Sites of Interchange: Modernism, Politics and Culture Between Britain and Germany, 1919-1955 1789973910, 9781789973914

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Sites of Interchange

GERMAN VISUAL CULTURE VOLUME EIGHT

s e r i e s e d i to r

Dr Christian Weikop Senior Lecturer Edinburgh College of Art University of Edinburgh

PETER LANG Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • New York • Wien

SITES OF INTERCHANGE MODERNISM, POLITICS AND CULTURE BETWEEN BRITAIN AND GERMANY, 1919–1955

EDITOR LUCY WASENSTEINER

PETER LANG

Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • New York • Wien

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Wasensteiner, Lucy, editor. Title: Sites of interchange : modernism, politics and culture between Britain and Germany, 1919-1955 / Lucy Wasensteiner. Description: Oxford ; New York : Peter Lang, [2022] | Series: German visual culture ; vol 8 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020054256 (print) | LCCN 2020054257 (ebook) | ISBN 9781789973914 (hardback) | ISBN 9781789973921 (ebook) | ISBN 9781789973938 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Modernism (Art)--Great Britain. | Modernism (Art)--Germany. | Art and society--Great Britain--History--20th century. | Art and society--Germany--History--20th century. | Great Britain--Relations--Germany. | Germany--Relations--Great Britain. Classification: LCC N6768.5.M63 S58 2022 (print) | LCC N6768.5.M63 (ebook) | DDC 709.04--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020054256 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020054257

Cover image: Photograph of a cricket game at Eton College, June 1936, with the description: ‘Fourth of June: Reunion on Agar’s Plough. Cricket may be in progress, but even the people in chairs are only pretending to watching it’. Photo: László Moholy-Nagy, first published in Bernard Fergusson, Eton Portrait (London: John Miles, 1937). Courtesy of Moholy-Nagy Foundation. Series cover design by Brent Meyers. Cover design by Peter Lang Ltd. issn 2296-0805 isbn 978-1-78997-391-4 (print) isbn 978-1-78997-392-1 (ePDF) isbn 978-1-78997-393-8 (ePub) © Peter Lang Group AG 2022 Published by Peter Lang Ltd, International Academic Publishers, 52 St Giles, Oxford, OX1 3LU, United Kingdom [email protected], www.peterlang.com Lucy Wasensteiner has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editor of this Work. All rights reserved. All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. This publication has been peer reviewed.

Contents

List of Figures Acknowledgements

ix xxi

Lucy Wasensteiner

Introduction

1

Artemis Yagou

1 Play, Design, Politics: Technical Toys, Design Policies and British-​German Exchanges in the First Half of the Twentieth Century

9

Ulrike Meyer Stump

2 Dorothy Warren and ‘The Smartest Private Art-​Gallery Place in London’: Promoting Exchange with Berlin, 1927–​1934

31

Lee Beard

3 Exhibiting Contemporary British Art: The Anglo-​German Club, 1931–​1934

51

Valeria Carullo

4 ‘New Eyes for Old’: How the Neues Sehen and the Neue Sachlichkeit Transformed the Photography of Architecture in Britain in the Early 1930s

73

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Contents

Leah Hsiao

5 The Dislocation of Amateurism: Moholy-​Nagy in England, 1935–​1937

91

Michelle Henning

6 Lucia Moholy and German Photography History in Britain

113

Antonia Behan

7 Interchanged Threads: Modernism and History in Ethel Mairet, Nikolaus Pevsner and the Bauhaus Weavers

135

Karen Koehler

8 Walter Gropius and Herbert Read: Architecture, Industry, Transitions and Translations

155

Burcu Dogramaci

9 Metropolitan Exile: London, Refugee Artists and Places of Contact in the 1930s and 1940s

177

Volker M. Welter

10 Berlin in London, Hiddensee in Walberswick: On Ernst L. Freud’s Exile Architecture in England

195

Ina Weinrautner

11 9, Carlton House Terrace: The German Embassy in London as Showcase for Nazi Ideology

215

Dirk Schubert

12 Planning the Modern City: The Neighbourhood Unit Idea in London and Hamburg before and after the Second World War

241

Contents

vii

Shulamith Behr

13 Reframing Exilic Identity for a German Audience: Joseph Paul Hodin’s Encounter with Else and Ludwig Meidner and Its Aftermath

263

Keith Holz

14 Witness to Global Realignments and Human Suffering: Oskar Kokoschka in Post-​War London

283

Notes on Contributors

303

Index307

Figures

Figure 1.1.

Cover of promotional leaflet entitled The Joy the Child Likes Best (London: Dr Richter’s Publishing Office, 1895), John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera, Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford. Photo: author’s own.

Figure 1.2. Illustration (detail) included in Anker instruction manual, possibly 1930s, Collection of the Deutsches Museum, Munich. Photo: author’s own. Figure 1.3.

Illustration (detail) on the packaging of Kliptiko construction set, early twentieth century, Collection of the Pollock’s Toy Museum, London. Photo: author’s own.

Figure 1.4. Illustration included in Märklin instruction manual, 1930s, Collection of the Deutsches Museum, Munich. Photo: author’s own. Figure 1.5.

Cover of Meccano Magazine, Vol. XXV, No. 5, May 1940. Photo: author’s own.

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18

19

20 21

Figure 1.6. Lott’s Bricks, Box Three, Series ‘B’, 1920s, Collection of the V&A Museum of Childhood, London. Photo: author’s own.

22

Figure 2.1. Georg Kolbe, Portrait of Dorothy Warren (1926). Georg Kolbe Museum, Berlin. Photo: Markus Hilbich.

32

Figure 2.2. The Warren Gallery, London. Gallery One, the ‘Velvet Room’, during the exhibition of D. H. Lawrence’s paintings, July 1929, with photographic portraits of D. H. Lawrence on either side of the

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fireplace. On the mantelpiece are Henry Moore’s Head of a Girl (1923) and Bird (1927). From Edward Nehls, ed., D. H. Lawrence: A Composite Biography (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1959), n.p. (between pp. 368 and 369). © 1959 by the Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. Reprinted by courtesy of The University of Wisconsin Press.

36

Figure 2.3. ‘A German Photographer Looks at London’, The Tatler, 19 December 1928, 581. © The British Library Board (ZC.9.d.561).

37

Figure 2.4. Invitation to the Georg Kolbe exhibition at the Warren Gallery, June 1928, back and front side (pages 4 and 1) of a folded leaflet. Georg Kolbe Museum Archive, Berlin, Georg Kolbe Estate, GK 421.

38

Figure 2.5. Invitation to the Georg Kolbe exhibition at the Warren Gallery, June 1928, inside pages (pages 2 and 3) of a folded leaflet. Georg Kolbe Museum Archive, Berlin, Georg Kolbe Estate, GK 421.

43

Figure 2.6. Henry Moore, Mother and Child (1928, LH 51), Styrian Jade, 4 in., formerly coll. Mrs Philip Trotter (Dorothy Warren), whereabouts unknown. Reproduced in Herbert Read, Henry Moore (London: Lund, Humphries and A. Zwemmer, 1949), pl. 10a. Reproduced by permission of the Henry Moore Foundation.

48

Figure 3.1. The Anglo-​German Club, 6 Carlton Gardens, London. Photo: © Tate.

53

Figure 3.2. Hildebrand Gurlitt (right) with Leopold von Hoesch, 1932. Photo: © Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-​13864. 56 Figure 3.3. Ben Nicholson’s studio, No. 7 The Mall, London. Photo: © Tate.

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Figure 3.4. Barbara Hepworth, Figure of a Woman, 1929–​1930. Exhibited in Neue Englische Kunst, Hamburg Kunstverein, June–​July 1932 (34, as Frau). Photo: E. J. Mason /​Barbara Hepworth © Bowness, © Tate.

61

Figure 3.5.

Henry Moore, Ideas for Sculpture: Mother and Child and Reclining Figures, c. 1929. Collage, graphite, watercolour, coloured ink on paper. 32 × 33.8 cm. Kunstmuseum Bern, Cornelius Gurlitt Bequest. Photo: courtesy Kunstmuseum Bern. Reproduced by permission of the Henry Moore Foundation.

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Figure 3.6. Cedric Morris with Arthur Lett-​Haines (right) and Rubio the parrot. Photo: © Tate /​Estate of Arthur Lett-​Haines.

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Figure 4.1. Restaurant ‘Die Bastei’, Cologne, c. 1927. Architect Wilhelm Riphahn. Photo: Werner Mantz, published in T. P. Bennet, Architectural Design in Concrete (London: Benn, 1927), plate IV.

80

Figure 4.2. Philip Morton Shand, ‘New Eyes for Old’, The Architectural Review 75 (1934), 11–​13, 11 with photograph by Lázló Moholy-​Nagy.

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Figure 4.3. Studio for Augustus John, Fryern Court, Fordingbridge, Hampsire, 1934. Architect Christopher Nicholson. Photo: Dell & Wainwright. Architectural Press Archive /​RIBA Collections.

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Figure 4.4. Embassy Court, Brighton, 1935. Architect: Wells Coates. Photo: Dell & Wainwright, Architectural Press Archive /​RIBA Collections.

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Figure 4.5. Pioneer Health Centre, St Mary’s Road, Peckham, London, 1935. Architect: Owen Williams. Photo: Dell & Wainwright. Architectural Press Archive /​RIBA Collections.

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Figure 4.6. The penguin pool at London Zoo, Regent’s Park, 1934. Architects: Lubetkin, Drake and Tecton. Photo: John Havinden. RIBA Collections.

87

Figure 4.7. The Isokon Flats, Lawn Road, Hampsted, London, 1934. Architect Wells Coates. Photo: John Havinden, RIBA Collections.

88

Figure 5.1. Photograph of a cricket game at Eton College, June 1936, with the description: ‘Fourth of June: Reunion on Agar’s Plough. Cricket may be in progress, but even the people in chairs are only pretending to watch it.’ Photo: László Moholy-​Nagy, first published in Bernard Fergusson, Eton Portrait (London: John Miles, 1937). Courtesy of Moholy-​Nagy Foundation.

98

Figure 5.2. Moholy’s cover design for Imperial Airways Gazette, Vol. 8, No. 4, April 1936. László Moholy-​Nagy. Courtesy of British Airways Heritage Collection.

101

Figure 5.3. The Oxford Encaenia procession, 1936. Photo: László Moholy-​Nagy, first published in John Betjeman, An Oxford University Chest (London: John Miles, 1938). Courtesy of Moholy-​Nagy Foundation and Oxford University Press.

105

Figure 5.4. View of Christ Church College Oxford, with the silhouette of the Tom Tower projected onto the buildings, 1936. Photo: László Moholy-​Nagy, first published in John Betjeman, An Oxford University Chest (London: John Miles, 1938). Courtesy of Moholy-​Nagy Foundation and Oxford University Press.

107

Figure 5.5. Negative photograph of the iron gate of Trinity College Oxford, 1936, with the description: ‘ “No undergraduate may be out after midnight without special leave.” A way of rendering the gates of Trinity

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College impregnable to those who would scale them.’ Photo: László Moholy-​Nagy, first published in John Betjeman, An Oxford University Chest (London: John Miles, 1938). Courtesy of Moholy-​Nagy Foundation and Oxford University Press. 108 Figure 6.1. Lucia Moholy, House of Walter Gropius Seen from the West, 1926. Photo: Bauhaus-​Archiv Berlin © DACS 2017.

116

Figure 6.2. Lucia Moholy and László Moholy-​Nagy, Double Portrait Photogram, 1923. Photo: Bauhaus-​Archiv Berlin.

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Figure 6.3. Lucia Moholy, Margaret Emma Alice (‘Margot’) Asquith (née Tennant), Countess of Oxford and Asquith 1935. Photo: National Portrait Gallery, NPG P128 © DACS 2013.

131

Figure 7.1. Ethel Mairet (1872–​1952), 1938. Photo: Dora Head. Ethel Mairet Papers, Crafts Study Centre. Image kindly provided by the Crafts Study Centre, University for the Creative Arts.

138

Figure 7.2. Maria Holstein, Helene Sinks, Ethel Mairet, Dora Schiemann and Grete Hinze in Germany, 1938. Photo: possibly Marianne Straub. Ethel Mairet Papers, Crafts Study Centre. Image kindly provided by the Crafts Study Centre, University for the Creative Arts.

144

Figure 7.3. Ethel Mairet weaving, c. 1930s. Photo: N. Wymer. Ethel Mairet Papers, Crafts Study Centre. Image kindly provided by the Crafts Study Centre, University for the Creative Arts.

145

Figure 8.1. Herbert Read, Naked Warriors (London: Arts & Letters, 1919) Cover design, Wyndam Lewis.

158

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Figure 8.2. Ernst Friedegg and Ernst Drahn, eds, Deutscher Revolutions Almanach für das Jahr 1919: über die Ereignisse des Jahres 1918 (Hamburg: Hoffmann & Campe, 1919). Cover design Ernst Drahn.

160

Figure 8.3. Walter Gropius, New Architecture and the Bauhaus (London: Faber and Faber, 1935).

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Figure 8.4. Walter Gropius, New Architecture and the Bauhaus (London: Faber and Faber, 1935). Book jacket design, Lázló Moholy-​Nagy.

166

Figure 8.5. Herbert Read, Art and Industry (London: Faber and Faber, 1934). Cover design Herbert Bayer.

168

Figure 8.6. Herbert Read, Art and Industry (London: Faber and Faber, 1934). Cover design Herbert Bayer.

169

Figure 8.7. László Moholy-​Nagy, Bill of Fare [Gropius Dinner, 9 March 1937] (London: Lund Humphries, February 1937). Photo: Royal Institute of British Architects Archive.

173

Figure 9.1. Ernö Goldfinger, 2 Willow Road, Hampstead, London, 1939, the street facade, photo: Sydney W. Newbery, 1940 (Architectural Press Archive /​ RIBA Collections, RIBA3394-​55).

182

Figure 9.2. Ernö Goldfinger, 2 Willow Road, Hampstead, London, 1939, Interior, Dining Room, photo: Dell & Wainwright, 1939 (Architectural Press Archive /​ RIBA Collections, RIBA8557).

183

Figure 9.3. Catalogue of the Aid to Russia exhibition, 1942. Photo: Archive 2 Willow Road, National Trust Collections. With kind permission of the Goldfinger Family. Copyright Ernö Goldfinger.

185

Figure 9.4. Aid to Russia exhibition in 2 Willow Road, 1942, with Pablo Picasso’s La Niçoise, 1937 –​today known

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as the portrait of Nusch Eluard. With hat: Nancy Cunard. Photo: Archive 2 Willow Road, National Trust Collections. Collections. With kind permission of the Goldfinger Family. Copyright Ernö Goldfinger. 186 Figure 9.5.

Figure 9.6.

Wells Coates, Lawn Road Flats, Hampstead, London, 1934 (Architectural Press Archive /​RIBA Collections, RIBA2508-​9).

189

Lawn Road Flats, Hampstead, London: The Isobar, photo: Dell & Wainwright, 1937 (Architectural Press Archive /​RIBA Collections, RIBA5745).

190

Figure 10.1. Ernst L. Freud, Marx house, London, 1935–​1936, garden façade. Photo: RIBA Collections.

203

Figure 10.2. Otto Salvisberg, Wiertz house, Berlin, 1928, garden façade, from Neue Villen (Stuttgart: J. Hoffmann, c. 1929). Photo: Canadian Centre for Architecture.

203

Figure 10.3. Ernst L. Freud, Cottington-​Taylor house (‘The Weald’), Bletchworth, Surrey, 1937–​1939, exterior view from garden, 1939. Photo: The Courtauld Institute of Art, London.

205

Figure 10.4. Ernst L. Freud, Scherk house, Berlin, 1930–​1931, garden façade. Photo: RIBA Collections.

206

Figure 10.5. Ernst L. Freud, Frognal Close townhouses, London, 1937–​1938, from The Architectural Review. Photo: Canadian Centre for Architecture.

207

Figure 10.6. Ernst L. Freud, Freud cottage ‘Hidden House’, Walberswick, Suffolk, 1937, view of the added circular bay window. Photo: Volker M. Welter.

209

Figure 11.1.

Interior of the German Embassy before the remodelling showing an array of period furniture. The caption reading: ‘The staircase in the building of the German Embassy in London’ and ‘The

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red room, a room in the flight of public rooms’. Photo: published in Der Silberspiegel (March 1936). Copyright: bpk/​Hilmar Pabel.

222

Figure 11.2. Up to 150 German skilled workers arrived in London to carry out the renovation of the German Embassy. In the streets of London they were easily recognisable by their typical work clothes. Unknown German newspaper, c. 1937, cutting from the Politisches Archiv Auswärtiges Amt Berlin, R 128233. 227 Figure 11.3. German Embassy, London, entrance hall, 1937. In the entrance hall, immediately upon entering the renovated Embassy, the austere National Socialist aesthetic was particularly palpable. The furniture was based on designs by Paul Troost, the bust of Adolf Hitler is by Josef Thorak. Deutsche Botschaft, London 1937, album with interior views of the German Embassy in London following the 1937 renovations, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington DC (hereafter ‘Album Deutsche Botschaft London 1937’). Photo: Hugo Schmölz. 228 Figure 11.4. German Embassy, London, living room with view through the dining room and anteroom into the library, 1937. With fireplace, lamp and tables by Paul Troost; seating by Hans Rußwurm; sculpture by Georg Kolbe; paintings by (among others) Arnold Böcklin loan from the Kronprinzenpalais Museum in Berlin; porcelain by Paul Scheurich, Meissen; gold cup by Emil Lettré. Album Deutsche Botschaft London 1937. Photo: Hugo Schmölz. 229 Figure 11.5. Outstanding craftsmanship was of great importance. The inlays in tromp-​l’oeil technique on the chest quote historical models known from the

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Renaissance, whereas the swastika motif on the parquet provokes with its explicit statement to Nazi ideology. German Embassy, London, 1937. Album Deutsche Botschaft London 1937. Photo: Hugo Schmölz. Figure 11.6. The new overall design was not limited to the public spaces alone. The entire Embassy was uniformly refurnished, even the rooms for the employees. German Embassy, London, maid’s bedroom, 1937. Album Deutsche Botschaft London 1937. Photo: Hugo Schmölz. Figure 11.7.

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The technical equipment of the Embassy, as here in the kitchen, was state-​of-​the-​art. German Embassy, London, electric kitchen, 1937. Album Deutsche Botschaft London 1937. Photo: Hugo Schmölz.

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Figure 12.1. Clarence A. Perry, diagram depicting a neighbourhood unit. Photo: published in Clarence A. Perry, ‘The Neighbourhood Unit. A Scheme of Arrangement for the Family-​Life Community’, Regional Survey of New York and its Environs, Vol. VII, ‘Neighbourhood and Community Planning’ (New York: 1929).

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Figure 12.2. Neighbourhood unit plan from the MARS group’s ‘Master Plan for London’, 1942. Photo: published in Maxwell Fry, Fine Building (London: Faber and Faber, 1944), 95.

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Figure 12.3. John Henry Forshaw and Patrick Abercrombie, Neighbourhood units in London. Photo: published in John Henry Forshaw and Patrick Abercrombie, County of London Plan, prepared for the London County Council (London: His Majesty’s Stationary Office 1943), 10.

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Figure 12.4. Konstanty Gutschow with Friedrich Heuer, depiction of the Ortsgruppe als Siedlungszelle idea. Photo: published in ‘Die Ortsgruppe als Siedlungszelle. Vorschlag und Methodik der großstädtischen Stadterweiterung’, Schriftenreihe B, no. 2, 20 December 1940, Staatsarchiv Hamburg 322–​323, A 42.

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Figure 12.5. Konstanty Gutschow, Generalbebauungsplan Hamburg 1944, Erste Skizze. Photo: Archiv für Städtebau, Niels Gutschow.

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Figure 13.1. Joseph Paul Hodin, 1960s. Photo: Ida Kar, National Portrait Gallery London.

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Figure 13.2. Ludwig Meidner, London, 1953. Photo: Unknown photographer, © Tate.

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Figure 13.3. Ludwig Meidner and J. P. Hodin (seated), London, 1953. Photo: Unknown photographer, © Tate.

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Figure 13.4. Ludwig Meidner, London, 1953. Photo: Unknown photographer, © Tate.

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Figure 13.5. Ludwig Meidner, London, 1953. Photo: Unknown photographer, © Tate.

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Figure 13.6. J. P. Hodin, ‘Meidners Studio in London’, Darmstädter Tagblatt (19–​20 November 1966), 16. Photo: © Tate.

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Figure 14.1. Kokoschka marked page in Cedric Dover, Hell in the Sunshine (London: Secker and Warburg, 1943), 168. Photo: © University of Applied Arts Vienna, Oskar Kokoschka Centre, Inv. No. OK-​Kult 4279/​V p. 168. 293 Figure 14.2. Oskar Kokoschka, Acrobat Family [Gauklerfamilie] (1946), oil on canvas, 50 × 61 cm, Albertinum | Galerie Neue Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Leih.-​Nr. L366,

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permanent loan from a private collection. Photo: © Albertinum | Galerie Neue Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Elke Estel/​Hans-​Peter Klut; VG Bild-​Kunst, Bonn 2019.

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Figure 14.3. Oskar Kokoschka, Circus or Atomic Energy Unchained (1946–​1947), oil on canvas, 61 × 91.5 cm, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem. Photo: Bridgeman Images.

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Figure 14.4. Collage of several newspaper clippings collected by Kokoschka regarding the death of Mahatma Gandhi, 1948. Photo: © University of Applied Arts Vienna, Oskar Kokoschka Centre, Permanent loan by the Oskar Kokoschka Documentation in Pöchlarn.

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Acknowledgements

The essays included in this volume have been developed from papers delivered at the conference ‘Sites of Interchange: Modernism, Politics and Culture in Britain and Germany 1919–​1951’ staged at the Courtauld Institute of Art on 2 and 3 November 2018. I would like to thank my co-​organiser, Dr Robin Schuldenfrei, and the Courtauld Institute of Art for hosting this event. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the further organisations who supported the conference: The German Federal Cultural Foundation, the British Council, the Liebermann-​Villa am Wannsee, Berlin and the Wiener Holocaust Library, London. Special thanks are due to the International Music and Art Foundation for providing financial support for the realisation of this volume. Last but not least I would like to thank the authors both for their involvement in our conference, and for their contributions to this volume. Lucy Wasensteiner

Lucy Wasensteiner

Introduction

The years between 1919 and 1955 were a highly turbulent time in the economic and political relationship between Britain and Germany. From the end of the Great War and their opposing positions as ‘victor’ and ‘defeated’, the fates of the two countries remained intertwined, locked into ever-​increasing tensions that would ultimately end once again in conflict. The cultural relationship between Britain and Germany during this period is no less fascinating. At first glance, the two nations appear culturally somewhat opposed. In Germany, these years are characterised by radical experimentation and change, from the introduction of the Bauhaus school and the embrace of modernity, through the sweeping cultural changes of National Socialism, to attempts to rebuild the two German states after the end of the Second World War. Britain during this period can seem comparatively conservative, a country where many of the established cultural structures remained unchallenged through the inter-​war years. The main focus of the scholarship exploring cultural interchange between Britain and Germany in the first half of the twentieth century has been the period after 1933, specifically the cultural impact of those arriving in Britain as émigrés from Nazi-​occupied Europe. The experiences of German fine artists in British exile have been explored in some detail: examples here include Visual Journeys: Art in Exile in Britain by Jennifer Powell and Jutta Vinzent and the groundbreaking exhibition catalogue Forced Journeys: Artists in Exile in Britain produced by the Ben Uri Gallery in 2009.1 The Yearbook of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies, first published in 1995, has also dedicated volumes to fine artists, as 1

Jennifer Powell and Jutta Vinzent, eds, Visual Journeys. Art in Exile in Britain (Chichester: George Bell Institute, 2008); Sarah MacDougall and Rachel Dickson,

2

introduction

well as –​for ­example –​to the performing arts and applied arts and crafts.2 Notable studies exploring the German-​speaking architects in British exile include, among others, Deutsche Architeckten in Großbritannien: Planen und Bauen im Exil 1933–​1945 by Andreas Schätzke and Meike Schultz.3 In keeping with the characterisation of the two cultures outlined above, it can be easy to conclude that the German-​speaking émigrés brought modernism to Britain after 1933. Or more specifically, that they attempted to do so, and that a British unreadiness for these new approaches either severely limited their careers, or forced them to emigrate onwards. The biographies of figures such as Kurt Schwitters or Walter Gropius seem to reinforce these ideas, as do studies in which America is posited as a ‘new world’ of hope and opportunity for émigrés thwarted in European exile.4 Increasingly however, attempts are being made to complicate this characterisation of cultural interchange between Britain and Germany in the early to mid-​twentieth century. On the one hand, attention is being drawn to British interest in German culture well before the arrival of the émigrés: as, for example, in Matthew Potter’s 2012 study The Inspirational Genius of Germany. British Art and Germanism 1850–​1939.5 And on the other, there is an increasing attempt to illustrate that cultural influence after 1933 did not only flow in one direction. Writing in the 2012 volume Migrations. Journey into British Art curator Emma Chambers explores, for

2

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eds, Forced Journeys. Artists in Exile in Britain c. 1933–​1945, exhibition catalogue (London: Ben Uri Gallery, 2009). Shulamith Behr and Marian Malet, eds, Arts in Exile in Britain 1933–​1945. Politics and Cultural Identity (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005); Charmian Brinson and Richard Dove, eds, German-​speaking Exiles in the Performing Arts in Britain after 1933 (Amsterdam: Brill, 2013); Marian Male, Rachel Dickson, Sarah Macougall and Anna Nyburg, eds, Applied Arts in British Exile from 1933. Changing Visual and Material Culture (Amsterdam: Brill, 2019). Anderas Schätzke and Meike Schultz, Deutsche Architekten in Großbritannien: Planen und Bauen im Exil 1933–​1945 (Stuttgart: Menges, 2013). See, for example, Stephanie Barron, ed., Exiles and Émigrés. The Flight of European Artists from Hitler 1933–​1945, exhibition catalogue (New York: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1997). Matthew C. Potter, The Inspirational Genius of Germany: British Art and Germanism 1850–​1939 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012).

Introduction

3

example, the extent to which Naum Gabo was influenced by his time in Britain.6 More recently, in his essay for the 2019 volume Insiders: Outsiders. Refugees from Nazi Europe and Their Contribution to British Visual Culture the architectural historian Alan Powers argues that, in the field of architecture at least, modernism did not arrive in Britain with the émigrés in 1933, rather that it had long been present.7 With contributions from academics and museum professionals based between Britain, mainland Europe and North America, this volume represents a rich addition to this growing body of literature, offering new complexity to the story of modernist cultural interchange between Britain and Germany. Its fourteen case studies, drawn from a range of fields, evidence how cultural influence between Britain and Germany did not only flow in one direction in the years between 1919 and 1955. Modernist culture was not only present in mainland Europe after 1919, it did not ‘arrive’ in Britain with the émigrés after 1933, and it was not only met with hostility or ambivalence by the British public. The essays illustrate how ideas were shared, and at which sites these ideas found their cultural articulation, across both countries, and in various fields of activity. In this collection ‘German’ is broadly defined. Many of the figures considered were born outside the borders of Imperial Germany, or those of the Weimar-​Republic, of National Socialist Germany in its various incarnations, of the post-​war German states. What unites the individuals and organisations covered in the book is perhaps the German language, and a self-​identification with the culture of German-​speaking Europe. ‘Britain’ and the ‘United Kingdom’ are both used in this volume to refer to the territory of today’s United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, formed following the independence of the Republic of Ireland –​though

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Lizzie Carey-​Thomas and John Akomfrah, eds, Migrations: Journeys into British Art, exhibition catalogue (London: Tate, 2012). Alan Powers, ‘Refugees from Nazi Europe and Their Contribution to British Architecture’, in Monica Bohm-​Duchen, ed., Insiders Outsiders: Refugees from Nazi Europe and Their Contribution to British Visual Culture (London: Lund Humphries, 2019), 39–​50.

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introduction

in practice the case studies are restricted to England.8 Regarding the period considered in the volume –​1919to 1955 –​these years were not only vital for the development of modernism in Europe generally. This time span allows a series of vital political developments to provide a backdrop for the culture under consideration: from the aftermath of the Great War to the rise of Nazism, the Second World War and the challenges of post-​war reconstruction. The decision to focus on these years also stems in part from a desire to broaden the focus out from German-​speaking émigrés in Britain, without ignoring their significance. Regarding the forms of culture considered in the volume, the essays consider visual culture, again broadly defined, to include the fine and applied arts alongside design and architecture. Finally, a word to the ordering of the essays. The texts are grouped according to certain key commonalities: a focus on British interactions with the Bauhaus school, for example, a focus on photography, or on interchanges between Britain and the ‘official’ Germany of the National Socialist period –​these groupings are described in more detail below. An attempt has also been made, albeit secondary to these groupings, to order the essays chronologically. The resulting collection breaks new ground, exploring cultural interchange in both directions, both before, during and after the years of National Socialism, and across a broad range of media. While the individual essays succeed in providing new insights into their respective fields, as a group they also provide an original overview, allowing various connecting points to come into focus. One such cultural bridge exists in the breadth and significance of UK interest in German culture during this period, and vice versa. It is also noteworthy how certain names reoccur, not only across the essays presented here, but also between this volume and the existing literature: Herbert Read, Walter Gropius or Hildebrand Gurlitt, for example. Viewed as a whole, the essays in this volume also highlight areas ripe for future research. These include the manifestations of UK-​German cultural interchange which arose within Germany. Many of the case studies considered in this book play out in Britain, a fact which can certainly in part 8

Indeed only southern English locations, a fact which perhaps highlights the need for further research into German émigrés in the British regions.

Introduction

5

be explained by the physical movement of the German émigrés. But it also highlights a need for further exploration into the German side, into the perhaps more subtle manifestations of British influence that occurred on German soil. The first essay in the volume, by the design historian Artemis Yagou, explores UK-​German interchanges in the field of industrial toy design across the period under consideration. With her broad assessment of an entire industry as a site of cultural interchange, Yagou illustrates how toy production reflected many of the key aspects of UK-​German relations at this time, from nationalism and rivalry to admiration and collaboration. The following two essays shift the volume’s focus to the fine arts, specifically to exhibitions and galleries as sites of cultural interchange. In her essay, Ulrike Meyer Stump focuses on the commercial gallery run by Dorothy Warren in London’s Mayfair between 1927 and 1934. Warren’s gallery provided an exhibiting space for German-​speaking modernists in London, among them the sculptor Georg Kolbe and the photographer Karl Blossfeldt. The essay by Lee Beard meanwhile looks at the Anglo-​ German Club, established in 1931 to help foster economic and cultural relations between Britain and the German-​speaking nations. Drawing on previously unpublished material in the Tate Gallery Archive –​among other sources –​Beard explores two exhibitions of contemporary British art organised by the Club in Hamburg in 1932 and in London in 1933, either side of Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor. Both of these texts shed important new light on these little-​known exhibiting venues and their work in promoting UK-​German exchange. With Valeria Carullo’s essay the focus turns to photography, in particular, how German modernist developments –​Neues Sehen and Neue Sachlichkeit –​can be traced in architectural photography in Britain, as evidenced by the pages of Architectural Review. Carullo illustrates how British photographers had been exposed to these developments via publications and trade exhibitions well before the arrival of the first émigrés in 1933. Leah Hsiao continues this photographic focus, exploring László Moholy-​Nagy’s time in Britain between 1935 and 1937. Hsiao’s text explores influences flowing from Britain to the émigrés, namely the British notion of ‘amateurism’, Moholy’s exposure to it via British elite culture,

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and its ultimate impact on his work. Michelle Henning’s essay investigates how Moholy’s former wife Lucia Moholy took German and continental ideas about photography and synthesised them for a British audience in her ‘Pelican Special’ A Hundred Years of Photography, the book published during Lucia Moholy’s own British exile in 1939. The essays by Antonia Behan and Karen Koehler provide the next thematic grouping in the volume, which can be loosely characterised by the interchange of ideas between British figures and the Bauhaus school. Behan’s text consider the British handweaver Ethel Mairet and her engagement with the Bauhaus émigrés –​not, however, as a radical new influence, but as a sympathetic group practicing ideas to which she had already been exposed. Walter Gropius provides the focus of Karen Koehler contribution, specifically, the parallels and intertextualities between Gropius’s New Architecture –​published in English translation in 1935 –​and Herbert Read’s 1934 volume Art and Industry. The following two essays consider the British urban landscape as a site of cultural interchange, in particular in the years after 1933. Burcu Dogramaci looks at the experiences of German émigrés in the London urban area, seeking to map contact zones where émigrés and locals worked together. Volker Welter considers the British career of émigré architect Ernst Freud. This essay explores the influences Freud’s British projects took both from German and Austrian architecture, and from the British tradition, at the same time highlighting the occurrence of such cross-​references before 1933. The exchanges between Britain and National Socialist officialdom provide a common thread between the essays by Ina Weinrautner and Dirk Schubert. In her text, Ina Weinrautner utilises previously unpublished sources from the German Foreign Office archives to reconstruct the renovations conducted at the German Embassy in London during 1937, Ambassador Joachim von Ribbentrop using interior design to present the Third Reich to his British hosts. Dirk Schubert considers architectural planning theory between Britain and Germany from the yeas of the Third Reich, through the Second World War, to the immediate post-​war period. In particular he explores how American ideas of the neighbourhood were interpreted in London and in Hamburg during these years.

