Material Modernity: Innovations in Art, Design, and Architecture in the Weimar Republic 9781350228733, 9781350228771, 9781350228757

Citation preview

Material Modernity

i

Visual Cultures and German Contexts Series Editors Deborah Ascher Barnstone (University of Technology Sydney, Australia) Thomas O. Haakenson (California College of the Arts, USA) Visual Cultures and German Contexts publishes innovative research into visual culture in Germany, Switzerland and Austria, as well as in diasporic linguistic and cultural communities outside of these geographic, historical, and political borders. The series invites scholarship by academics, curators, architects, artists, and designers across all media forms and time periods. It engages with traditional methods in visual culture analysis as well as inventive interdisciplinary approaches. It seeks to encourage a dialogue amongst scholars in traditional disciplines with those pursuing innovative interdisciplinary and intermedial research. Of particular interest are provocative perspectives on archival materials, original scholarship on emerging and established creative visual fields, investigations into time-based forms of aesthetic expression, and new readings of history through the lens of visual culture. The series offers a much-needed venue for expanding how we engage with the field of Visual Culture in general. Proposals for monographs, edited volumes, and outstanding research studies are welcome, by established as well as emerging writers from a wide range of comparative, theoretical and methodological perspectives.

Advisory Board Donna West Brett, University of Sydney, Australia Charlotte Klonk, Humboldt Universität Berlin, Germany Nina Lübbren, Anglia Ruskin University, UK Maria Makela, California College of the Arts, USA Patrizia C. McBride, Cornell University, USA Rick McCormick, University of Minnesota, USA Elizabeth Otto, University at Buffalo SUNY, USA Kathryn Starkey, Stanford University, USA Annette F. Timm, University of Calgary, Canada James A. van Dyke, University of Missouri, USA

Titles in the Series Art and Resistance in Germany, edited by Deborah Ascher Barnstone and Elizabeth Otto Bauhaus Bodies: Gender, Sexuality, and Body Culture in Modernism’s Legendary Art School, edited by Elizabeth Otto and Patrick Rössler Berlin Contemporary: Architecture and Politics after 1990, by Julia Walker Photofascism: Photography, Film, and Exhibition Culture in 1930s Germany and Italy, by Vanessa Rocco Single People and Mass Housing in Germany, 1850–1930: (No) Home Away from Home, by Erin Eckhold Sassin Material Modernity: Innovations in Art, Design, and Architecture in the Weimar Republic, edited by Deborah Ascher Barnstone and Maria Makela How to Make the Body: Difference, Identity, and Embodiment, edited by Jennifer L. Creech and Thomas O. Haakenson

ii

Material Modernity Innovations in Art, Design, and Architecture in the Weimar Republic Edited by Deborah Ascher Barnstone and Maria Makela

iii

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 2022 Copyright © Deborah Ascher Barnstone, Maria Makela, and Contributors, 2022 Deborah Ascher Barnstone and Maria Makela have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this work. Cover image: Untitled, c. 1940. Gelatin silver photogram, 50.1 × 40.2 cm. Gift of George and Ruth Barford, 1968.264. The Art Institute of Chicago / Art Resource, NY/ Scala, Florence (© Photo 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. Whilst every effort has been made to locate copyright holders, the publishers would be grateful to hear from any person(s) not here acknowledged. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN:

HB: ePDF: eBook:

978-1-3502-2873-3 978-1-3502-2875-7 978-1-3502-2876-4

Series: Visual Cultures and German Contexts Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

iv

Contents List of Illustrations List of Contributors Introduction Deborah Ascher Barnstone and Maria Makela

vii xi 1

Part One New Materials in Artistic Applications 1 Making Lemonade out of Lemons: Merz and Material Property Maria Makela

11

2 Experimentation and Invention in Weaving at the Bauhaus Isabel Wünsche

39

3 Paper Promises: Inflation and the Insufficiency of Ersatz in Weimar Germany Erin Sullivan Maynes

61

4 Abject Objects: Til Brugman, Evidentiary Representation, and Sexology’s Celluloid Fixation Thomas O. Haakenson

85

Part Two New Chemicals and Reprographic Processes 5 Visual Explosion in the Weimar Era’s Print Media Andrés Mario Zervigón

117

6 László Moholy-Nagy: Adventures in Light, Space, and Time Donna West Brett

143

Part Three Traditional Materials in New Applications 7 The Emperor’s New Glass: Transparency as Substance and Symbol in Interwar Design Freyja Hartzell

167

8 Inverted Cubism or the Spatial Painting: Adolf Rading’s Dr. Rabe House Deborah Ascher Barnstone

197

v

vi

Contents

9 Renée Sintenis, Wendt & Kühn, Lotte Pritzel: Modes, Markets, and Materials in Domestic Objects, 1910–30 Nina Lübbren

221

Index

247

Illustrations Plates 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Kurt Schwitters, Merz Picture 32A (The Cherry Picture) [Merzbild 32A. Das Kirschbild], 1921. Kurt Schwitters, Merz Picture Thirty-One [Merzbild Einunddreissig], 1920. Mihály Biró, Ersatz Exibition: Paper Textiles Section (Ersatzmittelausstellung Gruppe-Papiergewebe), 1918. Wilhelm Schulz, Dance Around the Golden Calf (Der Tanz um das goldene Kalb), published in Simplicissimus, vol. 24, no. 36 (3 December 1919). Bruno Taut, Dandanah, the fairy palace: building blocks of solid glass, children’s block set with instruction cards, 1919–20. Bruno Taut, “Das Kristallhaus,” plate 3 from the publication Alpine Architektur, 1918. View of the upstairs corridor and the Oskar Schlemmer frescoes. The coordination of color in the house is obvious in this photograph of the master bedroom showing the bed situated on a white rectangle, oozing red, white and grey on the ceiling, and red and white details on the windows and radiators.

Figures 1.1 1.2 1.3

1.4

Kurt Schwitters, Merz Picture 32A (The Cherry Picture) [Merzbild 32A. Das Kirschbild], 1921. Kurt Schwitters, Merz Picture Thirty-One [Merzbild Einunddreissig], 1920. Jupp Wiertz, Collect Combed-out Women’s Hair! Our Industry Needs it for Drive Belts [Sammelt ausgekämmtes Frauenhaar! Unsere Industrie braucht es für Treibriemen], 1918. Alfred Offner, Substitute Materials Exhibition [ErsatzmittelAusstellung], 1918.

13 15

19 21

vii

viii

Illustrations

1.5

‘How Do I Save on Cloth?’ [“Wie spare ich Stoff?”], in The Practical Berlin Woman: Weekly Magazine for Housekeeping, Fashion, and Needle-craft [Die Praktische Berlinerin: Wochenschrift für Haushalt, Mode und Handarbeiten], vol. 12, no. 29, 16 April 1916, cover page. Kurt Schwitters, Mz. 180 Figurine, 1921. Martin Jacoby-Boy, German Fibres Exhibition [Deutsche Faserstoff Ausstellung], 1918. H. O. Binder, ‘Holy Dada, Help Me’, in Youth: Munich Illustrated Weekly for Art and Life [Jugend: Münchener illustrierte Wochenschrift für Kunst und Leben], vol. 26, no. 21, 1 January 1921, page 32. Group portrait of the Bauhaus weavers, 1928. Margaret Leischner, Drehergewebe, Noppenstoff [Open-weave slubbed fabric], cover illustration of bauhaus. zeitschrift für gestaltung, no. 2 (July 1931). Advertisement for “Breuer Metallmöbel” [Breuer’s tubular steel furniture] in bauhaus. zeitschrift für gestaltung, no. 1 (February 15, 1928): 19. Otti Berger, Urkunde über die Erteilung des Patents 594 075: Möbelstoff—Doppelgewebe [Certificate of issuance of patent 594 075: upholstery fabric—double-weave], registered June 17, 1932. Anni Albers, fabric sample of the wall-covering material for the auditorium of the Federal School of the German Trade Union in Bernau, 1929, with Zeiss report. Mihály Biró, Ersatz Exibition: Paper Textiles Section (Ersatzmittelausstellung Gruppe-Papiergewebe), 1918. Wilhelm Schulz, Dance Around the Golden Calf (Der Tanz um das goldene Kalb), published in Simplicissimus, vol. 24, no. 36 (3 December 1919). Wenzel Hablik, One Mark Notgeld note (recto and verso), issued in Itzehoe, 1921. Wenzel Hablik, Five Million Mark Notgeld note (recto), issued in Itzehoe, 1923. Karl Arnold, Paper Money! Paper Money! Bread! Bread! (Papiergeld! Papiergeld! Brot! Brot!), published in Simplicissimus, vol. 28, no. 11 (11 June 1923). Designer unknown, 1000 Mark Reichsmark note with Anti-Semitic Stamp, issued September 1922.

1.6 1.7 1.8

2.1 2.2

2.3

2.4

2.5

3.1 3.2

3.3 3.4 3.5

3.6

24 27 29

35 41

48

51

54

58 68

75 76 77

78 83

Illustrations

4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5

4.6 5.1 5.2

5.3

5.4 5.5

5.6 5.7

6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 7.1 7.2

Til Brugman (a.k.a., Mathilda Maria Petronella Brugman) (1888–1958). The Scientific-Humanitarian Committee’s rooms in Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science. Signed copy of Til Brugman’s poem “SHE HE.” Views of a Gelenkpuppe, or “jointed doll.” One of the displays that made up the so-called Zwischenstufenwand (“wall of intermediary stages”) in Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute of Sexual Science. German cartoon depicting Magnus Hirschfeld. John Heartfield and George Grosz, Jedermann sein eigner Fussball, Nr. 1 (15 February 1919). Designer signing as “FO” [Oskar Fischer], “Wer regiert die Börse?” [“Who Controls the Exchanges?”], Die Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung [A-I-Z] Vol. 8, No. 49 (1929) pp. 10–11. From “Wie eine Zeitung entsteht” [“How a Magazine Is Made”] double-spread centerfold composition with the embedded feature “Kupfertiefdruck. Herstellung der A.I.Z” [“Rotogravure: Production of the AIZ”] in AIZ 6, no. 31, 1927. Sowjet-Russland im Bild 1, Nr. 1 (1 November 1921): 2. “13. Jahre Hindenburg” [“Thirteen Years of Hindenburg”] doublespread centerfold composition in AIZ 6, no. 37 (September 28), 1927. “Die Hamburger Derbywoche” [“The Hamburg Derby Week”] Die Hamburger-Illustrierte-Zeitung 5, no. 27. 1923. Grete Hahne, “Keine Arbeit—Kein Brot. Beitrag zum Internat. Frauentag” [“No Work, No Bread: An Article on the Occasion of International Women’s Day”] in Mahnruf, no. 3, 1932, pp. 6–7. Man Ray, [Untitled Rayograph], from Les Champs délicieux, 1922. László Moholy-Nagy, Untitled, 1923–5. László Moholy-Nagy, Untitled, c. 1940. László Moholy-Nagy, Das Lichtrequisit, 1930. László Moholy-Nagy, Diagram of Forces, 1938–43. László Moholy-Nagy, [Plexiglas Mobile Sculpture in Repose and in Motion], 1943. Bruno Taut, Dandanah, the fairy palace: building blocks of solid glass, children’s block set with instruction cards, 1919–20. Wilhelm Wagenfeld, Kubus storage containers, c.1938.

ix

85 93 94 104

107 111 118

120

124 128

131 134

138 148 151 152 154 159 162 168 169

x

7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 7.7 7.8 8.1 8.2

8.3 8.4

8.5

8.6 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4

9.5 9.6

Illustrations

Bruno Taut, Pavillon der Glasindustrie, Werkbundausstellung in Cologne, 1914. Bruno Taut, “Das Kristallhaus,” plate 3 from the publication Alpine Architektur, 1918. Wilhelm Wagenfeld and Carl Jakob Jucker, Table Lamp (Glass version MT 9 / ME 1), designed c.1923–4, executed 1927. Otto Lindig, Lichttempels (Light Temple), 1920–1. Walter Gropius, Bauhaus, Dessau, c.1925. Adolf Lazi, Azberg Porcelain, designed by Hermann Gretsch, 1950s. Dr. Rabe House exterior. The living room looking at Oskar Schlemmer’s installation and showing the extensive use of primary colors on the floor to indicate individual spaces within the room. View of the upstairs corridor and the Oskar Schlemmer frescoes. The coordination of color in the house is obvious in this photograph of the master bedroom showing the bed situated on a white rectangle, oozing red, white and grey on the ceiling, and red and white details on the windows and radiators. A glimpse into the library alcove off the main living room where the application of color on all surfaces, in often abstract geometric shapes is apparent. A different perspective on the living room and adjacent alcove. Renée Sintenis, Young Donkey (Junger Esel), 1925. Renée Sintenis, Foal (Füllen), c.1922. Grete Wendt, Berry Children (Beerenkinder), 1913. Wendt & Kühn, Six-tiered Angel Mountain with Madonna and Grünhainich Angels (6-stufiger Engelberg mit Madonna und Grünhainicher Engeln®), undated. Lotte Pritzel, Duet (Duett), undated. Lotte Pritzel, Chichette, undated.

181 184 188 190 192 193 198

210 214

215

217 219 223 225 230

231 237 239

Contributors Deborah Ascher Barnstone is Professor of Architecture and Head of School at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia. Barnstone’s primary research interests are in interrogating the origins of modernism and exploring the relationships between art, architecture, and culture more broadly. Her monographs include The Break with the Past: German Avant-garde Architecture, 1910–1925 (Routledge: 2018) and Beyond the Bauhaus: Cultural Modernity in Weimar Breslau, 1918–1933 (University of Michigan Press: 2016). Recent publications include articles in Journal of Architecture, Journal of Design History, and New German Critique. The Color of Modernism: Paints, Pigments and the Transformation of Modern Architecture in 1920s Germany is in press at Bloomsbury Academic for a 2021 release. Donna West Brett Donna West Brett is Associate Professor and Chair of Art History at the University of Sydney, Australia. She is author of Photography and Place: Seeing and Not Seeing Germany After 1945 (2016), and co-editor with Natalya Lusty, Photography and Ontology: Unsettling Images, (2019), which was awarded the 2020 Art Association of Australia and NZ Best Anthology Book Prize. Brett is a recipient of the 2017 Australian Academy of the Humanities, Ernst and Rosemarie Keller Award, Research Leader for the Photographic Cultures Research Group, and Editorial Member for the Visual Culture and German Contexts Series, Bloomsbury Visual Arts. Thomas Haakenson is Associate Professor in Critical Studies and Visual Studies at California College of the Arts in San Francisco and Oakland, USA. He holds a doctorate in Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society from the Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota, as well as graduate-level minors in German and the History of Science and Technology. Haakenson is co-editor of the book series Visual Cultures and German Contexts with Bloomsbury Visual Arts, and is the former co-editor of the book series German Visual Culture with Peter Lang Oxford. Freyja Hartzell is Assistant Professor at Bard College, USA. She holds a doctorate in the history of art from Yale University, and her research focuses on the history of European art, design, and architecture from 1750 through the present day. Her xi

xii

Contributors

particular area of interest is German visual and material culture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Nina Lübbren is Deputy Head of Department and Principal Lecturer in film studies at Anglia Ruskin University, UK. Her areas of expertise include film, media, and communication studies, as well as nineteenth-century visual culture. Lübbren’s current research is on Expressionist sculpture in Germany, especially of that by women. Maria Makela is Professor Emerita of Visual Studies at the California College of the Arts, USA. She holds a doctorate in art history from Stanford University, and has published widely on late nineteenth and early twentieth century German visual and material culture. Much of her recent work has focused on the various ways in which art, literature, film, design, and fashion engaged with diverse discourses about destabilized identity in Weimar-era Germany. She has an abiding interest in plumbing both the archive and popular culture for evidentiary material that asks us to reconsider commonly held assumptions about modern art and artifacts. Erin Sullivan Maynes is Assistant Curator of the Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, USA. She holds a doctorate in art history from the University of Southern California and is a specialist of prints and print culture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Germany. Her current research involves how the graphic production in Germany was related to the economic conditions of the inflationary era of 1918–24. Isabel Wünsche is Professor of Art and Art History at Jacobs University in Bremen, Germany. She studied Art History and Classical and Christian Archaeology in Berlin, Moscow, Heidelberg, and Los Angeles and received her PhD from Heidelberg University. Her research interests are nineteenth- and twentieth-century art and art theory, in particular European modernism and the avant-garde movements, as well as art and science interrelations, abstract art, forms of visualization, mathematical concepts in the visual arts, and synaesthesia. Andres Zervignon is Associate Professor and Undergraduate Director of the Department of History and Photography at the University of Rutgers, USA. Professor Zervigón received his doctorate in art history from Harvard University in 2000 and specializes in the history of photography and on the interaction between photographs, film, and fine art. His work focuses upon moments in history when these media prove inadequate to their presumed task of representing the visual.

Introduction Deborah Ascher Barnstone and Maria Makela

With his usual prescient presence of mind, Harry Graf Kessler wrote about the critical material inventions appearing in Germany during the First World War and Weimar Republic: “In the Wednesday Society a lecture, of which I only heard the second half, depicted how new technical procedures have successfully extracted oil from German brown coal which in the not-too-distant future will cover Germany’s need for oil (petroleum, benzene, paraffin, lubricants) and make us independent from abroad (America, Romania, Georgia) for this raw material. German technology is becoming ever more the real power that, in the middle of the war, despite all diversions and adventures, gains material domination of the world. The millions in field gray and even Hindenburg and Ludendorff are only on the periphery so to speak, of this ever more powerfully spreading Proteus, its organs that—with suffering, blood, and intellect—serve it and its empire.”1 Kessler astutely realized the strategic economic and political importance of these new materials both to Germany in 1918 and to its future. Although Kessler commented on material invention in industrial and military applications, there was activity in every field imaginable, from agriculture and foodstuffs, to clothing and housewares, to the arts. The Weimar Republic is known for the breadth of artistic invention that occurred after 1918, especially the radical new aesthetics developed in all the arts; less well known is the scope of material innovation that occurred in the arts at the same time. Art historians usually argue that such experimentation was the result of an intentional rejection of traditional modes of expression in the conscious attempt to invent a modern art and architecture, one unshackled from historic and traditional media and methods. While in some cases this was certainly true, the drivers for innovation were far more complex and nuanced. 1

Harry Kessler, Journey to the Abyss: The Diaries of Count Harry Kessler 1880–1918, ed. and trans. Laird Easton (New York: Knopf, 2011) 840.

1

2

Material Modernity

Experimentation with materials in the arts was not an isolated phenomenon but part of the German ethos spurred on by events during the First World War that Harry Kessler remarked, together with burgeoning German industrial prowess. During the war, the British government enacted a naval blockade to try to pressure Germany into surrender by starving the country of necessary raw goods and food. The blockade was particularly threatening because in 1914, Germany was dependent on imports of raw materials—nearly 77% of all German imports were raw materials and chemicals for industrial production; and 17.5% of tonnage was foodstuff.2 Apparently, a large portion of the imported chemicals was sodium nitrate, fertilizer used to replenish the soil. The deprivations suffered during the blockade inspired Germany to develop a raft of Ersatz (substitute) materials for every application imaginable from food to clothing to machine parts to munitions. Some of the better known Ersatz products included coffee made from acorns and clothing made from wood products like paper and nettle fibers.3 By the end of the war, there were more than 10,000 Ersatz products in Germany—a fact that attests to a different mindset apropos materials. The same material invention that permeated industry and agriculture affected artists who were also inspired by material shortages to invent new uses for existing materials and to experiment with new materials appearing on the market as a way of exploring creative possibilities. Techniques of artistic production, and the forms that are possible, whether in the fine arts or in architecture, have always been intertwined with the materials, or media, used. New media usually demand new techniques and their inherent qualities often leads to new form-making. For instance, since reinforced concrete begins as a viscous mix that must be formed, it is extremely versatile and can be made into complex curvilinear shapes that are difficult to make in any other material. The combination of steel rebar with the concrete makes it strong in both compression and tension. Thus, architects like Mexican-Spanish Felix Candela have been able to make thin-shelled concrete structures in highly dynamic, curved forms of the groin vault, such as the roof for Los Manantiales restaurant in Mexico City (1958). Material invention during the Weimar Republic resulted in a raft of new approaches to art across the spectrum of possibilities. It led to new forms such as the collage, used by artists like Hannah Höch; new uses of traditional materials 2

3

David A. Janicki, “The British Blockade during World War I: The Weapon of Deprivation,” Inquiries Journal, 6/6 (2014), 3–5. Arnulf Huegel, Kriegsernährungswirtschaft Deutschlands während des Ersten und Zweitem Weltkrieg im Vergleich. (Konstanz: Hartung-Gore, 2003) 174.

Introduction

3

such as wood applied to collage rather than used as a surface for painting or material for sculpture in work by Kurt Schwitters; traditional art made with new materials, such as concrete used for sculpture in pieces by Gela Forster; and new techniques of production that complemented new forms, as in the many photographic and reprographic procedures that were developed with new chemicals and used to create photographic collage in German newspapers.4 Scholars have studied aspects of this history before but usually studies have focused on a single innovation, or a single artist and his or her contributions to art or architecture in isolation of other innovations occurring at the time. Yet we believe that there was a culture of material invention active during the 1920s in Germany that has its origins in the late nineteenth century and the prosecution of the First World War. Andreas Huyssen tied the emergence of all avant-garde art to technological invention, yet technology is not the only driver of innovation but one of several.5 Histories of the avant-garde do acknowledge use of new media but to date, in most cases this has not been the driver for research but rather a secondary topic. Some of the scholarship on the design of Notgeld by notable artists is one exception.6 The nine essays in this book address the topic of Weimar era’s visual culture as it pertains to material scarcity, material invention, and technological innovation at this particular time and place. Those in part one, New Materials in Artistic Applications, consider with varying emphases how the lack of material goods in Germany during the First World War and the interwar era provided the impetus for innovation in art, design and literature. Affecting almost all areas of cultural production, its impact is analyzed here in relation to assemblage, textiles, paper money, and satirical writing. Maria Makela, in “Making Lemonade out of Lemons: Merz and Material Poverty,” addresses how the lack of cloth in blockaded Germany and the subsequent inflationary era affected then young artists like Kurt Schwitters. The nation had always imported almost all the raw materials it needed to make cloth,

4

5

6

A few examples of related texts: Patrizia McBride, The Chatter of the Visible (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 2016); The Photomontages of Hannah Höch, eds. Maria Makela, et al (Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 1996); Ralph Homayr, Montage als Kunstform: zum literarischen Werk von Kurt Schwitters (Frankfurt am: 1991); Sabine Kriebel, “Photomontage in the Year 1932: John Heartfield and the National Socialists,” Oxford Art Journal, 31/1 (2008), 99–127. Andreas Huyssen, “The Hidden Dialectic: Avantgarde—Technology—Mass Culture,” The Myths of Information: Technology and Postindustrial Culture, ed. Kathleen Woodward (Madison, WI: Coda, 1980), 151–64. Erin Sullivan Maynes, “Making Money” Notgeld and the Material Experience of Inflation in Weimar Germany,” Art History, 42/4 (2019) 678–701; L. P. Steven Heller, “Notgeld: Emergency Money in Inflationary Germany,” Design Observer, September 26, 2018.

4

Material Modernity

and suddenly there was none to be had from about 1916 through 1924, when the Dawes Plan rescued Germany from its economic crisis and the fibers to make cloth became affordable once again. During these years canvas—woven cotton or linen cloth—was mostly accessible only to established artists who could afford to buy it on the black market. Schwitters and others thus mostly stopped painting on canvas and began to use different materials for their work. In his case, it was “Merz” assemblages made of scavenged materials from the street affixed to supports of paper, wood or cardboard. Others, like the Dadaists in Berlin, began to make collages out of more easily accessible paper, as well as found object sculpture. The negative critical reception of such work was rooted in its perceived connection to Ersatz: the artificial, the inauthentic, the substitute. As Germans mourned the loss of the war, so too did they mourn the loss of traditional German Kultur, of which traditional oil painting was considered an integral component. Like their contemporaries, the artists at the Bauhaus felt the impact of the material exigencies of the era. Those in the weaving workshop were particularly affected, insofar as they also had only very limited access to the traditional fibers out of which cloth had previously been woven. As Isabel Wünsche demonstrates in her contribution to this anthology, “Experimentation and Invention in Weaving at the Bauhaus,” they, like Schwitters in Hannover and the Dadaists in Berlin, made the best of a bad situation. In their case, they began to experiment with various derivatives of chemically treated cellulose, the natural polymer that makes up the cells of all living vegetation. When the inflationary era ended in 1924 and, in particular after the Bauhaus moved from Weimar to Dessau in 1925, they capitalized on their experiments with cellulose-derived materials, creating rugs, tapestries, upholstery and wallpaper made of various combinations of now accessible wool, cotton, silk and flax with rayon, cellophane, artificial horsehair, and Eisengarn (iron thread), a cotton fiber impregnated with wax or paraffin. These new “synthetic” or Ersatz materials had unique characteristics that included high sheen, vivid color, strength and durability, which, in combination with the innovative ways in which they were woven together with “natural” fibers, revolutionized the textile industry. Erin Sullivan Maynes’ “Paper Promises: Inflation and the Insufficiency of Ersatz in Weimar Germany” further elaborates on Ersatz, in particular as it relates to paper money. Both during the war and in the inflationary era, paper was deployed to meet a wide variety of needs in blockaded and postwar Germany. It was used to make clothing, backpacks, “leather” goods like shoes and belts, upholstery, wallpaper, rugs, bandages, and insulation (such as for stuffing in

Introduction

5

duvets). But perhaps the most widespread use of paper at the time was currency, both the official paper Reichsmark and the unofficial “emergency” money called Notgeld that appeared after the beginning of the war in 1914 and then proliferated in the inflationary era. Unsanctioned currency issued by cities, towns, savings banks and other businesses, it was used to temporarily relieve persistent shortages of official money throughout Germany, in particular of metal coinage. Because the government was requisitioning various metals for military use, the metal value of coins quickly surpassed their exchange value and thus they soon disappeared from circulation. Notgeld, in particular, filled the gap. The designs were innovative and, as Maynes argues, often ironic in reference to the flood of paper money that became increasingly devalued until the Dawes Plan rescued Germany from its hyperinflation in 1924. Ersatz is also a theme of Thomas Haakenson’s article, “Weimar Celluloid: Til Brugman, Representation, and Sexual Science.” Celluloid was the product of a combination of nitrocellulose and camphor, a waxy, flammable, naturally occurring organic substance. In the early twentieth century, it was used to manufacture a wide variety of articles, from knife handles and dentures to hair combs and jewelry but it is best-known as the material for photographs and films. Physicians, anthropologists and sexual scientists like Magnus Hirschfeld used photographic and filmic images as substitutes for real, human subjects in order to “prove” their supposedly scientific arguments. Many artists at the time, in particular Berlin Dadaists like Til Brugman, recognized the irony in such work. Brugman’s short story, “Department Store of Love,” satirizes Hirschfeld’s Institute and its use of Ersatz objects in the service of “science.” These Zelluloidkinder henceforth would satisfy both the state’s need for reproductive sexuality and the department store’s customers’ desires for their fetish objects. Haakenson’s essay considers how Brugman’s story critiques the science of celluloid and its use and misuse as a substitute for the “real.” The essays in part two, New Chemicals and Reprographic Processes, address how developments in technology, techniques and materials contributed to the innovative visual culture of the Weimar era and beyond. This included rotogravure, as well as light (now used as a tool much like paint) and plexiglass, a transparent industrial plastic material invented in Germany. Andrés Mario Zervigón’s essay, “Visual Explosion in the Weimar Era’s Print Media,” describes how the new technology of rotogravure that was perfected by the end of the 1920s drastically impacted the illustrated mass media of the era. Though initially the quality of reproduction was quite low, with time that too was addressed, and modern photogravure could, at little cost, stamp a great

6

Material Modernity

variation of tones and fine details that approximate the quality of the traditional photograph. In addition, the particular technique involved in designing for the rotating copper cylinder, described by Zervigón at length, allowed for great freedom and yielded extraordinary results in both the popular and political mass media. Of particular interest to Zervigón are radical journals like Die Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung (the A-I-Z), the flagship periodical of the extremeleft media concern run by the German propaganda master Willi Münzenberg. Even in its most modern conveyances—photography and film—traditional representation was simply inadequate to capture the actual disorienting conditions and political reality of Weimar Germany. It was rotogravure and the medium of photomontage that came to the rescue here, for the design and distribution possibilities it afforded were substantial, both for the popular and radical press. In mainstream magazines, though, the swirling, vertiginous compositions that rotogravure made possible were used to convey the excitement and sometimes also the chaos of modern life, while in radical periodicals like the A-I-Z they were deployed to evoke political revelation and revolution. Like the Communist designers of the A-I-Z, the artist László Moholy-Nagy (known simply as Moholy) was similarly disinterested in veristic photography, though his approach took a different tack. Donna West Brett’s essay “László Moholy Nagy: Adventures in Light, Space, and Time” discusses his innovative photography that brought a new kind of seeing and visual power to the medium. Influenced by scientists like Claude Bragdon, Max Planck and, in particular, Albert Einstein and his ideas about the “movement of objects and light through space over time,” Moholy worked for most of his life creating art that he hoped would concretize the fourth dimension by integrating light with space and time. As Brett discusses, this ambitious project first took shape with his “photograms,” then with his kinetic sculpture Light Prop for an Electric Stage (1922–30), later known as the Light Space Modulator, and finally with his experiments using Plexiglass, a malleable acrylic product that could mold and reflect light. Her essay focuses on these three groups of work and considers how new technologies made possible his adventurous forays into light, space and time. The essays in part three, Traditional Materials in New Applications, all consider how age-old media—now updated thanks to modern technologies— revolutionized art and architecture in Germany during the First World War and beyond. The contributions here focus primarily on architecture, design and applied art, and the media of glass, bronze, wax, wood and textiles. In “Transparency as Substance and Symbol in Interwar Design,” Freyja Hartzell traces how the medium of glass—a material that had been used in both

Introduction

7

the east and west for centuries—was variously deployed by German writers, critics, architects and designers working between the early 1800s and the Nazi era. Glass—as both material and metaphor—has wielded throughout its history a mysterious, transformative power. Consistently associated with semiprecious and precious stones in religious texts, architecture, myth and fairytale, for hundreds of years it was linked to higher forms of materiality and the spiritual. Hartzell considers the ways in which such diverse figures as E.T.A. Hoffmann, Hans Christian Anderson, Paul Scheerbart, Bruno Taut, Adold Behne, Walter Benjamin, and Wilhelm Wagenfeld inflect this narrative. Paying particular attention to the work of Scheerbart and Taut made during the First World War and the early 1920s, she argues that translucent colored glass was at that time valued for the warm, social radiance that it emitted and harnessed as a socialist catalyst for utopian change. But, as evidenced by the work in particular of Wagenfeld, in the 1930s it was now transparent colorless glass made possible by improved technology that took center stage. Valued by the Nazis for its “stylelessness,” it was, she maintains, “empty by design.” Neither mysterious nor sublime, it was motionless and mute, a mere vessel for national socialist ideology. Deborah Ascher Barnstone considers in her essay—“Inverted Cubism or the Spatial Painting: Adolf Rading’s Dr. Rabe House”—a small 1920s architectural gem in Zwenkau, just south of Leipzig. Past scholars who have written on the house have focused primarily on the confluence of the spaces Rading constructed with the custom-designed metal installations and frescoes by Bauhaus artist Oscar Schlemmer. Barnstone, by contrast, pays particular attention to Rading’s architectural design, and, like Hartzell, focuses on color, specifically, applied color. Beginning with Goethe in the early nineteenth century, in various ways color theory captured the rapt attention of artists, architects, designers and scientists. Indeed, by the late 1920s color had become a popular substitute for applied ornament in contemporary architecture, particularly among the European avant-garde. Barnstone’s essay analyzes how Rading uniquely deployed applied color in Rade’s house so as to infuse the spaces with emotional power and to alter the user’s perceptions from a single viewpoint perspective to a multiviewpoint one. In such a way, he concretized in Dr. Rabe House the fourth dimension—like color—a topic of intense interest in the early twentieth century. Like the first two essays in this section, the third—“Renée Sintenis, Wendt & Kühn, Lotte Pritzel: Modes, Markets and Materials in Domestic Objects, 1910– 1930”—considers how various artists deployed traditional materials in unconventional ways. In it, Nina Lübbren looks at four women artists who both blurred and expanded the boundaries of “fine” art with their production of

8

Material Modernity

small-scale domestic objects made out of materials that had been used to make sculpture for hundreds of years: bronze, wood, and wax. Sintenis produced small statuettes of animals and figurines that were intended to sit on tables or in vitrines and to be handled, much as a children’s toy would be. They are made, however, of bronze, a “fine” art material not typically used for the production of children’s playthings. Through their company Wendt and Kühn, Margarete Wendt and Margarete Kühn made holiday decorations and small-scale turned toys out of wood. Like bronze—another material that had “fine” art associations— wood was associated specifically with German sculpture from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance eras, as well as with Expressionist sculpture and folk and tribal art. Wendt and Kühn’s mass-produced products differed from such work not only in their means of production, but in their size, targeted audience, and affect, thus also blurring previously well-drawn boundaries between the “fine” and “applied” arts. Finally, Lotte Pritzel made multi-media dolls intended for adults, using such “high” art materials as wax together with “low” art materials as fabric, sequence, cotton, wool, and beads. Consideration of the work of these four women significantly expands our understanding of early twentieth-century German art practice, in particular of sculpture. While it is not possible in this small anthology to address all the ways in which new materials, technologies, and techniques shaped art, design and architecture of early twentieth century Germany, we have tried to assemble essays on a variety of media and their applications that would introduce readers to a topic that we believe is particularly relevant to Germany at this time. Though by no means a comprehensive study, we hope it is a provocation, an invitation to reflect and continue research on this multi-faceted and fascinating subject.

Part One

New Materials in Artistic Applications

9

10

1

Making Lemonade out of Lemons Merz and Material Poverty Maria Makela

The disquiet had only just begun. At last I felt free, and I had to vent my jubilation in a loud scream. Not being wasteful, I took everything that I could find, for we were an impoverished country. One can also shout with rubbish—and this I did, nailing and gluing it together.1 Kurt Schwitters, 1930

“I am a painter, I nail my pictures together.”2 It was with this intriguing description that Kurt Schwitters supposedly introduced himself to Raoul Hausmann in Berlin’s Café des Westens sometime in 1918.3 Intriguing, because there is no mention of canvas, the material with which painters up until that time had normally been associated. There is the reference to nails and by association to wood, but nothing of the woven cotton or linen cloth that since the Renaissance

1

2

3

An earlier version of this essay published in Art History, 42, no. 4 (September 2019), 652–77, includes color reproductions of all the images discussed here and of others mentioned but not reproduced. I am grateful to the Association of Art History for granting me permission to reproduce the essay in this anthology. For help in the preparation of it, my many thanks to Ralf Burmeister, Samuel Bibby, Cole Collins, Anne Krause, Robert Kunath, Edith Palmer, Dorothy Price, Isabel Schulz, Camilla Smith, Adrian Sudhalter, Gwendolen Webster, and the members of the H&S spring 2015 reading group at California College of the Arts. I extend my gratitude, as well, to the anonymous readers of this essay and to my co-editor Deborah Ascher Barnstone, whose incisive comments led me to hone certain aspects of it. Thanks, too, to the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, which supplied financial support for research that contributed to the development of my ideas. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are mine. Kurt Schwitters in Heinz and Bodo Rasch, Gefesselter Blick. 25 kurze Monografien und Beiträge über neue Werbegestaltung, Stuttgart, 1930, 88; rpt. Baden, Switzerland, 1996; cited by Friedhelm Lach, ed., Kurt Schwitters. Das literarische Werk, vol. 5, Cologne, 1981, 335; and as translated by Ralf Burmeister, “Related Opposites”: Differences in Mentality between Dada and Merz,” in Kurt Schwitters. Merz—A Total Vision of the World, Bern, 2004, 146. Raoul Hausmann, “Kurt Schwitters wird Merz,” in eds. Karl Riha and Günter Kämpf, Raoul Hausmann. Am Anfang war Dada, Steinbach/Gießen, 1972, 63. On understandable doubts about the veracity of Hausmann’s anecdote, see Gwendolen Webster, Kurt Merz Schwitters. A Biographical Study, Cardiff, 1997, 50–1.

11

12

Material Modernity

had been an essential tool of the painter’s trade. In fact, the so-called “Merz” pictures that Schwitters began to produce around the same time he met Hausmann are collages on paper and assemblages of objects affixed to planks of wood or pieces of cardboard nailed to wooden frames. Interestingly, the cloth Schwitters no longer used for the ground of his pictures now articulated the surface of them. Though difficult to see in reproduction, bits of lace, gauze, velvet, cotton, wool and linen structure his early Merz pictures as much as the more easily recognizable fragments of paper, wire, string, metal, and wood. Though it has been said, for example, that Schwitters’ celebrated Merz Picture 32A (The Cherry Picture) of 1921 (Plate 1; Figure 1.1) “is dominated by rectangular pieces of paper,” in fact scraps of textiles animate the composition as much as they, countering their flat, matte surfaces with a soft tactility that guide the eye through the “painting.”4 Most notable is the bit of rough burlap just below and to the left of the cherries at center. Its color echoing that of the fruit, its shape that of a droopy leaf, it leads via the edges of the green straight-cut paper below to the trapezoidal creamy-pink scrap of cloth near the bottom of the picture, which in turn points to the white-dotted sky-blue poplin above and to the right. The poplin’s verticality and eye-catching pattern then lead to the more densely woven two overlapping fragments of dark blue cloth above, near the protruding dowel. They, in turn, scatter focus, one pointing upwards to the left, the other also upward but to the right, where our eyes come to rest at the top two corners of the composition. Textiles similarly activate many other Schwitters’ assemblages from about 1918 to 1924, which make frequent, considered, and liberal use of cloth, especially cloth that is tattered, torn, soiled, and frayed.5 In and of itself, Schwitters’ use of cloth on the surfaces of his works is unsurprising, insofar as textiles were formative for him from the start. His mother, Henriette, was a talented seamstress. Together with her husband, she opened a women’s clothing store in Hannover at the remarkably young age of twenty-one. So successful was it that when they sold it in 1898 there were enough proceeds to purchase five rental properties in Hannover, the income from which the family lived on comfortably for the rest of their lives.6

4

5

6

Museum of Modern Art, “Kurt Schwitters, Merz Picture 32a, The Cherry Picture, 1921,” http://www. moma.org/collection/works/33356?locale=en (accessed September 21, 2016). Accounting is complicated, but the data base of Schwitters’ work at the Schwitters Archive at the Sprengel Museum in Hannover indicates that between 1918 and 1924 Schwitters used cloth on the surfaces of approximately eleven works per year, whereas between 1925 and his death in 1947 he averaged annually only about four. Ernst Nündel, Kurt Schwitters in Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten, Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1981, 10–11.

Making Lemonade out of Lemons

13

Figure 1.1 Kurt Schwitters, Merz Picture 32A (The Cherry Picture) [Merzbild 32A. Das Kirschbild], 1921. Collage of cloth, wood, metal, gouache, oil, cut-and-pasted papers, and ink on cardboard, 91.8 × 70.5 cm. New York: Museum of Modern Art. ©2020 ARS, NY/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Photo: MoMA/Scala Art Resource, NY.

Much of the artist’s early work indicates an awareness of his mother’s profession, and in 1924 Schwitters was even engaged in writing a book on fashion, which, however, was never published.7 Notably, the artist’s home from the time he was six until his exile at the age of fifty was located but a mile from 7

The book was advertised as being in preparation in Schwitters’ Die Märchen vom Paradies, Hannover, 1924.

14

Material Modernity

the Döhrener Wollwäscherei und Kämmerei (Döhrener Wool Laundering and Combing), Germany’s largest wool processing plant.8 Founded in the 1860s on the site of a dam in the Leine River, Döhrener Wolle employed some two thousand workers on the eve of the war. Schwitters depicted the exterior of the plant in at least one oil painting,9 and, when he became serious about typography, designed ads for local businesses dependent on the firm, like Buchheister’s, Hannover’s largest retailer of handicraft supplies.10 Even larger and older than Döhrener Wolle was the Mechanische Weberei zu Linden (Mechanical Weaving Mills of Linden). Together with Döhrener Wolle, it made the textile industry one of Hannover’s most important.11 Founded in 1837, the company employed some three thousand workers on the eve of the war and produced the award-winning Lindener Samt (Lindener Velvet), an upscale cotton velvet known for its rich blue-black color, the dye recipe of which was closely guarded by the firm. The blue-black plush that Schwitters often used in his early Merz pictures was doubtless this very velvet, but in his work it is soiled and frayed rather than sewn into sumptuously elegant clothing. Merz Picture Thirty-One of 1920 (Plate 2; Figure 1.2) is a case in point. Of the various shapes that direct attention from the outward edges of the picture to the tilted “31” of the title near center, a large scrap of tattered dark blue velvet anchors the composition on the right, its frayed top edge and soft texture serving as counterpoints to the crisp, triangular scrap of cream-colored, precisely dotted gauze to its left. Two additional bits of scruffy Lindener Samt—one triangular, the other curve-edged and irregularly shaped—are sandwiched between the other “31” at the top edge and the right angle traced below by a white-tipped, knife-edged scrap of newsprint and a green and white wooden stick. 8

9

10

11

On the history of Döhrener Wolle, see Die “Wolle” Besteht in Döhren nicht mehr. Nachforschungen zu einer großen Fabrik in Hannover–Döhren, die es nicht mehr gibt, Hannover, 1987; Entwicklung der Textilkunst und des Hannoverhandwerks durch die Frau und ihre Mitwirkung in der Textil-Industrie in und um Hannover, Hannover, 1991; and Ninas Schmierblo(g)ck, “Die Wollwäscherei und – Kämmerei WW&K,” http://www.justchaos.de/blog/index.php?/archives/383-Die-Woll-Waeschereiund-Kaemmerei-WWK.html (accessed September 22, 2016). Karin Orchard and Isabel Schulz, eds., Kurt Schwitters. Catalogue Raisonné, vol. 1, 1905–22, Ostfildern-Ruit, 2000, 49, illustrate this 1911 untitled painting of the Leine Lock near Döhrener Wolle. Signed on its outer edge, one such advertisement was published in Hannoverscher Kurier 77: 540/41, November 18, 1925, Beilage. See also his innovative advertisements for Buchheister’s in Volker Rattemeyer and Dietrich Helms, eds., with the assistance of Konrad Matschke, “Typographie kann unter Umständen Kunst sein.” Kurt Schwitters: Typographie und Werbegestaltung, Wiesbaden, 1990, 155. On the Mechanische Weberei zu Linden, see Angelika Kühn and Irmgard Thörner, “Die Mechanische Weberei zu Linden 1837–1961, Technik und Sozialgeschichte—Die andere Seite des Designs,” Diplomarbeit Fachhoschule Hannover, Fachbereich Kunst & Design, Wintersemester 1987/88; Entwicklung der Textilkunst und des Hannover Handwerks durch die Frau und ihre Mitwirkung in der Textil-Industrie in und um Hannover, 1991; and Uwe Dempwolff, “Die Wirtschaft der Stadt Hannover vom Ende der Inflation bis zum Ausklingen der Weltwirtschaftskrise (1923–1933),” diss. Technische Universität Hanover, 1970.

Making Lemonade out of Lemons

15

Figure 1.2 Kurt Schwitters, Merz Picture Thirty-One [Merzbild Einunddreissig], 1920. Assemblage of oil, paper, wood, metal, textile, cotton, on carton, mounted on wooden frame, 98 × 66 cm. Hannover: Sprengel Museum (D12). ©2020 ARS, NY/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Photo: bpk Bildagentur/Sprengel Museum/Michael Herling/Aline Gwose/Art Resource, NY.

16

Material Modernity

It is the unexpected lack of cloth as ground and its tawdry presence as figure in Schwitters’ work of the early Weimar era that is of note, for this was a time of extreme material shortages in Germany, when cloth of any kind was hard to come by, as were so many other items. Though all combatants suffered deprivation during and after war, the Germans and Austrians were most affected due to the Allied blockade and the harsh terms of the Versailles Treaty. Critical as regards the conception and reception of new media like photomontage, found object “sculpture” and, in particular, Merz, this unprecedented material poverty and how it affected contemporaneous artists is the subject of this essay. I begin with an in-depth contextual history of the shortages, especially that of cloth, and elaborate on the Ersatzkultur (culture of substitute materials) that developed in Germany as a result. I then follow with an analysis of how this impacted Schwitters in particular and his generation of artists more generally. By shifting the terms of debate from what is represented in German avant-garde art of the era to the materials that were used, I make three interrelated points. First, Merz was itself a form of Ersatz in that it replaced traditional oil painting on (now hard to come by) canvas with materials that were available (cardboard or wood for the supports and discarded refuse for the surfaces). Second, the largely negative critical reception of Schwitters’ work had its origins in precisely this, as Germans mourned not just the loss of the war but also their muchvaunted Kultur of which oil painting was an integral component. Third and finally, I suggest that with his deployment of Ersatz Schwitters enmeshed himself as deeply in the socio-politics of the times as did the more explicitly political Berlin Dadaists, his reputation as something of an outlier in this regard notwithstanding.12 Insofar as he lived and worked primarily in and around the provincial town of Hannover where cloth was the name of the game and the textile industry crippled for years after the conclusion of the war, Schwitters was as much attuned to the misery of the era as were his peers in Berlin. Merz speaks eloquently to and of this misery (“One can also shout with rubbish”), however much the conversation might have been drowned out by the louder and 12

Largely because of his alliance with Herwarth Walden’s Berlin gallery “Der Sturm” and the primacy of l’art pour l’art that reigned there, Schwitters was denied membership in the Berlin “Club Dada” and his works not included in the “First International Dada Fair.” To be sure, Raoul Hausmann developed a close collaborative relationship with Schwitters, but even Hausmann saw his visual and performative work as essentially different than the Berliners in that it was more concerned with aesthetics and not at all with the politics of revolution. Hausmann, “Kurt Schwitters wird Merz,” 64 and 68. Richard Huelsenbeck had life-long misgivings about the Merz artist and his petit-bourgeois habitus, caustically describing him almost four decades after the First International Dada Fair as a “genius in a frock coat” and “the Caspar David Friedrich of the dadaist revolution.” Richard

Making Lemonade out of Lemons

17

more prescriptive art of, for example, George Grosz and John Heartfield. The difference is that Schwitters was more optimistic than they, and thought of his art, of Merz, as a metaphor for German ingenuity and resilience in the face of hardship.

The Blockade of Germany in the First World War: Shortages and Ersatz A few facts about the shortages will help to set the stage.13 With more than twice as many surface ships as Germany, beginning in December 1914 England effectively blocked any merchant vessels in the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean from entering the country. France and Russia did the same in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Germany was effectively cut off from overseas trade, and so had to creatively confront its massive needs for materials that could not be sufficiently produced within its own borders. The lack of food, malnutrition, and high mortality rates caused by the blockade are well-documented, but the lack of other goods and its effect on German culture is arguably less considered. Metal of all kinds was at a premium, and poster campaigns urged citizens to bring whatever objects they owned that were made out of aluminum, bronze,

13

Huelsenbeck, “Dada und Existentialismus,” in Willy Verkauf, ed., Dada. Monograph einer Bewegung, Teufen, 1957, as cited in Hans J. Kleinschmidt, ed., Memoirs of a Dada Drummer, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford, 1969, 146. More sympathetically, Schwitters’ contemporary Hans Richter similarly commented on what he saw as his friend’s essentially apolitical stance, though he admittedly did so while living in the United States after a period of personal difficulties during the McCarthy era. Schwitters, he wrote, was “absolutely, unreservedly, 24-hours-a-day PRO-art. His genius had no time for transforming the world, or values, or the present, or the future, or the past; no time in fact for any of the things that were heralded by blasts of Berlin’s Trump of Doom. There was no talk of the ‘death of art’, or ‘non-art’, or ‘anti-art’ with him. On the contrary, every tram-ticket, every envelope, cheese wrapper or cigar-band, together with old shoe-soles or shoe-laces, wire, feathers, dishcloths— everything that had been thrown away—all this he loved, and restored to an honored place in life by means of his art.” Hans Richter, Dada. Art and Anti-Art, Cologne, 1964, rpt. London, 2016, 138. For thoughtful reassessments of Merz and Schwitters’ alleged apoliticism, see Isabel Schulz, “ ’Die Kunst ist mir zu wertvoll, um als Werkzeug missbraucht zu werden.’ Kurt Schwitters und die Politik,” in Schwitters Arp, Ostfildern 2004, 197–204; and Ralf Burmeister, “Related Opposites,” 140–7. More recently, Cole Collins, in “Envisaging Alternatives: Representations of Women in the Collages of Kurt Schwitters,” Ph.D. Dissertation University of Edinburgh 2018, locates the political in Schwitters’ images of women. I expand on these scholars’ observations in my focus on Ersatz. Of all the sources on the blockade, I have found particularly helpful George Abel Schreiner, The Iron Ration. Three Years in Warring Central Europe, New York and London, 1918; Evelyn Blücher, An English Wife in Berlin. A Private Memoir of Events, Politics, and Daily Life in Germany throughout the War and the Social Revolution of 1918, New York, c. 1920; Hans Peter Hanssen, Diary of a Dying Empire, Bloomington, Indiana, 1955; and C. Paul Vincent, The Politics of Hunger. The Allied Blockade of Germany, 1915–1919, Athens, Ohio and London, 1985; See also D. A. Janicki, “The British Blockade During World War I: The Weapon of Deprivation,” Student Pulse 6: 6, 2014, http://www.studentpulse. com/articles/899/the-british-blockade-during-world-war-i-the-weapon-of-deprivation (accessed September 22, 2016).

18

Material Modernity

copper, brass, nickel and tin to government-run collecting points. Oil for both cooking and fuel was also in short supply, so schoolchildren were likewise exhorted to collect fruit pits from which oil would then be extracted, while landowners were urged to plant sunflowers and poppies, also a valuable source of oil. As the war progressed, leather became scarce as well and shoes therefore ever rarer. By December 1916, one had first to prove the need for a new pair, whereby a Bezugsschein, or acquisition permit, would be issued by the government.14 But even with the permit it was difficult to find any to buy, especially in Berlin. While travelling in Dresden in the winter of 1917, Dadaist Raoul Hausmann wrote to his wife Elfriede asking her to send his Bezugschein for shoes to him there, where he thought might more easily find a pair than in the capital.15 Advertisements abounded for Sohlenschoner (sole protectors), little pieces of scrap leather that could be tacked onto the soles of the shoes to lengthen their life.16 When there were no more leather scraps, shoemakers used wood to re-sole shoes, and by July 1918 clogs had become “the unwilling fashion of the hour” for Germans everywhere.17 Children often went barefoot in the summer, even to school, their parents told by the government that it was “their patriotic duty” to save their precious shoes for the winter.18 Rubber, always an import item and especially valuable to the military, was also now unobtainable, so tires on civilian vehicles were requisitioned. Perhaps the oddest campaign of all was for hair (Figure 1.3), which could be used as an insulation material in drive belts and even as thread.19 In 1917, it sold for between fourteen and twenty marks per kilo at the official government collection points.20 In an attempt to make ends meet, many women actually cut their hair to sell, a fact not usually noted in discussions of the popular page boy haircut of the 1920s. By the end of the war, shorter hair for women was in fact already not uncommon. Indeed, now Ersatz (replacement, or substitute) became the watchword of the day. Be it for coffee made out of acorns, shoes made out of wood, or thread made out of hair, advertisements abounded in the press that the surrogate products 14

15

16 17 18 19

20

Mitteilungen der Reichsbekleidungsstelle (henceforth referred to as Mitteilungen) 1: 2, December 23, 1916, unpaginated insert after 24. Raoul Hausmann to Elfriede Schaefer, December 7, 1917, in Eva Züchner, ed., Raoul Hausmann in Berlin 1900–1933, Berlin, 1998, 66. See, for example, Die praktische Berlinerin 13: 4, October 22, 1916, 19. Blücher, An English Wife in Berlin, 233–4. “Geht barfuß!,” Mitteilungen 1: 25, July 28, 1917, 96. See, for example “Frauenhaar—eine Hilfe bei der Garnknappheit,” Die praktische Berlinerin 14: 19, February 10, 1918, 11. Caroline Hermannsdorfer, ed., Haus und Herd in schwerer Zeit. Ein Wegweiser zum Durchalten in Küche und Haushalt, Munich, 1917, 130–8, gives details about government compensation provided in 1917 for all manner of things, including hair; see, too, Die Praktische Berlinerin 13: 43, July 22, 1917, 12.

Making Lemonade out of Lemons

19

Figure 1.3 Jupp Wiertz, Collect Combed-out Women’s Hair! Our Industry Needs it for Drive Belts [Sammelt ausgekämmtes Frauenhaar! Unsere Industrie braucht es für Treibriemen], 1918. Colour lithograph, 72.4 × 47.6 cm. Stanford: Hoover Institution Archives, Poster Collection (GE 189). Photo: Hoover Institution.

20

Material Modernity

merchants hawked were just as good as the real thing. Governments got involved as well, funding studies like one researched and written by the director of the botanical gardens in Berlin, a Prussian state entity.21 A lengthy 418 pages, Ersatzstoffe aus dem Pflanzenreich (Substitute Materials from the World of Plants) is illustrated with detailed drawings and instructs on how to cultivate, harvest, and make creative use of virtually anything growing within the borders of Germany. Municipalities mounted large exhibitions of Ersatz products, like the one in Vienna advertised by a poster depicting the Central Powers as an island surrounded by enemy boats, with a chemist materializing out of the smoke from the industrial complex below (Figure 1.4).22 His work to find creative substitutes for all manner of things, it suggests, will ultimately thwart the blockade.23 But of all the shortages, that of cloth was arguably the most acute. The reason for this is simple. Germany produced little of the raw materials it needed to make textiles but instead imported them.24 Cotton came primarily from the United States; wool from England, New Zealand, and Australia; silk from France, Italy, Japan, and China; and flax (the fiber that constitutes linen) mostly from Russia. With the outbreak of hostilities, the primary sources of flax and wool were cut off, and then, with the imposition of the blockade in December, of cotton as well. Initially silk could be procured from Italy via Austria and neutral Switzerland, leading to a curious proliferation in women’s magazines of fashions made out of silk at the beginning of the war. But with the entry of Italy into the conflict on the side of the Allies in May 1915 that source too dried up. As with other products, Germany had stockpiled very little of these raw materials, and most of what did exist was saved for the military. For those on the home front, the situation as regards cloth and clothing was thus arguably even more dire than that of food, of which Germany produced at least some.

21

22

23

24

L. Diels, Ersatzstoffe aus dem Pflanzenreich: Ein Hilfsbuch zum Erkennen und Verwerten der heimischen Pflanze für Zwecke der Ernährung und Industrie in Kriegs- und Friedenszeiten, Stuttgart, 1918. The Central Powers of the First World War in Europe were Austria-Hungary, Germany, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire. On this exhibition, see Andrea Brenner, “Das Maisgespenst im Stacheldraht. Improvisation und in der Wiener Lebensmittelversorgung des ersten Weltkriegs” and Hubert Weitensfelder, “Kriegsware. Stoffe in Produktion und Alltag,” both in Alfred Pfoser and Andreas Weigl, eds., Im Epizentrum des Zusammenbruchs. Wien im Ersten Weltkrieg, Vienna, 2013, 140–9 and 172–7. Texts about Germany’s important textile industry at this time are many. For an extensive though not exhaustive list, see note 6 of Maria Makela, “Artificial Silk Girls: Rayon as Silk’s Double in Weimar German,” in Deborah Ascher Barnstone, ed., The Doppelgänger, Oxford, 2016, 206–7.

Making Lemonade out of Lemons

21

Figure 1.4 Alfred Offner, Substitute Materials Exhibition [Ersatzmittel-Ausstellung], 1918. Colour lithograph, 127 × 94 cm. Stanford: Hoover Institution Archives, Poster Collection (AU 297). Photo: Hoover Institution.

The Mitteilungen der Reichsbekleidungsstelle (The Notifications of the Imperial Clothing Authority) are eloquent on this point. Created in June 1916, the Reichsbekeidungsstelle was charged with administering the supply of textiles that remained after the needs of the military were met; of allotting those supplies on

22

Material Modernity

a priority basis to governmental agencies, hospitals and other deserving institutions; of rationing private civilian use; and of encouraging the invention of surrogate fabrics.25 The Mitteilungen—published irregularly between December 1916 and the end of the war, but usually at least twice a month— publicized the various government decrees, regulations and ordinances as regards textiles and clothing, which became ever more draconian as the months passed. It also printed articles explaining the sometimes confusing measures and offered helpful tips about how to make do, pegging itself as an “indispensable guidebook” in this time of extreme need.26 The rules and regulations about Bezugsscheine—certificates of permit to purchase—are of particular note.27 A woman who wanted a new blouse, for example, was required to demonstrate need by completing a form that enumerated the contents of her wardrobe at the time of request. By March 1917, these could include no more than two everyday dresses, one Sunday dress, one pinafore, two blouses or jackets, one cloak or cape, one shawl, one dressing gown, three aprons, one pair of winter gloves and six handkerchiefs.28 If the authorities concurred that she was indeed in need of a new blouse because what she had was threadbare, she would receive the necessary permit to purchase. This she would then bring to a merchant, who was allowed to sell her the item only when provided with the appropriate documentation. The possibilities of tricking the system were initially many, but they diminished as time went on and the authorities were deputized to visit the homes of petitioners to assess veracity of need by examining their wardrobes.29 Those who were shown to have provided false information could be penalized with imprisonment of up to six months or a fine of up to 15,000 marks, and their excess items confiscated. As the Mitteilungen opined, anyone “who seeks to benefit himself at the expense of the general populace during this time of textile and shoe shortages deserves no consideration whatsoever.” Notably, as supplies of cloth and clothing dwindled,

25

26 27

28 29

Legislation enacted at the outset of the war allowed for the imposition of economic measures deemed necessary because of the conflict, and the creation of the Reichsbekleidungsstelle was among these. See the “Gesetz über die Ermächtigung des Bundesrates zu wirtschaftlichen Massnahmen,” August 4, 1914, Reichsgesetzblatt 327, §3. See, too, “Bekanntmachung über die Regelung des Verkehrs mit Web-, Wirk-, Strick- und Schuhwaren,” as amended December 23, 1916, reprinted in Sämtliche Kriegs-Gesetze- Verordnungen und -Bekanntmachungen 4, 1917, 615; and also in Mitteilungen 1: 2, December 23, 1916, 3–5. “Zum Geleit,” Mitteilungen 1: 1, December 12, 1916, n.p. “Neue Richtlinien der Reichsbekleidungsstelle für Erteilung von Bezugscheinen vom 27. März 1917,” Mitteilungen 1: 9, April 2, 1917, 3–7. “Liste der Stoff-Höchstmaße,” Mitteilungen 1: 9, April 2, 1917, Beilage. On this, see “Neue Richtlinien II. Fassung der Reichsbekleidungsstelle für Erteilung von Bezugsscheinen vom 13. Oktober 1917,” Mitteilungen 1: 36, October 13, 1917, 163–6.

Making Lemonade out of Lemons

23

even those with the necessary permissions simply could not find the items in question in stores; if available at all they were of such inferior quality that they all too often fell apart before long.30 The Mitteilungen also publicized regulations about the maximum amount of cloth that could be used to produce virtually any item of clothing, and as time went on the amounts were reduced. In March 1917, a tailor, seamstress, or manufacturer of readymade clothing could, for example, use a maximum of 4.5 meters of cloth that was 130 cm wide to make a woman’s dress, 1.6 meters to make a blouse, and 2.75 meters to make a pinafore.31 By October of that year they could still use 1.6 meters for a blouse, but the figures had decreased to 4.25 meters for a dress and 2.50 for a pinafore.32 Patternmakers like Ullstein were no longer allowed to produce patterns that utilized more than the stipulated amounts, and women encouraged to use lightweight, loosely woven cloth rather than heavy, densely woven textiles because it saved on raw materials.33 As everyone accommodated themselves to the new regulations, women’s fashions in particular changed. Beginning in the winter of 1916, skirts and dresses became shorter, acquired a leaner silhouette, and were sewn out of two, three or even four different kinds of fabric that had been scavenged from old clothing. Patchwork became fashionable, and women’s magazines like Die praktische Berlinerin (The Practical Berlin Woman) featured articles and even regular columns with titles like “Wie spare ich Stoff?” (How do I Save on Cloth?) (Figure 1.5), “Umarbeitungen” (Reworking), “Neues aus Altem” (New out of Old), and “Kleider aus zweierlei Stoffe. Verwendung von Resten” (Dresses out of Two Kinds of Material. On the Use of Scraps).34 Municipalities sponsored dropin workshops to teach women how to dismantle old clothing and turn it into new. Praising such establishments, the Mitteilungen declaimed that “here once again there is proof that in the [home] economy as in nature nothing need be 30

31 32

33

34

Blücher, An English Wife in Berlin, 233–4, tells the tale of an acquaintance who wanted to buy her daughter a pair of boots, like clothing also under the jurisdiction of Reichsbekleidungsstelle. After visiting shop after shop trying to locate a single pair in the appropriate size, she finally found one and purchased the boots, only to discover on the first wearing that they fell apart. The boots were in fact not made of leather but an inferior Ersatz material. “Liste der Stoff-Höchstmaße,” Mitteilungen 1: 9, April 2, 1917, Beilage. “Aenderung der Stoff-Höchstmaß-Liste nach der Bekanntmachung der Reichsbekleidungsstelle vom 13. Oktober 1917,” Mitteilungen 1: 36, October 13, 1917, Beilage. See, for example, items number fourteen and fifteen on so-called “Freiliste,” or list of cloth for which no Bezugsschein was required, in the “Bekanntmachung der Reichsbekleidungsstelle über Aenderung der Freiliste,” Mitteilungen 1: 36, October 13, 1917, 161–2. These articles and regular columns appeared with increasing frequency beginning in 1916. A very small sampling of these would include “Neues aus Altem,” Die praktische Berlinerin 13: 14, December 31, 1916, 9; the “Sonderheft Umarbeitungen,” Die Praktishe Berlinerin 13: 37, June 10, 1917; and “Das Umarbeiten von Kleidungsstücken und Verwendung älterer Stoffe,” Wiener Mode 31: 8, January 15, 1918, 250–1.

24

Material Modernity

Figure 1.5 ‘How Do I Save on Cloth?’ [“Wie spare ich Stoff?”], in The Practical Berlin Woman: Weekly Magazine for Housekeeping, Fashion, and Needle-craft [Die Praktische Berlinerin: Wochenschrift für Haushalt, Mode und Handarbeiten], vol. 12, no. 29, 16 April 1916, cover page. Berlin: Staastbibliothek zu Berlin, Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz. Photo: bpk Bildagentur/Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin/Art Resource, NY.

Making Lemonade out of Lemons

25

wasted for [now] there is simply no such thing as an unusable object.”35 The government, via the Mitteilungen and other venues, encouraged Germans not to be embarrassed by wearing clothing that was obviously darned. Declaring it, on the contrary, a “patriotic honor” to wear obviously used but well-mended clothing, it asserted that “in these times excessive luxury in any form is contrary to the [German] spirit.”36 Especially interesting in this regard, because it is usually not noted in histories of fashion, is the policy on corsets. By October 1917, women were required to obtain a Bezugsschein to purchase a new corset, doubtless a hurdle for many who would have to provide proof of need to male officials deputized to go through wardrobes and determine whether the request was justified.37 Now deemed a superfluous luxury, corsets began to fall out of favor, as, one by one, women abandoned them. The health-conscious efforts of those involved in the turn-of-the-century reform clothing movement notwithstanding, it was in fact the lack of cloth that led to the downfall of this particular item of clothing in Germany. Still, even with these measures there was not enough cloth to go around, as is evident in the increasingly alarmist tone and content of the official notices published in the Mitteilungen over the course of 1917 and 1918. Beginning in May 1917, for example, one could no longer get acquisition permits to purchase a new set of burial clothes for deceased relatives (a long-standing and time-honored tradition in Germany), and after mid-October coffins, likewise, could not legally be draped in cloth during funerary ceremonies.38 By July 1917, restaurants, hotels, and bars were no longer allowed to set their tables with cloth napkins, nor could they, after the end of August, use cloth table and bed coverings. Though these were not yet requisitioned, so as to protect their condition for possible future use elsewhere (such as for bandages in hospitals) their use on tables and beds was prohibited. Paper products, described below, were to be substituted.39 In July 1918, all curtains made out of cotton, linen, or wool were requisitioned throughout

35 36 37

38

39

“Eine nachahmenswerte Einrichtung,” Mitteilungen 1: 12, April 28, 1917, 31. “Krieg und Luxus,” Mitteilungen 1: 5, February 26, 1917, 19. Excepted here from the requirement to show a Bezugsschein were orthopedic corsets prescribed by a physician. See “Neue Richtlinien II. Fassung der Reichsbekleidungsstelle für Erteilung von Bezugsscheinen vom 13. Oktober 1917,” Mitteilungen 1: 36, October 13, 1917, 163–6. “Unzulässigkeit der Ausstellung Bezugsscheinen für Leichenbekleidung,” Mitteilungen 1: 15, May 19, 1917, 43; and “Neue Richtlinien II. Fassung der Reichsbekleidungsstelle für Erteilung von Bezugsscheinen vom 13. Oktober 1917,” Mitteilungen 1: 36, October 13, 1917, 163–6. “Bekanntmachung der Reichsbekleidungsstelle über die Verwendung von Wäsche in Gastwirtschaften,” Mitteilungen 1: 23, July 14, 1917, 86; and “Bekanntmachung der Reichsbekleidungsstelle über Beschlagnahme der im Besitz von Hotels, Gast- und Schankwirtschaften und ähnlichen Betrieben sowie Wäscheverleihgeschäften befindlichen Bett-, Haus- und Tischwäsche,” Mitteilungen 1: 29, August 25, 1917, 118–19.

26

Material Modernity

Germany so that the valuable long and sturdy lengths of cloth could be reconstituted into fiber that would be woven or knitted into textiles more productively used elsewhere.40 Indeed, the used textile business became hugely profitable, and the pages of wartime and post-war newspapers and periodicals are filled with ads of entrepreneurs seeking cloth of any kind. Illegal because businesses and private citizens alike were technically required to bring items they wished to sell to government collecting points where they would be paid a set price, this black market flourished because it was more lucrative than the official channels.41 As with everything else, Ersatz materials of various kinds compensated for the lack of wool, cotton, silk, and flax. Paper cloth, for example, fulfilled many of the military and civilian needs toward the end of the war and on into the inflationary era, when Germany had access again to the international market but little purchase power.42 Treated with a solution that made it water-resistant and touted as more hygienic than traditional cloth, paper cloth could be washed a number of times without disintegrating, and was used for everything from children’s clothing and uniforms to underwear, women’s dresses, napkins, sheets, carpets and stuffing for duvets.43 Schwitters made explicit reference to such trends in a 1921 collage, Mz. 180 Figurine (Figure 1.6), which features a woman in black dress, her apron clipped from newsprint. An inscription below (not pictured here) reads “Papier ist die

40

41

42

43

Private residences were excepted, as were curtains made out of artificial silk, half-silk, and paper. See “Bekanntmachung der Reichsbekleidungsstelle über Beschlagnahme, Bestandsaufnahme und Enteignung von Sonnenvorhängen und ähnlichen Gegenständen,” Mitteilungen 2: 30, July 27, 1918, 209–12. As is evident in the notifications in the Mitteilungen, the government tried to control these illegal practices but frequently could not. Note, for example, the implicit frustration expressed about private citizens selling their stores of cotton and linen cloths of various kinds to unsanctioned nongovernment sources in “Beschlagnahme von Tischwäsche in Gewerbetreiben, Verkauf von Leinenund Baumwollgeweben,” Mitteilungen 2: 16, April 20, 1918, 125–6. For a humorous take on this deadly serious situation, see “Das gute Geschäft,” Die Pille 1: 3, September 15, 1920, 60–3. This satirical short story chronicles what happens when one thousand wool blankets stowed in a military storage shed in the Berlin district of Moabit were accidentally discovered by a worker at the facility, unnoticed under a pile of cooking utensils. He realizes their value on the black market, and convinces the night watchman to cooperate in a caper to steal and sell them illegally. It goes awry, however, when so many shysters get involved that the facility’s government inspector discovers and makes off with them himself before the deal is sealed. Notably, Die Pille was published weekly in Hannover, as noted above an important center of Germany’s textile processing industry. The periodical was a favorite of Germany’s artistic and literary avant-garde, in particular of the Dadaists (who published in it) and their supporters. On Germany’s paper industry, see Wilhelm Heinke and E.O. Rasser, Handbuch der PapierTextilindustrie, Dresden, 1919; and Wilhelm Heinke, Das Spinnpapier, Dresden, 1917. See also Der Weltkrieg 1914–1918. Ereignis und Erinnerung, Berlin, 2004. The Deutsches Historisches Museum owns many examples of paper clothing. On the supposed superior hygienic qualities of paper cloth and its multiple uses, see “Papierwäsche,” Mitteilungen 1: 16, May 26, 1917, 47. “Behandlung von Papiergarnerzeugnissen,” Mitteilungen 2: 3, January 19, 1918, 25, provides tips on how to care for items made out of paper cloth.

Making Lemonade out of Lemons

Figure 1.6 Kurt Schwitters, Mz. 180 Figurine, 1921. Collage of colour, fabric, and paper, on paper, 17.3. × 9.2 cm. Hannover: Sprengel Museum (on loan since 2001 from the Kurt and Ernst Schwitters Foundation). © 2020 ARS, NY/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Photo: bpk Bildagentur/Sprengel Museum/Herling/Gwose/Werner/Art Resource, NY.

