsically invested with a “spatial consciousness” that we usually take for granted. Not only do objects self-evidently occupy a volume of space, Hildebrand conceptualizes, “it is also possible to compose objects in such a way that they evoke the idea of a volume of air bounded by them.” Conveying the sense that the various depicted objects form “a continuous and unbroken whole” and occupy a single “continuous” space begets an effect of realism.95 But Hildebrand stresses that the creation of a continuous and unified space is particular to the work of art.96 While the construction of a sense of unified continuous space is what connects the artwork with nature, the artwork does not produce this sense of space through the illusion of nature.97 By “concentration and condensation” the artwork produces an essential idea of nature, rather than the “diffuse stimulation of nature.”98 Because a sense of organic spatial cohesion relies on a total impression, Hildebrand prioritizes the distant view of the object such that our experience of the artwork unfolds as “a coherent attraction into depth.” He argues the latter is assisted by a naturalistic recognition of objects within the work and, by corollary, the recognition of the remainder of the work as a “cohesive element” or space within which these various internal elements are set. Hildebrand argues the more recognizable these objects are in the distant view, the more coherent our sense of depth, a recognizability achieved, he notes, by the simplification of figures, so their contrast with the background—their silhouette—becomes more salient than their modelling.99 And because we garner most information as to the relative size and particular characteristics of these objects in this presentation, the viewpoint from which each object is presented becomes a crucial consideration.100 If the artist is not employing the juxtaposition and concealment of objects, which is the most effective means of conveying a sense of depth, Hildebrand recommends the various objects in a work be coordinated to lie in a single plane, or grouped into as few planes as possible, lest the sense of recession become too “fragmentary.”101

Spatial Coherence Hildebrand’s assertion that the creation of a sense of space could only be achieved by an organic interrelationship of the various elements of an artistic work seen at a distance—not by kinesthetically building up an overall effect from the perception of independent details—led him to advocate “the concept of relief ” as the basis of an artistic practice with the most emphatic inherent form. Envisaging the work of art as “imaginary strata placed one behind another in a series […] made coherent as one appearance of uniform depth,” he tutors, would help the artist realize a work that “the calmly observing eye is able to take in without any kinesthetic activity.”102 Moreover, identifying his method in the relief-sculpture

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of Greek antiquity, Hildebrand claims to have discovered the eternal basis of art.103 He endorses the approach for both simple and complex compositions and both painting and sculpture. Only this method, he argues, produces art with an unwavering orientation to the world.104 Fundamental to the forceful expression of a “coherent effect” in the work of art, is the necessity “to evoke the impression of a surface,” against which depth can be imagined, which in the case of his own artistic genre, relief-sculpture, meant a sufficient number of points aligning in the same frontal plane. Similarly, Hildebrand argues the value of “a coherent background against which the figure stands out.” The conceptual datum of an imaginary front surface and the literal datum of a background provide orienting planes against which the relative depth of the various kinesthetic details of relief sculpture is registered. Hildebrand was adamant “The principal surface of the relief should not be the rear surface but the front surface,” lest the figures appear to be applied to the work rather occupying space inherent to it.105 Noting that a relief has a strikingly different appearance if its depth is increased, Hildebrand emphasizes the relationship between form and light. And he notes the effect of material, specifically its luster, on the creation of the silhouettes necessary to construct an objective sense of depth. Hildebrand makes these arguments by comparing bronze and stone sculptures, but vehemently rejects the notion different materials require different conceptions of relief as well as the Semperian claim that artistic principles are the consequence of material and technique.106 Hildebrand prioritizes the structure of sensory experience as the generating principle of art. Although he forwards his argument by reference to relief-sculpture, Hildebrand was by no means rejecting sculpture in the round. Rather, he argues, sculpture in the round could also provide that overall impression necessary to the artistic representation of a coherent spatial effect, so long as “the figure fulfil and express itself from various vantage points, as relief.”107 By constructing the impression that the beholder is looking through a surface into depth, the various details of the work are valued in relationship to this plane, and thus the independent values of its various details remain objectively related regardless the position of the viewer. Whether the work is distant or close, Hildebrand argues, when “the figure presents itself as a coherent surface image” the beholder will comport themselves to the object. It is not important to Hildebrand how many such vantage points any individual artwork constructs, so long as there “will always be one view that presents and unites the whole plastic nature of the figure as a coherent surface impression, analogous to painting or relief.” Without this anchoring view, Hildebrand warns, the beholder will engage the sculpture kinesthetically “without ever being able to grasp it as an actual visible form.”108 For works of sculpture in the round, therefore, Hildebrand recommends the artist configure the form to construct a “cubic” space from which the orienting surfaces can be more easily established. But he stresses this volume is only a preliminary step toward establishing the necessary sense of one or more surface planes.

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Architecture and Sculpture The function of this “cubic” conception of space is primarily heuristic.109 Hildebrand emphasizes the overall spatioplastic form of the artistic work, rendering the incorporated kinesthetic details secondary. Moreover, Hildebrand’s concept of “cubic” space allows him to extend his concern with relief to sculpture in the round and ultimately to the “cubic form” of architecture. Here again, he found eternal validation for his argument in ancient Greece: in the “closed spatial mass” of the temple, the columns of which, he argues, form a primary perforated surface.110 Even in architecture, to adequately convey a sense of depth, Hildebrand argues, the work of art has to visually emphasize a planar organization. On a number of occasions, Hildebrand dismisses projections that emerge from a plane as contravening the reading of relief from frontal surface into depth. If the columns figure more prominently than the overall “spatial mass” of a building, he contends, it undermines the sense that the architectural façade is the outermost surface of a “spatial body” and the ability of the façade to convey a sense of the building’s interior space. Especially Romanesque architecture, he notes, gives a strong sense of being composed as a series of planes in relief.111 Indeed, Hildebrand goes as far as to suggest that if a building does not “unify its forms as an effect of relief,” it cannot be a work of art and that it was precisely this “effect of relief ” that had provided the common basis unifying the evolution of architecture.112 Here Hildebrand is explicit that the representation of nature becomes valuable only when it gains sufficient coherence to be transparently vital in itself, just as a language becomes transparent in its meaning.113 We represent nature through forms that, realizing a sufficiently coherent structure, provide objectively orienting access to a world of elements and their relationships. Then, just as certain natural gestures come to represent for us certain actions and emotions, the forms of art— and thus certain kinesthetic movements of the eye—come to convey, through the recognizable repetition of certain structures, “a comprehensible language.” In this way we animate the forms of the image surface, seeing them as “functional signs” and “bearers of vital feeling,” neither direct imitations of nature nor rote stylizations, but cultural and personal expressions.114 Hildebrand thus defines a “complete and genuine art” as a work that “apprehends the unity of functional values as a unity of spatial values.”115 It is in the course of Hildebrand’s discussion of works that had failed to accomplish this organization of kinesthetic form into a coherent spatial whole that he forwards his influential critique of monumental sculpture. Commenting on Antonio Canova’s Monumento funerario di Maria Cristina d’Austria (1798–1805), in which a number of figures are presented before a pyramidal funerary monument, Hildebrand complains the figures are detached from architecture and thus without unifying spatial value.

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In their interaction, Hildebrand suggests architecture and sculpture respectively provide spatial and formal values. Without their integration or the formation of a “coherent space” between them, there can be no “artistic representation.”116 In a second critique, now of a sculpture in the round—Apollonios of Tralles’ Toro Farnese (second century BCE, known via its Roman copy)—Hildebrand complains the “intervening body of air” between the figures had not been formed into an “ideal space.” Rather, “it relates to the dispersed plastic figures as a real air space and makes them look like petrified people or a tableau vivant.”117 Without spatial cohesion, the content of an artistic image is a mechanical aggregation of realistic representations, lacking in artistic conception: life petrified not animated. One of the predicaments of the contemporary sculptor, Hildebrand complains, is the lack of opportunity to work in relief. A “whole genre of sculpture” spatially integrated with architectural works had been lost: “modern man thinks of sculpture only as a figure in the round set up in the middle of a square,” he laments.118 Indeed, the fundamental decision of the sculptor, the decision about the overall form of the work, had been outsourced to what Hildebrand supposes were committees of laymen who believe “a figure in the round must stand isolated in empty space, […] exactly where it should never be placed because all directions are of equal value and there is no front or back.” Robbed of spatial engagement with a context, sculpture lacks an artistic motivation, Hildebrand argues, suggesting the penchant for isolated public sculpture was the consequence of a pervasive urban realism, an ignorance of artistic concern with the beholder. These locations are identified by someone with “an undeveloped imagination,” he rails, “who […] conceives it [sculpture] as something existing in its own right, instead of imagining it […] as something that has artistic justification only in relation to the observer and must be treated accordingly.” Sitte’s defense of theatrical urban space can be understood as an extension of Hildebrand’s defense of the visual essence of art. It is the “spatial value” not the “functional value” that provides the unifying coherence of visual art, Hildebrand declares.119 Yet contemporary art pedagogy had come to focus on the functional conventions rather than spatial principles of form.120 Implicit in Hildebrand’s argument is the suggestion that the “cubic” conception of space and the orientation of the viewer through the “effect of relief ” is fundamentally architectonic. In contrast to our diffuse sense of space in the natural landscape, architecture provides a “definite spatial feeling,” a condensed visual expression of spatial coordinates. “Rather than having to orient ourselves as we do in nature, […] a space has already been articulated through the visual impression produced by the work,” he explains, “[…] Space itself, in the sense of inherent form, becomes effective form for the eye.” As in sculpture, Hildebrand argues, the overall spatial values of architecture provide the coherent framework within which relative functional values—which Hildebrand understood to be the static interrelationships of load, support, and mass—gain expressive import. Defined and coordinated as a cohesive organism by “the total spatial image,” “specific […]

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architectural forms” such as columns and cornices animate the whole, which is “experienced as active and thus as living.”121 In the discourse about the city as a work of art that follows Hildebrand’s thesis, the city provides the spatial cohesion for architectural experience, just as architecture does for sculpture in Hildebrand’s conception of relief. And just as Hildebrand complains about isolating sculptures at the center of urban squares, Sitte complains about isolating monumental buildings in large urban spaces. Architecture in the round becomes as problematic for Sitte as sculpture in the round for Hildebrand. Both feel alienated from a tradition, from that “logic of visual ideas” that in periods of “undisturbed artistic development” become akin to a “natural imaginative instinct”; both feel imagination stymied by an artistic education (Bildung) that preoccupies us with “activities and disciplines that are inimical to art.”122

Cubic Sculpture Hildebrand’s theory of art, in its effort to factor the experience of the observer, repeatedly resorts to the notion that the forms and depth of relief sculpture—as read from the perspective of an observer oriented to an optical “surface” by the overall impression of the artistic image—should be calibrated to present recognizable forms. Hildebrand thus harbors the presumption art is naturalistic. Moreover, privileging orientation to a two-dimensional optical surface, he undermines the three-dimensionality of sculpture. Those criticisms are made in African Sculpture, by Carl Einstein, who rejects Hildebrand’s approach as “malerische [painterly].”123 Hildebrand’s painterly approach is plain in his argument that “So long as a three-dimensional figure is seen primarily as cubic, it is still in the initial stages of its formation. Only when it works as a plane, although still cubic, does it acquire artistic form, that is, only then does it mean something to the visual imagination.”124 In Einstein’s understanding, Hildebrand sees the cubic as insufficient for artistic coherence, or, at best, sought to reconcile the sculptural and the painterly. Einstein is similarly dismissive about the work of Rodin, which, he describes as “the dissolution of sculptural form.”125 Hildebrand also found Rodin’s sculpture impossible to grasp.126 But Einstein is concerned that, by Hildebrand’s account, sculpture per se—at least sculpture understood as three-dimensional or cubic, which is how Einstein understood it—is not art. This perhaps explains why Einstein presents his critique in a book about African sculpture, which the European, armed with orthodox opinions, he suggests, either denies is art or rejects based on an interpretation entirely framed by European values. Einstein accuses the European of being closed to African sculpture by their presumption of “superiority.” He implies that Hildebrand, who was considered to be one of the greatest German sculptors of his generation, evinces a double “ignorance”: of

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sculpture and, by implication, of African sculpture in particular, which, Einstein argues, is unequivocally cubic.127 Einstein suggests the growing appreciation of African art among the artistic avant-garde had been prompted by the recognition that it “addressed certain spatial problems” and represented a particularly pure “mode of artistic production.” He points out, however, that very little was known about the works he discusses: it was not possible to date the objects nor to say anything certain about their history or geographical origin, other than they were objects with a spiritual significance. Einstein rejects an interpretation of chronology based on stylistic analysis as well as anthropological, ethnological, or psychological claims based on an isolated reading of the works.128 All that could be said with certainty about these works would have to be based on the “sculptures themselves!” he declares. Thus, he sets out to “analyze these objects as formal constructs” with the ambition “to determine whether we can extrapolate from the sculptures’ formal properties a total concept of form that is homologous with that of artistic form.”129 Einstein sets out to maintain a concern with the “specific laws” of vision but avoid substituting for the “visuality” or the “creative impulse” under consideration an (European) assumption about its proper structure.130 Instead, Einstein commits himself to “formal analysis,” rejecting the claim such interpretation surreptitiously harbors an “assertive will.” He argues “the form contains all the legitimate elements of vision within itself ” and that any general conception that might be garnered from the objects is only sensible so long as they maintain their correspondence with specific forms.131 Although he refers to no object directly in his text, and recognizes the ineluctable disjunctions between critical (textual) and artistic structures, following his essay the book includes photographs of nearly 150 works as evidence.132 Einstein’s study was perhaps the model for the atlas-like structure Rukser and Hilberseimer propose for Metropolis-Architecture. “It is precisely the essential congruence between general vision and its concrete realization that defines a work of art,” Einstein contends.133 Einstein turns to African sculpture because he believes these works embody a three-dimensional or, to use Hildebrand’s phrase, “cubic” approach. He is not concerned with these works because they are African, but because they embody a “plastic vision” inconceivable from the orthodox European perspective.134 Einstein describes Hildebrand’s “conflation of the pictorial [malerisch] with the sculptural” as Baroque and associates it with an emphasis on “psychic processes.” Conceived as “a conduit for psychological excitation,” Einstein argues impressionistic art seeks to inculcate “a maximally augmented creator” and “a maximally stimulated beholder” between whom sculptural works are less “objectified forms” and “spatial definition” than functionally effective mediums of discourse.135 Addressed to a preconceived subject, and modeled for them “so that the construction of the actual form would be left to the viewer,” Einstein implicitly

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presents Hildebrand’s conception of art as an exercise in pseudo-liberal Bildung: the construction of an ideal that in the process of apparent self-development, the student learns to embody. Anticipating reception and, through critical discourse, setting the terms by which one produces for this reception, modern European art had become “mechanically routine craftmanship.” It was only after aberrant artists—in works erroneously, in Einstein’s view, called “abstraction”— had “investigated the elements of spatial vision and the factors that generate and determine it” that African sculpture is “discovered” in Europe.136 Indeed, African sculpture makes clear, Einstein argues, that what has been called “abstraction” is actually “immediately given nature” and “the strongest realism.” These works of art, he asserts, are religious objects of veneration embodying the connection the artist feels between themselves and the cosmos. “The maker creates his work as the deity or its guardian, i.e., from the beginning he maintains a distance from the work, which either is or contains the god,” Einstein claims, “The sculptor’s labor is a form of remote adoration and the work is therefore a priori autonomous, more powerful than its maker.” Precisely because of the deepest possible sense of belonging, he argues, the African artist produces works of art that are conceived as objects apart from the creator and the beholder. The religious background of African art already establishes the connection between creator and beholder that Hildebrand and the modern European artist are at such pains to establish and intensify. Within the spiritual framework of African art, “the effect is a given and is predetermined.” As a consequence, Einstein contends, works of African sculpture evince “a spatial vision that precludes every function of the beholder.” The imperatives of the African artist are therefore, in Einstein’s reading, exactly the opposite of those laid down by Hildebrand. For only if the artist produces an “exhaustive, total, and unfragmented space,” purely threedimensional and uninflected by painterly illusionism, in which “a cubic space is fully realized, such that nothing further can be added,” Einstein argues, is the “selfcontainment of the work […] guaranteed.” This “isolation of space,” he stresses, “does not amount to abstraction,” because the artwork is just the embodiment of spiritual feeling. The connection between the African artist and the divine figures they represent is assured by religious belief and experienced as “unmediated sensation.”137 The distinction between European and African conceptions of art is that the former considers art a mediating and the latter an immediate (or unmediated) connection, Einstein argues. There is a different sense of identity with (or indifference from) being in the respective visions and thus a different sense of (social) coherence. The European artist feels apart from, and the African artist a part of, the cosmos; the European artist works to establish connections the African artist feels they hold innately as a community.138 Transformations in African sculpture are beyond the scope of “individual willfulness”; they are affected by religious transformations, while secular concerns, such as portraiture, have no

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place.139 European art is driven by surficial painterly values; African art (both its sculpture and painting) is driven by cubic sculptural values. Einstein thus discusses African sculpture in an effort to articulate the spatial and formal principles that constitute a purely cubic rather than painterly art. The cubic artwork, he points out, does not represent the metaphysical; “The metaphysical must reveal itself entirely within the completed form and condense itself in that form with astonishing intensity,” he explains, “form […] is organized so as to achieve a maximum of self-containment.”140 This last word, “Geschlossenheit,” crucial to Einstein’s argument—literally “closedness”—might also be translated as “coherence,” “cohesion,” and “unity.” It denotes the idea that the coherence of the cubic work of art is born of the interplay between the formal constituents of the work itself, rather than, as in Hildebrand’s thesis, from the illusionistic sense that objective figures are set within a continuous naturalistic space. Through the interrelatedness of its parts, cubic sculpture is a metaphysical being rather than a metaphysical representation of being. Thus, the coherence of African sculpture, which is not conceived for display, is not determined by external values—by the isolation provided by a base or the appeal of a perspectival naturalism to the beholder; it is conditioned innately. Einstein notices “a pronounced individuation” of the “component parts” of African sculpture, the presence of which, he suggests, is born of “religious purpose.” These independently formed parts are “aligned” not by a perspectival address to the beholder, but, he writes, “from within themselves,” as though the object yields its own values. Rather than a dominant overall impression, to which the constituent forms of the work succumb, as in Hildebrand’s thesis, Einstein suggests that in African sculpture the whole is recognizably constituted by its otherwise autonomous parts. The various parts of the work “are perceived as confined by mass, not as diminished by distance,” he writes, and thus “the individual parts and their contours will be reinforced.”141 Einstein repeatedly makes the claim that African sculpture is venerated in darkness, a context that makes visual effects, but not tactile ones, useless.142 Indeed, he often presents African sculpture as haptic, but not in the sense of the kinesthetic visual unfolding and modeling discussed by Hildebrand.143 Einstein conceives cubic form being grasped immediately—the works he was discussing are often, quite literally, holdable sculptures—as though the stimulating physical details constituting the comprehension of three-dimensional form present themselves simultaneously. For, given the spiritual self-evidence of this art, he argues, the work can be “timeless only when it excludes a temporal interpretation based on ideas of movement” and thus, he asserts, cubic sculpture “absorbs time by integrating into its form what we experience as movement.”144 Without perspectival and frontal appeals to the beholder, and without the kinesthetic elaboration of this viewpoint in depth, the “spatial vision” of a cubic art, Einstein writes, “must totally absorb cubic space and express it in a unified way.”145

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The fundamental artistic issue with regard to a “cubic vision of space,” Einstein points out, is that “three-dimensionality, which we cannot apprehend in a single glance, must be organized not as some vague optical suggestion, but as a selfcontained, actual expression.”146 He distinguishes between the cubic as form and the three-dimensionality that ineluctably comes with mass, arguing the mistaken presumption that the cubic is already present in the latter was a primary reason for European art privileging supplementary “painterly” and “graphic” approaches to sculpture. For the three-dimensionality of form to be registered in a “single glance,” for mass to become cubic, he argues, “form must be apprehended all at once, yet not as a mere suggestion of an object.” The various parts of the object must gain a certain presence and equivalence. “Three-dimensionally situated as they may be, all parts of the composition must nonetheless be represented simultaneously, i.e., the dispersed space must be integrated into a single field of vision.” Einstein argues this coherence—of the absolutely “fixed, stable form” of cubic sculpture—is possible if the object becomes kinetic, but kinetic in an immediate way, “arrested” as an “unconditionality.”147 Cubic art was neither pictorial and graphic nor kinesthetic in Hildebrand’s temporal sense. Rather than stimulating the beholder to a “mental synthesis of abrupt movements,” in a properly cubic art stable form appears animate of its own accord. The artistic problem of forming a mass into a stable yet intrinsically dynamic cubic space is nothing but the primal spiritual act of animating the inanimate. The principal discovery of African art, Einstein argues, is to conceive of form as a “spatial equation” through which “naturalistic sensations of movement, and hence of mass, are completely absorbed into a formal order.”148 This order invests mass with an “unambiguous determination” by giving every point in the object a sense of direction by virtue of its relationship to a neutral whole. Relief sculpture had “quantified” the third dimension and rejected any projections forward of the plane of vision because it valued above all the illusionistic representation of spatial depth as a naturalistic continuum.149 By contrast, Einstein argues, in an effort to consider the “specific nature” of the third dimension, cubic sculpture—by definition fixed, like all visual art—“generates movement as such” by polarizing the third dimension into a “bisection”: it “thrusts” not only into “depth” but also “into the foreground.”150 In this way, the continuous movement “is split into two opposite directions and so articulates two divergent tendencies” as “supreme differences of form.” Yet the opposing directionality of these thrusts is ultimately indifferent, Einstein points out, because this distinction is innate to the structure of representation, just as positive and negative, “in the infinite space of the mathematician, are quite meaningless.”151 In this polarization, movement is comprehended as inherent to the object itself, without external reference to naturalistic space. It is the neutrality of this movement, of equivalent forms and dimensions set in opposing directions that leads Einstein to suppose cubic works so formed are wholly present when viewed

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from any single viewpoint. Each part of the object, he argues, is “sculpturally independent” but also conditioned by the formal “totality.” Organized by what he calls “functional centers,” often apparent as salient points in the form, the various components of the works he discusses—be they figures in sculptural groups or the constituent parts of these figures—are often symmetrically neutralized, but in all cases subject to a hierarchy, in which these manifold equations and the singular parts of the object are ultimately cohered around a dominant axis, such that when the object is viewed from one angle, one already possesses “the mental image of how it appears from the opposite side.”152 Each “cubic point” is interpretable, he explains, “according to two directions” as the contrasts establish “a reversal of directional values” within the sculptural totality. Einstein describes this unifying hierarchy of integrated “spatial contrasts” and “constants” as necessary to obtaining a concentrated and intense form that transcends mere mass: “the cubic must represent itself in the subordination of viewpoints as tectonicized intensity.” It is this formally concentrated summation and equilibration of relationships, Einstein argues, that give these often-diminutive objects their power. “Since art deals in intensity,” he writes, announcing a cubic future, “monumentality as magnitude will be eliminated.”153 Einstein stresses that the self-contained form of cubic representation is, unlike impressions implicating external validation, a physical manifestation of the act of conceptualization per se. “Form is an equation, like the representations produced by our minds; this equation is artistically valid when it is grasped unconditionally and without reference to anything extraneous,” he writes, “For form is the perfect identity of vision and individual realization, which are structurally isomorphic and hence do not relate to each other as concept and individual case.”154 Einstein understands cubic formalization as “isomorphic” with the structure of thought. Cubic art, like all conceptualization, is but the organization of sensible experience into a self-contained, internally referential form. Unlike Hildebrand’s incomplete, discursively framed and naturalistic relief, the properly cubic object represents a concept with absolute immediacy. By presenting movement as distinct directions, cubic form presents the idea, not a picture, of movement and thus grasps movement in a more direct and objective way than a subjective appeal to naturalistic impression ever could. The art historian Sebastian Zeidler has argued Einstein was deeply influenced by the Romantic philosophy of Schelling and Novalis (Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg, 1772–1801), in particular the latter’s “Mathematical Fragments.” Both are sources for Friedlaender’s theories of indifference and polarity and Einstein was probably led to these ideas by Erwin Loewenson (1888–1963), cofounder of the Neue Club and the Neopathetisches Cabaret, or Friedlaender himself.155 In Einstein’s reflections on cubic sculpture, Hilberseimer and Rukser had a model for how the philosophical ideas central to their circle applied to the

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structure of vision. The polar division of the indifference of existence into a neutral equation of formal values might not only be used to extend our aesthetic intuition and comprehension of existence, it could also be used to give spatioplastic sense to constructed experience. Rather than rejecting the contemporary city, harboring learned expectations of theatrical subjectivism like Sitte and Hildebrand, Hilberseimer and Rukser, following Einstein, seek to animate (the) contemporary urban masses into a spiritually cohesive, self-contained unity.

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6 THE CITY-BUILDING-ART

Space Creation As the given material of contemporary urban design, Hilberseimer and Rukser embrace the cubic city Sitte resisted, explicitly rejecting Sitte’s defense of traditional kinesthetic urban experience. They do so after Brinckmann critically develops Sitte’s conception of the city as a work of art into a nascent history and theory of urban design.1 Hilberseimer and Rukser combine Einstein’s emphasis on the visual immediacy of cubic sculpture with Brinckmann’s emphasis on sculpting urban space. Hilberseimer and Rukser quote the first of three books Brinckmann publishes on the history of the city-building-art, Platz und Monument (Place and Monument, 1908), in their drafts of Metropolis-Architecture, but were probably also aware of Brinckmann’s Deutsche Stadtbaukunst in der Vergangenheit (German CityBuilding-Art in the Past, 1911) and, perhaps also, when writing their second draft, Stadtbaukunst, Geschichtliche Querschnitte und neutzeitliche Ziele (CityBuilding-Art, Historical Cross-Sections and Contemporary Goals, 1920).2 Brinckmann acknowledges Sitte’s resurrection of the idea of the city as a work of art in Place and Monument. But, dedicated to Wölfflin and indebted to August Schmarsow’s theory of architecture, in particular Schmarsow’s Barock und Rokoko, eine kritische Auseinandersetzung über das Malerische in der Architektur (Baroque and Rococo, a Critical Dispute about the Painterly in Architecture, 1897), Brinckmann’s book extends critical art history to urban design, rejecting Sitte’s anachronistic defense of historic principles.3 Baroque and Rococo is an historical explication of the theory of architecture Schmarsow forwards in the essay, “Das Wesen der architektonische Schöpfung” (“The Essence of Architectural Creation,” 1894).4 Rebuffing Semper’s conception of Bekleidungskunst (art of dressing) as a “technical” and “decorative” practice obscuring the true nature of architecture, Schmarsow defends the notion architecture is the liberal foundation of all artistic development.5 He argues the “common denominator in the creative process” is the “intuited form of three-dimensional space” intrinsic to our corporeal understanding of spatial

experience.6 Departing from Hildebrand’s emphasis on the structure of vision, Schmarsow understands the history of architecture as a history of spatial conceptions, though he thinks both architectural and mathematical formulation occur in “accord with the laws that govern the organization of our minds”: one creating (the “art of ”), the other reckoning (the “science of ”), space.7 Schmarsow understands architecture as a three-dimensional regulation of existence: an “axial system of coordinates” conceived around the subject as point of contact between experience and idea. “Architectural creation begins with […] the backbone of our intuition of space,” he claims.8 Unlike the other arts, architecture physically encloses a subject, rendering the “pure form[s]” of mathematics palpably vital. In this way architecture, which Schmarsow calls a “cosmic art,” gives life to an understanding of existence.9 Placing the inhabiting subject at the center of his cosmic theory of architecture, Schmarsow identifies the architectural interior as the “principal element” of architecture. Whether “we physically place ourselves inside the space or mentally project ourselves into it,” he explains, the concept of spatial enclosure is fundamental.10 Our imagination and experience of enclosure are focused by our corporeal sense of upstanding verticality and propensity to forward-facing movement. Architecture affects our psychological state by addressing a subject (as a building for a particular function) or by providing the subject, through the work’s “expanding and elevating” proportions, a perceived or actual psychophysical experience of comportment and movement.11 While we comprehend buildings from the exterior as “a body outside of ourselves in general space,” if we are given the cues to imagine the interior life of a building— “the laws of its formation,” Schmarsow argues, then we “open up a remote organism to the analogous feeling within ourselves.”12 Schmarsow describes this empathetic animation of the architectural body as sculptural. He suggests this sense is enhanced by the expression of a vertical axis and by architectural structures that appear to be more than mechanically aggregative: “The more all articulated forms and tectonic parts deviate from abstract regularity in their basic form (as dictated by their function within the whole), and the more they approach sculptural form,” he asserts, “the more they are animated and saturated with the human sensation of force.”13 If this is not the case, the building remains inanimate, “a mere crystallization—like a rocky outcrop that rises before us,” “only a tectonic configuration of mass.”14 The art of architecture surpasses the sculptural and again becomes architectural for Schmarsow the moment it becomes urban, when we again feel bounded by human creation. “[A]s soon as several self-contained spatial bodies are placed together, architecture as the creatress of space comes back into its own by arranging these building elements into larger spatial enclosures and placing them in new organic relations.” But the conception of space creation extends, for Schmarsow, beyond the architectural and the urban, to encompass all anthropogenic environmental transformation:

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We consciously claim all of this, even the artistic layout of a city plan, explicitly for architecture as an art. Architecture, the art of building cities, stretches out its hand to road construction, agriculture, and gardening, all of which extend the sins of our cultural labor as far as the eye can see. All establish and expand the regnum hominis and supply the human spirit, as it becomes aware of the laws that govern its own nature, with a satisfaction that finally culminates in a belief in a moral world order.15 The spatial imagination extends from the individual’s psychophysical being to encompass the universe. “The history of architecture is the history of the sense of space, and thus consciously or unconsciously it is a basic constituent in the history of worldviews,” Schmarsow concludes.16 In Schmarsow’s theory architecture is ultimately the expressed sense of our vitality—as an individual and a culture—in relationship to the cosmos.

Spatial, Plastic, Painterly In Baroque and Rococo, Schmarsow develops his theory to clarify “the essence of the three arts, painting, sculpture and architecture,” he felt requisite to any historical consideration of art.17 Schmarsow now describes architecture as the expression of a spiritual worldview that incorporates and integrates organic and inorganic bodies into “a cosmos of both components,” a universe of its own creation.18 However, confronted with more extensive spaces and bodies, he argues, our conception and experience become less architectural and sculptural, more painterly.19 We experience extended phenomena visually: “only the appearance floats before us, detached from corporeal and spatial foundation like a mirage.”20 Describing the history of style as a transformation in the “ratio” of the arts, Schmarsow argues modern architecture becomes increasingly painterly.21 For Schmarsow, then, architecture involves three different kinds of experience: the spatial experience of enclosure; the sculptural experience of plastic bodies; and the painterly experience of extended phenomena, in which our conception of space unites with the environment as a whole. Whereas spatial experience compels the subject, and sculptural experience crystallizes or animates the object, the experience of extended dimensions—in the vast interior, urban space, or landscape—motivates vision. Importantly, Schmarsow asserts the value of spatioplastic creation in urban spaces. Just as interior space can be self-contained or extended, so too exterior space. “With the arrangement of a square, where enclosedness [Geschlossenheit] matters, it [architecture] primarily follows the advice and experience of interior architecture plein air,” Schmarsow theorizes, “as soon as the relationship

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of monuments to each other and their spatial connection is grasped by the eye, however, or the connection of one’s own creations with the naturally or historically given setting imposes itself, then […] the painterly point of view presents itself.”22 The indifferent fulcrum of Schmarsow’s thesis is the vertical architectural axis that affirms the empathetic accord between the inhabitation of an architectural body and the vital corporeality of the beholding subject. Between this spatioplastic concurrence and the horizontal and painterly projection of vision, between the subject and the universe, an intuitive desire to penetrate the mysteries of existence expresses itself in varying forms, each a ratio of architectural, sculptural, and painterly essences. For Schmarsow, the essential spirit of architecture, at least in fifteenth-century Europe, is “Nordic,” evident in the verticality of Gothic architecture. He presents the Renaissance as contiguous with this spatial conception, arguing the project to rebirth antique forms should be distinguished from the creative spirit that gives it motivation.23 He then unfolds a history in which this spirit and its respective spatial constructs become progressively weaker (despite certain rejuvenations). The vertical becomes increasingly horizontal, the spatial increasingly painterly, until, in Schmarsow’s view, the concentrated creative spirit of architecture dissipates into atmospheric effects, the landscape, and the schematic naturalism and historicism of the nineteenth century. Schmarsow thus presents the spatial, plastic, and painterly aspects of modern architecture as implicated dispositions. Even the works of the High Renaissance, such as those of Donato Bramante (1444–1514), the antithesis of the painterly in Wölfflin’s thesis, had a significant painterly aspect.24 Insofar as the beauty of Bramante’s work “rests in the harmony of a multi-part whole,” Schmarsow argues, it is “clear what a significant role falls to the juxtaposition of forms left and right of a center, therefore the breadth of our field of vision.”25 Schmarsow presents the painterly as an extension of the intrinsic, concentrated and selfcontained, spatioplastic nature of architecture, asserting the ambivalence of the Renaissance in the course of European (architectural) history. The skeptical selfconsciousness inherent to the classical desire of Renaissance theorists, such as Leon Battista Alberti (1404–72), for human creations to embody the harmony of natural creations ineluctably implicates the sense of appearance for theatrical effect.26

The Baroque Organism Coursing through Schmarsow’s argument is a discussion of rhythm. In “the laws of rhythmic structuring” apparent in works at the threshold of the Gothic and the Renaissance, such as the palazzos of Venice, he observes, “a complicated verse

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construction is performed, which the eye looking calmly can only summarize after following all the parts.”27 In Bramante’s work, however—departing from Wölfflin’s assertion the High Renaissance is defined by still quietude—Schmarsow says “everything is life and movement, but in cheerful harmony or melodic progression.”28 The difficult synthesis of medieval and ancient comes to melodic balance with Bramante, soon to be upset by Raphael: “A single impetus, a light twitch is sufficient to shift the equilibrium of the oscillating waves, to destroy the harmony and to intensify to pressing contrary surges, if not shrill dissonance.”29 The Nietzschean distinction between High-Renaissance “melody” and early-Baroque (Mannerist) “dissonance” is central to Schmarsow’s thesis. He distinguishes the inorganic architecture of the High-Renaissance and the organic architecture of the Baroque wherein “harmonic proportions are replaced by progressive ones.” The former gives the sense of consistent, coherent structure (but an overall, painterly unification of parts), the latter evokes the plastic vitality of emerging growth.30 Schmarsow thus differentiates between a physically lawful and a metaphysically lawful expression. Quoting Wölfflin, he writes: Where “the manifold proportions of the whole and of the parts prove themselves conditioned by a unity underlying them all […]”—there we venerate the objective laws of nature, […], i.e. physical events, and, when it is worth emphasizing the regularity that satisfies our intellect, rightly speak of “crystallization.” The organic growth of vegetable and animal creatures, however, even their own body, conceals from us many a secret; its metamorphosis appears to us as depending on the mysterious reign of spontaneous forces […]; in its completion as a mature form, its own soul takes part, as though in its deepest origins an ideal illuminates a goal. The power of the subjective plays wonderfully in the organic.31 Schmarsow identifies the regeneration of Renaissance art with Michelangelo: his “animation of the human figure” in the Medici Chapel, for example, where the sculptor motivates “the expressive capacity of the whole body and all its extremities” even as he “preserve[s] the rock nature of their origin.” The evident massiveness of the stone and the muscular bodies in Michelangelo’s creations combine the “force of restrained physical strength […] with the domination of the spirit.”32 So too, The Last Judgment, in the Sistine Chapel—which, given its intense corporeality, is not primarily painterly but plastic, Schmarsow argues—is composed, like the sculptures in Florence, as a reconciled polarization.33 “Below everything is becoming and growing or disappearing and passing away, […] a chaotic struggle between life and death,” he posits, “Above, on the other hand, all contradictions between the weight of the body and the momentum of the soul or between the instinct of self-preservation and the burden of conscience dissolve into clarity and order.”34 In both chapels, “One direction rules the whole, […] not in harmonious

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growth […] but incorporates opposition into itself,” Schmarsow argues, implying Michelangelo captures our Dionysian-Apollonian struggle, “Below striving rules, above only fulfilment, and between both the tension is maintained which first determines the value of both.”35 Schmarsow identifies this same sense of animation in Michelangelo’s conception of architecture. He suggests the design of The Last Judgment factors that, when seen from the axial entry to the chapel, the rood screen divides the work into its respective halves. Schmarsow sees the same tension in the ascent of the Laurentian Library (from the ante- to the reading-room) and Campidoglio.36 In the latter, he argues, “The arrangement of the square […] reckons with the arriving wayfarer— as with the rising hill and the existing palace of the Senators—as the culmination of the, as it were, living, comprehended-as-growing central axis.”37 He describes the Campidoglio as the integration of architecture’s three-dimensions: In the center of the square, where the equestrian monument stands, between the two focal points of the ellipse, the transformation between the three dimensions takes place; here the depth axis, which we followed until then, gives way to the broad view, in which the whole of the upper composition presents itself, and the breadth again to the height, which decisively dominates in the structure of this group, and in itself coincides again with the direction of the depth, i.e. the living axis of the overall space.38 Then, describing Michelangelo’s use of travertine, Schmarsow recalls the calcifying process by which the stone is formed, presenting the material as “a uniformly coherent mass still active from within,” yet awaiting “the impetus of a creative force,” effectively emphasizing the distinction between inorganic crystallization and organic animation. Michelangelo, he waxes, “transfers himself into the growing mass itself, reigns through the natural force with his will and breathes on it […], so that it becomes fully alive for the consummation of his plastic thoughts.”39 By contrast with the successful three-dimensional incorporation of the Campidoglio, Schmarsow considers the fate of Michelangelo’s centralized design for St. Peter’s. The subsequent longitudinal extension of the nave and of the building into the city, via Carlo Maderno’s (1556–1629) façade and Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s (1598–1690) piazza, will constitute, like the late-Baroque in general, an extended, increasingly painterly departure from Michelangelo’s spatioplastic conception. For Schmarsow, these developments sacrifice that integrated equilibration of space and mass, vertical and horizontal, stasis and movement, that constitutes Michelangelo’s greatest achievement.40 “The development of the adjacent spaces is nothing but the immediate consequence of the central dome, which, without it, cannot exist at all,” Schmarsow asserts, describing Michelangelo’s “concise solution” to the longstanding Renaissance problem of the centralized church, “He succeeds because, as a sculptor, he can think of nothing else but organic bodies,

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even if palpably articulated, as the strictest coherence of a whole, which does not tolerate many-headedness [nor] permit the divergent independence of manifold parts.”41 Schmarsow presents Michelangelo’s design, as the architectural realization of his sculptural idea. “The ideals of the High-Renaissance were painterly minded, Michelangelo’s is plastic in the highest sense,” Schmarsow waxes, asserting the space and mass of the building are coherently integrated and animated by a singular spiritual intention: “The self-contained body of the building which already in the swelling approach below announces itself as having grown from within, separates itself independently from the surroundings on all sides and, following only the law of formation of its own nature rises to the highest point, which tolerates no detachment of individual parts.”42 In his design for St. Peter’s, Schmarsow concludes, Michelangelo offers “a conception of the work of building as an organism.”43 Michelangelo’s Baroque does not just represent an entity but also its vitality: “the Baroque gives both, but the one not without the other, the calm of being not without the restlessness of becoming,” he posits.44

Grown and Laid-Out Cities Brinckmann’s effort to extend art history to the city in Place and Monument covers the same ground (modern Europe) as Schmarsow’s Baroque and Rococo.45 Brinckmann interprets architectural and urban form as coeval manifestations of the same spiritual-artistic conceptions. But while Schmarsow takes the verticality of “Nordic” art as a given, Brinckmann returns to the medieval city with the evident ambition of differentiating himself from Sitte. Thus the first sections of Place and Monument contrast the “grown” and “laid out” cities of the Middle Ages. The Gothic architect, Brinckmann states, in the section on “grown cities,” does not feel bound by “the law of symmetry,” but “forms an asymmetrical conglomerate of individual parts.” Unlike the Renaissance emphasis on “the unity of the whole,” “the Gothic” is not “self-contained in artistic balance,” but formed by “addition and multiplication.” Its “charm,” he argues, “lies precisely in the fact that the many and various which it encompasses express themselves as many.”46 Its concatenation of parts “demand” to be intensified by a close-knit community. This the recent Neo-Gothic lacks, he notes, implying the ignorance of isolating architecture from its spiritual context. Brinckmann attributes the medieval emphasis on verticality and urban concentration (in a situation in which land was not scarce, he reports), to this cultural disposition, the manifestation of a particular “mystical-religious mood.”47 Just as the medieval cathedral is a collective of individual details, so the medieval city is a commune of individuals and dwellings. At pains to distance himself from Sitte’s painterly interpretation of the medieval city, Brinckmann suggests the extreme verticality of the interior of Gothic cathedrals and the narrowness of medieval streets and squares would be

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“unbearable” to a contemporary subject, who would comprehend them visually rather than corporeally. “[T]he Gothic façade surface does not tolerate the distant view,” he posits, perhaps following Hildebrand, “since its articulation possesses no self-contained calm, even the precipitous saliences lose their force at a distance.”48 Although the most important buildings were located on the principal squares of medieval cities, Brinckmann notes new squares were rarely constructed for significant buildings. He suggests the aesthetic power of the medieval square for the contemporary beholder arises from its contrast with the tightness and irregularity of surrounding streets. “A conscious intention is not expressed in this disposition,” he dismisses, “even less may one talk of a ‘pleasure of painterly beauties,’ which delight the modern eye. These are the product of centuries, not of gothic architects.”49 Brinckmann thus rejects Sitte’s suggestion the “grown” medieval city is the product of artistic intention, making a distinction between the artistic determination and socioeconomic conditions of art: “the narrow, irregular street arrangements and squares are not the product of a determined artistic system,” he writes, “Their formation is determined by slow development, by the work of generations without directing individual wills; they represent not so much an artistic disposition as social energies and economic relationships.”50 Nevertheless, despite its irregularities and contingent development, the slowgrowing mediaeval city did not lack certain identifiable forms. It often followed the course of an existing military (Roman) road or grew radially from nuclei such as monasteries, cathedrals, and castles.51 Brinckmann also rejects the notion planned medieval settlements were the embodiment of “ideal aspirations.” While he acknowledges these foundations were “determined” by a “unified will,” he understands them not as artistic creations, but as applications of technology. The “system of parallel streets crossing each other at right-angles” is found in ancient colonial cities and “still occurs today, wherever the establishment is calculated for rapid growth,” he points out, “The medieval city-building masters were prosaic schematizers, just like the builders of American cities.”52 Sitte sets the medieval city against the artlessness of the cubic metropolis. For Brinckmann, neither is artistic. The irregular medieval city was undesigned and the gridded city is the standard form of colonizing settlement regardless time and geography. Yet, Brinckmann notes, no doubt with Sitte’s followers in mind, many celebrate irregular urban form as quintessentially German, an aesthetic sensibility Brinckmann dismissively equates with the by-then waning fashion for Jugendstil.53 Brinckmann also comments on the location of Gothic monuments. “The position of the Gothic fountain, the Roland column, etc. to the sides of squares has been explained with regard to traffic,” he explains, clearly eyeing Sitte. “The reason is not proving, even if it may have contributed. Decisive are the demands that arise from the form of the monument itself.” Rather than Sitte’s functional explanations, Brinckmann offers socioartistic claims. The delicacy of medieval “pinnacles”

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requires mutual support, like “a small crystal which grows up next to a large crystalline structure.”54 This assertion, and the argument medieval monuments are commonly placed near the corner of buildings to reinforce their verticality, follows Schmarsow.55 Gothic monuments are not placed in the center of squares, Brinckmann argues, because the irregular layouts of slowly grown medieval cities do not have determinable centers. Their “construction is too delicate to command the square,” he adds, reinforcing his anarchistic claim medieval architecture is born of a spiritually reinforcing commune of independent constituents.56 While he suggests the artistic preconditions of Renaissance art are medieval, developed in Gothic relief, Brinckmann argues the independent, plastically conceived monumental sculpture only arises with the fulfilment of Humanism: “In the Renaissance, the plastic figure comes off the church wall and steps independently into the open square.”57 Moreover, following Schmarsow, Brinckmann associates the emergence of the Renaissance with the artistic ambition for “ever clearer spatial expression.”58 The plastic conception of Renaissance monuments is imbued with the spirit of the figures represented and the effective ambitions of art. This nascent representational consciousness ultimately leads to that painterly emphasis on appearance definitive (for Schmarsow) of the late-Baroque.59 As exemplum of the emerging sensibility, Brinckmann offers Donatello’s Gattamelata. Sitte emphasizes the placement of the sculpture, Brinckmann its spiritual and artistic synthesis of urban space. “A brazen figure requires air, the broad image of the silhouette is necessary at great distance because the inner structure of the dark bronze is lost to the eye,” Brinckmann explains, echoing Hildebrand, “From the openings of both streets and most points of the square the riding figure is set in sharp silhouette against the sky.”60 But with this concise artistic effect, Donatello integrates spatial, plastic, and painterly values: “The forward urging movement of the horse opens itself up” to the lesser of the two streets entering the square, Brickmann explains—offering an equestrian interpretation of Schmarsow’s discussion of corporeal spatial movement—while the contrapposto in the bodies of horse and rider that turn them toward the Via Cappelli present the greatest possible plastic understanding for a distant painterly view, uniting the sculpture with the church façade beyond.61 Brinckmann presents the monument to Colleoni da Bergamo in the Piazza di San Giovanni e Paolo in Venice (Bartolomeo Colleoni da Bergamo and Andrea del Verrocchio, 1493) as the development of Donatello’s conception. The statue is seen in silhouette from a minor access to the square, and frontally, where, together with the church façade, Brinckmann suggests, it defines a “right-angled room” consistent with the “perceptions of space” latent in the late-medieval palazzo.62 In the same vein, Brinckmann describes the Piazza del Signoria as “enclosed,” despite its incompleteness, identifying the “heart of the city of Florence” with the Renaissance urban paradigm: the ambition to create an emphatically spatial urban room.63

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Lamenting (unlike Sitte) that this archetype is rarely realized without arcades, Schmarsow conceives the arrested movement of the Piazza San Marco in Venice as a doubling of the trabeated courtyards of Renaissance palazzos. He thus culminates his discussion of Renaissance art with a late, urban development of the type Schmarsow found paradigmatic.64 The palazzo, “the clearest expression of the Renaissance intuition of space,” is “a space-forming representation,” Brinckmann writes, that “immediately awakens the calm feeling of a spatially clear expression.”65 Echoing Schmarsow, Brinckmann argues Renaissance urban design balances painterly, plastic, and spatial values with regular crystalline proportions.

Schematic and Animate Cities Brinckmann thus presents the square and the grid as the definitive urban forms of the Renaissance. While the Gothic planner took up, what Brinckmann calls, “the primitive plan” as an expedient, Renaissance city-builders transform the rectilinear city it into “an aesthetic principle.” They regularize existing Roman and medieval street-grids, then, beginning in the late-fifteenth century, use rectangular grids for new urban districts.66 Brinckmann’s discussion of the urban theory informing this practice includes the contributions of Alberti, Andrea Palladio (1508–80), and Giorgio Vasari (1511–74).67 At the end of this lineage, he presents the theoretical prescriptions of Vincenzo Scamozzi (1548–1616), which “threaten to turn the ideal into a schema,” as a telling contrast with the compelling artistic integration of architecture and the city common in Baroque Rome. As a departure from Renaissance orthodoxy prescient of this Baroque artistry, Brinckmann offers the central square in Pienza (1459–1564), designed by Bernardo Rossellino (1409–64) for Pope Pius II. Organized around the central axis of the cathedral and flanked by angled palazzos, Rossellino’s work anticipates Michelangelo’s in Rome. The western Palazzo Piccolimini, Brinckmann points out, is designed around a central axis that, from its urban entry, opens a view through a court-garden and loggia to the Tuscan landscape beyond. So too, from the principal square, a painterly glimpse of the landscape beyond the hilltown is offered to either side of the cathedral.68 Brinckmann also sees this displacement of the centralized ideal, if not its weakening of spatial enclosure, in the Piazza della Santissima Annunziata in Florence. The church loggia, with its larger columns, “dominates the side porticoes” and “the feeling is no longer purely Renaissance.”69 The orientation of the centrally placed equestrian monument reinforces this axial hierarchy. In these squares Brinckmann finds presentiments of the distant view and longitudinal movement characteristic of the late-Baroque. The “selfcontained unity” of the Renaissance, formed by circles, squares, and evenly proportioned rectangles, contrasts with the dynamic, sequential organization of Baroque space—the “impression of movement” identified by Schmarsow in the

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longitudinal church plan.70 But it is not until the end of the sixteenth century, “long after Michelangelo broke through the language of antique forms,” that Italian citybuilding practice is able to manifest its “own feeling and ideas.” With this renewed sensibility, Brinckmann argues, Baroque city-builders realize the Renaissance theoretical ambition for “artistic unity”: the “relationship of the urban whole to its parts like that of the human body to its members” embodied in the “organic” ideal. But do so with an artistic commitment to specificity that satisfies modern needs. The latter are constituted in Alberti’s concern with local conditions, the defensive demand to engage topography, and the aesthetic desire for “ascent of the city center.”71 Schmarsow had asserted early-Baroque art is characterized by a culminating verticality. Brinckmann applies the observation to urban topography, extending Schmarsow’s discussion of the Campidoglio ascent to the city as a whole. “With wonderful self-confidence,” Brinckmann states, emphasizing artistic accomplishment over theoretical proposition, “the Baroque defies all theory and permeates the art of city planning with an entirely new vitality.”72 Like Schmarsow, Brinckmann equates Michelangelo’s designs for the Campidoglio and St. Peter’s with the threshold and maturation of the earlyBaroque.73 And like Schmarsow, who argues the early-Baroque conception of space is constituted in the tension between vertical and horizontal, centrality and longitudinality, Brinckmann asserts, “despite its deep movement, the [Capitoline] square maintains the character of a central room.” Although the place is not fullyenclosed, the coincidence of stasis and movement gives the space a paradigmatic sense of tensioned poise.74 “A completely new conception of the body of the place asserts itself,” through Michelangelo’s design, Brinckmann posits, “it should not be completely enclosed in itself, but act beyond itself, make the adjoining space vital, draw it into itself.”75 Brinckmann suggests this early-Baroque conception of urban space revolves around Michelangelo’s definitive presentation of monumental sculpture. The equestrian monument of Marcus Aurelius (121–180), fixed to the Campdiglio by a concentric paving pattern, reinforces the longitudinal-vertical axis from the cordonata to the tower of the Senatorial Palace, an axis emphasized by  the perspectival inversion of the plaza’s trapezoidal plan. At the same time, the sculpture balances the space in its width and centers the place. The two stairs of the Senatorial Palace broaden and complete the experience of longitudinal and vertical movement, even as they “bring the spatiality to a completely new, surprising visibility.”76 The ground plane of the square rises toward the central sculpture, “swelling,” Brinckmann writes, with “animating movement.”77 Moreover, after a study of urban viewing distances by Hermann Maertens (1823–98), who had also influenced Sitte, Brinckmann publishes a cross-section showing the width of the square is coordinated with the heights of the sculpture (set by Michelangelo’s new socle) and the (centerline of the) facades of the flanking Palazzo dei Conservatori and Palazzo Nuovo.78 Michelangelo’s urban space encompasses its sculpture

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FIGURE 6.1  Ludwig Hilberseimer, The New City: Principles of Planning (Chicago: Paul Theobald, 1944), 53, contrasting static Renaissance and dynamic Baroque urban space (Pietro Perugino’s Delivery of the Keys, c. 1481–2 and Michelangelo’s Campidoglio in Rome, 1536–46).

FIGURE 6.2  Ludwig Hilberseimer, The New City: Principles of Planning (Chicago: Paul Theobald, 1944), 174, illustrating Bernini’s Piazza San Pietro, 1656–67.

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with the plastic values of the sculpture itself. “Michelangelo’s intention was to concentrate the effect of the whole space on the sculpture [Plastik]; to bring, by the situation, its total appearance to the strongest effect,” he explains, “and that is why it had to stand precisely at the center of gravity of the body of space.”79 Baroque urban space embodies Schmarsow’s corporeal perception, asserting its animate plastic presence not through particular details, but the self-contained integrity of three-dimensional counterpoint. In the architectural and urban interior, Brinckmann argues the vitality of Baroque space is effected by the continuity of “space-enclosing walls.” “If the eye is to be directed further, it must not be detained by the purity of details,” he theorizes, “The Baroque […] endeavors to form details such that they have an impure and incomplete effect in themselves, such that only the total order resolves the individual dissonances.”80 Baroque surfaces coalesce as forms compelling an “impression of movement.” “With irresistible force the brutal, horizontal cornice, […] drives, uninterrupted by nothing, toward the choir,” Brinckmann writes of the Baroque nave, “the direction of the light encourages longitudinal movement.” As the Baroque develops, rather than “draw the view in this one direction toward the choir,” the eye is drawn toward multiple foci.81 The lack of an “exhaustive view” makes Baroque space “difficult” to photograph, Brinckmann contends. “It is already difficult for the agitated and detail-focused modern eye to comprehend the pure appearance of the Renaissance construction of space,” he claims, implying the contemporary beholder views the world like a camera, “thus it fails near totally with respect to a Baroque space and becomes confused in the abundance of changing impressions without grasping the organism.” The contemporary (mechanical) subject, moving analytically from one surficial detail to another, lacks the intuition to comprehend the crystallization of Renaissance or the animation of Baroque forms. There is “nowhere a place of conclusion, of quiet looking from which the space has the effect of complete extent,” he explains; there is no position from which to contemplate Baroque space like a picture. Immersed, you grasp the vitality of Baroque space corporeally. “Baroque man demanded such spaces in order to feel well, while we, without the pathos of his feeling easily get caught in the details, the incomplete, and so the impression of a pompous emptiness overcomes us.”82 Brinckmann suggests the incapacity to comprehend the Baroque betrays an inherent lack of spirit. In his design of the St. Peter’s forecourt, Bernini, like Michelangelo, integrates urban space with topography. “[B]y the deft use of the terrain: the church grows by means of the rising ground, which is stylized as a powerful plinth for the façade.” Echoing the Campidoglio, Bernini’s angled colonnades, flanking rather than intersecting the façade, heighten, by scale and perspective, Maderno’s façade, an otherwise “cumbersomely exaggerated and yet powerless decoration piece.” However, unlike the entablature in the flanking palaces of Michelangelo’s design, the cornice of Bernini’s oval loggia halts rather than reinforces longitudinal

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movement. “The space no longer effects as a coherent whole, but disintegrates into parts,” Brinckmann contends, “the later Baroque […] wants to delight by the abundance of changing views.”83 Brinckmann illustrates this idea with a photograph taken from beneath one of the two colonnades, looking past one of the piazza’s two fountains toward the basilica, and a comment by Domenico Fontana (1543–1607) who describes Bernini’s urban scenography as a (painterly) composition of fountains, obelisk, architecture, landscape, and sky. Nevertheless, in turning from the Campidoglio to St. Peter’s, Brinckmann contrasts the Baroque need for “fullness of space” with the Renaissance emphasis on a “clarity of spatial relationships.”84 He thus places both the early and late Baroque, exemplified by the plastic and painterly conceptions of Michelangelo and Bernini, beneath the same spiritual umbrella. By the nineteenth century, however, Brinckmann argues, “a determined feeling of space” had been lost, and architectural form no longer offered any sense of spatial vitality. Rather, “architectural elements” were used “inorganically, decoratively” with an emphasis on “external appearance.”85 Brinckmann thus distinguishes the spiritualism of (Bernini’s) painterly Baroque from the secularism of (nineteenth-century) painterly historicism, but also, following Schmarsow, casts the late-Baroque as its forerunner. He notes the difficulty of giving external plastic expression to the spatial depth of a longitudinal plan. A “movement in height would in general be clear (Gothic cathedral, the central dome building),” Brinckmann explains, “a movement in depth, however, only allows for the realization of individual facades.”86 The consequent concentration on the portals of buildings leads to the characteristic concavity of the Baroque façade. Developing Schmarsow’s evocations (of the liquidity of travertine and the atmospheric effects of Bernini’s fountains), Brinckmann describes a “current of movement” flowing into late-Baroque buildings. He describes the undulating facades, wide-streets on axis with entryways, and the deployment of urban squares as a “collecting basin” for their associated buildings. “Thus is every Baroque square only a forecourt,” he concludes.87 Moreover, in his discussion of urban reform in late-seventeenth century Rome, usually associated with the reign of Sixtus V, Brinckmann emphasizes that the new streets cut through the city, many focused on the city’s architectural monuments, are drawn into vital connection with the Baroque urban square. In the Renaissance, he contends, new streets were conceived solely to “bring order into the irregularities of the medieval city”; their “artistic justification” lay merely in questions of execution. “Only the Roman Baroque treats the straight street as an organism of determined corporeality, as a particular form of spatial-expression,” he declares. The integration of streets into urban space gives them “resolve and direction” and “prevents the street space […] from losing itself indeterminately.”88 Brinckmann thus motivates the whole spatioplastic body of Rome. The Baroque city is not an inartistic aggregation (medieval city), mechanical apparatus (colonial city), or regularized crystallization (Renaissance city), nor, as the European city

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will become, a painterly composition of elements in the landscape (nineteenthcentury city). It is an organism, integrated and animated by a singular spiritual conception.

The Centrifugal City Brinckmann associates the dissolution of Baroque urbanism with late-Baroque and Enlightenment France. He contrasts the “enfolded body of [Baroque] space” with the “exaggerated dimensions” of “gigantic modern squares,” the predecessors of which are conceived, he suggests, in reaction to the confining fabric of medieval Paris.89 Neither “the closed space of the Renaissance” nor the “subordinate forecourt of the Baroque,” the French square marks “an independent, regular central space” that give “streets a point of direction in the city plan” but cannot provide compelling termination.90 In the design of large places, punctured by numerous streets, only the most “consistent” arrangement of facades and the most judicious planning can avoid dissolution of “spatial effect.”91 By the nineteenthcentury, and the renovation of Paris, the corporeal sense of Baroque space has evaporated in a “painterly dissolution of form.”92 Such is already apparent, Brinckmann notes, in the eighteenth-century Place de la Concorde. Its enormous dimensions and location, adjacent the Seine and Tuileries, mean the extent and height of its flanking buildings are “not at all sufficient for the representation of a room.”93 The “beauties” of this “landscape” are entirely “painterly,” he observes.94 For the accomplished realization of the French approach, Brinckmann looks to Nancy.95 But the tendency, after the French philosophes, was not, as there, to balance landscape with architecture; it was to embrace, even compete with, the landscape.96 In the eighteenth century, he argues, as the imperatives of urban defense give way, relieving encasing pressure on the city, urban design becomes a legislated ambition, conjoining practice with theory as never before.97 Nevertheless, the citybuilding-art remains, even in this overtly academic climate, the accomplishment of the artist. And as eighteenth-century French planning contingently designs its way out of the chaotic mediaeval fabric, Rome remains the model.98 With newfound emphasis on practical and hygienic concerns, however, the painterly disposition of the late-Baroque turns, under the influence of garden designers, such as André La Nôtre (1613–1700), from a centripetal emphasis toward the landscape.99 Following Schmarsow, Brinckmann holds onto the cohesive potential of the painterly, but presents this aspect of urban form within a richer and more nuanced historical understanding than Sitte had mustered. For Brinckmann, the painterly is inextricably interrelated to the spatial and plastic aspects of architecture and the spiritual and artistic conception of the environment, which, Brinckmann laments, is eroded by Enlightenment thought. “Architectural insecurity and the sentimental feeling for nature of our time places […] the monument in free

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nature,” Brinckmann worries, “it forces the artwork to emerge against the vivid fullness of nature.”100 With the Enlightenment, the spiritual-artistic conception of the cosmos becomes a literal naturalism. On the other hand, Brinckmann implies nineteenth-century urban development is the indifferent opposite of this naturalism, the literalization and autonomous calcification of the liberal ideal. He describes new cities, such as Karlsruhe and Mannheim, balancing the interests of the nobility and the bourgeoisie, as developments of a late-Baroque sensibility in which “Space-feeling and formexpression merge into each other.”101 Free of the problems of growth and reform, these settlements are constituted as artistic expressions and social contracts in a specific cultural and physical situation. Sitte dismisses these cities as the eclipse of Baroque artistry, portends of the schematically drafted pattern-making dominating contemporary planning.102 But aware of contemporary nostalgia for the contiguity of pre-Napoleonic German culture, Brinckmann critically presents their “noble, simple architecture” as intimately connected with the transformative ambitions of a social ideal: “the soothing, almost ponderous, calm of the purely bourgeois.”103 While the undecorated regularity of this architecture might appear “artless” in retrospect, he acknowledges, implicitly reminding his readers of contemporary revolutionary ideas, Brinckmann stresses the value these places— “free from all romanticism” and the “narrow angularity of the old [medieval] style of building, [so] awkward for the vital style of building”—had for their creators and inhabitants.104 He presents the power of the consistently articulated bourgeois street as a lesson for contemporary architects, lamenting the vital feeling for this simplicity was lost as “the formal language of architecture became richer.”105 While Brinckmann thinks eighteenth-century French planning remains vital, despite the coldness of its idealism and its inhibiting academicism, nineteenthcentury planners entirely succumb to historicism as theory quashes artistic license. Architects reach for past styles as a crutch amidst unstable politicaleconomic conditions. As “the feeling for space and spatial effect” breaks down, “Creation becomes tentative and volatile, one begins to look to the past without finding the redeeming form.”106 The city-building-art became even more impoverished than architecture, Brinckmann contends; because archaeological knowledge of antique city-building precedents were lacking, city-builders relied almost exclusively on textual sources. Brinckmann blames “the abstraction” of rotely academic neoclassicism for the “bleakness” of the contemporary city.107 In neoclassical architecture, he writes, pointing to the Rue de Rivoli, “the artistically arbitrary is replaced by correct clear form, pure contours, simple regular lines.”108 Uninterrupted rows of trees and the uniformity of squares and facades overwhelm even the best buildings. Architecture is robbed of its space-forming function. Streets have no conclusion. Nothing remains palpably “geometric.” Everything is but conduit and intersection.109 Brinckmann describes “the modern square,” routinely symmetrical and imposing, “as impersonal and as dead in its effect as a

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hotel room,” lacking inhabitation and a “harmonic situation” from which the parts gain meaning.110 The regularity of contemporary city-building is no longer the consequence of creative feeling, merely the instrument of an expedient colonization of the landscape. “The regular system has an insidious advantage,” he acknowledges, describing cities as “schema” speculatively deployed by surveyors for profit. “Constructing plots is now city-building,” he rails, “the city becomes not only artless and dreary, but also, with the architecture of historicism, deceitful, a dead formation hung with colorful rags.”111 Modern urban design “becomes abused and degraded by the most tedious drawing board schematics.”112

The Matter of the Metropolis Brinckmann thus ends where Sitte began, complete with disapproving comments on recent developments in Vienna. Function and profit had overwhelmed concern for aesthetics, which had been relegated to superficial architectural details and fawning sculpture for the sovereign. Focus on the efficiency of traffic and the fabrication of property had fostered monotony.113 And thus, Brinckmann finally turns to Sitte directly. It was Sitte’s great accomplishment to have protested this “senseless schematism.”114 Brinckmann praises Sitte’s distinction between the theoretical and applied aspects of urban planning. In a long tradition, including Alberti and Pierre Patte (1723–1814), Sitte had rightly pointed out “that every city is an individuality according to its terrain situation; that the city planner may not impose on the ground an independently conceived plan image, but must allow the plan to be guided by the natural conditions.” At the same time, Brinckmann felt much in contemporary planning had moved too far toward naturalism, treating, in the painterly lineage, the city as landscape. “This naturalism in urban planning has its value as an expression of a certain general feeling,” he writes, “but one must remain aware of the difference between nature and artistic form.”115 Nevertheless, Brinckmann felt Sitte’s reputation burnished. He praises Sitte’s recognition “that city-building is artistic activity” but stresses “Sitte could not find the artistic expression of form in the way in which he pointed.” He was a romantic, driven more by disposition than an understanding of the city-building-art “as a deeper artistic expression.” Rather than comprehending the urban artwork as an “historical development,” Sitte’s followers were simply replacing one schema with another.116 Schmarsow in hand, Brinckmann critiques Sitte’s conception of the painterly: “Sitte speaks all too often of ‘painterly pictorial effect’, which only too easily recalls theatrical effect,” Brinckmann corrects, “The concept of the painterly

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changes with the taste of the time, the painterly pictorial effect is a subordinate corollary appearance of the architectural.”117 If the city and its architecture are to be conceived as an organic work of art, Brinckmann emphasizes, the painterly cannot be separated from the plastic and the spatial. Brinckmann values Sitte’s historical understanding of urban design. But puzzles at Sitte’s fascination with the mediaeval city.118 Winding streets and irregular squares were not the result of urban planning, but the accidental consequence of narrow-fronted mediaeval architecture. The aggregative building of the mediaeval city had the merit of contingently responding to varying terrain. And this collective realization had a certain aesthetic value. The resulting urban spaces offered constantly changing perspectives and variety. But the approach prohibited penetrating views. The medieval city was confining. It foreclosed the possibility of monumentality. Following Stübben, Brinckmann argues the mediaeval model had become “a new schematism,” unthinkingly and indiscriminately applied, even on level terrain.119 “A street will not become beautiful by bending tenement facades like a paper map,” he parodies.120 Sitte and his adherents had prejudicially rejected potentially valuable artistic approaches. “The straight line and right-angle remain the most elegant elements of architecture and the straight, broad street, like the regular architectural square, will also maintain their value in the building of cities,” he contends, defending the validity of all artistic means, “They form the core and spine of the city, the most monumental formation of space.”121 Brinckmann advocates an urban art informed by an historic knowledge of artistic principles and given conditions. But he encourages city-building that is the expression of a contemporary sensibility: “Urban life has undergone tremendous development in the last fifty years,” he notes, “it is fundamentally distinct from the past.” Even the Baroque and the Enlightenment “can only provide suggestions.” It was important in the study of the past “to receive the law from the object” rather than interpret it through “modern eyes, and ascribe to the historical citybuilding-art beauties which it never had nor attempted,” he continues, “If we strive for such accidentally justified effects then the city-building of our time will never be an artistic work but representation of an effect—and in the sense that Goethe mocks.”122 Brinckmann stresses a renewed city-building-art will not be founded through an emphasis on kinesthetic painterly effects. Nor will it be the product of theory—“the construction of abstract thinking”—within which he includes the history of urban design. It can only be the product of “artistic force,” the result of a “spiritual-physical process,” a contemporary spatioplastic conception. The contemporary architect, he concludes optimistically, implicitly returning to Schmarsow’s basic thesis, “permeated by a new, honest, and pure feeling for corporeality, will also form a new and liberating beauty for the city-buildingart.”123 This new “space-feeling” he suggests, in a statement Hilberseimer and

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Rukser reproduce in their second draft, “represents itself at first in the individual living spaces, then in the grouping of these [spaces] into the building. The building determines the physiognomy of the street, the city; it is the material of the city-building-art. Building cities means: Shaping space with the material of buildings.”124 From Schmarsow’s historical thesis, Brinckmann conceives urban design as a practice that begins with the psychophysical conception of the interior, then combines and shapes these unitary bodies into a potentially animate spatioplastic urban physiognomy. Brinckmann’s assertions—including, notably, the idea that the spatial-mass of buildings constitutes the matter of the city-building-art (just as stone is the traditional material of the sculptor)— furnish the artistic program of Hilberseimer and Rukser’s MetropolisArchitecture.

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7 SPIRITUALIZING THE METROPOLIS

The Sculptural Art of Space In the first draft of Metropolis-Architecture, Hilberseimer and Rukser describe architecture as “Raumkunst” (“art of space”), in which, “spaces (self-contained [Geschlossenheit]) are created or filled in.” Architecture, they note, has this solidification of space “in common with sculpture.” They emphasize architecture constructs space within and outside buildings, the latter constituting the space of the city. And they conceive of the building per se, as the plastic mass constituting interior and exterior space: “The exterior and interior space is limited by the exterior surfaces of the body of the building, which forms, as the focus of both spatial conditions, the decisive architectural form.”1 In the second draft, they are explicit their commitment to Raumkunst adopts Brinckmann’s claim “all architectural design is the feeling of space,” which Brinckmann, after Schmarsow, describes as “psychophysical”: “the sense […] for a specific corporeality.”2 Like Brinckmann, they make no conceptual distinction between mass and space: There is no fundamental separation of architecture from sculpture in regard to the means of expression; the difference lies in the disparity of creative visions. Accordingly, the marker of the architectural artwork is that it (self-contained [Geschlossenheit]) contains or fills out space three-dimensionally and indeed twofold space: one filled out and enclosed by the artwork; the other, the entire space of air lying on the exterior. Exterior and interior space delimit each other in the exterior surfaces of the body of the building; these, as concentration of both ratios of space, represent the actual architectural form.3 Hilberseimer and Rukser thus present architecture as a division of space—the division Friedlaender thought necessary for any conceptualization—and convey the sense the building- and city-building-arts are essentially a spatial qualification of the artistic realm of sculpture.

In making their argument for architecture as Raumkunst, Hilberseimer and Rukser quote from the short section in Brinckmann’s Place and Monument on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century German architecture. At this turning point in his text from Italy to France, Brinckmann presents a conflict between the “Nordic” and late-Baroque conceptions of the building-art, posed as a spiritual (and political) distinction between a collective of independently animated vertical elements and an animated horizontal-body of interdependent parts. Brinckmann argues this conflict was more easily resolved in France, particularly southern France, where the “still strongly Gothic feeling of space” held in Germany during the Northern Renaissance was less developed and “horizontal articulation had never been abandoned in favor of an all-dominant verticalism.”4 Brinckmann here offers an acute statement of his thesis that Hilberseimer and Rukser reproduce in their second draft: The feeling of space [Raumgefühl], which in turn has its origin in the human feeling for a certain corporeality [and] is thus psychophysical, is primary to all architectural design. The structural forms, articulations, and details are the making-visible of these feelings in material by artistic activity. If one derives the transformation of the architectural language of form from another, then one labors with something secondary, which rewards no deeper understanding; one externally arrays symptoms next to each other and directs the new form back to something incomprehensible, instead of recognizing it as something singular, conditioned by the general.5 Hilberseimer and Rukser are compelled by Brinckmann’s emphasis on spiritual genesis, his clarification of the primary (corporeal) and secondary aspects of form, his critique of formalism, and his emphasis on the general conditions of art. In his extension of Schmarsow’s architectural theory to the art of city-building, Brinckmann clarifies and simplifies Schmarsow’s nuanced, dialectical history, with its varying ratios of spatial, plastic, and painterly dispositions, into a clear sequence of paradigmatic shifts and emblematic works. In effect, Brinckmann makes Schmarsow’s thesis, with its emphasis on the architectonic integration of differing modes of artistic perception (as well as his critique of historicist eclecticism), more salient for an audience, including Hilberseimer and Rukser, steeped in Expressionist cultural critique.

The City as Second Nature In their joint writing on the city and their independent art criticism, Hilberseimer and Rukser repeatedly stress the notion good art sensibly expresses (materializes) an idea in the most concise and compelling form. Like Schmarsow

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and Brinckmann, Hilberseimer and Rukser prioritize the psychophysical sense of corporeality as the motive of the (city) building-art. They suggest the contemporary conception of corporeality is bound up with a sense of dynamism. “Traffic has decided on straightforwardness,” they write, “Since we live in a time of speed.”6 To convey this sense, Hilberseimer and Rukser turn to the writer Theodor Däubler, quoting a stanza from his 1915 poem Hesperus: Eine Symphonie (Hesperus: a Symphony), which they adopt as the epigraph of their second draft.7 Hesperia, ancient Greek for “western land,” refers to Italy, where the poem, like much of Däubler’s more famous work, Das Nordlicht (The North Light, 1910), is set.8 The stanza appears in the central section of the poem’s five parts. In the first, we follow a soldier leaving his home and confronting the devastation of war. The second offers the onset of Autumn—a wild storm and the peace in its wake—as a pastoral. The third centers on Rome as “the blue hours of the campagna slowly flee,” evoking against the coming wintry dark the energy of the “great city”: its artificial light, its “noisy throngs,” its trains, engines firing, conveying long, illuminated lines into the night as they “scatter and dissipate thousands” into the hinterland.9 Certain stanzas in the opening section suggest the heavens are an ethical guide, while the earth, our medium, is a product of human skepticism: we seek to reach the stars and comprehend ourselves through the effort to overthrow given existence. In Das Nordlicht, Däubler builds his cosmic symbology upon illumination: the earth, desirous to be a star (unlike the moon, which can only reflect the sun), contains, even at its darkest poles, an internal light.10 Similarly, stanzas in the mid-section of Hesperia present the energy of the metropolis as a means of selfovercoming. The metropolis is a denaturing, artificial world, holding off the wintry night: the constitution of agency in the face of nihilism. The passage Hilberseimer and Rukser adopt follows a series of stanzas each centered on an urban typology— the stores, hairdressers, tobacco shops, cafés, bars, and brothels of the city. Däubler captures the hedonism of the metropolis as a cornucopia of fabricated experiences, a jungle with the same range of excitements and anxieties as nature. The poem’s fourth section, which contains the Nietzschean exhortation “Ecce Urbs” (behold the city), describes the following day in the Eternal City. After the Dionysian night, Däubler basks in the city’s Apollonian gardens and squares, drawing Rome into the heavens. In the final section, evoking the devastating earthly powers of volcanoes and flood, Däubler borrows an epigraph from Tyrtaeus (mid-seventh century BCE), not to rally one people against another in the midst of war, as this Spartan did, but to flame the embers of humanity, cast away fearful pessimism, accept and channel earthly energy.11 Read in light of Däubler’s poem, Hilberseimer and Rukser present the metropolis as a turning point. Their work is the conscious summation of a situation, a survey requisite to action, the recognition and control of mundane forces, guided by cosmic passion, rejecting false hope of transcendence. “Planlessness and confusion

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in the arrangement of the city as well as in the individual building are the not yet eliminated inheritance from the previous generation,” they write in their first draft, “hence so many misshapen and stunted metropolises, which have not yet been able to develop into what is essential for every artform: the coherent organism.”12 Such a confused milieu, they note, “had to detrimentally affect” the quality of architecture.13 Hilberseimer and Rukser set themselves the task of cultivating the metropolis as a work of art, an environment for individual (architectural) flourishing, out of the wilds of given environmental (i.e., given metropolitan) conditions.