Introduction

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The final two essays return to the fine arts, specifically to individual artists and their experiences after 1945. Shulamith Behr considers the art historian J. P. Hodin, and his shift from art historian to critic following his arrival in Britain as an émigré. A particular focus is provided by the encounter between Hodin and the émigré painter Ludwig Meidner in London in 1953. In the last text of the volume, Keith Holz considers the political engagements of Oskar Kokoschka in British exile, in particular from 1945 to his relocation to Switzerland in 1953. Post-​war Britain provided Kokoschka with a new vantage point on a range of global issues, from the aftermath of the Holocaust to race and empire, concerns which –​to greater or lesser degrees –​found expression in his work. The history of cultural interchanges between Britain and Germany during these highly eventful years is a complex one, which has yet to be comprehensively surveyed. This volume seeks to highlight particular moments within this history, across a range of fields which –​as noted above –​ throw certain existing assumptions into question. British cultural producers were aware of the modernist ideas prevalent in Germany well before 1933; indeed, British culture had played a role in forming this modernism. When the German-​speaking émigrés arrived en masse in Britain, they certainly influenced the Britain they encountered. But they were also influenced by this Britain, which was –​in many respects –​open to their ideas. It is this final thought, that inter-​and post-​war Britain was not exclusively hostile to German-​speaking culture, which stands perhaps as the central message of this volume. Nationalism, isolationism and hostility to the ‘foreigner’ have always featured in British culture, as they have in the culture of perhaps every other nation. But they were never the only attitudes in existence. Between 1919 and 1955 figures working across various visual cultures were involved in a fruitful interchange with their neighbours in mainland Europe. As basic as it may sound, British cultural history was and is European cultural history, a fact which today once again bears repeating.

Artemis Yagou

1 Play, Design, Politics: Technical Toys, Design Policies and British-​German Exchanges in the First Half of the Twentieth Century

Modernity and technology-​inspired play1 Exploring the entangled cultural relationship between Britain and Germany through the history of toy design may appear to be an unlikely research path; however, this choice becomes less surprising when we consider that ‘all toys reflect and interpret the social, moral and technical temper of their times’.2 As such, they offer valuable insights into a period’s Zeitgeist and especially into aspects of everyday life often overlooked or neglected in favour of political developments and artistic achievements. Furthermore, it is widely acknowledged that childhood and play acquired increasing importance in the second half of the nineteenth century and in the early decades of the twentieth century, to the extent that the latter has been termed the ‘Century of the Child’.3 A special place in the history

1

2 3

The present publication results from the author’s research project “How they played: Children and construction toys (c. 1840–​ 1940)”, conducted at the Deutsches Museum (Munich) and funded by the German Research Foundation –​ Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), 2016–​21. Basil Harley, Constructional Toys (Oxford: Shire Library, 1990), 4; Roger Caillois, Man, Play and Games (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 27. This was the title of the book published in 1900 by Swedish design reformer Ellen Key (appeared in English in 1900 as The Century of the Child). Juliet Kinchin and Aidan O’Connor, eds, Century of the Child: Growing by Design 1900–​2000 (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2012), 11; Hugh Cunningham, Children and Childhood in Western Society since 1500 (London: Longman, 1995), 175–​6.

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of toys around the turn of the twentieth century is occupied by construction sets inspired by the architectural and technical environment. Construction sets and their accompanying material (packaging, use manuals, advertising and so on) are eloquent sources on the mentalities and preoccupations of the people who created and used them. We examine such technical toys as designed artefacts embedded within a larger socio-​ political discourse, during a period dominated by two world wars that shattered pre-​existing certainties and ushered the desire for radically redefining social and cultural practices. Simple, educational construction sets in the form of alphabet blocks had been available in Western Europe already since the late seventeenth century.4 The educational reforms introduced by Friedrich Froebel (1782–​ 1852) and the subsequent international growth of the Kindergarten movement rendered building blocks central to the education of small children.5 After the middle of the nineteenth century, construction sets became intensely commercialised as well as more explicitly connected to technological themes.6 Technology-​inspired playthings seemed appropriate in a world of increasing mechanisation, where the impact of mechanical and civil engineering on society was increasingly visible and powerfully felt in everyday life.7 When in 1826 architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel visited Britain on an official visit sponsored by the Prussian Crown, Prussia was considered backward, especially as far as technology and industry were concerned.8 Britain was the pioneer of mechanisation; its manufacturing superiority, showcased in the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London, was subsequently seriously challenged, especially after the unification of Germany in 1871. John Brewer, ‘Childhood Revisited: The Genesis of the Modern Toy’, History Today 30 (December 1980), 36. 5 Norman Brosterman, Inventing Kindergarten (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1997); Tamar Zinguer, Architecture in Play: Intimations of Modernism in Architectural Toys (Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2015), 18–​51. 6 Zinguer, Architecture in Play, 62. 7 Harley, Constructional Toys, 4. 8 Julius Posener, From Schinkel to the Bauhaus (London: Lund Humphries/​The Architectural Association, 1972), 11–​12. 4

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Although the quality of German goods was considered inferior, Germany was catching up through determination and systematic efforts.9 By the end of the nineteenth century, unified Germany had gradually managed to become a major power.10 Its industrialisation was relatively belated, but took an explosive character in the third quarter of the nineteenth century.11 Both Britain and Germany shared the fascination with technology, especially from around 1890 until the Second World War. The range and depth of technological transformations was such that many observers considered novel technical artefacts as ‘wonders’ and ‘miraculous’ objects. An obsession for technological modernity swept both countries and entailed various aspects, often ambivalent or contradictory and ranging from euphoria to technophobia.12 Educational and cultural developments in the two countries ran in parallel and influenced each other, not least on the topic of the relation between arts, crafts and industrial design.13 The production and consumption of playthings was deeply embedded in the wider socio-​political changes brought about by technological development and modernisation. While modernisation has been defined as a conscious project of change, modernity is understood as the experience of that process.14 This process was wrought with difficulties, as individuals and groups were often struggling to deal with the rapidly changing circumstances in the workplace and in

Alan Powers, Bauhaus Goes West: Modern Art and Design in Britain and America (London: Thames and Hudson, 2019), 18. 10 Posener, From Schinkel to the Bauhaus, 17. 11 David Blackbourn, History of Germany 1780–​1918: The Long Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003), 158; Anthony McElligott, The German Urban Experience, 1900–​1945: Modernity and Crisis (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 34; Jeremy Aynsley, Designing Modern Germany (London: Reaktion Books, 2009), 10. 12 Bernhard Rieger, Technology and the Culture of Modernity in Britain and Germany 1890–​1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), especially Introduction and Chapter 1. 13 Powers, Bauhaus Goes West, 14–​18. 14 Anthony McElligott, Weimar Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 7. 9

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society at large.15 Changes were naturally affecting the private sphere too; the growing bourgeois strata were trying to cope with new social roles and with the challenges resulting from an increased concern about child-​ rearing.16 In this context, the choice of appropriate toys became a highly significant matter for middle-​class families. In a world radically altered by technological development, technical toys became the quintessential middle-​class playthings, especially for boys, and were crucial as vehicles for preparing the younger generation for the future.17

Commercialisation and competition Around the turn of the twentieth century, Britain and Germany regarded each other as technological competitors, but also rivals with respect to colonial expansion.18 These conditions affected all aspects of trade, including of course the toy trade. Manufactured toys as objects of commercial competition among nations became yet another area in which the antagonistic relationship between Britain and Germany unfolded, directly influencing parents and children. More generally, children issues were co-​opted in national and international politics. During the inter-​war period, political parties in Britain included childhood topics high on their agendas, not simply as a matter of domestic policies but also in the context of international state rivalries. Indeed, ‘children were seen as the most valuable asset a nation had, one which, if not properly nurtured, would lead to a 15 McElligott, The German Urban Experience, 34; Rieger, Technology and the Culture of Modernity, 16. 16 Cunningham, Children and Childhood, 175–​6. 17 Ruth Freeman and Larry Freeman, Cavalcade of Toys (New York: Century House, 1942), 255; Zinguer, Architecture in Play; Bryan Ganaway, ‘Engineers or Artists? Toys, Class and Technology in Wilhelmine Germany’, Journal of Social History 21/​2 (Winter 2008), 371–​401; David D. Hamlin, Work and Play: The Production and Consumption of Toys in Germany, 1870–​1914 (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2007). 18 Rieger, Technology and the Culture of Modernity, 12; Powers, Bauhaus Goes West, 18.

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process of degeneration and to a loss of power and status relative to other countries’.19 The commercial rivalry between the two countries in the toy sector had been evident in the business of war-​related toys already before the First World War. British toy producers were claiming lower prices and higher quality compared to German competitors; they would also use legends such as ‘made by British labour’ or ‘produced entirely by British labour’ on their products.20 Although Germany was the world’s largest toy producer and German firms had a high profile in the distribution of toys in Britain, the view that the toys of Edwardian children were almost exclusively German in origin is highly questionable. This perception of German dominance in the toy trade was widely held by contemporaries and has been perpetuated ever since, but the reality was rather more complex.21 Arguably, German pre-​eminence in the British toy market before the First World war was ‘deliberately exaggerated by some contemporaries for political reasons, pandering to a public increasingly paranoid about the strategic threat thought to be posed to Britain by the rapid and spectacular expansion of the German economy’.22 Nevertheless, in the sub-​field of construction or building toys, the German firm Anker of Rudolstadt did have global market dominance as well as a large share of the British market (Figure 1.1).23 The Anker blocks, established through high-​quality and successful marketing, were by far the most popular of all the brand-​name toys before the First World War, having both international distribution and a worldwide reputation for quality and educational merit.24 Their design reflected German architecture of the period, mainly 1870s baroque.25 The Anker blocks were protected 1 9 Cunningham, Children and Childhood, 172. 20 Kenneth D. Brown, ‘Modelling for War? Toy Soldiers in Late Victorian and Edwardian Britain’, Journal of Social History 24/​2 (1990), 245–​6. 21 Kenneth D. Brown, The British Toy Industry (Oxford: Shire Library, 2011), 13. 22 Ibid. 23 Brenda and Robert Vale, Architecture on the Carpet: The Curious Tale of Construction Toys and the Genesis of Modern Buildings (London: Thames and Hudson, 2013), 26; Brian Salter, Building Toys (Oxford: Shire Library, 2011), 5. 24 George F. Hardy, Richter’s Anker (Anchor) Stone Building Sets (Palmyra, VA: self-published, 2013), 1. 25 Salter, Building Toys, 13.

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by patents in numerous countries and their accompanying instruction booklets were translated into twenty-​one languages.26 Anker promotional material for the British market was published in the English language and included numerous testimonials by the press or by users, typically parents. The royal family acquired these toys for their children;27 such blocks were also used to make replicas of the Tower Bridge when it opened in 1894.28 The death of Adolf Richter, the driving force behind Anker, in 1910 and the First World War brought an end to the dominance of the company.29 The retreat of Anker paved the way to competitors, a fact which reinforces the image of a more balanced toy market in Britain. One of the products that acquired a large share in the educational toys’ market was the Meccano system of metal parts, invented and introduced in 1902 by Frank Hornby of Liverpool ‘to support the belief that children, especially boys, should understand basic mechanics and engineering’.30 German firms such as Märklin and Stabil imitated the highly popular Meccano and introduced their own ranges of metal construction toys.31 There was even a ‘short-​lived association’ between Meccano and Märklin, which led to ‘hybrid’ items produced in Liverpool.32 26 Zinguer, Architecture in Play, 62. 2 7 Hardy, Richter’s Anker, 1. The Illustrated London News reported in 1887 that ‘many directors of schools and teachers of art have testified their appreciation of the “Anchor” Stone Building Boxes, which have been adopted by the Crown Princess, and by other ladies of the highest rank, for use in the Imperial and Royal nurseries’. Illustrated London News, 5 March 1887, 259, quoted in the leaflet The Joy the Child Likes Best (London: Dr Richter’s Publishing Office, 1895), 23. 28 Deborah Jaffé, The History of Toys: From Spinning Tops to Robots (Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing, 2006), 106. 29 Hardy, Richter’s Anker, 1. 30 Jaffé, The History of Toys, 5; Roger Marriott, Meccano (Oxford: Shire Library, 2012), 5. 31 Several metal sets by Märklin and Stabil are included in the collection of the Deutsches Museum, Munich. 32 Joseph Manduca, The Hornby Companion Series Vol. 7: The Meccano Magazine 1916–​1981 (London: New Cavendish Books, 1987), 5. In 1912, spring-​powered motors made by Märklin were included in Meccano products, Peter Randall, The Hornby Companion Series Vol. 1: The Products of Binns Road –​A General Survey (London: New Cavendish Books, 1981), 10.

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Figure 1.1.  Cover of promotional leaflet entitled The Joy the Child Likes Best (London: Dr Richter’s Publishing Office, 1895), John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera, Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford. Photo: author’s own.

The outbreak of the First World War caused a predictable surge in the production of war-​related toys; additionally, the upset created by the war affected the toy market in many ways and opened new opportunities, especially as the flow of German products to Britain was blocked. The British Board of Trade identified toy-​making as one of several industries that could

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take advantage from the absence of German competition. By 1916 it was claimed that around 1,500 toy lines previously manufactured in Germany were being made by British firms.33 A cartoon entitled ‘Liverpool capturing German trade’ shows a delighted and triumphant Poseidon (the god of the sea in Greek mythology) pulling some toys behind him. He is bearing a belt with the word ‘Liverpool’ on it, thus implying that the toy trade from that port would greatly benefit from the war situation.34 War toy production was however of inferior quality due to rising prices, restricted supplies of raw materials and shortages of skilled labour.35 Immediately after the First World War, Britain was again opened to toy imports, although German toys initially encountered consumer resistance. Additionally, the German toy industry was slow to recover in the 1920s because of political instability, strikes, scarcity of raw materials and hyperinflation. In the 1930s it was ‘further weakened as a number of prominent Jewish toymakers fled abroad to escape the Nazi regime’.36 The influx of toy manufacturers as refugees from Germany to Britain enhanced pre-​existing connections and collaborations.

Powerful and puzzling imagery Traditionalist and nationalist themes are present in the packaging, instruction manuals and promotional material of various construction toys throughout the period under consideration. While the Anker blocks manufactured in Germany were devised for constructing ‘German-​style’ 3 3 Brown, The British Toy Industry, 15. 34 The cartoon is reproduced in Brown, The British Toy Industry, 16. Its original source is unclear, possibly the Liverpool Evening Express, c. 1910 (personal communication with Kenneth D. Brown, July 2019). 35 Brown, The British Toy Industry, 15. Another example of the impact of the First World War on toy production (through the ban of German toy imports) is presented in Braden P. L. Hutchinson, ‘Making (Anti)Modern Childhood: Producing and Consuming Toys in Late Victorian Canada’, Scientia Canadensis 36/​1 (2013), 79–​110. 36 Brown, The British Toy Industry, 16–​17.

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buildings, the text on the packaging of British Buildo Country Cottages of circa 1913 speaks of ‘unrivalled English homes’;37 according to a commentator, the latter ‘could not be more English in appeal’,38 although it is unclear how this ‘Englishness’ was defined and perceived. In a similar vein, Sander’s ‘Tudor’ Stone Building Bricks of 1913 were plaster bricks in a ‘medieval European style (not at all English Tudor)’.39 Despite their dubious architectural credentials, these bricks were meant to attract British buyers through the Tudor label symbolising tradition and prestige. Similarly, in an intriguing combination, a medieval-​looking rider co-​exists with a concrete bunker and modern cannons in early twentieth-​ century Anker manuals (Figure 1.2).40 One wonders what young users and their parents would make of this anachronistic and bizarre co-​existence of disparate elements. The contradictory nature of this image presents a telling example of ambivalence towards modernity. In both Britain and Germany the new was desired but also feared, while the old could be a source of consolation and security. Gradually, in the interwar years, nation-​inspired labels or themes became more and more visible and therefore significant. The message ‘All British’ is printed on the box of a construction set by the firm Arkirecto in the early 1930s,41 while interwar Kliptiko toys also emphasise ‘British manufacture’ on their package illustration showing children constructing a simplified version of the Tower Bridge (Figure 1.3).42 In the 1930s, banners with Nazi insignia appear in illustrations of mini railways and highways constructed with metal sets of the Märklin company (Figure 1.4).43 These may be small and hardly visible details, but their impact on enthusiastic and impressionable young users should not be underestimated. In the early stages of the Second World War, nationalistic representations on toys become even more straightforward: a cover of the Meccano Magazine depicts an air-​fight 37 Salter, Building Toys, 10. 3 8 Ibid. 39 Exhibit and caption at the Pollock’s Toy Museum, London. 40 Märklin Instruction Manual, 1930s, Collection of the Deutsches Museum, Munich. 41 Salter, Building Toys, 7. 42 Exhibit at the Pollock’s Toy Museum, London. 43 Märklin Instruction Manual, 1930s, Collection of the Deutsches Museum, Munich.

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Figure 1.2.  Illustration (detail) included in Anker instruction manual, possibly 1930s, Collection of the Deutsches Museum, Munich. Photo: author’s own.

in which a German military aircraft is hit by a British one (Figure 1.5).44 Such examples illustrate that both British and German toy design and promotion exploited the allure of various patriotic themes and employed a range of related visual imagery to attract customers. Manufacturers were taking advantage of the tense political climate in order to succeed in a highly competitive market. British manufactured Lott’s Bricks are another eloquent example of the complexity of the interactions between the two countries in the domain 44 Cover of Meccano Magazine, Vol. XXV, No. 5, May 1940, reproduced in Manduca, The Hornby Companion Series, 238.

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Figure 1.3.  Illustration (detail) on the packaging of Kliptiko construction set, early twentieth century, Collection of the Pollock’s Toy Museum, London. Photo: author’s own.

of toy trade (Figure 1.6). The idea for the creation of this product came to manufacturer Ernest Lott as he observed his children playing with Richter’s Anker blocks and he became convinced there would be a market for a simpler English-​styled version. He started experimenting and the results of his efforts were unveiled at the 1917 British Industries Fair, itself a wartime initiative.45 A trade journal of the time wrote that the Lott’s Bricks product line ‘which is of British manufacture, will prove itself to be a far better thing than anything Richter evolved. Our readers [are] very familiar with the German production, and know what extremely crude and unsightly

45 Salter, Building Toys, 13–​14.

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Figure 1.4.  Illustration included in Märklin instruction manual, 1930s, Collection of the Deutsches Museum, Munich. Photo: author’s own.

buildings they made.’46 Despite this claim, the quality of Anker products was in fact undeniable and it was cherished by many British clients. Actually, it appears that Lott’s Bricks were inspired by an Anker exhibit from the Brighton Toy and Model Museum’s display of building toys.47 Lott’s bricks were an imitation of Anker products and at the same time they attempted to supplant them by consciously and intensely exploiting nationalist feelings. A Lott’s bricks manual around 1920 presented the plaything in these words: Lott’s Bricks go farther than the supplying of a long felt want. They open up possibilities of interest and amusement, far surpassing those of other toys. Their attractions appeal hardly less to the grown-​up than to the child; they are English through and through –​in material, in manufacture, in design, and in the distinctively English character of the buildings they illustrate. Lott’s Bricks are made for English children, 6 February 1917 issue of Games and Toys, quoted in Salter, Building Toys, 14. 4 47 Salter, Building Toys, 62.

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Figure 1.5.  Cover of Meccano Magazine, Vol. XXV, No. 5, May 1940. Photo: author’s own. in an English factory, by English women, and they appeal to the Englishman’s ingrained belief that it is the best alone which is good enough for him.48

Lott’s bricks had been designed by architect Arnold Mitchell (1863–​ 1944), a successful mid-​market country house architect who drew from a range of styles including Arts and Crafts and different variations of classicism.49 Following his success in the home market, he had also turned 8 Lott’s Bricks manual, Collection of the V&A Museum of Childhood, London. 4 49 Clare Sherriff, ‘Arnold Mitchell (1863–​1944): “Fecundity” and “Versatility” in an Early Twentieth-​Century Architect’, Architectural History 55 (2012), 199–​235, 200.

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Figure 1.6.  Lott’s Bricks, Box Three, Series ‘B’, 1920s, Collection of the V&A Museum of Childhood, London. Photo: author’s own.

his attention to international opportunities before the First World War, working in Potsdam, which was the seat of the Prussian Court at the time.50 Ernest Lott himself selected Mitchell as an established local Arts and Crafts architect with the ‘necessary Englishness’ for the specific task of designing an English version of Richter’s Anker Blocks for children. It is ironic that German architect Hermann Muthesius (1861–​1927) appreciated the work of Arnold Mitchell and had included him in his 50 Ibid., 225.

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three-​volume publication Das englische Haus [The English House] of 1904 as one of the most reputable British architects.51 Muthesius was a Prussian senior civil servant and commentator on architecture and industrial culture. Serving as a cultural attaché in the German Embassy in London between 1896 and 1904, he had the mission, sponsored by the Imperial German Government, to investigate and record British achievements in building.52 He was deeply influenced by British design and became one of the pioneers of design reform in Germany, not least as one of the founding members of the Deutscher Werkbund.53 The Deutscher Werkbund was an organisation founded in Munich in 1907 by a group of manufacturers, artists and designers, with the aim of bringing together producers, retailers and designers in order to improve the quality of German goods marketed in both the home and export market. This organisation was created ‘in response to a widespread feeling that the rapid industrialisation and modernisation of Germany posed a threat to the national culture’.54 The Werkbund activities were unfolding in a ‘strong current of cultural nationalism that accompanied the rise of German economic and military power’ before the First World War.55 Such activities were not only attempting to address the ‘stylistic dependence on England’, but also to ‘shatter the artistic primacy of France’.56 The British had been following closely the Werkbund activities and related developments. They admired in particular the methodical and determined way in which Germans attempted to improve the standards of design for industrial production. The impact of the reformist activities of the Werkbund was felt in Britain, especially following the Cologne Werkbund exhibition of 1914, and inspired the establishment of the Design and Industries Association (DIA) in 1915, with a constitution that imitated 5 1 Ibid., 199. 52 Posener, From Schinkel to the Bauhaus, 17. 53 Aynsley, Designing Modern Germany, 25; Posener, From Schinkel to the Bauhaus, 18 and 23; Powers, Bauhaus Goes West, 19–​20. 54 Joan Campbell, The German Werkbund: The Politics of Reform in the Applied Arts (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978), 3. 55 Ibid., 77. 56 Ibid.

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almost verbatim the Werkbund one.57 ‘The design efforts of the German “barbarians”, as one of the English reformers observed, were beginning to make a mark on the markets of the world, and the British could no longer afford their prejudices about German bad taste.’58 Werkbund members were satisfied by this recognition, although Anglophobia persisted among them. The discourse of the times offers evidence of a difficult relationship between representatives of the two countries, tainted by mutual fear and prejudice.59

The case of Bassett-​Lowke Despite tensions, it is indisputable that close communication, various exchanges and mutual influences were the norm between the two countries throughout the period under consideration. A further case in point is provided by Northampton toy manufacturer Wenham Joseph Bassett-​Lowke (1877–​1953), a key personality for the development of British-​German relations in design and production. In 1900 he visited the Paris World’s Fair, where he was impressed by the design and high standards of several German toy producers. He was particularly attracted by the precision of the toy trains produced by the firms George Carette & Cie and Bing Bros, both of Nuremberg. Bassett-​Lowke established collaborations with them for the supply of locomotives, adapted to resemble British trains, and of other toy train components; these were produced to his specifications and to a standard of precision which had not been achieved in Britain.60

5 7 Ibid., 92. 58 Views expressed by British essayist Arthur Clutton-​Brock, quoted in Campbell, The German Werkbund, 92. 59 Ibid., 93. 60 Roland Fuller, The Bassett Lowke Story (London: New Cavendish Books, 1984), 16–​ 17; Louise Campbell, ‘A Model Patron: Bassett-​ Lowke, Mackintosh and Behrens’, The Journal of the Decorative Arts Society 10 (1986), 1; Nicholas Whittaker, Toys Were Us: A Twentieth-​Century History of Toys (London: Orion, 2001), 14–​15.

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In the first decades of the twentieth century he visited Nuremburg regularly to import engines and components through his German business associates and friends (such as Stefan Bing). Already before 1914, he was in contact with members of the Deutscher Werkbund. Additionally, as an early and active member of the Design and Industries Association, he travelled regularly on the Continent organising the DIA annual tour.61 After the outbreak of the First World War, the British government severed all trading links with Germany and encouraged the home manufacture of goods that were no longer obtainable. Those children lucky enough to possess commercially produced toys would quickly notice the difference as Germany was the main source of these toys.62 Despite his close links with German firms, Bassett-​Lowke himself had expressed his intention to replace continental goods in his own production during the First World War, as public antipathy towards German-​made products grew and there was much talk about them being replaced by locally-​made ones.63 The unavailability of German-​made products from 1914 onwards encouraged British firms such as Wenebrik, Dometo and Lott’s.64 The conflict lasted longer that had been anticipated, but after 1918 Bing were able to start supplying Bassett-​Lowke again. Nevertheless, for several years there was bitter anti-​German feeling and resistance to buying German products. There was public pressure for imported goods to be marked with the country of origin and relevant legislation was passed; as far as Bassett-​Lowke was concerned, his German-​made goods were sold away from their boxes or else the mark was removed from the box.65 Bassett-​Lowke was well-​aware of progressive approaches to design and is considered a key actor in the network that linked German engineering and toy production to the British Midlands.66 Additionally, in the 61 Narisa Levy, ‘W. J. Bassett-​Lowke as Architectural Patron’, in Fuller, The Bassett Lowke Story, 67. See also Janet Bassett-​Lowke, Wenman Joseph Bassett-​Lowke (Chester: Rail Romances, 1999). 62 Salter, Building Toys, 13. 63 Fuller, The Bassett Lowke Story, 30. 64 Salter, Building Toys, 7. 65 Fuller, The Bassett Lowke Story, 31–​2. 66 Vicki Thomas, ‘Playing in Northampton: Connecting Past, Present and Future’, in Michael M. Patte and John A. Sutterby, eds, Celebrating 40 Years of Play

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mid-​twenties he commissioned Peter Behrens, the pioneering German architect, to design his house at 508, Wellingborough Road, Northampton; the building was completed in 1926 and was christened ‘New Ways’.67 The house is considered as highly influential for ‘the adoption in Britain of “proper” modernism’.68 Years later, when in the 1930s German toy producers needed to evacuate from the Nazi regime, they looked to their British connections.69 Franz Bing and Stefan Kahn joined Bassett-​Lowke, for whom they had been manufacturing train sets.70 There is further evidence of a German, especially Jewish, diaspora having an effect on the toy trade locally: the family of W. F. Graham turned from British-​German toy trade to children’s book publishing in Northampton, while Phillipp Ullmann, who owned a toy factory in Nuremburg, was aided by retailers Marks and Spencer to leave Germany.71 Phillipp Ullmann and Arthur Katz eventually established the toy company Mettoy in Northampton in 1933.72 Several studies have emphasised the influence of emigrés on aesthetic or cultural

Research: Connecting Our Past, Present, and Future, Play & Culture Studies Series, vol. 13 (Pennsylvania: The Association for the Study of Play, 2016), 39–​57, 43. See also: Vicki Thomas, ‘The Toy Box: The Changing Semiotics of Toy Packaging’, in Evripides Zantides, ed., Semiotics and Visual Communication II: Culture of Seduction (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017), 252–​75. 67 Levy, ‘W. J. Bassett-​Lowke as Architectural Patron’, 67–​74. ‘New Ways’ is listed under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 as amended for its special architectural or historic interest, available at: , accessed 18 December 2020. See also: Edwin Heathcote, ‘The Homes in Northampton Built by Two of Europe’s Great Architects’ available at: , accessed 18 December 2020. 68 Powers, Bauhaus Goes West, 31. 69 Thomas, ‘Playing in Northampton’, 43. 70 Brown, The British Toy Industry, 16–​ 17. See also Vale, Architecture on the Carpet, 11–​14. 71 Thomas, ‘Playing in Northampton’, 43–​4. 72 Brown, The British Toy Industry, 17. See also Vicki Thomas, ed., All Work and No Play Makes You a Dull Designer (Exhibition Catalogue) (Northampton: The University of Northampton, 2013).

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aspects of design;73 the aforementioned examples show that the newcomers also had a strong impact on the level of manufacturing and production.

Exchanges and institutions after the Second World War British-​German design exchanges continued in the complicated times following the Second World War, when design issues were even considered to be matters of national importance. Recent research has demonstrated that German industrial design was examined systematically through a secret government mission organised by the British Intelligence Objectives Sub-​Committee (BIOS) between July and December 1946. Nine British design experts travelled in Germany for six months, visiting firms and training institutions of various consumer goods industries in the Western zone of occupation, and published their observations in a final report.74 The BIOS report is a primary source that may serve as a starting point for a more sophisticated understanding of design processes and their complexity. A few months after their expedition, the BIOS group also organised in Britain a travelling exhibition entitled ‘What can Britain learn from German industry?’, showcasing the insights and industrial products ‘captured’ from Germany. One high-​ranking member of the design mission to Germany and leading author of the BIOS report 73 See, for example, Cheryl Buckley and Tobias Hochscherf, ‘Introduction: From “German Invasion” to Transnationalism. Continental European Émigrés and Visual Culture in Britain, 1933–​56’, Visual Culture in Britain 13/​2 (2012), 157–​65; Aynsley, Designing Modern Germany, 14; Monica Bohm-​Duchen, ed., Insiders/​ Outsiders: Refugees from Nazi Europe and Their Contribution to British Visual Culture (London: Lund Humphries Publishers, 2019). 74 Anne Sudrow, ‘Competing for a Modern Consumer Culture: German Industrial Design under Investigation by the British Military Intelligence Service (BIOS) (1946–​1947)’, in Anne Sudrow, ed., Geheimreport Deutsches Design. Deutsche Konsumgüter im Visier des britischen Council of Industrial Design (1946) (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2012), 106; Artemis Yagou, Book Review, Journal of Design History 26/​4 (2013), 437–​8.

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was a German immigrant, Nikolaus Pevsner. Pevsner was an art historian who had been deprived of his post at the University of Göttingen for anti-​Semitic reasons in 1933; he then emigrated to England and gradually became one of the leading academic authorities on architectural and design history.75 His book Pioneers of the Modern Movement, first published in 1936, with a second edition as Pioneers of Modern Design in 1949, and then revised and partly rewritten in 1960, has had an enduring influence on the history of architecture and design. Pevsner had been specifically preoccupied with the comparison between England and Germany in his book An Enquiry into Industrial Art in England, published in 1937.76 Although it might appear from the BIOS activities that knowledge transfer was one-​sided (from Germany to Britain), in fact there was also flow of expertise in the opposite direction. Around the same time as the BIOS mission, in the autumn of 1946, the exposition of British industrial design ‘Britain Can Make It’ at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London intended to popularise questions of product design and raise design awareness among consumers and companies alike.77 As Britain employed this and other initiatives in order to explore the economic and social role of design, West Germany was keen to learn and particularly to imitate a number of British solutions related to design reform in industry. One of them was the establishment of the Council of Industrial Design of Great Britain, an organisation elevating industrial design to a matter of national concern.78 The significance of creating a West German national design council was highlighted by Else Meissner in a forward-​looking but rather forgotten text published in 1950.79 In that book, Meissner, ‘a longtime Werkbund member and activist in the Weimar women’s movement’,80 systematically 7 5 Sudrow, Geheimreport Deutsches Design, 108. 76 Nikolaus Pevsner, An Enquiry into Industrial Art in England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1937), 179; Powers, Bauhaus Goes West, 149. 77 Sudrow, Geheimreport Deutsches Design, 107–​8. 78 Ibid., 117. 79 Else Meissner, Qualität und Form in Wirtschaft und Leben (Munich: Richard Pflaum Verlag, 1950). 80 Paul Betts, The Authority of Everyday Things: A Cultural History of West German Industrial Design (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 180.