27

28

Material Modernity

grosse Mode. Besatz Holz. Ecken abrunden.” This has been translated somewhat incongruously as “Paper is big in fashion. Trimming wood. Smooth the edges” and interpreted as a reference to Schwitters’ interest as a collage artist in paper, which, for him, was allegedly “big in fashion.”44 In the context of the era’s extreme shortage of textiles and the ubiquity of paper clothing, however, it can be read more literally. Paper was, in fact, all the fashion in 1921, not just for Schwitters, the collage artist, but for everyone. Indeed, the second phrase of the inscription (“Besatz Holz”) can be translated not as “trimming wood” but as “vamp wood,” with “vamp” being a reference to a part of a shoe or boot. With leather also in short supply, Germans were, as elaborated above, forced to patch up their shoes with materials of all kinds, including wood. Experiments with other sorts of local plant materials as substitutes for cotton, linen, silk, and wool yielded greater or lesser results, depending on how difficult it was to cultivate the plants in Germany’s climate and also the expense of the production process that turned them into textiles. Initially nettles seemed to be the solution, and a publicity campaign proclaimed them to be the best Ersatz for cotton and urged Germans to harvest them in the wild and cultivate them at home. But for various reasons, rayon—known in Germany as “Kunstseide” or artificial silk—was ultimately the most successful.45 Made out of chemically treated cellulose—the natural polymer that makes up the living cells of all vegetation—the fiber was much touted during and after the war in the inflationary period because it provided the nation with an autarkic source of cloth. Indeed, discoveries about Ersatz textiles were publicized in both specialist and non-specialist journals of the time, as well as in large and widely advertised travelling exhibitions. The one organized by the government in the spring of 1918, for example, was promoted by a poster that features a spider web—perhaps the quintessential Ersatz textile—together with a spinning wheel, yarn, and spindles, one of which morphs into an electric street light illuminating the implied symbolic terrain of wartime Germany and cloth (Figure 1.7).46

44

45

46

Dorothea Dietrich, The Collages of Kurt Schwitters, New York and Melbourne, 1993, 136–8; and John Elderfield, Kurt Schwitters, London, 1985, 79. Alistair O’Neill, “Cuttings and Pastings,” in Christopher Breward and Caroline Evans, eds., Fashion and Modernity, Oxford and New York, 2005, 179–81, repeats the argument but additionally compares the work to some 1935 Schiaparelli designs for hats out of newsprint fabric. On the development of rayon during the war and its multiple valences in the Weimar era, see Makela, “Artificial Silk Girls,” 205–35. The exhibition was reviewed in Die Praktische Berlinerin 14: 24, March 17, 1918, 8. It opened in Berlin at the city’s largest exhibition venue, Die Ausstellungshallen am Zoo, then travelled throughout Germany and Austria.

Making Lemonade out of Lemons

Figure 1.7 Martin Jacoby-Boy, German Fibres Exhibition [Deutsche Faserstoff Ausstellung], 1918. Colour lithograph, 88.5 × 59. 5 cm. London: Imperial War Museum. Photo: IWM.

29

30

Material Modernity

Necessity as the Mother of Invention: New Media and their Reception in Weimar Germany In December 1918, the English aristocrat and resident of Germany, Evelyn Blücher, made a diary entry that aptly describes the situation as regards cloth and clothing one month after the end of the war. Little miseries which seemed but pin-pricks a short time ago are gradually gaining in intensity, until they feel almost like poisonous darts. For years people have been struggling along, supporting as best they could the absence of everything conducive to a decent existence, but now it is almost impossible to bear it any longer. The ancient boots and shoes defy any more mending, the stockings consist of a series of variegated patches, dresses and mantles have been turned and dyed year after year, and most people’s underwear has no recognizable resemblance to the dainty garments of pre-war times. They are of a nameless hue, and look as if they had been fished out of some forgotten patch-bag. As there is no soap, our linen issues from the wash-tub greyer and more hopelessly torn than we ever dared imagine, and certainly the German woman of to-day is the worst clad in all Europe.47

Did things soon improve, either for women or men? Not hardly. Some three and a half years later, in July 1922, Dadaist Raoul Hausmann—then currently in Prerow on the Baltic seaside—wrote to his wife Elfriede in Berlin that he was sending her two shirts. One, he said, had a darn in the front and any number of darns in the back. The cuffs of the other had already been replaced, but the cloth of them did not match that of the shirt, and one of its sleeves had a few darns in it as well. He thought it would be best to take apart the shirts and make a new shirt that had no darns by inserting the good sleeves of the one into the other and then using the removed darned sleeves to make a collar for another shirt.48 Scrimping, saving, repurposing: that was the order of the day as regards cloth and clothing, and this state of things did not improve until the Dawes Plan rescued Germany from its hyperinflation in 1924, allowing the country finally to afford goods on the international market again and import the raw materials it needed to make cloth.

47 48

Blücher, An English Wife in Berlin, 304. Raoul Hausmann and Hedwig Mankiewitz to Elfriede Hausmann, July 10, 1922, in Eva Züchner, ed., Scharfrichter der bürgerlichen Seele: Raoul Hausmann in Berlin 1900–1933: Unveröffentlichte Briefe, Texte, Dokumente aus den Künstler-Archiven der Berlinischen Galerie, Berlin, 1998, 151.

Making Lemonade out of Lemons

31

What, then, were painters to do in this situation? If Germans could not even adequately clothe themselves, how were artists to get canvas? Technically exempt from the regulation to present a Bezugsschein when purchasing cloth because they were likened to “gewerbsmäßigen Verarbeiter” (professional fabricators) and needed it to practice their trade, in fact they could find very little to buy unless they could afford to get it on the black market.49 And the black market for cloth was extensive, as is evidenced by the frustrated tone of the repeated exhortations in the Mitteilungen that businesses and private citizens looking to sell their linens must do it through the approved government agencies.50 Artists like Lovis Corinth and Max Liebermann—both successful, well-established, and very wealthy by the time the blockade began—had enough means to trick the system when possible and continue to paint on linen or cotton canvas. But even Corinth and Liebermann began to use cardboard or wood rather than canvas as the ground for many of their oil paintings at this time, and both exponentially increased their production of prints on more easily accessible paper.51 Younger, less well established artists with the ambition of becoming painters but with far fewer means were often faced with a choice: paint on cardboard or wood (technically very different than canvas and for many not the preferential ground for the medium of oil) or, for the moment, mostly give up traditional oil painting and do something else altogether. Many of the Expressionists thus embraced printmaking toward the end of the war and in the early inflationary years, producing woodcuts and especially lithographs organized topically in large portfolios. Hannah Höch, Raoul Hausmann, John Heartfield, and other Dadaists chose, instead, photocollage as their alternative medium of choice. Made of illustrations clipped from the mass media and then affixed to a paper or cardboard ground, such work obviated the need for canvas and took advantage of widely accessible and relatively inexpensive photographic reproductions for its imagery. For his part, Kurt Schwitters began to make collages on paper (like Mz. 180 Figurine) as well as assemblages of paper and threedimensional objects affixed to wood, cardboard or glass and elaborated with paint

49 50

51

“Kunstmaler–Verarbeiter,” Mitteilungen 1: 26, August 4, 1917, 102. See, for example, “Beschlagnahme von Tischwäsche in Gewerbetreiben, Verkauf von Leinen- und Baumwollgeweben,” Mitteilungen 2: 16, April 20, 1918, 125–6. Accounting is complicated, but a survey of Lovis Corinth’s print production is telling. Between 1891 and 1913, he made an average of about eleven prints a year. Between 1914 and 1923, the year before the Dawes plan was instituted, he made an average of 112 prints a year. In 1924 and 1925, the year of Corinth’s death, he made about twenty-five prints a year. See both Karl Schwarz, Das graphische Werk von Lovis Corinth, San Francisco, 1985; and Heinrich Müller, Die späte Graphik von Lovis Corinth, Hamburg, 1960.

32

Material Modernity

(like Merz Picture 32a and Merz Picture Thirty-One).52 Mostly detritus that he found on the streets of Hannover or elsewhere, the bits of metal, wire, cloth, wood and paper were simply too dear to waste at this time of extreme material poverty. Like Caroline Hermannsdorfer, upbeat editor of a popular 1917 how-to book who told her readers that they had to pick up and save “every scrap of paper in the house, on the street, and in the train” for possible future and different use, Schwitters roamed the streets of Germany’s cities and towns, scavenging by necessity.53 But the artist was no pessimist about his country’s situation. On the contrary, he passionately believed in the process of alchemy and the transformative potential it held for the trash and junk he collected. Later in life Schwitters said that the entire aesthetic enterprise of Merz was the “prayer of thanks for the victorious outcome of the war, since once again, peace had won. Everything was in ruins in any case, and now it was a question of building something new out of the broken pieces.”54 The artist meant this quite literally, though this and its attendant political implications are normally not acknowledged. After four long years of war and the British blockade, material goods in Germany were in fact in “broken pieces,” especially textiles. Schwitters was attracted exactly to this—to the tattered and torn, to the tawdry scraps of cloth and other broken bits of objects that he reconfigured by means of a process first of what he called “Entformung” (unmolding), then of “Umformung” (transformation).55 His good

52

53 54

55

The following enumeration of extant work is only approximate, but it shows a gradual decrease in the number of works Schwitters produced on canvas between the beginning of the war in 1914 and the end of the inflationary era in 1924, and a corresponding increase in those with supports of card/pasteboard, wood, metal or glass. In 1914 he made fourteen paintings on canvas, and seven on card/pasteboard, while in 1915, he produced the same number on canvas (five) as on card/pasteboard or wood. In 1916, the first year that the shortage of cloth became critical, Schwitters made only six paintings on canvas, but seventeen on card/pasteboard. In 1917, he produced four on canvas and sixteen on card/pasteboard; in 1918, six on canvas and six on card/pasteboard; and in 1919, one on canvas and eight on card/pasteboard. 1919 was the year the artist began in a consequential way to incorporate three-dimensional found objects into his work (“Merz”), using canvas as a support for only two, but card/pasteboard or wood for seven. In 1920, Schwitters made no paintings on canvas and only one on cardboard, but he made thirteen Merz works on card/pasteboard, wood, or metal. In 1921, he produced only one painting on canvas, but three Merz works on canvas and six on card/ pressboard or wood. In 1922, he made four paintings on canvas and three on card/pasteboard or wood, in addition to two Merz works on card/pasteboard. The year 1923 saw the production of three paintings on canvas and two on card/pasteboard, and of none on canvas but fifteen on card/ pressboard or wood. In 1924, Schwitters made three paintings on canvas and three Merz works on either card/pasteboard or wood. The above enumeration is based on the extant works listed in Orchard and Schulz, Kurt Schwitters. Catalogue Raisonné, vol. 1 and vol. 2, 1923–36, Ostfildern-Ruit, 2003; Merz-, I-, and Stempelzeichnungen on any material are not included, nor are prints. Hermannsdorfer, Haus und Herd in schwerer Zeit, 130–8. As cited in Lach, Kurt Schwitters. Das literarische Werk, vol. 5, 335, and translated by Burmeister, “Related Opposites,” 146. See Schwitters’ description of this process in “Die Merzmalerei,” the programmatic explanation that accompanied his July 1919 exhibition at the Sturm Gallery and published in Der Sturm 10: 4, July 1919, 61; reprinted in Lach, Kurt Schwitters. Das literarische Werk, vol. 5, 37.

Making Lemonade out of Lemons

33

friend Christof Spengemann implicitly acknowledged this when he commented in 1919 that “the original function of the objects play no role” in the Merz pictures, in which box tops, tickets, playing cards, and newspaper clippings become surface; string and wire become line; wire-netting becomes overpainting; greaseproof paper becomes varnish; cotton or velvet become softness.56 By rendering the once functional non-functional and purely artistic, Schwitters tipped his hat to the Ersatzkultur around him in which similar transformative processes were at work, as cellulose morphed into rayon, acorns into coffee, paper into clothing, and wood into shoes. At this time of extreme material and economic poverty, such flexibility of function had redemptive potential.57 Not everyone appreciated Schwitters’ optimism, however, as Ersatz reminded most of just how far the nation had fallen from its pre-war position of material plenty. To be sure, rayon would revolutionize fashion in the late 1920s, which capitalized on the fiber’s unique drape and ability to absorb dyes with a particular intensity. But initially there were many kinks in fabrics like Kunstseide. Up until about 1923, for example, it was immediately identifiable because it wrinkled easily and had an undesirable high sheen. This was precisely the problem with all the Ersatz products that flooded Germany’s markets between about 1915 and 1924. Tea and coffee made out of grains, herbs or acorns grown in Germany simply did not taste as good as the real thing; clothing made out of paper was scratchy; and soles of shoes made out of wood were not as comfortable as leather. Far from serving as evidence of Germany’s ingenuity in difficult times, for many this Ersatzkultur was only further proof of the country’s decline. Perhaps most succinct on this was the popular author, lecturer, and cultural critic Alexander von Gleichen-Rußwurm, great-grandson of Friedrich Schiller. Writing in 1920, he argued that the country was now populated by “Ersatzmenschen” (Ersatz people) who not only wore Ersatz products and ate Ersatz food, but who had in fact actually become Ersatz themselves. Bemoaning the demise of Friedrich Nietzsche’s “Übermensch” (superman), GleichenRußwurm posited the contemporary Ersatzmensch as essentially fake, superficial,

56

57

Christof Spengemann, “Kurt Schwitters,” Der Cicerone 11: 18, 1919, 578. Spengemann is here echoing Schwitters’ own statements in “Die Merzmalerei.” Though Richter as cited in note twelve was commenting primarily on Schwitters’ allegedly apolitical stance and not specifically on the material exigencies out of which Merz evolved, his words simultaneously address how the artist “loved” and redeemed the detritus he scavenged to “an honored place in life” through his art. On this essentially upbeat, optimistic artistic practice, see also Webster, Kurt Merz Schwitters, especially the prologue, xv–xviii; and Burmeister, “Related Opposites,” which expands on Webster’s observations in its comparison of Schwitters and Merz to the more pessimistic Berlin Dadaists and photomontage.

34

Material Modernity

and inauthentic, and the nation in which she lived empty, hollow, and without ideals.58 In this context, it is perhaps not surprising that the early critical reception of Merz was decidedly negative, for Schwitters’ use of materials confronted Germans with the shambles their country was in. Though he believed that the tawdry scraps of things in his assemblages were both transformed and transformative, and though his parsimonious artistic practice could even be considered patriotic in that it heeded the government mandate to avoid luxury and waste,59 most of his viewers were merely reminded by his work of Ersatz and all its downsides. I suggest that Merz was itself Ersatz and considered by contemporaries as such. Neither traditional oil painting on canvas nor sculpture or drawing, it was a kind of substitute, like any number of other countless Ersatz products with which the Germans were forced to contend because they could not get the real thing. Two examples—one visual, one textual—must suffice here to substantiate this claim. Though good-naturedly humorous, a caricature about the artist published in the popular magazine Jugend (Youth) in January 1921 pointedly relates Schwitters’ assemblages to the material poverty of the times and Ersatz (Figure 1.8). Ironically titled Heilger Dada hilf (Holy Dada Help Me), it shows the unnamed Schwitters at work in his studio, nailing bits and pieces of things to a plank of wood.60 As yet incomplete, the assemblage features a wooden cut-out figure clothed in blue, a male head with a spool for an eye, some unformed scraps of wood, and—most notably—a “Brotkarte” (permit to purchase bread), a partially obscured “Fle(isch)kart(e)” (permit to purchase meat), and a pink star inscribed with the term “Nahseide” (“near” silk, another popular term for “Kunstseide,” or artificial silk). With the war now over but the country still in shambles, impoverished, and as yet unable to purchase much at all on the international market, Germans were still rationed and forced to make do with subpar Ersatz products, here associated with Schwitters’ Merz activities. Paul Erich Küppers was more caustic in his 1920 summary of Schwitters’ artistic practice in an article that reviewed Hannover’s contemporary art scene for the influential Münchener Neueste Nachrichten (Munich’s Newest News).61

58 59 60 61

Alexander von Gleichen-Rußwurm, Ersatzmenschen, Leipzig, 1920. “Krieg und Luxus,” Mitteilungen 1: 5, February 26, 1917, 19. I am most grateful to Adrian Sudhalter for calling my attention to this image. Paul Erich Küppers, “Hannoverscher Kunstbrief,” Münchner Neueste Nachrichten, January 29, 1920, morning edition, reprinted in Ursula Kocher and Isabel Schulz, eds., Kurt Schwitters. Alle Texte, vol. 3, Die Sammelkladen 1919–1923, Bad Langensalza, 2014, 557–60.

Making Lemonade out of Lemons

35

Figure 1.8 H. O. Binder, ‘Holy Dada Help Me’ [“Heiliger Dada Hilf ”], in Youth: Munich Illustrated Weekly for Art and Life [Jugend: Münchener illustrierte Wochenschrift für Kunst und Leben], vol. 26, no. 21, 1 January 1921, page 32.

Dubbing the artist a talented but undisciplined “charlatan”—that is, a person who pretends to know or be something in order to obtain money, fame, or other advantages—he referred in his essay to Schwitters as but another “Captain of Köpenick.” The reference here is to the infamous real-life ex-convict Wilhelm Voigt, who—in 1906 in the small town of Köpenick just southeast of Berlin— impersonated a Prussian Guards officer by donning a pieced-together uniform scavenged from thrift stores. Claiming to be acting in the name of the emperor, Voigt commandeered eleven soldiers, captured the mayor of Köpenick, held him

36

Material Modernity

hostage for allegedly cooking the books, and then successfully made off with the town’s treasury. Per Küppers, like Voigt Schwitters is an impostor and his art an elaborate fake, a mere substitute for the real thing. For just as Voigt got his uniform from second-hand stores and claimed to be acting in the name of the emperor, so too did Schwitters scavenge bits of cloth and other detritus from the streets and claim to be acting in the name of art. Küppers’ disavowal of Schwitters is all the more notable because of his credentials as a supporter of modern art.62 An art historian who wrote his dissertation on the Renaissance painter Domenico Ghirlandaio, he went on in 1916 to become the first director of the Kestnergesellschaft (Kestner Society) in Hannover. His untimely death in 1922 cut his service short, but Küppers’ early leadership of the organization was critical in putting Hannover on the map as a center for German modernism, in particular Impressionism and Expressionism. Under his direction, the Kestnergesellschaft featured exhibitions of work by Karl Caspar, Lovis Corinth, Adolf Hölzel, Willy Jaeckel, Alexej von Jawlensky, Cesar Klein, Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Max Liebermann, Ludwig Meidner, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Oskar Moll, Emil Nolde, Karl Schmidt-Rotluff, and Albert Weisgerber, among others. Küppers was likewise an admirer of Cubism, and published a book on it in 1920.63 Schwitters’ assemblages, however, were seemingly too radical for him. To be sure, together with wife Sophie, Küppers commissioned an inlaid wooden box designed by the artist and reproduced one of his woodcuts in Das Kestnerbuch, a 1919 publication that included texts by Theodor Däubler, Else Lasker-Schüler, Alfred Döblin and Thomas Mann, as well as woodcuts and lithographs by Lyonel Feininger, Erich Heckel, Paul Klee, and others.64 He even allowed Schwitters’ work to be shown at the Kestner in group shows of the Hannover Secession. But it was not until after Küppers’ death that the Merz pictures were prominently featured there.65 His wife later confessed that, however friendly they were with 62

63 64

65

On Küppers and the Kestnergesellschaft, see, especially, Wieland Schmied, ed., Wegbereiter zur modernen Kunst. 50 Jahre Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hannover, 1966. Paul Erich Küppers, Der Kubismus. Ein künstlerisches Formproblem unserer Zeit, Leipzig, 1920. For a reproduction of the 1921 box, see entry no, 931 in Orchard and Schulz, Kurt Schwitters. Catalogue Raisonné, vol. 1, 434. Schwitters’ 1919 woodcut that was published in Das Kestnerbuch— Zwei Kreise—is sandwiched between pp. 128 and 129. Paul Erich Küppers, Das Kestnerbuch, Hannover, 1919. See also entry no. 572 in Orchard and Schulz, Kurt Schwitters. Catalogue Raisonné, vol. 1, 265. Though in 1920 Schwitters exhibited five Merz pictures at the Kestnergesellschaft, it was under the auspices of the Hannover Secession and in a group show doubtless not curated by Küppers. Prior to that, in 1917, 1918, and 1919, he exhibited only paintings and drawings. It was not until 1923, after Küppers’ passing, that the artist exhibited more Merz pictures at the Kestner, and even then only within the context of a show that featured primarily El Lissitzky. Kocher and Schulz, Die Sammelkladen 1919–1923, 1014, 1015.

Making Lemonade out of Lemons

37

Schwitters, for her “the line between originality and nonsense” was often blurred in his Merz work, a sentiment that Küppers evidently shared.66 Notably, Schwitters saved the clipping from the Münchner Neuesten Nachrichten, underlining in it the terms “charlatan” and “Captain of Köpenick.” That the artist then used the moniker to sign a humorous but scathing article he wrote for Herwarth Walden’s Der Sturm about his Hannover art critics is some indication of his perturbation about Küppers’ assessment of him and Merz.67 Space constraints preclude further discussion of Schwitters’ early critical reception. Suffice to say that it typically praises his early oils on canvas but denigrates the collages and assemblages, in language that bespeaks deep-seated cultural anxieties about the status of the nation just after it had lost the war and been humiliated by the terms of the Versailles Treaty.68 With nothing much else to be proud of just then, Germans now also had to deal with the loss of their much-vaunted “culture” and the traditional oil painting on canvas that had in part defined it for so long.69 Now it was “trash,” “refuse,” “garbage,” “rubbish,” “junk,” and, above all, Ersatz that characterized the nation and delineated its worth, in the everyday as in art. Unconventional and thus potentially controversial under any circumstances, the dirty scraps and broken bits of found objects in Schwitters’ assemblages were particularly so at this time and in this place. Ever the consummate repurposer, the artist preserved some of these published reviews in an old school notebook, gluing the newspaper clippings atop lined pages that are scrawled with notes he took while still a boy in school.70 With an advertisement for the business of a certain Max Ahronson from Vogelsdorf

66

67

68

69

70

Sophie Küppers-Lissitzky, “Die ersten Jahre,” in Schmied, Wegbereiter zur modernen Kunst. 50 Jahre Kestner-Gesellschaft, 24. Kurt Schwitters (Painting’s Captain of Köpenick), “TRAN Nummer 7. Generalpardon an meine hannoverschen Kritiker in Merzstil,” Der Sturm 11: 1, April 10, 1920, 2–4. Kocher and Schulz, Die Sammelkladen 1919–1923, 917, incorrectly cites Schwitters’ article as having been published in the January 1920 issue of Der Sturm. Notably, critics responded similarly to Schwitters’ Merz poem “Anna Blume,” discussion of which is beyond the scope of this essay. For a sampling of contemporary reactions to the artist’s visual and literary work, see Kocher and Schulz, Die Sammelkladen 1919–1923. It is a commonplace of historical scholarship that Germans from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries regarded themselves as distinct from other nations by virtue of their achievements in the realms of art, music, and literature. George Mosse, Fritz Stern, Hans Belting, Peter Gay, Peter Viereck, Wolf Lepenies, Robert Kunath, and others have all analyzed from various perspectives this German overestimation of Kultur and its associated aversion to politics, with some arguing that the idealistic, romantic veneration of culture was what led Germany to depart from the “normal” Western course of development and embrace Nazism. Without engaging in this wellknown Sonderweg (special path) debate, I nevertheless use key insights of it in my argument here about the reception of Merz. This “Kritiken” album is preserved in the Kurt Schwitters Archive at the Sprengel Museum, Hannover, and its contents reproduced and commented on in Kocher and Schulz, Die Sammelkladen 1919– 1923, 491–579 and 881–928.

38

Material Modernity

affixed to its cover, the book riffs off the dual meaning in German of the word “Abfälle.” It can connote scraps of things and leftover bits, like the various kinds of leather that Ahronson sold. But it can also mean trash or garbage. By pairing the mostly negative “Kritiken” (reviews) of his work on the inside of the notebook with the “Abfälle” advertised in the ad on the cover, Schwitters both located his artistic inspiration in detritus and succinctly stated his thoughts about those who could not appreciate the potential of material transformation, be it in the form of the ubiquitous Ersatz products of the early Weimar era or in the form of Merz. Their opinions, he suggests, are trash. I conclude with a return to my beginning. “I am a painter. I nail my pictures together.” As one of the first twentieth-century artists to experiment with mixed media assemblage, Schwitters influenced generations of artists to come. This legacy is not only impressive, it is particularly interesting because its origins can be traced back to Germany’s material poverty in the First World War and the inflation, specifically, to the absence of cotton and linen canvas on which to make traditional oil paintings and to the ubiquitous presence of what would in more affluent times pass as rubbish and refuse. In effect, Schwitters made lemonade out of lemons. With Merz—with the tattered, the torn, the tawdry, and the worn—he implicitly urged his fellow Germans to face head-on the exigencies of the times and to celebrate the ingenuity it took to live in them. That most were unable to do so is understandable, but that fact does not diminish Schwitters’ enterprise, which confronted viewers with the harsh day-to-day reality of their existence while at the same time optimistically heralded transcendence of it.

2

Experimentation and Invention in Weaving at the Bauhaus Isabel Wünsche

With the development of modern chemistry, a group of completely new fibers has been added to the few that have been in use for hundreds and even thousands of years. These new synthetic fibers introduce new combinations of properties and thus are drastically challenging our materials as we have known them.1 Anni Albers Where there is wool, there is also a woman who weaves, if only as a pastime.2 Oskar Schlemmer Convinced that women could not “perform the very hard work of stone sculpture, carpentry, wall-painting, wood sculpture, art printing,” the Bauhaus masters promoted a merger of the weaving workshop and the women’s class, so that women would “have a sphere of work appropriate to their natural constitution in which they can be productive.”3 Female students at the Bauhaus with very few exceptions were thus automatically funneled into the weaving workshop, where in addition to weaving they learnt textile arts such as crochet, macramé, spinning, embroidery, and appliqué, but also painting and spraying techniques.4 Walter

1

2

3

4

Anni Albers, “Interrelation of Fiber and Construction,” in idem, On Weaving, New Haven: Princeton University Press, 2017, 43. “Wo Wolle ist, ist auch ein Weib, das webt, und sei’s zum Zeitvertreib.” Oskar Schlemmer, Chronik: “Neun Jahre Bauhaus,” 1928, Bauhaus-Archiv. Quoted in Magdalena Droste, “Die Werkstatt für Weberei” (The Weaving Workshop), in Experiment Bauhaus, exh. cat., Berlin: Bauhaus-Archiv, 1988, 74. MRP March 15, 1921 and StAW no. 3, May 1922, 27–33, cited in Anja Baumhoff, The Gendered World of the Bauhaus, Frankfurt Main: Peter Lang, 2001, 60. Droste, “Die Werkstatt für Weberei,” 74; Michael Siebenbrodt and Lutz Schöbe, Bauhaus 1919–1933 Weimar—Dessau—Berlin, New York: Parkstone International, 2009, 137.

39

40

Material Modernity

Gropius and the Council of Masters justified this decision with the argument that women thought best in two dimensions only.5 Thus, at the premier art school and stronghold of modernist art, architecture, and design in Weimar Germany, the weaving workshop was almost uniformly viewed as the most suitable niche for female students. Despite this relegation to “women’s work” and the traditionally domestic handicrafts of spinning, weaving, and embroidery as well as the lack of any possibility for obtaining journeyman weaver certification until 1930, the weavers at the Bauhaus eagerly and successfully pursued new avenues in textile design and production. They systematically explored the properties of fibers, the specifics of the weaving techniques, and the economical use of fabrics in upholstery, home décor, and interior architecture. When Gunta Stölzl, master of the weaving workshop from 1926 to 1931, left the Bauhaus, she proudly noted that “the cultural influence of our work on the textile industry and on other workshops is clearly in evidence today. Those who have been trained by us are now occupying leading positions in the mechanical weaving mills, workshops and schools.”6 The Bauhaus weaving workshop first opened its doors in 1919 and was led by Johannes Itten, the so-called master of form, and Helene Börner, the master of works.7 Georg Muche, who directed the workshop from 1921 to 1927, focused on the economic organization of the workshop and increased its profitability by ensuring that its textile designs could be produced in bulk.8 He also turned away from the traditional weaving loom and towards industrial weaving techniques and the marketing of the so-called Bauhaus fabrics.9 In the Weimar Bauhaus, decorative fabrics, wall coverings, and upholstery fabrics emerged along with wall hangings and rugs, many of which found their way into Gropius’ office, the Sommerfeld House, and the Haus am Horn.10 5 6

7

8 9

10

Baumhoff, The Gendered World of the Bauhaus, 53–75. “der kulturelle einfluß unserer arbeit auf die textilindustrie und andere werkstätten ist heute deutlich sichtbar,—unsere ausgebildeten kräfte nehmen in mechanischen webereien und in werkstätten und an schulen leitende stellungen ein.” Stölzl, “die entwicklung der bauhausweberei,” bauhaus. zeitschrift für gestaltung, no. 2 (July 1931) (4). On the history of the weaving workshop, see Droste, “Die Werkstatt für Weberei,” 73–5; Droste, “Anpassung und Eigensinn. Die Werbereiwerkstatt des Bauhauses” (Adaptation and Stubbornness: The Weaving Workshop at the Bauhaus), in Das Bauhaus webt: Die Textilwerkstatt am Bauhaus (The Bauhaus Weaves: The Textile Workshop at the Bauhaus), Berlin: GH Verlag, 1998, 11–20; Siebenbrodt/ Schöbe, Bauhaus 1919–1933 Weimar—Dessau—Berlin, 137–42; Hans M. Wingler, The Bauhaus: Weimar, Dessau, Berlin, Chicago, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1978, 335–41, 461–5. Droste, “Die Werkstatt für Weberei,” 73. Sigrid Wortmann Weltge, Bauhaus Textiles: Women Artists and the Weaving Workshop, London: Thames and Hudson, 1993, 90–1. Droste, “Die Werkstatt für Weberei,” 73; Siebenbrodt/Schöbe, Bauhaus 1919–1933 Weimar— Dessau—Berlin, 137.

Experimentation and Invention in Weaving at the Bauhaus

41

After the move to Dessau in 1926, the weaving workshop was set up anew with a variety of looms, including a countermarch loom, a shaft machine, a Jacquard loom, and a carpet-knotting frame; the workshop also acquired its own dyeing facilities.11 Gunta Stölzl (1897–1983), who had trained in the weaving workshop from 1920 to 1925 and took over its leadership in 1926, restructured the workshop, subdividing it into a teaching unit and a production unit.12 While new students were being taught in the classroom workshop, the trained weavers in the production workshop could work on pattern samples for industry as well as on one-of-a-kind pieces with a stronger artistic orientation (Figure 2.1). The objective now was to develop affordable, durable, contemporary textiles for a broad market.

Figure 2.1 Group portrait of the Bauhaus weavers, 1928, unknown photographer, with permission of the Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin. Top row left to right: Lisbeth Oestreicher, Gertrud Preiswerk, Lena Bergner, Grete Reichardt. Bottom row left to right: Lotte Beese, Anni Albers, Ljuba Monastirsky, Rosa Bergner, Gunta Stölzl, Otti Berger, Kurt Wanke. 11 12

Gunta Stölzl, “die entwicklung der bauhausweberei” (2). Jeannine Fiedler and Peter Feierabend, eds., Bauhaus, Cologne: Könemann, 2000, 472–3. On Gunta Stölzl’s biography, see “Gunta Stölzl,” Frauen im Design: Berufsbilder und Lebenswege um 1900 / Women in Design: Careers and Life Histories since 1900, exh. cat. Stuttgart: Design Center, 1989, 228–31; “Gunta Stölzl,” in Ulrike Müller, Bauhaus-Frauen. Meisterinnen in Kunst, Handwerk und Design (Women at the Bauhaus. Female Masters in Art, Crafts, and Design), Berlin: Insel Verlag, 2014, 42–9; Gunta Stölzl: Bauhaus Master, ed. Monika Stadler and Yael Aloni, New York: MoMA, 2009.

42

Material Modernity

In this essay, I focus on the weavers’ experiments with synthetic fibers after the school’s move to Dessau in 1925. Their innovations were motivated by the overall concept of material studies that had shaped art education at the Bauhaus from its very beginning, but also by the extreme material shortages in Germany during and after the First World War. The weavers’ work with synthetic fibers was thus not only the result of a new, modernist aesthetic and the school’s turn to art and technology after the 1923 Bauhaus exhibition, but was also strongly influenced by the socio-economic conditions in Weimar Germany.

The Development of Synthetic Fibers Synthetic fibers were first produced in the second half of the nineteenth century. As the science of chemistry and manufacturing technology advanced, new options in textile production were increasingly sought. Initial attempts to create synthetic materials aimed at the imitation of natural fabrics; as the early synthetics improved, efforts to reduce production costs increased. In 1855, the Swiss chemist George Audemars, holder of the first patent for “artificial silk,” experimented with a solution of nitrocellulose, eventually achieving a filament which, after being dried and hardened in the air, could be wound on to a reel.13 Sir Joseph Swan, a prominent chemist and early inventor of the incandescent light bulb, modified the naturally occurring cellulose fiber found in tree bark and forced it through fine holes to form a filament. Fabrics produced from this early artificial fiber, a forerunner to rayon, were shown at the International Inventions Exhibition in London in 1885.14 The French engineer and industrialist Hilaire de Chardonnet achieved the first commercial-scale production—“Chardonnet silk”—which he displayed at the Paris Exhibition of 1889 and began producing in a factory in Besançon in 1890.15 A student of Louis Pasteur, Chardonnet based his approach on that of the silkworm itself. Like Swan, his artificial fibers were produced from a nitrocellulose solution extruded into a fine filament that was then chemically converted back to cellulose.16

13

14 15

16

J. Gordon Cook, Handbook of Textile Fibers: Man-Made Fibres, Durham, UK: Merrow Publishing, 1984, 5. Ibid. https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/history-you-asked/what-was-chardonnet-silk (accessed January 30, 2019). Cook, Handbook of Textile Fibers, 5–6.

Experimentation and Invention in Weaving at the Bauhaus

43

In 1892, the English chemist Charles Frederick Cross, together with his collaborators Edward John Bevan and Clayton Beadle, developed his own method for the production of artificial silk, which became the basis for the viscose, rayon, and cellophane industries.17 The first commercial viscose rayon was produced by the UK company Courtaulds Fibers in 1905.18 In Germany, the need for synthetic fibers became a necessity with the outbreak of the First World War, as the country was no longer able to import the necessary raw materials for its textile industry. Flax had come from Russia and cotton primarily from the United States; imports of wool from England, Australia, and New Zealand were stopped with the blockade of England in 1915; silk imports from France, Italy, Japan, and China were cut off when Italy entered the war on the side of the Allies in 1915.19 In order to ensure the ongoing production of both military and civilian clothing, the German government set up the Reichsbekleidungsstelle (Imperial Clothing Authority) in 1916; the agency was responsible for regulating the trade in textiles, administering the supply and distribution of clothing, and promoting the reuse of textiles.20 Government subsidies provided for the development of Ersatzstoffe (surrogate materials), the most common of them being a water-resistant kind of paper cloth that was used to satisfy military and civilian needs towards the end of the war and during the subsequent period of runaway inflation.21 More successful and widespread than paper cloth was artificial silk, which had been developed and produced for military purposes during the war. German silk-weaving factories, having made the transition to the production of artificial silk during the war, were ready to continue producing it for civilian purposes after 1918.22 Although the original fabric wrinkled easily and had an undesirable high sheen, artificial silk was relatively inexpensive to produce and offered a further measure of self-sufficiency. In the late 1920s, it would revolutionize fashion because of the fiber’s unique drape and ability to absorb dyes with a

17 18

19

20 21

22

Ibid., 9. The term rayon was adopted in the United States as a tradename for all forms of artificial silk in 1924, with “viscose” being used to refer to the viscous organic liquid used to make both rayon and cellophane. Mary Bellis, “Fabrics—The History of Fabrics and Different Fibers,” https://www. thoughtco.com/history-of-fabrics-4072209 (accessed January 30, 2019); Calvin R. Woodings, “A Brief History of Regenerated Cellulosic Fibers,” in idem, Regenerated Cellulose Fibres, Elsevier 2001, 1–7. Maria Makela, “Artificial Silk Girls: Rayon as Silk’s Double in Weimar Germany,” in The Doppelgänger, ed. Deborah Ascher Barnstone, Frankfurt Main, New York: Peter Lang, 2016, 210. Ibid., 210–11. Maria Makela, “Making Lemonade out of Lemons: Merz and Material Poverty,” in Art History, 42, no. 4 (September 2019), 652–77; reprinted here 11–38. Makela, “Artificial Silk Girls,” 213.

44

Material Modernity

particular intensity.23 Thus, artificial silk was hailed as a “gift of the modern age” and a technological marvel.24 The synthetic fabric looked and felt like real silk, but cost only half its price. It was praised for “[improving] the appearance of working class girls” and served to obscure class distinctions between those who could afford to wear silk, and those who could not.25 Like other synthetic fabrics, artificial silk was celebrated for its “modern” qualities such as lightness, flexibility, durability, and ease. It kept one cool in summer and warm in winter and was also quick to dry; the new synthetic fabric not only promoted comfort and mobility, it also set new standards for hygiene, as the material proved to be resistant to fungal and bacterial growth. By 1925, artificial silk was enjoying great popularity.26

Material Experiments at the Bauhaus Weaving Workshop Experimentation with synthetic fibers was just one aspect of the exploration of materials at the Bauhaus. The school’s preliminary course, as designed by Johannes Itten, included structural analyses of the works of the old masters, studies from nature with an emphasis on observation, and the development of three-dimensional compositions based on a variety of materials and emphasizing their properties.27 Students were encouraged to develop their own feel for the craft and art materials they were working with, to discover their essential properties and, at the same time, free themselves from the prejudices imposed by traditional uses and applications.28 At the Weimar Bauhaus, creative experiments with available materials were furthermore a necessity and a response to the financial obstacles, shortages, and lack of resources that greatly restricted the scope of the institution’s artistic ideals and educational goals. After Itten’s departure in 1923, Josef Albers, together with László MoholyNagy, took over the preliminary course. Albers’s focus was on preparing firstsemester students for their later training in the various workshops by introducing

23 24

25

26 27 28

Ibid., 214–15. Bemberg Company promotional brochure, Das Ideal der Frau, ca. 1927, German Hosiery Museum, cited in Yvette Florio Lane, “ ‘No Fertile Soil for Pathogens’: Rayon, Advertising, and Biopolitics in Late Weimar Germany,” Journal of Social History, Vol. 44, No. 2, The Arts in Place (Winter 2010): 545. James Laver, Fashion and Class Distinction, quoted in Lane, “ ‘No Fertile Soil for Pathogens’: Rayon, Advertising, and Biopolitics in Late Weimar Germany,” 545. Ibid., 549. Wingler, The Bauhaus, 277–86. Johannes Itten, Design and Form: The Basic Course at the Bauhaus, London: Thames and Hudson, 1964, 9.

Experimentation and Invention in Weaving at the Bauhaus

45

them to an “appropriate use of the most important craft materials, such as wood, metal, glass, stone, textiles, and paint, and to an understanding of their relationships as well as the differences between them.”29 After the Bauhaus move to Dessau, the preliminary course was extended to two semesters. Albers, who was responsible for teaching material studies in the first semester, advocated an economy of material and means in order to achieve “with a minimum of effort, a maximum of effect.”30 His focus shifted to an exploration of the qualities and potential of the materials at hand, stressing their constructive rather than expressive nature. In Dessau, too, finances and resources were rather limited; as Albers announced: “Ladies and gentlemen, we are poor, not rich. We can’t afford to waste materials or time. We have to make the most of the least.”31 Art education at the Bauhaus took a major turn in 1928 when Gropius resigned and Hannes Meyer took over directorship of the school. Meyer was critical of the formalist tendencies at the Bauhaus and emphasized instead scientific principles, functional design, social responsibility, and economic sustainability.32 The orientation and practice of the workshops shifted from the preparation of imaginary projects to the execution of actual commissions; students and staff became involved in projects with industrial partners outside of the school. The weaving workshop became one of the most productive and successful of the Bauhaus workshops. Experiments exploring the properties of the fibers, specifics of the weaving techniques, and everyday uses of fabrics were conducted from the very beginning, but in the mid-1920s, the weavers began to increasingly explore new materials, unusual material combinations, and in particular the new synthetic fibers coming on to the market after the First World War. As the focus in Dessau turned to industrially manufactured textiles, it was no longer enough for the artists to work according to their own personal inclinations. The weavers began to systematically investigate a whole range of design problems in an environment that resembled a laboratory more than a studio. Along with the use of synthetic fibers, the development of fabrics economical to produce was intensified under Hannes Meyer, who insisted that the weavers and the 29

30 31

32

Josef Albers in Bauhaus 1919–1928, ed. Herbert Bayer, Ilse and Walter Gropius, New York: MOMA, 1938, 91. Otto Stelzer, in Fifty Years Bauhaus, exh. cat., London: Royal Academy of Art, 1968, 36. Josef Albers, quoted in E. Neumann, Bauhaus and Bauhaus People: Personal Opinions and Recollections of Former Bauhaus Members and Their Contemporaries, New York: Van Nostrand and Reinhold, 1993, 206. Hannes Meyer, “bauhaus und gesellschaft” (Bauhaus and Society), bauhaus 3 (1929) 1: 2. See also Gillian Naylor, The Bauhaus Reassessed: Sources and Design Theory, London: Herbert Press, 1985, 165–72.

46

Material Modernity

school work more closely with the textile industry. This included external semesters, i.e., internships in industrial companies, an opportunity that was taken up by Bauhaus weavers such as Otti Berger, Lena Bergner, Margaretha Reichardt, and others.33 Functional textiles presented an unexpected challenge to the weavers as the main focus was no longer on personal, artistic expression, but rather functional criteria such as research into the end use of the fabric, the rethinking of traditional applications, and the production suitability of the various fabric samples.34 Stölzl classified the technical specifications of mass-produced textiles for everyday use as follows: “resistance to wear and tear, flexibility, permeability or impermeability to light, elasticity, light- and color-fastness, etc.” and emphasized that these features had to be “dealt with systematically according to the final use of the material.”35 In an article published in bauhaus, the school’s in-house journal, Stölzl highlighted the distinction between the development of functional textiles for use in interiors (prototypes for industry) and speculative experimentation with materials, form, and color in tapestries and rugs.36 She acknowledged that the tools of the weaver—the material, color, and the weave—are subject to constant technical improvement. Wool, silk, cotton, the synthetic fibers (artificial silk) are continuously being improved by better breeding and cultivating methods, mechanical treatment (process of spinning, refinement), new scientific inventions, and by new dyeing methods. The vitality of the material forces people working with textiles to try out new things daily, to readjust time and again, to live with their subject, to intensify it, to climb from experience to experience in order to do justice to the needs of our time.37

33 34 35

36 37

Siebenbrodt/Schöbe, Bauhaus 1919–1933 Weimar—Dessau—Berlin, 139. Weltge, Bauhaus Textiles, 102. “reißfestigkeit, scheuerfestigkeit, elstizität, dehnbarkeit, lichtdurchlässigkeit oder undurchlässigkeit, farbenechtheit, lichtechtheit usw. wurden systematisch behandelt je nach der funktion eines stoffes.” Stölzl, “die entwicklung der bauhausweberei” (2–4). Partial English translation in Weltge, Bauhaus Textiles, 102. Stölzl, “die entwicklung der bauhausweberei” (2). “die mittel des webers—material—farbe—binding (konstruktion der farbenverkreuzung)—erfahren dauernd technische vervollkommnungen. wolle, seide, leinen, baumwolle, die künstlichen faserstoffe (kunstseide) sind durch zucht und kultur, mechanische bearbeitung (spinnprozeß, veredlung) durch neue wissenschaftliche erfindungen, durch neue färbereimethoden—unaufhörlichem fortschritt unterworfen. diese lebendigkeit der materie zwingt den textilmenschen täglich neues zu versuchen, sich immer wieder umzustellen, mit seiner materie zu leben, sie zu steigern, von erfahrung zu erfahrung zu klettern um so den bedürfnissen, die in der zeit liegen, gerecht zu werden.” Stölzl, “die entwicklung der bauhausweberei” (4).

Experimentation and Invention in Weaving at the Bauhaus

47

In Dessau, the weavers developed fabrics for use as curtains, translucent draperies, wall coverings, furniture upholstery, rugs, and more and embraced novel materials such as the latest synthetic fibers, including artificial silk, artificial horsehair, and cellophane.38 They also experimented with raffia, bast fibers, and other yarns that were less delicate than other natural fibers.39 Artificial silk, the first synthetic fiber integrated into Bauhaus weavings, was employed for its rich material effects, which Otti Berger outlined as follows: It is smooth and shiny with a cold “feel” . . . the surface of the fabric changes, according to its structure, one moment: fairly inelastic! smooth, dense, shiny, cold! result: flowing metal. then: fairly elastic! coarse, flimsy, loose, dull! result: a very coarse fabric! of greatest importance, a fabric’s tactile qualities.40

Ruth Hóllos (married name Consemüller, 1904–93) used artificial silk in combination with wool in a number of curtain fabrics and wall coverings, a rather atypical combination that was well received because of its striking contrasts: gleaming threads of artificial silk against the matte background of the wool. This effect was also explored by Stölzl and Margaret Leischner (1907–70) and featured on the cover and in illustrations of the bauhaus journal of July 1931 (Figure 2.2). This strong focus on the material contrasts of the different types of yarns and threads and the effects of the weave formed the foundation of the socalled Strukturstoffe (structural fabrics) that were developed by the weaving workshop in Dessau; it marked a distinct shift from the individual, often ornamental textile creations in Weimar to the design of fabrics for mass production.41 In addition to its use as a contrast to wool or cotton, Hóllos and Albers both employed artificial silk, with its lustrous finish, to achieve a cool, elegant effect.42

38

39 40

41 42

Ingrid Radewaldt, “Bauhaustextilien 1919–1933” (Bauhaus Textiles 1919–1933), PhD thesis, Hamburg University, 1986, 206–42; Melanie Günter, Die Textilwerkstatt am Bauhaus (The Textile Workshop at the Bauhaus), Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, 2010, pp. 88–100. Weltge, Bauhaus Textiles, 102. Siebenbrodt/Schöbe, Bauhaus 1919–1933 Weimar—Dessau—Berlin, 139. “sie ist glatt und glänzend, mit kaltem ‚griff ’. durch struktur wird die oberfläche im stoff verändert, einmal: relativ unelastisch! glatt, dicht, glänzend, kalt! ergebnis: fließendes metall. oder: relativ elastisch! rauh, dünn, locker, matt! ergebnis: sehr rauhes gewebe! wichtig ist das taktilische im stoff.” Otti Berger, “Stoffe im Raum” (Fabrics in Space), Bauhaus Sonderheft, ReD, no. 5 (Prague 1930): 144. Gunta Stölzl: Bauhaus Master, 119. Radewaldt, “Bauhaustextilien 1919–1933,” 95–7.

48

Material Modernity

Figure 2.2 Margaret Leischner, Drehergewebe, Noppenstoff [Open-weave slubbed fabric], cover illustration of bauhaus. zeitschrift für gestaltung, no. 2 (July 1931), photograph by Walter Peterhans. Copyright Walter Peterhans, Museum Folkwang, Essen.

Margaretha Reichardt: Eisengarn for Marcel Breuer’s Tubular Steel Furniture One of the Bauhaus weavers who was instrumental in experimenting with new fibers but has received little credit for her innovation in textile design is Margaretha Reichardt (1907–84).43 Reichardt was born and grew up in Erfurt, where she studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule from 1921 to 1925. After attending the 1923 Bauhaus exhibition in Weimar, she chose to continue her studies at the

43

For more information on the weaver, see Margaretha Reichardt (1907–1984)—Textilkunst (Margaretha Reichardt (1907–1984)—Textile Art), exh. cat., Erfurt: Angermuseum, 2009.

Experimentation and Invention in Weaving at the Bauhaus

49

school, applying in 1925 but only joining the Bauhaus in 1926, after its move to Dessau.44 Reichardt completed the preliminary course under Albers and MoholyNagy and attended classes taught by Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, and Joost Schmidt. She specialized in weaving with Stölzl, but also worked in the carpentry workshop and on dance projects with Schlemmer in the theatre workshop. She spent the winter semester of 1929–30 as an itinerant teacher in Königsberg, East Prussia, working with former Bauhaus graduate Ruth Hóllos. In 1930, Reichardt passed the journeyman’s examination before the Weavers’ Guild in Glauchau. From 1930 until the summer of 1931, Reichardt was a freelance employee of the weaving workshop at the Dessau Bauhaus. During this time, she participated in various projects, including work for the Bundesschule des Allgemeinen Deutschen Gewerkschaftsbundes (ADGB, the Federal School of the German Trade Union) in Bernau and the Dessau Opera Café. In July 1931, she graduated, with Bauhaus diploma no. 54. After her departure from the Bauhaus, Reichardt spent a year working for the designer Piet Zwart in Holland. She also developed and eventually directed a weaving workshop in The Hague. In 1933, she returned to Erfurt, where she founded the Grete Reichardt Handweaving Studio.45 She was able to obtain a number of looms and other equipment from the recently closed Bauhaus weaving workshop and set up her own workshop in Erfurt’s Severihof. As a member of the Reichskulturkammer (Reich Chamber of Culture), she was allowed to participate in numerous artistic handicraft exhibitions in the 1930s and 1940s.46 During her time at the Bauhaus, Reichardt worked on the further development and application of a particularly strong, highly tear-resistant and durable polished thread called Eisengarn (iron thread). The thread had originally been developed by Wuppertal textile manufacturers Carl Theodor Wuppermann and Phillip Barthels-Feldhoff in the mid-nineteenth century and was commonly used in the production of shoelaces, braid (Hutlitzen), belting, straps and bands, linings, and also in the cable industry.47 Despite its name, Eisengarn contains no 44

45 46

47

She was student no. 83; on her time at the Bauhaus, see Rainer Behrends, “Margaretha Reichardt (1907–1984). Vom Bauhaus-Lehrling zur Meisterin der Textilkunst” (Margaretha Reichardt, 1907– 1984: From Bauhaus Apprentice to Master of Textile Art), in ibid., 12–28. Ibid., 25, 28–9. Among them were the 1936 exhibition at the Leipzig Grassi Museum, the 1937 World Exhibition in Paris, where she received an honorary diploma, and the 1939 Triennale in Milano, where she was awarded a Gold Medal for her designs of industrial textiles. Ibid., 28–9. Wolfgang Hoth, Die Industrialisierung einer rheinischen Gewerbestadt, dargestellt am Beispiel Wuppertal (The Industrialization of a City on the Rhein, using the Example of Wuppertal), Cologne: RheinischWestfälisches Wirtschaftsarchiv, 1975, 161, 181. For a more general discussion of the production of Eisengarn, see A. Bodmer, K. Braungard, W. Christ, et. al (eds), Enzyklopädie der textilchemischen Technologie (Encyclopedia of Textile-chemical Technology), Berlin: Springer, 1930, 47–8.

50

Material Modernity

metallic threads, but is a stiff cotton yarn with a metallic sheen due to impregnation with wax or paraffin and special finishing; the name refers to the particularly hard-wearing quality of the material.48 Due to its strength and durability, Eisengarn was ideal for use in the production of furniture upholstery. Marcel Breuer, who already had been collaborating with Stölzl and the weaving workshop in Weimar on appropriate seat and armrest fabric for his 1921 African Chair, turned to this new material for the production of his new tubular steel furniture. When chair B3 went into production in 1926, the coverings for the seat, back rest and arm rests, originally made from linen or horsehair, were replaced by a fabric woven from Reichardt’s Eisengarn (Figure 2.3).49 The lustrous, new fabric was the ideal support for the weight of a body suspended between the sinuous lines of Breuer’s steel tubing, and fit well with his demand for a sturdy but formally delicate modern piece of furniture at an economical price. Advertisements emphasized that Breuer’s fabric-covered tubular steel furniture had the convenience of good upholstered furniture, but without the weight, price, bulkiness or unhygienic surfaces.50 The price of a lounge chair, for example, is about 30 percent of that of a padded chair. A theatre chair or recliner, both covered in fabric, account for approximately 75 percent of the price of similarly upholstered wood furniture. Due to their durability and hygienic texture, Breuer’s steel furniture is approx. 200 percent more economical in use than that of the usual seating furniture.51

Reichardt’s role in the success of Breuer’s design has received relatively little attention, particularly since Breuer’s tubular steel furniture was marketed not as a Bauhaus product but as his own, personal creation.52 While some treatises on Breuer’s tubular steel furniture do mention the use of Eisengarn but without

48

49

50

51

52

“Eisengarn,” in Das Bauhaus webt: Die Textilwerkstatt am Bauhaus (The Bauhaus Weaves: The Textile Workshop at the Bauhaus), Berlin: GH Verlag, 1998, 203; “Metalized yarn,” in Fiedler/ Feierabend, Bauhaus, 620. Christopher Wilk, Marcel Breuer: Furniture and Interiours, London: The Architectural Press, 1981, 35; Experiment Bauhaus, exh. cat., Berlin: Bauhaus-Archiv, 1988, 108, figure 106. “die stoffbespannten stahlrohrmöbel haben die bequemlichkeit von guten polstermöbeln, ohne deren gewicht, preis, unhandlichkeit und unhygienische beschaffenheit.” Advertisement for “Breuer Metallmöbel,” in bauhaus, no. 1 (1928): 17. See also Wingler, The Bauhaus, 452. “der preis eines klubsessels z.b. beträgt ca. 30 prozent von dem eines gepolsterten sessels. Der eines theatersessels oder eines rückenlehnstuhls, beide mit stoffbespannung, beträgt ca. 75 prozent vom preise ähnlich flachgepolsterter holzmöbel. durch ihre haltbarkeit und hygienische beschaffenheit sind die breuer-metallmöbel im gebrauch ca. 200 proz. wirtschaftlicher als die üblichen sitzmöbel.” Ibid. Eva Horanyi, “Stahlrohrmöbel: Marcel Breuer und seine ungarischen Partner in Deutschland” (Tubular Steel Furniture: Marcel Breuer and his Hungarian Partners in Germany), in Die Ungarn am Bauhaus (The Hungarians at the Bauhaus), ed. Eva Bajkay, Pécs: Jannus Pannonius Muzeum; Berlin: Bauhaus-Archiv Museum für Gestaltung, 2010, 225.

Experimentation and Invention in Weaving at the Bauhaus

51

Figure 2.3 Advertisement for “Breuer Metallmöbel” [Breuer’s tubular steel furniture] in bauhaus. zeitschrift für gestaltung, no. 1 (February 15, 1928): 19.

mentioning Reichardt or its production in the Bauhaus weaving workshop, others do not discuss the fabric at all.53 More generally, discussions of the Breuer chairs rarely acknowledge the significance of the fabric for the overall functionality of the design. The suitability of Reichardt’s Eisengarn-based fabric for commercial applications at the time, however, was recognized, and the 53

The use of Eisengarn is acknowledged by Wilk, Marcel Breuer: Furniture and Interiours, 35. The fabric is not mentioned in Magdalena Droste and Manfred Ludwig, Marcel Breuer: Design, London: Taschen, 1992, 6–37; Otakar Macel, “Marcel Breuer—‘Erfinder der Stahlrohrmöbel’ ” (Marcel Breuer—Inventor of “Tubular Steel Furniture”), in Marcel Breuer, Design und Architektur (Marcel Breuer: Design and Architecture), ed. Alexander von Vegesack and Mathias Remmle, Weil am Rhein: Vitra Design Museum, 2003, 52–114.

52

Material Modernity

Junkers aircraft firm in Dessau commissioned an improved version for use in airplane seats in the 1930s.54 Production of Eisengarn fabric was then resumed in the 1980s by the firm Tecta in Lauenförde as an upholstery fabric for its furniture.55

Otti Berger: Patenting an Artificial Horsehair Upholstery Fabric Another durable, synthetic fiber-based material for upholstery was produced by Bauhaus weaver Otti Berger (1898–1944), who experimented with the use of horse hair in combination with another fiber such as cotton and eventually patented a double-weave fabric using artificial horsehair in 1932. Berger came from a Jewish merchant family in Zmajevac, then still part of the Habsburg empire.56 She attended a girls’ grammar school in Vienna and studied art at the Royal Academy of Art and Crafts in Zagreb from 1922 to 1926. In 1927, she enrolled at the Bauhaus in Dessau where she attended the preliminary course with Albers and MoholyNagy and classes by Kandinsky and Klee. Moholy-Nagy was particularly influential in Berger’s development as a weaver. She derived great inspiration from his emphasis on what he described as “spatial design”—exercises with abstract constructions in various materials intended to demonstrate the “interweaving of shapes” and “the fluctuating play of tensions and forces.”57 In the preliminary course, Berger developed an exploratory “tactile board,” made with various threads and yarns, in which she contrasted metal foil with paper and other weaving materials in order to explore their tactile values; Moholy-Nagy included an illustration of her board in his 1929 book Von Material zur Architektur.58

54 55 56

57 58

Fiedler/Feierabend, Bauhaus, 620. “Eisengarn,” in Das Bauhaus webt, 203. See also www.tecta.de (accessed January 30, 2019). On Berger’s biography, see “Otti Berger,” Frauen im Design: Berufsbilder und Lebenswege um 1900 / Women in Design: Careers and Life Histories since 1900, exh. cat. Stuttgart: Design Center, 1989, 208–11; “Otti Berger,” in Die Ungarn am Bauhaus (The Hungarians at the Bauhaus), ed. Eva Bajkay, Pécs: Jannus Pannonius Muzeum; Berlin: Bauhaus-Archiv Museum für Gestaltung, 2010, 376–7; “Otti Berger,” in Ulrike Müller, Bauhaus-Frauen. Meisterinnen in Kunst, Handwerk und Design (Women at the Bauhaus. Female Masters in Art, Crafts, and Design), Berlin: Insel Verlag, 2014, 62–7; Antonija Mlikota, “Otti Berger—Textile Designer, Theoretician, Educationalist, Innovator,” in Bauhaus—Networking Ideas and Practice (BAUNET), exh. cat., Zagreb: Museum of Contemporary Art, 2015, 238–55. Moholy-Nagy in Bauhaus 1919–1928, 124. Otti Berger (bauhaus, 2. semester 1928), tasttafel aus fäden (tactile board made from threads), in László Moholy-Nagy, Von Material zur Architektur (From Material to Architecture), Munich: A. Langen, 1929, 22, figure 1. See also Mlikota, “Otti Berger—Textile Designer, Theoretician, Educationalist, Innovator,” 245.

Experimentation and Invention in Weaving at the Bauhaus

53

In 1928, Berger entered the weaving workshop, where she worked under the supervision of Stölzl and took lessons on color theory and surface design from Klee. In 1929, she spent a semester at Johanna Brunsson’s weaving school in Stockholm. After her return to the Bauhaus, she worked as a part-time associate in the weaving workshop and, like Reichardt, was involved in the work for the Federal School of the German Trade Union in Bernau, designing 120 blankets made from silk for the student rooms. Berger finished her studies at the Bauhaus in April 1930, passing the journeyman’s examination in Glauchau in October 1930 and receiving Bauhaus diploma no. 31 in November. She went on to develop textile designs for various companies, among them Fischer & Hoffmann in Zwickau, Wohnbedarf AG and Palag AG in Zurich, and the De Ploeg Company in Bergeijk, Netherlands.59 At Stölzl’s recommendation, Berger returned to Dessau in autumn 1931 to take over leadership of the weaving workshop, which was then being managed by Lilly Reich, but even though she assumed responsibility for the workshop with regard to all aspects of pedagogy, production, and practice, she was never officially appointed its head.60 In 1932, Berger opened her own textile studio—“Otti Berger: Studio for textiles, fabrics for clothing and living—soft furnishings—curtains—wall and floor coverings”— in Berlin-Charlottenburg, and also published on weaving and textile design; however, the deteriorating political situation forced her to abandon her career in Germany.61 After a brief period in London in 1937 and 1938 and an unsuccessful effort to immigrate to the United States,62 she returned to Zmajevac and was deported to Auschwitz in 1944. An experienced textile designer with considerable knowledge of textile manufacturing techniques, Berger was eager in her quest to find the ideal fabrics for industrial use.63 She developed prototypes for automobile and transport upholstery, leading to the registration in 1932 of a patent for a double-weave fabric that included an artificial horsehair fiber (Figure 2.4). In this respect, 59

60

61

62 63

Mlikota, “Otti Berger—Textile Designer, Theoretician, Educationalist, Innovator,” 253–4; “Otti Berger,” in Women in Design: Careers and Life Histories, Stuttgart: Design Center, 1986, 208–11. On Otti Berger’s work, see Réka Semsey, “Otti Bergers Textilexperimente” (Otti Berger’s Experiments in Textile), in Die Ungarn am Bauhaus (The Hungarians at the Bauhaus), ed. Eva Bajkay, Pécs: Jannus Pannonius Muzeum; Berlin: Bauhaus-Archiv Museum für Gestaltung, 2010, 332–7; Christian Wolsdorff, “Wir waren halt die Dekorativen im Sternebanner Bauhaus,” in To Open Eyes: Kunst und Textil vom Bauhaus bis heute, exh. cat. Bielefeld: Kunsthalle und Kerber Verlag, 2013, 66–7. Among the publications were the articles “Stoffe im Raum” (Fabrics in Space), Bauhaus Sonderheft, ReD, no. 5 (Prague 1930): 143–5; “Umsatzsteigerung durch Geschmacksveredlung” (Increasing Sales by Refining Tastes), Der Konfektionär, no. 95 (1932); “Die besondere Rolle der Handweberei” (The Special Role of Handweaving),” Der Konfektionär, no 51 (1933). See Mlikota, “Otti Berger—Textile Designer, Theoretician, Educationalist, Innovator,” 253. Moholy-Nagy had invited her to join the New Bauhaus in Chicago. Semsey, “Otti Bergers Textilexperimente,” 332–7.

54

Material Modernity

Figure 2.4 Otti Berger, Urkunde über die Erteilung des Patents 594 075: Möbelstoff— Doppelgewebe [Certificate of issuance of patent 594 075: upholstery fabric— double-weave], registered June 17, 1932. Photo T’ai Smith, with permission of the Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin.

Experimentation and Invention in Weaving at the Bauhaus

55

Berger is exceptional; she was not only concerned with inventing new processes of weaving to produce synthetic, new materials, but also with protecting and ensuring the primacy of her inventions.64 Berger describes the novelty of her invention, registered under the German patent number DE594075, as follows: a new upholstery fabric which offers a replacement and a perfection of the known fabrics of this kind, consisting of natural horsehair. The essence of the invention is characterized in that the fabric is formed by upper wrap and upper weft, lower wrap and lower weft while the upper wrap uses artificial, horsehairlike fiber.65

The resulting double layer economically increased the fabric’s durability—an essential property for fabrics to be used in the seats and passenger compartments of modern railway cars and automobiles. In her patent application, she highlighted the two significant dimensions of her invention: the properties of the synthetic material and the way in which the fabric was woven. While acknowledging that natural horsehair and most likely synthetic horsehair fibers, too, had previously been in use, she emphasized that the weaving methods and combination of fibers she employed “enhanced the suppleness and workability, thus increasing strength and durability.”66 These properties are especially valuable for upholstery fabrics, because they are essential for their processing on the one hand, and for their durability on the other hand. It is also important in this regard that the synthetic fiber, in contrast

64

65

66

She applied to patent three of her textile inventions. Two patents were ultimately granted, “Möbelstoffdoppelgewebe” (double-weave upholstery fabric), #DE594075, in Germany in 1934 and “Gewebe (Lame-plume)”, #476,966 in the UK in 1937 while a third application was rejected. See T’ai Smith, Bauhaus Weaving Theory: From Feminine Craft to Mode of Design, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2014, 112. “Möbelstoffdoppelgewebe: Die Erfindung richtet sich auf einen neuen Möbelstoff, der einen Ersatz und eine Vervollkommnung der bekannten, aus Roßhaargewebe bestehenden Möbelstoffe bietet. Das Wesen der Erfindung kennzeichnet sich darin, daß bei dem aus Oberkette und Oberschuß, Unterkette und Unterschuß gebildeten Gewebe die Oberkette aus künstlicher, dem Roßhaar ähnlicher Faser besteht.” Otti Berger, “Möbelstoffdoppelgewebe”, patentiert im Deutschen Reiche vom 17. Juni 1932 ab, Reichspatentamt, Patentschrift Nr. 594075, Klasse 86c, Gruppe 1/10, B156145VII/86c, Erteilung des Patents: 22. Februar 1934 (“Double-weave Upholstery Fabric, Patent for the German Reich as of June 17, 1932, Reichspatentamt, Patent Document No. 595075, Class 86c, Group 1/10, B156145VII/86c, Patent Granted on February 22, 1934). See depatisnet.dpma.de (accessed January 30, 2019). “Man hat wohl schon für Schneidereizwecke Roßhaargewebe; auch solche aus künstlichem Roßhaar verwendet, die aus einem Doppelgewebe mit Roßhaarschüssen bestehen. Demgegenüber besteht der technische Fortschritt des neuen Möbelstoffes hauptsächlich darin, daß bei Verwendung künstlichen Roßhaares als Oberkette und einer Unterkette aus Wolle, Baumwolle, Seide o. dgl., die der Geschmeidigkeit und Biegsamkeit dient, auch die Festigkeit und Haltbarkeit erhöht wird.” Ibid.

56

Material Modernity to natural horsehair, is available not only in fitted lengths but as an endless thread. As a result, the artificial fiber allows a furniture fabric of sufficient width, because it depends only on the width of the loom.67

The cellulose-based artificial horsehair provides a strong, flexible thread, yielding a smoothly textured surface resistant to both wear and moisture.68 The resulting fabric is flexible, but does not easily crease or fold—the surface remains smooth and even. On the face side, the artificial horsehair warp is visible as a shiny surface that shields the thinner weft threads beneath; together with an additional warp of white cotton fiber that is only visible on the back side, it forms a double layer, increasing the fabric’s durability.69 After Berger’s departure from Germany, the fabric continued to be manufactured by the Schriever & Co. horsehair weaving company, in Dresden.

Anni Albers: Cellophane for Wall Coverings The transparent new synthetic foil, cellophane, chemically similar to rayon (both being produced from cellulose-based viscose), fascinated the Bauhaus weavers with its visual appeal and its flexibility.70 But it proved to be a difficult material for use in weaving as the cellophane yarn was extremely sensitive to the weather: “fabrics, with both warp and weft made from cellophane yarns, do not stretch well because the cellophane expands or contracts depending on the humidity.”71 Nevertheless, weavers such as Albers, Leischner, Reichardt, and Stölzl experimented with yarns made from the film, often using cellophane in combination with cotton or artificial silk. As with many activities at the Bauhaus, the exploration of new materials and artistic techniques evolved to a large extent in the context of the Bauhaus festivities and informal student gatherings. Reichardt’s attempts to work with cellophane resulted from a half-serious challenge posed to her by Franz Ehrlich and Heinz Löw, fellow students and dorm mates in the Prellerhaus. After being 67

68 69 70 71

“Diese Eigenschaften sind gerade für Möbelstoffe besonders wertvoll, weil sie für die Verarbeitung einerseits, für die Beanspruchung der Möbelstoffe im Gebrauch anderseits wesentlich sind. Wichtig ist in dieser Beziehung auch, daß die dem Roßhaar ähnliche Kunstfaser im Gegensatz zu dem Roßhaar in an sich bekannter Art nicht nur in abgepaßten Längen, sondern als endloser Faden zur Verfügung steht. Infolgedessen gestattet die künstliche Faser eine für Möbelstoffe genügende Breite, die nur von der Breite des Webstuhles abhängig ist, und eine beliebige Länge.” Ibid. Smith, Bauhaus Weaving Theory, 113. Ibid. Fiedler/Feierabend, Bauhaus, 617. Radewaldt, “Bauhaustextilien 1919–1933,” 98.