Simultaneity and Dynamism Describing the impediments to the realization of the organic metropolis in their first draft, Hilberseimer and Rukser cite Däubler a second time: his 1916 essay “Simultaneität” (“Simultaneity”), which they introduce as “concerning the psychology of the Gründerjahre [founding years].”14 “Style is destiny: we cannot choose our style ourselves,” Däubler opens, arguing linearity is the mark of contemporary architectural production, “Earlier, the building masters drew their plans with a free hand, today the ruler and drawing board reign; therefore, a great simplicity must determine the coming style!” To make his claim, Däubler points to a number of “modern architects”: Wagner and Adolf Loos (1870–1933) in Däubler’s native Austria; Hans Pölzig (1869–1936) in Breslau; Wright in Chicago; and Behrens and Wilhelm Martens (1842–1910) in Berlin. Yet, Däubler asks, “Where is our style then? Where is the commonality among them?” It is that which they left behind, he answers, associating this negative coherence with “simultaneity” and differentiating it from the style to come.15 Däubler’s essay is a critique of Wilhelmine culture, the “bourgeois-immoral society” he associates with stylistic eclecticism, individualism, and capitalist profiteering on established values.16 He laments the desecration of historic cities and the majority of new building is not “less miserable.” He cites new Vienna as the epitome of misguided development, but thinks Berlin no better. He casts the academy as a pretentious departure from traditional virtues.17 While the Romantic efforts of the Gothic revivalists were at first clever and harmless, the mid-nineteenthcentury completion of Cologne Cathedral, which required the revival of lost crafts, had provided the license and fabricated the skilled workforce necessary for lesser undertakings. Academic historicism disconnects artifacts from the society that produces them. Däubler thinks temporal prevarication the essence of his time.18 Däubler’s “simultaneity” describes an impure condition, at once interregnum and temporal collapse, devaluing the artwork and the pantheon of creation. From this zero, he sees two alternatives: “back to an intellectually-refounded old style or out […] into a swinging architectonics.”19 Identifying Behrens’ German Embassy in St. Petersburg with the former, Däubler endorses progress: “Simultanism is our

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dangerous affluence,” he writes, but “character is Expressionism” overcoming the indifferent simultaneity of impressions.20 Däubler critiques the “simultaneous overabundance of learnedness” (Bildung)—of knowledge less understood than recognized—as an obsessive development of the interior, a perpetual inhabitation of the reception room and the library, with little external effect.21 He associates this bourgeois retreat with the hypocrisy of a “disntinctively modern” blindness. “We, who bear responsibility in art, move through our built-up, debris-strewn cities […], close our eyes and ears for long stretches, until we come to a hidden cozy place, suddenly happy about something new that promises,” he scolds, “and thereby intentionally forget what has insulted us, swallow it down, overlook, accept it.”22 To break through the mechanical-repetition of contemporary psychology, Däubler rejects the solace of conventions. Against the negative indifference of simultaneity, he sets the positive embrace of “Simultanism,” which he describes as “the most important element for the generous future horizontal.” Däubler sees this transitional attitude in the work of Robert Delaunay (1885–1941) and the Futurists. “Simultaneity,” Däubler writes, “[…] is the condition under which the various elements that make up dynamism appear.”23 “We will remain broadtracked, swift, sleek, receptive to influences and intuitions,” he waxes, “The will to style, which is already at hand, will confirm, establish this substratum. On the obtained results, however, another position [remains to be asserted].”24 In Däubler’s (polar) conception, simultaneity (with its temporal stagnation) and simultanism (as its positive inverse) are the preconditions of a unifying dynamism. Arguing painting and sculpture are ahead of architecture, Däubler predicts “an animated style will ultimately breakthrough in the building-art.” “Of course,” he continues, “something like a salient Baroque [Kantenbarock—literally: Baroque of edges] has long hung in the air.” Pointing his readers to the recent histories of Cornelius Gurlitt (1850–1938), Wölfflin and Riegl, Däubler supposes current neoclassicism (such as Behrens’) provides the “necessary calming” for this unfolding.25 Though his anticipation of a metropolitan Baroque is informed by this scholarship, Däubler employs historical terms merely to approximate a “germinating” style; history can assist comprehension, but is not determining he stresses.26 Consistent with Ruest’s supposition materialism implies spiritualism, Däubler argues simultaneity supposes succession, stasis dynamism. Moreover, like Friedlaender’s call to indifferentiate opposites, to transcend difference with unity, Däubler argues cultures impelled to singularity, creatively subsume the past. “Primal abstractions will gothicize toward heaven, strangely plantlike, spiritually enlightened, pollinate the world,” he imagines, “From the same plant Baroque leaves will shade our homes and faithfully and pleasantly fan all the way into the parlors.”27 Däubler presents the simultaneity of the metropolis—a jungle of contradictions—as the constituent elements of a singular, dynamically variegated organism. The “same plant has different actualities of expression,” he notes, envisioning the emerging cultural form (vertically and horizontally) absorbing

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all dimensions of urban and interior life. Däubler presents industrial, neoRenaissance architecture as a calming interregnum between the historicist chaos of simultaneity and a dynamic metropolitan organicism analogous to the unifying Baroque animation of the Renaissance. He provides Hilberseimer and Rukser the psychophysical motive of the future city.

A Baroque Metropolis Hilberseimer and Rukser understand dynamism in a particular sense. They distinguish between the “proportional, dynamic, metric, and rhythmic” functions of artistic form: The distribution of temporal or real space, in such a way that elements in a work of art constitute a self-contained organism, is a matter of proportioning; the distribution according to the increasing and decreasing intensity within the organism effects the dynamic; the division into equal or different spaces or times is the matter of the metric; the allocation of accents within the metric effects the rhythm.28 In addition to the proportional division of the artistic organism vis-à-vis its environment, the metric consistency that gives the work its integrity, and the rhythmic articulation of the whole into various elements, “dynamism” is the formal function that gives the artwork varying intensity through modulation. For Schmarsow, and Brinckmann after him, this variable intensity distinguishes the organic Baroque from the static regularity of the crystalline Renaissance. Hilberseimer and Rukser’s embrace of dynamism allows them to accept, contrary to Sitte, both the straight street and the rectilinear building block. Citing Wagner’s Baukunst unserer Zeit (Building-art of Our Time, 1914), and pointing to the 1811 Commissioners’ plan for Manhattan, Hilberseimer and Rukser acknowledge “The principal advantage of the linear street net consists in the valuable orthogonality of the building blocks.” But rejecting the expediency identified by Sitte and Brinckmann, Hilberseimer and Rukser stress their conception of the cubic city is distinct: “It is self-evident that it is not at all dull schematism that is put forth here. It will always be necessary to observe the teaching of the Baroque, that the street is a dynamic line that moves toward its destination with growing intensity.”29 Hilberseimer and Rukser qualify the material means of capitalist urban production. In Brinckmann’s history of the Baroque, Hilberseimer and Rukser glimpse the possibility of dynamically animating the cubic city, reconceptualizing the metropolis as a sculptural work of art. “Cities-building means: ‘Shaping space with the material of buildings’,” they state, quoting Brinckmann. Hilberseimer and Rukser assert the mass of the metropolis “is formable material, like everything else.”30

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Moreover, the rectilinear grain of the contemporary city offers the urban sculptor material of incomparable uniformity.31 They note urban phenomena evidencing the consistency of the contemporary city, such as the “accidental coherence found in a row of buildings along a street still under construction” and “the development of a street with houses of the same kind as is common in conservative France.” In their second draft, they offer “the fabulous Rue Soufflot, Rue de Rivoli, Champs Elyssée or the Rue de l’Opera or the Place de la Carrière in Nancy” as exempla.32 Above all, Hilberseimer and Rukser praise the “monumental consistency” of the “Monadnock Block” (Burnham and Root, Chicago, 1885–93). Asserting the Monadnock enlivens the street wall with its undulating rhythm of projecting bay windows, they offer the notion “the buildings of the street, individually in their architecture, strengthen [the urban] dynamic,” as an “ideal postulate.” This cohesion might one day be enforced by regulation, they point out, but “For the time being, it remains all the more important […] that the individual building not oppose but submit to the vital force of this dynamic.”33 Hilberseimer and Rukser’s emphasis on the contribution of the individual building to the dynamism of the street represents the artistic and scientific idea that the coherence of the metropolitan organism would be manifest in the specificity of its parts. This call for a voluntary commitment to the collective animation of the city has obvious political resonance in the context of the anarchist program of Der Einzige. In addition to the dynamic animation of the street wall, Hilberseimer and Rukser consider the function of Baroque axes in the urban body. “The orientation of the street to viewpoints, monuments, squares and skyscrapers is always decisive,” they write, theorizing a contemporary axiality while citing the role of the royal residence in Hilberseimer’s native Karlsruhe as the focal point of a radiating street plan.34 Following Brinckmann’s discussion of grown and laid-out cities, Hilberseimer and Rukser distinguish between “planless, accidentally founded” cities and the much rarer cases of cities whose “founding and design occurs according to a plan.”35 Historically, they argue, “only the [monarchical] establishments of the Baroque evidence development according to a plan,” offering Karlsruhe and Mannheim as examples.36 In their second draft, they point to Burnham’s Chicago Plan (1909), Wagner’s proposal for the twenty-second district of Vienna, and certain entries to the competitions for Greater Berlin (1910) and Canberra (1911–12) as examples of contemporary urban artworks, noting all remain unrealized.37 Acknowledging few metropolises are recent incorporations, they argue most are “reestablishments,” offering the nineteenth-century reconstruction of Paris as “the equivalent of a gradual new-establishment.”38 “By inserting a geometric system of most-ingeniously arranged straight streets, all of which have a monument or public building as their destination,” they explain, identifying a heuristic role for the contemporary urban axis, “the Gothic city core was transformed into a completely new arrangement, which, although prompted by strategic considerations, realizes artistic intentions.”39 While these urban reconstructions

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FIGURE 7.1  The Cubic City as envisioned by Daniel Burnham and Edward Bennett, plate 122 from The Plan of Chicago. View looking West, of the Proposed Civic Center Plaza and Buildings, Showing it as the Center of the System of Arteries of the Surrounding Country, 1908. The Art Institute of Chicago / Art Resource NY.

FIGURE 7.2 Ludwig Hilberseimer, Grossstadtarchitektur (Stuttgart: Verlag Julius Hoffmann, 1927), 4, illustrating the competition winning entry for Canberra by Marion Mahony and Walter Burley Griffin, 1911.

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were not as “visionary [ausschauen]” as the 1811 plan of Manhattan or Wagner’s scheme, they demonstrate it is “possible that a city gradually evolves into a metropolitan organism.”40 In his later work, Hilberseimer will be preoccupied with creating the means and theorizing the process of urban reconstruction, most notably the transformation of Chicago. Asserting most metropolises are reestablishments, Hilberseimer and Rukser suggest the metropolis had come about as willfully as cities decreed by princely fiat. They are not principally concerned with discriminating between planned and unplanned cities, newly established or refounded cities, but with the nature of spiritual urban visions. It is not the incrementally evolved settlement they understand as organic. Only cities bound by the strength of a unifying idea have the potential to be an “organism.” Hilberseimer and Rukser envision an alternative to the centralized, imperial decrees of the sovereign and the colonizing

FIGURE 7.3  Ludwig Hilberseimer, Phased disintegration of the Chicago Grid. Marquette Park redevelopment scheme, Chicago, c. 1950. Karl Ludwig Hilberseimer Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archives, Art Institute of Chicago.

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economic-mechanisms of anonymous industrial capital. Their urban vision is the imagination of a socialist future. Understood as an alternative to unselfconsciously spiritual (medieval) and consciously bourgeois, monarchic, and papal cities, the assumed polity of Hilberseimer and Rukser’s post-metropolitan future comes into focus: neither the individual sovereign and the bourgeoisie, nor the anonymous mass subject, but the social (anarchist) collective of sovereign individuals. This neutralizing polar schema of three modern political-urban systems reflects differing relationships between the city and its constituent buildings: the subjection of architecture to the formal idea of the city; the absolute individualism of building without regard for any coherent conception of the city; and the mutual correspondence between the individual sovereignty of architecture and a collective idea of the city. Hilberseimer and Rukser’s interest in the individual contribution of cubic buildings to the dynamism of the street, their animation of (the) metropolitan masses, is at once an artistic and political conception. Hilberseimer and Rukser equate the inanimate cubic city—the coldly indifferent and chaotic metropolis—with the negative sociopolitical consequences of a skeptical materialist culture: “The metropolis, for which there are only, for the time being, hygienic-technical solutions, is still something purely material,” they dismiss, implicitly presenting their approach as a longed-for alternative to the “capitalist economic […] countenance.” “Man attempted to physically satisfy blind speculative frenzy and thus believed to no longer have need for the spirit,” they observe, “Today one has again recognized, […] that the city is not only a technical matter, […] not only capable of incorporating an artistic formation, but necessarily requires it.”41 In seeking to animate the mechanical regularity of the contemporary city with a Baroque-like sense of vitality, Hilberseimer and Rukser are not envisioning the kind of sovereign animation found in papal Rome or princely Karlsruhe. They consider the means by which architects can create works that enhance the “dynamism of the street” while reinforcing the cubic mass of buildings, charging individual architects with the task of motivating the collective plan. Rather than prescriptive determinations, they seek collective conditions within which the individual work can fulfil its potential. If the “environment is artistically miserable and does not allow organic relationships to be established between the particulars of the organism,” they argue, “even that which is good in itself cannot attain the significance and impact that is possible in a work whose integration into a larger artistic organism […] reflects its artist’s intensity.”42 It was the realization of spiritual conditions in which individual architects could express themselves for the mutual benefit of the whole, not central authority, that Hilberseimer and Rukser found compelling in the Baroque. Moreover, Hilberseimer and Rukser argue the realization of the city as an “artistic organism” with an “inner lawfulness” “requires logical integration of the urban artwork into space, the natural environment, consideration of the particularity and special circumstances of the terrain.” It was this integration, they observe, no doubt thinking of Brinckmann’s writings, that “made Baroque cities 140

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such unique spatial creations. Only in this way do streets and squares obtain actual sense as bearers of dynamic effect, as paths and culminations of proportioning intensity.”43 Only the city conceived in correlation with nature can be a true work of art, Hilberseimer and Rukser suppose. With this calibration the city’s internal structures—its streets, squares, and monuments—gain significance. Implicitly recalling Sitte’s and Brinckmann’s critiques of the clumsy use of urban vegetation in contemporary cities, Hilberseimer and Rukser distinguish between the metropolitan urban square, which, in a literal naturalism, had become “overgrown by gardens uncontrolled by architects,” and an architectural integration with the environment such as Michelangelo’s hilltop piazza in Rome.44 While they advocate the use of monuments to terminate streets and provide orientation to the urban fabric, Hilberseimer and Rukser do not limit monumental architecture to the representative buildings of state and church, but list “skyscrapers, theaters, warehouses, train stations, and other exceptionally elevated or more significant buildings” as functional centers within the urban artwork. Perhaps reflecting their mutual interest in the laws of nature and art, Hilberseimer and Rukser offer Joseph Poelaert’s (1817–1879) Palace of Justice (1860–1883) in Brussels as “the greatest modern solution” to the problem of the urban center.45 Although Däubler critiques Poelaert’s eclecticism in “Simultaneity,” he praises the promise of his Palais.46 Hilberseimer and Rukser emphasize the role of the building in integrating the city with the landscape: Just by its fabulous location the building obtains sense and architectural value. At the same time, it returns this sense to the urban arrangement as a whole, by

FIGURE 7.4  Ludwig Hilberseimer, Central Railroad Station, Berlin, Perspective, c. 1927. The Art Institute of Chicago / Art Resource NY. SPIRITUALIZING THE METROPOLIS

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letting it culminate in itself, providing the center in which the most important axes are absorbed by it. With extraordinary tact, the building is experienced as the spirit and condensation of the city, forming the center of gravity and focal point of the main radii that culminate thunderously in it; lying at the highest elevation, it exhibits overall clear horizontally-divided cubic masses— as individual architecture, scarcely of significance, but still vitally Baroque— everything playfully running into the crown of the dome, which brings the movement, by gradual tapering, to conclusion.47 In its cubic and centered, at once vertical and horizontal form, the Palace of Justice in Brussels, albeit a monument, is indifferent from—a metonym of—the city itself. Indeed, Hilberseimer and Rukser suggest the building does not exercise a commanding sovereignty, even as it retains Baroque-like vitality. It provides a center, but is not itself a remarkable individual, as though its significance comes from its position, the marked occupation of which gives orientation and value to the whole. Moreover, their extensive list of potential purposes for such orienting monuments, many prosaically utilitarian, suggests Hilberseimer and Rukser understand the

FIGURE 7.5  An indifferent center in the cubic city: Ludwig Hilberseimer, Opera House, perspective, 1912, the opening illustration of Ludwig Hilberseimer, Grosstadtbauten, Neue Architektur I, published with Merz 18/19 (Hannover: Aposs-Verlag, 1925), 1. (DADA III:2:18/19) Kunsthaus Zürich Library.

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Baroque in a weak (rather than strongly centripetal or centrifugal) sense, merely the cohesive formal function necessary for the city to operate as an organism. Indeed, their evocation of the Baroque seems primarily compelled by the recognition the palace is a singular point integrating the city with the landscape. Hilberseimer and Rukser’s conception of the city as an organic work of art extends, in spatial breadth, like Schmarsow and Brinckmann’s conception of the city, from the plastic intensity of sculpture (vertical) to the most diffuse spaces of human creation (horizontal), as though following Friedlaender’s observation that through cultivated aesthetic expansion we penetrate more deeply into nature and more precisely neutralize our spiritual creations. Through the neutral fulcrum of creative indifference we strive to hold the greatest range of phenomena in cohesive tension.

A Socialist Urban Landscape Hilberseimer and Rukser affirm Sitte’s critique of the expediently gridded city: “without any sense of space, without regard for the terrain, which the Baroque knew how to use so masterfully, this abstract scheme was thoughtlessly spread out over vast stretches of land without higher intentions, purely by accident, satisfying the need of the day.”48 They cite the new districts of Stuttgart as “an especially grotesque example” of this modern planning. While they credit Sitte with being the first to acknowledge the issue, they could not agree with his solution. Sitte had made the different but equal mistake of taking the medieval city as the “foundation of an artistic system.” The “crooked street” had been just as thoughtlessly applied, often to unsuitable terrain, taken up entirely for its “curving spatial effect” in cities as diverse as Karlsruhe (Zirkelstraße) and London (Regent Street).49 Like Brinckmann, they critique anachronistic models of all kinds, such as the application of old Nuremberg to the Bavarian quarter of Berlin’s Schönberg district.50 Because the metropolis had “grown out of peculiar economic conditions,” it was irresponsible to literally apply old urban precedents.51 Quoting Brinckmann’s assertion a “space-feeling […] represents itself at first in the individual living spaces,” then in the buildings that determine “the physiognomy of the street” and “the city,” Hilberseimer and Rukser argue the course of the street is not something to be determined theoretically in advance; it should be derived from the logics of the constituent building elements in correspondence with given conditions.52 The role of theory is to state the principles of design, not prescribe formal solutions. “The design of terrain is just one of the principal tasks of building cities and beginning from an artistic viewpoint it will be possible to find an appropriate solution for each case,” Hilberseimer and Rukser suggest. The urban form mediating architecture and landscape—even the streetgrid associated with cubic architecture—need not be expediently or rigidly applied. Eighteenthcentury Bath, they emphasize in their second draft, is evidence that a Baroque

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and “thoroughly lawful city can be laid out on uneven terrain.”53 In making this observation, Hilberseimer and Rukser surely had Brinckmann’s City-Building-Art in mind. “If we have been told for years,” Brinckmann writes of Bath, with obvious reference to Sittesque practice, “that […] irregular terrain requires loosening and painterly grouping of the city plan, here proof is provided as incentive that […] a prejudice, which arose from a temporally romanticizing and naturalistic attitude, was uncritically repeated again and again.”54 Taken by the city’s crescents and “quite simple architecture,” Brinckmann compares Bath to “a beautiful Baroque sculpture.”55 Bath is not a painterly design, but a plastic grouping of buildings in the landscape. “Flexibility and will—the stones of this English city preach both,” Brinckmann praises. Moreover, noting the city had been realized under a single landholder, Brinckmann offers Bath as a model for socialism and a new form of architecture: “do we not also again seek, instead of fragmentation, equalizing integration in all respects? And is not socialism pursuing one of its most important tasks on this point? How now, if with it, new architectural form would be won?”56 Hilberseimer cites Bath, particularly its integration with the landscape, throughout his career.57 Like Brinckmann, Hilberseimer and Rukser imagine the socialist city as a novel spatioplastic formation, a revolutionary conception of society creatively calibrated to the contingencies of the landscape. Such an integration of culture

FIGURE 7.6  Ludwig Hilberseimer, The New City: Principles of Planning (Chicago: Paul Theobald, 1944), 189, illustrating the integration of the city with the landscape in Bath.

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with nature at the world-economic scale of the metropolis could only arise, they suppose, with the resolution of the egregious imbalances definitive of capitalist accumulation and overproduction. In considering the integrity of the city and the integration of the city and the landscape, Hilberseimer and Rukser were implicitly evaluating politicaleconomic values, which meant, for them, values inextricable from a cultural—a spiritual—worldview. They found the attempt to isolate the political-economic from the spiritual objectionable. They reject Sitte’s vision of medieval harmony as a romantic reaction to the capitalist city. Hilberseimer and Rukser could not turn away from the system of environmental production as it stood. “American metropolises, which, for the time being, purely embody the metropolitan type of culture, have opted, on objective [sachlich] grounds, for the rectilinearity of streets,” they report, citing Manhattan and William Penn’s 1680s plan for the expansion of Philadelphia. Noting the rectilinear building blocks thus produced, they indirectly describe the exchange-value bound up with the standardized production of property.58 It is not the geometry of the American city but its systematic coldness of spirit that Hilberseimer and Rukser understand as the manifestation of capitalism and mass democracy. Although they note certain

FIGURE 7.7  Ludwig Hilberseimer, The New City: Principles of Planning (Chicago: Paul Theobald, 1944), 29, showing laid-out, geometric urban plans for Selinus, Montpazier, and Philadelphia.

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exceptions—the plans of Washington and Prince Rupert in British Columbia— they did not see these cities as departures from the ideology of American planning. “Common to all of these city layouts is the neglect of their artistic design,” they assert, “Only economic and hygienic viewpoints determined their arrangement.” Although Hilberseimer and Rukser acknowledge a distinctive urban form had arisen in the skyscraper district at the southern tip of Manhattan, they argue its “monumental artistic effects” were “accidental,” “explicable by the lawfulness of mechanical construction.”59 Advocating neither retreat from the cubic city nor acceptance of its prosaic mechanics, Hilberseimer and Rukser seek control of the means of environmental production. With a contemporary sense of dynamism and a commitment to anarcho-socialist values, Hilberseimer and Rukser sought to organically animate the mechanical city with the collective vitality of art. Calibrating human settlement with the natural world, they sought material conditions in which the individual architectural work could, by realizing its own autonomy, contribute to the coherence and sustainable significance of society as a whole. Although his urban and architectural forms would radically transform throughout his career, these ambitions remain central to Hilberseimer’s creation.

FIGURE 7.8  Ludwig Hilberseimer, Commercial area flanked by Residential Settlement Units integrated with the landscape, separating pedestrian and mechanical transportation, c. 1943. Karl Ludwig Hilberseimer Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archives, Art Institute of Chicago.

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The Corporeality of Architecture While Hilberseimer and Rukser’s emphasis on the relationship between architecture and sculpture follows Brinckmann, they inflect his argument under the influence of Einstein’s thesis on cubic art. Their vision of an unequivocally cubic architecture is buoyed by Einstein’s discussion of immediate (spiritual) experience in the context of Hildebrand’s distinction between inherent and effective form.60 With a quote from Rodin, the sculpture of whom both Hildebrand and Einstein found visually incoherent, Hilberseimer and Rukser suggest metropolitan conditions— literally the polluted atmosphere of the northern-European industrial city—cloud and blur the view of architecture, transforming its perception and inhibiting direct corporeal orientation. In the smoke-clouded, hazy air of the metropolis—whose veils dim the sun, dull the view, darken the colors, tarnish the gloss; whose vapor content shows like a magnifying glass the figures with brutal nakedness and bulk, in the most glaring colors—in this air, the preconditions of light and shade are very much different than in the gentle clear country air, the air of the south.61

FIGURE 7.9  Ludwig Hilberseimer, The New City: Principles of Planning (Chicago: Paul Theobald, 1944), 48, comparing a clear rural and polluted urban sky.

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Tracing an arc from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century, Schmarsow had brilliantly described the use of polished materials, color, water, and other means in Bernini’s work and used these observations to assert the painterly emphasis of late-Baroque and Rococo art. Brinckmann had extended Schmarsow’s reading to the effects of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century urban and suburban landscapes. Acknowledging the subsuming atmospherics of the contemporary urban environment, but committed to the spatioplastic integrity of architecture and the city, Hilberseimer and Rukser seek to account for the effective form of architecture under metropolitan conditions: Since all perception depends on the conveying medium, only through light do forms become that which they actually are: organization of bright and dark, of light and shadow, on the proportions [Verhältnisse] of which the effect of plastic art, therefore also of architecture, is based; and in order to use them according to their nature, according to his intentions, the architect only has certain combinations of geometric surfaces at his disposal.62 Following Brinckmann, Hilberseimer and Rukser understand architecture as a plastic medium, geometric articulation its primary means of expression. Rather than embrace the painterly contingency of impressionistic effects, they sought the means to more saliently express the inherent plasticity of architecture as effective form. In their second draft they consolidate the discussions of color, light, form, and material distributed throughout their first draft into a section prefacing more specific comments on the architecture of the metropolis, much as traditional architectural treatises commonly address fundamental artistic issues in their early books.63 Hilberseimer and Rukser argue the formation of the architectural object—its law—gives coherence to the contingent aspects of the metropolitan condition: “Uniformity [Gleichmässigkeit], constancy, intensity of light, the rapidity of change, the content of water, warmth—all these are elements that an optical form harmonizes according to definite laws.” They acknowledge this “harmonization” can be “impaired” by atmospheric variation. The weaker light of northern, moreindustrial Europe, for example, reduces the effect of the arcades common in southern Europe, because the desired “sharp contrast between light and dark” cannot arise. “Therefore,” Hilberseimer and Rukser write, in an implicit critique of a persistent classicism, “the building forms that have arisen in the south cannot be readily transferred to other climates.”64 Moreover, the control of contrast, “becomes more difficult the more buildings are raised and pressed against each other.”65 The same building might be overshadowed in the lower but be directly sunlit in the upper stories. The effectiveness of traditional architectural approaches could no longer be supposed in the dense and polluted cities of an industrialized world-economy. As the perception of architectural expression changes, existing

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artistic practices lose efficacy. Hilberseimer and Rukser’s concern with the way a metropolitan culture (of building) transforms the possibilities of individual (architectural) expression leads them to reconsider the fundamental artistic questions of architecture. Consistent with Goethe’s theory of organic encasement and his hope that a theory of colors could offer insight into biological morphology, Hilberseimer and Rukser understand the aesthetics of the building surface—its form, color, and shading—as the directly sensible language through which buildings communicate and their particular law of coherence becomes evident. Hilberseimer and Rukser present the external surface of the plastic body of the building as the visual condensation of the internal logics and needs of architecture in negotiation with the external conditions and experience of the city. Their artistic recommendation to harmonize the “optical image” of architecture according to “definite laws” takes locally varying environmental conditions of perception into account. Just as Goethe factors conditions of observation in order to encounter phenomena objectively, Hilberseimer and Rukser factor local environmental conditions, which differ geographically but also in the vicinity of the building site, in the effort to realize an objective visual form. In the “indeterminate gray” of the metropolis, Hilberseimer and Rukser suggest color can “be a valuable enhancement of the architectural effect,” “unifying” through monochrome or “enlivening” by polychromy individual buildings or groups of buildings.66 Hildebrand had discussed the use of stark contrasts intensified by strong colors to counteract the contingent environmental effects of sunlight and shadow on the appearance of buildings.67 Hilberseimer and Rukser understand color as integral to material. They write not of applied color, but of “the color of related materials,” and envision color enhancing and animating coherent plastic expression. “Consistency of color can become a unifying, polychromy an invigorating, even compositional, element,” they point out, “through it [color], the individual building in itself, several tightly combined to each other, can heighten the cubic effect of the individual as well as the connected.”68 They cite Pölzig’s residential group in Breslau (now Wrocław, 1908) as exemplary of the latter. They also discuss the differential coloring of individual building components to produce accents or patterns, the uniform coloring of one or more buildings to effect “a stronger integration of the cubic,” and the coloring of principal lineaments to guide the eye, a technique Wagner had employed.69 In addition to color, Hilberseimer and Rukser emphasize the importance of materials, their treatment and articulation, to the effective form of buildings. “Transparency and opacity; smoothness and dullness; hardness and softness of materials; sharp lines and edges; softer transitions from the higher to the deeper lying, are decisive for the refraction and division of levels of brightness,” they explain, “They determine the higher or lower degree of corporeality, the degree of independence of the individual parts; as separating and unifying elements they

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are means of composition of the greatest significance.”70 They note the “Sharp lines and edges of the body of the building cause a more decisive division of the degrees of brightness than softer ones, and thus a varyingly strong impression of corporeality.”71 Again and again, Hilberseimer and Rukser return to the idea of affirming corporeality and cubic form. It is a concern not unrelated to the contemporary sense of dynamism. In their first draft, they reference an essay by Behrens that distinguishes the mechanical “pseudo-aesthetic” of industrial buildings from a truly cultivated building-art.72 Behrens writes: When we chase through the streets of our metropolises in an overly fast vehicle, we can no longer discern the details of the buildings. Just as from the express train, cityscapes which we graze past in rapid tempo can appear in no other way than through their silhouette. Individual buildings no longer speak for themselves. Such a way of looking at our outside world, which has already become a constant habit for us in every situation, is only accommodated by an architecture that preferably shows closed, calm surfaces, that by its compactness offers no obstacles. If something special is to be emphasized, this part should be placed at the destination of our direction of movement. Necessary is a clear contrasting of protruding features to broadly extended surfaces, or a uniform sequence of necessary details, whereby these again achieve a collective unity.73 Like Behrens, Hilberseimer and Rukser emphasize those aspects of the building form which produce its silhouette, in particular “the most visible edge, the roof,” as the most important means for producing a “decisive conclusion” to buildings.74 But Hilberseimer and Rukser assert the emphatic articulation of metropolitan architecture depends not only on the overall “profile” of the building but also on “the relationship between the protruding and receding parts,”75 which they find “pivotal for the effect of corporeality.”76 Hilberseimer and Rukser stress these formal means are not independent devices; they ought to be integrally related to the expression of the work as a singular coherent entity. “The formal problem […] consists in developing these lines, protrusions, and indentations organically from the body of the building [Baukörper],” they write, “The protrusion must become the positive function of the concise surface, the recess with its dark air spaces the negative,” referring the reader—in what may have been a conscious departure from Hildebrand’s discussion of Romanesque relief—to the portals of Italian brick churches, the loggias and balconies of Gothic and Renaissance palaces, and the often-elaborate axial entrances of Baroque buildings.77 Rather than an impressionistic painterly unity (a unity seen), Hilberseimer and Rukser embrace an expressionistic spatio-sculptural unity (a unity felt), a psychophysical comprehension akin to the early- rather than late-Baroque in Schmarsow’s and Brinckmann’s terms.78

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The empathetic sense of positive and negative displacement—the “movement”— of architectural elements vis-à-vis the body of the building echoes Einstein’s claim that the self-referentiality of cubic sculpture is produced by a “spatial equation.”79 “The twofold movement into depth, forward and backward, has been bound into a single cubic expression,” Einstein writes.80 In the neutralized polar relationships of plastic elements, equal in dimension and therefore neutral in their opposing direction, the definitively cubic sculptor offers an idea of movement that at once presents and animates a sculptural body for the observer. Through this “tectonicized intensity” corporeality becomes apparent with an immediacy unknown to kinesthetic exploration, approaching an identity of vision, sensation, and thought.81 Hilberseimer and Rukser argue negative and positive “functions” are the “strongest structuring factors” of architectural expression. These functions, they stress, “decisively determine the rhythm of the building form,” which the “actual exponents and bearers of rhythm”—the “windows, columns, and the like”— reinforce.82 In order to maintain “architectural balance,” they argue, describing the ambition to articulate the architectural body in its “organic correctness,” “the ‘right location’ of these important accents” is paramount.83 They thereby preclude autonomous ornamentation, emphasizing that projections beyond the surface of the building should enhance rather than cover over, substitute for, or undermine the more integrated rhythms of the corporeal design. Offering the portal of Santa Anastasia in Verona (1280–1400) for praise, which appears to simultaneously penetrate into and project from the building mass, Hilberseimer and Rukser argue the use of projecting ornament without regard for its relationship to contrasting dark recesses, produces “clumsiness” and “upsets the tectonic balance in the most sensitive way.”84 Just as Einstein rejects Hildebrand’s emphasis on relief, the  conception of which prohibits projections, Hilberseimer and Rukser reject the classical emphasis on ornamentation, the conception of which diminishes the corporeal plasticity of the building volume. Consistent with Einstein’s argument, they advocate “the rhythm of the building form” be an organic expression of the building’s underlying tectonic intensity.85 Implicit in this argument is the presumption of a perceptible volumetric datum: the establishment of an indifferent planarity essential for the constitution of the cubic form they sought and against which the positive and negative polarities of the façade figure and counterbalance. As Hilberseimer and Rukser present it, after Brinckmann, the art of architecture works upon the enveloping plastic interface between interior and exterior. To emphasize the corporeality of architecture means animating this body while maintaining its primitive form, like a threedimensional stave across which the rhythms of the building course. In recent architecture, they saw this potential not only in the combination of the cubic massing and rhythmically swelling surface of the Monadnock but also in the undulating form of the theater Henry van de Velde (1863–1957)

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designed for the Deutsche Werkbund’s 1914 exhibition in Cologne. They suggest the contrast of the dark entry loggia with the bright surface of van de Velde’s building shows “it was possible to force even large recesses into a planar effect.”86 In van de Velde’s building, the balance between negative recesses and positive projections reasserts the corporeal surface. “Here the artist used paradoxically-ingenious means, similar to an enharmonic equivalence, to reinterpret the large, dark entrance cavity as something planar without the need for the pretense of columns and pilasters,” they claim.87 We might credit this argument to Rukser who was writing around this time (1920) for the progressive music journal Melos (see Chapter 10). The entry cavity of van de Velde’s theater is conceivable not as an interruption in the façade but as integral to a positive surface. They suggest this recognition is equivalent to that which arises when one understands the same musical sound can be assigned different spellings (for example: C# is the enharmonic of Db). With this realization, the distribution of sound itself—or, in the case of van de Velde’s building, light—is valued, not its representational significance. Just as experimental musicians were abandoning keyed orders—schematic (linguistic) formations of sound—for the chromatic scale, Hilberseimer and Rukser suggest architects had the capacity to forego the

FIGURE 7.10 Ludwig Hilberseimer, Grossstadtarchitektur (Stuttgart: Verlag Julius Hoffmann, 1927), 75, illustrating Henry Van de Velde’s Theater at the Deutsche Werkbund Exhibition in Cologne, 1914.

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traditional notes of the columnar orders and, through the corporeal modulation of light, engage vision—like Goethe’s mystical language—in a fundamental and direct, unconventionalized way.

The Law of the Metropolis The primary concern of Hilberseimer and Rukser’s co-authored texts on the architecture of the metropolis is artistic. But this artistic emphasis does not imply disinterest in the complex of political-economic and other cultural issues bound up with recognition the metropolis is a particular kind of economic and psychological phenomenon. Hilberseimer and Rukser turn to discussions of mass, scale, proportion, color, light, material, geometry, and form in a wholehearted effort to engage the profound sociocultural implications of architecture. They think it unconscionable anyone would consider aesthetic questions aside those implications. Hence their claim stylistic art history had overlooked economics. Hilberseimer and Rukser accept the cubic city is the manifestation of the irrefutable conditions with which any contemporary conception of the city has to contend. Focused on style as a purely formal matter, burdened by past creations, the vast majority of contemporary architects had overlooked the fundamental spiritual relationship between aesthetics and society. Having suppressed their innate aesthetic capacity for indifferent observation and synthetic insight, they remained ignorant of (extant) creation and the (morphological) world-transformation made possible by artistic science. Hilberseimer and Rukser’s emphasis on the correspondence between aesthetic and economic conditions may also have been prompted by Brinckmann. While urban historians had considered the “social and economic conditions of urban development” and architectural design had begun to be interpreted in its socioeconomic context, Brinckmann argues in his introduction to CityBuilding-Art, “the history of the form of cities”—of the “formal law” inherent to respective eras of urban design—had been largely ignored. He suggests Wölfflin may be right to suggest the individualism of the late-nineteenth century and its disposition toward analytical scientific specialization had led to disregard of the whole. “And yet,” he writes, “the observation that, in [contemporary] urban expansions and new establishments, spatial and plastic lawfulness, which appears in individual buildings in manifold diversity, is brought to a common denominator, should give the art historian great regard for the city as a total architectural composition.” The great scale of contemporary development had thrust the question of urban coherence into the foreground. In “the development of our modern city-building-art, the struggle with the problem of unity in diversity, has emphatically pointed out that the basis of development of every city constitutes the understanding of it becoming an organism,” Brinckmann

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contends, implicitly addressing contemporary architects as the audience of his urban history.88 Brinckmann points out that contemporary architects, under the pressure of mass (urban) production, had become preoccupied with the most basic spatioplastic laws of contemporary building. Throughout their drafts, Hilberseimer and Rukser argue the great bulking masses (the “growing bulkiness of the body of the building”) characteristic of the architecture of the metropolis, born of the economic and sociological demands of international capitalism, had made a focus on (traditional) ornament ineffective. As buildings increase in size, the effect of detail diminishes: “As the decidedly cubic effect of metropolitan buildings gains prominence,” they observe, “all planar means of design, therefore also ornament, recede.”89 Hilberseimer and Rukser’s embrace of the corporeality of architecture is an acceptance of given socioeconomic, environmental, and perceptual conditions: All detail related only to the modestly sized building becomes nonsense where its intensity and motivating force cannot grasp the whole body of the building, where it is by nature only an intimate detail. That is why, with the architecture of the metropolis, focused on monumentality, the possibilities for structuring detail, especially for ornament, are extremely limited; everything presses toward the lawful formation of the outlines; before the decisive cubic effect of these buildings, details withdraw completely; decisive [Maßgebend—literally, measure-giving] is the general formation of the mass, the law of proportion imposed on it.90 Hilberseimer and Rukser understand this necessary focus on the corporeality of architecture as a departure from the learned presumptions of academic artistic practice and a return to the most primitive means of the building-art: “Thus, the architecture of the metropolis can no longer seek its impact in the romanticizing constriction of historical styles”; they assert, “the decision lies in the overall forming of mass, of material. Here, the forgotten principle becomes clear, that the sense for proportions constitutes the human capacity of the architect as an artist.”91 Hilberseimer and Rukser see the basic shaping of the architectural body as the primary act of architecture; the new nature of life demanded a new form of architecture. As they write in the second draft, “Where the conditions of architecture practiced hitherto are destroyed, its means of expression cannot be maintained.” For where those conventions are retained, dysfunctional disjunctions between the form of the city and contemporary life arise.92 Under the conditions of the metropolis, characterized by new purposes and new demands on creation, massive buildings in a dense and confined context, volatile atmospherics, constrained fields of view, and dynamic movement, the best means of achieving effective form—of obtaining monumentality—coincides,

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Hilberseimer and Rukser argue, with the most essential means of architecture, the basic shaping of the building mass. The conditions of the metropolis had reinvigorated the most fundamental means of the building-art: From the incompatibility of the monumental and the pleasing, from the limitation, even impossibility, of ornament and individual effect, from the necessity to form an enormous, mostly-heterogeneous mass of material according to a law of form that is equally valid for every element, a reduction in the urban architectural form to the most concise, most necessary, most general follows: geometric forms. Thus here, the essential capacity of the architect, their sense for mass, proportion has an increased importance.93 Moreover, they argue, by renewing the building-art’s most essential and therefore eternal function—the artistic (sculptural) formation of the building mass— the effort to realize an effective form within metropolitan conditions returns architecture to a concern with inherent form, with its internal lawful expression, and therefore, unlike the rote schematics and decorative detailing of recent decades, to a practice of architecture comparable to the creative work of cultures in other places and times: The new that arises in this way is not the banality of purely technical expediency; it is a supreme integration [Gebundenheit] and concentration related to the astringency of Egyptian and Indian monuments. For a large mass, formed according to a general law, by the suppression of multiplicity—that is monumentality; that which Nietzsche understands by style in general: “the general case, the law is revered and elevated; the exception is, conversely, set aside, nuance wiped away; measure becomes master; chaos is forced to become form: logical, simple, unambiguous, mathematics, law.”94 The context of Nietzsche’s statement, drawn from a fragment in his posthumously published notebooks, is that the “grand style”—Nietzsche is writing of music— arises not from an effort to please or persuade, but when one “wills– To become master of the chaos one is; to compel one’s chaos to become form.”95 This is Nietzsche’s idea of the “will to power” which Friedlaender, who opens Creative Indifference with a montage of quotations from Der Wille zur Macht (The Will to Power, 1888), understood as the vital drive and innate capacity to differentiate the continuity of existence. When we give order to chaos, we articulate the world and ourselves. Hilberseimer and Rukser’s formal realism is at once pragmatic, aesthetic, and spiritual. The imperative of cultural work and the problem of metropolis-architecture is not to accept, develop, and vary extant cultural conventions in an effort to affect the latest fashion. It is to give order to the chaos of the present; to create new forms for a new culture; to

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inhere given material conditions with a contemporary spirit—a new law; and to express this conception in an inherently effective, concise, salient, and vitally coherent, form. “The art of city-building [Stadtbaukunst] is […] the ultimate achievement of the art of building [Baukunst] in general,” Hilberseimer and Rukser claim, after quoting Brinckmann’s assertion city-building shapes space with the material of buildings, “And if it is the goal of every art to bring order to chaos, then precisely that artistic forming must be the primary requirement for the disposition of urban works of art.”96 The act of looking beyond the accidental, of establishing the objective value of phenomena, investing an otherwise superficial existence with an underlying conceptual unity, such is the very (religious and scientific) act through which we construct a (natural and spiritual) law. The effort to conceive and construct the metropolis as a work of art is the observant acceptance of existence (of creation) as it is, with the intention to give it collectively perceptible significance—to construct a mystical language, in Goethe’s terms—through the specific means, in this case, of metropolis-architecture. All creation is the unique expression of a singular will in the perpetual unfolding of (human) nature. Objective culture is always a singular, irreducible, and eternally valid manifestation of the human spirit. But primitive art, the fundamental refounding of culture, manifests a collective worldview. Overcoming the extant chaos of settlement, realizing metropolis-architecture as a new genre of art integrated with nature, concerned the construction of a society of individuals with a new spirit, the embodiment of a coherent and egalitarian social entity founded on a creatively indifferent artistic science.

The Polar Nature of Architecture Brinckmann’s observation the mass-production of the metropolis had reduced architecture to its most common spatioplastic denominator echoes Goethe’s interest in the basso continuo of painting and Däubler’s conception of a unifying “architectonics.” Unlike Hildebrand’s assertion contemporary artists should be primarily concerned with the fundamental structure of vision, Hilberseimer and Rukser, following Einstein, set about clarifying and unifying the inherent spatioplastic laws of the cubic metropolis. Although Einstein collapses Hildebrand’s distinction between the optic and the haptic into the immediacy of plastic vision, his conception of definitively three-dimensional sculpture preserves a distinction between a mass and its cubic formation. Hilberseimer and Rukser hope to animate the mechanical masses of the contemporary city into a vital cubic aesthetic that, embodying an inherent lawfulness and dynamism, would integrate the various (typological) structures of contemporary life into a coherent whole. Like Einstein, they embrace the conception of an objective art that, through its concise self-contained form, is immediately comprehensible to a

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spiritual community. However, unlike the cubic sculpture discussed by Einstein, which is experienced from without (and is often manipulable in its dimensions and weight), the city is not only experienced through the external perception of plastic bodies, the metropolitan subject is immersed within the interior spaces of buildings and the city. Hilberseimer and Rukser argue the clarity and harmony of the plastic mass of architecture must also permeate interior and urban space. “Only the complete accordance of the interior and exterior construction creates the mutual proportionality and harmony requisite for artistic perfection,” they assert.97 This accord, they point out, after Schmarsow and Brinckmann, is more readily attained in buildings with a single interior space, “such as in churches, hangars, and halls,” recognizing, in the metropolis, “with the increasing number of interior spaces and floors, […] the relationships become more complicated.”98 In addition to the conceptual accord between interior and exterior space and between one self-contained space and another, Hilberseimer and Rukser argue an “objective style” should also convey the sense of the physical contiguity of interior and exterior space. “With every work of building,” they write, “interior and exterior architecture determine each other in such a way that the structure [Gliederung] of the interior spaces must be just as visible on the exterior as the basic features of the exterior form are on the inside.”99 “Thus, the plan only adds the third spatial coordinate, depth, to the horizontal and the vertical,” Hilberseimer and Rukser explain, cribbing Brinckmann, and is “[…] always already unconsciously involved whenever a building is perceived.”100 Hilberseimer and Rukser embrace the correspondence between the external appearance and internal structure of an organism—the basis of Goethe’s morphology—with an Einsteinian emphasis on immediacy. Rather than the sequential peripatetic experience of a concatenation of spaces, such as Brinckmann and Schmarsow describe in their accounts of the painterly Baroque, Hilberseimer and Rukser envision a comprehensive experience of architectural space, in which the interior of the plastic body of architecture is immediately evident from the exterior and vice versa. Without resorting to the static regularity of the Renaissance, Hilberseimer and Rukser seek to neutralize the dominant directionality of Baroque experience—which draws the subject from the city into and through the interior in ascension toward heaven—by balancing interior and exterior movement, negative and positive space, in the plastic singularity of the double-sided architectural enclosure. Whether they are inside the building or inside the city, the indifferent subject should comprehend these functional centers as equal values through the neutralized polarization of architecture. Equalizing the immersive experience of both architectural and urban space, Hilberseimer and Rukser displace the center of Schmarsow and Einstein’s plastic conception from the gravitational axis of a plastic mass to the solidified shell of a plastic volume. The (vertical) emphasis on the auratic subject (apparent in the upright figures Einstein discusses as well as the crowning dome of Schmarsow’s Baroque church) is counterbalanced with the (horizontal)

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interrelationship of the interior and the exterior, imbricating the formation of the architectural body with its socioenvironmental context—the dialectic of a post-Humanist politics. Just as Hilberseimer and Rukser envision the exterior surface of buildings reinforcing and invigorating the cubic conception of the building mass, they argue the interior surface should enhance this architectural law within the building. The interior should “take up and continue the metric (possibly symmetric) and rhythmic relationship according to which the space is formed,” they stipulate, “the same task incumbent upon polyphony (enlargements, reductions, tightenings and broadenings) in music, so [… the interior spaces] become lawful and real organs of the whole spatial organism.”101 The “patterning” of the interior “demonstrates the particular law of a space,” Hilberseimer and Rukser assert; “by finding the common denominator of the division and formation of space intimated even in the small details, the eye grasps the cohesion of the whole” and thus, they argue, “the lawfulness of the whole becomes confirmed in every detail.”102 While they recognize mobile furniture “does not guarantee that constant spatial relationship which the whole space demands as an organism,” Hilberseimer and Rukser nevertheless saw the potential for furnishings, proportioned to particular rooms, to reaffirm architectural rhythms and relationships, such as tables in correspondence with horizontal and cabinets in relationship to vertical dimensions and axes. Given its unconditional relationship to the mathematics of the architecture, they dismiss “schematic” modular furniture as a “spatially neutral” “non-entity [Undingt].”103 Hilberseimer and Rukser thus distinguish architecture per se—the concern with the interrelationship of interior and exterior space—from interior architecture, which, often “degraded to applied art,” they assign the task of inserting objects, colors, and ornaments, “into the already created spaces in a way that only strengthens their harmonious self-containment [Geschlossenheit].”104 With this principled understanding of interior space as contiguous with the architectural conception, Hilberseimer and Rukser differentiate their conception of interior design from the prevailing autonomy of the applied arts. Moreover, they argue the relationship between urban design and architecture should be equally principled. “The task for the architecture of the metropolis is […] to find the forms of interior architecture corresponding to the interior spaces of the metropolis.”105 Like the interior room, urban space should be patterned to visually reinforce the underlying logics of the plastic mass of the city. City-building, like the applied arts, had become a cacophony of independently performed pieces. In Hilberseimer and Rukser’s vision, the architectural corpus, the urban interior, and the building interior would be in a concordant and polyphonous—a conditioned but not determined— interrelationship.

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Spiritualizing the Metropolis In both exterior and interior design, Hilberseimer and Rukser advocate the reduction of architectural means to the most primitive common denominator of form—basic geometry and proportional articulation—as a spiritual response to the metropolitan condition. “All these moments of the most extreme interrelatedness and conciseness correspond, psychologically viewed, to the phenomena of metropolitan life,” they assert, “the neuroses, the heightened pulse.” They see the inability to comprehend architectural detail within the overwhelming scale and complexity of the metropolis as the architectural corollary of the excessive stimulation of contemporary urban existence, asserting the fundamental incongruence between the psychology required to appreciate bourgeois decoration—“a calm comfort, a lyrical mood and insularity”—and the “boisterous tension of the metropolis.”106 They therefore dismiss the notion the prevailing “Babel style” could be placed—as they had set their own corporeal forms alongside the art of Egypt and India—among the great styles of other times and places. The imitation of historical styles offers no bearing for contemporary life, “so it is obvious that in metropolitan architecture there is no longer any justified possibility of application for these styles.”107 By contrast, Hilberseimer and Rukser present their formal realism—the objective articulation of integrated and concentrated masses—as the artistic correlate of the contemporary system of production: “Architectural monumentality is the expression of that which creates the non-artistic accumulation of modern machine forms and engineer constructions,” they claim. Through evident corporeality—the salient rhythmicization of bodies—Hilberseimer and Rukser sought to invest the cold rationality of mechanical reproduction with new life. They describe the “tendency of this objective style [Sachstils]” as “restriction to the architecturally essential, insistence on the greatest exactitude and clarity of form, on the most precise harmonization of all proportions (not equalization), on eurythmy.”108 Hilberseimer and Rukser understand the eternal process of artistic creation as the translation of spiritual values into concrete values. “The metropolis has been called a creation of anonymous capital and objectivity,” they explain, “The style of the architecture of the metropolis can therefore only be an objective style, a style that receives its architectural law from the object.”109 The anonymous, soulless metropolis, the mechanical index of practicality, driven by utility and technology, unguided by spiritual visions (unlike cultures of the past), gives rise to objects that can be recognized—which is to say, reconceived—like a second nature, as artistic laws. To do so, was not, however, to mistake the purposeful for the purposive, the practical for the artistic, the subject of art for the work of art. The formalization of the objective relationships given forth by the anonymous

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logics of capital could no more be reduced to external purpose than the form of any work of art. This is not a so-called functional or utilitarian style. Since art knows no tendency and no purpose than art itself. The work of art exists only in and for itself, without regard for external claims. By denying this, the preachers of an [external] purpose in art, the deniers of the proposition ‘art for art’s sake’, overlook that almost all abstract values, evaluated only according to their [useful] purpose, would be highly superfluous junk, and that, on the other hand, decoration as such, or the representative, of a building, for example, can be objective but without a particular purpose.110 The presence of given objective relationships in the metropolis merely pointed out how ridiculous it was to offer historical styles—a set of formal relationships, born of particular, now anachronistic conditions—as “the living forms of metropolis architecture.” Rather, “It is in the nature of objective style that it comprises a limitation to the essential, which must result in working toward the greatest clarity of form and harmony of all proportions,” they summarize, “The effect of ornament—which, as a rule, is only possible for the smaller proportions— must recede against the eurythmy of form. Thus the objective style becomes monumental value.”111 For Hilberseimer and Rukser, metropolis-architecture, would, like all works of art, manifest a spiritual comprehension of existence. The work of art is a particular “kind of formation [Gestaltung],” Hilberseimer and Rukser suppose, the formal precipitation of a correspondence between the material and the spiritual, with its own particular sense or “law.”112 In the context of a world economy, creation had to begin with recognition of the objective material conditions underlying the production of the metropolis. Hilberseimer and Rukser’s search for the common denominators of metropolitan building is an acceptance of given conditions, the identification of the artistic and psychological motives that expressly integrated, could give contemporary existence orientation and measure, comprehending and seizing the means of production as collective (and artistic) values.

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8 POLARIZING THE METROPOLIS

Urban Organs Hilberseimer and Rukser divide their drafts of Metropolis-Architecture into general remarks and a discussion of the “individual types of metropolis architecture.”1 They consider the conditions affecting metropolis-architecture in general and its characteristic types specifically, such as the commercial buildings that had “skyrocketed from thirty meters to well over a hundred meters” on Manhattan, and the residential buildings inhabiting the “street networks” grown like a “spiderweb” around London and Berlin.2 In this second section of their morphology, Hilberseimer and Rukser focus on the architectural organs constituting the metropolitan organism and the way their location and function within the body of the city condition their form. They recognize synthetic understanding of a biological organ considers its relationship to other organs and the vitality of the organism as a whole. Hilberseimer and Rukser presume purposeful distinctions between metropolitan types reflect the capitalist division of labor. The division of labor driven to its extreme (the system of Taylorism!) has resulted in a concentration of metropolitan life of unequal intensity, both horizontally and vertically. The density of the building mass is different in the individual districts of the city, since workplaces and dwellings had to be separated from each other for hygienic and economic reasons. The city core, as the center of business, is built on most densely and with the tallest buildings for the most intense utilization of the area; around it lie, mostly separated from one another, the more widely-spaced and less tall buildings of the residential and industrial quarters. The last zone, formed of suburbs and garden cities, usually lying beyond gardens or parks, is connected with the city center by rapid transit.3 While the focus on density in this description seems self-evident in the context of the immense growth of the metropolis, it harbors the recognition architecture

is conditioned by its external environment. The milieu of architecture had been radically transformed by the rapid urbanization and capitalization of settlement. While they also recognize several places—“the European industrial centers of Rhein-Westphalia and the Belgian coalfields”—in which hitherto separate cities had begun to merge “so densely close together that the whole area seems to have become one giant city [Riesenstadt],” Hilberseimer and Rukser reserve their discussion to what they consider the more essential “schema.”4 The broad range of densities between the center and periphery of the city exhibited by this schema no doubt had the advantage, in their view, of allowing a polar interpretation to encompass the breadth of urban phenomena, within which the relative values of architecture could be conceived. Hilberseimer and Rukser understand density in much the same way as Goethe writes of organic complexity: with the increasing complication of the metropolis there is a coeval spatialization and speciation of architectural types. Hilberseimer and Rukser organize their discussion around four general types: residential buildings; commercial buildings; industrial and transportation buildings; and public buildings, which they call in the second draft “hall buildings [Saalbauten],” to which Hilberseimer will devote a monograph, Hallenbauten, in 1931.5 Although they begin with these distinctions, they suppose an alternate conception of contemporary settlement based on cohesive rather than divisive spiritual values would not necessarily reiterate extant (purposive and geographic) differences; the organs of an organism are conditioned but not determined by their milieu. Their search for the common denominators underlying metropolitan architectural types is the search for the elementary material, the consistent architectural basis of contemporary environmental production that articulated according to anarcho-socialist values of equality and mutual self-realization would constitute new urban forms.

Mass Dwelling Hilberseimer and Rukser’s socialist desire to calibrate the metropolis with the landscape, consistent with their conception of culture as the collective formalization of a spiritual orientation to given existence, is bound up with the notion the metropolis and capitalism are deeply implicated with geographical displacement and the commodification of land. “The residential buildings of a city were still fifty years ago, for the most part, the property of their inhabitants,” they contend, “This changed with the introduction of freedom of movement and trade in nearly all developed countries, suddenly opening the way into the cities for innumerable masses of people.”6 With rapid urbanization and the growth of the  proletariat, the concomitant need for urban housing resulted in the tenement—the medium

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in this newly liquid relationship between the masses and place—becoming the predominant metropolitan type.7 The suddenness and scale of this transformation caught “building-artists” unprepared, they account, just as the traditional foundation of architecture in the crafts was being destroyed by the industrialization of building production. Housing construction was left to speculators as municipal officials were unable to grasp the new demands.8 Few recognize the tenement constitutes “a new architectural problem.” Rather than “receiving the architectural law from the object,” they scold, architects try to adapt earlier housing precedents.9 Academically trained architects remain uncomfortable with the aesthetics that emerge when the requirements of tenement building are fulfilled. But density is unavoidable. Under metropolitan conditions, “the most intense utilization of the plot requires the creation of the greatest possible number of feasibly identical and comfortable dwellings as possible.”10 Hilberseimer and Rukser identify aesthetic issues—not lack of existential goods, such as privacy, natural light, ventilation, plumbing, or fire safety—as the “fundamental deficiencies” of the tenement.11 They are not unconcerned with the practicalities of this notoriously poor-quality housing. They took it as given the adequate supply of “comfortable dwellings” is the ambition of tenement architecture. But aesthetic aversion had led traditionally trained architects to inadequately engage practical needs. Unlike surveyors and speculators, without compunction for the schematism of the cubic city, academically minded architects sought to escape the repetitious logics of the metropolis and its architecture, turning to façade decoration out of an aversion to tenement planning.12 Motivated to conceal the “banal mathematical-symmetrical partition of mass and surface,” architects drawn by learned conventions append “decorative accents” to tenements, such as balconies typical of Gothic and Renaissance palaces. Hilberseimer and Rukser protest the evident lack of attention to ordering fenestration and the “disruption and disturbance of the façade” produced by “negative” elements such as deep-set windows and loggias. They point to the bourgeois houses of the German Baroque and southern France as contrast, exclaiming, “with how much assurance the canon between building surface and recesses is handled!”13 Just as they recommend a dynamism consistent with the rectilinear logics of the modern city, Hilberseimer and Rukser search for a flexible architectural aesthetic consistent with dense aggregations of residential units. In both cases they look to the Baroque and particularly southern France for instruction. Rather than imitating this determining regularity, however, Hilberseimer and Rukser envision modern needs imbued with an organic coherence. In urban and tenement plans, they reject both soulless mathematics and the willful formalism of bourgeois conventions envisioning an indifferent aesthetic that draws the material logics accepted by anonymous capital into an expressive vitalism.

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Hilberseimer and Rukser’s reform of tenement architecture emphasizes the mutual relationship between the city and its individual architectural constituents. They observe the fragmentation of property and the narrow street front of most urban building plots diminishes the quality of the architectural interior and makes a unified urban aesthetic impossible to achieve.14 By “combining an entire street into a group, and thus giving the resulting block front a uniform rhythmic design,” they recommend, it is possible through the combination of both “negative accents,” such as loggias, and positive accents, such as bay windows (no doubt thinking of the Monadnock), to “form the whole mass in a plastic way and thus turn the whole street from an arbitrary into a consistent (lawful) structure.”15 While they could point to block-scaled residential developments in Berlin, the historicist predilections of their builders had foresworn the plastic potential of a fully realized cubic architecture. They offer instead Wright’s Lexington Terrace (Chicago, 1901) as an “exemplary solution.”16 They note Pölzig was able to produce “a certain degree of [horizontal] organic unity” by combination of plots, presumably referring to his Breslau project.17 And they praise designs by Wagner in Vienna

FIGURE 8.1 Ludwig Hilberseimer, Grossstadtarchitektur (Stuttgart: Verlag Julius Hoffmann, 1927), 75, illustrating Frank Lloyd Wright’s Lexington Terraces, Chicago, 1901.

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and Behrens for AEG in Henningsdorf outside Berlin. In work by Hubert Gessner (1871–1943), however, they identify the potential danger of blockscaled development treated not as a uniform whole but individual units; the result: a “hopeless confusion.”18 Nevertheless, Hilberseimer and Rukser claim it is too early to identify an approach to tenement design that could definitively contribute to the city as a work of art. “For the time being, the German tenement building is still in the process of becoming,” they contend, “An aggregate of economic conditions still awaits its resolution, which must precede design.”19 Hilberseimer and Rukser are at pains to avoid presumptuous determination of the urban masses. “In France, with its conservative architecture, the bourgeois Baroque created the uniformity of tenement rows,” they contend, in an implicit critique of Bildung, “By adopting an apparently well-fitting mask, one avoided the real problem.”20 Given its mediating position, between the center and periphery of the city, the scales and locations characterized by international and domestic interests, it would be premature to specify the form of mass housing, the crucial fulcrum in their polar investigation of metropolis-architecture. Hilberseimer and Rukser implicitly recognize the (political-economic) solution to mass housing—which, Hilberseimer will assert in 1927, “constitutes the real international character of the metropolis”—is the ultimate goal of a reanimated metropolis.21 A comparison of Hilberseimer’s designs in 1919, which do not include mass housing, and 1924, where flats are central to his conception, demonstrates how this question is pivotal to his development. Without transformation in principle, Hilberseimer’s anarchist restraint gives way to constructivist projection.

Individuated Dwelling Unlike the tenement, Hilberseimer and Rukser report, the contemporary villa and the “houses of garden cities” possess greater continuity with the history of owner-occupied houses, embodying an individuated relationship to the landscape. They were even more susceptible to historicism than tenement buildings because “it was not necessary to pay attention to the similarity of the rooms, floors, balconies, etc.”22 The detached dwelling resists grouping into continuous rows. Only secondarily regulated by relationships to the street, its “organic space-relations” are primarily conditioned by the “surrounding garden.”23 “As a consequence,” they notice, “these buildings commonly have something of the primordiality of the farmhouse with regard to the proportions and distribution of rooms,” an observation they support with Heinrich Tessenow’s work (1876–1950).24 Wright’s work is the principal focus of Hilberseimer and Rukser’s discussion of detached and semi-detached dwellings in their second draft, the writing of

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which perhaps coincides with the development of their essay on “American Architecture.” They describe his “un-European country houses” as integrated with, yet asserting their profile in, the landscape. Wright aggregates building elements to produce simple forms and cubic proportions. He amasses opaque surfaces into large planes asserting corporeality, but is also innovative in his conceptions of space and illumination.25 Wright’s domestic architecture is calibrated with nature even as it holds plastic and spatial values in playful balance. They contrast Wright’s work with the “formal abstraction” of Behrens’ Villas at Dahlem and Bogen, Leugner’s in Wiesbaden, and Wagner’s and Joseph Hoffmann’s (1870–1956) houses in Vienna, which they compare to classical villas around Rome.26 They claim Hoffman’s Stoclet House in Brussels more “schematizing” than “classicizing.” By contrast, Wright rethinks domestic architecture from first principles. They accuse Berlin architects, such as Alfred Messel (1853–1909) and William Müller (1871–1913), of dependence on the past. But they praise Taut’s “generous” settlement in Kirchmöser as the first “settlement of villas conceived as a unified whole.” They evidently saw Taut’s work in correspondence with the work of Edwin Lutyens (1869–1944) and other architects in the English Arts and Crafts movement, such as Raymond Unwin (1863–1940) and Edgar Wood (1860–1935). While Hermann Muthesius (1861– 1927) had introduced this work to the continent, they noted, unlike the English interest in medieval precedents, German architects had looked to the Baroque, a bourgeois ideal rather than the commune of the late-medieval city-state.27 In their first draft, noting the influence of the English house on both Wright’s work and, via Muthesius, the villas of Behrens, Wagner, and Hoffmann, Hilberseimer and Rukser suggest a divergence in villa architecture between an emphasis on the integration of elemental parts and an abstracted whole. They follow with a similar claim at a different scale, presenting the villa and the tenement as the poles between which all housing is conceptually arrayed, identifying dwelling units aggregated “as a unified block or rowhouse” in garden suburbs and small cities as lying between these more individuated and densely integrated arrangements.28 In their second draft, Hilberseimer and Rukser also distinguish between settlements associated with small cities and the burgeoning suburbs of the metropolis. They identify the latter with Anglo-American capitalism, “primarily the result of the full-fledged implementation of Taylorism.”29 As the spatialization of capitalist interests and class oppression, the single-family dwelling is an ideological instrumentalization of architecture.30 The metropolis is an enlarged factory town, its suburbs barracks. The earliest of these garrisons were mechanically “executed without consideration,” “Thus came about prosaic, lengthy, […] rows of houses, as the surroundings of London and the industrial centers of German and Belgium show.”31 Hilberseimer and Rusker praise Ebeneezer Howard (1850–1928) and architects of the English garden city movement—Lutyens, Barry Parker (1867–1947), Unwin, and

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Baillie Scott (1865–1945)—for their attempt to reform these conditions. In particular, they point out, “English arrangements”—such as Letchworth and Hampstead garden cities—“exhibit a certain rigor of architectural design with respect to adaptation to terrain,” which they contrast with the “more painterly dissolutions” and willfulness apparent in settlements associated with German industrial complexes, such as those of the Krupp corporation, coal facilities near Dresden, and developments in Staaken.32 By contrast, echoing Brinckmann, they point to the plastic integration of settlement and landscape in “the complex for government officials and workers” associated with a nitrogen factory by the architect Salvilsberger and an unspecified project by Hilberseimer himself.33 Hilberseimer and Rukser suppose the economies of worker housing prohibit detached dwellings and necessitate the grouping of residences. Looking to Wright’s Waller Apartments (Chicago, 1895), “the plans of which emphatically lecture on the comfort resulting from the enhanced position of the American worker,” Hilberseimer and Rukser suggest a horizontal expression, born of the alignment of elements such as roofs and floors, would be a primary aesthetic concern in such collectivization. In their first draft, they identify these characteristics with Tessenow’s Schaffner houses in Trier among other works.34

FIGURE 8.2  Ludwig Hilberseimer, Test Pilot Teaching Facility, c. 1916–18. Karl Ludwig Hilberseimer Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archives, Art Institute of Chicago.

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For Hilberseimer and Rukser, rowhouses, vitally rather than mechanically conceived, had the potential to neutralize the demands of ownership and rent, the individual and the collective, the countryside and the urban. In the latter draft, in addition to Tessenow’s “most precise form,” they praise the contributions of Muthesius, Richard Riemerschmid (1860–1957), Theodor Fischer (1862–1938), Paul Bonatz (1877–1956), Taut, and others to this type of housing.35

The Primitive Form of Metropolis-Architecture For residential architecture the primary metropolitan problem is displacement, for commercial architecture concentration. “The demand of the commerce of the metropolis to eliminate all time-consuming decentralization, the necessity to manage as many needs as possible in a single place,” Hilberseimer and Rukser explain, “has resulted in a new kind of centralized commercial business and therewith the emergence of new kinds of building types: the department store, commercial, office, and administration buildings.”36 Hilberseimer and Rukser argue (the concentrated integration of) commercial architecture is “far more instructive for the essence of metropolis architecture” and gives a clearer indication of its “formal conclusion” than residential architecture.37 Although they see the department store as definitive, they argue all commercial architecture exhibits tendencies indicative of metropolis architecture as a whole. The need for commercial storage—which augured the department store, a “new creation of the metropolis”—had led businesses to retrofit and combine existing residential buildings in search of more spacious floor areas. With the transformation of these facilities into places for display, the need for natural light and the desire to exhibit goods to the street led to the remodeling of the facades of existing buildings to accommodate large openings. Nevertheless, department stores were still hampered by the limitations of the extant fabric: by obstructing interior walls and lack of interior light. Because the “absence of walls both inside and outside is an objective feature of the department store,” it is impossible, they scold, to try and deal with this architectural issue by a return to historical styles.38 In their second draft, Hilberseimer and Rukser distinguish two artistic approaches to the transparency of exterior facades: an emphasis on vertical articulation (the “dissolution of the walls into columns and windows”) and a “counterpoint” between vertical and horizontal, combining “continuous horizontal bands to strictly fix the floor divisions, between which the surface is divided by windows.”39 As respective precedents they point to the Maison de Charles Quint in Bruges (1523) and the Neubau (1585) in Strasbourg, which they respectively align with Messel’s Wertheim Department Store and Johann Schaudt’s (1871–1957)

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FIGURE 8.3 Ludwig Hilberseimer, Grossstadtarchitektur (Stuttgart: Verlag Julius Hoffmann, 1927), 55, illustrating cubic “Commercial Buildings”: Henry Hobson Richardson, Marshall Field Wholesale Store, Chicago, 1885–7 and Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler, Auditorium Theater, Chicago, 1886–9.

FIGURE 8.4 Ludwig Hilberseimer, Grossstadtarchitektur (Stuttgart: Verlag Julius Hoffmann, 1927), 56, illustrating department stores in the United States and Europe.