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discussed the economic and social impact of good design. She situated West German design ‘within the larger cultural geography of international design’ and commented on the founding of design councils in various European countries; she also emphasised that ‘even Great Britain had established a generously subsidised Council of Industrial Design in 1944, with the exclusive aim of promoting British industrial design at home and abroad’.81 Eventually, the German Design Council (Rat für Formgebung) was founded in 1953, following the English precedent.82 The English word ‘design’ itself ‘entered the German language after the Second World War, when it became adopted as part of a recognised international terminology’.83

Conclusion During the first half of the twentieth century, British-​German relations in the design and production of technical toys, and more generally in the domain of industrial design, were occurring on a multitude of levels. Toy design and manufacturing were embedded in wide socio-​ political contexts and permeated by large debates; they were shaped by the social, cultural and political milieu, but also contributed to shaping it. The emerging view of British-​German exchanges in that time-​period is one of multidimensional exchanges, mutual influences and ongoing cross-​fertilisation. Historical research illuminates these complicated and nuanced situations, a process that may prove useful today in helping us avoid simplistic answers to complex questions.

8 1 Ibid. 82 Sudrow, Geheimreport Deutsches Design, 117. 83 Aynsley, Designing Modern Germany, 9.

Ulrike Meyer Stump

2 Dorothy Warren and ‘The Smartest Private Art-​ Gallery Place in London’: Promoting Exchange with Berlin, 1927–​1934

Dorothy Warren (1896–​1954) –​interior decorator, designer, gallerist and eccentric –​was the owner of the Warren Gallery in central London and of a pet cockatoo, which made it into her wedding photograph published by the London society magazine The Sketch in 1928.1 A printed invitation to this wedding has found its way into the archives of the Georg Kolbe Museum in Berlin.2 Though perhaps not of great historic importance, this document is proof of a cross-​national friendship between the English gallerist and the German artist, illustrating how personal relationships could be central to cultural interchange between the two countries. It is unlikely that Kolbe made it to London for the celebration, staged at the Warren Gallery’s premises, although he must have known Warren quite well. In 1926 he had produced her portrait (Figure 2.1); she had returned the favour with an exhibition of his sculptures at her gallery in London in June 1928, six months before her wedding.3 This essay attempts to put Dorothy Warren back on the map of the British-​German art scene. It serves too as a case study for the role played by gallerists and artists travelling back and forth between the two countries in the interwar years, carrying objects and ideas with them in both directions. 1 The Sketch, 5 December 1928, 512. 2 Edward Prioleau Warren, printed wedding invitation for Georg Kolbe, 16 November 1928, Georg Kolbe Museum Archive, Berlin. 3 See illustrated invitation to a Private View for 12 June 1928, Georg Kolbe Museum Archive, Berlin (Figures 2.4 and 2.5).

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Figure 2.1.  Georg Kolbe, Portrait of Dorothy Warren (1926). Georg Kolbe Museum, Berlin. Photo: Markus Hilbich.

Warren crossed my path as the first English gallerist to show the plant photographs of German sculptor and photographer Karl Blossfeldt in November 1929.4 She combined Blossfeldt’s plant depictions with paper-​cut abstractions by Francis Bruguière, an American photographer then living in London.5 The exhibition celebrated a double book launch for Blossfeldt’s Art Forms in Nature, the English translation of his extremely successful photography book Urformen der Kunst, and Bruguière’s experimental 4 See the author’s book Karl Blossfeldt: Variations (Zurich: Lars Müller Publishers, 2021). 5 The show seemed interesting and highly unusual to me and I restaged it in an exhibition I curated for the Contemporary Arts Center, in Cincinnati, Ohio. The exhibition No Two Alike: Karl Blossfeldt, Francis Bruguière, Thomas Ruff juxtaposed Thomas Ruff ’s Negatives series (some are Blossfeldt motives which he reprinted as negatives) and his large-​format abstract Photograms with my reinterpretation of the historic encounter of Blossfeldt and Bruguière. See the catalogue: Ulrike Meyer Stump, ed., No Two Alike: Karl Blossfeldt, Francis Bruguière, Thomas Ruff (Vienna: Verlag für moderne Kunst, 2018) with texts by Edward Juler, Anne McCauley, Kevin Moore and the author.

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publication Beyond This Point, written in what he called ‘absolute collaboration’ with the BBC author Lance Sieveking.6 In one room of her gallery, Dorothy Warren showed thirty-​five gelatin silver prints of light designs and multiple exposures by Bruguière, including film stills he had produced with the German dancer Sebastian Droste in New York in the mid-​1920s. A gramophone played a recording of Sieveking reading from the book. Warren’s clever scenography thus turned the gallery visit into a multisensory experience quite revolutionary at the time. The Blossfeldt presentation in the gallery’s other room consisted of 102 photogravures from the unbound portfolio version of Art Forms in Nature which must have resulted in a very dense, stacked hanging. A surprising pair, Blossfeldt and Bruguière’s presentation at the Warren Gallery intrigued critics, as ‘quite different from the usual run of photographic shows’.7 In hindsight, however, the show is even more remarkable. The juxtaposition of vegetal forms and geometric abstractions in this exhibition recalls Wilhelm Worringer’s Abstraction and Empathy (1908), a volume which experienced some popularity in England during this period, and which related to many central concerns of British modern art, in particular of sculpture, and of biomorphism in general.8 Warren and her short-​lived gallery –​which existed for just seven years between 1927 and 1934 –​have not, however, received the same art-​ historical attention as other London galleries of the period. In the literature her work remains overshadowed by contemporary businesses such as the Leicester Galleries or the Mayor Gallery, despite the fact that Fred

6 7 8

Karl Blossfeldt, Art Forms in Nature (London: Zwemmer, 1929). Francis Bruguière and Lance Sieveking, Beyond This Point (London: Duckworth, 1929). Gui St Bernard, ‘Picturised Emotions of an Author: Exhibition that Stirs Various Senses –​Art from Paper and Light’, in Daily News and Westminster Gazette, 21 November 1929, Sieveking Scrapbook, Lilly Library, Bloomington, Indiana. Worringer’s study was translated into English only in 1953. His ideas on abstraction, however, were introduced to London by T. E. Hulme in a lecture, ‘The New Art and Its Philosophy’, that he gave at the Quest Society in 1914 and published in The New Age. See T. E. Hulme, The Collected Writings of T. E. Hulme (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), and Miranda B. Hickman, The Geometry of Modernism: The Vorticist Idiom in Lewis, Pound, H.D., and Yeats (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005).

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Mayor, for example, was a regular customer of Warren’s and represented many of the same artists.

The Warren Gallery, Mayfair Warren was born in 1896 to a well-​connected, cultural family. Her aunt was the Bloomsbury patron Lady Ottoline Morell, her godfather the writer Henry James. Warren and her gallery appear only fleetingly in accounts of the interwar cultural scene. She is named in connection with the scandal surrounding a 1929 exhibition of D. H. Lawrence’s paintings staged at her gallery, and as an early promoter of the sculptures of Gertrude Hermes and the needlework of fisherman John Craske.9 We hear of her affair with Silvia Townsend Warner’s lover, the poetess Valentine Ackland, which evidently involved drugs and violent disputes.10 And –​last but not least –​she is remembered as the gallerist who offered Henry Moore his first solo exhibition in January 1928.11 Lance Sieveking described Warren in his autobiography, as ‘a remarkable woman, tall and commanding’.12 Townsend

See, for example, Edward Nehls, D. H. Lawrence, A Composite Biography, vol. 3 (Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1959). Jane Hill, The Sculpture of Gertrude Hermes (Farnham: Lund Humphries in Association with the Henry Moore Foundation, 2011). Julia Blackburn, Threads. The Delicate Life of John Craske (London: Jonathan Cape, 2015). 10 Claire Harman, Sylvia Townsend Warner. A Biography (London: Penguin Books, 1989). 1 1 Moore’s 1928 exhibition consisted of forty-​two sculptures and fifty-​one drawings. See the catalogue of works available at: , accessed 21 August 2019. Moore was delighted with the reception of the show: ‘[Dorothy Warren] sold £90 worth of my things –​thirty drawings at £1 each, several to Epstein, several to Augustus John, and Henry Lamb –​it was mostly other artists, and established ones, who bought, and that was a great encouragement to me.’ John and Vera Russell, ‘Conversations with Henry Moore’, Sunday Times, 17 December 1961. 12 Lance Sieveking, The Eye of the Beholder (London: Hulton Press, 1957), 264. 9

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Warner’s biased impression was ‘beautiful: beechen hair, a fierce taut slender shape, but ugly hands and a voice like Ottoline [Morrell]’s only more baying’.13 Henry Moore remembered her as a significant advocate of British Modernism with ‘tremendous energy and real verve, real flair’.14 And D. H. Lawrence described her as ‘awfully nervy’ and complained of her unreliability in business matters.15 Nevertheless, he entrusted her with the exhibition of his controversial paintings in 1929, and could rely on her unconditional support during the subsequent indecency trial and the prohibition of further exhibitions of his work in England.16 After closing her gallery in the mid-​1930s, Warren concentrated her efforts on interior decoration. She died in Edinburgh in 1954. In a more positive moment, D. H. Lawrence –​quoting his stepdaughter, the painter Barbara Weekley who was herself one of Warren’s artists –​called the Warren Gallery ‘the smartest private art-​gallery place in London’.17 The gallery was located at the corner of Maddox Street and George Street in Mayfair and consisted of two rooms on the first floor of an eighteenth-​century building. Warren’s flat was above the gallery. On the top floor lived another eccentric, Edward Gathorne-​Hardy, a member of the notorious ‘Bright Young Things’.18 The gallery itself was intimate and decorated like a private apartment (Figure 2.2), very unlike London’s prestigious Goupil gallery, for example, or the galleries Bernheim-​Jeune or Paul Rosenberg in Paris, which have been described by historian Malcolm Gee

Claire Harman, ed., The Diaries of Sylvia Townsend Warner (London: Chatto & Windus, 1994), 75–​6. 14 Russell and Russell, ‘Conversations with Henry Moore’. 15 D. H. Lawrence, letter to Enid Hilton, 31 August 1928, in James T. Boulton, Margaret H. Boulton with Gerald M. Lacy, eds, The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, vol. VI, March 1927–​November 1928 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 535. 16 See Nehls, D. H. Lawrence 1959, esp. 342–​95. The police also confiscated Dorothy Warren’s volume of George Grosz’s Ecce Homo which was restored to her by the court because it had not been for sale. Nehls, D. H. Lawrence, 724, note 328. 17 D. H. Lawrence quoting Barbara Weekley, letter to Dorothy Brett, 13 August 1927, in Boulton, Boulton and Lacy, eds, The Letters of D.H. Lawrence, 127. 18 Sieveking, Eye of the Beholder, 264. 13

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Figure 2.2.  The Warren Gallery, London. Gallery One, the ‘Velvet Room’, during the exhibition of D. H. Lawrence’s paintings, July 1929, with photographic portraits of D. H. Lawrence on either side of the fireplace. On the mantelpiece are Henry Moore’s Head of a Girl (1923) and Bird (1927). From Edward Nehls, ed., D. H. Lawrence: A Composite Biography (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1959), n.p. (between pp. 368 and 369). © 1959 by the Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. Reprinted by courtesy of The University of Wisconsin Press.

as ‘a cross between a museum and an aristocratic residence’.19 Warren’s gallery also did not have the elegant modern look of the Nierendorf Gallery in Berlin, for example, where the furniture was designed by the Bauhaus master Marcel Breuer and where Karl Blossfeldt had enjoyed his first solo 19 Malcolm Gee, ‘Modern Art Galleries in Paris and Berlin, c. 1890–​ 1933: Types, Policies and Modes of Display’, Journal for Art Market Studies 2/​1 (2018), available at: , accessed 2 September 2018. See also Anne Helmreich, ‘The Socio-​Geography of Art Dealers and Commercial Galleries in Early Twentieth-​ Century London’, in Helena Bonett, Ysanne Holt and Jennifer Mundy, eds, The Camden Town Group in Context, Tate Research Publication, May 2012, available at:

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Figure 2.3.  ‘A German Photographer Looks at London’, The Tatler, 19 December 1928, 581. © The British Library Board (ZC.9.d.561).

exhibition in Germany. But Warren was proud of her grey velvet-​covered walls and the concealed lighting. Her aim was ‘to create in a house of a congenial period the perfect dwelling, aesthetically and practically’, as recalled by her husband, Philip Trotter.20 This in fact corresponded with

, accessed 2 September 2018. 20 Trotter, quoted in Nehls, D.H. Lawrence, 193–​4.

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many new galleries in inter-​war London. According to Andrew Stephenson, these galleries attracted ‘new younger, middle-​class art audiences’ with ‘a modern and metropolitan self-​consciousness about presentation’, while their innovative displays ‘provided for different forms of engagement with twentieth-​century interior design and styling’.21 In Warren’s gallery, everything was for sale, including the furniture, with framing services advertised as a speciality (see Figure 2.4). Warren’s husband also used the premises

Figure 2.4.  Invitation to the Georg Kolbe exhibition at the Warren Gallery, June 1928, back and front side (pages 4 and 1) of a folded leaflet. Georg Kolbe Museum Archive, Berlin, Georg Kolbe Estate, GK 421. 21

Andrew Stephenson, ‘Strategies of Display and Modes of Consumption in London Art Galleries in the Inter-​war Years’, in Pamela Fletcher and Anne Helmreich, eds, The Rise of the Modern Art Market in London, 1850–​1939 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), 99. Stephenson does not, unfortunately, mention Warren’s gallery in this text.

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for his business trading green semi-​precious stone objects under the name of Styrian Jade Ltd. Reading through the Warren Gallery’s notebook, one learns that Warren sold her art works mostly to other dealers or artists. The best-​sellers with the –​mostly female –​spontaneous visitors were her husband’s decorative stone objects, usually bought to serve as wedding presents.22

Connections to Germany Dorothy Warren had a special affinity to Germany. She once called it admiringly ‘a country carefully educated to approach all kinds of writing, drama, music and all the other arts, without mentioning the sciences, from a superhumanly unprejudiced and objective stand-​point’.23 She repeatedly travelled there and established a network of artists and gallerists during these visits. In 1928 the Berlin magazine Der Querschnitt figured Warren as the owner of London’s first ‘female gallery’ in an essay portraying six remarkable English women –​together with two politicians, a diplomat, England’s first female pilot and the editor of a feminist English newspaper.24 Warren also ran a book department in her gallery in cooperation with a German friend, Prince Leopold Loewenstein, who, according to Warren, was publishing German books in English, and buying English books for translation and publication in Germany.25 Warren did business with German officials in London –​mostly members of the Embassy –​and corresponded with Fritz Saxl of the Warburg Library in Hamburg.26 When Frieda Riess, one of the most successful Berlin 2 2 23 24 25 26

Warren Gallery notebook, V & A Special Collections, London. Quoted in Nehls, D.H. Lawrence, 201. Augusta von Oertzen, ‘Englische Frauen’, Der Querschnitt 8/​1 ( January 1928), 27–​8. Dorothy Warren, letter to D. H. Lawrence, 9 April 1928, reprinted in Nehls, D.H. Lawrence, 200–​1. Leopold Loewenstein was the father of Rupert Loewenstein, later the financial manager of the Rolling Stones. For example, 24 January 1930: ‘delivered Sickert picture to Herr Kühlmann, Berkley Hotel’ and 13 July 1928: ‘Fritz Saxl wishes for photograph of Fragonard No. 3 to

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society photographers visited London, she photographed Bloomsbury-​ hostess Mary St John Hutchinson, the writers Edith and Osbert Sitwell, the painter Augustus John, and Dorothy Warren. The portraits were published as ‘A German Photographer Looks at London’ in the society magazine The Tatler (Figure 2.3) and as ‘Portraits […] from a study trip to London’ in its German equivalent, Die Dame.27 It is very likely that Riess was a Berlin acquaintance of Warren’s who introduced her to the other sitters. Each of these names belonged to Warren’s immediate circle of friends. Warren’s exhibition programme, though officially specialised in modern British art, included several German ­figures –​Blossfeldt and Kolbe being the most prominent today. In England, Blossfeldt was perceived as a typically German artist. One reviewer of the BBC-​magazine The Listener wrote on Art Forms in Nature: ‘It is needless to point out that this book hails from Germany. No other national genius seems so well able to produce these monuments of combined patience and originality.’28 The ‘Americanness’ of Blossfeldt’s exhibition partner, Francis Bruguière, on the other hand, was never mentioned. On the contrary, it was Bruguière’s reputation in Germany which was noted in England. His photographs had been published in the German magazine UHU in 1925 and exhibited at Der Sturm gallery in Berlin in 1928; a light design appeared on the cover of Der Sturm magazine in July 1928. According to the manager of the London Avenue Pavilion, the cinema which screened Bruguière’s film Light Rhythms in March 1930, Bruguière’s photographs had also received be sent to Hamburg.’ Richard von Kühlmann was former Ambassador to England and German foreign minister and an art collector. Warren Gallery notebook, V & A Special Collections, London. 27 Anon., ‘Bildnisse der Berliner Photographin Frau Riess von einer Studienreise nach London’, Die Dame 4 (November 1928), 3–​5. Eight portraits were published without any accompanying text. Reproduced in Marion Beckers, Elisabeth Moortgat, eds, Die Riess. Fotografisches Atelier und Salon in Berlin, 1918–​1932 (Berlin: Das Verborgene Museum and Wasmuth Verlag, 2008), 154–​5. This catalog also reproduces a second version of Riess’s portrait of Dorothy Warren (p. 153). Riess showed her English portraits in an exhibition titled ‘Englische Köpfe’ [English Heads] at her studio on Kurfürstendamm 14/​15 in Berlin opening in November 1928. 28 Anon., ‘What Nature Knows of Art’, The Listener, 18 September 1929, Zwemmer Scrapbook, Tate Archives TGA 992.

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highest political attention in Germany. He wrote in a letter to the press: ‘Mr. Francis Bruguière is a very celebrated photographer who recently held an exhibition in the Warren Galleries in London, and whose photographs were used in the German Reichstag to prove that photography had gained the status of an art.’29 The Warren Gallery’s Kolbe exhibition took place during June and July 1928 and included twenty-​five statues and twenty-​five drawings, dating from the early to the mid-​1920s.30 An illustrated invitation was produced to promote the show’s private view (Figures 2.4 and 2.5). The sculptures on show were mostly small-​scale, measuring only a few inches in height, among them The Night of 1926 (a pendant to The Morning, exhibited in the pool of Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion in 1929), Assunta (1919/​ 1921), Dance of Death (1923) and Paolo and Francesca (1925). There were also portraits and drawings, blue and sepia ink washes consisting mainly of nudes. In Germany Kolbe was already a highly respected artist. A member of the Berlin Academy of Arts since 1919 he had executed numerous public pieces and was busy with portrait commissions. Outside Germany, however, his work was less well known. Warren reported to D. H. Lawrence on 26 June 1928: ‘[…] although sculpture is notoriously hard to sell, frightfully expensive to transport, and the general feeling about German work is not favourable, the show has been a financial as well as an artistic success.’31 The gallery notebook presents a different picture, listing only one interested customer and one sale. It is not clear whether this notebook documented all sales from the gallery. Warren’s own activities are rarely mentioned, and it may be that the book served more as a work report for her assistants. 29

Stuart Davis, Avenue Pavilion, London, letter to the Press concerning Press Preview of Light Rhythms on 11 February 1930, February 1930, Bruguière archives, Center for Creative Photography, Tucson AZ. Light Rhythms is known as the first abstract film produced in England. 30 See exh. cat. The Warren Gallery, Exhibition IX. Sculptures and Drawings by Georg Kolbe (London, 1928), National Art Library, V & A Museum, London. The catalogue gives 12 June to 7 July 1928, as exhibition dates. An entry in the Warren Gallery notebook states that the works were taken down 13 July. Lord Sandwich was interested in a sculpture, a crouching figure, and one statue was delivered to Hugh Walpole. Warren Gallery notebook, V & A Special Collections, London. 3 1 Dorothy Warren, letter to D. H. Lawrence, 26 June 1928, in Nehls, D.H. Lawrence, 223.

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Perhaps Kolbe’s exhibition was more successful than the notebook suggests; perhaps too, that while trying to convince Lawrence to hold a show at her gallery, Warren had embellished the truth. In Germany meanwhile, the journal Der Querschnitt was sure to mention the exhibition by the ‘brave Miss Warren’, noting the excellent presentation: ‘For the first time, German Art in England [is] prominently showcased.’32 A little over two years after the Kolbe exhibition, in October 1930, Warren devoted a solo show to another German sculptor, Carl Moritz Schreiner. Schreiner was active in Düsseldorf and, like Otto Dix and Max Ernst, a member of Das Junge Rheinland, the progressive artists’ group based around the Düsseldorf gallerist Johanna ‘Mutter’ Ey. He had started his career portraying animals (with a special penchant for cats); by the mid-​1920s, he was receiving large public commissions for architectural sculptures such as the relief over the entrance of the Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf still in place today. Warren had intended to display thirty-​ seven sculptures in her Schreiner exhibition –​among them portraits and animal figures in plaster and stucco, alongside twenty-​four drawings. Upon arrival of the works, half of the boxes were too large to be carried upstairs to the gallery, while certain pieces had been damaged during transport.33 Promoting exchange between Germany and England had proven in this case a logistical challenge. The exhibition did not do well, although the press –​without mentioning that Schreiner was a German –​were favourable to his cats and kittens, as well as his Dying Horse, subjects that seemed to please local customers.34 The gallery notebook, however, boldly states for the opening: ‘Good attendance but no sales.’35 Der Querschnitt 8/​7 ( July 1928), 505: ‘[…] bei der tapferen Miss Warren Bronzen von Kolbe, die ausgezeichnet aufgestellt sind; das erste Mal in England Deutsche Kunst gross herausgebracht.’ 33 ‘Sculptures and paintings arrive 3 October 1930, 12 cases of which 6 too large to bring upstairs. Tänzer, Sterbendes Pferd and Bronze cat were damaged.’ Warren Gallery notebook, V & A Special Collections, London. 34 The reviewer liked the ‘freedom, vitality, and imagination’ of the sculptures, the ‘liveliness of the cats and kittens’ and the ‘poignant beauty of [Schreiner’s] dying horse’. The Scotsman, 20 October 1930. 3 5 16 April 1930: first mentioning of Schreiner and the possibility of exhibiting his work. 14 October: opening. Review by the Times (Mr Marriott). Warren Gallery notebook, V & A Special Collections, London. 32

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Figure 2.5.  Invitation to the Georg Kolbe exhibition at the Warren Gallery, June 1928, inside pages (pages 2 and 3) of a folded leaflet. Georg Kolbe Museum Archive, Berlin, Georg Kolbe Estate, GK 421.

The Berlin-​London art exchange In 1927, before hosting these two solo shows by German artists, Dorothy Warren had in fact initiated her series of German exhibitions by committing to a ‘Berlin-​London art exchange’ together with the Berlin gallerist Rudolf Wiltschek. Wiltschek would present German artists in Warren’s gallery in London, while Warren would present English artists at Wiltschek’s gallery in Berlin. Wiltschek had worked with the ‘Kleine Galerie’ [Small Gallery] in Berlin since 1923; his own gallery was founded in 1925, showing primarily German art –​young painters, but also sculpture by Kolbe, for example, as well as other Berlin artists.36 Wiltschek’s 36 Werner J. Schweiger, entry regarding the ‘Galerie Rudolf Wiltchek’ for a planned ‘Lexikon des Kunsthandels der Moderne im deutschsprachigen Raum

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London exhibition began life at his gallery in Berlin. Opening in October 1927 as Twenty-​Four New Paintings from 1927 it toured Dresden, Hamburg, Munich, Frankfurt and the Galerie Ey in Düsseldorf before ending at the Warren Gallery. Among the works exhibited in London were pieces by another member of Das Junge Rheinland, Gert H. Wollheim, as well as pieces by Karl Gatermann the Elder.37 Wollheim was represented by a number of paintings, for example, the now-​lost Death of a Beggar (1927), which was accompanied by a poem.38 Gatermann meanwhile was described by the reviewer in The Times as one of the best German watercolour artists and was compared to William Turner, an outstanding compliment for a foreign artist.39 In the spring of 1928, just before her Kolbe exhibition in London, Warren showed her English painters at Wiltschek’s Gallery in Berlin.40 Sixty works by artists including Augustus John, Walter Sickert, Duncan Grant, Allan Walton, Paul Nash and Barbara Weekley were on display. Contemporary British art was clearly rare in Germany at this time, the show reviewed in the press as having the ‘charm of the uncommon’ (Seltenheitsreiz). The English painters, however, were somewhat condescendingly described 1905–​ 1937’, ca. 2005–​ 2011, Berlinische Galerie Archive, Kunstarchiv Werner J. Schweiger, inventary number BG-​WJS-​M-​1,71, available at: , accessed 16 July 2019. 37 Wiltschek’s exhibition moved from his own gallery to the Galerie Baumbach in Dresden, the Galerie Commeter in Hamburg, the Galerie Caspari in Munich, the Galerie Goldschmidt in Frankfurt and the Galerie Ey in Düsseldorf before arriving in London. See: Stephan von Wiese, ed., Gert H. Wollheim. Eine Retrospektive (Düsseldorf: Kunstmuseum and Wienand Verlag Köln, 1993), 225. See also: Internationale Sammler-​Zeitung 18 (1927), 158. Wollheim also exhibited at the New Burlington Galleries in 1938 as part of the 20th Century German Art exhibition. Regarding Gatermann see Peter-​Alexander Hanke and Bernd Gatermann, Der Maler Karl Gatermann d. Ä., Leben und Werk (Wuppertal: B. Gatermann, 2011). 3 8 von Wiese, Gert H. Wollheim, 225. 39 Hanke and Gatermann, Der Maler Karl Gatermann, 16–​22. 40 See references to her stay in Berlin for the installation of this exhibition in her letters to D. H. Lawrence from 9 April and 26 June 1928, in Nehls, D.H. Lawrence, 202 and 221. The Rudolf Wiltschek Gallery was located on Viktoriastrasse 2, and later moved to Bellevuestrasse 9.

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as ‘well-​behaved’.41 Warren’s husband later insisted on the importance of this engagement for British art on the continent: Dorothy Warren’s exhibitions of contemporary British art in Berlin and elsewhere were a first pioneer step in a movement that is now part of the stock-​in-​trade of the British Council, working on a Foreign Office grant and advised by high officials of the state machinery of aesthetics. For a young woman with no capital, presenting her own selection of artists –​some (like Sickert) already famous, but mostly known in London only through her efforts, they were a tour de force. Lord D’Abernon, as British Ambassador at Berlin, opening the first of these exhibitions, paid tribute to their contribution to international understanding.42

Nevertheless, it was Max Sauerlandt, director of the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, and Hildebrand Gurlitt, director of the Kunstverein in Hamburg, who would promote English art a few years later and who generally get the credit for introducing the British avant-​garde to Germany, first with the help of Herbert Read, then with the more conservative Anglo-​German Club in London. Gurlitt’s Neue englische Kunst [New English Art] exhibition opened four years after Dorothy Warren’s in June 1932 in Hamburg.43 His articles on British sculpture and painting were published in Germany in October of the same year.44 Contrary to Warren’s Berlin show, the Hamburg exhibition concentrated exclusively on the younger generation. Hence the literature on Henry Moore credits Sauerlandt and his personal friendship with Herbert Read for the first acquisition of Moore’s work in Germany.45 However, the painter Hubert 41 Kunst und Künstler: illustrierte Monatsschrift für bildende Kunst und Kunstgewerbe 9 (1 June 1928), 362. 42 Philip Trotter in Nehls, D.H. Lawrence, 700, Note 383. 43 See Lee Beard’s essay in this volume and Meike Hoffmann, Nicola Kuhn, Hitlers Kunsthändler: Hildebrand Gurlitt, 1895–​1956. Die Biographie (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2016). 44 Hildebrand Gurlitt, ‘Against the “Parxitelean” Tradition’, in Die neue Stadt. Internationale Monatsschrift für architektonische Planung und städtische Kultur 6 (September/​October 1932), 149–​50, and ‘Neue englische Malerei’, in Die neue Stadt 9 (December 1932), 186–​9. 45 In her study on Moore’s reception in Germany, Christa Lichtenstern does not mention Warren at all. Christa Lichtenstern, ‘Moore’s Presence in West Germany’,

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Wellington, principal of the Edinburgh College of Art, in 1957 remembered what he called Dorothy Warren’s ‘crusade for Henry Moore in Germany’ which, according to him, resulted in ‘the purchase of three [of Moore’s] works by the Hamburg Gallery, before any official recognition had been given to him in [England]’.46 Since Herbert Read was friends with Moore, Nash and Bruguière (whose multiple exposure of hammers adorns the dust jacket of Read’s second edition of Art and Industry), he was certainly also a regular visitor to the Warren Gallery. It is not unlikely that Read directed Sauerlandt there. A Warren Gallery notebook entry of 4 October 1928 mentions: ‘Art Gallery Hamburg sent man to see about holding a show –​Will return.’47 Whether the mysterious art gallery man from Hamburg ever returned is unfortunately not recorded.48

Conclusion From this short introduction to Warren’s promotion of German art in England, and of English art in Germany, we may conclude, first of all, that she was instrumental in constructing a platform of comparison, juxtaposing the latest trends in British art with, for example, the reduced, sculptural plant forms of Blossfeldt or with the more conservative efforts of in Christa Lichtenstern, Henry Moore, Work –​Theory –​Impact (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2008), 290–​1. Sauerlandt himself mentions a visit to Moore’s studio in a letter to his wife dating February 1931. Max Sauerlandt, letter to St, 25 February 1931, in Kurt Dingelstedt, ed., Max Sauerlandt. Im Kampf um die moderne Kunst. Briefe 1902–​1933 (Munich: Albert Langen and Georg Müller Verlag, 1957), 376. 46 Hubert Wellington, letter to Philip Trotter, 10 September 1957, quoted in Nehls, D.H. Lawrence, 695, note 335. 7 Moore’s exhibition at the Warren Gallery had taken place in January 1928. So the 4 Hamburg visitor did not come to see Moore’s show. 48 Max Sauerlandt’s published letters reveal that he was in London in early August 1928, not October. Unfortunately, no letters of October are reproduced. Dingelstedt, Max Sauerlandt.

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Kolbe to abstract the human body. We could expand the study by relating her efforts to those of the British art historian Reginald Howard Wilenski who, in 1932, not only published Blossfeldt’s photographs alongside contemporary British art in his The Meaning of Modern Sculpture, but also encouraged young artists to study Blossfeldt’s plant forms.49 Wilenski also wrote the introduction to Gurlitt’s Hamburg exhibition of Neue englische Kunst and thus furthered the understanding of modern British art in Germany.50 He, too, was influential in promoting exchange in both directions. But we could also take a different approach: we could, for example, ask ourselves why Warren’s name does not appear in much of the existing literature or analyse the London art market and see whether there were other small galleries that have disappeared from the record. Was Warren’s case unique and possibly due to her status as a female gallerist? Finally, we may end by acknowledging the individuals behind the institutions promoting exchange between England and Germany and perhaps continue our investigation into their personal relationships as the driving force in this cross-​national circulation of objects and ideas. Questions of ‘who attended which wedding?’, ‘How did they meet?’, ‘Where did they travel?’ or ‘Who liked, envied or hated whom?’ open doors to gossip and speculation. But occasionally, biographical details and anecdotal references do help the understanding of a particular historic event or even of a broader context.51 Indeed, some personal relationships lead not only to the circulation, but also to the production of artworks. This is the case with Kolbe’s Portrait of Dorothy Warren (Figure 2.1) or, less obviously, with Henry Moore’s Mother and Child (1928), previously in Warren’s private collection, and known today only through a reproduction in Herbert Read’s 1949 Moore monograph (Figure 2.6). As noted above, Warren was representing Moore’s work from at least 1928 to 1931 and was known as a ‘crusader’ on its behalf both at home and abroad. Two of his sculptures 49 Reginald Howard Wilenski, The Meaning of Modern Sculpture (London: Faber & Faber, 1932). 50 Lichtenstern, Henry Moore, 291. 51 After writing a book-​length reception study on Blossfeldt’s photographs where biographical details take up as little as a half a page (see note 1), I am amused to find myself here in defense of a biographical approach.