Experimentation and Invention in Weaving at the Bauhaus

57

served a disappointing dinner with poor meat in a watery sauce at her studio, the two suggested that Reichardt could have done better with wood and cellophane. She accepted the challenge and went on to integrate these materials into her weaving practice.72 As early as 1927, she was executing cellophane tension fabrics. Such fabrics did not have the necessary durability and wear resistance for use on upholstery, but could be used for wall coverings, whose function, Berger noted was: “to protect the wall, to insulate against heat or cold, and perhaps increase the light . . . it must be well-tensioned and, above all, preferably washable.”73 One of the most prominent examples of the creative innovations in textiles resulting from the experiments with synthetic fibers was the sound-absorbing, light-reflecting fabric that Anni Albers created for the auditorium of the Federal School of the German Trade Union in Bernau in 1929. Albers (née Fleischmann, 1899–1994) belonged to the first generation of Bauhaus weavers; she had enrolled at the Weimar school in 1922 and entered the weaving workshop in 1923.74 Although the workshop was not her first choice, Albers soon learned to appreciate the challenges of textile construction and began producing her own geometric designs. After her marriage to Josef Albers in 1925 and the move to Dessau in 1926, she began to develop commercial wallcoverings and fabric treatments with specific light reflection and sound absorption characteristics. Several of her designs were published and she received contracts for wall hangings.75 When 72

73

74

75

“Wieviel wird über die Verwendung nichttextilen Materials in der Bauhaus-Weberei geredet. Wie ist es dazu gekommen? Wie überall in einer größeren Gemeinschaft gibt es kleine Gruppen, die über ihre Probleme nicht nur tagelang, sondern auch nächtelang diskutierten. Eine solche Kleinstgruppe bestand aus der Grete Reichardt, Heinz Löw und mir. Grete Reichardt lud uns zwei einmal zu einem Abendessen in ihrem Atelier im Atelierhaus, in dem wir alle Drei wohnten, ein. . . . Wir warteten erwartungsvoll und hungrig und Grete Reichardt kam mit einer Schüssel, in der nicht etwa knusprige Koteletts lagen, sondern miesgebratene, in einer Wassersauce schwimmende Fleischstücke lagen. Nun war uns klar, daß Grete Reichardt uns nicht aus Freundschaft zu diesem Essen eingeladen hat, sondern daß sie durch die zu erwartende Diskussion Anregungen für ihre Arbeit in der Werkstatt suchte. Wir beschlossen, sie auf den Arm zu nehmen. Wir fingen an zu schwärmen, wie schön sich in einem Gewebe, Holz beispielsweise in Form von Wurststäbe und Zelluphan [sic], ausnehmen würde. Tatsächlich kaufte sich Grete Reichardt eine Zelluphanplatte und ein Bündel Wurststäbe. Die Zelluphanplatte schnitt sie zu webefähigen Fäden auf und produzierte das erste Materialgewebe, aus dem später alle Effekttextilien entstanden sind.” Franz Ehrlich, Autobiographischer Lebensabriss (Autobiography), unpublished document, Archiv, Bauhaus Foundation Dessau, 3–4. I am grateful to Dr. Miriam Krautwurst, Angermuseum Erfurt, for providing this information. “die funktion einer wandbespannung ist, die wand zu schützen, wärme und kälte zu isolieren, vielleicht das licht zu vermehren. Sie muß in erster linie gespannt wirken und hygienisch sein, am besten abwaschbar.” Berger, “stoffe im raum,” 145. On Anni Albers’ biography, see “Anni Albers,” Frauen im Design: Berufsbilder und Lebenswege um 1900 / Women in Design: Careers and Life Histories since 1900, exh. cat. Stuttgart: Design Center, 1989, 204–7; “Anni Albers,” in Ulrike Müller, Bauhaus-Frauen. Meisterinnen in Kunst, Handwerk und Design (Women at the Bauhaus. Female Masters in Art, Crafts, and Design), Berlin: Insel Verlag, 2014, 50–5; Ann Coxon and Maria Müller-Schareck, “Anni Albers, die Vielseitige,” in Anni Albers, exh. cat. Düsseldorf: Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen; Munich: Hirmer, 2018, 12–19. The Woven and Graphic Art of Anni Albers, exh. cat., Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985.

58

Material Modernity

Figure 2.5 Anni Albers, fabric sample of the wall-covering material for the auditorium of the Federal School of the German Trade Union in Bernau, 1929, with Zeiss report, photograph by Arthur Redecker, Hannes-Meyer-Archiv, Deutsches Architekturmuseum, Frankfurt am Main.

Stölzl left the Bauhaus in 1931, Albers took over as head of the weaving workshop. After the closure of the Dessau Bauhaus in 1932, Anni and Josef Albers were involved in the effort to set up the Bauhaus as a private school in Berlin. In 1933, they left Germany and moved to the United States, where they taught at Black Mountain College, in North Carolina, from 1933 to 1949. Afterwards, they settled in Connecticut. Albers wrote and published many articles on weaving and textile design.76 The fabric Albers developed for the curtain in the auditorium of the Federal School of the German Trade Union was woven from cellophane, cotton, and a velvety chenille (Figure 2.5). Specifically designed for use in this public building, the ribbed, silvery material was woven on a cotton warp with cellophane in the

76

See the comprehensive volume Anni Albers, On Weaving.

Experimentation and Invention in Weaving at the Bauhaus

59

face for increased light reflection and a chenille back for sound absorption.77 Hannes Meyer sent a sample of the fabric to the Goerz Werk at Zeiss Ikon AG to have its photometric properties scientifically tested.78 The following results were noted: “In case of a light distribution with a vertical incidence and vertical arrangement of the corrugations, the fabric appears dark. In case of a light distribution at normal vertical incidence, but a horizontal arrangement of the corrugations, the illumination increases significantly. . . .”79 In terms of function, design, and aesthetic, the fabric also combined well with the functionalist architecture designed by Hannes Meyer.80 Writing later, Albers noted: “We are once again led away from a pronounced line and contour to a surface that acts only by a slight optical vibration of the overlapping raised and lowered threads: shiny and dull, brighter and darker, tan and white. This material will be calm but alive.”81 It was for her textile design that Albers received her Bauhaus diploma in 1930. The diploma, signed by Meyer and Stölzl, stated: “she has constantly tried to incorporate new materials into the weaving workshop, thus stimulating future paths and goals within the field of weaving.”82 According to Philip Johnson, Albers’s unique textile also served as her entry ticket to the Unites States in 1933.83

Conclusion Synthetic fibers well suited the Zeitgeist of the interwar period and the widelyheld belief that the endless advances of science and technology would serve as a motor for economic prosperity and social progress. Soon, many argued, engineered products would prove to be better than those of nature itself, and the expanding field of organic chemistry seemed to offer an especially promising 77

78

79 80 81

82

83

Weltge, Bauhaus Textiles, 104. T’ai Smith, “Monumental: Die Entwicklung einer Wandbespannung,” in Anni Albers, exh. cat., Düsseldorf: Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen; Munich: Hirmer, 2018, 61. “Wir haben den vom Bauhaus hergestellten geriffelten Silberstoff auf seine lichttechnischen Eigenschaften hin untersucht . . .” Report to Meyer, October 28, 1929, copy at the Albers Foundation. Ibid. Smith, “Monumental: Die Entwicklung einer Wandbespannung,” 61. Anni Albers, “Designing as Visual Organization” (1965), in idem, On Weaving, New Haven: Princeton University Press, 2017, 59–60. Hannes Meyer, Gunta Stölzl, “sie hat laufend versuche gemacht, neue materialien in die weberei einzubeziehen und gab somit anregung für künftige wege und ziele innerhalb des gebietes der weberei.” Bauhaus diploma no. 10, February 1930. “Anni Albers: Interview with Nicholas Fox Weber,” Takes 1–3, February 1, 1982, source material for Bauhaus in America, Clio Films, The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, Bethany, CT. See also Smith, “Monumental: Die Entwicklung einer Wandbespannung,” 61.

60

Material Modernity

method for correcting nature’s shortcomings and economic disadvantages. Germany had long been the acknowledged leader in this field, therefore it is no surprise that after the First World War there was a heightened sense of its potential for solving the country’s economic and social problems, specifically, a shortage of raw materials for textiles and consequently the high cost of clothing. Eschewing the natural fibers of wool, cotton, and silk in favor of the much more economical and hygienic synthetic fibers meant embracing a modern, homegrown product at the expense of a traditional, more expensive, and most often foreign one.84 The weaving workshop at the Bauhaus systematically explored the properties of fibers, the specifics of the weaving techniques, and the everyday use of fabrics in upholstery, home décor, and interior architecture. Weavers such as Albers, Berger, Reichardt, and others developed new fabrics, collaborated with industry, patented their inventions, and forged their own professional careers. With their innovative use of synthetic fibers, exploration of new weaving techniques, and the development of low-cost materials for tear-resistant meterware, washable curtains, and sound-absorbing wall coverings, the Bauhaus weavers not only overcame the prejudices and stereotypical thinking of their male colleagues with respect to the role of women in art, they also developed innovative, economical solutions to both aesthetic and functional problems in early twentieth-century textile design and production.

84

Lane, “ ‘No Fertile Soil for Pathogens’: Rayon, Advertising, and Biopolitics in Late Weimar Germany,” 545–6.

3

Paper Promises Inflation and the Insufficiency of Ersatz in Weimar Germany Erin Sullivan Maynes

The slogan of our time and also the slap in the face of our time is the word “Ersatz.” [Das Schlagwort der Zeit und zugleich ein Schlag ins Gesicht der Zeit ist das Wort Ersatz.]1 In his 1920 book Ersatzmenschen (Substitute People), Alexander von GleichenRußwurm lays out the ways that Ersatz substitutes have permeated modern life. Although Rußwurm’s particular preoccupation is political and intellectual Ersatz—complex ideas paraphrased as slogans that stand in for more traditional forms of intellectual thought and German Geist—the author ultimately directs his screed against all forms of imitation. His conception of Ersatz casts a wide net; he targets the cheap and maudlin, the showy that falls short. Ersatz, he argues, turns people into Ersatzmenschen, those easily attracted to the Schein, or appearance, of convincing counterfeits. According to Rußwurm, Ersatzmenschen are not deceived by Schein; they know it is a false appearance. But Ersatz has curbed their desire for the authentic, and, in the process, eroded their humanity. The Ersatzmensch becomes an imitation person, satisfied with the substitute and desensitized to its inferiority. “We have to get away from Ersatzmenschen,” he insisted, “away from the Ersatz worth and wares for mind [Geist] and body. Only then can a people, a state, an individual become a healthy and truly valued [wertberichtigten] member of humankind.”2 Ersatz, Rußwurm suggests, 1

2

Unless otherwise noted, all translations from the German are my own. Alexander von GleichenRußwurm, Ersatzmenschen (Leipzig: Dürr & Weber, 1920), 5. Ibid., 11.

61

62

Material Modernity

was rotting society from within at all levels, from the individual to the nation itself. The erosion of values had personal significance for Rußwurm. He was the great grandson of Friedrich von Schiller, one of Germany’s most celebrated philosophers and an embodiment of Weimar’s Enlightenment Golden Age. Yet birthrights such as name and affiliation—once so valuable in a country that selfidentified as a land of poets and thinkers—were nevertheless also the kinds that suffered the greatest devaluation during the decade of inflation that began with World War I and continued until late 1923. Titles were no protection against economic ruin in this new reality, as Rußwurm himself knew all too well. For those who lived on a fixed income, such as individuals who lived off inheritances, property, or salaried professionals, the constantly depreciating mark represented a real decline in personal wealth and wellbeing. Once amongst the most highly respected members of Wilhelmine society, these aristocratic elites and the educated Bildungsbürgertum (educated upper middle class) were among those who were forced to find additional paid work; Rußwurm himself relied on writing to make ends meet. Others began selling off heirlooms and other inheritances to stay afloat. The beneficiaries of inflation, meanwhile, were those who had a more ambivalent social status, those who embraced risk, such as debtors and currency speculators. Indeed, the state itself was amongst the inflation’s biggest beneficiaries in the short term, as the real value of debts declined along with the purchasing power of the depreciating German mark.3 Such radical reversals of fortune were part of the verkehrte Welt, or topsyturvy world, of the early Weimar Republic, a designation used to describe the way that war and the protracted economic crisis that followed it had overturned Germany’s seemingly deeply rooted social order. In this world, both financial and cultural values appeared relative and mutable rather than stable and certain. The historian and journalist Sebastian Haffner called this period “the gigantic, carnival dance of death, the unending, bloody Saturnalia, in which not only money but all standards lost their value.”4 Ersatz was a commodity and a concept 3

4

All war debts—which totaled 154 billion marks—were worth the equivalent of 15.4 pfennigs (relative to 1913’s exchange rate) by November 1923. See Bernd Sprenger, Das Geld der Deutschen: Geldgeschichte Deutschlands von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart (Paderborn: F. Schöningh, 1991), 218. Sebastian Haffner is the pen name of Raimund Pretzel. See his memoir, Defying Hitler: A Memoir, trans. Oliver Pretzel (New York: Picador Books, 2002), 52–3. He also remembered the reversal of the social order during inflation in this way: “It was a situation in which mental inertia and reliance on past experience were punished by starvation and death, but rapid appraisal of new situations and speed of reaction were rewarded with sudden, vast riches. The twenty-one-year-old bank director appeared on the scene, and also the high school senior who earned his living from the stock-market tips of his slightly older friends. He wore Oscar Wilde ties, organized champagne parties, and supported his embarrassed father.” Ibid., 56.

Paper Promises

63

suited to such relative values, to the artificiality and insufficiency of semblance over substance. During the war, Ersatz had been presented as a kind of compensatory simulacrum of prewar plenty that offered the promise—however illusory—that home front sacrifices would be limited and voluntary. After the war, Ersatz’s deceptive powers were worn thin, yet Ersatz substitutes persisted. This essay will explore the prevalence of Ersatz during the war and its material character, which was shaped by shortages and the necessities of the war economy. It will then consider how this economy of Ersatz relied on one material above all: paper. Paper was available throughout the war, was readily adaptable to a range of needs, and appeared in many useful forms. But paper also embodied the inflation’s contradictions and became a symbol of scarcity and of the deficiencies and duplicity of Ersatz. Nowhere was this more apparent than with the most visible, and ultimately, most pernicious form of paper Ersatz: paper money. Paper as material had little material value, it was fragile and ephemeral. But it was also the dominant material support for the representative object of state economic power, an object that needed to project stability and durability. As confidence in the currency eroded, more and more of it was needed to keep up with rising prices. This fed a ruthless cycle: the more money there was, the less it was worth. And this cycle manifested in a very visible and material way, through the stacks of money, the wheelbarrows of cash, the omnipresent piles of paper money that made their appearance—and then disappeared in the furnace— during the final year of inflation, the period known as hyperinflation, when the final exchange value of the mark reached 4.2 trillion to the dollar.

Ersatz and the “art” of artifice The German word Kunst, like the English “art” when used as a prefix denotes something imitative; künstlich and artificial share the same meaning and the same etymological root. Ersatz is artifice, a simulacrum of the substituted item. This was the Ersatz that Rußwurm railed against, the kind that approximated its model not by improving upon it but by amplifying various surface qualities. Ersatz was exaggerated rather than austere, theatrical rather than sedate, artificial rather than authentic. It has an affinity with Susan Sontag’s definitions of camp, the essence of which she described as “a love of the unnatural; of artifice and exaggeration.”5 In retrospect, it seems that as a conservative defender of classical 5

Susan Sontag, “Notes on ‘Camp,’ ” (United States: Picador, 2019 [1964]), 5.

64

Material Modernity

Kultur, Rußwurm is describing a dissatisfaction with the products of popular culture, what he perceived as the hollow Schein (appearance) of spectacle without substance. Yet in 1920, the year Ersatzmenschen was published, the Ersatz that Rußwurm confronted was less the showy Ersatz of the masses than the shabby Ersatz of wartime rationing, which continued to permeate everyday life in Germany throughout the inflationary decade. Rußwurm did, in fact, make specific reference to such materially impoverished imitations, writing contemptuously of these products and the people who consume them, right now, raw materials are chosen to replace items with which they have only the most distant semblance. Thus, cloth and “leather” are made of paper, bread is made of bran and potatoes, values are made out of assumptions, barracks are made out of apartments and apartments out of barracks, in order to serve the bodily nourishment and excretions (Notdurft) of the Ersatzmensch. Because only Ersatzmenschen allow themselves to be content with and to get pleasure from [Ersatz]—stupid spectators of a stupid life . . .6

Rußwurm here pinpoints the way that wartime and inflationary Ersatz is a sad substitute for the goods it replaces because it is forced to use items “with which [it] ha[s] only the most distant semblance.” Thus, materials such as bran and potatoes were made into bread, military barracks were transformed into apartments, and, most importantly, once stable values were suddenly generated out of speculative “assumptions,” the unmoored economy of Ersatz value that undergirded the inflation. Although the widespread application of Ersatz goes back to the nineteenth century, it was the mass mobilization of men and materials during World War I, as well as the resulting blockades of the Central Powers that made Ersatz a necessity, especially in Germany. Germany had become an industrialized powerhouse very quickly relative to western European neighbors like Great Britain; as its economy became focused on manufacturing, it also became more reliant on the import of raw materials from other nations.7 But with material supplies cut off by war or requisitioned for military use, shortages were endemic to large parts of the German economy. The British blockade, which was more or less in place by 1916, severely curtailed German trade even with neutral nations.

6 7

Rußwurm, Ersatzmenschen, 14. See Charles Paul Vincent, The Politics of Hunger: The Allied Blockade of Germany, 1915–1919 (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1985), 38. See also Mary Elisabeth Cox, Hunger in War and Peace: Women and Children in Germany, 1914–1924 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019).

Paper Promises

65

Thus, Germany had to rely on products which could be manufactured from materials obtained domestically or from one of the Central Powers, nations which were themselves facing similar shortages. In practical terms, this meant that German diets were severely curtailed, bread and potatoes became primary staples, and then, with the failure of the potato crop in 1916, turnips. The most severe period before the end of the war was the winter of 1916 and 1917, nicknamed the Kohlrübenwinter, or turnip winter, for Germans’ heavy reliance on the root vegetable.8 By 1918, Germans were subsisting on a diet of 1,000 calories per day, a diet almost completely lacking in fats, which were rationed to twelve percent of their prewar level.9 A variety of imitation products were thus introduced to make up for missing consumer goods. Individuals were most likely to notice the Ersatz foods that substituted for staples such as coffee, tea, butter, and sugar. Other products aimed to replace more ambitious fare. Procarnol, for instance, was a brand of meatless meat which advertised that it could be used as a substitute for cooked and fried meatballs, hamburger, in dishes calling for rabbit, in stuffed cabbage, “and so on.”10 Yet, in spite of the range of this powdered preparation, its packaging also insisted that the product offered a convincing replacement for any one of these items. Other Ersatz products similarly presented themselves as replacements for other sought-after staples—eggs, spices, cheese—by offering a pleasing texture or familiar flavor that could help stretch available stores and enliven meager fare. But the cheap paper packaging of these products belied the enthusiastic assertions of their advertising copy and gave them the appearance of sameness in spite of the variety they promised the consumer. This framing of Ersatz as a solution to the strains of wartime rationing and requisitioning was also pitched to businesses through trade exhibitions displaying the latest developments in Ersatz products. In Vienna in 1918, for instance, an Ersatzmittelausstellung (Ersatz materials exhibition) promoted the variety of goods that, though denied because of blockade or wartime requisitioning, could be simulated with substitutes. One poster promoting the event depicts an island surrounded by warships, each flying the flag of different Allied nation. On the island, more than a dozen smokestacks generate a cloud of smoke from which rises the deity-like silhouette of a scientist, carefully 8 9 10

Ibid., 46. Ibid., 49. A collection of such powder-based Ersatz products, all similarly packaged in small paper envelopes, can be found at the University of Southern California Special Collections. See Food. World War I ephemera, USC Libraries Special Collections, https://archives.usc.edu/repositories/3/archival_ objects/8079.

66

Material Modernity

combining chemicals and framed by rays of light and the text “ErsatzmittelAusstellung.”11 The suggestion is that the Central Powers, though isolated, will withstand the privations of the Allied blockade by miraculously creating whatever they need through the tools of modern science. Consumers, however, were not so readily convinced that Ersatz was the promised solution to their problems. This skepticism is apparent even in an article announcing the Vienna Ersatzmittelausstellung itself, which openly acknowledges the negative connotations attached to the word Ersatz: “[when] the word ‘Ersatz’ first appeared . . . the concept of swindle, deceit, and shabbiness adhered to this . . . word. The Ersatz that the war has created does not want to counterfeit anything, but it must adequately stand in for that which we cannot get in our countries.”12 A more satirical tone was struck in an article from the same publication, the Neue freie Presse, in which the author mused, “Who says that coffee needs to have caffeine and rum needs to contain alcohol? When one ignores these minor details, one can wholeheartedly enjoy Ersatz [products].”13 But the economist Ignatz Jastrow pinpointed the double-speak absurdities of Ersatz best: “The new language has already outdone itself,” he noted. “In addition to egg-Ersatz without nutritional value and soap-Ersatz without sufficient cleaning capability, one must also accept in the bargain word-Ersatz without meaning.”14 As Maria Makela has comprehensively documented, the need for cloth was particularly acute. Germany had long imported most of the necessary raw materials needed to produce textiles, from cotton and wool to silk and flax to make linen.15 Finding replacements for these lost materials was of paramount importance. Domestic demands combined with the variety of military uses of cloth—not only for uniforms, but also for munitions and first aid—meant that there was little left for civilian use. As a result, one was restricted to a set number of essential pieces: blouses, a dress, underwear, shoes. In the event that one had to obtain a new item, one had to first prove that s/he truly needed it in order to obtain a special permit, called a Bezugsscheine. This permit enabled one to

11

12 13 14 15

This poster is by Alfred Offner, and is in the collection of the Hoover Institute, Stanford University. Ersatzmittel Ausstellung, Wien, 1918, 1918, Poster collection, Hoover Institution Archives, https:// digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/10054. “Die Ersatzmittelausstellung,” Neue Freie Presse, June 8, 1918. “Die Welt des Ersatzes,” in Neue Freie Presse, November 29, 1917. Dr. I. Jastrow, “Kleingeld-Ersatz,” in Vossische Zeitung, April 4, 1917. See Maria Makela’s essays “Making Lemonade out of Lemons: Merz and Material Poverty,” in Art History 42, no. 4 (2019): 652–77; reprinted here 11–38; and “Artificial Silk Girls: Rayon as Silk’s Double in Weimar Germany,” in The Doppelgänger: German Visual Culture Series vol. 3, ed. Deborah Ascher Barnstone (Oxford, New York: Peter Lang, 2016): 205–36.

Paper Promises

67

purchase the necessary item from a sanctioned shop where such goods were so limited, they could only sell to customers with the necessary paperwork.16 The war thus became the impetus for innovations in textiles made from paper. The Deutsche Faserstoff Ausstellung (German Fibers Exhibition), an industry exhibition focused on such products, traveled to major cities throughout Germany including Berlin, Düsseldorf, and Leipzig in 1918. The Ersatzmittelausstellung in Vienna also featured an affiliated exhibition of Papiergewebe, (paper textiles) called the EMA Gruppe Papiergewebe-Ausstellung (Ersatzmittelausstellung Group Paper Textiles Exhibition), presented by the lower Austrian Trade Association of the Textile Industry (niederösterreicherischen Gewerbeverein), the War Associations of the Textile Industry (Kriegsverbänden der Textilindustrie), and the Economic Union of the Paper Industry (Wirtschaftsverband der Papierindustrie)17 This affiliated exhibition even had its own promotional poster, designed by the Hungarian illustrator, Mihály Biró (Plate 3; Figure 3.1). In Biró’s poster, Mercury, the Greco-Roman god of commerce, cradles a large roll of paper that has started to unfurl at one end. The paper frays into strips, from which float finished shirts, pants, dresses, and rope ready-made. Here, references to modern technology are absent. Instead, paper is treated as a kind of Philosopher’s Stone that transforms itself from the humblest material into fashionable and much needed fabric. Paper’s connection to the textile trade, as well as its potential for alchemical transformation, from something base to something beneficial, was not new. When rag papers were manufactured in Europe beginning in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and continuing until the nineteenth century, mills produced paper exclusively from soiled cotton and linen fabric collected by rag pickers.18 Not only were the rags repellent, the process of turning them into paper was also intensely unpleasant: for centuries, one of the most common materials for breaking down fibers was human urine.19 The end result was the transformation of something abject into something clean, pure, and ready to receive the word. But as the relatively low-tech process of papermaking became increasingly industrialized, the demands for and on new kinds of papers proliferated, as did

16 17

18

19

Makela, “Merz and Material Poverty,” 660. See Heinz Schmidt-Bachem, Aus Papier: eine Kultur- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte der Papier verarbeitenden Industrie in Deutschland, (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011), 653. For more on the early modern character of the ragpicker and comment on the “concept of the resurrection of corrupt material” in the production of rag paper, see Lothar Müller, White Magic, trans. Jessica Spangler (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2014), 46–51. See, for example, Mark Kurlansky, Paper: Paging Through History (New York and London: W.W. Norton & Co., 2016), 82.

68

Material Modernity

Figure 3.1 Mihály Biró, Ersatz Exibition: Paper Textiles Section (Ersatzmittelausstellung Gruppe-Papiergewebe), 1918, lithograph, 127 × 96.5 cm, Poster AU 253, Poster collection, Hoover Institution Archives, http:// digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/10001.

Paper Promises

69

the technological solutions that promised to meet those demands. Indeed, before 1850, paper was used almost exclusively for writing and printing. After 1850, the most significant new use of paper was as a packing material. But paper also began to appear in a multitude of new personal hygiene products such as toilet paper, tissues, sanitary napkins, diapers, and bandages.20 Rather than being made with human waste, in other words, modern paper products were used to clean, contain, and dispose of human waste. The functions such products served made paper’s expendability and ephemerality an asset, not a liability in wartime. By the end of the war, paper was so thoroughly integrated into the military and consumer textile industries that the antiquarian and editor, Ernst Collin, wrote in an essay, “Paper as Textiles” (Papier als Spinnstoff), that “Paper is today the raw material for almost all products in the apparel industry.” For example, bags used for military and industrial needs are produced from [paper], it forms a leather substitute for belts [and] for all products of the saddlery trade. Book binders, which now have only a limited supply of both leather and linen, find useful materials for covers in paper fabrics which perfectly simulate ordinary calico, artificial linen, and canvas. Ropemakers produce twine, cords, and ropes from paper thread, and paper is also in many cases used for bandages. Colorfully patterned upholstered furniture and wallpaper, as well as carpets, runners, and mats are [also] made from durable paper fabrics.21

Collin’s list omits mention of more delicate items of clothing, such as underwear. But for products such as twine or floor mats in which rough-hewn fibers sufficed, or those like wallpaper, which already resembled paper in form and function, Collin’s text suggests that the transition to paper-based products was successful enough. The Berlin-based Papier Zeitung (Paper Newspaper) a trade journal for paper fabricators, manufacturers, and distributors, offered information on new discoveries and patents in the paper trades. It also reported on developments in the various paper industries and novel uses for paper in connection with the war, tracking the variety of functions for which new paper products were being developed. Nurses, for instance, were dressing wounds with paper bandages made from blotting paper.22 Paper socks and slippers were made for wounded

20

21

22

See Sabine Schachtner, Größer, schneller, mehr: zur Geschichte der industriellen Papierproduktion und ihrer Entwicklung in Bergisch Gladbach (Cologne: Rheinland-Verlag, 1996). Ernst Collin, “Papier als Spinnstoff,” in Archiv für Buchgewerbe: Zeitschrift des Vereins für Buchwesen und Schrifttum 55, no. 1 (1918), 17–19. “Filtrierpapier als Ersatz für Mull,” in Papier Zeitung, June 10, 1915, 942. See also “Das Papier als Ersatzmittel,” in Die Zeit, January 10, 1915.

70

Material Modernity

soldiers’ sensitive feet in military hospitals.23 Another article reported that backpacks made primarily from paper fabric were being tested in the field and, the article stated, had held up for more than a year. “The backpack,” it noted, “proves the resilience of the paper fabric . . . [and] also shows careful workmanship and consideration for the raw materials.”24 Some of the proposals were more hypothetical, including an article on the latest research regarding the digestibility of wood pulp as a potential foodstuff for animals and humans.25 There were also human-interest stories that highlighted the less glamorous roles of paper in wartime; the Papier Zeitung published a poem about toilet paper written by a soldier at the Front. His words of gratitude celebrate the tenderness of toilet paper as well as the women who package and send it: “We extend our hands to you / because what you cut, fold, and smooth / saves us from filth and shame / that soft and delicate band / from you to us in enemy lands!”26 Nevertheless, many of the improvised functions for paper in wartime were far less advanced. The Papier Zeitung reported on an exhibition staged in Vienna early in the war with the title “Paper as Protection from Cold and as Ersatz Material.”27 It promised to offer instruction on the ways soldiers at the Front could weatherproof their clothing with paper, stuffing it into their uniforms as an added layer of insulation. The Papier Zeitung continued to offer helpful DIY tips, advising, for instance, that one could use sheets of oil paper to make clothing more waterproof,28 or reuse old newspapers to warm up thin blankets by layering them inside fabric and stitching them down to secure pieces in place.29 Paper could even be used to stop bullets. After the end of the war, when fighting broke out between revolutionary Spartacists fighters and counterrevolutionary Freikorps troops during the days of March 1919, left-wing fighters in the Zeitungsviertel (Newspaper Quarter) repurposed large rolls of unprinted newspaper near the Ullstein and Rudolf Mosse publishing houses to form barriers that blocked bullets and halted counterrevolutionary advances in the streets. A photo of a ragtag group of Spartacist fighters aiming rifles behind makeshift barricades of rolls and stacks of newspaper appeared soon after in a special issue of the Ullstein publication Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung titled “Berlin’s

23 24

25 26 27 28 29

“Lazarettschuhe aus Papier,” in Papier Zeitung, February 21, 1915, 318. “Tornister mit Überzug und Tragriemen aus Papiergewebe,” in Papier Zeitung, November 25, 1915, 1804. “Verdaulichkeit von Zellstoff,” in Papier Zeitung, January 14, 1915, 68. “Abortpapier ins Feld,” in Papier Zeitung, February 1915, 203. “Ausstellung Papier als Kälteschutz und Stoffersatz,” in Papier Zeitung, January 3, 1915, 7. “Wärmende Kleidungsstücke mit Papierfutter,” in Papier Zeitung, February 21, 1915, 318. “Mit Zeitungspapier gefüllte Bettdecken,” in Papier Zeitung, January 10, 1915, 50.

Paper Promises

71

Days of Turmoil” (Berliner Sturmtage), an image that suggested newspapers’ active roles was literally on the fighting lines, taking part in the struggle.30

Valuable on Paper Although paper proved to be practical, its loftier promise—that it was a protean material able to fill any function—was overstated. Paper was more often a substitute for unavailable items in less transubstantiated ways, most notably in its guise as ration cards, otherwise unremarkable pieces of printed and stamped paper that individuals could exchange for desperately needed goods. Ration cards were offered first for bread, then sugar, milk, coffee, fat, and later, potatoes, marmalade, and meat.31 Authorities also controlled the limited supply of nonfood products, such as soap, through these vouchers. They were interchangeable in appearance, the grids of individual tickets good for a single serving of bread, a ½ pound of meat, or an egg, their simple form corresponding with their ruthlessly utilitarian function. The most prominent form of paper Ersatz during the inflationary decade, however, was paper money, both the official paper Reichsmark and the unofficial “emergency” money called Notgeld that appeared after the beginning of the war in 1914. Notgeld was unsanctioned currency issued by cities, towns, savings banks, and other businesses to temporarily relieve persistent shortages of official money throughout Germany. Notgeld acted as Ersatz for the Reichsmark, but the paper Reichsmark was itself Ersatz more generally for value; not the value of gold, the tie to which had been severed by the government’s finance laws of August 4, 1914, but for a more abstract concept of value tied to one’s confidence in the issuing authority itself: the government. Throughout the inflationary decade, in fact, paper stood alone, a fiat currency underpinned by the stability of a very unstable state.32 Thus, Ersatz money was not a technological challenge but a conceptual and political one; indeed, paper currency did not first appear with the advent of war

30 31

32

See https://www.axelspringer.com/de/inside/ullstein-in-den-sturmtagen-1919. Lena Hallwirth, “Die Versorgung der Zivilbevölkerung mit Lebensmitteln und Ersatzlebensmitteln während des Ersten Weltkriegs,” (Masterarbeit, Institute of Social Ecology, Vienna, Alpen-AdriaUniversitaet Klagenfurt Vienna, Graz, 2016). Before the finance laws of August 1914, the Reichsmark, like most major world currencies at the time, was a commodity currency—in other words, its value was guaranteed by a commodity: gold. The finance laws in effect ended the Gold Standard because they forbid the exchange of paper currency for gold and because they removed the three-to-one ratio that had been in place to prevent the overprinting of paper money. See Gerald Feldman, The Great Disorder: Politics, Economics, and Society in the German Inflation, 1914 – 1924 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).

72

Material Modernity

in 1914, and Germany was not the only country to experience inflation up to that point. In the thirteenth century the Italian Marco Polo encountered paper money in China, where such notes, made from mulberry bark, had been in use since the seventh century. The first significant European paper currency was not issued until 1694. The Bank of England, the world’s first central bank, was granted permission by the crown to issue banknotes and extend credit to help William III of Orange finance his military campaign against the French. According to the financial journalist Klaus Bender, this was the turning point: “Wars and the necessity to finance them was henceforth to be the driving force behind the triumphal march of paper money.”33 Indeed, the paper money printed by the Continental Congress during the American Revolutionary War similarly enabled the colonies to finance the conflict with credit. However, the dramatic overproduction of this currency, called the Continental, ultimately led to hyperinflation and the enduring adage that something was, “not worth a Continental.”34 Such misadventures led to a widespread distrust of paper as a legitimate medium of exchange. In Faust part 2, for instance, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe satirized the printing of paper money as the literal work of the devil. In the story, an emperor, encouraged by Mephistopheles, agrees to issue paper money backed by hypothetical gold reserves on the emperor’s lands. The Emperor is able to avert financial disaster and rehire his army in the short term, but in the long term it leads to his ruin and the downfall of the kingdom. Goethe viewed paper money as a kind of alchemy in reverse, where gold is transformed into paper and material value is disregarded in favor of exchange value.35 In Germany, the Reichsbank had been issuing paper notes and guaranteeing them since the bank’s founding in 1876. The Reichsmark was given additional credibility and status as legal tender in 1909, meaning that it had to be accepted as payment for any and all debts. Ultimately, it was the way the government decided to finance the war that started inflation, a decision based on an assumption that the war would be short-lived and that Germany would be victorious. On August 4, 1914, the government enacted a series of war finance laws that, among other things, ended the Gold Standard in Germany by

33

34

35

Klaus Bender, Moneymakers: The Secret World of Banknote Printing (Weinheim: Wiley-VCH Verlag, 2006), 20. Jason Goodwin, Greenback: The Almighty Dollar and the Invention of America (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2014 [2003]), 72. See Marc Shell, “Language and Property : The Economics of Translation in Goethe’s Faust,” in Money, Language, and Thought: Literary and Philosophical Economies from the Medieval to the Modern Era (Berkeley: University of California, 1982): 84–130, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust Part Two, trans. David Luke (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).

Paper Promises

73

forbidding the exchange of gold for paper money in order to maintain the Reichsbank’s gold reserves and also by permitting the Reichsbank to print paper money in excess of the three-to-one ratio (three paper marks for each single gold mark in reserve) previously required.36 Almost immediately, the value of metal increased, in part because the government was requisitioning various metals for military use, but also because the Reichsbank was hoarding gold and silver to grow its capital reserves. As a result, the metal value of coins quickly surpassed their exchange value; first gold and silver mark coins disappeared from circulation, followed by various pfennig coins minted in copper. Paper, far less limited in supply, was soon used to make up for the serious shortage of Kleingeld—smaller denominations, usually in pfennig amounts—that made up the majority of everyday economic transactions throughout Germany.37 Paper’s relative worthlessness as money was actually useful in the short term because consumers were less tempted to hoard or repurpose it, and so kept it in circulation. Paper had very little material value, and individuals had little incentive to find other functions for it. While coins were hoarded because of the value of metal and because of their easy and widespread convertibility, paper money, particularly Notgeld, was only accepted locally and was only valuable when spent, not when saved. And unlike materials which could be repurposed for more immediate needs—paper was typically most valuable in the form in which one received it, be it as ration card, voucher, or banknote. In Ersatzmenschen, Alexander von Gleichen Rußwurm singles out paper money as a particularly pernicious form of Ersatz. “Paper money,” he noted, “is always Ersatz money.”38 “Symbols take the place of things,” he continued, “We have a situation in which true capital is replaced by ‘Schein’ capital, whereby it is easier to represent a fairytale denomination in one’s bankbook [Buch] in place of a healthy row of clear numbers.”39 It is the abstraction paper money represents that Rußwurm finds objectionable. The “healthy” and “clear” numbers of true

36

37

38 39

Gerald Feldman has cautioned that the pre-Gold Standard era has been idealized as a “Paradise Lost” when in reality, it was already operating in an altered fashion before the war. Moreover, no country operated under a strict version of the Gold Standard; rather, central banks exercised discretion in varying their gold-reserve to currency ratios. In fact, in June 1914, Feldman notes that credit operations of Berlin banks were so extensive that as little as 5 percent of their outstanding credits were actually covered by specie holdings. Feldman, The Great Disorder, 30. Notmünzen made primarily out of nickel were also produced by cities and towns, especially in 1917. These coins were often stamped “Kriegsnotgeld.” Notmünzen were preferable to paper Kleingeld when available because they were far more durable than paper notes. Gerald Feldman points out that before 1914, 52 to 65 percent of monetary circulation in Germany was in coin. Feldman, The Great Disorder, 28. Rußwurm, Ersatzmenschen, 73. Ibid., p. 72.

74

Material Modernity

capital are far more desirable than the “Schein” capital of paper money and the fantasy numbers that inflate its value. What constitutes true capital for Rußwurm? Not surprisingly, it is physical assets, material and concrete: “A printing press steadily churning out banknotes belongs to the worst Ersatz of a healthy financial system and produces nothing other than bankruptcy veiled, it masks the difference between money as medium of exchange and capital as value or assets.”40 The Schein Rußwurm references here plays on the double meaning of Schein in German, which refers to (an often deceptive) surface appearance, but is also the word for a bill or banknote.41 The German sociologist Georg Simmel published the pioneering Philosophie des Geldes (Philosophy of Money) in 1900, years before Germany’s encounter with inflation. Yet Simmel understood that money itself and the material form that money took, whether paper or gold, were not the same thing. Money, Simmel noted, is the mediator that enables the functions money performs, such as exchange and circulation; and in the modern world, money performs more functions more rapidly. Paper money, Simmel argued, “signifies the progressive dissolution of money value into purely functional value.”42 It was because of, not in spite of, paper’s abundance that it was able to function so efficiently as a medium for modern money and modern exchange. “The dual nature of money as a concrete and valued substance and, at the same time, as something that owes its significance to the complete dissolution of substance into motion and function, derives from the fact that money is the reification of exchange among people, the embodiment of a pure function.”43 However, these advantages were also potential weaknesses. There are no practical checks on the production of paper money; governments and institutions must police the supply on their own. Simmel concluded that “Only in a stable and closely organized society that assures mutual protection and provides safeguards against a variety of elemental dangers, both external and psychological, is it possible for such a delicate and easily destroyed material as paper to become the representative of the highest money value.”44 After all, only a small mental shift transforms paper money from valuable specie into a relatively worthless piece of paper.

40 41

42

43 44

Ibid., p. 73. See my discussion of the “Schein-Leben” in “Making Money: Notgeld and the Material Experience of Inflation in Weimar Germany,” in Art History 42, no. 4 (2019): 678–701. Georg Simmel, The Philosophy of Money, trans. David Frisby (London & New York: Routledge Classics, 2004), 184. Ibid., p. 188. Ibid., p. 184.

Paper Promises

75

Paper, in its abundance, was an ironic symbol of the counter logic of inflation, an inversion of the typical relationship between number and value. The more money that was printed, the less it was worth, and, consequently, the more had to be printed. The dramatic and unpredictable drops in the value of the mark were indeed abstract and incomprehensible to the general public; the more the mark’s value fell, the more people understood that paper money’s worth was illusory and conceptual rather than concrete and material. Indeed, the only thing that guaranteed the value of paper money was a belief that it had value, and paper was no longer backed by a golden guarantee. This absence of an essence, the Gold Standard Sein underlying the Schein, is alluded to in Wilhelm Schulz’s drawing for a December 1919 issue of the satirical weekly Simplicissimus, “The Dance around the Golden Calf,” (Plate 4; Figure 3.2). Men and women in contemporary

Figure 3.2 Wilhelm Schulz, Dance Around the Golden Calf (Der Tanz um das goldene Kalb), published in Simplicissimus, vol. 24, no. 36 (3 December 1919). Hoover Institution Library & Archives.

76

Material Modernity

dress cavort around the Biblical Golden Calf, the tempting idol worshipped by the Israelites after Moses went to Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments. The Israelites’ Calf was indeed an empty signifier with no divine signified, but at least it was made of gold. The calf in Schulz’s drawing appears, instead, to be covered in currency that is blowing away, revealing only a skeleton beneath its shiny skin. The caption reads, redundantly, “. . . and they never noticed, it was made of paper.” Here, the revelers’ misplaced faith is not their mistaken belief in a false idol, but in the empty promises of paper. Notgeld was double Ersatz, an insufficient replacement for a currency that was itself an inadequate substitute for value. Notgeld, however, was Ersatz with a camp sensibility—it was capable of ironic self-reference. While the staid Reichsmark maintained its standard format and designs, updated with new denominations, Notgeld notes sardonically referred to the economic situation, even referencing their own relative worthlessness. One of the most successful designs for the way it contains this message within the note’s composition is part of a set designed by Wenzel Hablik for his hometown of Itzehoe, issued in 1921. The one-mark note depicts a decoratively abstracted figure defecating the one of the note’s denomination (Figure 3.3). The not-so-subtle suggestion is that this mark, in spite of its attractive appearance, is shit, or, at least, worth as much. The note’s verso, meanwhile, offers a running list of the price of various goods, comparing the cost in 1913 versus the price in 1921 when the bill was issued. In 1923, Hablik again designed two inflationary notes for one and five million marks, respectively, though the messaging has become more urgent, even apocalyptic. On the five-mark note, Hablik illustrated a ship tossed by waves, invoking metaphors of inundation, but the tiny ship, named “Itzehoe Mark” is also threatened by the denomination, “five million” which morphs into flames (Figure 3.4). The text that frames this central scene reads, in part, “It is difficult to keep one’s cool in a burning ship!” Such imagery, comparing the currency crisis

Figure 3.3 Wenzel Hablik, one mark Notgeld note (recto and verso), issued in Itzehoe, 1921, offset print, 5.5×10.6 cm, collection of the author.

Paper Promises

77

Figure 3.4 Wenzel Hablik, five million mark Notgeld note (recto), issued in Itzehoe, 1923, offset print, 8.7×18 cm, collection of the author.

to multiple maritime dangers, would have been especially powerful in Itzehoe, a town north of Hamburg where the Elbe meets the North Sea and the town’s crest features two towers above swelling blue waves.

Drowning in Paper Visual and verbal metaphors of inundation, such as floods and avalanches, were frequently used to represent the unprecedented volume of paper money pouring into the market. Rußwurm himself characterized the situation using such language in Ersatzmenschen, stating, “It is the realm of money, or actually, of anti-money, that large numbers of often poorly printed notes [Wertzeichen] flood the market, and in their unchecked abundance, smother the true prosperity of better days.” Olaf Gulbransson’s illustration for Simplicissimus, “Die Sintflut” or “The Deluge,” literalizes this flood of money.45 A dead mother and child float on this sea of notes, while others strain to keep their heads, or rather, hands above the waves of paper, fingers gripping bills. Only the businessman, an antiSemitic caricature carefully counting his cash, has managed to float above it all, perched on an upturned desk. Gulbransson’s emaciated mother and child reappear in another illustration, also from Simplicissimus, by Karl Arnold. The woman holds a skeletal baby, away from the rising tide of paper threatening to 45

This illustration appears in Simplicissimus, vol 28, no. 20 (August 13, 1923), 255. See http://www. simplicissimus.info.

78

Material Modernity

drown them both. The caption, “Papiergeld! Papiergeld! Brot! Brot!” (Paper Money! Bread!) (Figure 3.5), is less a statement than a plaintive wail, but recalls Rußwurm’s argument that paper money “smother[s] the true prosperity of better days.”

Figure 3.5 Karl Arnold, Paper Money! Paper Money! Bread! Bread! (Papiergeld! Papiergeld! Brot! Brot!), published in Simplicissimus, vol. 28, no. 11 (11 June 1923). Hoover Institution Library and Archives.

Paper Promises

79

Although paper money was an abstraction as value, it had a distinct material presence as a physical object, or, rather, objects. Notes were not noticeable in small numbers, but as inflation accelerated and money had less purchasing power, larger amounts of money—both in terms of denomination an in terms of the literal number of notes—were required to buy everyday products.46 As a result, paper money took up physical space in ways never before experienced. Bernd Widdig has pointed to the wheelbarrow full of worthless cash as an allegory of the inflation; it exemplifies money manifested almost purely as a chaotic mass of material.47 The sheer amount of paper money produced during the inflation is impossible to accurately calculate, but the number of notes printed was certainly in the billions. The production of official Reichsmarks was, moreover, dwarfed by the number of regional Notgeld notes that were issued. Notgeld, a fiat currency with precarious legal status, was never openly sanctioned by authorities, and was tolerated only out of necessity. To avoid provoking authorities, Notgeld issuers had to signal that their currency was not challenging the issuing authority of the government’s own Reichsbank. They did this by creating currency that was valid only within contained geographic areas and only for brief periods, often just a few months. Such measures also unintentionally inflated the physical number of notes in circulation, as new notes had to be printed when old notes expired. Other factors also contributed to the surplus production of Notgeld in particular, as issuers tried various strategies for dissociating their own local currencies from the constantly depreciating masses of paper money piling up elsewhere. Issuing distinctive Notgeld notes that audiences wanted to buy more than spend was encouraged by a mania for Notgeld collecting that started almost as soon as the first notes were issued in 1914. Collectors, in turn, inspired their own category of Notgeld called Sammlerscheine—literally collector’s notes—that were never meant for circulation. Such collectors were numerous enough that there were also bespoke publications dedicated to Notgeld collecting.48 In rare cases, Sammlerscheine even made a profit for issuers.49 Dr. Arnold Keller, an 46

47

48

49

The highest value denomination paper mark for much of the inflation was 1,000 marks. Larger denominations were first issued in July 1922. See Manfred Müller, Deutsches Notgeld, Bd. 4: Die Notgeldscheine der deutschen Inflation (Regenstauf: Gietl, 2010). Bernd Widdig, Culture and Inflation in Weimar Germany (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2001). For more on the practice of collecting Notgeld and specifically Sammlerscheine see my essay “Making Money,” and “Currency and Community: Labor, Identity, and Notgeld in Inflation-Era Thuringia,” in Alternative Realities: Utopian Thought in Times of Political Rupture. Bulletin of the German Historical Institute, Supplement 14, ed. Paul Lerner and Joes Segal (2019): 39 – 56. The town of Naumburg, for instance, made enough profit on the sale of the Hussiten Kirschfest notes designed by Walter Hege that they were able to renovate the town hall. See Ursula Dittrich-Wagner, “Walter Hege und das Naumburger Notgeld,” https://www.mv-naumberg.de/notgeld.

80

Material Modernity

authority on Notgeld who began collecting provisional notes as early as 1914 is one scholar whose own collection gives a sense of the scale of Notgeld production; Keller himself assembled a collection of over 100,000 distinct Notgeld issues, a collection that nevertheless remained incomplete. He estimated that 10,000 collector’s notes were issued between 1918 and 1922, and in 1923 alone, more than 70,000 different Notgeld hyperinflation issues—that is, notes with distinct designs or denominations—were printed. There was also a small but significant category of specialty Notgeld called Stoffgeld—material money made from a variety of non-paper, non-Ersatz materials including silk, linen, leather, aluminum foil, enamelware, and even Meissen porcelain. This money had a more readily discernible material value than paper Notgeld though its exchange value was still tied to the unpredictable drops in the value of the Reichsmark. Material money was typically produced with goods associated with an area’s manufacturing base, such as the linen and silk bills produced by the city of Bielefeld, the aluminum foil notes made in Lautawerk, or the ceramic and porcelain coins produced in Meissen. The Lederscheine, or leather notes, from the town of Pößneck, promote the town’s leather products with depictions of the variety of leather goods the region produces—sofas, jackets, shoes, and handbags—embossed on a leather five million mark note around the silhouette of a cowhide. Other Pößneck notes called Stiefelsohlengeld, translated roughly as “shoe sole money,” serve as a promotion of Pößneck’s leather products, and are at the same time, a functional version of those items: the bill is both banknote and a leather shoe sole.50 One might be able to reuse leather, but what does one do with paper? Paper during inflation was no longer the useful, durable, and mutable Ersatz promoted during wartime. Paper, especially paper money, was increasingly seen—and depicted—as a nuisance, even a threat, useless, flimsy, and immutable. While Ersatz was about the transubstantiation of materials, inflation brought materials back to Earth. Paper money, thoroughly disenchanted, was no longer a signifier of value but, simply, a mass of unwanted, unwelcome Stoff, particularly during the final year of hyperinflation when one needed piles of it to purchase anything practical. Paper money’s transformation back into a persistently, obdurately, irreducibly material object recalls Bill Brown’s notion of “redemptive reification,” “a re-

50

For further discussion of these leather notes see Maynes, “Making Money,” and Hans LudwigGrabowski, Notgeld der besonderen Art: Geldscheine aus Stoff, Leder, und sonstigen ungewöhnlichen Materielien (Gietl: Regenstauf, 2005).

Paper Promises

81

thingification that resuscitates the character of things as things—or the thingness of the object—although it is engaged not in recovery (retrieving some prelapsarian moment) so much as discovery (discovering a heretofore unrecognized thingness).”51 The discovery of this “thingness,” occurring through the interruption of habit or the displacement of the object “from routine systems and networks of use,” leads to other deployments of the object, what Brown describes as misuse value. “This expansion of use often includes the recognition of a different physical property of the object... you also confront [the object’s] physical specificity.”52 In photographs documenting the final year of hyperinflation, most notably the street photography of Willy Römer and Georg Pahl, one does see individuals confronting the physical specificity of paper money in a variety of ways.53 Their utility is compromised by notes’ diminutive sizes, but users make various alterations or accommodations, with varying degrees of success. In a photograph by Pahl descriptively titled “One million mark notes used as receipts (Rechnungsblock),”54 a faceless hand calculates totals on the blank backs of repurposed one million mark bills—hyperinflationary issues were often only printed on one side—jotting out payment due on a nolonger valid form of payment. In another Pahl photo with the self-explanatory title, “Wallpapering a wall with one mark notes which today are much cheaper than wallpaper,” a well-dressed man arranges one mark and 1,000 mark notes on a piece of plywood, gluing and placing each one in a fastidious grid.55 Other, more creative uses for notes also emerge in the photographic record. Children, notably, find uses for stacks of cash as building blocks, or they are shown gluing notes together to make kites. Adults could also get in on the fun, there are photos of a woman in a party hat and dress made entirely of currency. Cabaret star Karl Valentin played on the double meaning of the German word “Bank” as both bench and bank in Deutsche Bank 1923, a park bench papered with worthless inflationary money. As a place to rest one’s ass/ets, it is a demonstration of the potential for a playful repurposing of objects and the words used to describe them.

51 52 53

54

55

Bill Brown, Other Things (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), 374. Ibid., 373. Many of the photos discussed here appear in Hans Ernst Oswalt’s Sittengeschichte der Inflation: ein Kulturdokument aus den Jahren des Marktsturtzes (Berlin: Verlag Neufeld und Henius, 1931). Georg Pahl, Ein Million-Markschein als Rechnungsblock. Findige Leute benutzen die Rückseite des Einmillionenscheines zum Schreiben; ein neuer Block würde Milliarden kosten, 1923, Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-00193. Georg Pahl, Tapezieren einer Wand mit Ein-Markscheinen welche heute um vieles billiger sind wie eine Tapete, 1923, Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-00104.

82

Material Modernity

But most often, inflationary money, whether Reichsmarks or Notgeld, ended up in the furnace. By the end of hyperinflation in October and November 1923, people were selling devalued notes by the pound as wastepaper, worth more by weight than denomination. Paper did, at least, burn easily and disappear quickly once discarded. After November 1923, it was imperative to banish paper marks from public life and public tills as quickly as possible in order to stabilize the economy, paving the way for a new currency untainted by an association with the old. To that end, an interim currency was introduced: the Rentenmark. The Rentenmark was backed not by gold, but by its association with an equally concrete and limited good: payments on public lands.

“The Jew took Gold and Silver . . . and left us with this Dreck” This mass of money did not entirely disappear, however, and the staggering number of notes printed, especially in the final months of inflation, ensured that some would escape destruction. Many were kept as souvenirs, reminders of the surreal experience of recent years. But soon notes made public appearances as well. Indeed, the old paper marks and Notgeld in hyperinflationary amounts in the millions and billions reappeared as early as 1924, the year two federal elections were held for control of Parliament.56 The notes had been modified, stamped with messages such as: “The Jew took our gold, silver, and bacon and gave us this paper filth,” (“Der Jude nahm uns Silber, Gold, und Speck und gab dafür uns den papiernen Dreck!”) (Figure 3.6) and The “Jew Bank” has the gold, the Dreck sits here in your hand!” (“Das Gold, das hat die Judenbank / Der Dreck, der blieb in deiner Hand!”). Although the messages themselves varied, their content was consistent, as was their source: the far-right National Socialists (NSDAP) and the German National People’s Party (DNVP). These new old notes were now only money in farcical form, but their true function was more sinister: as anti-Semitic political propaganda, they were an Ersatz campaign flyer in miniature. The zombie bills were resurrected several more times, almost always during Parliamentary elections to bolster support for 56

See Hans-Ludwig Grabowski and Wolfgang Haney, eds. “Der Jude nahm uns Silber, Gold und Speck . . .”: Für politische und antisemitische Propaganda genutzte Geldscheine in der Zeit der Weimarer Republik und des Dritten Reichs (Regenstauf: Battenberg & Gietl Verlag, 2015) and A.J. GibbsMurray, “Tarnished Gems”: Anti-Semitic Notgeld and Reichsbanknote Issues (Raleigh, NC: Lulu.com, 2018). There were other stamps featured on these notes, all of which appear to be anti-Semitic in nature. They circulated for every significant federal election year through 1933, the last year of free elections and the Weimar Republic itself before the rise of Hitler and the Third Reich.

Paper Promises

83

Figure 3.6 Designer unknown, 1000 Mark Reichsmark note with Anti-Semitic Stamp, issued September 1922, 8.4×16 cm, collection of the author.

far-right parties, especially the Nazis. They were meant to resurface memories of recent economic chaos, a return of the repressed inflation. They also made Jews the scapegoat for this event and associated this Other with the loss of real material wealth and wellbeing: gold and silver but also food. What “the Jew” left behind was this otherwise unnamed “Dreck,” a piece of paper that was, as a oncecirculated currency, worn, wrinkled, and, yes, dirty. Such associations between Jews and “filthy lucre” were a long-established and pernicious trope, sticky and easily attached to other similarly toxic messages on the right regarding the inflation and its causes.57 But the Dreck was also paper itself, suggesting that while paper money could be repurposed, it could never transcend its materiality. This Dreck was inseparable from the paper it was printed on, paper that failed to live up to its promise.

57

The association between Jews and “filthy” lucre goes back to the thirteenth century in Europe at least, and is tied to long-standing anti-Semitic attitudes within Christianity. Such a discussion is beyond the scope of this essay, but warrants more fulsome consideration, particularly in relation to the abject, diminished, or Ersatz materiality of inflation itself. For a recent exploration of the frustrating durability of these attitudes as they manifest in material culture going back to medieval Europe and the classical world, see Joanne Rosenthal and Marc Volovici, eds., Jews, Money, Myth (London: Jewish Museum London, 2019).

84

4

Abject Objects Til Brugman, Evidentiary Representation, and Sexology’s Celluloid Fixation Thomas O. Haakenson

Figure 4.1 Til Brugman (a.k.a., Mathilda Maria Petronella Brugman) (1888–1958). Image reproduced courtesy of Literatuurmuseum The Hague, Netherlands. 85

86

Material Modernity

The displays were shocking. Some called the images perverse. Exposed genitalia. Sensational artifacts. Sexually suggestive poses. Members of the public visited in numbers. But not everyone was enamored. The writer Til Brugman (a.k.a., Mathilda Maria Petronella Brugman) (1888–1958) was no prude by any measure (Figure 4.1). The Dutch provocateur was a rare figure: an openly lesbian woman active and, by some accounts, influential in the otherwise primarily male and heterosexual avant-garde circles of early twentieth-century Europe. She found good cause to satirize the seemingly progressive, somewhat self-serving display of filmic and photographic representations. The visual spectacle had earned the label “scientific evidence” in no small part because of the pioneering research and professional activities of Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld.1 The site of these visual displays of seeming debauchery was Hirschfeld’s Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (“Institute of Sexual Science”) in the Tiergarten, the central park in Germany’s capital city, Berlin. The Institute, opened in 1919 and closed in 1933, was a figurative if not quite literal “hot bed” of sexual and gender provocation during the interwar period. It was also a site, as Brugman would make clear in her literary intervention, that depended on the problematic use of celluloid representations as substitutes for real people. Although Brugman had developed her biting literary style in the Netherlands in the 1910s and 1920s, she found herself in August 1931 in Berlin visiting the displays of Hirschfeld’s publicly accessible empirical-scientific emporium, presumably with her then-lover, fellow artist Hannah Höch (a.k.a., Anna Theresa Johannah Höch).2 Both women had connections to the avant-garde Dada art movement, which had begun in 1916 in Zurich, Switzerland, but had spread quickly to Europe and North America shortly thereafter. Brugman became familiar along with other Dutch artists active with De Stijl (“The Style”) with Dada’s political orientations and the movement’s specific, activist inclinations. A German, Höch’s artistic ambitions took her from the rural town of Gotha to the bustling capital city in 1912, where she enrolled in the Kunstgewerbeschule (“School of Applied Arts”) and eventually became active in the Dada movement through her then-lover Raoul Haussmann. The two women, Brugman and Höch, began an intimate relationship in 1926. The romance lasted until about 1935 and ended for unclear reasons, possibly out of fear and in response to the rise of the

1

2

Magnus Hirschfeld, “B. Das Institute für Sexualwissenschaft,” Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen1 (1908) 570–88; Rainer Herrn, “Einleitung zu Theorie und Praxis,” unpublished manuscript (2004): 13. Institute für Sexualwissenschaft (1919–1933): Eine Online-Austellung der Magnus-HirschfeldGesellschaft. Accessed June 28, 2019. https://www.hirschfeld.in-berlin.de/institut/en/personen/ pers_39.html.

Abject Objects

87

National Socialist party, with its murderous intolerance for non-heterosexual relationships. In contrast to Höch, Brugman was even more of an outsider in Germany and to Dada, a gender radical by some accounts and, according to a characterization by Dutch De Stijl artist Theo Van Doesberg that borders on the misogynistic and homophobic, something of an enfant terrible of the Dutch avant-garde: In Den Haag there lives a little monster that says it’s homosexual—but it’s as womanly as a young wet-nurse. Its name is Brugman and has the habit of daily rubbing me with Dirt, Shit and perfumed sperm. It writes volumes about crowing roosters, and turning mountains—Trouble! Her trash-verse has no place in De Stijl.3

Brugman was not one to let such provocations diminish her critical and intellectual projects. Once in Berlin and coupled with Höch, she was not about to let go to waste an opportunity for a Dada-style artistic intervention such as that presented to her in Hirschfeld’s Institute. Even in light of increasing and formalized National Socialist intolerance in the early 1930s, Brugman and Höch continued their artistic activities, activities that were often directly critical of political and cultural institutions. In this sense, Brugman’s literary rethinking of Hirschfeld’s Institute suggests an important reframing of debates during the period about admissible scientific evidence and visual culture. Yet scholarly engagement with Brugman’s provocative and potent literary corpus is limited and does not fully account for her challenge to the material problems of sexual science’s visual evidence. Only a select handful of studies in English—notably those by Maria Makela and Julia Nero, for example— have focused on the Dutch writer’s work in this fashion. And although the reception of Brugman’s work in German- and Dutch-speaking contexts is more robust than in English ones, this reception rarely explores Brugman’s critical engagements with science. Many of the scholarly efforts to shed light on the acerbic, insightful, and often hilarious texts by the enfant terrible of the Dutch avant-garde, as outlined below, have coupled—or even reduced—their analyses to discussions of her lesbian sexuality and her romantic, occasionally professional collaboration with Höch. These studies have given deserved voice to Brugman as an innovative avant-garde writer. The reduction is understandable, especially as

3

Cited in Julie Nero, Hannah Höch, Til Brugman. Lesbianism, and Weimar Sexual Subculture, unpublished dissertation, Case Western Reserve University, 2013: 153.

88

Material Modernity

some of the images and texts that have survived showcase Brugman’s relationship with Höch, such as the playful postcard that Höch illustrated and which announced the couple’s return to Germany from the Netherlands.4 These wellintended scholars have sought to rectify Brugman’s marginalization as an insignificant and minor figure, situating her as a victim of the misogynist and homophobic biases of her time. These biases that have been reproduced in literary and art historical scholarship and are evidenced by a continued absence of discussions of her work. Yet it is clear in reading Brugman’s grotesque, “Wahrenhaus der Liebe” (“Department Store of Love”), that there is more material significance—in both the figurative and the literal sense—to the work of this supposedly marginal figure than simple gender trouble or exclusively sexual disorientation.5 As Brugman’s literary lancing makes clear, it was not the existence of Magnus Hirchfeld’s Institute per se but rather the claims of supposed “visible proof ” and, concomitantly, the material foundations for the collection’s scientific displays that was the primary target of her critical, aesthetic intervention. In “Department Store of Love,” Brugman describes a shop filled with celluloid (i.e., plastic) objects, all of which are related to sexual identity or sexual practices. The owners of the store confront the nation’s military and propose that figures made of celluloid—Zelluloidkinder (i.e., “celluloid children”)—could be used in place of human soldiers to end war. Brugman’s literary weapon is not a machine gun but rather a metonymic gesture. Clearly, as scholars have noted, her Zelluloidkinder criticize the heterosexism behind normative sexual practices— that is, the belief that human sexual expression should serve procreative purposes only, especially since procreation is needed to replenish the nation’s population and the nation’s military. Yet often overlooked is Brugman’s materially insightful, metonymic intervention. As outlined in the pages that follow, it becomes clear that Brugman’s Zelluloidkinder serve two purposes: the real and the representation. These “celluloid children” thereby call into question material means of representation that was so critical for scientific projects at the time, including Hirschfeld’s sexual science. The emphasis on the material means of representation,

4

5

Hannah Höch, Berlinische Galerie. Accessed April 13, 2019. http://sammlung-online. berlinischegalerie.de/eMuseumPlus?service=ExternalInterface&module=collection&objectId=162 320&viewType=detailView. On the relationship of the grotesque in the avant-garde circles of Weimar Germany to what Dada philosopher Mynona (aka Salomo Freidländer) described as “speculative empiricism”, see Thomas O. Haakenson, “ ‘The Merely Illustory Paradise of Habits’: Walter Benjamin, Salomo Friedländer, and the Grotesque,” New German Critique (2009) 36. 1 (106): 119–47.

Abject Objects

89

while perhaps common among visual studies scholars today, was a radical intervention for an artist in early twentieth-century Berlin.6

Celluloid and Material Matters In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, celluloid was becoming increasingly popular. As Jean E. Boyd outlines in “Celluloid: The Eternal Substitute,” the material’s low cost and incredible dexterity—so many things could be made with it and from it—is part of the reason it became so ubiquitous in the West.7 To be clear, “celluloid” is a cellulose-based product that involves the mixing of other ingredients: the two terms “cellulose” and “celluloid,” however, are often (mistakenly) used interchangeably. Materially speaking, celluloid was a mixture of cellulose and a chemical from the nitroso group. The organic, plantbased compound cellulose had been discovered in 1838 by French chemist Anselme Payen. Shortly after Payen’s discovery, others found that by combining a chemical from the nitroso group with cellulose, a strong yet pliable material emerged, one that could also be hardened. It was British scientist Alexander Parkes who first noted in 1855 that a solid residue remained from the early photographic development process known as the “collodion process” or the “collodion wet plate” process.8 Parkes patented the mixture as a waterproofing for textiles that same year. He continued to experiment with the possibilities for the residue, and had his greatest success when he dissolved this residue— cellulose nitrate—in a minimum of camphor, a waxy, flammable, naturally occurring, highly flammable organic, which acted as a solvent.9 More specifically, Parkes discovered that by mixing cellulose nitrate and camphor, and then placing the mixture on a heated rolling machine, he could remove some of the solvent. The remaining material was malleable, able to be shaped by dies or pressure before it hardened. He showcased his discovery, which he dubbed “Parkesine,” at the 1862 International Exhibition in London.

6

7

8

9

For a similar argument with respect to Brugman’s contemporary, Kurt Schwitters, see Maria Makela, “Making Lemonade Out of Lemons: Merz and Material Poverty,” Art History 42.4 (September 2019): 652–6777, reprinted here 11–38. Jean E. Boyd outlines in “Celluloid: The Eternal Substitute,” Distillations: A Publication of the Science History Institute, Fall 2012 / Winter 2013: n.p. SPI: The Plastic Industry Trade Association, “History of Plastics,” Society of the Plastics Industry, Inc. Accessed April 13, 2019. https://web.archive.org/web/20130803122739/http://www.plasticsindustry. org/AboutPlastics/content.cfm?ItemNumber=670. Nitrocellulose is also known as cellulose nitrate, flash paper, flash cotton, guncotton, and flash string. For purposes of consistency in this essay, the term nitrocellulose is used throughout.

90

Material Modernity

Others were quick to copy Parkes’s technique. But it was John W. Hyatt and his brother, Isaiah Hyatt, who recognized the key role that camphor played in the process. Camphor, it seemed, served as the key ingredient to harden, or to plastinize, the otherwise liquid cellulose nitrate residue from the photographic collodion process. The Hyatt brothers applied for a patent in 1870, and Isaiah named the product “celluloid” in 1872. The name “celluloid,” oddly enough, received a patent, but not the ingredients themselves—a quirky historical fact, given that so much of what is associated with the visual culture industry that resulted is known by the term. The logic of a patent for the name “celluloid” and not the material—a distinction that reinforces Brugman’s concern with a lack of attention to material things—was due to that fact that Parkes’s original formula had never been patented and a number of individuals and industries had been making versions of “celluloid” for many years prior to 1870. Nevertheless, the resulting boom in so-called celluloid manufacturing in Europe and North America began, even if the name “celluloid” technically referred only to the Hyatt brothers’ specific brand. Brugman was no doubt aware of the rather odd non-material history of (the term) “celluloid” even as those around her increasingly referred to forms of film and visual culture as part of a “celluloid industry.”10 In her short story “Department Store of Love,” Brugman sought to challenge the use of celluloid among scientists and in service of the often-militaristic nation-building efforts in Germany. It is important to note to these ends that the Hyatt brothers’ patent application for (the term) “celluloid” in 1870 occurred in a notably auspicious year, the same year that also marks the end of the Franco-Prussian War. The modern German nation-state was formed shortly thereafter, early in 1871. The coincidence of Germany’s militaristic origins—the Germans had defeated the French in battle, after all—and the official patent for the name “celluloid” clearly did not escape Brugman’s attention. In “Department Store of Love,” the author suggests the modern-nation state is only possible because of soldiers, although the human soldiers to be found in her satirical tale are replaced by ones made of celluloid itself. Much like the name “celluloid” and its material components then, Brugman sought with her narrative inversion of celluloid and real bodies to distinguish Germany as a nation-state from the material supports needed to maintain it.

10

Unless otherwise noted, the term “celluloid” is used hereafter without quotation marks and in line with the Dutch writer’s use of the term and her concerns with the conflation of material and figurative elements.

Abject Objects

91

That is, to distinguish German soldiers in service of the nation-state from what they also were: real human beings. Even from its mid-nineteenth-century origins, celluloid was revolutionary on a number of levels, a fact that is not often appreciated—and one that Brugman embraced in her suggestion of celluloid’s multiple, sometimes conflicting uses. Celluloid in its various forms quickly enabled the creation of new products, it also enacted a significant leveling of class differences. As Sharon Korbek Verbeten points out, calling it a “society equalizer,” celluloid became “a substitute for costlier ivory, tortoise, amber and jet.”11 Julie Robinson claims that the material, in its various names and forms, “bridged the gap between the classes.” Sometimes sold under the name “French Ivory” or “Ivorine,” celluloid-based plastics afforded blue collar and unskilled laborers luxuries previously available only to the wealthy, including items previously emblematic of social status such as dentures, hat pins, charms, vanity sets, and jewelry. Further experiments with celluloid led to new types and tones of film stock in both cinematic and photographic forms. All these uses had secured by the 1920s the reputation of nitrocellulose in general, and its derivative celluloid in particular, as “a thoroughly modem material.”12 The development of these various uses for celluloid often were accompanied by efforts to create consumers for these products through far-reaching advertising campaigns. As Kate Forde outlines in “Celluloid Dreams,” the uses for celluloid expanded in both form and content, and “overall production of celluloid in the US reached 40,000 tons a year.” Increasingly sophisticated advertising campaigns for celluloid’s waste materials and byproducts, Forde claims, paralleled this increase in celluloid production.13 For her part, Maria Makela has suggested that the introduction of artificially produced products in Germany during the interwar period, in many cases necessitated by material shortages, was often accompanied by campaigns that equated the natural and the artificial. In the public’s imaginary, the “artificial” became an accessible, affordable, even ideal substitute for the real thing.14 While Makela’s essay focuses on naturally occurring silk versus the cellulose-based product rayon in Germany, Forde’s study examines the U.S. company Cutix and the development of its nail polish advertising. Both Makela’s 11

12 13

14

Sharon Korbeck Verbeten, “Celluloid Wonders,” Antique Trader February 25, 2008. Accessed April 13, 2019. https://www.antiquetrader.com/features/celluloid_wonders. Forde 175. Kate Forde, “Celluloid Dreams: The Marketing of Cutex in America, 1916–1935,” Journal of Design History, 15.3 (2002): 175. Maria Makela, “Artificial Silk Girls: Rayon as Silk’s Double in Weimar Germany,” The Döppelgänger, ed. Deborah Ascher Barnstone (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2016): 205–36.