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Kaufhaus des Westens in Berlin. No doubt, to their mind: the former represented an early-sixteenth century hybrid of late-Gothic verticality and early-northern Renaissance; the latter a late-sixteenth century Baroque modulation of that order. They praise Messel’s Wertheim, suggesting “the interior walls are guided back to supports and the exterior walls are concentrated into pillars,” as though we were watching a traditional building dematerialize before our eyes. Moreover, Hilberseimer and Rukser argue Messel had dressed the static mechanics of the commercial structure expressively without draping the building in off-the-shelf wares. “The reduction of the exterior wall to columns and glass surfaces avoids with genial tact the brusque nudity of the building skeleton such that the columns at the same time are formed as bearers of metric and rhythmic accents,” they wax, “This solution is so well tuned that ornamental accessories and the like are not suppressed but appear indispensable. That gives an astringency and rigor that affects the monumental.” Nevertheless, Hilberseimer and Rukser lament that Messel’s subsequent expansion had sacrificed the evident corporeality of the original. His first effort, looking to Parisian precedents, employed an atrium— apparent on the exterior through the building’s materiality—as its “center of gravity.” With the extension “too many equally important accents are joining,” upsetting the building’s upright balance. Along with commercial success, the bloating corpus had accumulated historicist and other deceptive ornaments, suggesting Messel’s original achievement, like much bourgeois attainment, was more fortune than good management. In retrospect, Messel’s building is “a strange mix of boldness and convention.”40 Joseph Olbrich’s (1867–1908) department store for the Tietz corporation in Düsseldorf (1907–9) Hilberseimer and Rukser present as an application of the much-admired corner solution of Messel’s building. Suggesting Olbrich’s work is more “combination” than “composition,” they contrast its “willful counterpoint” with Behrens’ work.41 They describe Behrens’ Small Motors Factory for the AEG as “in essence a section of the Wertheim building,” confirming the commercial architecture of the metropolis is more consistent than distinct. “This connection shows how much all the building types of metropolis-architecture are basically related to one another,” they affirm, “with the elimination of everything incidental, the same basic rhythmic idea results.”42 With its “purgation of all historical echoes” and “elimination of everything incidental,” Hilberseimer and Rukser present Behrens’ Small Motors Factory as the “perfection and objective formation” of Messel’s approach. It is an “harmonic whole,” they declare, architecture expressed as a “basic rhythmic idea.” Behrens’ work has “clarity, rigor, and precision”; is an “explicit form,” an “entity.” Behrens’ building is everything Hilberseimer and Rukser take as definitive of a purposive and organic work of art.43 Its particular advance: the horizontal emphasis of the building unifies in a way Messel’s gothicizing vertical emphasis (after the loss of its atrial axis) could not. “The evident production of cubic forms here eliminates

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the significant danger, with the prevailing vertical accent, of a disintegration of the corporeal into the ideal,” they write—following Brinckman’s discussion of Gothic and implicitly contrasting devotional transcendence with their own spiritual materialism—“The strictly maintained floor division is then the suggestion of several independent cubes resting upon one another such that the structure alluding to the heavy weight can never be as dangerously form-bursting as the vertical.”44 In this respect, they also saw Burnham’s storage building for Butler Brothers (1903) and George Croll Nimmons’ (1865–1947) Sears, Roebuck & Co. Administration Building (c. 1904/5) in Chicago (“the largest warehouse on earth”) as exemplary.45 With reference to Samuel Scott Joy’s (1875–1942) Midland Department Store in Chicago (1914), they write, “Sometimes the cubic can be pushed so far that the openings and cavities appear to have been subsequently quarried from an originally massive cubic block.” Hilberseimer and Rukser present this movement from Messel to Behrens—the elimination of any distinction between effective and inherent form (and between the functional and formal conception of architecture)—as the quintessential development of modern commercial building and thus metropolitan architecture per se. “Where the division of floors or placement of columns have become purely formal structuring elements of the cubic, the department store finally appears only as a variety of commercial building in general,” they conclude.46 With an emphatically cubic architecture, the architecture of the metropolis becomes metropolis-architecture. As general commercial types, now conceived in formal terms, Hilberseimer and Rukser offer Hans Bernoulli’s (1876–1959) Geschäftshaus Fischbein und Mendel (Berlin, 1908–9) and Pölzig’s Geschäftshaus on Junkernstraße (Breslau, –1912) as exemplary of vertical and horizontal approaches, the latter counterbalancing the vertical with cantilevered floors. Both, they write, offer “the cool pathos of the prosaic, the clear, objective, virtuoso-smooth solution.”47 Hilberseimer and Rukser thus present differing commercial purposes as variations of a primitive form—a cubic volume with tensely gridded surfaces. “Object lesson for the genre in general,” they state factually, “the wide-net evenly stretched over the entire surface reveals the window pattern occupying the entire wall surface, decisively determining [… in the office building] as well as in the department store, the supply of light and form of the building.” In a consistently cubic-gridded architecture, Hilberseimer and Rukser recognize variation between purposes, as well as the particular expressiveness of architecture, in different articulations of the wall surface: This is the moment by which the office and administration buildings are precipitated as a particular type of commercial building. Since here the possibility is given, as with the residential building, not to divide the whole wall surface into windows and support, giving rise to a formal distinctiveness. By changing meters, the sameness of the divisions and the window pattern can be superseded or enlivened—within the floor itself or by setting the floors

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against each other as metric unities. In this way, significant dynamic effects are now made possible; now the structure, which, with other types of commercial buildings, essentially depends on statics, can, within the building itself, build up to a dynamic culmination.48 By aesthetically reconceiving the greatest possible range of contemporary phenomena as variations of a common structure, Hilberseimer and Rukser’s morphology insightfully understands purposeful differentiations as purposive expressions. The architectural species of the contemporary metropolis are comprehensible as varying manifestations of an inherent primitive. Hilberseimer and Rukser see formal articulations, not as aesthetic distinctions separate from functional concerns (ornament); aesthetic and functional concerns are inseparable. When architecture is revalued as the integral material—the indifferent mass— constituting the metropolis as a whole, the differential expression of architectural elements gains significance. Material becomes spiritual, the mechanical animate. The singular expressions of indifferent individuals in mutual self-realization are at once self-creation and world-creation. Rather than determined by a corrupt worldview, the metropolis is reconceived as an emerging, collective work of art. As exemplars of the dynamic animation artistically possible with an indifferently cubic architecture, Hilberseimer and Rukser turn to office buildings by Hermann Dernburg (1868–1935)—perhaps his Handelsstätte Spittelmarkt building (c. 1910)—and Behrens’ Mannesmann Works in Berlin. Applying Rukser’s knowledge of music, they describe the latter as: a symphonic relegation of metric lineages, in each a differentiation of the whole as in individual phrases of a tonal work; simultaneous execution of several meters to the full repercussion of their intensity and yet synthesized into a fervent whole, bearing all kinds of homogeneity (parallelism) and heterogeneity (contrast). How close such creations stand to the Baroque is shown where the dynamic of the building mass is set in movement not only in one direction (planar) but according to all spatial dimensions (according to depth).49 They also see this undulating movement at work in the Guttaperscha Compagnie headquarters in Hannover—where, they write, “the advancing wings, the central avant-corps receding, entirely corresponds to the basic idea of the Baroque palace”—and, in concentrated form, in Wright’s Larkin Administration Building (1903–6). Contrary to Hildebrand’s thesis, they compare the “sudden protrusions” of the latter to the portals of Romanesque basilicas and “the monumentality of its giant undivided surfaces” to “Egyptian pylons.”50 Central to Hilberseimer and Rukser’s artistic (and spiritual) conception of dynamism is a sense of equilibrated polar oscillation or counterpoint. They consider a sense of unwavering movement, which they identified in Paul Mebes’

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(1872–1938) Nordsternhaus (Berlin, –1914) as no less mechanical than a repetitive aggregation of parts. “Just as in music the uninterrupted tone is absolutely nothing […] thus unformed, aimless movement remains a purely mechanical running along, a body without pulse,” they write morbidly. Mebes’ building, which glides around the most acute corner of its triangular site with uninterrupted momentum, demonstrates that an unceasing emphasis on the horizontal or the flat-surface could be as problematic as excessive vertical emphasis.51 Hilberseimer and Rukser are as critical of pseudo-vitalism as Hilberseimer is of pseudo-naturalism. For Hilberseimer and Rukser the commercial buildings of the metropolis also demonstrate “purposive universality” in their internal organization.52 Just as they consider the formal values of the villa and the tenement, based on the degree of separation and amalgamation of residential units, Hilberseimer and Rukser conceive warehouses, department stores, offices, and factory buildings on a bivalent polar continuum (which also included, they point out, buildings for banks, newspapers, insurance companies, hotels, and restaurants) spanning from buildings with load-bearing walls and mostly opaque facades to (citing Behrens’ Mannesmann and Wright’s Larkin buildings as exemplars) structures with open floorplates and predominantly transparent facades.53 In Hilberseimer and Rukser’s view, the body of commercial architecture is increasingly reduced to its most essential (horizontal and vertical) elements, an inherent form that, to be aesthetically effective in the fluctuating atmospheric and distracted psychological conditions of the metropolis, the architect has to affirm with utmost salience. In the metropolis only the most elementary relationships embody the potential for artistic expression with the concision to sensibly manifest the spiritual idea of the city as a work of art. In addition to Behrens’ approach, they call attention to Dwight Perkins (1867–1941) in Chicago, who, adopting the artistic means of the Monadnock, makes “the plastic division […] stronger, the vertical more emphatic.”54

From History to Material to Art In turning to discuss the tall building, perhaps the most fantastic architectural expression of the metropolis, Hilberseimer and Rukser counterintuitively return to classicism. They argue there is a clear relationship between the moderate height of classical architecture and its “division” into horizontal floors, suggesting this articulation “greatly facilitated the lucidity and clarification of the corporeal organization.” “Therefore,” they write, “if the previous proportions are abandoned, entirely new formal relationships must be created that can replace the value of the earlier simplicity.” As such a transformation, they offer Michelangelo’s innovative use of columns to incorporate two stories on the Campidoglio, arguing the Palazzo dei Conservatori allows “greater possibilities of division of several floors within a

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continuous system of pilasters.”55 Hilberseimer and Rukser preface their discussion of the skyscraper with Michelangelo’s expansion of aesthetic possibilities and an emphasis on corporeal concision. Historically, they explain, increases in the height of buildings entailed significant impracticalities. Taller buildings required thicker walls with consequent loss of interior space and daylight. In recent architecture, however, material and technical advances in skeletal construction meant exterior walls no longer have a bearing, only an enclosing, function; increases in height do not result in significant loss of interior space or light.56 Despite their practical potential, however, skyscrapers, “hitherto only extant in America,” remain the product of capitalist logics and imperial psychology, “products of metropolitan land speculation, commercial advertising, and the American obsession for records.” In Manhattan’s Equitable, Times, Singer, and Woolworth buildings, the emphasis on “immense height” had only intensified—the latter, they exclaim: “With 55 stories, the highest building on earth!”57 And yet, they wax, the skyscraper “belongs to the most significant and most elementary form creations of our time.”58 Like their discussion of sixteenth-century precedents for metropolitan commercial building, their discussion of Michelangelo’s colossal-order seems intended to recalibrate architectural thinking to the potential of what had hitherto remained mere mechanisms of capital. Hilberseimer and Rukser evoke history, not as a storehouse of models, but as spur to creativity. Indeed—in accord with Nietzsche—they argue an unhealthy comportment toward history is the very sign of bourgeois decadence.59 As vertical expressions, Hilberseimer and Rukser admit, the skyscraper recalls Goethe’s ode to Erwin: “all horizontal partition recedes to such an extent that the aspiring effect of gothic cathedrals (Strasburg Cathedral) is reached.”60 But they found the Gothic buttressing and ornamentation of skyscrapers “embarrassing.” These “details and inhibitions” could not compete with the “inexorably upward flowing lines” of the forms themselves.61 While Ernest Graham’s (1868–1936) Equitable Building was “more logically consistent” than other skyscrapers, its neoclassicism lacks the “heavenassailing massiveness” of the others. “The principal weakness of American architecture in general,” they scold, “remains this flirtation with the bourgeois ideal of classicism adopted from Paris.” Hilberseimer and Rukser reject allegorical conceptions of the skyscraper. It was the great accomplishment of Wright and Burnham—the latter in the Monadnock “as early as 1891!”—to have overcome the obsessions of American architectural culture by directly engaging the conditions of contemporary building.62 They attribute this newfound indifference to “the purely constructive” engineering of utilitarian industrial building.63 In these structures the vitality of the metropolis is most readily experienced. Because “it became easier to receive the law from the object here,” they argue, “the origin of modern metropolis architecture lies precisely in the monumentality of the modern train station

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and factories.”64 Industrial buildings, in particular transportation structures, had no or few precedents; were therefore least subject to the “inhibiting effect” of preconceptions; had the greatest involvement of engineers, who tend to concentrate on the “purely constructive” aspects of building; and were guided for economic reasons by the greatest imperative toward technical-material efficiency.65 If they could point to Mannesmann, the Monadnock, or Butler Brothers as the most exemplary works of metropolis-architecture, it was because the designers of these buildings had taught themselves to see industrial works without preconceptions. Contemporary architecture “first found its purest impact in industrial buildings.”66 It is no accident, Hilberseimer and Rukser argue, that the large purpose-built commercial building with open floorplates and largely transparent façade was “merely surmised by Messel.”67 Between Wertheim and Mannesmann they place Behrens’ Small Motors Factory, which, along with his Turbine Hall for the AEG and Pölzig’s Water Tower in Posener, they identify as translations from the utilitarian, creations embodying “the clearest forms of metropolis architecture.”68

The Poles of “American Architecture” Large sections of Hilberseimer and Rukser’s second draft appear in the journal Kunst und Künstler in September 1920, as the essay “Amerikanische Architektur” (“American Architecture”). That Hilberseimer and Rukser credit the Monadnock to Burnham in their drafts and more accurately to John Root in the essay suggests the essay came after the typescripts, while the similarity of the published text and the second draft imply their chronological proximity.69 “American Architecture,” they argue in the essay, “is a completely new, littleknown world of form”—“creative” and “original, genuine-American.” They distinguish it from the “corrupt” “Americanism” then in vogue in Europe with an unsourced quotation from the poet and philosopher Rudolf Pannwitz (1881–69), about whom Rukser would later publish a book: “our Americanism has nothing of the good America, while today’s America has gotten back its Americanism from Europe picked at, cluttered, and weakened.”70 American culture should no longer be seen as a European derivative; America had produced a culture of its own. The quote appears in a section of Die Krisis der Europäischen Kultur (The Crisis of European Culture, 1917), where Pannwitz argues “it is shameful and disheartening that we have adopted from America, as from England, the bad and liquidating instead of the good and consolidating.” Pannwitz presents Germany divided between world-historical directions: an English-American “supremacy of world trade” and a Napoleonic “spiritual and cultural empire.”71 Consistent with Hilberseimer’s anarcho-socialism, the Nietzschean Pannwitz advocates

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a pan-European culture and state constituted by the “moral and spiritual regeneration of the individual.”72 Acknowledging the significant European influence on US architecture, Hilberseimer and Rukser argue “contemporary American architecture cannot possibly be dismissed as colonial, lacking independence.”73 They compare Reconstruction to the era following German unification, reminding their readers Germany had its own revivalism with similar psychologicalsociopolitical motives. Rather, they argue the antecedents of a genuine “American Architecture” are the “insignificant, anonymous buildings of the period of colonial dependency, the announcement of a self-reliant sense of form” with “ease and precision.”74 They point to the new, mostly industrial, buildings for which there were no precedents, created by architects who had no choice but to act under the pressure of capital. Here, as in their drafts, Hilberseimer and Rukser follow numerous prewar panegyrics to industrial building, such as Walter Gropius’s “Die Entwicklung moderner Industriebaukunst” (“The Development of Modern Industrial Building-art,” 1913), to which they return in conclusion.75 But Hilberseimer and Rukser’s argument is inflected by their spiritual materialism. Industrial building no more constitutes a culture than the discoveries of science. Nevertheless, it discredits traditional architecture. The materialistic means of industrial building—lacking “its own formal language and clear determination”—negate culture, stimulating its positive regeneration. The division of building and architecture constitutes the impetus for their reintegration. “If one had previously understood architecture as engineered structure decorated with stylistic elements,” Hilberseimer and Rukser explain, “one now recognized that the architectural solution has nothing in common with an aesthetic formalism, but represents an organic unity in which both the functional and the formal are fused into a necessary unity.” Out of necessity— “the material demands of new ways of life and business”—American architects discarded conventions. “Thus, […] the businessman compelled the architect to go back to purpose, the individuality of the building, to give logical expression to its concrete conditions and necessities […] to extract the formal law from the object, instead of imposing it.”76 Hilberseimer and Rukser present the specificity of “American Architecture” as the realization of a “creative impulse,” born of the “energy” released in liberation from the inhibiting clichés of architectural Bildung, as though the “independent creations” of “American Architecture” were the coming into being of new architectural organisms, the emergence—by reorganizing matter—of a new spirit.77 They take the Brooklyn Bridge as the great landmark in this development. “The freely visible span is, through the division of the two supports and the culminating arch between them, proportioned most successfully,” Hilberseimer and Rukser behold, “[…] in spite of the gigantic dimensions,

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the massiveness of the relative material quantities is, by energy, ease, and elegance, forgotten.”78 The Brooklyn Bridge makes an enormous technological leap with self-evident grace. But if the Brooklyn Bridge was the realization of an “American Architecture,” the Monadnock Building represented its most salient achievement. Photographs of these works constituted the epigraph and conclusion of their text.79 “American Architecture” follows from the Monadnock

FIGURE 8.5 Ludwig Hilberseimer, Grossstadtarchitektur (Stuttgart: Verlag Julius Hoffmann, 1927), 65, showing William Symes Richardson, for McKim, Mead, and White, Pennsylvania Hotel, New York, –1919 and Daniel Burnham and John Root, Monadnock Building, Chicago, 1881–91.

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like Russian realist literature emerges from Nikolai Gogol’s overcoat (The Overcoat, 1842), they claim, referencing the famous remark misattributed to Dostoyevsky. For here the problem of all architecture as cubic-rhythmic is finally recognized and realized in a new way, taking into account all conditions. The embarrassing way out so pernicious for the majority of later skyscrapers, to substitute for creative inability an excessive accumulation of material—to confuse the shaping of form [Formbildung], composition, with addition of material or conventional individual forms—is instinctively avoided. An undeceivable sense for proportions gives this giant assembly inner consistency and logical integrity [Bindung].80 The Monadnock is not an accumulation of material details, like the learned conventions of a rote education or a puppet of cobbled-together bits; it is an integrally composed, holistically proportioned, three-dimensional entity, animated by rhythmic force. This, Hilberseimer and Rukser argue, is the very problem of architecture, or, more exactly, echoing Einstein, three-dimensional art. In addition to its cohering proportions, Hilberseimer and Rukser found three additional aspects of the Monadnock compelling. First, the “broad planar border [ribbon]”—the uninterrupted surface of brickwork—that runs around the periphery of the façade coheres the building as a “built mass.”81 They imply this border gives the basic outlines of the building optical primacy. It makes the mass cubic. Second, echoing their comments on van de Velde’s theater and the facades of commercial architecture, they argue the building’s fenestration becomes integral to the surface of this cubic volume: Of greatest significance is the reinterpretation of the window, realized here for the first time, which has become characteristic of American architecture. In historic architecture, the window has always been an independent architectural element: a factor of division, accent, or axial support. It was a perforation of the wall, which left of the surface only the space between windows; was the negative function of the surface, which contrasted against the surrounding corporeality of the building masses; therefore, of greatest importance for the relations of the whole. It has been completely stripped of this significance as an independent component here; it no longer contrasts with the surface, but participates in its positive function; is only a piece and component of the surface itself, a member of a pattern stretched over the entire building, such that the wall no longer appears interrupted but uniformly animated. With this reinterpretation, a new synoptic architectural moment has been obtained directly from the functional, which, applied as a multiplicity, would have been most likely to become harmful for a building comprised of accumulated floors.82

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Appearing as a single pattern rather than an accumulation of independent elements, the fenestration of the Monadnock is integral to rather than contrasted with, does not interrupt but reinforces and animates, the surface of the building. Thirdly, Hilberseimer and Rukser argue this vivacity is enhanced by the most minimal means: Thus, it was possible to get by without dynamic development [Durchbildung]. The architect could limit himself to enlivening the rigid rectilinearity with narrowly protruding bays. He also foregoes the development of meter, the subsuming of individual parts into form-scales of different orders. All the same, the formation of the mass into a monumentally-formed organism has succeeded. Architecture has ceased to be an ill-fitting mask.83 Shedding the veil of historicist architecture and with minimal gesturing, the outer surface of the Monadnock enlivens the mass but appears integral, rather than an addition, to the body of the building. Here Hilberseimer and Rukser echo Einstein in another way. In the last chapter of his book, Einstein argues the sense of distanced objectivity embodied in cubic sculpture is also evident in the “self-objectifying” practices of tattooing and masking. “A people for whom art, religion, and custom have an effective immediacy will seek to render visible the powers that dominate and surround them,” Einstein writes. The intent of tattooing and masking, he argues, is “to transform the individual body into a universal one.” Whereas modern Europeans, “disposed both to psychologizing and theatricality,” ritualistically strive “to preserve a certain continuity, and identity,” Einstein argues the individual immersed in an objectively spiritual culture, “who is less inhibited by a subjective ego and pays honor to objective powers, must, if he is to maintain himself alongside them, transform himself into them, especially when celebrating them most intensely.” In that context, tattooing and masking only have meaning, Einstein explains, when they are “inhuman, impersonal, which is to say constructive.”84 Rather than masquerading the skyscraper in historical forms in an effort to preserve the traditional identity of architecture, Hilberseimer and Rukser praise the indifferent constructive expression of Root’s Monadnock, which vitally draws, as a pattern into its skin, the objective spiritual powers of a rational culture. In an essay published two years later, Hilberseimer claims the photograph of the Monadnock accompanying “American Architecture” was the first image of the building published in Germany. The photograph is taken from a position high above the street, capturing the north end of the building and one of its long sides in deep perspective. It documents the building’s broad masonry border, its cubic mass, and the undulating surface (produced by the shallow “bay” windows) that lend the building’s massive bulk a sense of rippling movement.85 These aspects of

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the Monadnock’s form—Hilberseimer and Rukser did not mention the building’s monolithic materiality—forestall visual registration of the individual floors. Together, the periodic undulations in the mass and the proportional distribution of the fenestration produce a counterbalancing omnidirectional field. The integrity of the building’s “cubic-rhythmic” expression averts a sense of aggregation with minimal material means. The Monadnock is a singular, inherently animate entity. “With this work,” Hilberseimer and Rukser theorize, “Root gave American architecture foundation and goal, consummated the disengagement from Europeanism, [and] formulated the American principle of style.” In Goethean terms, the Monadnock is the Ur-skyscraper, the origin and ideal of a truly “American Architecture,” the archetypal exemplum of the species. The artistry of the building is neither reducible to nor inhibits the building’s performance. Like utilitarian industrial structures, the skyscraper is born of functional requirements and technical necessities. But the Monadnock has an organic beauty—an evident yet restrained spirit—beyond matter and function. Root, Hilberseimer and Rukser write, “had shown how to find new forms of expression for the conditions of his country and the needs of the present.”86 Even his own collaborator, they now point out, despite his success, had not realized anything comparable. Burnham’s work, like that of Louis Sullivan (1856–1924), remained “strongly experimental and not entirely unified.” Only the “vertically structured cubic mass” of Ernst Graham’s Equitable Building demonstrates an attempt “to realize these new ideas in a logically consistent manner.” But the great majority of skyscrapers continued to employ “historical frippery,” even Cass Gilbert’s (1859–1934) Woolworth Building, “the tallest building on earth.”87 While Hilberseimer and Rukser think Root plants the seed of a new architectural species, they sense Wright is the yeoman of the future. “Only the great Frank Lloyd Wright offers a complete grasp of the universal,” they exclaim. “He returns everywhere to the primitive-beginnings [Urfänge] of building and from here, clearly and steadily advancing, obtains new forms for all architectural genres.” The Chicagoan seemed to have the temperament of all cultures available to him: Roman “sense of form,” “Japanese delicacy,” “Egyptian astringency,” which he brought to “enchanting unity.” They compare the Larkin Building “to an Egyptian monument.”88 They figure Wright as a primordial spirit cultivating the varieties of a magical new world. Around Root’s “elementary monumentality,” Hilberseimer and Rukser present Wright’s “steadfast surety of […] proportions” and his “ingeniously dynamic composition.” They emphasize the self-containment of the one and the range—the movement and formal virtuosity—of the other, as though American architecture spanned the extent of sculptural possibilities, from a near-raw block of stone to a wholly animate Michelangelo sculpture.89 “Like the great building masters of the Baroque,” they say of Wright, “the movement of the building mass to a magnificent upswing is the most important thing for him. He thereby clarifies the meaning of the axes, the significance of the parts of the building, their relation to the whole.”90 Wright’s work, Hilberseimer and Rukser suggest, no doubt thinking

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(following Einstein) of the contrast between the extensive spans and “functional centers” of his pinwheeling domestic architecture, gains its evident value by the self-referential, unified and neutralized, yet dynamic relationship between vertical and horizontal, center and periphery.91 This tension between Root’s cubic block and Wright’s broad orbit of forces constitutes the motive of Hilberseimer and Rukser’s two-part essay, which moves from Root’s urban skyscraper to Wright’s “free-standing” rural-suburban houses. To span the full extent of “American Architecture” and the conditions of the metropolis, Hilberseimer and Rukser place Root at the indifferent center of their argument, conceiving the Monadnock as the vertical fulcrum of an “American Architecture,” around which Wright’s work, with its grasp of the universal, constitutes exploratory extensions into a fertile continent with ever new potential. “American Architecture” constitutes the greatest intensity and charge of vertical and horizontal, spatial and temporal forces hitherto known. With his massive skyscraper Root points to the heavens, in his expansive “single-family houses” Wright “returns to the simple form of the farmhouse” and the earth.92 Hilberseimer and Rukser also present Wright’s domestic work as cubic, but a cubic sculptural group equilibrated by: an overriding pyramidal law; dynamic polar reversals across and around horizontal and vertical axes; rhythmic repetitions of architectural elements; material contrasts; reciprocal couplings of the corporeal and the aeriform; and the apportioning of nature into architecture and landscape: In his free-standing single-family houses, he [Wright] returns to the simple form of the farmhouse. He constructs them [his houses] from the simplest cubic forms, terrace-forming the most delightfully differentiated overall arrangements, to take advantage of the differences in height for the arrangement of high sidelights, and to determine the location of windows at discretion. In this way he can maintain the corporeal form of the building in large unbroken surfaces and unite the necessary windows into groups and strips, which as accents and structuring elements are again of utmost significance for the whole. […] He extends the flat roofs of his country houses, the loggias and terraces into continuous horizontal divisions, uses that to intensify the stepping, and to subject the diversity of the body of the building into a unifying formal law. In general, the firmness of all proportions is everything to him; that is why he incorporates the surroundings of his buildings into his architecture, and vice versa. He calibrates the value of the horizontal bands […] to delimit the body of the building against the expanse of the surrounding atmosphere and thus arises—from the roof cantilever, terraces, etc.—semi-corporeal structures, which direct the transition from the indifferentiatedness of the space of air to the corporeal certainty of the building. The slope of the roofs is chosen in such a way that the oblique surfaces remain at least partly visible; this uppermost conclusion, which is not just linear, silhouette-like, but planar, then appears as

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the strongest horizontal accent. Most of his country houses, composed into the rippling infinity of the prairie, are very low, nestled, indeed pressed, into the earth, hence the interior spaces horizontally spread out from each other. That is why these houses are never just some grotesque weed, they appear grounded and primitive, like the farmhouse.93 Realization of the immaterial as material, division of the infinite into the finite, is a spiritual act of creation. It is the expression of this act that is decisive in artistic work. Wright comprehends poles as unities and makes that comprehension self-evident, both externally and internally. Moreover, Wright realizes in domestic architecture that dematerialization characteristic of metropolitan commercial building: The interior architecture is placed under the same laws. The partition walls fall; as far as possible the living floor forms a single large space; from this follows a new way of living, dwelling, and furnishing. A pathos of sobriety and objectivity, a new delight in materials, brings the principles realized in the body of the building to analogous application here as well. Thus, it becomes possible that the American is pleased by a brick instead of a marbled room.94 Like the Brooklyn Bridge or the Monadnock, Wright’s architecture is a direct engagement with material, of both building and landscape (land and air). But it is not the material itself (brick or marble) that is critical; it is Wright’s spiritual investment and his artistry. In Hilberseimer and Rukser’s view, every work of art is the expression of a law. In Wright’s work this spiritual conception is presented to experience in self-contained, non-referential works that, like the sculpture discussed by Einstein, make use of neutralized polar tensions to animate the otherwise static artform of architecture. Unlike Einstein, however, Hilberseimer and Rukser stress architecture is not just plastic but spatial. Although the definition of space, in dialogue with the plastic, is of concern for both Hildebrand and Einstein, prompted by Wright’s accomplishments, Hilberseimer and Rukser’s emphasis in “American Architecture” on the infinite continuity of matter and space—its “indifferentiatedness [Indifferenziertheit]”—both within and beyond the body of architecture, from the urban block to the rural landscape, allowed them to extend and recalibrate their synoptic vision. From Root’s self-contained block to Wright’s fugal proportioning of land and air, under the umbrella of “American Architecture” Hilberseimer and Rukser transformed Gropius’s prewar thesis about industrial building and its need for artistic expression—already a thesis about the relationship between materialism and spiritualism, matter and art, nature and culture—into a thesis about the environment and the built environment in general. In “American Architecture” the polar field of metropolisarchitecture becomes isomorphic with the cultivation of nature and the human expression of existence.

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It is this idea Hilberseimer and Rukser stress in conclusion. “Clarifying the value and the significance of this architecture is of greatest importance for the European,” they write, “especially now, when a renewal of the European art of building is in the making.”95 They stress that the most significant European architects—Wagner, Behrens, Pölzig, Loos, and others—had been strongly influenced by American architecture and return to Gropius’s text of 1913 to explain why: The self-evidence of these buildings is based not on the material superiority of their extensive size—the basis of monumental effect is certainly not to be sought therein—rather, in their builders, the natural sense for great, concise form seems to have been preserved independent, healthy and pure. Therein lies a valuable pointer for us, to forevermore deny respect for the historical longings and other intellectual concerns that obscure our European art-making and get in the way of artistic naivete.96 Following Gropius, they celebrate the primitive naturalness of the American builder. But their advice to European architects is not to copy this American architecture. Rather, they recommend, quoting Goethe, the European architect have “the courage to be that which nature has made them.”97 That meant, Hilberseimer and Rukser assert, “sober, supremely-thoughtful people and great artists at the same time.”98 Just as “American Architecture” is more than industrial building, human nature is more than its material dimension; culture spans from the material to the spiritual and enfolds these dimensions by the means of art. American architecture could no longer be reduced to the pole of industrial building; it had become, in Hilberseimer and Rukser’s mind, an organism, coherent and, at the scale of a continent, self-contained. European architecture, by contrast, was still one-sidedly attracted to old academic ideals, stylistically defined, and fragmented.

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9 THE FATE OF THE METROPOLIS

The Conventions of Art It is remarkable Hilberseimer and Rukser’s essay on “American Architecture” appears in the journal Kunst und Künstler, edited since 1906 by the art critic Karl Scheffler.1 The specter of America is central to Scheffler’s prolific writing on architecture. Hilberseimer and Rukser’s argument that an original architecture had emerged in the United States and should be taken seriously in Europe was dependent upon Scheffler’s diagnosis of, and a challenge to his prescription for, the metropolis. Scheffler expounds the core of his thinking in an early collection of aphorisms, Konventionen der Kunst (Conventions of Art, 1904), in which he argues the subject, disoriented by the flux of experience and perpetually compelled by the imagination, constantly tries to correct their balance, but is ultimately incapable of maintaining integrity without a persistent conceptual armature for support.2 “No soul, in anarchic freedom […] can withstand the mysteries of existence; the life of the imagination requires limitation by self-created form and an organization like a well-regulated state,” Scheffler declares; “without the self-deception of an ‘eternal truth’ […] life lacks stability and dignity.”3 Scheffler makes no claim this external scaffold be true. Belief, though founded in nature, is buttressing myth. “All religious dogmas, all philosophical systems are in this sense conventions, that the individual encloses within himself vis-à-vis the eternally impenetrable.”4 Scheffler is aware conventions constrain liberty, but argues “the soul makes itself unfree […] to be free in a more limited sense.” Supposing we “cannot live in anarchistic spiritual states,” Scheffler wants to liberate us from constant self-assertion.5 Primary among these constraints for Scheffler are the sensible signs that facilitate communication between “bodily-constrained souls.”6 Acknowledging the basic arbitrariness of linguistic signs, Scheffler recognizes language is a matter of

“habituation and schooling” (of Bildung). But he argues artistic communication is “not so arbitrary,” “dictated by instinct,” and, in its subtlety, irreducible to linguistic codification.7 Artistic talent is not the capacity “to comprehend appearances as reflections of the eternal idea,” he theorizes, demarcating science and art, but the “capability to express the results of such insightful intuition with concrete marks of art in such a way that the same intuition is suggested to others.”8 The artist precipitates and distills motifs and devices such that they become emphatic and “universally known” with “vivid effect.”9 Because the repetition of “the same combination of forms and colors” motivates conscious or habitual recognition, Scheffler suggests the recognizability of any particular artistic means, the propensity for those means to become commonplace, and ultimately the quality of art, is also dependent on extra-artistic factors.10 Without shared understanding, the motifs and devices of art lack significance. Even in the midst of strongly held and shared convictions, artists need to develop the emphatic means through which specific beliefs can be characteristically conveyed.11 But Scheffler argues these means are also “to a certain degree” dependent on the “common religious feeling” that “is precondition for that unity one calls style.”12 Unlike linguistic communication (using arbitrary signs), the creation, selection, and use of forms in artistic communication are bound up with the emergence of significance.

The Contiguity of Culture Scheffler’s art theory is primarily concerned with how certain forms provide the basis for spiritual development and why certain forms become conventional when others remain insignificant. He argues conventional motifs and devices, having become salient through a process of spiritual-artistic sympathy and recognition, constitute a “tradition.”13 This finite set of non-linguistic signs provides the armature configuring subsequent artistic production, giving rise to “those epochs of art that structure history.”14 Style is a process of consolidating, structuring, and developing spiritual-artistic motives.15 At the moments of its greatest flourishing, style is constituted by artists who are not simply creating in anticipation of collective reception, but, by emphatic resonance with the community, are exercising their power to affect its disposition.16 Only within the framework of convention, by accepting a “language of signs,” Scheffler asserts, can an artist express themselves with confidence in the significance of their work and thus contribute to the sentiments of society.17 In this way, Scheffler distinguishes between periods of “pronounced world intuition” and “unfruitful” periods, lacking a coherent worldview, during which the artist is isolated and misunderstood.18 Accordingly, he characterizes two kinds of artists: those who embrace “self-sacrifice” and “self-relinquishing” to uphold and develop collective sentiments and those who tragically put the ego first, concerned

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with conveying their own intuitions, frequently in isolation, and often in negation to the prevailing worldview.19 Scheffler does not reject the value of individual artistic expression, but demands this expression begin with extant values. Only by affirming received truths can the artist be united with “general experience,” he argues, conflating the embrace of convention with vitality.20 Although he rejects autocratic taste, Scheffler commits the artist to existing cultural forms. Nevertheless, it is essential to his thesis that conventions be developed, not simply reaffirmed and repeated. In times with a clearly identifiable collective will, he argues, the tension between convention and “longing for new knowledge” is an important and productive motor of culture, as dissatisfaction with convention, under conditions in which conventions remain strong, can seamlessly expand the boundaries of convention. It is a “self-evident” but overlooked fact, he argues, that the “feeling of belonging together gives the artist the best power.”21 His exemplar is the Baroque development of Renaissance art. But, Scheffler laments, his generation was no longer building upon this modern tradition.22 In Scheffler’s theory, art indexes the spirit; times of spiritual cohesion and fragmentation are both betrayed in art. But only periods of unified spiritual expression satisfy the demand that art communicate to a broad culture. Individual expression without collective comprehension is “cultureless.”23 Constituting the threshold between “positive-religious” and “philosophical-pessimistic” worldviews, Scheffler argues the Renaissance ultimately undermined the European spirit with the skepticism that would dominate succeeding centuries.24 The adoption of antiquity in the Renaissance had led to the historicism of his own time. Modern culture had progressively lost its vital sense of reality and no longer offered a perspective upon the eternal experience of humanity. While his contemporaries could feel what the ancients felt, he worries (echoing Nietzsche) that his age had not attained its own feeling, had even lost touch with the significance of feeling, and had fallen into either mechanistic rationalism or unbridled fantasy. Scheffler thus stresses the necessity for every period to develop “new formations” if it is to have its own culture and fully appreciate the cultures of others.25 Supposing the course of modern skepticism had reached its apotheosis, Scheffler associates the absence of a coherent and vital worldview with the extreme flux inherent to scientific thought, industrialization, and internationalization. “Gradually […], by racial mixing, by expanding possibilities of knowledge, or by other conditions, changes occur in the form of intuition of large communities,” Scheffler claims, “One day the artist notices […] that the conventional signs no longer correspond to his living feeling, that they, as something concrete, have outlasted abstract, incorporeal thoughts.”26 Scheffler’s commitment to convention is inextricable from his xenophobia and racism and his distaste for the influence of metropolitan life. Seeking to overcome this sense of alienation by reviving cultural contiguity, he calls upon the artist to renew a productive balance between imagination and reality, individual expression and collective understanding.

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Scheffler acknowledges vital transformations in spiritual worldview are difficult, because “inertia is always prepared to strongly resist the necessary revolutionization of familiar forms of art and knowledge.”27 Nevertheless, he presents the artist isolated from traditional sentiments as unpragmatically elitist. “If anyone, prompted to name means for preventing tuberculosis, recommends meticulous purity and adequate nourishment, he expresses a truth,” Scheffler analogizes, “Yet nothing is done with this if contrary to the given conditions it cannot become reality.”28 Scheffler speciously excuses his conservatism as realism. His purported balance of tradition and innovation insidiously prejudices prevailing cultural forms. As Scheffler saw it, the contemporary crisis of culture is characterized by the unmotivated recourse to dead forms and the immaculate conception of new forms, historical eclecticism and exuberant invention. His advocacy for a living tradition asserts the necessity of contiguity. If artistic production does no more than repeat the past, it betrays its lack of vitality. Historical eclecticism betrays the absence of a common worldview. But so did the outright rejection of historical form. “The word convention is given a more contemptible sense by the independent creators of the present,” he complains, “because our time has become so very dependent on old beauties.” But it was wrong, Scheffler argues, to reject convention outright: “every art is based on conventions and one can only differentiate whether they are dead or living.”29 Nevertheless, Scheffler does not dismiss the possibility a new culture might take root in such times. The best artists avoid dead conventions and produce “new world ideas” that at first may only be comprehended by a small group of like-minded individuals.30 Tragically, the expressions of an individual artist may go unrecognized for many years.31 Absent the momentum of convention, the subjectivity of the artist can impede reception. As a critic, however, Scheffler takes it upon himself to identify the strands from which he believes a future culture might be woven, just as he supposes it is the fateful task of the artist to perpetually sow the seeds of art even when, in the absence of a living tradition, their work has little chance of bearing fruit.32

Naturalism and Impressionism With this fatalism, Scheffler presents artistic work as a determined form of commitment.33 The artist should temper individual intuition by accepting, affirming, and extending vital conventions in periods of advanced style; in nascent periods they should develop the “forms of intuition” to grasp the world.34 Therefore, in transitionary times, Scheffler argues, naturalism predominates, because “artistic activity,” overwhelmed by the objective, “lacks the power to form its own language for that which is beheld.”35 Naturalistic art, “based on profane material sense,” is “utilitarian and mechanical,” betraying a dearth of spirit.36 By contrast, the beautiful “shows the relationship of things to thoughts.”37 The artist,

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“becomes all the more self-certain and free, the more he is led by a guiding world idea, by a synthetic feeling of nature.”38 The best artists select, transform, and combine aspects of nature according to their worldview.39 Painters resist the urge to slavishly copy nature, architects the urge to reflexively reuse historic forms. In warning against excessive naturalism, Scheffler also cautions against excessive abstraction. It is an error to combine parts of nature in the manner of a “hieroglyph,” he argues, since these forms are neither sufficiently transformed nor synthesized to convey artistic feeling.40 Analytic painting, which tends to ornamentation, remains art only insofar as it manifests the most abstract feeling for the underlying forces of nature. Architecture becomes hieroglyphic when it abandons vital commitment to social need. These warnings against naturalism and formalism underwrite Scheffler’s promotion of Impressionism. Although the Impressionist use of “not yet perfected color conventions” was difficult for a community long educated in linework to grasp, Scheffler felt this transformation of vision liberated art from both rote convention and the “utilitarian and mechanical” products of professional artists.41 He describes Impressionist painting as a “still unclarified world intuition”—“a type of religious convention”—that, resonant with “a small community,” promises to revitalize modern culture. He felt it was the only contemporary artistic practice that both preserved what remained “vital from tradition” and “eradicated everything deadly conventional.”42 Scheffler soon applies this commitment in his analysis of the metropolis. Although he will argue Berlin is “the capital of every modern ugliness,” following the theory of August Endell (1871–1925) he will also suggest the metropolis has its own particular kind of beauty.43 This so-called “beauty of the metropolis” (Endell’s phrase) is the sense of divine creation that gives the metropolis, otherwise inherently fractured, a uniform appearance under certain atmospheric conditions.44 Impressionist painting takes pleasure in such accidental effects. In an exceptional reformation like Paris, Scheffler acknowledges, “one enjoys the unintended beauties together with the intended.”45 But because the capitalist city is in constant flux, Scheffler supposes the primary aesthetic of the metropolis must be accidental. “These kinds of impressions are what the beauty of the metropolis is based on,” he claims, in essence rejecting the notion the metropolis could be a work of art.46

Convention and Anarchy In Scheffler’s view, conventional forms and devices provide a common basis from which to develop individual artistic expression. When a Christian painter exercises their individual artistic capacities in the painting of a Madonna, for example, they begin with “a symbol of faith and recognition for all,” thus “sure […]

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of primary understanding.”47 In architecture, Scheffler argues, such understanding was historically provided by rituals of religious worship and the representational demands and lifestyles of rulers. The architect primarily embodies these social values in the planimetric organization of buildings.48 At the same time, Scheffler theorizes, artistic expression is tempered by motives that, derived from natural phenomena, exceed the duration of social values. In this respect, architecture is the most constrained of arts. In its dependence on “pure, non-naturalistic forms,” architecture represents phenomena, such as gravity, that lie behind the contingencies of visual appearance.49 Because of its constructive connection with the inherent laws of nature, Scheffler considers architecture the most profound of arts.50 Indeed, Scheffler thinks the artistry of the architect begins with the empathetic expression of a building’s comportment vis-à-vis gravity: “he ascribes his own instinct for statics to the dead material, which his bodily feeling develops as sense of mass, form and proportion.”51 The building-art gives material the appearance of an inner life. Striving to develop and express a spiritual understanding of the eternal laws intrinsic to nature, Scheffler argues every culture develops a unique response to the eternal experience of gravity.52 Artistic feeling, constituted in a particular place and time, is a necessarily limited sense of existence.53 Expressing our sense for the most elemental and eternal phenomena of experience, architecture is the least agile art.54 But its forms are also “more enduring,” conveying “an essence to which the whole of the visual arts refer.”55 In this way, Scheffler contends, “Renewal of the basic forms of architecture is only felt as need if the world intuition changes. The history of faith is at the same time the history of the building-art; every religion has its style.” Indeed, Scheffler claims, “Together religion and Baukunst constitute a culture.”56 Art, but most profoundly architecture, is a record of spiritual history.57 Insofar as they concern the same fundamental experience, cultural works are universally apprehensible “‘eternal beauties.’”58 As opposed to the “coherence” of earlier epochs, in which “people had agreed on religious conventions,” Scheffler laments, “[…] the fragmentation in the artistic production of the present is […] explained by the absence of a common world idea.”59 The radical transformation of understanding in the wake of the scientific revolution promised “a new, great epoch of faith and culture,” but a coherent spiritual worldview and corresponding artistic conventions had yet to emerge. In such periods, Scheffler despairs, faith only survives because a new belief has not taken its place. Artists perpetuate worn-out tradition. Indeed, Scheffler felt the very idea of and desire for spiritual consensus were under attack.60 Rationalists suppose the possibility of representing reality without the mediation of experience. They reify extant forms of representation or claim to model reality with logical principles. Meanwhile, purveyors of the imagination purport to create phenomena beyond the capacity of experience. Although he found its present manifestation chaotic, Scheffler discerns presentiments of a coming order in the metropolis.61 “The economically

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organized life of business is today the single area where conventions concerning necessary forms of life are about to be concluded,” he suggests, implicitly equating the programs of capitalism with the religious rites and social protocols of the nobility, “Everywhere else social conditions are still found in a state of anarchy, the quick compromise or the dead tradition.”62 The majority of contemporary architecture was either historically derivative or, at best, innovative only in the eclecticism of its borrowing. But in the new building types demanded by modern capitalism—in office buildings, bridges, train stations, docks, and factories—Scheffler discerns “an independent spirit, different from everything earlier,” a “limiting, strengthening convention” “that has yet to become art.”63 Unlike societies in the past, which prioritize “ideal works,” such as churches and palaces, he observes, modern capitalism prioritizes “profane […] buildings with an economic purpose.”64 Moreover, Scheffler embraces the still-muted “sense of causality” in these “ur-formations.”65 Modern engineering deserved artistic forms adequate to convey contemporary comprehension of the material world.66 With respect to these emerging orders, Scheffler is adamant that conventions arise from sustained commitment to the determining factors of a time and place. “It cannot be forgotten that the human in general is a product of something developing slowly and necessarily and is biologically, climatically, and socially determined,” Scheffler lectures, countering the call for liberté among the Jugendstil artists of his time. Conventions can be established, Scheffler argues, only by a confident acceptance of fate, by a willingness to assume a given state, coming to recognize by representing that condition. “Religious agreement can only emerge if the people, the by-necessity-devoted, recognize the compelling as something desirable and ennoble it by free assent,” he posits, “This confirmation of all determinations, joyful affirmation vis-à-vis fate: only that creates a common world intuition.”67 Fashion maintains no such conviction, Scheffler stresses, associating the current cultural chaos with futile agitation. Fashion, “always the ruler of interstitial times,” is the decadence accompanying a “fading cultural idea.” Though no less determined by historical and geographical givens than the highest style of art, the fashionable artist, lacking faith, “cannot provide an effective rebellion” and thus “exercises compulsion as a destiny.”68 Undisciplined by the determinations that root a system of belief, Scheffler defines fashion as “the Faustian defiance of all compulsion” equating it with anarchy. Such is Scheffler’s misanthropic and racist conclusion to Conventions of Art: “what poor, dependent, restricted being the human still is, […] that a people without conventions is nothing other than an ethnographic mob.”69 Scheffler thinks this of the metropolitan too. If culture is to once again develop, he will soon argue, the metropolis would need to be clarified of this volatility and shaped by tradition.

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The Fate of Berlin In his preoccupation with convention Scheffler emphasizes the persistence rather than creation of culture. The epigraph of his most popular work, Berlin, ein Stadtschicksal (Berlin, an Urban-Fate, 1910), is the first stanza of a poem by Goethe, which describes the subject taking an “imprinted form” from birth.70 With this sense of fate, Scheffler argues, “Each city is an individual, […] each has its special mood, its atmosphere, a physiognomy peculiar only to it and an overall character that imprints itself unforgettably.”71 Bound up in this “impression” is a city’s entire history, “the spirit of the people as it has built the body of a city.”72 He considers the discernment of this visage a practice of objective observation, “an act of obedience to nature.” “Only thus does one reconcile with the tragedy to which all life phenomena are subjected,” he claims.73 Like any being, Scheffler argues, every city is at once typical and particular. Like most medieval cities, Berlin had grown beyond its fortifications and was now thrusting into the countryside. But its particularities were more significant than most, because unlike capitals and principal centers, which are usually “rich, beautiful cities, harmoniously formed organisms of history,” Berlin “had to adapt to unfavorable conditions.”74 Scheffler describes Berlin as “an enormous contingent structure” that is “more difficult to grasp as an entity than other cities.”75 Scheffler finds Berlin monstrous. His book traces the “almost tragic fate of this city,” as though its destiny was set from the beginning.76 He emphasizes that Berlin is “a colonial city” established as part of the Germanic conquest of the East.77 Distant from the historical centers of German culture and history, it was “never a natural center, never the predetermined German capital,” but a tenuous and provincial outpost on the vast plain stretching to Russia.78 Without connection to the North Sea or the mountainous south, it lacked the cosmopolitanism of a trading city.79 Unlike “natural centers,” such as Paris, Vienna, and London, Berlin has never represented an indigenous culture, Scheffler asserts; like American and Australian cities, it is “the historical product of a blood-mixture,” an “artificial” product of “energetic, strong-minded, ravenous, and freedom-thirsty people, heirless sons, oppressed, destitute, and those who did not have the best reputation at home.”80 “Such a mixed-population is not a creator of culture,” he states abhorrently, it “becomes a spiritual entity only with difficulty, and that is why it does not find beautiful synthetic forms of life.” Rather, Berlin is “resilient, practical, hard, and tenacious in the struggle for existence, Yankeeenterprising and in the profane sense capable in will and deed.”81 By dint of its tolerance of immigrants, Scheffler continues unabashed, the colonial city had no “unified, religious will.” The consequence was a lack of “passion and imagination” he claims, “everything religious in Berlin always assumes forms of rationalism.”82 Where there is a modicum of idealism, it is philosophical and

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then, a la Hegel, coldly focused on forming a state.83 “It comes about that that the cultural history of Berlin is almost not at all about ideas of religion, not works of architecture, painting, and poetry and not aristocratically refined forms of life, but that it is a history of state building,” Scheffler nags, “That is, a history of economic organization and military conquests.”84 He describes the soulless course of Berlin as “the development of a colonial city into a garrison town.”85 Although he acknowledges a semblance of cohesion in the early-nineteenth century, Scheffler sees Enlightenment Berlin as no less pragmatic and materialist. Characterized by skepticism and irony, “peasant pedantry and bureaucratic formalism,” “world-wise hypocrisy” and “brash sincerity,” he finds its developed form no less “strange” and “un-German.”86 Scheffler cast the exaggeratedly masculine rulers of Berlin as autocratic, efficient, responsible, realistic, and resilient. They were “puritanically self-righteous,” effective “colonizers and pioneers.”87 His tale makes much of the city’s supposed Americanism.88 Presenting Berlin as foreign from the very beginning and asserting a city, like a person, cannot fundamentally change their lot, Scheffler’s racist, anti-Semitic, and sexist tract, purportedly documenting the absence of traditional values in Berlin, sets up his xenophobic prescription for the city.

Formless and Cultureless As a colonial settlement, less concerned with defense than cities with significant noble residences, Scheffler argues historical Berlin “had something of the formlessness of a modern working city.”89 Without natural boundaries, it had the space for “unlimited possibilities.”90 But Berlin emerges not “uniformly and with wonderful logic” from its core like medieval Paris; it develops “piecemeal, in the almost arbitrary juxtaposition of parts” from two rival settlements.91 “Everywhere,” Scheffler claims, “firm public spirit rests on tradition, custom, and practice,” but constant immigration made this “almost impossible” in Berlin.92 Without a clear fulcrum, he argues, Berlin, neither bourgeois nor truly princely, had neither ambition nor “vital social organization.” Given the city’s contingently pragmatic growth, lacking a “living, willing city consciousness,” he reasons, “sooner or later the rule of the police and its representative, the civil servant, must take its place.”93 Scheffler saw a lack of social hierarchy reflected as “lack of clear structure” in the city itself: “The spirit condemned to formlessness has itself formed a formless urban body.”94 With Berlin, Scheffler grizzles, one feels robbed of the enjoyment of reading history in urban form. He discerns in its contemporary state little more than the old walls, some old country roads, and a weak center. Only the direct course of Unter den Linden stands out, but the few straight roads seem not to lead anywhere. The gridded Friedrichstadt has “no connections to the actual old city,” he reports,

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as though witnessing a coup, “it is a princely arrangement arbitrarily attached to the city center, that has been taken into possession by modern Americanism.” Nor could he find unity in the pedestrian experience of the city. Paris provides a clear sense of orientation; Berlin, without natural landmarks or constructed features is not an “urban organism,” just confused.95 The fact that it had no “rhythmic sense of space” proved its “artificiality.”96 Where Scheffler does find Berlin typical, “everything appears externally imitated, treated as though it were provisional.”97 He compares the neighborhoods produced by the Hohenzollern princes to factory towns, more American than Renaissance.98 In Berlin, “one can nowhere take actual distance. Berlin lacks urban landscape. Everywhere one is amidst houses,” Scheffler protests, evidently accosted, “they don’t step back, don’t become background or focal point; they don’t order themselves in a spatially beautiful way and one doesn’t get to breath freely.” Scheffler’s distaste for the uncouth jostling of the city’s inhabitants is clear. “The surrounding land with its particular terrain, with its trees and its air, does not penetrate into the city,” he laments, “Berlin is not built into the landscape with grace and taste, but strangely separated from her.”99 The Spree is never a boundary or destination like the Seine. Even those places meant to impress he found awkward. The city’s public spaces were “either too big or too open.” Just as he had expressed difficulty in discriminating foreign faces in Conventions, Scheffler found Berlin’s squares “more or less without physiognomy, indifferent in every respect.”100 The city “has not naturally emerged like a growth but artificially like an incorporation.”101 One might say that, in addition to taking up Sitte’s critique of the contemporary city, Scheffler retrospectively applies his diagnosis: there was no great medieval or Baroque accomplishment; Berlin had always been flawed. The city lacked organic spirit from the very beginning; it was always the product of immigrants and bureaucrats. “And whatever the future generations may do: the fundamental errors of the arrangement will never be eliminated,” he determines, “Because they are constitutional mistakes.”102 Even after Berlin becomes central to German unification, architectural ideas are still imported; Berlin cannot sustain an architecture of its own.103 It was no accident that a “specifically Berlin style of architecture” arises in the late-eighteenth century, at the very moment European architecture turns to eclecticism.104 Even at its noble highpoint, Scheffler could not grant Berlin much. The city’s greatest architects only became more academic as they got older, he chides.105 Even his praise of Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781–1841) is backhanded.106 Schinkel’s accomplishments are just the most developed realization of Berlin’s “eclectic selfeducation.”107 With Schinkel, he says, neoclassicism, more than anywhere else, becomes “an exclusively determining urban style.”108 Although this gives Berlin a semblance of consistency, Scheffler describes the city’s nineteenth-century architecture as a “bureaucratically-correct Greek, […] soldierly cold, garrison-

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like, and impoverished of feeling, […] a product of Bildung and only a mask.”109 While Berlin’s bourgeois ascent had prepared the way for its contemporary growth, metropolitan Berlin was still only an “organically-appearing culture.”110 In the empty monumentality of its architecture and its broad and soulless urban spaces “Berlin prepared to become the metropolis and political capital of Germany,” and, Scheffler claims, mustering populist resentment, “in its colonial, government-city-like newness also looked down architecturally, with a certain disdainfulness, upon the old urban cultures of the motherland.”111

The Foreign Metropolis Scheffler presents Berlin’s late-nineteenth-century urbanization as its most disturbing phase.112 His skewed history fabricates the claim Berlin lacked the fortitude to resist the “modern economic idea of the metropolis” that “rules exclusively and unrestrictedly” in America. “Berlin could and had to Americanize itself,” Scheffler supposes, “because it was not prevented by deep-rooted traditions from the unfolding of economic materialism, because it was a pioneer city […] for centuries, similar to the cities of the new world.” Not only had Berliners failed to resist this transformation, they had demonstrated “true greed and […] passion” for “the new industrial culture.”113 The metropolis had inverted the relationship between the city and the countryside, Scheffler theorizes. He describes a “metamorphosis in the essence of the city […] from the original state, the naturally patrician culture, to the artificial industrial culture.” Previously, the city is an addendum to rural life: a refuge, a marketplace, administrative center, princely residence, or religious seat. But with industrialization, he argues, the country becomes a dependency.114 Scheffler casts the newfound imperial capital as the instrument of a reverse colonization, the replacement of traditional German culture and people: “The uncouth but still unspent youth of Prussian colonial land took over the leadership in Germany with the right of strength and violence,” he resents, “These endless throngs of eastern men, with hungry parvenu willingness, firm nerves and crude appetites for life, had no cultural conscience.”115 The “metropolitan tendencies” of Berlin, the city’s proliferation of “universal Americanization,” was having “a traditiondestroying effect on the whole of German life.” With “Prussian conscientiousness” metropolitan Berlin “accelerates and completes” the “destruction of ancient values and traditions.”116 “The colonial city now colonizes the motherland with a doubtlessly modern but not yet cultured concept of life,” he mourns, “It is the pioneer of a new idea of work, naturalizes the new value of civilization by destroying old cultural values.”117 “From the imperial capital the democratic capitalist idea of equality extends itself like an infectious disease,” he rails, “It kills the peasant spirit and the craft attitude, poisons the satisfaction of the worker,

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creeps into the tradition of civil servants and into the feeling of the patrician and sets a uniformly colorless, insolent middle class attitude in place of the structured consciousness of the state.”118 Scheffler primarily blames not the unbridled cruelty and unceasing disruption of capitalism for the felt erosion of German culture, but the disposition of the Berliner, who had allowed themselves to become a partisan of Americanized interests. Berlin’s “barbaric colonists,” now proletarian, were, as in earlier migrations, Scheffler supposes, a “Babylonian jumble of people,” equally bold, ruthless, speculative, diligent, and “thoroughly incapable of culture.”119 The metropolis, he suggests, “has the American tendency to dissolve all aristocratically structured form” and “recognizes no specific urban, indeed, scarcely a cultural national interest,” only the economic self-interest and affected representation of “colonial human existence.”120 He praises the workers but looks down on their bourgeois pretensions in a place where the “spirit of the middle class” is the provincial affectation and conspicuous consumption of the parvenu.121 Berlin’s hard-won veneer of respectability and order had crumbled under massive urbanization. Berlin had become the beacon of the “powerful workforce and enterprise of the new era” but also the symbol of decadence and disorder.122 Scheffler’s critique of the metropolis seeds his prescriptions for the future city. He emphasizes the idea that Berlin is neither quite German nor American. “It is the fate of Berlin […],” he divines, “that it has never felt so much like a German city that it could effectively withstand Americanism, but it is just German enough to be incapable of the ultimate consequences of modernity.”123 Scheffler’s central issue with contemporary Berlin is what he calls its “half-heartedness.” Its emerging form, “neither clear centralization nor decentralization,” is an imperfect “Americanization.”124 Although its “chosen schemas resembled […] the new American colonial cities,” the basic idea of “the City for business, the land for dwelling, was not consistently carried through.”125 Scheffler thus countenances the virtues of a purely capitalist city and the possibility colonial societies might form a culture of their own. But, for Scheffler, “half-heartedness” was the definitive trait of the proletariat. For example, he condemns the workers’ lack of integrity for the tumult of the city’s rental market. The Berliner’s “almost pathological tendency to often change his apartment,” was not foremost the consequence of dispossession, precarity, regulation, housing supply, and design, but a “badly-developed family life.”126 Indeed, Scheffler takes the tenement as the primary indication of the city’s contemptible culture. He is therefore buoyed by the emerging “conviction” for “colonies of beautiful country houses and garden-city-like arrangements of suburbs” around Berlin. But he finds these developments less “bold and consistent” than its tenement buildings.127 He observes “town-like settlement” is preferred even on the periphery, contending “the country house much more than the tenement or the commercial building requires a tradition, a rural-

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bourgeois building convention.”128 Lacking such, Berlin’s country houses were a profligate muddle of influences; “correct country house colonies” were few. The uncoordinated developer-driven growth of Berlin had fostered a “breathoppressing, proletarian-colonial milieu.”129 For that reason, Scheffler praises the ambition of the Greater Berlin competition: “the arrangement of a broad belt of suburbs ringing the metropolis.”130 The initiative demonstrated the capital was “beginning to become conscious of the consequences of its conditions of existence”; the “truly modern idea” of a separation between living and dwelling was beginning to take shape. But Scheffler doubts Berlin could sustain these developments.131 The city administration had not incorporated the hinterland. In Scheffler’s opinion, Berlin, fickle by nature, lacked the capacity to sustain ideals as conventions.132

The Destiny of the Metropolis In the final chapters of Berlin, Scheffler speculates on alternative futures for the city. Despite the “Americanistic stupidity of the colonial population,” the fact Berlin is a “prison of work,” and “as appalling as the achievement is aesthetically and ethically,” Scheffler observes coldly, “the purely material achievement is astounding.”133 In the “monumentally-grotesque spectacle” of Berlin Scheffler glimpses presentiments of a “newer concept of life” that is “vital” and “vivaciously grasped.”134 From the new conditions, “a new form of culture could doubtless follow,” he admits, pretending to outline these “tremendous new possibilities.”135 While capitalism had ignored tradition, Scheffler reasons, in a discussion of what he calls “The Pioneer Will,” it had also overcome “many detrimental historical inhibitions” and permitted unprecedented “freedom of movement.”136 So too, in the hitherto most culturally dependent city in Germany, a new generation was seeking “originality and creative independence,” Scheffler acknowledges.137 Behind the fleeting fashions and “recklessness” of this youthful rebellion, Scheffler senses an ethical spirit at work. The youth of the new capital were the enthusiastic audience for contemporary cultural works. But, he sours, this generation, rejecting the forces of German unification as parochial and traditional, was unreservedly open to foreign ideas and often anti-nationalistic.138 Such is the ambivalence of fashion, he supposes, that in a receptive center of international culture and debate, the youth had become so susceptible to “foreign spiritual values” proffered by a Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906) or Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910).139 Precisely because of the “spiritual internationality” of Berlin, Scheffler writes backhandedly, its populace lacks “the correct national self-feeling to objectively appreciate the true value of the foreign.”140 With its fashion for “pure reason,” American organization of business, “revolutionary social tendencies,” sense of “greatness and tremendous historical significance,” and a youthful avant-garde insatiably feeding on a perpetually

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transforming field of impressions, Scheffler felt no cultural idea could prove sufficiently resilient to consolidate Berlin’s “milieu of transitional forms.”141 The pioneer city of capital seems doomed to perpetual flux. Nevertheless, under the title “Utopia,” Scheffler wryly presents the possibility the city’s new urban and cultural developments could be sustained and directed. He envisions a despotic mayor “who makes the entire city population a willing instrument of his strong hand, [… and] begins the mighty work of organization, first administratively and then economically and culturally, to make Berlin a living entity.”142 Scheffler imagines this future metropolis as “a garland of garden cities” organized around a central industrial and commercial city. These peripheral cities, he writes, would be “well connected to each other and the center, each in itself a small organism, in which dwelling is allowed to feel easy, comfortable and healthy, where a new youth can grow up vigorously and enjoying all the advantages of the country.”143 In this Baron Haussmann-like state-led reconstruction, facilitated by the public seizure of property, Scheffler forecasts the renewal of the guilds and civicconsciousness, and the equitable provision of land. The central city, he envisions, consists of large commercial buildings and, on the periphery, monumentally amalgamated tenement blocks that no longer exhibit the contemporary diversity of forms but make an architecturally calm, aesthetically rhythmic impression. A city without screaming advertising, without the indecencies of contemporary commercial life, because it belongs to the large corporation and the unifying organization, in short, because the moral law of the metropolis has been recognized and implemented. One sees finally a feeling of home arising, a vital urban feeling that lends the colorful population of the city a definite physiognomy. A new type of metropolitan Berliner appears, a new social structure announces itself.144 Scheffler’s utopian metropolis is a domestication of otherwise-indiscernible foreign capital, the detente of Americanism and the “solid old cultural traditions” of Europe. He implicitly conceives the urban equivalent of that contract between art, big business, and the mercantilist monarchy then being constituted as the Deutsche Werkbund. “Great-Berlin was able to preserve the old cultural conscience of Europe and yet also have the sense of reality of America,” he fictionalizes.145 “But that is a utopia” he states in the concluding chapter, “The Destiny of Berlin”; history had proved Berlin has no “capacity for self-discipline.”146 “The first prerequisite for an urban consciousness of great style would require that the Bildung-poor eastern urban population, dazzling in its many nuances, be completely and very soon consolidated,” Scheffler disgusts.147 He had no doubt Berlin would progress into a great capital exercising its centralizing force on the rest of the nation. Nevertheless, he argues, “it will only be outwardly” the equivalent of Paris or London.148 “Berlin cannot abolish the conditions effecting

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its becoming and being for centuries,” he states, “as a colonial city, which it is and will remain, it cannot be the reservoir of all national energies and ideas in a natural way.”149 In Scheffler’s xenophobic opinion, Berlin—which he describes as “the giant caravanserai that shot up on the Spree”—is foreign and destined to remain so.150 It would always be eastern, affected by secessionist sentiments, a colonial city in transition, “continually becoming and never to be.”151

Convention and Indifference For Scheffler, the promise of the pioneering metropolis was most “visible” in its architecture. The “monumentalization of the economic concept of development” had clearly produced new solutions to purposeful problems.152 Although the “imperative of economic development compels the architect at the same time as it seduces him to rhetoric, [to] material lies, to pseudo-art,” one nevertheless sees “how economic organization comes to visible modern results.”153 Of these new formalizations, Scheffler found the department store particularly symbolic. He cynically describes it as the outgrowth of markets selling cheap goods to the proletariat, the synthesis of small businesses into a unified form. His exemplar is Messel’s building for Wertheim. Scheffler credits the “academic and eclectic” Messel with inaugurating “something like a new period of modern building-art.”154 But it is Berlin’s tenement housing that Scheffler finds most indicative. In an extraordinary passage, brilliant in its insight and insidious in its politics, Scheffler implies the collectivization inherent in mass housing is a furtive socialism.155 Beneath the “bogus palatial splendor” of Berlin’s apartment buildings, Scheffler recognizes “a decisive move toward uniformity” that is most apparent, he argues, “when the facades still stand unadorned in raw construction as skeletons.”156 Scheffler argues the underlying conditions of the tenement—its use, regulation, and class expectations vis-à-vis cost—had led to the formation of a basic underlying typology of dwelling and an “involuntary urge for uniformity” that fashionable facades were an increasingly futile attempt to conceal. In the basic elements of contemporary tenement architecture “lies the recognition that the life of our day does not concern separation and individualism but uniformity, the organization of diversity.”157 From this observation, Scheffler reasons, it follows that the row house no longer be conceived as an aggregation of isolated dwellings like a freestanding house, but as the formation of a street wall. And that the “large block, bounded by four streets, be treated like a single house; that is: the uniformity must be consciously raised into a principle and be made into the foundation of a new metropolitan form of tenement building.”158 Moreover, he continues, this suggests these block-buildings should be the creation of a single author and realized by a single developer at a scale that exceeds the

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capacities of the usual “cultureless” speculator. It requires, in short, a scale of design and construction only manageable by a “capitally-intensive large concern,” a scale consistent with the “economic centralization of power” at work in the contemporary metropolitan economy.159 Yet, he explains, coeval with the ascent of big business, social expectations and the coordinated assertion of professional and class interests also emerge: At the same time as the building block takes the place of the self-contained individual house, the plan of the dwelling also changes and improves. As soon as the whole is disposed uniformly, the tenants, whose dwellings are architecturally unified, turn themselves, as if automatically, into a kind of economic community, and hence results then: the disposition of a common garden court in place of the many small dark courts now popular; the installation of a central kitchen for all dwellings; of common play spaces and gyms for children; of reading and party rooms. Dwellings can then be built block by block for bureaucrats, workers, or unmarried business people; dwelling complexes for parliamentarians, pension offices, etc. could emerge, whose economic operation ranges somewhere between a hotel, monastery and private apartment. In such a development, the metropolitan tenement is not arbitrary, but necessary. That is why it first established itself secretly, recently however more openly.160 In Scheffler’s thesis, the tenement reflects the collectivization of society with all the promises and threats this implies. “Vital need per se,” he explains, “has already become the architect in Berlin.”161 The tenement is the natural form of the metropolitan condition, the most visible expression of the political economic organization of contemporary society. In Berlin’s new architecture, “every element […] grows organically from material functions and the architect is only the organizer of social and economically directed demands,” he argues, “That is why the works of the building-art so vividly point to the spirit of the public and to the needs of the collective.”162 These profound observations and speculations are the kernel of Scheffler’s Die Architecture der Grossstadt (The Architecture of the Metropolis, 1913), which we know, from the earliest surviving (handwritten) notes for Metropolis-Architecture (1914), Hilberseimer picks up in his nascent deliberations on the city. What Scheffler identifies with implied disdain, Hilberseimer will take up as explicit program.163 In Scheffler’s thinking, the form of the tenement, like the metropolis, can only ever be, given the flux of capital, a transitory and volatile phenomenon that, while it might be improved, cannot be taken seriously as a cultural form. Although Scheffler’s view of the metropolis is extraordinary in its insight, and his recommendations for the planning and design of the city are compelling in their logic, his conservativism prevents him from countenancing the reform of the metropolis, especially tenement reform, as anything but a “necessary compromise.”164

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FIGURE 9.1  Ludwig Hilberseimer, with model tower composed of fifteen-story buildings designed for his Welfare City, exhibited in Stuttgart in 1927. Karl Ludwig Hilberseimer Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archives, Art Institute of Chicago.

In The Architecture of the Metropolis, Scheffler proposes isolating the metropolis—with its fashions, entertainments, and tenements—from the life of the nation per se. His conception of future settlement is separated into two kinds of urban forms: a central Arbeitstadt (work city)—with its collectivist tenements— and a peripheral Wohnstadt (residential city), the latter configured to reassert

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the family unit as the basic socio-spatial “cell” of society. Adopting conservative conceptions of the garden suburb, building on the Arts and Crafts and garden city movements in Britain and related developments in Germany, Scheffler imagines these residential cities continuing a patrician tradition. By limiting the exposure of the nation’s citizens to the temptations of capital, Scheffler supposes the family, ensconced in small settlements rooted to the land, would foster “a healthy and conservatively-thinking citizen,” the “natural counterweight” to the sociophysical values of international capitalism.165 These statements, his later criticism, including his influential considerations of Messel’s work, and the influential writings of Walter Curt Behrendt on the bourgeois city (also influenced by Brinckmann), all follow from Scheffler’s prodigious writings on architecture and the city in 1907.166 In addition to Berlin, an Urban-Fate: Scheffler makes a number of extensive contributions to Eduard Heyck’s Moderne Kultur: ein Handbuch der Lebensbildung und des guten Geschmacks (Modern Culture: a Handbook of Life-Education and GoodTaste, 1907), a multi-volume manual of (pretentious) conventions. He releases a monograph on Der Architekt (The Architect, 1907). And he publishes a critical survey of Moderne Baukunst (Modern Building-Art, 1907).167 This latter publication and the lengthy essay, “Kultur und Geschmack des Wohnens” (“Culture and Taste of Dwelling”), published in the first of Heyck’s volumes, contain introductory sections followed by discussion of individual architectural typologies. The basic structure and much of the content of Hilberseimer’s MetropolisArchitecture is clearly influenced by this work.168 Scheffler’s profound insights into the architecture and organization of the metropolis as well as the basic logic of his art theory are so pervasive in Hilberseimer’s writing, to document the borrowings, let alone the influences, would be tautologous in the context of an explication of Hilberseimer’s early theory. But this is precisely the point. Hilberseimer and Rukser turn Scheffler on his head. Even their hesitation about the tenement is the equal and opposite claim to Scheffler’s assertion that the tenement, an evidently transitory form, is the most figured of all metropolitan types. Just as they take up the critique of the cubic city and give it an opposite valence to Sitte, they take up Scheffler’s observations on architecture and the metropolis and invert his politics. They do so from profound antipathy to Scheffler’s conservative commitment to convention. In Scheffler’s worldview, our perspective on the eternal gains its currency not from insight into reality but from the correspondence between the integrity of the subject and the established conventions of society. In Friedlaender’s thesis, however, humanity does not conceive itself according to race or class, nor in correspondence with traditional social conventions; the guarantor of subjective indifference is humanity’s objective indifference from the world. Although Scheffler acknowledges a common humanity, he considers it uncivilized until validated by

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social authority. Although he understands beauty to be our recognition of natural law, he thinks humanity is best served by the contiguity of its aesthetic range. But within a society overcoming ideological inhibitions, Friedlaender argues, social convention cannot warrant our common identity, individual experience, or the laws of existence. Aesthetic activity is not subsequent but intrinsic to spiritual formation. Humanity establishes and verifies its integrity by creatively engaging— aesthetically comprehending and materially transforming—the world. Social cohesion is the mutual expression of self-realization. Creation begins not with the limits of its own making but with creation as such, from which, Friedlaender argues, humanity becomes (indifferent from the) divine. Of Scheffler’s negative, Hilberseimer and Rukser make a positive. Berlin is not fated. Our constitution is not fixed by privileged lineage. We are not destined to inhabit a reified conception. Capitalism is not some determining force in a spiritual battle with determining tradition. We are not determined but conditioned and creative. Certainly, we must face our lot. But we don’t have to do so inhibited and resentful. We can be graceful and divine. Not parochial but worldly. Hilberseimer and Rukser face Berlin and the metropolis—not fatalistically, but— life-affirmingly.169 When they justify their approach by rejecting impressionistic and subjective interpretations of the metropolis, Hilberseimer and Rukser no doubt have Scheffler in mind. They transform the beauty of the metropolis from a contingent impression into an objective expression. Emphatically asserting the inherent integrity, the common singularity and indifference, of (the) masses, they reconceive the diversity of the metropolis, which Scheffler rejects as an aberrant departure from a contiguous tradition, as the egalitarian beauty of mutual selfrealization. In their embrace of the schematic and mechanical aggregations of the contemporary city, in their unequivocal conviction the capitalist incorporation can be reanimated, Hilberseimer and Rukser are the consciously precise antithesis of Scheffler. “Tragedy […],” Friedlaender writes of Nietzsche, “means the triumph, not the defeat of life.”170 Scheffler had pessimistically argued Berlin had no choice but to Americanize. So, in their essay on “American Architecture,” Hilberseimer and Rukser create another, positive “America.” If every city is indeed an individual, as Scheffler suggests, in Hilberseimer and Rukser’s unfashionable anarcho-socialist worldview it should be creatively indifferent not fatalistically prejudiced.

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10 BASSO CONTINUO

Concision and Dynamism Equipped with a synthetic conception of architecture that grasps the common elements and formal structures of contemporary building, the realization of coherent individual buildings and an integrated urban whole are coeval under rational conditions of production. Such is the anarcho-socialist thesis stated in (the title of) Metropolis-Architecture. Against Scheffler’s assertion anarchism is chaos indistinguishable from capitalism; Hilberseimer and Rukser conceive the city as a collective work of art, realizable through mutual self-realization and the communal control of the means of environmental production. Fittingly, Hilberseimer and Rukser further this argument in the independent work they produce in parallel with their jointly authored drafts. In particular, Rukser’s art criticism offers compelling support for the notion the metropolis-artwork could develop from individual lawful creation. This is already clear in the February, 1918, issue of Die Aktion, for which Rukser translates excerpts from the Discours sur le Style (Discourse on Style), delivered by the Comte de Buffon (George-Louis Leclerc, 1707–88) on the occasion of his election to the French Academy in 1753.1 Though better known as a natural philosopher, Buffon was elected to the academy for his literary merit. Craftily presenting his remarks as lessons from stylists preceding him, Buffon differentiates between eloquence—the transmission of enthusiasms that persuade certain listeners affectively—and the articulation of ideas to an audience for whom tone, gesture, and cadence are in themselves unconvincing. Higher thoughts, being vast and complicated, are not immediately comprehensible, Buffon argues. To make an impression on the listener, complicated ideas need to be presented in a logical and compelling way. Moreover, this exposition should allow thoughts to be qualified and expanded by supplementary notions without the listener becoming lost. The truth of style, Buffon argues, lies in the orator’s candid conviction for their subject, born from “experience and meditation” on nature and the synthetic

reconciliation of these observations into a coherent system of ideas.2 Buffon supposes style is regulated by the reasoning that provides expression with its structure and sequence. The orator should keep the plan of the work in mind at all times—all the more so as its complexity and length increase. With a wellordered plan, the design of the work becomes clear and can be executed with a sense of imperative.3 Absent this integrity expression is joyless, the artist is adrift, and even the most beautifully wrought details lack value. Nevertheless, the orator must also be concerned with expression. All speech is concerned with the same subject—“man and nature”—Buffon contends, but genres differ in their constitution. For example, poetry makes greater use of vivid imagery than philosophy. Style thus depends on the artist’s grasp of the means of expression: “Style must engrave thoughts,” he presses; but without style writers only “trace words.”4 Buffon articulates notions that become fundamental to Rukser’s and Hilberseimer’s art criticism. Ideas should not be confused with representation. The plan of the work is primary. But art is more than regulating ideas. While lucidly expressed ideas persist, the logic of poorly executed works may be better expressed in other works. Style is not added to, but emerges by manifesting ideas in sensible form. Moreover, Rukser’s translation begins with Buffon’s assertions that style is the structure and sequence of thought and animation is bound to concision: “Style is nothing other than the order and tempo that one gives to one’s thoughts,” Buffon states, “If one closely connects them to each other, links them together, the style becomes tight, concise, and lively; if one lets them follow slowly and only incidentally connects them by values […] then the style becomes rambling, dull, and slow.”5 If the lineaments of the design are clearly articulated and the artist animates these outlines into a “harmonious and moving image,” the result is “sublime.”6

The Form of the Artwork and Humanity This vitality is central to Rukser’s discourse on art. In 1914, Hans Richter depicts his brother-in-law in a pencil sketch entitled “Pianist.” Rukser’s animated figure is sufficient to imply the presence of an instrument (not depicted by Richter) that has become entirely transparent to the musician. With the same liveliness, Rukser outlines his sense of form-creation in a series of essays on music and the visual arts in the years immediately following the war. Rukser is intent on identifying and rationalizing the elements and laws of (contemporary) artistic mediums to compel the greatest expressive potential. Rukser publishes three of these essays in Der Einzige. They appear in February and March, 1919, during the short period Hilberseimer is also contributing to the journal, and, like Hilberseimer’s essays, may have been conceived as a whole.7

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The first considers the fugues of the Czech-born Arthur Willner (1849–1960), vice-chairman of the Stern’sches Konservatorium in Berlin.8 “In an age that declares the possibilities of musical expression exhausted, to find a musician, who avails himself of a ‘strict compositional form’ with pleasure, is a remarkable event,” Rukser celebrates, describing Willner’s composition as a valuable antidote to willful formalism.9 Rather than adopt an existing convention, Willner had created “an entirely new technique”—a new law for the sound-material of the piano— “which,” Rukser stresses, “does not make the piano a neutral but a universal soundresonating body, comparable to the orchestral sound-resonating analogies of the organ.” “Such an element of bonding”—by “the condensation of all energies into a definite direction and method”—Rukser contends, “is prerequisite for, and enabling of, a resolute individuality of logic, precision, and rigor.”10 While he presents the ambition of Willner’s composition as “the training and disciplining of creative individuality,” Rukser also stresses the degree to which an integrating stricture, by virtue of its precision, supports and encourages a diverse range of expression. He suggests Willner’s investigations of “individual rhythmic, dynamic, melodic problems [could be] applied to burlesque, heroic, monumental, lyric, or sentimental content.”11 Moreover, Rukser argues Willner’s approach had given rise to “absolutely new, never heard combinations of sound.” Willner’s regulation had compelled new skill in piano playing—“the thorough formation of the nuances of attack” become more demanding—and a salient sense of concise vitality: The value and the crucial significance of this music lies in the necessity of its inner coherence and progression. That is the test for the correctness of the chosen path, that every tone is immutable and, as it stands, necessary—there is no space for arbitrariness; degrees of strength, harmonic complexes, rhythmic accents and all other kinds of contradistinctiveness [Gegensätzlichkeit] follow from a law. Thus organic correlations, metric legalities, arise that stand out in unrelenting, at times almost brutal, alignment and direction of tune; a precision and severity that allows us to speak of ‘exact music’ as of ‘rigorous science.’12 Rukser seems less interested in the particular grammar Willner employs—he doesn’t outline it; although it’s surely significant that a fugue is contrapuntal, a neutralized polarization of form—than the fact that he employs an instrumental regularity by which the order, measure, consistency, and variation of his musical experimentation become salient. Though indifferent with respect to any particular quality, the creation of a “law,” given the particular nature of a medium, provides the means by which we can discern qualitatively different expressions as momentous in collective significance. “The law, which delimits the artwork in its integrity from the outside in form, acts within the whole in different functions, proportional, dynamic, metric, and rhythmic,” Hilberseimer and Rukser write in this vein in Metropolis-Architecture,

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“All together form the artwork, are its elements, which it is the task of design to indistinguishably fuse into a complete unity, ‘the [highest and] singular operation in nature and art.’ (Goethe)”13 In anticipation of this unfolding speciation and organization, Hilberseimer and Rukser enact theory as an artistic morphology, that, with the lawful integrity of indifference, enlivens material into a vital medium with manifold potentialities. Two weeks after his essay on Willner, Rukser applies a similar argument to the paintings of Richard Janthur (1883–1956). In Willner’s fugues, Rukser emphasizes the artistic lawfulness that disciplines creation; in the essay on Janthur, he emphasizes artistic lawfulness corresponds with the integrity of the artist themselves. Here Rukser echoes the most well-known phrase in Buffon’s Discourse: “style is the man himself.”14 “Janthur’s works are unique, because he himself is,” Rukser states, taking up analogies common in Friedlaender’s philosophy: “He is one of the very few formed people that exist today; one who carries measure and law within himself, who does not swing around a constantly changing external center of gravity.”15 In linking the lawfulness of the work to the cosmic self-balancing of the author, Rukser argues the psychological and programmatic aspects of works by artists such as Willner and Janthur betray moments of singular correspondence— the “departure point”—between existence and the formal functions of art.16 Hilberseimer and Rukser exercise the same claim in their differentiation of purposeful and purposive architectural functions. Rather than merely embody external givens, when we grasp existence indifferently and insightfully—not disinterestedly and neutrally—we give absolute (spiritual) value to relative states. Indeed, Rukser compares Janthur’s works to “a photographic plate, a barometer, which registers things from unknown classes of life and spheres of the world.”17 In Janthur’s art, “every represented form is unique; [because] he is a singularity [Einziger],” Rukser writes, referencing the journal title, “he is a self-contained being; he has that which the modern person lacks to their misfortune, a limit determined and observed by him himself.”18 In Janthur’s still lives and landscapes, Rukser suggests, “Behind the implied formal schemes of nature, the plant’s own spiritual being flashes mysteriously—correlations that [Maurice] Maeterlinck might have anticipated.”19 Rukser probably had Maeterlinck’s (1862–1949) Die Intelligenz der Blumen (The Intelligence of Flowers, 1907) in mind—a work received as social allegory—which asserts the innate intellect, will, and skill of plants.20 Janthur’s lawful, self-contained integrity allows natural entities to come alive.21 Autonomy is mutually affirming. In the essay on Janthur—using the same quote from Goethe that he and Hilberseimer use in their second draft—Rukser asserts lawfulness is the “the highest and singular operation of nature and art.”22 For the epigraph of “Von der Form des Menschen” (“Concerning the Form of the Human”), published a fortnight later, he cites Wilhelm Meister, eponymous protagonist of Goethe’s

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Bildungsromane (novels about the formative years): “The most difficult thing […] is the kind of isolation man must bring about in himself if he wants to form himself at all.”23 The individual often lacks the lawfulness to give sense to the flux of contemporary experience. Contemporary society, in Rukser’s opinion, requires a constitution that neither succumbs to nor prejudices contemporary existence: “Against the enormous flood of pressing impressions and claims assailing from outside, man must be able to set something in opposition if he doesn’t want to give himself up,” Rukser advocates.24 The “lack of the formal”—what Rukser calls “the bane of the modern age”—had left humanity “unrestrained and adrift in the cosmos” lacking “inner equilibrium and gravitational mass.” Without bearing, the “formless” (Goethe) subject is prone to reification and relativism, as qualitative relations are reduced to contingent calculations of effect.25 Unlike Scheffler, however, Rukser casts a well-structured human “form” as an alternative to Bildung, which, he laments, is no longer “a plastic-formal analogy.” The term had come to denote “the inhuman […] self-forgetting of those that have become a human schema.” Liberalism had petrified humanity with ideals, Rukser suggests after Ruest. The “form of the person” had been colonized and commodified. The only way humanity “finds its way back to some integrity [Gebundenheit],” Rukser argues, is if the reified bourgeois convention of the “normal human, a human in the abstract” is rejected and humanity per se is brought into focus.26 Rukser advocates every individual become a vital work of art—by “awakening all […] powers, instincts, faculties, pleasures, and passions; agitating them toward the most intense unfolding; and, finally, controlling them into a harmony by the formal law peculiar to [them].” Because every human form is “singular and unique,” he asserts, “the morphogenesis of humanity” can only occur through the full realization of “human diversities.” The “atomization of humanity occurs not as an end in itself,” he explains, “it occurs when all people attain that form which accords to them.” Lest this diversity be misunderstood as bourgeois individualism, Rukser equates its realization with a common law. “When the law ‘Be true to yourself, be yourself!’ stands above and in all,” he explains, then everyone is “connected precisely by this principle common to them.” Common to “humanity” is not any particular law, but lawfulness per se. With the inherent understanding of mutual self-realization, “in place of the mass formed by random addition," Rukser imagines, "a higher unity than states," "not merely an addition of every possible human animal, but an organism on a higher level of existence,” the unity in diversity of an organic community: “Only all human beings comprise humanity, only all forces together the world.”27 In the glide of these essays in Der Einzige—from the lawful work of art (constituting a diversity of genres), to the lawfulness of the artist, and thence the lawfulness of humanity (constituted as the mutual, just concordance of diverse individuals)—Rukser conceives a human community isomorphic with the work of art.28

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Reanimating Existence Between June 1920 and January 1921, around the time he and Hilberseimer were likely developing the second draft of Metropolis-Architecture, Rukser publishes a series of essays in the progressive music journal Melos, inaugurated in February, 1920, and edited by the conductor Hermann Scherchen (1891–1966). In the first, “Die Situation der heutigen Musik” (“The Situation of Today’s Music”), Rukser explains the opposition to so-called “radical” music as an “instinctive aversion” to creation that rests on the belief the “material, physical, and psychological” conditions of music are “unchangeably given.” While he acknowledges, following Nietzsche, “that every great art presupposes a great measure of convention, insofar as it is language,” Rukser stresses convention is “not immutable, not objectively valid.” Every artist has the freedom to employ “the means of language and material” available to them, which, in the case of the musician, he writes, is “everything that is tone and sound.” It is not important to follow convention; but it is important new music be made.29 This “is solely a question of whether the musician can artistically represent his sensation within today’s agitated existence,” he explains, suggesting, in lock step with Hilberseimer’s indifference to objective and abstract art, that “If he can do so with traditional means, then that is good.”30 Nevertheless, like Hilberseimer, Rukser finds it understandable that an artist, for whom “traditional forms and means constantly evoke onerous associations,” would want to find “means of expression adequate to his experience.”31 To overcome the crisis of contemporary music—which he links to the “nihilistic crisis” in European culture identified by Nietzsche—Rukser argues it is necessary to grasp the “spiritual conditions” under which contemporary music is being produced. The “firmly-established, unified culture and worldview” enjoyed by artists such as Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750); Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–91); and to a lesser degree, Ludwig van Beethoven (1756–91) was no longer extant. Rukser states, “We have been thrown back much more deeply into a chaos of powers and capabilities than we commonly believe.”32 The “lawfulness of classical forms” is merely a “formal genre” that had been reified as immutable. “Why shouldn’t the points of division on the tone scale not also be placed differently, if only thereby the possibility of new accomplishments arises!” Rukser declares. So-called atonal music is not an abandonment of legality, but “a new expression of the law.” Contemporary experience is a garish cacophony of color and sound, he observes, and thus “sounds and harmonies have gained another sense for us than that which they still had in the uniformity of the classical tonal range.” Rukser hopes “the contemporary artist will be able to give his experience a universally valid artistic expression […]; that music […] will again become a religiously-animated human endeavor.”33 Just as he and Hilberseimer embrace the dynamism of the metropolis, Rukser seeks to imbue contemporary music with a sense commensurate with contemporary life.