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Figure 2.6.  Henry Moore, Mother and Child (1928, LH 51), Styrian Jade, 4 in., formerly coll. Mrs Philip Trotter (Dorothy Warren), whereabouts unknown. Reproduced in Herbert Read, Henry Moore (London: Lund, Humphries and A. Zwemmer, 1949), pl. 10a. Reproduced by permission of the Henry Moore Foundation.

remained on Warren’s mantelpiece long after the closure of her 1928 exhibition, when her gallery was filled with paintings by D. H. Lawrence (see Figure 2.2). Mother and Child can truly be seen as a concrete product of this artist-​gallerist relationship, while the story behind the sculpture’s material provides important clues to the genesis of this work. According to the caption in Read’s monograph, it was manufactured from ‘Styrian Jade’. This was a term invented by Warren’s husband Philip Trotter for the green stone of his imported decorative objects.52 As the name suggests, the source 52

Trotter in Nehls, D.H. Lawrence, 696, note 337. Trotter called it a ‘bogus name’ because the stone is in fact a serpentine and does not originate from the state of Styria but from neighbouring Burgenland.

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of this stone was Austria: Warren and Trotter’s frequent holidays touring Germany would typically involve a stop in the Austrian Burgenland, at the castle of Burg Bernstein close to the mines where this ‘jade’ was sourced. It was here that the stone objects were made by local artisans, before being shipped to London for sale by Trotter.53 Warren must have brought a piece of uncut stone back from this quarry, through Germany and across the English Channel, to be passed to Moore for the production of Mother and Child. The object thus stands as a collaborative project, a product of both the German-​and English-​speaking worlds; maybe a commission, but certainly a very personal token of appreciation from the young Moore to the smart gallerist who had launched his career in England, and as it appears, in Germany as well.

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Burg Bernstein was owned by the Almásy family. Contrary to my claims in Meyer Stump, No Two Alike, it was not László Almásy who was Philip Trotter’s business partner, but his brother, János Almásy. The eccentric lifestyle and taste for the occult of this castle-​owner (who later on, in the 1930s, is said to have had a relationship with the British Nazi supporter Unity Mitford) must have intrigued both Warren and Trotter.

Lee Beard

3  Exhibiting Contemporary British Art: The Anglo-​German Club, 1931–​1934

On 26 June 1932 the exhibition Neue Englische Kunst [New English Art] opened at the Kunstverein in Hamburg. Consisting of over 100 exhibits, this was by far the largest display of contemporary British painting and sculpture to be shown in Germany since the end of the First World War.1 The exhibition, which toured to Munich and Berlin, was seen as an opportunity to help build greater mutual understanding of recent artistic trends and developments taking place in the two respective countries.2 As R. H. Wilenski observed in the catalogue, currently ‘English people, as a whole, know next to nothing of post-​war Germany, and the German people, I imagine, know next to nothing of post-​war England’.3 Opened by the British Ambassador to Berlin, Sir Horace Rumbold, the Hamburger Nachrichten reported that the show was sure to be the most interesting event of the Hamburg summer,

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3

As was recorded in a transcript for the exhibition catalogue, 134 artworks were transported from London, where they had been assembled at the Tate Gallery, to Hamburg on the 22 June. Tate Gallery Archive [TGA] 8317.6.1.16. The published catalogue for the exhibition was titled Erste Austausch Ausstellung neuer Kunst England Deutschland [First Exchange Exhibition of New Art England Germany]. In a questionnaire sent to the prospective exhibitors, it was asked ‘Are you willing that the pictures selected should perhaps be exhibited later in Munich, Berlin and possibly London or Edinburgh?’ TGA 8317.6.1.5. Although there is evidence the exhibition travelled to the German cities, it does not appear to have been shown in the UK. English type-​written transcript of the ‘Foreword’ by R. H. Wilenski. TGA 8317.6.1.10.

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and unquestionably a highlight of the season’s social calendar.4 The exhibition certainly received wide coverage in the regional and national newspapers. Writing in the Frankfurter Zeitung, Gustav Pauli, Director of the Hamburg Kunsthalle, noted that whilst there was an evident and understandable influence of the École de Paris on the works displayed, he was also interested to see similarities between some of the English paintings and the Neue Sachlichkeit [New Objectivity] movement in Germany. For the reviewer in the Hamburger Fremdenblatt this was a relationship that should now be developed further, proclaiming that it was time for both countries to begin mutually, and artistically, to take notice of each other.5 The Neue Englische Kunst exhibition was organised as a collaboration between the authorities in Hamburg and the London-​based Anglo-​German Club (Figure 3.1). Established in 1931, the Anglo-​German Club was conceived as a social organisation that could help foster greater business and cultural relations between Britain and German-speaking nations. From the outset its founder, Mark Neven du Mont, succeeded in attracting a distinguished list of influential figures to support and promote the Club’s aims and objectives. Viscount D’Abernon, who acted as British Ambassador to Germany from 1920 to 1925, became the Club’s President. Its inauguration dinner was attended by, among others, the German Ambassador to London, the Austrian Minister, the Under-​Secretary of State for Foreign affairs, the Under-​Secretary of the Overseas Department of the Board of Trade and the Director of the BBC, Sir John Reith. As was reported in The Times, German Ambassador Konstantin von Neurath noted in his speech ‘that the foundation of the club came at a time of the deepest industrial and

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Anon., ‘Neue Englische Kunst’, Hamburger Nachrichten (27 June 1932). I am extremely grateful to John Campbell for his kind assistance in the translation of German documents during my research. I would also like to thank Charles Spicer for sharing with me an extract from his PhD Thesis, ‘Ambulant amateurs’: The Rise and Fade of the Anglo-​German Fellowship (Institute of Historical Research, School of Advanced Study, University of London, 2018). Gustav Pauli, ‘Ausstellung Englischer Kunst in Hamburg’, Frankfurter Zeitung (8 July 1932), and ‘Neue Kunst in England’, Hamburger Fremdenblatt (25 June 1932).

Exhibiting Contemporary British Art

Figure 3.1.  The Anglo-​German Club, 6 Carlton Gardens, London. Photo: © Tate.

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economic depression, which affected not Germany alone but the whole world’ adding that ‘there was no country to-​day which could isolate itself from the affairs of other nations’.6 For Viscount D’Abernon ‘The Anglo-​ German Club stood before everything else as an exponent of international understanding and cooperation’.7 Although the economic situation was undeniably a driving factor behind the Anglo-​German Club, as a whole its publicity stressed the encouragement of ‘intellectual intercourse on a social basis’.8 At its London premises at 6 Carlton Gardens –​less than 100 m from the German Embassy in London at 9 Carlton House Terrace9 –​the Club provided a wide range of facilities for its members, including accommodation and meeting rooms, a dining room, a basement bar (serving cold German beer and snacks), and a library and writing room where Austrian, Swiss and German newspapers were available. It also organised numerous dinners, excursions, concerts, lectures and debates.10 The Club’s association with the visual arts also played a role in its agenda to further ‘intellectual intercourse’ between the two nations. Following ‘the surprise and enthusiasm with which the Hamburg Exhibition’ was ‘met on the Continent’, in 1933 the Anglo-​German Club was involved in organising a second exhibition, The Exhibition of Contemporary British Art, this time at its London home in Carlton Gardens.11 The events that surrounded the organisation and reception of both exhibitions, as well as the actions of a number of the individuals involved, provide a compelling insight into how the cultural landscape of the period was substantially impacted by the changing political situation across Europe. Whilst the two shows were held less than eighteen months apart, significantly they 6 7 8 9 10

11

Anon., ‘Ambassador on the Economic Crisis’, The Times (24 July 1931). Anon., ‘Lord D’Abernon on the World Crisis’, The Times (13 May 1932). Anon., ‘An Anglo-​German Club in London’, The Times (10 March 1931). See the essay by Ina Weinrautner in this volume. Anglo German Club, 1933 (pamphlet published to outline ‘its foundation and objects, its history and progress during the first two years, with a description of the Club House and the amenities and advantages offered to Its Members’). TGA 8317.6.1.54. Anon., ‘Foreword’, The Exhibition of Contemporary British Art, The Anglo German Club, 6 Carlton Gardens, London, 14 December 1933.

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took place equidistant either side of the passing of ‘The Enabling Act’ by the Reichstag in March 1933, an amendment to the Constitution that effectively awarded Hitler and the Nazi Party absolute control in Germany. From the outset, the Anglo-​German Club had stated unequivocally that it was a ‘strictly non-​political’ organisation.12 Nonetheless, as the organisers of The Exhibition of Contemporary British Art would realise, by late 1933, due to the Club’s explicit association with Germany, this was a position they would be required to vehemently verify and defend on various fronts.

New art to Hamburg A key figure in the organisation of the earlier Neue Englische Kunst exhibition in Hamburg was the Director of the city’s Kunstverein, Hildebrand Gurlitt (1895–​1956) (Figure 3.2). The son of the architect and art historian Cornelius Gurlitt, Hildebrand had established something of a reputation as a promoter and supporter of modern German artists since his appointment as the first director of the König Albert Museum in Zwickau in 1925. During his time in Zwickau, Gurlitt acquired and exhibited works by, among others, Max Pechstein, Käthe Kollwitz, Erich Heckel and Emil Nolde, as well as commissioning the Bauhaus to redesign and decorate the building that housed the collection in 1926. However, in 1930, confronted by the worsening economic climate and the rise in the region of Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP), Gurlitt was removed from his post. As Susan Roland has shown, although the official reason given was financial mismanagement, it is very probable that Gurlitt’s open support of modern art, in contention with the ideals of the 12

As early as March 1931, in an announcement in The Times, it was stated: ‘The objects of the club are: –​“To foster friendship and understanding between British and German nationals and to provide a non-​political meeting place for gentlemen of both countries. To establish a centre for Germans visiting London and to make the feel at home in this country.” ’ Anon., ‘An Anglo-​German Club in London’, The Times (10 March 1931).

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Figure 3.2.  Hildebrand Gurlitt (right) with Leopold von Hoesch, 1932. Photo: © Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-​13864.

NSDAP, contributed equally to his dismissal.13 Fortuitously for Gurlitt, it was precisely the economic and political uncertainty of the period that would help sustain his ongoing parallel activities as an art dealer. Working with the support of the wealthy Dresden industrialist Kurt Kirchbach, Gurlitt was in a position to use his knowledge and artworld connections to acquire works for both Kirchbach and other private collectors. With 13

Susan Ronald, Hitler’s Art Thief: Hildebrand Gurlitt, the Nazis, and the Looting of Europe’s Treasures (New York: St Martins Press, 2015), 141.

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many in Germany facing great financial strain, the need to sell off assets was commonplace, for opportunist dealers like Gurlitt this meant that artworks could often be acquired at a low price.14 By the time he entered the Hamburger Kunstverein as its new director in 1931, Gurlitt appears to have been actively establishing business relations overseas, the scope of which was certainly broadened by his involvement in the Neue Englische Kunst exhibition.15 Listed among the Selection Committee for the Hamburg show were a number of notable British art establishment figures, including the Director of The Tate Gallery, J. B. Manson, the art critic for The Times, Charles Marriot, the art historian and critic R. H. Wilenski, and significantly, the soon-​to-​be leading apologist for modern art in England, Herbert Read. In May 1932 Gurlitt travelled to London to identify works for the exhibition. Prior to his arrival, the Secretary of the Anglo-​German Club had distributed a questionnaire to potential contributors, containing a request for the location at which artworks could be viewed. Not surprisingly, many of the main contemporary 14 The discovery of some 1,400 works from Gurlitt’s private collection in the apartment of his son Cornelius in 2010 –​around 300 of which had been exhibited as Degenerate Art in Munich in 1937 –​has prompted widespread media and academic interest in Gurlitt’s dealership activities during the years of the Third Reich. See, for example, Roland, Hitler’s Art Thief; also Andreas Baresel-​Brand, Meike Hopp and Agnieszka Lulinska, eds, Bestandsaufnahme Gurlitt: “Entartete Kunst”, beschlagnahmt und verkauft, der NS-​Kunstraub und die Folgen (Munich: Hermer Verlag, 2017); Maurice Philip Remy, Der Fall Gurlitt: die wahre Geschichte über Deutschlands größten Kunstskandal (Berlin: Europa Verlag, 2017); and Meike Hoffmann and Nicola Kuhn, Hitlers Kunsthändler: Hildebrand Gurlitt 1895–​1956, die Biografie (Munich: C. H. Beck Verlag, 2016). 15 As Beth Gates Warren has shown, by 1930 Gurlitt was writing to Edward Weston in California regarding the purchase of photographs, most likely for Kurt Kirchbach’s collection of avant-​garde photographs. An exhibition of this collection was organised by Gurlitt at the Hamburg Kunstverein in January 1932. Beth Gates Warren, ‘Edward Weston and His German Connections’, in Mitra Abbaspour, Lee Ann Daffner and Maria Morris Hambourg, eds, Object: Photo. Modern Photographs: The Thomas Walther Collection 1909–​1949. An Online Project of the Museum of Modern Art (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2014), available at: , accessed 21 August 2018.

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art dealers in London were listed among the respondents, including the Arthur Tooth and Sons Gallery, Leicester Galleries and the New Bond Street premises of the London Artists’ Association. Gurlitt also visited a number of artists in their studios. Ben Nicholson, writing in a letter to his wife and fellow artist, Winifred Nicholson, noted that; Dr Gurlitt from Hamburg came to select my p[ain]t[in]gs Wed. evening, & I told him to go & see your work at the Leicester Galleries […] I also told him more about Frances [Hodgkins] etc […] Will you drop a line to Brown [at Leicester Galleries] & say that you’d like Gurlitt to have some things for Hamburg if he likes them (he took 6 of mine) […] I think the show is worth you taking trouble about as it may go on to Berlin afterwards.16

Nicholson proudly announced that Gurlitt ‘seemed very excited’ to have found work like his in England, and that a photographer had been to take pictures of him and his work for reproduction in Germany (Figure 3.3). He also mentioned that Gurlitt had already been to see Henry Moore at his nearby studio on Parkhill Road. As it would turn out, with his contribution of six works on paper and six sculptures, Henry Moore was among the best represented of the British artists shown in Hamburg. Winifred Nicholson sent six paintings, and Ben Nicholson, much to his frustration, had only two works included.17 Almost all the exhibits were for sale, and the range of contemporary art on show was rather catholic. Walter Sickert and William Nicholson headed the older, more established generation of British artists, with Nicholson’s Scottish Still Life (1931, today private collection), being one of the most expensive works on display, priced at £262. Christopher Wood was shown posthumously, with loans from two of his most notable patrons, Lucy Wertheim and H. S. ( Jim) Ede, the latter lending Building 16 Letter from Ben Nicholson to Winifred Nicholson, c. May 1932. In a later letter to Winifred dated 4 August 1932, Nicholson wrote: ‘Here is the catalogue of that German show, it is said to have been a great success at Hamburg –​now going on to Munich and then Berlin.’ I would like to thank the Trustees of the Winifred Nicholson Archive for sharing with me this material. 17 Nicholson noted, ‘Rotten only 2 of mine having gone –​there were 5 others (including the big 7 & 5 one) which was chosen & didn’t go owing to Tooths [Gallery] muddling it.’ Ibid.

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Figure 3.3.  Ben Nicholson’s studio, No. 7 The Mall, London. Photo: © Tate.

the Boat, Tréboul (1930, today Kettles Yard, Cambridge). The remarkable pre-​war Slade School generation was also well represented, with works by Mark Gertler, William Roberts, Stanley Spencer and Edward Wadsworth. Perhaps due to their apparent affinity with the Neue Sachlichkeit artists, in terms of numbers of works on display, Gertler, Roberts and Spencer, along with the younger Edward Burra, were among the most predominant of the painters. This was a quality observed by reviewers at the time, and the works of Roberts and Spencer were illustrated in several of the Hamburg newspapers. Wadsworth also received notable coverage in the press, with a number of his modern maritime paintings reproduced, including North Sea (1929, today private collection). Wadsworth also visited the exhibition in Hamburg, where he met with Hildebrand Gurlitt.18 18 Barbara Wadsworth, Edward Wadsworth: A Painter’s Life (London: Michael Russell Publishing, 1989), 198.

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Reception and reviews The various published reviews of the exhibition provide an interesting insight into the reputation of English art in Germany during the early 1930s, and the extent to which the Hamburg show both challenged and substantiated this. In the view of the critic for the Hamburger Fremdenblatt, the English were seen to have an uneasy relationship with modern art, only recently beginning to get used to the idea that it was necessary for Europe to live in a changed way since the war.19 However, for this reviewer there was one distinct aspect of the Hamburg exhibition that challenged more than any other the perception that English art is always delicate, elegant and gentle; this was the modern sculpture on display. Singling out for praise the ‘powerful and primeval’ work of Moore, Barbara Hepworth and John Skeaping, the critic boldly claimed that England may now be in the process of taking a leading role in the history of sculpture in Europe (Figure 3.4).20 This was a position supported by both Gustav Pauli and Ernst Sander, who recognised a far greater advancement into the territory of modern art among the sculpture on display, than in the paintings.21 For Sander, this was evident in a new generation of sculptors that were working in the space opened up by the pioneer Jacob Epstein, an artist whose absence, he notes, was met with great disappointment by some in Hamburg. The critic in the Hamburger Fremdenblatt also noted that, in the view of many Germans, Epstein was the most significant modern artist working in England at the time. The general consensus among the Hamburg reviews was that the leader of the younger school of modern British sculpture was undoubtedly Henry Moore. By 1932 Moore’s work had already entered into one of the city’s main public collections, the Hamburg Museum für Kunst

1 9 Anon., ‘Neue Kunst in England‘, Hamburger Fremdenblatt (25 June 1932). 20 Ibid. 21 Anon., ‘Austellung Englischer Kunst in Hamburg‘, Gustav Pauli, Frankfurter Zeitung (8 July 1932), and Ernst Sander, untitled press cutting (National Art Library, London, 78.H).

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Figure 3.4.  Barbara Hepworth, Figure of a Woman, 1929–​1930. Exhibited in Neue Englische Kunst, Hamburg Kunstverein, June–​July 1932 (34, as Frau). Photo: E. J. Mason /​Barbara Hepworth © Bowness, © Tate.

und Gewerbe [Museum of Arts and Crafts]. In the previous year, the progressive director of the museum, Dr Max Sauerlandt, had travelled to Moore’s London studio, where he had acquired seven drawings and a small ironstone sculpture of a head.22 At this time Sauerlandt appears to have been in close contact with one of Moore’s primary supporters in Britain, the art historian, critic and poet, Herbert Read. In 1934 Read published the first monograph on the artist and, along with Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth, Moore remained a central figure among the group of modern artists that he actively promoted. All three were included in

22

Information from the Henry Moore online catalogue of the artist’s work. Available at: , accessed 21 August 2018. It is not clear whether all of these works entered into the Hamburg Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, or if some were for Sauerlandt’s private collection.

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Read’s seminal Art Now, one of the first publications to present to a British audience a theoretical framework for understanding recent developments in European avant-​g arde art. With considerable attention paid to the ‘subjective realism’ of the German Expressionist School, significantly, in its opening pages, Read dedicated Art Now to Max Sauerlandt, in ‘recognition of his devotion to the cause of modern art’.23 This dedication was clearly motivated on Read’s part by recent political events taking place in Europe. In the book’s preface, written during the summer of 1933, Read acknowledged that with the ‘access to absolute power of a group of men’ in Germany, ‘artists and museum directors’ had been ‘dismissed from their posts [and] modern paintings and sculpture’ had been ‘relegated to the cellars or suffered worse indignities’.24 Sauerlandt was one such director. On 5 April 1933, under the Nazi ‘Restoration of the Professional Civil Service’ laws, Sauerlandt was removed from his post at the Hamburg Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe. Within six months he was ousted from his Chair at the University of Hamburg, as well as having his membership at the Hamburger Kunsthalle suspended. In 1937, the important collection of modern art that he had amassed in Hamburg was categorised as ‘degenerate’ and seized by the Hitler government. The seizure included Moore’s drawing Ideas for Sculpture: Mother and Child and Reclining Figures (c. 1929, today Kunstmuseum Bern) (Figure 3.5), one of the works Sauerlandt had acquired from the artist six years earlier. By 1940 this work would be in the possession of Hildebrand Gurlitt, who was now employed as one of the four official dealers appointed by the Nazi Commission for the Exploitation of Degenerate Art.25

23 Herbert Read, Art Now: An Introduction to the Theory of Modern Painting and Sculpture (London: Faber and Faber, 1933), 7. 24 Read, Art Now, 12–​13. 25 The other three were Karl Buchholz, Ferninand Möller and Bernhard A. Böhmer. Ronald, Hitler’s Art Thief, 174.

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Figure 3.5.  Henry Moore, Ideas for Sculpture: Mother and Child and Reclining Figures, c. 1929. Collage, graphite, watercolour, coloured ink on paper. 32 × 33.8 cm. Kunstmuseum Bern, Cornelius Gurlitt Bequest. Photo: courtesy Kunstmuseum Bern. Reproduced by permission of the Henry Moore Foundation.

A changed climate It was against the backdrop of unfolding events in Germany that the organisation of The Exhibition of Contemporary British Art began in London. In the summer of 1933, the Anglo-​German Club held a dinner to celebrate the second anniversary of its inauguration. At the event, the German Ambassador Leopold von Hoesch, an increasing critic of Hitler’s

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actions, stated that it was ‘the duty of all German people living in England to preserve the sacred trust of Anglo-​German understanding’, adding that ‘on it, he was convinced, depended not only the development of their mutual relationship, but the peace of the world’.26 The Club’s standing as a ‘non-​political organisation’ was also once again firmly stated. This was a position explicitly embedded in the ultimate presentation of the contemporary British art exhibition in London, its December 1933 press announcement emphasising that its conception was ‘based upon the belief that art, while it has interesting national flavours, transcends all national and political aims and prejudices’. As the press release continued, ‘the club, in relation to domestic questions in Germany’ was ‘strictly neutral ground’. It was also noted that plans were in place to hold a future exhibition at the Anglo-​German Club of ‘the best examples of contemporary work by German-​speaking peoples’.27 The two individuals appointed as Honorary Organisers for the Exhibition of Contemporary British Art were Arthur Lett-​Haines (1894–​ 1978) and J. R. J. ( Jack) Macnamara (1905–​44). Lett-​Haines was a painter and sculptor, who often referred to himself as an ‘English Surrealist’. In the 1920s he had lived in Paris with his partner, the artist Cedric Morris, where they had become part of an artistic community that included Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Ernest Hemmingway and Nancy Cunard (Figure 3.6). In contrast, Macnamara had served as an officer in the British army in India, and is known to have worked for the secret service during the previous decade.28 It appears likely that Macnamara’s involvement in the organisation in the exhibition was perhaps due more to his desire to establish relationships with influential members of the Anglo-​German Club, than to his interest in contemporary art. In October 1933, Macnamara wrote to Lett-​Haines that he had ‘clinched with the Anglo-German Club’ and had met with Neven du Mont. What appears to have particularly impressed Macnamara was that

2 6 Anon., ‘Plea for Anglo-​German Understanding’, The Times (21 July 1933), 18. 27 Anon., ‘Art Exhibitions: Anglo-​German Club’, The Times (15 December 1933). 28 Michael Bloch, Closet Queens: Some 20th Century British Politicians (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 2015).

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Figure 3.6.  Cedric Morris with Arthur Lett-​Haines (right) and Rubio the parrot. Photo: © Tate /​Estate of Arthur Lett-​Haines.

the Club’s founder was the cousin of the Vice-​Chancellor of the German Reich, Franz von Papen, an individual that had played an integral role in Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor. Macnamara enthusiastically informed Lett-​Haines, ‘Du Mont and I are going to Berlin next month to meet von Papen and others, which should be interesting.’29 Several weeks later, writing from the Anglo-​German Club, Macnamara explained how very busy he was arranging the trip: ‘You would think I was an ambassador the trouble 29

Letter from J. R. J. ( Jack) Macnamara to Arthur Lett-​Haines, dated 8 October 1933. Cedric Morris papers, TGA, 8317.1.1.2163.

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that is being taken –​the F[oriegn].O[ffice]., the embassy etc. I am giving some lectures there.’ He concluded, rather intriguingly, ‘I have got to stop as I have […] to interview Mosely’s right-​hand man.’30 Although it is not clear what the contents of Macnamara’s lectures were, the letter he subsequently sent to Lett-​Haines from his hotel in Berlin on 18 November 1933 is worth quoting at length: I have discussed art with many people. Art is going to be allowed to develop itself as in other countries, and is definitely going to be encouraged. If certain well-​known people have occasionally diatribed against certain forms of modern art, it is because they are expressing a personal opinion, as do well-​known people in other countries occasionally. But art is not being tampered with officially (except in cases of gross immorality). If artists have been in a few cases turned out it is because they have been nuisances politically or morally, a fact they keep to themselves when in other countries. Providing they confine their attentions to art, which, as I say, is to be allowed to develop on its own lines, they are encouraged in every way.31

As was evident in the introductory pages of Read’s Art Now, at a time when Nazi policies against modern art were already being denounced in Britain, it is not completely clear whether Macnamara was being naïve, disingenuous or voicing his own political position. This is amplified when, in the same letter, Macnamara informs Lett-​Haines that ‘he had been unable to get into touch with Flechtheim about pictures’, adding that, although he had asked ‘other picture dealers, no one seems to have heard of him’.32 Macnamara must have been referring to his whereabouts, rather than his reputation, since Alfred Flechtheim had been one of the foremost connoisseurs, collectors, publishers and dealers of modern art working in Germany. During the previous decade, Flechtheim had established galleries in Düsseldorf, Berlin, Frankfurt, Cologne and Vienna, as well as forming a successful business partnership with the notable Paris-​ based dealer, and early exponent of cubism, Daniel-​Henry Kahnweiler. 30 Letter from Macnamara to Lett-​Haines, 6. Carlton Gardens, London /​Oct. 26th 1933. Cedric Morris papers, TGA, 8317.1.1.2165. 31 Letter from Macnamara to Lett Haines, Hotel Bristol, Berlin, Unter der Linden, Nov 18th 1933. TGA 8317.1.1.2167. 32 Ibid.

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However, by mid-​1933, as a Jew and a prominent advocate of avant-​garde art, Flechtheim’s future in Germany was extremely precarious. In March 1933 an auction partly organised by Flechtheim was violently disrupted by a mob of Hitler’s paramilitary ‘Brown Shirts’, with modern artworks confiscated as ‘degenerate’. Flechtheim was also publicly denounced by the Reichskammer der bildenden Künste (RBK) [Reich Chamber for the Visual Arts], as an example of the international Jew that had brought about the economic crisis through inflationary commercial practices. The fact that he was also refused membership of the RBK, which by September had become a legal requirement, meant that he was no longer able to officially engage in any business activities. By early October 1933, little over a month before Macnamara arrived in Berlin, Flechtheim had fled the city and Germany. His reputation and image continued to be ridiculed by the Nazis in his absence. The reason for Macnamara’s attempt to make contact with Flechtheim in Berlin must have related to plans for the future show of German works, rather than the imminent Exhibition of Contemporary British Art, since items for the latter would have predominantly been in London. The Exhibition of Contemporary British Art opened at the Anglo-​German Club on 14 December 1933 and, as had been the case in Hamburg, presented the public with a relatively wide-​ranging selection of artworks. Wilson Steer and Walter Sickert represented the elder statesmen of the group. Mark Gertler, William Roberts and Stanley Spencer were also present, albeit with far fewer paintings than in Hamburg. Among the new additions were Augustus John and Charles Ginner, as well as Lett-​Haines’s partner Cedric Morris, who exhibited four pictures. Notably, six of the more progressive artists on display –​Edward Burra, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Paul Nash, Ben Nicholson and Edward Wadsworth –​were listed in the catalogue as members of Unit One; a recently formed exhibiting group that was said ‘to stand for the expression of a truly contemporary spirit’ in painting, sculpture and architecture.33 With Herbert Read as its 33

Paul Nash letter to the Editor of The Times, 2 June 1933, quoted in Herbert Read, ed., Unit 1: The Modern Movement in English Architecture, Painting and Sculpture (London: Cassell and Company, 1934), 10.

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leading exponent, and a clear engagement by those involved with artistic developments on the continent, for a brief period the short-​lived group presented a direct challenge to the more conservative aspects of British art. This was evident to one visitor to the Anglo-​German Club exhibition, who observed that ‘[as] if to invite discussion, the “abstractionists”, such as Mr Edward Wadsworth and Mr Ben Nicholson, are grouped in proximity to the sherry bar’.34

Diplomacy and difficulties Due to the impact of events in Germany, the organisers of the London exhibition were however not successful in persuading all of the artists they wished to submit works for the show. On 5 December, Lett-​Haines wrote to Jacob Epstein, an artist who had been the victim of considerable anti-​ Semitic orientated criticism throughout his career, in a desperate attempt to convince him and his wife of the neutrality of the Anglo-​German Club. Enclosing the club’s prospectus, and ‘other material to reassure Mrs Epstein that our constitution is entirely unpolitical’, Lett-​Haines added that its Directors would like to offer him ‘honorary membership during the period of the Exhibition’.35 This clearly had no effect, and two days later Epstein replied, ‘I am quite unable I find to exhibit at 6 Carlton Gardens, and most certainly I do not wish to have any works of mine borrowed to exhibit there.’36 Another artist that appeared to have some concerns regarding the German associations of the Club was Duncan Grant. Whilst Epstein had been a notable absence from the earlier exhibition in Hamburg, Grant had sent eight paintings. However, for whatever reason, Lett-​Haines now 34 Anon., ‘Art Exhibitions: Anglo-​German Club’, The Times (15 December 1933). 3 5 Draft letter from Lett-​Haines to Jacob Epstein, 6, Carlton Gardens, London /​Dec 5 1933. TGA 8317.6.1.37. 36 Letter from Jacob Epstein to Lett-​Haines, 18 Hyde Park Gate, S. W. 7 /​7 December 1933. TGA 8317.1.1.1050.

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believed that Grant was actively disrupting plans for the London show. As he wrote in a draft letter to Grant dated 8 December 1933: I cannot help but be hurt by the attitude taken by you and some of your friends towards the exhibition for which I am responsible, and I can only inform you that my activities are the reverse of those which I gather you imagine them to be. Your boycott of the exhibition can only serve to help jeopardise the success of an ideal which I believe to be virtues to both of us; that of pacific international & interracial relations. I append lists of those associated with the affairs of this non-​political organisation […]. The non-​Nazi & Jewish elements of the club outnumber any Hitlerite section of more than 100 to 1 & very many emigres have found refuge here.37

He went on to explain that, as he wrote, Alfred Flechtheim was with him at the Anglo-​German Club. Despite Lett-​Haines’s best efforts, within six months of the exhibition’s closure in London the Club’s explicit association with Germany appears to have become increasingly contentious. In a letter dated 15 June 1934, the Anglo-​German Club’s secretary, Lieutenant Colonel Cawson, informed its members that the decision had been made to change the organisation’s name to the D’Abernon Club.38 The official reason given for this was outlined in an announcement in The Times the following week, which explained that although the Club ‘was formed three years ago to assist in the work of creating good will and understanding between the nationals of Great Britain and German-​speaking countries’, it was now felt necessary to ‘enlarge its scope and extend its aims to other countries under its new name’.39 Whilst it appears very likely that part of the underlying reason for this was a distancing of the Club from events taking place in Germany, Cawson reassured its members that its ‘attitude towards the German speaking countries remains as friendly as before and that no change of policy is intended’.40 Nevertheless by August 1934, in response to the ‘many enquiries’ that it was Draft letter from Lett-​Haines to Duncan Grant, 6, Carlton Gardens, London /​Dec 8th 1933. TGA 8317.6.1.36. 38 Letter sent by Lieutenant Colonel G. Cawson, 6 Carlton Gardens, London /​15 June 1934. TGA 8317.1.1.35. 39 Anon., ‘The D’Abernon Club’, The Times (20 June 1934). 40 Cawson, Ibid. 37

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now receiving, it was felt necessary to publish a second announcement to further assert its political neutrality. [The D’Abernon Club] is a British club for people interested in the progress and problems of other countries and is not identified with any political party. The club’s activities are conducted on purely social lines; they do not conflict or compete with the work of any other body in this country. The chief purpose is to establish a neutral platform where the many controversial questions which agitate the world of to-​day may be discussed.41

Over the following twelve months, the D’Abernon Club continued to host events at 6 Carlton Gardens. The Club also organised several more art exhibitions, including a display of works by the German sculptor Kurt Edzard, and a collection of paintings of India and Kashmir by Alexander Scott. It is not surprising however, considering the Club’s ongoing commitment to securing a precarious political neutrality, that earlier plans for an exhibition of contemporary German art were not realised.42 By the end of the decade, the London public was however given the opportunity to see such works with the opening of the Exhibition of Twentieth Century German Art at the New Burlington Galleries in July 1938; an event that was seen by many to be a riposte to the Nazi’s recent Entarte Kunst [Degenerate Art] exhibition in Munich.43 By this time, the D’Abernon Club appears to have ceased to exist.44 Max Sauerlandt and Alfred Flechtheim had both passed away by 1938, the former from stomach cancer, the latter from blood poisoning contracted from a rusty nail in a London boarding house. Macnamara, who had become part of

1 Anon., ‘The D’Abernon Club’, The Times (2 August 1934). 4 42 As Susan Roland has observed, Gurlitt had been asked initially to organise a return exhibition of Hamburg artists following the 1932 show. Roland, Hitler’s Art Thief, 152. Matthew Potter has noted that between 1932 and 1934 Gurlitt had approached the Tate with a proposal for a modern German art exhibition. Matthew C. Potter, The Inspirational Genius of Germany: British Art and Germanism 1850–​1939 (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2012), 272. 43 See Lucy Wasensteiner, The Twentieth Century German Art Exhibition: Answering Degenerate Art in 1930s London (New York: Routledge, 2018). 44 By 1938, 6 Carlton Gardens was occupied by the Athenæum Club.