92

Material Modernity

and Ford’s analyses support the conflation of the real and the artificial which was increasingly common in early twentieth-century consumer culture, and make clear that this conflation was made possible in no small part because of the manufacturing versatility of nitrocellulose and its derivatives, such as celluloid. Surprisingly, given such widespread use and product development, highly flammable celluloid derivatives continued to be used for film stock and photographic paper until the mid-twentieth century. It was only in 1927 that a less flammable version of filmic and photographic celluloid was developed, one that gained widespread use in the motion-picture industry only in the late 1940s. This newly developed “cellulose acetate film” quickly became (appropriately!) known as “safety film” in comparison to its flammable predecessors. The ubiquity of the term celluloid prior to the emergence of “safety film,” however, helps explain why “celluloid” also became synonymous with filmic and photographic forms of visual culture and the associated industries, as in discussions of onscreen legends with secret, homosexual identities, who were trapped by the socalled celluloid closet.15 Despite their successes, it is important to keep in mind that nitrocellulose and its derivatives were embraced at differing rates in various public and private enterprises. Among scientific practitioners in fields such as pathology and anthropology in fin-de-siècle Germany, debates over the possible uses of nitrocellulose in general, and celluloid in particular, focused on the extent to which photographic and filmic celluloid could replace real, human subjects— especially when this scientific “evidence” was presented to the untrained, uneducated lay public. As the example of Hirschfeld’s Institute reveals, these filmic and photographic celluloid representations became “stand ins” for real, human subjects in reductive, problematic ways. To these ends, Hirschfeld increasingly promoted the importance of photos and film, for the study of gender and sexuality, including suggesting in 1919 the need to develop a department devoted explicitly to scientific photography and cinema as well as an archive to contain these images (Figure 4.2). Hirschfeld’s Geschlechtsübergänge (“Gender Transitions”), published for the first time in 1905, and the five-volume magnum opus Geschlechtskunde (“The Science of Gender”), the first volume of which Hirschfeld published in 1926, both attest to Hirschfeld’s emphasis on the learned form of visual assessment necessary for the success of his professional and public activities—and the extent 15

Vino Russo, The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies (New York: Harper & Row, 1981, 1987). See also the film The Celluloid Closet, dirs. Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, 1995.

Abject Objects

93

Figure 4.2 The Scientific-Humanitarian Committee’s rooms in Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science. Image reproduced with acknowledgment of the Archiv der Magnus-Hirschfeld-Gesellschaft e.V., Berlin.16

to which he and others were willing to use representations in place of real human bodies to prove the supposed truth of their science. In use to some extent since the late 1880s in filmic and photographic forms, celluloid as the material basis for these techniques of representation took on by the early twentieth century a symbolic function in sexual science as a vehicle of supposed optical truth. “Department Store of Love” is one avant-garde writer’s response to these developments, a response based not only on personal and ethical concerns, but also on the ways in which such developments refigured the evidentiary significance of representation via photographic and filmic celluloid.

The Enfant Terrible of the Dutch Avant-Garde Understanding the cultural and evidentiary forces at play in masking celluloid’s dual role as material of representation and synonymous with the thing it represents explains, to some extent, Til Brugman’s own disappearance from histories of early twentieth-century artistic pioneers. Much like celluloid, Brugman’s own materiality has been glossed over, missed, in efforts to focus on the avant-garde’s more visible, more publicly acknowledged, and often more privileged (male heterosexual) figures. Brugman’s “Department Store of Love” is 16

Author unknown, Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, Das erste Jahr (Berlin 1920): n.p.

94

Material Modernity

one of only several dozen satires and grotesques published during her lifetime and posthumously. Few of her texts have been translated from the German or Dutch into English. Brugman, however, was a very prolific if not always commercially successful writer. A handwritten and typed list in the Hannah Höch Archive at the Berlinische Galerie, for example, chronicles some ninety grotesques written by Brugman and that were once in Höch’s possession. Myriam Everard suggests, based on Höch’s list of Brugman titles, there were 116 unpublished Brugman manuscripts in 1935; only forty-six of these texts have survived.17 Among the most notable works that Brugman published during her lifetime is the short-story collection Scheingehacktes (“Appearance of Minced Meat”), with a cover design by Hannah Höch, which appeared in in 1935. Slightly later, in 1945, Brugman published another collection, Hemelia en het Woord (“Hemelia and the Word”), which was later republished as Holland 1927. Her work was often radically innovative in both form and content, as demonstrated by the English-French poem “SHE HE,” which invoked some of the avant-garde trends of the day in its use of text as image, a strategy that enforced further the poems playful substitution of female and male pronouns for each other (Figure 4.3). She

Figure 4.3 Signed copy of Til Brugman’s poem “SHE HE.” This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- Share Alike 3.0 Unported (https:// creativecommons.org/licen ses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en) license. 17

See Nero 166. See also Myriam Everard, “ ‘Man lebt nur einmal in Patchamatac’: Die groteske Welt von Til Brugman, Lebensgefährtin von Hannah Höch,” in Da-da zwischen Reden zu Hannah Höch, Jula Dech and Gertrud Maurer, eds. (Berlin: Orlanda Frauenverlag, 1991): 97 fn 25.

Abject Objects

95

would publish other texts and essay occasionally during her lifetime as well, but mostly lived off her work as a translator. After her death, more of Brugman’s works appeared. The collection Til Brugman 5 Klankgedichte (“5 Sound poems”) was published in 1981. Increasing interest, mostly among gender and sexuality studies scholars, led to the publication of Even Anders: Vier in 1989. Marion Brandt edited another group of the author’s grotesques, which appeared in 1995 as Til Brugman: Das vertippte Zebra, Lyrik und Prosa (“Til Brugman: The Striped Zebra, Poetry and Prose”), in response to growing interest in the author’s corpus among gender and sexuality studies scholars. Given the limited amount of published material available, it is understandable that the handful of scholars who have written about Brugman’s work have focused primarily on the ways in which her lesbian relationships, notably with Hannah Höch but also with Siena Masthoff and others, influenced her artistic practice. Among these important interventions are Mineke Bosch and Myriam Everard’s co-edited 1988 special issue of Lesbisch Cultureel Tijdschrift, “Til Brugman and Hannah Höch,” as well as Myriam Everard’s essay exploring the couples mutually influential artistic activities, “ ‘Man lebt nur einmal in Patchamatac’: Die groteske Welt von Til Brugman, Lebensgefährtin von Hannah Höch,” in Da-da zwischen Reden zu Hannah Höch from 1991.18 Finally, scholars focusing on Hannah Höch have brought to light important dimensions of Brugman’s avant-garde activities and the innovative literary strategies she developed, often focusing less directly on the Dutch writer’s sexuality and more on her impressive intellect and language abilities.19 The work of Maria Makela and Julie Nero are notable here, including Makela’s co-edited exhibition catalog, The Photomontages of Hannah Höch, her essays “The Misogynist Machine: Women and Technology in Weimar Germany” and “Grotesque Bodies: WeimarEra Medicine and the Photomontages of Hannah Höch,” and Nero’s unpublished 18

19

Bosch, Mineke and Myriam Everard, guest eds. Til Brugman and Hannah Höch, special Issue Lesbisch Cultureel Tijdschrift Lust en Gratie 18 (Amsterdam) (Fall 1988). Additional, notable publications on Brugman would include Marleen Slob, De mensen willen niet rijpen, vandaar: leven und werk van Til Brugman (Amsterdam: VITA, 1994); Jula Dech “Til Brugman oder Eine Liebe in Holland,” in Sieben Blicke auf Hannah Höch, Jula Dech, ed. (Hamburg: Nautilus, 2002); Cara Schweitzer, Schrankenlose Freiheit; Pamela Pattynama and Inge Polak, “Dadandy Til,” Lover 10 (1983): 4, 182–8; Myriam Everard, “Graven: De Dood is de humor von het leeven,” Diva 3 (November 1984): 24–7, 35; Marleen Slob, De mensen willen niet rijpen, vandaar: leven und werk van Til Brugman (Amsterdam: VITA, 1994). Additional, notable publications focusing on Höch but providing important insights on Brugman’s artistic and personal activities include Heinz Ohff, Hannah Höch: ein Leben mit der Pflanzen (Gelsenkirchen: Gemeinde Museum Gelsenkirchen, 1978); Ohff, “Holland,” in Hannah Höch: eine Lebenscollage, Band II, vol. 1, 1921–45 (Berlinische Galerie, Berlin, 1995), 262; Ralf Burmeister, et al, Hannah Höch: Aller Anfang ist Dada (Berlin: Berlinische Galerie; Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Verlag; Basel: Museum Tinguely, 2007).

96

Material Modernity

dissertation, Hannah Höch, Til Brugman. Lesbianism, and Weimar Sexual Subculture.20 While these scholars all demonstrate the important insights to be generated from existing scholarship on Brugman, significant errors are notable, as when Maud Lavin claims in her Cut with the Kitchen Knife: The Weimar Photomontages of Hannah Höch that “[O]utside a small circle, Höch apparently had no public identity as a lesbian,” or when Heinz Ohff comments that Höch’s relationship with Brugman was an indication of her desire to “experience all that life had to offer,” and emblematic for her need “to escape the confines of petit-bourgeois morality.”21 The marginalization of Brugman in some studies, even those that purport to focus on gender and sexuality, explains why so much of the other, existing scholarship has attempted to situate Brugman in these terms. Counteracting these efforts to trivialize Höch and Brugman’s relationship, Everard notes that “In a previously mentioned 1926 letter22 to her sister, Höch wrote, “I am and will be very happy with Til, we will be a model of how two women can form a single rich and balanced life. Each day I find out new and wonderful things about Til that enrich me and allow me to see life in a new light.”23 And Nero suggests that in a 1926 letter to Höch, Brugman wrote that she carried one of Höch’s letters in her pajama pocket, and read it every night before she went to sleep. Brugman dubbed her “Payamatasche” (“pajama pocket”) as the happy imaginary land of Patchamatac, and the name would be the title of one of her short stories as well. Almost twenty years later, in 1945, Höch mentioned Patschamatak in her Bilderbuch (“book of images”), even though the couple had been separated for more than a decade at that time.24 Clearly Brugman’s relationship to Höch was influential and important to both women, and the relationship’s significance explains why so much of the scholarship on Brugman has sought to recover the Dutch writer’s work by explaining her marginalization

20

21

22

23 24

Peter Boswell, Maria Makela, and Carolyn Lanchner, eds. The Photomontages of Hannah Höch (Minneapolis: Walker Art Center 1996); Maria Makela, “The Misogynist Machine: Images of Technology in the Work of Hannah Höch,” Women in the Metropolis: Gender and Modernity in Weimar Culture, Katharina von Ankum, ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997): 106–27; and Maria Makela, “Grotesque Bodies: Weimar-Era Medicine and the Photomontages of Hannah Höch,” Modern Art and the Grotesque, edited by Frances Connelly (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2003): 193–219. Nero 158. See also Maud Lavin, Cut with the Kitchen Knife: The Weimar Era Photomontages of Hannah Höch (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993); Heinz Ohff, Hannah Höch: Eine Lebenscollage. Band II, vol. 1 1921–1945 (Berlinische Galerie, Berlin, 1995). Höch’s October 14, 1926 letter to her sister Grete. Höch Nachlass, Murnau, cited in Lavin, Cut with the Kitchen Knife, 188–9; 241n17. Nero 158. Nero 169.

Abject Objects

97

accordingly, as a result of homophobia and the marginalization of women in the European avant garde. In light of her relationship to Höch, it is not surprise that scholars would focus on Brugman’s sexuality in interpreting much of her work during the 1920s. Brugman’s relationship with Höch no doubt was influential in the Dutch writer’s views on Hirschfeld and his institute, which the couple had visited together. A colleague who worked in the Institute of Sexual Science, Ludwig Levy-Lenz, described the collection in a way that demonstrates why the displays were no doubt problematic for someone with Brugman’s intellectual abilities and artistic curiosity: The Museum of the Institute was one of the most unique sights in the world. Here were among others, thousands of photographs to view, images of sexual criminals, of neurotics, mentally disturbed individuals, pictures of absurd sexual practices, perversities, of methods and tools for such purposes, images of prostitutes, photos of homosexuals, transvestites, lesbians, exhibitionists, sadists, masochists, pimps, kleptomaniacs, and many, many others. Short and succinct, what was brought together here was really a labyrinth of human miseries and confusions! We had an infinite number of objects that had served as sexual fetishes. A collection of roughly one hundred pairs of ladies’ Chevreau shoes, in all colors, heels, and from these a few that could be laced above the upper thigh. In the same Museum there was a cabinet with braids and bundles of hair that a single braid-cutter had cut off and kept. From an undergarment fetishist we inherited an assortment of the most beautiful, expensive, delicate and intimate pieces of underclothing that have ever been worn.25

Emphasizing the sensationalist and exhibitionist nature of the Institute’s displays, Levy-Lenz reveals the diversity of materials collected and displayed together under the auspices of research in the name of sexual science. Brugman produced a similar description of Hirschfeld’s facility, albeit with a critical, grotesque edge. 25

Lenz-Ludwig as qtd. in Herrn, “Sammlung” 11–12. Ludwig Levy-Lenz, Erinnerungen eines SexualArztes (Baden-Baden: n.p., 1954) 372–5. For comparison, the original German reads as follows: “Das Museum des Instituts war eine in der Welt einzig dastehende Sehenswürdigkeit. Hier waren u.a. Tausende von Fotographien zu sehen, Bilder von Sexualverbrechern, von Neurotikern, Geistesgestörten, Bilder von abwegigen sexuellen Gewohnheiten, Perversitäten, von Mitteln und Werkzeugen hierzu, Prostituertenaufnahmen, Fotos von Homosexuellen, Transvestitten, Lesbierinnen, Exhibitionisten, Sadisten, Masochisten, Zuhältern, Kleptomanen und vielen, vielen anderen. . . . Kurz und gut, was hier zusammengetragen war gleich einem Labrynth menschlicher Leidenschaften und Verirrungen! Wir besaßen eine Unzahl von Gegenständen, die als Sexualfetische gedient hatten: Eine Sammlung von rund hundert Paar hohen Damen-Chevreau-Schuhen in allen Farben, Stiefen, von denen einige bis weit über die Oberschenkel zu schnüren waren. Im gleichen Museumsraum stand ein Ausstellungsschrank mit Zöpfen und Haarbündeln, die ein einziger Zopfabschneider abgeschnitten und aufgewahrt hatte. Von einem Wäsche-Fetischishten erbten wir eine Auswahl der schönsten, reichhaltigsten, delikatesten und intimsten Wäschestücke, die jemals getragen wurden.”

98

Material Modernity

Wielding her pen like a sword, Brugman used her published and unpublished writing to address some of the seemingly most progressive developments of the interwar period in Europe. No other text in Brugman’s nearly forgotten corpus demonstrates the author’s critical interventions and literary innovations than does her short story “Department Store of Love,” first published in 1931.26 As noted by the few scholars who have analyzed this particular tale, such as Makela and Nero, the story is a satire of Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute of Sexual Science in Berlin’s Tiergarten. As these analyses often suggest as well, Brugman’s own sexuality and gender identity factor into the story on several levels. The motivation for the tale probably was personal to some degree; the Dutch writer tried to use her own voice as a marginalized avant-garde artist among otherwise all male, heterosexual colleagues to challenge some of the sexual and gender stereotypes still at play in Hirschfeld’s public display. In addition, Brugman wrote herself and Höch into “Department Store of Love” as characters. While Höch’s literary double is a co-owner of the store, Brugman’s is the narrative voice, the other owner, that frames and explains many of the story’s events. In so doing, Brugman’s surrogate retains a sense of unquestionable authority and certitude, markedly similar to the scientific discourses of the day that are parodied so well in the story. Perhaps most importantly, the tale undoubtedly is an examination of medical scientific ethics and a challenge to the scientific status quo. The story’s ethical suspicions are directed at medical scientific practices in general but also and somewhat covertly, focused on Hirschfeld, whose personal celebrity, public personae, and appetite for attention often were at odds with the fearfully introverted and publicity-shy clients whom he and his Institute claimed to help—and, for that matter, whose very sufferings became the basis of Hirschfeld’s own celebrity in public and scientific circles. Brugman’s relationship with Höch, who is celebrated as one of the few women who were active in the Dada movement in Germany, was no doubt important to the Dutch writer’s use of satire. Brugman’s Dada affiliations in the Netherlands are rarely mentioned however. The Dutch avant-garde connection was an important one for Brugman. The Berlin Dada movement is often reduced to a political group of artists whose members were either communists or anarchists. Such efforts render key Dada figures like Hannah Höch and Salomo Friedländer trivial, insignificant, or apolitical, since some of their critical foci were empirical

26

Brugman, “Das Warenhaus der Liebe,” Das vertippte Zebra: LDas vertippte Zebra: Lyrik und Prosaerlin: Hoho Verlag Christine Hoffmann, 1995): 72–81. The story is published in German; there is no official English translation. As such, all translations in this essay are by the author.

Abject Objects

99

scientific practices. Raoul Hausmann, for his part aligned with the supposed anarchistic faction, also had a burgeoning interest in challenging scientific discourses.27 As is clear from “Department Store of Love,” Brugman belongs to the camp of “uncategorizable” Berlin Dadaists such as Höch and Friedländer, and to a lesser extent Hausmann.28 The connections with this group, and their critical engagements with science, were only strengthened for Brugman when she moved with Höch from the Netherlands to Berlin in 1929. Key to understanding Brugman and the other “uncategorizable” Dadaists’ critical program is some familiarity with the radical changes that were happening with respect to scientific evidence at the time. The increasing popularity of the photograph in medical science, in particular, makes clear why Brugman and colleagues were so skeptical of the “truth” of the image. For his part, the sexologist Hirschfeld sought to harness the scientific popularity of photographic evidence in his professional and public campaign in service of reforming Germany’s archaic laws against same-sex sexual practices and so-called unconventional gender expression. Abandoning the “yellowing parchment” and the “dead letters” of natural philosophy, Hirschfeld emphasized visual engagement with the objects of nature, when he opened the Institute in Berlin’s Tiergarten in 1919. Hirschfeld believed that such an optical orientation nevertheless required a learned form of visual perception. To observe— beobachten—was not simply to look, but rather to see in a particular and learned way. In many ways, the visual “readability” of evidence was not only part of Hirschfeld’s scientific and political activities but also their constitutive possibility.29 The function of photographs, and their material possibility, is challenged in Brugman’s artistic enterprise. Throughout “Department Store of Love,” Brugman’s narrator discusses the desires of a number of visitors to her Hirschfeld-like facility. The first customer is a commander in the military, a high deputy of the government who was given a “determining impression” from a chamber pot in “the most delicate days” of his youth. According to the narrator, the official had attempted to suppress unsuccessfully his inclination to live permanently and openly with the object. Other guests include a sixty-year-old woman who wants to wear used military riding pants, and an old man who desires two rubber

27

28

29

Raoul Hausmann, Dada-Wissenschaft. Wissenschaftliche und technische Schriften, FUNDUS 193 (Hamburg: Philo Fine Arts, 2012). See, for example, Timothy O. Benson, Raoul Hausmann and Berlin Dada in Studies in the Fine Arts: The Avant Garde, 55 (Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI Research Press, 1989). Herrn, “Einleitung” 4. Herrn describes Hirschfeld’s activities in similar terms.

100

Material Modernity

children’s bottoms, one to dress and undress, and the other without accessories. Also among the curious guests to the Department Store of Love is a female kleptomaniac who is also a gymnast, thus enabling her to hide stolen goods on her person in a most impressive and occasionally provocative fashion. The needy customers and the exceptional demand force the unique store to close early on most days, suggesting the owners are not simply capitalists involved solely for the sake of extensive profit. Such realistic references in combination with fantastic and comical elements—typical of the grotesque style—are meant to distance the reader so as to prepare them for reflection on the critique contained in the text’s overall thematic structure. What appears at first a wholesale embrace of capitalism in the Department Store is, in reality, a challenge to science’s supposed objectivity. As Kate Forde notes in her discussion of early twentieth-century advertising campaigns and celluloid-based beauty products, the markets for these products were created by campaigns that actually gave rise to an illusory need for these products. Forde asks, rhetorically, “Is it possible that the shared [celluloid] chemical technology of film and nail polish stimulated the consumer’s unconscious desire to absorb the substance of plastic modernity?” Forde outlines the ways in which scientists and advertisers working with celluloid during the period “moved further and further away from the presentation of ‘facts’ (however spurious) about the product and towards the highly sophisticated production of illusion.”30 Brugman spoke to these celluloid illusions directly as well, but inverted the logic Forde articulates. In “Department Store of Love,” the owners feel indebted not to capitalism but rather to science for their success and worldwide popularity. They acknowledge explicitly the impact of science on their enterprise: “We looked happily at each other . . . all of our ideas that science found also were transplanted uninhibited into reality.” The owners suggest that their store has allowed science’s abstract concepts and typologies to find material expression in everyday life. Such a claim depends implicitly upon the subtle critique that science itself is abstracted from reality. Thus, the challenge can be seen in embryonic form in the ironic commentary that science has enabled the public expression of the fetishistic desires of the store’s clientele. To develop further her challenge to sexual science, Brugman connects scientific discourses suggestively with sexual and military fantasies in the text. The narrator describes a peculiar series of events that threaten not only the

30

Forde 188.

Abject Objects

101

existence of the department store but also its clientele. A parade to celebrate the business’s success is dispersed by “disruptive military hordes” in a passage that provides a glimpse of some of the other fantastic elements of the grotesque style: And if they—the baffled crowds—did not want to do what was demanded then the army used force. Suddenly a wild screeching began, and each was concerned solely with burying his love object . . . to save it. The disruptive military hordes demanded everyone stop and hand in their love objects. And if they did not want to do so, then the army used force. The military group set up bomb fires, broke everything that they could put their hands on, stepped on objects of the most tender love with their feet. They choked belches from the body of a woman and trampled glands that lay around. Screams of misery flew here and there. People fled, protected their little rubber bottoms and hid themselves with their gramophone horns in the earth. Trombones were taken away before the melody was even finished; frightened, a boy buried underneath his outstretched body a bald head that meant everything in the world to him. The noise was deafening.31

The military threat represented in the literary scenario paralleled actual events that occurred in Berlin in May of 1933 when National Socialists looted and burned Hirschfeld’s Institute. The event in Brugman’s story, written and published earlier, produces a much different outcome. The narrator of Brugman’s tale approaches the military horde’s leader who was, it turns out somewhat ironically, the first customer of the department store. The narrator demands to know why he earlier bought a chamber pot to satisfy his own desires and now wants to close the store and prevent others from realizing similar, personal pleasures. He can only reply that he has been ordered to close the store to preserve the old, authentic, good birth “die alte, authentische, gute Geburt.” No matter what happiness he or others might find through the auspices of the department store, such happiness cannot solve the problems of the modern nation-state. He asks the narrator rhetorically: “Can we for instance fight war with this happiness? If everyone as he pleases shoots his semen wherever he wants instead of putting children in the world? The state wants ovaries . . . not [musical instruments known as] ocarinas.” Rather, alluding to the declining German birth rate as the issue for military intervention, Brugman implicitly connects increasingly restrictive social and political ideology of the time with questions of gender and sexual liberty. That is, he who would “shoot his sperm wherever he wants” without regard for the need for reproduction jeopardizes not only the birth rate but also

31

Brugman 79–80.

102

Material Modernity

the ability of the state to wage war. Brugman’s narrator, engaging the military commander’s insistence that war and non-reproductive sexual happiness are incommensurable, suggests a radical solution. As a solution to the dilemma raised by the military commander, Brugman’s narrator suggests using celluloid to produce children—Zelluloidkinder—who will grow up to be soldiers and, hence, who can satisfy both the state’s need for reproductive sexuality and the department store’s customers’ desires for their fetish objects: “We could bring immediately 1,000,000 million [a million million] celluloid-children into the five parts of the world.” The military commander accepts readily the narrator’s alternative solution to the state’s demand for reproductive sexuality. The two co-owners already have in fact produced the celluloid children, the reader is informed in a very ironic twist, as a “small surprise for the League of Nations,” an international peace-keeping agency created in 1920 in response to the First World War. The celluloid children, much like the photographic images used in Magnus Hirschfeld’s typological studies of sexual and gender deviancy, become equivalent to real human beings in Brugman’s story. While the conflation of the real and celluloid by the military is made explicit, the conflation thereof by science is introduced indirectly. In the story, the two discourses are united through a circumvention of reproductive sexuality in order to satisfy the reproductive demands of the modern military state. It is the fetishistic substitution not of love objects on the part of the store’s clientele explicitly but rather of celluloid reproductions and phenomenal substitutes for reality by the German state—and, implicitly, Hirschfeld’s and his colleagues’ sexual science—that are the intended targets of Brugman’s grotesque critique.

The Art and Science of Celluloid Even before the First World War, however, Germany embraced the use of celluloid. The material was used in the production of children’s dolls made from celluloid plastics starting around 1896, and Germany quickly became the world leader in the production of “celluloid dolls” for children.32 Additionally, the demand for white chalk for use in German school rooms resulted the discovery in in 1897 that the casein protein in milk could be combined with formaldehyde acting as the solvent. The resultant “casein plastic” enabled the creation of 32

Verbeten n.p.

Abject Objects

103

additional products in Germany and elsewhere, some of which—plastic buttons, for example—are still made from the same combination of materials. As a material for use in artistic experimentation, celluloid was well known to avant-garde artists in general and the Berlin Dadaists in particular. Individuals such as Man Ray and László Maholy-Nagy experimented with the ways in which photographs could be manipulated based on their composition or the means used to develop them. These experiments involved not only content but also form: not only the subject of the image but also the materials used to make the photographs as well as the processes used to develop them. For other practitioners, however, the issue was not simply the materials of photographic process and the ability to manipulate these images as optical illusions or disruptions of everyday expectations. Rather, artists such as Brugman and Höch, as well as other Berlin Dada stalwarts like Hausmann and Friedländer (also known as “Mynona”), were concerned with the idea of representation itself and, even more specifically, the ways in which scientific discourses—including medicine, anthropology, and sexual science—had absorbed photographic images as acceptable substitutes for real, human subjects. Brugman no doubt noted the significant use of various nitrocellulose derivatives and celluloid products in Germany. By the time she wrote her story, “Department Store of Love,” celluloid had become a material with seemingly unlimited uses. Her engagement with Dada further supports the idea that her engagement with the material in her story is more about the science of celluloid— its use and misuse as a substitute for the real—than it is a one-dimension critique of Hirschfeld’s science. Germany clearly dominated the market for plastic dolls by the 1920s. Hermsdorfer Celluloidwarenfabrik even produced a much-soughtafter plastic doll sometime between 1923 and 1926 that, oddly enough, the company imprinted with the label “DADA 10” on the doll’s back, just below its neck and between its shoulders (Figure 4.4).33 Here the connection to Dada was no doubt a coincidence, perhaps an allusion to the word’s French translation as a children’s toy, albeit in French the word “Dada” meant “hobby horse.” But the connection between Dada and celluloid, and the Berlin Dadaist’s concerns with photographic representation and scientific practice, went much deeper than historical or etymological coincidence. Hannah Höch’s muchanalyzed photomontage series from the 1920s, Aus einem ethnographischen Museum (“From an ethnographic Museum”), focused on the museological 33

“Hermsdorfer Celluloidwarenfabrik, Gelenkpuppe DADA 10,” Wikimedia Commons. Accessed April 13, 2019. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Hermsdorfer_Celluloidwarenfabrik,_ Gelenkpuppe_DADA_10.

104

Material Modernity

Figure 4.4 Views of a Gelenkpuppe, or “jointed doll.” The doll is marked on the back with a Coccinellidae, a small beetle sometimes called a “ladybug” or “ladybird,” and the words DADA and the number 10 of the Hermsdorfer Celluloidwarenfabrik. Dolls such as this were produced between 1923 and 1926. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- Share Alike 3.0 Unported (https://creativecommons. org/licen ses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en) license.

displays and photographic reproductions of supposedly inferior non-Europeans. Höch targeted these displays and reproductions in her series not because these images simply were aesthetically appealing. Rather, she critiqued the role these displays and reproductions played as supposed scientific evidence, offering seemingly irrefutable proof of evolutionary or cultural support for Germany’s participation in the European colonial enterprise. Brugman was no doubt engrossed with Höch in discussions about this project, as the Dutch writer was partnered with Berlin Dadaist for most of the period in which the Höch created the series Aus einem ethnographischen Museum. Brugman was undoubtedly familiar with other Dadaists in Berlin and their concerns at the time with science and representation as well. Höch’s former partner Hausmann also exhibited a clear interest in scientific and technical discourses of the period.34 His writings on sensory and technical manipulation, his critical 34

Raoul Hausmann, Dada-Wissenschaft: Wissenschaftliche und technische Schriften, preface by Ralf Burmeister, introduction by Arndt Niebisch (Hamburg: Philo Fine Arts, 2013).

Abject Objects

105

engagements with the use of Fotozellen (“sensors to detect light”), and, finally, his efforts to develop his own theory of sense perception in the form of an optophonetische Weltanschauung (“optophonetic worldview”) demonstrate Hausmann’s serious effort to rethink existing approaches to sense physiology and to explain optical phenomena, in his terms, “holistically.”35 More specifically, Hausmann saw in the efforts of various fields of sense physiology a divided scientific practice, one that focused more on the blinding developments of specialized expertise than on a holistic theory of human engagement with the phenomenal world.36 Another figure prominent in Brugman’s Berlin Dada circles was similarly active during the period in ways that show irrefutable connections about the two. Salomo Friedländer’s discussion of cinematic projections in his short story, “Fata Morgana Machine,” echoes the literary use of celluloid by Brugman as a problematic stand-in for real, human soldiers.37 The story describes the efforts of a professor to create a machine that makes three-dimensional images come to life with the ultimate goal of eliminating military conflict and, relatedly, the loss of human life. Friedländer, a relatively unknown figure today, was in the 1920s at the avant garde of avant-garde writers and thinkers like Brugman, Höch, and Hausmann. Friedländer’s own literary efforts to challenge the sciences of the early twentieth century help situate further Brugman’s efforts in her own writerly interventions. The title of Friedländer’s short story is telling: a “fata morgana” is, put simply, a “mirage.” Thus, a “fata morgana machine” is a machine that makes false images, conscious tricks of visual perception. Like Brugman’s “Department Store of Love,” Friedländer’s story in both title and content sought to challenge scientific representations through satire. Similar to Brugman’s Zelluloidkinder, Friedländer saw the use of supposed visual evidence in scientific practices as a problematic conflation of the real and illusory. Friedländer’s response, much like Brugman’s, was to invert the conflation, to propose the illusion in place of the real. In the words of Friedländer’s narrator, “his ideal was to achieve the optical reproduction of nature, art, and fantasy through a stereoscopic projection apparatus that would place its three-dimensional constructs into space.” Brugman would take up many of the same concerns with science and representation shared as Höch, Hausmann, and Friedländer, and apply these concerns to the emerging field of Sexualwissenschaft (“sexual science”) in Germany and its leading practitioner in Berlin, Magnus Hirschfeld. 35 36 37

Burmeister in Hausmann 15. Niebisch in Hausmann 36. Salomo Friedländer, “Fata Morgana Machine,” in Friedrich Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986, 1999): 134–5.

106

Material Modernity

In the background of Brugman’s invocations of alternative celluloid interventions is the use of photographic celluloid by figures such as Hirschfeld. One of the most explicit examples of Hirschfeld’s emphasis on visual forms of scientific evidence is Geschlechtsübergänge: Mischungen männlicher und weiblicher Geschlechtscharaktere (“Gender Transitions: Mixtures of Male and Female Sexual Characteristics”), an expanded version of a speech Hirschfeld gave at the Congress of Natural Scientists. The original version of the study appeared, prior to the Congress, in the journal Monatsschrift für Harnkrankheiten und sexuelle Hygiene (“The Monthly Journal for Urinary Illnesses and Sexual Hygiene”) in 1904. In Geschlechtsübergänge, Hirschfeld outlined an empirical scientific strategy for cataloging the seemingly infinite variety of forms of gender expression and expressions of sexual desire; he labeled his taxonomy, which focused on supposedly visible forms of anatomical and morphological difference, sexuelle Zwischenstufen (“intermediary stages of sex development”).38 In his speech for the Congress, he focused on two examples of Zwischenstufen to demonstrate his theory; it is unclear, however, if he used real, living human subjects or simply photographic representation of these individuals to demonstrate his scientific observational techniques. Regardless, he emphasized even at this early stage the professional medical nature of his observations and the resultant conclusion that “taken in very strong scientific terms, one is not able in this sense to speak of man and woman, but on the contrary only of people that are for the most part male or for the most part female.”39 Importantly, the published version of his study included in its final section a carefully chosen collection of photographs. The images in the published, book-length version of Geschlechtsübergänge, appearing well into Hirschfeld’s more active turn toward politics but before the realization of the Institute for Sexual Science, demonstrate clearly his conflation of the biology of sex and gender with morphological characteristics visibly discernible on the surface of the body, an approach that represents a provocative and problematic conflation of Schein (“appearance”) and Sein (“being” or “essence”) through images.Also to be found in the book-length version of Geschlechtsübergänge were two other essays that had been published in the Monatsschrift: “Ein Fall irrtümlicher Geschlechtsbestimmung (erreur de sexe)” (“A Case of Mistaken Sexual Determination (error of sex)”) and“Ein seltener Fall von Hermaphroditismus” 38

39

Rainer Herrn, “Magnus Hirschfeld, Geschlechts-Übergänge; Magnus Hirschfeld, Naturgesetze der Liebe,“ unpublished essay, 2004. Hirschfeld qtd. in Herrn, “Magnus“ 11; Hirschfeld, Geschlechtsübergänge 18.

Abject Objects

107

(“A Rare Case of Hermaphrodism”). Both these essays add further support to the important, and problematic, role that photographic representations played in Hirschfeld’s efforts to evidence visually the supposed identifiable causes and immutable signifiers of sexual and gender differences. It was with the opening of the Institute of Sexual Science in 1919 that Hirschfeld’s use of photographs and visual representations took on even more importance in his attempts to teach the public to see sexuality with the discerning eyes of the scientific expert). Hirschfeld had already discussed in 1908, the year he declared the need to develop sexual science as an independent discipline, the use of optical aids that included “thousands” of images of sexual Zwischenstufen. These photographic and visual representations would take on increasing significance in the field as Hirschfeld sought to secure public and political support through the Institute (Figure 4.5). The exhibition room of the Institute, first opened in 1921, displayed various anthropological fetishes such as totems and amulets, supposedly used for worship in so-called primitive cultures, as well as sexual fetishes that had become scientific curiosities, including various objects used for genital and anal stimulation. Although Hirschfeld made a distinction between the research archive and the more public display space in the facility, items displayed in the Institute’s exhibitions came most often from the its

Figure 4.5 One of the displays that made up the so-called Zwischenstufenwand (“wall of intermediary stages”) in Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute of Sexual Science. Image reproduced with acknowledgment of the Archiv der Magnus-HirschfeldGesellschaft e.V., Berlin.40 40

ArbeiterIllustrierte Zeitung (May 23, 1928): n.p.

108

Material Modernity

growing collection of objects and photographs.41 Hirschfeld in many respects followed the lead of other medical scientists during the period such as Ernst Haeckel, Louis Pasteur, and as his mentor, the pathologist-cum-politician Rudolf Virchow. Virchow’s Institut für Pathologie (Institute for Pathology), for example, opened in 1899 and still operates as the Berliner medizinhistorisches Museum (Berlin Medical Historical Museum). Like Virchow and others keen to share scientific discoveries directly with the lay public, Hirschfeld thought that photographs and other objects displayed in his Institute of Sexual Science would make his taxonomic strategy visually communicable to a non-scientific public: It appeared to me very worthwhile to create an archive of sexual science, a sexual-biological museum, analogous to the phylogenetic institute of [Ernst] Haeckel in Jena or the bacteriological institute of [Louis] Pasteur in Paris. Here one could collect for strict scientific purposes within a discipline-specific library valuable original documents and official papers, as well as pictorial and special data for collective research, data, statistics for comparative folklore or juridical studies, further graphic representations, results of comparative measurements, preparations, photographs, slides, instruments, moulages, sexual symbols, etc. etc.42

While Hirschfeld acknowledged the influence of individuals such as Haeckel and Pasteur in the public display of his scientific enterprise, he was the first sexual scientist to use photographs to support his medical scientific claims.43 But Hirschfeld’s Institute was part of a broader campaign on his part, and those other scientists like Virchow, Haeckel, and Pasteur, to convince the public of the need for as well as the accuracy of their supposedly scientific insights. Hirschfeld used the visual evidence made available to large audiences at the Institute to support his published studies of intermediary development as well as to gain a wider audience for his scientific projects. In the first volume of Geschlechtskunde (“The Science of Gender”), his five-volume study published between 1926 and 1930 and devoted to the emerging field of Sexologie (“sexual science”), Hirschfeld claimed that he—and any other trained observer—could

41 42

43

Herrn, “Sammlung” 1. Hirschfeld qtd. in Herrn, “Sammlung” 3; Magnus Hirschfeld, “Zur Methodik der Sexualwissenschaft,” Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft 1 (1908) 700–1. Herrn suggests that Hirschfeld does not cite Virchow’s Pathological Museum (nor Lombroso’s Museum for Psychiatry and Criminology in Turin) because Hirschfield was interested in depathologizing (and de-criminalizing) sexual practices. It is nevertheless the case that the public turn of Hirschfeld’s science is undoubtedly indebted to the political-scientific successes of and cautionary public science espoused by Virchow.

Abject Objects

109

discover an individual’s sexual and gender identity from the morphological surface of the body alone as represented in the photographic image. Here he referenced Karl Heinrich Ulrich’s mid-nineteenth-century concept of “Urnings,” individuals whose souls were supposedly trapped in the wrong body and who therefore sexually desired those of the same biological sex:44 Already in my [essay] “Urning People“ I could bring a row of images (for example comparisons of the relationship between the shoulders to the pelvis by male, female, and Urning types) that showed with all clarity that with homosexuals there exists a particular sexual type from which it is entirely impossible [to claim] that he has inherited his condition.45

Hirschfeld of course had shared his presupposition already roughly twenty years earlier, stating that he could locate through visual representations the main types of sexually indeterminate individuals ad oculos, or “by sight.” For Hirschfeld, the Institute’s photographic and object displays and the variety of images displayed in published form in the Geschlechtsübergänge and Geschlechtskunde were, taken as a whole, themselves only part of a much larger, more widespread attempt by many scientists during the period—Virchow, Haeckel, and Pasteur among them—to demonstrate that anyone could learn to see scientifically, if only they knew what to see. To these ends, and specific to sexology, Hirschfeld’s Institute was a significant resource for materials used in the instruction of the scientific vision necessary for the optical assessment of Zwischenstufen for professional researchers as well as members of the lay public. The photographic collection of the Institute was reported to be significant, containing more than 6,000 photographs and more than 3,000 microscopic preparations.46 Some of the photographs in the collection were obtained from anthropologists affiliated with the Institute or familiar with Hirschfeld’s work.47 The first and only archivist of the Institute’s visual materials was Karl Giese, who served in the role from 1924 until the Institute was closed in 1933 at the hands of the National Socialists. Supposedly part of the charge of the Institute’s employees during the Weimar years also was the development of first-class photographic apparatuses, presumably to be used in producing

44

45 46 47

Cf. Manfred Baumgardt, “Berlin, ein Zentrum der entstehenden Sexualwissenschaft und die Vorläufer der Homosexuellen-Bewegung,” Eldorado: Homosexuelle Frauen und Männer in Berlin 1850–1950: Geschichte, Alltag und Kultur (Berlin: Rosa Winkel Verlag, 1992) 13–16. Hirschfeld qtd. in Herrn, “Sammlung” 5; Hirschfeld, Geschlechtskunde 567. Herrn, “Sammlung” 8. Herrn, “Sammlung” 20. Herrn notes that Hirschfeld received photographs from Ernst Haeckel, for example.

110

Material Modernity

additional images. The services of the Walter Talbot Firm were secured in order to provide photographs as well. Important among these visual instructional aids in the Institute was the assemblage of quotidian ethnological artifacts Hirschfeld and others had collected as a means of educating the public visually about sexual practices. Ferdinand Freiherr von Reitzenstein, manager of anthropological and ethnographic artifacts at the facility, included such objects in a special exhibit held in Dresden in 1924. Taken together, the photographic and display objects in Hirschfeld’s Institute constituted significant Anschauungsmaterial, or “visual display material,” and would allow professional scientists and members of the public to witness first-hand instruments and techniques for supposedly healthy gender and sexual expression.48 Not only was there a high demand from established scholars for tours of the Institute. Giese conducted from 1924 to at least 1930 tours on Saturday afternoons for curious members of the lay public as well.49 No other aspect of Hirschfeld’s work nor of the Institute’s emphasis on trained forms of visual assessment speaks more directly to these ambitions than the so-called Zwischenstufenwand (“wall of intermediary stages”). The wall was filled with photographs of individuals who expressed corporeally various intermediate stages of biological development between normal masculine-male and feminine-female. The collection consisted of initially sixteen prominently displayed posters each containing four photographs with accompanying text that identified various forms of intermediate biological development and, thus, sexual identity as well. This orderly display, however, was soon turned disorderly as images were added to the Zwischenstufenwand in a way that did not reflect the chronological proximity of the supposed intermediary developmental stages. As the number of supposedly certified Zwischenstufe veritably exploded, new photos were added to the wall in a hodge-podge fashion without regard for the construction of a visual narrative of biological development from supposedly most incomplete to supposedly most complete. By the time the National Socialists closed the facility, Hirschfeld and his colleagues claimed to have identified thousands of variations in sexual and gender expression, and Hirschfeld had been much praised and parodied in the popular press as the so-called champion of a “third-sex” (Figure 4.6).

48 49

Herrn, “Sammlung” 7. Herrn, “Sammlung” 29.

Abject Objects

111

Figure 4.6 German cartoon depicting Magnus Hirschfeld with the caption “The first champion of the third sex.” Image reproduced with acknowledgment of the Archiv der Magnus-Hirschfeld-Gesellschaft e.V., Berlin50

The dependence on and manipulation of visual evidence, and especially the manipulation of celluloid photography in Hirschfeld’s publications and the Zwischenstufenwand on display at his Berlin Institute, contrast with the celluloid creations in Brugman’s grotesque, “Department Store of Love.” Brugman’s goal was to engage the aesthetic experience to expose social and scientific bias. Her concern was in part with the problematic nature of sexology as a supposedly scientific enterprise, an enterprise that presupposed “normal” sexual and gender expression as it posed the question of what constituted abnormal sexual develop. In focusing on the material forms of evidence in Hirschfeld’s publications and in his Institute’s displays, Brugman could employ celluloid via her Zelluloidkinder not only to make visible the implicit biases in such a scientific practice, where the “normal” itself remained unexplained and unexamined. She could use her Zelluloidkinder as well to call into question the representational reductivism of these empirical scientific displays, displays that were offered up as irrefutable evidence. 50

Original source unknown. janwillemsen/flickr. Non-commercial attribution. Creative Commons. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0. Accessed on April 13, 2019. https://www.flickr. com/photos/8725928@N02/9128896648/in/photostream.

112

Material Modernity

Conclusion In its invocation of celluloid children for military recruits, “Department Store of Love” paints a picture of an army that willingly confuses a belief in the real for the real itself. By placing the military debate in the context of a discussion of sexual practices, however, Brugman’s short story suggests a unique framework for understanding the roles of science and technology, and specifically how these epistemological and material practices alter our own, ever-transforming sense of self and other, of material reality and the materials for truth-making. Brugman’s “Department Store of Love” reveals the symbolic and literal significance of celluloid much like the work of well-known German-Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin, who proposed around the same period as Brugman, an approach to assessing the tasks which modern cultural forms pose for the “human apparatus of perception at the turning points of history.”51 Benjamin, like Brugman, sought to challenge this conflation of material means of representation with the truth of scientific authority. Benjamin would write a critical review of the objectifying Veranschaulichungsmethoden, “methods of visual illustration,” found in a 1920s Berlin nutrition exhibit.52 Through its displays of various dietary guidelines and suggested meals, the nutrition exhibition assumed a scientific authority that made any critical claims on the part of the participant-public suspect in the face of apparently objective facts. Benjamin found the ruse of this objectivity in the displays themselves, in the “methods of visual illustration” that supposedly demonstrated the objectivity and insight of the exhibition’s displays even as these methods of visual illustration constituted objectivity itself. There was no transcendental truth to be found in a good breakfast. The exhibition simply presented another moment for Benjamin in which the development of Technik—in German, a term that refers both to “technology” as well as “technique”—could apparently influence the content of public thought through predetermined visual cues, cues that lead to alreadydetermined and uncritical responses. The public, in short, was supposed to bow at the altar of the display, a display which simultaneously constituted the truth it claimed only to represent. Like Benjamin, Brugman too was concerned with the way in which a perceptual conformism, an inability to recognize the material basis of

51 52

Benjamin, “Work of Art” 240. Walter Benjamin, “Jahrmarkt des Essens. Epilog zur Berliner Ernährungsausstellung.” Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 11 ( Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1980) 527–32.

Abject Objects

113

representation and supposed truth, influenced early twentieth-century engagements with science’s visual evidence. She developed—along with a number of other, better-known avant-garde artists such as Piet Mondrian— strategies to challenge this optical oversimplification. The Dutch enfant terrible Brugman, much like Berlin Dadaists Höch, Friedländer, and Hausmann, was concerned specifically with the public’s uncritical reception of supposed scientific evidence. Such evidence, she and her Berlin Dada colleagues were aware, only had the appearance of unanimous agreement and scientific objectivity; these visual forms of evidence had been, and in some cases, continued to be debated heavily in the professional scientific communities of the day. In Brugman’s short story, the author places an emphasis on the human use of Technik—both the use of fetish objects to appease various human desires as well as the use of celluloid to alter the understanding of what constituted human reality. The celluloid children of Brugman’s tale—the Zelluloidkinder—suggest that it is not so much a psychic extension of the human subject but rather that the human subject itself that can be abstracted into an object. Brugman alludes to the idea that her reader’s uncritical attachment to material forms of modern culture alters the very understanding of not only what constitutes good data for scientific research, but also what constitutes the human subject itself. Figured as a precursor to contemporary fixations on cyborgs and robots as literal replacements for human bodies, Brugman’s grotesque intervention in “Department Store of Love” presents a literary use of celluloid to challenge the idea of the human as object, the human as representation, in service of supposed scientific truth. Brugman, in quintessential avant-garde fashion, refused to acquiesce to the status quo. She continued to challenge the fading materiality of the human body, even as this real human body was beginning seemingly to vanishing in the face of modernity’s fascination with its apparent material fungibility.

114

Part Two

New Chemicals and Reprographic Processes

115

116

5

Visual Explosion in the Weimar Era’s Print Media Andrés Mario Zervigón

On February 15, 1919, two members of Berlin’s notorious Dada movement released the first issue of the journal they satirically titled Jedermann sein eigner Fussball (Everyone His Own Football) (Figure 5.1). The duo, George Grosz and John Heartfield, meant the title to poke fun at the abuses doled out by Germany’s new republican government and its irregular Freikorps troops, who had been busy suppressing intermittent uprisings through the 1918–19 German revolution. Just like the man greeting us with raised hat at the top-left, citizens had become footballs to be kicked about by the new regime and its militarist supporters. The photomontage composition appearing below the title waged the issue’s strongest assault. Laid out across the roughly depicted blades of an extended folding fan, an accoutrement normally associated with coy femininity, it offered photographs of the government’s leaders along with a handful of military chiefs, all of whom vie for the prize of the “most beautiful,” as the captions below announced. Grosz and Heartfield wanted their montage to reduce the seemingly proud and virile men to mere models of “Masculine Beauty,” as the montage itself was titled. In the hands of the two avant-garde artists, photographs originally produced to laud the political and military celebrities in official publicity and press reportage, had been manipulated such that they appeared to reveal the truth behind a strutting public image. For its time and even today, this was a stunning composition that signposted the degree to which avant-garde artists could take their experiments with the fundamental building blocks of representation, made in the aesthetic climate following Cubism, and apply the lessons to the realms of politics and popular culture. Jedermann sein eigner Fussball essentially domesticated fine arts innovation for a mass audience. In so doing, the men had retooled their highly trained aesthetic skills for a mass-printed platform that reached thousands of 117

118

Material Modernity

Figure 5.1 John Heartfield and George Grosz, Jedermann sein eigner Fussball, Nr. 1 (15 February 1919). Private collection.

Visual Explosion in the Weimar Era’s Print Media

119

readers. They were in effect stepping outside their rarified ateliers to get their hands dirty in the muck of quotidian modernity and, at best, effect a transformation of the real world well beyond the traditional affairs of art. Interventions such as these have since become the hallmark of the historical avant-garde and its extraordinarily creative run after World War I.1 This particular case of domesticated innovation, however, was stymied by the technological limitations of its published format. The cover of Jedermann sein eigner Fussball may have employed advanced photomontage techniques adopted from Cubist collage to the worlds of advertising and political propaganda, but its clean mass-reproduction was sullied by the journal’s print technology: halftone. The play with the surface of appearances plied by resorted photographic fragments remained difficult to read and decipher. With more money, Grosz and Heartfield might have afforded a higher quality version of the halftone process, complete with glossier paper allowing the montage elements to shine more brightly. But even this investment would have fallen far short of the actual cut and paste compositions that Grosz and Heartfield gleefully displayed as objects in the “The First Great Dada Fair,” staged with the group’s other members a year and a half later in 1920. Only in the five years to follow would photographic reproduction in mass-print make some of its most important twentieth-century strides. Correspondingly, ten years later, another periodical tore past the technical limitations that had confined Heartfield and Grosz at the Weimar Republic’s birth (Figure 5.2). A stunning two-page spread from 1929 demonstrates what the new publication could achieve beyond what Heartfield and Grosz could have even imagined as Dadaists. It had been two months since the Wall Street Crash that ushered in America’s Great Depression, and the magazine editors now sought to indict the inordinate power of the West’s banking system and the abuse it doled out. With a headline querying “Wer regiert die Börse?” [Who Controls the Exchanges?], the spread showed cartoon-like moneybags bearing the photographed heads of J. P. Morgan and John Rockefeller atop galloping towers rendered by hand. The men’s stubby arms, which extend from the overstuffed sacks that are their bodies, pull the reins of finance and keep European stock exchanges under tight control. Behind the plutocrats, the photographed façade of New York’s stock exchange towers upward toward a view that opens onto its hectic trading floor. At the other end of the taut reins lie similar circular views of 1

Peter Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde, trans. Michael Shaw (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984). On the useful rubric of domesticated avant-garde production, see Patrick Rössler, Die neue Linie 1929–1943: Das Bauhaus am Kiosk (Bielefeld: Kerber, 2007).

120

Material Modernity

Figure 5.2 Designer signing as “FO” [Oskar Fischer], “Wer regiert die Börse?” [“Who Controls the Exchanges?”], Die Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung [A-I-Z] Vol. 8, No. 49 (1929) pp. 10–11. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin—PK / Abteilung Historische Drucke / Signatur: . . 2“ Ue 526/12 : R.

other exchanges, each bearing the same top hat sported by the stern-looking oil magnate on his skyscraper perch. Faintly undergirding this scene, a curving globe situates Europe’s financial capitals geographically, and signals the world domination of American plutocracy in this moment of crisis. What this new magazine offered were pictorial compositions that exploded across its pages not only with greater visual fidelity to their source photographs but also with a much smoother amalgamation of text and graphic mark into the larger synthetic pictorial composition of a page layout. Titled Die Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung (The Worker’s Illustrated Magazine, henceforth A-I-Z), the serial took best advantage of a new rotogravure printing process to exercise a creativity that rivaled and, at some moments, even surprised the work of avant-garde artists around Central Europe and Soviet Russia. The case of the A-I-Z suggests that key advances in the Weimar era’s visual culture

Visual Explosion in the Weimar Era’s Print Media

121

were made possible when advanced printing technologies removed many of the boundaries that had separated pioneering visual experimentation from its mass reproduction, particularly in popular formats. The result permitted the broad dissemination of cutting-edge pictorial forms that had largely been limited to discrete objects. It even allowed a burst of creativity specifically enabled by the new technology’s openness to cross-media experimentation, expanding far beyond the rectilinear straightjacket of halftone plates. With such license, amateurs unschooled in the fine arts and anxious about photography’s representational power, could surpass the efforts of their highly trained brethren, who had themselves only entered the realms of politics and popular culture as neophytes. The story of the A-I-Z, therefore, is the story of interwar Germany’s other avant-garde, one made possible by rotogravure and similar innovations in print technology.

The New Design Terrain of Rotogravure The innovations one can see in “Wer regiert die Börse” simply would not have been possible without rotogravure. The technology initially entered the magazine and book industries because it improved the pictorial quality of photography in mass print and significantly reduced the price of mass pictorial publication. But it did something else as well. Rotogravure made the most inventive designs of halftone printing a commonplace. Beautifully reproduced photographs now regularly flew, crashed and overlapped in a kaleidoscopic sequencing that mirrored the hectic and politically charged instants caught by the camera. Operating in close tandem, the rotogravure’s affordability, visual fidelity and its openness to free-form design fostered a cutting-edge visual culture for mass audiences, an aesthetic development that often rivaled the achievements of avant-garde artists. The process’s development, however, had taken some time before becoming available to magazines such as the A-I-Z. Ever since the first triumphs in fixing the camera obscura’s projected image, photography’s home has been as much on the printed page as on lightsensitized copper or photographic paper. Inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce achieved his earliest success on the road to the medium’s discovery when he incised a sensitized plate of bitumen by exposing it to the sun under a translucent image.2 The prints he drew from this plate and others like it from 1822 and 1825 were at once among the first photomechanical images and the first photogravures.

122

Material Modernity

What qualified them specifically as gravure was that the image plate used to print them was etched rather than rendered in relief. His printer’s ink filled recessions incised on a flat surface rather than coating forms protruding from a plane. Rotogravure would be a similar sort of etching but made on a copper drum fitted to a rotary press. Although gravure accompanied photography’s discovery, it would take nearly a century of further refinements before it could affordably work on room-size machines that printed in mass volumes. Chief among the hazards facing those who sought to expand on Niépce’s early precedent was the difficulty in obtaining the same pictorial quality from a printing plate as from a negative. Most press technologies worked in simple black and white, impressing their text and pictures with solid pigment stamped onto a uniform ground. Text appeared in solid blocks and pictures arose through a network of solid—often minuscule—lines varying in width. The printer’s limitation to undifferentiated pigment and ground made it exceedingly difficult to duplicate the photograph’s subtle gray tones. As a consequence, there long remained a boundary separating mechanical and photographic printing. An important casualty of this prolonged separation was the full integration of word and photograph on one plate and, thus, on the same printed page. One of photography’s pioneers, William Henry Fox Talbot, patented an early photogravure process he called photoglyphic engraving in 1858, and this held the potential of combining the mechanically impressed photograph and type in the same periodical issue or book, if not on the same page. But its quality was low. In the case of his own book, which he published as the multi-volume Pencil of Nature a decade earlier (1844–6), Talbot produced his photographs separately as negative-positive contact prints and tipped them in by hand at substantial cost. The great breakthrough came in the early 1880s with the invention of halftone printing. Finally photographs and text could be set into the same plate and, a few decades later, spun from rotating presses at great speed. But this relief process only mimicked the gray tones of photography by reducing an image to a small network of dots of varying size. Its quality of reproduction was correspondingly often quite low. More advanced forms of halftone printing developed in the 1890s offered far more detail and even a surprising degree of design license, effectively softening the division between mechanical and

2

More specifically, he prepared the plate for etching; the bitumen hardened in relationship to the light striking its surface. He then washed the plate with lavender oil, which diluted and washed away the unexposed portions much as acid would in a traditional copper engraving. For a classic review of this process, see Beaumont Newhall, The History of Photography (New York: Modern Museum of Art, 1988), 13–16.

Visual Explosion in the Weimar Era’s Print Media

123

photographic reproduction, and inaugurating exciting image-text spreads by inventive editors. But the cost of composing the plates and the limited number of prints they could spin before wearing down meant that design experimentation was generally the exception rather than the rule.3 Modern photogravure made complicated text-image-graphic compositions of the sort printed by the A-I-Z easily available. Thus, was born the age of the “typophoto,” as Hungarian Bauhaus professor László Moholy-Nagy termed the amalgam in the mid-1920s.4 Like Niépce’s early intaglio (or engraving) process, the newer technology is a photoengraving process that uses the action of light to etch an image on a flat tablet. Unlike other photomechanical print techniques, such as halftone relief, it is not limited to the printing of solid pigment on undifferentiated ground. Instead, it can stamp a great variation of tones and fine details that approximate the quality of the traditional photograph produced from a negative. It works by engraving innumerable intaglio cells on a copper plate. These vary in depth depending on the tones of the original photographic negative to which the plate is exposed. The darker the tone, the less light hits the sensitized copper plate, and the shallower the cell. The infinite variation of depth duplicates the photograph’s detail and subtle tonal gradations for mechanical printing. It also allows for the appearance of layered images, text and graphics, as in the 1929 A-I-Z spread where round photo fragments bordered by black appear over the faint design of a globe. Another key improvement in photogravure, and its partner technology rotogravure, is that the same plate is engraved with text, graphics, and photographs, all at once. No longer was it necessary to prepare halftone or woodblock reliefs in advance, and then slot these into matrices of set type on a metal printing plate. The new process meant that all the typographic and design work took place on the same surface before the printing plate was even prepared. Photograph and text therefore met much earlier on the apparatus that spelled one of the photogravure’s greatest technical differences over its predecessors: the light table. 3

4

For more on this lack of picture-text correspondence in halftone printing, see “Before VU ” in Michel Frizot and Cédric de Veigy, eds. VU: The Story of a Magazine (London: Thames and Hudson, 2009): 288–95. My account of the rotogravure process is heavily indebted to this book and Frizot’s essay “Photo/graphismes de magazines: Les possibles de la rotogravure, 1926–35,” in Photo/ Graphisme (Paris: Jeu de Paume, 2008), 5–12. For the spectacular possibilities of halftone printing that defined the exception rather than rule, see Thierry Gervais, “L’invetion du magazine. La photographie mise en page dans ‘La Vie au grand air’ (1898–1914),” in Etudes Photographiques, No. 20 (2007): 50–67. László Moholy-Nagy, Malerei, Fotografie, Film (Munich: Albert Langen Verlag, 1925). See the second edition from 1927 from a more comprehensive discussion of the typofoto.

124

Material Modernity

Designing for the Rotating Copper Cylinder Between the mid-1920s and the advent of computer-assisted publishing around 1967, the mounting of an illustrated magazine page took place not on the printing plate itself, as with earlier technologies, but on large sheets of glass illuminated from below by a light table. First, a layout grid was devised that roughly determined the placement and dimensions of the images, texts and graphic elements. The original photographs were then duplicated at the appropriate size and printed directly on positive film. The text was typeset and then similarly rendered on transparent cellophane. The two were then cut and pasted onto the backlit glass sheet roughly following the original layout grid. One can see the layout staff of the A-I-Z leaning over light tables to arrange these celluloid and cellophane pieces into a unified amalgam (Figure 5.3). The result would be a maquette on glass.

Figure 5.3 From “Wie eine Zeitung entsteht” [“How a Magazine Is Made”] doublespread centerfold composition with the embedded feature “Kupfertiefdruck. Herstellung der A.I.Z” [“Rotogravure: Production of the AIZ”] in AIZ 6, no. 31, 1927. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin—PK / Abteilung Historische Drucke / Signatur: . . 2“ Ue 526/12 : R.

Visual Explosion in the Weimar Era’s Print Media

125

Through a series of photomechanical processes, the plates would be printed onto a copper drum leaving the signature intaglio cells of infinitely varied depth. Because the maquette’s glass plate was literally a blank sheet, the process naturally allowed for a great deal of creativity in how photographs, text, captions, and headlines could be positioned. Captions or headlines, for example, could be hand-drawn on film rather than typeset, and then pasted under, above, or even over the other translucent components. Moreover, because the film and cellophane were so easy to cut, rows and columns of text could be shaped like putty as they filled gaps between pictures and captions, or the photos could be fragmented, made to overlap one other, or otherwise set at unusual angles. Once transferred to copper cylinders and fitted on a rotary press, the amalgams could print high volumes on cheaper, lighter paper than was otherwise possible with the halftone. Unique to the rotogravure process as well was its use of thinner inks of various colors. The liquids had to flow rapidly in order to fill the gravure cells, a technical specificity demanding nearly the opposite consistency of halftone printing, which was made in relief. In the older technology, denser gooey inks had to stick tightly to protruding forms, which were usually small dots, rather than rush to fill recessed spaces. The thinner inks could be far less opaque and were available in many colors. Some magazines chose a sepia-toned dye that better favored the subtle tonal gradations of photography. Periodicals could also opt for red, blue, or any other color depending on the desired effect. Generally, an entire issue would be printed in one color, although the occasional translucence of the inks could create the illusion of multiple hues. If desired, a publisher could send pages through two or more printing cycles, thereby producing multi-chromatic arrays that caught the eye with even greater allure. The politically radical A-I-Z, for example, would opt for the more costly procedure at important moments in the calendar, such as May Day. Among the magazines to first adopt this technology, the A-I-Z stood out as one of the most inventive. Its editors, layout staff and print technicians learned to take best advantage of rotogravure’s design freedom and, just as importantly, the openness of the process to photographic manipulation.

A New Type of Magazine It would take years, however, for the magazine to adopt and adapt rotogravure. The A-I-Z was, since January 1925, the flagship periodical of the New German

126

Material Modernity

Press, an extreme-left media concern run by the German propaganda master Willi Münzenberg (1889–1940). The magazine and its press grew out of the Internationale Arbeiterhilfe (International Worker’s Relief, henceforth IAH). Münzenberg had founded the organization in Berlin in 1921 at the direct orders of Russian leader Vladimir Lenin. The IAH’s ostensible mission was to solicit charitable donations of money and food from the Western European Left, with the goal of relieving a grave famine that had struck Russia’s Volga region in the spring of that same year.5 But in actuality, Münzenberg and Lenin meant the IAH less to feed the hungry than to build international “solidarity” with the Soviet Russian cause. The energetic German had cut his teeth on this sort of endeavor as leader of the International Socialist Youth Secretariat, which he headed in Zurich exile during the First World War. There he developed key talents in public advocacy for the era’s more radical form of socialism. In the relative freedom of Switzerland, he gathered a large number of committed followers who pressed an uncompromising brand of opposition against the Great War and most especially against Europe’s majority socialist parties, which seemed to support the conflict at least in their political passivity. Protests, fliers, congresses, and agents provocateurs comprised his primary means of agitation, as did periodicals. His Secretariat’s Jugend-Internationale (Youth International, 1915–18) earned visibility as one of the most prominent international publications to rage against the conflict, attracting contributions from prominent dissident socialists such as the Germans Karl Liebknecht and Edwin Hörnle, and exiled Russians Lev [Leon] Trotsky and Lenin. Trained artists, however, did not count among his contributors even in the city where the rambunctious Dada movement found its birth. Nonetheless, if there was an experienced radical partisan whom Lenin could later rely on to wage a successful and high-profile publicity campaign for Russia and its starving people, Münzenberg was surely the one. Roughly three months after setting up the new IAH headquarters in Berlin in August 1921, the young German and his expanding staff set about publishing a monthly illustrated magazine that would distill his campaign of congresses, rallies, slide shows, film screenings and postcards into a single format that stressed photography. He intended the heavily pictorial brew, titled SowjetRussland im Bild (Soviet Russia in Pictures), to spread news of the Volga starving 5

On Münzenberg and the IAH, see Sean McMeekin, Red Millionaire: A Political Biography of Willi Münzenberg, Moscow’s Secret Propaganda Tsar in the West (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003) and Kasper Braskén, The International Worker’s Relief, Communism, and Transnational Solidarity: Willi Münzenberg in Weimar Germany (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).

Visual Explosion in the Weimar Era’s Print Media

127

and to cultivate emotional sympathy with their plight, which the IAH claimed it could salve with sufficient donations from political sympathizers. Unsurprisingly, the result was a chaotic jumble that ran chaotically from the first to the last page. The magazine’s very first issue offers a good case in point. Released on the fourth anniversary of Russia’s 1917 Bolshevik coup, it offers frame after frame of printed photographs in the manner of popular commercial illustrated magazines from the time, such as the Berliner-Illustrirte [sic] Zeitung.6 A single closely shot but badly printed image of Saint Petersburg’s Palace of Work spreads across the cover page. The presumably red bunting and the new statue of a bare-breasted male worker mark the “revolutionary” use of this old imperial building. Inside the magazine, matrices of photographs further boast the emerging society’s “red sport” and its celebrity political leaders, specifically Trotsky. The photographs in the sport feature stress near endless rows of participants stretching to distant forest horizons, in one case ending in a picturesque lake (Figure 5.4). The lower image features no horizon at all but instead an endless stretch of rally attendees who, pictured from high above, seem to be ants in the larger Soviet endeavor. Each of the pages asserts that the country, which seemed a mortal threat to Germany during its own revolution of 1918–19, was in fact a thriving and dynamic socialist Elysium, one that readily placed the quotidian worker on a monumental pedestal, and that nourished youthful happy citizens able to enjoy mass-sport and politics. But another page of pictures at the issue’s core shows crowds of famished Volga Russians, mostly children, awaiting food and transport in squalid clusters of human misery, or just starving in stripped-down shelters. The shock of the photographs is slightly ameliorated by subsequent pages showing the ships and wagons that were supposedly busy delivering food to the region and foster homes packed with happy children, all purportedly arranged by the aid committee of the IAH. A rack of poorly printed photographs set rectilinearly against diminutive and sparse text, they carried the greatest weight of communicating the magazine’s message. But in addition to the meager visual fidelity of the pictures and their orthodox presentation, the meaning they conveyed was conflicted—at once heroic and pleading. According to the photographs, the new regime had created a brave new paradise. Yet in the same country, millions now starved and would go on to die without help from the world’s sympathetic “workers,” that catchall 6

When the Ullstein Press founded this magazine in 1891, it employed the word “illustrirte” rather than “illustrierte,” the second of which had become the customary German adaptation of the English word “illustrated.” The press apparently used this misspelling in order to distinguish its new magazine from the “Illustrierte Zeitung” then being published by its competitor the Scherl Press.

128

Material Modernity

Figure 5.4 Sowjet-Russland im Bild 1, Nr. 1 (1 November 1921): 2. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin—PK / Abteilung Historische Drucke / Signatur: . . 2“ Ue 526/12 : R.

category that stood in for lower economic class and the unemployed in twentiethcentury socialist discourse. It was not until the A-I-Z began publishing in January 1925 that the mixed picture of socialist victory and defeat was resolved with clarity in both the images and their organization. By then, a new editorial board and production team had learned that a politically radical magazine could win

Visual Explosion in the Weimar Era’s Print Media

129

its audiences—to a significant extent—through the raw pictorial appeal of photographs and that it almost did not matter if the message they delivered in composite was mixed. The spectacular marshaling of clearly reproduced pictures was what mattered. To be most effective, the new magazine would need a far higher print quality and a more striking rolling out of the picture. For the time being, however, the serial had to rely on the terribly low-quality halftone process that a successive series of presses affiliated with the German Communist Party (KPD) made available to the AIH, often in the face of Münzenberg’s protestations. The correspondence between him and the Party leadership is rich with his short-tempered complaints about the printing company, which he claimed had no idea how to reproduce a proper image, and no interest in doing so either.7 At the heart of the problem was the Party’s early resistance to publishing images in its press organs, a problem that John Heartfield’s brother Wieland Herzfelde attributed to the organization’s distrust of popular culture, which it associated with the larger illustrated press and humor magazines.8 In the view of party leaders, the commercial visual culture in the popular press offered mere distractions that lured Germany’s impoverished citizens away from their true political interests and, at worst, plied them with dreams of sudden wealth and visions of communist-driven chaos.9 Such anxiety amounted to a German Communist iconophobia (to be discussed in the next section). It was no wonder that the KPD initially invested little interest or funds in quality image reproduction. Blame also fell on the magazine’s early editorial staff, who plied a confused message about the new Soviet Russia and had difficulty seeing beyond the rectilinear regularity of standard print periodicals and the halftone process. Münzenberg began forging a solution to the problems in late 1924 when he spun off many of the IAH’s publications into the New German Press, a corporation separate from the IAH. He meant to shield his magazine, bulletins, newspapers and books from the state censorship that had frequently shuttered many of the KPD’s publications between 1923 and 1924.10 The move allowed him to shop around for new printing partners who offered far great print quality, which Münzenberg could now afford with the generous though secret funds he gathered from the Communist International in Moscow, the Comintern.11 By 7

8 9

10 11

See file R Y 9/ I6/7/1, particularly pages 159–60 for the most piquant of this correspondence, Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR at the Bundesarchiv, Berlin. Wieland Herzfelde, Gesellschaft, Künstler und Kommunismus (Berlin: Malik Verlag, 1921), 25. For more on this problem, see Barbara McCloskey, George Grosz and the Communist Party: Art and Radicalism in Crisis, 1919–1936 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997). In fact, the Neuer Deutscher Verlag was an existing company that the IAH purchased. See McMeekin, Red Millionaire.

130

Material Modernity

then Sowjet-Russland im Bild (Soviet Russia in Pictures) had changed its name to Sichel und Hammer (Sickle and Hammer) and began covering both domestic German news as well as the apparent progress of Russia under its contested New Economic Plan. With the advent of the New German Press in late 1924, the magazine changed its name to Die Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung, a title that would last through the Weimar years and its subsequent Prague exile. With all the 1924–5 changes complete, including a revamped editorial board, a cadre of contributing writers and plenty of Comintern cash, the magazine turned to the rotogravure process in the fall of 1925. The energy apparent in the ever-growing quantity of photographs, even in their orthodox arrangement, now cut loose into exciting and sharply reproduced montages often spread across two pages. The A-I-Z staff quickly learned how to take best advantage of this expensive technology.

Design Innovation A composition titled “13 Jahre Hindenburg” (13 Years of Hindenburg) from mid-1927 typifies what the magazine began to produce under its new editorial direction with the design freedom afforded by rotogravure technology and, as it turned out, a growing ambivalence about photography (Figure 5.5). The composition is typical: unusually dynamic formal arrangements and careful juxtapositions seemingly force selected press photographs, in relatively sharp reproduction, to reveal the deeply unsettling and invisible world they had initially helped to conceal. The images are thereby forced to divulge the harsh political reality lying beneath the alluring surface of military and governmental pomp in wartime and interwar Germany. This was the parade of appearances that the selected photographs had originally served. Now, however, in the hands of the A-I-Z’s new editors and layout staff, the proud visage of Paul von Hindenburg, pressed onto a postage stamp, tips rightward toward endless rows of graves, which the caption announces are the dead of Verdun, one of the First World War’s most lethal battles (February 21 – December 18, 1916). As the viewer gathers the relationship between the horizon of death and Hindenburg’s rightward glance over it, steel-helmeted soldiers emerge from the distance further to the right. Quickly the gaze travels to the left as the widening photo-strip accommodates the soldiers’ nearing proximity with larger dimensions, thereby suggesting the men’s surging movement leftward and forward toward us.