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It was therefore wrong to dismiss experimentation because its consequences are unclear. While the work of impressionist Max Liebermann (1847–1935) is “fairly worthless today,” Rukser offers, citing an artist close to Scheffler, it was decisively important for the development of modern German painting.34 Contemporary music should not be dismissed by a judgment of “absolute value” he writes, “What is important about experiments to us contemporaries, are the possibilities that announce themselves, if even only so quietly.”35

The Form of Material Two months later (August, 1920), Rukser publishes “Die Umformung der modernen Klangkörper” (“The Transformation of the Modern Orchestra” [literally: “The Transformation of the Modern Body of Sound”]) in Melos. Like the observations of (city-)building in Metropolis-Architecture, Rukser’s essay is concerned with the range and consistency of the contemporary means of (musical) production. Seeking “new possibilities of expression” and “to communicate themselves as vividly as possible,” Rukser observes, the contemporary composer “examines the available means of producing sound more carefully than the previous generation.”36 Nevertheless, while experimental artists had explored numerous aspects of sound—such as the distinction between pitch and tone in Arnold Schönberg’s work (1874–1951)—Rukser thinks the issue of sound quality, in particular the orchestral constitution of tone colors (timbres), remained largely unexplored. The kinds and number of instruments comprising an orchestra had become so conventional, Rukser points out, the standard “is applied even where it is not prescribed,” such as to performances of works by composers such as Bach and Mozart that had demanded very different instrumentation. “The interplay of several instruments only […] makes sense if a certain tonal homogeneity is achieved; if the instruments come together to form a unified body of sound,” he implores.37 But prevailing conventions had skewed modern music toward the jagged details of mechanical sounds. Studies by the physicist Hermann Helmholtz (1821–94) had shown “the sound graph” of violins and pianos contain “numerous disharmonic overtones,” Rukser reports, and yet contemporary orchestras usually contain disproportionate numbers of these instruments, by comparison with the deeper string and brass instruments. He advocates the composition of the orchestra be revised to rebalance its sound and stimulate creativity. Asserting “a new instrument, a new sound, can give valuable stimulation to creation,” Rukser suggests “The connection between the sensuousness inherent to material and the creative spirit is far closer than one believes.”38 `In Mozart, Rukser explains, violins are balanced by a “strong base instrumentation,” but in Beethoven, “who multiplies the violins, without

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sufficiently strengthening the bass,” violins often overwhelm the bass instruments and this had become the norm for composers such as Louis-Hector Berlioz (1803– 69) and Wagner. Conventional emphasis on string instruments had schematically amplified “the mechanical scratching and scraping noises”; disharmonious overtones had come to overwhelm “the pure sound”—the bell tones—of the other instruments.39 The result, Rukser argues, is “the well-known phenomenon that today’s orchestral sound, despite its fullness and capacity for modulation, is inadequate and tedious.” The orchestra had to be rebalanced, he demands, either by a reduction of the offending instruments or by an increase in the others, “to allow the tones with harmonic overtones to determine orchestral sound.”40 Importantly, Rukser emphasizes the purity of “bell tones.” Like the human voice, he argues, their “sound curve” is a “gentle wave line” rather than the jagged sound graph produced by instruments with disharmonious overtones. Rukser seeks to subsume these disjunctive mechanical sounds into the coherent movements of an organic whole. Contrasting an emphasis on “tone surface” with the organ pieces of César Franck (1822–90), which, unlike Viennese classicists, emphasize “the statics of the bass,” Rukser asserts Franck’s “bass is vital, always thematically enlivened.”41 Reducing attention-grabbing surface details in favor of animate corporeality; imbuing surficial color with an evident integral structure—these are fundamental recommendations of Metropolis-Architecture. The concluding part of Rukser’s text asserts the merits of including new kinds of instruments into the orchestra so “amplification of the bass” could also foster a “greater tonal range.” In this regard, Rukser suggests Johannes Moser’s piano and, consistent with his and Hilberseimer’s extensive writings on non-European art, the Javanese Gamelan.42 The notion the aesthetic range of the orchestra would be broadened and become available to the creator indifferently, regardless the eventual work, are principles consistent with Friedlaender’s philosophy. Just as diatonic scales needlessly prejudice the articulation of the chromatic scale, Rukser is concerned with overcoming the stultifying Bildung of orchestral sound. By polarizing and equilibrating the contemporary means of aesthetic production, Rukser seeks to extend the body of sound to stimulate and intensify the collective significance of, creation. In Metropolis-Architecture Hilberseimer and Rukser argue architects choose their material on the basis of artistic intention. They reject the notion materials determine architectural form. At the same time, they understand new aesthetic possibilities are made possible by new means. Rukser does not suppose instrumentation determines composition. Hilberseimer and Rukser commit themselves to the notion the (analytical) extension and rationalizing neutralization of aesthetic range is the indifferent (synthetic) basis of spiritual creation. The range and consistency of aesthetic supports constitute the common basis (the universal language) of art. The matter of building, like orchestral sound,

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is not raw but processed, like a block of stone. It is expanded by indifferent or constricted by prejudicial conventions, consistent and fine-grained or flawed and jarring depending on its nature and degree of rationalization. Rukser understands the orchestra, like he and Hilberseimer the metropolis, as a meta-medium, integrating the full potential of contemporary, historic, and international culture. Like the metropolis, hitherto deadened by traditional values, Rukser seeks the (experimental) revitalization of an otherwise mechanical body (of sound).

The Saliency of Form In an essay on Moser’s piano (September 1920), Rukser explicates some of the assumptions underlying his ideas for orchestral reform. By supposing they already possess the most perfected instruments, he complains, musicians and composers had come to take “modern sound machines” for granted. They had sought to increase the strength of existing sounds rather than discover new sound qualities by reforming, or inventing new, instruments. As exemplar, Rukser offers Moser’s piano, which he identifies in his essay on orchestral sound for its capacity to produce “bell tones.”43 While this earlier essay emphasizes the balance and range of orchestral instrumentation, the essay on Moser’s piano concerns the calibration of orchestral sound to the limits of human perception. “Hearing is an energy consuming process,” Rukser claims, “if the ear […] is overexerted, then well-known fatigue sets in. The more intensely the sound excites the hearing organ, the sooner it will occur.”44 In the previous essay, Rukser had contrasted the smooth sound curve of the human voice with the staccato graphs of the piano and violin. Now he argues “listening to orchestral music is much more strenuous than listening to vocal music.”45 Because species are naturally attuned to each other, he argues, people are more immediately responsive “to sounds that are homologous to the human voice.” Modern string instruments and the common piano contravene this accord. But Moser’s piano, by the means of a sounding board, eliminates disharmonic overtones and produces pure notes. While other pianos obscure the singing voice, Rukser suggests Moser’s piano can “support and strengthen” vocal performance. The elimination of disharmonic overtones also simplifies piano playing, in particular pedaling. It opens up hitherto unknown possibilities for solo performance and composition. And allows the piano to be more easily incorporated orchestrally.46 Rukser differentiates this approach to music reform from experiments with “tone color [timbre].”47 He argues technical reform is the more primary and had the greatest potential, because it concerns the preconditions rather than composition of sound, and thus the “physical basis on which a healthy music practice can grow.”48 Rukser embraces the potential of new materials for music much as Hausmann had embraced the aesthetic potential of new materials for visual art and architects such as Bruno Taut had experimented with the aesthetic potential of ferroconcrete, steel, and glass.49

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But, more importantly, by focusing on aesthetic attention, Rukser envisions an artistic practice calibrated for the greatest possible correspondence between inherent and effective form. His efforts to expand the range and stimulate new forms of artistic practice pivot on the utmost correspondence between objective existence and human perception, the point of indifference between the mechanical and organic. The most salient forms, with their immediate resonance, constitute the evident framework in which the full range of aesthetic creation gains animating significance. The neutralized polarization of orchestral sound—of harmonic and disharmonic—provides a lawful structure within which all sounds—even those of new or not yet incorporated instruments—more precisely figure. Rukser and Hilberseimer reject the chaos of the metropolis and the distraction of ornamental architectural detail with the same logic. In the context of the dynamic and polluted city, they argue salient cubic volumes offer the most immediately perceivable visual forms. With the harmonization of building elements, such as fenestration patterns and projections and recessions, these volumes provide the evident structure—the lawful tectonic framework—within which the expression of individual buildings and building-elements meaningfully figure. And just as Rukser advocates that a neutralized balance of musical sound allows the individual instruments of the orchestra to gain value, Rukser and Hilberseimer embrace regularized visual fields, oriented by (purposive) functional centers, for their capacity to equalize, harmonize, and individuate the various architectural constituents of the urban orchestra. Just as the rationalization and perceptual calibration of instrumental material opens untold aesthetic potentials for orchestral sound, the rationalization and perceptual calibration of the material of building enhances the choral conception of the city as a communal work of art, harmonious in diversity.

Index of the Spirit In a scathing review (November, 1920) of the composer Hans Pfitzner’s (1869– 1949) Die neue Ästhetik der musikalischen Impotenz: eine Verwesungssymptom? (The new Aesthetic of Musical Impotence: A Symptom of Decay?, 1920), Rukser makes clear his concern with lapidary artistic material is driven by his desire for the most objective spiritual expression.50 Rukser rejects everything Pfitzner believes about art: his presumption art should provide pleasure and the subjective judgment this entails; that Pfitzner takes the nation as the end of art; and that Pfitzner substitutes the artist’s psychology for the work itself.51 If he had read his Nietzsche, Rukser explains, Pfitzner would realize the origin of the work of art explains nothing; Pfitzner fails to recognize the “objectivity of the work of art […] is independent from the artist.” Most importantly, by taking up Schopenhauer’s notion that music, in its apparent independence from the empirical world, has a special place among the arts, Pfitzner misunderstands the character of arts other

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than music. The non-musical arts, Rukser emphasizes, do not have realism as their aim. Both Goethe and Nietzsche had shown “ideas can be made accessible a priori or by [the] imagination without being analogized in bodily form.”52 If there is a special place for music, Rukser writes, it is that identified by Kandinsky. While the other arts became ever-more naturalistic, music over the past few centuries became the “means of expressing the life of the soul.”53 Pfitzner misses the point that in poetry, language is not used in its everyday meaning. Nor is a painted landscape a photographic representation of nature. Pfitzner fails to comprehend that all art, even the most naturalistic, is “abstract.” Music is not exceptional, as Schopenhauer believed. “The problem for every artist,” Rukser writes, “is to represent his feelings, his theme, in the material of his art; [as] an artistic form.”54 Using concepts indebted to Friedlaender, Rukser takes Pfitzner as an exemplary case of an artist driven by received ideas, in whom: that which is their strength as artists, the coherence of the person, the perception and evaluation of the world outwards from a single point, […] turns into weakness, […] into prejudice, spiritual bondage […]. Thus, in such cases, the intellectual is readily schematized, the abundance of the cosmos is not thought through in its totality in all directions, but everything is solely related to a path that is alone held to be correct: without learning from the compass that it is not the directions which are essential, but the central point from which they originate and in which they come together again.55 For Rukser, the immediacy and vitality of creation is the index of the creative indifference of the artist, an expression of their singular devotion to an objective conception of the cosmos. Pfitzner’s belief music is an exceptional art is just Wagner’s “narcotic effect,” Rukser writes, following Nietzsche’s critique. But in such “failures,” Rukser points out, “what the artist holds to be true and right is brought to light; and as Goethe has already recognized, one considers to be true only that […] which makes one’s existence possible.”56 For Rukser, a lack of clarity in the matter of art—such as that evidenced in the chaotic metropolis and skewed orchestral sound—betrays the lack of an objective conception of existence.

The Search for Form In the same month as he and Hilberseimer publish “Amerikanische Architektur” (September, 1920), Rukser’s essay “Die Beethovensche Form” (“Beethovenian Form”) appears in the Weimarer Blätter, the journal of the German National Theater and Weimar Society. Like the essay on architecture, which moves from

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Root’s self-contained urban block to Wright’s horizontal landscape imprints, Rukser describes Beethoven extending the breadth of his discipline’s artistic potentials in a paradigmatic departure from classicism. Classicism, Rukser argues, is a balanced synthesis of opposing tendencies. It reconciles an evident and strong internal structure—the “harmonic form” that “intrinsically give […] works life”— and the tendency for this organic structure to withdraw when “artistic means” are placed in service of a “descriptive naturalism.”57 While emphatically artistic works tend to lose vitality and become “conventional,” he warns, transparently naturalistic works tend to excess.58 Arguing the classical is at once vital and restrained, Rukser presents Beethoven oscillating between artistry and naturalism. “And precisely because his soul is spread so infinitely wide,” Rukser writes, Beethoven “succeeds more often than others in bending opposite poles together toward fruitful perfection.”59 Beethoven gives up the “classicism of Mozart’s forms,” in search of his own. For Beethoven, “there was no general solution, no eternally-valid canon of proportions,” Rukser contends, “he had to fight anew for the ‘golden ratio’ again and again, […] because […] ever new depths and distant views— constantly emerged within him.” At once “passionate” and “ethical,” Beethoven draws an ever-expanding range of experience into ever-greater synthesis.60 And thus, Rukser argues, “his principle became creation from contrast.”61 In this regard, Rukser points out, Beethoven recognizes the sonata, unlike the fugue, “rests on a plurality of themes,” exemplifying a “struggle between desire and accomplishment,” in which the “inner tension of the themes against each other gives rise to the musical structure.” Where other composers, such as Mozart, inwardly resolve these tensions into melody, Beethoven “instinctively recognized the possibility of allowing the forces of differing tensions contained within the contrast to have a form-shaping effect,” Rukser praises. And this expression of a manifold of tensions allows “a new culture of music” to evolve.62 Instead of “uniformity,” Beethoven’s works are a “causal multiplicity of divisors.”63 At once destroying and creating, Rukser argues, Beethoven “is the great initiator, the first modern.”64 The modern age is “passionately-problematic” rather than “perfect in its purest form.”65 Beethoven is to Mozart as Michelangelo is to Raphael, he suggests (Schmarsow-like). Mozart is “unity of sensation,” Beethoven “ambivalence” and “struggle.” “Beethoven transforms being into becoming” but has the “audacity to give what lies before the result and leaves the highest and most important achievement to the listener.” While Mozart inherits “the perfected style” and invests it with feeling, Beethoven, “is the dissolver of this style,” working by “the revaluation and reinterpretation of existing schemas.” This renewed vitality, at once presentist and anticipatory, Rukser calls “expressionistic.” Beethoven “formulates the portion of our world of sensation that we, tossed between desire and attainment, feeling and action, know the best.” He describes Beethoven as a “man, who has not reached the highest inner culture of a Goethe, who could not give himself a clear spiritual form, but still remains in a chaotic struggle for it.”66 Rukser considers Beethoven transitional, like the Expressionism of his own time. 214

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A few months later (January, 1921), with the question “Expressionismus als Ziel?” (“Expressionism as Goal?”), Rukser develops this notion by addressing “the purported end of Expressionism” morbidly celebrated by a number of German critics, among whom, Rukser thinks, a clear understanding of Expressionism had been lost.67 Artistic striving and political intention had been falsely equated and Expressionism debased by “despicable imitators” who had “turned genuine expressionism into a bland academic schema,” a symptom of that “general present crisis in European culture, which Nietzsche perceived, [and] Pannwitz described.”68 The “essence” of Expressionism, Rukser posits, “is not […] rebellion against all boundedness, but against bonds that have lost their integrity, against formulas and schemas; it is revolt against arbitrary limitation of means; the resurrection of imagination.” This made Expressionism a species of Dionysian art in general, he stresses. The present artist is no longer restricted to “natural models”; “we live, feel, and speak differently than our grandfathers,” Rukser announces: “so the modern artist has the right and obligation to create an art that is the sense and expression of our life—a life full of problems and dangers that prepares and longs for a new culture and a new man.”69 It was wrong to paralyze Expressionist work by comparing its “preparation for future generations” with perfected precedents, to rebuff its protagonists for departing from extant models, or to dismiss it presuming there is a right course and it had been discovered by Schönberg.70 To articulate his sense of Expressionism, Rukser turns to a comment by Wagner on Beethoven, asserting the employment of existing forms to dampen artistic expression is the province of the “aesthete,” the reinvigoration of extant form the accomplishment of genius.71 It is fundamental to Expressionism, Rukser thinks, that art is only ever conceived in the present. Art, he expounds, is neither reducible to paraphrase nor natural (humanity “can never express itself in a completely mechanical, purely compulsive way”). Neither motifs nor means are primary: “what matters most is not so much the language in which the artist speaks, but what he says with it,” Rukser declares. “Therefore, the goal to be pursued is not a formal, but a religiously-animated, expressionism; that is, […] the universally valid expression of our experience.”72

Early Designs for Metropolis-Architecture At the end of 1920, Rukser suggests his own time is transitional. Although he and Hilberseimer had identified the Beethoven-like range of “American Architecture,” the drafts of Metropolis-Architecture are distinctly preparatory. In their presentist search for the basso continuo giving substance and measure to the unfolding expressions of a future architecture, Hilberseimer and Rukser identify significant open questions of (city-)building. For example, they acknowledge major Taylorist BASSO CONTINUO

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disjunctions between the programmatic themes of the metropolis; the preconditions of tenement architecture are still in formation; iron and glass construction had not attained the “corporeality and firmness of an opaque stone wall” (echoing Hildebrand’s comparison of bronze and stone sculpture); the aesthetic potential of glass had yet to be realized; the metropolis is “hygienic-technical” rather than spiritually conceived; the capitalist city is most representative of contemporary conditions; and the idea of the metropolis-artwork is only a plan.73 Hilberseimer and Rukser do not offer definitive conceptions of the future city; grasping the unknown, they offer presentiments of and principles for its emergence. Although his work will often be misinterpreted as definitive proposition, Hilberseimer maintains this anarcho-experimental attitude throughout his career, as the title of his intellectual autobiography, Entfaltung einer Planungsidee (The Unfolding of a Planning Idea), with its implicit reference to growth, attests (Entfaltung can also mean “blooming” or “evolvement”).74 Hilberseimer’s designs for the city are non-prescriptive demonstrations of principle and potential— experimental sonatas employing the elemental means of contemporary environmental production. The effort by artists and critics in Hilberseimer’s orbit, such as Behne, Hausmann, and Richter, to give shape and momentum to this transitional sensibility will lead them to unforeseen developments of their work, new elemental principles, and new terms to describe their posture— nach-dadaistisch (post-dadaistic), Gestaltung (formation), Elementarismus (elementarism), and konstruktive (constructive) among others.75 Nevertheless, a forward-leaning “presentism,” a spiritual materialism, creatively and indifferently pivoting on an expansive yet lawfully condensed rationalization—a multivalent, equilibrating polarization—of existence is their constant bearing. Rukser’s defense of a particular conception of Expressionism in late 1920, congruent with present conditions, at once expansive and conducive, simultaneously synthesizing and developing a manifold of themes, revitalizing historic as well as conceiving new forms, is but one moment in this perpetual transition, evidently crafted for the audience of Melos. Nevertheless, his description of Beethoven’s sonatas as a manifold of polarized values (“a causal multiplicity of divisors”), constituted by both found and made elements, revitalized and created forms, well describes the early designs for metropolis-architecture Hilberseimer publishes eighteen months earlier (July 1919). These typological studies appear in the Darmstadt journal Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration under the title “Architektonische Entwürfe von Ludwig Hilbersiemer” (“Architectural Designs of Ludwig Hilberseimer”).76 Probably developed in parallel with the first draft of Metropolis-Architecture, these designs are the evident subject of an apparently unpublished commentary by Rukser.77 Labeled like specimens—“Design for a Theater,” “Design for a Train Station,” etc.—the drawings and their order of publication are carefully curated. The first, an exterior perspective of a theater, shows the building in an urban setting, fronting

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FIGURE 10.1  (Upper left) Ludwig Hilberseimer, Design for a Theater and Entry Passage from Max Wagenführ, “Architektonische Entwürfe von L. Hilberseimer,” Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration (July, 1919): 208. Karl Ludwig Hilberseimer Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archives, Art Institute of Chicago. FIGURE 10.2 (Upper right) Ludwig Hilberseimer, Design for a Country House, from Max Wagenführ, “Architektonische Entwürfe von L. Hilberseimer,” Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration (July, 1919): 209. Karl Ludwig Hilberseimer Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archives, Art Institute of Chicago. FIGURE 10.3  (Lower left) Ludwig Hilberseimer, Designs for a Country House and Embassy Residence with Outbuildings, from Max Wagenführ, “Architektonische Entwürfe von L. Hilberseimer,” Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration (July, 1919): 210. Karl Ludwig Hilberseimer Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archives, Art Institute of Chicago. FIGURE 10.4  (Lower right) Ludwig Hilberseimer, Design for an Urban Residence, from Max Wagenführ, “Architektonische Entwürfe von L. Hilberseimer,” Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration (July, 1919): 211. Karl Ludwig Hilberseimer Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archives, Art Institute of Chicago.

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FIGURE 10.5 (Left) Ludwig Hilberseimer, Designs for a Ballroom and Library, from Max Wagenführ, “Architektonische Entwürfe von L. Hilberseimer,” Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration (July, 1919): 212. Karl Ludwig Hilberseimer Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archives, Art Institute of Chicago. FIGURE 10.6 (Right) Ludwig Hilberseimer, Designs for a Dining Room and Living Room, from Max Wagenführ, “Architektonische Entwürfe von L. Hilberseimer,” Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration (July, 1919): 213. Karl Ludwig Hilberseimer Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archives, Art Institute of Chicago.

a wide street or square. It is flanked by equally cubic buildings that, similar in proportion, but slightly lower than the principal mass of the theater, share with the theater a baseline rhythm in their pattern of fenestration. Although the theater rises pyramidally as a concatenation of cubic volumes to mark what one imagines might be an urban or landscape axis, the asymmetric two-point perspective and the flanking buildings temper this sense of exceptionality. If this building is conceived to be one of the functional centers in the urban field Hilberseimer and Rukser describe in their second draft, it is, as they describe the Palace of Justice in Brussels, at once singular and indifferent from its context, though lacking topographical emphasis. The drawing of the entryway to the theater on the lower half of the same page, emphasizes the overriding tectonic logic of the interior. The proportions of the intercolumniations reiterate the larger exterior window and those of the entry hall the lower building block, albeit extended in depth to encourage forward movement. The drawing of the opera house is followed by a series of domestic designs: a “country house,” larger “stately country house,” “residential embassy,” “urban villa,” and four interior designs—a hall for entertaining, library, dining room, and living room. As would become his practice, Hilberseimer no doubt imagines these interiors applicable to any of the residential buildings. The second half of the

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FIGURE 10.7  Ludwig Hilberseimer, Designs for a Train Station, Market Hall, and City Hall, from Max Wagenführ, “Architektonische Entwürfe von L. Hilberseimer,” Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration (July, 1919): 214. Karl Ludwig Hilberseimer Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archives, Art Institute of Chicago.

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FIGURE 10.8  (Left) Ludwig Hilberseimer, Designs for a Department Store and Office Building, from Max Wagenführ, “Architektonische Entwürfe von L. Hilberseimer,” Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration (July, 1919): 215. Karl Ludwig Hilberseimer Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archives, Art Institute of Chicago. FIGURE 10.9  (Right) Ludwig Hilberseimer, Design for a Light Court, from Max Wagenführ, “Architektonische Entwürfe von L. Hilberseimer,” Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration (July, 1919): 216. Karl Ludwig Hilberseimer Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archives, Art Institute of Chicago.

presentation focuses on designs for the commercial city: a train station, market hall, city hall, department store, and office building, followed again by an interior design—a design for a light court that is, presumably, generally applicable. The order of drawings suggests the opera house might have been conceived for a suburb or small town. But the various non-residential designs all evidence similar geometric formation and surface patterning, suggesting Hilberseimer conceives the opera house as the Ur-type of his designs. It contains in nuce the geometric logic and structuring rhythms that give the ensemble coherence. “Clear, firm, hard, sure, the forms of the most similar and most different genera stand next to one another,” Rukser writes of Hilberseimer’s designs, “cylinder against cylinder, cube against cube, sphere against prism, triangle against quadrilateral, pyramid against cylinder; and yet everything restrained by the will toward unity.” Vital contrast with restraining unity is Rukser’s definition of the classical. Exclaiming “everything for him lies in proportion!” Rukser emphasizes Hilberseimer’s spatioplastic sculptural accomplishment. “[I]f the sense for mass, for proportions in general, constitutes the artist, then above all the building artist,” he asserts, “Because the formation [Gliederung] of the mass, of the corpus of the building in itself and of the relation of the parts to the whole […] is decisive and at the same time makes evident the correlation between the inner and outer

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arrangement of the building.” This self-contained formation and integration of elements are “resolved brilliantly, masterfully in the opera house!” Rukser declares. Moreover, Rukser argues “the great clarity and simplicity of Hilberseimer’s plans, [and] the visible accordance of external and internal space” in his designs, “has its root in the fundamental idea [Grundidee]” of “organic formation [Gestaltung].” More than a crystallization of values, Hilberseimer, under the influence of the “German Baroque,” goes beyond “mechanical addition to creative formation, from conglomeration to composition,” and thereby avoids “falling into the extreme, one-sided pursuit of but one relationship.” Though classically eurhythmic, Hilberseimer’s forms are animated with multivalent tensions. To achieve this multidimensional creative neutralization, Rukser points out, Hilberseimer “treats the building or building group as a plastic mass.” He takes into account the “surrounding space, its dynamic relationships, [and] illumination,” considering how the “architectural form attains its plastic sense as organization of light and dark.” Moreover, Rukser notes, Hilberseimer conceives the plastic masses of architecture as integral articulations of urban space. “Only the orientation of the building according to its surroundings allows the golden section of space division, the culmination of axes,” he writes.78 With remarkable concision of his own, then, Rukser argues Hilberseimer’s designs embody the principles he and Hilberseimer identify in MetropolisArchitecture, complete with references to Baroque animation and the implications this carried in light of his and Hilberseimer’s statements on Beethoven and Michelangelo and on Brinckmann’s reading of Schmarsow. The difference between “mechanical addition” and “creative formation,” between “conglomeration” and “composition,” is just that distinction between the crystalline and the organic identified by the latter. So too, Rukser’s description of Hilberseimer’s architecture as formations of massive geometric solids echoes Einstein’s defense of plastic art. The cylindrical forms of Hilberseimer’s train station overcome Hilberseimer and Rukser’s concern with the incorporeality of iron and glass construction. And there is also an echo of Friedlaender when Rukser points out that Hilberseimer’s architectural bodies division space. Like a sculptor, Rukser argues, the architect is concerned with both positive and negative space. Hilberseimer, he explains, integrates interior and exterior spaces by applying the same “law of measure, of rhythm” to each. Moreover, by connecting the functional centers of interior and exterior spaces, “these axes become the connections of the most important points of a city and the skeleton of the street layout.” In the context of the prosaic demands of the contemporary city, the spiritual conception of urban space did not omit the “practical” dimension of “orientation.”79 Rukser and Hilberseimer animate contemporary mechanics with Baroquelike—in Rukser’s terms “expressionistic”—aesthetics. In his defense of Expressionism, Rukser had presented the polar synthesis of life and art

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as a moment of historical necessity. But in his remarks on Hilberseimer’s architecture, Rukser suggests this synthesis is quintessentially architectural. “The conditions of architecture are quite essentially different from those of the other arts in that they contain a certain practical moment,” he explains. Stressing this utilitarian imperative does not alter “the general concept of the work of art,” Rukser suggests it ensures the architect remains grounded—the architect “is not only conditioned by the culture contemporary to him, but thoroughly dependent on it” and “cannot pass over the demands and needs of his time.” In “architecture the public and private economic governance of the time are more clearly recognized than in the other arts.”80 Architecture is the art most immediately connected to the matter of its time and the spirit of the present. Rukser places Hilberseimer among artists such as Wagner, Behrens, and Pölzig, who had eschewed the “technical zeal” and “academic hollowness” characteristic of the previous era, distinguishing his “unbiased objectivity” from one-sided engagements.81 As example, he offers Hilberseimer’s design for an “industrial” facility, surely his Test Pilot Teaching Facility, not among the designs published by Wagenführ. Rukser identifies the varying rhythmic measures and orientations of the larger and smaller building complexes and the tense bidirectional cohesion of the composition. “This work already shows that Hilberseimer has recognized the crucial significance of the dynamic for the unity of the work of art,” he writes.82 Similarly, in his reading of Hilberseimer’s commercial designs, Rukser emphasizes an evident tension between vertical and horizontal. He describes the “enormous tower” of the market hall as the presentiment of the European skyscraper and envisions it acting as a “point of direction and destination for street and air traffic.” Indeed, he presents this and Hilberseimer’s other public works like he might musical movements. He describes the tower of the market hall—reminiscent of Friedrich Weinbrenner’s (1766–1826) work in Hilberseimer’s native Karlsruhe and the Senatorial Palace on the Capitoline Hill in Rome—as “flown upward out of the restrained passion of the beautifully vaulted hall-wings,” the “rolling curves” of Hilberseimer’s central train station “far above the low reception buildings,” and “the cubes of the opera house towering up inside one another.” Hilberseimer’s department store, Rukser writes, “represents a far more concentrated, purely planar solution of the metric problem than that arrangement of columns preferred since Messel and Olbrich.” Rather than diatonic relief, Hilberseimer animates the chromatic surface. In the “austerity, clarity, and simplicity of form” he finds characteristic of Hilberseimer’s architecture, Rukser sees “the most urgent energy,” an idea explicable, we might observe, only by conceiving of the building as an organism that, because it is unadorned by slackening conventions, articulates itself in pure “graceful” gestures, or, as Rukser describes it, echoing Buffon, “untheatrical monumentality lacking any embellishment.”83

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Nationalism, Localism, Cosmism In the essay accompanying Hilberseimer’s designs, Wagenführ also stresses the inherent lawfulness of Hilberseimer’s architecture is organic rather than mechanical and also connects this sense of animation with the artistic immediacy of the work.84 In each of his building types, Wagenführ argues—resorting to academic concepts and bourgeois ideas of personality—Hilberseimer embodies a “pronounced character” and through his use of the “simplest effects” “makes this character all the more vivid and clear.” The various purposes, he writes, calling attention to the self-referential nature of Hilberseimer’s ensemble of forms, “are all distinguished by architectural means alone.”85 More strongly than Rukser, Wagenführ suggests Hilberseimer’s work constitutes an inflection point in German architecture. The “self-discipline, austerity, [and] simplicity” of Hilberseimer’s designs mark a revolutionary turn away from “insanity” toward “reason,” he posits. By the use of “primitive forms [Urformen]” and “artistic means of the simplest kind,” he praises, “The architect renounces all trivialities.”86 While it is only possible to see a style in retrospect, he notes, the fact that a style is “the condensation of the spirit of the time” and the “expression of a lawfulness” nevertheless allows the critic to “trace characteristic expressions” and to understand them in relationship to “that which lives fermenting and urgent within us.” Wagenführ presents Hilberseimer’s work as the dawn of a newly vital culture: Hilberseimer’s “terseness of expression is […] uncommonly beneficial today when we threaten to suffocate in a swell of rhetoric,” he writes, positing Hilberseimer’s architecture embodies an immediate relationship with the people: “‘Bread and circuses,’ art of the people, clarifies the architectural language of the great theater, everything opens up to the entrance, no portal, no ceremonial driveway is created, the people pour into it.” Wagenführ thus even suggests the directness of Hilberseimer’s work does not pander to but animates the masses. Hilberseimer’s style, “has a truly regenerating effect,” he concludes. “After the painful experiences of war, revolution—and peace,” he writes, “only from such beginnings, if the teachings and achievements are properly used, will a pure, high German art be able to blossom anew.”87 This last note jars, given Hilberseimer’s pronounced internationalist politics. For Wagenführ suggests Hilberseimer’s “austere” forms are “close to the German character [Wesensart].” Scheffler-like, Wagenführ presents Hilberseimer’s architecture as neither stale classicism nor fugacious Jugendstil.88 “Behind the rough exterior, a warm heart beats in the German’s chest,” he states, probably with the bourgeois German Baroque um 1800 in mind. “There is always something touching about a very plain simplicity, which, however, only takes hold of those who are capable of deep feeling themselves,” Wagenführ now sickens, “This art is made by a German for Germans and thus many will find their way to it.”89

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Rukser cites the “German Baroque” for different reasons, evoking Hilberseimer’s Beethovenesque polar range. When he describes Hilberseimer’s commercial designs as “essential expressions of contemporary architecture,” he contrasts them with the “idyllic” nature of his hip-roofed residential buildings.90 Certainly, Hilberseimer employs contrast for effect. But Rukser suggests this contrast also embodies cultural meaning, ranging from technology and accommodation of purpose to the profound historical continuities of dwelling. Residential building, he reasons, is “the oldest, therefore the longest worked-through genre of [architectural] form” with “only limited new possibilities.” With respect to “private dwellings,” he contends, “the general economic conduct” had changed little in the past century. As a consequence, Rukser focuses on the organization of Hilberseimer’s domestic designs. He praises the “extensive” and “unpretentious” country house, drawing attention to “the excellent order of rooms made possible by the long corridor” conceived as a gallery. He notes such a corridor is impossible in the spatially restricted urban villa, which Hilberseimer organizes around a central cylindrical hall. Projecting as a rotunda on the exterior, this hall provides clerestory illumination to a building turned as much inward as outward. In this way, Rukser emphasizes the distinctiveness of Hilberseimer’s domestic types. In Rukser’s account, Hilberseimer draws on architectural precedents, at once contemporary and historical, from the “American” to the “Baroque.” His typologies span from the monumental to the idyllic, conceived for sites ranging from the dynamic metropolis to the arcadian landscape. And he incorporates the most contemporary technologies and purposes as well as the historical traditions of building, uniting material and artistic concerns. Rukser presents Hilberseimer at the indifferent, equilibrating center of a broad spatial and temporal field. The architect is entitled to all available means, Rukser asserts, in a statement echoing those of his subject, but it is ultimately, he argues, “irrelevant where the artist has appropriated his details.”91 Rather, Rukser states, quoting Goethe, “the main thing is that one has a great will and possesses the skill and tenacity to carry it out.”92 Hilberseimer’s designs will soon lose this trace of historical contiguity. Nevertheless, it is indeed possible Hilberseimer had Scheffler’s call for a clear distinction between the patrician Wohnstadt and capitalist Arbeitstadt in mind in these designs. But he was no doubt creating with a broader and more integrated imagination of the future city. For example, Tessenow, to whom Hilberseimer had looked in his early residential designs, publishes Handwerk und Kleinstadt (Handcraft and Small-City, 1919) around the same time as Hilberseimer is completing these studies.93 Rather than the cultural, spatial, and temporal separation of commercial and domestic realms pursued by Scheffler, Tessenow advocates small urban communities based on local, small-scale production as a synthesis of modernity and tradition, industry and craft. Tradespeople, Tessenow argues, are neither intellectuals nor specialists; they embody both the physical and the intellectual, unite the hand and the mind. Not preoccupied with the

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FIGURE 10.10 Ludwig Hilberseimer, Pitched Roof Houses, Suburban Housing Project, perspective, c. 1920. Gift of George Danforth. The Art Institute of Chicago / Art Resource NY.

organization of production or the idiosyncratic artistry of the object, Tessenow suggests the tradesperson arbitrates design and fabrication, the creation and materialization of objects, ensuring a material culture that is “sober and generally usable.”94 Arguing tradespeople dampen the tendency of capital, science, art, and commerce to act in their own interest, Tessenow presents the small town as a center of value determination, a scale of association that could resist the overproduction of the metropolis and the exploitation of the village, governing the capitalist and the large landowner in the collective interest. Although he had no illusions the metropolis or the village would disappear, Tessenow argues the small town could give measure to the landscape, provide a model of sustainable productivity, integrate spiritual and material values, and direct creation for common well-being. Critically advocating the writings of Peter Kropotkin, whom Hilberseimer quotes in his later books, for their ideas about the “urban cultivation” of agriculture, Tessenow imagines the small town, integrated with the landscape, could neutralize the resentment and displacement caused by international capitalism.95 If selfsustaining in its industrial production, Tessenow supposes the small town would cultivate a vigorous, egalitarian, and urbane cultural life.96 In Hilberseimer and Rukser’s anarcho-socialist imagination, a community of mutual self-realization requires in essence no such prejudicial formation. While Scheffler privileges the exclusive poles (nationalism/internationalism) and Tessenow the inclusive center (localism) in this debate, Hilberseimer will indifferently extend his vision of settlement to encompass an emerging postnational, planetary humanity.

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11 HILBERSEIMER AND DADA

Montage and Metamechanics Hilberseimer and Rukser seek to transform the chaotic metropolis into a coherent sociophysical entity, giving the city and its architecture lawful integrity, animating its elements and interrelationships with a contemporary spirit, a collectively sensible idea. In this new artistic genre of metropolis-architecture, they assert, “Only those will be successful who have freed themselves from everything scholastic and established, who recognize and feel that here something entirely new is in the making, similar to today’s poetry, painting and sculpture.”1 In their embrace of the means of contemporary (urban) production and the dynamic sense of metropolitan experience and their rejection of extant European values, Hilberseimer and Rukser’s equation of metropolis-architecture with new forms of art has an evident relationship to the ambitions of their self-proclaimed Dadaist associates.2 Their rejection of the relevance of architecture traditionally conceived to the dense and dynamic conditions of the metropolis has obvious parallels with the Dadaist rejection of traditional artistic genres. Even as Berlin Dadaists are scathingly critical of metropolitan experience, they employ the technologies of mechanical reproduction constitutive of that experience—such as the photoillustrated press, advertising, and film—as the mediums of their work.3 Of course, Hilberseimer and Rukser are by no means the first to consider and embrace new building materials and means of construction and the Dadaist embrace of the idea that “art might be assembled from the stuff of modern life” does not make Hilberseimer and Rukser Dadaist.4 Not the employment of contemporary technics as the readymade means of a new art, but the attitude toward contemporary life is decisive. Even as they address its brutality, Berlin Dadaists accept the metropolis as the given condition of existence.5 Subject to the saturated atmosphere and sensorial-physical impacts of contemporary existence—exposed to the instruments of modern warfare, the vehicles of chauvinist and capitalist propaganda, and the machinery of capitalist reproduction—the Berlin Dadaists

seek means to grasp contingent experience, reestablish objective perception, recalibrate sense to the expanding plethora, and realize an indifferent position from which to advance comprehension.6 Early Dada in Zurich and Berlin condenses the chaos of contemporary life into the form of the cabaret performance, intensifying the disjunctions and absurdity of metropolitan existence through ironic, exaggerating, nonsensical performance.7 Artistic practice is reconceived as diagnostic device.8 But the Berlin Dadaists— Richard Hülsenbeck (1892–1974), John Heartfield (1891–1968), George Grosz (1893–1959), Johannes Baader (1875–1955), Hausmann, Höch, Wieland Herzfelde (1896–1988), and Rudolf Schlichter (1890–1955) among others—extend and transform this effort within the dynamic metropolitan context of Berlin. With an acute sense of the problematics of realizing a new culture, they conceive their work as “negative affirmation” hastening the end of the prevailing cultural regime. In the drawings of Grosz or the montages of Höch and Hausmann, depicting the decadent simultaneity of the metropolis, the Berlin Dadaists lay bare the senseless hypocrisy and chaos of contemporary experience.9 “If, after this shock [of war], art should still be possible at all,” Hanne Bergius, the leading historian of Berlin Dada, summates, “then it would have to free itself from tradition, from belief in progress, from metaphysics and ideals, and only follow the imperative to have nothing.” To overcome the prevailing structures of Wilhelmine society, the Berlin Dadaists had to depreciate its worldview. From a bourgeois perspective, the devaluation of progress and idealism nullifies the means by which revaluation takes place. In light of Friedlaender’s philosophy, however, the artistic strategies of the Berlin Dadaists take on a sense of rational indifference. “Not to deny nor abolish contradictions, rather to expose them and let them collide in a creative balancing act—that was the new life-like quality of Dada’s artistry,” Bergius argues, referring to the inconsistency of the Dadaist means of representation, “The forms of production and movement of life itself—their principles of polarity—determined, with procedural inconsistency, the new artistic, dadaistic procedures.” Describing the “tension of polarities” in Berlin Dada—“the irreconcilable opposition of generations, […] the collision of nature and artefact, human and machine, uniqueness and reproducibility, […] new tensions between life and death, movement and rigidity”—Bergius, quoting Friedlaender, suggests Dada is understandable as “a ‘zero point of world differences’ and at the same time ‘creator of all difference.’”10 Moreover, Bergius argues Berlin Dadaists sought to make “the attractions and repulsions of polarities” “recognizable” in their works. She presents Höch’s Schnitt mit dem Küchenmesser Dada durch die letzte Weimarer Bierbauch-Kulturepoche Deutschlands (Cut with the Dada Kitchen-Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly-Cultural Epoch of Germany, 1919), which guts bourgeois culture, as exemplary of one pole of Dadaist practice: montage. Beginning in late 1919, however, in work by Grosz, Hausmann, Schlichter, and others, many Berlin Dadaists turn, though not exclusively, from montage to “metamechanical constructions.”11 As her primary exemplum of

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FIGURE 11.1  Hannah Höch, Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany, 1919. Collage, 114 × 90 cm. NG 57/61. bpk Bildagentur, Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen, Berlin, Germany. / Photo: Jörg P. Anders. / Art Resource, NY. © 2022 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.

metamechanics, Bergius focuses on Schlichter’s Dada Dachatelier (c. 1920), but cites, as early examples, works such as George Grosz’s Ohne Title (Without Title) and Berlin C (both 1920), which, Hays points out, have an obvious resonance with Hilberseimer’s architectural conceptions at this time.12 Bergius suggests these “opposing procedures of formation,” which “emerged from processual

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FIGURE 11.2  George Grosz, Jacobstrasse, 1920. Watercolor on paper. Inv. 13484. bpk Bildagentur, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich, Germany / Art Resource, NY. © 2022 Estate of George Grosz / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.

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contradictions, […] were able, as common principles characterizing the group, to integrate the different concerns of the Dada-personalities and to create new possibilities of production.”13 Conceived as a constellation of independent orbits, Berlin Dada is held together by the bipolar gravitational force of two objective practices, each a mass of techniques: analytical montages emphasizing the Dionysian incoherence of the metropolis; synthetic metamechanical constructions asserting Apollonian unity within these conditions.14 In the montages—Bergius uses the term to include “collage, photomontage, the so-called Dadaistic ‘Klebebild’ [adhesive picture], assemblage, Dada ‘sculpture’” as well as installations, poetry, and typography—“creative subjectivity was dissolved into a multispectral and multivalent multiplicity, which surrendered itself to things,” Bergius accounts, “just as, at the same time, it was able to distance them again by the force of ‘creative indifference’ (Friedlaender): the procedures developed in a sense-enhancing and analytical, reality-critical and fictional way.” Höch’s Schnitt is a material record of the metropolis and a reordering of its elements according to a polar logic. Rather than escape into the sanctuary of nature, characteristic of Expressionism, Berlin Dadaists critically engage the metropolis “as dynamic second nature,” objectifying its physicality, psychology, and sociology like a natural scientist.15 Emphatic acts of artistic production call attention to the formalization of those observations; montage deconstructs the image as “symbolic form” even as it entails a “new concentration on image production.” “In the metamechanical constructions,” Bergius theorizes: [T]he Dadaist transformed themselves into an abstractly working, deindividualized, collectively-acting “engineer”, who, with the objectivity of the technologized world of work and its lawful mechanized precision, simulated an analogous means of production in the picture. The works were born of purifying processes of reduction and abstraction, the design of which was borrowed from plans and construction drawings. All false sentiment should give way to the ‘control of line and form’ (Grosz). In complete opposition to the open form and material abundance of the montages, the uniformly typifying concept aimed for the hermetic design of a resulting image.16 This metamechanical position, with its salient architectonics, closed structure, and emphasis on the exactitude and saliency of line and form, obviously accords with Hilberseimer and Rukser’s lawful projections for the “metropolis-artwork.”17 Bergius, however, suggests many Dadaist works in 1919–20 exhibit characteristics of both poles and there is a sense in which Metropolis-Architecture can be understood as montage too.18 There is an evident relationship between Dadaist montage and architectural photomontage, most obviously Mies’s experiments in representation.19 But just as montage-like practices take particular forms in literature, music, performance,

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and the visual arts, architectural montage is conditioned by the nature of architecture—by the use and conception of representational mediums within the processes of and critical reflection on design. In Hilberseimer’s theoretical and artistic production, montage is also at work, if by montage we mean, as Bergius does, the polar dissection of the metropolis guided by Friedlaender’s idea of creative indifference. Hilberseimer and Rukser’s polar analysis of—their theoretical cut through—the architecture of the metropolis draws the manifold of architectural phenomena into a single textual-photographic plane, exposing the contradictions between extant architectural practice and the conditions of contemporary existence, even as it synthesizes contemporary forms of building as variations within a set of polar equivalencies. Metropolis-Architecture is at once the product of the observing naturalist and the representing artist, the calculating engineer and the visionary constructor. Hilberseimer’s analysis and design obtains its value in the tension between simultaneity and dynamism, the Dionysian and Apollonian, the mechanical and the animate, theory and practice, representation and construction.20 Hilberseimer and Rukser reconstruct architecture, as Dada does art, by undermining traditional supports and conventions, exposing them as normative assumptions, identifying the construction of the medium itself as an artistic practice. When Hilberseimer and Rukser argue the metropolis is not just a large city but a novel condition, they reject the traditional conception and production of buildings, placing the technical supports and conventions of architecture within the realm of creation. The question of architectural design becomes a cultural rather than methodological problem. There is “no longer any absolute aesthetic lawfulness”; as existence transforms, the laws of (human) nature also need to transform.21 In a vital culture, the Dionysian fecundity of life is constantly given measure by new Apollonian creations. This commitment to flux is problematic for the building and city-building-arts. Dada provocations bring the street into the salon and art into the street; architecture constitutes the street and the salon. With Dada irony, the constructedness of representation remains conscious, lest the Dadaist court the bourgeois reification it rejects. Architecture is by nature objectification. The relative ephemerality of the non-building-arts allows a Dionysian vitality architecture does not. Relative to other artistic creations, architectural works take a long time to produce and affect everyday life for long periods of time. Indexing their analysis to historical materialism, Hilberseimer and Rukser invest the present with the duration sufficient to give city-building temporal leverage.22 Immersed in a volatile culture, Hilberseimer embraces the critical word and the experimental project as transitory forms of architecture, but can only do so with the sense his observations (montage) and designs (metamechanics) anticipate a culture to come. If there is distance between Hilberseimer and Dada, it is the temporality, science, and collectivity city-building requires, the spiritual

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commitment, constructive knowledge, and social cohesion (the metaphysicalmechanics) requisite for (cultural) construction. For with these limitations a “ratio of tension” arises between conceptualization and materialization.23 Nevertheless, Hilberseimer is absolutely committed to the spiritual-creative act— the “presentism”—that decisively reconceives the metropolis and its conditions in an instant.

Magical Realism, Sobriety, and Corporeal Vision In his novels of the early 1920s, Der Schöpfer (The Creator, 1920) and Graue Magie (Grey Magic, 1922), Mynona (Friedlaender) imagines the immediate correspondence between conceptualization and materialization.24 The ultimate promise of Friedlaender’s “creative indifference” is our capacity to transform the world at will. The novels are motivated by Friedlaender’s conversion to the ideas of his long-standing mentor, the neo-Kantian philosopher Ernst Marcus (1856–1928). After reading Marcus’s drafts of Das Problem der exzentrische Empfindung (The Problem of Eccentric Sensation, 1918) in 1916, Friedlaender helps him secure a publisher (Walden’s Verlag der Sturm), then writes and lectures (at Walden’s Der Sturm gallery) on Marcus’s ideas in 1918 as Creative Indifference is appearing in print.25 Marcus believed his theory of eccentric sensation provided a more solid foundation for Friedlaender’s Creative Indifference, which exceeded Kant’s epistemological limits. Following Marcus’s Theorie einer natürlichen Magie gegründet auf Kants Weltlehre (Theory of Natural Magic Based on Kant’s WorldDoctrine, 1924), which he reads in draft form in 1920, Friedlaender resituates Creative Indifference (1926) on the foundation of Kantian rather than Nietzschean philosophy, replacing references to Dionysian praxis with Kant’s idea of practical reason and equating creative indifference with autonomy.26 Transforming Kant’s philosophy “into a dynamic form analogous to the method of the natural sciences,” Marcus argues “eccentric sensation” is “the singular problem of the universal character of the new time.” Although he focuses on the “relation of optical phenomena to the corporeal world,” he envisions his thesis encompassing all sensory experience.27 Acknowledging vision is a subjective construction distinct from plastic existence, Marcus discards the notion subjective understanding is merely a consequence of intellectual reflection. Using the theory of the (a priori) ether developed in Kant’s incomplete Opus Postumum, Marcus rejects models of vision in which light penetrates the eye.28 He argues the sensation of light is the product of a natural sense triggered without such stimulus.29 Bodies are properties of an indifferent ether (like standing waves) connected with each other by ethereal vibrations.30 The “lightless movement” of bodies, which causes

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“the undulation of the ether,” stimulates the optic nerve leading “the brain” to create a sensation of light.31 Marcus argues apparent errors of vision are born not in the reception of but the effort to conceptually confirm sensation by focusing our attention upon particular objects at certain distances.32 While the optic nerve concords with the manifold of concentric undulations emanating through the ether from the vibrating bodies of the universe, the “synthetic intention of the desire for knowledge,” uses the “optical imagination” to stabilize conceptual impressions.33 For example, we “involuntarily interpret” perspectival drawings as the representation of “empirically known bodies.”34 But, Marcus argues, “natural vision of depth precedes the concept”; perspective is a symbolic convention tertiary to an idea formed on the basis of natural understanding.35 As a subjective product, visual sensations are singular, but triggered by the same objective condition: “if different individuals have an equal optical perception (for example, of a building), the optical building-formations they see are at best equal to one another, but not identical,” Marcus explains, “The similarity of these sensation-formations (of the building) is perfectly explained by the fact that just the same cause (the body of the building) induced in different individuals the same or similar optical formations of sensation.”36 But we do not perceive visual sensation as our creation; we project this sensation into the world. This sense in which our body extends into the depths of the cosmos Marcus calls “eccentric sensation.”37 In Theory of Natural Magic Marcus considers our capacity to overcome the concepts that conceal direct experience of the cosmos. He describes “natural magic” as a gradual expansion of comprehension through continual return to a primitive point of unprejudiced engagement—overcoming all “tension”— with the material world. Marcus compares this practiced capacity for “a wide awake, powerfully interested, powerfully receptive sobriety”—neither Dionysian intoxication nor Apollonian rationality, to our practiced capacity for awakening, for moving from dream-like imagination to conscious engagement.38 To be able to reanimate oneself at will is to (eternally) overcome the (mortal) fate in which concepts become conventional. “[W]hat precisely matters is to direct our attention to the degree and the completeness of our animation and as far as possible to work toward animation,” Marcus argues, “self-revitalization concerns an act of transforming and perfecting the organism of the body, a continuation of the original organizing power of the imagination, by which original material deficiencies in organization are subsequently removed.”39 The origin of this animated indifference is the singular spiritual control we develop over our own material being (e.g., the ability to move a limb, think, and remember). Marcus differentiates this immaterial unity from the mechanics of biology, calling it an “organism” and describing it as a “supernatural” power inexplicable to science.40 “Natural magic” is the cultivation of this legislative will; through our faculties of eccentric sensation and their technological extension we

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eccentrically effect the world beyond our corpus.41 Marcus understands his theory of natural magic as the ultimate conclusion of Kant’s epistemology: a practical or “dynamic” reason; the intellectual, aesthetic, and ethical development of an “expression of force.”42 Although organic sovereignty is metaphysical, its exercise is mechanical. Athletic and artistic performance, however graceful, is the practiced, imaginative control of mechanical acts. Although we are taken by its apparent immediacy, we should not credit such action solely to feeling. Made abstractly explicit, the “miraculous power” of reason inherent to organic action falsely appears detached from life.43 “We are active and not merely passive. Marionettes of skill,” Marcus writes. The will, working by practiced reason, motivates the material world.44 We animate existence by reorganizing understanding in a process continuous with action.45 By “constant organic thinking” we create a “magical reality” affecting nature by our “supernatural” will in harmony with natural law.46 With acute awareness of our sovereignty and “causal force,” we discipline our physical and mental reception. In the sober mood of utmost wakefulness, “The whole horizon of experience remains intact; only emotion disappears, so that we are not hindered in the judgment of experience.”47 This is not Kantian disinterest, but a Goethean calibration of interest: the capacity to concentrate attention such that one refuses the inadvertent formation of concepts in response to physical stimuli and imaginative speculation. Marcus’s ideal state of sobriety is nothing but conscious life itself.48 Marcus’s ideas reinvigorate Friedlaender’s claim that through the rational cultivation of indifference we exercise our immediate access to the objective world and our capacity to transform it.49 He converts the “didactic edifice” of Kant’s philosophy into a force of “world-building, whose center is the spirit of humanity, the intellect.”50 Kant’s philosophy becomes “concrete-dynamic,” constructive.51 Moreover, the idea of eccentric sensation suggests the physical world, indifferently perceived, is a medium of intersubjective communication.52 In his satirical short-story, “Goethe spricht in den Phonographen” (“Goethe Speaks in the Phonograph,” 1916), Friedlaender, conceiving “the ether as a recording medium,” imagines technology that discerns the distant echoes of Goethe’s voice still faintly reverberating through the universe.53 An art based upon Marcus’s natural vision eschews perspectival conventions, relying upon innate “mathematical-mechanical” perception of the elemental plastic relationships of objects, those aspects of form Hilberseimer and Rukser sought to make salient.54 Although they do not mention Marcus (but certainly knew him), Marcus’s description of the ether as a “fixed mass” is congruent with Hilberseimer and Rukser’s conception of architecture and urbanism as sculpted space.55 In Marcus’s thesis physical sensation provides “optical orientation,” consistent with Schmarsow’s empathetic emphasis on our corporeal understanding of space.56 The cubic architecture of the metropolis, identified by Sitte, and made salient by Hilberseimer and Rukser, is at once mathematical-mechanical and

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indifferent, a non-conventional, yet—according to both Einstein’s and Marcus’s theories—immediately understood language (mystical in Goethe’s terminology), the lapidary consistency of which permits and fosters expressive architectural nuances that would otherwise need to be kinesthetically built-up contingently and independently.57 Amassing pronounced collective value, the regularity of this urban structure encourages the animation of the individual architectural body. With the immediacy of corporeal vision, mechanism becomes organism, physics metaphysics, and metropolis-architecture the constitution of a new urban culture—the unity in diversity of mutually affirming singularities.

The Creator and Grey Magic In The Creator, Friedlaender celebrates the natural, magical power of animation.58 Cultivation of the ability to be awake and dream at the same time, the rational power to objectively exercise the imagination, overcomes the automatism of the natural impulses and the learned formalizations of convention.59 In the narrative arc of the novel, in which this power is developed by an experimental metaphysician, understood as a meta-scientific “engineer,” there is ultimately no distinction between the observations of the scientist and the imaginings of the poet.60 The most animate creations are the most objective: “The more ingenious a poet, the more independent of his capriciousness his creatures move.”61 Creation is not creation of matter, but of the capacity to transform matter.62 The consummation of imagination as objectivity is the indifferent point at which science and art meet harmoniously in the (re)construction of reality. “Objective automatism is the function of subjective activity,” the narrator states, implying an anarcho-socialist Constructivism, “If the subject rises—the world perfects itself automatically.”63 Grey Magic draws out the tension of The Creator between a reality-denying idealism and a vulgar materialist will. In Creative Indifference, this polarity is conceived, after Schopenhauer, as a world-historical discord between Eastern mysticism and Western mundanity, symbolized by the geographic poles of India and America. In Grey Magic the concomitant tension (white and black) between art and science, ethics and capitalism, humanity and technology, harmony and domination, is brought to crescendo in the rapidly transforming metropolis of Berlin.64 The antithetical protagonists of the novel, a roman à clef Friedlaender dedicates to Marcus, are the “experimental metaphysicist” “Dr. Ernest Sucram” (Ernst Marcus) and “Morvitius” (“mors + vita = Totleben” [living-dead]), an American film magnate, described as an automaton with a Winckelmannian torso.65 Friedlaender’s narrative is charged by the tension between the two men, symbolized by their mutual affection for a young woman (“Agnes”) and the capitalist’s effort to mechanically, and the ethicist-scientist’s effort to spiritually, transform reality.66 The inability of Sucram to immediately realize his conceptions

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by reason (white magic)—the manifestation of this capacity constitutes the conclusion of the novel (and capitalism)—is augmented by the instrumental material support (black magic) of Morvitius, who profits from Sucram’s insight.67 Friedlaender’s book overflows with the fantastic “organo-technology [Organotechnik]” of this collaboration: telepathic typewriters, artificial eyes, ether cameras, gravity nullifiers, holographic projectors, personal flying machines, kinetic buildings, invisibility cloaks, subterranean vehicles, teleportation devices, wireless technologies, artificial illumination, and regional climate control.68 Central to the novel is the Americanization of Berlin, presented as the impact of film on the metropolis. Film is transforming reality into a simulacrum and capital is gaining the omnipotent control of an auteur. “Soon you will no longer be able to distinguish film from life,” Morvitius states, “We will make vivid film-characters of people that we kill and animate at will.”69 Morvitius hopes “to increase limited physical power into the magical transcendent.” But Morvitius, lacking self-control, inevitably falls “into the fantastically abstruse.”70 Without the “soberest critique,” the will untethers imagination from reality.71 But through “rule of reason,” with indifference, everyone can develop their own “harmony” and become “an original composer,” Sucram argues, the “magic of reason […] will make its machine from nature itself.”72 Hilberseimer appears in Grey Magic as “the acerbic art critic Hilberle,” circulating in the “bohemian” “petit-bourgeois” circle of “Dr. Orest Amsel” (Ruest), editor of “Der Insler” (Der Einzige), brother-in-law of “Agnes,” a circle which also includes the “reasonably well-known humorist Friedrich Salomon” (Friedlaender), “the painter-philosopher Settegal” (Arthur Segal) and numerous writers, musicians, and artists.73 Friedlaender bases the group on the monthly salon hosted (from 1920) by Segal and his wife Ernestine (née Charas, 1879–1967, secretary of the New Secession in Berlin and later member of the November Group) which included Friedlaender and Hilberseimer among its regular attendees, as well as Hausmann, Höch (who spoke of the group as the “Mynona-Segal” circle), Grosz, Schwitters, Behne, Walden, Kandinsky, Mies, Richter, Viking Eggeling (1880–1925), Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931), and László Péri (1889–1967).74 Friedlaender titled a preprinted selection from Grey Magic, published in Der Sturm in December 1922, “Jour bei Settegal.” As Friedlaender describes the gatherings in Grey Magic, Segal would present his paintings and guests would make speeches amidst music, dancing, flirtation, and discussion. Friedlaender suggests Frau Segal conceived the evenings like her husband his paintings: assemblies of the most diverse elements given equal value.75 Grey Magic concludes in a festival, pitched as an event of global significance, attended by the Berlin elite. It takes place on an expressionist-styled sphere hovering like a satellite above the working-class suburb of Wedding to which the invited are miraculously conveyed. “According to unwritten laws, the architecture built itself ” to Sucram’s vision.76 Sucram uses the festival to demonstrate and

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celebrate “the emancipation of reason from all material devices.”77 He asserts the star is beyond polar thinking, the manifestation of pure reason.78 The festival culminates with the trinity of Morvitius, Sucram, and Agnes merging into a single body and the earth straightening on its axis.79 In the epilogue, however, we are told this magical world-justification remains only memory, like a collective dream, a film.80 “Nevertheless, in the meantime,” it reads, “the point in time approaches when the destiny of humanity must be decided: the earth will become too small for hostility!”81 The global sovereignty of reason and, by extension, peace seems fanciful now, but will become, given earthly finitude, an existential necessity.

The Metropolis as Film In the lead up to the concluding event of Grey Magic, Mynona has Hilberle wonder why Sucram would not put his talents to better use: “Me go!” The art critic Hilberle shook his ornery head, “Magic?!—He [Morvitius] is a commonplace machine-technician, a financial barbarian, who pumps science. Even Sucram is less magician than doctor. And at the feast he will get the title of Professor from the President, and Morvitius an honorary doctorate. I know that from the State Art Journal. Perhaps that is the occultic sense that is to be manifested there? I don’t understand how anyone can expect more than bluff from this celebration. Sucram could achieve more clever things, but Morvitius has put him in his wallet.”82 Mynona presents the well-informed Hilberseimer pragmatically endorsing beneficent reason but rejecting the fanciful rhetorical projections of physics, metaphysics, capital, and state. Friedlaender’s characterization and narrative themes accord with Hilberseimer’s essay “Filmmöglichkeit” (“Possibilities of Film,” 1922), published in the same year as Grey Magic. “Technical invention only achieves resounding success if a definite need for it is at hand,” Hilberseimer asserts.83 In the drafts of Metropolis-Architecture, Hilberseimer and Rukser argue architects take up new materials, such as ferroconcrete, iron, and glass, to further new conceptions of life. “Changed conditions, different manners of use, new needs and aspirations in technical and spatial matters,” they explain, “have led to the innovative use of material, corresponding to the metropolitan formal types.”84 Without iron and ferroconcrete “skeletal buildings reduced to only pillars would be technically impossible,” they acknowledge.85 But the availability of iron and glass construction did not lead to this development, they stress, rejecting the erroneous determinism of an “iron style.”86 For example, the new department stores were

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not the consequence of “an immediate influence of material and technique on the design of form.”87 Their designers already held the concept of wall-free commercial buildings. Material-technological determinism discounts the creative cultural essence of architecture. The notion culture directs the application of technology is the theme of Hilberseimer’s essay on film. “Both [photography and film],” he argues, “completely satisfy the need of modern people for the radical visualization of reality, of life.” “The aspiration of painting, since the Renaissance, to become the mistress of reality, film realized in unimagined ways,” Hilberseimer asserts, “seen from the point of view of the Renaissance it appears like a miracle.” However, film had only been “superficially” employed. Understood as merely a “technical matter,” “a means of reproduction,” not yet considered for its “artistic possibilities,” film had been limited to the “most pernicious ‘Romanticism,’ as means of reproducing a world of mockups.” This popular theatrical application of film had led to the fabrication of the metropolis as a film set, to “the decorative kitsch of Kurfürstendamm and the grotesque monumentality of Wilhelmine budlings.” Rather than developing film to enhance life, the metropolis had been reconceived for filmic reproduction. “Film has created such a comprehensive culture of mockups, […] that Berlin students learn about Egyptian art in the city of mockups,” Hilberseimer reviles, “In their pompousness, these feature films entirely correspond to the mendacious pathos of our period. With mockups one builds monuments of all styles; on order immediately available.”88 Echoing his earlier comments on historicism and naturalism, Hilberseimer is particularly critical of “so-called exotic films,” which, rather than “communicating the life and specific character” of distinct cultures, portray non-Europeans as “barbarians,” betraying the “devastating ignorance which only Europeans are capable.” “These films are based on completely false assumptions”; he scolds, “they have absolutely no regard for actual relationships, customs, and practices; they unfortunately owe their production to a mindless desire for sensation.” This was also true of most historical films, which fail in “educational effect.” Film had been used to entrench rather than lay bare ideology. Even as “film offers the possibility to have an effect on a broad mass,” Hilberseimer rails, it had only been employed “for the realization of spiritual intentions […] in the sense of authoritarianism.”89 Instead of “exploring the possibilities of film and thus searching for a basis of formation,” film had been used to reproduce given literary and theatrical forms. Hilberseimer advocates film true to its “own spirit.” “The possibilities of action […] in film are fundamentally different from those on the stage,” Hilberseimer points out, “While the stage actor rules over language and gesture as the material of design, the film actor has a much richer scale of possibilities,” which it is possible to foresee if not yet specify.90 “The possibilities of effect of any art must emerge from its material. With the least external effort it must produce the strongest inner movement,” he explains, “Film has hitherto ignored its particular lawfulness.”91

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Looking for animating potential in the “fundamental elements” of the medium, Hilberseimer asks, “When have the possibilities of movement by exaggerated fast or slow cranking, distortion of scale change, shortening and stretching, been used as elements of design? Or even once the possible effects of the reverse course (reverse cranking) of an event been employed?” In certain few films, Hilberseimer points out, “Events are heightened into paradox by the rapidity of their sequence, sometimes achieving a grandiose unreality leading us into another world.”92 Above all, Hilberseimer praises the work of Charlie Chaplin (1889–1997): [T]he only one who has hitherto understood how to consciously use the possibilities of film, above all the mechanical. He therefore seems incredibly fantastic. His comedy is completely self-referential: neither spiritual nor unspiritual and totally unliterary, complete gesture in itself. He typifies the grotesquerie of daily life. With the reduction of action to a minimum, he achieves a maximum of effect. […] Here is something new, absolute. Through his imaginative design, Chaplin was the first to elevate film into the sphere of art.93 Chaplin takes on the mechanical gestures and indifferent appearance of the metropolitan masses, animating the proletarian puppets of capital with a hithertounknown humanity. Concentrating his own gestures and those of the medium into their most fundamental, salient, and dynamic elements, Chaplin circumvents theatricality and gives life to film as a new medium of art. An appreciation of Chaplin’s grotesquerie, at once critical and transformative, Hilberseimer explains, “requires an organ that, especially among the learned, is most undeveloped.”94 Through profound indifference, Chaplin extends our aesthetic capacities. Hilberseimer explicitly endorses: the use of film’s naturalistic powers to analytically penetrate reality (montage); and explorations of the material nature of film that, synthetically grasping its fundamental elements, develop its creative power to magically transform reality (metamechanics). In film, as in the metropolis, Hilberseimer rejects the idealism that preconceives a world of gestures (further entrenching extant ideas), in favor of a materialism that, focusing on inherent mechanisms, objectively reconstructs the spirit, newly animating existence. In a short essay on film in G in 1925, Hilberseimer asserts the political value of such capacities, “understood not from any limited party standpoint, but the means for realizing ethical intentions.”95

The Grotesque Hilberseimer’s uses the term “grotesque” to describe Wilhelmine architecture and the life of the metropolis. Friedlaender describes Mynona’s satire as “grotesques.”96 Published in journals such as Der Sturm and Die Aktion and performed at Der neue

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Club and Dada events—by himself and numerous others—Mynona’s humorous works were probably better known than Friedlaender’s philosophical tracts.97 The Creator and Grey Magic were extended texts of this kind, the latter incorporating ideas from shorter pieces. In a 1919 reflection on his alter ego—which Hilberseimer kept as a typescript copy in his files—Friedlaender suggests grotesquerie appears against a background of reified norms revealing a gap between absolute and conventional truths.98 Exaggerating reality, the “grotesque humorist” reminds us—often shockingly—of the theology underwriting conventional understanding, of the constructedness of our representations and manifestations, exposing the true organ of reality, the divine spirit we harbor within ourselves. Friedlaender wants us to laugh in the face of such revelation, for “the grotesque is the touchstone that reveals how near or how far one still is from the real with his soul.”99 As a barometer of indifference, the grotesque is most effective when there is a readily appreciable discrepancy between our beliefs and our social forms. Demonstrating the importance of his early art theory, Hilberseimer returns to the Der Einzige essays in 1922, reordering and expanding their contents into a single, lengthy text with the title of the first: “Creation and Development.”100 In coming to its conclusion, the revision contrasts the “grotesque masking” of American commercial architecture and the “nakedness” and “new monumentality” of industrial construction. In the “elementary expression […,] exact determination, and artistic naivety” of “anonymous utilitarian buildings, silos, and factories,” Hilberseimer asserts “the pathos of sobriety has become form.” “Yet,” Hilberseimer continues: [T]here is no fulfilment [in industrial construction]. We live with inconclusive horizons. Expectant. Dreaming of hopes whose fulfilment we long for. We are still a long way from the ‘creative indifference’ (S. Friedlaender) that governs life by equilibrating all phenomena. Polarized differentiating. Chaos surrounds us. Unformed. Indeed, urging to form. A new world is in the making [im werden]. Even if one sneeringly looks down upon the still-awkward self-expression of the creative. Civilization and progress have changed the scale. Discretizing the real into the distorted-grotesque.101 Hilberseimer’s observations of the metropolis are an attempt to scrape off the ideological cataracts clouding the vision of his contemporaries. But they are also an attempt to conceive a new reality. In the 1922 revision, Hilberseimer references Hausmann’s essay, “Die neue Kunst” (“The New Art,” published in May 1921) with the assertion “Times of decay, of stagnation, are at the same time epochs of revitalization, of becoming. One shatters the old without already being able to form the new. Floats, so to speak, between two worlds. In such times, the creative force easily tends to the grotesque, even satire.”102 Hausmann, who had

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also written for Der Einzige in 1919 and was influenced by Friedlaender’s and Marcus’s ideas, asserts the grotesque appears in times of transition: “In the state of floating between two worlds, whenever we have broken with the old and yet cannot form the new, satire, the grotesque, […] emerge; and it is the profound sense of these forms of expression […] to allow us to divine and feel another life.” Hausmann saw the grotesque “mechanization of life” in “the caricature, the clown, and the puppet,” Hilberseimer in the masks of commercial architecture and the corpses of utilitarian buildings.103 Reality had fragmented into a masquerade of conventional beauties and spiritless industrial repetition. In concluding the revision, Hilberseimer returns to his Goethean and Nietzschean theory of art, presenting the present as a bivalent moment of eternal return: The past teaches that every creative age follows one of slackening, dissolution and disintegration: from an eternal contrast. From creative force comes dissolving, disintegrating. It is always the same force at work, which cannot be lost. Only its effect is different. An apparent end is only the beginning of a new becoming. An eternal polarization of the same energy. So to speak, eternal inhalation and exhalation of God. The metaphors of polarization and divine respiration appear in Friedlaender’s philosophy, as does the reference to cosmic symbolism in the final paragraph of Hilberseimer’s text: We stand at the beginning of such becoming, about the effect of which nothing can be said. For the traditionally-oriented, of course, it only appears as negation. But it is much more positive. The well-tried past is a most convenient escape, not salvation. One must have overcome their time in order to be able to begin anew. Humanity, by the force of its spirit, stands between the divine and the mundane. Mediator between the two is the work of the creative. Symbolically forming a new language, the knowledge of our cosmic essence.104 Explicitly rejecting the accusation of nihilism as bourgeois, Hilberseimer is committed to Friedlaender’s idea that human creativity, embodying the power of divine nature, animates the mundane. Such is the role of art. Soberly facing the grotesque products of “civilization and progress” enacts the “creative indifference” Hilberseimer identifies as the ethical lever of a “new world.”105 Hilberseimer invests the spiritless academicism and materialism of modern civilization with metaphysical—which is to say, artistic and cultural— significance. Contemporary European civilization lacks creative insight and integrity. The clearest evidence of this lack is the grotesque confusion of the metropolis. Hilberseimer did not see urban reanimation as the end, but the corollary of cultural work.