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the Executive Council at the D’Abernon Club, was elected Conservative Member of Parliament for Chelmsford in 1935. During this period, along with his parliamentary secretary, the Soviet spy Guy Burgess, he made several more trips to Germany. Although he clearly had some sympathies with the Nazis, by the end of the decade Macnamara was adamant that Germany should be confronted militarily; he was killed by a mortar in 1944 whilst serving as a Colonel with the 1st London Irish Rifles in Italy.45 As previously noted, Hildebrand Gurlitt was by the late 1930s employing his knowledge and experience to help the Nazis locate ‘degenerate’ art for confiscation. Following the posthumous discovery of his personal collection in 2010, Gurlitt became perhaps the best-​known profiteer of the Nazi war against cultural modernism.46

45 Bloch, Closet Queens. 6 See fn, 14 supra. 4

Valeria Carullo

4 ‘New Eyes for Old’: How the Neues Sehen and the Neue Sachlichkeit Transformed the Photography of Architecture in Britain in the Early 1930s

British photography of the early twentieth century was dominated by pictorialism. Photographers were claiming their role as artists; the only way they knew to achieve this was by following the aesthetic rules set by more established visual arts. However, photographs of buildings –​with the exception of those that fitted the pictorialist vision, such as ruins or castles in landscapes –​were generally regarded as purely documentary records, and therefore not required to evoke an atmosphere, but to convey accurate information. Indeed, this was also the case in other countries, until the emergence of the so-​called ‘New Photography’, which introduced a new way of using the camera based on the unique qualities and capabilities of the medium. This significant shift was engendered by the convergence of avant-​g arde theories, artistic developments and technological developments in photography –​all related to the profound economic, industrial and cultural changes that followed the end of the First World War.1 At the dawn of the 1920s architecture was also about to embark on a period of radical transformation: over the course of the decade the New Photography and the Modern Movement

1

See László Moholy-​ Nagy, Malerei, Fotografie, Film (Munich: Langen, 1925); Albert Renger-​Patzsch, Die Welt ist Schön (Munich: Kurt Wolff, 1928); Alexander Rodchenko, ‘Puti sovremennoi fotografii [The Paths of Modern Photography]’, Novyi Lef 9 (1928), 31–​9.

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developed simultaneously and in close alliance, changing forever the course of the two disciplines.

Germany, Britain and the New Photography Germany was one of the main centres of development of the New Photography. At the Bauhaus, Hungarian artist László Moholy-​Nagy advocated a new role for the camera as the instrument that would introduce a Neues Sehen [New Vision], a new way of seeing. No longer relying on methods of representation inherited from other visual arts, photography would find its own modern aesthetic derived from its specific technical qualities and from the effects produced by its own primary tool –​light. At the same time, it would help viewers gain a new understanding of the world around them: new and unexplored viewpoints would, for example, allow them to look even at familiar things in an unfamiliar way, and provide the potential to notice what had previously gone unnoticed. Like other Neues Sehen adherents, Moholy-​Nagy was also interested in experimental uses of the photographic medium, such as photograms and photo-​ collages. Photography’s role was therefore no longer to simply document and represent, but also –​and crucially –​to interpret and create. Other photographers in Germany, such as Albert Renger-​Patzsch and August Sander, were also interested in the camera as a new and independent means of expression, which would result in the development of a purely photographic aesthetic. They were however suspicious of the experimental approach encouraged by Moholy-​Nagy and the proponents of Neues Sehen, believing instead that reality should be captured with a direct, dispassionate, clinical outlook. Their work was linked with the art movement Neue Sachlichkeit [New Objectivity], and their outlook most famously promulgated by Renger-​Patzsch’s book of 1928 Die Welt ist Schön [The World is Beautiful], a collection of images featuring both natural and man-​made objects, often isolated from their context and selected to emphasise geometry, pattern and repetition. Through their analysis of the object, Neue Sachlichkeit photographers understood the importance of the detail,

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which could in some cases be more eloquent than the whole at expressing the essence of the object. In their quest for detachment and ‘objectivity’, they produced images characterised by clarity, sharp focus and a rigorous composition. Die Welt ist Schön was widely reviewed, and positively received in Germany; its title –​not chosen by Renger-​Patzsch, who intended to call it Die Dinge [Things] –​nonetheless emphasises an aspiration to find beauty in unexpected places, especially in ordinary, everyday objects. As previously mentioned, at this time Britain still tended to consider photography through the reassuring lens of tradition and continuity with the centuries-​old visual arts. Germany was however a regular focus of attention with regards to its photographic publications, both artistic and technical, which were reviewed and praised in the pages of the Photographic Journal, the periodical of the prestigious Royal Photographic Society. Some of the Society’s members even ventured into ‘straight photography’ territory, though these were generally admonished by their more conservative fellow members. Photographs of unconventional subjects, especially those featuring unconventional points of view, were labelled as ‘stunts’, and regarded with a certain degree of incomprehension if not open contempt. At the time of the publication of Die Welt ist Schön, Renger-​Patzsch’s work was already familiar to photography exhibition goers in London; nonetheless, the photographic establishment –​steeped in the conventions and cultural references of pictorialism –​reacted with bafflement if not incredulity. Of the two reviews that appeared in the September 1929 issue of the Photographic Journal, both were critical of the content of the book, even if the Society’s president, John Dudley Johnston, admitted that the work was of ‘very high technical accomplishment’.2 The other reviewer, Bertrand Cox, dismissed the book with comments such as: ‘If these photographic exercises are in emulation of the efforts of the modern poster artist, and of a crude type of wood-​cut, we feel that the effort is a mistaken one.’3 However, Renger-​Patzsch’s approach did not lack supporters in Britain.

2 3

John Dudley Johnston, review of Die Welt ist Schön, The Photographic Journal (September 1929), 418. Bertrand Cox, review of Die Welt ist Schön, The Photographic Journal (September 1929), 418.

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In the February 1930 issue of the Photographic Journal, for example, the reviewer of that year’s Deutscher Kamera Almanach stated that: While the old photographic pictorialism […] sought to create an atmosphere […] modern photography allows for the objects themselves to speak […] Photography no longer imitates other arts, but displays her own technique […] showing things and ways of life, which art has failed to find or can ill represent […] The New Photography believes in frankness and the absence of make-​believe.4

Modernist photographic techniques and attitudes had in fact been introduced to Britain during the 1920s, partly through fashion and avant-​garde magazines, and partly thanks to a number of expatriate American photographers in London, such as Francis Bruguière and Curtis Moffat. New exhibition venues opened in the capital around 1930, challenging the role played by institutions such as the Royal Photographic Society in the previous decades and familiarising the public with the work of German, French, American and Soviet representatives of the New Photography. One of the key venues for the display of continental modernist photography was the Camera Club, revived in 1929 by its new director William Crawford, founder of one of London’s leading advertising agencies. The agency’s own gallery and the Lund Humphries Gallery (in the publisher’s premises) were other unconventional spaces exhibiting photography. The climate of innovation promoted in the city by those avant-​garde circles that had welcomed the expatriate photographers was boosted by the rapid expansion of commercial and industrial photography, especially from 1930 onwards: illustrated periodicals and brochures offered new creative possibilities, especially through the collaboration between photographers and graphic designers. The growing advertising industry immediately recognised the popular appeal of ‘straight photography’ (as opposed to the elitist status of pictorialism) and the potential of the New Photography to create memorable and impactful images for its campaigns. In Germany, the possibilities offered by photography to increase product appeal in advertising had already been discovered in the 4

J. C. W., review of Deutscher Kamera Almanach 1930, The Photographic Journal (February 1930), 79.

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mid-​1920s; the precision and ‘realism’ of Neue Sachlichkeit imagery made it especially suited to this purpose. In 1928 art historian Carl Georg Heise observed how Renger-​Patzsch’s photographs were ‘simultaneously beautiful, useful and highly effective as advertising images for brochures and posters’.5 Six years later, Neue Sachlichkeit photographer Walter Nurnberg had moved to London from Berlin, describing with these words his new professional prospects: ‘[It was] a gold rush […] Industry and commerce offering better remuneration than the portrait client, exerted a great attraction and promoted a general stampede.’6

New photography and the British architectural press Architectural modernism was slow to make its presence felt in Britain; before the 1920s, there were hardly examples of the movement in the country. Here, as with photography, the conservative attitude and attachment to tradition of the architectural establishment caused a general suspicion of the radical developments occurring on the continent. Architectural education was equally unaffected by the new ideas that were spreading across other European countries.7 By the end of the 1920s however, a number of key figures in architecture and architectural publishing had become convinced –​like their counterparts in mainland Europe –​ that the old way of building was no longer suited to a modern society, and that architecture needed to start on a new path. They embraced the approaches and ideals put forward by architects such as Le Corbusier,

5 6 7

Carl Georg Heise quoted in Claus Pfingsten, ‘Albert Renger-​Patzsch –​Early Industrial Photography’, History of Photography 21/​3 (1997), 188. Walter Nurnberg quoted in David Mellor, Modern British Photography 1919–​39 (Arts Council of Great Britain, 1980), 27. See Manfredo Tafuri and Francesco Dal Co, Modern Architecture (London: Academy Editions, 1980); Kenneth Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Critical History (London: Thames & Hudson, 2007); Alan Powers, Britain (London: Reaktion, 2007).

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Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Frank Lloyd Wright, and devoted themselves to both promoting these architects’ work and instigating a change in the profession. Among these figures was Hubert de Cronin Hastings, proprietor and editor of the Architectural Review. This was one of the most widely read architectural periodicals in the field and was also –​crucially –​interested in attracting a non-​specialised readership. Collaborators such as Jim Richards, John Betjeman and Philip Morton Shand provided the articles to advance the modernist cause, while the layout, often playful and eclectic, was transformed to accommodate the increasingly important role played by photographic illustrations. As noted above, architectural photographers in Britain had previously been expected to provide accurate and technically accomplished descriptions of buildings that had no more than documentary value. By the late 1920s however, these photographers had been exposed to the New Photography imagery, through publications and displays in their own country, and through exhibitions further afield, that many of them no doubt attended. Among these exhibitions was the highly influential Film und Foto, staged in Stuttgart in 1929. Organised by the Deutscher Werkbund, one of the main centres for the development of modern architecture, Film und Foto attracted many out-​of-​town visitors.8 It showcased the work of Moholy-​Nagy, Renger-​Patzsch and numerous other New Vision and New Objectivity photographers (as well as representatives of American Straight Photography), and highlighted the close connection and reciprocal influence between cinema and photography. Another important exhibition on modern photography, Fotografie der Gegenwart [Photography of the Present], held in Essen at the beginning of 1929, travelled to the Whitechapel Art Gallery in June of the same year under the title International Photographs, displaying works by August Sander, Renger-​Patzsch and Moholy-​Nagy, among others.9

8

9

See Maria Morris Hambourg and Christopher Phillips, The New Vision: Photography between the World Wars (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art /​Harry N. Abrams, 1989); Eleanor M. Hight, Picturing Modernism: Moholy-​Nagy and Photography in Weimar Germany (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995). Giovanni Fanelli, Storia della fotografia di architettura (Bari: La Terza, 2009).

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Another possible source of inspiration for British architectural photographers open to new approaches in the late 1920s and early 1930s was the work of German photographer Werner Mantz.10 Mantz’s photographs clearly demonstrated how the simple, bold forms of modern architecture, with their smooth surfaces in steel, concrete and glass, provided the perfect subjects for a type of visual representation favouring geometrical compositions and tonal contrasts. An outstanding representative of Neue Sachlichkeit, Mantz was a sought-​after architectural photographer in the 1920s and 1930s who worked mainly for companies and architects in Cologne. His sharp, vivid, precisely composed images, which tended to highlight geometry and occasionally bordered on abstraction, were highly regarded by the architects who employed him. In the words of Michael Euler-​Schmidt, ‘whatever the terms of his commissions, he produced an interpretative result of high aesthetic value through his sophisticated deployment of light, which had an extraordinary promotional effect for the architect’.11 Two of Mantz’s photographs were included in architect T. P. Bennett’s book Architectural Design in Concrete, published in London in 1927 (Figure 4.1).12 Supplied by Werner Hegemann, editor of the influential German magazine Wasmuth Monatshefte für Baukunst, these images stood out among the standard architectural views that illustrated the book. It took a few more years for British architects to realise the impact that this type of imagery could exert, before they adopted its key elements for the promotion of their work and the communication of their ideas and aspirations. Slowly too, the architectural press began to grasp the role that photographic images could play not simply in relating information to readers, but also in influencing their taste and outlook. The Architectural Review’s campaign in favour of modern architecture required powerful arguments both in the form of written articles and of memorable imagery, in order to convince a still sceptical British public of the validity 10 See Christoph Brockhaus, Werner Mantz: Architekturphotographie in Köln 1926–​ 1932 (Cologne: Locher, 1982). 11 Michael Euler-​Schmidt, ‘Mantz, Werner’, Neue Deutsche Biographie 16 (1990), S. 94 f, available at: , accessed 20 August 2019. Quote translated by Prof. Eric Ormsby. 12 T. P. Bennett, Architectural Design in Concrete (London: Benn, 1927), plate VI.

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Figure 4.1.  Restaurant ‘Die Bastei’, Cologne, c. 1927. Architect Wilhelm Riphahn. Photo: Werner Mantz, published in T. P. Bennet, Architectural Design in Concrete (London: Benn, 1927), plate IV.

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of the new design approach. The Review’s content also included articles on photography itself, such as the review, published in December 1929, of the book Art Forms in Nature by German photographer Karl Blossfeldt, accompanied by a number of his highly-​enlarged images of plant details.13 This publication, which had originally appeared in German under the title Urformen der Kunst, suddenly brought his author to the attention of the photographic community, establishing his place in the Neue Sachlichkeit movement. Two further articles in Architectural Review –​published in 1932 and 1934 –​ensured that any readers previously unaware of the New Photography were now introduced to it. The first of these was the 1932 article ‘The Still Camera Today’,14 whose author Oswell Blakeston had made a short abstract film with Francis Bruguière. The second article, exhibiting even greater conviction to the movement, was P. Morton Shand’s ‘New Eyes for Old’, published in 1934 (Figure 4.2). Both articles were accompanied by photographs taken by Moholy-​Nagy; both asserted the unbreakable link between the New Photography and modern architecture. As Shand set out: Past ages have seen the visible world with the eyes of their leading creative painters. We see it through the camera’s impersonal lens. But what we see is what men like Moholy-​Nagy have taught us to discern: the magic of everyday things examined in close scrutiny, and that arbitrary isolation of casual components which reveals the part as greater than the whole. The two fields in which the spirit of our age has achieved its most definite manifestations are photography and architecture. Did modern photography beget modern architecture or the converse? It is an interesting point. But since their logical development was simultaneous, and their interaction considerable, it hardly matters which. What does matter is that it was the same sort of mind and power of vision which has produced both […].15 Frederick Etchells, ‘Nature and Art’, The Architectural Review 66 (1929), 298–​300. Etchells ends his favourable review of the book with the exhortation: ‘We are told that Professor Blossfeldt is an architect; may we not hope that he will give us in the near future some further studies, it may be of crystal forms, which will show us Nature at work in a sense akin to the cubic masses into which all architectural shapes can be ultimately resolved?’ 14 Oswell Blakeston, ‘The Still Camera Today’, The Architectural Review 71 (1932), 154–​7. 1 5 Philip Morton Shand, ‘New Eyes for Old’, The Architectural Review 75 (1934), 11–​ 13, 12. 13

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Figure 4.2.  Philip Morton Shand, ‘New Eyes for Old’, The Architectural Review 75 (1934), 11–​13, 11 with photograph by Lázló Moholy-​Nagy.

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Shand, who spoke fluent German and French, was the translator of Gropius’s writings into English and a crucial point of contact between the British modernists and their continental counterparts. He also acquired the copyright in England for the photographs of many European architects, which therefore regularly appeared on the pages of the Architectural Review.

Dell & Wainwright In 1930, the Architectural Review had already made a pivotal move with regards to its imagery by employing the groundbreaking partnership of Dell & Wainwright as official photographers. The pair made their debut in the Architectural Review in 1929 with their photographs of Finella,16 a Victorian house in Cambridge which had undergone an interior redesign between 1927 and 1929 by the young Australian architect Raymond McGrath. Aided by a skillful use of artificial lighting and an adventurous choice of viewpoints, they produced a set of striking images that made the most of cast shadows and the reflective materials employed by McGrath. What is perhaps surprising is that the older of the two photographers, Mark Oliver Dell (1883–​1959), had during previous decades worked in the pictorialist manner. In the course of the 1920s however his approach had clearly evolved; by 1929 he had spoken in favour of ‘straight photography’ in a lecture at the Royal Photographic Society.17 Shortly after setting up his own practice in 1923, Dell had made his former student Herbert Lionel Wainwright (1902–​76) his partner. The pair’s experience as BBC photographers, and their use of a Leica on those assignments, might have further pushed this transformation in Dell’s work. He and Wainwright worked in close collaboration with the Review’s modernist-​ minded editors. 1 6 A. C. Frost, ‘Finella’, The Architectural Review 66 (1929), 264–​72. 17 Mark Oliver Dell, ‘Some Recent Prints from the Pyrenees’, The Photographic Journal (March 1929), 104.

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Figure 4.3.  Studio for Augustus John, Fryern Court, Fordingbridge, Hampsire, 1934. Architect Christopher Nicholson. Photo: Dell & Wainwright. Architectural Press Archive /​RIBA Collections.

It is remarkable how quickly Dell & Wainwright developed their unique and highly effective style at Architectural Review, combining elements of Neue Sehen and Neue Sachlichkeit, and in the process creating a powerful advertising tool for modern British architects. Certainly, their repertoire was not confined to the work of these architects, but it was undoubtedly here that Dell & Wainwright found the most suitable subject for their creative flair (Figures 4.3–​4.5). Using a large-​format camera and coloured filters to achieve sharp, high contrast images of uncompromisingly modern white houses, they showed they had absorbed the lessons of Neue Sachlichkeit. At the same time, they employed compositional devices typical of Neues Sehen –​including very low viewpoints, tilted camera angles and bird’s eye views –​adding dynamism to their images of commercial, infrastructural and residential buildings. In their photographs of interiors, as seen in the photoshoot at Finella, for example, Dell & Wainwright skilfully

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Figure 4.4.  Embassy Court, Brighton, 1935. Architect: Wells Coates. Photo: Dell & Wainwright, Architectural Press Archive /​RIBA Collections.

played with reflections and shadows while occasionally –​and unconventionally –​employing their trademark angled views. Despite a frequent emphasis on geometry, both their interior and exterior photographs rarely rely simply on graphic values, instead conveying a sense of three-​dimensional space perfectly suited to the depiction of architecture. As architectural photography historian Robert Elwall has written, ‘Their images leap from the page with an almost irresistible appeal and power.’18 Dell & Wainwright’s work, as a whole, made a fundamental contribution to the Architectural 18

Robert Elwall, Photography Takes Command: The Camera and British Architecture 1890–​1939 (London: RIBA Heinz Gallery, 1994), 77.

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Figure 4.5.  Pioneer Health Centre, St Mary’s Road, Peckham, London, 1935. Architect: Owen Williams. Photo: Dell & Wainwright. Architectural Press Archive /​ RIBA Collections.

Review’s effort to ‘sell’ the new architecture, and, more than that, to the creation of an enduring mystique in the imagery of modern buildings. Other British photographers, such as the talented Sydney Newbery and Herbert Felton, soon followed Dell & Wainwright’s example. The figure of John Havinden is particularly representative of the relationship between modern architectural photography and advertising. Havinden had trained

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Figure 4.6.  The penguin pool at London Zoo, Regent’s Park, 1934. Architects: Lubetkin, Drake and Tecton. Photo: John Havinden. RIBA Collections.

in the photographic studio of an American advertising agency in London.19 He went on to work mainly for Crawford’s Advertising Agency, whose director, his brother Ashley –​himself a designer wholly committed to the modernist cause –​was instrumental in finding remunerative employment for László Moholy-​Nagy upon his arrival in London in the mid-​1930s.20 Havinden’s foray into architectural photography however produced outstanding results. His images of iconic modern British buildings, such as his 19 More information on John Havinden can be found in David Mellor, Modern British Photography 1919–​39 (Arts Council of Great Britain, 1980). 20 See David Wainwright, The British Tradition: Simpson –​A World of Style (London: Quiller Press, 1996) and Alice Strang, Anne Simpson and Richard Hollis, Advertising and the Artist: Ashley Havinden (Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland, 2003).

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Figure 4.7.  The Isokon Flats, Lawn Road, Hampsted, London, 1934. Architect Wells Coates. Photo: John Havinden, RIBA Collections.

1934 photographs of Berthold Lubetkin’s Penguin Pool (Figure 4.6) and Wells Coates’s Isokon Flats (Figure 4.7), are among the most evocative of the period and bear the unmistakable hallmark of the New Photography.

Conclusion By the time these images were taken, the influx of émigré photographers in Britain from Germany and central Europe had already begun. Walter

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Nurnberg, Felix Mann, Stefan Lorant and Kurt Hutton (influential founders of the Picture Post), as well as Bauhaus-​trained Lucia Moholy and Edith Tudor-​Hart, all emigrated to Britain in 1933–​4, followed in 1935 by Moholy-​Nagy and Tudor-​Hart’s brother Wolf Suschitzky.21 As the 1930s progressed, the merits of the New Photography were still being debated in some quarters, for example, in the pages of Gallery, the Royal Photographic Society’s monthly review of international photography. Yet such authors were by then irredeemably out of touch with the reality of the profession, unable to halt a radical transformation that would leave a long-​lasting legacy in many fields, including the photography of architecture.

21 Regarding Lucia Moholy and László Moholy-​Nagy, see the essays of Michelle Henning and Leah Hsiao in this volume.

Leah Hsiao

5 The Dislocation of Amateurism: Moholy-​Nagy in England, 1935–​1937

László Moholy-​Nagy (1895–​1946), former teacher at the Bauhaus schools in Weimar and Dessau, departed Germany in 1934. He travelled via Holland to London where he arrived in May 1935. He had previously made three visits to Britain between 1933 and 1935; during the last of these, in January 1935, he married his second wife Sibyl Moholy-​ Nagy.1 Moholy returned only once to Germany after 1935 –​in July 1936, when he received a commission to photograph the Summer Olympics in Berlin. Repulsed by developments under National Socialism, Moholy quickly dropped the commission, left Germany and vowed never to return. In his absence, many of his early paintings and metal constructions stored in Berlin were destroyed without his knowledge.2 While hostility towards him grew in Germany, Moholy remained optimistic in his hopes for England, as a destination which would allow him to continue his artistic experiments. Moholy and his wife Sibyl remained in London until July 1937, when they set sail for Chicago in quest of the New Bauhaus. Although Moholy’s sojourn in England lasted barely two years, scholars have acknowledged the significance of this transitional period between his 1

2

Terence Senter notes that Moholy-​Nagy already decided on moving to England in October 1934. During his second London visit in August 1934, Moholy studied dye-​transfer of colour photography, facilitated by his ex-​wife, Lucia Moholy. Terence Senter, ‘Moholy-​Nagy: The Transitional Years’, in Achim Borchardt-​Hume, ed., Albers and Moholy-​Nagy: From the Bauhaus to the New World (London: Tate Publishing, 2006), 87. Sibyl Moholy-​Nagy, Moholy-​Nagy: Experiment in Totality (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950), 130–​3.

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careers in Europe and America. Sibyl Moholy-​Nagy recounted in Moholy-​ Nagy: Experiment in Totality (1950) that England, with its tradition of free thinking, was the most suitable destination for him at the time compared with Scandinavia, Switzerland and even America.3 In his thesis on Moholy-​ Nagy’s time in England, Terence Senter has given a detailed account of Moholy’s many-​sided activities during his London years in the fields of photography, film, two and three-​dimensional commercial designs.4 While emphasising Moholy’s amateur characteristics as essential to his art philosophy, Krisztina Passuth has also explored how Moholy encouraged educators to train designers as all-​capable amateurs in his posthumous book Vision in Motion (1947), inspired by experiences gained during his London sojourn between the two Bauhaus careers.5 In this essay, I explore the dynamic relationship between Moholy’s amateur profile, the amateur phenomenon in England and the representation of English elite culture. Amateurism is deeply ingrained in English culture. Associated with positive qualities, it is particularly celebrated by the upper-​classes in the field of British sport. In Moholy’s artistic theories, the notion of amateurism corresponds to the idea that artists be trained in light of overall human development, rather than as professional workers with specific capabilities. With its similar appreciation of the amateur characteristics of a performer, England provided a favourable environment for Moholy to further develop these theories and continue his artistic experimentations. Moholy’s innovative work with English subjects –​as a demonstration of his amateur approach essential to his artistic philosophy –​also found substantial support from the upper-​class in exploring a modernist representation of the specifically English elitism. I develop my discussion in three parts. Firstly, I will explore the English phenomenon of amateurism, with which Moholy greatly sympathised following his visit to the 1936 Berlin Olympics. In the second part, I identify

3 Ibid., 116–​17. 4 Terence Senter, ‘Moholy-​ Nagy in England: May 1935–​ July 1937’ (Masters Dissertation, University of Nottingham, 1975). 5 Krisztina Passuth, Moholy-​ Nagy: Documentary Monographs in Modern Art (London: Thames and Hudson, 1987), 60–​78.

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the ways in which Moholy’s amateur character corresponded to the English sense of amateurism through an overview of his engagement with different commissions and subjects in England. In the third part, I consider Moholy’s photographic commission for John Betjeman’s book An Oxford University Chest,6 and examine Moholy’s modernist interpretation of English architectural aesthetics and cultural traditions. This essay sets out to illustrate that the celebration of amateurism –​from the gentleman amateurs of British sport to a modern engagement with specifically upper-​class British subjects –​is the major thread throughout Moholy’s transitional years in England.

Amateurism in British sport and the 1936 Olympic Games The contemporary concept of amateurism, emerging around the 1860s, is considered a phenomenon of English origin.7 It can have multiple meanings in various contexts, such as the manner of liking an activity without professional training or participating simply for pleasure, detached from any purposeful labour of either occupation or money.8 In the field of sport, the terms ‘amateur’ and ‘amateurism’ have been specifically defined, so as to distinguish an amateur player from a professional. Scholars Dilwyn Porter and Stephen Wagg suggest amateurism is a modern sense of athletic sportsmanship that highlights individual freedom and a willingness to participate distinct from commercial or material intentions.9 6 7 8 9

The photographs were executed in June 1936 and were published in 1938 as John Betjeman, An Oxford University Chest (London: John Miles, 1938). Lincoln Allison, Amateurism in Sport: An Analysis and a Defence (London: Frank Cass, 2001), 3–​70. Ibid., 171–​4. Regarding the various definitions of amateur and amateurism (the latter particularly in sports context), see: Allison, Amateurism in Sport, 171–​80. Dilwyn Porter and Stephen Wagg, ‘Introduction’, in Dilwyn Porter and Stephen Wagg, eds, Amateurism in British Sport: It Matters Not Who Won or Lost? (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008), 1–​7.

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They characterise an amateur as a non-​professional who takes part in sport for the purpose of enjoyment, regardless of the actual result of the game or the physical honour of the prize.10 Amateurism has been particularly celebrated in English cricket as a representation of elite culture, in which amateurs could be distinguished as participants from the upper-​class. In nineteenth-​century English sport culture, ‘amateur’ and ‘gentlemen’ were interchangeable terms, which resulted in the phrase ‘gentleman amateur’.11 Amateurs, with an appreciative appearance of being ‘non-​professional’, would often play against professionals in the form of Gentlemen versus Players teams. Especially during the 1920s, gentlemen amateurs, with their assumed characteristics of leadership, dominated team captaincy of both the county and national English cricket sides.12 The pre-​eminence of English amateurs and amateurism was manifested in the 1936 Olympic Games, a highly politicised event now known as Hitler’s Games. Scholars have drawn attention to the tradition of the ‘Sonderweg’ in German history –​translated as the ‘special path’ or ‘exceptionalism’ –​developed since the nineteenth century.13 Historian Arnd Krüger has argued that in sporting participation during National Socialism, this Sonderweg was reflected in an interpretation of victory in a particular event as evidence of racial superiority.14 The Nazis were certainly ambitious to create their 1 0 11

Porter and Wagg, ‘Introduction’. Ibid., 4. Ross McKibbin, Classes and Cultures: England 1918–​1951 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 332–​9. Stephen Wagg, ‘ “Time Gentlemen Please”: The Decline of Amateur Captaincy in English County Cricket’, Contemporary British History 14/​2 (2000). 12 As Wagg considers, the upper-​class hegemony in county cricket started to decrease in the 1930s, mirroring changes in class structure. One representative figure is Jack Hobbs, who was a professional but played like an amateur, and captained Surrey and the England’s team between 1905 and 1934. Stephen Wagg, ‘Never the Gentleman: Caste, Class and the Amateur Myth in English First-​Class Cricket, 1920s to the 1960s’, Sport in History 37/​2 (2017). 1 3 Jürgen Kocka, ‘German History before Hitler: The Debate about the German Sonderweg’, Journal of Contemporary History 23/​1 (1988), 3–​16. 14 Arnd Krüger, ‘Germany: The Propaganda Machine’, in Arnd Krüger and William Murray, eds, The Nazi Olympics: Sport, Politics and Appeasement in the 1930s (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003), 17. Duff Hart-​Davis quotes an observation of an ordinary English visitor in Germany before the

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version of the most spectacular Olympiad in history. Earlier preparations included the construction of the Olympic Stadium and Village, an elaborate opening ceremony, an Olympic torch to run from Athens to Berlin and extensive physical training for the athletes.15 The German aspirations for the Games also exerted an impact on national sports education. The National Socialist regime strengthened instruction in schools, providing a basis for further professional training in sports clubs.16 To further promote victory, censorship and propaganda were heightened throughout the Games, both at home and abroad.17 At the end of the 1936 Olympics, Germany triumphed with a total of thirty-​three gold, twenty-​six silver and thirty bronze medals. In contrast to this German sense of perfectionism was the amateur sportsmanship of the British team, which, as Duff Hart-​Davis has pointed out, fundamentally corresponded to the Olympic ideal of taking part, rather than winning at all costs.18 Britain won only four gold, seven silver and three bronze medals at the Berlin Games. Historian Richard Holt interprets the performance of the British team as lacking preparation and prioritising individual honour, in spite of interventions by sports clubs or the state.19 This amateurism was further evidenced by the clear division Olympics in 1935, which precisely presents a picture of the Sonderweg culture permeated in the country at the time: ‘It is almost impossible to put on paper the scope of this today. There is no news but Government news, no view but the Government view, no voice but the Government voice […]. One of the most annoying things to foreigners, or at any rate to me, was the eternal prefix “German”. This word is now synonymous with “unequalled best”. It was only when I once complimented my friends on the wonderful German moon, and explained that we had nothing like it in England, that some sense of the absurdity of their attitude reached them.’ Duff Hart-​Davis, Hitler’s Games: The 1936 Olympics (London: Century, 1986), 33. 15 Hart-​Davis, Hitler’s Games, 46–​58. 16 Krüger, ‘Germany’, 23. 17 Ibid. 18 Hart-​Davis, Hitler’s Games, 10. 19 For example, this was shown by the British team for the 400 m relay. Richard Holt, ‘Great Britain: The Amateur Tradition’, in Krüger and Murray, The Nazi Olympics, 70–​86, 81. Neil Duncanson and Patrick Collins, Tales of Gold (London: Queen Anne Press, 1992), 32–​4.