Visual Explosion in the Weimar Era’s Print Media

131

Figure 5.5 “13. Jahre Hindenburg” [“Thirteen Years of Hindenburg”] double-spread centerfold composition in AIZ 6, no. 37 (September 28), 1927. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin—PK / Abteilung Historische Drucke / Signatur: . . 2“ Ue 526/12 : R.

At their greatest volume, the soldiers strike the porcine head of Quartermaster General Erich Ludendorff, the true power behind the Great War’s administration. His ample and self-assured stature, in turn, dwarfs the wartime Hindenburg, who stands before the outsized quartermaster like a small Russian coupling doll, removed from its larger militarist double. Next to this arrangement, General Hindenburg appears again, now following the then Kaiser down a flight of steps like a “subject,” as the caption asserts.12 Meanwhile, farther to the right, the same loyal subject “of the German Republic bows obediently before the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg at a horse race” while, further to the right, he cozies up to Roman Catholic “princes” as president of the Republic, in place of the deposed Kaiser. As Hindenburg’s kowtowing moves forward in time from thirteen years ago to the present, the size of the photographs increases along a rising diagonal. Therefore, through sequencing, juxtaposition, and dynamic shaping of image forms, the

12

The captions read “Wilhelm II leads us to glorious times while Hindenburg, the subject, follows.” At the war’s declaration, the Kaiser declared that “I will lead you to glorious times.”

132

Material Modernity

reality veiled by the ceremony of appearance—here recorded with the photograph—is dramatically unleashed. Less noticeable here yet key to the impact of the furiously unveiled history is the picture’s size, splashed across a centerfold surface nearly double the dimension of today’s American tabloids.13 The aggressive lurching forward of repressed history, therefore, operates as a monumental photographic revelation taking place only inches in front of the reader’s face. Yet “13 Years of Hindenburg” is only one example of what the magazine was able to achieve in formal innovations. From October 1925 forward, after the A-I-Z’s adoption of rotogravure, it provided similar dramas again and again, as in a more rectilinear composition from April 1926, riffing on what Moscow asserted was the West’s rapid rearmament. Titled “Das Wettrüsten zu einem neuen Weltkrieg” [The Arms Race to Another World War], it also shows history unfolding in a menacing repetition, this time charted by military weapons in action. Where the same press and stock images once heralded the technical sophistication of military equipment and the military prowess of soldiers, here they proffer the frightening specter of a grisly war in the past and a future conflict likely on the horizon. Its content and form sought to unveil the shocking violence of war that Weimar-era citizens were quickly forgetting, particularly as glorifying photo albums of the conflict washed over the country’s book market. For Germany as well as other countries, the A-I-Z’s approach to photography was novel. Indeed, in the early years of its publication, particularly in the first two years of the magazine’s run (1925 and 1926), the photo-compositions found in its pages increasingly stood well beyond the standard matrixes of image and reportage that determined the average illustrated weekly’s layout. In such habitual presentations, photographs had generally been chosen for their first flush of meaning and, perhaps even more importantly, for their immediate visual appeal, exactly as the Communist Party feared when it observed Germany’s illustrated press. As Kurt Korff, editor of the tremendously popular Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung explained in 1927, his periodical “adopted the editorial principle that all events should be presented in pictures with an eye to the visually dramatic and excluding everything that is visually uninteresting.”14 Most

13

14

The dimensions of the A-I-Z were roughly 15 × 11 inches. The double spread, therefore, was about 30 × 22 inches. Kurt Korff, “Die Berliner Illustrirte,” in 50 Jahre Ullstein 1877–1927 (Berlin: Verlag Ullstein, 1927), excerpted and translated in Anton Kaes, Martin Jay and Edward Dimendberg, eds., The Weimar Republic Sourcebook. Weimar and Now: German Cultural Criticism, 3 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994), 646–7.

Visual Explosion in the Weimar Era’s Print Media

133

intriguing was his confession that “It was not the importance of the material that determined the selection and acceptance of pictures, but solely the allure of the photo itself.”15 Here was an outright celebration of the photograph’s potentially superficial appeal, a dedication to the medium that ran directly opposite the A-IZ’s own.16 Correspondingly, in a spread from Korff ’s sister mainstream paper, Die Hamburger Illustrierte Zeitung, illustrated reports unfold almost cinematographically, and with relatively poor quality (Figure 5.6). As shown in a spread from 1923, establishing shots of a derby, seen above and below at the left, set the scene, while the cameo of a horse floating at the left-center provides the film-studio-like portrait of the star. Meanwhile, a dramatic cast of diegetic observers on the right allows one to imagine his or her presence at the tony affair. Here was a titillating re-orchestration of the visible world built partly around a text providing appropriate narrative. But, again, this was scarcely a model for the A-I-Z that, 1: often abjured the first flush of a photograph’s meaning and, 2: wished to interrogate—not luxuriate in—the ordinary perception of reality. At most, it was a model that the A-I-Z wished to challenge. Partly at work were the ideological and historical conditions around the A-I-Z, forged by Münzenberg’s deep reliance on photography for the success of his publication and a great anxiety that German communism had with the medium ever since the days of the postwar revolution, when press outlets flooded the public sphere with apparent photographic proof of the party’s violent marauding. The conditions would be similar to those that produced the following pronouncement: From the centers of capitalist power to the farthest corners of the imperialist world, imperialism oppresses the powerful masses of proletarians from every country with the dictatorship of plutocratic finance capital. With elementary violence, imperialism veils and deepens all the contradictions of capitalist society.17

The words animate a 1928 declaration by the Comintern, the same organization that Münzenberg’s A-I-Z ultimately served. And in the statement, one can clearly divine the driving notion of an everyday reality veiled by appearances — 15 16

17

Korff, “Die Berliner Illustrirte,” 3. In fact, Gabriele Ricke makes just this argument in his study, suggesting that the A-I-Z consciously positioned itself as a “counter-model” to the mainstream press. See Ricke, Die Arbeiter-IllustrierteZeitung. Gegenmodell zur bürgerlichen Illustrierten (Hannover: Internationalismus Verlag, 1974). “Das Programm der kommunistischen Internationale (1928),” in Hermann Weber, ed., Der deutsche Kommunismus. Dokumente (Cologne + Berlin: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1963), 46.

134

Material Modernity

Figure 5.6 “Die Hamburger Derbywoche” [“The Hamburg Derby Week”] Die Hamburger-Illustrierte-Zeitung 5, no. 27. 1923. Private collection.

Visual Explosion in the Weimar Era’s Print Media

135

appearances that hide an all-too-telltale array of contradictions. Münzenberg specifically charged his staff with illustrating just such themes through photography. Herein rested his fundamental challenge: to unveil and persuade with precisely the things that the medium was generally made to obscure. In the KPD itself, the notion of a deeply conflicted reality, hidden by mere appearances, was pursued even more fanatically. A 1925 statement issued in support of the Party’s electoral candidate for president began with the following assertion: The governing coalition that unites the bourgeois parties of Germany and that stands behind the powerfully influential circle of big capital, has chosen to run Hindenburg as candidate for the office of president of the Republic, the same Hindenburg who was the imperial field marshal in the last war, who held the trust of Wilhelm, that fool by the grace of God.18

Behind the governing coalition and its new candidate, the statement declares, stands the cloaked reality of finance capital. The fact that Hindenburg was running for office at all, “openly pronounces that we live in an imperial republic in which a mere democratic facade cloaks the dictatorship of a monarchist haute bourgeoisie.”19 Again and again, the KPD made such pronouncements, continually asserting that political reality and, indeed, visible reality itself, were chimerical. Underneath the thin surface of Weimar’s apparent actuality lay nefarious and self-interested forces that gave this reality its distorted shape, a semblance that German communism could unmask. Only the gritty actuality of unemployment and poverty might speak for themselves, but the KPD nonetheless had to apply its dense party-line discourses in order to reveal the cloaked relationship of politics and capital that, it claimed, generated such miserable conditions. It was in part this harsh ideological discourse about misleading surfaces and the underlying reality they veiled that likely forged a deep anxiety within German communism for images, and particularly for photography, even as Münzenberg felt no choice but to use the medium for his press’ flagship periodical. The deep suspicion about surface and image, a feeling reinforced by an assault of seemingly misleading photographs in the mainstream press, created an anxiety towards mimesis among German communists that remarkably paralleled the historical

18 19

“Thälmann Präsidentschaftskandidat der KPD,” in Weber, Der deutsche Kommunismus, 148. “Thälmann Präsidentschaftskandidat der KPD,” 148.

136

Material Modernity

avant-garde’s own. German communism shared with the Dada movement, and the Bauhaus’s Moholy-Nagy, the view that representation, even in its most modern conveyances—photography and film—was simply inadequate before the actual disorienting conditions of modern reality. Avant-garde artist John Heartfield, for example, later explained that his route to photomontage was charted by his utter frustration with the photographic propaganda disseminated throughout Germany during World War I. His war-time experience sparked the realization that “you can lie to people with photos, really lie to them.”20 In a similar vein, Moholy-Nagy dismissed mimesis as the mere re-presentation of given relationships, a reproduction that fails to stimulate the modern senses. Photography, he asserted, had to reject “traditional forms of representation” and instead “establish a new kind of seeing, a new kind of visual power” with such techniques as photograms and photomontage, which avant-garde artists had been experimenting with ever since cubism used collage to explore the mechanics of representation.21 In Russia, too, photographers such as Alexandre Rodchenko suggested that no single photograph could adequately grasp or “synthesize” reality. Instead, the photo-series, photomontage, and radically vertiginous vantage points had to be employed.22 For both the international avant-garde and German communism, therefore, photography had to be radically reinvented if it were to be used at all in the modern age. In response, ideologues associated with workaday communism, just like artists participating in the historical avant-garde, would ultimately have to redefine the terms of photographic representation itself, essentially short-circuiting mimesis in order to unmask the far more authentic but unseen reality that photography consistently failed to record. With an ambivalence for photography, Münzenberg and his staff had found a way to use the photograph not for its first flush of meaning, but as an instrument to teach a large public sphere that reality and its representation were rarely what they first appeared to be, exactly as KPD dogma insisted. It was therefore specifically on the A-I-Z’s interstitial terrain between communist iconophobia 20

21

22

From an interview of Heartfield by Bengt Dahlbäck, curator of the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, 1967. Excerpts of transcript printed in Roland März and Gertrud Heartfield, ed., John Heartfield. Der Schnitt entlang der Zeit. Selbstzeugnisse, Erinnerungen, Interpretationen (Dresden: Verlag der Kunst, 1981), 464. See Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, “Unprecedented Photography (1927),” translated in Christopher Phillips, ed., Photography in the Modern Era (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art/Aperture, 1989), 83–5. On cubist collage and the mechanics of pictorial signification, see Yve-Alain Bois, “Kahnweiler’s Lesson,” Representations Nr. 18 (Spring 1987): 33–68. See Rodchenko’s various translated statements in Phillips, Photography in the Modern Era.

Visual Explosion in the Weimar Era’s Print Media

137

and the demands of modern publicity that the conflicting imperatives of communist dogma and photography encouraged a magazine staff, untrained in cutting-edge art, to realize one of Weimar-era Germany’s most inventive uses of the medium. The editors and their layout workforce would be quite nearly in the same position as Germany’s avant-garde artists, who de-skilled their highly trained fine-arts practices in order to produce similar forms of mass-produced photomontage. The A-I-Z’s staff was in a sense Germany’s other avant-garde. But the innovations that the men and women working for A-I-Z realized through their ambivalence to photography simply would not have been possible without rotogravure. In fact, the new technology even stimulated the sort of formal thinking that led to the magazine’s signature style. The extraordinary possibilities of this photo-typo-graphic alchemy, leavened with a suspicion for photography, can also be seen on the pages of Mahnruf (1923–33), the monthly magazine of the IAH that was likely transferred to the A-I-Z production team in 1929. In a 1931 double-spread titled “No Work—No Bread” (Figure 5.7), circular photo fragments showing women in various employment cluster and overlap toward the middle of the composition while another fragment above-right shows a hand outstretched toward a woman tipped toward the left, her face aghast at the meager sum of coins carried by the hand’s palm. By contrast, a woman at the bottom-right gently feeds her child with a spoon, suggesting that the various forms of work engaged by the women to the left enable them to feed their children. The woman facing a meager palm of coins cannot. As a whole, the composition generates a powerful sort of propaganda that makes work and bread quite literally a matter of life and death. Most of the article’s text flows around the circles, like water filling an empty volume, while other texts and the title itself run over the photos. In a particular flourish, the magazine read by a woman at the bottom-left features slogans that spring from her periodical’s pages and declare “WOMEN MUST READ . . . AND LEARN!” Although not always realized to such an extreme, the rotogravure’s process in the hands of the A-I-Z editorial team and production staff encouraged the creation of eye-catching photomontages that vastly expanded a photograph’s first flush of meaning or, as in the Hindenburg layout, transformed its original signification entirely. The new technology allowed the design team to make every page or double-spread a complete design unit, blurring the distinction between picture, word and graphic when best realized.

138

Material Modernity

Figure 5.7 Grete Hahne, “Keine Arbeit—Kein Brot. Beitrag zum Internat. Frauentag” [“No Work, No Bread: An Article on the Occasion of International Women’s Day”] in Mahnruf, no. 3, 1932, pp. 6–7. Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR im Bundesarchiv: StB 1 - 2007/0000#0160#0001.

Visual Explosion in the Weimar Era’s Print Media

139

The Printed Photograph and Rotogravure The affordability at high runs, visual fidelity, and design leeway of photogravure made the exciting design work a regular eye-catching affair. Leafing through the more creative rotogravure periodicals even beyond the A-I-Z and Mahnruf, such as the French Vu (1928–40) and the Soviet USSR in Construction (1930–41), was like peering into a pictorial whirlwind. As a reader turned an issue’s pages, multiple pictorial shards slid against each other, arrows pointed, graphs indicated, and free-flowing text divulged the week’s or month’s news. But even though each page or double-spread could function as a deeply integrated graphic unit, the photograph nevertheless provided the greatest allure and frisson in an increasingly common frenetic assembly. Essentially, the picture, or a number of them stacked in interesting ways, almost always provided the pole around which the larger assembly spun. Under such typo-pictorial conditions, the news photograph as well as archived images thrived. They reached larger audiences than ever before and struck with a clarity that often stunned or—alternately—repulsed audiences, depending on the beauty or ghoulishness of the highly legible content. But the flash isolation of an important moment and place, a characteristic that increasingly defined the news photograph’s pictorial style, also helped determine the often freneticlooking layout of the pages on which it appeared. Duration had retracted into tighter units, as the cameras snapping before cataclysmic events now made manifest. Simultaneously, time began moving so quickly that its frames seemed to overlap, as illustrated periodicals of the interwar era had increasingly revealed across their flipping pages. The perfect fit of the news picture with the printed page had already begun to unfold to great effect in the 1890s with halftone printing. But rotogravure’s openness to design choice encouraged editors and print technicians to devise complex graphic systems on a far more regular basis, generating compositions that signaled the ever more hectic pace of modern life. The experience of consuming an illustrated weekly by the late 1920s became as vertiginous as the rapidly unfolding events reported by the photographs within their typographic units, a perceptual encounter that approximated the newest fashions in modern cinema. Vu emphasized the development in its 1928 inaugural issue. “Produced through the latest technology and based on an entirely new concept,” it proclaimed, Vu was to be an “ILLUSTRATED MAGAZINE that reflects the brisk rhythm of modern life, a magazine that reports and documents every aspect of contemporary life,” including political events, disasters and sporting

140

Material Modernity

achievements. On its pages, the newest photo, print and transport technologies would cohere in a blend that, through its content and look, reflected the harried pace of interwar modernity. As the magazine’s statement further emphasized: From every place on the globe where an event of any significance occurs, photographs, dispatches and articles will find their way into the pages of Vu, with columns and special reports and illustrations serving as links that connect its readers with the rest of the world, giving them a bird’s-eye view of life as it is lived in far-flung parts.23

Enhanced by the affordability and design freedom of rotogravure, the illustrated periodical could now regularly offer a cutting-edge look, if the editorial and design team possessed the initiative. Availing themselves of the technology’s potential, they could define page after page by the fast-paced reporting of the news photograph, which was increasingly taken in the thick of key events. Typographic elements could easily be made to swirl from and around the massreproduced image. Signals of action flashed by the modern news photograph, such as vertiginous vantage points, close proximity, and the blur of half-stopped action, could easily be coordinated with the similarly vertiginous designs of accompanying graphic and textual work, to conjure a complete unit based on spontaneity and mobility. What once lay at the extreme of halftone design possibilities now became an everyday performance in print.

Designing for Revelation Whereas Vu and other mainstream magazines in the West used the flexibility of rotogravure to convey the broader spectacle of modern life, the A-I-Z staff specifically employed it for the purpose of stunning political revelation. The swirling and vertiginous kaleidoscope of reportage and light entertainment found in Vu was the earthquake of a world transforming itself politically in the A-I-Z. What lay beneath the surface of appearances in other magazines exploded into view with the help of A-I-Z’s particularly inventive staff, such that the pyrotechnics themselves signaled the ferocity of political disclosure. Most likely in the hands of the same people, Mahnruf also became well-disposed to realize these sorts of design possibilities of rotogravure on a regular basis. Its later issues were printed in rotogravure and took great advantage of the process. Another

23

“Reflections on a New Magazine,” in Frizot and de Veigy, VU : 300–1.

Visual Explosion in the Weimar Era’s Print Media

141

double-page spread from February 1933 shows a proudly standing worker from a dramatic worm’s-eye view at its center. As he rises to near page height, photos of worker misery cluster to the left, and shots of radical “solidarity”—realized in strikes and protest—overlap each other to the right. The second array floats on a field of red that matches the thick line on which the Paul-Bunyan-like worker stands. In the bar that runs the double-spread’s length, a quote by Marx famously intones that philosophers have only interpreted the world, whereas the necessity is to change it. The arrangement of word and image suggest that the agent of transformation is the hammer-bearing worker who pounds misery into solidarity, with spectacular and dynamic success. Here was the perfect pictorial realization of the IAH’s later charge of worker mobilization and relief, realized on a monthly basis by the A-I-Z’s precedent and through rotogravure’s ready openness to extreme design innovation. Here and elsewhere the new technology helped realize German artist Johannes Molzahn’s 1928 prophecy that the photograph in mass print would become “the pacesetter for the tempo of time and development.” As he explained, “the multitude and arrangement of visual sensations forces the uninterrupted work of assimilation on the eye and the psyche.”24 With photo, type and graphic regularly and fully integrated on the rotogravure page, the visual sensation was indeed accelerated and the modern urban citizen now had to follow Molzahn’s imperative: “Stop Reading! Look!”25 In the case of the A-I-Z and Mahnruf, however, the design innovation provoked by communist iconophobia and made possible by rotogravure issued a variation on the command: Stop reading, look, then fight!

24

25

Johannes Molzahn, “Stop Reading! Look!” in Das Kunstblatt Vol. 12.3 (March 1928): 78–82. Translated and reprinted in Anton Kaes, et. al., Weimar Republic Sourcebook, 648–9. Molzahn, “Stop Reading! Look!” 648.

142

6

László Moholy-Nagy Adventures in Light, Space, and Time Donna West Brett

This century belongs to light. Photography is the first means of giving tangible shape to light, though in a transposed and—perhaps just for that reason— almost abstract form. László Moholy-Nagy, 19271 One night in 1931, on the top platform of the Berlin Radio Tower, László MoholyNagy and Sibyl Pietzsch observed the city below with its intricate patterns of light and shadow. The visual display before them was created by “the flashing bands of train and automobile headlights” with the sky above lit by airfield beacons. “This is it—almost—this is almost painting with light,” exclaimed Moholy (as he was known).2 “I’ve always wanted to do just this—to project light and color on clouds or on curtains of falling water. People would respond to it with a new excitement. . . Color would be plastic.”3 1

2

3

László Moholy-Nagy, “Unprecedented Photography,” in Photography in the Modern Era: European Documents and Critical Writings, 1913–1940, ed. Christopher Phillips (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art/Aperture, 1989), 85. First published as László Moholy-Nagy, “ProduktionReproduktion,” De Stijl 5, no. 7 (July 1922). I have adopted the convention used by Matthew Witkovsky and fellow authors in the catalogue for the major retrospective of Moholy’s work titled Moholy-Nagy: Future Present, to refer to MoholyNagy as he was commonly known (Moholy). See Matthew S. Witkovsky, Carol S. Eliel and Karole P.B. Vail eds., Moholy-Nagy: Future Present (Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago, 2016). In addition to other works cited throughout see for example, Joyce Tsai, ed., The Paintings of Moholy-Nagy: The Shape of Things to Come (Santa Barbara: Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 2015); Oliver A.I. Botar, Sensing the Future: Moholy-Nagy, Media and the Arts (Zurich: Lars Müller Publishers, 2014). Sybil Moholy-Nagy, Moholy-Nagy: Experiment in Totality (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950), 72. Moholy-Nagy delivered a lecture at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam on November 27, 1934 titled “From Painting to Light Architecture,” in which he referenced his Berlin experience, whereby he imagined devices that could project visions of light into the air, or onto clouds. See Frans Peterse, “László MoholyNagy and the Netherlands,” in László Moholy-Nagy: The Art of Light, ed. Hattula Moholy-Nagy (Madrid: La Fábrica Editorial, 2010), 104 and “Moholy Nagy over licht-architectuur; fantastische gedachten; de betekenis van de abstracte kunst voor de moderne mens (Moholy Nagy [sic] on Light Architecture; Fantastic Ideas; the Relevance of Abstract Art to Modern Man),” Het Volk, November 28, 1934.

143

144

Material Modernity

This evocative account by Pietzsch, who would later become Moholy’s second wife, illuminates the Bauhaus artist’s enthusiasm for an art form that might concretize the fourth dimension by integrating light with space and time. His experiments with new materials and techniques, which fostered this aesthetic enterprise, had begun nearly a decade earlier drawing inspiration from recent advances in optical science and modern conceptions of space. Moholy and his circle were influenced at the time by theoretical advances in the fields of geometry and physics by Claude Bragdon, Max Planck, and Albert Einstein. Einstein’s ideas of the “movement of objects and light through space over time,” for example, became central to the work of a number of artists and of interest in intellectual circles.4 Bauhaus director, Walter Gropius, identified this confluence of ideas declaring, “Science now speaks of a fourth dimension in space, which means the introduction of an element of time into space.”5 Moholy’s pioneering development of painting with light was advanced by technology-driven experiments that he used to progress what he called “camera vision.” His ambition to encapsulate light with space and time was made manifest first with his “photograms,” then with his kinetic sculpture Light Prop for an Electric Stage (Lichtrequisit einer Elektrischen Bühne, 1922–30), later known as the Light Space Modulator, and finally with his experiments using Plexiglas, a malleable acrylic product that could mold and reflect light. By focusing on these three groups of work, this essay expands the vast body of literature on Moholy to consider how new technologies made possible his adventurous forays into light, space and time that would bring a new kind of seeing and visual power to the medium of photography. Enabling his ambition to explore the fourth dimension, these technologies and their associated bodies of work also redefined the photographic apparatus as a device that could not only record light but could also project and reflect light. In Moholy’s hands photography developed into a thoroughly modernist medium that revolutionized human perception, making possible what the artist enthusiastically described as a “new vision” rooted in the technological culture of the twentieth century.

4

5

Eleanor M. Hight, Picturing Modernism: Moholy-Nagy and Photography in Weimar Germany (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995), 73–4. Walter Gropius, “Preface,” in László Moholy-Nagy, The New Vision and Abstract of an Artist (New York: Wittenborn, Schultz, Inc., 1947), 6.

László Moholy-Nagy

145

Light: Photograms In his essay “On 60 Fotos by Moholy-Nagy,” fellow photographer and critic Franz Roh admiringly set out the experimental range of Moholy’s work, noting that, “the old, Moholy has seen in a new way: by bolder plasticity, new shades of light and dark, and above all by a change of perspective.”6 By this, Roh was acknowledging Moholy’s theoretical framework for a new vision of photography engaged through his optical experiments with daring sights of objects from above or from below, which created astronomic perspectives. Moholy’s experiments in the photographic opened up the possibilities of the art-form to engage with artmaking methods of the day as well as with new theoretical approaches to the medium. He considered photography to be a thoroughly modernist medium, suggesting in a 1927 essay that “the photographic process has no precedent among the previously known visual media,” thereby alluding to what he called the “new frontier of photography” that would revolutionize human perception.7 “It seems to me,” as Moholy put it, “that we, creators of our own time, should go to work with up-to-date means,” such as those appropriate to the era’s industrial civilization.”8 Moholy’s embrace of the new had less to do with discarding the past than with re-deploying the medium (painting, photography or film) with the means, processes or technologies appropriate to the work in the time it was made. In contrast to “static” painting, Moholy embraced photography—a well-established technology renewed by developments in optical instruments—as an aesthetic means by which he could utilize light as a modern material to explore the possibilities of making two-, three-, and four-dimensional art. In the introduction to Painting, Photography, Film (Malerei, Fotografie, Film) of 1925, Moholy set out his treatise for the optical creation of photography and the depiction of nature using light as a creative agent, what he referred to as “chiaroscuro in place of pigment.”9 Light here is considered a “new creative means” and it is in Painting, Photography, Film that he coined the term photogram, a process that allowed him to compose in a newly mastered material.10 The

6

7 8

9 10

Franz Roh, “On 60 Fotos by Moholy-Nagy,” in Moholy-Nagy: An Anthology, ed. Richard Kostelanetz (New York: Praeger, 1970), 49. Originally published as Franz Roh, ed., Moholy-Nagy: 60 Fotos (Berlin: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1930). Moholy-Nagy, “Unprecedented Photography.” See also Kostelanetz, Moholy-Nagy, 104. László Moholy-Nagy, Painting, Photography, Film, trans. Janet Seligman (London: Lund Humphries, 1967). Malerei Fotografie Film originally appeared as volume 8 in the Bauhausbücher series in 1925. Moholy-Nagy, Painting, Photography, Film, 7. Moholy-Nagy, Painting, Photography, Film, 32.

146

Material Modernity

cameraless technique of the photogram afforded him an opportunity to explore the possibilities of making an image with light by placing objects in contact with light-sensitive paper and exposing them to a light source such as the sun or an electric lamp.11 Moholy’s experiments in the photographic centered around his interest in light as a component of a light-space-time continuity, an interest he had in common with fellow artists Hans Richter, Kurt Schwerdtfeger, Josef Hartwig, and Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack.12 While the word “photography” translates from its Greek origins as “writing with light,” the photogram as a new instrument of vision “is the most completely dematerialized medium which the new vision commands,” according to Moholy.13 His ambition was not to replicate light but to use it as a pure artistic medium, like paint. In other words, he desired to record and fix light itself, in all its permeable, malleable, and temporal nature. Moholy’s use of the photogram utilized old techniques that, unbeknownst to him, were at the forefront of photographic invention in the 1830s. Quite simply, a photogram is a unique image made by placing two- or three-dimensional objects onto a piece of paper made light-sensitive by a chemical coating. The paper is then exposed to light, developed, and chemically fixed, with only the outline or shadow of the object remaining to form a picture such as the outline of a fernleaf. In early iterations of the photogram technique, such as those by the British scientist and photographic pioneer William Henry Fox Talbot (1800–77), the light-sensitive paper was exposed to the sun, whereas Moholy and others also utilized electric light in the studio.14 Neither a negative nor a positive, the photogram is essentially a unique, unrepeatable image, that, unlike a camera image, uses no mediating lens. As Susan Laxton has written, the “material, process, and subject matter” of all photograms, including those of Moholy, is light.15 It was light as material, process, and subject that Moholy used to strive for a representation of the fourth dimension by capturing light projected over time (via space and time exposure), a vision he pushed into other experimentations such as those in film and in pure kinetic light projection through light-space modulation using metal and Plexiglas. For Moholy, the photogram records the

11

12 13

14

15

László Moholy-Nagy: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum (Malibu, CA: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1995), 10. Moholy-Nagy, Painting, Photography, Film, 21. László Moholy-Nagy, “A New Instrument of Vision,” in Moholy-Nagy, ed. Richard Kostelanetz (London: Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 1974), 50. Originally written in 1932 and published in Telehor (Brno, 1936). As reproduced in William Henry Fox Talbot, The Pencil of Nature, first issued in six parts from 1844 to 1846. Susan Laxton, “Moholy’s Doubt,” in Photography and Doubt, eds. Sabine T. Kriebel and Andrés Mario Zervigón (London: Routledge, 2017), 146.

László Moholy-Nagy

147

actions of light over time, “that is, the motion of light in space,” indicating that the medium’s tool is not the camera but rather light and time itself, with the resulting work bringing a new form of space articulation.16 This claim is key to understanding the ways in which he developed the medium from a material manifestation to a dematerialized form. The photogram technique used by Moholy developed in startling experimental forms from the early 1920s up until the early 1940s. This approximately twentyyear period has been defined by scholars as the Berlin, Weimar, Dessau, London and Chicago periods, reflecting the different locations Moholy found himself in, each influencing his work in profound ways.17 Modernist scholar Eleanor M. Hight has suggested that Moholy’s photograms go beyond the illustration of theory and rather contain new kinds of imagery that relate to the cosmos in an astronomical and spiritual sense.18 This differentiated Moholy’s work from both Christian Schad (1894–1982) and Man Ray (1890–1976) in that he rendered varying tonalities of light movements and dematerialized objects rather than merely focusing on the textural qualities of the depicted objects (Figure 6.1).19 As is well known, the photograms made by Moholy and Man Ray were published together in an issue of Broom in 1923. After seeing Man Ray’s work, and an intermittent period of similar experimentations, Moholy developed his style and process away from straight renditions of objects on light-sensitive paper.20 The journal issue also included Moholy’s essay “Light: A Medium of Plastic Expression,” in which he questioned how photography might be liberated from its reproductive function.21 His self-proclaimed “primitive” attempts to use light as a medium of plastic expression had already born fruit in those photograms reproduced in the journal, in which he attempted to control light by means of

16 17

18 19 20

21

See Kostelanetz, Moholy-Nagy, 61. See for example, Renate Heyne, “Light Displays: Relations So Far Unknown,” in László Moholy-Nagy: The Photograms Catalogue Raisonné, eds. Renate Heyne and Floris Neusüss (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2010), 27–33. Hight, Picturing Modernism, 58. See Hight, Picturing Modernism, 59 and Moholy-Nagy, “A New Instrument of Vision,” 50. Harold Loeb ed., Broom: International Magazine of the Arts, November 1921–January 1924, this issue March 1923. Moholy’s essay “Light: A Medium of Plastic Expression,” was reprinted in Painting, Photography, Film as “Photography” and “Photography without Camera, ‘The Photogram.’ ” See Renate Heyne, “Light Displays,” 27. See Witkovsky et al. Moholy-Nagy: Future Present, 76. Despite Moholy-Nagy’s endeavor to move beyond the reproductive function of photography by creating unique images that were photograms, he was known to make negatives from these images and therefore able to reproduce them. Herbert Molderings claims that by this stage Moholy-Nagy had most likely read Paul Lindner’s booklet Photographie ohne Kamera (Berlin: Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, 1920), because Lindner suggests reversing the negative photogram to a positive image and refers to the process of “photography without apparatus.” See Molderings, “Light Years of a Life,” in Moholy-Nagy: Future Present, 19.

148

Material Modernity

Figure 6.1 Man Ray, [Untitled Rayograph], from Les Champs délicieux, 1922, gelatin silver print (photogram), 21.6 × 17 cm. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 84.XO.1241.1. © Man Ray Trust ARS/ADAGP. Copyright Agency.

László Moholy-Nagy

149

lenses, mirrors and transparent materials. It is also in this essay that he expressed his desire to record light in motion.22 As a way of affirming his pioneering work, Moholy wrote a letter to the American curator and photographer, Beaumont Newhall on 7 April 1937. He stressed that the cameraless photographs by Fox Talbot from the 1830s, or those by modernists Christian Schad (schadographs) and May Ray (rayographs), should be referred to not as shadowgraphs, but rather by Moholy’s nonbiographical term, photograms. The latter term, coined by Moholy, points to his own advancements in the medium made as early as 1922, and so he claimed, without knowledge either of Talbot’s, or Man Ray’s work in this area. As Moholy pointed out, “I used or tried to use not alone shadows or solid transparent and translucent objects but really light effects themselves,” which took the form of lenses, liquids and crystals for example.23 While the processes used by Schad, Man Ray, and Moholy were essentially those deployed by Fox Talbot nearly a century before, their individual techniques pushed the medium into new realms of representational qualities. For Moholy, this included the fourth-dimensional qualities of light, space, and time. As Hight and others have outlined, the debates surrounding the timing of these inventions were highlighted by vehement claims by the Russian artist El Lissitzky, who asserted that Moholy knew of Man Ray’s experiments as early as September 1922.24 In Lissitzky’s notes from 1925 he set out the facts as he remembered them, alleging that Moholy plagiarized several of his and others’ ideas.25 Here Lissitzky recalled his own role in introducing Moholy to photography and he outlined the occasion at the Dada conference in Weimar at which Tristan Tzara showed Moholy excerpts of Man Ray’s Les Champs délicieux, a series of photograms from 1922 (see Figure 6.1).26 Lissitzky’s frustration is 22

23

24

25

26

Moholy-Nagy, “Light–A Medium of Plastic Expression,” Broom: International Magazine of the Arts (March 1923): 283–4. See also Krisztina Passuth, Moholy-Nagy (London: Thames and Hudson, 1985), 293. See Kostelanetz, Moholy-Nagy, 57. Letter to Beaumont Newhall April 7, 1937. While Talbot’s first forays into photography in the 1830s were cameraless photographs made in the sun by placing objects onto photo-sensitized paper, Christian Schad experimented with what he called schadographs as early as 1918 and Man Ray’s rayographs can be dated to the early 1920s. In the letter to Newhall, Moholy-Nagy claims he made his first photograms in 1922 and yet in Vision in Motion, he footnotes that both Man Ray and he, independent of each other re-invented the photogram around 1920. See László Moholy-Nagy, Vision in Motion (Chicago: Paul Theobald and Company, 1965), 187. Hight, Picturing Modernism, 72. See also Herbert Molderings, “Light Years of a Life: The Photogram in the Aesthetic of László Moholy-Nagy, in Moholy-Nagy: The Photograms Catalogue Raisonné, eds. Renate Heyne and Floris Neusüss (Ostfildern, Hatje Cantz, 2009), 17. El Lissitzky, Moscow, September 15, 1925. See Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers, El Lissitzky: Life, Letters, Texts (London: Thames and Hudson, 1968), 66–7. Quoted here from Passuth, Moholy-Nagy, 391. Man Ray, Les Champs délicieux, 1922, 12 tipped-in rayograms. Bound book in blue slipcase, 39.8 × 29.5 × 2 cm, The J. Paul Getty Museum.

150

Material Modernity

clear in his recollection, in which he listed witnesses to the event, and highlighted Man Ray’s experiments as superior in their artistic merit, concluding the text by drawing attention yet again to Moholy’s alleged plagiarism. Lissitzky, Tzara, and more recent scholars date his experiments with photograms to late 1922, and yet Moholy claimed in a brief footnote in his last book Vision in Motion, published in 1947, that he re-invented the photogram around 1920 at the same time as Man Ray’s own experiments. This can only be thought of as either an error or a purposeful inconsistency.27 Indeed, Moholy’s first wife Lucia, placed the discovery to the summer of 1922 in the Rhön region of Germany, where, on visiting a local school, it is likely they observed the photogram method from someone identified as a woman from Loheland. Herbert Molderings suggested this was possibly a teaching assistant, Bertha Günther, who was known to have made basic floral photograms around this time.28 Despite these early claims questioning Moholy’s contribution to the medium, and his determination to differentiate his constructivist approach from Man Ray’s surrealist experiments in the unconscious, Moholy clearly broke from standard textural renditions and material association, making a foray into transforming light into image. The shift toward total experimentation in light can be seen in a comparison of photograms from the early 1920s with those from around 1940. A photogram from 1923–5, in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, is typical of the works Moholy made at this time, with clear visual references toward the constructivist and Bauhaus motifs of circle, rectangle, light, and shadow (Figure 6.2).29 Here the various planes create a depth of field though the formation of shadows and layering that evoke a sense of motion, reminiscent of a shudder. His later works more succinctly indicate his interest in the photogram’s potential to record light as it fell onto a screen or light-sensitive surface where a differentiated play of light and shadow, or indeed refraction, can be recorded in what he referred to as lightcompositions.30

27

28 29

30

Hight, Picturing Modernism, 58 and Moholy-Nagy, Vision in Motion, 187. See Hight for a brief history of the photogram technique, 59–60. Man Ray claims to have discovered the photogram or cameraless photograph by chance in January 1922 as evidenced by Tristan Tzara who happened to come to lunch on that day. On Tzara’s suggestion Man Ray published a number of photograms in Les Champs délicieux in December 1922, see Hight, Picturing Modernism, 69–70. Molderings, “Light Years of a Life,” 18. László Moholy-Nagy, Untitled 1923–25, gelatin silver print (photogram), 16.8 x 23.1 cm, Museum of Modern Art, 490.1939. Moholy-Nagy, Painting, Photography, Film, 32.

László Moholy-Nagy

151

Figure 6.2 László Moholy-Nagy, Untitled, 1923–5, gelatin silver print (photogram), 16.8 × 23.1 cm. The Museum of Modern Art, Anonymous gift, 490.1939. © Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence.

A photogram in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago from 1940 illustrates the mastery of the technique developed by Moholy over the intervening period (Figure 6.3). A symphonic image of shape and movement, the forms created in space and time through the process of light dancing around shapes and diffractive elements gives the perception that the image remains in flux. Made while teaching at the Chicago Bauhaus (later known as the Institute of Design) after leaving Nazi Germany, it is thought that the photogram may have been used as a teaching example in the classroom. Regardless of its intended purpose the image appears as if it is folding in on itself, with the centrifugal lines spinning into the void, punctuated by fissures of light. Either spinning toward or away from the viewer, the central form seems to have generated a force of light that pulsates like a gaseous planetary output. This sense of motion contributes to a profound sense of depth in the work, which evokes an object moving through space and time. While there is no intended representation in Moholy’s photograms, the tonal qualities and forms conjure a certain reading that suggests the sensation of moving through space, light and time, evoking astrological

152

Material Modernity

Figure 6.3 László Moholy-Nagy, Untitled, c. 1940, gelatin silver photogram, 50.1 × 40.2 cm. Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of George and Ruth Barford, 1968.264. © The Art Institute of Chicago/Art Resource, NY/Scala, Florence.

realms. Perhaps this is not surprising given his preoccupation with scientific methods indicated by an illustrative inclusion of star movements and x-rays in Painting, Photography, Film.31

Space: The Light Space Modulator In Vision in Motion, Moholy considers space-time as understood through the integration of Einstein’s terminology into everyday language; terms such as

31

See Moholy-Nagy, Painting, Photography, Film, 63–72.

László Moholy-Nagy

153

space-time, relativity, motion, speed, or vision in motion. For Moholy, these terms designate a “new dynamic and kinetic existence freed from the static, fixed framework of the past.”32 Although Vision in Motion was published posthumously, his concepts of space-time were introduced in an earlier text, The New Vision, originally published in 1928 and revised in 1947 to include a further essay, “Abstract of an Artist.”33 Identifying various dimensional terms in current use, he highlighted movement or the kinetic quality of an object as the fourth dimension, “in other words, time is added,” as he put it. In a letter to fellow artist Theo van Doesburg, Moholy recounted a meeting with Einstein in 1924, at which they discussed the possibility of the mathematician contributing his ideas on relativity to the Bauhausbücher series. Along with other intellectuals of art and literature, Einstein was a supporter of the Bauhaus idea, and in regular correspondence with the Bauhaus’s founding director Walter Gropius.34 In turn, Moholy and his friend Sigfried Giedion who was an architectural historian, were active supporters of the idea of space-time.35 Moholy argued that this brought a dynamic new approach to art after Einstein, most particularly through the absorption of the elements time and speed into daily language.36 Moholy’s early experiments in this area from the 1920s solidified his conception of Einstein’s Relativity Theory emanating in for example, his kinetic sculpture Light Prop for an Electric Stage (Lichtrequisit einer Elektrischen Bühne 1922–30), later known as the Light Space Modulator (Figure 6.4).37 With the invention of his Light Space Modulator—a three-dimensional device that could project and reflect light onto multiple surfaces—he was able to use light as a way of extending human vision from two

32 33

34

35

36

37

Moholy, Vision in Motion, 266. Linda Dalrymple Henderson, “Four-Dimensional Space or Space-Time? The Emergence of the Cubism-Relativity Myth in New York in the 1940s,” in The Visual Mind II, ed. Michelle Emmer (Cambridge, MA., MIT Press, 2005), 370. Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, Moholy-Nagy, Experiment in Totality (New York: Harpers & Brothers, 1950), 34 and Henderson, “Four-Dimensional Space or Space-Time?” 361, 387 n.26. See Peter L. Galison, Gerald Holton & Silvan S. Schweber, eds., Einstein for the 21st Century: His Legacy in Science, Art, and Modern Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018), 324, n32 and 33. See also Theo van Doesburg, Grondbegrippen van de nieuwe beeldende kunst (Nijmegen: SUN , 1983), 109 and Hans M. Wingler, The Bauhaus: Weimar, Dessau, Berlin, Chicago (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1969), 78. For correspondence between Gropius and Einstein see Lynn Gamwell, Exploring the Invisible: Art, Science and the Spiritual (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 320, n.38. Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1941). On Moholy-Nagy and the fourth dimension see Linda Dalrymple Henderson, The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013), 35, and Victor Margolin, The Struggle for Utopia: Rodchenko, Lissitzky, Moholy-Nagy 1917–1946 (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1998). See also Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1941). Henderson notes that the source for the work being known as Light Space Modulator after Moholy’s death is unknown. See page 549, n125.

154

Material Modernity

Figure 6.4 László Moholy-Nagy, Das Lichtrequisit, 1930, gelatin silver print, 24 × 18.1 cm. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 84.XP.912.3.

or three dimensions into the fourth dimension of space-time, thus creating immersive media experiences.38 Incorporating the fourth-dimension into the Light Space Modulator, or as he referred to it, through the dimension of space-

38

For an analysis of Moholy’s photograms and his work Light Prop for an Electric Stage (1930) see Laxton, “Moholy’s Doubt,” 154.

László Moholy-Nagy

155

time, Moholy sought to make light visible by means of modulating light forms projected onto a surface such as a screen or indeed a photographic surface (photogram).39 Advancing his experiments in painting with light through the technique of the photogram, or cameraless photography, the Light Space Modulator thus embodied Moholy’s ambitions to capture the spirit of the new age.40 The construction of the work spanned eight years, from 1922 to 1930, and became the starting point of a number of series in various media, including painting, photography, and industrial design.41 The Light Space Modulator was devised as an electric kinetic sculpture capable of generating light and motion effects for the stage as its rotating reflective plates interacted with beams of light.42 Moholy used the Light Space Modulator as both the subject and object of film, in particular in the sixth part of Light Display, Black White Gray (Ein Lichtspiel: Schwarz Weiss Grau), 1930.43 As the metal, kinetic sculpture moved around a rotating plate, individual sections became visible through an aperture that reflected light from 128 colored electric bulbs that pointed in different directions and projected shadows onto a surface. Moholy’s film synopsis combines abstract poetic directions such as, “Moonlight, shadow of twigs on hills and mounds,” with technical directions such as “Light in motion. Iris diaphragm closing-opening; spiral moving; large apertures, closing-opening; masks moving, snapping.”44 The film itself is a virtual cascade of light, movement, and abstract shapes that are formed by the Light Space Modulator, with light bouncing off its surfaces as it moves across the picture plane, enhanced by the more abstract qualities of the projected light effects that seem to escape beyond the three-dimensionality of the work into space. It is a dazzling array of layered forms, lights, and shadows that evoke photograms in motion. Moholy described it as demonstrating the 39 40

41

42

43 44

See Floris M. Neusüss, “Introduction,” Moholy-Nagy: The Photograms Catalogue Raisonné, 10. Passuth, Moholy-Nagy, 53. The Light-Space Modulator was only completed in 1930 with the help of Hungarian engineer István (Stefan) Sebök and technician Otto Ball. “The basis of the composition is a rotating disc with three metal frames whose edges meet. The oblique glass spiral placed on the disc traverses an inclined glass plate. Three metal screens with oblique axes and of different patterns, as well as two half-perforated metal discs, are also in contact with the lower, rotating disc. The spiral is in motion, the light projected upon the mechanism passes through the three metal screens whose position, owing to the rotating movement, is constantly changing, as is the silhouette projected at a distance of two or three metres.” See Passuth, Moholy-Nagy, 54–5. Moholy-Nagy first published a photograph of the Light Prop in his article “Lichtrequisit einer Elektrischen Bühne,” in Die Form 5, 11–12 (June 7, 1930): 297–9. The original and also a reproduction of Light Prop for an Electric Stage (Light-Space Modulator), 1930 are in the collection of the Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard Art Museums, Harvard University. There are also copies in the Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin and in the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, Holland. Moholy-Nagy, Vision in Motion, 288. Moholy-Nagy, Vision in Motion, 288.

156

Material Modernity

refined values of the black-white-gray gradations of the photogram (the cameraless photography) in continuous motion. At the same time it uses all possible means of the film technique such as superimpositions—at places seven times—prisms, mirrorings and moving light. Through systematic use of light and shadow in motion it tries to conquer the peculiar dimension of the film, the dimension of space-time.45

What started as an experimental sculptural apparatus for painting with light on a stage, the Light Space Modulator soon became a sculptural object in its own right, as a subject of both photography and film, and also acted as a light projector or “quasi-cinematic projection device,” as Matthew Witkovsky referred to it.46 Through its use in projecting light, the Light Space Modulator became a photographic tool, with the perforations in the metal serving as photographic apertures that turned the modulator into a camera-like apparatus. “What seems to be needed,” Moholy declared, “is a camera which will shoot automatically or otherwise work continuously. The number of light-phenomena can also be increased by using mechanically movable sources of light.”47 While this declaration was made in terms of the Light Space Modulator’s capacity to create light forms in motion that were subsequently used for film-making, it seems apparent that his intention—in thinking of the modulator as a camera-like device—was to use it directly to make photograms. Though it is unclear if Moholy actually used the Light Space Modulator to create photograms, its viability as a photographic apparatus or light projector was explored by Renate Heyne and Floris Neusüss as part of their research for the photogram catalogue raisonné. Using a replica of the Light Space Modulator in the Bauhaus-Archiv in Berlin, Heyne and Neusüss were able to determine that the modulator had the potential to create such images. Heyne and Neusüss even reproduced some examples for comparison.48 Along with some of the more abstract photograms, these would signal a major shift in Moholy’s process— from direct transference of object to image—to the projection of light through or reflected off objects onto a surface receptor. The former method was used by Schad, Man Ray, and also László and Lucia Moholy-Nagy in their early experiments using daylight printing out paper. As Heyne outlined, the process involved arranging various objects, templates, or fabrics on the paper and

45 46

47 48

Moholy-Nagy, Vision in Motion, 288. Matthew S. Witkovsky, Introduction to Moholy-Nagy: Future Present, eds. Matthew S. Witkovsky, Carol S. Eliel and Karole P.B. Vail (Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago, 2016), 17. Moholy-Nagy, Painting, Photography, Film, 44. Heyne and Neusüss, László Moholy-Nagy: The Photograms, 199.

László Moholy-Nagy

157

exposing it to bright sunlight. Moholy often interrupted this process by rearranging or adding objects for various tonal results.49 His reticence to clarify the Light Space Modulator’s role beyond photograms in motion to the formation of fixed photograms is considered by Laxton as suppressing the role of the sculptural constructions used to give light dimension and form to the photograms.50 Moholy’s concept of projection, or of controlling light by passing it through fluids or transparent materials such as glass, was heralded as early as 1923 in his essay published in Broom, as earlier noted. This process, accomplished in the darkroom instead of in open daylight, enabled a controlled light atmosphere in which light sources could be angled, overlapped, or intensified. Both Heyne and Laxton contend that the production of the photograms in the darkroom was virtually beyond Moholy’s control, resulting in continuous experiments that are visually alike in his determined drive to master the medium.51 While this is undoubtedly plausible, it is also possible that the controlled atmosphere and benefit of extended time in the darkroom, away from the unpredictability of sunlight, enabled him to set up his constructions (including the Light Space Modulator). This would enable Moholy to test projections of light through and around objects onto a white surface prior to exposure, with the space-time factor of the exposure itself rendering the unpredictable variability. A number of photograms were made by laying the objects directly onto the photographic paper, evidenced by the relational scale of shapes, or physical traces on the surface. And yet, other more abstracted renditions could be achieved by inserting space (however small) between the layers of projected light source, objects and screen/photographic paper, as is evidenced by his Dessau projection photograms.52 Considering that he may have used the Light Space Modulator as a projector to create some of the photograms, it is highly likely then, that this process of projecting light on, through and around objects to create tonal variations on a surface could also have been achieved without the modulator, such as those he achieved later in Chicago. Indeed, as Heyne and Neusüss have noted, it was in the darkroom where Moholy could ultimately use experimental combinations of overlapping light developing its own effect “and hence play just as important a part in the production of the image as the objects themselves.”53

49 50 51 52 53

Heyne, “Light Displays,” 28. Laxton, “Moholy’s Doubt,” 154. See Heyne, “Light Displays,” 29 and Laxton, “Moholy’s Doubt,” 153. See Heyne, “Light Displays,” 33. Heyne, “Light Displays,” 29.

158

Material Modernity

In furthering these arguments, Molderings also highlights the development of the process whereby Moholy could illuminate objects from varying angles, with the objects suspended above the paper surface.54 Heyne and Neusüss have suggested that while Moholy used various three-dimensional objects to modulate light effects onto the photographic paper, he at times still placed these objects directly on the photographic paper with resultant physical traces of this contact evident in his Berlin, Weimar, and Dessau periods.55 Moholy heralded the Light Space Modulator in Painting, Photography, Film from 1925 where he sketched in words the basic premise for the work, describing a machine with moveable plates that can be slipped between the light source and film creating variations in the exposure. The light-phenomena are further increased by adding movable sources of light. “This principle,” stated Moholy, “is very flexible and can be used equally in representational (object-) photographs and in absolute light composition.”56 Moholy outlined his ideas for the photogram technique in Painting, Photography, Film and simultaneously investigated new means of constructing cameras like the camera obscura that can eliminate perspectival representation. In a descriptive text that could be interpreted as referring to either the photogram method or the Light Space Modulator as projector, Moholy states, this potentiality can be practically utilized in the following manner: the light is allowed to fall on to a screen (photographic plate, light-sensitive paper) through objects with different coefficients of refraction or to be deflected from its original path by various contrivances; certain parts of the screen are shaded, etc. This process can occur with or without camera. (In the second case the technique of the process consists in fixing a differentiated play of light and shadow).57

By the time Moholy relocated to Chicago to head up the design school there, he had already moved beyond using objects to modulate light interactions to, instead using light as the primary medium. It was in Chicago that Moholy developed the process of placing objects in the negative holder of an enlarger, then projecting their forms over distance onto the photographic paper through space and time.58 The effect of this process resulted in a rich layering of dark and light tones and abstracted formations. Fixing a differentiated play of light or

54 55 56 57 58

Molderings, “Light Years of a Life,” 22. Heyne, “Light Displays,” 29–30. Moholy-Nagy, Painting, Photography, Film, 44. Moholy-Nagy, Painting, Photography, Film, 32. Heyne, “Light Displays,” 33.

László Moholy-Nagy

159

shadow through refraction or deflection, without the use of objects as modulating forces on the photographic surface, was also fully achieved in his Chicago photograms by using various light sources such as flashlight. In a singular example, Moholy abandoned an apparatus altogether. He first wet a piece of photographic paper, then crumpled and flattened it. He subsequently exposed it to light, which caressed the undulating surface reacting variously to the upper and lower registers with resultant shadows and highlights. The ensuing image, Diagram of Forces 1938–43, which he described as “a diagram of forces projected on the flat sheet,” is a culmination of dynamic experiments that seemingly renders the image in both negative and positive registers (Figure 6.5).59 Rather than the oppositional forces seen in many of the photograms where solid objects are registered in the negative white space, Diagram of Forces bridges the space between the photographs and photograms in an exploration of three-

Figure 6.5 László Moholy-Nagy, Diagram of Forces, 1938–43, gelatin silver print, photogram, 20.2 × 25.2 cm. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Museum purchase funded by the S. I. Morris Photography Endowment, 84.238. 59

See Heyne and Neusüss, Moholy-Nagy: The Photograms, 242, and Laxton, “Moholy’s Doubt,” 155.

160

Material Modernity

dimensions on a two-dimensional surface. His other experiments with negative and positive images ranged from converting photograms to negatives for enlargement purposes, and to printing photographs in a negative mode, such as Negative Portrait 1925/29 in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. While Heyne and Neusüss’s experiments with the Light Space Modulator replica resulted in a range of photograms made possible by the moving light source and individual components, they could not identify any specific works from Moholy’s oeuvre that were clearly made in that way. There are a range of images from the Dessau period known as the projection photograms, produced before the completion of the modulator, which reveal his artistic intentions and indicate the possible use of the device.60 But because Moholy sometimes used multiple exposures or perspective devices to distort the imagery, it is impossible to definitively ascertain whether or not the modulator was used.61 There are however, a number of photograms that incorporate patterns of various forms such as circles and grids, tonal gradations and spatial effects that recall the experiments of Heyne and Neusüss, and are reminiscent of the structural qualities of the Light Space Modulator.

Time: Light Modulators and Adventures in Plexiglas Moholy’s experiments with the Light Space Modulator subsequently evolved to making a number of Plexiglas sculptures and mobiles that he variably called “Light Modulators” or “Space Modulators.” These two- and three-dimensional works extended his wide-ranging experiments with Plexiglas, a transparent industrial plastic material that he painted, scored, scratched, molded, and perforated.62 Invented in Germany and registered as a product in 1933, Plexiglas was seen as an alternative for glass, its transparent and malleable features inspired its early adoption into design, architecture and art.63 Moholy saw Plexiglas and plastics in general as having the potential for kinetic light displays and made use of their unpredictable qualities, flaws, and ability to transform, refract, and reflect

60 61

62

63

For projection photograms see Heyne and Neusüss, Moholy-Nagy: The Photograms, 199. A range of such photographs do contain circular devices with holes and abstract light sensations that mark rapid movements across the paper, which has been identified as a wire-gauge. For more on Moholy’s experiments with Plexiglas see Julie Barten, Silvie Pénichon, and Carol Stringari, “The Materialization of Light,” in Moholy-Nagy: Future Present, 195–201. While several German companies were experimenting with plastics, Plexiglas was invented and trademarked by Otto Röhm of Röhm and Hass Company in 1933. https://www.world-of-plexiglas. com/en/the-history-of-plexiglas-this-is-how-it-came-about/

László Moholy-Nagy

161

light.64 He used the material as another means to compose with light and used dematerialized light effects to further his investigations of time, space, and motion. From the late 1930s to the early 1940s, Moholy combined Plexiglas with chromium rods to create a series of small sculptures and mobiles that extend the biomorphic shapes found in many of his photograms. Not only did the mobiles function on their own accord, like the Light Space Modulator they were also the subject of photographs and used as projection devices. The incorporation of the chromium rods changed the weight and balance of the sculptures, allowing for a variety of effects both in repose and in movement. One such example was dramatically photographed by Moholy against a black background, emphasizing the transparent material and its varying components, materials, form, and perforated surface. This diptych, [Plexiglas Mobile Sculpture in Repose and in Motion], 1943 (Figure 6.6) in the George Eastman Museum collection, represents a culmination of his drive for the ultimate experimentation in light, space, and time, while also forging a connection between his photograms and the Light Space Modulator.65 The work itself is reminiscent of a kinetic photogram, both in its moving state and its reproduction in photographic form. The photographs show the mobile in its static and moving states of being, reflecting Moholy’s goal for a four-dimensional space-time creation. The moving object centered in the middle of the blackened frame of the image appears as if it is bound for space, preparing to tear itself away from the surface of the paper and from the space in which it was photographed. The photographic rendition freezes motion in time, recording traces of the object in movement as it propels itself in a spinning loop travelling through space and time, leaving a trail of light in its wake. This image is reminiscent of the dynamics present in the photogram discussed earlier (Figure 6.3), but rather than implying movement through shifting light-planes that add depth to the rendering of the forms, here the object and its photographic rendering appear as if in the midst of a violent spatial tremor. The American curator and critic Katherine Kuh considered such structures as “vehicles for choreographed luminosity,” implying movement and transparency in this description.66 64 65

66

Moholy-Nagy, “Abstract of an Artist,” 228. While this particular light modulator is reproduced in Vision in Motion in repose, it is accompanied by a different photograph recording it alive with motion. Both images are described as “Space modulator with perforations and its virtual volume,” but here it is dated 1940, see figures 329 and 330, 242–3. The photographs of a similar work from 1943 in repose and in motion are reproduced in Moholy-Nagy, Moholy-Nagy, Experiment in Totality, 205–6. See Maggie Taft and Robert Cozzolino, eds., Art in Chicago: A History from the Fire to Now (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018), 104. See also Katherine Kuh, “Inheritor and Activator,” Saturday Review, July 26, 1969.

162

Material Modernity

Figure 6.6 László Moholy-Nagy, [Plexiglas Mobile Sculpture in Repose and in Motion], 1943, gelatin silver prints, diptych, 16.5 × 23.2 cm. George Eastman Museum, purchase with funds provided from Eastman Kodak Company, 1981.2163.0059. Courtesy of the George Eastman Museum.

Moholy used the concept of the light modulator in his photographic instruction in Chicago, incorporating a wide array of materials such as rolled paper, the face, or indeed any surface that can reflect light. This ground-breaking aspect of the light modulators was the combination of the element of light with space and time. What makes the motion of the 1943 light modulator possible for the eye to comprehend is the photographic capture of movement. Photographic vision as opposed to human vision, according to Moholy, can “render, precisely register, the speed of objects or stop motion in a hundredth, thousandth, or millionth of a second. It can “see” through mist, even in the dark, by using infrared emulsion.”67 The light modulators also extended his experiments in sculpture, developing what he referred to as volume modulation. This encompassed various stages, three of which include the block (material), modelling and perforation, all elements visible in the Light Space Modulator and the later light modulators. It was in fact, the discovery of new materials, according to Moholy, that inspired “man” to overcome the limits of form, in which the

67

Moholy-Nagy, Vision in Motion, 207.

László Moholy-Nagy

163

material can be amplified through actions such as twisting that added space directions. He claimed it was the countering of space direction, with frozen motion in space that ultimately provided the first step to rendering what he called “vision in motion.”68 The fourth stage (equipoised hovering) is a theoretical concept independent of directional relations, containing only relationships of material and volume. As he put it, “all other possible elements are within its own system since it is in a hovering floating condition.”69 Freed from the constraints of traditional media, the light modulators conquered the forces of gravity, embracing their kinetic qualities by the incorporation of the fifth stage (the mobile). Here, the three dimensions of volume are enhanced by the addition of an element of time—movement.70 Moholy clearly derived his desire to see his mobile light modulator, [Plexiglas Mobile Sculpture in Repose and in Motion], 1943 in motion from a photograph he reproduced in Vision in Motion of an Alexander Calder mobile taken by Herbert Matter in 1939, described by Moholy as moving phenomena.71 In this text, Moholy drew on his earlier thoughts on the dynamics of motion, published in collaboration with Alfréd Kemény in a manifesto from 1922 titled “The DynamicConstructive System of Forces.”72 Moholy advocated for evolving static material construction into dynamic construction, in which the material is employed as a carrier of forces, thus freeing it from mechanical and technical movement constraints. Motion in space, as captured in this image by Moholy, can only be grasped “if its reality is perceptible through the senses,” as he put it. In other words, motion is only rendered and made visible by photographic vision.73

Vision in Motion According to Sibyl Pietzsch, the light modulator from 1943 and two companion pieces from 1945 and 1946 were the closest Moholy came to a kinetic solution. As the suspended form turned in mid-air, “it created a virtual volume of reflected light or it merely vibrated as the air around it moved.”74 Accordingly then, this is

68 69 70 71 72

73 74

Moholy-Nagy, Vision in Motion, 220, 225–6. Moholy-Nagy, Vision in Motion, 236. Moholy-Nagy, Vision in Motion, 237. Moholy-Nagy, Vision in Motion, 240. László Moholy-Nagy and Alfréd Kemény, “The Dynamic-Constructive System of Forces,” Der Sturm 12, 1922. Moholy-Nagy, Vision in Motion, 245. Moholy-Nagy, Experiment in Totality, 205.

164

Material Modernity

the closest Moholy got to visualizing his endeavor to create a space-time effect in four dimensions. The mathematical pursuit of the unquantifiable fourth dimension in space, popularized by scientists such as Buckminster Fuller or the architect Claude Bragdon, resonated with Moholy’s ambitions at the time leading to his extensive investigations into the space-time-continuum. Written not long before his death, in a 1946 article Moholy clarified his position, saying, among the new forces shaping our life the problems of space-time are of primary importance. . . . By introducing consciously the elements time and speed into our life, we add to the static space existence a new kinetic dimension. . . . The spacetime experience is a biological function, as important as the experience of color, shape, and tone. It is also a new medium of the arts.75

If Moholy’s Vision in Motion is understood as a treatise on the space-time continuum that is the fourth dimension as he and other artists such as Marcel Duchamp saw it, then we can trace Moholy’s argument through various media and visual experiments. As explicated throughout this essay, Moholy’s experiments in visualizing the fourth dimension built on his understanding of vision and motion made manifest through light and space over time. These experiments included his photographic practice in which space and time are rendered as super-impositions, or photomontage in which space and time are juxtaposed and fused into a unity. Primarily of interest were his experiments with the cameraless picture (photogram), which “can also be understood as vision in motion since it is a diagram of the motion of light, creating the spacetime continuum which literally is the photogram,” as Moholy put it.76 In heading to a kinetic, time-spatial existence, like Bragdon he could see the adventure of the fourth dimension, understood by Moholy as space-time. In 1939, Bragdon understood the fourth dimension in terms of spatial geometry, as a “precipice of thought, sustained only by the rope of an analogy, slender but strong” that “extends in the direction of a great abyss, then vanishes at the giddy brink.”77 This feeling of an ungraspable goal, which is sensed and not seen, resonates with Moholy’s own largely unachieved ambition for a clear rendition of the spacetime continuum and his own adventures in light, space, and time.

75

76 77

László Moholy-Nagy, “Space-Time Problems in the Arts,” in The World of Abstract Art (New York: Ram Press, 1946), 181–2. Moholy-Nagy, Vision in Motion, 256. Claude Bragdon, A Primer of Higher Space (The Fourth Dimension) (London: Andrew Drakes, 1939), 11.

Part Three

Traditional Materials in New Applications

165

166

7

The Emperor’s New Glass Transparency as Substance and Symbol in Interwar Design Freyja Hartzell

In 1920, expressionist architect Bruno Taut designed what was by far the smallest, yet perhaps most visionary project of his career: Dandanah—The Fairy Palace, a sixty-two-piece set of children’s building blocks industrially manufactured from colored pressed glass (Plate 5; Figure 7.1). Taut’s glass blocks, designed to facilitate connections between creative play and speculative architectural thinking in a post-First World War generation, were at the same time each individually self-contained, sleek, lapidary—like bright, colored gems, or crystals. Writing that same year (under the pseudonym of “Glass”) to the mystical brotherhood of expressionist artists and architects dubbed “The Crystal Chain,” Taut observes with a child’s rapture the sensuous possibilities of Dandanah’s colored glass—a new product recently patented by the Luxfer Prism Company: “I have here on my table a thick piece of yellow glass. Heavy as a building brick, constantly changing in appearance. Certainly, its prismatic form is constant, but there is an ever-changing life in it. It’s simply fantastic what effects the light produces, and yet within a fixed form. The vessel of the new spirit that we are preparing will be like this.”1 The chunks of frozen fire that constructed Taut’s Fairy Palace were pedagogical tools, not simply in their function as toys for developing spatial awareness and motor skills in young children, but, more profoundly, as a means by which children could discover the utopian potential of modern, industrial glass for architecture and design, and so become transformative forces for a better, future world.

1

Bruno Taut, letter of April 15, 1920 to the Crystal Chain, translated in Whyte, The Crystal Chain Letters, 84.

167

168

Material Modernity

Figure 7.1 Bruno Taut, Dandanah, the fairy palace: building blocks of solid glass, children’s block set with instruction cards, 1919–20. Pressed glass and printed cardstock. German Luxfer-Prism Syndicate. Canadian Centre for Architecture, Gift of Phyllis Lambert.

Almost two decades later, in 1938, industrial designer Wilhelm Wagenfeld developed a set of stackable glass food service and storage cubes whose capacity for reconfiguration into a seemingly limitless variety of architectural massings likened them to a hollow, colorless, and transparent set of children’s blocks (Figure 7.2). The Kubus containers’ manufacture from cheap, durable, pressed glass enabled them to travel from refrigerator to table in households across the Third Reich. Wagenfeld understood the twentieth century’s industrially pressed, heat-resistant utilitarian glass as a new and miraculous material—“the magic of frozen light.”2 His regular, colorless vessels—like outsized ice cubes—pictured a different vision of modernity in 1938 than Taut’s fiery fairy-blocks had done in 1920. Both were building blocks for utopia; yet the future societies each implied were radically opposed.

2

“Glas is der Zauber gefrorenen Lichts.” Wagenfeld cited in Heinz Scheiffele, ed., Wilhelm Wagenfeld und WMF: 25 Jahre Zusammenarbeit, 1950–1975 (Aalen: Wahl-Druck, 2003), 12.

The Emperor’s New Glass

169

Figure 7.2 Wilhelm Wagenfeld, Kubus storage containers, c.1938. Vereinigte Lausitzer Glaswerke, AG. 1. Museum Associates/LACMA. Licensed by Art Resource, NY © 2020 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.

Before the modern era, transparent glass existed primarily in the imagination. As cultural scholar Jeffrey Schnapp has noted, “[d]reams of crystalline transparency arose in a world in which crystalline transparency was a rarity, which is to say throughout the premodern era. Nearly all actual glass was opaque to semi-opaque, tinted by impurities, filled with bubbles and imperfections.”3 The essence and origin of transparent glass, long before it was realized and rationalized in modern industrial architecture and design, was the stuff of fairytale—like Cinderella’s glass slipper or Snow White’s glass coffin. I adopt this originary understanding of transparency as born of myth and fantasy to explore its transfigurative role in German cultural politics approaching, during, and beyond the Weimar period. This essay deploys images of both modern and premodern glass—manifested with remarkable vibrancy and special cultural significance in literary images of gemstones, crystal, snow, and ice—to question

3

Jeffrey Schnapp, “Crystalline Bodies: Fragments of a Cultural History of Glass,” West 86th vol. 20, no. 2 (Fall–Winter 2013), 176.

170

Material Modernity

the myths of purity inherent in modernist socio-political agendas that slipped themselves into clear glass, identifying it as the appropriate material vessel for their ostensibly “transparent” and egalitarian relation of individual to society— and state.4 Wagenfeld’s description of glass in a 1963 lecture hints at the curious, simultaneous nothingness and somethingness of transparent glass that enticed and entangled designers of objects during the modern period: “Pure colorless glass is invisible. Light and shadow reveal its form to us. We feel the glass, but we see through it as if it did not exist.”5

A Clean Slate: Transparency as Moral Exhibitionism Less than a year after the Nazi Party came to power in Germany, the GermanJewish cultural critic (and recent expatriate) Walter Benjamin made provocative references to the material properties of modern glass in an essay titled “Experience and Poverty,” published in a Czech journal in December 1933. “It’s not for nothing,” Benjamin proposes, “that glass is such a hard, smooth material to which nothing can be fixed. A cold one and a sober one, as well. Things made of glass have no ‘aura.’ Glass is generally the enemy of secrets. It is also the enemy of possession.”6 In “Experience and Poverty,” Benjamin was writing not just at a beginning— the dawn of the Third Reich—but also about another, earlier beginning: a true ground zero. The unique “experience” of the generation that came of age during the First World War, Benjamin argues, was actually a negation of experience, a kind of emptying out of established, middleclass life, and a liquidation of the environments and objects that enabled it—an experiential and material impoverishing. “[E]xperience has fallen in value,” Benjamin asserts,

4

5

6

For foundational work on the relationship between transparency and the state as manifested in the built environment see Colin Roe and Robert Slutzky, “Transparency: Literal and Phenomenal,” Perspecta vol. 8 (1963): 45–54 and also Deborah Ascher Barnstone, The Transparent State: Architecture and Politics in Postwar Germany (Routledge, 2005). Wilhelm Wagenfeld, lecture given in conjunction with the exhibition, “Deutsches Glas,” at the Landesgewerbeamt Stuttgart, December 16, 1963, pp. 2–3. Wilhelm-Wagenfeld Stiftung, Bremen. My translation. Walter Benjamin, “Erfahrung und Armut,” in Walter Benjamin: Aufsätze, Essays, Vorträge. Gesammelte Schriften Band II-I, Rolf Tiedemann und Hermann Schweppenhäuser, eds. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2014), 217. My translation. In addition to the German text (published originally in Die Welt im Wort (Prague), December 1933), I will use Rodney Livingstone’s English translation: “Experience and Poverty,” in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, volume 2, part 2, 1931–1934, Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland, and Gary Smith, eds. (Cambridge, MA : Belknap Press, 1999) 731–4, where it is most accurate.