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A Mutual Begging Society In addition to Grey Magic, Hilberseimer appears in two other Mynona grotesques, one of which, “Der Bettelreiche” (“The Mendicant Rich”) appears in the BörsenCourier, a left-leaning broadsheet and Berlin’s leading newspaper for the arts, in January, 1922.106 Referring to Honoré de Balzac’s (1799–1850) writing on the precarity of the artist-intellectual, Mynona satirizes the vacuous system of exchange-value and credit.107 “As is well known, begging is the healthiest occupation,” the tale begins, “To point this out to every person would be the noblest duty of the ethically-oriented physician. Theoretically, of course, awful complications arise here, as humanity would become the mutual begging club. But child, let’s be honest! Actually, we are nothing else at all.” Mynona’s suggestion, begging is a general condition and—unlike most forms of labor at this time— relatively healthy, ironically transforms what might appear to be aberrance or hardship into an acceptable and structural condition. Within a capitalist society we are at the mercy of others, forced to exercise, even perfect (“Begging is of course even healthier if one pursues it rationally”), the means by which we gain income. The tale is an account of a man who becomes wealthy by expertly feigning maladies and misfortunes: “A beggar who is self-respecting, who is driven not simply by need and laziness, does not beg away naturalistically, but is stylistically competent, studies his profession; thus, a learned beggar, […] should have an effect just like a catastrophe: such […] that people transform at once into streams of tears and money.”108 It is important, the beggar argues, not to exhaust oneself in one’s labor, but to labor for best advantage. The ideal is to perform with such proficiency one does not need to labor at all. The best (stylized) feigning is mechanically methodical: “The mastery consists in the automatization of the material.”109 One particular night, the beggar is approached by a “scrawny, elegant gentleman” offering a thousand marks to his youthful sidekick if he would admit the beggar is a fake. The boy gives him up, upon which the man exclaims, “I thought so immediately. Precisely the excellence of the masquerade made me leery. […] in this area, which requires genius, you are a bungler. Here is the thousand-mark note, on the condition you send the little one away and let me help you. I’ll bring you to me; we will make the most lucrative business company.”110 The two men travel by car along Kurfürstendamm in fashionable West Berlin, across the Halensee Bridge to a house on the Auguste-Viktoria Straße in upmarket Grunewald, where “Ludwig Hilberle” (Hilberseimer) introduces himself to the former beggar, “Bob Schnob” (Bob Snob), as “an engineer, skilled monteur [Schlosser].” When Schnob tries to tell Hilberle he is a relative of “Walter Rache …”—perhaps Walter Rathenau [1867– 1922], founder of the AEG and current foreign minister, who at that moment is turning Germany, in reaction to the strictures of the Treaty of Versailles, toward communist Russia—Hilberle dismisses him, telling him such things neither

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interest him nor “adorn” Schnob. Schnob, having been forced by Hilberle to drop all pretense of invalidity and social validity, enters the latter’s apartment where he is transformed. “On our four legs we now scaled as many steps and landed in a laboratory-like atelier space,” Schnob narrates, “The workshop made the impression of a model workshop operating in full swing. On rotating pedestals machine-like figures arose everywhere. ‘They are automatons,’ said Hilberle, ‘let’s sit down!’” Mynona juxtaposes the enlivened automatons with the animalistic laboring and inactive bodies of the two men. The beggar continues: Hilberle then brewed us Turkish coffee. We smoked Dutch tobacco from long pipes; it became quite cozy. A calm yet animated mood set in. Hilberle fetched carraway seeds, and now we really drank our way [to informality] from “Sie” to “Du”: “To our future Ltd.!” toasted Hilberle. “You know, Bob, here on the socles are automata. They are only mechanical devices and yet we can learn from them. Listen to me (cheers!) as attentively as possible: people are automata, unfortunately without knowing it and wanting it. Were they with knowledge and will, they would live more precisely, more perfectly, because they could never err. A difficult chapter in a long practice of applied philosophy. On the other hand, with ease I can perfectly represent every person in their few characteristic movements as automatic machines.”111 Mynona characterizes the didactic Hilberseimer as acutely cognizant of the necessity to overcome the dehumanizing effects of Bildung in the manifestation of personal sovereignty and contrasts this with the self-interest that attempts to otherwise affect this “difficult” path. By grasping the objective, mechanical nature of existence, Hilberle has the capacity to animate the mechanical, and yet all Schnob sees is a Faustian bargain offering the means of exploitation. Hilberle’s Marcusian genius appears doomed to commodification. Mynona has Hilberle describe the “small fortune” he has made from his “inventions” and propose the re-creation of the beggar “in metal and wax as automatons,” an idea Hilberle had come upon when he noticed the beggar’s (mechanical action) cranking his “wailing organ.”112 “It is child’s play for me to set up your few ragged movements and the clockwork in your automaton body,” Hilberle says, “We will sow miserable begging automatons all over the earth and reap millions.”113 Hilberle sees the automation of begging as the first of many undertakings—“My skilled workmanship will accomplish yet other things: early births, nursing mothers, operations of famous surgeons, etc. etc.”—all of which concern the labor of organic reproduction. To his delight, Schnob explains, “Hilberle fabricated me in the same night with such striking likeness that the fellow who had channeled me until then fell in blindly.”114 The two men place their “ersatz beggars” in cities all over the world. “In Berlin alone I sit in front of the Café Megalomania [the Café des Westens (a hub for progressive

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artists and intellectuals)], the Reichstag building, and the Russian embassy,” Schnob exclaims, “A booming business!” And yet, Hilberle’s mass-reproduction of animated singularities reveals to Schnob the spirit inherent to the material world. “The world is infinitely more machine-like than the living automatons who consider—believe—themselves to be human,” Schnob concludes, “As is well known, true freedom is not a chimera, but invisible, insensible like immortality (at least so far).”115 Ubiquitously materialized, the needs of society become practically immediate and transparent—“one automatically falls for it”—such that a post-Humanist future promises a graceful liberty that corrupted liberal Humanism, bound by its commitment to learned values and self-interest, cannot imagine. There is a direct correspondence between sovereignty over the body and creative dominion over the material world. In the true act of liberty, mechanism becomes organism because organism has become mechanism—the will (spirit) has become reasonable (lawful). Passed through the point of indifference, a mass-civilization of beggars becomes a community of sovereign individuals. Making (visible) this magical transformation is the (artistic) genius of animation.

Human Marionettes In “Creation and Development,” the essay Hilberseimer publishes in the first issue of Der Einzige, he quotes a passage from the nineteenth-century German writer Heinrich von Kleist (1777–1811): We can see the degree to which contemplation becomes darker and weaker in the organic world, so that the grace that is there emerges all the more shining and triumphant. Just as the intersection of two lines from the same side of a point after passing through the infinite suddenly finds itself again on the other side—or as the image from a concave mirror, after having gone off into the infinite, suddenly appears before us again—so grace returns after knowledge has gone through the world of the infinite.116 Hilberseimer uses the quote as a hinge between the first section of his essay, which discusses the tension between primitive culture and European civilization, and the second and third sections, which pass from the problematics of contemporary civilization to the spiritual promise of creative indifference. The quote is the crucial passage from the conclusion of Kleist’s enigmatic “Über das Marionetten Theater” (“On the Marionette Theatre,” 1810). In Hilberseimer’s isolated presentation, the quote echoes Friedlaender’s discussion of the irreducibility of existence and of our embodied being as the infinitesimal touchpoint with this infinite reality.

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Hilberseimer was perhaps aware of Friedlaender’s “Marionetten, Menschen, Götter” (“Marionettes, Humans, Gods”), an essay on Kleist published in 1911.117 Kleist’s text influences Friedlaender’s call to neutralize experience with rational mathematization. It takes the form of a conversation between the lead dancer at a local opera house and a narrator who notices the dancer frequently attends a marionette theater in the nearby marketplace where he observes the “exceedingly graceful” mechanical figures. The puppeteer’s activity was not “like grinding the handle of a hurdy-gurdy,” the dancer observes, “the movement of his fingers has a somewhat artificial [künstlich] relationship to those of the attached puppets, somewhat like the relationship of numbers to logarithms or the asymptote to the hyperbola.”118 Rather than precisely govern each gesture, the puppeteer controls an abstraction of movement. While the mathematics of the body’s trajectories are relatively uncomplicated, “viewed in another way,” they are “very mysterious. For it is nothing other than the path to the soul of the dancer […].” The dancer even suggests the “final trace of the intellect” might one day be eliminated: a “marionette constructed by a craftsman […] could perform a dance that neither he nor any other outstanding dancer of his time […] could equal.”119 Unlike human performers, marionettes are unburdened by the self-consciousness and tiring physical struggle inhibiting grace. “[I]t would be almost impossible for a man to attain even an approximation of a mechanical being,” the dancer concludes, “In such a realm only a God could measure up to this matter, and this is the point where both ends of the circular world would join one another.”120 Humanity is alltoo-human, whence its vain effort for perfection, the unnatural striving preventing it from becoming divine.121 That Kleist presents humanity as inherently flawed bothers Friedlaender. Rather than stringing it up, Friedlaender thinks the poles of matter and spirit give charge to human being. In “Marionettes, Men, Gods,” he argues a different kind of idealism is required “in times of primitive spirituality” when idealism is set against fate, than in times of skepticism when the idealist is “subject to embarrassingly inhibitory tests.” In the modern drift of skepticism toward nihilism, the “unencumbered innocence of an ideal” and the immediacy of compulsion is lost. For these “critical times” Friedlaender sought a more graceful idealism. “The idealist […] brings life the best, but he also has the best to learn from life: liveliness.” An idealist must have a plasticity Friedlaender thinks “Kleist entirely lacked.” Self-criticism is necessary to idealism and an ideal is nothing without the material to realize it. “Marionettes and gods both dance gracefully: the marionette because it lacks all critical reflection; god, because he has successfully completed critical reflection,” Friedlaender writes, “We, on the other hand, people wandering between marionettes and gods, expelled from this paradise of infallibility, are no longer marionettes and not yet gods.”122 Friedlaender finds Kleist oscillates “between creation and perfection” as “unreachable poles.” It is an equal mistake, Friedlaender argues, to abide in a middling realm without sense of the poles that

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FIGURE 11.3 Raoul Hausmann, Der Geist unserer Zeit (Mechanischer Kopf) [The Spirit of Our Time (Mechanical Head)], 1919. Wooden model of a head, mounted with various objects. Inv.: AM 1974–6. Photo: Georges Meguerditchian. Musée National d’Art Moderne / Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France. © 2022 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris.

give it tension. Moreover, because he understands material and spirit as a division of experience, Friedlaender warns against thinking of their interrelationship in historical terms: “The ideal lies in no past, in no future; it is an eternal possession, which […] must be continuously acquired in the present.”123 As the means by which we give order to existence, the poles of material and spirit must be eternally 246

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purified in order to heighten the charge of our “interregnum.”124 It is no accident Mynona has Hilberle express both a metaphysical and mechanical understanding of human being. Dada works are replete with mechanical-human figures, such as the dolls of Höch and Sophie Tauber (1889–1943), Richter’s masks, Francis Picabia’s (1879– 1953) diagrams of mindless repetitive motion, the machine-wounded, and burghers and soldiers depicted as dummies and corpses. Given the brutality of technical rationality and the mechanization of contemporary experience, factory workers transformed into automatons by the industrial system of mechanical reproduction, instrumental slaughter, populations lobotomized by trauma and transformed into mechanical-human hybrids by prosthetic devices, the graceful marionette embodies salvation.125 Kleist’s dialogue includes discussion of “mechanical legs” that enable human movement with “a composure, lightness, and grace that would amaze any sensitive observer.”126 In the metamechanical bodies of Dada, particularly Hausmann’s works—the figures in The Engineers, the representation of Vladimir Tatlin (1885–1953) in Tatlin lebt zu Hause (1921) and his Mechanischer Kopf (Der Geist unserer Zeit) (Mechanical Head [The Spirit of our Time], c. 1921) for example—we glimpse Kleist’s promise: the return of grace after the debilitating self-consciousness of knowledge. In Grosz’s Ohne Titel or his Konstruktionen of 1920–2, the metropolis and its mannequin-burghers are, for satirical purposes, all-too-clumsy; in Jacobstrasse oppressed and despondent. In Dada-Dachatelier (1920), Schlichter seems intent on displaying the full breadth of metamechanical existence. For Friedlaender, profoundly human being exists at the polarizing fulcrum of the most divergent metamechanics, the origin and median of the sacred and the profane, the puppet and God, matter and creation. In “The Mendicant Rich” he depicts Hilberseimer as a metamechanical sculptor, reanimating the modern subject.

Cultural Reanimation Both Rukser and Hilberseimer publish statements on Berlin Dada that reflect their ambition to reanimate the masses.127 In May, 1919, Rukser reviews the Club Dada performances and exhibition (28 April to 10 May) at the Salon I. B. Neumann on Kurfürstendamm. Unlike the commotion set off by the group’s major 1918 event, he reports the “Kurfürstendamm audience” met the “coarseness of Hausmann and Hülsenbeck” with mere “amusement.” Rukser felt the bourgeois attendees “understood absolutely nothing of what was going on and intended.” They “smothered each attempt to outrage into a flat, dull, snobbish laughter.” While the artist, in perpetual movement, “rushes from experience to experience, from vision to vision, from renewal to renewal and reestablishes balance through organizing formation,” the burgher is sedentary, comforted by habit and possession, wary of HILBERSEIMER AND DADA

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change that threatens them. “Dadaism is a strategy” to enliven the bourgeoisie with the restlessness of the artist, Rukser suggests. Yet, “The burgher stands bewildered by this; he has nothing to hold onto, not even a word, because Dada—means nothing!” Dada’s Dionysian carnival simply bewilders Apollonian “seriousness.”128 Rukser presents Dada as consistent with Friedlaender’s creative indifference— the “affirmation of the world as it is, with all its value and un-value”—and thus Nietzschean self-realization: “the loyalty of man to himself, to nature,” “the courage to be that which nature has made him to be,” “without the whitewash of all bogus conventions of bourgeois life.” And he describes this attitude as “the correctly understood Humboldtian concept of humanity!” Dada takes up the conception of Bildung uncorrupted, offers “no direction,” “knows no prescriptions […]: ‘Everyone makes his art his own way.’” But he also argues the exhibition had “a certain uniformity, best described in terms of its artistic affiliation with Expressionism’s circle of problems.” He finds only Fritz Stuckenberg’s (1881– 1944) Kandinskyesque color, Hausmann’s structured plasticity, and Jefim Golyscheff ’s (1897–1970) intensely mystical abstraction worth praising. He finds Grosz’s exhibition poster amusing, but unconvincing “artistically.” “Dada is less significant as an artistic than as a cultural, human-political movement,” he writes, emphasizing its importance as “one of our weapons against the mechanization, flattening, secularizing, and bourgeoisification of the world.”129 Heartfield later crops Rukser’s review in his Dada anthology. He eliminates the discussion of specific works, the supposition Dada is an extension of Expressionism, and the suggestion the bourgeoisie were unfazed by Hausmann and Huelsenbeck’s provocations.130 Although the latter was probably less a critique than an effort to emphasize the hermeticism of the bourgeois mind, Rukser implicitly questions the efficacy of Dada tactics. Eighteen months later, in his December, 1920, column for Socialist Monthly, in what was perhaps understood as a belated review of the Erste Internationale Dadamesse (First International Dada-Fair) a few months earlier, Hilberseimer also presents Dada as an effort to reanimate the contemporary subject dulled to quiescence by the rigidities of bourgeois values (the “mask of learned education [Bildung]”). “Dadaism wants the abolition of all solidity, the production of a motivated and self-motivating world, exciting disquiet instead of somniferous rest,” Hilberseimer explains for his socialist readers, “Dadaism wants to liberate the ego from ineffectual systems, to let it flow together with the cosmos, to make it autonomous, active, to restore the universal entity [Alleinheit] shattered by bourgeois morality.” He quotes Baader from the Freie Straße expressing the Dadaist love of life “in all its incomprehensible forms […] beginning from the most grotesque self-mockery to the most sacred word of worship for the ripened earth-ball belonging to all people.”131 Unlike Rukser, Hilberseimer asserts “the deadly efficacy of Dadaism,” which “smashes the most sacred tin gods of Bildung, destroys the most secretive fetishes,

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ridicules artfully-assembled seriousness.” He points out that Dada’s concurrent faith in vitalism and skepticism of dogmatism is a Nietzschean embrace of constant creation and metamorphosis. This explains Dada’s effort to accelerate the collapse of bourgeois conventions and its resilient capacity for both self-creation and -destruction: Dada strikes the soul of the bourgeois, destroys the glorioles of his sanctuaries, lets pompousness finally burst. Every stagnation becomes brittle by itself. Dada wants to accelerate the collapse. Its unbroken instinct for life smashes while laughing. Dada possesses enough elasticity to also be anti-Dadaistic. That is its strength, its unassailability. Dada represents that Indo-Americanism propagated by S. Friedländer (Creative Indifference […]) according to which the most sacred is contained in the most profane and, conversely, the most profane is in the most sacred.132 With roots in Schopenhauer, the idea of an Eastern corrective to Western culture is a common theme in Friedlaender’s circle, notable in the writings of the Dadaists, Behne (and his close associate, the architect Bruno Taut), Westheim, and Einstein, as well as Hilberseimer and Rukser’s numerous essays on non-European art.133 The term “Indo-American” stands in Friedlaender’s philosophy for equilibrating a geographically polarized global culture to organically integrate, harmonize, and value difference: “Indo-Americanism would designate this tendency to cultivate, from the innermost, all difference, that is world, body and life,” Friedlaender writes, “Only hereby will the earth, the diametrics of which are still convulsively disproportioned, the earth-culture, round itself.”134 Given the primacy of individual experience for Friedlaender, there is an implied vector in this metamorphosis. Creative indifference is more than the passive internalization of existence (Indian), it is also the external activization-materialization of ideas (American).135 To capture this constructive sense of creative indifference for the readers of Socialist Monthly, Hilberseimer quotes Hausmann, who suggests the Dadaist is a plastic being that indifferently accepts the contingency of existence, the determinations of the environment, the liquidity of modern forms, like a mechanism within a machine. Thereby, however, the Dadaist gains practical integrity, both consistency and fortitude, requisite to the realization there is constructive significance in the transformation of existence: Dada is the truth, the only true practice of real people as they are today, constantly in movement through the simultaneity of events […] Dada is (and this annoys most people without end) even totally against all spirit; Dada is the total absence of what is called spirit. Why have spirit in a world that runs on mechanically? What is the human? A soon funny, soon sad matter, that is played and sung by its production, by its milieu. […] The Dadaistic man knows

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no past that binds him, he is tensioned by the living present, by his existence. Dada shapes the world practically according to its circumstances, it uses all forms and practices in order to destroy the moralistic-pharisaic bourgeois world with its own means.136 Hilberseimer presents these ideas in artistic terms. He contrasts Dada’s indifference with naturalism and abstraction, which he respectively presents as materialism and idealism, the rigid and exclusive poles of a bourgeois worldview. He calls the idealist “flight of modern painters into the abstract” a “dilution of life feeling.” The work of the Expressionists in their varying national movements had devolved into a “profitable war business, an exceedingly dead formalism,” he continues, echoing Huelsenbeck’s critique, leveraged as early as the summer of 1918. “The capitalistic economic form has made a production of specialties out of art,” he writes, suggesting a parallel with Taylorism. Academic artists in factory-like academies, even political radicals, were being stamped-out by a mechanical culture: “Years long academic study permits routine execution. Academicism reaches far beyond the so-called Left, where radicalism has been schematized. One learned the métier and made an unseen higher profession of it.”137 While naturalism and abstraction rigidly (self-consciously and cowardly) formalize reality, Dada embraces vitalism. “Dadaism has courage for reality again,” Hilberseimer commends. “It is after all born of reality, of actuality. The naturalism of the Dadaist is not analyzing-disintegrating but synthetic-integrating. The Dadaist uses nature, reality, according to intentions.”138 To emphasize this constructive point, Hilberseimer cites Tristan Tzara (1896–1963) whose 1918 manifesto argues the artist now creates not “symbolistic and illusionistic reproductions” but “immediately”: “The new painter creates a world, the elements of which are also its means, a sober, determined, work without argument.”139 Rather than accept given bourgeois molds of specialization, individual differences (of art) emerge in the construction of our common existence. Hilberseimer presents Dada as a perpetually new beginning, coincident with reality, from which emanates a diverse manifold unified by common existence and primal creativity. “Dada is not a direction not even a direction of art,” Hilberseimer exclaims, “Dada is everywhere and in everything. Because there, there [da, da] is life. Dada daily starts anew. Its strong, genuine feeling for life allows it constantly new beginnings, prevents any rigidity.”140 By way of Herzfelde’s introduction to the catalogue of the Dada Fair, Hilberseimer reiterates his central point: Dadaistic art emanates not from an illusion of power, born of devotion to historical or given idols, but from the direct seizure of the power of (self-)creation.141 Of the works in the fair, Hilberseimer mentions only the montages of Hausmann, Grosz, and Heartfeld, which “showed the possibilities of this new material,” and “the sculptural caricatures of Rudolf Schlichter,” which he describes as “new and of significance.”142 That Hilberseimer pauses on the contributions of his fellow Karlsruhe

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native is telling. Schlichter titled each of the works in this series, all reproductions of classical sculptures, “Improved Sculpture of Antiquity.”143 “The bourgeois, who constantly moan that one wants to senselessly ruin or smash the past, may stop here and ask for forgiveness,” Herzfelde writes of Schlichter’s works in his catalogue essay: Has a [Julius] Meier-Gräfe [1867–1935] or Lessing ever understood to take away all the blinkers from antiquity in such a way, i.e. to make it present as Schlichter has here, by providing an idol—which was intelligible and worthy of attention only for scholars of antiquity—with a head that seems human to our sensibilities and thereby to move the whole body into the range grasped by our senses. So the market value may be destroyed; the sculpture has thereby regained life and its original sensual appeal.144 Schlichter had reanimated these figures like Pygmalion, not by raising them into an ideal, as Winckelmann supposed, but by bringing them down to earth, a true metamorphosis. In them, Herzfelde argues, “the relationship of the Dadaists to antiquity is shown most tangibly.”145 Crucial to the art of antiquity, Nietzsche pointed out, is its intimate presence to life. Not stylistic, historical, or market value, but spiritual vitality is the currency of art. In conclusion, Hilberseimer reflects on the contribution of the Dadaists, who had been presented in Socialist Monthly two-and-a-half years earlier as the youthful future of the International. Having offered lengthy statements by Baader, Hausmann, Tzara, and Herzfelde, Hilberseimer questions the distance between Dada and society: In these two-and-a-half years Europe has lived through a time that offered the highest possibilities for a real formation of reality. The near future will show what essential seriousness lies in the ostensible unseriousness of Dadaism. Not what has been proclaimed in manifestoes is essential; we have already heard this (and de facto greater things) at the outbreak of revolutions in many a decade […]. Now is the time to carry out what those before could perhaps not do. Singularly decisive is whether Dadaism will also transfer its proclamations into the praxis of life. Only then will it prove that it was entitled to them. The will of some who count themselves among the Dadaists gives us hope that this right will be proven.146 Hilberseimer ultimately concludes where Rukser did the year before, and is perhaps referring to himself in the last sentence. It is one thing to smash the idols of bourgeois culture and another to revitalize the automatons left behind. It is not enough to be Indian; one has to be American too. Manifestoes, exhibited works of art, are insufficient so long as life itself has not been transformed. The task of art, Hilberseimer argues, is to reanimate existence—to creatively invest the world with collective significance.

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Elementarism and Movement By 1922, the artists in Friedlaender’s circle believe the medium of film presents the elemental rhythms of organic life with utmost immediacy, offering the most profound insight for the aesthetic reason of an artistic science. Hilberseimer contributes to the journal G (Gestaltung), published between 1923 and 1926 to forward ideas of “elementary form-creation,” joining Richter (the journal’s editor), Mies (the journal’s primary funder), Hausmann, van Doesburg, El Lissitzky (1890– 1941), and Werner Gräff (1901–78) among others.1 Hilberseimer later describes “elementarism” as the most significant development in European art in the 1920s and the definitive step in the evolution of twentieth-century architecture.2 G is anticipated by a body of discourse in which Hilberseimer is a leading voice. Most significantly, Hilberseimer discusses the experimental film-studies of Richter and Viking Eggeling under the heading “Bewegungskunst” (Movement-Art) in his May 1921 column in Socialist Monthly.3 Evidently informed by Richter’s theoretical reflections, Hilberseimer’s comments precede by two months the publication of Richter’s essay “Prinzipielles zur Bewegungskunst” (Principles of Movement-Art), by a month van Doesburg’s essay on abstract film, by five months the elementarist manifesto signed by Hausmann, Hans Arp (1886–1966), Ivan Puni (1892–1956), and László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946), all published in the Dutch journal De Stijl, and by seven months Behne’s praise of Eggeling and Richter’s work in Socialist Monthly.4 “To bring to expression movement in the fine arts is a problem the solution of which has already preoccupied many creative spirits,” Hilberseimer acknowledges, pointing to the Futurists among others. But the Futurists sought movement in the “unsuitable” mediums of painting and sculpture. These arts “well make vivid an episode within a sequence of movements,” but can never become a sequence of

movements in themselves, Hilberseimer clarifies. By contrast, Hilberseimer argues Eggeling and Richter “have solved the problem of movement in the most radical way and by the creation of new means of expression have laid the foundations of a basso continuo for painting, such as Goethe earlier yearned, and which open unimagined perspectives for art.” Hilberseimer suggests Eggeling and Richter’s abstract studies show the “operation [of film] itself is a dramatic evolution and revolution in the sphere of the purely artistic,” a transformation Hilberseimer compares to recent explorations in music. However, it was important to Hilberseimer that abstract film not be reduced “to analogies with music or memories of natural objects.” While abstract film and atonal music are both concerned with elementary formal relationships, they are distinct artistic mediums. The “abstract forms” in Eggeling and Richter’s films, Hilberseimer writes, in a statement echoed in Richter’s text, “find tension and resolution in themselves, and since all material comparisons and memories cease, are elementarily magical.”5 Hilberseimer embraces the metamorphosis of form in Eggeling and Richter’s film studies as the expression of pure creation. They realize the Dadaist embrace of continuous flux. As Friedlaender suggests in Grey Magic, film promises an immediate relationship between conceptualization and formalization, if not materialization. Hilberseimer conceives film as the sensorial expression of elemental thought: the polar emergence and disappearance of form as such, the division and synthesis (Dionysian-Apollonian) Friedlaender, following Goethe and Nietzsche, understands as the aesthetic essence of creation and Marcus embraces as fundamental to natural reason.6 “The ‘language’ (form-language) that is ‘spoken,’” in film, Richter writes, echoing his now lost Universal Sprache (Universal Language, 1920), “consists of an ‘alphabet,’ emerging from an elementary principle of intuition: polarity,” to which he adds: “Polarity as general principle of life = composition method of every formal expression. Proportion, rhythm, number, intensity, position, sound, meter etc.”7 What Goethe conceives as a mystical, natural language for empirical observation had, following Kandinsky, Friedlaender, and Marcus, become for Hilberseimer and Richter a magical, abstract language for imaginative creation, no longer the representation of nature but a pure sensory presentation of thought. “The principles according to which they are ordered,” Hilberseimer explains of Eggeling and Richter’s films, “are the principles of construction of our own nature, a creative synthesis.”8 Moreover, because these (polar) organic principles (of human nature) are applicable to all the arts, if used to provide a common elementary unity for the various mediums, Hilberseimer suggests they offer the potential to connect the arts with our vital being and with each other in an artistic synthesis: The language that is spoken there consists of an alphabet that arises from an elementary principle of intuition with polarity as the fundamental idea. Polarity

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as general principle of life, method of composition of every formal expression. The aesthetic principles of this alphabet point the way to a Gesamtkunstwerk. Undogmatically and synthetically applied, it is effective in equal measure for the other arts. Totality of all creative forces, from a common root to infinitely diverse forms. Art is rule over means with utmost economy. Only an intrinsic [wirklich] discipline of the elements and their most elementary application allows further building therefrom. Art is not the subjective fulmination of an individual but organic language of the most profound significance for the whole of humanity. Therefore, it must be free of error in its foundations and so lapidary that it can be effectively used as such. It is an error to believe the sense of art consists in the heights of individual artistic achievements. Art sets the individual the task of creating the great unity from the manifold of sensations. A task that has to be undertaken by humanity as a whole and has to resolve consciousness and drive equally.9 Hilberseimer makes clear an elementary language constituting a common foundation for the arts must be rooted in the polarized intuition of vital experience, that meticulous empirical observation and mathematicization of being that Friedlaender advocates, following Goethe, as the basis of creative indifference. Hilberseimer offers a sculptural analogy for such a language. Only the most lapidary—which is to say, integrally consistent material—can support the requisite saliency of expression to foster an expansive manifold of creation. It is not to the summit of style that one should look in any attempt to forge a new art, Hilberseimer explains, implicitly returning to his earlier theory, but to its preconditions, the elementary formation of the given manifold of sensations, balancing imagination (metaphysics) with a reasoned awareness of existence (physics). Hilberseimer believes the identification—“without confusion” and “independently of genius”—of “a language that has had such an elementary resonance in us since the beginning of our existence, within the rhythm of which we live constantly” would have, in addition to creating a new art of film, clear sociological and pedagogical significance. This cohesive material language would draw together the various arts by imbuing even “the simplest tasks” of art with a “basso continuo.”10

Animation of the Mass In their embrace of the contemporary cubic city and their polar neutralization of the formal patterns unifying the various typologies of the metropolis, Hilberseimer and Rukser establish the elementary means for the new medium of metropolisarchitecture. They identify the “lapidary” material and vital artistic language to cohesively support a diverse range of architectural expression, investing the

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chaos of the metropolis with a lawful nature, such that animation of its individual buildings contributes to the city as a coherent work of art. Hilberseimer and Rukser conceive metropolis-architecture as a mass medium, able—within given economic, technological, sociological, and environmental conditions—to imbue the most diverse individual creative expression with collective significance. The consequence of post-Renaissance skepticism, Hilberseimer writes in “Creation and Development” is “the abrogation of community, its replacement with the mass. But the gain: the development of individuals who succeed in creating the new community again.”11 This idea of an individually animated collective, forwarded by Hilberseimer in the inaugural issue of Der Einzige, receives its most salient articulation by Hausmann in the second number (January, 1919). In “Zu Kommunismus und Anarchy” (“On Communism and Anarchy”), Hausmann argues the equality promised by communism is a step toward anarchism.12 He figures the equal valuing of various kinds of labor would give rise to an era of selfrealization, in which the ego would develop, not “autocratically,” as a predetermined function of society, but with an organic sense of the mutual relationship between the individual and society as a whole.13 Asserting the individual’s “recognition of [their] own creative authority” is requisite to community, Hausmann argues society is conditioned by whether individuals understand their autonomy as the realization of a super-personal vitality or see their freedom in an antagonistic relationship to others. Communism allows the former because it correlates the whole with individual experience. It synthesizes the material existence within which a higher “law” born of “self-responsibility” can emerge.14 Hausmann distinguishes his conception of communism from orthodox positions wherein “the doctrine of the commune” is falsely conceived in opposition to the “doctrine of the ego.” He understands communism as a medium for self-realization, the material basis for anarchism.15 “Communism […] will, […] at the moment of its progress into the higher phase, autonomously dissolve into pure individuals, thereby reform this mass again anarchistically,” Hausmann contends, “Through their acquired experience individuals will no longer naively regard their power as limitless, but will know about the formation of compromises inherent in every individual act.”16 Considered in relationship to a work such as Höch’s Schnitt …, Hausmann’s thesis, later republished as “Cut through the Time,” suggests a direct relationship between Dada’s formal processes and constructive politics.17 Contemporary human nature is drained of its bourgeois value, equalized, and invested with a coherent structure. Indifferent polarization is the means by which the contemporary mass (of experience) is invested with the structural integrity requisite to its collectively significant individual articulation. Through the common denominators of existence, communism unifies society, establishing mutual self-realization and individual diversity as a common law, in the same way the organs of a body differentiate themselves in reciprocity with the life of the organism as a whole.

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It is probably no accident that when Hausmann falls out with Ruest, Hilberseimer and Rukser also cease writing for Der Einzige. Ruest over-zealously edits Hausmann’s work to make it appear more supportive of his strictly individualist position.18 Unlike his younger associates, Ruest did not see the war and abdication as definitive events. Like many Expressionists, marked by the stultifying and alienating machinations of Wilhelmine society, Ruest rejects the determinism of a vulgar Marxism that presents the unfolding of history as a mechanism beyond agency.19 Refusing the compromises of communism and democracy, Ruest understands present political-economic questions as the continuation of a longer cultural struggle. Ironically, this led him, in the eyes of his critics, to underestimate the barriers remaining to pure “self-realization.”20 Like Hausmann, Hilberseimer and Rukser see equalization as a necessary step toward anarchist socialism. Hilberseimer and Rukser identify and rationalize the common denominators of metropolis-architecture as the elements through which individual buildings would realize their own integrity in mutual relationship with the city as a whole, thus creating the kind of spiritual community Friedlaender, in his 1913 essay “Das Individuum und die soziale Frage” (“The Individual and the Social Question”), called a “differentiated individual.”21

Equalization and the Indifferent Center Höch recalls the monthly soirées Segal hosts with his wife Ernestine take place in rooms displaying Segal’s “equivalence” paintings.22 Segal’s interest in equalization develops in the circles of Expressionist and then Dada artists in Munich, Switzerland, and Berlin.23 Writing in 1912 about rapid transformations in style, he discusses the Futurist exhibition in Paris enthusiastically awaited in Germany. Segal suggests Kandinsky’s “socially” oriented art is no less futurist and more synthetic, going beyond particulars to understand urban phenomena within the natural universe.24 Segal will understand his own work as an effort to synthesize and equilibrate the manifold of contemporary experience and the various positions of the new art. After the war, he also pursues this ambition as a board member of the Novembergruppe (November Group), an umbrella association for varying artistic movements.25 As early as 1916, Segal turns from Expressionism, combining Delaunay’s simultaneous contrast with the structural regularity of Cubism.26 From his haven in Ascona during the war, Segal participates in the events in Zurich but remains at the periphery of Dada.27 Like Hilberseimer, he embraces Dada’s social critique and artistic concerns without participating in its polemical parody.28 In later lectures, cited by Hilberseimer, Segal draws upon an unpublished text from this period, “Grundlagen der ‘Wesentlichen Kunst’” (“Foundations of ‘Essential Art,’” 1917), which echoes Friedlaender’s ideas. “What we call life is the differentiation of

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that which originates from the undifferentiable and becomes conscious of itself,” Segal writes.29 Vitalism overcomes entropic self-differentiation.30 By indifferently grasping the singular qualities of the cosmos, we realize the value of difference: “In equivalence: conscious correlation; in conscious correlation: salvation.”31 In this sense, Segal understands his work as a departure from authoritarianism. Asserting the historic correspondence between the inequality of artistic form and the injustice of the world, Segal compares artworks that prioritize a central figure, hero or motive, to “an absolute monarchy.”32 He claims these works usurp the world around them and, differentiating primary and secondary elements, subjugate aspects of themselves.33 By contrast, Segal argues: One part should not subordinate itself to another part, […]. The whole should not be more interesting than the parts, the parts not more interesting than the whole; one part should not be more interesting than the other parts nor therefore than the whole. Only then will art and work be one—artwork. Real artwork. Only then will an artwork be apart and at the same time the cosmos, not only a part of the cosmos. Only then will an artwork be liberating.34 In the column in which he reviews The International Dada Fair, Hilberseimer turns from his discussion of Dada to the work of Segal, not included in the exhibition.35 Like other Dadaists, Segal rejects academically conceived painting (“painting for its own sake”) and therewith, Hilberseimer points out, comes to a new kind of art, characterized by “decentralization” and based on the “spiritual principle” of “equivalence.” “Against the optical equivalence of Impressionism, which attempted to objectively transmit the once-chosen snippet, Segal sets cosmic equivalence,” Hilberseimer explains, “He gave up the relative in order to come to the absolute scale.”36 The Impressionist subjectively grasps experience. Segal indifferently presents the singularities of existence. In Segal’s work there is the same rejection of detail and respect for part and whole as in Hilberseimer and Rukser’s conception of metropolis-architecture (architecture and the city). “At first, Segal paints everything the same size, the apple as large as a human or a tree,” Hilberseimer writes, elucidating Segal’s techniques, “Later, he […] seeks to achieve equality by differences in color and brightness, to produce equivalence with purely painterly means.” In his effort to overcome centralization and assert equivalence, Segal moves beyond the bounds of painting: “The frame […] becomes integral part of the picture […],” Hilberseimer expounds, “Its picturedelimiting function has ceased. […] With the centralistic composition the frame cuts the picture off from the environment. With Segal the frame leads the picture into the environment.” Concomitantly, Segal renders the center of his pictures “indifferent”:

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Four squares are placed next to one another in such a way that two touch in darkness, two in brightness. The point of intersection is indifferent, but the eye is cast to all four directions of the border. Each of these squares has the same shading, which moves from black through one color or another to white. This shading is not dependent on the external illumination of the sun, which does not illuminate everything equally. This illumination is the inner illumination that emanates from everything; […] innate divine vision. And before God everything is equivalent; the small is great and the great small.37 The recognition of the equivalence of all things comprehends the coincident (present) nature of existence. Through two-dimensional polar—gridded— rationalization, which Segal calls Rasterbilden (raster pictures), Segal indifferentiates his compositions, conceiving his pictures as contiguous with, rather than delimited from, the environment. The centers of Segal’s canvases are not superordinate foci but integral to (his) creation. Conceived, after Friedlaender, as our infinitesimal indifference from the infinitude of being, these central points are constituted as the fulcrum in our extension of the spirit, the neutral point integral to representation, around which existence is rationally formalized as an artistic science.

Threshold of Constructivism Hilberseimer conveys Segal’s artistic ideas of equivalence, boundlessness, and the indifference of art and life in December, 1920, shortly after he and Rukser endorse the indifferently cubic city with integrated points of orientation in the second draft of Metropolis-Architecture and present the American city as a contiguous field, ranging from Root’s self-contained block to Wright’s landscape imprints (September, 1920). Moreover, Hilberseimer does so upon concluding “Singularly decisive is whether Dadaism will also transfer its enunciations into the praxis of life.”38 After contact with East European artists—most notably the Erste Russische Kunstausstellung (First Russian Art Exhibition) in late 1922—Hilberseimer and his associates adopt the term “constructivism” to describe this longstanding ambition, even as they identify the threshold between art and life with Segal.39 Hilberseimer reasserts Segal’s synthetic ambition and the continuity between Segal’s art and the “cosmos” in a catalog accompanying an exhibition of Segal’s work in 1922.40 The pivotal importance of Segal’s work is also asserted in a document published by the Swedish collector Hjalmar Gabrielson-Göteborg the following year.41 Seeking to expand his holdings, Gabrielson-Göteborg had commissioned Segal to choose and procure the works. The 1923 catalog recording these acquisitions is comprised of an introduction by Behne and two longer texts by Hilberseimer and Friedlaender.

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FIGURE 12.1  Ludwig Hilberseimer, Arthur Segal (Berlin: Josef Altmann, 1922), 15, with Alfred Segal, Brücke (Bridge), 1921.

Behne presents the acquisitions as an effort to strengthen a collection dominated by Swedish and, Impressionist and Post-Impressionist French art. This primarily meant extending Gabrielson-Göteborg’s holdings to Russian and German Expressionism resulting in a collection capturing, Behne argues, “the transition to constructivism and constructivism itself, in rare wealth.”42 Rather than purchase works by well-known figures, Segal uses the commission to support emerging artists. Consistent with his anarcho-socialist ethic, he offers equal payment for each work. More well-known artists petition Gabrielson in protest and Segal is accused of misappropriating funds.43 Behne defends Segal, asserting

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the acquisitions are an attempt “to objectively account for the whole of European art creation.”44 It is no accident Hilberseimer’s essay begins by quoting a French novelist.45 Both Behne and Hilberseimer, whose essays emphasize the progressive transformation of the new art, consider “constructivism” coeval with the postwar emergence of pan-European community. Behne arrays the acquired works between Marc Chagall’s non-traditional naturalism and the abstraction of Eggeling’s films. “What occurs between these two poles … ‘object in the frame’ and ‘form as the function of movement,’ we may describe as the crisis of the modern picture,” Behne writes provocatively, noting the influence of Russian art in Western Europe. In Segal’s pictures, the pivotal work in this polar development, this crisis is resolved. In Segal’s harbor pictures, Behne argues, there is an intensification of the “Gegenständlichen [objective or representational]” that, “increasingly free of stylizing tendencies,” gives rise to “the important emancipation of the edge [of the canvas]”. Rather than the applied (material) unity of Cubism or the imbued (ideal) unity of Expressionism, Segal integrates art and life through an indifferent objectivity (spiritual materialism). Segal overcomes the tension between the restriction of the frame and the isolated space of the canvas by dividing up the picture plane

FIGURE 12.2  Arthur Segal, Der Hafen (The Port), 1921. Photo: © Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln, Museum Ludwig, Köln, Inv.-Nr. ML 01316.

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and continuing the image onto the frame itself: “a regular, mechanical division of fields annuls the significance of the outer boundary,” Behne writes, producing both “maneuverability” with respect to the canvas and “simplification to one Schicht [layer or class].” By describing Segal’s work as a synthesis of multiple images, Behne presents Segal’s painting as precursor of Eggeling’s films. The picture plane cinematically dissolves into a manifold of singularities. Behne suggests Segal’s Prismatische Konstruktion (Prismatic Construction, 1923), the only work in the catalog reproduced in color, explores “the same problem on a higher level, enriched by the problem of light.”46

Demonstrative Aesthetics The reconciliation of art and life after the idealism and abstraction of Expressionism and Cubism is also the subject of Friedlaender’s catalog essay, “Goethe’s Farbenlehre und die Moderne Malerei” (“Goethe’s Theory of Colors and Modern Painting”), prompted by the influence of Goethe’s color theory on Segal.47 Writing as “Friedländer-Mynona,” a synthesis of his philosophical and artistic personas, Friedlaender presents Goethe’s natural philosophy as an ethic of aesthetic creation and his Theory of Colors as “the cipher and hieroglyph of a new aestheticism.” Placing experience before theory, Friedlaender stresses, Goethe only rationalizes after having encountered phenomena indifferently, and thus represents the world in an integral rather than ramifying way. He suggests the ultimate consequence of Goethe’s observations of color is the revelation of the optical as such. “One could present the history of painting as progress in the emancipation of the purely optical from the objects of nature,” Friedlaender declares. To convey his sense of this liberation, Friedlaender cites Marcus. He emphasizes the visual rationalization of existence is a constructive division that recognizes the “vitally differentiated elements” of a painting—light, color, form—are “vitally permeated by their common identity.” Moreover, he argues the vital unification inherent to aesthetic experience “symbolically” lends the work of art an ethical dimension. Painting is a rationalization of appearance in the same way science is a rationalization of nature. A painting makes sense—and is an epistemological enquiry—precisely insofar as it vitally imbues experience with lawful coherence.48 In his remarks on Segal, Friedlaender recalls Schiller’s claim aesthetic experience provides the moral education necessary for a true state. In his Letters on Aesthetics Schiller presents aesthetic play as the freedom to escape determinations of sense and reason, to mediate and remediate nature and law, relax and tension form. “In art, morality and philosophy form a sensible covenant,” Friedlaender explains, “here is the creative workshop of the senses, thus true nature.”49 In a longer version of his text, Friedlaender presents Segal’s prismatic paintings—which he describes as the “consummation” of

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Constructivism—as a practice of “aesthetic” education consistent with Schiller’s aesthetic state.50 Friedlaender claims Segal is the first to equilibrate light, color, and form. While the elements of painting cohere as an organic entity in all painting, in Segal’s works optical conceptualization becomes palpable, thus symbolizing the act of rationalization itself. It is just this capacity to make demonstrably evident the indifference of light, form, and color—by the emergence and disappearance of these elements—that Behne and Hilberseimer celebrate in the films of Eggeling and Richter. In Friedlaender’s understanding, artistic creation is a sensible assertion of the potency of creative indifference. But Hilberseimer will emphasize this is only the threshold of a vital praxis. For Hilberseimer, Constructivist painting and film remain propaedeutic to the transformation of (human) nature.

Zero of Art Unlike Behne and Friedlaender’s essays, “Anmerkungen zur neuen Kunst” (“Remarks on the New Art”), Hilberseimer’s contribution to the GabrielsonGöteborg catalog, does not mention Segal, but builds upon their identification of Segal with Constructivism. It reflects on the synthetic ambition of the acquisitions, offering a survey of recent art beginning with Expressionism and concluding with Constructivism and its prospects.51 To characterize the “spiritual physiognomy of the nascent expressionism,” Hilberseimer quotes the French novelist CharlesLouis Philippe (1875–1909). Attacking dilettantish and bookish culture, Phillippe calls for renewed barbarism—strong and passionate engagement with a cleareyed view of nature.52 Hilberseimer thus recounts the Expressionist interest in the “most primitive” and “most original” art. He describes the “astonishing, bizarregrotesque form creations” of non-European and prehistoric art as “revelations of magic” and the art of children and the insane as “Interpretations of spiritual occurrences.” All creative works are “Manifestations of metaphysics,” Hilberseimer argues, “an intuitive picture of the world” demonstrating “unshakable belief in one’s own vision.” While the “form world” of the Expressionists had been, “to a great extent determined” by the “elements of art” found in such works, Hilberseimer is at pains to stress these artists were not “directly imitating.” More important, Hilberseimer argues—buttressing Friedlaender’s claims—is the Expressionist use of color. He calls color the “particular domain” of Expressionism and emphasizes its “psychological” use, following the precedent of medieval painting, “to create a completely new, transformed world.” “Color is music for it. With infinite possibilities of variation. Explores the deepest mysteries,” he writes, no doubt with Kandinsky in mind.53 For Goethe, color and form are the index by which the inherent secrets of morphological development are discerned, visual evidence of unfolding life. In Hilberseimer’s worldview, color and form are also manifestations of the developing spirit. The creative work of art embodies an 262

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intuitive comprehension of the universe, and thus, as the manifestation of life in the present, is the expression of a worldview, a state of being. Hilberseimer also understands Cubism in this biological sense.54 Rather than focusing on the way in which the work of art embodies a worldview, Cubism is concerned with the morphology of the artwork conceived as an autonomous entity. “Cubism is essentially the formation of surfaces by the means of contrasting divisions. It recognized the particular lawfulness of the artwork: as a particular organism with certain laws of construction. It consciously grasped the basic elements of all formation: the geometrically cubic. Recognized the identity of material and form.” But Cubism’s emphasis on the technical construction of the artwork sapped its vitality. Although it had the “artistic intention” to “control chaos” and “create organisms,” Hilberseimer explains, “if forming becomes […] purely specification of static functions and beautiful relationships, then a certain uprooting occurs.”55 Hilberseimer is critical of formal conventions in both Expressionism and Cubism. In Expressionism, he critiques pseudo-primitivism. In Cubism, he argues the subjective emphasis on “anthropomorphic figuration” led to “a new classicism.” Rather than vital creation, both movements had begun to depend on conventions. “The genuine work of art always grows out of the chaos of its time. Can only then become its symbol.”56 To become eternal, art requires engagement with the present. Hilberseimer presents Expressionism and Cubism as complimentary movements, both concerned with the work of art as a synthetic organism, the one focusing on its metaphysical life, the other its physical existence. He presents Dadaism and Suprematism as a second phase of growth. In Switzerland and France, where it was not “essentially political” as in Germany, Dadaism was, like Suprematism in Russia, “a further development of cubism toward purely abstract art.” These movements, he suggests, bring abstract art to an objectively rational conclusion. Referring to Kasimir Malevich’s (1879–1935) Suprematist Composition: White on White (1918), he writes: Suprematism led non-objective art to its ultimate possibilities. The fact that a Suprematist could cover a square with an equivalent, flat-painted color certainly signified the end of abstraction. Total annihilation of material. But at the same time utmost concentration. The tensest will for ultimate unity. Suprematism deconstructs the stereometric formal elements of cubism into the planimetric. Creates in this way a consistently planar painting. It is a rhythmic play of abstract planes. Simple geometric figures. The Suprematist seeks the zero-point of art. Concludes the process of analytical subtraction. Expects the coming synthetic forces.57 Brilliantly, if implicitly, Hilberseimer equates Malevich’s “degree zero” painting with Friedlaender’s mathematical idea of indifference (±0). At the point of absolute indifference between reality and representation, matter and idea, Suprematism, THE EQUIVALENCE OF ART AND LIFE

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and the performative collapse of art and life in Dada, bring art to the threshold of creative reengagement with existence.58 Dada and Suprematism draw the representational means of Expressionism and Cubism to their negative “zeropoint” (-0). Constructivism had begun to creatively enact the inverse, positive and plastic potential of this indifference (+0), progressively expanding the aesthetic range of contemporary art and working toward the transformation of reality: “With great decisiveness the constructivists have inscribed a new course. That of reality,” Hilberseimer praises, “In their, for the time being, still non-utilitarian constructions the unmistakable will to take possession of reality is legible. From constructions in painting, the constructivists have passed onto the construction of objects. To architecture in the most comprehensive sense of the term.”59 This expansion of creative power, the progressive integration of aesthetic vision and material production, Hilberseimer presents as the corollary of collective sovereignty. The realization of creative indifference in the environmental sense of architecture is the manifestation of a cooperative artistic science. For only with the broadest social integration does the cultural power of scientific observation and artistic expression have the capacity to integrally transform (rather than chaotically fragmentarily change) reality at the scale of the built environment as a whole. Constructivism is the logical consequence of methods of work based on the collectivity of our time. It has, therefore, not a subjective basis, but a general nature. It unreservedly recognizes the social conditions of art as of life as a whole. Looks for its elements in the expressions of our industrial-mechanical age. Mathematical clarity, geometrical rigor, purposive organization, the most extreme economy, and most precise constructivity are not only technical but eminently artistic problems. They constitute the real essence of our epoch. The constructive method draws every object into the realm of design. Not still-lifelike picturing, but forming as reality.60 Although their work remained non-utilitarian material experimentation, Hilberseimer argues Constructivist artists were “working consciously toward the solution of new problems of material and form.” He saw their works as “the transition to utilitarian architectural constructions,” the preparation for environmental transformation.61 No doubt, Hilberseimer saw his own design work as constructivist, as a contribution to the collectively held “objective” of transforming, by creatively embracing contemporary means, the environment into a meaningful work of art, an aesthetic state in Schiller’s sense. Nor is there doubt he sought demonstratively “precise constructivity.” But it is also clear he understood this rational and technical work as a spiritual realization contiguous with the insights and ambitions of Expressionism and Cubism. Hilberseimer sought to imbue the collective artifact of humanity, of which the metropolis was a part, with organic coherence, vital being.

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Realization and Equalization of (the) Masses Around the time he is presenting Constructivism as the collective transformation of reality, Hilberseimer publishes “Der Wille zur Architektur” (“The Will for Architecture”) in Das Kunstblatt, wherein he contrasts the dawn of a spiritually integrated environmental transformation with the “flight from reality” toward an “idealized past,” the “deficient will to live” characteristic of the first quarter of the century. “Because one couldn’t cope with the facts of social life, one turned to mysticism,” he rails. “Forgot, through metaphysical speculations, the present and its tasks.” By contrast, the new art, seeking an objective understanding of creation, becomes ever more indifferently coincident with the present. The new art is not avant-garde in Hilberseimer’s understanding. It discards the prejudicial formalizations distancing art from reality. With innate practical reason it adapts to the greatly transformed and rapidly transforming conditions of life. “The present, […] as seldom before, has to deal with the realities and upheavals of this world. Compels a creative rationalism. Has elicited a revolutionizing of spiritual means: of politics, science, art.” A worldview incongruent with given conditions foreswears creation. Constructivism is the vital imperative to grasp and transform existence. Thus, after many experimental attempts, art has found the way to reality. Made illusionism, which has been a singular goal since the Renaissance, absurd. Created a new sense for the matter of the environment. It is not about painting more or less good pictures, forming statues, ordering aesthetic arrangements today, but forming reality itself. Not painting pictures, but forming entities. Applying the forming laws of art to space, to the object, as reality. But the turn from illusion to reality is only the first step toward realizing the ultimate value of art. “Integrating all the forces which are still reproductively effective today into the productive process of work must be attempted. To systematically yield efficacy. Because the objective is to order the world and human relationships. Induce responsible action. Regulate the most important and essential conditions of life.”62 The transformation of reality is not cultural creation in its highest sense without an integrated worldview. Hilberseimer’s organic state of culture is a republic of knowledge—the progressive, collective integration of our understanding of existence—and a republic of creation: the development of our capacity for collective action. Hilberseimer sees architecture as pivotal to this spiritual incorporation, “the area of art that poses the most problems for solution today.” Architecture is the condensing point through which constructivist art leverages an aesthetic state. “Only concentration of all artistically creative forces on a delimited area, the most determined setting of objectives, can lead to the necessary accomplishments,” Hilberseimer writes.63

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The brief history of recent art Hilberseimer offers in “The Will for Architecture” parallels his “Remarks on the New Art,” but presents the new art as a movement toward constructive architectonics.64 “The experimental character of constructivistic works a priori exclude self-purposefulness,” he explains, “They are only works of transition. To utilitarian architectural constructions. A well-disciplined training for architecture as the ultimate goal.” Expressionism clarifies the means of design and the structure of images. Cubism identifies “the basic elements of all formation” (“geometrically-cubic forms”) and takes “the first step […] from illusion to independent formation [Bildung].” Abstraction moves from composition to pure construction, ultimately sublimating the object as idea. With Suprematism, Hilberseimer writes, “Abstract idealism reached its zenith, annihilated everything still in some way material. Reached the conclusion of an artistic phase. Prepared the way for new creative possibilities.” With emphasis on the means of creation, the new art passes, through an inflection point, from idealism to materialism. It makes reality the common idea of humanity and matter of creation.65 In its experimentation, the new art is at once preparatory and a model for new architecture. “Like every art,” Hilberseimer tutors, “architecture confronts the indispensable necessity to attain clarity about its underlying and commandable means.” Echoing the drafts written with Rukser, Hilberseimer argues the geometric explorations of Cubism had particular significance for the building-art.66 Simple cubic bodies: cubes and spheres, prisms and cylinders, pyramids and cones, pure forming elements, are the fundamental forms of every architecture. Their corporeal determination compels formal clarity. Architecture arises of geometry. When geometric forms become proportioned bodies, architecture emerges. Diversity with greatest unity. Details subordinated to begetting principal lines. Before decisive cubic construction, particulars completely withdraw. Measure-giving is the general formation of masses. That law of proportion imposed on them. The most heterogeneous material masses require a law of form equally effective for every element. Hence reduction of building form to the most essential. Most general. Simplest. Most unambiguous. Subordination of multiplicity. Formation according to a general law of form.67 Visibly embodying an ideational content, simple geometric forms imbue the material masses of building with evident coherence. Matter becomes idea. Moreover, these elemental means of architecture are animated by the collective spirit of their time.68 “The architecture of the present above all differs from that of the past due to its sociological and economic preconditions,” Hilberseimer points out, “From the new purposeful demands there result at the same time formal peculiarities that are entirely decisive for the architecture of today. They are new

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and invigorating.” These particular enlivening purposes, Hilberseimer suggests, “Constitute when formed the lawful artistic factor today.”69 Hilberseimer’s metropolis-architecture reconceives the spiritual posture of the contemporary city. It makes no sense to embody the contemporary purposes of tenement, commercial, and factory buildings in the forms of cathedrals, temples, and palaces. “To sensibly form the residential building, the commercial building, the factory is one of the most essential tasks of contemporary architecture,” he declares. “Pure types of these kinds of buildings have still not emerged,” he observes, yet “The similarity of their intended uses permits a comprehensive typification.” Following his work with Rukser, Hilberseimer felt the profound commonalities of metropolitan (building) masses resist Taylorization. He considers the distillation of formal principles common to contemporary purposes “necessary constructive work.” The masses (buildings) of the city could embody a more unified and mutually affirming comportment than the histrionic affectations of capital had allowed. Cohered by commonalities, their distinctions would gain purposeful significance.70 Architects, however, remained ignorant of this task. Most had detached themselves from practical reason. By taking the “principles of individual handcraft” rather than “collective industrial preconditions” as the basis of architectural production, they had “evaded the normalization on which the entirety of industry is based.”71 But a constructive architect seeks the most insightful and rational grasp of material. “Rational thinking, surety of objective, precision and economy, hitherto qualities of the engineer, must become the basis of this comprehensive architectonic,” Hilberseimer instructs, “Because constructivism is no new decorativity. No new formalism. It grasps things themselves. Penetrates and spiritualizes them. Reduces them to their essential form. Organizes them sensibly. Brings them to their ultimate consummation of form.” Logical and purposeful, lucid creation is not cold calculation. It is the vital ethic of artistic materialization. Like constructive art, Hilberseimer stresses, a constructive architecture will emerge from “material experiments,” from “Attempts to know and learn to form material and its possibilities. To fathom its possibilities of relation and interrelation.”72 Hilberseimer describes this activity as discovering “laws of form” that “modified […] by different demands and purposes” will manifest objects with their “own particular lawfulness” that, because they are informed by these general studies and the rational ethic that shapes them, “will always be connected by the laws of clarity and economy.”73 In this way, the architect goes beyond the work of the engineer. Creating singular entities in correspondence with present needs and conditions, the architect forms material artistically, according to a synthetic idea of culture. “The work of the engineer is completed with rational performance. That of the architect begins therewith,” Hilberseimer explains, “For the architect, the rational solution is the material of formation. He subordinates it to an encompassing idea of form. It is for him merely the means of giving an idea corporeality. Realizing it

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in space.”74 The constructive architect, beyond mere knowledge of construction, is concerned with the sensible significance of construction. Rationality is not thereby reified, but animated by vital purpose, a “creative rationalism.”75 Rather than fleeing their time, the constructive architect animates the mechanics of creation with spiritual purpose. Hilberseimer makes a similar argument in G at this time. “Instead of placing demands on engineers and industry for new constructions and materials realizing new conceptions of form,” he complains, learned “architects used the proffered new constructions and materials entirely senselessly, as substitutes for the old.” Having lost touch with the contemporary feeling for life, architects could no longer conceive a new world. Ignorant of the innovative practices of industry, their impotence stymied building. “The occultic fetishism architects pursue with their trade proves more and more a relic of a romantic past. Their petit bourgeois individualism a hindrance that must be overcome,” Hilberseimer complains. The consequence: a loss of architectural initiative and the increasing autonomy of the building industry. Misunderstanding the “form-modifying influence” of production, architects had sought to impose form, stifling their capacity to create form. The built environment was the product of technology and purpose unmediated by architects. “Whereas architecture once determined the forms of instruments, even tools, now technology fertilizes architecture.” Hilberseimer implores his colleagues to regain comprehension of the vital means of production. Only with “the courage of the present and the will to the future” will it be possible “to generate fruitful work,” he claims. Only the “affirmation and mastery of the conditions for life and production,” Hilberseimer stresses, “will make possible the synthesis” necessary to cultural work.76 “Ignorance of necessities has hitherto always led to rigidity. And what is more rigid than the architecture of the present?” Hilberseimer asks in “The Will for Architecture.” “Creativity manifests itself, however precisely, by completely working through given conditions. Finding adequate form for them.”77 To overcome the present rigor mortis, to reanimate the contemporary masses (of building), you have to accept and understand their contemporary constitution, engage them indifferently, embrace their inherent vitality, not suppress, conceal, divide, cajole, or ignore their potential.

The Rasterized and Cinematic City Hilberseimer and Rukser conceive the animated masses of the metropolis constructing a new community and urban form. They argue “the city-buildingart is altogether the highest peak of architecture, because it brings the creations of all architectural genres together in the highest formal order conceivable.”78 They adopt Brinckmann’s conception of the city as a linear “spiritual-physical process”

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that begins with the formation of “individual living spaces” and ends with the “physiognomy of […] the city.”79 But they recognize the impediments to this thesis, noting the impoverishment of the individual (building) in a fragmented society.80 In “The Will for Architecture” Hilberseimer is more explicit in asserting the individual and society, the interior and exterior, are reciprocally conditioning. He begins, not expressionistically, as Brinckmann does, with the individual room, but dialectically, with the poles of the individual interior and the city as a whole: Contemporary architecture is essentially dependent on the solution of two factors: the single cell, of space and of the total urban organism. Space as an integral part of buildings integrated within street-blocks will determine this in its form of appearance. Will in this way become a forming factor of the city arrangement, the actual objective of architecture. Conversely, the constructive formation of the city plan attains essential influence on the constructive formation of space and buildings.81 Hilberseimer conceives both the building and the city as organic entities, with their own internal coherence. The integral organization of buildings is conditioned by their urban milieu, just as the urban milieu is constituted by the integral organization and interaction (grouping) of buildings. But the internal organization of the city—the interaction, placement, and form of its buildings—is also conditioned if not determined by given material means and the collective spirit; the metropolis by the disposition supporting international capital, Hilberseimer and Rukser’s vision of settlement by a prospective socialism. Embracing the cubic city Hilberseimer and Rukser’s definitively encase architecture at the scale of the building-block. They identify the individual spaces of a building as the constituent organs of the architectural body and the individual building-blocks of the city as the constituent organs of the urban body. The room and the building-block are the elementary spatio-plastic cells of their respective organisms. “What the space [the room] is at the small, the urban structure is at the large, scale,” Hilberseimer explains in “The Will to Architecture,” “an encompassing organization of mutual needs and relationships.”82 Hilberseimer and Rukser initially conceive the moment of mutual interaction between the metropolis and architecture as the dynamic vertical surface of a linear street—not simply the exterior surface of a building, but the exterior surface of a building that has fully realized itself in correspondence with its milieu, that has grown to occupy the largest possible area before encountering limitations imposed by its urban context (the building-block). Although Hilberseimer and Rukser acknowledge the potential coherence of the cubic city is the product, not just of the common denominators of building made salient, but the mediation of the street layout, Hilberseimer’s independent work will place increasing emphasis

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on the constructive and regulating function of the urban plan. Put otherwise, Hilberseimer and Rukser, following Brinckmann, initially conceive exterior urban space as the reciprocal of interior architectural space. By the time of their essay on “American Architecture” in 1920, they have reconsidered this presumption. In Schmarsow’s and Brinckmann’s terms: the ethereal substance between the organs of the city is conceived not exclusively as plastic but also in a more painterly way as landscape. By 1923, however, Hilberseimer understands the painterly—and by extension landscape—not as impressionistic but as constructively filmic, the polar emergence and dissolution of form; rhythmic, architectonic articulation of an ethereal contiguity. Beyond Behne and Friedlaender, who take Segal’s rasterpictures as the threshold of Constructivism, Hilberseimer sees the “rhythmic play of abstract planes” and “planimetric” Cubism of Suprematism opening a larger territory. Not rectilinearly apportioned like Segal's (urban) paintings, Malevich's (planetary) canvases are ethereal spaces, dynamic constellations of free-floating “geometric figures.” Moreover, in a 1922 essay on the pre-Columbian architecture of contemporary Mexico, coincident with his essays on film, Hilberseimer articulates renewed appreciation for the interrelationship of the city and the landscape.83 “As fantastic as the individual buildings,” Hilberseimer exclaims of Mayan architecture, “are the whole complexes, the positioning of the buildings and their relationships to one another.”84 He quotes the 1898 observation of Harry Graf Kessler (1868– 1937), that Mayan buildings often appear in the landscape not “horizontally on a surface, but vertically in height. Their character lies in a rhythm of heights.”85 In Mayan cities Hilberseimer describes a lawfully diverse “American” architecture, employing the verticality of the skyscraper and the horizontality of the terrace. Yet unlike Chicago, where the works of Root and Wright are distant, Mayan city-builders rhythmically juxtapose diverse forms intensifying their saliency. Hilberseimer illustrates his essay with ink drawings (1895) by US archaeologist William Henry Holmes (1846–1933). These aerial views of Uxmal, Chichen Itza, and Palenque depict complexes of towers protruding above the tree canopy, like the emerging figures in Eggeling and Richter’s films.86 Where unobscured by vegetation, the bases of these masses seamlessly dissolve into the continuous, undulating terrain. In his subsequent work, Hilberseimer, extends his artistic conception of settlement to the scale of the region and the continent, even as he continues to emphasize the most coherent form of (city-)building is a self-contained entity. His earlier emphasis on the plastic cubic body of architecture as the articulating division of interior and exterior space is neutralized by a concern for the spacing and form of urban bodies in the landscape, just as his concern with the inherent values of anarchistic community is neutralized by the globally equilibrating values of a constructive politics.

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Constructive Politics Just as the various forms in Richter and Eggeling’s films dissolve into and emerge from their background with time, Hilberseimer imagines cities disappearing, transfiguring, and materializing in the landscape in correspondence with the historical transformation of culture. In his urban theory and design after 1922, Hilberseimer cranks the handle, speeding urban projection into the future. “Creating the form of the environment is one of the main tasks of humanity,” Hilberseimer writes in “Vom Städtebaulichen Problem der Grossstadt” (“On the Cities-Building Problem of the Metropolis”), published just a month after “The Will for Architecture,” in June 1923. “Essential components of this form-creation are the building of states and cities.” Emphasizing states and cities—like cities and buildings—are “mutually determining, […] in constant interrelationship,” Hilberseimer, writing a half-century after German unification, reemphasizes the metropolis is the ramification of the possessive, colonizing worldview, the embodiment of a mercantilist economy (given contemporary technology) global in extent. Unlike the large-city, predominantly national in character, the metropolis is the organ of the state within an antagonistic international system. “The city, above all the metropolis, cannot be considered an independent organism existing for itself,” he explains, “It has grown together and is connected […] with the entire civilizationally-organized world. Thus, this world represents an entire organism, fathoming the lawfulness of which is essential preparatory work of a systematically organized form-creation.”87 In his conception of the city after 1923, Hilberseimer envisions a post-national world-organism. He sets himself the anti-Schefflerian task of conceiving urban organs for an emerging socialist international. Rather than observing the form of buildings within the metropolis, Hilberseimer is now equally concerned with understanding the form of the metropolis in the global economy. He reapplies the logic of his and Rukser’s metropolitan analysis to the city as a whole, arguing “The constructing method must be preceded by […] a systematic exploration of the fundamentals.” Hilberseimer again compares his approach to natural philosophy. “With the same self-understandability with which we observe the manifesting of nature, we must also investigate the creations of the human spirit, which are not perceivable with the external senses,” he explains.88 This claim could easily be aligned with Goethe, Nietzsche, and Friedlaender. In the context of his ongoing considerations of constructivism, however, Hilberseimer refers to an essay by Alfred Bauer, “Konstruktive Politik” (“Constructive Politics”), published three months earlier in Socialist Monthly.89 Bauer’s essay critiques the narrow-interest, short-sightedness, perdition, and skepticism dominating European politics in the lead up to and aftermath of the war. Against “quietistic optimism” and “resigned pessimism,” Bauer advocates a (Nietzschean) “will that […] sees in and through things, rejects any self-delusion

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about them, and feels the duty to create anew.” “Whomever wants reconstruction or rather new construction, must know and communicate one thing: humanity is the master builder of history and free designer of the future,” he waxes, “In the creative person, final and unconditional faith in fate unite with the defiance of the freest self-will […] into the most profound synthesis.”90 Unlike the natural sciences, the social sciences had “remained unfruitful for life,” because they had not taken the necessary step beyond the “schematic-mechanical conception” of existence that, supposing contemporary conditions an outgrowth of the past, “fails to recognize the most powerful states and social formations are built.” “We must build states,” he declares.91 Recalling the statement by Marx, which, a few months later, through Lissitzky’s graphic design, becomes the central epigraph of G—“Art should not explain but change life.”92—Bauer asserts a “constructive politics” must “proceed in two directions: one analytically investigating the forms of society and those forces working in society, but then, however, progressing toward synthesis, […] construct the social, political, and economic organization in which the vital forces lead to the greatest effect and growth.”93 With the same movement (analysis-synthesis) as Hilberseimer’s theory and design, Bauer’s constructive politics sought to transform society into a cohesive and vital organism. Moreover, Bauer argues a constructive politics keeps culture and civilization in a productive, reciprocal tension. “Civilization is not creative, but is the diffusion of cultural creation. A people that only yet has civilization, will stagnate, rigidify,” Bauer theorizes, “On the other hand, a people that only has culture, cannot fulfill its sense; a small class of ‘culture bearers’ will, in misery, confront the vital masses like an adversary.” Europe lacked this Dionysian-Apollonian balance. Culture had not renewed civilization. Hence the war. And the “unhealthy development of our metropolises.” With respect to the latter, Bauer writes: “We have there before us, almost in its pure form, the result of a […] planless economic confusion and, worse still, planned overexploitation by a few of the nation as a whole.”94 Bauer explicitly connects social, political, and economic reform with urban reform. Hilberseimer will soon argue the state and its cities are the principal manifestations of society. But Bauer makes an explicit distinction between the polity and the polis. The “state,” Bauer stresses, is “something living, fluid,” but “state-building […] concerns only the construction of static buildings, […] the construction of the form in which the forces can work with the greatest possible effect.”95 At once the product and program of culture, the forms of the state and the city release and direct the polity’s dynamic power, the mechanisms through which culture’s dynamic forces unfold. Bauer argues all forms of life, balancing external and internal forces, exhibit this interrelationship between the static and the dynamic.96 These forces were ultimately not comprehensible, Bauer acknowledges. But Bauer could not resign himself to their fate. It was the spiritual task of humanity to avoid the nihilistic consequences of skepticism by attempting

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to give shape to life. In the one-sided “materialistic attitude of the social sciences” a preoccupation with “the static elements” of existence casts the world as lifeless and rigid.97 It is the task of a constructive politics, Bauer argues, to constantly reconstitute social forms in correspondence with the dynamics of life.98 “Since we will never know [… these forces] completely,” Bauer acknowledges, “we can only strive for the best possible order, that is, for that order which allows the productive forces of humanity to unfold and have an impact to the greatest possible degree.” The goal of a constructive politics is “to direct the flowing forces through our forms of community in a way that produces dynamic equilibrium.”99 Yet, precisely because the coherence apparent in the coursing of cosmic bodies is unattainable, the apparent harmony of the cosmos will always remain an aspiration. In making these instrumental claims, Bauer draws on merchant-seaman come planner, Martin Mächler’s (1881–1958) electrical and organic metaphors for the interrelationship between social forces and environmental infrastructure.100 In “On the Cities-Building Problem of the Metropolis,” Hilberseimer, following Bauer, refers to an essay by Mächler and quotes another.101 Hilberseimer will reference Mächler throughout his career, particularly his plan for Greater Berlin.102 The fact Hilberseimer first cites Mächler alongside Bauer in 1923, suggests Hilberseimer reads Mächler’s wide-ranging arguments about the world-economic system, the importance of transportation, and his conception of the metropolis as a “worldcity,” through the lens of Bauer’s constructive politics and interprets Mächler’s metaphors of polarity according to his own well-developed understanding of Friedlaender’s philosophy.103 Against naïve optimism and skeptical fatalism, myopic materialism, and dogmatic ideology, Hilberseimer understands constructive politics as a cleareyed faith in creative rationalism, an effort to face the human condition with a sense of poise, purpose and agency, a constantly projective effort to give shape to reality with the greatest possible respect for the given forces of existence and the indeterminacy of the future, a perpetual act of reflection and prediction, the cultural forming and reforming of civilization, with a view to its utmost integrity and coherence. In the present circumstance, Bauer points out, the international workers movement had given rise to a new dynamic within and between nations. Contemporary statecraft faced the task of rebalancing the world system. In particular, in the wake of the recent conflict, Bauer charges constructive politics with projecting the constellation of Europe in 1950 so as to avoid near-term collisions among its constituent bodies. He contends a harmonious Europe is necessary to neutralize the Anglo-Saxon, Russian-Siberian, and East-Asian powers, a constant refrain in Socialist Monthly.104 Bauer reconceives stateconstruction at a pan-European scale and sees environmental transformation as its most salient act of creation. His constructive politics provides the planetary horizon for Hilberseimer’s reconception of settlement in the mid-twenties.

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13 METROPOLIS-BUILDING

The Elements of Metropolis-Architecture Metropolis-Architecture represents the development of the theory Hilberseimer formulates with Rukser in 1918–20 and of the designs Hilberseimer publishes in 1919 in conjunction with that theory.1 The majority of the material constituting the 1927 book is complete by 1924. It includes designs Hilberseimer exhibits in the November Group section of the Great Berlin Art Exhibition in the summer and at Walden’s Der Sturm gallery in November of that year.2 In association with the latter exhibition, Hilberseimer publishes the unillustrated essay “Grossstadtarchitektur” (“Metropolis-Architecture”) in Walden’s journal in December.3 The introductory and concluding chapters of the 1927 book, its major theoretical statements, are, with few exceptions, comprised of this essay and “On the Cities-Building Problem of the Metropolis,” both based on Hilberseimer’s collaboration with Rukser. The central chapters on building types, though more developed, also draw on the early drafts.4 Unlike this early work, which drew upon prewar examples, Hilberseimer’s theory and design after 1921 is increasingly informed by a rapidly expanding body of architectural and urban experimentation. Most importantly, the work of J. J.  P. Oud (1890–1963) (influenced by Wright) and Le Corbusier (1887–1965) had become central to Behne’s and Hilberseimer’s thinking.5 So too, Mies’s designs appear in numerous sections of Metropolis-Architecture among the many recent buildings and projects Hilberseimer includes to support his argument. Metropolis-Architecture thus realizes Hilberseimer and Rukser’s ambition to incorporate visual exemplars as verification for theory. Unlike their earlier proposals, however, Hilberseimer’s book interleaves textual, photographic, and drawn material. The drafts envision something like an atlas of images following the text, consistent with Einstein’s book on sculpture and the Orbis Pictus series edited by Westheim, which includes Einstein’s second book on African sculpture among its volumes.6 Hilberseimer and Rukser publish a number of essays on non-European art between 1920 and 1922 that parallel (following Kandinsky and Marc’s almanac) Westheim’s efforts in the Orbis Pictus series and his journal Das

FIGURE 13.1 Cover of Ludwig Hilberseimer, Grosstadtbauten, Neue Architektur I, published with Merz 18/19 (Hannover: Aposs-Verlag, 1925). (DADA III:2:18/19) Kunsthaus Zürich Library.

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Kunstblatt to expand the aesthetic and spiritual appreciation of art.7 Westheim authors the first volume of Orbis Pictus on Indische Baukunst (Indian Building-Art, 1920), long an inspiration for the work of Taut and Behne. Described as “books of world-art,” each volume is comprised of a short “foreword,” a bibliography, and a photographic catalog representing a specific cultural period of pre-modern European or non-European art.8 Hilberseimer no doubt conceives the images in Metropolis-Architecture as representations contributing to a new worldview: an international (building) culture overcoming the dispirited civilization of the bourgeois metropolis. In its assertion of this idea, Hilberseimer’s early theoretical and artistic work arguably comes together in its most salient form in Grossstadtbauten (MetropolisBuildings), a special edition of Schwitters’ journal Merz in 1925, conceived as the first issue of a series on “Neue Architektur” (New Architecture).9 In MetropolisArchitecture, Hilberseimer situates his work alongside that of his peers. MetropolisBuildings is entirely illustrated by his own creations, asserting a strong connection between his theory and design. Its concluding section is an exposition of these designs in image and text, recording and developing, it seems reasonable to suppose, the content of the 1924 exhibitions.10 Incorporating much of the same text and design work as Metropolis-Architecture, but, unlike his subsequent books, uncomplicated by the critic’s survey, Metropolis-Buildings provides the elements and principles of a future practice, investing urban design with a coherent visual and functional logic, applicable and adaptable to a constructive cultural transformation.