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between the sporting interests of the competitors and their occupations.20 Furthermore, Holt notes the different understandings of the term ‘amateur’ that may have dominated in the German and British contexts. In Nazi Germany, amateurism was seen as an athlete’s voluntary contribution to the country, and thus as a form of patriotism. The British sense of amateurism meanwhile tended towards the ideal of participating out of loyalty to the sport itself. This was independent of one’s financial background or governmental sponsorship.21 Some time around early July 1936, Moholy was commissioned by a London-​based picture agency to produce a 16 mm film and a series of photographic stills of the Berlin Games.22 Although Moholy cancelled the commission shortly after his arrival in Berlin, without having taken any shots of the events, he clearly recognised the sharp contrast between the German Sonderweg and the English sense of amateurism.23 Shortly after Moholy returned from Berlin to England, in August 1936, he and Sibyl were invited to the house of the headmaster of Eton College. When Moholy shared his experience of the Berlin Olympics with the Etonian students, he commented on the performance of the British athletes as ‘simply magnificent’ losses achieved by ‘amateurs’ who ‘never won a medal’.24 Confused by this statement, the Etonians questioned Moholy: ‘Pardon me, Sir! We have won the boat races in this and that time; we are the best cricket players in

2 0 Holt, ‘Great Britain’, 81. 21 One typical example of amateur sportsmanship in the 1936 Olympics was Sir Arnold Lunn, who introduced alpine skiing to the Winter Games in Garmisch-​ Partenkirchen, but did not win a medal for the British team. Holt, ‘Great Britain’, 76. 22 Moholy-​Nagy, Moholy-​Nagy, 130–​1. 23 Arnd Krüger notes that among the German and international journalists and photographers in the 1936 Olympics, only German photographers were allowed to be inside the stadium and only photographs showing the positive spirit of the Games were permitted to distribute. The restriction of the Nazis on the content and style of photographic reportage would have been a serious impediment to the creative approach of Moholy, who was very likely taking the commission as a freelance photographer. Krüger, ‘Germany’, 34. 24 Moholy-​Nagy, Moholy-​Nagy, 117.

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the world […].’25 Moholy further explained his joy in the Britons’ amateurism, fundamentally connected to their enthusiasm for sport: Of course. But you do it for fun. The Germans, the Japanese, even the Americans, torture their teams half to death, to make them competition-​mad. Your boys went just as far as sport for leisure would take them […] because you are amateurs.26

Moholy’s ‘compliment’ received a rather negative response, however. Sibyl recounted that they were not talked to again for the rest of the day, that they were never invited for another visit, and that they could only take the experience as a lesson in how ‘the English delight in self-​criticism is reserved for the natives’.27 Their reverence for amateurism perhaps prevented the Etonians from taking Moholy’s words as anything more than irony, an interpretation of ‘amateur’ as somehow ‘unprofessional’. I suggest however that following his trip to Berlin, Moholy pinpointed the specifically English sense of amateurism in sport, which celebrated the innate passion among the players for the process of participation, contrary to the German sense of the Sonderweg that would emphasis on the outcome of victory. This was also an acknowledgment of a specific sense of amateurism associated with the upper-​class prestige, already manifested in the players-​versus-​gentlemen tradition of English cricket. In fact, even before the Berlin trip, Moholy had been exposed to the amateur culture of the English upper-​class. During an earlier visit to Eton in June 1936 for the commission Eton Portrait (published 1937), a cricket game was among the scenes Moholy captured in his photographs (Figure 5.1).28

2 5 Ibid., 117–​18. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid. 28 Bernard Fergusson, Eton Portrait (London: John Miles, 1937).

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Figure 5.1.  Photograph of a cricket game at Eton College, June 1936, with the description: ‘Fourth of June: Reunion on Agar’s Plough. Cricket may be in progress, but even the people in chairs are only pretending to watch it.’ Photo: László Moholy-​ Nagy, first published in Bernard Fergusson, Eton Portrait (London: John Miles, 1937). Courtesy of Moholy-​Nagy Foundation.

An amateur in England, 1935–​1937 The correlation between Moholy’s own interest in amateurism, and the English character of amateurism, termed by Sibyl as ‘a perfect psychological coincidence’, helped the artist find a substantial audience for his artistic experiments in London.29 I identify Moholy’s amateurism in the following aspects of his London work. Firstly, Moholy showed great enjoyment in the range of projects he was involved with, revealing both his 29

Moholy-​Nagy, Moholy-​Nagy, 117.

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extreme versatility and his resistance to notions of specialisation. Sibyl recalled how Moholy was often occupied with several commissions at the same time, commuting between the film studio, commercial designers, meetings on exhibitions and publications, and lectures in and out of London, with the aim of working ‘with pleasure for the benefit of his soul and as a concomitant to the all-​embracing function of living’.30 Secondly, and related to this, Moholy frequently undertook these tasks not as a professional with established experience, but rather as both a novice and a foreigner, a figure without expertise, engaging with aspects of English culture from the outside. Finally, much of Moholy’s work seems to evidence a greater interest in participation and experimentation than in the actual profit he would receive. Or perhaps more accurately, a series of highly paid commercial projects afforded him the freedom to choose his commissions according to these criteria.31 These points are illustrated by a brief overview of Moholy’s work during his time in England. His first major project in the country was the film Lobsters, shot on the Sussex coast in the summer of 1935.32 The producer of the film, John Mathias, was described by Moholy as ‘a wealthy young Englishman who in the best amateur tradition had switched from polo to movies’.33 Dr R. J. Daniel, a witness of the filming process, noted how Moholy was able work on the production of the film while retaining a novice’s excitement about the biology of the lobsters. This fascination with both art and science would be manifested again later, for example, in Moholy’s emphasis on the synthesis of intuition and science in amateurism discussed in Vision in Motion.34 Sibyl also recognised the significance of the Lobsters project, writing that it was here that Moholy first encountered the ‘basic national characteristics’ of English community life, which later helped him gain confidence 3 0 Ibid., 117, 129. 31 Moholy’s earnings in London was as £1,500–​£2,000 per annum, which was much higher than average standard. In comparison, the highest amount Gropius received was an annual payment of £480. Senter, ‘Moholy-​Nagy in England’, 257–​9. 32 Moholy-Nagy, Moholy-Nagy, 125. 33 Ibid., 126. 34 Passuth, Moholy-​Nagy, 205.

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to engage with his subjects in photography commissions such as The Street Markets of London and The New Architecture in the London Zoo (both executed during 1936).35 In these projects, as in Eton Portrait (executed June 1936, published 1937) and An Oxford University Chest (executed June 1936, published 1938), Moholy combined visual aesthetics with sociological considerations.36 Sibyl noted that Moholy’s adaptability to the perspective of the English audience was the reason behind the success of these photographs.37 Moholy’s work was also featured in the Architectural Review in July 1936, where he provided photographs and layout designs for the article ‘Leisure at the Seaside’.38 The interplay of typographic elements with cut-​outs in the page conveyed an active response to leisure culture on the English coast. In November 1935, Moholy was commissioned to produce photography and booklet designs for the Imperial Airways Gazette (Figure 5.2). He was also responsible for setting up an exhibition display for Imperial Airways –​ Moholy’s first work on three-​d imensional displays in

Moholy-​Nagy, Moholy-​Nagy, 125–​6. The date of Moholy’s commission for Mary Benedetta’s The Street Markets of London remains unclear, as Senter notes, that although according to Sibyl, Moholy carried out the commission after he returned from a trip to Hungary –​and thus, after his visit to the Berlin Olympics –​in the summer of 1936, the chronology contradicted with Benedetta’s account that Moholy illustrated Eton Portrait after her book. Senter, ‘Moholy-​Nagy in England’, 80. Moholy-​Nagy, Moholy-​Nagy, 130–​1. 36 Moholy argued in Malerei, Fotografie, Film that photography is not simply a form of creative art, but more importantly, it provides an objective view of the subject that is more truthful than the conceptual image formed via optical eyes. Moholy expressed in his work for The Street Markets of London that he intended to combine ‘the purely aesthetic principle of pictorial composition’ with ‘providing a truthful record of objectively determined fact’. László Moholy-​Nagy, Painting, Photography, Film, trans. Janet Seligman (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1973; repr., Malerei, Fotografie, Film (1927)), 27–​9. László Moholy-​Nagy, ‘Foreword’, in Mary Benedetta, ed., The Street Markets of London (London: John Miles Ltd, 1936), vii. 3 7 Moholy-​Nagy, Moholy-​Nagy, 127–​9. 38 ‘Leisure at the Seaside’, Architectural Review LXXX/​B (1936), 7–​28. Senter, ‘Moholy-​Nagy in England’, 90. 35

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Figure 5.2.  Moholy’s cover design for Imperial Airways Gazette, Vol. 8, No. 4, April 1936. László Moholy-​Nagy. Courtesy of British Airways Heritage Collection.

England –​and produced a print catalogue and other graphic designs for the exhibition.39 While working on the exhibition, Moholy was additionally offered a role as design consultant at Simpson’s menswear store in 39 The exhibition was organised by Imperial Airways and displayed at the Science Museum, South Kensington in 6 December 1935–​23 February 1936. Senter notes that Moholy’s work for the exhibition carried on until the point of departure in

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Piccadilly. He was tasked with preparing the window displays, a core part of the company’s business in its central London shop, for which Moholy was extremely well paid.40 Rather than focusing on displaying the goods to customers however, Moholy instead employed the windows as a stage for his light experiments with colour and texture.41 Indeed, as Sibyl later recounted, Moholy’s commercial work in England consistently reflected his interest in exploring the visual impression of movement rather than static presentation of forms.42 This can certainly also be traced in his work preparing special effects for H. G. Wells’ film Things to Come (also conducted during 1935, the film released in 1936), the futuristic theme of which in effect well corresponded to Moholy’s own interest in exploring ‘space-​time’ art.43 The film provided Moholy with an exciting opportunity to conduct photographic experiments with new plastic materials and mechanical models, although –​to his great disappointment –​most of his work was not included in the final edit of the film.44 Through 1936 this range of projects continued. From January 1936 Moholy was working on a second lucrative commission, this time from Jack Pritchard, to create advertising leaflets for the Isokon Furniture and Venesta Plywood Companies. The following year, in March 1937, he designed the menu page for a farewell dinner organised for fellow London

40 41 2 4 43 44

July 1937. Senter further relates the project to Moholy’s work poster design for the London Underground in 1937. The other graphic designs Moholy made for Imperial Airways include one information leaflet, one poster-​map, one cover and two versions of booklets. Senter, ‘Moholy-Nagy in England’, 176–​88, 194–​203. ‘Air Transport Exhibition at the Science Museum’, Nature 136 (1935), 863–​4. Senter, ‘Moholy-​Nagy in England’, 128–​37. Also Anon., ‘Display Lessons from a New Store’, Commerical Art /​Art and Industry 1/​July (1936). Senter has interestingly noted that in his work for the Simpson’s, however, Moholy would be ‘shrewd and astute enough to comply when necessary’, and make compromise to please the entrepreneur. Senter, ‘Moholy-​Nagy in England’, 149. Moholy-​Nagy, Moholy-​Nagy, 123. Senter, ‘Moholy-​Nagy in England’, 118–20. One of these, as Senter points out, was Plexiglas. The film, despite its high public reception, nevertheless experienced a big financial loss. Ibid., 108–​20. Regarding this dinner, see also the essay of Burcu Dogramaci in this volume.

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émigré Walter Gropius, who shortly thereafter travelled on to America.45 These two-​dimensional projects reflect, as Terence Senter has examined, Moholy’s research on typography and graphic design and correspond to the techniques also employed in concurrent issues of International Textiles between 1933 and 1937 (in terms of layout, page-​margin, lettering and arrangement of illustrations, for example).46 The interlinked chronology of these commissions exposes the coincidental and unpredictable nature of the projects that Moholy encountered as an émigré in England. There was a huge variety in the type of project, in material, scale, time frame, potential audience and remuneration. However, the seemingly unrelated and serendipitous nature of Moholy’s work in Britain also reveals an underlying consistency of artistic philosophy. As Sibyl described, the breadth of these commissions was a confirmation of Moholy’s ‘amateurism’, of his ‘trying out all potentialities of a given medium’ in order to achieve ‘the ultimate goal of total design’, as well as the attitude towards ‘the most heterogeneous tasks’ of ‘new combinations … all part of the same game’.47 To quote once again from Sibyl’s biography of her husband, The problem posed by a Simpson window display was basically no different from a setting for Madame Butterfly. Both had to convey a message; they had to appeal to perception and emotion in the onlooker, just as do painting and sculpture. […] It

45 Moholy’s Isokon designs included trademark, brochure, advertisement card and photomontage; Venesta designs included a colour advertisement which was featured in timber and published in the February 1936 issue of The Architectural Review. Ibid., 171–​6. 46 Examples include: layouts; page-​space design (fully-​filled; partly-​filled; with or without lettering; white; partly-​coloured; wholly-​coloured); lettering (contrast in typeface; stencilled effect; single colour or variety; isolated or accompanied by reversals or shadows; opaque or transparent; in horizontal or oblique lines) and illustration (drawing, photograph or mixture, monochrome, polychrome, single illustrations, casually scattered vs. series illustrations in relation to arrangements of subjects, and photographic cut-​outs, etc.). See The International Textiles, Amsterdam, vol. 1–​5, 15 December 1933–​31 July 1937. Senter, ‘Moholy-​Nagy in England’, 151–​68. 47 Moholy-​Nagy, Moholy-​Nagy, 125.

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leah hsiao was Moholy’s peculiar gift to find, in various fields, the common denominator with which to make his particular contribution.48

This approach, of recognising the varied possibilities of art projects through a predominant perspective, and the consequent dedication to experimentation, can also be linked to his later pursuit of ‘a new vision’.49 As later elaborated through Vision in Motion, Moholy considered creating art as carrying out ‘experiments’ –​inclusive of the act, approach and process of exploring intuitively the relations between body and space, vision and motion.50 This conviction to experimentation brought with it a need to constantly explore new fields in both teaching and practice –​from painting to sculpture, photography, film theatre and stage setting. The process of exploration was valued far above the development of any professional specialism.

An Oxford University Chest and an upper-​class English tradition One particularly important example among Moholy’s English projects was his commission to produce illustrations for John Betjeman’s book An Oxford University Chest.51 Moholy’s photographic representations of Oxford not only illustrate once again his own amateurish experiments, and thus the alignment of his work to an English faith in amateurism. They also served to strengthen these local cultural ideas, and thus in turn the specific culture of the English upper middle class. 8 Ibid. 4 49 Ibid., 126. 50 Moholy-​Nagy, Vision in Motion (Chicago: Theobald, 1947). 51 Examining the date of a footnote to Ward Lock’s Oxford on the architectural condition of the Christ Church and a reference to a letter discussing the rowing events in the College Barges, Senter points out that the text of the book would be produced only after Moholy completed photographs on the subjects. Terence Senter, ‘Moholy-​Nagy’s English Photography’, The Burlington Magazine 123/​944 (1981), 670. Senter, ‘Moholy-Nagy in England’, 50–​1, 78–​81. Betjeman, An Oxford University Chest, 127, 133.

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Figure 5.3.  The Oxford Encaenia procession, 1936. Photo: László Moholy-​Nagy, first published in John Betjeman, An Oxford University Chest (London: John Miles, 1938). Courtesy of Moholy-​Nagy Foundation and Oxford University Press.

In June 1936, upon Betjeman’s request, Moholy made a series of photographs during a two-​day visit to the Oxford Encaenia ceremony (Figure 5.3).52 Not dissimilar from Moholy’s contemporaneous illustrations for The Street Markets of London, Moholy’s modernist interpretation of 52

Senter, ‘Moholy-​Nagy in England’, 339. Senter, ‘Moholy-​Nagy’s English Photography’, 659. It is necessary to point out, however, Moholy’s reputation as a professional photographer was already introduced to England years before he moved to London,

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Oxford answered to his intention to provide a ‘literary and impressionistic photoreportage’ by manipulating different compositions to depict the figures and unconventional perspectives to view the architecture.53 This tour of the architectural setting takes us through an oblique view of St Mary-​ the-​Virgin’s Church, the high altar of the Christ Church Cathedral from a particularly low vantage point, a close up of the iron gates to St John’s College Gardens and a bird’s eye-​view of the Brasenose College. The intentionally distant position to capture Hawksmoor’s Twin Towers shows an interesting contrast to the finials on the roof of Radcliffe Camera. The worm’s eye-​view outside Balliol College presents a dynamic interplay between the bicycle and the figure against the architecture. Moholy’s spatial composition at Christ Church establishes a connection to the Tom Tower through its silhouette (Figure 5.4). The daunting negative image of Trinity College –​immediately relating to Moholy’s 1927 negative print of a sailboat as a means of emphasising the subject –​is followed by Betjeman’s description: ‘No undergraduate may be out after midnight without special leave’ (Figure 5.5).54 Historian Karin Hiscock has identified in John Betjeman’s editorial work at The Architectural Review (1930–​5) an intention to promote a modern experience of English tradition, fundamentally connected to his commitment to his own upper middle-​class intellectual identity and cultural ideology.55 Hiscock cites in particular Betjeman’s interest in

which means he would carry out these three photographic commissions more as a professional character. Moholy worked as a professional photographer in Berlin until 1933, and made photographic portraits for Penelope Chetwode, the future wife of John Betjeman, in the winter of 1933. Senter, ‘Moholy-​Nagy in England’, 3–​9. 53 László Moholy-​Nagy, ‘Foreword’, vii. 54 Betjeman, An Oxford University Chest, 48. Eleanor M. Hight notes that a negative photograph of the sailboat was first published along with the positive in Franz Roh’s Lázló Moholy-​Nagy: 60 Fotos. The negative of the sailboat was captioned ‘inversion and enhancement of the former picture’. Eleanor M. Hight, Moholy-​Nagy: Photography and Film in Weimar Germany (Wellesley, MA: Wellesley College Museum, 1985), 74. 55 Karin Hiscock, ‘Modernity and “English” Tradition: Betjeman at the Architectural Review’, Journal of Design History 13/​3 (2000), 208–​9.

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Figure 5.4.  View of Christ Church College Oxford, with the silhouette of the Tom Tower projected onto the buildings, 1936. Photo: László Moholy-​Nagy, first published in John Betjeman, An Oxford University Chest (London: John Miles, 1938). Courtesy of Moholy-​Nagy Foundation and Oxford University Press.

contemporary approaches to the representation of English traditional and vernacular architecture through the integration of modernist aesthetics in the 1930s.56 This is seen from Betjeman’s engagement with visual imagery and typography, such as the layout of content, changing typefaces and, most 56 Ibid.

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Figure 5.5.  Negative photograph of the iron gate of Trinity College Oxford, 1936, with the description: ‘ “No undergraduate may be out after midnight without special leave.” A way of rendering the gates of Trinity College impregnable to those who would scale them.’ Photo: László Moholy-​Nagy, first published in John Betjeman, An Oxford University Chest (London: John Miles, 1938). Courtesy of Moholy-​Nagy Foundation and Oxford University Press.

importantly, a very modernist and creative photographic representation of traditional English architectural subjects.57 One example Hiscock cites is Betjeman’s choice of a superimposed mirrored image of St Paul’s in the 57

Moholy’s own interest in the combination of multi-​media in graphic design, especially the use of typography, as demonstrated in his works for International Textiles and Imperial Airways, also aligns with Betjeman’s interest in visual imagery In László Moholy-​Nagy, ‘The New Typography (1923)’, in Richard Kostelanetz, ed., Moholy-​ Nagy (London: Allen Lane, 1971), 75. Moholy considered that the modern poster has integrated ‘all typefaces, type sizes, geometric forms, colours, etc.’ and was particularly looking for a new vocabulary of typography in 1927. László Moholy-​Nagy,

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Review’s June issue of 1931.58 Hiscock argues that Betjeman’s approach of employing a modernist perspective to represent architecture was grounded in the celebration of the eighteenth-​century concept of the Picturesque, which specified a particularised view of nature intervened by the artist.59 Betjeman’s engagement with modernist themes was thus not a celebration of modernity, but rather a response to the challenge posed by international modernism to English traditions and connoisseurship, ideas essential to the English elite identity that Betjeman praised through his work.60 Hiscock notes that Betjeman’s support of a modernist interpretation of traditional English subjects was, fundamentally, a reassertion of English elite culture in modern experience, in which way the ‘tradition lives in the present’.61 Once again in An Oxford University Chest, Betjeman attempted to reassert English elite culture in the contemporary era. The title page, designed in old English typeface and printed on handmade paper, highlighted the role of the book as a celebration of English traditions, rather than of modernist interventions. Moholy’s name, listed among the book’s illustrators, also appears in a conventional font and layout. Moholy’s photographs seem to suggest he shared Betjeman’s aims. His method of presenting specific viewpoints in the architecture can be seen ‘Contemporary Typography (1926)’, in Kostelanetz, ed., Moholy-​Nagy, 79–​80. Moholy’s experiments on designing two-​dimensional visual imagery is seen from his work for International Textiles between 1933 and 1935. See Senter, ‘MoholyNagy in England’, 152–​62. Hiscock, ‘Modernity and “English” Tradition’, 194–​5. 58 Anon., ‘Decoration and Craftsmanship’, Architectural Review 69/​June (1931), 221–​2. 59 Hiscock, ‘Modernity and “English” Tradition’, 196–​7. This view of the picturesque can be further related to the representation of English country houses narrated in Joseph Nash’s Mansions of England in the Olden Time (First published in four volumes, between 1839 and 1849) in terms of how architectural representation would frame particularised views and settings to serve the interests of the Aristocrats. In the illustrations of the book, there were also depictions of sports or leisure activities for pastime and pleasure. The representations of both sporting activities and architectural settings could therefore be employed as a celebration of the elite culture. Joseph Nash, The Mansions of England in the Olden Time (London: Thomas McLean, 1839–​49). 60 Karin Hiscock, ‘Modernity and “English” Tradition’, 194, 208–​9. 1 Ibid., 204. 6

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as a refashioning of the picturesque in new terms, playing into Moholy’s self-​identification as a modern photographer ‘providing a truthful record of objectively determined fact’.62 At the same time the project strengthened his claims to amateurism, with its experimental viewpoints and strong sense of a process of free wandering and exploration. Moholy’s photographs, though modern, celebrated both the traditional Oxford architecture and the amateur ideas so central to English upper middle-​class identity.

Conclusion During his transitional years in England, Moholy employed his amateur, experimental approach to the representation of English culture: be it the exclusive menswear store ‘Simpsons’, an expensive furniture company, Eton College or Oxford University. With these projects, Moholy became further acquainted with the English concept of amateurism, of such central importance to the country’s upper middle-​class identity. Observing the 1936 Berlin Olympics, in the midst of these English projects, his rejection of German Sonderweg exceptionalism was confirmed. The England of the mid-​1930s was perhaps the perfect destination for Moholy at this crucial moment of transition, the deeply-​rooted culture of amateurism complementing and further developing these aspects of his own work. Moholy however did became exhausted by the overwhelming nature of his constant artistic and commercial experimentations –​as he admitted to Sibyl while watching a cricket game on Hampstead Heath in the spring of 1937.63 Nonetheless, this faith in amateurism was translated into Moholy’s teaching career in America. As he wrote in Vision in Motion in 1947, setting out his theory for art education, ‘the sincere expression of the layman in any medium can be the start for “art”. […] He is an authentic testimonial of the manifold abilities of the human being to act and

2 Moholy-​Nagy, ‘Foreword’, vii. 6 63 Moholy-​Nagy, Moholy-​Nagy, 137.

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react purposefully if emotionally stimulated’.64 Emphasising the importance of emotional inspiration over professional training, Moholy further noted ‘one does not have to be a judge to have a sense of justice, though there are professional judges’,65 a playful analogy reminiscent of not only the value of free play of the preliminary course of Bauhaus years, but also perhaps the sporting culture Moholy had encountered while watching an English cricket game.

4 Moholy-​Nagy, Vision in Motion, 27. 6 65 Ibid.

Michelle Henning

6 Lucia Moholy and German Photography History in Britain

During the late 1920s, in Berlin, Lucia Moholy began the research that would eventually become A Hundred Years of Photography 1839–​1939. The book was published in 1939 by Penguin, during her exile in London. She begins, in the preface, with the claim that ‘numerous books have been written in the history of photography’.1 Actually, Moholy’s was probably the first twentieth-​century British publication to attempt a full cultural history of photography, and certainly the first paperback. A Hundred Years summarised the key technical and artistic developments in scientific, vernacular and art photography in only 170 pages, and was addressed to a general rather than a specialist readership. Launched in January 1936, Penguin’s policy was to bring topical issues and quality writing to a new reading public who were unable to afford more expensive hardback books. The company set out to sell newly-​commissioned books, in the form of sixpence mass-​market paperbacks, as a means of popular education and cultural improvement.2 The series in which Moholy’s book was published, Pelican Specials, was launched in 1938, specialising in discussions of science and the arts, and, as the back covers declared, ‘published within as short a time as possible from the receipt of the manuscript’. Like the other Pelican and Penguin Specials, Moholy’s book had an emphasis on science, technology and empiricism, and was implicitly left-​ wing and internationalist. Specials could sell up to 100,000 copies, and A

1 2

Lucia Moholy, A Hundred Years of Photography 1839–​1939 (London: Penguin Books 1939), 5. Nicholas Joicey, ‘A Paperback Guide to Progress: Penguin Books 1935–​c.1951’, Twentieth Century British History 4/​1 (1993), 30.

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Hundred Years of Photography sold about 40,000 copies in two years, but after the edition sold out in January 1941 no further editions were printed due to paper shortages. War had also damaged the export market.3 In the following decades, it was largely forgotten. This is not to say that Moholy’s history had no impact in the field. Helmut Gernsheim, like Moholy a Neue Sachlichkeit [New Objectivity] photographer and émigré from Nazi Germany, was inspired to work in photography history by Moholy’s book, which was sent to him when he was interned in Australia.4 Nevertheless, A Hundred Years of Photography receives only passing mention in his writing and in surveys of the historiography such as Martin Gasser’s 1992 essay ‘Histories of Photography 1839–​1939’.5 There are a number of writers who have studied Moholy’s archive, her photographic work and her biography –​but only one short study in English of A Hundred Years of Photography, by Angelo Maggi.6 While Maggi’s chapter demonstrates the originality and breadth of A Hundred Years, this essay sets out to demonstrate that Moholy translated for a British readership, via a factual and empirical history, certain

3 4

5 6

Steve Hare, ‘Posted Abroad’, Logos 24/​4 (2013), 38. See ‘Helmut Gernsheim interviewed by Val Williams’, Oral History of British Photography, British Library, March 1995. See also Michael Berkowitz, ‘Lost in the Transnational: Photographic Initiatives of Walter and Helmut Gernsheim in Britain’, in Jay Howard Geller and Leslie Morris, eds, Three-​Way Street: Jews, Germans, and the Transnational (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2016), 144–​68. Gasser, Martin, ‘Histories of Photography 1839–​1939’, History of Photography 16/​1 (1992), 50–​60. Angelo Maggi, ‘A Hundred Years of Photography: A Critical Rereading of an Innovative Contribution’, in Angela Madesani and Nicoletta Ossanna Cavadini, eds, Lucia Moholy (1894–​1989) tra fotografia e vita/​Between Photography and Life (Chiasso: Centro Culturale Chiasso /​Silvana Editoriale, 2012). In 1996, Liz Heron and Val Williams reproduced an extract from A Hundred Years and pointed out that it ‘makes some more recent attempts at introductory history seem parochial’. Liz Heron and Val Williams, eds, Illuminations: Women Writing on Photography from the 1850s to the Present (London: I.B. Tauris, 1996), 70. David Bate, quite unusually, cites Moholy in some depth in his introductory Photography: The Key Concepts. David Bate, Photography: The Key Concepts (London: Bloomsbury, 2016).

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theoretical perspectives on photography that were in circulation in the late 1920s and early 1930s among central European artists and writers such as herself (she was Czech) and her ex-​husband László Moholy-​Nagy (who was Hungarian).7 Moholy had arrived in Britain in 1934 both as a political exile with communist and anarchist affiliations, and as a Jew escaping Nazi-​occupied Europe, though she did not generally self-​identify as Jewish.8 The Austro-​Hungarian Empire into which she had been born no longer existed, and the Bauhaus, where she was based with Moholy-​Nagy until their separation in 1929, had shut down in 1933. Other writers have discussed Moholy’s struggle to regain possession of (and credit for) the negatives of her photographs taken at the Bauhaus (see, for example, Figure 6.1), her claim to have co-​authored several of Moholy-​Nagy’s texts and photographs, and the role that her identity as a woman and an assimilated Jew might have played in her marginalisation.9 My aim here is not to restore the status of an under-​recognised woman artist and author, although Lucia Moholy is certainly that, but to demonstrate how certain ideas about photography can be traced through Moholy’s book to their origins in other continental European texts. My focus is therefore on the book as a potential ‘site of interchange’ between German and English-​speaking photography communities.

7 8 9

For clarification: I refer to Lucia Moholy as ‘Moholy’ and László as ‘Moholy-​Nagy’. Rose-​Carol Washton Long, ‘Lucia Moholy’s Bauhaus Photography and the Issue of the Hidden Jew’, Woman’s Art Journal (Fall/​Winter 2014), 37–​46. Lucia Moholy, ‘Moholy-​Nagy: Marginal Notes, Documentary Absurdities’’, in Madesani and Cavadini, eds, Lucia Moholy, 165–​79; Robin Schuldenfrei, ‘Images in Exile: Lucia Moholy’s Bauhaus Negatives and the Construction of the Bauhaus Legacy’, History of Photography 37/​2 (May 2013), 182–​203; Rose-​Carol Washton Long, ‘From Metaphysics to Material Culture: Painting and Photography at the Bauhaus’, in Kathleen James-​Chakraborty, ed., Bauhaus Culture: From Weimar to the Cold War (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), 52–​3; Eleanor M. Hight, Picturing Modernism: Moholy-​ Nagy and Photography in Weimar Germany (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995), 3–​5; Meghan Forbes, ‘ “What I Could Lose”: The Fate of Lucia Moholy’, Michigan Quarterly Review, Winter 2016, 28–​ 9; Rolf Sachsse, Lucia Moholy: Bauhaus Fotografin (Berlin: Gegenwart Museum /​ Bauhaus Archiv,1995).

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Figure 6.1.  Lucia Moholy, House of Walter Gropius Seen from the West, 1926. Photo: Bauhaus-​Archiv Berlin © DACS 2017.

Historicising photography During the late 1920s and the 1930s, many new critical writings on contemporary photography were being published in the books, exhibition catalogues, journals and periodicals of the European avant-​garde.10 They 10

Some of these writings are collected in: Wolfgang Kemp, ed., Theorie der Fotografie II, (1912–​1945) (München: Schirmer Mosel, 1999); Christopher Phillips, ed., Photography in the Modern Era: European Documents and Critical Writings, 1913–​1940 (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art /​Aperture, 1989); Timothy O. Benson and Éva Forgács, eds, Between Worlds: A Sourcebook of Central European Avant-​Gardes, 1910–​1930 (Cambridge, MA: Los Angeles County Museum of Art /​ MIT Press, 2002).

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included short but influential essays such as the printmaker Emil Orlik’s ‘Uber Fotographie’ [‘On Photography’] of 1924, and predominantly visual publications such as László Moholy-​Nagy’s Malerei, Photographie, Film [Painting, Photography, Film] of 1925 and Franz Roh and Jan Tschichold’s 1929 photo-​book Foto-​Auge /​Oeil et Photo /​Photo-​Eye.11 A flurry of photography exhibitions culminated in Film und Foto, known as FiFo, of 1929. In their reflections on the relation of the new photography to older practices, these publications and exhibitions represented a growing consensus among European artists, curators and intellectuals on the question of how to account for technical and stylistic changes in photography. A boom in the history of photography followed, with Helmut Bossert and Heinrich Guttmann’s 1930 book on early photography Aus der Fruhzeit der Photographie, 1840–​1870, Heinrich Schwarz’s 1931 monograph David Octavius Hill, Walter Benjamin’s now-​canonical essay ‘Kleine Geschichte der Fotographie’ (‘Little History of Photography’) also from 1931, and the photographer Gisèle Freund’s PhD dissertation, La Photographie en France au dix-​neuvième siècle (Photography in France in the Nineteenth Century) published in 1936.12 With the exception of the Benjamin and Orlik texts, all of these are listed in Moholy’s bibliography.