The Emperor’s New Glass

171

amid a generation which from 1914 to 1918 had to experience some of the most monstrous events in the history of the world. . . never has experience been contradicted more thoroughly: strategic experience has been contravened by positional warfare; economic experience, by the inflation; physical experience, by hunger; more experiences, by the ruling powers. A generation that had gone to school in horse-drawn streetcars now stood in the open air, amid a landscape in which nothing was the same except the clouds and, at its center, in a force field of destructive torrents and explosions, the tiny, fragile, human body.7

The First World War’s systematic eviscerations had not simply impoverished everyday experience, they had rendered it transparent, as well. The “tiny, fragile, human body,” which before the war had been draped, padded, and swathed in the protective tissues of private bourgeois existence, was now, according to Benjamin, utterly exposed to the outer world of public events—standing “in the open air. . . in a force field of destructive torrents and explosions.” In Benjamin’s view, the entirety of culture had been bankrupted.8 In the postwar wasteland there was nothing left to hold on to, nothing to hide. And the impoverished— naked—generation that inhabited this barren landscape was also the first to experience transparent glass architecture and mass-produced glass objects as features—and even markers—of modern, domestic life. But before transparency could be realized as object or environment, it was a perception, or experience—a perception of cultural disillusionment, an experience of radical clearing out, or an evacuation of culture. This cultural emptying amounted, in Benjamin’s terms, to a new and ironically promising type of “barbarism” that cleared a space for a radically open-minded approach to the future—for an undivided, self-conscious modernism: Barbarism? Yes, indeed. We say this in order to introduce a new, positive concept of barbarism. For what does poverty of experience do for the barbarian? It forces him to start from scratch; to make a new start; to make a little go a long way; to begin with little and build up further, looking neither to left or right. Among the great creative spirits, there have always been the inexorable ones who begin by clearing a tabula rasa.9

For Benjamin the compulsion to start “from scratch” was a prerequisite to the condition of modernism: “a total absence of illusion about the age and at the 7

8 9

Benjamin, “Experience and Poverty,” in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, volume 2, part 2, 1931– 1934, Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland, and Gary Smith, eds. (Cambridge, MA : Belknap Press, 1999), 731–2. Ibid., 732. Ibid.

172

Material Modernity

same time an unlimited commitment to it.”10 He counted among the proponents of this fierce and ruthless modernism figures now familiar to the history of art and architecture, including the painter Paul Klee, and the architects Adolf Loos and Le Corbusier. But the advocate of this tabula rasa—or “clean slate”— modernism least known to the history of visual and material culture, though most heroic to Benjamin, was neither professional artist nor architect, but the Berlin poet, science fiction writer, and utopist Paul Scheerbart (1863–1915). In Benjamin’s view, Scheerbart “greeted the present with greater joy and hilarity” than any other modernist “barbarian.”11 Scheerbart greeted the present with glass, and through it envisioned the future. Though his untimely death from illness in 1915 precluded his actual participation in the transparent interwar culture that Benjamin describes in 1933, Scheerbart was nonetheless instrumental in its construction. Scheerbart housed his fictional characters, according to Benjamin, “in adjustable, movable glass-covered dwellings of the kind since built by Loos and Le Corbusier.”12 Benjamin enlists Scheerbart in his apprehension of glass as revolutionary: the great cultural emptier and modern social leveler—“the enemy of secrets. . . the enemy of possession.” But more specifically, Scheerbart’s glass is for Benjamin the material manifestation of the modern tabula rasa: not simply a clean but an invisible slate. It was Scheerbart “with his glass” and the Bauhaus “with its steel” that between them, Benjamin mused, created rooms in which it was “hard to leave traces.”13 And indeed, Scheerbart’s 1914 Glass Architecture proposed the substance itself as the purveyor not just of a new environment, but of a new culture, for the modern era: We live for the most part in closed rooms. These form the environment from which our culture grows. Our culture is to a certain extent the product of our architecture. If we want our culture to rise to a higher level, we are obliged, for better or for worse, to change our architecture. And this only becomes possible if we take away the closed character of the rooms in which we live. We can only do that by introducing glass architecture, which lets in the light of the sun, the moon, the stars, not merely through a few windows, but through every possible

10 11 12 13

Ibid., 733. Ibid. Ibid. See Benjamin’s notorious reference to Bertolt Brecht’s use of the word “traces” in his poem, “Aus dem Lesebuch für Städtebewohner” in “Experience and Poverty,” 734.

The Emperor’s New Glass

173

wall, which will be made entirely of glass—of colored glass. The new environment, which we thus create, must bring us a new culture.14

For both Scheerbart and Benjamin, glass was not simply a modern domestic convenience, but a utopian substance: it was the clean and clarifying antidote to the close and cloying interiors that had lulled the private dweller of the dusty nineteenth century into dangerous complacency in regard to public events. Benjamin wrote in 1929 that “to live in a glass house is a revolutionary virtue par excellence. . . a moral exhibitionism, that we badly need.”15 Glass was a Marxist material: it dissolved the blinding barriers between private domesticity and civic responsibility. Glass offered political transparency and collectivist collaboration. And glass took a stance. Free and “empty,” it was likewise sharp and uncompromising. No longer a passive object of use, it became instead a subject— an “enemy,” not simply of the domestic dust and grime of plush nineteenthcentury interiors, but of prewar bourgeois conservatism itself: personal possession, private conspiracy—dirty secrets. While visually straightforward, it was materially complex: clear and honest, but at the same time resistant, hardhearted. In 1914, Scheerbart articulated glass’s pointed utopianism in Glass Architecture, his part practical, part visionary manifesto in 111 propositions for the uses of glass in modern domestic architecture. In the book’s final proposition, “Glass Culture,” Scheerbart prophesies a new “glass milieu” that will “completely transform humanity.”16 But Scheerbart saw a smear on the glass horizon: “. . .it can only be wished,” he falters, finally, “that the new glass-culture will not meet with too many opponents [Gegner].”17 For Scheerbart, then, glass was a “Gegner,” or opponent; aligning itself etymologically with the German term for object, Gegenstand, it stood socially, politically—and materially—“against” things. Benjamin’s “Experience and Poverty” sharpened Scheerbart’s interpretation of the adversarial nature of glass, while at the same time rendering the already symbolic substance emptier, more transparent. In the rift between the cultural shattering brought about by the “War to End All Wars” and its ironic successor, modern glass became no 14

15

16

17

Paul Scheerbart, “Environment and its influence on the development of culture,” Glass Architecture (1914) in Glass! Love!! Perpetual Motion!!! A Paul Scheerbart Reader, Josiah McElheny and Christine Burgin, eds. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 26. Benjamin also cited Giedion’s passage above in his epic compilation and annotation of citations, Das Passagen-Werk (The Arcades Project). Benjamin, “Surrealism,” Literarische Welt, V (1929). Reprinted in Benjamin, Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings, Peter Demetz, ed., Edmund Jephcott, trans. (New York: Schocken, 1978), 180. Scheerbart, “CXI: Die Glaskultur,” Glasarchitektur (1914) published in Project Gutenberg http:// gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/glasarchitektur-1752/3 accessed July 14, 2016. Ibid.

174

Material Modernity

longer just an “opponent,” but an “enemy”—capable of making its own enemies.18 “Do people like Scheerbart dream of glass buildings,” Benjamin asks, “because they are the spokesmen of a new poverty?”19 A good question. Inasmuch as Benjamin claimed Scheerbart as a modernist “barbarian,” it is also crucial to recognize Scheerbart’s expressive, colorful “glass culture” as fundamentally distinct from Benjamin’s blank “tabula rasa,” and, by extension, to acknowledge color and translucency—alongside, but also sometimes in opposition to colorlessness and transparency—as constituents in the unique materiality and special meanings that glass brought to modern life in the twentieth century.

“Into Glass You Shall Pass”: Transparency and Transformation in Myth and Fairytale Benjamin’s question—whether “people like Scheerbart dream of glass buildings because they are the spokesmen of a new poverty”—was, in the contemporary context, hardly rhetorical. Scheerbart’s activities as poet, writer of science fiction stories, and speculative architectural theorist would already suggest that his involvement with glass was far from impoverished. In fact, his extensive exploration of the material and its uses—its historical and mythical past, its modern culture, and its future promise—signals his rich, nuanced, sometimes contradictory (and apparently compulsive) relationship with glass. Scheerbart’s attraction to glass was anything but “cold and sober”; on the contrary, it reads throughout his writings like a love story. Almost fifty years after Scheerbart’s death, Wilhelm Wagenfeld mused in a 1963 lecture, “people say that love is not objective, and I think, how good that it is not—the same is true for the love of glass. Once you fall for this strange material, you remain for the rest of your life under her spell.”20 This obsession with glass had undoubtedly been Scheerbart’s fate.

18

19 20

Rodney Livingstone’s translation of “Experience and Poverty” in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, volume 2, part 2, 1931–1934 equates Benjamin’s own term for glass as the “enemy of secrets” (“Feind des Geheimnises”) with Scheerbart’s wish that glass will “not encounter too many enemies.” See Benjamin, “Erfahrung und Armut,” in Walter Benjamin: Aufsätze, Essays, Vorträge. Gesammelte Schriften Band II-I, Rolf Tiedemann und Hermann Schweppenhäuser, eds. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2014), 217 and Scheerbart, “CXI: Die Glaskultur,” Glasarchitektur (1914) published in Project Gutenberg http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/glasarchitektur-1752/3 accessed July 14, 2016. Ibid., 734. Wilhelm Wagenfeld, lecture given in conjunction with the exhibition, “Deutsches Glas,” at the Landesgewerbeamt Stuttgart, December 16, 1963, pp. 2–3. Wilhelm-Wagenfeld Stiftung, Bremen. My translation.

The Emperor’s New Glass

175

Scheerbart’s attraction to and exploration of the “strange material” sprang from longstanding historical traditions, and a rich body of literature. Glass— both as material and metaphor—has wielded throughout its history a mysterious, transformative power. In her foundational discussion of glass as architectural substance and symbol in “The Interpretation of the Glass Dream: Expressionist Architecture and the Crystal Metaphor,” architecture historian Rosemarie Haag Bletter uncovers a “mystical tradition” behind glass imagery, which culminated in the “rich, shimmering, and illusory world of reflections” that defined early twentieth-century Expressionist architectural fantasies, whose frequently unrealized (or unrealizable) images pictured crystal and glass as material embodiments of the more abstract characteristics and values of transparency and flexibility.21 Mining history and delving into myth, Bletter constructs a vision of glass in motion: a material ever in transition from one state to another. The very nature of glass was (and is) to be in flux. Indeed, Wagenfeld described both the process of glassmaking and the physical nature of glass itself as phenomena of transition: We know that glass is artificially made and composed of various natural materials, which become fused with one another in fire. But this fusion is also a transformation. A transformation of what is naturally occurring to that artificiality which is glass. Glass is amorphous: as a substance it is formless. Apprehended physically it is a liquid, but congealed by its infinitely great viscosity.22

As the common root of “transition,” “transformation,” and “transparency” suggests, glass has been understood over the centuries as a substance that one could both pass through, and that was, itself, perpetually in a state of “passing”: not simply morphing but imitating—“standing in” for other materials and ideas. Jeffrey Schnapp identifies glass’s capacity to pass or stand in for “naturally occurring crystals or jewels” as one of its defining traits throughout history. Glass’s consistent association with semiprecious and precious stones, recurring in religious texts as well as myth and fairytale, links it, according to Schnapp, with “higher forms of materiality (spiritual bodies),” causing it to represent and radiate qualities of “cleanliness, health, moral probity, resoluteness, magical

21

22

Rosemarie Haag Bletter, “The Interpretation of the Glass Dream: Expressionist Architecture and the History of the Crystal Metaphor,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 40:1 (March 1981): 21. Wilhelm Wagenfeld, lecture at “Deutsches Glas” exhibition, Landesgewerbeamt Stuttgart, December 16, 1963, pp. 2–3. Wilhelm-Wagenfeld Stiftung, Bremen.

176

Material Modernity

powers, and strength.”23 However, glass’s role as imitator of crystals and gems, dependent on appearances (and perceptions), renders this Ersatz material at the same time transcendent and transitory. Part of the “magic” of glass in myths and tales is its very instability: it is unreliable, fragile, and fugitive. Its surface appearance and optical effects cannot be trusted to reveal its actual substance— neither in terms of its true material value, nor in those of its structural integrity. Glass can both deceive and break. The glassy allure of crystal embodies the ambivalence of both form and meaning that animates E.T.A. Hoffmann’s literary fairytale, “The Golden Pot” (1814). Throughout the story, appearances alter as each character’s perception of reality shifts in response to his or her desires. Crystal and glass objects, while they frequently serve to enliven the narrative with erotic energy, also paradoxically threaten virility, individual freedom, and even physical mobility.24 The tinkling of “pure crystal bells” heralds for Hoffmann’s protagonist, the student Anselmus, the transcendence of his meager everyday life through the promise of romantic (poetic and erotic) bliss; however, a malevolent crone’s prophesy that Anselmus will “run into the crystal which will soon be [his] downfall” is realized toward the end of the tale in Anselmus’s imprisonment in a crystal bottle in which “cataracts of fire were congealing around his body and turning into a solid icy mass. . . while Anselmus’s limbs were more and more pressed and contracted together and were hardening into powerlessness. . .”25 Cultural scholar Christoph Asendorf has noted the story’s depiction of “the deadly aspect of crystal alongside its affinity with desire” as proof of Hoffmann’s profoundly ambivalent apprehension of crystal, in which “petrifaction corresponds to metamorphosis, utopia congeals into an individual nightmare.”26 In its perpetual transmutations, however, Anselmus’s bottle—now prison, now paradise—aligns itself more accurately with the fluid materiality of human-made glass than with the rigid, crystalline structure of a naturally “growing” mineral. Glass’s reputation for treacherous instability developed not just from its legendary ability to pass from molten, lava-like substance to congealed “icy mass,” however, but from the innate fragility of its most familiar cool and fixed

23

24

25

26

Jeffrey Schnapp, “Crystalline Bodies: Fragments of a Cultural History of Glass,” West 86th vol. 20, no. 2 (Fall–Winter 2013), 176. It is important to note that references to and descriptions of glass and crystal are largely interchangeable both in Hoffmann’s original German and in English translations. E.T.A. Hoffmann, “The Golden Pot,” in Leonard J. Kent and Elizabeth C. Knight, eds. and trans., Tales of E.T.A. Hoffmann (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1969), 14 and 76. Christoph Asendorf, Batteries of Life: On the History of Things and their Perception in Modernity, Don Reneau, trans. (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1993), 22–3.

The Emperor’s New Glass

177

state. The material preciousness of preindustrial glass accrued from its inherent structural weakness. Bletter argues that while glass’s fragility precluded the preindustrial construction of large-scale glass structures, it was this same fragility that inspired the construction of centuries’ worth of outlandish “diaphanous structures” in literature that eventually enabled the transparent architecture of the modern era.27 Schnapp, too, highlights preindustrial glass’s brittleness as a key constituent in the agglomeration of its meanings: “the perception of glass has been shaped by the certainty that, at any moment, a glass object can undergo sudden, unexpected, and catastrophic failure.”28 And Wagenfeld observed, even in working with industrial glass that, “it is not only glass’s state as s frozen liquid, or its transparency, that so appeals to our senses; we are almost more strongly attracted to its fragility and to the caution that must be exercised in order to interact with it.”29 Like the evil Snow Queen’s blackmagic mirror in Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale, glass had a material will of its own and could, without warning, splinter and shatter.30 Like the shards of that malevolent mirror that lodge themselves in the heart and eye of the unsuspecting little Kay—distorting his moral vision and making him vulnerable to the Snow Queen’s nefarious designs—deep in the enchanting history of glass is embedded a sliver of violence: the compulsion to expose and penetrate—to pierce, albeit in the name of “freedom.”

A Modern Gothic: Magical Realism in Colored Glass Colored glass has been employed across centuries to mimic naturally occurring crystals and gemstones in what Schnapp has termed “architectures of light.”31 One of the original manifestations of these architectures was the Gothic cathedral, whose first examples date from the twelfth century. With its revolutionary groin vaults, flying buttresses, and pointed arches, the Gothic cathedral allowed for larger expanses of glass, and thus more light than any previous architecture. The light that passed through the Gothic cathedral was not the colorless light of revelation; it was an altered light—the colored light of 27 28 29

30

31

See Bletter, “Glass Dream,” 22. Schnapp, “Crystalline Bodies,” 176. Wagenfeld, “Die Gegenwart in Architektur und Hausrat” (1946), in: Ders.: Wesen u. Gestalt der Dinge um Uns, Potsdam 1948, 199. Wilhelm-Wagenfeld Stiftung, Bremen. “The Snow Queen” was first published on December 21, 1844 in New Fairy Tales, first volume, second collection. Schnapp, “Crystalline Bodies,” 176.

178

Material Modernity

transfiguration. While precious stones, with their spiritual associations, were considered the best transmitters of divine light, colored glass could not only “pass” for precious stones but could also be used structurally as a screen to transmit and transmute spiritual light. Light from heaven, embodied in color by its passage through “sapphire” or “ruby” glass, could transfigure the soul of the worshipper upon whom it fell.32 Colored glass-ecstasy was both a foretaste of heaven and a blueprint for utopia. Myth and fairytale still clung fast to colored glass at the turn of the twentieth century, especially in its function as a utopian material. Between 1889 and his death in 1915, Scheerbart published about thirty pieces of writing on glass— most of them fiction. For architecture historian and Scheerbart scholar John A. Stuart, it is narrative that binds Scheerbart’s literary fantasies with his more practical visions for modern architecture and design.33 The futuristic Gray Cloth with Ten Percent White: A Ladies Novel (1914) depicts the negotiation of glass architecture through the story of the Swiss glass architect, Edward Krug, who travels by airship to erect colorful glass structures around the world. As a condition of their marriage, Krug’s young wife agrees to wear only “gray cloth with ten percent white,” so as not to clash with—or upstage—his vibrant glass architecture.34 Though, in the spirit of the tabula rasa, it promised a new beginning, the colored glass of Scheerbart’s architectural fantasies was not Benjamin’s uncompromising “enemy of secrets.” It was playful, mysterious, and seductive, revealing its effects on the individual and society not immediately—or transparently—but gradually, through the filter of color. Glass Architecture, also published in 1914 and generally considered The Gray Cloth’s non-fiction pendant piece, contained technical proposals for a new glass culture arising in large part from Scheerbart’s friendship with architect and utopist Bruno Taut. According to Taut (to whom Glass Architecture was dedicated) his relationship with Scheerbart constituted a blending of utopian aspiration and attention to practical viability.35 The book cemented the gleaming facets of Scheerbart’s glass culture with modern technology. The double glass walls he promoted in Glass Architecture, and also in his fiction writing, were at

32

33

34

35

See Bletter’s discussion of Abbot Suger’s reference to precious stones as the embodiment of divine light in his building program for St. Denis in “Glass Dream,” 26–7. John A. Stuart, “Unweaving Narrative Fabric: Bruno Taut, Walter Benjamin, and Paul Scheerbart’s The Gray Cloth, Journal of Architectural Education vol. 53, no. 2 (November 1999): xv and 65. See Stuart’s introduction to his translated edition of the novel: The Gray Cloth. Paul Scheerbart’s Novel on Glass Architecture (Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 2001) and also: 79–80. See Taut’s later discussion of his working relationship with Scheerbart in “Glaserzeugung und Glasbau,” Qualität 1, no. 2 (April/May 1920): 9.

The Emperor’s New Glass

179

once mystically transformative—“the light between these walls shines outwards and inward, and both the outer and the inner walls may be ornamentally colored”—and also ingeniously functional: “Heating and cooling elements. . . can be suspended like lamps in the interior, where all hanging lights are to some extent superfluous, since light is distributed by the walls. . . .”36 Scheerbart imagined that glass fibers, or “fairy hair,” might “lead to a whole new industry in applied art” including carpets, furniture coverings, and other domestic textiles.37 Above all, in Glass Architecture Scheerbart inveighed against traditional building materials like brick and wood, not simply for their opaque inability to foster the dreamlike decorative possibilities of glass, but for what he deemed their incompatibility with modern doctrines of safety and hygiene: the glass-andferroconcrete dwelling was not flammable, harbored no vermin, and was proof against the newly discovered “brick bacillus.”38 Though the modernist in Scheerbart anticipated a standardized, sanitized glass future, this future was distinct from Benjamin’s tabula rasa modernism, which implied a clean—and necessarily violent—break with the cultural past. Perhaps this distinction may be attributed to the mystic in Scheerbart, forever attached to glass’s magical past, from the “Near East. . . a thousand years before Christ,” to the Gothic cathedral.39 Focused on its expansive cathedral windows, Scheerbart’s admiration for sacred Gothic architecture was rooted in its deployment of colored glass as an instrument of spiritual transfiguration.40 While Scheerbart’s glass culture was to be secular and egalitarian, its morally transformative impact was the same force it had exerted in Gothic cathedrals over half a millennium earlier. “[O]ur hope,” Scheerbart writes, “is that glass architecture will also improve mankind in ethical respects. It seems to me that this is a principal merit of lustrous, colourful, mystical and noble glass walls.”41 Critical in Scheerbart’s formulation was the notion of “seeing” as beholding— rather than seeing through. In contrast to an “impoverished” modernist transparency of exposure, in which the aim of glass architecture was to erase the

36

37

38 39 40 41

Scheerbart, Glass Architecture #4: “Double glass walls, light, heating and cooling,” in Glass! Love!! Perpetual Motion!!!, 29. Scheerbart, “Glass House Letters,” translated and reprinted in Glass! Love!! Perpetual Motion!!!, 132– 3. Scheerbart also discusses this malleable “fairy hair” in his review of Taut’s Glashaus at the 1914 Werkbund exhibition. See also Scheerbart, “Glass Houses: Bruno Taut’s Glass Palace at the Cologne Werkbund Exhibition,” Technische Monatshefte. Technik für Alle (March 28, 1914) 8, translated in Glass! Love!! Perpetual Motion!!!, 96. See Glass Architecture #43, 44, and 89 in Glass! Love!! Perpetual Motion!!!, 54 and 78. Ibid., 39. Ibid., 38. Ibid., 71.

180

Material Modernity

boundaries between private and public, regime and individual, subject and object, Scheerbart’s colored glass was an intensely sensual material to be experienced for its own sake, through qualities far more playful than transparency. Scheerbart prized glass not for its immateriality, but for its unique materiality: its capacity to embody and manipulate color and light through translucence and reflectivity, as well as prismatic and even kaleidoscopic effects. While for Benjamin the effect of transparent glass should be a “moral exhibitionism,” for Scheerbart, translucent, colored glass could deliver a spectrum of aesthetic effects, while at the same time generating “positive moral effects.”42 Scheerbart summarized these in his aphorism, displayed prominently above the entrance to Bruno Taut’s experimental colored-glass structure at the 1914 exhibition of the German Werkbund in Cologne, which read: “Colorful Glass Destroys Hatred.”43

Glass House and Fairy Palace: Bruno Taut’s Utopian Experiments Shortly after his first meeting with Scheerbart in 1913, Taut received the commission to design the “Glashaus”—a faceted, crystalline pavilion constructed from a variety of glass products fabricated by the German Luxfer Prism Company—for the 1914 Werkbund exhibition (Plate 6; Figure 7.3). In Glass Architecture, Scheerbart had singled out Taut’s Glass House as a model for his modern Gothic vision—a model “in which the entire glass industry is to be represented.”44 And in “Glass Houses: Bruno Taut’s Glass Palace,” published in March of 1914, Scheerbart anticipated in detail the impact of Taut’s pavilion: The glass palace is designed above all to prove that glass can be used for much more than just windows; walls, too, can be built of glass. Glass’s translucence (not transparency) makes it unparalleled for walls, since no other building material can achieve such magnificent effects.45

Opening in May, Taut’s “glass palace” realized Scheerbart’s conflation of the ageold Gothic and the technologically ultramodern through the conjunction of its 42 43

44 45

Scheerbart, “Glass Houses,” 97. Scheerbart’s rhyming couplets are translated to rhyme in English in “Glass House Letters” in Glass! Love!! Perpetual Motion!!!, 135–6. I have used my own, non-rhyming translations in the text above, however, because I feel their meaning is truer to the original if the rhyme is sacrificed. Scheerbart, Glass Architecture #49, in Glass! Love!! Perpetual Motion!!!, 57. Scheerbart, “Glass Houses: Bruno Taut’s Glass Palace at the Cologne Werkbund Exhibition,” Technische Monatshefte. Technik für Alle (March 28, 1914) 8, translated in Glass! Love!! Perpetual Motion!!!, 95.

The Emperor’s New Glass

181

Figure 7.3 Bruno Taut, Pavillon der Glasindustrie, Werkbundausstellung in Cologne, 1914. Photograph: Arthur Köster © 2020 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Akademie der Künste Berlin, Bruno-Taut-Collection No. 210, Ph. 2a.

materials and construction with Taut’s conceptual framing of the project. The experimental Glass House functioned essentially as a showroom for its primary sponsor, German Luxfer Prism, which donated the building materials and provided many of the exhibits.46 At the same time, however, the cover of the brochure that Taut published to accompany his pavilion positioned the structure as an evolutionary product of the Gothic tradition by including, beneath an elegant line drawing of the Glass House with its faceted, crystalline, and pointed glass dome, Scheerbart’s aphorism: “The Gothic cathedral is the prelude to glass architecture.”47 For Taut, the Gothic cathedral and its modern descendent, the 46

47

Dietrich Neumann discusses the history of the Luxfer Prism Companies, established in Chicago in 1897, and their relation to early twentieth-century architecture in “ ‘The Century’s Triumph in Lighting’: The Luxfer Prism Companies and their Contribution to Early Modern Architecture,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 54, no. 1 (March 1995): 24–53. See p. 43 for this specific reference to Taut’s Glass House. “DER GOTISCHE DOM IST DAS PR Ä LUDIUM DER GLASARCHITECTUR.” Taut’s brochure, “Glashaus Werkbund-Ausstellung Cöln 1914,” is reprinted in Glass! Love!! Perpetual Motion!!!, 98–107.

182

Material Modernity

Glass House, were connected by light. “Building is nothing other than the bringing of light,” he would write later, in 1921. “Glass is light itself. . . and so glass architecture is nothing other than the final link in the chain of building.”48 Taut’s Glass House materialized Scheerbart’s tales of a floating, mobile, and multicolored architecture of glass in a host of reflective and translucent materials that staged an ever-changing play of colored light. In his brochure, Taut narrates a tour of the Glass House with childlike delight, all the while making practical, systematic reference to each of the modern firms and technologies responsible for realizing the glass dream. Translucent walls, constructed from Luxfer’s thick, prismatic glass tiles sandwiched together by ultra-thin concrete ribs were illuminated by both natural and electric light, and coated in lustrous silver and gold veils, creating mother-of-pearl effects.49 In an ecstatic reverie that seems to offer the prewar “thesis” to Benjamin’s interwar “antithesis” of glass as the coldand-sober “enemy of secrets,” Taut’s friend, the architectural critic Adolf Behne, wrote of his own transformative experience of glass in Taut’s pavilion: The longing for purity and clarity, for glowing lightness, crystalline exactness, for immaterial lightness, and infinite liveliness found in glass a means of fulfillment— in this most bodiless, most elementary, most flexible, material, richest in meaning and inspiration, which like no other fuses with the world. It is the least fixed of materials transformed with every change of the atmosphere, infinitely rich in relations, mirroring the “below” in the “above,” animated, full of spirit and alive! The thought of the beautiful cupola room which was vaulted like a sparkling skull, of the unreal, ethereal stair, which one descended as if walking through pearling water, moves me and produces happy memories.50

Behne’s 1915 description of “flexible” glass architecture that, glowing with light and flowing with water, is both animated and, at the same time, “moves” the participant, stands in direct opposition to the “hard, smooth” and, most of all, aura-less material that Benjamin invokes in 1933. In its warm, glinting dynamism, Behne’s image of the glass house interiors mirrors Scheerbart’s words monumentalized on its façade: “Light wants to move through everything and all / And is alive in crystal.”51 48 49

50

51

Bruno Taut, “Glasarchitektur,” Die Glocke (March 1921), S. 1374. My translation. The ribs were made from Glaseisenbeton or Keplerian Reinforced Concrete-Glass patented and manufactured exclusively by the Deutsches Luxfer Prismen-Syndikat. Taut writes that, “the walls of the upper circular section are made of silver smalt. Silver or gold smalt is the name for glass that has a sheen of silver or gold yet is translucent. This product is made by the Puhl & Wagner company of Treptow in Berlin, which is the only company to hold a patent for manufacture of such glass.” See Taut, “Glashaus,” in Glass! Love!! Perpetual Motion!!!, 102. Adolf Behne, “Gedanken über Kunst und Zweck dem Glashause gewidmet,” Kunstgewerbeblatt, N.S. XXVII (October 1915), 4. Translated by Bletter in “The Interpretation of the Glass Dream,” 34. Scheerbart, “Glass House Letters,” in in Glass! Love!! Perpetual Motion!!!, 136.

The Emperor’s New Glass

183

Finally, Behne’s account challenges the veracity of what appeared in Benjamin’s eyes to be glass’s salient trait and principal merit: its resistance to “traces”—both of dirt and of the anti-modern past. Despite its perceived immateriality, Taut’s glass environment “produces happy memories” for Behne; rather than disowning or dematerializing the past, the technologically cutting-edge glass house actually recalls it. Taut himself alludes to the pavilion’s capacity to generate memory, and so confirms the intentional inclusion within his design of contact with the warm, subjective past of individual experience. “The cascade’s downward trail leads the eye to a purple fabric-lined niche with a screen, upon which rhythmically shifting kaleidoscopic images are projected. The beauty of the images reminds the viewer of childhood.”52 The sensory immediacy and imaginative optic and haptic play of Taut’s Glass House evoked the child’s immersive experience of the world and argued actively (if tacitly) for a social and cultural return to the creative freedom childhood. The Werkbund exhibition was cut short by the outbreak of the First World War in August of 1914. As building industries ground to a halt and a scarcity of building materials characterized the war years and heir aftermath, Taut occupied himself with necessarily modest, and experimental, projects. In 1917, he began work on a folio of colorful watercolor drawings, published in 1919 as Alpine Architecture.53 This collection of images, carefully annotated with lyrical descriptions and assertions in the rounded, fluid characters of the artist’s own hand, and closer to a child’s fairytale picture-book than an architectural treatise, constituted the first of Taut’s illustrated works relating glass architecture and alternative visions for society. Unconfined by the realities of construction, Taut was able to respond even more directly—and ambitiously—to Scheerbart’s propositions for a glass culture than he had at the Werkbund exhibition. In Taut’s Scheerbartian vision, the “crystal house” in the mountains was to be “built entirely of glass—coloured” (Figure 7.4). Not only would colored glass houses adorn the Alps, however; the mountains themselves would be integrated into Taut’s vast, ornamental endeavor. In Plate 6, Taut envisions a “Valley as Blossom,” where “in the depths of a lake” there would be “flower-like decorations of glass in the water.” In a hallucinatory stream of consciousness he continues: “Together with the walls they glow at night. Likewise the peaks of the mountains. They are

52 53

Taut, “Glashaus,” in Glass! Love!! Perpetual Motion!!!, 103. For a recent reprint and chronology of the project, see Matthias Schirren, Bruno Taut: Alpine Architecture, A Utopia/Eine Utopie (Munich and New York: Prestel, 2004).

184

Material Modernity

Figure 7.4 Bruno Taut, “Das Kristallhaus,” plate 3 from the publication Alpine Architektur, 1918. Watercolor and ink on paper. Akademie der Künste Berlin, Alpine Architektur from the Bruno-Taut-Archive No. 5.

set with smooth crystal mushrooms. Searchlights on the mountains pick out the bright twinkling of the peaks at night.”54 Consistent with his insistence on the functional purposelessness of his 1914 Glass House, Taut argued against utilitarianism throughout Alpine Architecture. In an appeal to the “People of Europe,” Taut offered the pure purposelessness of glass architecture as an antidote to the devastating, utilitarian logic of war: Yes, impractical and without utility! But have we become happy through utility? Always utility and utility, comfort, ease,—good meals, cultivation—knife, fork, railroads, water-closets but also—cannons, bombs, instruments of murder! To want only the utilitarian and comfortable without higher ideals is boredom. Boredom brings quarrel, strife, and war. . .55 54

55

See Dennis Sharp’s edited and translated edition of Alpine Architecture, including black-and-white reproductions of the plates in Glass Architecture by Paul Scheerbart and Alpine Architecture by Bruno Taut (New York and Washington: Praeger Publishers, 1972). For the most part I have used Shirley Palmer’s translations of Alpine Architecture, with occasional interventions of my own. See Sharp, Glass Architecture. . . and Alpine Architecture, 122. Bruno Taut, Alpine Architecture, plate 16. Reprinted in Sharp, Glass Architecture. . . and Alpine Architecture. My translation.

The Emperor’s New Glass

185

Bletter notes that Taut’s pacifist constructions were to be realized “communally by the masses in the same way Taut assumed Gothic cathedrals had been built.”56 For Taut, as it had been for Scheerbart, the significance of glass architecture was not its inherently cool, spiritual perfection but the warm, social radiance this necessarily produced. The Gothic cathedral was not the impenetrable and unalterable holy of holies, but a collective project in the making—capable of transforming society to the extent that its individual members not only inhabited but also constructed it. “Preach!” Taut exhorts, Preach: the social concept: the Brotherhood of Man. . . Harness the masses—for a gigantic task, in the completion of which each man will feel himself fulfilled. . . A task whose completion can be felt to have meaning for all. Each man will see his own handiwork clearly in the common achievement: each man will build— in the true sense. All men will serve the one concept, Beauty. . . Boredom disappears, and with it strife, politics and the evil spectre of War.57

Taut’s vision for the social relevance of glass architecture, its utopian potential, and, specifically, the childlike, imaginative sense of play that it seemed to evoke in those who worked with it, combined in Dandanah—The Fairy Palace. Designed between 1919 and 1920, the set of brightly colored, pressed-glass children’s building blocks was manufactured by the German Luxfer Prism Company. Taut collaborated on Dandanah with art historian Paul Mahlberg and his wife Blanche, who registered the blocks for a patent in 1920. During this period directly after the completion of Alpine Architecture, Taut was also involved with the so-called “Crystal Chain,” the group of expressionist architects and artists, including Adolf Behne and Bauhaus-founder Walter Gropius, who maintained an ecstatic correspondence around the themes of utopia and glass architecture between November 1919 and December 1920. Dandanah can thus be understood as a miniature embodiment of Taut’s and Scheerbart’s conceptions of glass as mystical, mobile, and alive.58 The very word Dandanah was intended to evoke the esoteric magic of Eastern palaces and temples. And when light passed through the colored blocks they seemed to catch strange fire: Crystal Chain member and architect Hermann Finsterlin described his daughter playing 56 57

58

Bletter, “Glass Dream,” 35. Taut, Alpine Architecture, plate 16. Text translated in Sharp, Glass Architecture. . . and Alpine Architecture, 125–6. See Iain Boyd Whyte The Crystal Chain Letters: Architectural Fantasies by Bruno Taut and His Circle, Iain Boyd Whyte, ed. and trans. (Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 1984). See also Dandanah, http://www.deutsches-museum.de/en/exhibitions/materials-energy/technical-toys/tour/; Juliet Kinchin, The Crystal Chain and Architectural Play,” in Century of the Child: Growing by Design, 1900–2000 (New York: MoMA , 2012, 60–1.

186

Material Modernity

with the glass blocks by candlelight in a darkened room; and Taut, himself, wrote of the unpredictable and “ever-changing life” contained within their translucent geometries.59 The Dandanah blocks were spiritual vessels in the most speculative sense: while they facilitated an intense, almost hypnotic experience of play, they also provided scope for the development of a constructive imagination during the interwar period. Dandanah’s sixty-two geometric blocks in red, blue, yellow, green, and colorless glass delivered the dynamic, prismatic experience of the experimental Glass House into small hands. They represented the opportunity for a new start—a chance to become what Taut referred to in a letter to the Crystal Chain in November 1919 as “imaginary architects.”60 Within the Crystal Chain context, “imaginary architects” were those who—for the time being—were unable to realize their dreams of crystal castles. But the child who played with Dandanah, modeling her fantasies on the six included instruction sheets that encouraged the construction of massive, monumental, colorful buildings—alive with color and radiating light—was also an “imaginary architect,” a future-builder.

Death by Design: The Gradual Freeze Wagenfeld claimed in 1963 that “no material is so magical, so improbable, as glass. One would like to believe that glass was not invented at all, but had, like rock crystal, always existed, and was at some point simply discovered.”61 In its simultaneous fixity and flexibility, Taut’s glass architecture—both actual and imagined—embodied the mysticism and mystique of the crystal, especially as it had been perceived over the course of the nineteenth century. In his Spiritual History of Ice, Eric G. Wilson has explored the paradox of the crystal in the early nineteenth-century nature philosophy of German thinkers including Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. “The crystal moved. . . biologically minded thinkers,” Wilson writes, “because it could grow.”62 Not only could ostensibly “static” or “dead” crystals grow, but, for some philosophers—most notably Friedrich von 59

60 61

62

Bruno Taut, letter of April 15, 1920 to the Crystal Chain, translated in White, The Crystal Chain Letters, 84. Taut, letter of November 24, 1919 in White, The Crystal Chain Letters, 19. Wagenfeld, “Deutsches Glass,” Lecture at Stutgart Landesgewerbeamt, December 16, 1963, 2–3. Wilhelm-Wagenfeld Stiftung, Bremen. My translation. Eric C. Wilson, The Spiritual History of Ice: Romanticism, Science, and the Imagination (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2003), 27.

The Emperor’s New Glass

187

Schelling writing at the turn of the nineteenth century—all growth in nature patterned itself on the structural organization and growth of the crystal. For Schelling and thinkers who followed him, the development of crystals as a kind of primary or primal growth pattern could be observed most directly and immediately not in rock crystals but in the frozen crystals of snow and ice. And he understood man-made growth, too, as the result of crystallization: “Architecture,” he wrote in his 1803 Philosophy of Art, “is music in space, as it were a frozen music.”63 Inherent in the ice crystal’s paradox of inorganic “growth” was a dialectic of playfulness and austerity particularly palpable in Taut’s most fantastical projects—Alpine Architecture and Dandanah. In Plate 10 of Alpine Architecture— “Snow, Glacier, Glass”—“snowfields in regions of eternal ice and snow” are “built over and decked with embellishments in the form of planes and blocks of colored glass,” as if some gigantic child had taken her Dandanah blocks with her on a holiday in the mountains. And yet the vast, frozen resistance of the glacier—its fierce and fearsome sublimity—provides an awesome counterpoint to the fanciful colored glass that ornaments it. Is this a living place, a habitable place? Taut’s final plate, a stylized rendering of the words, “Stars—Worlds—Sleep— Death—The Great Nothing—The Nameless—The End,” suggests that his “Alpine architecture” is not, in the end, an architecture for dwelling, but an architecture of transformation and, ultimately, dissolution of matter altogether. The development of design in Germany over the course of the 1920s with its increasing Sachlichkeit of restrained forms clean lines, and unembellished surfaces, might be compared to a gradual freeze: household ceramics began increasingly to resemble virgin snow, and glass was turning to ice. While Schelling had experienced architecture in the eighteenth century as “frozen music,” Wagenfeld saw glass in the twentieth century as “the magic of frozen light.”64 And his Kubus refrigerator containers—clear, sterile, and destined for the cold—were the designer’s practical tabula rasa for the modern German home. Taut’s blazing colored glass had ornamented the frozen mountain peaks of his unruly Alpine landscapes. But Wagenfeld’s colorless, transparent cubes seemed to have killed off not just microbes but ornament itself, presenting German housewives with squeaky-clean slates: smooth, sanitary—and see-through—surfaces.

63 64

See Wilson’s discussion of Schelling’s On The World Soul (1798) in ibid., 28. “Glas is der Zauber gefrorenen Lichts.” Wagenfeld cited in Heinz Scheiffele, ed., Wilhelm Wagenfeld und WMF: 25 Jahre Zusammenarbeit, 1950–1975 (Aalen: Wahl-Druck, 2003), 12.

188

Material Modernity

Wagenfeld’s best-known design is perhaps the now iconic table lamp (Figure 7.5) that he designed in conjunction with Carl Jucker at the metal workshop of the Bauhaus school in Weimar between 1923 and 1924, when both were apprentices there. With its cool, resistant, and (sometimes) transparent materials, the “Wagenfeld lamp” was an aura-less object upon which it was “hard to leave traces.” From the

Figure 7.5 Wilhelm Wagenfeld and Carl Jakob Jucker, Table Lamp (Glass version MT 9 / ME 1), designed c.1923–4, executed 1927. glass, chrome, steel. © 2020 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Courtesy Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin. Photo: Gunter Lepkowski.

The Emperor’s New Glass

189

inception of the Bauhaus in 1919, director Walter Gropius had associated the school and its mission with the image of the “glass house” as a catalyst for social and political transformation. Lyonel Feininger’s woodblock print, The Cathedral of Socialism, accompanied Gropius’s Program for the State Bauhaus in Weimar in 1919. On the pamphlet’s facing page, Gropius exhorted young artists and craftspeople to build “the new structure of the future. . . which will one day rise toward heaven from the hands of a million workers like the crystal symbol of a new faith.”65 Together, Gropius’s words and Feininger’s black-and-white picture—sparsely constructed from empty geometric forms whose angular contours made them resemble glass facets or crystal shards—bound the building of a utopian future equally to the politics of collectivism and the concept of transparency. Gropius described the creative mission of the Bauhaus as the “crystalline expression,” of a great Gesamtkunstwerk, or total work of art—“a cathedral of the future” that would “shine with its abundance of light into the smallest objects of everyday life. . .”66 Bauhaus potter Otto Lindig realized Gropius’s image in his thrown and hand-built Temple of Light of 1921: a small sculpture, an expressionist architectural model, and an elaborate lantern (Figure 7.6). The Light Temple undergoes a transformation when illuminated from within. The lighted Light Temple seems to dissolve, its once solid body now serving only as the frame or vehicle for light itself. Lindig’s ceramic Temple of Light inhabited the liminal territory between materiality and immateriality—between object and image: the “abundance of light” that it was designed to emit transformed it from an embodied thing into the bodiless, spiritual “symbol of a new faith.” The cathedral’s metamorphosis—from Taut’s multicolored mysticism of the 1910s, to Feininger’s scratched sign for a socialist future in 1919, to Lindig’s luminous lantern of 1921—traces a shift not simply across an array of materials, but over a range of meanings. Ultimately, Wagenfeld’s 1924 lamp reunites the Gothic image with its ur-material, glass, while ostensibly transforming it from a utopian dream to a humble, utilitarian object that, through its simple, everyday function of shining light, appears to make good on its promise.67 But “the dark 65

66

67

Walter Gropius, “Program of the Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar,” Weimar Republic Sourcebook, eds. Anton Kaes, Martin Jay and Edward Dimendberg (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995), 435. Walter Gropius, “Address to the Students,” The Bauhaus: Weimar, Dessau, Berlin, Chicago, ed. Hans Maria Wingler (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1969), 36. This lamp has been generally attributed in scholarship to Bauhaus apprentices Wilhelm Wagenfeld and Carl Jucker (see, for example Frederic Schwartz’s reference in note 55, below). However, as has recently been brought to my attention by Dr. Julia Bulk of Wilhelm Wagenfeld Foundation in Bremen, a 1999 court ruling by the Hanseatisches Oberlandesgericht in Hamburg established Wagenfeld as the single author/creator of the lamp. It is still possible, though, to credit Jucker with preliminary studies/sketches for the lamp, as has been the procedure of the Bauhaus Archive in Berlin.

190

Material Modernity

Figure 7.6 Otto Lindig, Lichttempels (Light Temple), 1920–1. Earthenware. © Maria Hokema, Schwäbisch-Gmünd. Courtesy Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin.

secret of this bright light,” as design theorist Frederic Schwartz has articulated it, was that, for all its signifiers of rationalized industry, it was never put into mass production.68 Years later, Wagenfeld himself recalled that “these designs which looked as though they could be made inexpensively by machine techniques were, in fact, extremely costly craft designs.”69 Despite its best utilitarian intentions, then, the Wagenfeld lamp remains—like its crystalline predecessors—a miniature monument to a future where clean, cool, transparent objects would radiate transformative light. The shaft’s chilly chrome, the icy glass base, and the frosted dome convey, as Schwartz argues, a very different socialism from the embracing anarchism cast through Taut’s warm, colored glass, or from Feininger’s and Lindig’s crystalline collectivism: “It won’t destroy hatred, but it will show it clearly. . .”70 This was what Schwartz has called “a socialism of vision. . . a symbol

68

69 70

Frederic J. Schwartz, “Wilhelm Wagenfeld and Carl Jakob Jucker Table Lamp. 1923–24,” in Bauhaus 1919–1933: Workshops for Modernity (Museum of Modern Art: 2009), 138. Ibid. Schwartz employs Gillian Naylor’s citation of Wagenfeld in The Bauhaus Reassessed, 112. Ibid., 138–40.

The Emperor’s New Glass

191

for a moment when politics retreated into visual form. . .”71 Did modern design’s visual freeze mark a kind of political withdrawal? What sort of vessel did the ostensibly progressive objectivity and aesthetic passivity of modern design—its openness, emptiness, and transparency—furnish those who recognized the aesthetics of the everyday as a powerful instrument of political propaganda?

The Emperor’s New Glass: The Politics of Emptiness In 1925, the Bauhaus workshops relocated from romantic town of Weimar to the industrial city of Dessau, where they were installed in Gropius’s steel-and-glass temple to modern design (Figure 7.7). In September of 1932, the Nazi-dominated city council of Dessau forced the closure of Walter Gropius’s brazenly transparent Bauhaus through funding cuts driven by the council’s fear of Bauhaus ties with Soviet artists and movements, as well as the school’s perceived leanings toward the political left. The Bauhaus reopened as a private institution in Berlin in late October of 1932, but was quickly dissolved in August 1933 as a result of Nazi pressure.72 But equating the Nazis’ hatred of the Bauhaus with a hatred of modernist transparency is a mistake; it is in fact a dangerous misinterpretation of fascism’s significantly complex relation to the aesthetic culture of modernism. In fact, as architectural historians Barbara Miller Lane and Wolfgang Pehnt have shown, Hitler himself seems to have been torn between the need to align the Third Reich with an aesthetics of enduring greatness, such as that identified in Greek art and architecture, and the desire to proclaim the new era of National Socialism with architecture and design that would be perceived not just by the intelligentsia but, more importantly, by the German public, as progressive or “new.” Miller Lane has pointed out that, in his rhetorical efforts to blend tradition with modernism, Hitler adopted the slogan “Deutsch sein heisst klar sein”—“to be German is to be clear.”73 Though fundamentally unclear in meaning, and

71 72

73

Ibid. For more on Mies’s relationship to Nazi politics, and for specifics on the closing of the Dessau and Berlin Bauhaus, see Celina R. Welch, “Mies van de Rohe’s Compromise with the Nazis,” Wiss. Z. Hochsch. Archit. Bauwes.—A.—Weimar 39 (1993) 1/2: 103–14 and Franz Schulze, Mies van de Rohe: A Critical Biography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 186. Barbara Miller Lane, Architecture and Politics in Germany 1918–1945 (Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1968), 189. Miller Lane explains that Hitler first used this slogan in 1933 in answer to the question “What is German Art?” She also notes that Hitler made reference to the virtue of “functionalism” and “practicality,” two values associated with modernist architecture and design, in speeches of this time. See also Wolfgang Pehnt, Deutsche Architektur seit 1900 (DVA Bildband, 2005).

192

Material Modernity

Figure 7.7 Walter Gropius, Bauhaus, Dessau, c.1925. Photograph by author (2003). © 2021 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.

deeply hypocritical in retrospect, Hitler’s phrase underscores the persistent connection of modernity to transparency—as well as the political force of their conjunction—even after the liberal, progressive values and projects of the Weimar Republic had been systematically suppressed by the new fascist regime. Historian Paul Betts has drawn attention to the fact that “while the Bauhaus itself was dramatically closed in 1933 as an unwanted scourge of ‘cultural bolshevism,’ several Bauhaus products. . . stayed in production through the early 1940s. . .”74 Indeed, the Nazis actively supported the work of several Bauhaustrained artists, including glass designer Wilhelm Wagenfeld. Perhaps most ironically, it was the Nazi subsidization of modern designs originally developed during the 1920s that made modern design generally affordable, enabling it to achieve that status of true “mass design” for the first time in the Third Reich. Such products included the Bauhaus wallpapers by Maria May, whose hugely popular minimalist designs—coupled with their recognizable Bauhaus brand— communicated the cachet of modern simplicity and functionality that Hitler advanced through his rhetoric of German “clarity.”75 And since metal, concrete, 74

75

See Paul Betts, The Authority of Everyday Objects: A Cultural History of West German Industrial Design (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 63. Ibid., 68.

The Emperor’s New Glass

193

and wood were increasingly requisitioned for weapons production, paper, ceramic, and glass became important sources of revenue for the Nazi economy. These commodities, Betts writes, “– quite unchanging in actual design—became a favorite repository of Nazi myths and fantasies.”76 In other words, the Nazis took modern design hostage, forcing it to play host to their parasitic populism. But how much force was really needed to evacuate the political agenda from a modern design already vacant? Display played a key if insidious role in inscribing political meaning on the “clean slates” of sterile, unornamented modern objects like the snow-white porcelain vases designed by Hermann Gretsch and arranged with military precision by photographer Adolf Lazi in the 1930s (Figure 7.8). Modernist emptiness beckoned the Nazis not simply with its dispassionate, martial order, but with its very lack of specific regional or historical style: a stylelessness that the Nazis apprehended, popularized, and propagandized as “eternal” form, material evidence of “timeless German greatness.”77 Over the twenty years between one world war and the next, mobile, multicolored, antiutilitarian, anarchist glass had been blanched and frozen by a cold, rational

Figure 7.8 Adolf Lazi, Azberg Porcelain, designed by Hermann Gretsch, 1950s. 76 77

Ibid., 49. Ibid., 67.

194

Material Modernity

“socialism of vision,” in which, according to Wagenfeld, utility itself was beauty. Inside his Kubus containers was no anarchist fire, nothing that stood for—or against—anything; his ice was neither mysterious nor sublime, animated nor encroaching: it was simply empty by design. Motionless and mute, such defenseless “eternal forms” passed into enemy hands. Years later in the 1980s, Wagenfeld reminisced about the Kubus storage vessels, designed in 1938 and produced during his years at the Lausitzer Glassworks, in the late 1930s and early 1940s: Some people came to visit us [at the Glassworks] once and said that, just like the Volkswagen factory [newly constructed and opened in 1938], a new refrigerator factory would be built, and for this they needed our set of refrigerator storage containers, sized it up, and declared it wonderful. We sold the sets in huge quantities. Some were shipped to Kiel, and some to Le Havre. I was tricked into believing they were for export, but it turned out they were for the German navy.78

Whatever their true motives, the visitors to Wagenfeld’s glassworks apprehended the mass-produced Kubus containers as objects that could “pass,” in the transformative sense discussed earlier. The glass cubes were fundamentally populist objects capable, certainly, of serving a direct, functional purpose within the complex machinations of the approaching war, but, perhaps even more importantly of bringing simple “joy” to the German people—akin to the Volkswagen or “people’s car,” which Adolf Hitler had just celebrated at a 1938 rally as built “for the broad masses. . . to answer their transportation needs, and. . . intended to give them joy.”79 Transparency, as both materiality and myth, offered the perfect disguise for a regime sustained by propaganda and dependent for its effectiveness on darkness and deception. Designers like Wagenfeld reversed, in a sense, Andersen’s ironic tale of “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” in which the Emperor is tricked into parading naked through his own streets by swindlers passing for weavers, who purport to weave for him cloth so exquisitely fine that it is invisible.80 Modern 78

79

80

My translation. Wagenfeld executed other commissions for Nazi organizations, including the KdF (Kraft durch Friede, or “Strength through Joy”); in the same interview he describes a special commission of burgundy glasses for Göring’s Lufftwaffe ministry. Wilhelm Wagenfeld quoted in interviews with Walter Scheiffele during the 1980s in Walter Scheiffele, Wilhelm Wagenfeld und die moderne Glasindustrie: Eine Geschichte der deutschen Glasgestaltung von Bruno Mauder, Richard Süßmuth, Heinrich Fuchs und Wilhelm Wagenfeld bis Heinrich Löffelhardt (Stuttgart: Verlag Gerd Hatje, 1994), 221. Hitler’s speech is quoted in Steven Parissien, The Life of the Automobile: The Complete History of the Motor-Car (Thomas Dunne Books, 2014), 119. “The Emperor’s New Clothes” was first published in Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales Told for Children. First Collection. Third Booklet (Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel, 1837).

The Emperor’s New Glass

195

designers had generated a real product—but one that stripped them naked. Their “emperor’s new glass” was a transparent product that, instead of deceiving their clients, swindled its designers themselves, exposing them to exploitation by sinister forces. Industrial modernism’s snowy porcelains and icy glass cubes were indeed objects on which it was “hard to leave traces”; their designs had evolved through the desire for both material and conceptual cleanliness. But taking modern design’s complex and ambivalent history within the context of interwar politics into account, the notion of a “Bauhaus modernism” as simply (and invitingly) “empty” becomes problematic, because despite its consciously evacuated design, it could not be emptied of meaning. Glass was never a “clean slate”—neither for modernity’s “good” nor for its “bad” barbarians—but rather a palimpsest. Its stylistic vacuity meant something unique, irreplaceable—in the same way that a key witness is one upon whose testimony a case depends. Betts writes that the progressive, modernist design object, understood as an active subject, or agent, in Nazi cultural politics, became a “living witness of cultural rebirth, social reconstruction, racial victory, and private pleasure.”81 That is to say, it meant something, in the way that an important hostage, held because of a specific, provocative cause or set of values, means something. And the modernist object— designed to be transparent, empty, and free—was an ironically easy hostage. It was, in fact, not just a hostage but a host—a vessel, which, though originally invested with socialist transparency, became quickly infested with national socialist hypocrisy. The story Wagenfeld tells in 1980 of the 1938 Kubus subterfuge seems at best confusing, and at worst, a possible retrospective fabrication. Ultimately, whether Wagenfeld truly believed he had been tricked into collaborating with the Nazis or not may be of little real consequence, as the historical record does little to substantiate his suspicions.82 But perhaps the underlying question is not what Wagenfeld believed about the Kubus commission in 1938—or in 1980, for that matter—but why he would have felt deceived. For had he not—like modern industrial design itself—already retreated, evacuated the public field? Though

81 82

Ibid., 72. There is no evidence that the Kubus blocks were delivered to or used by the German Navy during the Second World War. Wagenfeld’s interview statement did of course produce a powerful response, and the question of whether his Kubus designs were “enlisted” by the Navy has colored the Wagenfeld literature since the late 1970s. Beate Manske lists a series of reasons why it is highly unlikely that the Kubus-Geschirr were used by the German Navy in “Wilhelm Wagenfelds Rautenglas—Aufbau und Vermarktung des Sortiments,” in Zeitgemäß und Zeitbeständig. Industrieformen von Wilhelm Wagenfeld (Bremen: Wilhelm Wagenfeld Stiftung, 2012), 172.

196

Material Modernity

loved by the Nazis, Wagenfeld’s cubic vessels—their cargo laid bare—mimicked, in miniature, the hated Bauhaus itself, with its glass “curtain wall” that exposed controversial ideological “contents.” Why did the Nazis fear the glass Bauhaus, while desiring the glass blocks by a Bauhaus designer? Was it because the first was so difficult to empty, while the last were all too easy to fill?

8

Inverted Cubism or the Spatial Painting Adolf Rading’s Dr. Rabe House Deborah Ascher Barnstone

The new spirit. . . fights for the reestablishment of the spirit of initiative, for the clear understanding of its time, and for the opening of new vistas on the exterior and interior universes which are not inferior to those which scientists of all categories discover every day and from which they extract endless marvels. Apollinaire1 In 2016, the mayor of Zwenkau, Germany, Holger Schulz announced ambitious plans for the transformation of a small 1920s architectural jewel, the Dr. Rabe House by Adolf Rading, into a tourist destination (Figure 8.1). Zwenkau lies south of Leipzig amidst several inland seas that are popular swimming holes. Schulz envisioned the newly renovated masterpiece as a magnet with which to attract out-of-town visitors headed for the seas and architecture students, especially with the approaching 100th anniversary of the founding of the Bauhaus.2 Paradoxically, while Rading was an important pioneer of Neues Bauen, he had nothing to do with the Bauhaus. However, his friend and collaborator at the Dr. Rabe House, the artist Oskar Schlemmer, had taught there and simply having work by Schlemmer in the house was enough to make it a potential tourist draw.3 The story shows the enduring power of the Bauhaus 1

2

3

Guillaume Apollinaire, “The New Spirit and the Poets,” Apollinaire on Art: Essays and Reviews, 1902– 1908, trans. Susan Suleiman (New York: Viking, 1928), 237. Ulrike Witt, “Haus Rabe: Klassische Moderne soll junge Elite-Architekten nach Zwenkau locken,” Leipziger Volkszeitung, April 30, 2016 and Ulrike Witt, “Bauhaus-Original ungewiss,“ Leipziger Zeitung, July 27, 2017. Erich Rabe was a Dr. med., which means that he held a doctorate in medicine. His daughter became a surgeon and continued to use the practice rooms until the 1990s.

197

198

Material Modernity

Figure 8.1 Dr. Rabe House exterior. The painting on the underside of the awning is just visible. © Creative Commons.

mystique and its ability to generate public interest in any project touched by former teachers and students. Indeed, recent scholarship on the house focuses more on Schlemmer’s contribution than Rading’s. Yet the overall design and interiors were all Rading’s work and it is just as radical as Schlemmer’s—inside the “simple and almost puritanical outer” cubic volume, with its unadorned white stucco facades and flat roof is a surprising interior composed of richly colored surfaces, that cover floor, walls, and ceiling, to create a unique spatial experience.4 By synthesizing contemporary color theory with new spatial theories borrowed from popular science, Cubist and De Stijl painting, Rading was able to construct a revolutionary project. Other architects in the 1920s, like members of Dutch De Stijl Gerrit Rietveld and Theo van Doesburg, and Germans Bruno Taut and Walter Gropius, had similarly experimented with applying color to every interior surface. Like them, Rading chose a palette of subtractive primary colors, red, yellow, and blue, together with the shades, black, white, and gray, but Rading’s approach was subtly 4

Edith Nowak-Richowski, “Das Wohnhaus eines Arztes,” Innen-Dekoration, XLIII (1932) 199; Durth, Rading trifft Schlemmer, 54–9.

Inverted Cubism or the Spatial Painting

199

different. In projects like the interiors of the Berlin Hufeisensiedlung (Horseshoe Housing), Taut used color to make immersive environments; he typically applied the same color to all four walls, painting a different color on floor and ceiling, with the aim of imbuing the space with a particular emotion. At the Bauhaus, Gropius collaborated with painter Hinnerk Scheper to apply primary colors as architectural accents—they serve as way-finding devices and replace traditional ornament. Rading’s approach was closer to that of the De Stijl practitioners who used abstract arrangements of elemental orthogonal forms and lines, tinted with primary colors in an attempt to “dissolve the closed nature of architecture.”5 The application of colored form in De Stijl projects like the painter Piet Mondrian’s studio in Paris ignored the usual distinctions between floor, walls, and ceiling to engulf the space with colored abstract forms. This might be described as the formation of endless, or boundless, and undifferentiated space, or the opening up of a higher spatial dimension, what in the early years of the twentieth century was called the fourth dimension.6 If De Stijl architects attempted to conjure the fourth dimension by dissolving perceptible spatial boundaries, homogenizing surfaces, and thereby eliminating the privileged viewpoint of traditional space, Rading used a different formal tactic. De Stijl space was abstract and undifferentiated whereas Rading’s space was abstract yet differentiated. He worked with colored fields and shapes of a less structured nature to overlap and blur spatial boundaries yet still kept the surfaces distinct; he used colored forms to animate enclosure in a way that defied conventional distinctions between floor, wall, and ceiling and denied the single privileged viewpoint of traditional perspectival space; and he sometimes placed those forms to indicate potential directions of movement in the space. By creating multiple, ever shifting viewpoints for the moving observer to experience, he fashioned a new kind of spatial experience. Rading’s architecture was therefore a synthesis of contemporary color theory championed by Adolf Hözl, Wassily Kandinsky, and Bruno Taut, to name a few, and new ideas about space explored in De Stijl and especially in Cubist paintings. In spite of his status as an important proponent of the Neues Bauen in the 1920s and 1930s, neither Rading, nor his groundbreaking design, have received

5

6

Allan Doig, Theo van Doesburg: Painting into architecture, theory into practice (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 1986), 80. On van Doesburg and his intentions see Doig Theo van Doesburg: Painting into architecture, theory into practice, particularly Chapter 1, “The early years of De Stijl” and Chapter 2, “Elementary means and the development of the painterly conception of architecture.”

200

Material Modernity

much recent scholarly attention.7 Rading is best known for his project at the 1927 Weissenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart, a fairly conventional Neues Bauen project of orthogonal forms, white stucco, and tubular steel details. One aspect of Rading that distinguishes him from other contemporaries was the way that he adopted much of the formal expression associated with the avant-garde of the 1920s while remaining highly suspicious of architectural fashion, and authored several articles articulating this including one called “Fanal (Signal)” in which he warns his readers about totally abandoning traditional forms in favor of fashionable new ones.8 His work was situated in the middle ground between the oftenoppositional positions in Weimar art debates. He was extremely well read, wrote and published a good deal in contemporary professional journals like the Deutsche Werkbund’s Die Form (Form) and engaged repeatedly with contemporary art issues. Although he does not seem to have written about Cubism, or even about painting, the scope of his other writings supports the notion that he would have been well versed in the new approach to painting. He was also close friends with numerous artists like Otto Mueller, Oskar Moll, and Johannes Molzahn, and collaborated with Oskar Schlemmer at the Dr. Rabe House. Rading spent the last twenty-four years of his life overseas, in France, Israel and England, where he consistently worked but never achieved the stature he had enjoyed in interwar Germany. The Dr. Rabe House likely has been overlooked because it is located in a small town in part of the former East Germany where it was inaccessible to many scholars until quite recently and because it remained in private hands through the 1990s. Only recently did the Hamburg entrepreneur and arts patron Horst Schmitter decide to invest in restoring the house to its original condition. German architectural historian Werner Durth authored a history of the creation of the house to celebrate the restoration, with a special focus on the confluence of Rading’s painted surfaces with the metal installations and frescoes custom designed for the house by Bauhaus artist Oskar Schlemmer.9 He does not probe the theoretical antecedents to the project however. In her essay, “Theatrical Doubles: The Affecting Presence of Oskar Schlemmer’s Wall Designs” (2013), American architectural historian Marcia Feuerstein uncovers

7

8 9

The Akademie der Künste, Berlin did publish a monograph on Rading in 1970; Regine Göckede wrote her dissertation on Rading, then published it as, Adolf Rading: Exodus des Neuen Bauens und Überschreitungen des Exils in 2002. Vladimir Slapeta wrote an article about the Dr. Rabe House for Domus in 1989. Adolf Rading, “Fanal,” Rading Archiv, AdK Berlin. Unpublished. Werner Durth, Rading Trifft Schlemmer: Bau Haus Kunst (Walther König: 2014).

Inverted Cubism or the Spatial Painting

201

the performative aspects of the house’s design, focusing on Schlemmer’s work over Rading’s.10 Schlemmer’s metallic pieces, and the figurative frescoes, are masterpieces but they are artistic additions to the architectural composition. This essay shifts the discussion to Rading’s idiosyncratic combinations of color, colored forms, and spatial form, that were influenced by developments in color theory and Cubist painting, to uncover the ways in which he created a novel spatial construct.

Color Theory in the 1920s By the late 1920s, color had become a popular substitute for applied ornament in contemporary architecture particularly amongst the European avant-garde. In Germany, new approaches to color application were championed foremost by Bruno Taut who, in 1919, authored “Ruf zum farbigen Bauen” (Call to Colored Architecture), a polemical call to arms for architects interested in color and its potential, which he reiterated in 1925 in “Wiederum die Farbe” (Again Color), and in 1930 in “Die Farbe” (Color). Taut’s call was undersigned by a host of wellknown architects including Walter Gropius, Hans Poelzig, and Rading’s close collaborator, Hans Scharoun.11 For Taut, color was the modern means with which architects could achieve “optische Sinnfreude” or “meaningful optical pleasure” in their work: by combining color with other architectonic elements he believed it was possible to create and enhance the emotional and psychological power of new space and form. At the Dr. Rabe House, Rading explored color as ornament as well as a space-enhancing and perception-altering element. The interest in color during the 1920s had its antecedents in the preceding century when philosopher Johann von Goethe published his famous 1810 treatise Zur Farbenlehre (The Theory of Color). From this moment, color theory enjoyed a revival in Germany, and elsewhere, amongst philosophers, scientists, artists, and architects. The rest of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries witnessed a plethora of publications addressing every possible aspect of the subject. Although he was a philosopher, Goethe addressed an incredibly broad range of questions in his treatise, one reason it aroused interest in so many

10

11

Marcia Feuerstein, “Theatrical Doubles: The Affecting Presence of Oskar Schlemmer’s Wall Designs,” Architecture as a Performing Art eds. Marcia Feuerstein and Gray Read (London: Ashgate, 2013). Bruno Taut, “Aufruf zum farbigen Bauen,” Frühlicht (1921 Herbst), 28, reprint (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 2000). Rading and Scharoun taught together at the Breslau Academy of Art and ran a joint practice in Berlin from 1926.

202

Material Modernity

different disciplines. Goethe believed that color had to be a perceptual phenomenon since it is comprehended via sight. He realized that perception could only be properly understood if the nature of color was clear: he ultimately postulated three types of color, physiological, physical, and chemical. Goethe did not claim to actually write a theory of colors but, instead, laid out an extensive body of evidence on which a theory could be founded. One particularly prescient observation he made is that color is associated with what he termed, “emotions of the mind.”12 In this section, Goethe anticipates future psychological color studies and concerns of many early twentieth-century artists like Wassily Kandinsky, who developed a theory of color and emotion (see below), and of architects like Bruno Taut who were fascinated with the emotional power of colored space. Color scientists had a different set of interests that included the chemistry of color mixing, sources of illumination, and the physiology of color perception. The German chemist Wilhelm Ostwald, tackled the problem of color harmony in his Farbenfibel (Color Primer), the ways to achieve harmony between different hues by developing a mathematical logarithm to govern the color mix. Harmony in painting is the juxtaposition of colors that appear correct and pleasing to the eye. Artists and architects of the 1920s were well aware of Ostwald’s work, which was widely read: Ostwald corresponded with Bauhaüsler Walter Gropius, LazloMoholy-Nagy, and Herbert Bayer, among others, and gave several lectures on his color theories at the Bauhaus in 1927.13 Ostwald’s theory was discussed in the progressive architecture magazine Die Form in 1929, a magazine Rading had contributed to and presumably read regularly, just as Rading was designing the Dr. Rabe House.14 For architects, color was an appealing alternative to nineteenth-century historicist ornament; it offered a way to adorn architectural space without applying traditional ornamentation like moldings as well as a means with which to enhance spatial power. Conceiving of color as a type of abstract ornament emerged from nineteenth century German polychrome debates and disputes about the necessity of ornament and is a corollary to the development of nonrepresentational language in the arts.15 For a generation of artists and architects 12 13

14

15

Goethe, 304. Philip Ball and Mario Ruben, “Color Theory in Science and Art: Ostwald and the Bauhaus,” History of Science, 43 (2004), 4845. The way in which Ostwald’s theory was discussed in Die Form, 4 (1929), 92, shows that it was wellknown. The author mentions its wide dissemination since 1921 and its controversial nature. David Morgan, “The Idea of Abstraction in German Theories of the Ornament from Kant to Kandinsky,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 50/3 (Summer 1992), 231–42.

Inverted Cubism or the Spatial Painting

203

interested in uncovering the basics of artistic expression, who hoped to move art toward abstraction, color seemed to be one of the essential elements—and the primaries were the fundamental colors. The questions of what constituted the primary colors and how color acted optically on the viewer’s psyche and emotions, were therefore of prime concern.16 Perhaps, the single most influential German-language publication treating color and emotion in the early twentieth century was the 1912 book by Russian émigré painter, Wassily Kandinsky, Über die Geistige in der Kunst: ins besondere in der Malerei (On the Spiritual in Art: Especially in Painting). Kandinsky treated the definition and workings of color language, the psychological aspects of color affect, and proposed that form, color, and meaning were interrelated.17 Kandinsky was widely read and discussed in art circles; reviews of his book appeared in Kunst und Künstler, for instance, his ideas are discussed in other journals like Innen-Dekoration and Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration in relationship to all manner of art and design from painting to product design to architecture.18 Color theory was a standard part of an artist’s education in the 1910s and 1920s: and while architects might not have been as universally well versed as painters, they would certainly have been familiar with Goethe’s Farbenlehre of 1810, with its rejection of Newtonian theory. Rading frequently cited Goethe’s philosophical writings, if not the Farbenlehre. Although he was not a signatory to Taut’s Ruf zum farbigen Bauen Rading knew Taut fairly well: they were both active publishing in contemporary architecture journals and were members of the Ring. Rading’s use of color at the Dr. Rabe House suggests that he was familiar with Kandinsky’s and Ostwald’s ideas as well. The 1930 review of the Dr. Rabe House in Innen-Dekoration is the strongest evidence of Rading’s engagement with color theory. According to the reviewer, Edith Nowak-Richowski, “The feeling of spatial well-being, the livability of this house, is not realized with rich materials but with essential spiritual ones; with a fundamental concept, that arises from spatial creation rather than from floor plans, and with color as the form-giving and space-defining element.”19

16

17 18

19

John Gage, Colour and Meaning: Art, Science and Symbolism (London: Thames and Hudson, 1999) 249–61. Wassily Kandinsky, On the Spiritual in Art (New York: Guggenheim Foundation, 1946) 44–79. Emil Waldmann, “Neue Bücher,” Kunst und Künstler, 10 (1912) 524; Theodor Volbehr, “Die Grüne Farbe,” Innen-Dekoration (1920–1), 177; Theodor Volbehr, “Die Farbe Grün, Goethe und Kandinsky,” Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration (1918–19) 379. Edith Nowak-Richowski, “Das Wohnhaus eines Arztes,” Innen-Dekoration, 43 (1932), 199.