Urban Growth Hilberseimer drew large portions of “On the Cities-Building Problem of the Metropolis” from the drafts of Metropolis-Architecture, where he and Rukser implicate art history and historical materialism. In Metropolis-Buildings Hilberseimer gives material conditions an even stronger political-economic cast. Following Bauer, he argues “the creations of the human spirit […] must be considered polar manifestations, as soul and body [Mächler’s comparison]” in which: “The body of society undergoes the most diverse kinds of formation corresponding to the respective basis of production.” He offers a sketch of this historical relationship between the polis and political economy: “Loose regional association is followed by the more tightly-structured village (agricultural economy); later the tightly organized city (handwork); finally, at the highest level, community formations corresponding to world-states, the metropolis, and worldcity (industry).”11 Moreover, while Hilberseimer and Rukser had identified capitalist speculation as the fundamental driver of the growth and characteristic “disorganization” of

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the metropolis, Hilberseimer now more forcefully asserts the willful inability of the bourgeoisie to equitably control urban growth. “With surprising amplitude, a multitude of forces pushed for the formation of large cities, without succeeding in gaining control over them, organizing them, making their vital excess usable for the public, the whole people,” Hilberseimer critiques. Rather than far-sighted public stewardship for “common interests,” “Everything was entrusted to private initiative, the essential perspective of which was to drive the price of land and rental income as high as possible.”12 The incoherence of the metropolis was evidence the “organizational spirit […] was completely disregarded in the construction and expansion of large cities.”13 The metropolis is the consequence of economic forces and a particular political disposition.14 Reserved for the profiteering interests of the few, the means to produce a systematic differentiation and integration of activities, evident in the (Taylorist) organization of industrial production, had not been extended to the design of the city. The metropolis was a mechanical contraption of uncoordinated and disjointed parts. Hilberseimer advocates a rational practice of urban differentiation and synthesis that integrates the city into an organically functioning (graceful) community. The principal factors in the rational planning of the metropolis are “spiritual” and “material,” Hilberseimer writes, the “ordering and structuring of the onrushing forces” and the “systematic [planvolle] acquisition of the necessary space to build up these forces.” Hilberseimer calls for planned urban development and the spatiomaterial means to realize it.15 Envisioning a more socially integrated future, Hilberseimer endorses a constructive attitude that, necessarily rooted in the present, anticipates and accommodates change, preserving the vitality—the spiritual life—of generations to come. The task of the builder of cities reaches out far beyond the present. In great strokes, he constitutes the city and the urban life of the future. Therefore, it is vital that every urban complex be established on a comprehensive plan that, with deliberation and diligence, supports the most diverse needs of an emerging common being, considers its geographic and topographic situation, does not overlook its stately, economic, and productive significance.16 Hilberseimer argues this constructive conception should be primarily concerned with: the principal means of transportation—“the arteries of the whole organism”; the functional subdivision of land in accord with terrain and purpose; and, through public expropriation, the planned accommodation of growth.17 Offering a polar typology of the historical city, Hilberseimer subtly recasts his and Rukser’s earlier response to Sitte, now emphasizing the structure of growth. Hilberseimer describes “two city types that oppose each other like ideological opposites, but have often mixed in practice”: “the so-called natural urban complex

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of the Middle Ages, in which the streets more or less radiate from a center point (marketplace) leading to a ring-form arrangement [when fortified …] and the so-called artistically-geometric system, which underlies the establishment of cities in antiquity, the Renaissance, and the Baroque.”18 The former, accretion through individual buildings, had the advantage of “complete adaptation to the terrain,” but lacked a constructive worldview. While he praises Sitte’s efforts, Hilberseimer rejects anachronistic models. He rails against the (artless) fatalism of medieval, bourgeois, and historicist ideals. The problem of the bourgeois metropolis is not the use of a geometric system, as Sitte supposes, but its impoverished “schematic application.” Hilberseimer rejects the irrational and dispirited use of rectilinear logics, but not those logics themselves. “For creative people systems are only means for design,” he states. “From convenience, thoughtlessness, and lack of imagination,” the geometric system “has been applied entirely senselessly: without regard for the land, without higher point of view, without sense for the architectonic.”19 The urban plan ought to be shaped to the terrain, by a comprehensive sense of value, the most common constructive logics of its constituent elements, and sensible artistic ambition. Moreover, he argues, “the arrangement of the city plan according to the geometric point of view corresponds to the basic principles of all architecture.” “The straight line, the right angle, have always been the most distinguished elements,” he claims, again emphasizing design is the sensible expression of belief, “Doesn’t the straight street with its clarity, rather than the arbitrarily bent, also correspond to our present feelings and organizing spirit?”20 Hilberseimer does not prescribe the form of the future city, but suggests rectilinearity, thoughtfully used, offers the most salient artistic expression of an organizing, equilibrating, and dynamic worldview, the prevailing spirit of the time. Sensibly embodying a constructive vision for an integrated egalitarian community, the practical, rational, and artistic organization of the city promises the most intensive cultivation of contemporary and future creation.

Urban Morphology With this critique of Sitte’s ideas, Hilberseimer prefaces his discussion of “urban expansion,” “the most important and essential problem” of “contemporary citybuilding.”21 Here the significance of Hilberseimer’s debt to Bauer’s constructive politics becomes clear, as well as the tension between anarchism and constructivism. Hilberseimer acknowledges continued growth perpetually threatens to undermine urban organization. The vitalist imperative—implicit in the Nietzschean (and Dadaist) critique of Bildung—to create without inhibiting future creation weighs on Hilberseimer as the encounter between self-realizing metropolis-architecture and sculpted urban form (a metropolis-building).22

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By emphasizing the medieval city was continuously refortified by the construction of circumscribing walls, Hilberseimer reconceives the medieval model. The incrementally expanding city is de facto “concentric” urban growth, which he describes as “annular expansion” by consecutive rings.23 Every prevailing worldview is ineluctably and contingently materialized. But while the fatalism of incremental expansion was sustainable in the Middle Ages, and annular growth potentially allows alternating rings of open and built space, with the increased traffic characteristic of the metropolis, the concentric model only intensifies pressure on the city: “it allows not planned growth but planned concentration.” The most significant alternative to the “concentric” model, the “radial” approach, rather than encircling settlement, envisions the city expanding in wedge-shaped sectors. Although this would also allow sectors of open space to expand, Hilberseimer concludes this is only a “conditional” solution. Once the city has reached a certain size, the problem of intensified concentration recurs.24 Against the concentration entailed in the concentric and radial models, Hilberseimer holds up the recent proposals of Erwin Gutkind (1886–1968) and Ernst May (1886–1970), noting the debt of the latter to Unwin’s ideas.25 Gutkind’s Vom städtebaulichen Problem der Einheitsgemeinde Berlin (On the Cities-Building Problem of the Unified Community, 1922), which Hilberseimer’s title echoes, outlines a polycentric model that, in Hilberseimer’s view, “unites a number of larger or smaller centers with the main center into an organic entity.”26 Although each of these centers were in themselves radial, Hilberseimer emphasizes Gutkind had sought a solution that shapes “the mass” of the city—its “living, working, and recreation places”—rather than one-sidedly emphasizing commerce and traffic. Hilberseimer also describes May’s proposal, for “Stadterweiterung mittels Trabanten” (“City-Expansion by means of Satellites,” 1922)—which he finds “similar” to Gutkind’s—in sculptural terms. May “proposes to confine the central city by rounding it to its existing space.” May envisions a constellation of rounded bodies—small residential and industrial satellites in the orbit of a central commercial city—circulating within an “ether” of unbuilt, publicly owned landscape usable for agriculture or recreation.27 The cosmic analogy (employed by both May and Bauer) was no doubt compelling for Hilberseimer. It is a staple of Friedlaender’s writings and avantgarde discourse after Expressionism more broadly. It asserts the perpetual harmony and mutual interrelationship of diverse bodies as well as the mutual adjustment of their course to accommodate decaying and emerging entities and trajectories. Hilberseimer notes May’s model could adaptively incorporate existing and new urban “organisms,” coordinating these satellites at a distance through the communicative tethers of a rapid transit system. Moreover, he emphasizes that May’s system allows the members of the urban constellation to develop specific purposeful forms. May had proposed the satellites, by virtue of their efficient

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FIGURE 13.2 Ludwig Hilberseimer, diagram of a “Trabantenstadtsystem” (“SatelliteCity-System”), from Ludwig Hilberseimer, Grosstadtbauten, Neue Architektur I, published with Merz 18/19 (Hannover: Aposs-Verlag, 1925), 11. (DADA III:2:18/19) Kunsthaus Zürich Library.

connection, be primarily residential and the central city commercial. “With all the local independence of the members of a total body,” Hilberseimer states, “these [urban organisms] remain narrowly connected with the central city and form with it an economic entity.” Hilberseimer thereby distinguishes the satellite conception from the economic and cultural apartheid—the distancing of the residential and commercial cities—intrinsic to parochial proposals, such as Scheffler’s. Rather, Hilberseimer understands May’s proposal as the morphological transformation of organs within the same body. “In connection with such an extensive expansion of the city, a reconstruction of the inner city must be undertaken, interrelated therewith a restructuring of the population,” he advocates, “By the creation of

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new living quarters, the whole inner city must be made free for commercial life.”28 The principal impediments to such reconstruction, he laments, are “sentimental historicism” and a “concept of the city” burdened by the “memories” of “walls and gates.”29 Asserting “our task is not that of conserving the past but preparing the way of the future,” Hilberseimer argues it is impossible to accommodate urban growth with an anachronistic conception of the city as an autonomous, self-contained individual.30 Urban developments such as those currently being projected for Tokyo, accommodating around nine million, and even for New York, accommodating around thirty-five million people, are based on preconditions entirely different in kind from those to which we have hitherto been accustomed. They will therefore produce an entirely new kind of city type that will do away with spatial enclosedness [Geschlossenheit], the concept by which we have hitherto conceived of a city. Its immense extent necessarily compels decentralization.31 Despite acknowledging the inevitability of decentralization, Hilberseimer does not abandon the idea of settlement as a coherent, integrated conception. Just as constructivism promises to overcome the limits of art, Hilberseimer envisions a new era of city-building. Like Segal’s equivalence paintings, the constructive city is no longer delimited by a bounding frame. And just as Segal strives to overcome the hierarchically centralized canvas, Hilberseimer supposes the tremendous extent of the future city would dilute its historical focus. The center remains in Segal’s pictures, but is indifferent from the structure that organizes the landscape canvas as a whole. This deemphasized central point merely exercises a calibrating function between the spectator and the canvas, art and life. In May’s proposal, the central commercial district, the world-city in the satellite system, is the pivotal fulcrum calibrating the national and international economies, the place through which the energies of one flow into and condition the other. But, just as Segal’s cinematic canvases dissolve into an equilibrated system of frames, Hilberseimer reconceives May’s constellation as a (Suprematist) landscape of interconnected, mutually valued entities. Hilberseimer suggests each of the planets in the satellite system could constitute a life (qualities and laws) of its own, in mutual interrelationship with the constellation as a whole. In addition to the separation of living and working cities, he imagines “industrial decentralization will occur alongside world-urban points of concentration” and the potential for the concerns of particular industries to aggregate together, such that “the economic and spatial interrelationships of an industrial district will grow by itself into an organically-coherent giant city.”32 He thus emphasizes the constructive plasticity of the future city. Hilberseimer and Rukser had considered the distribution and morphology of architectural species and the sculpting of the common denominators of building. Hilberseimer extends

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their thesis to the speciation of urban entities and the sculpting of the urban mass as a whole. Following Bauer, Hilberseimer argues this purposeful articulation of urban constellations would coincide with the reorganization of the state. “The statebuilding of the future will be dependent on the formation of great economiccomplexes of states, on the integration of national and multinational states into economic entities,” he predicts, “the condensation of the politically-torn European continent into an economic entity is the prerequisite for a pioneering city-building policy […], which will bring a solution to the hitherto unsolvable problem of the metropolis.”33 Hilberseimer thus reconceives the extant metropolis as a harbinger of internationalization, the negative portend of a positive, spiritual worldcommunity: Confusing metropolises with princely capital cities, the seats of bureaucracy, metropolises were branded as parasites of the rest of the country. They were regarded only as consumers, not as producers. In complete misjudgment of their actual nature, it was overlooked that it was precisely the metropolises that independently increased the economic process of production, seized, increasingly quickly and consciously, economic leadership, contributed to the productive work of a country, to its spiritual essence.34 The increasingly massive metropolis had constituted the material and spiritual conditions of the contemporary state. One could choose to see it as a parasite on the nation and anachronistically long for return to the villages or small towns of medieval or bourgeois Europe, as the followers of Sitte, Scheffler, Tessenow and others had done in various ways. Or one could envision its intensified transformation: the universalization and decentralization of the metropolis, its functions incorporated into a cosmopolitan urban field contiguous with the landscape, constituting the European continent as a singular political-economic entity circulating within the dynamically equilibrating future world-system of a socialist international.

Cosmic Settlement In Metropolis-Buildings Hilberseimer furthers his concern with the speciation of the city at the scale of its internal organs and systems. The self-realization of metropolis-architecture and the constructive shaping of the urban structure become mutually correspondent. He describes the need to proportion and size urban blocks and streets differently with respect to their purpose—to account for varying needs of solar penetration, through-ventilation, and traffic. The “requirements that are taken for granted in every small settlement were completely

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ignored in big city planning,” he points out, “the building regulations tailored to all types of buildings, without differentiation according to purpose.”35 In this vein, Hilberseimer qualifies his interest in traffic. He suggests the rational if capitalist imperative to deal with the problem finally allows hitherto ignored but implicated issues of urban design, such as the problem of housing, to be addressed.36 Ideas of efficiency could be harnessed for a more equitable city. Hilberseimer’s newfound emphasis on shaping the form of the city is the corollary of a constructive politics that seeks to more actively channel and shape the dynamic (socioeconomic) energies of society. The relationship between transportation infrastructure and patterns of settlement becomes increasingly important to Hilberseimer’s thinking in the mid-1920s and the separation of mechanical and organic (pedestrian) movement fundamental after his emigration to the United States.37 Hitherto, urban questions had been too narrowly focused. Hilberseimer points out that the “reform activity of architects faced the façade, the fundamental division of land was left to the speculators, and the building police watched over the plan.”38 Architects had focused on “splendid buildings and splendid streets” rather than the fundamental “elements of city-building,” “dwellings and transportation.”39 And yet, “Space is to the house at the small scale, what it is to the urban complex at the large scale,” Hilberseimer proclaims, “a comprehensive organization and formation of mutual requirements and relationships.”40 The task of the citybuilding and building arts is to conceive the city as a whole in all its dimensions. Moreover, in the conclusion of his text, Hilberseimer offers a new, threedimensional conception of city-building. Hilberseimer and Rukser had presented the integration of the city with the landscape as integral to urban design, but mostly with regard to the organization of streets. Hilberseimer goes further in Metropolis-Buildings, equating the three-dimensional shape of urban form with terrain. In addition to the organization of the city, its requirements, the design of terrain is one of the principal tasks of city-building. […] In order to make the unsurveyable [unübersehbare] labyrinth of the metropolis into a spatially apprehensible entity [Gebilde], it is absolutely necessary to differentiate the heights of buildings. By gradation of building masses, the hitherto ungraspable urban organism can be made graspable and visible. By thus changing the heights of buildings and opening up the blocks, in addition to clarity [Übersichtlichkeit], one can also bring spaciousness into the city complex and thereby make the body of the building visible and clear [übersichtlich].41 Hilberseimer extends his concern for the visible clarity of architecture as a coherent body—his concern with the cubic form of the building—to the city as a whole. The city should be organized so its constituent building-blocks exhibit

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their inherent form within and without. So too the inherent form of the city as a whole should be self-evident within the city and the landscape. The goal of the city-building-art is to give the urban corpus the most vital formation and concise visual expression. Only the materialization of an immediately graspable entity could convey the collective significance of the polis, the unity of a coherent culture. The concisely shaped city is the corollary of a constructive politics and world-community. In Metropolis-Buildings, Hilberseimer presents the satellite-city (without mentioning May, Unwin or Howard) as the outgrowth of English garden city developments that had the separation of working and dwelling as a principal goal. But, despite the “local independence” of the orbiting residential satellites, he explains, “they still remain members of a total body, remain narrowly connected with the central core, form with it an economic and administrative entity.” Despite the advantages of the satellite system for the quality of dwelling, Hilberseimer acknowledges this centralization means the satellite model remains intensively reliant upon traffic. “The horizontal spreading of a metropolitan complex and a satellite-city system may be seen as the hypertrophying of horizontal citybuilding,” Hilberseimer theorizes, it “will never offer the possibility of perfectly regulating the ever-increasing traffic of the city.” Hilberseimer points to the chaos of American skyscraper cities as an indication of the consequences of centralization. Although he values the ability of the skyscraper to mitigate urban expansion, Hilberseimer recognizes the skyscraper cannot ameliorate the consequences of intense growth on its own. It has to be accompanied by the sculpting of urban form. “In contrast to the hitherto horizontal urban complex, which increasingly proves the impossibility of its continued existence as a metropolis, the city of the future must be vertical,” he writes, and “Instead of spreading still further in a plane, further concentration, further balling-together [Zusammenballung (agglomeration)].” Hilberseimer equates the neutralization of the satellite model’s hierarchical emphasis on the commercial city with the corporeal balling-together of metropolises into discrete particles. He imagines the heliocentric satellite system, centrally organized by the intense attraction of world-capital, had the potential, by freeing its various constituents from determined dependencies, to evolve into a more equitable, decentralized model of interacting “trajectories,” a neutral spatioplastic constellation of clearly autonomous bodies, each rounded into an integrated and concise three-dimensional form: a self-contained, coherent, and finite entity. Liberated from capitalist fixation, the satellite city becomes what we might call a cosmic city. Hilberseimer describes this conception as “a future task, the solution of which will become an unrelenting demand.”42 For now, he could only illustrate the idea. He does so in the two drawings constituting his “Schema einer Hochhausstadt” (“Schema of a High-Rise-City”), which, along with a diagram of the satellite model, were the only three drawings referred to in the principal text of Metropolis-Buildings. Although the book contains numerous

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other designs, Hilberseimer places particular focus on his conception of a HighRise-City, the illustrations of which conclude his theoretical discussion.

Planet City In the High-Rise-City, for a cosmic system of settlement, Hilberseimer envisions a planetary city: a self-contained and integrated world, unifying dwelling and commerce, rooted to the earth, balled up into the sky. He coheres the various purposes of the city into a system of vertically interconnected horizontal layers. The city’s subterranean, terrestrial, and extra-terrestrial strata incorporate distinct functions and speeds of movement: “Construction of individual city-elements, functionally separated from each other,” he explains: “below, the commercial city with its automobile traffic; above, the dwelling city, with its pedestrian traffic; beneath the earth, the long-distance and urban train traffic.”43 From its lowest to its highest levels, the High-Rise-City constitutes a polar organization. In the subterranean level: rapid horizontal movement connects the city with distant spheres. In the extra-terrestrial level, residential slabs vertically connect inhabitants with light and air. The lowest levels: a geographic network of high-speed public transportation. The uppermost levels: the collective stability of individual dwelling units. Below, the mechanical rush of automobiles; above, the stroll of pedestrians. At the equator between these horizontally and vertically charged fields, between earth and sky, the large volumes—the long-span interiors—of commercial activity (offices, department stores, warehouses, and entertainments), isolated from a landscape now liberated from the sprawling consumption of the city. In the corporeal formation of his architecture, Hilberseimer gives expression to these distinct layers and movements. The horizontal, squat proportions of the commercial masses contrast with the tall and slender residential slabs. The coursing of the commercial layer, its bands of fenestration compressed into long horizontals, act in counterpoint with the evenly spaced window grids in the residential buildings above, lending a sense of neutral calm to the hemisphere of dwelling. The rhythm of the commercial fenestration is an accelerated, continuous run of triplets, twelve beats for every four in the dwellings above. The silhouetted bodies of speeding automobiles and upstanding pedestrians—animated notes— accentuate this contrast between horizontal movement and vertical calm. Hilberseimer’s use of chiaroscuro emphatically asserts the logic of his sculptural massing. The darkened end-walls of the residential slabs in the extraterrestrial realm are rendered with equal value to the subterranean material. These perpendicular walls and the earth—the frontal, planar elements of the composition—constitute counter-proportioned rectangles. The earthen rectangle is absorbed into the boundaries of the drawing. The residential slabs, opposed against a lighter background, figure as concisely sculpted masses. Crisply salient in

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FIGURE 13.3  Ludwig Hilberseimer, Hochhausstadt (Highrise City), perspective view, East-West Street, 1924. Gift of George E. Danforth. The Art Institute of Chicago / Art Resource NY.

the glowing, shadowless (northern) atmosphere, they rotate and elevate the earth into the heavens. So too, the dark grey of the subterranean level, the light gray of the receding building surfaces, the lighter shade of the street and pedestrian walkways combine to divide the sheet into two realms, roughly equal in area. The composition as a whole, counterposes dark and light, graphic and non-graphic, ground and sky. Moreover, variations in the patterning of light and dark reinforce the division of the city into its horizontal realms. The entire sheet (a proportion of around 2:3) is divided into horizontal layers in the approximate ratio of 5:18:5:5, forming the sky, residential, commercial-terrestrial, and subterranean levels, respectively. The uppermost and lowermost layers, pure earth and pure sky, are of equal dimension and opposite value. The sky is entirely without color. The earth is solidly, darkly colored. The terrestrial and subterranean layers are lighter, that of the extraterrestrial (residential) layer, between earth and sky, combines dark, light, and uncolored areas. Together, the two drawings of the High-Rise-City comprise a polarized diptych: one a section-perspective through a north-south street, the other a sectionperspective through an east-west street.44 In fact, however, each drawing is not a single section-perspective but two. A salient feature distinguishes the upper (above ground) and lower (subterranean) portions of each. In both drawings the upper perspective projects beyond the section plane toward the viewer, suggesting each drawing is comprised of a section-perspective in the subterranean layer and a related section-perspective above the ground plane. Although the two

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FIGURE 13.4  Ludwig Hilberseimer, Hochhausstadt (Highrise City), perspective view, North-South Street, 1924. Gift of George E. Danforth. The Art Institute of Chicago / Art Resource NY.

section-perspectives in each drawing share their vanishing point and horizon line, once this projection is noticed, they also appear as separate drawings. The section-perspective in the upper portion of each drawing is symmetrical in its vertical layering. The residential slabs in the foreground occupy the entire height, those in the middle ground the lower half, of that band devoted to the residential layer (5:9:9:5). The slabs in the mid-distance, forming the defining edge of the horizontal street, top out at this horizontal axis of symmetry; those in the foreground soar above it, even as they are neutralized (halved) by it. This “equator” in the upper section-perspectives hovers above the horizon line, the pedestrian plane, and the ground. This liberated center of gravity, combined with the ambiguous relationship between the upper and lower section-perspectives, gives the sense that this upper world, at once terrestrial and extraterrestrial, distinct from the subterranean sphere, floats above the mundane. Moreover, the projection of the upper perspective, forward of the section plane toward the viewer, results in a curious focus. At the lower right in the section through an east-west street, and at the lower left in the section through a northsouth street: the upper section-perspective and the lower section-perspective meet at the edge of the drawing in a single point. Here the three strata described by Hilberseimer—the subterranean, terrestrial, and extraterrestrial layers—conjoin infinitesimally. When the two drawings are hung side by side, the singularities in each drawing come together to cohere and disperse the attention of the viewer across both sheets.45 Each singularity acts with the other as a polarized zero point—a

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point of indifference, beyond the frame of, yet intrinsic to both, drawings— from which views emanate in two directions simultaneously. Four one-point section-perspectives are conjoined by this virtual point into a single image. Like Segal’s paintings, with their numerous panels, or Eggeling and Richter’s films, with their numerous stills, Hilberseimer’s drawings for the High-RiseCity cohere a manifold and transgress their frame. The horizon line of the two drawings, one-third of the way up the sheet, as well as the other horizontal datums, correspond to produce a visual field with proportions (approximately 1:3) similar to the hemisphere of the city jointly constructed by the sectionperspectives. The vanishing point in the East-West section divides the sheet into thirds horizontally and in the North-South section into halves, while the perspective of the North-South section recedes much further in depth than the perspective of the East-West section. In this way, the two drawings—in both form and content—give us a sense of the overall proportions and shape of the city. We have the sense that the city extends much further in the east-west than in the north-south direction. In viewing both drawings together, we also experience the polarized orientation of the slab buildings. We obtain a comprehensive sense of the corporeality of the city and the urban space it forms. We understand the warp and weft of its streetscapes and the subterranean transportation network, sense the interrelationship of its speeds and architectonic rhythms, and comprehend the various levels, dimensions, and organization of the city by experiencing the entire composition as coherently unified from a single point. In these drawings for the High-Rise-City, Hilberseimer objectively presents his three-dimensional city with a singular perceptual and conceptual immediacy. We view the city in two directions from a single point at its center, but by the precision of this presentation, comprehend it in all its dimensions. Although the city extends beyond the frame of our vision—we are entirely circumscribed and immersed in this world and are not presented with an image of its external form—we understand the organization and extent of the city. We comprehend this world from the inside out. We hover above the ground, the street, and the pedestrian concourse, at the neutral center of this urban sphere. Through this point of indifference, Hilberseimer draws our vision into alignment with his own. He effectively presents the inherent form of the High-Rise-City as a singular, organic, self-contained, three-dimensional entity. Hilberseimer’s conception of the corporeal city—the city as a self-evidently autonomous organism—is indifferent from his conception of the landscape. One supposes the other. Conceptually, one is a body, the other space. The city and the landscape are the polar extents of Hilberseimer’s rationalization of the worldeconomy. By 1925 Hilberseimer had polarized the problem of city-building into its most broadly conceivable and pure dimensions. He had stepped beyond the Dadaist and Suprematist plane of metropolitan polarization into the future of a plastically constructive international.

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FIGURE 13.5 Ludwig Hilberseimer, Grossstadtarchitektur (Stuttgart: Verlag Julius Hoffmann, 1927), 17, illustrating his “Schema einer Hochhausstadt” (“Scheme of a HighRise-City”) with diagram of the scheme overlaid on Berlin (top left).

By offering a mystical “schema” for the corporeal pole of the cosmic city, however, Hilberseimer potentially reified the extremes of a cubic urbanism and a planar landscape. Friedlaender found the objectification of conceptual poles problematic and Hilberseimer does too, later referring, in part ironically, to his design for a High-Rise-City as a “necropolis”: “Seen as a whole, the concept of this High-Rise-City was already false as a concept,” he writes, perhaps referring to its plastic visibility, “The result was more a necropolis than a metropolis, a sterile landscape of asphalt and cement, inhuman in every respect.”46 Rather than seeking to materialize this purely constructed conception—a planet city— Hilberseimer will spend the rest of his life searching for the creative equilibrium, the tense neutralizing balance, of the city and the landscape, of the plastic and the planar, of settlement—the expression of human nature—as an abstract idea and a vital practice indifferent from nature as such. In this way the High-RiseCity remains the fundamental conceptual force in Hilberseimer’s subsequent work. Without the imaginary pole of the vertical and self-contained city, the horizontal, formless, and aimless extension of settlement into the landscape

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FIGURE 13.6 Ludwig Hilberseimer, Mischbebauung (Mixed-Development) Scheme, with residential buildings of different heights, c. 1930. Karl Ludwig Hilberseimer Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archives, Art Institute of Chicago.

has no counterpoint. Hilberseimer maintains his conception of the coherently integrated, three-dimensional urban organism as the antithesis of universal chaos: the neutralization of the city and the landscape is the integral, constructive resistance to the indiscriminate possessiveness of capitalist and patrician states.

Metropolis-Buildings Directly following the drawings of his Schema for a High-Rise-City in MetropolisBuildings, Hilberseimer publishes a number of other designs and a final section of text, titled simply “notes,” that outlines the general intent of these designs then refers to them directly.47 Hilberseimer conceives these designs—for two tenement blocks, two row houses, three skyscrapers, and four houses—not as independent buildings but as the substance constituting the body of the city. “The tenement was hitherto considered and treated independently of the city organism as an autonomous entity, as an individual building,” he points out, “But this completely contradicts its character as a mass building. […] Thereby, the problem of the tenement essentially becomes a problem of City-Building.” The metropolis had radically transformed the conditions and meaning of building. After the metropolis, buildings can no longer be conceived as isolated works. They are the

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constructive elements of a larger, collective work: metropolis-architecture. Their design is inherently interconnected with the function and form of the city and the common needs of its population. “The organization of the city plan has to follow, not the needs of speculators but the needs of inhabitants,” he demands, implicitly imagining an indifferent subject for his architecture. This meant, with respect to the design of the basic masses of buildings: “Discontinuation of all unventilatable courts, insolation of spaces, cross-ventilatability of dwellings and blocks, large building spans, separation of residential and traffic streets.” And with respect to the formation of the spaces within these buildings: the separation of “spaces for living, sleeping, washing, and cooking” especially in “the small dwelling.” Hilberseimer contrasts this functional specificity with prevailing practice. “Previous flats had to allow any arbitrary possibility of use, but corresponded to none perfectly. Therefore, uneconomic use of space. Which, at this point, only the strictest differentiating of space according to purpose can remedy.” In this way, Hilberseimer’s various designs for residential buildings are conditioned by external and internal conditions, such as their urban location (“by the type of lot to be built on. Edge development of a narrow strip. Open court. Street facing.”) and social organization (two-, three-, and four-bedroom apartments).48 Hilberseimer argues the buildings of the metropolis should be understood not as independent autonomous entities, but as constituent elements of a whole. They should develop internal and external specificity in accord with their purposeful and purposive function within a coherent polis and polity. The distinctiveness of the various types of metropolis-architecture is born not of their particularity as autonomous creations; the singularity of any metropolis-building is constituted by its indifferent relationship to society as a whole. Unlike the affected monumentality of Behrens’ modern classicism, the differentiations and salient forms and rhythms of Hilberseimer’s (new) objectivity evidently emerge with restraint from a consistent material language, their lapidary concision the consequence not of an abstracted impression but constructive expression.49 Indeed, Hilberseimer presents his metropolis-buildings not as a series of isolated creations, but as a body of interrelated designs (a sonata). He does not present one building after another. Following the two drawings of his “Schema of a High-Rise-City,” he intersperses exterior and interior perspectives of all his designs, drawings that illustrate the perception of mass and space, consistent with his emphasis on the salient spatioplastic formation of metropolis-architecture. Then, in the final section of the book, he presents the conceptual drawings of the architect: the plans for these buildings and urban districts, interspersed with his “notes” on the designs. Hilberseimer primarily thinks of metropolis-buildings as visible bodies, inherently shaped and animated by an idea of the contemporary city, in all its—physical, sociological, economic, psychological, political, and aesthetic—dimensions.

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In addition to these designs for metropolis-buildings and his “Schema for a High-Rise-City,” Metropolis-Buildings also includes a “schema” for a Wohnstadt (Residential-City), a satellite-city dimensioned by a comfortable walking distance from two trains stations connecting commuters to a commercial center. In Metropolis-Buildings, then, Hilberseimer exhibits urban-architectural designs for three different political-economic systems. His designs for metropolis-building types are conceived for the existing system. His design for

FIGURE 13.7 Ludwig Hilberseimer, Grossstadtarchitektur (Stuttgart: Verlag Julius Hoffmann, 1927), 33, illustrating his “Schema einer Wohnstadt” (“Scheme of a ResidentialCity”), c. 1923.

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a Residential-City is conceived as a commuter city in the satellite system. The High-Rise-City is a planet-city conceived for a cosmic system of autonomous cities in the landscape. In theory, these schemes are mutually exclusive propositions, although aspects of his designs for metropolis-buildings inform his schemas for the Residential and High-Rise cities and Hilberseimer no doubt saw the satellite system as a transitional form in the evolution toward the cosmic system. Hilberseimer presents the same elemental material in different spiritual forms. With the exception of one of his Mietshausblock (Tenement-Block) designs, all the buildings exhibited in Metropolis-Buildings are conceived for the existing city. Alongside his more visionary conceptions, Hilberseimer maintains the view that the existing city could be reformed (into a cohesive aesthetic state) through the transformation of its singular constituents. The High-Rise-City and the Residential-City offer not only visions of settlement for alternate political-economic systems, they also offer magical visions of urban coherence that, based on the contemporary means of production, act as aesthetic ideas for contingent development in the present. Hilberseimer notes, for example, that Mietshausblock II (Tenement-Block II) is conceived for a condition common in Berlin, a block surrounded by four streets. But he also points out that many of its aspects are developed in his scheme for a Residential-City accommodating 125,000 people. Hilberseimer conceives his designs for the contingent city as particular responses to the extant conditions of the metropolis. But—precisely because they embody the conditions of the metropolis, contain the elements requisite for the evolution of the metropolis, and constitute its salient building blocks—Hilberseimer understands them as at once rationalized types and aesthetic propositions, potentially constitutive of the city as a harmonious work of art.

Horizontal Buildings In Tenement-Block II Hilberseimer divides the Berlin block to create a residential street and avoid the series of unventilated courtyards deep within a lot that were a notorious characteristic of the speculatively developed tenements in the city. He emphasizes this division creates “equivalent structures [Baukörper or buildingbodies]” with equivalent solar access.50 Hilberseimer dimensions the cubic city for existential needs. The perspective of the project indicates the short ends of these buildings contain commercial space. In his Residential-City Hilberseimer functionally differentiates commercial north-south from residential east-west streets.51 The block itself is conceived as an aggregation of smaller buildings formed in correspondence with the design of their constituent units. The plan of the unit, Hilberseimer writes, discussing the reasoning behind its three separate bedrooms, “shows the attempt to organize a small dwelling for the needs of a family with

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FIGURE 13.8  Ludwig Hilberseimer, “Mietshausblock II” (Tenement-Block II), perspective, section, plans, and block plan, c. 1923. Karl Ludwig Hilberseimer Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archives, Art Institute of Chicago.

children of both sexes.” Hilberseimer emphasizes the living space would be furnished with mobile furniture to allow this room to also be used as a bedroom. Introducing his metropolis-buildings, Hilberseimer asserts the general value of functionally differentiating internal dwelling space, but also stresses that living rooms are “Dwelling spaces without differentiation. Can be used as desired.”52 Hilberseimer notes that the units in his Residential-City were the development of his design for Mietshaus II (Tenement II). The principle of “space differentiation,” he explains, “was led to its ultimate conclusion” here: a “typification of space.” It is clear from the published plans—his plan for a four-bedroom apartment and his plan of an aggregation of units showing numerous “plan variations” (a portion of a building with a three-, four-, five-, six-, and seven-bedroom flat)—that Hilberseimer conceives the functionally distinguished rooms in these units as standard combinatorial elements. The “directly illuminated foyer, kitchen, bathroom, loggia [recessed balcony], bedroom and sleeping cabins [children’s bedrooms]” each has their own fixed organizations and dimensions. The sizes of each room are inherently related, evidently dimensioned as multiples of a module that also provides the underlying meter for the column spacing in the structural frame of the building and the rhythmic organization of fenestration. Each of the rooms with designated functions, Hilberseimer notes, is provided with the requisite, standardized, built-in furnishings and equipment. Hilberseimer’s unit plans are a combination of fixed and movable objects, determined and indeterminate spaces.53

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The overall form and general appearance of the building—under given material circumstances of construction—is mutually conditioned by the external proportioning and organization of the urban block and this internal order and flexibility. By design, the variations in the arrangement of interior spaces would become subtly apparent on the exterior. The aggregation of differently sized dwelling units leads to variation in the placement of the building’s stairways. These stairways—expressed as vertical elements, subtly projecting from the exterior surface of the buildings and bracketed on each side by recessed loggias—provide, in accordance with Rukser and Hilberseimer’s theory, the primary rhythmic accents in the building massing. And this mathematical rationalization of inhabitation gives rise to a range of musical expressions. The underlying modular order and taut grid of fenestration cohere the external surfaces of the building even as—moving along the north-south residential streets of Hilberseimer’s Residential-City—the syncopated location of stairways enliven their appearance. The body of the building is mutually determined by its internal life and external conditions, the imbrication of domestic and urban economies. Exercising his concern with the quality of domestic and the equality of urban life, Hilberseimer gives the organs of dwelling and the architectural organisms of the city the requisite coherence and autonomy to allow both to form and express themselves against the imposing conditions of the metropolis. In his Residential-City scheme, Hilberseimer employs the “elements” of his residential design for Tenement II—the dimensioned and proportioned domestic organs of the city—“to organize the composition” of a satellite-city.54 He takes up the distinction between commercial and residential streets, and the proportions, organization, and dimensions of the building-block from the Berlin project. Working between situated and typological design, between his work on an extant Berlin block and a theoretical schema, Hilberseimer reverses the vector by which the ecology of architecture is conceived. For Hilberseimer, architecture is no longer a question of contingent building—an environmental determinism—but a holistic urban question of the organic interrelationship of mutual needs, in which the internal coherence of domestic and urban life is embraced to give the collective works of architectural and urban design newfound spatial and plastic integrity. Hilberseimer also explores ideas of spatial in/differentiation and environmental in/determinism in his row house designs. “Like the tenement, the small house also lacks adequate differentiation of space,” Hilberseimer argues, emphasizing, in his design for Reihenhäuser I (Row Houses I), that “In order to ensure a completely free possibility of use of individual rooms, the living spaces are […] equally dimensioned.” Just as the equilibrated rationalization of the cubic city and the urban plan fosters— and enhances the significance of—the indifferent singularity of its building-blocks, so too the equilibrated rationalization of the domestic plan provides the opportunity for the indifferent singularity of dwelling. Hilberseimer understands the indifferent rooms of Row Houses I as the means to freely organize domestic life, differentiate its manifold of activities, provide individual privacy, and realize distinct conditions

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for living. While Row Houses I pursues the indifferentiation of domestic space, Row Houses II pursues the “widest differentiation of space.” While the plan of Row Houses I, “was based on the square, the simplest and most unaccented form,” that of Row Houses II is conceived as consistent with Tenement II as a typology of functionally specified rooms and a living space. (The row house scheme illustrated here, is the neutralization of these two approaches.)55 Moreover, rather than the foursquare plan and four-story cubic volume of Row Houses I, Row Houses II sprawls horizontally. “Restricting the body of the building encompassing the main living space to only one floor,” Hilberseimer explains, “allows the formation of large terraces and the most contrasting formation to the cubic composition.”56 The internally differentiated building, constrained in height, sprawls horizontally; the internally indifferentiated building, constrained horizontally, balls up. It is no accident that Hilberseimer simultaneously conceives his design for an internally differentiated row house as a design for a detached single-family house [“Einzelhaus”].57 Without the external pressures of a situation constraining the ground plan, dwelling expands and differentiates freely. The interior and exterior space of architecture are mutually conditioning. The body of architecture evolves in correspondence with its urban

FIGURE 13.9 Ludwig Hilberseimer, Row Houses for a Residential Satellite City, perspective, plan, and section, c. 1923. Variation on the row house schemes published in Ludwig Hilberseimer, Grosstadtbauten, Neue Architektur I, published with Merz 18/19 (Hannover: Aposs-Verlag, 1925). Karl Ludwig Hilberseimer Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archives, Art Institute of Chicago.

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environment. For Hilberseimer, difference and indifference, specific and generic, are one and the same conception, the polar morphology giving comprehensible form to the vital life of dwelling.

Vertical Buildings Hilberseimer also conceives his skyscraper designs in these terms. It is no accident he moves in his notes from the vertically constrained and horizontally expanding single-family house to the skyscraper. The tall building arises when the intensity of urban life confronts horizontal constraints. The detached house and the tall building are indifferent opposites. Hilberseimer explains that his design for a Hochhaus (High-Rise) “represents a programmatic attempt to obtain, through differentiation of the heights of the body of the building and offsetting, a greater height for individual parts of the building.”58 In his planimetric diagram of the design: a square plan (twelve by twelve bays) enclosing an internal square court (six by six bays) is broken down into four overlapping rectangular slabs of three, six,

FIGURE 13.10 Ludwig Hilberseimer, Hochhaus, Fabrikanlage (Skyscraper, FactoryFacility), c. 1923, from Ludwig Hilberseimer, Grosstadtbauten, Neue Architektur I, published with Merz 18/19 (Hannover: Aposs-Verlag, 1925), 19. (DADA III:2:18/19) Kunsthaus Zürich Library.

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nine, and twelve stories (each three by nine bays in plan). Drawn as a view toward its lowest elevations, the two-point perspective shows the four offset volumes constituting the body of the building spiraling—contrapposto-like—in rhythmic ascension. Hilberseimer explains that his design of a skyscraper for the Chicago Tribune on Michigan Avenue—a design he did not submit to the 1922 competition and perhaps completed in retrospect—“applies the same principle to allow a greater height for the principal part of the building”59. Above a nine-story plinth of five by thirteen bays, a U-shaped tower of five by six bays rises an additional

FIGURE 13.11 Ludwig Hilberseimer, Chicago Tribune, design competition entry, perspective and plan, and Ludwig Hilberseimer, Hochhaus, perspective and plan 1922. Karl Ludwig Hilberseimer Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archives, Art Institute of Chicago.

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sixteen floors to a height of twenty-five stories. Hilberseimer likely supposes the different volumes in these buildings house different purposes. In the caption of the perspective, the High-Rise design is also described as a “factory facility.”60 The lowest volume, with its large area of blank façade, probably accommodates an industrial use, its other volumes office space.61 The volume of the Chicago Tribune was perhaps differentiated to accommodate offices and newspaper production. By contrast, the offsets in Hilberseimer’s design for a residential skyscraper are not so volumetrically pronounced. This tenement building is more subtly articulated, between its tower, containing dwelling units, and its base, which no doubt contains the collective amenities Hilberseimer thinks essential for such buildings. “The individual dwelling should benefit from the advantages of a community,” he advocates, “common servants, common public spaces, central kitchens, which permit the same advantages as a good restaurant, the general application of the hotel business to the private dwelling in catering, servicing, and management.”62 Hilberseimer envisions the equalization of rental buildings. Through the common denominators of architecture—its elemental purposes, spaces, and forms— Hilberseimer neutralizes the unequal extremes of tenements and hotels, but also rented and owned structures. The standardized spacing, furnishing, and equipment of his dwellings give the masses of the metropolis the liquidity of movement hitherto enjoyed by capital. Metropolis-architecture, conceived as the integral differentiation of a collective body, unifies and animates a social conception of the city. These skyscraper designs, like the row house and residential building designs, are studies in the purposeful comportment of architectural bodies. Each is unified with the others by the consistency of the constructive system that gives meter to their organization and appearance. (“The system of supports and beams directly yields the architectural structure,” Hilberseimer explains of his Chicago Tribune design, in which the surface of the building is simply and precisely formed by the infill glazing of its gridded structure.63) Moreover, each is enlivened in their form or their surface patterning by the life they accommodate. The fenestration of the High-Rise, for example, varies between the ground-story (probably industrial) volume and the upper volumes, and between the short and long elevations of the upper volumes (probably indicating a distinction between horizontal floor plates and vertical stairwells). With its differentiation of volumes and surface-patterning, expressed structural frame, integral mathematical logic, and rhythmic expression, the High-Rise can be understood as the Goethean urform of Hilberseimer’s architecture. Hilberseimer first publishes this design in 1923 as the concluding punctuation of “The Will to Architecture,” the first time he had illustrated his own theory with one of his own designs.64 The sectional differentiation of the HighRise, like that of the residential skyscraper, portends the layering of the High-RiseCity. Moreover, its rhythmic “gradation of masses” integrates the cubic form of the building-block as a singular entity, concisely presents this coherence to the moving metropolitan eye, and spaciously opens up the building and the street to light and

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air.65 When Hilberseimer equilibrates his polarization of city and landscape, this variation and flowering seeds the Mischbebauung (mixed-development) concept of the late-twenties and his cultivation, after 1939, of the North American prairie. Hilberseimer’s metropolis-buildings are constituted by elemental constructive means, flexibly responsive to given internal needs and external situations, imbued with a common sense, formed with a consistent meter, balanced by a commitment to equality, and composed through the correspondence of internal and external factors. Conceived as responses to and embodying the material, sociological, and economic conditions of the metropolis, they are at once theoretical conceptions and aesthetic conjectures, that together hold the promise of “a completely new sense” of the city.66 This is how Hilberseimer describes the High-Rise-City, to which he returns in the conclusion of his notes: In contrast to the chaos of American skyscraper cities, the structure of which is determined by their arbitrariness, here it was attempted to systematically organize a High-Rise-City. The tall building, which, like the rental building, on the basis of the usual fragmentation of property, excessively pushes the chaos of a city organism to infinity, requires a city plan corresponding to its [the skyscraper’s] requirements so its advantages are not again nullified. This can be achieved by block-like integration, coherent organization and formation.67 The High-Rice City is not the fanciful description of a utopian imagination nor, merely, the logical rationalization of extant material, economic, and sociological forces. In this planetary conception Hilberseimer exercises and clarifies his vision of world-formation. The creation of the skyscraper had opened up a new dimension of human existence. Only, however, by conceiving of the skyscraper city as an artistic artifact—as an organism (a collective body of integrated parts) and the creation of a community—might the forces of unceasing speculative growth that had given rise to this phenomenon and the infinite prospecting of horizontal and vertical dimensions be circumscribed, calibrated to the landscape, delimited and shaped for immediate comprehension and the common good. For Hilberseimer, rounding the infinite, giving form to chaos and sense to creation is the singular point of spiritual— of cultural, intellectual, and artistic—work. Greatest significance, utmost concision.

The Anti-Distraction Machine The third of Mynona’s grotesques featuring the character Hilberle (Hilberseimer), “Der Sieb der Dadaiden” (“The Sieve of the Dadaists”), appears in the satirical journal Simplicissimus in 1928. It explicitly associates Hilberseimer’s architectural ambitions with Dada.68 The title combines the words Dada and Danaïdes, the latter a reference to the fifty daughters of Danaus in Greek mythology, all but

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one of whom kill their husbands on their wedding night and, in an allegory of perpetual futility, are henceforth condemned to bear water in a sieve.69 “In view of the approaching winter season, the architect Hilberle was seething with an idea for which he tried in vain to interest the city fathers and mothers,” the story begins, until a councilmember by the name of “Jack-the-never-ripper,” described as a “master butcher,” becomes enthusiastic about the project. Hilberle “now got cracking in an enthusiastic speech before the ardently-devising shareholders, after he had run over them so often that they were already boiling over at the sight of him, … but now he had finally made it with all of them.” Hilberle enjoined these capitalists in the ambition to “organize the [Winter] season uniformly,” to “bring all the amusements together under one hat.” “Centralization of the entire season’s undertakings was the slogan,” the story states, conveying the unexpectedness and incongruity of the partnership, “to which Hilberle in particular was now committed with his grandiose idea.” That idea was to bring together the season’s entertainments in a “monstrous seasonal palace” that the narrator describes as a “giant hyper-American project” at which one laughs uncomfortably and compares to a “spinning machine” and a “meat grinder.” Despite this skepticism for the project itself, the narrator considers Hilberle “no nothing nor halfling, like most people” but a “double spirit, only born by accident as twins, but singleton in the roundest sense, at the very least a triangular man with a head that was certainly not a captive balloon, like the other building masters.”70 Again, Mynona presents Hilberseimer as at once rational and visionary, a sovereign and singular individual critiquing by inverting the forces of (American) capitalism. Hilberle, Mynona writes, was “the famous builder of a tank in the form of a trojan horse that in ‘World War Two Squared’ is to be smuggled into the capital of the hereditary enemy,” suggesting Hilberle’s embrace of hyper-Americanism was by no means naïve. Here Hilberle had turned his “no less heroic temperament to the peaceful task of erecting a giant meat grinder,” which after the laying of the cornerstone by the eminent citizens of the city “shot up from the depths of a shaft to the heights of the clouds.”71 The building was an enormous “sieve” for processing the bourgeoisie: Fresh from seas, mountains, valleys, arenas, hangars, sunbaths, all-naked men and girls were captured into rolled heaps, loaded into airplanes, landed on the pinnacle of the revolving palace and this living flesh poured into the throat of pleasure, which swallowed them down, into thousands of lifts and elevators, into deeper and deeper magical halls, each of which flashed more colorful surprises. In the interior of the—how should one say—Dadaistic sieve not a single pleasure of the season was left out; indeed, one was only once slid out of this giant stomach from above, so one had to dwell the whole season in the digestive tract, until finally, as it were, released in the most intestine-alizing of exits into the subway, which led us into the summer season.—Whilst wound

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through theaters, balls, matinees, [Gerhart] Hauptmann-celebrations, etc., one was made fashionable in every regard and (in case one died) buried, burned, embalmed.72 Identifying Hilberle (Hilberseimer) as the architect of Dada, Friedlaender makes clear the degree to which the Dada program (of events, performances, and exhibitions) satirized the futility of bourgeois society. The Dadaist sieve might be understood as the grotesque antithesis (in direction and effect) of the filmic revelation that had concluded Grey Magic. Where the magic of reason attains absolute vitalism, bourgeois futility does not even end with death. Indeed, Friedlaender, who frequently plays out the tension between spirit and material through metaphors of directionality, seems to have had this reversal of movement in mind when writing “The Sieve of the Dadaists.” In a draft, Mynona writes that Hilberle, who is “well-known” to be “mischievous,” constructed certain areas of the building as so-called “witches swings,” constructions that give the inhabitant the illusion they are upside down, and thus, Mynona’s suggestion seems to be, the false belief they are spiritually ascendant. With the unpleasant discovery of this trick, “Many a coprologist was almost fragrantly audible with shock at this humorous assassination.”73 In addition, the draft offers a concluding statement about the building’s overall intentions that did not appear in the published piece: the narrator, arriving at the moral of the story, tells the reader that “even the weakly-sensible [imbecilic] sees that Hilberle had refined the naturalistically ‘free,’ the concept of ‘free nature,’ into purely optical and other illusions.”74 The bourgeoisie entertain freedom as something one futilely strives to possess rather than embrace as a vitalist practice. For Mynona, this seems to have been the significance of the absolute interiority of the sieve. Hilberle’s machine is a diagram—an ideology (of distraction)—designed to perpetuate capitalist social relations: In the summer season, the naïve may again swarm outward “into freedom”. Just as Hilberle’s season machine stands there before desire as a kaleidoscope convulsing in itself. Its glazing is a genuine mirror for the “free” pedestrians outside, but it is transparent from the inside. In the ‘free’ [space] around this tall building the humane Hilberle donated heated street benches, because he wants to prick the envy of the dispossessed. (He is also an engineer of souls.) Without this envy many people fall into proletarian-lethargy [prolethargie]. The season-genius Hilberle prevents this leveling and therefore doesn’t have a good lion’s smile. But a light blond swam across the Hellespont [the channel of the Dardanelles] because of him and happily disappeared with him into the interior of his season apparatus, this dashing torture chamber, wherein the chess master snacks on nibble-able figures; and even the playing fields consist of marzipan and chocolate. Only this continual season is through and through, from top to bottom, palatable.75

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Looking back from the late-1920s upon the Dadaist project, which Friedlaender seems to see symbolized in Hilberseimer’s High-Rise-City, “The Sieve of the Dadaists” points to the critique of bourgeois distraction and perhaps also the futility of that critique. It presents the metropolis, with its spectacular entertainments, as a giant machine designed to perpetuate a false concept of freedom. Grotesquely, Hilberle’s grasp of that apparatus, despite his brilliance and self-consciousness, ends in nothing more than the satisfaction of his own pleasure. Such is the mechanical-material specter implicit in the ideal of the metropolis as a liberated marionette. Nevertheless, it is clear that Friedlaender associates Hilberseimer with the ambition to overcome this possessive exploitation and locates his architecture at the inflection point between a spiritless materialism and his own vision of liberation from hyper-Americanization. Friedlaender’s satirical presentation of the metropolitan meat grinder, a montage machine mincing the bourgeoisie, is the indifferent opposite of Hilberseimer’s High-RiseCity. The latter is a metamechanical construction that, like the conclusion of Grey Magic, imagines the polar antithesis of our inherited world: a floating orb of collective self-realization, manifest by natural magic, our inherent power of creation.

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NOTES

Foreword Plácido González Martínez, “Ludwig Hilberseimer at the Illinois Institute of Technology: Architectural Education, Organic Democracy and Colonization,” Docomomo Journal: For an Architect’s Training 49 (2013): 34–9. 2 Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, The International Style. New York: WW Norton, 1997 (1932). 3 Pier Vittorio Aureli, “More and More about Less and Less: Notes toward a History of Nonfigurative Architecture” Log 16 (2009): 7–18. 4 Ibid. 1

Introduction For the most comprehensive critical studies of Hilberseimer’s work: “Ludwig Hilberseimer (1885/1967),” Rassegna di architettura e urbanistica, 27 (1986) initiated by Christine Mengin’s scholarship; Richard Pommer, David Spaeth, and Kevin Harrington, eds., In the Shadow of Mies: Ludwig Hilberseimer Architect, Educator, and Urban Planner (New York and Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago and Rizzoli International, 1988); and K. Michael Hays, Modernism and the Posthumanist Subject: The Architecture of Hannes Meyer and Ludwig Hilberseimer (1992; Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1995). And on Mies: Detlef Mertins, Mies (London: Phaidon, 2014); Phyllis Lambert, ed., Mies in America (Montréal and New York: Canadian Center for Architecture, Whitney Museum of American Art and Harry N. Abrams, 2001); and Terence Riley and Barry Bergdoll, eds., Mies in Berlin (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2001). 2 On Hilberseimer as urban planner: Markus Kilian, “Großstadtarchitektur und New City: Eine planungsmethodische Untersuchung der Stadtplanungsmodelle Ludwig Hilberseimers,” (PhD diss., Karlsruhe: Universität Karlsruhe, 2002). 3 LH, Contemporary Architecture: Its Roots and Trends (Chicago: Paul Theobald and Company, 1964). “Unkultur” is Karl Scheffler’s term: “Kultur und Kunst,” in Moderne Kultur: ein Handbuch der Lebensbildung und des guten Geschmacks, ed. Eduard Heyck, 2 vols. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1907), I:17. 4 Hilbersiemer attends lectures by Josef Durm (1837–1919) and Friedrich Ostendorf (1871–1915) among others (see bibliography), but was more persuaded by lectures on art (from Marcus Rosenberg) than architecture. LH, Acceptance Speech on the 1

occasion of his admittance to the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, 1963, in KLHP, 8/3:3/2, 1–2. 5 LH, Grossstadtbauten, published as Merz 18/19 (Hannover: Aposs-Verlag, 1925). 6 LH, Grossstadtarchitektur (Stuttgart: Verlag Julius Hoffmann, 1927). 7 LH, “Das Haus von Ludwig Hilberseimer,” Die Form, 9 (September, 1927): 277–9. 8 “Ludwig K. Hilberseimer,” typescript, KLHP, 1:3.6. On Meyer and Hilberseimer: Hays, Modernism and the Posthumanist Subject. 9 LH, Internationale Neue Baukunst (Stuttgart: Verlag Julius Hoffmann, 1927). LH and Julius Vischer, Beton als Gestalter: Bauten in Eisenbeton und ihre architektonische Gestaltung (Stuttgart: Julius Hoffmann, 1928). LH, Hallenbauten (Leipzig: J. M. Gebhardt’s Verlag, 1931). The Handbook was co-founded by Durm: Roland Jaeger, “Monumentales Standardwerk: Das ‘Handbuch der Architektur’ (1880–1943). Verlagsgeschichte und Bibliographie,” Aus dem Antiquariat, 4, no. 5 (2006): 343–4. 10 Detlef Mertins, “Pius Pahl House, c. 1932–1933,” in Bauhaus 1919–1933: Workshops for Modernity, ed. Barry Bergdoll and Leah Dickerman (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2009), 310–17. 11 IIT arises from the merger of the Armour Institute of Technology with Lewis Institute in 1940. LH, The New City: Principles of Planning (Chicago: Paul Theobald, 1944). LH, The New Regional Pattern: Industries and Gardens, Workshops and Farms (Chicago: Paul Theobald, 1949). LH, The Nature of Cities: Origin, Growth, and Decline; Pattern and Form; Planning Problems (Chicago: Paul Theobald & Co., 1955). On IIT: Lambert, ed., Mies in America. On Lafayette Park: Charles Waldheim, ed., CASE: Hilberseimer/Mies van der Rohe Lafayette Park Detroit (New York: Prestel Verlag, 2004). 12 Scott Colman, “Organism and Artefact: The Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Circle and the Chicago School: Architecture, Planning and Sociology circa 1944” (PhD diss., Sydney: University of Sydney, 2006). Scott Colman, “‘Twixt Sociology and Architecture: Reginald Isaacs and Chicago’s South Side,” Sixtieth Annual Meeting of the Society of Architectural Historians, Pittsburgh, April 11–15, 2007. Scott Colman, “From Organism to Artifact: The Development of Louis Wirth’s Sociological Planning,” Society for American City and Regional Planning History, 15th National Conference on Planning History, Toronto, October 3–6, 2013. Scott Colman, “Promoting the New City: Ludwig Hilberseimer at the Art Institute of Chicago, 1944,” in Exhibitions and the Development of Modern Planning Culture, ed. Robert Freestone and Marco Amati (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2014), 111–29. 13 Ezio Bonfanti and Aldo Rossi, eds., Architettura razionale (Milan: F. Angeli, 1973). Aldo Rossi, The Architecture of the City (Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press, 1982); or. ed., L’Architettura della città (Padova: Marsilio Editori, 1966). On Critical Architecture: K. Michael Hays, “Critical Architecture: Between Culture and Form,” Perspecta, 21 (1984): 14–29; K. Michael Hays, “Inscribing the Subject of Modernism: The Posthumanist Theory of Ludwig Hilberseimer,” in Strategies of Architectural Thinking, ed. Richard Burdett, Jeffrey Kipnis, and John Whiteman (Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press, 1993), 114–29; and Hays, Modernism and the Posthumanist Subject. On Landscape Urbanism: Charles Waldheim, Landscape as Urbanism: A General Theory (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2016). On generic and non-figurative architecture, see the writing and design of Rem Koolhaas and Pier Vittorio Aureli. 14 For example: Stuart E. Cohen, “Introduction,” and Stanley Tigerman, “Late Entries to the Chicago Tribune Tower Competition,” in Stanley Tigerman, Chicago Tribune Tower Competition (New York: Rizzoli, 1980), 98–100, 99–103.

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15 LH, Mies van der Rohe (Chicago: Paul Theobold and Company, 1956). LH, Entfaltung einer Planungsidee (Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, and Vienna: Ullstein, 1963). LH, Contemporary Architecture. LH, Berliner Architektur der 20er Jahre (Mainz und Berlin: Bei Florian Kupferberg, 1967). 16 Constantin Parvulescu, “After the Revolution: The Individualist Anarchist Journal Der Einzige and the Making of the Radical Left in the Early Post-War I Germany” (PhD diss., Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2006). Constantin Parvulescu, The Individualist Anarchist Discourse of Early Interwar Germany (Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitara Cluejeana, 2018). Seeing a parallel between Ruest’s and Friedlaender’s ideas and poststructuralist philosophy, Parveluscu translates Der Einzige as The Singularity. 17 Seth Taylor, Left-Wing Nietzscheans: The Politics of German Expressionism 1910–1920 (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1990). Hanne Bergius, Das Lachen Dadas: Die Berliner Dadaisten und ihre Aktionen (Berlin: Anabas Verlag, 1989). Hanne Bergius, Montage und Metamechanik: Dada Berlin—Artistik von Polaritäten (Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 2000). SF/Mynona, Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Detlef Thiel, Hartmut Geerken, and Sigrid Hauff, 33 vols. (Herrsching: Waitawhile, 2005–). 18 KLHP, 8/1:1.1–1.3 and 8/3:1.1. LH, Grossstadtarchitektur. 19 Wassily Kandinsky, Über das Geistige in der Kunst insbesondere in der Malerei (Munich: R. Piper & Co. Verlag, 1912). 20 Pommer et al., eds., In the Shadow of Mies. 21 Giorgio Grassi, La Costruzione Logica Dell’Architettura (Padova: Marsilio Editori, 1967). 22 Rossi, The Architecture of the City. Cf. Hays, Modernism and the Posthumanist Subject, 321 (note 28). 23 Manfredo Tafuri, Architecture and Utopia: Design and Capitalist Development, trans. Barbara Liugia La Penta (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1976); or. ed. Progetto e Utopia. Architettura e sviluppo capitalisco (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 1973). Also: Manfredo Tafuri, Theories and History of Architecture (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), 170 (note: 34), or. ed. Teorie e storia dell’architettura, 4th edn. (Rome: Laterza & Figli Spa, 1976). Manfredo Tafuri and Francesco Dal Co, Modern Architecture, trans. Robert Erich Wolf, 2 vols. (New York: Rizzoli, 1979), 2:90, 161–2, 195., or. ed. (Milan: Electa Edifice, 1976). 24 Richard Anderson, “An End to Speculation,” Metropolisarchitecture and Selected Essays (New York: GSAPP Books, 2012), 15–81. Pier Vittorio Aurelli, The Project of Autonomy: Politics and Architecture within and against Capitalism (New York: Temple Hoyne Bell Center for the Study of American Architecture and Princeton Architectural Press, 2012). Pier Vittorio Aureli, The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001). Pier Vittorio Aureli, “More and More about Less and Less: Notes Toward a History of Nonfigurative Architecture,” Log, no. 16 (Spring/Summer, 2009): 7–18. Pier Vittorio Aureli, “The Barest Form in which Architecture Can Exist: Some Notes on Ludwig Hilberseimer’s Proposals for the Chicago Tribune Building,” thecityasaproject.org (October 31, 2011), http://thecityasaproject.org/2011/10/the-barest-form-in-which-architecture-canexist-some-notes-on-ludwig-hilberseimer’s-proposal-for-the-chicago-tribunebuilding (accessed March 28, 2014). 25 Hays, “Inscribing the Subject of Modernism.” Hays, Modernism and the Posthumanist Subject. For Friedlaender’s influence on Benjamin: Uwe Steiner, “The True Politician: Walter Benjamin’s Concept of the Political,” New German Critique, 83 (Spring-Summer, 2001): 43–88. On Friedlaender’s relationships with Simmel and Bloch: Detlef Thiel, “Von Schopenhauer und Nietzsche durch Ernst Marcus 306

NOTES

26

27

28

29 30 31

32 33

zu Kant—und über Kant hinaus … Der unbekannte ‘Dr. S. Friedlaender,’” in SF/ Mynona, Philosophische Abhandlungen und Kritiken 1896–1946, vols. 2–3 (2006), of SF/Mynona, Gesammelte Schriften, 33–4, 92–6; Detlef Thiel, “Die Tragödie der Unabhängigkeit Friedlaender/Mynona opfert Nietzsche,” in SF/Mynona, Friedrich Nietzsche: Eine intellektuelle Biographie, vol. 9 (2009) of SF/Mynona, Gesammelte Schriften, 68–9; Lisbeth Exner, Fasching als Logik. Über Salomo Friedlaender/Mynona (Munich: Belleville, 1996), 240–4. In his belief in “creative indifference,” Hilberseimer, acutely conscious of reification, is unburdened by the epistemological limits of “negative dialectics.” See Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialectics, trans. E.B. Ashton (New York: Seabury Press, 1966); or. ed. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag. Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1978). Rem Koolhaas, “The Generic City,” in Office for Metropolitan Architecture, Rem Koolhaas, and Bruce Mau, S,M,L,XL, ed. Jennifer Sigler (1995; Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 1997), 1239–64. Albert Pope, Ladders (Houston: Rice University School of Architecture; New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996). Waldheim, Landscape as Urbanism. On the idea of planning as patterning: Hilberseimer, The New Regional Pattern, and Sandra Neugärtner, “Structure as Infrastructure: Interrelation of Fiber and Construction,” Hilberseimer: Infrastructures of Modernity Symposium, Bauhaus, Dessau, October 27–29, 2021. Hugo Häring, “Zwei Städte: Eine Physiognomische Studie, zugleich ein Beitrag zur Problematik des Städtebaus,” Die Form, 1, no. 8 (1926): 172–5. Cf. Hays, Modernism and the Posthumanist Subject, 182–3. Adolf Behne, Die Wiederkehr der Kunst (Leipzig: Kurt Wolff Verlag, 1919). Paul Westheim, Die Welt als Vorstellung: Ein Weg zur Kunstanschauung (Potsdam-Berlin: Gustav Kiepenheur, 1919). Hilberseimer reviews Westheim’s book in his first column for SM: LH, “Bildende Kunst,” Sozialistische Monatshefte (January 26, 1920): 66–7. Iain Boyd Whyte, Bruno Taut and the Architecture of Activism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). Detlef Mertins and Michael W. Jennings, eds., G: An Avant-Garde Journal of Art, Architecture, Design, and Film 1923–1926, trans. Steven Lindberg with Margareta Ingrid Christian (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2010), esp. 3–20.

Chapter 1 1 2 3 4 5

6

Anselm Ruest is an anagram of Ernst Samuel. Mynona is the German word for anonymous (Anonym) spelled backwards. They were cousins and brothers-in-law. The supplement varied in title. Editorial [Anselm Ruest], DE, 1, no. 1 (January 19, 1919): 12. AR, “Die letzte Revolution,” DE, 1, no. 1 (January 19, 1919): 1–4. Max Stirner [Johann Kaspar Schmidt], The Ego and His Own, trans. Steven T. Byington (New York: Benjamin R. Tucker, 1907); or. ed. Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (Leipzig: Reclam, 1845). Although Friedlaender was a member of the Society for Individualistic Culture (Stirner-Society), attended its events in May and July of 1919, and his philosophy was perhaps in part conceived as a reinterpretation of Stirner’s ideas (Exner, Fasching als Logik, 181), he was by no means as committed to Stirner’s philosophy as Ruest. LH, “Schöpfung und Entwicklung,” DE, 1, no. 1 (January 19, 1919): 5–6. NOTES

307

7 Taylor, Left-Wing Nietzscheans, 6–7. 8 John Henry Mackay, Max Stirner—sein Leben und sein Werk (Berlin: Schuster & Loeffler, 1898). AR, Max Stirner. Leben—Weltanschauung—Vermächtnis (Berlin: Hermann Seemann, 1906). On Ruest: Taylor, Left-Wing Nietzscheans, chapter 6. 9 Hartmut Geerken, afterword to Der Einzige, ed. Hartmut Geerken, 2 vols. (Munich: Kraus Reprint, 1980), I:344. Exner, Fasching als Logik, 177–8. 10 Taylor, Left-Wing Nietzscheans. 11 The twenty-eighth issue was published on November 1, 1919. Friedlaender left the journal by the end of the first year. Only eleven issues were published in the following six years. Geerken, afterword, 182. 12 Hilberseimer, “Schöpfung und Entwicklung,” 5–6; “Umwertung in der Kunst,” DE, 1, no. 2 (January 26, 1919): 4–5; “Form und Individuum,” DE, 1, no. 3 (February 2, 1919): 6–7; “Der Naturalismus und das Primitive in der Kunst,” DE, 1, no. 8 (March 9, 1919): 88–9; “Kunst und Wissen,” DE, 1, no. 11 (March 30, 1919): 127–8. On the content of these essays see Hays, “Inscribing the Subject of Modernism,” and Modernism and the Posthumanist Subject. 13 Hilberseimer, “Kunst und Wissen,” 127–8. 14 Cf. SF, “Präsentismus: Rede des Erdkaisers an die Menschen,” Der Sturm, 3, no. 144–5 (January, 1913): 253–4; Adolf Behne, “Die ästhetischen Theorien der modernen Baukunst,” Preussische Jahrbücher, 153, no. 2 (August, 1913): 282–3; and Raoul Hausmann, “PRÉsentismus. Gegen den Puffkeismus der teutschen Seele,” De Stijl, 4, no. 9 (September, 1921): 136–43, repr. in Raoul Hausmann, Raoul Hausmann Texte bis 1933, ed. Michael Erlhoff, 2 vols. (Munich: Edition text + kritik, 1982): II:24–30. 15 Hilberseimer, “Schöpfung und Entwicklung,” 5. 16 Ibid. 17 Ruest, Max Stirner. 18 Stirner, The Ego, 14. 19 Ibid., 31. 20 Ibid., 228. 21 Ibid., 46. 22 Ibid., 47. 23 Ibid., 54. 24 Ibid., 47. 25 Ibid., xii. 26 Ibid., 182. 27 Ibid., 184. 28 Ibid., 206. 29 Ibid., 336. 30 Ibid., 177. 31 Ibid., 173–5. 32 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology (New York: Prometheus Books, 1998), 183; or. ed. (Frankfurt am Main: Marx-Engels-Verlag, 1932). 33 Ibid., 139. 34 “Der ‘heilige Max.’ Aus einem nachgelassen Werk von Marx-Engels über Max Stirner (1845–1846),” in vols. 3 (1903) and 4 (1904) of Dokumente des Sozialismus: Hefte für Geschichte, Urkunden, und Bibliographie des Sozialismus, ed. Eduard Bernstein (Stuttgart: Verlag von J. H. W. Dietz Nachfolger). 35 Ruest, Max Stirner, 279. 36 Ibid., 279–80. 37 Ibid., 260. 308

NOTES

38 Ibid., 285. 39 Friedrich Albert Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus und Kritik seiner Bedeutung in der Gegenwart (Iserlohn: J. Baedecker, 1866). 40 Ibid., 435. 41 Terry Eagleton, The Ideology of the Aesthetic (1990; Carlton, Victoria: Blackwell Publishing, 2014), 157, 160. 42 Ruest, Max Stirner, 265. 43 Ibid., 273. 44 Sandra Shapshay, “Schopenhauer’s Aesthetics” (Summer 2018) and Rob Wicks, “Arthur Schopenhauer” (Spring 2019) in Edward N. Zalta, ed., The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/ schopenhauer-aesthetics/ and https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2019/entries/ schopenhauer/. 45 Ruest, Max Stirner, 264–74. 46 Ibid., 318; see: 297, 316–20. 47 Ibid., 319. 48 Ibid., 324. 49 Ibid., 327; see: 267–8. 50 Ibid., 291, 287–91, 302–7. 51 Ibid., 307. 52 Ibid., 314–16. On fatalism versus self-possession: Ibid., 326–7. 53 Ibid., 310–1; on eternal recurrence: 329. Friedrich Nietzsche, Also sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für Alle und Keine (1883–1885), quoted by Ruest, Max Stirner, 312. See Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for Everyone and No One, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (1961; London: Penguin Books, 1969), esp. 89; or. ed. Also sprach Zarathustra (Chemnitz: Ernst Schmeitzner, 1883); and Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science with a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1974); 2nd edn (1887); or. ed., Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (Chemnitz: Ernst Schmeitzner, 1882). 54 Ruest, Max Stirner, 322–3, 330. 55 On Nietzsche’s elitism: Ibid., 291. 56 Ibid., 324. See 289, 292–5, 298–9, 301. 57 Ibid., 334. 58 Ibid., 316. 59 Ibid., 327. 60 On “elemental opposites” in Nietzsche: AR, “Das tragischer Zeitalter,” DE, 1, no. 7 (March 2, 1919): 75. On the mutual realization of our common individuality as Nietzsche’s “superman”: AR, “Getrennt marschieren—vereint schlagen!” DE, 1, no. 8 (March 9, 1919): 88. 61 Ruest, Max Stirner, 256–8; also 296–7. 62 Ruest cites Nietzsche as evidence Lange’s critique of materialism renewed interest in morality. Ibid., 264. Influenced by Lange, Nietzsche asserts his “physio-psychology” would overcome moral philosophy. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, trans. Walter Kaufmann (1966; New York: Vintage Books, 1989), “On the Prejudice of Philosophers” §23; or. ed. Jenseits von Gut und Böse: Vorspiel einer Philosophie der Zukunft (Leipzig: Druck und Verlag von C. G. Naumann, 1886). 63 AR, “Stirner und Nietzsche,” DE, 1, no. 1 (January 19, 1919): 6. 64 Ibid., 6. 65 Betty J. Blum, Oral History of Jacques Calman Brownson (Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1996), 74. NOTES

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66 Friedrich Nietzsche, Menschliche, Allzumenschliches, 2 vols. (1879), II:§284, quoted in AR, ed., DE, 1, no. 1 (1919): 6–7. The first issue also contains an obituary for writer Heinrich Lautensack (1881–1919). 67 AR and SF, “Vermerk zum 1. April 1919,” DE, 1, no. 10 (March 23, 1919): 115. Also see: AR, “Das tragischer Zeitalter,” DE, 1, no. 7 (March 2, 1919): 73–5. 68 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings, ed. Raymond Geuss and Ronald Speirs, trans. Ronald Speirs (1999; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); or. ed. Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik (Leipzig: Verlag von E. W. Fritzsch, 1872). For Nietzsche’s critique of contemporary German society: §§15–22. Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, ed. Daniel Breazeale, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (1983; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), especially “David Strauss, the confessor and the writer,” 1–55, and “On the uses and disadvantages of history for life,” 57–123; or. ed. Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1872–1874). 69 Nietzsche suggests the search by Winckelmann (whom he mentions only once), Schiller, and Goethe for a model of “self-cultivation” in Greek art had “failed […] to penetrate the essential core of Hellenism.” Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, §20. 70 Suzanne E. Marchand, Down From Olympus: Archaeology and Philhellenism in Germany, 1750–1970 (1996; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003). M. S. Silk and J. P. Stern, Nietzsche on Tragedy (1981; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 10–16. 71 Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Gedancken über die Nachahmung der griechischen Wercke in der Mahlerey und Bildhauer-Kunst (1755), quoted in Alex Potts, “Introduction” to Johann Joachim Winckelmann, History of the Art of Antiquity, trans. Harry Francis Mallgrave (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2006), 42 (note 22); or. ed. Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums (1764). Paul Guyer, “18th Century German Aesthetics,” in Zalta, ed., The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2020/entries/aesthetics-18th-german/. 72 On Winckelmann’s theory of artistic development: Potts, “Introduction,” 1–53. For the periodization itself: Winckelmann, History of the Art of Antiquity, 227. 73 Ibid., 199. On Winckelmann’s dating of the Apollo Belvedere: Potts, “Introduction,” 20. 74 Silk and Stern, Nietzsche on Tragedy, 6. Winckelmann, History of the Art of Antiquity, 305, 231, and 303. 75 On Nietzsche’s use of these terms: Silk and Stern, Nietzsche on Tragedy, 281. 76 Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, §§1–2. 77 Silk and Stern, Nietzsche on Tragedy, 80, 281. Raymond Geuss, “Introduction,” to Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, xi. 78 Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, §§1–2. 79 On the influence of Schopenhauer on Nietzsche: Silk and Stern, Nietzsche on Tragedy, 3, 22–3, 68–9, 81, 85, 291–2, 298–300. On the comparative character of the Dionysian and Apollonian: 320–1, and Geuss, “Introduction,” vii–viii. 80 On the Greek theater as orchestral unity: Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, §8. 81 Ibid., §8, esp. 45. Hilberseimer quotes the passage in “Der Naturalismus,” 88. 82 Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, §11, §15, §18. 83 Ibid., §10, especially 53–4. 84 Ibid., §§11–14. On the relationship of lyric and epic poetry: §§5–6. 85 Hilberseimer, “Schöpfung und Entwicklung,” 6. 86 Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, §9, especially 46–7. 87 Ibid., §18. 88 Ibid., §5, §17. 89 Ibid., §17. 90 Ibid., §15, §16, §18. 310

NOTES

91 Ibid., §18. 92 Ibid., §17 [translation altered]. Silk and Stern, Nietzsche on Tragedy, 340. 93 Friedrich Nietzsche, “An Attempt at Self-Criticism” (1886), in Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, 3–12. Silk and Stern, Nietzsche on Tragedy, 301. 94 Silk and Stern, Nietzsche on Tragedy, 340. 95 Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, §22, §24. 96 Nietzsche, “An Attempt at Self-Criticism,” §5. 97 In the rest of this section, I am closely following Aaron Ridley, “Introduction” to Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo: How to become what you are in Friedrich Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols and Other Writings, trans. Judith Norman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), x–xvi; or. ed. Ecce Homo: Wie man wird, was man ist (1888) (Leipzig: Insel-Verlag, 1908). 98 Nietzsche, The Gay Science, §335. 99 Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, II:§10. See also Friedrich Nietzsche, Nietzsche contra Wagner (1889), in Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, XII:§1. 100 Nietzsche, The Gay Science, §290. 101 Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, §§3–4. Ridley, “Introduction,” xiii–xvi. 102 Hilberseimer, “Schöpfung und Entwicklung,” 5. 103 SF, Schöpferische Indifferenz (Munich: Georg Muller Verlag, 1918). 104 Taylor, Left-Wing Nietzscheans, 117. Because of the war, Creative Indifference, was not published until the summer of 1918. Thiel, “Die Tragödie,” 70. Thiel, “Von Schopenhauer und Nietzsche,” 44. 105 Taylor, Left-Wing Nietzscheans, 118. 106 Friedlaender’s early biography: Thiel, “Die Tragödie,” 10; Thiel, “Von Schopenhauer und Nietzsche,” 21. For the history of research on and an introduction to Friedlaender: Detlef Thiel, “Avant-propos,” in SF/Mynona, Philosophische Abhandlungen, 15–16; Thiel, “Von Schopenhauer und Nietzsche,” 17–114; and Exner, Fasching als Logik. 107 SF, Friedrich Nietzsche: Eine Intellektuelle Biographie (Leipzig: G. J. Göschen, 1911). 108 Although the usual English meaning of “indifference” is carried by the German word “Indifferenz,” the far more common term in German is “Gleichgültigkeit,” which, translated literally, means “equal validity.” Angus Stevenson and Maurice Waite, eds., Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 12th edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 723; and Stuart Fortey, Horst Kopleck, Helen Galloway, and Veronika Schnorr, Collins German Dictionary, 5th edn (Glasgow: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006), 268. 109 F. W. J. Schelling, Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom, trans. Jeff Love and Johannes Schmidt (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006), esp. 44, 68, 168–9: note 95; or. ed. Philosophische Untersuchungen über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit und die damit zusammenhängenden Gegenstände (1809). 110 An “autobiography of the world.” Friedlaender, Friedrich Nietzsche, 6. 111 Friedlaender’s ideas here are evidently influenced by Spinoza’s philosophy— specifically, his notions of substantia, infinita potential, and attributum—which also influenced Nietzsche. 112 Friedlaender, Friedrich Nietzsche, 8. 113 Ibid., 7. 114 Ibid., 8, 9. 115 Ibid., 6. On Nietzsche and Heraclitus: Ibid., 19. 116 Ibid., 6. 117 Ibid., 9. NOTES

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118 Ibid., 15. Friedlaender, Schöpferische Indifferenz, xiv. 119 Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil. 120 Friedlaender, Schöpferische Indifferenz, 135. 121 Friedlaender, Friedrich Nietzsche, 12. On Nietzsche as exemplar of self-liberation for Friedlaender: Thiel, “Die Tragödie,” 70–1. 122 Friedlaender, Friedrich Nietzsche, 15, 14. 123 Ibid., 11. 124 Friedlaender’s summation of The Birth of Tragedy: Ibid., 24. 125 Ibid., 18–19, 27. 126 Ibid., 27. 127 Ibid., 17–18. 128 Ibid., 18–19. 129 Ibid., 20. On Schopenhauer and tragedy: 18–20, 22. 130 Ibid., 21. 131 Ibid., 26. 132 Ibid., 20–1. 133 Ibid., 26, 124. 134 Ibid., 139, 120. 135 Ibid., 144. 136 Ibid., 81; see: 90, 124. 137 Ibid., 148, 147. 138 Ibid., 146. 139 Ibid., 125. 140 Ibid., 28, 28–9. 141 Paul Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste, 2nd edn (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 142 Friedlaender, Friedrich Nietzsche, 25. 143 Ibid., 43–4, 47–8. On Kant and Nietzsche, 55. 144 Ibid., 38. 145 Given this repetition, the following omits citations except for quotations. 146 Friedlaender, Schöpferische Indifferenz, 59. 147 Ibid., xvii. 148 See note 14 above. 149 Friedlaender, Schöpferische Indifferenz, 3. 150 Ibid., xiv. 151 Ibid., 53. 152 Ibid., 51. 153 Ibid., 88. 154 Ibid., 50. 155 Ibid., 15. 156 Ibid., 102. 157 Ibid., 98. 158 Cf. Friedlaender, Friedrich Nietzsche, 51. 159 Cf. Ibid., 53. 160 Friedlaender, Schöpferische Indifferenz, 110. 161 Ibid., 102. 162 Ibid., 116. 163 Ibid., 142. 164 Ibid., 56–7.