11

12

Emil Orlik, ‘Über Fotografie (1924)’, in Kemp, ed., Theorie der Fotografie II, 181–​3; László Moholy-​Nagy, Malerei, Photographie, Film (Munich: Albert Langen Verlag, 1925), cited here in English translation: Painting, Photography, Film (London: Lund Humphries, 1969); Franz Roh and Jan Tschichold, Foto-​Auge /​Oeil et Photo/​Photo-​ Eye: 76 Photos of the period (Stuttgart: Akademischer verlag Dr Fritz Wedekind & Co, 1929). Helmuth Th. Bossert and Heinrich Guttmann, Aus der Frühzeit der Photographie 1840–​70 (Frankfurt am Main: Societats-​Verlag, 1930); Heinrich Schwarz, David Octavius Hill: der Meister der Photographie (Leipzig: Insel-​Verlag, 1931), cited here in English translation: David Octavius Hill: Master of Photography (London: George C. Harrap, 1932); Walter Benjamin, ‘Kleine Geschichte der Photographie‘ (1931), cited here in English translation: ‘Little History of Photography’, in Michael W. Jennings, Harold Eiland and Gary Smith, eds, Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, vol. 2, 1927–​1934 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 526; Gisèle Freund, La Photographie en France au dix-​neuvième siècle (Paris: A. Monnier, 1936).

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These discussions of photography, conducted mostly in German and French, were translated to the American context by Beaumont Newhall in his MoMA exhibition Photography 1839–​1937, and his book Photography: A Short Critical History, published in 1938, and revised and reprinted repeatedly over the next fifty years (as The History of Photography: From 1839 to the Present Day).13 Although now overtaken by other histories and other approaches, its enormous success and influence had the effect of prioritising certain aspects of the interwar debates on photography while obscuring others. In particular, the European avant-​garde’s interest in technical reproduction, though it shaped the MoMA exhibition, became lost in later iterations of Newhall’s text. The impact of a German Romantic revival, with new theories of environmentalism and embodiment, and of Marxist social history and political theory are also largely invisible in Newhall’s account. The German and central European debates about photography in this period have been characterised as ‘the beginning of photography history as art history’.14 However, several of the key texts that shape Moholy’s account exhibit an interest in the wider social and cultural context and uses of photography. It was Newhall who really made it his project to transform photography history into art history. Moholy translated these ideas in a very different way to him. In some ways, her book can be seen to draw on German language approaches to the wide technical applications of photography, exemplified in Josef Maria Eder’s Geschichte der Photographie [History of Photography] (1904; republished in 1932) and Erich Stenger’s Die Photographie in Kultur und Technik of 1938 [translated as The History of Photography: Its Relation to Civilisation and Practice in 1939].15 Media 13 14 15

Beaumont Newhall, Photography: A Short Critical History (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1938); Beaumont Newhall, The History of Photography: From 1939 to the Present Day (London: Secker and Warburg, 1972). Matthew S. Witkovsky, ‘Circa 1930: Art History and the New Photography’, Études Photographiques 23 (May 2009), n.p. Josef Maria Eder, Geschichte der Photographie (Halle a. S.: Knapp, 1932); Erich Stenger, Die Photographie in Kultur und Technik: ihre Geschichte während 100 Jahren (Leipzig: Seemann, 1938). Martin Gasser notes the nationalistic /​National Socialist overtones in Stenger’s text. Martin Gasser, ‘Histories of Photography 1839–​1939’, History of Photography 16/​1 (1992), 51–​2.

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archaeologist Erkki Huhtamo describes Stenger’s book as a ‘cultural and media history of photography’.16 Moholy’s book could be characterised in the same way, though she also pays attention to photography as art. One of the principal ways in which her work differs from Newhall’s is in the treatment of style and technique. Newhall criticised her for leading by technique, and technical change, and failing to provide an ‘urgently needed’ account of stylistic developments in photography.17 He saw technique as ‘the choice of formal possibilities’ of a given historical period, which, as Heinrich Wölfflin put it, shapes the ‘modes of imaginative beholding’ distinct to that period.18 Newhall argued that technique shapes style, but at the same time, ‘that technical changes in photography are dictated by stylistic demands’.19 Style, for Newhall as for art historians such as Wölfflin and Wilhelm Worringer, expressed the nation and the epoch. By contrast, Moholy’s text is partly informed by the Marxist approach (exemplified by Freund), which links changes in photographic style to social and economic changes. She also situates photographic style within the larger practices and contexts of the major art movements and tendencies –​Romanticism versus Realism, Impressionism, Futurism, and so on, and discusses photography’s links to abstraction and its role in the Neue Sachlichkeit. While Newhall affirmed photography as an art form distinct from painting, Moholy repeatedly emphasises the interdependence of photography and painting. She suggests that since its invention, all art movements have become linked with photography, one way or another, and thus painting and photography are subject to a ‘mutual interaction’.20 16 Erkki Huhtamo, ‘Elephans Photographicus: Media Archaeology and the History of Photography’, in Nicoletta Leonardi and Simone Natale, eds, Photography and Other Media in the Nineteenth Century (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2018), 15. Ian Jeffrey comments on how the ‘orthodox history … underplays the heterogeneity of the medium’ in Ian Jeffrey, Revisions: An Alternative History of Photography (London: Lund Humphries, 1999), 35. 17 Beaumont Newhall, ‘Review of Lucia Moholy, A Hundred Years of Photography’, The Art Bulletin 23/​3 (September 1941), 246. 18 Wölfflin, Heinrich, Principles of Art History: The Problem of the Development of Style in Later Art (New York: Dover Publications, 2013), vii. 19 Newhall, ‘Review’, 246. 20 Moholy, A Hundred Years, 81.

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Moholy’s personal proximity to, and part in, the central European avant-​garde helps to explain this belief that photography is part of modern art, and her rejection of the notion of an autonomous and discrete history of photography. She was not just drawing on the published texts, but on her relationship to key protagonists. Probably the most technically able photographer at the Bauhaus, though not formally employed there, she documented the School’s buildings at Dessau, and the objects produced there, as well as making portraits of faculty members between 1923 and 1928. She also collaborated on the production of some of Moholy-​Nagy’s most famous images. She knew Roh, whom she photographed in 1926, and Tschichold, whose wife Edith she photographed the same year. Photographs by Moholy appeared in both FiFo and Painting, Photography, Film. Moholy brought German debates to a new context that was especially receptive to ideas relating to new technology, but less receptive to German metaphysical philosophy and to the avant-​garde. British photographic publishing was dominated by technical how-​to books, including the handbooks and manuals published by the photography companies, as well as books on recent technical developments by figures closely involved in the industry, such as The Kingdom of the Camera by inventor and journalist Thomas Thorne Baker (1934).21 In addition, there were English translations of Schwarz’s book on David Octavius Hill (1932), Georges Potonniée’s The History of the Discovery of Photography22 (translated in 1936) and Stenger’s Die Photographie in Kultur und Technik (1939) mentioned above. Events commemorating the 1939 centenary of photography reflected a split between the treatment of photography as a technology and as an art. The Victoria and Albert Museum’s An Exhibition of Early Photography to Commemorate the Centenary of Photography 1839–​1939 focussed on, in the words of The Times reviewer, ‘the products, rather than the mechanism’ of photography, while the Science Museum’s exhibition 100 Years of Photography addressed technical and commercial developments including aerial photography, wire photography and radiography; 2 1 Thomas Thorne Baker, The Kingdom of the Camera (London: Bell, 1934). 22 Originally published as Georges Potonniée, Histoire de la découverte de la photographie (Paris: P. Montel, 1925).

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the ‘art photographs’ included were of the sentimental, pictorialist type.23 Publications such as Potonniée’s and Stenger’s, and these 1939 exhibitions, participated in what Martin Gasser calls ‘priority debates’ –​making nationalistic claims for their own country’s role in the invention and development of photography.24 Symptomatically, the Victoria and Albert Museum exhibition opened on 25 January 1939, a day chosen to commemorate the anniversary, not of the announcement of Louis Daguerre’s process (7 January), but of William Henry Fox Talbot’s.25 Moholy eschewed priority debates. Largely in line with Marxist social histories, she focused her attention instead on social, cultural and economic forces determining the invention of photography. In her opening chapter, she repeats the phrase ‘the time was ripe’ (a phrase used by Schwarz in his 1931 study of Hill), with each repetition contextualising the arrival of photography differently: how the invention was facilitated by enlightenment, industrialisation, the developing capitalist free market, democratisation, class mobility, secularisation and the rise of a reading public. She also claims that light-​sensitive processes and optics had been studied long before the nineteenth century, mentioning Chinese experiments with photochemistry, Arabic alchemy, understandings of skin tanning and the theory of combustion.26 Her argument is that photography did not spring fully formed from nowhere but arrived as one ‘outcome of collective efforts spread over thousands of years’, and she observes that ‘photography has been a compound invention, as most inventions are’.27 Yet, she argues, while all periods made discoveries of this sort, only the early nineteenth century could have brought them into fruition in the specific form of photography.

Anon., ‘Photography of 100 Years’, The Times, 21 July 1939, 12. Gasser, ‘Histories of Photography’. Anon., ‘Photography as It Was’, The Times, 25 January 1939, 9. This far-​reaching historical account is mischaracterised by Matthew Witkovsky, who criticises Moholy for saying that a ‘desire for photography [dates] from the earliest days of mankind’. This sentence does not appear in the book, and her emphasis is on early photochemical and optical experiments –​nothing to do with desire. Witkovsky, ‘Circa 1930’, n.p. 27 Moholy, A Hundred Years, 23. 2 3 24 25 26

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If the British exhibitions reflected a distinction between the ‘products’ and the ‘mechanism’ of photography, echoing the historical split between the treatment of photography as art and as technology, Moholy’s text is marked by a different tension. In combining art, technology and social context she was reflecting the competing demands that had marked German-​language writing on photography in the late 1920s and early 1930s. These were, on the one hand, the demand of Marxist and socialist parties at the time that art be placed in the service of society or revolution, and on the other, the avant-​garde requirement that art and design shape a new way of life.28

Production /​reproduction The German tensions between the demands of the left for a populist realism, and the avant-​garde ambition for a new vision, relates to an opposition between production and reproduction which marks both Moholy’s work with Moholy-​Nagy and the narrative of A Hundred Years. Both Moholys had been involved in communist and anarchist circles, in which ‘production’ had virtuous connotations through its association with industry, while ‘reproduction’ described the function of bourgeois ideology. The 1922 essay ‘Production-​Reproduction’ described reproduction as the ‘reiteration of already existing relations’ that ‘can be regarded 28 Benjamin’s writings sometimes awkwardly blend the two, especially in Walter Benjamin, ‘Das Kunstwerk in Zeitalter seiner technischen Reprodukzierbarkeit’ (1935), cited here in English translation: ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility’, in Harold Eiland and Michael W. Jennings, eds, Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, vol. 3, 1935–​1938 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 101–​33; Herbert Molderings argues that ‘Little History of Photography’ combines ‘the vulgar materialism of the cultural policy of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) […] with the radical aestheticism of avant-​ garde art and photography’. Herbert Molderings, ‘Photographic History in the Spirit of Constructivism Reflections on Walter Benjamin’s “Little History of Photography” ’, Art in Translation 6/​3 (2014), 328.

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for the most part as mere virtuosity’.29 Another 1927 essay discusses two ways of understanding ‘reproduction’ –​one as the ‘dependence on traditional forms of representation’ (reproduction of existing relations) and one as a practice no less important than the practice of art.30 Both Moholy’s New Objectivity photography and Moholy-​Nagy’s New Vision were oriented towards ‘production’, in rejecting existing art-​historical genres and to ‘reproduction’ in their commitment to technical media. Oliver Botar has argued for the role of Biozentrik [biocentrism] in their shared interest in scientific and technical photography. Biocentrism was associated with the right-​wing German philosopher Ludwig Klages, and with left-​wing branches of the Free German Youth in the 1910s, and it combined Romantic environmentalism, educational reform, communal living, and sensory and therapeutic healthcare. The Moholys’ biocentric approach treated technology as a means to expand the senses, and reinvent the body.31 For them, photographic documentation and recording practices might open up new ways of seeing. The dialectic of production and reproduction allowed for a recognition of reproductive photographs, without necessarily classifying them as art, as able to ‘make visible existences which cannot be perceived or taken in by our optical instrument, the eye’, so now ‘we see the world with entirely different eyes’.32 Reproduction is presented as the primary technical function of the photograph, providing a distinctive basis for creative production as a transformation of life and body. Moholy recalled that the couple’s conversations in 1922 around ‘problems arising from the antithesis Production versus Reproduction’ led them to experiment with photograms, unaware of similar experiments by other artists (though as Oliver Botar argues, they did know about 29 László Moholy-​Nagy, ‘Produktion-​Reproduktion’ (1922), cited here in English translation: ‘Production-​ Reproduction’, in Benson and Forgács, eds, Between Worlds, 454. 30 Moholy-​Nagy, ‘Die beispiellose Fotografie’ (1927), cited here in English translation: ‘Unprecedented Photography’, in Bauhaus: Art as Life, exhibition catalogue, Barbican Gallery London (Cologne: König, 2012), 250–​1. 31 Oliver A. I. Botar, Sensing the Future: Moholy-​Nagy, Media and the Arts (Zurich: Lars Müller, 2014), 20–​33. 32 Moholy-​Nagy, Painting, Photography, Film, 26–​9.

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Figure 6.2.  Lucia Moholy and László Moholy-​Nagy, Double Portrait Photogram, 1923. Photo: Bauhaus-​Archiv Berlin.

Bertha Günther’s experiments in the women’s commune of Loheland).33 Photograms, Rayographs or Shadowgraphs (after Man Ray and Christian Schad respectively) are cameraless photographs made by placing objects on or between a light source and photographic paper. The photogram became emblematic of the dialectic of production and reproduction in Moholy-​ Nagy and Moholy’s collaborative work (see Figure 6.2). It conformed to the demand of production by enabling an entirely new way of seeing objects, while at the same time acting as a kind of direct ‘reproduction’, recording without even the interference of lenses. The photogram also became central to a debate about the relationship between photography and painting. As early as 1922, the Dada poet Tristan Tzara had written that ‘everything that bore the name of art had succumbed to paralysis’ until Man Ray’s cameraless ‘Rayographs’.34 For Roh and Moholy-​Nagy, as for Tzara, this was the key means by which 3 3 Moholy, ‘Marginal Notes’, 167; Botar, Sensing the Future. 34 Tristan Tzara, ‘Photography in Reverse’, (1924), in Benson and Forgács, Between Worlds, 483–​4.

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photography had broken away from painting. Newhall disagreed. Pointing out that photograms resemble cubist paintings, he argued that ‘some contemporary shadowgraphs seem as much in the tradition of painting as the landscape by Stieglitz which he [Moholy-​Nagy] criticizes’.35 However, in A Hundred Years, Moholy points out that the photogram was rooted in an old technique, ‘discovered by Schulze in 1727 and familiar to Fox Talbot before 1834’, and was adopted by abstract artists who were trying ‘to give shape to their feeling of balance’.36 This explanation, though inadequate as an account of abstract art, contains an implicit critique of Newhall’s argument. Moholy writes: ‘The question whether photography has been subjected to any influence of the abstract arts does not, therefore arise with regard to these pictures. It was a process of assimilation, not of influence.’37 In other words, the photogram was not photography mimicking cubism, but rather the deployment of photography for the purposes of abstraction, which belongs no more to painting than to photography. Newhall was referring to Moholy-​Nagy’s 1925 book Painting, Photography, Film which suggested that photography should explore its own distinctive and mechanical modes of picture-​making, and in which an Alfred Stieglitz photograph was captioned: ‘The triumph of Impressionism or photography misunderstood. The photographer has become a painter instead of using his camera photographically.’38 By 1929 it was received wisdom that photography had been reborn when it liberated itself from dependence on painting. Roh begins his Photo-E ​ ye essay by identifying two significant periods of photography, the early years and the 1920s, separated by photography’s wilderness years when it was diverted into mimicking painting and graphic art. Now photography has found its way again, and a ‘true visual culture’ is emerging to rid photography of ‘kitsch’.39 Bossert and Guttmann and Schwarz imported this idea into photography history, with Bossert and Guttmann labelling pictorialist images ‘kitsch’, and invoking

3 5 Newhall, Photography: A Short Critical History, 63. 36 Moholy, A Hundred Years, 162. 37 Ibid. 38 Moholy-​Nagy, Painting, Photography, Film, 49. 39 Roh, Foto-​Auge, 14.

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the contemporary return to ‘Sachlichkeit’ [objectivity], and Schwarz arguing that when photography aspires to the ‘limitless world’ of painting and the graphic arts, it becomes ‘untrue to itself ’.40

Decline and rebirth A Hundred Years breaks with this assessment in its positive valuation of the interchange between the different arts, yet it retains two aspects of this argument: a negative attitude towards retouching, and the narrative Witkovsky characterises as ‘ascendancy, decline and rebirth’.41 We can find this in Roh’s Photo-​Eye essay, in Helmut Bossert and Heinrich Guttmann’s 1930 book on early photography, in Schwarz and in Benjamin. The decline in photography is identified as setting in as early as the 1850s, spreading in the 1860s and 1870s, and continuing through the 1890s. The moment of rebirth is the moment of modernism, the New Vision and the New Objectivity. The rise and fall narrative could draw on two different models of the history of art: Wölfflin’s notion of a history of successive styles, each expressing their period without directly reflecting it; and the Marxist account of stylistic changes as arising from social and economic changes.42 Either narrative could justify the notion that the late nineteenth century saw a decline in the aesthetic standards of photography: from a Marxist perspective, as photography becomes increasingly commodified under industrial capitalism; in a Wölfflinian account, as

40 Bossert and Guttmann, Aus der Frühzeit der Photographie; also Schwarz, David Octavius Hill, 10. 41 Witkovsky, ‘Circa 1930’, n.p. 42 As Benjamin suggested, Freund’s account veers towards a crude Marxist view of art’s significance as dependent on its capacity to mirror a society, or express the needs of a social class. Benjamin argues instead that the artwork’s significance derives from how well it is able to ‘make the time of its production accessible to remote and alien epochs’. Walter Benjamin, ‘Letters from Paris (2)’, in Eiland and Jennings, eds, Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, vol. 3, 245.

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true aesthetic style is replaced with fashion –​understood as transitory and superficial.43 All these writers connect the late nineteenth-​century decline to the popularisation and commercialisation of photography. They agree that an early directness in photography was lost as photographed subjects were turned into ‘types’ by commercial carte-​de-​visite photographers, and as the rise of the retouching studios fed a growing taste for mediocrity and flattery.44 Freund attributes rising mediocrity in art and photography to the influence, in France, of Louis-​Philippe’s notion of the ‘juste-​milieu’, the state reflection of bourgeois values. But she also places responsibility at the door of André Adolphe Eugène Disdéri, inventor of the carte-​de-​visite and owner of an elaborate, prop-​filled photography studio in Paris, who she views as responsible for the massive success of commercial portraiture in the 1860s, but also its aesthetic decline.45 However, Moholy argues that while Disdéri’s photographs are now laughable and ‘a degeneration of the art’, they are nevertheless ‘of extraordinary value for the student of social evolution’.46 She comments that such portraits are highly revealing about that era’s ‘idea of personality’ being entirely attached to material accessories. In this respect, her argument resembles Benjamin’s, who treats the carte-​de-​visite as an expression of the bourgeois self-​definition through possessions (although Moholy is unlikely to have read his essay, which is not listed in her bibliography).47 The opposition to retouching was shaped by a number of factors: a left-​wing association of retouching with the deceptive practices of the right-​wing press; a growing interest in ‘straight photography’ and New Objectivity and rejection of pictorialism; the rise of ‘miniature’ Leica-​ style cameras, and roll-​film which did not lend itself to retouching. Both 43 Frederic Schwartz, ‘Cathedrals and Shoes: Concepts of Style in Wolfflin and Adorno’, New German Critique 76/​3 (1999), 26. 44 See Benjamin, ‘Little History of Photography’; Moholy, A Hundred Years, 108; Gisèle Freund, Photography and Society (Boston: David R. Godine, 1980), 39, 49. 45 Freund, Photography and Society, 39, 49, 61. 46 Moholy, A Hundred Years, 108. 47 Benjamin’s essay was published in a relatively obscure literary journal and had little impact at the time. See Molderings, ‘Photographic History’.

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Freund and Moholy rejected retouching in their own practice.48 In 1924, Orlik wrote that ‘it is not surprising that photographers depended more and more on the help of retouching, in order to meet a declining taste for truth amongst their clients’, and Moholy also discusses the demands of customers, the middle classes who ‘thought that a smooth face suggested a higher social rank’.49 Schwarz described colouring and retouching as leading to ‘aberrations’, while for Benjamin, retouching, gum bichromate printing and soft-​lighting techniques were all regressive attempts to stem an inevitable destruction of tradition.50 The narrative of decline relies on a notion of the greatness of early photography, and especially early portraiture. The view that some of the greatest achievements in photographic portraiture were by the earliest photographers was also widely shared. Like Freund, Schwarz and Benjamin (whose ‘Little History of Photography’ also draws heavily on Schwarz), Moholy discusses portraiture in depth. Orlik in 1924 pioneered the view that the relationship between photographer and subject is key to the greatness of early photographers such as Hill, Nadar and Julia Margaret Cameron. Freund attributes the quality of Nadar’s early portraits to his ‘close relationships with his models’, while Moholy says that Hill’s success was dependent on the ‘contact between photographer and photographed’.51 Moholy and Freund’s writings are particularly convincing on this as both worked as portrait photographers. Unlike these other writers though, Moholy suggests that this ‘feeling of warmth and contact’ is an aesthetic tendency, something shaped by Romanticism.52 In this way, she not only places photography in art history but denaturalises early photography, suggesting an image of intimacy is not necessarily the result of actual intimacy. 48 The history of this attitude to retouching is summarised in André Gunthert, ‘Sans retouche’, Études photographiques 22 (September 2008), available at: , accessed 7 August 2019. 49 Orlik, ‘Über Fotografie’; Moholy, A Hundred Years, 115–​16. 50 Schwarz, David Octavius Hill, 11; Benjamin, ‘Little History of Photography’, 517. 51 Freund, Photography and Society, 42–​3; Moholy, A Hundred Years, 61. In 1940 Moholy corresponded with Schwarz regarding a second edition of her book, and possible collaboration on a photography museum. Maggi, ‘A Hundred Years’, 45. 52 Moholy, A Hundred Years, 41.

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In the writing of Benjamin, Orlik and Schwarz the quality of early calotype portraits is also presented as a consequence of long exposure. Orlik explains the effect of the sitter’s stillness on the viewer by suggesting they are sat as if ‘where it neither rains nor snows and no storm blows’ –​a phrase he takes from Lucretius via Goethe.53 Thus, he attributes to photographic portraiture an aesthetic transcendence: to be outside the storm is to be outside time and history, something that instantaneous photography can never again achieve. Orlik argues that long exposure enabled early photographs to capture a ‘synthesis of expression’, a concept derived from the philosopher Schelling, for whom an ideal portrait is a composite of ‘the individual gestures and moments of life’ which constitute a person.54 Both Benjamin and Schwarz follow this argument, linking the special quality of Hill and Adamson’s photographs to the use of specific technologies –​old, slow Chevalier lenses and paper negatives –​that slow down the process of capture.55 In her own book Moholy alludes to this argument, stating that ‘Some are inclined to think that the calmness of attitude and expression are due to the length of time which was required for exposing a photograph’ and she provides a quotation from 1840 (when exposure times were around ten to twenty minutes): ‘Everybody seemed to understand that there was a secret relation between the young man, the box with the short, cannonlike brass tube, and the sitter.’56 In this way, she reads early portraits not in terms of transcendence but as a patient collaboration between humans and apparatus, a three-​way relationship between photographer, camera and sitter, a ‘give and take’ which results neither in ‘pure realism’ nor ‘classic purification’ (i.e. staging) but something between the two.57 53

Orlik, ‘Über Fotografie’, 182. Orlik is discussing the early photographer Hermann Biow, comparing his portraiture to a comment by Goethe on a painting of Talleyrand, in which Goethe cites Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura. 54 Schelling cited in Jan von Brevern, ‘Resemblance After Photography’, Representations 123/​1 (Summer 2013), 8. 55 Benjamin, ‘Little History of Photography’, 510, 517; Schwarz, David Octavius Hill, 39. 56 Cited in Moholy, A Hundred Years, 42. 57 Moholy, A Hundred Years, 41–​2.

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The narrative arc that these writers share describes a ‘rebirth’ in photography in avant-​garde practice, including photomontage, the New Vision, ‘straight photography’ and the Neue Sachlichkeit or New Objectivity. Yet while Benjamin is famously critical of the latter’s aestheticisation and commodification of the everyday (sardonically citing Renger-​Patzsch’s title Die Welt ist Schön –​The World is Beautiful), in A Hundred Years, Moholy treats New Objectivity as a rejection of the formalism of much 1920s photography. In such photography, Moholy argues, Whether the object was an egg or a tea-​cup, a score of pins or a pair of gloves, a piece of silk or a heap of sand, a row of corn sheaves or pebbles on the beach, was of no importance if the lights and shades were well arranged, and the pattern well balanced.58

In contrast, she viewed New Objectivity as a kind of realism in its return to subject matter (objects), and its rejection of both formalism and expressionism. She reproduces one of her own photographs to illustrate the point: her 1935 Portrait of Emma Countess of Oxford and Asquith, in which a shallow depth of field invites the viewer to attend to the countess’s earlobe, the coarse texture of her hair, or the detail on the pattern of her scarf, while the countess’s own attention is elsewhere (Figure 6.3). Moholy writes, For the first time in the history of photography it was not only the shape, delineation and expression of the human face, but the sculptural details of the head and the texture of skin, hair, nails and dress which became attractive subjects to the photographer.59

However, she acknowledges that this approach to portraiture does not go down well, particularly in England, which has ‘conserved a strong taste for the soft-​focussed, gentle and placid portrait photograph of the Reynolds and Gainsborough style’.60 Nevertheless, Moholy’s New Objectivity approach combined with an English philosophical empiricism to shape the style of the book itself: A Hundred Years of Photography has a brusque clarity, an attention to detail, an avoidance of esoteric, abstract and theoretical claims. Underpinning this there is also a biocentric, Romantic 5 8 Ibid., 163–​4. 59 Ibid., 165. 60 Ibid., 166.

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Figure 6.3.  Lucia Moholy, Margaret Emma Alice (‘Margot’) Asquith (née Tennant), Countess of Oxford and Asquith 1935. Photo: National Portrait Gallery, NPG P128 © DACS 2013.

concern with the relationship between the human body and technology, an eclectic combination that reflected Moholy’s wide-​ranging interests, which enabled her to work so closely with Moholy-​Nagy and to befriend both Johannes Itten, the most esoteric of the Bauhaus teachers, and Otto Neurath, the Vienna Circle sociologist and opponent of all things metaphysical.61

Conclusion: Life without photographs is no longer imaginable Moholy’s book operated as a ‘site of interchange’ between German and English-​speaking photography communities, bringing to Britain some key 61 Correspondence between Moholy and Neurath is located in the Otto and Marie Neurath Isotype Collection, in the Department of Typography and Graphic Communication, University of Reading.

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concerns of the European intellectual debates on photography that were neglected in Newhall’s influential writings, such as the interest in technical reproduction, the influence of new theories of environmentalism and embodiment, and of Marxist social history. While she retained the Central European disdain for pictorialism and the belief that the history of photography followed an arc of ‘ascendancy, decline and rebirth’, Moholy argued it without recourse to metaphysical claims or mystical notions. She introduces the British readership to her own New Objectivity, not as the familiar formalism which was evident in advertising photography in the 1930s, but as a kind of realism, contrasting with the softer, more idealised aesthetic still popular in Britain. Addressing social, cultural and economic forces, the book also reflected the competing demands on photography in Germany, from the left and from the avant-​garde, and the ways in which her collaboration with Moholy-​Nagy had navigated this through an interest in the new reproductive potential of photography. The consequence is a rare book that is able to address both artistic experimentation and the long history of photography as a communication medium. Moholy relates, for example, the story of René Dagron, who used microfilm carried by pigeons during the Franco-​Prussian war in 1870–​1, and the book ends with a shift from the discussion of contemporary portrait photography to the halftone and press photography, including photo-​telegraphy (wire photography) and its futuristic possibilities. This discussion anticipates Moholy’s own experience: in Britain, she had attempted to earn a living as a portrait photographer, but, as she writes, since the 1914–​18 war, portraiture had ‘suffered a setback’ even while scientific photography continued to grow so that ‘many portrait photographers who used to do nothing but portraiture had to take on commercial work which promised a better turnover’.62 In 1939 she began to supplement her portraiture work with work in microfilm. Working first at Cambridge University, then as director of the ASLIB Microfilm Service (Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux) at the Science Museum London (from 1942), and at the Victoria and Albert Museum (from 1943), Moholy was coordinating the microfilming of documents for intelligence purposes, including producing microfilm copies of German scientific periodicals, 62 Moholy, A Hundred Years, 166.

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using Recordak Microfile cameras imported from the United States with Rockefeller foundation funding.63 It was, as Rolf Sachsse points out, ‘a spying organisation working almost entirely for Bletchley Park’.64 It has been argued that the ASLIB service was part of a developing approach to information that led eventually to the World Wide Web.65 Moholy’s work with microfilm is one of a number of connections between the experiments of the interwar avant-​garde and the new era of information technology. In articles written in 1945 and 1946, Moholy discusses the ASLIB service and its relation to Power’s original project, and contextualised it within the larger political and scientific movement of the internationalisation of science, describing her work as part of larger efforts to ‘produce what Mr H. G. Wells calls “the abolition of distance on the intellectual plane” ’.66 A Hundred Years can be read as a bridge between her longstanding interest in production /​reproduction and in biocentrism, and her coming career in espionage. Indeed, she ends the book with a statement which simultaneously evokes a biocentric merging of body and technology, and anticipates the future significance of transmittable (wire and online) images: Life without photographs is no longer imaginable. They pass before our eyes and awaken our interest; they pass through the atmosphere, unseen and unheard, over distances of thousands of miles. They are in our lives, our lives are in them.

63

Lucia Moholy, ‘The ASLIB Microfilm Service: The Story of Its Wartime Activities’, Journal of Documentation 2/​3 (1946), 147–​73; Dave Muddiman, ‘A New History of ASLIB, 1924–​1950’, Journal of Documentation 61/​3 (2005), 402–​28; Dennis Cox, ‘The Contribution of Microphotography and Reprints to the Development of Libraries’, Journal of Documentation 43/​4 (1987), 341; Bonnie Mak, ‘Archaeology of a Digitization’, The Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 2013. 64 Rolf Sachsse, ‘Microfilm Services and Their Application to Scholarly Study, Scientific Research, Education and Re-​Education in the Post-​War Period: A Draft Proposal by Lucia Moholy to the UNESCO Preparatory Commission 1945, and its Prehistory in Modern Art’, in Costanza Caraffa and Tiziana Serena, eds Photo Archives and the Idea of Nation (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015), 167–​78. 5 Muddiman, ‘A New History of ASLIB’. 6 66 Lucia Moholy, ‘A Few Remarks on Documentary Reproduction in General and Microfilm in Particular’, Journal of Documentation 1/​1 (1945), 40.

Antonia Behan

7 Interchanged Threads: Modernism and History in Ethel Mairet, Nikolaus Pevsner and the Bauhaus Weavers

Scholars of architecture and design have long either denied the existence of British modernism, or treated it as a ‘compromise’ between traditional elements and a spirit of innovation that arrived, if at all, with the Bauhaus émigrés in the mid-​1930s.1 This essay will challenge that narrative by presenting a case study of the lesser-​known British handweaver Ethel Mairet. Mairet’s approach to handweaving indeed underwent a decisive shift around the time of the Bauhaus émigrés’ arrival, from work in the Morrisian tradition reconstructing natural dye recipes to championing design for industry. Nonetheless, I will argue that a closer study of Mairet’s lectures, notebooks and published writings reveals that most of her key ideas about modernism were already well developed before her first encounters with Walter Gropius and the Bauhaus weavers. Mairet’s example suggests that some British designers saw the Bauhaus less as a source of new design approaches and styles, than as practicing what they had already been preaching.2 As I will argue in the second part of this essay, their common ground on many issues of

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2

See, for instance, RIBA’s exhibition copy for Beyond Bauhaus: Modernism in Britain 1933 to 1966 (October 2019–​February 2020): ‘On the centenary of the Bauhaus school, one of the most famous and influential design schools in modern history, this exhibition looks afresh at the birth of Modernism in Britain.’ Alan Powers, ‘Britain and the Bauhaus’, Apollo (1 May 2006), 48–​54; James Peto and Donna Loveday, Modern Britain: 1929–​1939 (London: Design Museum, 1999), 11. See also Cheryl Buckley, Designing Modern Britain (London: Reaktion, 2007).