204

Material Modernity

The Fourth Dimension in 1920s Art and Architecture If color was an instrument of perception-altering design, probing new spatial possibilities was another goal of such experiments with color. Notions of other dimensions, whether a fourth, or n-dimensions, permeated scientific and lay literature between the 1870s and 1919, as art historian Linda Dalrymple Henderson and artist Tony Robbin have shown.20 Higher dimension space was particularly prevalent in texts on mathematics, physics, and philosophy but also in popular fiction.21 Such notions had partly developed from new branches of mathematics that challenged Euclidean geometry. Called non-Euclidean geometry, the new math posited the possibility of a condition that would contradict Euclid’s fifth postulate: namely, for any given line L and point A, there is only one line that can pass through A and be parallel to L. This holds true on a flat two-dimensional surface but if L and A are on the curved surface of a sphere, for instance, any line passing through A will intersect L. The discovery of non-Euclidean geometry revolutionized concepts of space since it suggested that our perception of space might not be accurate, that space might have dimensions that we cannot perceive with the naked eye, and that space might not be fully measurable using Euclidean tools. Up until Albert Einstein’s and Hermann Minkowski’s publications on relativity in 1905 and 1907, respectively, the fourth dimension was considered to be a higher spatial dimension. Numerous mathematicians and philosophers had attempted to illustrate the concept in the nineteenth century in order to help make it visible and comprehensible; perhaps the easiest to understand were British mathematician and author Charles Howard Hinton’s colored drawings, American architect Claude Bragdon’s linear diagrams, and French mathematician Esprit Jouffret’s three-dimensional projections. All three men drew geometric projections of figures that illustrated the existence of a fourth spatial dimension such as Hinton’s and Bragdon’s tesseracts, or tetra-hyper cubes, and Jouffret’s poly-hydra in four dimensions.22 Although specialists in mathematics and physics disagreed about what constituted the fourth dimension, Minkowski and 20

21

22

Linda Dalrymple Henderson, The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2013); and Tony Robbin, Shadows of Reality: The Fourth Dimension in Relativity, Cubism and Modern Thought (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006). Linda Dalrymple Henderson, “The Image and Imagination of the Fourth Dimension in TwentiethCentury Art and Culture,” Mathematics and Imagination, 17/1 (Winter 2009), 131–60, 194; Henderson, The fourth dimension in art; and Robbin, Shadows of Reality, 1–19. Claude Bragdon, A Primer of Higher Space [The Fourth Dimension] [Rochester, NY, 1913], pl. 1) and Esprit Jouffret, Traité élémentaire de géométrie à quatre dimensions (Elementary Treatise on the Geometry of Four Dimensions) (Paris: Gauthiers-Villar, 1903), figure 41.

Inverted Cubism or the Spatial Painting

205

Einstein believed that the fourth dimension was time, rather than space, as many nineteenth-century thinkers had proposed. German artists and architects engaged with both notions of a fourth dimension but after 1919, Minkowski and Einstein’s theory of space-time increasingly dominated artistic thinking.23 While it is impossible to rehearse the many ways in which fourth dimensional ideas permeated 1920s German artistic thought, a few examples illustrate how pervasive it was. Books treating the fourth dimension were published in Germany already in the 1870s and include Eugen Dreher’s 1879 Die Vierte Dimension des Raumes (The Fourth Dimension of Space), Leopold Pick’s 1898 Die vierte Dimension (The Fourth Dimension), and Max Zerbst’s 1909 Die vierte Dimension: Skizze einer Theorie (The Fourth Dimension: Sketch of an Idea), as well as several volumes probing the intersection of fourth dimensional thinking and occultism and Spiritism.24 Both theosophy and anthroposophy explored notions of cosmic intelligence, one aspect of fourth dimensional thought—Rudolf Steiner wrote a book on the fourth dimension—and many architects were anthroposophists, or sympathetic to the movement. Rading’s close friend and collaborator, Hans Scharoun, is one example. While it is unclear whether Rading was involved with anthroposophy, he did write copiously about philosophical and spiritual concerns and would certainly have been familiar with the movement’s basic tenets. There were also many publications on Einstein’s Theory examining it from every angle.25 The fourth dimension in both its manifestations were mentioned in contemporary specialist journals in a casual way, which suggests that such concepts were widely disseminated.26 Significantly, Theo van Doesburg redrew several of Hinton’s diagrams in De Stijl, which was widely read in Germany, while other architects, like Erich Mendelsohn who designed the Einstein Tower beginning in 1917, were well versed in and discussed the Theory

23 24

25

26

In The Fourth Dimension, Linda Dalrymple Henderson charts the evolution of space-time thinking. See for instance, Theodor Devaranne, Geisterglaube, Spiritismus und vierte Dimension: Anleitung zur Beurteilung okkulter u. spiritischer Erscheinungen (Berlin: Hutten, 1918); and Friedrich Zoellner, Vierte Dimension und Okkultismus (Leipzig: Mutze, 1922. See for instance, Hendrik Anton Lorentz, Das Relativitätsprinzip: eine Sammlung von Abhandlungen (Leipzig: Teubner, 1913) ; Albert Einstein, Über die spezielle und die allgemeine Relativitätstheorie (Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1917); and Max Born, Die Relativitätstheorie Einsteins und ihre physikalischen Grundlagen (Berlin: Springer, 1920). Examples of articles mentioning the fourth dimension casually include: Julius Elias, “Die Grosse Berliner Kunstausstellung 1910,” Kunst und Künstler, 8 (1910), 568; Harry Scheibe, “Die Atmosphäre der Neuen Architektur,” Die Form (1925–6), 329. Walter Riezler, “Die Atonale Welt,” Die Form, 2 (1929) 26, “In das klare und feste Ordnungsgefüge des dreidimensionalen Raumes dringt seit Einstein die Zeit als vierte Dimension und bringt den Raum ins Gleiten.” In English, “Since Einstein’s time, the clear and firm ordering structure of three-dimensional space has invaded time as the fourth dimension and made space slide.”

206

Material Modernity

of Relativity.27 For instance, Russian artist and architect El Lissitzky, who spent a great deal of time in Germany, researched the relationships between Einstein’s space-time concept and the fourth dimension and probed his ideas in the Proun Room installation he made for the 1923 Grosse Berliner Ausstellung. Rading emphatically believed that,“Architecture is ethos, [which] means that architecture is the ethos of the times. Architecture is born of the thought of the times.”28 Holding such a conviction, he would have considered working with popular concepts like the fourth dimension in space and time as well as the mystical and spiritual manifestations of fourth dimensional thinking, essential to his practice. Fourth dimensional thinking had a critical impact on the development of Cubism.29 Invented by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque between 1907 and 1912, with theoretical contributions by Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger, at its core, the Cubist approach rejected the notion that art should represent nature or reality. Cubism abandoned perspective attempts to replicate three-dimensional spatial reality on the picture plane in favor of a new way of picturing the world, what Metzinger called, “a new expression of reality.”30 According to Cubist Theory, one aspect of rejecting traditional representational schemas was the fusion of time and space in the painting.31 The French poet and critic, Guillaume Apollinaire authored some of the clearest texts on Cubism and Cubist Theory. He claimed that, “new measures of space. . . in the language of the modern studios, are designated by the term fourth dimension. . . .”32 In addition, Apollinaire described how the Cubists created a work, they . . . no longer painted an object viewed from one perspective, but rather layered views from many angles in order to capture the subject from all sides. They analysed the object and brought it to the canvas as a fragmented picture. Shape and space melted into one another in one composition of enmeshed, intersected and dissected surfaces. Instead of creating volume, the painters focused on revealing facets and constructing surfaces.33 27

28 29 30

31 32

33

Erich Mendelsohn letter to Luise Mendelsohn, dated June 16, 1919, Mendelsohn Archive, Kunstbibliothek Berlin. Mendelsohn describes an argument over Einstein’s theories he had had with Käthe and Erwin Findlay Freundlich, the astronomer and associate of Einstein’s who had obtained the commission for the Einstein Tower for Mendelsohn. Adolf Rading, “Neues Bauen,” Rading 21, Rading Archive, AdK, Berlin. 2. Henderson, The Fourth Dimension, 145–233. Cited in Henderson, The Fourth Dimension, 179, from Andre Arnyvelde, “Contribution à l’histoire du cubisme,” Gil Blas (1912), 3. Henderson, The Fourth Dimension, 187. Cited in Henderson, 145; Guillaume Apollinaire, “La Peinture nouvelle: Notes d’art,” Les Soirées de Paris, No. 3 (April 1912), 90. Guillaume Apollinaire and Dorothea Eimert, “What is Cubism?” in Cubism (New York: Parkstone International, 2015), n.p.

Inverted Cubism or the Spatial Painting

207

According to Apollinaire, Cubist technique was to divide views of any threedimensional object into distinct planes then simultaneously show the image views projected onto the flat surface of the painterly picture plane. In this way, certain Cubist painters collapsed multiple views, fragmented as well as whole, and the time it took to move around an object in order to see those views, into a single non-perspectival image. Other artists painted the differing views as if they could see through the object, in a way that replicated some of the diagrams illustrating the fourth dimension. The result was a flattening and schematization of objects, which contributed to the development of abstraction. The art historian John Adkins Richardson argues that the more important Cubists like Picasso, Braque, and Gris, did not use the multiple viewpoint technique, but he admits that others like Marcel Duchamp, Albert Gleizes, and Jean Metzinger did.34 Richardson sees only fragmented compositions, akin to collage, in Picasso, Braque and Gris’ work, which may not suggest movement or time, but certainly challenge conventional perspective. The approach therefore defied conventional modes of visual, spatial, and chronological perception. Herwarth Walden’s Sturm gallery mounted an exhibit of Cubist paintings in 1913 in Berlin, where Rading had lived and worked since 1905. Walden included canvases by Picasso and Braque, whose work was already well known in Germany because of articles in art journals like Kunst und Künstler. While we do not know whether or not Rading saw the show, he certainly would have been aware of it. Many architects practicing in the 1920s were inspired by new approaches to painting.35 As Harry Scheibe writing in Die Form explained, “It was painting that made astonishing advances and much of painting became more and more abstract. The merits of abstract painting are great; but architecture has also been renewed by it [abstract painting].”36 The shift to abstraction in painting is well known: it resulted in the abandonment of realistic imitation of nature and the search for the fundamental elements of art to replace pictorial representation. Two of those fundamentals were color and elemental form, interpreted in various ways such as lines, squares, and rectangles in De Stijl art and as squares, rectangles, triangles, and circles in Russian Constructivist art. Architectural corollaries to this shift are equally well known: they included the rejection of historical and classical forms and applied ornament in favor of simple, 34

35

36

John Adkins Richardson, “On the ‘Multiple Viewpoint’ Theory of Early Modern Art,” in the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 53/2 (Spring 1995), 129–37. Bruno Taut often wrote about the new art. See for instance, Bruno Taut Diary, AdK Berlin, re-printed in Bruno Taut 1880–1938, 33; and Bruno Taut Diary, AdK. Cited in Iain Boyd Whyte, Bruno Taut and the Architecture of Activism (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1982), 20. Harry Scheibe, “Die Atmosphäre der Neuen Architektur,” Die Form (1925–6), 329.

208

Material Modernity

unadorned, flat roofed boxes. As mentioned above, the basic colors were understood to be either subtractive (red, yellow, blue) or additive (red, green, blue) primaries with black, white, and gray. Typically, architects experimented with applications of color in space as alternatives to applied ornament, as carriers of spiritual properties, and as a means to using architectural space to contribute to psychological and emotional wellbeing. Rading used two key aspects of abstraction in his compositional techniques at the Dr. Rabe House: elemental form and pure color.

Color-Space Although color and space are very different attributes of painting and architecture, in fact the two are very tightly connected. Both fourth dimensional geometry and color theory are related to human perception of the physical world and representational schemas of that world. Historically, they intersected in the concept of color-space, abstract mathematical models that describe the range of colors and color relationships in a three-dimensional construct. German painter Philipp Otto Runge created what was perhaps the first color-space model, the Farbenkugel (color sphere) in 1807, in an early attempt to picture color relationships spatially. Runge’s ideas were augmented in the mid-eighteenth century by German physician and physicist, Hermann von Helmholtz, who is known for his work on the mathematics of the eye, human vision, color vision, and visual perception of space. Helmholtz pioneered the field of sensory physiology, or psychophysiology, when he sought to explain the mechanics of color perception in the eye. He proposed that the eye had three color photoreceptors for red, green and blue that combined in the brain as visible color. Helmholtz was also concerned with disproving the Kantian idea of a priori space in order to show that human knowledge of space derives directly from experience, from how space is perceived and understood.37 A contemporary of von Helmholtz, German mathematician Hermann Grassmann first developed the idea of vector space, which gave algebraic representation of n-dimensional space using color to illustrate the vector relationships; then in 1853, he followed with a theory of color mixing that used three-dimensional modeling. Numerous

37

Henderson 114; Hermann von Helmholtz. “On the Origin and Significance of Geometrical Axioms, Popular Lectures on Scientific Subjects, Trans. E. Atkinson (London: Longmans, Green & Co.; 1881) and “On the Relation of Optics to Painting,” in the same issue.

Inverted Cubism or the Spatial Painting

209

other color theorists into the present have created three-dimensional color models such as the orthogonal RGB color-space. As a concept, color-space is significant because it demonstrates the interconnection between color theory and new spatial models.

The Dr. Rabe House Rading combined pure color and colored abstract form at the Dr. Rabe House to accomplish two goals: infuse the spaces with emotional power and alter perceptions of the architectural space from a single viewpoint experience to a multi-viewpoint one. Rading’s design synthesized contemporary color theory with the spatial and compositional strategies of the Cubist painters, albeit in a very different medium—a three-dimensional construct—which meant that his methods and results ultimately differed from those used on the Cubist canvases. In fact, in one fundamental way, Rading did exactly the opposite of the Cubists. The Cubists flattened space and form onto a two-dimensional planar surface, Rading inverted the process by folding the flat painted canvas in on itself in six sections thereby enclosing both the space and the viewer. In this way, not only did Rading invert the Cubist process but also, he drastically altered the conventional relationship between viewer and canvas from frontal and distanced engagement to an all-encompassing interior experience. That is, he spatialized the two-dimensional canvas. If Cubism fractured and merged time and space on a flat plane, then Rading’s wall paintings did the opposite: they engulfed the viewer within pictorial space and attenuated time by stretching the time necessary for viewing the surrounding artwork and space (Figure 8.2). Rading selected the subtractive primary palette for the Dr. Rabe House, red, yellow, blue with black, white, and gray, that was popular with contemporary painters and architects like Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg of the De Stijl group in the Netherlands, Bruno Taut and Hans Scharoun in Germany, and Le Corbusier and Eileen Gray in France. Although the subtractive primaries were popular choices in 1920s architecture there was no consensus on which hues should be in the set therefore each architect chose a unique palette of hues. Rading selected a deeply saturated hue for most of the colors, with the notable exception of the yellows he used, that ranged from light, bright canary yellow to a rich ochre. For Rading, color was one of six fundamental aspects of architecture that included “light, environment, landscape, work conditions, and material,”

210

Material Modernity

Figure 8.2 The living room looking at Oskar Schlemmer’s installation and showing the extensive use of primary colors on the floor to indicate individual spaces within the room. © Jörg Glaescher at laif.

which meant that selecting the optimal hue was important to him.38 Rading tested several different methods of using color in the house. He used pure fields of color and stripes; he painted color in pure geometric forms, wavy asymmetrical shapes, and over entire surfaces. He applied color in ways that directed movement through the space, defined locations and discreet spaces within the architecture, activated particular spaces, and enhanced the perceptual effects of individual spaces. Apollinaire was describing Cubism when he wrote about how the new approach to painting caused “the opening of new vistas on the exterior and interior universes,” yet his words also describe what Rading achieved with the interaction between color and space at the Dr. Rabe House. Rading challenged both architectural and painterly conventions with his application of color, which differed from that of other contemporaries because he moved beyond the use of pure color and geometric form to marry color with abstract forms of many kinds, sometimes even using pattern and figure, to transform the traditional medium of painting from a flat surface to an engulfing three-dimensional space. 38

Adolf Rading, “Lehrplan einer Bauakademie,” December 5, 1932, 6. AdK, Rad 6.

Inverted Cubism or the Spatial Painting

211

Rading designed the Dr. Rabe House to house two functions: the doctor’s medical practice and his private home. Three stories high, the house has the signature elements of early modernism: it is a simple cubic block, with white stucco facades, and a flat roof with a barely articulated thin metal drip edge (see Figure 8.1). Rading explained the necessity of using such a basic form, “But also the cube, until now not space in our sense, but actually only demarcation to the outside, assumes another meaning. The original primitive need for protection is transformed into oblivion and thus the beginnings of space are mentally indicated.”39 The outer boundaries of the project define the thresholds between outer public world and the dynamic, private, inner domestic world. The contrast between the simplicity of outer form and complexity of inner space is part of what makes the dynamic interior experience possible; the building’s form therefore acts as an enormous encompassing threshold between exterior and interior worlds. At first glance, the house appears to be an unremarkable example of Neues Bauen design. But on closer examination, Rading’s quirky personalization becomes apparent as do the ways that the façade composition foregrounds what exists inside. Each façade has a unique aspect, and none are symmetrical, although they might appear to be so on a cursory look. Rading uses subtle asymmetry to keep the viewer and the viewer’s eye in motion and give the sense that observing the house from multiple locations is necessary to comprehending its design. The main entrances are offset to one side of the front façade, marked by the thinnest of asymmetrically placed awnings that wraps around the corner of the house and is set upon slender square columns. There is a door to the practice that faces the street while the door to the private home lies under the same awning but around the corner, on the more private side of the house. A large glass window, topped by a thin horizontal one above, seems to mark the center of the façade—except that the windows are slightly off-center. They also echo the rooms inside, which are an intimate sitting area below and the long, narrow children’s bedroom above. The façade to the right of the street face exemplifies Rading’s compositional techniques. The chimney is expressed as a darkly painted volume that protrudes from one side of the house and wraps over the roof, echoing the wrapping of the entry awning. It is set to the left of the elevation, offsetting two banks of windows to the right, that is a group of four subtly different designs. The two windows closest to the chimney are rectangular ones divided into an almost square light 39

Adolf Rading, “Neues Bauen,” Rading 21, AdK, Berlin, 3.

212

Material Modernity

and a long vertical light to the right. The other two mirror these divisions; except that the upper window is long and thin, an anomaly in the group. A fifth, tiny window, floats to the left of the chimney acting as a visual accent and helping animate the façade composition. The only colors, other than white, used on the exterior are the dark gray on the chimney and a deep forest green, that is close to black, on the window frames, mullions, and doors. The glass surfaces mirror natural colors on the site. Inside the house, the visitor discovers a rationally arranged, nearly square plan, with simple almost square and rectangular rooms organized around a central space. Similarly, Rading used a box within a box for the building’s threedimensional organization. He inserted a two-story void that connects the living room with the bedroom floor above through two windows. In plan, the living room also pushes horizontally at the spatial boundary between inside and outside to create a small protruding bay at one end, a small winter garden with a stair to the rear yard. In both plan and section, the arrangement resembles Hinton’s and Bragdon’s fourth-dimensional figure, the tesseract, although it is most like the drawings Theo van Doesburg made of four-dimensional space. The pushing of spaces into other spaces activates the plan and section and, more importantly, connects rooms across the plan and section to set up opportunities for multiple viewpoints through the house. Rading emphatically believed that architecture reflected the times and the ways in which people live.40 While he does not articulate exactly what this means in spatial terms, his residential work from 1918 onwards tended to combine modern open planning in public spaces like the living and dining rooms with traditional planning in private ones like the bedrooms.41 Rading understood the house to consist of two parts: the outer shell, which he called a “dead body,” and the interior, “the power” and “force” of the house; in other words, the exterior is meant to be silent and simple, which is supported by the Dr. Rabe’s House muted exterior while the interior is meant to be lively.42 He compared the house to the human body and its interior to the human nervous system without which the skeleton and muscles are dead. Materials, he asserted, activated the interiors to hold the spaces together; color was one perceptual quality of material that he worked with and light was another—the living room, for instance, is flooded

40 41

42

His many essays from the 1920s make this clear, for instance “Fanal” and “Neues Bauen.” Deborah Ascher Barnstone, “Modernism Reconsidered: the Kultur/Zivilisation Dichotomy in the work of Adolf Rading,” New German Critique, Fall 2009, No. 108; and Deborah Ascher Barnstone, Beyond the Bauhaus: Cultural Modernity in Breslau, 1918–1933 (Ann Arbor: U. Mich. 2016). Adolf Rading, “Vom Wesen des Bauwerks,” 1925, 1. AdK, Rad. 92.

Inverted Cubism or the Spatial Painting

213

with natural light because the garden-facing wall is floor-to-ceiling glass. Although Rading does not call out color per se, he indicates the importance of color and optical effects in many of his essays. “If there was a painter who could conjure up the glamor, color and crystal of marble on a wooden board so that the difference was imperceptible, why should I not let him deceive me?”43 he once asked. Rading finished the essay by asserting that architectural beauty lies in the qualities of materials as perceived by living beings. The interiors of the Dr. Rabe House, then are designed to activate human perception and experience. As Marcia Feuerstein points out, the German word for wall is Wand, which is also the root for wandern, to walk or wander.44 This suggests a connection between enclosure and promenade through space. In addition, the very specific wall paintings signal the potential for the house to act as a performance space or as a space for a sequence of experiences. To this end, Rading assigns color several functions: to act as a way indicator, to demarcate specific spaces within the house, to create an emotional quality and to alter the way in which space is experienced (Figure 8.2). As an indicator, the use of color to mark paths through the architecture begins outside the house where the underside of the entry awning is painted in black and white curvilinear forms that turn the corner. A black swirl of color leads to the door to the practice while the band of white points to the private entrance on the side. Immediately inside the practice foyer, a strip of red ceiling points to the waiting room straight ahead. Upstairs in the living room, floors are color coded with strips that lead the visitor around the space and from one door to another. A red strip moves the visitor from the stairwell into the living room, where a blue strip makes the turn along the wall toward a grayish white strip that leads to the playroom door. The red also separates the double-height dining space from the single-height lounge and library. Rading also uses color on baseboards and overhead to direct movement. One example is on the stairwell, where one baseboard is red and the other blue, to make two bold lines connecting upstairs and down. The directional movement is reinforced by the ceiling above, which is painted ochre to match Oskar Schlemmer’s frescoes. Rading wrote, “If we want to come to healthy conditions, it must first of all become clear that the function of life, the dynamic is primary, the building is secondary, not an end in itself in the sense of the architecture of yesterday. Thus, the architect is no longer the architect of yesterday, but artist, creator in that sense.”45 Rading’s use of color is one way in which he generates dynamism (Plate 7; Figure 8.3). 43 44 45

Adolf Rading, “Kosten und Schoenheit,” 2, Rading 103. Feuerstein, 182. Adolf Rading, “Neues Bauen,” Rading 21, AdK, Berlin, 5.

214

Material Modernity

Figure 8.3 View of the upstairs corridor and the Oskar Schlemmer frescoes. The way that Rading chose to complement Schlemmer’s color choice is apparent in the ceiling painting. © Jörg Glaescher at laif.

Colored patches also demarcate spaces where movement is supposed to pause for particular functions like the black square in the main living room on which the dining table and chairs are placed and the white square on which the bed is placed in the master bedroom. (Plate 8; Figure 8.4) Rading used blue for the library space and black for the lounge next to the fireplace. While in each of these instances, Rading colored a section of the floor in order to indicate a location within a larger space that has a specific function, he also colored entire floors; the doctor’s waiting room is blue, the kitchen is red, and the playroom is grayish white. In order to create an emotional quality, in many instances, Rading uses color to generate an immersive environment, which enhances the emotional force of the space. His application of color to this end appears to be inspired by Kandinsky’s color theory. The pale, yellow walls and ceiling in the main living space are warm and calming; while the bright red in the master bedroom is energetic. Kandinsky called both yellow and red “warm” colors but he makes a distinction between them. Red “may cause a spiritual vibration,” and is “an endless typically warm color” that “has an inner, highly vivid, lively, restless

Inverted Cubism or the Spatial Painting

215

Figure 8.4 The coordination of color in the house is obvious in this photograph of the master bedroom showing the bed situated on a white rectangle, oozing red, white and grey on the ceiling, and red and white details on the windows and radiators. © Jörg Glaescher at laif.

appeal,” which might explain its use in a bedroom.46 Yellow, in contrast, is “earthly,” which may explain its appeal in a space designed for larger group human interaction. According to Kandinsky, “Blue is the typical heavenly color. When very dark, blue develops an element of repose. When it sinks into black. . . it attains a serious, profound meaning sinking into the deep seriousness of all things where there is no end.”47 Rading uses blue and black for the library and lounge floors, areas that are meant to be contemplative and he uses blue for the doctor’s consulting room, another room where deep thinking happens. Finally, Rading alters the way in which space is experienced by designing the interior in such a way that it creates more than an informal backdrop for domestic dramas but a protected, self-contained other world.48 In the theater, 46 47 48

Kandinsky, On the Spiritual in Art, 41. Kandinsky, On the Spiritual in Art, 65. Marcia Feuerstein reads the space as “Architecture as performing art,” but in her reading, it is the architecture that is the main actor whereas the opposite is also true: the architecture is the background against which human drama is enacted. Architecture as a Performing Art eds. Marcia Feuerstein and Gray Read (London: Ashgate, 2013).

216

Material Modernity

flats and drops sit behind the action, flattening the space and framing it on a two-dimensional picture plane located at the proscenium opening. At the Dr. Rabe House, the action is enfolded and enclosed by the painted surfaces so that it is totally immersed inside the decorated box. Rading embellished the void of the double-height living room and the rooms surrounding it as a multicolored abstract three-dimensional art installation, with colored geometric shapes that wrap around corners, connect floors to walls, and walls to ceilings blurring the edges and boundaries between planes. He used a combination of colored geometric shapes with amorphous flows of color; doors, windows, and built-in furniture are all part of the overall schema. Kandinsky emphasized the critical importance of color and form relationships, “The unavoidable influence and mutual relation between form and color, causes us to observe the effect which form has on color. The form, even if entirely abstract and resembling a geometric figure, has its inner harmony and is a spiritual being. . . The value of certain colors is emphasized by certain forms, and dulled by others.”49 In other words, the combination of form and color is a powerful tool for the production of visual, and spatial, effect—a fact demonstrated by the varying ways that Rading deployed color form in the house. As mentioned above, parts of the floor in the main living space are bright red, cobalt blue, gray-white, and black rectangles; the ceiling is light yellow bisected by two white lines of differing widths; a section of the wall over the alcove features a semicircle that is part black and white stripes and part black situated off center between two black rectangles suspended just above; this figure wraps itself underneath into the library where it is composed of black and white sections; some black oozes down the wall near the bookshelves and another black section gestures toward the alcove; inside the most private part of the room one wall is bright red while a rounded red form oozes across the ceiling. A gray wall envelopes two sides of the alcove—a red wall makes up the third side. The way the color and forms bend and twist draws the eye over multiple surfaces but also denies any single, privileged viewpoint. Instead, every new point in space offers up a different vista (Figure 8.5). In the kitchen, a red parallelogram and white triangle bisect the ceiling flanked by gray and black cabinetry on both sides and white end walls. A red step stool and red trim pick up the color as visual accents. The strong diagonal formed at the intersection between red and white accentuates the movement through the space while the white end walls frame any action in the room. The cabinetry 49

Kandinsky, On the Spiritual in Art, 46.

Inverted Cubism or the Spatial Painting

217

Figure 8.5 A glimpse into the library alcove off the main living room where the application of color on all surfaces, in often abstract geometric shapes is apparent. © Canadian Centre for Architecture.

is asymmetrically arranged around black cabinet door fronts and a white rectangular door front. Here, as in the living room, the distribution of colored form on all surfaces of the room animates the space. It is impossible to comprehend the space without changing viewpoint. Upstairs, the parallel oozing red, white and black on the bedroom ceiling surges across the room and seep down the walls and onto the armoire while a black band, underscored by a longer thin red piece of trim, marks the bottom of the white wall and slides toward the heating elements (Plate 8; Figure 8.4). The radiators are colored white and red in a one-third to two-thirds proportion; which is echoed in the window sill above. The window frames are red (on the left-hand side above the white sill) and white on the right-hand side (above the red sill). The custom-designed bed has a black frame with a thick black foot-rest and thin black head-rest, that turns the far corner to create a black accent against the red end-wall. The inner frame is bright white. Even the custom-armoire combines natural wood doors with red painted ones—emphasizing the relationship between materiality and color. The black accents, interwoven with

218

Material Modernity

the red, keep the eye moving over the room’s surfaces, thereby establishing multiple vantage points from which to experience the space. In the hallway, Rading used gray and ochre triangles to direct movement toward both the stairway and the bedrooms and to complement figural wall paintings executed by Oskar Schlemmer; the gray wall acts as the backdrop for the action. In fact, the ochre color first appears on a very large figure Schlemmer painted on the stair, then Rading used it on a vertical wall in the stairwell to the left of the large figure; the color then folds onto the ceiling above the stair, and spills over onto the landing, where it oozes into a white field. As in other spaces, the juxtaposition of colored forms makes the space dynamic to observe and experience (Plate 7; Figure 8.3). The amorphous shapes Rading painted in much of the house recall forms used by his contemporaries Amedee Ozenfant and Le Corbusier in their Purist paintings as well as some of the elements in analytical cubism. The triangular, partially curved and rectangular forms echo the fractured sections of Cubist canvases. Several views through parts of the house share the fragmentary composition of Cubist work: the view through the upstairs hallway toward the top of Schlemmer’s tall, ochre figure, with its partial head framed by skewed and incomplete yellow and black triangles, might be a section from a Cubist painting, while the breaking up of geometric forms, like the black and white circle in the living space or the red, white and black ceiling in the bedroom, suggests both the fragmentary nature of the space and perception of it. In all these cases, either the eye or the viewer must move in order to perceive the different views—propelling the viewer through space is a way of engaging time while experiencing space (Figure 8.6).

Conclusion The illusion of occupying a painting that Rading creates in the Dr. Rabe House actualizes the sense of being in another world, one where the fourth dimension might be palpable. Several design moves reinforce this sensation; removing some of the traditional hierarchies of spatial enclosure; surrounding the body with largely undifferentiated surfaces; and introducing unfamiliar ornamental elements to the space. Coloring all the surfaces of a room in an abstract way emphasizes the fourth dimension, a goal articulated by Theo van Doesburg for his

Inverted Cubism or the Spatial Painting

Figure 8.6 A different perspective on the living room and adjacent alcove. © Canadian Centre for Architecture.

219

220

Material Modernity

use of abstract colored forms on all surfaces of an enclosure.50 In an article for Die Form published early in 1929 as the Dr. Rabe House was in design development, van Doesburg asserted that, “The solution of the colors in architecture is identical with the solution of the moment of time in painting,” which ties color in architectural form to Cubist, De Stijl, and Constructivist experiments with fractured time.51 Writing about the Dr. Rabe House for the journal Innendekoration (Interior Decoration), Edith Nowak-Richowski asserts, “that the spatial effect [of the color] is astounding—the simple floor plan starts to move.”52 He goes on to elaborate that when color is combined with space, and someone moves through the space, the result is a new sense of time. “Construction and composition, space and time, static and dynamic together in one. . . . The creative space-time painting of the twentieth century makes it possible for the artist to realize his great dream of putting man, not in front, but into the painting.”53 This is precisely what Rading achieved at the Dr. Rabe House –he inserted the human being into the painting. When abstract colored forms, lines, and surfaces envelope the viewer, the distinction between floor, wall, and ceiling disappears, or blurs, so that one literally does not know which “end is up.” One result is the sense of extension of space in all directions; of endless spatial possibilities. As Apollinaire said, “. . . the fourth dimension appears to spring from the three known dimensions: it represents the immensity of space eternalizing itself in all directions at a given moment.”54 Another result is the dispersion of viewpoints across the space, thereby denying the primacy of single viewpoint perspective. The Cubist painting used the object to suggest spatial and temporal experience frontally; Rading uses the abstract form and color to illuminate spatial and temporal possibility in an immersive environment.

50

51 52 53 54

Theo van Doesburg, “Farben im Raum,” Die Form (1929) 35; Theo van Doesburg, “Towards a plastic architecture,” reprinted in Conrads, Programs and Manifestos on 20th Century Architecture. Van Doesburg, “Farben im Raum,” 36. Nowak-Richowski, “Das Wohnhaus eines Artzes,” 203. Van Doesburg, “Farben im Raum,” 36. Guillaume Apollinaire, The Cubist Painters: Aesthetic Meditations. Trans. Lionel Abel. (New York: Wittenborn, 1949), 13–14 cited in Pamela A. Genova, “The Poetics of Visual Cubism: Guillaume Apollinaire on Pablo Picasso,” Studies in 205h and 21st Century Literature, Vol. 27, Iss. 1 (2003) 13.

9

Renée Sintenis, Wendt & Kühn, Lotte Pritzel Modes, Markets, and Materials in Domestic Objects, 1910–30 Nina Lübbren

We are accustomed to thinking of modern art and innovation in materials in terms of glass, concrete, and found objects. Renée Sintenis, Margarete Wendt, Margarete Kühn, and Lotte Pritzel were innovators of a different kind. They were artists of the Weimar period who began experimenting with novel uses of traditional materials in the years just before the Great War. Sintenis was a sculptor of small bronze figurines, based on wax models. Pritzel made multi-media dolls out of wire, cloth, and beads. Wendt and Kühn, the entrepreneurial founders of the Wendt & Kühn company, produced turned and whittled wooden ornaments. All four professionals were commercially successful in the 1920s, not least because their products were small-scale and suited for domestic interiors and private use. Their wares do not easily fit into patterns of avant-garde innovation associated with Expressionism, Dada, or the Bauhaus. And yet, in that the four women considered here were motivated by both artistic and commercial imperatives, an analysis of their unique work and the ways in which its materials were deployed, significantly expands the understanding of early twentiethcentury German art practice. What is at stake here is not only a different gendered approach to materials but also a reconfiguring of what is considered “art” or “sculpture.”

Many thanks to Deborah Ascher Barnstone and Maria Makela for their meticulous, probing and immensely stimulating editorial comments.

221

222

Material Modernity

Renée Sintenis, Berlin: From Wax to Bronze During the 1920s, Renée Sintenis was the most eminent sculptor in Germany in terms of commercial success and popular appeal.1 After two years with the Berlin art gallery of Fritz Gurlitt, she switched in 1921 to the dealer Alfred Flechtheim, who continued to represent Sintenis until his emigration in 1933. Flechtheim included her in numerous group exhibitions, featured her in his periodical Der Querschnitt (Cross-Section) and sold her objects all over the world, including to collections in Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Paris, London New York, and San Francisco.2 So coveted were her works that in the late 1920s, Sintenis reputedly earned more than “many a bank director.”3 The overwhelming majority of her sculptures were bronze statuettes of animals, mostly between eight and ten centimeters in height, though she also made figurines of people. Sintenis’ oeuvre straddled the space between commercial production and fine art: it was mass produced yet she altered every piece to make it unique. The way in which the small scale she used interacted with the material differentiated her bronzes from others and was a crucial ingredient in the sculptor’s success. Junger Esel (Young Donkey, 1925, formerly Museum Breslau) may serve as representative of the kind of sculpture that made Sintenis’ reputation during the Weimar years (Figure 9.1). It is a small bronze figurine, mounted on a rectangular plinth. The donkey’s youth is emphasized via its thin and disproportionately long legs, its large head and big eyes. The animal seems to stand precariously on its tiny hooves, as if it could teeter over at any moment, and its head, held forward, suggests that it needs to concentrate in order to stay upright. The S-curve of the donkey’s spine echoes the curve of the hind legs and tail. The target market for Sintenis’ figurines like Young Donkey was two-fold. Flechtheim sold many of the works to public collections but the majority were destined to be displayed in private interiors. Art critic Karl Scheffler observed

1

2

3

Magdalena Bushart, “Der Formsinn des Weibes: Bildhauerinnen in den zwanziger und dreissiger Jahren,” in Profession ohne Tradition: 125 Jahre Verein der Berliner Künstlerinnen, ed. Verein der Berliner Künstlerinnen (Berlin: Berlinische Galerie, 1992), 135–50, here: 144; Anja Cherdron, “ ‘Ein Vorzug ist, daß die Künstlerin nie ins Kunstgewerbliche gerät’: Renée Sintenis in der Kunstkritik,” in Um-Ordnung: Angewandte Künste und Geschlecht in der Moderne, ed. Cordula Bischoff and Christina Threuter (Marburg: Jonas Verlag, 1999), 44–55. Julia Wallner, “ ‘Man kann seinen Kram nicht vertreten.’ Alfred Flechtheim und Renée Sintenis: Eine moderne Handelsbeziehung,” in Sprung in den Raum: Skulpturen bei Alfred Flechtheim (Berlin: Georg Kolbe Museum and Nimbus, 2017), 247–70. See also Ursel Berger, “Kunst für Sammler: Die Plastiken von Renée Sintenis,” in Renée Sintenis: Das plastische Werk, ed. Ursel Berger and Günter Ladewig (Berlin: Sammlung Karl H. Knauf, 2013), 13–20. Mentioned in a gazette of the 1920s; quoted in Wallner, “ ‘Man kann’,” 249.

Renée Sintenis, Wendt & Kühn, Lotte Pritzel

223

Figure 9.1 Renée Sintenis, Young Donkey (Junger Esel), 1925. Location unknown (formerly Museum Breslau). Reproduced in: Hans Hildebrandt, Die Frau als Künstlerin. Berlin: Rudolf Moss Buchverlag, 1928. Photograph: Author’s archive.

that Sintenis’ small works could be found among other art objects in collectors’ homes, on tables and chests of drawers and in glass cases.4 The statuettes sat on table tops, like letter weights or other objets. Some of them rested on low plinths but others were placed directly onto pieces of furniture.5 The placement of the 4 5

Karl Scheffler, “Renée Sintenis,” Kunst und Künstler, 22 (1924), 260. Moritz Heimann, “Renée Sintenis,” Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration, 38 (1916,) 191–4; Scheffler, “Renée,” 260.

224

Material Modernity

figurines is important as is the fact that they were at once small and robust. They could, in other words, be picked up and handled.6 The materiality of Sintenis’ works in bronze is critical to how people responded to the sculptures. Triggered by its small size, at least one contemporary negated the material nature of the work even as he paradoxically acknowledged it. Sintenis’ friend, the art critic, writer and homosexual rights activist Hans Siemsen cradled one of her numerous bronze foals in his hand around 1926. It is not known which exact sculpture Siemsen held but it was likely something similar to Füllen (Foal, c.1922) (Figure 9.2). Siemsen wrote of the foal: “It is made (of bronze) in such a way that once you have taken it into your hand, you can’t decide to give it back. It makes you tender. You just have to touch it! And nobody even remembers that that which he holds in his hand is only a piece of metal, only a piece of bronze.”7 Siemsen appeared to negate the material of the object but we could also read his appreciation as acknowledging it; his description is very tactile, almost sensual. He is at once intensely aware of the materiality of the work and repudiating its matter. In Siemsen’s account, the material of bronze came to life through being handled. The relationship to the material is here described as intimate and tactile. The experience of palming the animal is charged with personal affect: “It makes you tender.” The object had a direct emotional effect on its beholder, who was also, literally, its “holder.” The handling of the figure was essential to the intimate personal experience, and the manipulation was facilitated by the object’s small scale. Siemens was not the only person to be charmed by the handleability of Sintenis’ sculptures. Others also noted the objects’ small scale as inviting a particular type of touch, a haptic interaction that operated at a tangent to the disembodied modernist gaze. Writer and editor Moritz Heimann wrote in 1916: “You can set these figures before you on the table, you can take them in your hand, you can enjoy them. . .”8 In 1918, art historian and painter Ignaz Beth similarly noted that “[y]ou can comfortably take these little things in your hand and are then able to contemplate them from all sides as in them lives a concentrated expression that seems to have been conditioned by the format.”9 6

7

8 9

For further discussion on the tactility of Sintenis’ figurines, see Nina Lübbren,“Ornament, Monument and Gender in German Sculpture, 1910–1930: Milly Steger and Renée Sintenis,” in Sculpture and the Decorative in Britain and Europe: Seventeenth Century to Contemporary, eds Imogen Hart and Claire Jones (London: Bloomsbury, 2021), 190–209. Hans Siemsen, “Renée Sintenis (1926/27),” Veröffentlichungen des Kunstarchivs 27/28 (n.d. [1926/7]), 10–14; quoted in Britta Buhlmann, Renée Sintenis: Plastiken—Zeichnungen—Druckgraphik (Berlin: Georg-Kolbe-Museum, and Frölich und Kaufmann, 1983), 121–2. Heimann, “Renée,” 193. Ignaz Beth, “Renée Sintenis,” Kunst für Alle (1918), 288–91, here: 289.

Renée Sintenis, Wendt & Kühn, Lotte Pritzel

225

Figure 9.2 Renée Sintenis, Foal (Füllen), c.1922. Location unknown. Reproduced in: Alfred Kuhn, Die neuere Plastik von Achtzehnhundert bis zur Gegenwart, Munich: Delphin-Verlag, 1922. Photograph: Author’s archive.

The works’ intimate scale and portability, even the “cuteness” of those that represent animals, also carries connotations of toys. Like Sintenis’ objects, these are made to be handled, carried, touched, held, manipulated, and stored in cupboards. Large-scale objects are difficult to categorize as toys, and finally, toys were and are not usually made of bronze. Sintenis thus used a material of “high” sculpture (that is, bronze) and to some extent the formal language associated with that material, and shaped it into a “cute” animal, such as might be associated with children and not collectors of fine art. Perhaps Sintenis’ little beasts conjured

226

Material Modernity

memories of the supposedly innocent pleasures of childhood; perhaps they evoked the kind of fetishistic thrills afforded by toy-sized things, like the libidinally charged pocket mirror and tiny chess figures in Hermann Hesse’s novel Steppenwolf (1927). Art writer and critic Julius Meier-Graefe referred to Sintenis’ works as “things from the toy box” (Dinger aus dem Spielkasten).10 And Karl Scheffler thought that the proportions of the animals’ limbs had been expressively changed so that the works “were somewhere in the middle between a children’s toy Expressionism [Kinderspielzeug-Expressionismus] and a well-trained Classicism.”11 Comparisons of Sintenis’ sculptures with children’s playthings could be read in the context of gendered characteristics ascribed to femininity. Sculpture historian Anja Cherdron points to the feminized association of “toy” with women but also notes that one need not necessarily interpret such pronouncements as disparaging; on the contrary, they were made as part of a general re-evaluation of the naïve and putatively “primitive.” Meier-Graefe posited the feminine as a potential corrective to masculine “stubborn intellectualism” (bornierte Intellektualität).12 Masculine rationalism had generally fallen into disrepute in the wake of the First World War.13 However, the exact choice of words is interesting on another level. Kinderspielzeug and Spielkasten (children’s toy and toy box) refer not just to a vague notion of infantility but very specifically to children’s toys, to objects found in the home, to “things” of a particular nature.14 One of the “things” found in a toy box might be a doll, for example, or a small wooden farmyard animal. Yet bronze, it should be noted, was and is not a common material for children’s toys. Sintenis’ use of bronze meant that she could have her statuettes be produced and sold in large numbers. By the late 1920s, on average twenty-five casts were made per figure in bronze, in addition to a number of silver casts.15 Sintenis had a close working relationship with the Berlin bronze foundry, the Gießerei Noack,

10

11 12 13

14

15

Julius Meier-Graefe, “Die Plastik von Renée Sintenis,” Almanach auf das Jahr 1920, 130); quoted in Anja Cherdron, “Prometheus war nicht ihr Ahne”: Berliner Bildhauerinnen der Weimarer Republik (Marburg: Jonas Verlag, n.d. [2000]), 104. Scheffler, “Renée,” 262. All translations are the author’s unless noted. Meier-Graefe, “Die Plastik,” 104. See in more detail Nina Lübbren, “Women, War and Naked Men: German Women Sculptors and the Male Nude, 1915–1925,” in Art and War, ed. Deborah Ascher Barnstone and Barbara McCloskey (Oxford, Berne, Berlin, Brussels, Frankfurt am Main, New York, Vienna: Peter Lang, 2017). Indeed, Meier-Graefe consciously chose the plural Dinger as opposed to the more grammatically mainstream Dinge. Dinger has a more material ring to it than Dinge; these are not the things of the mind but actual things, low-brow objects. Ursel Berger, “Renée Sintenis in der Kunst ihrer Zeit,” in Britta Buhlmann, Renée Sintenis: Plastiken— Zeichnungen—Druckgraphik (Berlin: Georg-Kolbe-Museum / Frölich und Kaufmann, 1983), 14.

Renée Sintenis, Wendt & Kühn, Lotte Pritzel

227

which she used throughout her career.16 In 1927, she wrote of her relationship with the foundry: Noack père taught me to chisel and to patinate. We all worked together in the casting workshop and were always happy with one another, ate wartime sandwiches and smoked cigarettes together. Without a good caster the sculptor can’t manage, and we artists must be very thankful for the steady readiness to experiment, the good will and the taste of this family of casters—and for their love for this oh-so-beautiful and oh-so-difficult craft.17

Sintenis’ comment reveals the close working relationship she had with the foundry and the hands-on approach the artist took to the process of casting. Bronze casting occupies an ambivalent role in the history of early twentiethcentury modern sculpture. Bronze is not a resource found in nature; it is a human-made alloy, amalgamated from ninety percent copper and ten percent zinc.18 Unlike stone or wood, bronze is not usually worked directly by the artist. As art historian Magdalena Bushart has noted, nowhere else but in the use of bronze has the division of labor and the rationalization of the process of sculpture-making been pushed this far.19 Artists generally do not as such “make” a bronze sculpture but fashion only the clay or wax models, which are then turned over to professional foundry workers to be molded in plaster and then cast in metal. Sintenis began her sculptural work by first constructing a wire scaffold on a wooden base. This she covered with black wax that she shaped with a spatula and by hand.20 In the words of art historian Hanna Kiel who wrote a 1935 monograph on Sintenis, black wax is a material “that yields to the warming hand but hardens quickly, is resistant rather than pliable and has no need of a modeling iron.”21 Only Sintenis’ handful of large-scale sculptures had a plaster cast made from the wax model; the smaller animals were reproduced from the first bronze cast. Casting the figurines from a bronze cast meant that the molds did not wear out; this method permitted a high number of bronzes cast using the

16 17

18

19

20 21

Britta Buhlmann, “Die Bildhauerin Renée Sintenis,” in Buhlmann, Renée, 33–114. Renée Sintenis, in Edwin Redslob, “Die Bildgießerei Noack,” Veröffentlichungen des Kunstarchivs, 47 (Berlin, n.d. [1927]), 21–2; quoted in Buhlmann, “Die Bildhauerin,” 41. Gerhard Gerkens, “Was ist Kleinplastik?,” in Gerhard Gerkens, Was ist Kleinplastik? Das kleine Format in der Bildhauerkunst: Eine didaktische Ausstellung V (Bremen: Kunsthalle Bremen, 1981), Section “XIV Materialien,” n.p. See also Martina Droth, Frits Scholten, and Michael Cole, Bronze: The Power of Life and Death (Leeds: Henry Moore Institute, 2005). Magdalena Bushart and Henrike Haug, “formlos—formbar [sic]: Bronze als künstlerisches Material,” in formlos-formbar: Bronze als künstlerisches Material, ed. Bushart and Haug (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2012), 7–17, here: 8. Buhlmann, “Die Bildhauerin,” 39. Hanna Kiel, Renée Sintenis (Berlin: Rembrandt-Verlag, 1935), 46.

228

Material Modernity

lost-wax process with the same precision. The process also reduced the number of steps between the artist’s work of creation and the final product. Sintenis countered the perception that the artist relinquished any input into the final casting process by regularly visiting the foundry. She often chiseled into the bronzes herself so that casts from the same molds ended up looking subtly different.22 Art historian Britta Buhlmann notes that it was not the uniform look that was important but the individuality of each specific cast.23 An example are the two casts made of the Tänzerinnen (Dancers), one of which has a hammered surface with a translucent patina while the other has a smooth surface and a black shiny patina.24 Each figurine, though cast from the same mold, retained the imprint of an authorial uniqueness. Working in stone or wood is often known as “direct carving,” but it can be argued that this procedure is never actually “direct” as it requires the use of tools such as chisels, files, and hammers. Building a three-dimensional object up from wax or clay, by contrast, is done by direct action of the fingers, thumbs, and palms on the material. The intimacy of handling one of Sintenis’ figurines, described by Hans Siemsen, echoes and responds to the intimacy of the artist’s handling of the pliable wax. The 1927 documentary film Schaffende Hände (Creative Hands), directed by art historian and film maker Hans Cürlis, colleague of the animated film pioneer Lotte Reiniger, includes long takes of Sintenis’ hands in close-up, her work-stained fingers forming a wax model of an animal on its wire scaffold. Cürlis’ film ignores the subsequent casting process, as if here (as for Siemsen) the material bronze elliptically disappeared.25 Similarly, the critical reception of Sintenis’ work downplayed the massproduced aspect and emphasized the artist’s hands-on shaping of the material. The discourse of the individual shaping of each unique piece fed into the experience of handling the piece; the artist’s care can be seen as creating the emotional experience of the (be)holder. Hans Siemsen, fully aware of the existence of multiple casts and of the input of a commercial workshop beyond Sintenis’ individual creativity, was nevertheless able to commune with the little object in his hand as if it were not only a living creature but also a unique

22 23 24

25

Buhlmann, “Die Bildhauerin,” 41. Buhlmann, “Die Bildhauerin,” 41. Buhlmann, “Die Bildhauerin,” 41. One version is illustrated in Walter Georgi, “Herbst-Ausstellung Berlin 1913,” Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration, 33 (1913–14), 357–64, illustration on 375). Extracts from Schaffende Hände were screened as part of the Berlin exhibition Die erste Generation; see Julia Wallner and Günter Ladewig, eds, Die erste Generation: Bildhauerinnen der Berliner Moderne (Berlin: Georg-Kolbe-Museum, 2018). On Cürlis’ film, see also Cherdron, Prometheus, 50–5.

Renée Sintenis, Wendt & Kühn, Lotte Pritzel

229

creation. Scheffler linked the appearance of Sintenis’ youthful animals to the artist’s working method: “The naiveté of her working method preserves the animals’ innocence and gives her modest works a trait of the minor masters.”26 Ignored here are the multiple and complicated processes of modeling, scaffolding, mold-making, casting, chiseling, and patinating, in favor of an emphasis on a “modest” “naiveté.” Sintenis’ bronzes differed from both other bronzes made in Germany during the 1920s as well as from other small-scale sculptures. Before the end of the war, German bronze sculptures like Wilhelm Lehmbruck’s Gestürzter (Fallen Man, 1915–16) were often life-size, their surfaces worked to suggest human touch, in an echo of Auguste Rodin’s working method. After the war, bronzes were increasingly polished to a smooth metallic gleam, as in Rudolf Belling’s Dreiklang (Triad, 1919) or Marg Moll’s Liebespaar (Lovers, 1928). German post-war bronzes also tended to be of a more intimate scale, typically 50 to 80 centimeters in height. Smallerscale objects, like Ruth Schaumann’s religious figurines or Dorothea KirchnerMoldenhauer’s animals were generally made of porcelain or terracotta. As a material, ceramics were linked to porcelain manufactories, such as the Nymphenburger Porzellanmanufaktur. These commercial outfits commissioned artists to furnish designs for wares that were marketed as knickknacks and ornaments for the home. Interestingly, critics hardly ever aligned Sintenis’ animals with this type of domestic decoration. Instead, her works were confidently placed in the camp of “art,” perhaps partly because of the association of bronze with “fine art,” and partly due to the foregrounding of the artist’s personal touch on each piece.

Wendt & Kühn, Grünhainichen: Entrepreneurs in Wood Unlike Sintenis, the Saxon company of Wendt & Kühn was firmly situated in the realm of commercial high-end craft production. The firm did not claim to be making sculptures and did not operate within the network of art dealers and galleries. The company became internationally known for its Christmas decorations, Easter ornaments, and other small-scale turned toys. Early designs, including cherubs, children, angel candlesticks, and nativities have left a lasting legacy to this day.27 26 27

Scheffler, “Renée,” 262. The prime source for the firm is Cordula Bischoff and Igor Jenzen, 100 Jahre Wendt & Kühn: Dresdner Moderne aus dem Erzgebirge, ed. Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (Dresden: Chemnitzer Verlag, 2016). Additional information is on the company’s website at https://www. wendt-kuehn.com.

230

Material Modernity

Margarete “Grete” Wendt and Margarete “Grete” Kühn both studied with applied artists and furniture designers Margarete Junge and Gertrud Kleinhempel at the Dresden Kunstgewerbeschule (Applied Arts School).28 In 1913, Wendt’s Beerensammler (Berry Gatherers) won second prize in a competition for highquality tourist souvenirs, organized by the Landesverein für Sächsischen Heimatschutz (State Association for Saxon Homeland Preservation)29 (Figure 9.3). Wendt’s wooden wares first appeared on the German national applied art scene in 1914 when the designer exhibited figurines, candelabra, dolls’ houses and boxes turned on the lathe in the Haus der Frau (Woman’s House) at the Cologne Werkbund exhibition.30 In the same year, Wendt designed what was to become her most iconic creation, the Elfpunkte-Engel (Eleven-Spot-Angel). The little figure is of polished wood, hand-painted, made up of rounded, simplified forms. On October 1, 1915, in the middle of the war, Wendt and Kühn, founded their company, Wendt & Kühn, Spielwaren und Gebrauchsgegenstände aus Holz (Wooden Toys and Items of Everyday Use).31 Soon after its founding, in December 1915, the firm participated in the Christmas exhibition of the State Association for Saxon Homeland Preservation.32 A few months later, in the spring of 1916, the two designers sent

Figure 9.3 Grete Wendt, Berry Children (Beerenkinder), 1913. Location unknown. Photograph, Berry Gatherers (Beerensammler), 1949, reproduced with kind permission of Archiv Wendt & Kühn, Grünhainichen. 28 29

30 31 32

Bischoff and Jenzen, 100 Jahre, 32–5. Many thanks to Susann Blaschke of Wendt & Kühn for this information and for kind permission to publish the accompanying illustrations. Cordula Bischoff, “100 Jahre Wendt & Kühn,” in Bischoff and Jenzen, 100 Jahre, 7–11, here 9. Bischoff, “100 Jahre,” 9. Bischoff, “100 Jahre,” 9.

Renée Sintenis, Wendt & Kühn, Lotte Pritzel

231

items to the Leipzig trade fair, the first time that any company had ever sent works of applied art to this fair.33 The two entrepreneurs then purchased the company’s headquarters (still extant today), a timbered building in the small town of Grünhainichen, east of Chemnitz in the Erzgebirge or Iron Ore Mountain region of Saxony. The 1923 version of the Eleven-Spot-Angel, still for sale today, modified the 1914 design by further infantilizing the angel’s features. The figure is now a very young child, almost a baby (Figure 9.4). The head is large in proportion to the body; the toddler wears a short white shirt appropriate to a small child, not the long dress of the earlier design; the legs and arms are pudgy; the wings are small, more like those of a cherub. The face retains its simplified features and round cheek markings. In her choice of a much younger child for the angel, Wendt capitalized on the relatively new popularity of baby-like dolls in Germany, such as those produced by the Breslau doll-maker and entrepreneur Käthe Kruse. With their very young age, baby-like look and soft, padded feel, Kruse’s dolls

Figure 9.4 Wendt & Kühn, Six-tiered Angel Mountain with Madonna and Grünhainich Angels (6-stufiger Engelberg mit Madonna und Grünhainicher Engeln®), undated. Photograph reproduced with kind permission of Archiv Wendt & Kühn, Grünhainichen.

33

Bischoff, “100 Jahre,” 9.

232

Material Modernity

distinguished themselves from earlier dolls in clay or wax that were fashioned more like miniature adults.34 However, unlike Kruse’s dolls, Wendt & Kühn’s wares were made exclusively of wood, a material that came to be of increasing interest to makers, critics, and collectors around the turn of the century. Appropriated by early twentiethcentury avant-garde and expressionist artists, wood was redolent with connotations of the authentic, the völkisch, and the nationally German, however much its use may also have been influenced by African and Oceanic sculpture. Scholarship has tended to focus on the kinds of roughly hewn figures made by members of the Dresden artists’ group Die Brücke. Stephanie Barron’s 1983 exhibition German Expressionist Sculpture, privileged the wooden sculpture of artists Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Karl Schmidt-Rotluff and Erich Heckel as epitomes of the expressionist aesthetic.35 Their roughly hewn wooden figurines were thought to re-imagine the traditional material of wood, associated in Germany with the fifteenth-century limewood sculptors, as indices of primitivist yearnings for a non-classicist, pre-academic “authenticity” of sculptural expression. Because the artists carved the wood directly, this kind of sculptural practice was seen as an index of pre-modern and non-European sculpture beyond the allegedly outmoded conventions of nineteenth-century academic marble, bronze and plaster statues. The Austrian sculptor Cirillo Dell’Antonio, who worked in wood himself, wrote in 1912 that “resistant wood educates the sculptor into serious spiritual work while pliable clay seduces him [sic] into playing.”36 In 1920, art historian and curator Wilhelm Valentiner struck a postwar nationalist tone when he contrasted the “charming” French facility in handling material with the German struggle to extract the “soul of the wood” from this raw hard material.37 Direct carving into wood was seen at the same time more technically challenging and of a more spiritual nature than molding in clay or wax. Art historian Monika Wagner has traced a path of how in the first decades of the twentieth century, wood mutated from a medium of the international avant-garde to a “national” German material.38 True or not, direct carving into wood was now seen as more technically challenging and of a more

34

35 36

37 38

Bryan Ganaway, “Character Dolls: Consumer Culture and Debates over Femininity in Late Imperial Germany (1900–1918),” Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 3, no.2 (1910), 210–28, here: 223. Stephanie Barron, ed., German Expressionist Sculpture (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum, 1983). Cirillo Dell’Antonio, quoted in Monika Wagner, “Wood—‘Primitive’ material for the Creation of ‘German Sculpture’,” in New Perspectives on Brücke Expressionism: Bridging History, ed. Christian Weikop (Farnham and Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate, 2011), 70–88, here: 70. Wilhelm R. Valentiner, Junge Kunst (1920); quoted in Wagner, “Wood,” 74. Wagner, “Wood,” 71.

Renée Sintenis, Wendt & Kühn, Lotte Pritzel

233

spiritual nature than molding in clay or wax. In addition, it was allegedly uniquely German. Contributing to this discourse was the interest in the völkisch regional and local peasant and fisherfolk crafts of Germany. Nineteenth-century art historian Anton Springer, had extolled the folk art character of regional woodcrafting in 1899, and later Schmidt-Rottluff was much taken by the indigenous wooden arts and crafts he encountered on a trip to the Baltic region in 1915.39 However, roughly hewn wooden sculptures—be they those of the expressionist or peasant artists—formed only a small proportion of the sculptural output in Germany during the years 1910 to 1933. As sculpture historian Erich Ranfft notes, the majority of sculptures continued to be made in clay and plaster with a view to being cast in bronze, with some works cast in the modern medium of artificial stone.40 Even among those sculptures carved in wood, the rough works made by the Expressionists were in the minority.41 In other words, the kinds of sculpture foregrounded in Barron’s exhibition represent only a very specific niche of German three-dimensional work in wood. Of note here are Wendt & Kühn’s commercially mass-produced figures, which are not usually discussed in the context of sculpture. Indeed, the artists participated not at all in the discourse of the avant-garde, being, as they were, certainly at some remove from the discursive and cultural framework of art dealerships, commissions, private collectors, and publications. Nor do their products fit into the discourses of “primitivism,” or into those of authentic selfexpression and truth to material achieved via direct carving. In terms of material process, the meticulous hand-craft technique of producing Wendt & Kühn ornaments remains much the same today.42 Local timber yards provide wooden planks that are left to dry for two years. These are then cut and turned on a lathe, milled and polished. Some parts are glued on. The figurines are treated with a primer and a base coat. They are placed in a centrifuge to achieve an even coat of white paint. Employees of the firm then hand-paint each item individually. The

39

40

41

42

Anton Springer, Handbuch der Kunstgeschichte (fifth edition, 1899), and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, letter to Wilhem Niemeyer, September 1, 1915; both quoted in Wagner, “Wood,” here 72–3. On the history of wood, see also Katharina Hoins, “Birkenklotz bis Lattenzaun: Tony Craggs ‘Stack’ und seine Verzweigungen in eine Holzkunstgeschichte,” Dresdner Kunstblätter, 59, no.4 (2015), 43–51. Erich Ranfft, “Reproduced Sculpture of German Expressionism: Living Objects, Theatrics of Display and Practical Options,” in Sculpture and Its Reproductions, ed. Anthony Hughes and Erich Ranfft (London: Reaktion, 1997), 114–15. Ranfft notes that the selection of works for the 1983 expressionist sculpture exhibition was informed by roughly hewn wooden works by 1980s artists like George Baselitz; Ranfft, “Reproduced,” 114. https://www.wendt-kuehn.com/art-craft/workshops.

234

Material Modernity

division of labor, painstaking attention to detail and mass production process is diametrically opposed to the single-authored, unique, and roughly hewn wooden objects of expressionist sculptors. The reception of Wendt and Kühn’s work dovetails with another network of creative production in Saxony, parallel to avant-garde groups like the Brücke or the Dresdner Secession Gruppe 1919. Alwin Seiffert, the headmaster of the technical school for the toy industry in the Erzgebirge town of Seiffen, founded the Spielwarenmuseum or toy museum in Seiffen (the basis for today’s Erzgebirgisches Spielzeugmuseum Seiffen, opened in 1953).43 Another proponent of regional art, Oskar Seyffert, had founded the Sächsischer Verein für Volkskunde und Volkskunst (Saxon Society of Ethnography and Folk Art) in 1897, and the Museum für sächsische Volkskunst (Museum for Saxon Folk Art) in 1913; he was also a professor at the Dresden Applied Art School where Wendt and Kühn had studied. Seyffert served as vice-chair of the State Association for Saxon Homeland Preservation.44 The Association promoted “good simple forms from among the old traditional toys.”45 Various writers emphasized in particular the material of wood for Erzgebirge toys.46 The inclusion of the toys in museums arguably elevates them to the status of “art” or, at least blurs the distinctions between mass-produced wares and art. This is a point of some importance as regards Wendt & Kühn’s figurines which, notably, Seyffert included in the “Modern Folk Art” section in his newly opened Museum for Saxon Folk Art.47 The form of wood carving, or to be more precise, wood turning, practiced in the firm of Wendt & Kühn engaged with some of the völkisch discourse on wood but pursued yet another kind of intervention. The firm’s products were linked to a specific regional tradition of wood carving in Germany, namely that of the Erzgebirge of Saxony. The Erzgebirge had been home to an industry of handcrafted toys and seasonal ornaments since the eighteenth century.48 The toys were mostly tin soldiers and porcelain dolls but wood was revived in the 1890s, with the establishment of around forty Schnitzvereine or local societies of wood carving.49 These societies organized competitions, exhibitions, and other activities 43 44

45 46

47 48 49

Not to be confused with the eponymous Munich architect. Manuel Schramm, “The Invention and Uses of Folk Art in Germany: Wooden Toys from the Erzgebirge Mountains,” Folklore, 115, no.1 (2004), 64–76, here: 66. Schramm, “The Invention,” 66. Oswald Fischer, “Schönes neues Holzspielzeug,” Glückauf, 52 (1932), 255–6; Alwin Seifert, “Neues erzgebirgisches Holzspielzeug,” Sächsische Heimat 9:3 (1925–6), 105–8; both quoted in Schramm, “The Invention,” 68. Schramm, “The Invention,” 67. Schramm, “The Invention,” 64. Igor A. Jenzen, “100 Jahre Wendt & Kühn: Holzkunst, Volkskunst, Reformkunst,” Dresdener Kunstblätter 59, no.4 (2015):15–23, here: 22.

Renée Sintenis, Wendt & Kühn, Lotte Pritzel

235

designed to promote wood as a material. The societies’ wooden carvings and proto-industrial home industry also fed into the invention of Volkskunst or folk art since the 1890s, and the productions of Wendt & Kühn spoke to both of these emergent trends.50 Wendt & Kühn represented one side of a return to völkisch tradition, neither on the side of high art nor on the side of native folk crafts but a kind of amalgamation and appropriation of aspects of each: indigenous regional tradition and modern design as taught in the urban center of Dresden. There are indeed resonances between the small scale, commercial popularity, and the clustered style of display in Sintenis’ sculpture and Wendt & Kühn’s decorations. However, the similarities end here. Wendt & Kühn did not manufacture items in high-art materials like bronze and stone, or in other commercial materials like celluloid and tin, contemporary materials popular with toy manufacturers. The firm focused exclusively on wood and tapped into the folkloristic associations of that material. This “unique selling point” fed into the company’s effective business practices and their international success.

Lotte Pritzel, Munich: Multi-Media Dolls Like Sintenis and Wendt & Kühn, the Breslau-born and Munich-based artist Lotte Pritzel made small-scale objects that were aimed mostly at private buyers for display in the home. However, her dolls were not part of the discourse of regional applied art nor were they made of the high-art material of bronze. Pritzel used many materials that were traditionally associated with domestic needlework and home-making, such as textiles and beads. Her career began in 1911, when she made the first of many dolls that would cement her fame in 1910s and 1920s Munich and Berlin. Texts on and images of the dolls were widely published. The Darmstadt publisher Alexander Koch published no fewer than seven articles on Pritzel between 1910 and 1923, all lavishly illustrated in black-and-white and color, in his periodical Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration (German Art and Decoration).51 50 51

In the words of Schramm, “The Invention,” 65. Wilhelm Michel, “Puppen von Lotte Pritzel,” Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration, 27, IV, no.7 (1910–11), 329–38; Georg Hirschfeld, “Neue Puppen von Lotte Pritzel—München,” Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration, 31 (1912–13), 254–60; W.M. [Wilhelm Michel], “Neue Wachspuppen von Lotte Pritzel,” Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration, IV, no.6 (1914), 312–15; Sebastian, “Neue Puppen von Lotte Pritzel,” Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration, 38, XIX , no.7 (1916), 422–5; R. Coester, “Lotte Pritzel — München,” Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration, 23, no.3a (1920), 346–54; W.F. [Willy Frank?], “Vitrinen-Puppen von Lotte Pritzel,” Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration, 50, XXV, no.7 (1922), 112–15; Hans Rupé, “Neue Vitrinen-Puppen von Lotte Pritzel,” Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration, 53, 27, no.5 (1923–4), 42–9. In addition, Pritzel’s dolls were illustrated in the journal Innen-Dekoration (also published by Alexander Koch), vol.30 (1919), 388; and vol.31 (1920), 62.

236

Material Modernity

In 1913, the year of at least two exhibitions of Pritzel dolls in Berlin, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, husband of sculptor Clara Rilke-Westhoff and sometime boyfriend of Munich psychoanalyst and writer Lou Andreas-Salomé, got to know Pritzel and wrote an essay on the dolls.52 Also in 1921, Das Puppenbuch (The Doll Book) came out, which included contributions by poet Theodor Däubler and writer René Schickele, and illustrations of dolls by Pritzel and Erna Pinner.53 Pritzel’s dolls were at the forefront of a trend in the making of idiosyncratic, artistic dolls for adults. They became known as “Pritzel-Puppen” (Pritzel-dolls). The dolls were multi-media objects. The dolls’ bodies were made out of cotton wool on a wire framework, and the heads of tinted wax with hand-painted faces. The limbs were also modeled in wax and tinted.54 The figurines’ hair was made of wax, cotton wool, colored silk, gold and silver thread, or real hair.55 The dolls were swathed in garments of silk, velvet, taffeta, tulle, chiffon, glass beads, glitter, and lace.56 Their clothes were wildly extravagant, borrowing from Rococo fashion, German carnival costumes, the Italian commedia dell’arte and ArabianNights-style fantasy. They had elongated proportions, thin fragile limbs, pointed toes, and delicate hands.57 The overall effect is one of luxurious decadence. Dolls were objects of fascination for a variety of artists in the years before and after the First World War. Gabriele Münter painted a little girl next to a cat and a rag doll in which the girl herself assumes uncanny, doll-like features (Puppe, Katze und Kind [Doll, Cat and Child], 1914, glass painting). Hannah Höch fashioned multi-media jointed dolls and also included a wooden marionette in her collage Er und sein Milieu (He and His Milieu, 1919). And Oskar Kokoschka produced numerous sexualized images of a life-sized doll that he had commissioned from Munich doll-maker Hermine Moos, after having first approached Pritzel for the job.58 In addition, the subject of dolls made its way

52

53

54 55

56

57 58

It was later published in Rainer Maria Rilke and Lotte Pritzel, Puppen (Munich: Hyperionverlag, 1921); reprinted in Lotte Pritzel 1887–1952: Puppen des Lasters, des Grauens und der Ekstase, ed. Edita Mork and Wolfgang Till (Munich: Puppentheatermuseum im Münchner Stadtmuseum, 1987), 13–18. Also available at https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_RJnPAAAAMAA . Das Puppenbuch (Berlin: Erich Reiss, 2nd edn 1921). Essays were by Kasimir Edschmid (Pinner’s boyfriend), René Schickele, Theodor Däubler, and Carlo Mierendorff. Hirschfeld, “Neue Puppen,” 259. Rüdiger Joppien, “Von Puppen und Keksen: Lotte Pritzel und Bahlsen,” in Mork and Till, Lotte Pritzel, 97–103, here: 100; and Rupé, “Neue Vitrinen-Puppen,” 44. Joppien, “Von Puppen,” 100; Max von Boehn, “Über Lotte Pritzel” (1929), quoted in Mork and Till, Lotte Pritzel, 67. On average, the proportion of head to body is 1:10. Joppien, “Von Puppen,” 100. Bonnie Roos, “Oskar Kokoschka’s Sex Toy : The Woman and the Doll Who Conceived the Artist,” Modernism/modernity, 12:2 (2005), 291–309; Nathan J. Timpano, “Body Doubles: The Puppe as Doppelgänger in Fin-de-Siècle Viennese Visual Culture,” in The Doppelgänger, ed. Deborah Ascher Barnstone (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2016), 119–46.