312

NOTES

Chapter 2 1 Friedlaender, Schöpferische Indifferenz, xiii–xiv. 2 Taylor, Left-Wing Nietzscheans, 142. Hilberseimer, “Schöpfung und Entwicklung,” 5. 3 Ruest, “Die letzte Revolution,” 1. 4 Heinrich Wölfflin, Principles of Art History: The Problem of the Development of Style in Later Art, trans. M. D. Hottinger (1932; New York: Dover Publications, 1950), 234; also 151, 185; or. ed. Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe: das Problem der Stilentwicklung in der neueren Kunst (Munich: F. Bruckmann, 1915). 5 Colin Rhodes, Primitivism and Modern Art (London: Thames and Hudson, 1994). 6 Wilhelm Worringer, Abstraction and Empathy: A Contribution to the Psychology of Style, trans. Michael Bullock (New York: International Universities Press, 1953; Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1994); or. ed. Abstraktion und Einfühlung: Ein Beitrag zur Stilpsychologie (Munich: Piper Verlag, 1908). 7 Hilberseimer, Berliner Architektur, 24. Kandinsky, Über das Geistige, 3. 8 Ibid., 4. 9 Ibid., 5–6. 10 Ibid., 6–8. 11 Hilberseimer, Berliner Architektur, 16. 12 Franz Marc, “Spiritual Treasures,” in Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc, The Blaue Reiter Almanac, ed. Klaus Lankheit, trans. Henning Falkenstein (Boston: MFA Publications, 2005), 55; or. ed. “Geistige Güter,” in Der blaue Reiter, 2nd edn (Munich: R. Piper & Co. Verlag, 1914). 13 Kandinsky, Über das Geistige, 20. 14 Hilberseimer, “Schöpfung und Entwicklung,” 4. 15 Cf. Kandinsky, Über das Geistige, 21–2. 16 Hilberseimer, “Schöpfung und Entwicklung,” 4, quoting JWG, “Von deutscher Baukunst” (1772). John Gage, ed. and trans., Goethe on Art (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980), 109. 17 JWG, “The pilgrimage to Erwin’s grave in July 1775” (1776), “Strasbourg Minster” (1812), and “On German Architecture” (1823), in Gage, ed., Goethe on Art, 112–14, 115–17, 118–23. 18 For Hilberseimer’s internationalism see: LH, “Von der Kunst des jungen Frankreichs,” SM (August 16, 1920): 670–4; LH, “Unsere Geistigen,” SM (June 8, 1921): 486–9; and Stanislaw Kubicki, Otto Freundlich, Tristan Remy Gasbarra, Herm. F. A. Westphal, Stanislawowa, Ludwig Hilberseimer, Doris Homann, Franz Joseph Esser, Raoul Hausmann, Hedwig Mankiewitz, “Zweites Manifest der Kommune,” open letter to the Novembergruppe (May, 1922) repr. in Helga Kliemann, Die Novembergruppe (Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 1969), 66–8, and Hausmann, Raoul Hausmann Texte bis 1933, I:195–8. 19 Hilberseimer, “Schöpfung und Entwicklung,” 5. 20 Stirner, The Ego, 173–5. 21 Hilberseimer, “Schöpfung und Entwicklung,” 5. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid. 24 Hilberseimer, “Umwertung in der Kunst,” 4. 25 Schelling, Philosophical Investigations, 68. See 44. 26 Hilberseimer, “Umwertung in der Kunst,” 4. 27 Ibid., 5.

NOTES

313

28 Ibid. 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid. 31 Unsourced quotation in Ibid. JWG, “Aus Makariens Archiv,” from Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre oder Die Entsagenden, 2nd edn (Stuttgart: Cotta’sche Buchhandlung, 1829), repr. in Wilhelm Meister’s Lehr- und Wanderjahre (Paris: Baudry’s europäische Buchhandlung, 1840), 313–16. 32 Hilberseimer, “Umwertung in der Kunst,” 5. 33 Ibid., 5. Also LH, “Zum Problem der Künstlererziehung,” Freie Zeitung, 1, no. 117 (September 20, 1919): 2. Cf. Kandinsky, Über das Geistige, 31–2. 34 Hilberseimer, “Umwertung in der Kunst,” 5. 35 LH, “Schöpfung und Entwicklung,” typescript with handwritten notes (1922), KLHP, 8/3:1.10, 9–10. See Aloïs Riegl, Late Roman Art Industry, trans. Rolf Winkes (Rome: Giorgio Bretschneider Editorer, 1985), 54–5; or. ed. Spätrömische Kunstindustrie (1901). 36 LH and UR, “Grossstadtarchitektur,” undated typescript with handwritten notes and emendations, KLHP, (Series:Box.FileFolder) 8/1:1.3, 15–16. Riegl, Late Roman Art Industry, 9. Aloïs Riegl, Problems of Style: Foundations for a History of Ornament, ed. David Castriota, trans. Evelyn Kain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), or. ed. Stilfragen: Grundlegungen zu einer Geschichte Ornamentik (Berlin: Georg Siemens, 1893). Gottfried Semper, Gottfried Semper: Architect of the Nineteenth Century, trans. Harry Frances Mallgrave (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996), 301–2; or. ed. Der Stil in den technischen und tektonischen Künsten, oder Praktische Architektur, Ein Handbuch für Techniker, Künstler, und Kunstfreude (Frankfurt a. M.: Verlag für Kunst und Wissenschaft, 1860). Margaret Iversen, Alois Riegl: Art History and Theory (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1993), chapters 2 and 4. Harry Francis Mallgrave, Gottfried Semper: Architect of the Nineteenth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 290–302, 372–81. 37 Hilberseimer, “Form und Individuum,” 6. 38 Ibid. 39 Cf. Hermann Muthesius and Henry Van de Velde, “Werkbund theses and antitheses” (1914), in Programmes and Manifestoes on 20th-century Architecture, ed. Ulrich Conrads (London: Lund Humphries, 1970), 28–31. 40 Hilberseimer, “Form und Individuum,” 6. 41 Ibid., 7. 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid. 44 Ibid. 45 Ibid. 46 Ibid. 47 Hilberseimer, “Der Naturalismus,” 89. 48 Hilberseimer, “Form und Individuum,” 7. 49 Hilberseimer, “Der Naturalismus,” 89. 50 Ibid., 88. 51 Ibid., 88–9. 52 Ibid., 88. 53 Ibid., 89. 54 Hilberseimer, “Kunst und Wissen,” 127–8. 55 Ibid., 127. 56 Ibid. 57 Ibid., 128. 58 Ibid., 127. 314

NOTES

59 Ibid. 60 Ibid. 61 Ibid. 62 Friedlaender, Schöpferische Indifferenz, xiv, xxvi, xxvii, xxxii (just in the introduction). 63 Unsourced quotation in Hilberseimer, “Kunst und Wissen,” 127–8. JWG, Zur Farbenlehre, 2 vols. (Tübingen: Cotta, 1810), 2:119–20. I have modified the translation by Rodney Livingstone in: Walter Benjamin, “Truths and Truths / Knowledge and Elements of Knowledge” (1920–21), in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, ed. Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings, 10 vols. (1996; Cambridge, Mass. and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004), I:279. 64 SF, “Anmerkung zu Hilberseimers ‘Schöpfung und Entwicklung’” (1918), KLHP, repr. in SF/Mynona, Das Experiment Mensch: Philosophische Essays und Kritiken (1912–1939), vol. 21 (2017) of SF/Mynona, Gesammelte Schriften, 65. Cf. László Moholy-Nagy, “Production-Reproduction,” De Stijl, 5, no. 7 (July 1922): 98–101. 65 Friedlaender, “Anmerkung zu Hilberseimers ‘Schöpfung und Entwicklung,’” 65. 66 Cf. Fritz Neumeyer, “Nietzsche and Modern Architecture,” in Nietzsche and “An Architecture of Our Minds,” ed. Alexandre Kostka and Irving Wohlfarth (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1999), 291–2.

Chapter 3 1 Friedlaender, Friedrich Nietzsche, 125; also 93, 131. 2 JWG, Theory of Colors, trans. Charles Lock Eastlake (London: John Murray, 1840; Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1970); or. ed. Zur Farbenlehre (1810). 3 On the relationship between Goethe and Newton, see S. Friedländer-Mynona, “Goethes Farbenlehre und die Moderne Malerei,” in Sammlung Gabrielson Göteborg: Erwerbungen 1922–1923 (Berlin: Sammlung Gabrielson Göteborg, 1923), unpaginated; and SF/Mynona, “Prismatische Malerei als Frucht der Goetheschen Farbenlehre,” Berliner Börsen-Courier. Moderne Tageszeitung für alle Gebiete, 55, no. 233 (May 20, 1923): 1 & supplement, 5; repr. in Friedlaender/Mynona, Philosophische Abhandlungen, 724–9. 4 See Deane B. Judd, “Introduction” (1969) to Goethe, Theory of Colors. 5 SF, “Goethe,” Berliner Tageblatt und Hanelszeitung, 37 (March 18, 1907), repr. in Friedlaender/Mynona, Philosophische Abhandlungen, 239–44. Thiel, “Von Schopenhauer und Nietzsche,” 33–4. 6 Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, Objectivity (New York: Zone Books, 2010), 59. 7 Goethe, “Erfahrung und Wissenschaft,” 24, trans. in Daston and Galison, Objectivity, 70. 8 Jan E. Purkinje, “Beobachtungen und Versuche zur Physiologie der Sinne” (1819), in Opera omnia (Prague: Purkyñova spoleçnost, 1918–41), 1:89, quoted in Daston and Galison, Objectivity, 277. 9 Friedlaender, “Goethe,” 240. 10 Ibid., 242. 11 Friedlaender, Friedrich Nietzsche, 126. 12 Friedlaender, “Goethe,” 240. 13 Thiel, “Von Schopenhauer und Nietzsche,” 57. 14 SF, “Goethe contra Newton,” Die Aktion: Zeitschrift für freiheitliche Politik und Literatur, 23 (July 24, 1911): 722. NOTES

315

15 Friedlaender, “Goethe contra Newton,” 722. 16 JWG, Scientific Studies, ed. and trans. Douglas Miller (New York: Suhrkamp, 1988), 12. 17 Ibid., 15. 18 Ibid., 17. 19 Ibid., 271. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid., 48. 22 Ibid., 58–9. 23 Ibid., 49. 24 Ibid., 57. 25 Ibid., 64. 26 Ibid., 63. 27 Ibid., 61. 28 Ibid., 305. 29 Ibid., 63. 30 Ibid., 64. 31 Ibid., 11. 32 Friedlaender, “Goethe,” 242. 33 Goethe, Scientific Studies, 66. 34 Ibid., 8. Beth Lord, ed., Spinoza’s Philosophy of Ratio (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018). Jonathan Irvine Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650–1750 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). Marjorie Levinson, “A Motion and a Spirit: Romanticizing Spinoza,” Studies in Romanticism, 46, no. 4 (Winter 2007): 367–408. Spinoza’s ideas in an architectural context: Gökhan Kodalak, “Spinoza and Architecture: The Air of the Future,” Log, 49 (Summer 2020): 123–45. 35 Goethe, Scientific Studies, 9. 36 Ibid., 77. 37 Ibid., 23. 38 Ibid., 22. 39 Ibid., 23. 40 JWG, Essays on Art and Literature, ed. John Gearey, trans. Ellen von Nardoff and Ernest H. von Nardoff (New York: Suhrkamp, 1986), 71–2. 41 Ibid., 16. 42 Goethe, Scientific Studies, 274. 43 Ibid., 276. 44 Ibid., 274. 45 Goethe, Essays on Art and Literature, 16. 46 Ibid., 78. 47 Ibid., 77–8. 48 Ibid., 78. 49 Ibid., 79. 50 Ibid., 86. On medium specificity: Guyer, “18th Century German Aesthetics.” 51 Goethe, Essays on Art and Literature, 87. 52 Ibid., 89. 53 Ibid., 91. 54 Ibid., 93, 101. In his 1805 essay on Winckelmann, Goethe contrasts modern skepticism with the apparent grace of ancient life in the face of fate (what Ruest and Friedlaender would call tragic culture). 55 Ibid., 91. 56 Ibid., 92. 316

NOTES

57 Goethe, Scientific Studies, 277. 58 Ibid., 277–8. 59 Ibid., 274. 60 Ibid., 275. Nicholas Saul, ed., The Cambridge Companion to German Romanticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 210. 61 Goethe, Scientific Studies, 275. 62 Ibid., 274. 63 Ibid., 156. 64 Ibid., 275. 65 Ibid., 276. 66 Cf. Friedlaender, Schöpferische Indifferenz, 55. 67 Friedlaender, “Goethe contra Newton,” 722. 68 Thiel, “Avant-propos,” 25. 69 Friedlaender, “Goethe contra Newton,” 722. 70 Goethe, Scientific Studies, 275. 71 Friedlaender, “Goethe contra Newton,” 722. 72 Friedlaender, Friedrich Nietzsche, 75, 126. 73 In conversation with Friedrich Wilhelm Riemer (1774–1845) on 19 May, 1807. 74 Goethe, Scientific Studies, 294. 75 Ibid., 278. 76 Ibid., 296. 77 Ibid., 283–4. 78 Ibid., 296. 79 Ibid., 279. 80 Ibid., 283–4. 81 Goethe, Essays on Art and Literature, 15. 82 Kandinsky, Über das Geistige, 30–2. 83 Ibid., 36. 84 Ibid., 37. 85 Ibid., 45, 49. 86 Ibid., 51. 87 Ibid., 55–8. 88 Ibid., 60. 89 Ibid., 64, 63, 61. 90 Ibid., 64. 91 Ibid., 65. 92 Ibid., 68. 93 Ibid., 69. 94 Ibid., 72; for Kandinsky’s Goethean account of color, 72–87. 95 Ibid., 70–1. 96 Ibid., 88. 97 Ibid., 108ff. 98 Caroline van Eck, Organicism in Nineteenth-Century Architecture: An Inquiry into Its Theoretical and Philosophical Background (Amsterdam: Architectura & Natura Press, 1994), chapter 4. 99 “The more primitive—that is to say, alive and freely functioning—a nation is, the more primitive—that is to say, alive, free, meaningful and lyrically active—its songs will be, if it has any. The further a nation is from an artificial, scientific way of thinking, speaking and writing, the less deadened and stultified will be its songs and verses.” Johann Gottfried Herder, Sämtliche Werke, ed. Bernhard

NOTES

317

Suphan et al., 32 vols. (1877–1913), V:164, quoted by Nikolaus Pevsner, “Goethe and Architecture,” trans. Adeline Hartcup, Palladio, 10–12 (1951), repr. in Nikolaus Pevsner, Studies in Art, Architecture and Design, 2 vols. (London: Thames and Hudson, 1968), I:165–6. 100 On the turn to Goethe as a reaction to and in parallel with neo-Kantianism: Georg Simmel, “Kant and Goethe: On the History of the Modern Weltanschauung,” trans. Josef Bleicher, Theory, Culture & Society, 24, no. 6 (2007): 159–91; or. ed. Kant und Goethe. Zur Geschichte der modernen Weltanschauung, 3rd edn (Berlin: Kurt Wolff Verlag, 1916). 101 Goethe, Essays on Art and Literature, 204. 102 Ibid., 204. 103 Ibid., 47. 104 Goethe, Scientific Studies, 57–60. 105 Sigrid de Jong, “Experiencing Architectural Space,” in Eighteenth-Century Architecture, ed. Caroline van Eck and Sigrid de Jong (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2017), 192–229; Sigrid de Jong, “The Quest for the Origins of Architecture,” in Eighteenth-Century Architecture, ed. Caroline van Eck and Sigrid de Jong (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2017), 715–52. 106 Hilberseimer, “Schöpfung und Entwicklung,” 4. 107 Goethe, “On German Architecture,” in Gage, ed. and trans., Goethe on Art, 106–7. 108 Ibid., 105. 109 Goethe, “On German Architecture,” 105. On Laugier’s theory see Neil Levine, “The Appearance of Truth and the Truth of Appearance in Laugier’s Primitive Hut,” in Modern Architecture: Representation and Reality (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 45–74 and Wolfgang Hermann, Laugier and Eighteenth-Century French Theory, (London: A. Zwemmer, 1977). 110 Goethe, “On German Architecture,” 106. 111 Ibid., 107. 112 Ibid., 108. 113 Hilberseimer, “Schöpfung und Entwicklung,” 4. For an alternate translation: Goethe, “On German Architecture,” 109. 114 Ibid. 115 Worringer, Abstraction and Empathy. 116 Goethe, “On German Architecture,” 108. 117 Ibid., 110. 118 Ibid., 111. 119 JWG, “Strasbourg Minster” (1812), in Gage, ed. and trans., Goethe on Art, 115–16. 120 The fate of Strasbourg is not decided until the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in June.

Chapter 4 1 Hilberseimer, Grossstadtarchitektur. 2 LH, “Die Architektur der Großstadt,” manuscript (1914), KLHP, 8/3:1.1. 3 LH and UR, “Grossstadtarchitektur,” undated typescripts with handwritten notes and emendations, KLHP, 8/1:1.3 (38 pages) [first draft (I)] and 8/1:1.1 (72 pages; copy: 8:1/1.2) [second draft (II)].

318

NOTES

LH and UR,“Amerikanische Architektur,” Kunst und Künstler, 18, no. 12 (September, 1920): 537–45. 5 Richard Pommer, “‘More a Necropolis than a Metropolis’: Ludwig Hilberseimer’s Highrise City and Modern City Planning,” in Pommer et. al., eds., In the Shadow of Mies, 48. 6 A. E. Brinckmann, Stadtbaukunst: Geschichtliche Querschnitte und Neuzeitliche Ziele (Berlin: Neubabelsberg: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Athenaion M. B. H., 1920), 71. 7 Max Wagenführ, “Architektonische Entwürfe von L. Hilberseimer,” Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration, 22, no. 6 (July 1919): 208–16. 8 Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Grossstadtarchitektur,” II:72. 9 Ibid., I:1. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid., I:2. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid., II:1. 15 Ibid., I:3. 16 Ibid., I:3–4. 17 Ibid., II:9–10. 18 Ibid., I:4. 19 Ibid. 20 Cf. Ibid., II:10. 21 Ibid., II:10–11. The word “rural” is added as a handwritten emendation: “rural communities and settlements.” See the discussion of landscape in the next chapter. 22 Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Grossstadtarchitektur,” II:1. 23 Ibid., II:7. 24 Ibid., II:7–8. 25 Ibid., II:1. 26 Presuming Hilberseimer and Rukser were envisioning a publication rather than exhibition. 27 Ibid., I:36. On the scientific atlas see Daston and Galison, Objectivity. 28 See Iain Boyd Whyte and David Frisby, eds., Metropolis Berlin 1880–1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012). 29 Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Grossstadtarchitektur,” II:5. 30 Ibid., II:7. 31 Ibid., II:5–6. 32 Ibid., II:6. 33 Ibid. 34 See Goethe, letter to Carl Friedrich Zelter, October 30, 1808. Hilberseimer and Rukser quote the first clause. Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Grossstadtarchitektur,” II:6. 35 Ibid., II:2. See Schiller to Goethe, March 27, 1801 (Letter Nr. 809), in Briefwechsel zwischen Schiller und Goethe in den Jahren 1794 bis 1805 (Stuttgart and Augsburg: I. G. Cotta’scher Verlag, 1856), 2:338–40. 36 Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Grossstadtarchitektur,” II:2. Cf. I:15. 37 Ibid., II:3. 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid., II:4; Cf. I:16–17. 40 Ibid., II:12. 4

NOTES

319

Chapter 5 Camillo Sitte, City Planning According to Artistic Principles: A Contribution to the Solution of Modern Problems of Architecture and Monumental Sculpture Especially with Regard to the City of Vienna, trans. George R. Collins and Christiane Crasemann Collins, in George R. Collins and Christiane Crasemann Collins, Camillo Sitte: The Birth of Modern City Planning (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 1986; Mineloa, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 2006), 129–410; or. ed. Der Städte-bau nach seinen künstlerischen Grundsätzen. Ein Beitrag zur Lösung moderner Fragen der Architektur und monumentalen Plastik unter besonderer Beziehung auf Wien (Vienna: Verlag von Carl Graeser, 1889). 2 Collins, Camillo Sitte, 15–16. 3 Ibid., 44–5. 4 Ibid., 64. Sitte, City Planning, 138, 223. 5 Collins, Camillo Sitte, 35–6, 66, 68. 6 Sitte, City Planning, 229. 7 Ibid., 222. On Semper’s critique in relation to the city see Wolfgang Herrmann, Gottfried Semper: In Search of Architecture (Cambridge, MA, and London: The MIT Press, 1984), 155. 8 Sitte, City Planning, 213. 9 Ibid., 222–3. 10 Ibid., 226, 231–6. 11 Ibid., 241–2. 12 Ibid., 243. 13 Ibid., 244. 14 Ibid., 245. 15 Ibid., 245. 16 Ibid., 220. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid., 245, 241. 19 Ibid., 168–9. 20 Ibid., 167–8, 222. 21 Ibid., 283. 22 Ibid., 297. Cf. 299, 278ff. 23 Ibid., 249–50. 24 Ibid., 278. 25 Ibid., 227. 26 Ibid., 154. 27 Ibid., 143. Collins, Camillo Sitte, 62. Hilberseimer, Hallenbauten. 28 Sitte, City Planning, 144. 29 Ibid., 153. 30 Ibid., 154. Cf. 242. 31 Ibid., 248. 32 Ibid., 222. 33 Ibid., 243–4. 34 Ibid., 249. 35 Ibid., 244. 36 Ibid., 142. 37 Ibid., 299. 38 Ibid., 243. 1

320

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39 Ibid., 249. 40 Ibid., 264. Cf. 204–5, 196. 41 Ibid., 155–8, 223. 42 Ibid., 249. 43 Ibid., 185–6. 44 Collins, Camillo Sitte, 68–9. 45 Sitte, City Planning, 159–60. 46 Ibid., 155–7. 47 Ibid., 189–90. 48 Ibid., 163–7. 49 Ibid., 165. 50 Ibid., 171. 51 Ibid., 175–6. 52 Ibid., 186. 53 Ibid., 187–8. 54 Ibid., 195–7. 55 Ibid., 197. 56 Ibid., 198. Collins, Camillo Sitte, 79–82. 57 Sitte, City Planning, 201. 58 Collins, Camillo Sitte, 65; 375–6: note 163; and 391–2: note 237. 59 Sitte, City Planning, 243, 199. 60 Ibid., 199. 61 Ibid., 229–30. 62 Ibid., 142. 63 Collins, Camillo Sitte, 69. 64 Sitte, City Planning, 204–5. 65 Ibid., 217–19. 66 Ibid., 271. 67 Ibid., 252. 68 Collins, Camillo Sitte, 53–60. Otto Wagner, Die Groszstadt: Eine Studie über diese von Otto Wagner (Vienna: Anton Schroll und Komp., 1911). 69 Sitte, City Planning, 283. 70 Ibid., 269, 230. 71 Ibid., 259–60. 72 Ibid., 261. 73 Ibid., 299–300. 74 Ibid., 300. 75 Collins, Camillo Sitte, 92–5. 76 Ibid., 92. 77 Ibid., 35–6. 78 Ibid., 196 (editor’s note). 79 Ibid., 69. 80 Ibid., 98–9. 81 Hilberseimer, Berliner Architektur, 16. 82 Adolf Hildebrand, “The Problem of Form in the Fine Arts,” trans. Harry Francis Mallgrave and Eleetherios Ikonomou, in Empathy, Form, and Space: Problems in German Aesthetics 1873–1893, ed. Harry F. Mallgrave (Santa Monica: Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1994), 227–79; or. ed. Das Problem der Form in der bildenden Kunst (Strasbourg: J. H. Ed. Heitz, 1893). 83 On the question of orientation in Sitte: Collins, Camillo Sitte, 65; 391–2: note 237. 84 Hildebrand, “The Problem of Form,” 227. NOTES

321

Ibid., 228. Ibid., 229. Ibid., 230–1. Ibid., 231. Ibid., 232. Ibid., 233. Harry Francis Mallgrave and Eleetherios Ikonomou, “Introduction,” to Mallgrave, ed., Empathy, Form, and Space, 1–85. Simmel, “Kant and Goethe.” 92 Hildebrand, “The Problem of Form,” 236. 93 Ibid., 237. 94 Ibid., 236. 95 Ibid., 239. 96 Ibid., 240. 97 Ibid., 242. 98 Ibid., 242–3. 99 Ibid., 244–5. 100 Ibid., 245–6. 101 Ibid., 246–7. 102 Ibid., 251–2. 103 Ibid., 252. 104 Ibid., 252–3. 105 Ibid., 254. 106 Ibid., 255. 107 Ibid., 256. 108 Ibid., 258. 109 Ibid., 262–75. 110 Ibid., 259. 111 Ibid., 259–60. 112 Ibid., 260. 113 Ibid. 114 Ibid., 261–2. 115 Ibid., 264. 116 Ibid., 266. 117 Ibid. 118 Ibid., 266–7. 119 Ibid., 268. 120 Ibid., 268–9. 121 Ibid., 269. 122 Ibid. 123 Carl Einstein, Negerplastik, 2nd edn (Munich: Kurt Wolff Verlag, 1920), ix. On Einstein, I am following: Sebastian Zeidler, “Introduction” and “Totality against a Subject: Carl Einstein’s ‘Negerplastik’,” October, 107 (Winter 2004): 3–13, 14–46; and Sebastian Zeidler, Form as Revolt: Carl Einstein and the Ground of Modern Art (Ithaca: Cornell University Press and Cornell University Library, 2015). 124 Hildebrand, “The Problem of Form,” 258. Zeidler, “Totality against a Subject,” 18–19, 18: note 10. 125 Einstein, “Negro Sculpture,” trans. by Charles W. Haxthausen and Sebastian Zeilder, October, 107 (Winter 2002): 126–7; or. ed. Negerplastik, repr. in Carl Einstein, Werke, 3 vols., ed. Rolf-Peter Baacke and Jens Kwasny (Berlin: Medusa, 1980), I:245–391. 126 Zeidler, “Totality against a Subject,” 24. 127 Einstein, “Negro Sculpture,” 124. 85 86 87 88 89 90 91

322

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128 Ibid., 125–6. 129 Ibid., 125. 130 Ibid., 125–6, 131. 131 Ibid., 126, 131. 132 Ibid., 131. 133 Ibid., 126. 134 Einstein, Negerplastik, ix. 135 Einstein, “Negro Sculpture,” 127–8. 136 Ibid., 128. 137 Ibid., 129. 138 Ibid. 139 Ibid., 130. 140 Ibid. 141 Ibid. 142 Ibid., 129, 130. 143 Ibid., 130. 144 Ibid., 131–2. 145 Ibid., 131. 146 Ibid., 131–2. 147 Ibid., 132. 148 Ibid., 131, 133. 149 Ibid., 133. 150 Ibid., 133–4. 151 Ibid., 134. 152 Ibid. 153 Ibid., 135. 154 Ibid., 133. 155 Zeidler, Form as Revolt, 2; 27–8; 41–2; 261: notes 13 and 14; 264: note 58. Zeidler suggests Einstein discovers these ideas circa 1910. Friedlaender was engaging the same issues around the same time: Salamo Friedlaender, “Marionetten, Menschen, Götter,” Jugend, 16, no. 46 (November 7, 1911): 1233 and 1235, repr. in SF/Mynona, Philosophische Abhandlungen, 320–3; and SF, “Polarität: Philosophischer Vortrag,” recital, Literarische Cabaret Gnu, December 14, 1911, in Der Sturm, 2, no. 92 (January, 1912), 732f., repr. in SF/Mynona, Philosophische Abhandlungen, 324–9.

Chapter 6 1 Collins, Camillo Sitte, 95–6. 2 A. E. Brinckmann, Platz und Monument: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte und Ästhetik der Stadtbaukusnt in neuerer Zeit (Berlin: Ernst Wasmuth, 1908). A. E. Brinckmann, Deutsche Stadtbaukunst in der Vergangenheit (Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Heinrich Keller, 1911). Brinckmann, Stadtbaukunst. See also A. E. Brinckmann, Plastik und Raum als Grundformen Künstlerischen Gestaltung (Munich: R. Piper & Co. Verlag, 1922). 3 Brinckmann, Platz und Monument, iii. David Watkin, The Rise of Architectural History (1980; Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1983), 11. 4 August Schmarsow, “The Essence of Architectural Creation” (1893), in Mallgrave, ed., Empathy, Form, and Space, 282–3. 5 Ibid., 281–2. NOTES

323

Ibid., 286–7. Ibid., 288, 291. Ibid., 288. Ibid., 288, 291–2. Ibid., 289. Ibid., 288–9. Ibid., 290, 293. Ibid., 294. Ibid., 293. Ibid., 294. Ibid., 296. August Schmarsow, Barock und Rokoko, Eine kritische Auseinandersetzung über Das Malerische in der Architektur (Leipzig: Verlag von S. Hirzel, 1897), 1. 18 Ibid., 8–9. See 5–11. 19 Ibid., 9–10. 20 Ibid., 12. 21 Ibid., 1–3. 22 Ibid., 17. 23 Ibid., 38. 24 Heinrich Wölfflin, Renaissance and Baroque, trans. Kathrin Simon as (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1966); or. ed. Renaissance und Barock: Eine Untersuchung über Wesen und Entstehung des Barockstils in Italien (Munich: Theodor Ackermann, 1888). 25 Schmarsow, Barock und Rokoko, 36. 26 Ibid., 36–7; see also 43–8. 27 Ibid., 30. 28 Ibid., 41. 29 Ibid., 42. 30 Ibid., 110. 31 Ibid., 108–9, unsourced quotation. See Wölfflin, Renaissance and Baroque, 66. 32 Schmarsow, Barock und Rokoko, 277–83. Cf. Giorgio Vasari, “Preface to Part 3,” in The Lives of the Artists, trans. Julia Conaway and Peter Bondanella (1991; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 277–83. 33 Schmarsow, Barock und Rokoko, 67. 34 Ibid., 65. 35 Ibid., 66. Cf. Ibid., 93–4, 101–3. 36 Ibid., 71–2. 37 Ibid., 71. 38 Ibid., 71–2. 39 Ibid., 79. 40 Ibid., chapters 3–6. 41 Ibid., 90. 42 Ibid., 97. 43 Ibid., 98, 91–2. 44 Ibid., 102–3. Cf. 93–4. 45 Brinckmann, Platz und Monument, v. 46 Ibid., 1. 47 Ibid., 2. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid., 2–3. 50 Ibid., 3–4. 51 Ibid., 4. 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

324

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52 Ibid., 4–5. 53 Ibid., 6. 54 Ibid. 55 Cf. Schmarsow, Barock und Rokoko, 98–9. 56 Brinckmann, Platz und Monument, 7. 57 Ibid., 9. 58 Ibid., 11. 59 Cf. Schmarsow, Barock und Rokoko, chapters 3–6. 60 Brinckmann, Platz und Monument, 11–12. 61 Ibid., 12. 62 Ibid., 15–16. 63 Ibid., 19, 22. On its incompleteness: 24. 64 Ibid., 24–5. On the Baroque departure from the Renaissance palazzo courtyard, see Schmarsow, Barock und Rokoko, 158–9. 65 Brinckmann, Platz und Monument, 26. 66 Ibid., 33, 130. 67 Ibid., 34–8. 68 Ibid., 27–8. 69 Ibid., 25. 70 Ibid., 39–40. 71 Ibid., 29–30. Brinckmann discusses the ideal schemes of Frau [Giovanni] Giacondo, Vassari, and Scamozzi. Ibid., 30–2. 72 Ibid., 38. 73 Ibid., 49. 74 Ibid., 44. 75 Ibid., 45–6. Cf. Schmarsow, Barock und Rokoko, 199–201. 76 Ibid., 46. 77 Ibid., 48. 78 Herman Maertens, Der Optische-Maassstab oder Die theorie und Praxis des ästhetischen Sehens in den bildenden Künsten. Auf Grund der Lehre der physiologischen Optik (Bonn: Cohen & Sohn, 1877). See Ákos Moravánszky, “The Optical Construction of Urban Space: Hermann Maertens, Camillo Sitte and the Theories of ‘Aesthetic Perception’,” The Journal of Architecture, 17, no. 5 (2012): 655–66. 79 Brinckmann, Platz und Monument, 49. 80 Ibid., 40. 81 Ibid., 40–1. 82 Ibid., 41. 83 Ibid., 54–5. 84 Ibid., 49–50. 85 Ibid., 58–9. 86 Ibid., 59. 87 Ibid., 59–60, 79. 88 Ibid., 66. 89 Ibid., 45–6, 90–1. 90 Ibid., 105. 91 Ibid., 105–6. 92 Ibid., 108. 93 Ibid., 116. 94 Ibid., 117. 95 Ibid., 117–23. NOTES

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96 Ibid., 121–3. 97 Ibid., 131–5. 98 Ibid., 142. 99 Ibid., 136, 137–43. 100 Ibid., 127. 101 Ibid., 150. 102 Sitte, City Planning, 231, 238. 103 Brinckmann, Platz und Monument, 149–50, 151. See Paul Mebes, ed., Um 1800: Architektur und Handwerk im Letzten Jahrhundert ihrer traditionellen Entwicklung, 2 vols. (Munich: F. Bruckmann, 1908). 104 Brinckmann, Platz und Monument, 150. 105 Ibid., 153. 106 Ibid., 144. 107 Ibid., 145. 108 Ibid., 143–4. 109 Ibid., 146. 110 Ibid., 160–1. 111 Ibid., 153–4. 112 Ibid., 108. 113 Ibid., 153–9. 114 Ibid., 164. 115 Ibid., 166. 116 Ibid., 165. 117 Ibid., 165–6. 118 Ibid., 167. 119 Ibid., 167–8. 120 Ibid., 168. 121 Ibid., 169. 122 Ibid., 169. 123 Ibid., 170. 124 Ibid., 169–70. Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Grossstadtarchitektur,” II:29.

Chapter 7 Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Grossstadtarchitektur,” I:17. Cf. Brinckmann, Platz und Monument, 58–9. 2 Brinckmann, Platz und Monument, 88, quoted in Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Grossstadtarchitektur,” II:4. 3 Ibid., II:4–5. 4 Brinckmann, Platz und Monument, 89. 5 Ibid., 88, quoted in Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Grossstadtarchitektur,” II:4. 6 Ibid., I:9. 7 Theodor Däubler, Hesperien: Eine Symphonie (Munich: G. Müller, 1915), repr. in Theodor Däubler, Dichtungen und Schriften (Munich: Kösel Verlag, 1954): 133–72 (154). See Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Grossstadtarchitektur,” first draft: 9, second draft: epigraph. 8 Raymond Furness, Zarathustra’s Children: A Study of a Lost Generation of German Writers (Rochester: Camden House, 2000), 154. 9 Däubler, Hesperien, 149. 1

326

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10 Furness, Zarathustra’s Children, 154. 11 Däubler, Hesperien, 170. 12 Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Grossstadtarchitektur,” I:14. 13 Ibid., II:31–2; Cf. I:14. 14 Ibid. 15 Theodor Däubler, “Simultaneität,” Die Weissen Blätter, 2, no. 1 (1916): 108. 16 Däubler, “Simultaneität,” 108. 17 Ibid., 109. 18 Ibid., 111–12. 19 Ibid., 113. 20 Ibid., 116. On this indifference (the “blasé attitude”) see Georg Simmel, “Die Großstädte und Geistesleben,” Jahrbuch der Gehe-Stiftung, 9 (Dresden: Zahn & Jaensch, 1903), repr. in Georg Simmel, Das Individuum und die Freiheit (Berlin: Wagenbach, 1984). 21 Däubler, “Simultaneität,” 117. 22 Ibid., 118. 23 Ibid., 119. 24 Ibid., 118. 25 Ibid., 119. 26 Ibid., 120. 27 Ibid. 28 Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Grossstadtarchitektur,” II:2–3. 29 Ibid., I:10. 30 Ibid., II:24, quoting Brinckmann, Platz und Monument, 170. 31 For Hilberseimer’s longstanding interest in this idea of materiality, see M. Heeren, “Neue Werksteinformen: Zu der Studie von Arch. L. Hilberseimer,” Deutsche Bauhütte 10 (October 25, 1906), 346. 32 Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Grossstadtarchitektur,” I:10–11; II:26. 33 Ibid., I:10. 34 Ibid., I:11. 35 Ibid., I:4. 36 Ibid., I:4–5; II:24. 37 Ibid., II:30; I:6. 38 Ibid., I:5. 39 Ibid., II:31. 40 Ibid., I:5. 41 Ibid., II:24–5. 42 Ibid., II:25. 43 Ibid., II:25. 44 Ibid., II:26. Sitte, City Planning, 239–41. Brinckmann, Platz und Monument, 126, 131, 146, 151–2, 155. 45 Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Grossstadtarchitektur,” II:27. 46 Däubler, “Simultaneität,” 112. 47 Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Grossstadtarchitektur,” II:27. 48 Ibid., II:27–8. 49 Ibid., II:28. 50 Ibid., II:29. Cf. Brinckmann, Platz und Monument, 88. 51 Ibid., II:28. 52 Brinckmann, Platz und Monument, 169–70, quoted by Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Grossstadtarchitektur,” II:29. 53 Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Grossstadtarchitektur,” II:29. NOTES

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54 Brinckmann, Stadtbaukunst, 71. 55 Ibid., 73. 56 Ibid., 76. 57 Most notably the conclusion of Hilberseimer, The New City. See Colman, “Promoting the New City.” 58 Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Grossstadtarchitektur,” II:29. 59 Ibid., II:30. 60 Hilberseimer and Rukser use the word “cubic” eleven times in their second draft. 61 The attribution to Rodin is a handwritten note to the typescript. Unattributed quotation (perhaps Rodin’s Les Cathédrales de France, 1914) in Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Grossstadtarchitektur,” II:13–14. 62 Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Grossstadtarchitektur,” II:12. 63 Cf. Friedrich Weinbrenner, Architektonisches Lehrbuch, 3 vols. (Tübingen: Georg Cottaischen, 1810/1819), esp. vol. 1, Geometrische Zeichnungslehre, Licht- und Schattenlehre (1810). 64 Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Grossstadtarchitektur,” II:13. 65 Ibid., II:16. 66 Ibid., II:14. 67 Hildebrand, “The Problem of Form,” 250–1. 68 Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Grossstadtarchitektur,” II:14. 69 Ibid., I:11–12; II:14. 70 Ibid., II:14–15. 71 Ibid., II:12. 72 Peter Behrens, “Die Zusammenhänge zwischen Kunst und Technik,” Dokumente des Fortschritts, 7 (March, 1914): 134–41; repr. in Kunstwart und Kulturwart, 27, no. 3 (1914): 218. 73 Behrens, “Die Zusammenhänge zwischen Kunst und Technik,” 221–2. 74 Ibid., II:15; I:13. 75 Ibid., I:13; II:15. 76 Ibid., I:13; II:15; I:13. 77 Ibid., II:15; I:13. 78 Cf. Zeidler, “Totality against a Subject,” 24–32. 79 Zeidler has called the technique “aspect reversal.” Through the simultaneous presence of a number of these polar assertions, Zeidler writes, “a maximum of visual information about the body has been assembled into a single, frontal aspect.” Zeidler, “Totality against a Subject,” 36. 80 Einstein, “Negro Sculpture,” 136. 81 Ibid., 135. 82 Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Grossstadtarchitektur,” II:15. 83 Ibid., II:16. 84 Ibid., I:13–14. 85 Ibid., I:13. For an alternate reading of Mies and Hilberseimer’s work through the lens of Hildebrand’s theory, see Sarah Whiting, “Bas-Relief Urbanism: Chicago’s Figured Field,” in Lambert, ed., Mies in America, 642–91. 86 Ibid., I:14. 87 Ibid., II:16. 88 Brinckmann, Stadtbaukunst, vii. 89 Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Grossstadtarchitektur,” I:6–7. 90 Ibid., II:19. 91 Ibid., I:6. 92 Ibid., II:19. 328

NOTES

93 Ibid., II:19–20; Cf. I:14–15. 94 Ibid., II:2. 95 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (1967; New York: Vintage Books, 1968), §842 (March–June, 1888), 443–4. 96 Ibid., II:24. 97 Ibid., I:19; II:21. 98 Ibid., I:19. 99 Ibid.; I:19, II:21. 100 Ibid., II:22. Cf. Brinckmann, Platz und Monument, 39, 59. 101 Ibid., II:22. 102 Ibid., II:22–3. 103 Ibid., II:23. 104 Ibid., I:19–20. 105 Ibid., I:23. 106 Ibid., II:20. 107 Ibid., I:21. 108 Ibid. 109 Ibid., I:17–18. 110 Ibid., I:18. 111 Ibid., I:18–19. 112 Ibid., II:2.

Chapter 8 Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Grossstadtarchitektur,” II:32. Ibid., I:20–21. Ibid., I:20; II:32. Ibid., I:20. In the second draft, they also cite English industrial conurbations. Ibid., II:32. Cf.Jean Gottmann, Megalopolis: The Urbanized Northeast Seaboard of the United States (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1964). 5 Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Grossstadtarchitektur,” I:21–2; II:33. Hilberseimer, Hallenbauten. 6 Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Grossstadtarchitektur,” I:22; Cf. II:34. 7 Ibid., I:22; II:34–5. 8 Ibid., I:22; II:35. 9 Ibid., I:23; II:35. 10 Ibid., I:24; II:35. 11 Ibid., I:24. 12 Ibid., I:23. 13 Ibid., I:24; II:35–6. 14 Ibid., I:24–5. 15 Ibid., I:37. 16 Ibid., II:37. 17 Ibid., I:24–5. 18 Ibid., II:39. 19 Ibid., II:39. 20 Ibid., II:39–40. 21 Hilberseimer, Grossstadtarchitektur, 7. 22 Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Grossstadtarchitektur,” I:25. 1 2 3 4

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23 Ibid., I:26. Cf. the writings of Hilberseimer’s teacher Friedrich Ostendorf. 24 Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Grossstadtarchitektur,” I:26; II:40. 25 Ibid., II:40. 26 Ibid., I:26; II:42–3. 27 Ibid., II:43. 28 Ibid., I:26. 29 Ibid., II:43. 30 Ibid., II:43–4. 31 Ibid., II:44. 32 Ibid., II:44–5. 33 Ibid., II:45. 34 Ibid., I:26. 35 Ibid., II:45. 36 Ibid., II:46. 37 Ibid., I:27. 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid., II:47. 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid., II:48. 42 Ibid., I:30. 43 Ibid., I:30; II:48. 44 Ibid., II:49. 45 Ibid., I:30. 46 Ibid., II:49. 47 Ibid. 48 Ibid., II:50. 49 Ibid., II:50–1. 50 Ibid., II:51. 51 Ibid. 52 Ibid. 53 Ibid., I:30. Ibid., II:52. 54 Ibid., II:51. 55 Ibid., II:53. 56 Ibid., II:53–4. 57 Ibid., I:31; II:57. 58 Ibid., II:54. 59 Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, “On the uses and disadvantages of history for life,” 57–123. 60 Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Grossstadtarchitektur,” I:31. 61 Ibid., I:31–2. 62 Ibid., I:32. 63 Ibid., I:32–3; II:58. 64 Ibid., I:33–4; II:59. 65 Ibid., I:32–3. 66 Ibid., I:32; II:58. 67 Ibid., I:32; II:58. 68 Ibid., II:59. 69 The issue of Kunst und Künstler containing “American Architecture” went to the press in mid-August, 1920. Hilberseimer and Rukser make a number attributional errors. 70 Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Amerikanische Architektur,” 537. UR, Über den Denker Rudolf Pannwitz: Mit einer Selbstbiographie von Pannwitz und einer Bibliographie 330

NOTES

(Meisenheim am Glan: A. Hain, 1970). Rudolf Pannwitz, Die Krisis der Europäischen Kultur (München-Feldafing: Hans Karl, 1921), 197. 71 Ibid., 202, 193. 72 Jan Vermeiren, “Imperium Europaeum: Rudolf Pannwitz and the German Idea of Europe,” in Mark Hewitson and Matthew D’Auria, eds., Europe in Crisis: Intellectuals and the European Idea, 1917–1957 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2012), 136. 73 Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Amerikanische Architektur,” 537. 74 Ibid., 538. 75 Walter Gropius, “Die Entwicklung moderner Industriebaukunst,” in Die Kunst in Industrie und Handel (Jena: Eugen Diederichs, 1913), 10–22. 76 Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Amerikanische Architektur,” 538. 77 Ibid., 538–40. 78 Ibid., 538. They falsely attribute design of the bridge to Henry Hobson Richardson. 79 Ibid., 547. The essay was also illustrated by photographs of: Louis Sullivan’s Merchant’s National Bank in Chicago, an anonymous grain elevator and storage facility, Henry Hobson Richardson’s Marshall Field Wholesale Store (Chicago, 1885–7), the Lynn Trumbull Public School (1908–9) by Dwight H. Perkins (1867– 1941), and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Steffen (Buffalo, 1909) and Coonley (Chicago, 1907) Houses as well as two drawings—a plan and perspective—of Wright’s Larkin Building (1903). 80 Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Amerikanische Architektur,” 540. 81 Ibid., 540–1. 82 Ibid., 541. 83 Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Amerikanische Architektur,” 541. 84 Einstein, “Negro Sculpture,” 137. 85 LH, “Das Hochhaus,” Das Kunstblatt, 6, no. 12 (1922): 529, 531. 86 Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Amerikanische Architektur,” 541. 87 Ibid., 542. 88 Ibid., 543. Cf. Gropius, “Die Entwicklung moderner Industriebaukunst,” 21. 89 Cf. Hildebrand, “The Problem of Form,” 276–8. 90 Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Amerikanische Architektur,” 542–3. 91 Einstein, Negerplastik, xxi. 92 Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Amerikanische Architektur,” 543. 93 Ibid., 543–4. 94 Ibid., 544. 95 Ibid. 96 Gropius, “Die Entwicklung moderner Industriebaukunst,” 21–2, quoted by Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Amerikanische Architektur,” 544–5. 97 Unattributed quotation in Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Amerikanische Architektur,” 545. See Johann Peter Eckermann, Gespräche mit Goethe in den letzten Jahren seines Leben (1836) (Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1981), chapter 281. 98 Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Amerikanische Architektur,” 545.

Chapter 9 1 2 3 4

Scheffler edits the journal from 1907. Karl Scheffler, Konventionen der Kunst Aphoristisch (Leipzig: Julius Zeitler Verlag, 1904). Ibid., 5–6. Ibid., 6–7. NOTES

331

5 Ibid., 7. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid., 9. 8 Ibid., 17. 9 Ibid., 10. 10 Ibid., 18–19. 11 Ibid., 11. 12 Ibid., 13. 13 Ibid., 19. 14 Ibid., 20. 15 Ibid., 19–20. 16 Ibid., 13. 17 Ibid., 20, 13. 18 Ibid., 14–15. 19 Ibid., 24. 20 Ibid., 25–6. 21 Ibid., 27–8. 22 Ibid., 28–9. 23 Ibid., 26. 24 Ibid., 11. 25 Ibid., 38–9. 26 Ibid., 20–1. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid., 22. 29 Ibid., 17. 30 Ibid., 16, 22. 31 Ibid., 22–3, 15–16. 32 Ibid., 14, 15. 33 Ibid., 24. 34 Ibid., 11–12, 25. 35 Ibid., 11–12. See 55–6. 36 Ibid., 55. 37 Ibid., 56. 38 Ibid., 50–1. 39 Ibid., 51–2. 40 Ibid., 52. 41 Ibid., 54–5. 42 Ibid., 53–4. 43 August Endell, Die Schönheit der großen Stadt (Stuttgart: Verlag von Strecker & Schröder, 1908). See also: Karl Scheffler, “August Endell,” Kunst und Künstler, 5 (1907): 314–24. Karl Scheffler, Berlin: Ein Stadtschicksal (Berlin-Westend: Erich Reiss Verlag, 1910), 200. 44 Endell, Die Schönheit. 45 Scheffler, Berlin, 201. 46 Ibid., 203. Cf. Hays, Modernism and the Posthumanist Subject, 16–20, re Sigfried Giedion (1888–1968). 47 Ibid., 12. 48 Scheffler, Konventionen, 35–6. 49 Ibid., 30. 50 Ibid., 31–2. 51 Ibid., 37. See Mallgrave, ed., Empathy, Form, and Space. 332

NOTES

52 Scheffler, Konventionen, 37. 53 Ibid., 37–8, 53. 54 Ibid., 30. 55 Ibid., 30–1. 56 Ibid., 32. 57 Ibid., 29. 58 Ibid., 31. 59 Ibid., 12–13. 60 Ibid., 33. 61 Ibid., 33. 62 Ibid., 39. 63 Ibid., 39–40. 64 Ibid., 39. 65 Ibid., 40. 66 Ibid., 40–1. 67 Ibid., 67–8. 68 Ibid., 66–7. 69 Ibid., 69. 70 Goethe, “Urworte. Orphisch” (1817), unsourced quotation in Scheffler, Berlin, epigraph. 71 Scheffler, Berlin, 3. 72 Ibid., 4. 73 Ibid., 5. 74 Ibid., 6–7. 75 Ibid., 7. 76 Ibid. 77 Ibid., 11. 78 Ibid., 11–13. 79 Ibid., 14. 80 Ibid., 17–18. 81 Ibid., 18–19, 22–4. 82 Ibid., 38–9, 40. 83 Ibid., 44. 84 Ibid., 42–3. 85 Ibid., 43. 86 Ibid., 26–8. 87 Ibid., 28–9. 88 Ibid., 17, 18, 27, 200. 89 Ibid., 14. 90 Ibid., 16, see 14–16. 91 Ibid., 45. 92 Ibid., 46. 93 Ibid., 47. 94 Ibid., 49. 95 Ibid., 51. 96 Ibid., 52. 97 Ibid., 55. 98 Ibid., 56. 99 Ibid., 58–9. 100 Cf. Scheffler, Konventionen, 48. 101 Scheffler, Berlin, 61. NOTES

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102 Ibid., 62. 103 Ibid., 62, 80–1. 104 Ibid., 81. 105 Ibid., 84. 106 Ibid., 87. 107 Ibid., 82. 108 Ibid., 88. 109 Ibid., 88–9. 110 Ibid., 91. 111 Ibid., 90. 112 Ibid., 135–6. 113 Ibid., 141. 114 Ibid., 140. 115 Ibid., 143–4. 116 Ibid., 226–7. 117 Ibid., 230. 118 Ibid., 227–8. 119 Ibid., 143–4, 146, 151; see also 154. 120 Ibid., 147. 121 Ibid., 157; also see: 200. 122 Ibid., 145. 123 Ibid., 181. 124 Ibid., 182. 125 Ibid., 179–80, 183–4. 126 Ibid., 210. 127 Ibid., 254, 253. 128 Ibid., 254. 129 Ibid., 186–7. 130 Ibid., 254. 131 Ibid., 254–5. 132 Ibid., 256. 133 Ibid., 194, 191. 134 Ibid., 235. 135 Ibid., 230. 136 Ibid., 234. 137 Ibid., 237. 138 Ibid., 243. 139 Ibid., 240; see 245–6. For Hilberseimer’s reading of Tolstoy: LH, “Exotische Kunst,” Feuer: Monatschrift für Kunst und künstlerische Kultur (October, 1921): 34. 140 Scheffler, Berlin, 240–1. 141 Ibid., 235–6. 142 Ibid. 143 Ibid., 258. 144 Ibid., 259. 145 Ibid., 260. 146 Ibid., 262. 147 Ibid., 261. 148 Ibid., 262. 149 Ibid., 262–3. 150 Ibid., 265. 151 Ibid., 267. 334

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Ibid., 247. Ibid., 246, 250. Ibid., 249. Ibid., 250–3. Ibid., 250–1. Ibid., 251. Ibid., 251–2. Ibid., 252–3. Ibid., 252–3. Ibid., 250–3. Ibid., 246. Karl Scheffler, Die Architektur der Grossstadt (Berlin: Bruno Cassirer, 1913). LH, “Die Architektur der Großstadt.” Pommer, “More a Necropolis than a Metropolis,” 26–7. 164 Scheffler, Die Architektur der Grossstadt, 16. 165 Ibid., 6–7, 16, 20. 166 Walter Curt Behrendt, Alfred Messel, mit einer einleitenden Betrachtung von Karl Scheffler (Berlin: Bruno Casirer, 1911). Walter Curt Behrendt, Die Einheitliche Blockfront als Raumelement im Stadtbau: Ein Beitrag zur Stadtbaukunst der Gegenwart (Berlin: Bruno Cassirer Verlag, 1911). 167 Karl Scheffler, “Kultur und Kunst,” “Kunstbildung,” “Kunst und Leben,” “Kultur und Geschmack des Wohnens,” “Das Theater,” in Moderne Kultur: ein Handbuch der Lebensbildung und des guten Geschmacks, 2 vols., ed. Eduard Heyck (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1907), I:17–49, I:51–92, I:93-112, I:149–268, II:403–24. Karl Scheffler, Moderne Baukunst (Berlin: Julius Bard, 1907). 168 Pommer, “More a Necropolis than a Metropolis,” 26–7. Alexander Eisenschmidt, “The Formless Groszstadt and Its Potent Negativity: Berlin, 1910 through the Eyes of Endell, Scheffler, and Hegemann” (PhD diss., Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2008). Alexander Eisenchmidt, “The City’s Architectural Project: from Formless City to Forms of Architecture,” Architectural Design, 82, no. 5 (September, 2012): 18–25. Alexander Eisenschmidt, “Metropolitan Architecture: Karl Scheffler and Alfred Messel’s Search for a New Urbanity,” Grey Room, no. 56 (Summer 2014): 90–115. Alexander Eisenschmidt, The Good Metropolis: From Urban Formlessness to Metropolitan Architecture (Basel: Birkhäuser Verlag GmbH, 2019), chapter 2. 169 On the “indifference” of Berlin and its people: Scheffler, Architektur der Grossstadt, 37, 53, 60, 63, 65, 68, 71, 73, 178. 170 Friedlaender, Friedrich Nietzsche, 18–19. 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163

Chapter 10 Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, Discours sur le Style, édition publiée avec une introduction et des notes par René Nollet, 3rd edn (Paris: Libraire Hachette et Cie, 1912). Excerpts trans. by Udo Ruckser [Udo Rukser] as “Aus Buffons Rede über Stil,” Die Aktion, 8, nos. 7–8 (February 23, 1918): 90. The misspelling is corrected in the reprint: Paul Raabe, “Bio-Bibliographischer Anhang zu den Jahrgängen 5–8 (1915–1918),” Die Aktion herausgegeben von Franz Pfemfert 7. Jahrgang 1917 8. Jahrgang 1918 Mit einem Kommentar von Paul Raabe (Munich: Kösel-Verlag, 1967), 57. 2 Buffon, Discours sur le Style, 12. See 22. 3 Ibid., 8. 1

NOTES

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4 Ibid., 17. 5 Buffon, “Buffons Rede,” 90. 6 Buffon, Discours sur le Style, 21. 7 UR, “Arthur Willners Fugen,” Der Einzige, 1, no. 5 (February 16, 1919): 7–8. UR, “Janthur, der Maler,” Der Einzige, 1, no. 7 (March 2, 1919): 79–80. UR, “Von der Form des Menschen,” Der Einzige, 1, no. 9 (March 16, 1919): 104. 8 “Guide to the Arthur Willner Collection,” Leo Baeck Institute, Center for Jewish History, New York, 2002. 9 Rukser, “Arthur Willners Fugen,” 7. 10 Ibid., 8. 11 Ibid., 7–8. 12 Ibid., 8. 13 Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Grossstadtarchitektur,” II:2–3, quote unsourced. See letter from Goethe to Schiller, number 128, quoted in Friedrich Wilhelm Riemer, Mittheilungen über Goethe aus mündlichen und schriftlichen, gedruckten und ungedruckten Quellen, 2 vols. (Berlin: Verlag von Duncker und Humblot, 1841), 2:366, “Goethe’s und Schiller’s Briefwechsel 1794–1805.” 14 Buffon, Discours sur le Style, 22. 15 Rukser, “Janthur,” 79. 16 Rukser, “Arthur Willners Fugen,” 8. 17 Rukser, “Janthur der Maler,” 80. 18 Ibid., 79. 19 Ibid., 79–80. 20 Maurice Maeterlinck, The Intelligence of the Flowers, trans. Alexander Teixeira de Mattos (New York: Dodd Mead and Company, 1907), 8–9; or. ed. Die Intelligenz der Blumen (Jena: Eugen Diederichs, 1907). 21 Rukser, “Janthur der Maler,” 79. 22 Unattributed quote in Rukser, “Janthur, der Maler,” 80 (see note 21). 23 JWG, Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, 1795–1796), quoted in Rukser, “Form des Menschen,” 104. 24 Ibid., 104. 25 Goethe, Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, quoted in Ibid. 26 Ibid., 104. 27 Ibid., 104. 28 Cf. SF, “Das Individuum und die soziale Frage,” Die Aktion, 3, no. 51 (December 20, 1913): 1182–6. 29 UR, “Die Situation der heutigen Musik,” Melos, 1, no. 8 (June 1, 1920): 188. 30 Ibid., 188–9. 31 Ibid., 189. 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid. 34 Karl Scheffler, Max Liebermann (Munich: R. Piper, 1906). 35 Rukser, “Die Situation,” 189. 36 UR, “Die Umformung der modernen Klangkörper,” Melos, 1, no. 12 (August 1, 1920): 276. [Alternately titled, in the journal contents, “Die Veränderung des Orchesterklanges.”] Rukser repeats remarks made in this essay on orchestral instrumentation in a review of Rudolf Cahn-Speyer, Handbuch des Dirigierens (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1919). UR, “Bücherbesprechungen,” Melos, 2, no. 4 (February 16, 1921): 82. 37 Rukser, “Die Umformung,” 277.

336

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38 Ibid., 276. Rukser cites Johann Peter Eckermann’s (1792–1854) conversations with Goethe (Gespräche mit Goethe, 1836–1848) and Strauss’s foreword to Louis-Hector Berlioz’s (1803–1869) textbook on instrumentation (Grand Traité d’Instrumentation et d’Orchestration Modernes, 1844). 39 Ibid., 277. 40 Ibid., 278. 41 Ibid., 277. 42 Ibid., 278. 43 Ibid., 276. 44 UR, “Das Moser-Klavier,” Melos, 1, no. 14 (September 1, 1920): 320. 45 Ibid., 320. 46 Ibid., 321. 47 Ibid., 320. 48 Ibid., 322. 49 Raoul Hausmann, “Das neue Material in der Malerei” (April 12, 1918), published as “Synthetisches Cino der Malerei” in Am Anfang war Dada (Gießen, 1972): 27ff; repr. in Raoul Hausmann, Raoul Hausmann, I:14–16. 50 Hans Pfitzner, Die neue Ästhetik der musikalischen Impotenz: eine Verwesungssymptom? (Munich: Verlag der Süddeutschen Monatshefte, 1920). UR, “Pfitzners Ästhetik,” Melos, 1, no. 18 (November 1, 1920): 402–5. 51 Ibid., 402. 52 Ibid., 403. 53 Kandinsky, Über das Geistige, quoted by Rukser, “Pfitzners Ästhetik,” 404. 54 Ibid., 405. 55 Ibid., 405. Rukser refers his readers to Nietzsche, The Gay Science, §369. 56 Rukser, “Pfitzners Ästhetik,” 405. 57 UR, “Die Beethovensche Form,” Weimarer Blätter: Zeitschrift des Deutschen Nationaltheaters und der Weimar-Gesellschaft, 2, no. 9 (Weimar: Verlag Bruno Wollbrück, 1920): 453. 58 Ibid., 453–4. 59 Ibid., 454. 60 Ibid., 455. 61 Ibid., 456. 62 Ibid. 63 Ibid., 458. Cf. Karl Scheffler, Die Melodie: Versuch einer Synthese nebst einer Kritik der Zeit (Berlin: Verlag Bruno Cassirer, 1919). 64 Ibid., 457. 65 Ibid., 458. 66 Ibid., 457. 67 UR, “Expressionismus als Ziel?” Melos, 2, no. 2 (January 16, 1921): 26–8. 68 Ibid., 26. 69 Ibid., 27. 70 Ibid., 26–7. 71 Ibid., 27 citing Richard Wagner, Beethoven (1870). See trans. by Roger Allen in Richard Wagner’s Beethoven (1870) (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2014), 77–9. 72 Rukser, “Expressionismus als Ziel?” 28. 73 Hilbersiemer and Rukser, “Grossstadtarchitektur,” II:17, 18, 24, 26, 30. 74 Hilberseimer, Entfaltung einer Planungsidee. 75 Hausmann describes his (and Hilberseimer’s) position as “post-dadaistic” in a letter to Ludwig Hilberseimer, January 10, 1921, KLHP, 2/1:1.1. 76 Wagenführ, “Architektonische Entwürfe von L. Hilberseimer.” NOTES

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77 UR, “Der Architekt Ludwig Hilberseimer,” undated typescript, KLHP, 8/4:1.23. 78 Rukser, “Der Architekt Ludwig Hilberseimer,” 3. 79 Ibid., 3. 80 Ibid., 1. 81 Ibid. 82 Ibid., 1–2. 83 Ibid., 3. 84 Wagenführ, “Architektonische Entwürfe,” 215–16. 85 Ibid., 216. 86 Ibid., 212. 87 Ibid., 216. 88 Ibid., 213. 89 Ibid., 213–15. 90 Rukser, “Der Architekt Ludwig Hilberseimer,” 3. 91 Ibid., 4. 92 JWG, am 17.2.1832 im Gespräch zu Johann Peter Eckermann, quoted by Rukser, “Der Architekt Ludwig Hilberseimer,” 4. 93 Heinrich Tessenow, Handwerk und Kleinstadt (1918; Berlin: Bruno Cassirer, 1919). 94 Ibid., 8. 95 Peter Kropotkin, Fields, Factories, Workshops (London: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1898). See: Hilberseimer, New Regional Pattern; Hilberseimer, Nature of Cities. 96 See K. Michael Hays, “Tessenow’s Architecture as National Allegory: Critique of Capitalism or Protofascism?” Assemblage, no. 8 (February, 1989): 104–23.

Chapter 11 Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Grossstadtarchitektur,” II:72. Leah Dickerman, “Introduction,” in Leah Dickerman, Dada (Washington: National Gallery of Art, 2006), 1. 3 Earl A. Powell, III, Glenn Lowry, Bruno Racine, and Alfred Pacquement, “Foreword,” to Dickerman, Dada, ix. 4 Dickerman, “Introduction,” 8. 5 Ibid., 2–3. 6 Ibid., 2–4, 7. 7 Ibid., 26, 35. On Dada in Berlin, especially the early performances, exhibitions, and montages: Bergius, Das Lachen Dadas. 8 Dickerman, “Introduction,” 9. 9 Dickerman, “Introduction,” 7. See SF, George Grosz, repr. vol. 13 (2011) of SF/ Mynona, Gesammelte Schriften, 152–227; or. ed. (Dresden: R. Kaemmerer, 1922). 10 Bergius, Montage und Metamechanik, xi. 11 Ibid., xii. 12 Hays, Modernism and the Posthumanist Subject, 188ff. 13 Bergius, Montage und Metamechanik, xii. 14 Ibid., xiii. 15 Ibid., xii. 16 Ibid., xiii. 17 Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Grossstadtarchitektur,” II:72. 18 Bergius, Montage und Metamechanik, xiii. 1 2

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NOTES

19 On Mies and Dada: Detlef Mertins, “Architectures of Becoming: Mies van der Rohe and the Avant-Garde,” in Riley and Bergdoll, eds., Mies in Berlin, 106–33, and Mertins, Mies, 63ff. 20 Bergius, Montage und Metamechanik, xv. 21 Ibid., xiv. 22 Cf. Raoul Hausmann, George Grosz, Rudolf Schlichter, John Heartfield, “Die Gesetze der Malerei,” typescript (September, 1920), Nachlass Hannah Höch, BG-HHC H 60/79. 23 Hilberseimer, “Umwertung in der Kunst,” 5. 24 Mynona, Der Schöpfer, repr. vol. 13 (2011) of SF/Mynona, Gesammelte Schriften, 75–151; or. ed. (Munich: K. Wolff, 1920). Mynona, Graue Magie, ein Berliner Nachschlüsselroman, repr. vol. 14 (2013) of SF/Mynona, Gesammelte Schriften, 64–353; or. ed. (Dresden: R. Kaemerer, 1922). 25 Ernst Marcus, Das Problem der exzentrische Empfindung und seine Lösung (Berlin: Verlag der Sturm, 1918). Detlef Thiel, “Die Hyperamerikanisierung Europas,” in SF/Mynona, Graue Magie, 30. A summary of Friedlaender’s views on Marcus: SF/Mynona, “Vom Weltäther,” (Paris, beginning of 1935), in Christoph Keller, ed. Nachdruck des ersten Kapitels der Originalausgabe von Das Problem der exzentrischen Empfindungen und seine Lösung von Ernst Marcus, erscheinen 1918 im Verlag der Sturm, Berlin; sowie zusätzlicher Materialien von Ernst Marcus und Salamo Friedlaender/Mynona, sowie von Detlef Thiel und Christoph Keller (Berlin: Esther Schipper, 2015), 19–22. On the relationship between Friedlaender and Marcus see Thiel, “Von Schopenhauer und Nietzsche,” 79–85. Thiel, “Von Schopenhauer und Nietzsche,” 81–3. Thiel, “Die Hyperamerikanisierung Europas,” 30. Detlef Thiel, “Philosophie ist keineswegs harmlos,” Kalonymos. Beiträge zur deutsch-jüdischen Geschichte aus dem Salomon Ludwig Steinheim-Institüt, Duisburg, 4 (2006): 30. 26 Ernst Marcus, Theorie einer natürlichen Magie gegründet auf Kants Weltlehre (Munich: Verlag von Ernst Reinhardt, 1924). Thiel, “Von Schopenhauer und Nietzsche,” 103. Detlef Thiel, “Anmerkungen zu: Das Problem der exzentrischen Empfindung und seine Lösung,” in Keller, ed. Nachdruck, 25. Thiel, “Die Hyperamerikanisierung Europas,” 30–2. Thiel, “Philosophie ist keineswegs harmlos,” 3. Detlef Thiel, “Friedlaender/Mynonas ‘Hauptwerk’?” vol. 10 (2005) of SF/Mynona, Gesammelte Schriften, 65–6. On the relationship between Marcus’s and Kant’s ideas see Thiel, “Die Hyperamerikanisierung Europas,” 30. Thiel, “Philosophie ist keineswegs harmlos,” 30ff. For the influence of Marcus’s ideas on Grey Magic, see chapter 2 of Mynona, Graue Magie. 27 Marcus, Das Problem der exzentrische Empfindung, 5–8, esp. 67–73. 28 Marcus distinguishes Kant’s concept from scientific ideas of the ether: Marcus, Theorie einer natürlichen Magie, 15ff. 29 Ernst Marcus, “Kant und der Äther: Kommentar und Rezension eines Buches zu Kants Opus Posthumum: Kants opus postumum, dargestellt und beurteilt” (Berlin: Erich Adickes, 1920), in Frankfurter Zeitung, August 31, 1921, repr. in Keller, ed. Nachdruck, 14–15. See also: Christoph Keller and Detlef Thiel, “Aus einem Gespräch zwischen Christoph Keller und Detlef Thiel Über Ernst Marcus Exzentrische Empfindung, Salomo Friedlaender/Mynona und Upton Sinclair (Wiesbaden, am 19. Mai 2014)” in Keller, ed. Nachdruck, 28–30. On Marcus’s Kantian idea of our natural capacity for sensation and cognition: Marcus, Das Problem der exzentrische Empfindung, 27–8. 30 SF/Mynona, “Vom Weltäther,” 20. On the indifference of the ether: Mynona, Graue Magie, 142. NOTES

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31 Marcus, Das Problem der exzentrische Empfindung, 10. Marcus, Theorie einer natürlichen Magie, 53. 32 Marcus, Das Problem der exzentrische Empfindung, 57. 33 Ibid., 27. 34 Ibid., 40. 35 Ibid., 42. 36 Ibid., 9. 37 Ibid., 11. 38 Marcus, Theorie einer natürlichen Magie, 156–7, and “An den Leser.” On the role of dreaming and sleep: Marcus, Theorie einer natürlichen Magie, 111ff; on the difference between “sobriety” and Nietzsche’s polarity of Dionysus and Apollo: 157, 184. 39 Ibid., 163, 159, 160. 40 Marcus, Theorie einer natürlichen Magie, 24, 2. 41 Ibid., 1–3, 6, 63ff, 186–8. 42 Ibid., 44; on aesthetics and morality: 69ff. 43 Ibid., 92. 44 Ibid., 93. 45 Ibid., 105; see esp. 111–23. 46 Ibid., 138–9. 47 Ibid., 145. 48 Ibid., 191ff, 161. 49 Thiel, “Von Schopenhauer und Nietzsche,” 100. Friedlaender/Mynona, “Vom Weltäther,” 22. 50 Marcus quoted in Thiel, “Von Schopenhauer und Nietzsche,” 80. 51 Ibid., 81. On the “dynamic effects [dynamischen Wirkungen]” of the will: Marcus, Theorie einer natürlichen Magie, 41. 52 Marcus, Das Problem der exzentrische Empfindung, 69. That Marcus understands matter as nothing more than idea, does not change the intersubjective communicative function of the (material) (trans)formation (of the ether) in his theory: Marcus, Theorie einer natürlichen Magie, 30–2 and esp. 44–5. 53 SF, “Goethe Speaks into the Phonograph” (1916), in Friedrich A. Kittler, Grammophon Film Typewriter (Berlin: Brinkmann & Bose, 1986), trans. Geoffrey Winthrop-Young and Michael Wutz as Gramophone, Film, Typewriter (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 59–68. Thiel, “Die Hyperamerikanisierung Europas,” 56. 54 Marcus, Das Problem der exzentrische Empfindung, 59. 55 Marcus, Theorie einer natürlichen Magie, 16. Hausmann, who had visited Marcus with Friedlaender in late 1916, was also influenced by Marcus’s ideas and Rukser would manage Marcus’s estate after his death in 1928. Thiel, “Von Schopenhauer und Nietzsche,” 84, 106. Thiel, “Philosophie ist keineswegs harmlos,” 3. Raoul Hausmann, letter to Hannah Höch, 23 November, 1916, quoted in Detlef Thiel, “Anmerkungen zu: Das Problem der exzentrischen Empfindung und seine Lösung,” in Keller, ed. Nachdruck, 25. 56 Marcus, Das Problem der exzentrische Empfindung, 55. 57 Ibid., 68. 58 Mynona, Der Schöpfer, 147. 59 Ibid., 81–2. 60 Ibid., 86, 151. 61 Ibid., 88. 62 Ibid., 135. 63 Ibid., 147. 340

NOTES

64 Ibid., 124. On the reconciliation of this conflict: Mynona, Graue Magie, 286. 65 Thiel, “Die Hyperamerikanisierung Europas,” 21; 34–5: note 21. Mynona, Graue Magie, 100–1. 66 On this conflict, see the statement of the nurse: Mynona, Graue Magie, 94–5. 67 Thiel, “Die Hyperamerikanisierung Europas,” 34; on the end of capitalism: 35–6. Mynona, Graue Magie, 188; on the end of capitalism: 268; on the idea of white, black, and grey magic: 266–9. 68 On the idea of “Organotechnik”: Detlef Thiel, “Angewandte Transzendentalphilosophie: Organotechnik,” vol. 13 (2011) of SF/Mynona, Gesammelte Schriften, 9–73. 69 Thiel, “Die Hyperamerikanisierung Europas,” 123. Mynona, Graue Magie, 101; “Sensationsfilm” 102. 70 Mynona, Graue Magie, 116. 71 Ibid., 116. Re Expressionism and Activism, see the discourse with the character “Kuno Hylk” representing Kurt Hiller: Mynona, Graue Magie, 215–17, 272, 293–4. 72 Ibid., 265, 266. 73 Ibid., 136, 159, 136, 134. 74 On the Segal circle: Exner, Fasching als Logik, 245–9. On Ernestine Segal: Norbert Lynthon, “Arthur Segal in England,” trans. Bettiina Schwerdtfeger as “Arthur Segal in England,” in Wulf Herzogenrath and Pavel Liška, eds., Arthur Segal 1875–1944 (Berlin: Argon Verlag, 1987), 101–3. Due to delays obtaining permission to return to Germany, the Segals do not return to Berlin until 1920. Pavel Liška, “Arthur Segal— Leben und Werk,” in Herzogenrath and Liška, eds., Arthur Segal 1875–1944, 39. On associates of the circle: 42–4. Wulf Herzogenrath, “Interview mit César Domela (Nieuwenhuis),” in Herzogenrath and Liška, eds., Arthur Segal 1875–1944, 129. 75 Mynona, Graue Magie, 232ff. 76 Ibid., 349. 77 Ibid., 331. 78 Ibid., 345–47. 79 Ibid., 350. 80 Ibid., 351–2. 81 Ibid., 352. 82 Ibid., 319. 83 LH, “Filmmöglichkeiten,” Sozialistische Monatshefte (August 14, 1922): 741. 84 Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Grossstadtarchitektur,” II:12. 85 Ibid., II:16. 86 Ibid., I:28. 87 Ibid., I:27. 88 Hilberseimer, “Filmmöglichkeiten,” 741. 89 Ibid., 742. 90 Ibid. 91 Ibid., 742–3. 92 Ibid., 743. 93 Ibid. 94 Ibid. 95 LH, “Nicht lesen verbotener Film!” G, 5–6 (April, 1926): 136. 96 SF/Mynona, Grotesken, vols. 7–8 (2008) of SF/Mynona, Gesammelte Schriften. On Friedlaender’s (Mynona’s) grotesques, see Detlef Thiel, “Ich verlange ein Reiterstandbild Mynonas gesammelte Grotesken,” in SF/Mynona, Grotesken, 13–81. 97 Thiel, “Ich verlange ein Reiterstandbild,” 35. Thiel, “Von Schopenhauer und Nietzsche,” 18. NOTES

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98 SF, “Mynona,” Der Einzige, 27–8 (November, 1919): 326–7. KLHP, 8/3:4/23. 99 Ibid., 327. 100 LH, “Schöpfung und Entwicklung” (1922). Hilberseimer only published abbreviated portions of the rewritten text: LH, “Schöpfung und Entwicklung,” SM (December 12, 1922): 993–7; LH, “Anmerkungen Zur Neuen Kunst,” Kunst der Zeit: Zeitschrift für Kunst und Literatur, Organ der Künstler-Selbsthilfe, 3, no. 1–3 (1928): 52–7. 101 Hilberseimer, “Schöpfung und Entwicklung” (1922), 38. 102 Ibid., 29. Raoul Hausmann, “Die neue Kunst,” Die Aktion, 11, no. 19–20 (May 14, 1921): 281–5; repr. in Hausmann, Raoul Hausmann Texte bis 1933, I:179–85. 103 Ibid., 184. Cf. LH, “Attrappen Architektur,” Qualität, 4–5 (May–June, 1925): 102–3. 104 Hilberseimer, “Schöpfung und Entwicklung” (1922), 41. 105 Ibid., 38. 106 Mynona, “Der Bettelreiche,” Berlin Börsen Courier, no. 1 (January, 1922): 5; repr. in SF/Mynona, Grotesken, 574–8. 107 Ibid., 574. See Erika Vause, “The Art of Making Debts: Accounting for an Obsession in 19th-Century France,” The Public Domain Review (May 12, 2021), https:// publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-art-of-making-debts (accessed October 20, 2021). 108 Mynona, “Der Bettelreiche,” 574. 109 Ibid., 575. 110 Ibid., 576. 111 Ibid., 577. 112 Mynona, “Der Bettelreiche,” 577. 113 Ibid., 577–8. 114 Ibid., 578. 115 Ibid. 116 Heinrich von Kleist, quoted by Hilberseimer, “Schöpfung und Entwicklung,” 5. I have used: Heinrich von Kleist, “On the Marionette Theatre,” trans. Thomas G. Neumiller, The Drama Review, 16, no. 3 (September, 1972): 26; or. ed. “Über das Marionetten Theater,” Berliner Abendblätter (December 12–15, 1810). 117 SF, “Marionetten, Menschen, Götter,” Jugend, 16, no. 46 (November 7, 1911): 1233 and 1235, repr. in SF/Mynona, Philosophische Abhandlungen, 320–3. 118 Ibid., 23. 119 Kleist, “On the Marionette Theater,” 22. On the rhetorical incongruence of Kleist’s essay: Paul de Man, “Aesthetic Formalization: Kleist’s Über das Marionettentheater,” in Paul de Man, The Rhetoric of Romanticism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), 263–90. 120 Kleist, “On the Marionette Theater,” 24. 121 Ibid., 26. 122 Friedlaender, “Marionetten, Menschen, Götter,” 320. 123 Ibid., 322. 124 Ibid., 323. 125 Dickerman, “Introduction,” 4, 30–3, 39–40. 126 Kleist, “On the Marionette Theater,” 23. 127 Cf. Adolf Behne, “Dada,” Freiheit, 269 (July 9, 1920): 2. 128 UR, “Dada. Aufführung und Ausstellung im Salon Neumann, Kurfürstendamm,” Freie Zeitung (May 8, 1919), in Teilnachlass Raoul Hausmann, Berlinische Galerie, Museum für Moderne Kunst, BG-RHA 1814. 129 Rukser, “Dada.” See Wilhelm von Humboldt, The Limits of State Action, trans. J. W. Burrow (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969); or. ed. Ideen zu einem Versuch die Grenzen der Wirksamkeit des Staats zu bestimmen (1792).