Renée Sintenis, Wendt & Kühn, Lotte Pritzel

237

into cinema. In 1919, Ernst Lubitsch directed the comedy Die Puppe (The Doll) in which a woman impersonates a wind-up bridal doll. Pritzel’s dolls can be placed against this backdrop of an interest in dolls, puppets, and automata. Photographs of Pritzel’s dolls were carefully staged and posed. Early published photographs posed the dolls in narrative compositions, either as single figures or in multi-figure arrangements. For example, the arrangement entitled Duett (Duet), illustrated in the 1921 Puppenbuch, shows two slender-limbed figures, shrouded in billowing lace and tulle and posed on a low octagonal plinth (Figure 9.5). The

Figure 9.5 Lotte Pritzel, Duet (Duett), undated. Reproduced in Das Puppenbuch, Berlin: Erich Reiss, 2nd edn, 1921. Photograph: Author’s archive.

238

Material Modernity

woman’s posture is languid, her limp arms draped across her companion’s shoulder and chest, her head lolling, her eyes closed. The man stands in a dancer’s pose, his arms lost in layers of fabric, his visible pupil swiveled upwards. A narrative is hinted at, perhaps one of inebriation, revelry and sexual swooning. In another image, merely captioned Puppen für die Vitrine (Dolls for the Showcase), a female figure is perched atop an oversized modern chair, reminiscent of Viennese Workshop furniture; she casts a haughty eye over the bewigged eighteenth-century gentleman approaching beseechingly from below.59 A 1914 color plate shows a ginger-haired young woman garbed in dark-blue knee-breeches and a fanciful, embroidered jacket, seated on an ornate Louis-Quinze chair in front of heavy black drapery; she lifts one hand in a speaking gesture.60 A discarded bouquet of roses suggests the aftermath of a party or tryst. Behind the seated woman stands a figure who is captioned as Standing Woman but the same figure recurs as a male Pierrot in another photo where he is seen reclining wearily on a chaise longue. Both the discarded bouquet and the androgyny of the standing figure appear again in another photo of 1914 entitled Tänzer ([Male] Dancer), which shows a sexually ambiguous figure in front of a dark background and in full robes and sandals; a candelabrum on an arabesque-shaped side table accompanies the figure.61 It is clear from these photographs that the dolls could be bent into a variety of poses and gestures, evocative of different moods, and arranged in interactive tableaux designed to elicit narrative speculation in viewers. The photographs are not attributed, but many of them were probably commissioned by the Berlin design dealership of Friedmann & Weber that represented Pritzel and also disseminated the photographs in the form of art postcards.62 The dolls occupy a hybrid territory between artistic sculpture and decorative ornament. They were not children’s toys to be played with in that they are too fragile to be handled and too “grown-up” in their demeanor (Figure 9.6). As writer and culture critic Wilhelm Michel noted in 1914, the “erotic sentiment” played a decisive role in all of the dolls.”63 He described one (unnamed) doll as “a

59

60 61 62 63

Hirschfeld, “Neue Puppen,” 260. The Pierrot and the ginger woman appear again in a 1914 photo of five dolls together; two at left approach three at right, one of whom sits in the familiar Louis-Quinze chair; the Pierrot is now arranged in a pose and gesture of open-armed welcome. W.M., “Neue Wachspuppen,” 326 top. W.M., “Neue Wachspuppen.” W.M., “Neue Wachspuppen,” 326 below. The postcards appear on sale via Etsy and eBay from time to time. W.M., “Neue Wachspuppen,” 314.

Renée Sintenis, Wendt & Kühn, Lotte Pritzel

239

Figure 9.6 Lotte Pritzel, Chichette, undated. Reproduced in Das Puppenbuch, Berlin: Erich Reiss, 2nd edn, 1921. Photograph: Author’s archive.

240

Material Modernity

sinful little figurine with a shell that one can surely only view correctly once one regards it as an ‘erotic curve’.”64 Michel continued: She [Pritzel] has created folk who are in love; that is to say, the forms and ideas of this dolls’ world arise somehow from the sphere of love. They open drunken eyes, full of love’s melancholy; they bend beseechingly over the small waxen hand of a partner, they know the shudder with which one closes one’s eyes and almost painfully and defensively stretches out one’s hands, they know kittenish desirability and sublime swooning.65

This kind of language is inappropriate for children’s dolls and was used deliberately to differentiate Pritzel’s creations from toys aimed at children, like those produced by Käthe Kruse. Writer and playwright Georg Hirschfeld wrote, “These are not the dolls for which children reach.”66 Pritzel figures’ slender bodies, made-up faces, queer sexualities, ornate costumes and sophisticated knowingness were the opposite of the contemporary trend toward infantilism in doll-making.67 They addressed a taste for eroticized adult objects for the home. Later, the surrealist artist Hans Bellmer picked up on the figures’ sensual appeal when Pritzel’s work inspired him to make his own sexualized dolls with moveable ball joints.68 However, unlike Pritzel’s creations with their gender-fluid anatomies and mature playfulness, Bellmer’s dolls are fetishized as feminine and prepubescent, and their materials—wood, plaster, metal rods and bolts—produce a harsh effect that contrasts markedly with Pritzel’s pliant confections. The context within which Pritzel operated was one in which dolls could be big business. Early twentieth-century dolls were both mass-produced and made in home industries for consumers who prized hand-made artisanship. The value placed on the hand-made is similar to what was esteemed in figures by Wendt & Kühn and sculptures by Sintenis. Kruse, who founded her own doll company in 1911 (still a going concern today), advocated dolls that nurture tender emotions and had individualized faces.69 Prior to her, the mass market had mainly manufactured dolls that were mimetic and “technological,” with ball joints in the limbs and neck, porcelain heads with glass eyes and moveable lids, and the ability

64 65 66 67 68 69

W.M., “Neue Wachspuppen,” 314. He probably referred to Venus, W.M., “Neue Wachspuppen,” 317. W.M., “Neue Wachspuppen,” 314. Hirschfeld, “Neue Puppen,” 258. Ganaway, “Character Dolls,” 223. Sue Taylor, Hans Bellmer: The Anatomy of Anxiety (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000). Ganaway, “Character Dolls,” 219–21. For a history of the firm, see also https://www.kaethe-kruse.de/ de/geschichte.

Renée Sintenis, Wendt & Kühn, Lotte Pritzel

241

to say “Mama” and “Papa.”70 Kruse’s so-called reform dolls struck a new note, with their baby-like faces and bendable soft bodies, and soon this new type itself infiltrated the mass-produced toy market.71 But they, as well as others like those produced by Bavarian doll-maker Marion Kaulitz, were now also discussed in terms of art. A specialist toy trade periodical, the Rundschau über Spielwaren (Toy Review), mused in 1909 about dolls in general: “Today the doll, which has undergone a metamorphosis in a short period of time, has become a little piece of art.”72 In the same year, the journalist Hartl Mutius visited Kaulitz’s dollmaking studio in Munich’s bohemian neighborhood of Schwabing; she reported on “the joy of artistic discovery” to be had therein.73 Pritzel’s dolls operated outside the context of toy manufacture that informed the discourse on reform dolls. Their material makeup ensured that they would not be treated as playthings. They were not made to be robust and to be handled but constructed of fine stuffs, and their aesthetics emphasized delicacy and fragility. Pritzel and curators exhibited the works as “dolls and figures” (the 1916 exhibition at the Munich Galerie Caspari was entitled Puppen und Figuren).74 Pritzel called her creations “Puppen für die Vitrine” (dolls for the showcase or the glass cabinet), a novel category that made a bid for a special status for these objects. Not dolls for play, they were to be dolls for display: behind glass, like precious objects. A vitrine or glass case can be situated in a museum, and it may contain fossils, insects or gemstones. It can be repurposed for domestic use as a display case for personal mementoes, souvenirs, and bric-à-brac. The label “dolls for the showcase” also functioned as a kind of brand that differentiated Pritzeldolls from other dolls like the “Kaulitz-dolls,” Erna Muth-Klotzsche’s “paperdolls and Erna Pinner’s “grotesque dolls.”75 Certainly, Pritzel’s dolls did not necessarily have to be displayed in glass cases only. One photograph shows them placed on a shiny wooden table top, next to a Nymphenburg porcelain tureen, a ceramic piece of fruit and a slender goblet; the doll is an object among objects.76 Michel noted in 1914:

70 71 72 73 74 75

76

Ganaway, “Character Dolls,” 214. Ganaway, “Character Dolls,” 224. September 1, 1909; quoted in Ganaway, “Character Dolls,” 223. Illustrierte Zeitung (July 1, 1909); quoted in Ganaway, “Character Dolls,” 218. Mork and Till, Lotte Pritzel. F., “Münchner Künstler-Kaulitz-Puppen,” Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration 27 (1910–11), 84–5; Wolfgang H. Döhring, “Papierpuppen von Erna Muth,” Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration 45 (1919– 20), 124–5; Kasimir Edschmid, “Groteske Puppen von Erna Pinner,” Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration 39 (1916–17), 356–7. Innen-Dekoration 30, nr.11 (1919), 389.

242

Material Modernity

Somewhere, in between two windows or two doors, there is nearly everywhere one of those empty areas that are so difficult to bring to life using furniture. Here the glass cabinet on a plinth draped in dark cloth, with its colourful, chatty content may well find its home. Alternatively, they [the dolls] can stand freely in space because they are all conceived sculpturally, in the round. Or they can become decorations in a toy or bric-à-brac cupboard, that formerly so popular piece of furniture whose resurrection one may fervently wish for, in which everything is gathered that one has purchased while traveling or at other opportunities in the way of exotic, folkloristic or somehow otherwise qualitative play things or music boxes.77

Michel’s description envisaged the dolls as being placed in a prominent position in the home, the mode of display halfway between that of sculpture and that of trinkets and souvenirs. The buyers imagined for Pritzel’s dolls were educated, comfortably off middle-class people, with a tinge of a bohemian life-style. In Michel’s imagination, these people owned “exotic” and “folkloristic” items—the two types of artefact that were also interesting to contemporary avant-garde sculptors. Although Pritzel dolls might fall under the heading of knickknack, decoration or craft, this is not how they were positioned in the press. There they were repeatedly discussed as “art,” not as applied art.78 W[ilhelm] F[rank] wrote in 1922 that Pritzel’s dolls were “sculptural works of art in which the doll-like is now only material, only expressive means.”79 A writer calling himself “Sebastian” found the dolls to be a “mixture of sculpture and effervescent dexterity” and speculated that Pritzel’s true talents might lie beyond doll-making in the realms of “a pure sculpture of form—for example, in porcelain or metal or clay.”80 The list of materials is interesting in this context. “Pure sculpture” was, for Sebastian, associated not with marble or wood but with metal (bronze, perhaps?), clay (used in modeling for bronze casting) and, oddly, porcelain (which one might more usually associate with commercial porcelain manufactories). Porcelain would seem to move “pure sculpture” into the realm of the Rococo figurine. Pritzel dolls did not use any of these three materials but did depend on wax, the

77 78

79 80

W.M., “Neue Wachspuppen,” 315. Hirschfeld wrote, “But this cute technique is always opposed by strong and original art.” Hirschfeld, “Neue Puppen,” 260. Michel also commended the fact that Pritzel’s dolls did not take the path of applied art; Michel, “Puppen,” 329. The sentiment that Pritzel’s dolls are not applied art was reiterated by Sebastian, “Neue Puppen,” 425 and by Coester, “Lotte Pritzel,” 347. W.F.,”Vitrinen-Puppen,” 113. Sebastian, “Neue Puppen,” 424.

Renée Sintenis, Wendt & Kühn, Lotte Pritzel

243

same materials that Sintenis used to make the models for her bronzes. However, Pritzel combined the wax with other materials that were not associated with high or “pure” sculpture at all: fabrics, glitter, and hair, in a working process more akin to Kurt Schwitters’ multi-media assemblages than to Sintenis, Kruse, or Wendt & Kühn. Curator Wolfgang Glüber situates Pritzel’s work in the “liminal realm between applied art and sculptural art.”81 This hybridity arguably inspired the poetic responses of Theodor Däubler and Rainer Maria Rilke, and the stage dancers Anita Berber and Niddy Impekoven. Impekoven danced a Lotte Pritzel-Puppe at the Frankfurt opera house in 1918, as part of her program of Alte und moderne Puppen (Old and Modern Dolls); and Berber performed Die Pritzelpuppe in Berlin in 1919, and Pritzelpuppen in Vienna in 1922, the latter with her dancepartner Sebastian Droste.82 Lotte Pritzel also designed costumes for the stage, and the fourteen-minute documentary film, Die Pritzel-Puppe (The Pritzel Doll), produced in 1923 by the Cultural Department of Ufa (Universal Film AG) included footage of Pritzel making a doll, Impekoven dancing, and actors wearing her costumes on stage in Frank Wedekind’s pantomime Die Kaiserin von Neufundland (The Empress of Newfoundland, Munich, 1922).83 The dolls exceeded the boundaries of their material constitution. They reached out into the world of movement and performance, a world that had already been adumbrated in the narrative stagings of the doll photographs. In their way, the dolls may be compared to the painted wooden marionettes with appliquéd textiles, made by Sophie Taeuber-Arp for the puppet show König Hirsch (King Stag) in 1918, or to Hannah Höch’s Dada-Puppen (Dada-Dolls).84 Wax, the material from which the heads and bodies were modeled, has inherently uncanny properties. Hans Hildebrandt described wax as “that material which stands between death and life.”85 Georg Hirschfeld wrote that Pritzel’s dolls were “[n]o static bronze statuettes—waxen dolls with moveable limbs suggest a most secret life.”86 Hirschfeld here contrasted the animated dolls with

81

82 83

84

85

86

Wolfgang Glüber, “Puppen für die Vitrine: Zu den Arbeiten der Puppenkünstlerin Lotte Pritzel,” Kunst in Hessen und am Mittelrhein, 36+37 (1996–7), 139–50, here: 150. Ingrid Stilijanov-Nedo, “Fundstücke,” in Mork and Till, Lotte Pritzel, 73. Boehn, “Über Lotte Pritzel,” 68; Ingrid Stilijanov-Nedo, “Fundstücke,” in Mork and Till, Lotte Pritzel, 71–4; Murnau-Stiftung, https://www.murnau-stiftung.de/movie/16555. On Taeuber-Arp and Höch’s dolls, see Modern Couples: Art, Intimacy and the Avant-Garde, ed. Jane Alison and Coralie Malissard (Munich: Prestel, 2018), the catalogue for the eponymous exhibition at the Barbican Gallery, London, 2018. Hans Hildebrandt, Die Frau als Künstlerin: Mit 337 Abbildungen nach Frauenarbeiten bildender Kunst von den frühesten Zeiten bis zur Gegenwart (Berlin: Rudolf Mosse Buchverlag, 1928), 145. Hirschfeld, “Neue Puppen,” 259.

244

Material Modernity

putatively lifeless bronze. This is in contrast to how Sintenis’ sculptures were seen. Sintenis transformed her wax models into bronze animals that were then discussed as being full of life, as if it were the wax that conferred the breath of life. Pritzel’s dolls retained their waxen makeup and never transformed into bronze. For Hirschfeld, “bronze” was shorthand for the world of mainstream sculpture. It was their material composition that situated Pritzel figures in that equivocal in-between realm, at once sculpture, doll, “doll sculpture,” plaything, and erotic figurine. The dolls negotiated this terrain, and they played into the uncanny status of dolls per se. Däubler’s text on Pritzel in Das Puppenbuch riffed off the dolls to weave a tales of Eichendorffian oneiric intensity.87 Däubler noted the significance of the dolls’ skeletons: “Geripp und Puppe zugleich: die Skelettin.”88 (“Skeleton and doll at once: the skeletress.”) The dolls were not soft and boneless, as were Käthe Kruse’s children’s dolls. The bonelessness of Kruse dolls emphasized the infantile character of the dolls. The skeleton makes Pritzel’s dolls into adults. It gives them an anatomy, akin to sculpted figurines: the clothes do not consist of their body, but envelop bodies of bone / wire, and skin / wax that continue to exist beneath them. The material of wax, especially when it appears as a painted face, delivers these dolls into the vicinity of wax figure cabinets and simulacra. Literary historian Kenneth Gross notes that there is a connection between Sigmund Freud’s concept of the uncanny and Rilke’s poem to Pritzel’s dolls (1913). Rilke’s short poem talks of the dolls as disappearing and dissolving, and as “things” made of farewells and goodbyes: To detain lightly, with a tiny wave, Those who dwindle before they vanish and decay, To make a thing from farewells and not to reunite, So that this thing smiles wastefully and elevates itself Up on its toes, in order quietly to attend that Which has already vanished and decayed (: Roses and ideas —)89

The Rilke poem responds to Pritzel’s dolls as things, not in the sense of commodities and objects but in the sense of artefacts charged with psychological, affective, and imaginative power. Pritzel is described as “making a thing” but this 87

88

89

The reference is to Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff ’s 1826 playfully Romantic novella Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts. Theodor Däubler, “Die Puppen der Lotte Pritzel,” in Das Puppenbuch, n.p.; reprinted in Mork and Till, Lotte Pritzel, 45–9, here: 46. Rainer Maria Rilke “Für Lotte Pritzel”; reprinted in Mork and Till, Lotte Pritzel, 40.

Renée Sintenis, Wendt & Kühn, Lotte Pritzel

245

“thing” then immediately smiles, hovers on tiptoes and involves itself in the life of ephemera, “roses and ideas.” The “thing” is animated, in true uncanny fashion. This is not only something applicable to dolls and mannequins in general but to Pritzel’s dolls specifically. They invite this reading of lightness, melancholy, smiles, and imminent fading away. Art historian Hans Hildebrandt included Pritzel in his 1928 book on women artists. Hildebrandt’s volume was innovative in the way it extended the purview of art beyond traditional materials to include not only painting, sculpture and graphic art but also tapestry, lace-making, metalwork, ceramics, toy-making, and doll-making. He described doll-making as a “special category of purely feminine sculptural activity.”90 Indeed, it is the case that with a few exceptions, the dolls discussed in the 1910s and 1920s were made by women; male doll-makers were marginalized in contemporary discourse.91 In Hildebrandt’s words, Pritzel’s “creations with [their] breath-fine, fragile limbs, with features behind which a thousand moods, tricks, desires seem to move, can never be thought of by a man, never be created by a man’s heavy hand.”92

Conclusion Anja Cherdron notes that sculptural materials carried gender-specific connotations in the first decades of the twentieth century.93 Cherdron examines the writings of nine male art historians and critics of the 1920s and concludes that these writers assigned “masculine” qualities to stone and wood, that is, those materials that lent themselves to direct carving, and “feminine” qualities to clay and wax, “soft” materials used for modeling.94 She notes that during the Weimar Republic, there appeared to co-exist different images of a male sculptor: “on the one hand, the image of the [male] sculptor as a ‘modern creator’ who uses clay to form the ‘human creature’—mostly a female creature; on the other hand, there existed the [. . .] art historical image of the [male] sculptor who overcomes the material’s resistance through ‘hard labour’ and thereby proves his ‘masculinity’.”95 90 91

92 93 94 95

Hildebrandt, Die Frau, 145. Doll-makers included Erna Pinner, Marion Kaulitz, Erna Muth-Klotzsche (who worked in paper), Lis Beyer and Käte Paech, all in the more artistic camp, and on the entrepreneurial side, Käthe Kruse and Margarete Steiff (the latter of whom became famous for her plush toys; both Kruse dolls and Steiff animals are still sold today). Hildebrandt, Die Frau, 145. Cherdron, “Prometheus. . .,” 49–60. Cherdron, “Prometheus. . .,” 50–8. Cherdron, “Prometheus. . .,” 55.

246

Material Modernity

The argument is persuasive, and the binary associations of “direct” carving (in German: Bildhauerei) versus modeling (in German: Plastik) offer themselves to being mapped onto culturally enshrined binaries between two normative genders. To what extent actual practices conformed or exceeded these hegemonic gender assignments remains an open question, one that Cherdron acknowledges.96 Studying these three case studies results not so much in an “expanded field” of sculpture in Rosalind Krauss’ sense.97 Krauss argued that the late nineteenth century witnessed a “fading of the logic of the monument” which had hitherto underwritten the concept of sculpture.98 The modernist sculpture existed in a kind of homelessness, and was then superseded by the sculptural field expanding, in the 1960s and 1970s, into the categories of landscape and architecture.99 But this expansion of the field from within, is not the only way to enlarge the scope of art historical interrogation; rather an expansion of analytical boundaries and a casting the net wider than traditional “sculptural” materials offers new scope and insight. The feminist question “Where are the women?” invites different paths and directions.100 It turns out that “the women” were distributed across what was already a much wider field.

96

Cherdron notes that it is possible that the clinging to traditional images of the male sculptor could be interpreted as attempts to sustain an ideal notion that had already changed with regard to the priorities in the choice of material; Cherdron, “Prometheus. . .,” 58. One could add to this that the ideal of the “hard” male sculptor needed to be upheld at a time when it was already being contested on all fronts. 97 Rosalind Krauss, “Sculpture in the Expanded Field” (1978); reprinted in Modern Sculpture Reader, ed. Jon Wood, David Hulks and Alex Potts (2nd edn, Leeds and Los Angeles, California: Henry Moore Institute and Getty Publications, 2012), 333–42. 98 Krauss, “Sculpture,” 336. 99 Krauss, “Sculpture,” 337–9. This presents a necessarily simplified summary of Krauss’ complex arguments. 100 See Cynthia Enloe’s writings, in particular The Curious Feminist: Searching for Women in a New Age of Empire (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2004).

Index The letter f after an entry indicates a page that includes a figure A-I-Z (Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung, Die) 6, 119–21, 124f, 125–6, 128–9, 130 ideological and historical conditions 133–6 photography 130–2, 133, 136–7, 140–1 “13 Jahre Hindenburg” (13 Years of Hindenburg) 130–2 “Wettrüsten zu einem neuen Weltkrieg, Das” (The Arms Race to Another World War) 132 “Wie eine Zeitung entsteht [“How a Magazine is Made”] 124f abstract painting 207 Advertisement for “Breuer Metallmöbel” 51f Albers, Anni 41f, 56–9 fabric sample of the wall-covering material for the auditorium of the Federal School of the German Trade Union 58f–9 Albers, Josef 44–5, 58 Alpine Architecture (Taut, Bruno) 183–5, 187 Alte und modern Puppen (Old and Modern Dolls) (Impekoven, Niddy) 243 America 119–20 Andersen, Hans Christian “Emperor’s New Clothes, The” 194–5 “Snow Queen, The” 177 anti-Semitism 82–3f Apollinaire, Guillaume 206–7, 210, 220 Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung, Die (A-I-Z). See A-I-Z architecture 7, 175, 177, 178–86, 187 see also Dr. Rabe House abstraction 207–8 color theory 201, 202–3, 207–8 De Stijl 198, 199 fourth dimension 205–6

Nazism 191 Rading, Adolf 198–200, 206, 212–13 Arnold, Karl Paper Money! Paper Money! Bread! Bread! (Papiergeld! Papiergeld! Brot! Brot!) 77–8f artificial horsehair 52–6 artificial silk 34, 42–4, 47 see also rayon Audemars, George 42 Aus einem ethnographischen Museum (“From an ethnographic Museum”) (Höch, Hannah) 103–4 Azberg Porcelain, designed by Hermann Gretsch (Lazi, Adolf) 193f Bank of England 72 barbarism 171–2 Barron, Stephanie German Expressionist Sculpture 232, 233 Bauhaus (Gropius, Walter) 191, 192f Bauhaus school 189, 191, 192f, 197–8 color 198 modernism 195 Nazism 191, 192, 196 Bauhaus weaving workshop 39–42, 45–8f, 60 Albers, Anni 41f, 56–9 artificial silk 47 Berger, Otti 41f, 46, 47, 52–6 Eisengarn (iron thread) 4, 49–50 material experiments 44–8 Reichardt, Margaretha 41f, 46, 48–52, 56–7 synthetic fibers 44, 45, 47 Beadle, Clayton 43 Beerensammler (Berry Gatherers) (Wendt, Margarete) 230 Behne, Adolf 182–3

247

248 Belling, Rudolf Dreiklang (Triad) 229 Bellmer, Hans 240 Benjamin, Walter 112, 170–4 “Experience and Poverty” 170–1, 173 Berber, Anita 243 Pritzelpuppe, Dei 243 Pritzelpuppen 243 Berger, Otti 41f, 46, 47, 52–6 Urkunde über die Erteilung des Patents 594 075: Möbelstoff—Doppelgewebe [Certificate of issuance of patent 594 075: upholstery fabric— double-weave] 54f Bergner, Lena 41f, 46 Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung 132–3 “Berlin’s Days of Turmoil” (Berliner Sturmtage) photograph 70–1 Betts, Paul 192–3, 195 Bevan, Edward John 43 Bezugsschein (acquisition permit) 18, 22, 25, 66–7 Bilderbuch (“book of images”) (Höch, Hannah) 96 Biró, Mihály 67 Ersatz Exibition: Paper Textiles Section 68f Bletter, Rosemarie Haag 185 “Interpretation of the Glass Dream: Expressionist Architecture and the Crystal Metaphor, The” 175, 177 Blücher, Evelyn 30 Bosch, Mineke and Everard, Myriam “Til Brugman and Hannah Höch” 95 Boyd, Jean E. “Celluloid: The Eternal Substitute” 89 Bragdon, Claude 164, 204 Braque, Georges 206, 207 Breuer, Marcel 50 tubular steel furniture 50–1f British naval blockade 2, 17, 64 bronze 8, 226–9, 242–4 Brown, Bill 80–1 Brücke, Die 232 Brugman, Til (Mathilda Maria Petronella Brugman) 5, 85f–8, 93–6 celluloid 88, 90, 103, 112 Dada 98–9, 103, 104 Even Anders: Vier 95

Index Hemelia en het Woord (“Hemelia and the Word”) 94 Institut für Sexualwissenschaft 97, 98 Scheingehacktes (“Appearance of Minced Meat”) 94 scientific evidence 112–13 sexuality 88, 96–8 “SHE HE” 94f Til Brugman 5 Klankgedichte (“5 Sound Poems”) 95 Til Brugman: Das vertippte Zebra, Lyrik und Prosa (“Til Brugman: The Striped Zebra, Poetry and Prose”) 95 “Wahrenhaus der Liebe” (“Department Store of Love”) 5, 88, 90, 93–4, 98–102, 111–13 Zelluloidkinder (celluloid children) 88, 102, 111, 113 Bushart, Magdalena 227 camphor 90 canvas 4, 11–12, 31 capital 74 capitalism 100 carving 228, 232–3, 234–5, 245–6 casein plastic 102–3 casting 227–8, 233 Cathedral of Socialism, The (Feininger, Lyonel) 189 cathedrals 177–8, 179, 181–2, 185, 189 cellophane 56–9 celluloid 5, 89–93, 102 Brugman, Til 88, 90, 103, 112 Dada 103–4 dolls 102, 103, 104f marketing 100 photography 103–4 soldiers 88, 90–1, 105 Zelluloidkinder (celluloid children) 88, 102, 111, 113 “Celluloid Dreams” (Forde, Kate) 91–2, 100 “Celluloid: The Eternal Substitute” (Boyd, Jean E.) 89 cellulose 4, 89 see also rayon ceramics 193f Champs délicieux, Les (Ray, Man) 149 Chardonnet, Hilaire de 42

Index Cherdron, Anja 226, 245–6 Chichette (Pritzel, Lotte) 239f cinema. See film clean slates 172, 193, 195 cloth/clothing 3–4, 11–16, 20–29f, 66 see also synthetic fibers and weaving Bezugsschein (acquisition permit) 18, 22, 25, 66–7 Blücher, Evelyn 30 canvas 4, 11–12, 31 Dawes Plan 30 Hausmann, Raoul 30 paper cloth 26–8, 69 Reichsbekleidungsstelle (Imperial Clothing Authority) 21, 43 Strukturstoffe (structural fabrics) 47 coins 73 collage 2–3, 31–2 see also Merz pictures photocollage 31 Collect Combed-out Women’s Hair! Our Industry Needs it for Drive Belts [Sammelt ausgekämmtes Frauenhaar! Unsere Indsutrie braucht es für Treibriemen] (Wiertz, Jupp) 19f Collin, Ernst “Paper as Textiles” (Papier als Spinnstoff) 69 color 7 color-space 208–9 De Stijl 198, 199 emotion 202, 203 glass 177–80 Gropius, Walter 199 Kandinsky, Wassily 202, 214–15, 216 Dr, Rabe House 7, 198–9, 203, 209–10f, 212–20 Taut, Bruno 199 theory 201–3, 208 color-space 208–9 concrete 2 Continental, the 72 Corinth, Lovis 31 corsets 25 Cross, Charles Frederick 43 Crystal Chain 185, 186 crystals 175–6, 186–7 Cubism 206–7, 209, 210, 218

249

Cürlis, Hans Schaffende Hände (Creative Hands) 228 currency 5, 82 see also paper money Notgeld 5, 71, 73, 76f–7f, 79–81 Cut with the Kitchen Knife: The Weimar Photomontages of Hannah Höch (Lavin, Maud) 96 Dada 4, 31, 86, 98–9 Brugman, Til 98–9, 103, 104 celluloid 103–4 “First Great Dada Fair, The” 119 Friedländer, Salomo 105 Hausmann, Raoul 104–5 photography 103–4 Schwitters, Kurt 16 Dada-Puppen (Dada-Dolls) (Höch, Hannah) 243 DADA 10 doll 103, 104f Dance Around the Golden Calf (Der Tanz um das goldene Kalb) (Schulz, Wilhelm)75f–6 Dandanah—The Fairy Palace (Taut, Bruno) 167–8f, 185–6, 187 Däubler, Theodor; Schickele, René; Edschmid, Kasimir Puppenbuch, Das (The Doll Book) 236, 243, 244 De Stijl movement 198, 199 Dell’Antonio, Cirillo 232 design 187, 190–5 Dessau 191 Deutsche Bank 1923 (Valentin, Karl) 81 Deutsche Faserstoff Ausstellung (German Fibers Exhibition) 67 Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration (German Art and Decoration) 235 Diagram of Forces (Moholy) 159f–60 diet 65, 112 direct carving 228, 232–3, 245–6 Dr. Rabe House (Rading, Adolf) 7, 197–201, 203 abstraction 208, 209 color 7, 198–9, 203, 209–10f, 212–20 as cube 111 Cubism 218 exterior 212 façade composition 211–12 fourth dimension 218–20

250

Index

interior 212–13 light 212–13 space 209, 211, 213, 215–16, 220 Doesburg, Theo van 205, 218–20 Döhrener Wollwäscherei und Kämmerei (Döhrener Wool Laundering and Combing) 14 dolls 102, 103, 104f, 231–2, 235–45 Dreck 83 Dreher, Eugen Vierte Dimension des Raumes, Die (The Fourth Dimension of Space) 205 Drehergewebe, Noppenstoff [Open-weave slubbed fabric] (Leischner, Margaret) 48f Dreiklang (Triad) (Belling, Rudolf) 229 Duchamp, Marcel 164, 207 Duett (Duet) (Pritzel, Lotte) 237f–8 Durth, Werner 200 economy, the 62, 71, 72–6, 119–20 hyperinflation 63, 81–2 inflation 62, 63, 72, 79 Einstein, Albert 144, 152–3, 204, 205 Eisengarn (iron thread) 4, 49–52 Elfpunkte-Engel (Eleven-Spot-Angel) (Wendt, Margarete) 230, 231f EMA Gruppe Papiergewebe-Ausstellung (Ersatzmittelausstellung Group Paper Textiles Exhibition) 67 emotion 202, 203 “Emperor’s New Clothes, The” (Andersen, Hans Christian) 194–5 Er und sein Milieu (He and His Milieu) (Höch, Hannah) 236 eroticism 238–40 Ersatz (substitute) 4, 20, 62–4, 66 see also Ersatz (substitute) products Gleichen-Rußwurm, Alexander von 61–2, 63–4 Ersatz (substitute) products 2, 4–5, 20 celluloid. See celluloid cloth/clothing. See cloth/clothing exhibitions 28–9f foods 64, 65 glass 176 Gleichen-Rußwurm, Alexander von 64 nettles 28 paper 71

paper cloth 26–8, 69 paper money. See paper money Schwitters, Kurt 16, 33–4 synthetic fibers. See synthetic fibers trade exhibitions 65–6 Ersatz Exibition: Paper Textiles Section (Biró, Mihály) 68f Ersatzkultur (culture of substitute materials) 16, 33 Ersatzmenschen (Substitute People) (Gleichen-Rußwurm, Alexander von) 33–4, 61, 64, 73–4, 77 Ersatzmittelausstellung (Ersatz materials exhibition), Vienna 65–6, 67 Ersatzstoffe (surrogate materials) 43 see also Ersatz (substitute) products Ersatzstoffe aus dem Pflanzenreich (Substitute Materials from the World of Plants) (Diels, L.) 20 Erzgebirge 234 Euclidean geometry 204 Even Anders: Vier (Brugman, Til) 95 Everard, Myriam 96 “ ‘Man lebt nur einmal in Patchamatac’: Die groteske Welt von Til Brugman, Lebensgefährtin von Hannah Höch” 95 Everard, Myriam and Bosch, Mineke “Til Brugman and Hannah Höch” 95 experience 170–1 “Experience and Poverty” (Benjamin, Walter) 170–1, 173 fabric sample of the wall-covering material for the auditorium of the Federal School of the German Trade Union (Albers, Anni) 58f–9 “Fall irrtümlicher Geschlechtsbestimmung (erreur de sexe), Ein” (“A Case of Mistaken Sexual Determination (error of sex)”) (Hirschfeld, Magnus) 106–7 “Fanal” (“Signal”) (Rading, Adolf) 200 “Farbe, Die” (Color) (Taut, Bruno) 201 Farbenfibel (Color Primer) (Ostwald, Wilhelm) 202 Farbenkugel (color sphere) 208

Index fashion 18, 23–5 paper 28 “Fata Morgana Machine” (Friedländer, Salomo) 105 Faust (Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von) 72 Feininger, Lyonel Cathedral of Socialism, The 189 femininity 226, 245–6 see also women Feuerstein, Marcia “Theatrical Doubles: The Affecting Presence of Oskar Schlemmer’s Wall Designs” 200–1 film 92, 93, 156, 237 “First Great Dada Fair, The” 119 First World War 64, 130–2 Benjamin, Walter 170–1 building 183 finance 62–3 Münzenberg, Willi 126 naval blockades 2, 17–18, 64 paper, uses of 69–70 propaganda 136 Fischer, Oskar “Wer regiert die Brse?” [Who Controls the Exchanges?] 119–20f five million mark Notgeld note (Hablik, Wenzel) 76–7f Flechtheim, Alfred 222 Querschnitt, Der (Cross-Section) 222 folk art 232–3, 234, 235 food shortages 64, 65 ration cards 71 food substitutes 64, 65 Forde, Kate “Celluloid Dreams” 91–2, 100 Form, Die 202 fourth dimension 144, 153–4, 164, 199, 204–8, 218–20 see also space-time Frank, Wilhelm 242 Freud, Sigmund 244 Friedländer, Salomo 105 “Fata Morgana Machine” 105 Füllen (Foal) (Sintenis, Renée) 224, 225f furniture 50–2 gender 245–6 German Communist Party (KPD) 129, 133–6

251

German Expressionist Sculpture (Barron, Stephanie) 232, 233 German Fibres Exhibition [Deutsche Faserstoff Ausstellung] (Jacoby-Roy, Martin) 29f Germany 90, 104 Communist Party 129, 133–6 Geschlechtskunde (“The Science of Gender”) (Hirschfeld, Magnus) 92–3, 108–9 Geschlechtsübergänge: Mischungen männlicher und weiblicher Geschlechtscharaktere (“Gender Transitions: Mixtures of Male and Female Sexual Characteristics”) (Hirschfeld, Magnus) 92–3, 106 Gestürzter (Fallen Man) (Lehmbruck, Wilhelm) 229 Giese, Karl 109, 110 Gießerei Noack 226–7 glass 6–7, 167–75, 193–6 architecture 7, 175, 177, 178–86, 187 Behne, Adolf 182–3 Bletter, Rosemarie Haag 175, 177, 185 colored 177–80, 187 design 187, 190–1 as Ersatz material 175–6 instability 176–7 in myths and fairytales 175–7, 178 Scheerbart, Paul 7, 172–5, 178–82 Schnapp, Jeffrey 175–6, 177 Taut, Bruno 7, 167–8f, 180–6, 187 Wagenfeld, Wilhelm. See Wagenfeld, Wilhelm Glass Architecture (Scheerbart, Paul) 172, 178–9, 180 Glass House (Taut, Bruno) 180–2, 183 “Glass Houses: Bruno Taut’s Glass Palace” (Scheerbart, Paul) 180 Gleichen-Rußwurm, Alexander von 33–4, 62, 63–4 Ersatzmenschen (Substitute People) 61–2, 64, 73–4, 77 Gleizes, Albert 206, 207 Glüber, Wolfgang 243 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von Faust 72 Zur Farbenlehre (The Theory of Color) 201–2, 203

252 “Golden Pot, The” (Hoffmann, E.T.A.) 176 Gothic cathedrals 177–8, 179, 181–2, 185, 189 Grassmann, Hermann 208 Gray Cloth with Ten Percent White: A Ladies Novel (Scheerbart, Paul) 178 Grete Reichardt Handweaving Studio 49 Gretsch, Hermann 193f Gris, Juan 207 Gropius, Walter 189, 191 Bauhaus 191, 192f color 198 Gross, Kenneth 244 Grosz, George 117–19 “Grotesque Bodies: Weimar-Era Medicine and the Photomontages of Hannah Höch” (Makela, Maria) 95 Gulbransson, Olaf “Sintflut, Die” (“The Deluge”) 77 Günther, Bertha 150 Hablik, Wenzel five million mark Notgeld note 76–7f one mark Notgeld note 76f Haeckel, Ernst 108 Haffner, Sebastian (Raimund Pretzel) 62 Hahne, Grete “Keine Arbeit—Kein Brot. Beitrag zum Internat. Frauentag” [“No Work, No Bread: An Article on the Occasion of International Women’s Day”] 138f hair 18 halftone printing 122–3, 129 “Hamburger Derbywoche, Die” [“The Hamburg Derby Week”] (Hamburger Illustrierte Zeitung, Die) 133, 134f Hamburger Illustrierte Zeitung, Die 133, 134f “Hamburger Derbywoche, Die” [“The Hamburg Derby Week”] 133, 134f Hannah Höch, Til Brugman. Lesbianism, and Weimar Sexual Subculture (Nero, Julie) 95–6 harmony 202 Hausmann, Raoul 18, 30, 99 science/technology 104–5 Heartfield, John 117–19, 136

Index Heckel, Erich 232 Heilger Dada hilf (Holy Dada, Help Me) (Binder, H.O.) 34, 35f Helmholtz, Hermann von 208 Hemelia en het Woord (“Hemelia and the Word”) (Brugman, Til) 94 Hermannsdorfer, Caroline 32 Hermsdorfer Celluloidwarenfabrik 103 DADA 10 doll 103, 104f Hesse, Hermann Steppenwolf 226 Heyne, Renate 156–7, 158, 160 Hight, Eleanor M. 147 Hildebrandt, Hans 245 Hindenburg, Paul von 130–1f, 135 Hinton, Charles Howard 204, 205 Hirschfeld, Georg 243–4 Hirschfeld, Magnus 86, 92, 98, 99, 106 “Fall irrtümlicher Geschlechtsbestimmung (erreur de sexe), Ein” (“A Case of Mistaken Sexual Determination (error of sex)”) 106–7 Geschlechtskunde (“The Science of Gender”) 92–3, 108–9 Geschlechtsübergänge: Mischungen männlicher und weiblicher Geschlechtscharaktere (“Gender Transitions: Mixtures of Male and Female Sexual Characteristics”) 92–3, 106, 109 photography 106–9 science 106–9, 110–11 “seltener Fall von Hermaphroditismus, Ein” (“A Rare case of Hermaphrodism”) 107 “third sex” 110–11f Hitler, Adolf 191–2, 194 Höch, Hannah (Anna Theresa Johannah Höch) 86–8, 95–7, 98–9, 236 Aus einem ethnographischen Museum (“From an ethnographic Museum”) 103–4 Bilderbuch (“book of images”) 96 Dada-Puppen (Dada-Dolls) 243 Er und sein Milieu (He and His Milieu) 236 Hoffmann, E.T.A. “Golden Pot, The” 176

Index

253

Hóllos, Ruth 47 ‘How Do I Save on Cloth?’ (”Wie spare ich Stoff ”) (Die Praktische Berlinerin) 24f Hyatt, Isaiah 90 Hyatt, John W. 90 hyperinflation 63, 81–2

Jucker, Carl Jakob and Wagenfeld, Wilhelm Table Lamp (Glass version MT 9 / ME 1) 188f, 189–90 Jugend-Internationale (Youth International) 126 Junger Esel (Young Donkey) (Sintenis, Renée) 222, 223f

IAH (Internationale Arbeiterhilfe [International Worker’s Relief]) 126–7, 129 ice 187 imaginary architects 186 Impekoven, Niddy 243 Alte und modern Puppen (Old and Modern Dolls) 243 Lotte Pritzel-Puppe 243 imports 2 inflation 62, 63, 72, 79 Institut für Pathologie (Institute for Pathology) 108 Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (“Institute of Sexual Science”) 86, 87, 88, 92, 93f Brugman, Til 97, 98 burning/looting of 101 ethnological artefacts 110 Giese, Karl 109, 110 Levy-Lenz, Ludwig 97 photography 107f–8, 109–10 Reitzenstein, Ferdinand Freiherr von 110 Zwischenstufenwand (“wall of intermediary stages”) 107f, 110 Internationale Arbeiterhilfe (International Worker’s Relief [IAH]) 126–7 “Interpretation of the Glass Dream: Expressionist Architecture and the Crystal Metaphor, The” (Bletter, Rosemarie Haag) 175, 177 Itten, Johannes 40, 44

Kaiserin von Neufundland, Die (The Empress of Newfoundland) (Wedekind, Frank) 243 Kandinsky, Wassily 202, 203, 214–15, 216 Über die Geistige in der Kunst: ins besondere in der Malerei (On the Spiritual in Art: Especially in Painting) 203 Kaulitz, Marion 241 Kaulitz dolls 241 “Keine Arbeit—Kein Brot. Beitrag zum Internat. Frauentag” [“No Work, No Bread: An Article on the Occasion of International Women’s Day”] (Hahne, Grete) 138f Keller, Arnold 79–80 Kessler, Harry Graf 1 Kestnerbuch, Das 36 Kiel, Hanna 227 Kirchner, Ernst Ludwig 232 Kirchner-Moldenhauer, Dorothea 229 Koch, Alexander 235 Kokoschka, Oskar 236 König Hirsch (King Stag) (Taeber-Arp, Sophie) 243 Korff, Kurt 132–3 KPD (German Communist Party) 129, 133–5 Krauss, Rosalind 246 “Kristallhaus, Das” (Taut, Bruno) 183–4f Kruse, Käthe 231–2, 240–1, 244 Kubus storage containers (Wagenfeld, Wilhelm) 168–9f, 187, 194–6 Kühn, Margarete “Grete” 8, 221, 230 see also Wendt & Kühn Kultur 16, 37 n. 69 Kunst (art) 63 künstlich (artificial) 63 Kunstseide 28, 33 Küppers, Paul Erich 34–7 Küppers, Sophie 36–7

Jacoby-Roy, Martin German Fibres Exhibition [Deutsche Faserstoff Ausstellung] 29f Jedermann sein eigner Fussball (Everyone His Own Football) 117–19 Jouffret, Esprit 204

254

Index

Lavin, Maud Cut with the Kitchen Knife: The Weimar Photomontages of Hannah Höch 96 Laxton, Susan 146, 157 Lazi, Adolf Azberg Porcelain, designed by Hermann Gretsch 193f leather 18, 80 Lederscheine (leather notes) 80 Lehmbruck, Wilhelm Gestürzter (Fallen Man) 229 Leischner, Margaret 47 Drehergewebe, Noppenstoff [Openweave slubbed fabric] 48f Lenin, Vladimir 126 Levy-Lenz, Ludwig 97 Liebermann, Max 31 Liebespaar (Lovers) (Moll, Marg) 229 light 143, 145–50, 153–9 colored glass 177–8 Lindig, Otto 189, 190f Taut, Bruno 182 “Light: A Medium of Plastic Expression” (Moholy) 147, 157 Light Display, Black White Gray (Ein Lichtspeil: Schwarz Weiss Grau) (Moholy) 155–6 light modulators 160, 162–3 Light Prop for an Electric Stage (Lichtrequisit einer Elektrischen Bühne) (Moholy) 6, 144, 153 Light Space Modulator (Moholy) 6, 144, 152–60, 161, 162 light tables 124f Lindener Samt (Lindener Velvet) 14 Lindig, Otto Temple of Light 189, 190f Lissitzky, El 149–50, 206 Lotte Pritzel-Puppe (Impekoven, Niddy) 243 Lubitsch, Ernst Puppe, Die (The Doll) 237 Ludendorff, Erich 131f magazine production 124f–9, 132–41 Mahnruf 137, 140–1 “No Work—No Bread” 137–8f

Makela, Maria 91–2, 95 “Grotesque Bodies: Weimar-Era Medicine and the Photomontages of Hannah Höch” 95 “Misogynist Machine: Women and Technology in Weimar Germany, The” 95 Photomontages of Hannah Höch, The 95 “ Man lebt nur einmal in Patchamatac’: Die groteske Welt von Til Brugman, Lebensgefährtin von Hannah Höch” (Everard, Myriam) 95 masculinity 226, 245–6 materials see also materials, shortages Ersatz (substitute) 2, 4–5 see also Ersatz (substitute) products experimentation 2 flexibility 33 imports 2, 20, 43 innovation 1, 2–3 scavenging 32 technological developments 5–6, 42, 59–60, 67 traditional 6–8 materials, shortages 2, 3–5, 16, 18–28, 32–4, 42, 43 see also Ersatz (substitute) cloth/clothing 42, 43 see also cloth/clothing scavenging 32 mathematics 204 May, Maria 192 Mechanische Weberei zu Linden (Mechanical Weaving Mills of Linden) 14 Meier-Graefe, Julius 226 Mendelsohn, Erich 205–6 Merz Picture Thirty-One (Schwitters, Kurt) 14–16, 32 Merz Picture 32A (The Cherry Picture) (Schwitters, Kurt) 12, 13f, 32 Merz pictures (Schwitters, Kurt) 4, 12, 16–17, 32–3, 34, 36–8 metal 17-18 Metzinger, Jean 206, 207 Meyer, Hannes 45–6 Michel, Wilhelm 238–40, 241–2 Miller Lane, Barbara 191

Index Minkowski, Hermann 204–5 “Misogynist Machine: Women and Technology in Weimar Germany, The” (Makela, Maria) 95 misuse value 81 Mitteilungen der Reichsbekleidungsstelle (The Notifications of the Imperial Clothing Authority) 21–2, 25 modeling 245–6 modernism 171–2, 193, 195 Moholy (Moholy-Nagy, László) 6, 44, 143–4 Berger, Otti 52 Diagram of Forces 159f–60 light 143, 145–50, 153–9 “Light: A Medium of Plastic Expression” 147, 157 Light Display, Black White Gray (Ein Lichtspeil: Schwarz Weiss Grau) 155–6 light modulators 160, 162–3 Light Prop for an Electric Stage (Lichtrequisit einer Elektrischen Bühne) 6, 144, 153 Light Space Modulator 6, 144, 152–60, 161, 162 motion 163–4 Negative Portrait 160 New Vision, The 153 Painting, Photography, Film (Malerei, Fotografie, Film) 145, 152, 158 photograms 145–52f, 155–8, 160, 164 photography 136, 143–5, 155–60, 162, 164 Plexiglass 160–1 [Plexiglas Mobile Structure in Repose and in Motion] 161, 162f, 163 projection 157 space modulators 160 space-time 152–60, 164 time 160–3 Untitled (1923–5) 150–1f Untitled (c. 1940) 151–2f Vision in Motion 150, 152–3, 163, 164 volume modulation 162 Von Material zur Architektur 52 Moll, Marg Liebespaar (Lovers) 229 Molzahn, Johannes 141

255

money 74 see also paper money coins 73 Lederscheine (leather notes) 80 Stiefelsohlengeld (shoe sole money) 80 Stoffgeld (material money) 80 motion 163–4 Muche, Georg 40 Münter, Gabriele Puppe, Katze und Kind [Doll, Cat and Child] 236 Münzenberg, Willi 126–7, 129, 133–5, 136 Museum für sächsische Volskunst (Museum for Saxon Folk Art) 234 Muth-Klotzsche, Erna 241 Mz. 180 Figurine (Schwitters, Kurt) 26–8, 31 nation-states 90–1 naval blockades 2, 17–18, 64 Nazism 191–3, 195–6 Negative Portrait (Moholy) 160 Nero, Julie 96 Hannah Höch, Til Brugman. Lesbianism, and Weimar Sexual Subculture 95–6 nettles 28 Neusüss, Floris 156, 157, 158, 160 New German Press 129, 130 New Vision, The (Moholy) 153 Niépce, Joseph Nicéphore 121–2 nitrocellulose 89 n. 9, 92 non-Euclidean geometry 204 Notgeld (emergency money) 5, 71, 73, 76, 79 collecting 79–80 Hablik, Wenzel 76f–7f Lederscheine (leather notes) 80 quantity produced 79 Sammlerscheine 79–80 Stiefelsohlengeld (shoe sole money) 80 Stoffgeld (material money) 80 Nowak-Richowski, Edith 203, 220 Offner, Alfred Substitute Materials Exhibition [Ersatzmittel-Ausstellung] 21f oil 18 “On 60 Fotos by Moholy-Nagy” (Roh, Franz) 145

256 one mark Notgeld note (Hablik, Wenzel) 76f “One million mark notes used as receipts (Rechnungsblock)” (Pahl, Georg) 81 Ostwald, Wilhelm 202 Farbenfibel (Color Primer) 202 Pahl, Georg “One million mark notes used as receipts (Rechnungsblock)” 81 “Wallpapering a wall with one mark notes which today are much cheaper than wallpaper” 81 painting 207 Painting, Photography, Film (Malerei, Fotografie, Film) (Moholy) 145, 152, 158 paper 4–5, 63, 193 see also paper money cloth 26–8, 69 dolls 241 manufacture 67 ration cards 71 trade exhibitions 67, 69 uses 69–71 wartime uses 69–71, 72 “Paper as Protection from Cold and as Ersatz material” exhibition 70 “Paper as Textiles” (Papier als Spinnstoff) (Collin, Ernst) 69 paper cloth 26–8, 69 paper money 63, 71–7, 80–1 see also Notgeld burning 82 designs 76f–7f Dreck 83 Gleichen-Rußwurm, Alexander von 73–4 Hablik, Wenel 76f–7f inundation metaphors 76–8f as political propaganda 82–3f quantity produced 79, 82 repurposing 80–1 Simmel, Georg 74 Paper Money! Paper Money! Bread! Bread! (Papiergeld! Papiergeld! Brot! Brot!) (Arnold, Karl) 77–8f Papier Zeitung (Paper Newspaper) 69–70 Parkes, Alexander 89

Index Parkesine 89 Pasteur, Louis 108 Payen, Anselme 89 Pencil of Nature (Talbot, William Henry Fox) 122 Philosophie des Geldes (Philosophy of Money) (Simmel, Georg) 74 Philosophy of Art (Schelling, Friedrich von) 187 photocollage 31 photograms 145–52f, 155–8, 160 photography 5–6, 92, 93, 99, 103–4, 146 see also visual illustration A-I-Z 130–2, 133, 136–7 German communism 133–6 halftone printing 122–3, 129 Hirschfeld, Magnus 106–9 Höch, Hannah 103–4 Institut für Sexualwissenschaft 107f–8, 109–10 Jedermann sein eigner Fussball 117–19 Korff, Kurt 132–3 Moholy 136, 143–5, 155–60, 162, 164 Molzahn, Johannes 141 Niépce, Joseph Nicéphore 121–2 photograms 145–52f photogravure 122, 123–5 as propaganda 136 Ray, Man 147, 148f, 149 Rodchenko, Alexandre 136 rotogravure 5–6, 121–3, 130, 137, 139–41 Schad, Christian 147, 149 science 103, 106–8 Talbot, William Henry Fox 122, 146, 149 technology 121 photogravure 122, 123 photomontage 17–19, 136, 137 Photomontages of Hannah Höch, The (Makela, Maria) 95 Picasso, Pablo 206, 207 Pick, Leopold vierte Dimension, Die (The Fourth Dimension) 205 Pietzsch, Sibyl 143, 144, 163 Pinner, Erna 241 plastic 102–3

Index plastic dolls 102, 103, 104f Plexiglass 160–1 [Plexiglas Mobile Structure in Repose and in Motion] (Moholy) 161, 162f, 163 popular culture 129 porcelain 193, 229, 242 Pößneck 80 Praktische Berlinerin, Die (The Practical Berlin Woman) 23 ‘How Do I Save on Cloth?’ (”Wie spare ich Stoff ”) 23, 24f precious stones 175–6, 178 print technology 119, 121–5, 129, 130, 139–41 printmaking 31 Pritzel, Lotte 8, 221, 235–45 Chichette 239f Duett (Duet) 237f–8 Pritzel-Puppe, Die (Kayser, Ulrich) 243 Puppen für Vitrine (Dolls for the Showcase) 238 Standing Woman 238 Tänzer ([Male] Dancer) 238 Pritzel-Puppe, Die (The Pritzel Doll) (Kayser, Ulrich) 243 Pritzel-Puppen (Pritzel-dolls) 236 Pritzelpuppe, Dei (Berber, Anita) 243 Pritzelpuppen (Berber, Anita) 243 Procarnol 65 projection 157 publishing 124–5 Puppe, Die (The Doll) (Lubitsch, Ernst) 237 Puppe, Katze und Kind [Doll, Cat and Child] (Münter, Gabriele) 236 Puppen für die Vitrine (dolls for the showcase) 241 Puppen für Vitrine (Dolls for the Showcase) (Pritzel, Lotte) 238 Puppen und Figuren exhibition 241 Puppenbuch, Das (The Doll Book) (Schickele, René; Edschmid, Kasimir; Däubler, Theodor; Mierendorff, Carlo) 236, 244 Querschnitt, Der (Cross-Section) (Flechtheim, Alfred) 222

257

Rading, Adolf 7, 199–200, 205, 206 color 198–9, 203 Dr. Rabe House 7, 197–201, 203, 208, 209–20 “Fanal” (“Signal”) 200 Weissenhofsiedlung, Stuttgart 200 Ranfft, Erich 233 ration cards 71 Ray, Man (Emmanuel Radnitzky) 147, 149–50 Champs délicieux, Les 149 [Untitled Rayograph] from Les Champs délicieux 148f rayon 28, 33, 43 see also artificial silk redemptive reification 80–1 reform dolls 241 Reichardt, Margaretha 41f, 46, 48–52, 56–7 Reichsbekleidungsstelle (Imperial Clothing Authority) 21, 43 Reichsbank, the 72–3 Reichsmark, the 71, 72–3 Reitzenstein, Ferdinand Freiherr von 110 Rentenmark, the 82 representation 86, 88, 92–3, 103, 105, 112–13 Benjamin, Walter 112 reality 136 reproduction 119, 121 Richardson, John Adkins 207 Rilke, Rainer Maria 236, 243, 244–5 Robinson, Julie 91 Rodchenko, Alexandre 136 Roh, Franz “On 60 Fotos by Moholy-Nagy” 145 rotogravure 5–6, 121–5, 130, 137, 139–41 rubber 18 “Ruf zum farbigen Bauen” (Call to Colored Architecture) (Taut, Bruno) 201, 203 Rundschau über Spielwaren (Toy Review) 241 Runge, Philipp Otto 208 Russia 126–8, 130 Sächsischer Verein für Volkskunde und Volkskunst (Saxon Society of Ethnography and Folk Art) 234 Sammlerscheine (collector’s notes) 79–80 scale 224–6, 229

258 scavenging 32 Schad, Christian 147, 149 Schaffende Hände (Creative Hands) (Cürlis, Hans) 228 Schaumann, Ruth 229 Scheerbart, Paul 7, 172–5, 178–82 Glass Architecture 172, 178–9, 180 “Glass Houses: Bruno Taut’s Glass Palace” 180 Gray Cloth with Ten Percent White: A Ladies Novel 178 Scheffler, Karl 222, 226, 229 Scheibe, Harry 207 Schein (appearance) 61, 64, 74 Scheingehacktes (“Appearance of Minced Meat”) (Brugman, Til) 94 Schelling, Friedrich von 186–7 Philosophy of Art 187 Schickele, René; Edschmid, Kasimir; Däubler, Theodor Puppenbuch, Das (The Doll Book) 236 Schiller, Frederick von 62 Schlemmer, Oskar 197–8, 200, 213, 214f, 218 Schmidt-Rotluff, Karl 232, 233 Schnapp, Jeffrey 175–6, 177 Schulz, Holger 197 Schulz, Wilhelm Dance Around the Golden Calf (Der Tanz um das goldene Kalb) 75f–6 Schwartz, Frederic 190–1 Schwitters, Henriette 12 Schwitters, Kurt 3–4, 11–14, 31–8 critical reception 34–8 Dada 16 Küppers, Paul Erich 34–7 Küppers, Sophie 36–7 Merz Picture Thirty-One 14–16, 32 Merz Picture 32A (The Cherry Picture) 12, 13f, 32 Merz pictures 4, 12, 16–17, 32–3, 34, 36–8 Mz. 180 Figurine 26–8, 31 science 92, 98, 99, 100, 111–12 Benjamin, Walter 112 color 202 Einstein, Albert 144, 152–3, 204, 205 fourth dimension 204 Friedländer, Salomo 105

Index Hausmann, Raoul 104–5 Hirschfeld, Magnus 106–9 Moholy 144 photography 103, 106–8, 110 sex/sexuality 107–8, 110 visual illustration 112–13 sculpture 232–3, 242–6 see also Sintenis, Renée Sebastian (writer) 242 Seiffen 234 Seiffert, Alwin 234 “seltener Fall von Hermaphroditismus, Ein” (“A Rare case of Hermaphrodism”) (Hirschfeld, Magnus) 107 sex development 106, 107, 109, 110–11f sexuality 88, 92, 96–8, 99–102 see also Institut für Sexualwissenschaft dolls 238–40 fetishes 107f Hirschfeld, Magnus 106–7 science 107–8 “Urnings” 109 Seyffert, Osakr 234 “SHE HE” (Brugman, Til) 94f shoes 18, 23 n. 30, 28 Sichel und Hammer (Sickle and Hammer) 130 Siemsen, Hans 224, 228–9 silk 20 see also artificial silk Simmel, Georg Philosophie des Geldes (Philosophy of Money) 74 Sintenis, Renée 8, 221, 222–9, 244 Füllen (Foal) 224, 225f Junger Esel (Young Donkey) 222, 223f Tänzerinnen (Dancers) 228 “Sintflut, Die” (“The Deluge”) (Gulbransson, Olaf) 77 Six-tiered Angel Mountain with Madonna and Grünhainich Angels (6-stufiger Engelberg mit Madonna und Grünhainicher Engeln) (Wendt & Kühn) 231f snow 187 “Snow Queen, The” (Andersen, Hans Christian) 177 society 62

Index soldiers 88, 90–1, 105 Sowjet-Russland im Bild (Soviet Russia in Pictures) 126–8f, 130 space 208–9, 211, 213, 215–16, 220 see also space-time space modulators 160 space-time 144, 152–60, 164, 204–5 see also fourth dimension Spartacist uprising 70–1 Spielwarenmuseum (toy museum), Seiffen 234 Spiritual History of Ice (Wilson, Eric G.) 186 Springer, Anton 233 Standing Woman (Pritzel, Lotte) 238 State Association for Saxon Homeland Preservation 234 Steiner, Rudolf 205 Steppenwolf (Hesse, Hermann) 226 Stoffgeld (material money) 80 Stölzl, Gunta 40, 41f, 46, 47 Strukturstoffe (structural fabrics) 47 Substitute Materials Exhibition [Ersatzmittel-Ausstellung] (Offner, Alfred) 21f Swan, Joseph 42 synthetic fibers 42–4, 45, 59–60 Albers, Anni 41f, 56–9 artificial horsehair 52–6 artificial silk 34, 42–4, 47 see also rayon Berger, Otti 41f, 46, 47, 52–6 cellophane 56–9 Eisengarn (iron thread) 4, 49–52 rayon 28, 33, 43 Reichardt, Margaretha 41f, 46, 48–52, 56–7 Table Lamp (Glass version MT 9 / ME 1) (Wagenfeld, Wilhelm and Jucker, Carl Jakob) 188f, 189–90 Taeber-Arp, Sophie König Hirsch (King Stag) 243 Talbot, William Henry Fox 122, 146, 149 Pencil of Nature 122 Tänzer ([Male] Dancer) (Pritzel, Lotte) 238 Tänzerinnen (Dancers) (Sintenis, Renée) 228

259

Taut, Bruno 7, 180–5, 187, 203 Alpine Architecture 183–5, 187 color 199, 201, 202 Dandanah—The Fairy Palace 167–8f, 185–6, 187 “Farbe, Die” (Color) 201 “Kristallhaus, Das” 183–4f “Ruf zum farbigen Bauen” (Call to Colored Architecture) 201, 203 “Wiederum die Farbe (Again Color) 201 Glass House 180–2, 183 Technik (technology; technique) 112, 113 technology 5–6 see also science print 119, 121–5, 129, 130, 139–41 Temple of Light (Lindig, Otto) 189, 190f textiles 12, 43 see also cloth/clothing and weaving Bauhaus 46–7 functional 46 paper 69 used 26 “Theatrical Doubles: The Affecting Presence of Oskar Schlemmer’s Wall Designs” (Feuerstein, Marcia) 200–1 “third sex” 110–11f “13 Jahre Hindenburg” (13 Years of Hindenburg) (A-I-Z) 130–2 “Til Brugman and Hannah Höch” (Bosch, Mineke and Everard, Myriam) 95 Til Brugman: Das vertippte Zebra, Lyrik und Prosa (“Til Brugman: The Striped Zebra, Poetry and Prose”) (Brugman, Til; ed. Brandt, Marion) 95 Til Brugman 5 Klankgedichte (“5 Sound Poems”) (Brugman, Til) 95 time 160–3 touch 224, 228 toys 225–6, 234 see also dolls trade exhibitions 65–6, 67, 69 transparency 169–70, 171, 191–2, 194 see also glass tubular steel furniture 50–1f Tzara, Tristan 149–50

260 Über die Geistige in der Kunst: ins besondere in der Malerei (On the Spiritual in Art: Especially in Painting) (Kandinsky, Wassily) 203 Ulrich, Karl Heinrich 109 uncanny, the 244–5 Untitled (1923–5) (Moholy) 150–1f Untitled (c. 1940) (Moholy) 151–2f [Untitled Rayograph] from Les Champs délicieux (Ray, Man) 148f upholstery artificial horsehair 52, 53–6 Eisengarn (iron thread) 4, 49–52 Urkunde über die Erteilung des Patents 594 075: Möbelstoff—Doppelgewebe (Certificate of issuance of patent 594 075: upholstery fabric— double-weave) (Berger, Otti) 54f “Urnings” 109 Valentin, Karl 81 Deutsche Bank 1923 81 Valentiner, Wilhelm 232 Verbeten, Sharon Korbek 91 verkehrte Welt (topsy-turvy world) 62 Vienna Ersatzmittelausstellung (Ersatz materials exhibition) 65–6, 67 vierte Dimension, Die (The Fourth Dimension) (Pick, Leopold) 205 Vierte Dimension des Raumes, Die (The Fourth Dimension of Space) (Dreher, Eugen) 205 vierte Dimension: Skizze einer Theorie, Die (The Fourth Dimension: Sketch of an Idea) (Zerbst, Max) 205 Virchow, Rudolf 108 Vision in Motion (Moholy) 150, 152–3, 163, 164 vision 208 visual illustration 112 vitrinen (showcases) 241 Voigt, Wilhelm 35–6 Volkswagon 194 volume modulation 162 Von Material zur Architektur (Moholy) 52 Vu 139–40

Index Wagenfeld, Wilhelm 7, 168, 170, 174, 175, 177, 186, 187 Kubus storage containers 168–9f, 187, 194–6 Nazi support 192 Wagenfeld, Wilhelm and Jucker, Carl Jakob Table Lamp (Glass version MT 9 / ME 1) 188f, 189–90 Wagner, Monika 232 “Wahrenhaus der Liebe” (“Department Store of Love”) (Brugman, Til) 5, 88, 90, 93–4, 98–102, 111–13 Walden, Herwath 207 wallcoverings 57, 192 “Wallpapering a wall with one mark notes which today are much cheaper than wallpaper” (Pahl, Georg) 81 wax 8, 227–8, 242–4, 245 wealth 62 weaving 39–42, 45–8f Albers, Anni 41f, 56–9 Berger, Otti 41f, 46, 47, 52–6 Reichardt, Margaretha 41f, 46, 48–52, 56–7 Wedekind, Frank Kaiserin von Neufundland, Die (The Empress of Newfoundland) 243 Weissenhofsiedlung, Stuttgart 200 Wendt, Margarete “Grete” 8, 221, 230 see also Wendt & Kühn Beerensammler (Berry Gatherers) 230 Elfpunkte-Engel (Eleven-Spot-Angel) 230, 231f Wendt & Kühn 8, 221, 229–35 Six-tiered Angel Mountain with Madonna and Grünhainich Angels (6-stufiger Engelberg mit Madonna und Grünhainicher Engeln) 231f “Wer regiert die Brse?” [Who Controls the Exchanges?] (Fischer, Oskar) 119–20f “Wettrüsten zu einem neuen Weltkrieg, Das” (The Arms Race to Another World War) (A-I-Z) 132 “Wie eine Zeitung entsteht [“How a Magazine is Made”] (A-I-Z) 124f

Index “Wiederum die Farbe (Again Color) (Taut, Bruno) 201 Wiertz, Jupp Collect Combed-out Women’s Hair! Our Industry Needs it for Drive Belts [Sammelt ausgekämmtes Frauenhaar! Unsere Indsutrie braucht es für Treibriemen] 19f Wilson, Eric G. Spiritual History of Ice 186 women 39–40, 245–6 see also femininity wood 8, 232–5 World War One. See First World War

261

Zelluloidkinder (celluloid children) 88, 102, 111, 113 Zerbst, Max vierte Dimension: Skizze einer Theorie, Die (The Fourth Dimension: Sketch of an Idea) 205 Zur Farbenlehre (The Theory of Color) (Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von) 201–2, 203 Zwenkau 197 Zwischenstufen (intermediary stages of sex development) 106, 107, 109, 110

262

263

264

265

266

267

268

Plate 1 Kurt Schwitters, Merz Picture 32A (The Cherry Picture) [Merzbild 32A. Das Kirschbild], 1921. Collage of cloth, wood, metal, gouache, oil, cut-and-pasted papers, and ink on cardboard, 91.8 × 70.5 cm. New York: Museum of Modern Art. ©2020 ARS, NY/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Photo: MoMA/Scala Art Resource, NY.

Plate 2 Kurt Schwitters, Merz Picture Thirty-One [Merzbild Einunddreissig], 1920. Assemblage of oil, paper, wood, metal, textile, cotton, on carton, mounted on wooden frame, 98 × 66 cm. Hannover: Sprengel Museum (D12). ©2020 ARS, NY/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Photo: bpk Bildagentur/Sprengel Museum/Michael Herling/Aline Gwose/Art Resource, NY.

Plate 3 Mihály Biró, Ersatz Exibition: Paper Textiles Section (Ersatzmittelausstellung Gruppe-Papiergewebe), 1918, lithograph, 127x96.5 cm, Poster AU 253, Poster collection, Hoover Institution Archives, http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/ objects/10001.

Plate 4 Wilhelm Schulz, Dance Around the Golden Calf (Der Tanz um das goldene Kalb), published in Simplicissimus, vol. 24, no. 36 (3 December 1919). Hoover Institution Library & Archives.

Plate 5 Bruno Taut, Dandanah, the fairy palace: building blocks of solid glass, children’s block set with instruction cards, 1919–20. Pressed glass and printed cardstock. German Luxfer-Prism Syndicate. Canadian Centre for Architecture, Gift of Phyllis Lambert.

Plate 6 Bruno Taut, “Das Kristallhaus,” plate 3 from the publication Alpine Architektur, 1918. Watercolor and ink on paper. Akademie der Künste Berlin, Alpine Architektur from the Bruno-Taut-Archive No. 5.

Plate 7 View of the upstairs corridor and the Oskar Schlemmer frescoes. The way that Rading chose to complement Schlemmer’s color choice is apparent in the ceiling painting. © Jörg Glaescher at laif.

Plate 8 The coordination of color in the house is obvious in this photograph of the master bedroom showing the bed situated on a white rectangle, oozing red, white and grey on the ceiling, and red and white details on the windows and radiators. © Jörg Glaescher at laif.