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130 Rukser, “Dada,” partially repr. in John Heartfield, Der Schnitt entlang der Zeit: Selbstzeugnisse Erinnerungen, Interpretationen, ed. Roland März (Dresden: VEB Verlag der Kunst, 1981), 34–6. 131 LH, “Bildende Kunst,” SM (December 20, 1920): 1120. 132 LH, “Bildende Kunst,” SM (December 20, 1920): 1121. See Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse, §223. 133 Timothy O. Benson, “Mysticism, Materialism, and the Machine in Berlin Dada,” Art Journal, 46, no. 1 (Spring, 1987): 47ff. 134 Friedlaender, Schöpferische Indifferenz, 27. 135 Ibid., xxvii, 3–4, 9. Detlef Thiel, “Friedlaender/Mynonas ‘Hauptwerk’?” in SF/ Mynona, Schöpferische Indifferenz, 58. Detlef Thiel, “Von Schopenhauer und Nietzsche,” 78. Salamo Friedlaender, “Paul Adler: ‘Nämlich,’ ‘Elohim,’ ‘Die Zauberflöte,’” Wieland, 3, no. 10 “Kalender” (January, 1918): 24, repr. in SF/Mynona, Philosophische Abhandlungen, 529. 136 Raoul Hausmann, “Dada in Europa,” Der Dada, 3 (1920): 3–4, quoted by LH, “Bildende Kunst,” SM (December 20, 1920): 1121. 137 Hilberseimer, “Bildende Kunst,” (December 20, 1920): 1121. 138 Ibid. 139 Tristan Tzara, “Manifest Dada” (1918), repr. Richard Huelsenbeck, ed., Dada Almanach (Berlin: Erich Reiss Verlag, 1920), 121. 140 Hilberseimer, “Bildende Kunst,” (December 20, 1920): 1121. 141 Wieland Herzfelde, introduction to the catalogue of the Erste Internationale Dadamesse (Berlin: Malik-Verlag, 1920), [2]; quoted in Hilberseimer, “Bildende Kunst,” (December 20, 1920): 1121–2. 142 Hilberseimer, “Bildende Kunst,” (December 20, 1920): 1122. 143 All of Schlichter’s sculptures shown in the exhibition have been lost. Bergius, Montage und Metamechanik, 392, 400–401. 144 Herzfelde, introduction to the catalogue, [3]. 145 Ibid. 146 Hilberseimer, “Bildende Kunst,” (December 20, 1920): 1122.

Chapter 12 1 Mertins and Jennings, eds., G. 2 Hilberseimer, Berliner Architektur. 3 LH, “Bildende Kunst,” SM (May 23, 1921): 465–9. 4 Hans Richter, “Prinzipielles zur Bewegungskunst,” De Stijl, 4, no. 7 (1921): 109–12. Theo van Doesburg, “Abstracte Filmbeelding,” De Stijl, 4, no. 5 (1921): 71–5. Raoul Hausmann, Hans Arp, Iwan Puni, and L. Moholy-Nagy, “Aufruf zur elementaren Kunst,” De Stijl, 4, no. 10 (October, 1921), repr. in Hausmann, Raoul Hausmann, II:31. Adolf Behne, “Der Film als Kunstwerk,” Sozialistische Monatshefte (December 15, 1921): 1116–18. 5 Hilberseimer, “Bildende Kunst,” (May 23, 1921): 467. Cf. Richter, “Prinzipielles zur Bewegungskunst,” 109. 6 On Hilberseimer’s discussion of film: Lutz Robbers, “‘Elementary-magical’: Hilberseimer as Media Theorist,” Hilberseimer—Infrastructures of Modernity, Florian Strob, convenor, The Bauhaus, Dessau, October 27–29, 2021. Robbers notes Hilberseimer’s use of the term “elementarily magical” and discusses the importance of Marcus’s work for the artists of the G group. He does not connect Hilberseimer’s NOTES

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ideas to Friedlaender or Marcus’s idea of “natural magic.” See also Edward Dimendberg, “Toward an Elemental Cinema: Film Aesthetics and Practice in G,” in Mertins and Jennings, eds., G, 53–69. 7 Richter, “Prinzipielles zur Bewegungskunst,” 110. See Hans Richter, Universal Sprache, undated draft, repr. in Stephen C. Foster, ed., Hans Richter: Activism, Modernism, and the Avant-Garde (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1998), 185–239. 8 Hilberseimer, “Bildende Kunst,” (May 23, 1921): 468. 9 Ibid., 467–8. 10 Ibid., 468. 11 Hilberseimer, “Schöpfung und Entwicklung,” 5. 12 Panarchos [Raoul Hausmann], “Zu Kommunismus und Anarchie,” Der Einzige, 1, no. 2 (January 26, 1919): 5–7, repr. in Hausmann, Raoul Hausmann, I:27–30. 13 Ibid., 27. 14 Ibid., 27–8. 15 Ibid., 27. 16 Ibid., 29–30. 17 Raoul Hausmann, “Schnitt durch die Zeit,” Die Erde (October 1, 1919). 18 Raoul Hausmann, “Der individualistische Anarchist und die Diktatur,” Die Erde, 1, no. 9 (May 1, 1919): 276–8, repr. in Hausmann, Raoul Hausmann, I:43–5. 19 Taylor, Left-Wing Nietzscheans. Crucial to the dissolution of this view is Georg Lukács, History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1971); or. ed., Geschichte und Klassenbewußtsein—Studien über marxistische Dialektik (Berlin: Malik-Verlag, 1923). 20 Ruest, “Das tragischer Zeitalter,” 75. See Ruest’s reply to Arthur Goldstein, “Der ‘Einzige’ und Sozialismus” published in AR, “Die Einzige bewährt sich als Egoisten. Zwei offene Briefe,” DE, 1, no. 3 (February 2, 1919): 29–30 and Ruest, Max Stirner, 285; AR, “Wo sind die Geistigen?” DE, 1, no. 2 (January 26, 1919): 1–4; AR, “—aber lügt nur nicht sehr!” DE, 1, no. 5 (February 16, 1919): 49–52; and AR, “Getrennt marschieren—vereint schlagen!” DE, 1, no. 8 (March 9, 1919): 85–8. 21 SF, “Das Individuum und die soziale Frage.” 22 Bergius, Das Lachen Dadas, 121–2, 127. Liška, “Arthur Segal,” 42–4. 23 Segal was a member of the Neue Secession. Liška, “Arthur Segal,” 27. 24 Arthur Segal, “Die neue Malerei und die Künstler,” Die Aktion (April 10, 1912): 465, repr. in Herzogenrath and Liška, eds., Arthur Segal, 264. 25 Liška, “Arthur Segal,” 38, 42. 26 Ibid., 35. 27 Ibid., 32–3, 36. 28 Ibid., 32. 29 Arthur Segal, “Grundlagen der ‘Wesentlichen Kunst’” (1917), in The Arthur Segal Collection, Leo Baeck Institute, Center for Jewish History, New York City, I:1/13, “Einleitung”: 1. See Ludwig Hilberseimer, “Bildende Kunst” (December 20, 1920): 1123. 30 Segal, “Grundlagen der ‘Wesentlichen Kunst,’” 2. 31 Ibid., 3. 32 Ibid., 1, 3. 33 Ibid., 2. 34 Ibid., 2–3. 35 Bergius, Montage und Metamechanik, 254, 388–9. 36 LH, “Bildende Kunst” (December 20, 1920): 1122. 37 Ibid. 38 Ibid. 39 Erste Russische Kunstausstellung (Berlin: Internationale Arbeitshilfe, 1922). 344

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40 LH, Arthur Segal (Berlin: Josef Altmann, 1922), 8. Liška, “Arthur Segal,” 45. 41 [Arthur Segal, ed.,] Sammlung Gabrielson Göteborg: Erwerbungen 1922–1923 (Berlin: Sammlung Gabrielson Göteborg, 1923), unpaginated. 42 Adolf Behne, “Die Sammlung Gabrielson-Göteborg,” in [Segal, ed.], Sammlung Gabrielson Göteborg, unpaginated. 43 Liška, “Arthur Segal,” 52. 44 Behne, “Die Sammlung Gabrielson-Göteborg,” unpaginated. 45 LH, “Anmerkungen zur neuen Kunst,” in [Segal, ed.], Sammlung Gabrielson Göteborg, unpaginated. 46 Behne, “Die Sammlung Gabrielson-Göteborg,” unpaginated. 47 S. Friedländer-Mynona, “Goethes Farbenlehre und die Moderne Malerei,” in [Segal, ed.], Sammlung Gabrielson Göteborg, unpaginated. Wulf Herzogenrath, “Segal in der Kunstgeschichte,” in Herzogenrath and Liška, eds., Arthur Segal, 17. 48 Friedländer-Mynona, “Goethes Farbenlehre,” unpaginated. 49 Ibid. 50 S. Friedlaender/Mynona, “Prismatische Malerei als Frucht der Goetheschen Farbenlehre,” Berliner Börsen-Courier. Moderne Tageszeitung für alle Gebiete, 55, no. 233 (May 20, 1923): 1and supplement, 5; repr. in SF/Mynona, Philosophische Abhandlungen, 728. See also Thiel, “Von Schopenhauer und Nietzsche,” 35–6. 51 Hilberseimer, “Anmerkungen zur Neuen Kunst,” unpaginated, the only text from Hilberseimer’s German writings translated into English during his lifetime. See “Observations on the New Art,” Howard Dearstyne, trans., College Art Journal, 18, no. 4 (Summer 1959): 349–51. 52 Hilberseimer, “Anmerkungen Zur Neuen Kunst,” unpaginated, quoting Charles-Louis Philippe, Lettres de jeunesse à Henri Vandeputte (Paris: Revue Nouvelle Française, 1911). 53 Hilberseimer, “Anmerkungen Zur Neuen Kunst,” unpaginated. 54 Cf. Adolf Behne, “Biologie und Kubismus,” Der Sturm, 6, no. 11–12 (September, 1915): 68–71. 55 Hilberseimer, “Anmerkungen Zur Neuen Kunst,” unpaginated. 56 Ibid. 57 Ibid. 58 Cf. LH, “Introduction,” in Kasimir Malevich, The Non-Objective World, trans. Howard Dearstyne (Chicago: Paul Theobald and Co., 1959), 6–9. 59 Hilberseimer, “Anmerkungen Zur Neuen Kunst,” unpaginated. 60 Ibid. 61 Ibid. 62 LH, “Der Wille zur Architektur,” Das Kunstblatt, 7, no. 5 (1923): 133. 63 Ibid., 134. Cf. Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Grossstadtarchitektur,” II:5–6. 64 Cf. Paul Westheim, Architektonik des Plastischen (Berlin: Ernst Wasmuth, 1923). 65 Hilberseimer, “Der Wille zur Architektur,” 134. 66 Ibid. 67 Ibid. 68 Hilberseimer is possibly influenced in this regard, via his teacher Friedrich Ostendorf (1871–1915), by Weinbrenner’s theory. Cf. Weinbrenner, Architektonisches Lehrbuch, vol. 1. 69 Hilberseimer, “Der Wille zur Architektur,” 136. 70 Ibid. 71 Ibid. 72 Ibid., 134. 73 Ibid., 134–6. 74 Ibid., 140. NOTES

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75 Hilberseimer, “Der Wille zur Architektur,” 133. Cf. Max Brod, “Aktivismus und Rationalismus,” in Tätiger Geist: Zweites der Ziel Jahrbücher, ed. Kurt Hiller (Munich: GeorgMüller Verlag, 1917–18), 56–64. 76 LH, “Bauhandwerk und Bauindustrie,” G, 2 (September, 1923): 2. 77 Hilberseimer, “Der Wille zur Architektur,” 136. 78 Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Grossstadtarchitektur,” II:72. 79 Brinckmann, Platz und Monument, 169–70. 80 Hilberseimer and Rukser, “Grossstadtarchitektur,” II:26. 81 Hilberseimer, “Der Wille zur Architektur,” 138. 82 Ibid., 139. 83 LH, “Mexikanische Baukunst,” Das Kunstblatt (April, 1922): 163–71. 84 Ibid., 166. 85 Harry Graf Kessler, Notizen über Mexiko (Berlin: F. F. Fontane & Co., 1898), 103, unsourced quotation, in Hilberseimer, “Mexikanische Baukunst,” 166. 86 Hilberseimer, “Mexikanische Baukunst,” 164, 165, 170. 87 LH, “Vom Städtebaulichen Problem der Grossstadt,” SM (June 19, 1923): 352. 88 Ibid. 89 Alfred Bauer, “Konstruktive Politik,” SM (March 20, 1923): 137–44. Bauer’s identity is unclear. (Surely not the publisher of that name.) Is it possible “Alfred Bauer” is a pseudonym of “Adolf Behne”? On Behne’s use of pseudonyms see Kai Gutschow, “The Culture of Criticism: Adolf Behne and the Development of Modern Architecture in Germany, 1910–1914,” (PhD diss., New York: Columbia University, 2005), 91. 90 Hilberseimer, “Vom Städtebaulichen Problem der Grossstadt,” 137. 91 Ibid., 138. 92 Hans Richter, ed., G, no. 1 (July 1923): 2. 93 Bauer, “Konstruktive Politik,” 138. 94 Ibid., 139. 95 Ibid., 140. 96 Ibid., 140–1. 97 Ibid. 98 Ibid., 141. 99 Ibid., 144. 100 Bauer cites Martin Mächler, “Die Grossstadt und der Städtebau,” SM (May 1, 1922): 408–11 and Martin Mächler, “Demodynamik,” Deutsche Rundschau, 3 (1921): 273–84. 101 Hilberseimer refers to Martin Mächler, “Das Siedlungsproblem,” SM (February 28, 1921): 182–7 and quotes Martin Mächler, “Neubau,” Frühlicht, 4 (Summer 1922): 102–4. 102 Martin Mächler, “Denkschrift betreffend eine Ergänzung des Gesetzentwurfes zur Bildung eines Stadtkreises Groß-Berlin,” Der Städtebau, 15, no. 1–2 (1920): 3–12. Hilberseimer, Grossstadtarchitektur, 9–10. 103 Hilberseimer likely became aware of Mächler’s work as early as “Das Siedlungsproblem,” SM in early 1921. He may also have known Mächler’s publications in the journal Der Städtebau (City Planning) in the previous year and the small book that was the basis for those publications: Die Grossiedlung und ihre weltpolitische Bedeutung: Städte und staatenbauliche Skizzen (The Metropolis and Its World-Political Significance: Cities and City-Building Sketches, 1917). See Ilse Balg, ed., Martin Mächler—Weltstadt Berlin: Schriften und Materialien (Berlin: Galerie Wannsee Verlag, 1986). 104 Bauer, “Konstruktive Politik,” 142–4. 346

NOTES

Chapter 13 Hilberseimer clearly acknowledges the book “is based on preliminary studies made jointly with Dr. Udo Rukser, Berlin.” Hilberseimer, Grossstadtarchitektur, colophon. 2 Christine Mengin, “Regesto delle opera e dei progetti 1885/1938,” 78–88; trans. by John Hithersay as “List of Works and Projects 1885/1938,” Rassegna di architettura e urbanistica, 27 (1986): 132. 3 LH, “Grossstadtarchitektur,” Der Sturm, 15, no. 4 (December, 1924): 177–89. 4 See LH, “Stadt und Wohnungsbau,” Sozial Bauwirtschaft (July 15, 1925): 185–8; and LH, “Über die Typisierung des Mietshauses,” Die Form, 1, no. 15 (December, 1926): 338–40. 5 Hilberseimer visits Holland and France in October, 1924. Mengin, “List of Works and Projects,” 132. See Adolf Behne, “Architekten,” Frühlicht, 2 (1921–1922): 126–35; Adolf Behne, Holländische Baukunst in der Gegenwart (Berlin: Verlag Ernst Wasmuth A. G., 1922); LH, “Höllandische Baukunst,” Freiheit, 5, no. 118 (March 10, 1922): unpaginated; J. J. P. Oud, “Über die Zukünftige Baukunst und ihre architektonischen Möglichkeiten,” Frühlicht, 4 (Summer 1922): 113–18; and Ludwig Hilberseimer, “J. J. P. Ouds Wohnungsbauten,” Das Kunstblatt, 7, no. 10 (1923): 289–93. 6 Carl Einstein, Afrikanische Plastik (Berlin: Ernst Wasmuth, 1921). 7 LH, “Afrikanische Kunst,” SM (June 28, 1920): 520–3. UR, “Indische Plastik,” Feuer: Monatschrift für Kunst und Künstlerische Kultur, 2 (March, 1921): 318–31. LH, “Exotische Kunst,” Feuer: Monatschrift für Kunst und künstlerische Kultur (October, 1921): 34–9. LH, “Mexikanische Baukunst.” Also: LH, “Vom Niedergang der Künste,” Feuer, 1, no. 7 (1920): 614–16 and UR, “Tradition und Originalität,” Feuer, 2, no. 9 (June, 1921): 516–18. 8 Paul Westheim, Indische Baukunst (Berlin: Ernst Wasmuth, 1920). 9 Hilberseimer, Grossstadtbauten. 10 Cf. Colman, “Promoting the New City.” Hilberseimer also publishes his designs for a Trabantenstadt (Satellite-city) in “Stadt und Wohnungsbau.” 11 Hilberseimer, “Vom Städtebaulichen Problem der Grossstadt,” 352. Cf. Mächler, “Demodynamik,” 276. 12 Hilberseimer, “Vom Städtebaulichen Problem der Grossstadt,” 353. 13 Ibid., 352. 14 Ibid., 354. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid., 354–5. Cf. Hilberseimer, The New City. 19 Hilberseimer, “Vom Städtebaulichen Problem der Grossstadt,” 355. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid. 22 Cf. Adolf Behne, Der moderne Zweckbau (Munich: Drei Masken Verlag, 1926), written 1923. 23 Hilberseimer, “Vom Städtebaulichen Problem der Grossstadt,” 355. 24 Ibid., 355–6. 25 Raymond Unwin, Grundlagen des Städtebaus: Eine Anleitung zum Entwerfen Städtebaulicher Anlagen von Raymond Unwin, trans. L. Mac Lean (Berlin: Otto Baumgärtel, 1910). 26 Hilberseimer, “Vom Städtebaulichen Problem der Grossstadt,” 356. Erwin Gutkind, Vom städtebaulichen Problem der Einheitsgemeinde Berlin (Berlin: Verlag Hans Robert Engelmann, 1922). 1

NOTES

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27 Hilberseimer, “Vom Städtebaulichen Problem der Grossstadt,” 356. Ernst May, “Stadterweiterung mittels Trabanten,” Der Städtebau: Monatshefte für Städtebau und Siedelungswesen, 19, no. 5–6 (1922): 51–5. 28 Hilberseimer, “Vom Städtebaulichen Problem der Grossstadt,” 356. 29 Ibid., 357. 30 Cf. Hilberseimer, “Grossstadtarchitektur,” 177. Hilberseimer, Grossstadtarchitektur, 98. 31 Hilberseimer, “Vom Städtebaulichen Problem der Grossstadt,” 357. 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid., 353. 35 Hilberseimer, Grossstadtbauten, 9. 36 Ibid. 37 Cf. Hilberseimer, Grossstadtarchitektur, 10ff, esp. 15–17. 38 Hilberseimer, Grossstadtbauten, 9. 39 Ibid., 9–10. 40 Ibid., 10. 41 Ibid., 11. 42 Ibid., 13. 43 Ibid., 14. 44 In Grossstadtarchitektur, Hilberseimer publishes drawings of the Hochhausstadt not included in Grossstadtbauten. Hilberseimer, Grossstadtarchitektur, 17–19. 45 Cf. “Ludwig Hilberseimer (1885/1967),” 34–5. 46 Hilberseimer, Entfaltung einer Planungsidee, 22. Hilberseimer, Acceptance Speech, 4. On Hilberseimer’s use of the term “necropolis” see: Anna Vallye, “On the Diagrammatic Rationality of Hilberseimer’s Planning,” in Architect of Letters: Reading Hilberseimer, ed. Florian Strob (Basel: Birkhäuser Verlag GmbH, 2022) [forthcoming]. 47 Hilberseimer, Grossstadtbauten, 22–8. 48 Ibid., 22. 49 See Behne, “Architekten,” 129 and Adolf Behne, “Romantiker, Pathetiker, und Logiker im modernen Industriebau,” Preussische Jahrbücher, 124 (Fall 1913): 171–4. 50 Ibid., 25. 51 Mietshausblock I (Tenement-Block I), also eliminates internal courtyards, but arranges commercial space on the long rather than short side of the block. 52 Hilberseimer, Grossstadtbauten, 25. 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid. 55 On rationalism and functionalism: Behne, Der moderne Zweckbau. 56 Hilberseimer, Grossstadtbauten, 27. 57 Ibid., 18, 26, 27. 58 Ibid., 27–8. 59 Ibid., 28. See Tigerman, Chicago Tribune Tower Competition. 60 Hilberseimer, Grossstadtbauten, 19. It is described as a “Fabrikbau” (“Factory Building”) in Hilberseimer, “Der Wille zur Architektur,” 140. 61 The most prominent of many precedents is Gropius’ building for the 1914 Werkbund exhibition. 62 Hilberseimer, Grossstadtbauten, 28. 63 Ibid. 64 Hilberseimer, “Der Wille zur Architektur,” 140. Cf. Marco De Michelis, “Ritratto di un architetto come giovane artista,” Rassegna di architettura e urbanistica, 27 (1986): 6–24, trans. by Frank Spadaro as “Portrait of an Architect as a Young Artist,” 119–21, esp. 120. 348

NOTES

65 Hilberseimer, Grossstadtbauten, 11. 66 Ibid., 28. 67 Ibid. 68 Mynona, “Das Sieb der Dadaiden,” Simplicissismus, 33, no. 30 (October 22, 1928), 378. 69 Detlef Thiel, “Nachweise und Anmerkungen” to SF/Mynona, Grotesken, II:577–8. 70 Mynona, “Das Sieb der Dadaiden,” 378. 71 Ibid. 72 Ibid. 73 Mynona, “[Simplicissimus: Die Saison beginnt],” (Fall, 1928), repr. in SF/Mynona, Grotesken, II:267. 74 Ibid. 75 Ibid.

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By Ludwig Hilberseimer (Essays) “Schöpfung und Entwicklung.” Der Einzige, 1, no. 1 (January 19, 1919): 4–6. “Umwertung in der Kunst.” Der Einzige, 1, no. 2 (January 26, 1919): 4–5. “Form und Individuum.” Der Einzige, 1, no. 3 (February 2, 1919): 6–7. “Der Naturalismus und das Primitive in der Kunst.” Der Einzige, 1, no. 8 (March 9, 1919): 88–9. “Kunst und Wissen.” Der Einzige, 1, no. 11 (March 30, 1919): 127–8. “Hilde Coste am 14. Mai 1919.” Freie Zeitung, 1, no. 38 (June 3, 1919): 2. “Lyonel Feininger Ausstellung im graphischen Kabinett J. B. Neumann.” Freie Zeitung, 1, no. 38 (June 3, 1919): 2. “Zum Problem der Künstlererziehung.” Freie Zeitung, 1, no. 117 (September 20, 1919): 2–3. “Neue Kunst.” Freie Zeitung, 1, no. 123 (September 27, 1919): 2–3. “Paul Scheerbart und die Architekten.” Das Kunstblatt, 3, no. 9 (September, 1919): 271–4. “Afrikanische Kunst.” Sozialistische Monatshefte (June 28, 1920): 520–3. “Vom Niedergang der Künste.” Feuer: Monatschrift für Kunst und künstlerische Kultur, 1, no. 7 (May, 1920): 614–16. “Von der Kunst des jungen Frankreichs.” Sozialistische Monatshefte (August 16, 1920): 670–4. and Udo Rukser, “Amerikanische Architektur.” Kunst und Künstler, 18, no. 12 (September 1, 1920): 537–45. “Höllandische Architektur.” Die Kornscheuer, 2, no. 5 (March, 1921): 94–7. “Unsere Geistigen.” Sozialitische Monatshefte (June 8, 1921): 486–9. “Exotische Kunst.” Feuer: Monatschrift für Kunst und künstlerische Kultur, 3, no. 1 (October, 1921): 34–9. “Bauen und Bauwirtschaft.” Sozialistische Monatshefte (January 30, 1922): 96–9. “Höllandische Baukunst.” Freiheit, 5, no. 118 (March 10, 1922): unpaginated. “Architektur.” Das Kunstblatt, 6, no. 3 (March, 1922): 132–4. “Mexikanische Baukunst.” Das Kunstblatt, 6, no. 4 (April, 1922): 163–71. “Filmmöglichkeiten.” Sozialitische Monatshefte (August 14, 1922): 741–3. “Schöpfung und Entwicklung.” Sozialistische Monatshefte (December 12, 1922): 993–7. “Das Hochhaus.” Das Kunstblatt, 6, no. 12 (1922): 525–31. “Anmerkungen zur neuen Kunst.” in Arthur Segal, ed., Sammlung Gabrielson Göteborg: Erwerbungen 1922–1923 (Berlin: Sammlung Gabrielson Göteborg, 1923), unpaginated. “Der Wille zur Architektur.” Das Kunstblatt, 7, no. 5 (May, 1923): 133–40. “Vom Städtebaulichen Problem der Grossstadt.” Sozialistische Monathefte (June 19, 1923): 352–7. “Bauhandwerk und Bauindustrie.” G, 2 (September, 1923): 2. “Das Hochhaus.” G, 2 (September, 1923): 3. “J. J. P. Ouds Wohnungsbauten.” Das Kunstblatt, 7, no. 10 (1923): 289–93. “Von der Wirkung des Krieges auf die Kunst.” Sozialistische Monatshefte (December 18, 1923): 730–2. “Grosstadtarchitektur.” Der Sturm, 15, no. 4 (December, 1924): 177–89. “Konstruktion und Form.” G, 3 (1924): 24–5. “Bauwirtschaft und Wohnungsbau.” Sozialistische Monatshefte (May 18, 1925): 285–91. “Attrappen Architektur.” Qualität, 4–5 (May–June, 1925): 102–3. “Stadt und Wohnungsbau.” Sozial Bauwirtschaft (July 15, 1925): 185–8. “Nicht lesen verbotener Film!” G, nos. 5–6 (April, 1926), 136. “Architektur-Ausstellung der Novembergruppe. Große Berliner Kunstausstellung.” Die Form, 1, no. 10 (1926): 225. “Amerikanische Architektur.” G, 4 (March, 1926): 4–8. “Über die Typisierung des Mietshauses.” Die Form, 1, no. 15 (1926): 338–40. “Die Wohnung als Gebrauchsgegenstand.” in Deutsche Werkbund, ed., Bau und Wohnung: Die Bauten der Weißenhofsiediung in Stuttgart errichtet 1927 nach Vorschlägen BIBLIOGRAPHY

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des Deutschen Werkbundes im Auftrag der Stadt Stuttgart und im Rahmen der Werkbundausstellung (Stuttgart: Akad. Vertag Dr. Fr. Wedekind & Co., 1927): 69–71. “Zu den Bauten von Auguste und Gustave Perret, Paris.” Bauwelt, 24 (June 16, 1927): 598. “Struktiver Städtebau.” Das Kunstblatt, 11, no. 7 (July, 1927): 267–71. “Das Haus von Ludwig Hilberseimer.” Die Form, 2, no. 9 (September, 1927): 277–9. “Internationale Neue Baukunst.” Moderne Bauformen: Monatshefte für Architektur und Raumkunst, 26, no. 9 (September, 1927): 325–6. “Kirchenbauten in Eisenbeton.” Zentralblatt der Bauverwaltung, 47, no. 42 (October19, 1927): 533–42. “Josef Gantner: Grundformen der europäischen Stadt.” Bauhaus: Zeitschrift für Gestaltung, 2, no. 4 (1928): 26. “Sigfried Giedion: Bauen in Frankreich.” Bauhaus: Zeitschrift für Gestaltung, 2, no. 4 (1928): 26–7. “Anmerkungen Zur Neuen Kunst.” Kunst der Zeit: Zeitschrift für Kunst und Literatur, Organ der Künstler-Selbsthilfe, 3, nos. 1–3 (1928): 52–7. “Eisenbeton-Architektur.” Das Kunstblatt (November, 1928): 337–41. “Berlin und seine Bauprobleme.” Sozialistische Monatshefte (December 17, 1928): 1074–8. “Grosstädtische Kleinwohnungen.” Zentralblatt der Bauverwaltung, 49, no. 32 (7 August, 1929): 1–6. “Das Stahlhaus, eine neue Aufgabe architektonischer Gestaltung.” Das Kunstblatt, 13, no. 1 (January, 1929), 26–7. “[Das Projekt Mies van der Rohes in] Das Formproblem eines Weltplatzes: Wettbewerb der Verkehrs-A.G. für die Umbauung des Alexanderplatzes.” Das Neue Berlin, 2 (February, 1929): 39–41. “Vorschlag zur City Bebauung.” Das Kunstblatt, 13, no. 3 (March, 1929): 93–5. “Entwicklungstendenzen des Stadtebaus.” Die Form, 4, no. 8 (April 15, 1929): 209–11. “Die Neue Geschäftsstrasse.” Das Neue Frankfurt, 3, no. 4 (April, 1929): 67–77. “Kleinstwohnungen: Grösse, Gundriss und städtebauliche Anordnung.” Bauhaus: Zeitschrift für Gestaltung, 3, no. 2 (April–June, 1929): 1–4. “Handwerk und Industrie.” Bauhaus: Zeitschrift für Gestaltung, 3, no. 2 (April–June, 1929): 21–4. “Zur Neuvorlage des Entwurfs zum Städtebaugesetz.” Die Form, 4, no. 9 (May 1, 1929): 236–7. “Entwurf für die Stadthalle Nürnberg.” Die Form, 4, no. 10 (May 15, 1929): 391–2. “Städtebau und Wohnungsbau auf der Technischen Tagung der Reichsforschungsgesellschaft.” Die Form, 4, no. 11 (June 1, 1929): 294–6. “Ja, Die Genossenschaftstadt ist möglich!” Die Form, 4, no. 12 (June 15, 1929): 332. “Rundschau in der Baupolitik.” Die Form, 4, no. 13 (July 1, 1929): 362–4. “Wohnung und Werkraum’ Austellung Breslau 1929.” Die Form, 4, no. 17 (September 1, 1929): 451–71. “Glasarchitektur.” Die Form, 4, no. 19 (October 1, 1929): 521–2. “Marie von Boschan-Altersheim in Kassel” in Bauwettbewerbe, no. 51 (June, 1930): 17–20. “Reichstagerweiterung und Platz der Republik.” Die Form, 5, no. 13 (July 1, 1930): 337–41. “Neue Literatur über Städtebau.” Die Form, 5, nos. 19–20 (October 15, 1930), 518–21. “Vorschlag zur City-Bebauung.” Die Form, 5, nos. 23–4 (December 15, 1930): 608–11. “Flachbau und Stadtraum.” Zentralblatt der Bauverwaltung vereinigt mit Zeitschrift für Bauwesen, 51, nos. 53–4 (1931): 773–7. “Die Kleinstwohnung in Treppenlosen Hause.” Bauhaus, 5, no. 1 (January, 1931): 1–3. “Buchbesprechungen.” Bauhaus, 5, no. 1 (January, 1931): 3. “Vorschlag zur City-Bebauung.” Moderne Bauformen: Monatshefte für Architektur und Raumkunst, 30, no. 3 (March, 1931): 55–9. “Die Wohnung unserer Zeit.” Die Form, 6, no. 7 (July 15, 1931): 249–51. 354

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“Entwurf fur die Stadthalle Nurnberg.” Die Form, 6, no. 10 (October 15, 1931): 390–1. and Grete Tugendhat and Fritz Tugendhat, “Die Bewohner des Hauses Tugendhat äußern sich.” Die Form, 6, no. 11 (November 15, 1931): 437–9. “Flachbau und Flachbautypen.” Moderne Bauformen: Monatshefte für Architektur und Raumkunst, 31 (1932): 471–8. “Werkbund und Siedlungswesen: Bericht des Ausschusses für Siedlungswesen.” Die Form, 7, no. 11 (November 15, 1932): 335. “Haus Dr. B. in Berlin-Zehlendorf.” Die Form, 7, no. 11 (November 15, 1932): 357–9. “Construcción plana y tipos de construcción plana.” Revista de Arquitectura, 19, no. 145 (January, 1933): 17–24. “Raumdurchsonnung.” Moderne Bauformen, 34, no. 1 (January, 1935), 29–36. “Raumdurchsonnung und Siedlungsdichtkeit.” Moderne Bauformen 36, no. 2 (February, 1936), 69–76. “The Elements of City Planning.” Armour Engineer and Alumnus, 6, no. 2 (December, 1940): 4–13. “The Literature of City Planning.” Architectural Forum, 73, no. 2 (August, 1940): 100–1. Review of Paul Zucker, ed., New Architecture and City Planning – A Symposium, College Art Journal, 6, no. 2 (1946): 165–6. “Hugo Häring und das Neue Bauen.” Die Neue Stadt, 6, no. 5 (1952): 188–91. “Eine Neuplanung für Chicago.” Der Aufbau, 10 (February 3, 1955): 87–90. “Die Umformung einer Großstadt.” in Paul Volger and Erich Kühn, eds., Medizin und Städtebau: ein Handbuch für Gesundheitlichen Städtebau (Munich: Urban & Schwarzenberg, 1957), 533–50. “Chicago Replanned.” Student Publication University of Michigan College of Architecture and Design, 1 (Spring, 1955): 35–40. “Plan d’urbanisme de Chicago (USA), 39 a 41 rue, vue depuis le lac Michigan.” Architecture—Formes et Fonctions, 4 (1957): 33. “Grossstadtische Planungsaufgaben.” Baukunst und Werkform, 10, no. 1 (1957): 13–17. “Introduction.” Kasimir Malevich, The Non-Objective World, 6–9. Translated Howard Dearstyne. Chicago: Paul Theobald and Co., 1959. “Anmerkungen Zur Neuen Kunst.” Kunst der Zeit: Zeitschrift für Kunst und Literatur, Organ der Künstler-Selbsthilfe, 3, no. 1–3 (1928): 52–7, trans. by Howard Dearstyne, as “Observations on the New Art.” College Art Journal, 18, no. 4 (Summer, 1959): 349–351. “Profile: Ludwig K. Hilberseimer.” Der Aufbau, 14 (March, 1959): 107–10. “The Automobile and the City.” American Institute of Architects Journal, 34 (December, 1960): 30–1. “Kasimir Malevich and the Non-Objective World.” Art Journal, 20, no. 2 (Winter, 1960–1961): 82–3. “A New Regional Settlement Pattern (1944).” Intercity, (May, 1962): 10.1–10.4. “Chicago, Density, and Traffic.” in Dennis Sharp, ed., Architecture and Planning (London: Barrie and Rockliff, 1967): 31–4. “A Tall Bold Slugger: Chicago, Density and Traffic.” Arena/Interbuild, 83/14, no. 916 (October, 1967): 41–3.

By Ludwig Hilberseimer (Books) Arthur Segal. Berlin: Josef Altmann, 1922. Grossstadtbauten, published as Merz 18/19. Hannover: Aposs-Verlag, 1925. Grossstadtarchitektur. Stuttgart: Verlag Julius Hoffmann, 1927. BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Internationale Neue Baukunst. Stuttgart: Verlag Julius Hoffmann, 1927. and Julius Vischer, Beton als Gestalter: Bauten in Eisenbeton und ihre architektonische Gestaltung. Stuttgart: Julius Hoffmann, 1928. Hallenbauten. Leipzig: J. M. Gebhardt’s Verlag, 1931. The New City: Principles of Planning. Chicago: Paul Theobald, 1944. The New Regional Pattern: Industries and Gardens, Workshops and Farms. Chicago: Paul Theobald, 1949. The Nature of Cities: Origin, Growth, and Decline; Pattern and Form; Planning Problems. Chicago: Paul Theobald & Co., 1955. Mies van der Rohe. Chicago: Paul Theobold and Company, 1956. Entfaltung einer Planungsidee. Berlin, Frankfurt am Main and Vienna: Ullstein, 1963. Contemporary Architecture: Its Roots and Trends. Chicago: Paul Theobald and Company, 1964. Berliner Architektur der 20er Jahre. Mainz und Berlin: Bei Florian Kupferberg, 1967.

By Udo Rukser (Essays and Books) Der Diebstahl nach der lex Ribuaria. Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1913. “Aus Buffons Rede über Stil.” Die Aktion, 8, nos. 7–8 (February 23, 1918): 90. “Dada. Aufführung und Ausstellung im Salon Neumann, Kurfürstendamm.” Freie Zeitung (May 8, 1919), in Teilnachlass Raoul Hausmann, Berlinische Galerie, Museum für Moderne Kunst, BG-RHA 1814. “Arthur Willners Fugen.” Der Einzige, 1, no. 5 (February 16, 1919): 7–8. “Janthur, der Maler.” Der Einzige, 1, no. 7 (March 2, 1919): 79–80. “Von der Form des Menschen.” Der Einzige, 1, no. 9 (March 16, 1919): 104. “Die Situation der heutigen Musik.” Melos, 1, no. 8 (June 1, 1920): 188. “Die Umformung der modernen Klangkörper.” Melos, 1, no. 12 (August 1, 1920): 276. “Das Moser-Klavier.” Melos, 1, no. 14 (September 1, 1920): 320. “Die Beethovensche Form.” Weimarer Blätter: Zeitschrift des Deutschen Nationaltheaters und der Weimar-Gesellschaft, 2, no. 9 (Weimar: Verlag Bruno Wollbrück, 1920): 453. “Pfitzners Ästhetik.” Melos, 1, no. 18 (November 1, 1920): 402–5. “Expressionismus als Ziel?” Melos, 2, no. 2 (January 16, 1921): 26–8. “Bücherbesprechungen.” Melos, 2, no. 4 (February 16, 1921): 82. “Indische Plastik” Feuer: Monatschrift für Kunst und Künstlerische Kultur, 2, no.1 (March, 1921): 318–31. “Tradition und Originalität.” Feuer, 2, no. 9 (June, 1921): 516–18. “Mynona: Die Bank der Spötter.” Feuer: Monatschrift für Kunst und künstlerische Kultur, 2, no. 9 (June, 1921): 527f, repr. in Salamo Friedlaender/ Mynona, Gesammelte Schriften, Detlef Thiel, Hartmut Geerken, and Sigrid Hauff, eds. 33 vols. (Herrsching: Waitawhile, 2005-), IV: 416–17. “Das pathologische Interesse des Dichters [Goethe].” Weimarer Blätter: Zeitschrift des Deutschen Nationaltheaters und der Weimar-Gesellschaft, 3, no. 9 (1921). Die Rechtstellung der Deutschen in Polen. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1921. and Albert Theile, eds., Deutsche Blätter für ein Europäisches Deutschland gegen ein Deutsches Europa, serial (1943–1946). Goethe in der hispanischen Welt. Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1958. Natur in der Hispania; ein Beitrag zur hispanischen Kultur- und Geistesgeschichte. Bern: Francke, 1962.

356

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Über den Denker Rudolf Pannwitz: Mit einer Selbstbiographie von Pannwitz und einer Bibliographie. Meisenheim am Glan: A. Hain, 1970. Bibliografía de Ortega. Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1971.

Selected Bibliography Anderson, Richard ed. Metropolisarchitecture and Selected Essays. New York: GSAPP Books, 2012. Balg, Ilse ed. Martin Mächler—Weltstadt Berlin: Schriften und Materialien. Berlin: Galerie Wannsee Verlag, 1986. Bauer, Alfred. “Konstruktive Politik.” Sozialistische Monatshefte (March 20, 1923): 137–44. Behne, Adolf. “Die ästhetischen Theorien der modernen Baukunst.” Preussische Jahrbücher, 153, no. 2 (August, 1913): 282–3. Behne, Adolf. “Romantiker, Pathetiker, und Logiker im modernen Industriebau.” Preussische Jahrbücher, 124 (Fall 1913): 171–4. Behne, Adolf. “Biologie und Kubismus.” Der Sturm, 6, 11–12 (September, 1915): 68–71. Behne, Adolf. Die Wiederkehr der Kunst. Leipzig: Kurt Wolff Verlag, 1919. Behne, Adolf. “Dada.” Freiheit, 269 (July 9, 1920): 2. Behne, Adolf. “Der Film als Kunstwerk.” Sozialistische Monatshefte (December 15, 1921): 1116–18. Behne, Adolf. “Architekten.” Frühlicht, 2 (1921–1922): 126–35. Behne, Adolf. Holländische Baukunst in der Gegenwart. Berlin: Verlag Ernst Wasmuth A. G., 1922. Behne, Adolf. Der moderne Zweckbau. Munich: Drei Masken Verlag, 1926. Behrendt, Walter Curt. Alfred Messel, mit einer einleitenden Betrachtung von Karl Scheffler. Berlin: Bruno Cassirer, 1911. Behrendt, Walter Curt. Die Einheitliche Blockfront als Raumelement im Stadtbau: Ein Beitrag zur Stadtbaukunst der Gegenwart. Berlin: Bruno Cassirer Verlag, 1911. Behrens, Peter. “Die Zusammenhänge zwischen Kunst und Technik.” Dokumente des Fortschritts, 7 (March, 1914), 134–41; repr. in Kunstwart und Kulturwart, 27, no. 3 (1914): 216–23. Benson, Timothy O. “Mysticism, Materialism, and the Machine in Berlin Dada.” Art Journal, 46, no. 1 (Spring, 1987): 47ff. Benson, Timothy O. Hans Richter: Encounters. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2013. Bergius, Hanne. Das Lachen Dadas: Die Berliner Dadaisten und ihre Aktionen. Berlin: AnabasVerlag, 1989. Bergius, Hanne. Montage und Metamechanik: Dada Berlin—Artistik von Polaritäten. Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 2000. Bergius, Hanne. “Dada Triumphs!” Dada Berlin, 1917–1923: Artistry of Polarities. Translated Brigitte Pichon. Farmington Hills, MI: G. K. Hall, 2003. Brinckmann, A. E. Platz und Monument: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte und Ästhetik der Stadtbaukusnt in neuerer Zeit. Berlin: Ernst Wasmuth, 1908. Brinckmann, A. E. Deutsche Stadtbaukunst in der Vergangenheit. Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Heinrich Keller, 1911. Brinckmann, A. E. Stadtbaukunst: Geschichtliche Querschnitte und Neuzeitliche Ziele. Berlin Neubabelsberg: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Athenaion M. B. H., 1920. Brinckmann, A. E. Plastik und Raum als Grundformen Künstlerischen Gestaltung. Munich: R. Piper & Co. Verlag, 1922. BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Brod, Max. “Aktivismus und Rationalismus.” in Kurt Hiller ed., Tätiger Geist: Zweites der Ziel Jahrbücher (Munich: GeorgMüller Verlag, 1917–1918): 56–64. Brownlee, David B. ed. Friedrich Weinbrenner: Architect of Karlsruhe. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 1986. Burnham, Daniel H. and Edward H. Bennett. The Plan of Chicago. Edited by Charles Moore. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1993; or. ed. Chicago: Commercial Club of Chicago, 1908. Caldwell, Alfred. The Life and Work of a Prairie School Landscape Architect. Edited by Dennis Domer. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. Collins, George R. and Christiane Crasemann Collins. Camillo Sitte: The Birth of Modern City Planning. Mineloa, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 2006; or. ed. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 1986. Colman, Scott. “Organism and Artefact: The Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Circle and the Chicago School: Architecture, Planning and Sociology circa 1944.” PhD diss., Sydney: University of Sydney, 2006. Colman, Scott. “Promoting the New City: Ludwig Hilberseimer at the Art Institute of Chicago, 1944.”. Robert Freestone and Marco Amati, eds., 111–29. Exhibitions and the Development of Modern Planning Culture Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2014. Daston, Lorraine and Peter Galison, Objectivity. New York: Zone Books, 2010. Däubler, Theodor. Hesperien: Eine Symphonie. Munich: G. Müller, 1915; repr. in Dichtungen und Schriften. Munich: Kösel Verlag, 1954): 133–72. Däubler, Theodor. “Simultaneität.” Die Weissen Blätter, 2, no. 1 (1916): 108–21. Dickerman, Leah, and Matthew S. Witkovsky, eds. The Dada Seminars. Washington: National Gallery of Art, 2005. Dickerman, Leah. Dada. Washington: National Gallery of Art, 2006. Durm, Josef. Die Baukunst der Griechen. Darmdstad: Diehl, 1881. Durm, Josef. Die Baukunst der Etrusker, Die Baukunst der Römer. Darmstadt: Diehl, 1885. Durm, Josef. Die Baukunst der Renaissance in Italien. Stuttgart: A. Bergsträsser, 1903. Einstein, Carl. Negerplastik. Munich: Kurt Wolff Verlag, 1920; or. ed. 1915. Einstein, Carl. Afrikanische Plastik (Berlin: Ernst Wasmuth, 1921). Eisenschmidt, Alexander. “The Formless Groszstadt and Its Potent Negativity: Berlin, 1910 through the Eyes of Endell, Scheffler, and Hegemann.” PhD diss., Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2008. Exner, Lisbeth. Fasching als Logik. Über Salomo Friedlaender/Mynona. Munich: Belleville, 1996), 240–4. Foster, Stephen C. ed. Hans Richter: Activism, Modernism, and the Avant-Garde. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1998. Friedlaender, Salamo. Schöpferische Indifferenz. Munich: Georg Muller Verlag, 1918. Friedlaender, Salamo. [Mynona]. Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Detlef Thiel, Hartmut Geerken, and Sigrid Hauff, 33 vols. Herrsching: Waitawhile, 2005–. Gage, John ed. and trans. Goethe on Art. London: Scolar Press, 1980. Geerken, Hartmut ed. Der Einzige, 2 vols. Munich: Kraus Reprint, 1980. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Theory of Colors. Translated by Charles Lock Eastlake. London: John Murray, 1840; Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1970; or. ed. Zur Farbenlehre. 1810. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Essays on Art and Literature. Edited by John Gearey. Translated by Ellen von Nardoff and Ernest H. von Nardoff. New York: Suhrkamp, 1986. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Scientific Studies. Edited and translated by Douglas Miller. New York: Suhrkamp, 1988. González Martinez, Plácido. In Light of Hilberseimer: The Genesis and Legacy of The New City. Seville: Vibok Works, 2015. 358

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Grassi, Giorgio. La Costruzione Logica Dell’Architettura. Padova: Marsilio Editori, 1967. Gregotti, Vittorio, ed. “Ludwig Hilberseimer (1885/1967).” Rassegna di architettura e urbanistica, 27 (1986). Gurlitt, Cornelius. “Ostendorf ’s Theorie des architektonischen Entwerfens.” Deutsche Bauzeitung, (July 23, 1913): 522–6. Gutkind, Erwin. Vom städtebaulichen Problem der Einheitsgemeinde Berlin. Berlin: Verlag Hans Robert Engelmann, 1922. Guyer, Paul. Kant and the Claims of Taste. 2nd edn. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1997; or. ed. 1979. Häring, Hugo. “Zwei Städte: Eine Physiognomische Studie, zugleich ein Beitrag zur Problematik des Städtebaus.” Die Form, 1, no. 8 (1926): 172–5. Hausmann, Raoul. Raoul Hausmann Texte bis 1933. Edited by Michael Erlhoff. 2 vols. Munich: Edition text + kritik, 1982. Hays, K. Michael. Modernism and the Posthumanist Subject: The Architecture of Hannes Meyer and Ludwig Hilberseimer. Cambridge, Mass. and London: The MIT Press, 1995; or. ed. 1992. Heeren, M. “Neue Werksteinformen: Zu der Studie von Arch. L. Hilberseimer.” Deutsche Bauhütte, 10 (October 25, 1906): 346. Herzogenrath, Wulf and Pavel Liška, eds. Arthur Segal 1875–1944. Berlin: Argon Verlag, 1987. Heyck, Eduard ed. Moderne Kultur: ein Handbuch der Lebensbildung und des guten Geschmacks. 2 vols. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1907. Jüttner, Frank. “Ludwig Hilberseimer und das Primitive in der Kunst.” PhD diss., Stuttgart: University of Stuttgart, 2018. Kandinsky, Wassily. Über das Geistige in der Kunst insbesondere in der Malerei. Munich: R. Piper & Co. Verlag, 1912. Kilian, Markus. “Großstadtarchitektur und New City: Eine planungsmethodische Untersuchung der Stadtplanungsmodelle Ludwig Hilberseimers.” PhD diss., Karlsruhe: Universität Karlsruhe, 2002. Kleist, Heinrich von. “On the Marionette Theatre.” Translated Thomas G. Neumiller, The Drama Review, 16, no. 3 (September, 1972): 26; or. ed. “Über das Marionetten Theater.” Berliner Abendblätter (December 12–15, 1810). Köhler, Daniel. The Mereological City: A Reading of the Works of Ludwig Hilberseimer. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2016. Llobet i Ribeiro, Xavier. Hilberseimer y Mies: La metrópoli como ciudad jardín (Barcelona: Fundación Caja de Arquitectos, 2007). Mallgrave, Harry F. ed. Empathy, Form, and Space: Problems in German Aesthetics 1873– 1893 (Santa Monica: Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1994). Marchand, Suzanne E. Down From Olympus: Archaeology and Philhellenism in Germany, 1750–1970. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003; or. ed. 1996. Marcus, Ernst. Das Problem der exzentrische Empfindung und seine Lösung. Berlin: Verlag der Sturm, 1918. Marcus, Ernst. Theorie einer natürlichen Magie gegründet auf Kants Weltlehre. Munich: Verlag von Ernst Reinhardt, 1924. May, Ernst. “Stadterweiterung mittels Trabanten.” Der Städtebau: Monatshefte für Städtebau und Siedelungswesen, 19, nos. 5–6 (1922): 51–5. Mertins, Detlef and Michael W. Jennings, eds. G: An Avant-Garde Journal of Art, Architecture, Design, and Film 1923–1926. Translated by Steven Lindberg with Margareta Ingrid Christian. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2010. Ostendorf, Friedrich. Theorie des Architektonischen Entwerfens, Band 1: Einführung. Berlin: Verlag von Wilhelm Ernst &. Sohn, 1913. BIBLIOGRAPHY

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

361

INDEX

Alberti, Leon Battista 115, 121–2, 128 Alexander, Christopher xv “American Architecture” 75, 175–84, 213, 270 Anderson, Richard 12 Archizoom xv Arp, Hans 252 Aureli, Pier Vittorio xvi, 12 Aurelius, Marcus 122 Baader, Johannes 227, 248, 251 Bach, Johann Sebastian 208–9 basso continuo of creation 44, 67–70, 84, 86, 112, 131, 134, 156, 159, 185, 187–90, 201–2, 203–15, 230, 250, 253–5, 261, 266 of metropolis-architecture 9–10, 134, 148, 153, 156, 158, 160, 162, 168–83, 203, 215–23, 256, 267, 269, 277–8, 281–2, 290–1, 299–300 Bath 75, 143–4 Bauer, Alfred 271–3, 276, 278, 279, 282 Bauhaus xv, xvii, 1, 3–4, 7–8 Baumeister, Reinhard 90–1 Beethoven, Ludwig van 208, 209, 213–6, 221, 224 Behne, Adolf 3, 14, 216, 236, 249, 252, 258–62, 274, 276 Behrendt, Walter Curt 201 Behrens, Peter 79, 134–5, 150, 165–6, 170–3, 175, 183, 222, 292 Benjamin, Walter 12, 316 Bergius, Hanne 227–31 Bergson, Henri 70 Berlin 1–4, 7–8, 11, 15, 30, 46, 54, 76, 99, 134, 137, 141, 143, 161, 164–6, 170–3, 188, 191–202, 205, 226–30, 235–8, 242–3, 247, 256, 273–4, 279, 289, 293–5, 300–3

Berlioz, Louis-Hector 210 Bernini, Gian Lorenzo 117, 123–5, 148 Bernoulli, Hans 171 Bernstein, Eduard 22 Bildung 18, 26, 33, 38, 43, 105, 107, 135, 165, 176, 185, 193–4, 197, 201, 206–7, 210, 243, 248, 278 Bloch, Ernst 12 Bonatz, Paul 168 Bramante, Donato 115–16 Brinckmann, Albert Erich 9, 75, 112, 118–33, 136–7, 140–1, 143–4, 147–8, 150–1, 153–4, 156–7, 167, 201, 221, 268–70 Brooklyn Bridge 176–7, 182 Brownson, Jacques 25 Buffon, Comte de 203–4, 206, 222 Burnham, Daniel 79, 137–8, 171, 174–5, 180 see also Monadnock Building Byzantium 81 Canberra 137–8 Cézanne, Paul 79 Chagall, Marc 79, 260 Chaplin, Charlie 239 Chicago xv, xvii, 1–2, 4–8, 32, 134, 137–9, 146, 164, 167, 169, 171, 173, 177, 180, 270, 298–9 city as a work of art 3, 9, 12–13, 77, 83, 86–8, 90–112, 129, 134, 136–7, 141, 143, 153, 156, 160, 165, 172–3, 188, 203, 207, 212, 216, 255, 264, 293 mass(es) (material) of the 128–30, 136, 154–6, 161, 172, 174, 220–1, 223, 234–5, 239, 244, 247, 254–6, 265–70, 279, 282–303 Colleoni, Bartolomeo 120

Collins, George and Christiane Crasemann 98 Cologne 134, 152 colonizing (racist) worldview 7, 10–11, 17, 41–5, 69, 81–2, 92, 94, 105–6, 119, 125, 128, 139–40, 145, 174–6, 186, 190–8, 201, 207, 271 Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM) xvi Constructivism 1, 38, 87, 165, 174–5, 179, 216, 232, 234–5, 249–50, 255, 258–62, 264–73, 276–8, 281–4, 288, 290–2, 299–300 Dada 1, 3, 8, 13, 78–9, 216, 226–31, 240, 247–51, 253, 255–8, 263–4, 278, 288, 300–3 Darwin, Charles 24, 29 da Vinci, Leonardo 52 Däubler, Theodor 79, 133–6, 141, 156 Delaunay, Robert 135, 256 Der Einzige 8–9, 15–19, 24–8, 30, 39–56, 74–5, 79, 86, 99, 137, 204–207, 236, 240–1, 244, 255–6 Dernburg, Hermann 172 Der neue Club 30, 99 Der Sturm (gallery) 3, 30, 232, 274 Der Sturm (journal) 236–9 Deutsche Werkbund 3, 152, 197 Die Aktion 16, 30, 203, 239 Donatello 95, 120 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor 79, 177–8 Düsseldorf 170 Eggeling, Viking 236, 252–3, 260–2, 270–1, 288 Einstein, Carl 12, 42, 78–9, 99, 105–12, 147, 151, 156–7, 178–9, 181–2, 221, 235, 249, 274 Elementarism 1, 13, 216, 252–4 El Lissitzky 252, 272 Emerson, Ralph Waldo 66 Endell, August 188 Engels, Friedrich 21–2 Expressionism 1, 8, 13–14, 16–17, 30, 41, 52, 54, 78, 132, 135, 150, 214–16, 221, 230, 236, 248, 250, 256, 259–64, 266, 269, 279 Feuerbach, Anselm 53 Fischer, Theodor 168

Flaubert, Gustave 79 Florence 95, 116, 120–1 Fontana, Domenico 125 Förster, Ludwig 97 Franck, César 210 Friedlaender, Salamo 8–10, 12–15, 16, 25, 30–41, 50–1, 54–7, 59–60, 66–7, 70–2, 77, 79–80, 99, 110, 131, 135, 143, 155, 201–2, 206, 210, 213, 221, 230–2, 234–7, 239–49, 252–4, 256, 258, 261–3, 270–1, 273, 279, 290, 301–4 G (Gestaltung) 2, 14, 216, 239, 252, 268, 272 Genoa 81 Gessner, Hubert 165 Gilbert, Cass 174, 180 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 10, 12–13, 42–4, 46–7, 54, 56, 57–74, 77, 79, 84, 85–7, 129, 149, 153, 156–7, 162, 174, 180, 183, 191, 206–7, 213–14, 224, 234–5, 241, 253–4, 261–2, 271, 299 architecture and 42–3, 71–4, 174 Golyscheff, Jefim 248 Gräff, Werner 252 Graham, Ernst 174, 180 Grassi, Giorgio 12 Gropius, Walter 7, 176, 182–3 Grosz, George 227, 229–30, 236, 250 grotesquerie 27, 143, 182, 196, 238–42, 248, 262, 300–3 Gurlitt, Cornelius 135 Gutkind, Erwin 279 Hardekop, Ferdinand 79 Häring, Hugo 13 Hausmann, Baron von 197 Hausmann, Raoul 9–10, 14, 35, 78–9, 211, 216, 227, 236, 240–1, 246–52, 255–6 Hays, K. Michael xvi, 12, 228 Heartfield, John 227, 248 Heckel, Erich 52 Hegel, Friedrich 21–3, 192 Helmholtz, Hermann 209 Henrici, Karl 98 Heraclitus 66 Herder, Johann Gottfried 43, 70 Herzfelde, Wieland 227, 250–1 INDEX

363

Heyck, Eduard 201 Hilberseimer, Ludwig 1–14, 16–19, 25–30, 35, 39–57, 61, 64, 66, 70–90, 92, 98– 9, 106, 110–12, 129–84, 199–206, 208, 210–13, 215–26, 228, 230–2, 234–45, 247–60, 262–303 “Amerikanische Architektur”, see “American Architecture” Arthur Segal 258–9 Berliner Architektur der 20er Jahre 8 Beton als Gestalter with Julius Vischer 3 Chicago Tribune design 299–300 Contemporary Architecture: Its Roots and Trends 8 “Creation and Development” (1922) 47, 99, 240–1, 271 Dada and 1, 3, 9, 13, 78–9, 216, 226–32, 234–51, 253, 256–8, 263–4, 278, 288, 300–3 Der Einzige, essays in 8, 16–19, 27–8, 30, 39–56, 71–5, 79, 82, 86, 99, 204, 240–1, 244–5, 255–6 ­design projects in German period 3–4, 32, 141, 142, 167, 199–200, 224–5, 282–303, see also MetropolisArchitecture; Metropolis-Buildings design projects in US period 4–7, 139, 146, 298–300 Entfaltung einer Planungsidee 8, 216 film and 237–9, 268–78, 281, 288 Grossstadtarchitektur, see MetropolisArchitecture Grossstadtbauten, see MetropolisBuildings Hallenbauten 3, 92, 162 Hochhausstadt (High-Rise-City) xvi, 3, 13, 285–93, 299–303 Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) xv, 2, 6 influence of xv–xvii, 7–8, 11–14 Internationale Neue Baukunst 3 Lafayette Park, Detroit xvi, 6 Mies van der Rohe 8, 14 Mynona’s grotesques and 236–7, 242–4, 300–3 The Nature of Cities xvii, 6 The New City xvii, 6, 78, 96, 123, 144–5, 147 The New Regional Pattern xvii, 6 pedagogy of, xv, xvii, 1, 3–8 364

INDEX

single-family house, Weissenhofsiedlung, Stuttgart xvi, 3, 32 Sozialistische Monatshefte (Socialist Monthly) columns 2, 3, 248–9, 251–2 von Kleist, Heinrich and 244–5 Hildebrand, Adolf von 99–111, 113, 119–20, 147, 149, 150, 151, 156, 172, 182, 216 Hiller, Kurt 14, 16, 30, 110 Hitchcock, Henry-Russel xvi Höch, Hannah 9, 78–9, 227–8, 230, 236, 247, 255–6 Hoffmann, Joseph 166 Holmes, William Henry 270 Howard, Ebeneezer 166, 254 Hülsenbeck, Richard 227, 247 Humanism 10, 12, 18, 20, 23, 51, 120, 158, 244 Humboldt, Wilhelm von 63, 248 Ibsen, Henrik 196 Impressionism 1, 41, 52–4, 84, 96, 106, 148, 150, 187–8, 202, 209, 257, 259, 270 Janthur, Richard 79, 206 Jennings, Michael 14 Johnson, Philip xvi Kandinsky, Wassily 9, 41, 42, 44, 47, 66–70, 88, 99, 213, 236, 248, 253, 256, 262, 274 Kant, Immanuel 22, 24, 27, 30–2, 34, 56, 68–9, 100, 135, 232, 234 Karlsruhe 1, 99, 127, 137, 140, 143, 222, 250 Kessler, Harry Graf 270 Kleist, Heinrich von 244–7 Koolhaas, Rem 12 Kropotkin, Peter 225 Lange, Albert 22–4 La Nôtre, André 126 Laugier, Marc-Antoine 72–3 Le Corbusier xvi, 13, 274 Lendvai, Erwin 79 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 44, 251 Liebermann, Max 209 Liebknecht, Karl 15 Loewensen, Erwin 110

London 143, 161, 166, 191, 197 Loos, Adolf 134, 183 Lutyens, Edwin 166 Luxemburg, Rosa 15 Mächler, Martin 273, 276 Mackay, John Henry 16 Maderno, Carlo 117, 124 Maertens, Hermann 122 Malevich, Kasimir 263, 270 Manhattan 136, 139, 145, 146, 161, 174 Mannheim 127, 137 Marc, Franz 42 Marcus, Ernst 232–5, 241, 243, 253, 261 Marées, Hans von 53 Martens, Wilhelm 134 Marx, Karl 21–2, 256, 272 May, Ernst 279, 280–1, 284 Mebes, Paul 172–3, 223 Mertins, Detlef 14 Merz 3, 274–301 Messel, Alfred 166, 168–71, 175, 196, 201, 222 Wertheim Department Store, 170, 175, 198 Metropolis-Architecture 3, 10, 12, 48, 75–7, 82, 84, 86, 99, 106, 112, 130, 161, 199, 201, 203, 205, 208–10, 215–16, 221, 230–1, 237–8, 258, 267, 274–6 design projects, related 3, 9, 11, 75–6, 84, 165, 215–24, 228, 231–2, 274–301 drafts of 3, 9, 12, 48, 75–89, 99, 106, 112, 130–75, 199, 203, 205, 208–10, 212, 215–16, 218, 221, 226, 230–1, 234–5, 237–8, 254–8, 274–301 illustration of 77, 84–5, 106, 274–6 metropolis-architecture as new genre of art 9–10, 79, 85–9, 156, 160, 171–3, 180, 203, 224–6, 268, see also basso continuo Metropolis-Buildings 276–301 Meyer, Friedrich 63 Meyer, Hannes 3 Michelangelo 46, 52, 116–18, 121–5, 144, 173–4, 180, 214, 221 Piazza del Campidoglio 46, 117, 122–5, 173 Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig xv, xvi, 1, 2, 4–6, 8–9, 11, 14, 230, 236, 252, 274 Moholy-Nagy, László 252

Monadnock Building 137, 151, 164, 173–5, 177–82 Moser, Johannes 210–11 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 208–9, 214 Müller, William 166 Muthesius, Hermann 166, 168 Mynona, see Friedlaender, Salamo Nancy 126, 137 Neopathetische Cabaret 30, 99, 110 Newton, Isaac 56, 57, 66, 72 Nicholas of Cusa 66 Nietzsche, Friedrich 10, 15–17, 20–1, 23–35, 37, 39–41, 43–4, 46–7, 49, 52, 54–6, 60, 66, 70–1, 73, 116, 133, 155, 174–5, 186, 202, 208, 212–13, 215, 232, 241, 248–9, 251, 253, 271, 278 Nimmons, George Croll 171 non-European art and culture 8, 10, 14, 17, 19, 41–3, 52–5, 69, 105–9, 155, 159, 180, 210, 235–8, 249, 251, 262, 270, 274–6 Novalis 110 Olbrich, Joseph 170, 222 Ostendorf, Friedrich 305, 331, 346 Oud, J. J. P. 274 Palace of Justice 141–3, 218 Palladio, Andrea 121 Pannwitz, Rudolf 175, 215 Paris, xvi, 15, 97, 126, 137, 170, 174, 188, 191–3, 197, 256 Parker, Barry 166 Patte, Pierre 128 Pechstein, Max 52 Penn, William 145 Péri, László 236 Perkins, Dwight 173 Pfemfert, Franz 16, 30 see also Die Aktion Pfitzner, Hans 212–13 Philippe, Charles-Louis 262 Picabia, Francis 247 Pienza 121 Plácido, González Martínez xvi Plato 28, 30, 33 Poelaert, Joseph 141 see also Palace of Justice Pölzig, Hans 134, 149, 164, 171, 175, 183, 222 INDEX

365

Pommer, Richard 75 Pope, Albert 13 Puni, Ivan 252 Pygmalion 26, 251 Raphael 45–6, 52, 116, 214 Rathenau, Walter 242 Richter, Hans 9, 14, 216, 236, 247, 252–3, 262, 270–1, 288 Rukser, Udo and 13, 204 see also G (Gestaltung) Riegl, Alois 9, 47–8, 99, 135 Riemerschmid, Richard 168 Rodin, Françoise Auguste 52, 105, 147 Rome 17, 46–7, 81, 95, 97, 104, 119, 121, 123, 125, 126, 133, 140, 141, 166, 180, 222 Root, John 137, 175, 177, 179, 180–2, 214, 258, 270 see also Monadnock Building Rossellino, Bernardo 121 Rossi, Aldo xv, 12 Rottenberg, Ludwig 79 Rousseau, Henri 42, 79, 99 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 41 Ruest, Anselm 8, 12, 15–16, 17, 19–26, 30, 32, 35, 39–41, 51, 59, 71, 80, 135, 207, 236, 256 Rukser, Udo 9–10, 13–14, 48, 55, 75–90, 92, 98–9, 106, 110–12, 130–4, 136–84, 201–26, 230–2, 234–5, 237, 247–9, 251, 254–8, 266–71, 274–7, 281–3, 295 “Amerikanische Architektur”, see “American Architecture” Dada and 9, 78–9, 226–32, 247–9, 251 essays by 9, 14, 75, 203–24, 274–5 Grossstadtarchitektur, drafts of, see Metropolis-Architecture Hilberseimer, unpublished essay on 216, 220–4 Samuel Ernst, see Anselm Ruest Scamozzi, Vicenzo 121 Scheerbart, Paul 14 Scheffler, Karl 9, 184–203, 207, 209, 223–5, 271, 280, 282 Schelling, Friedrich 44–5, 110 Schiller, Friedrich 25, 63, 73, 87, 261–2, 264

366

INDEX

Schinkel, Karl Friedrich 193 Schlichter, Rudolf 227–8, 247, 250–1 Schmarsow, August 9, 112–18, 120–2, 124–6, 128–33, 136, 143, 148, 150, 157, 214, 221, 234, 270 Schmidt-Rottluff, Karl 52 Schönberg, Arnold 209, 215 Schopenhauer, Arthur 22–4, 27, 29, 30, 32, 37, 47, 56, 73, 212, 213, 235, 249 Schwitters, Kurt 3, 236, 276 see also Merz Scott, Baillie 167 Scott Joy, Samuel 171 Segal, Arthur 13, 236, 256–62, 270, 281, 288 Segal, Ernestine 236, 256 Semper, Gottfried 48, 102, 112 Simmel, Georg 12, 70, 99 Sitte, Camillo 9, 90–9, 104–5, 111–12, 118–22, 126–9, 136, 141, 143–5, 193, 201, 234, 277–8, 282 Spinoza, Baruch 32, 60, 66 Stirner, Max 15–16, 19–25, 35, 39–40, 43–4 Stübben, Joseph 90, 98, 129 Stuckenberg, Fritz 248 Stuttgart xvi, 3, 32, 143, 200 Sullivan, Louis 169, 180 Suprematism 263–4, 266, 270, 281, 288, 290 Tafuri, Manfredo xv, 12 Tatlin, Vladimir 247 Tauber, Sophie 247 Taut, Bruno 14, 166, 168, 201, 211, 249, 276 Tessenow, Heinrich 165, 167–8, 224–5, 282 Tolstoy, Leo 196 Tzara, Tristan 250–1 Uhde, Wilhelm 42 Ungers, Mathias xv Unwin, Raymond 166, 279, 284 van de Velde, Henry 151–2, 178 van Doesburg, Theo 236, 252 Vasari, Giorgio 121 Venice 81, 95, 115, 120, 121 Verona 151

Versailles xvi, 242 Vienna 9, 90, 91–3, 97, 128, 134, 136–7, 164, 166, 191, 210 Vitruvius 92 Wagenführ, Max 76, 217–23 Wagner, Otto 92–3, 97, 134, 136, 137, 139, 149, 164, 166, 183, 222 Wagner, Richard 47, 210, 213, 215 Walden, Herwath 3, 30, 232, 236, 274 see also Der Sturm; Der Sturm Waldheim, Charles 13 Weinbrenner, Friedrich 222, 329, 346

Westheim Paul 14, 249, 274, 276 Willner, Arthur 205–6 Winckelmann, Johann Joachim 26–9, 44, 235, 251 Wolf, Friedrich August 63 Wölfflin, Heinrich 9, 41, 46, 99, 112, 115–16, 135, 153 Wood, Edgar 166 Worringer, Wilhelm 41, 73 Wright, Frank Lloyd 14, 75, 79, 134, 164–7, 172–4, 180–2, 214, 258, 270, 274 Zeidler, Sebastian 110, 323

INDEX

367

368

369

370