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design makes their ultimately differing interpretations of modernism all the more significant. The major opposition to the account I seek to put forward is the existing historiographic framework largely shaped by the influential narrative Nikolaus Pevsner first published in 1936 as Pioneers of the Modern Movement: From William Morris to Walter Gropius.3 Particularly after the 1950s, this book came to define the fields of architectural and design history.4 Though Pevsner’s own understanding of modernism was somewhat complex and changed over time,5 his narrative had a schematic tendency that was reinforced by its transmission and repetition. Despite subsequent developments in the field of design history, the Pioneers model, which frames modernism in national terms as a passing of the baton from Britain to Germany, remains remarkably persistent. Yet Pevsner’s account was not always so influential, especially not when it was first published in Britain in 1936.6 I would therefore like to begin by considering the actual relationships between German and British weavers during the crucial interwar period.

3

4

5

6

Nikolaus Pevsner, Pioneers of the Modern Movement: From William Morris to Walter Gropius (London: Faber & Faber, 1936); Pioneers of Modern Design: From William Morris to Walter Gropius (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1949), Pelican Books, 1960 (revised and partly rewritten), 1975 (revised). See, for example, Clive Dilnot, ‘The State of Design History, Part I: Mapping the Field’, Design Issues 1/​1 (Spring, 1984), 4–​23; Victor Margolin, ‘Design History or Design Studies: Subject Matter and Methods’, Design Issues 11/​1 (Spring, 1995), 4–​15. Alan Crawford, ‘Nikolaus Pevsner and the Arts and Crafts Movement’, Pevsner and Victorian Architecture: Studies in Victorian Architecture and Design 5 (2015), 59–​ 71; Irene Sunwoo, ‘Whose Design? MoMA and Pevsner’s Pioneers’, Getty Research Journal 2 (2010), 69–​82. Pevsner’s book became especially influential after MoMA issued a second edition of the text in 1949 which accompanied the museum’s extensive programming in modern design. See Sunwoo, ‘Whose Design?’

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Ethel Mairet and the Bauhaus weavers Ethel Mairet (1872–​1952, Figure 7.1) was a contemporary and friend of architect and designer C. R. Ashbee and was, like him, devoted to William Morris’s ideal of ‘Art for Life’ as opposed to ‘Art for Art’s sake’. Unlike Ashbee’s, Mairet’s career as a weaver was late-​blooming, having only begun in earnest in the 1910s –​when she was in her forties and when Ashbee’s most productive period was coming to a close. The world that this Morris-​ inspired craftswoman faced during the interwar period was one in which, as she noted, ‘this question of crafts now is a quite different question from what it was even 20 years ago’.7 Though Mairet was successful in this environment, by the early 1930s she had grown frustrated with the handcraft movement. Complaining about the ‘arty-​crafty horrors’ she encountered at the Women’s Institute exhibitions and the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, she deplored a movement that had come to celebrate ‘the joy of making’ regardless of the quality of the work.8 Such amateur craftsmanship, which relied on the public’s sense of charity and tendency ‘to buy anything with the tag of handmade’, demoted craft to the status of hobbies and brought down the prices of professional work.9 It was to address these problems that, at 60 years of age, Mairet began a more public-​facing phase of her career, writing and lecturing around England and abroad. For Mairet, Morris’s authentic vision was to be realised through a new scheme of craft education. As part of her new approach, she opened her Ditchling workshop, known as Gospels, to international apprentices and guest workers.10 Gospels soon became a ‘Mecca for European 7

Ethel Mairet, ‘The Crafts in Post War Britain’, lecture, Gateway Club 6 June 1934. Ethel Mairet Archive, Crafts Study Center, University for the Creative Arts, Farnham (hereafter EM CSC). 8 Ethel Mairet, letter to Mrs Griffin, 28 January 1933; Ethel Mairet, letter to Ananda Coomaraswamy, 29 April 1941. EM CSC. 9 Ibid. 10 Among Mairet’s German and Swiss workers were Else Biller, Hilde Biller, Martel Biller (married: Schumacher), Greta Hinze, Maria Holstein, Ragna Kjelsberg, Liselotte Kleineberger, Leonore Maass, Loth Oppenheim, Marei Pass, Helga

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Figure 7.1.  Ethel Mairet (1872–​1952), 1938. Photo: Dora Head. Ethel Mairet Papers, Crafts Study Centre. Image kindly provided by the Crafts Study Centre, University for the Creative Arts.

handweavers’11 and an important hub for young women across Europe looking for professional experience and training, as well as a certain degree of independence and adventure. These weavers, often previously trained in technical colleges, sought out Mairet in particular for her creative approach and to pursue freedom in research. During this period, Mairet also began to travel across Europe, researching handweaving schools, markets and workshops in Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, Finland and Yugoslavia.

11

Rogstad, Asa Romson, Elisabeth Schaler, Dora Schiemann, Helene Sinks, Miss Stokkeland, Marianne Straub and Bianca Wassmuth. Margot Coatts, A Weaver’s Life: Ethel Mairet: 1872–​1952: A Selection of Source Material (Bath: Crafts Study Center, 1983), 37–​50. Peter Collingwood, ‘Her Ideas Still Seem So Alive’, Weaver’s Journal (Summer, 1980), 14.

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It was in the context of her own revaluations of design education and the relationship between handweaving workshops and industrial production that Mairet learned of the Bauhaus and their parallel efforts. In 1933, Gospels welcomed the Swiss weavers Bianca Wassmuth and Marianne Straub, both of whom had trained with former Bauhausler Heinrich-​Otto Hürlimann in Zürich. Mairet also likely heard Walter Gropius speak at the Design Industries Association (DIA) meeting in London in May 1934, for she drew her audience’s attention to the school in a lecture the next month at the Gateway Club.12 The idea that Gropius’s arrival in London in 1934 marks a ‘first encounter’between British designers and the Bauhaus has been overstated. Harry Peach, director of the cane furniture company Dryad, and a member of the DIA, visited the Bauhaus in 1927 and drew his colleagues’ attention to its work.13 Yet if Mairet was among the first British designers to speak of Gropius and the Bauhaus, her thought was largely unchanged by this discovery. Rather, it was confirmed. Here was an educational project that coordinated all the crafts and strove to integrate them with ordinary life, just as she (and many of her colleagues) had been trying to do. No less significant, for her, was the fact that the Bauhaus functioned as a research institute with the aim of creating prototypes for industrial production. Mairet had already begun lecturing on the idea of handweaving as ‘the living incentive to trade’14 and thought of her own workshop as an independent research laboratory based on handwork that would provide models for industrial production and create bespoke high-​ quality textiles for fashion. Mairet understood that the textile designer had a variety of paths and she articulated her apprenticeship models in terms of them: design for industrial production, the small-​scale hand workshop producing unique and small-​run goods and bespoke commissions (such as for high fashion), and teaching. This is not to say that Mairet was unaffected by her awareness of, and developing friendship with, Walter Gropius. Whereas

1 2 Mairet, ‘The Crafts in Post War Britain’. 13 Pat Kirkham, Harry Peach (London: The Design Council, 1986), 62–​3. 14 Mairet, ‘Handloom weaving in Europe at the present day historically considered’, draft for lecture at the Institute of Education, Southampton Row, November 1933, 3. EM CSC.

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her initial desire in setting up her weaving school at Gospels had been to dismantle existing art and design education and ‘begin anew’, she reported that when she discussed this with Gropius, he instead persuaded her to ‘work though’ existing institutions.15 Over Christmas, 1936, Mairet decided to produce two books. One she planned to write herself, on the subject of ‘weaving and its creative place in the world now’.16 The second was to be a series of essays by people ‘who see the place of weaving as part of the whole development of modern life’.17 For the latter, Mairet solicited contributions from the potter Bernard Leach, her former husband the art historian A. K. Coomaraswamy, the aesthetic theorist Yanagi Soetsu, the French textile designer Paul Rodier, the arts educator Eric Newton, her former student the weaver Marianne Straub, the Swedish weaver Else Gulberg, the handweaver Gunta Stölzl and Walter Gropius himself. Rejecting the concept of a ‘how-​to’ book, Mairet wanted to collect the ideas of leading theorists and craftspeople on the state of the field. When many prospective contributors to the edited volume declined or failed to submit, Mairet ended up appending the essays she did receive to her own 1939 volume, Hand Weaving To-​Day: Traditions and Changes, published by Faber & Faber, the same distinguished firm that had brought out Pevsner’s Pioneers three years earlier. This was largely due to the urging of T. S. Eliot, an editor at Faber and friend of Ethel’s second husband Philip Mairet. Writing to H. D. C. Pepler, the publisher of Mairet’s 1916 book Vegetable Dyes, Eliot pressed him for a new book by Mairet. After receiving, in response, a manuscript for a revised edition of Vegetable Dyes, Eliot clarified his request: What we had in mind as something that Mrs. Mairet ought to do, was a much longer, quite exhaustive book on the whole subject of weaving, though of course from the point of view of an authority primarily interested in handweaving. […] If Mrs. Mairet is not prepared to consider a longer and more systematic book, we will 1 5 16

Ethel Mairet, letter to Marianne Straub, 28 March 1941. EM CSC. Ethel Mairet, letter to Bernard Leach, 26 December 1936. Bernard Leach Archive, Crafts Study Center, University for the Creative Arts, Farnham (hereafter BL CSC). 17 Ibid.

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consider this one on its merits, but I shall personally be keenly disappointed if this is all that we may ever expect from her.18

At this prompting, Mairet’s twofold project, which had been stalled for two years as she waited for contributors to the essay collection, finally came back to life. Fellow weaver Percy Beales wished Mairet had ‘held it back for a year or two and clarified her own mind’.19 Perhaps already impatient with the delay, Mairet seems to have felt a certain urgency in expressing her thoughts on the larger stakes of textile and craft. Despite Beales’s criticism, it is clear that she knew what she wanted to say, only she struggled to bring it across, complaining of her difficulty with writing rather than talking.20 One of the most interesting contributions Mairet did receive was a brief memoir of the Bauhaus weaving workshop by its former master, Gunta Stölzl. Stölzl composed her section in German, which Mairet herself translated.21 In her memoir, Stölzl championed a holistic approach blending technique and creativity, production for industry and free creative research, and emphasising experiment, experience and freedom. Cooperation between educational departments would prevent over-​specialisation. Stölzl closed by judging the Bauhaus experiment to have had ‘a strong positive influence’ on education and trade –​as evidenced not least by industry’s ‘ruthless copying of our designs’.22 This concrete link between British craft thought and that of the Bauhaus’s premier weaver has passed seemingly unremarked by scholars, perhaps because Stölzl’s work was relegated to an appendix of a little-​known work by Mairet, where it appeared under her (misspelled) married name as ‘Frau Sharon Stötzl [sic]’. In Hand-​Weaving To-​Day, Mairet elaborated a schema of contemporary European handweaving that she had developed as early as 1932, 18

T. S. Eliot to H. D. C. Pepler, 17 June 1938 in Valerie Eliot and James Haffenden, eds, The Letters of T.S. Eliot, Volume 8: 1936–​38 (London: Faber & Faber, 2019), 895. 19 P. S. Beales, letter to Bernard Leach, 27 November 1939. BL CSC. 20 Mairet, letter to Coomaraswamy, 29 April 1941. 2 1 Gunta Sharon Stölzl, letter to Ethel Mairet, 17 February 1937. EM CSC. 22 Gunta Sharon Stölzl, ‘Weaving at the Bauhaus’, in Mairet, Hand-​Weaving To-​Day, 117–​18.

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based on her travel and research. In her lectures over the previous seven years, Mairet had consistently identified four movements in contemporary European handweaving: the Scandinavian school, the French school, the Yugoslavian movement and the British school. Mairet’s remarks on the British school are particularly notable. According to her, British weaving had not yet really begun. Devastated by the legacy of the industrial revolution to an extent not yet seen in other European countries, the British crafts represented a unique opportunity and challenge to start anew.23 Significantly, in Hand-​Weaving To-​Day, Mairet now added a fifth modern tradition to her previous fourfold schema. By calling it ‘Post-​ War Weaving Connected with Architecture’, she designated not only the Bauhaus figures Otti Berger and Gunta Stölzl, but also the Swedish weaver Else Gulberg, who had worked with the architect Alvar Aalto. Mairet held up the Bauhaus as the chief example of a twentieth-​century educational institute, but she did not see modernism as its exclusive product. Gulberg, in particular, represented the possibility of building a new weaving aesthetic from existing or residual textile knowledge. Mairet held that this foundation would be the catalyst for the future of textiles, which she argued were just as important for art and society as developments in more prestigious design forms: ‘Everywhere, though, [the craft of weaving] has roots and from these roots it can spring again into vitality, to run parallel with the birth of modern architecture. Weaving has its new materials and new ideas just as architecture has.’24 By the time the book was published, Mairet had met many of the Bauhaus weavers with whom she corresponded including Stölzl, Hürlimann and Margarete Leischner, on a 1938 trip to Germany and Switzerland.25 23 Ethel Mairet, ‘Handweaving in England’, Rural Industries Journal (Spring, 1932), 5; Ethel Mairet, ‘The Cultural Importance of Handloom Weaving, with special Reference to England’, Lecture, Copenhagen, 1932. EM CSC. 24 Ethel Mairet, Hand-​Weaving To-​Day (London: Faber & Faber, 1939), 15. 25 Mairet, ‘Germany, June 20–​25, Switzerland June 25–​July 2, 1938’, notebook. EM CSC. Mairet recorded her experience in Nazi Berlin in an extended note following her visit to the International Handcraft Exhibition. This unpublished note, a detailed analysis of which lies beyond the scope of this essay, demonstrates both a disgust at the brutality of the Hitler regime, and a degree of complacency about its themes. She enjoyed the exhibition, but she was deeply disturbed that this exhibition of ‘such

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Accompanied by Straub, she also met with her former Gospels students in Berlin (Figure 7. 2). Mairet spent an afternoon with Stölzl in her Zürich studio and Mairet gifted her two of her handwoven silk scarves in red. Mairet continued this engagement with the Bauhaus school in the winter of 1940, when she translated Otti Berger’s essay ‘Stoff im Raum’, which she planned to send to Gropius to be published at Harvard.26 Berger’s essay focused on a typical Bauhaus interpretation of the ‘truth to materials’ formula, according to which materials had abstract essences that could be brought out in the design. As Berger wrote (in Mairet’s translation), ‘We come to the analysis of stuff […] one must listen to the secrets of stuff, […] and one knows that the essence of silk is warmth, that the quality of artificial silk is coldness.’27 And yet, much as Mairet admired the Bauhaus approach and studied its innovations, she was somewhat critical of the Bauhaus weavers. For instance, although she described Leischner’s work as ‘very interesting’, she believed that Leischner knew ‘nothing about her actual materials’.28 Whereas Bauhaus weavers tended to emphasise structure and abstract qualities such as ‘coldness’, Mairet emphasised material knowledge, built on traditions of experience, and reinterpreted on the basis of that knowledge. Her experiments focused on producing colour rather than theorising it, on breeds of sheep rather than weave structures and grid patterns. With wool, this meant studying the history and natural history of the animal, its environment, and the needs of the people raising and using it. For Mairet, ‘craft’ –​as she had developed that concept in lectures over the previous decade, and as she articulated it, in however truncated a form, in her 1939 civilised things’ could have been mounted by the same people who in ‘so blatantly uncivilised’ ways marked out Jewish businesses, and was troubled that Berliners seemed to feel powerless to do anything to resist such persecution. At the same time, she also commented that Jews ‘must have dominated the country’ and that what she called ‘the Jewish question’ ‘had to be dealt with’ in some way. 26 Mairet had received a copy of the essay from Leonore Maass, a student and worker at Gospels in the late 1930s who had trained at the Bauhaus. 2 7 Otti Berger, ‘Stoffe im Raum/​Textiles for the House’, trans. Ethel Mairet. EM CSC. Original published in Red (Praha): Bauhaus Special Issue 3/​5 (1930), 143–​5. 28 Mairet, ‘Germany’ notebook, 17.

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Figure 7.2.  Maria Holstein, Helene Sinks, Ethel Mairet, Dora Schiemann and Grete Hinze in Germany, 1938. Photo: possibly Marianne Straub. Ethel Mairet Papers, Crafts Study Centre. Image kindly provided by the Crafts Study Centre, University for the Creative Arts.

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Figure 7.3.  Ethel Mairet weaving, c. 1930s. Photo: N. Wymer. Ethel Mairet Papers, Crafts Study Centre. Image kindly provided by the Crafts Study Centre, University for the Creative Arts.

Hand-​Weaving To-​Day: Traditions and Changes –​was nothing less than such material knowledge: an archive of research that was no less modern for being ‘traditional’ (Figure 7.3).

Mairet and Pevsner, ‘From William Morris to Walter Gropius’ Stölzl’s remarks in Hand-​Weaving To-​Day are worth bearing in mind: ‘I cannot here give the whole programme of the three years’ apprenticeship at the Bauhaus. It was not a fixed programme; it was a living thing that was always changing.’29 The Bauhaus was a complex, changing institution,

29 Mairet, Hand-​Weaving To-​Day, 114.

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not easily reduced to a set of attitudes and principles. The case is somewhat different, however, with the idea of ‘the Bauhaus’ that was consolidated and retrospectively made coherent by its exiled members when they were forced to explain and promote themselves in Britain and America. No work has been more influential in disseminating this retrospective account than Nikolaus Pevsner’s seminal Pioneers of Modern Design (1936), a work that continues to stand as the foundation of today’s design history. To be sure, Pevsner’s work has its own complexities, and what can seem its overly schematic emphasis on German modernism should be understood in context as a corrective to the then predominant influence of Le Corbusier.30 Nonetheless, the contours of Pevsner’s account remain unmistakable. The climax of Pioneers comes when Pevsner asserts that Gropius is the authentic expression of the modern age. What is the modern age? Pevsner states it is a ‘cold’ world, one of ‘science and technique, of speed and danger, of hard struggles and no personal security’.31 This blunt assessment finds its echo in Pevsner’s discussion of why ‘modernism’ never developed in England and the torch passed to Germany. At this critical juncture, Pevsner offers very little interpretation or information. His entire theory of England’s failure to adopt modernism is conveyed in a handful of sentences: English writers have not failed to acknowledge this fact; but hardly anybody has tried to explain it. One reason may be this: so long as the new style had been a matter which in practice concerned only the wealthier class, England could foot the bill. As soon as the problem began to embrace the people as a whole, other nations took the lead. […] The leveling tendency of the coming mass movement –​a true architectural style is for every man –​was too much against the grain of the English character. A similar antipathy prevented the ruthless scrapping of traditions which was essential to the achievement of a style fitting our century.32

30 Ute Engel, ‘ “Fit for Its Purpose”: Nikolaus Pevsner Argues for the Modern Movement’, Journal of Design History 28/​1 (April 2014), 16–​17; Stephen Games, Pevsner: The Early Years (London: Continuum Books, 2010), 135–​7, 169–​72. 31 Pevsner, Pioneers (1936), 207. 32 Pevsner, Pioneers (1936), 29, 166.

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In its broad outlines, Pevsner’s account of British–​German interchange had in fact been anticipated by several English critics and historians, notably P. Morton Shand in a series of articles for the Architectural Review.33 Mairet herself had sketched out versions of a design history claiming Morris as a ‘pioneer’34 for a new age and pointing to the Bauhaus as an institution for designers,​British and otherwise,​to emulate. In this sense, instead of being revolutionary, Pevsner’s narrative may have been only too familiar –​which is perhaps also partly why it endured, despite its unconvincing and problematic interpretation based on ‘national character’.35 As early as 1938, writing for the Frankfurt Institute’s Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, the art historian Meyer Schapiro criticised Pevsner’s ‘tendency to displace the analysis of an historical situation through a general psychological category’ such that he ‘forgets thereby the social conflicts and class divisions, all of which are subsumed under the collectively based sense of an uncritical concept of mainstream society’.36 Greater historical specificity eluded Pevsner, however. Explaining what happened to design in Britain after Morris necessarily meant investigating

P. Morton Shand, ‘Scenario for a Human Drama’, Architectural Review 76 ( July 1934), 9–​16, (August 1934), 39–​42, (September 1934), 83–​6, (October 1934), 131–​ 4; vol. 77 ( January 1935), 23–​6, (February 1935), 61–​4, (March 1935), 99–​102. 34 Ethel Mairet, ‘Hand Loom Weaving’, lecture, Institute of Education, Southampton Row, November 1933. EM CSC. 3 5 For more on national character, race theory and Pevsner’s relationship to his doctoral supervisor, Nazi art historian Wilhelm Pinder, see: William Vaughan, ‘The Englishness of British Art’, Oxford Art Journal 13/​2 (1990), 11–​ 23; Ute Engel, ‘The Formation of Pevsner’s Art History: Nikolaus Pevsner in Germany 1902–​1935’; Stefan Muthesius, ‘Germanness, Englishness, Jewishness, Scientificness, Popularization?’ in Peter Draper, ed., Reassessing Nikolaus Pevsner (New York and London: Routledge, 2016), 29–​55, 57–​69; Iain Boyd Whyte, ‘Nikolaus Pevsner: Art History, Nation, and Exile’, RIHA Journal 0075 (23 October 2013), available at: , accessed 11 December 2017; Susie Harries, Nikolaus Pevsner: The Life (London: Chatto & Windus, 2011), 486. 36 Meyer Schapiro, ‘A Critique: Pevsner on Modernity (1938)’, trans. David Craven. RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 31 (Spring, 1997), 158. Schapiro’s original German text appeared in Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung 7, no. 1/​2 (1938), 291–​3. 33

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the living role of the crafts. Pevsner’s most concrete explanation for why modernism came to a halt in England –​because of an excessive attachment to craft traditions that scorned mass production –​foreclosed such analysis from the start. It is on this point that Mairet’s alternative account resonates most strongly. It should be noted that Mairet and Pevsner were close interlocutors, and they even co-​authored an article for the magazine Design for To-​Day, ‘Design and the Artist-​Craftsman’.37 Here, too, however, their divergences were telling. Pevsner’s section of this two-​part article focused on ‘historicism’ in textiles and criticised Arts and Crafts and William Morris for their interest in peasant design and historical sources. For Pevsner, abandoning these sources would mean ‘honesty towards the style of our age’.38 While Mairet agreed that English weaving had fallen behind other countries, she did not focus on style, but on collaboration: ‘In England we seem to feel there is an unsurpassable gulf between the artist-​craftsman and industry.’39 Mairet’s statement might seem to affirm the traditional narrative of a nostalgic, premodern Britain awaiting the arrival of technological modernism. However, she did not conclude that the British craft industries had a lingering connection to the past that needed to be broken. Rather, the problem was that the rupture with the past had already happened, with the Industrial Revolution and the destruction of small-​scale production. Britain lagged behind other European countries, she argued, because there was not enough connection to craft knowledge. The efforts of William Morris’s generation had been to restore connections that had been lost. That generation’s failure, to Mairet’s mind, lay in creating a movement that was far too focused on the individual craftsman rather than on design as a social activity. Craftspeople inspired by Morris ended up emphasising the difference between the craftsman and industry and thus re-​inscribing the rupture that Mairet sought to mend. As Mairet put it,

37 3 8 39

Ethel Mairet and Nikolaus Pevsner, ‘Design and the Artist Craftsman, One-​Ethel Mairet, Two-​N. Pevsner’, Design for To-​Day ( June 1935), 225–​7. Pevsner, ‘Design and the Artist Craftsman: Two’, 227. Mairet, ‘Design and the Artist Craftsman: One’, 227.

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[T]‌he craftsman has let the machine get hold of the mainsprings of life, without feeling that sense of responsibility to the future; without realizing and without understanding, that to work with the machine, requires a kind of knowledge and precision which the average craftsman does not want to acquire […]. The ordinary work in a workshop or studio is pleasant work: to get the understanding of machine technique is hard work always, mostly in unpleasant surroundings: and few craftsmen want to face it.40

Mairet here criticises her fellow craft-​workers for focusing on one aspect of Morris’ teaching –​joy in labour –​while abdicating responsibility to life and thus practicing craft for craft’s sake. As she saw it, William Morris’s authentic legacy emphasised the union of art and life and expressed its most essential characteristics as an activity rather than a style or a method. As she explained in a lecture in 1933 –​ three years before Pevsner’s Pioneers and even before Shand’s series linking modernism and Morris, this approach to design was what made Morris a ‘pioneer’: I think there is no doubt now that he has had an enormous influence over the trade of to-​day, although there are few people who realize what an influence it was. He would not admit the separation of art from life, he would not admit that industry could do without the art that art was not something to be put on at the last minute but was inherent in the making of everything. And although his actual work is considered mediaevalistic, the ideas that lay behind that work are taken more or less for granted now. He was one of the pioneers that England would not have been able to do without. Morris insisted that the artist was not a person apart nor that art was something to be kept for a particular public.41

Mairet’s conclusions about the historical position of the crafts in England bear repeating. Because England began the Industrial Revolution, and experienced industry and mechanisation most profoundly, there was too little craft to use as a basis for the modernist unification of hand and machine.42 From Mairet’s perspective, Pevsner’s insistence on a ‘whole-​ hearted welcome of the machine’43 was superfluous, because, especially 40 Ethel Mairet, Handweaving and Education (London: Faber & Faber, 1942), 8. 1 Mairet, ‘Hand Loom Weaving.’ 4 42 Mairet, ‘Handweaving in England.’ 43 Pevsner, Pioneers (1936), 29.

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in the textile industry, the machine had already arrived. Pushing for ever more complete mechanisation therefore offered no new advantage. For Mairet, the machine needed to be ‘fought against’44 –​not, however, as part of a fantasy of pre-​industrial restoration, but rather to establish a balance between industrial production and human creative activity. As she put it, ‘The machine naturally has its own possibilities which are quite different from the handweaver and spinner but the machine is not a thing of culture. It is and can only be the tool by which culture can come through and be expressed.’45 Mairet’s critique of the equation of modernity and class ‘leveling’ was similarly nuanced.46 As she argued, the Industrial Revolution had already destroyed traditional social structures and had mechanised production on all levels, with the result that ‘the whole attitude to hand work has changed. It has been put on to the level of hobbies –​something to be done [at] odd times if you have any.’47 Statements such as these enable Mairet’s work to be seen as a partial recovery of Morris’s authentic teaching, which, he insisted, was not directed against ‘this or that machine’, but against ‘the great intangible machine’,48 the entire system of capitalist industrial organisation that separated craft work from industry and productive activity. This total view was the basis of Morris’s radical politics; and yet, it is an aspect of Morris’s life and work (as well as a frequent characteristic of Bauhaus intellectual life) that Pevsner ignores.49 To be sure, Pevsner was himself motivated by a desire to serve the community –​a duty he interpreted as the creation of a ‘style appropriate to the age’.50 Yet for Mairet, even the Bauhaus was less important for its style than 4 Mairet, ‘The Cultural Importance of Handloom Weaving.’ 4 45 Ethel Mairet, ‘The Application of Art in Textile Production/​The Influence of H.W. on Trade’, draft for lecture to Lancashire Section, Textile Institute, 21 October 1938. EM CSC. 46 Mairet, ‘Handloom weaving in Europe at the present day historically considered.’ 47 Ibid. 48 William Morris, ‘Art and Its Producers’, in May Morris, ed., Collected Works of William Morris XXII (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1914), 352. 49 Schapiro, ‘A Critique’, 158; Games, Pevsner, 137. 50 See, for example, Harries, Nikolaus Pevsner: The Life, 183–​7; 203–​5.

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for its pedagogy, a collective enterprise in which living and working, one craft and another, were practiced side by side. The creativity and understanding thus promoted were more important than any manual skill. For Mairet, England was ahead of other countries in technology but lagged behind in creativity.51 Mairet’s challenge to Pevsner allows us to see that for some at least, education in craft and tradition were not impediments to, but preconditions for the development of modernism. The questions that guided her historical analyses were: What kinds of techniques were being taught? How much creative freedom did the weaver have? Was there an emphasis on technical accuracy or experimentation? Her answers, departing from Pevsner’s portrayal of style as emerging from national character, Zeit or Seele, see style as related to but exceeding technique, and emerging historically from education and educational policies. Recent scholarship, most notably that of Glenn Adamson and the Journal of Modern Craft, has defined craft in opposition to modernity, emphasising craft’s difference from and resistance to machine production.52 But this takes the Pevsnerian anti-​modern understanding of craft at face value. The truth is that craft’s relationship to modernity was never static. During the period when Mairet worked and wrote, many individual craftspeople, as well as organisations like the Design Industries Association and even the Royal Designers for Industry (who welcomed Mairet in 1937 as their first female member), saw their goal as reconciling industrial practice and craft and perceived such reconciliation as the essence of modernism.53 Although Mairet saw some of Pevsner’s claims as continuations of her own Morrisian legacy, she and her peers also struggled against that legacy and sought to redefine it. For them, one of William Morris’s crucial legacies 5 1 Mairet, ‘Design and the Artist Craftsman: One’, 226. 52 Glenn Adamson, The Invention of Craft (London: Bloomsbury, 2013); ‘Editorial Introduction’, The Journal of Modern Craft 1/​1 (March 2008), 5–​12. 53 This idea also evokes a longer history of interchange between Britain and Germany in the realm of design including Hermann Muthesius, the D.I.A. and the Deutsches Werkbund. See John V. Maciuika, Before the Bauhaus: Architecture, Politics, and the German State, 1890–​1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), especially 69–​103.

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was the idea that the character of the age was not a given, not something inevitable and imposed from without, but subject to contestation and creation. Indeed, for many British artists, designers and craftspeople, I suggest, the artist’s task was less to create a style to reflect the age than to create the conditions and character of the age itself –​through the making, designing and enjoyment of objects. Something of Pevsner’s misreading of British design by focusing on the visual result is captured by the designer C. F. A. Voysey’s response to his admiration. Pevsner had claimed Voysey as a modernist based on his minimal style. Voysey objected to this classification just as he objected to International Modernism, which he believed ‘had no religion’ and ‘would not last’. Voysey specifically contested the claim that his work was new: ‘I make no claim to anything new. Like many others, I followed some old traditions and avoided others.’54 In a similar manner, it could be said that Mairet and many British artists rejected one primary aspect of what was soon to become the new tradition of Pevsnerian and Bauhaus modernism: the idea that the future was a ‘cold world’.55 In a letter to Bernard Leach, the Red Rose Guild’s director Harry Norris approvingly quoted Eric Gill as saying: ‘The fact for us, [is] that the world of Gropius is inhuman and will perish by that fact. […] He lives in a world of words wearing a pair of blinkers to shut his eyes to all matters he doesnt [sic] wish to see.’56 What Norris and Gill seem to have thought the German modernists blinkered themselves against were the problems of industrial modernity. As Frederick J. Schwartz has argued, ‘The affirmation implicit in Gropius’ unproblematic fusion of “art and technics” was, in effect, an affirmation of the social system that accompanied the school.’57 Mairet and other artists felt that their own country’s history had given them insight into these problems, and this was the lesson they took from Morris’s radicalism. To 54 C. F. A. Voysey, ‘Letter to the Editor’, Architect’s Journal 81 (14 March 1935), 408; Nikolaus Pevsner, Studies in Art, Architecture, and Design: Victorian and after (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968), 150. 55 For a similar reading, see Crawford, ‘Nikolaus Pevsner’, 70. 56 Harry Norris, letter to Bernard Leach, 9 November 1936. BL CSC. 57 Frederic J. Schwartz, The Werkbund: Design Theory and Mass Culture Before the First World War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), 1.

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this extent, English modern design could indeed be called Victorian, but not in the reductive sense of Pevsner’s dismissal, which starts to resemble what the literary scholar Isobel Armstrong has termed ‘the Modernist repression of the Victorians’, who had ‘anticipated’ them, yet had rejected their conclusions.58 Anti-​Victorianism was a central feature of intellectual life in Pevsner’s Britain, as exemplified by Lytton Strachey’s 1918 critique Eminent Victorians.59 But Morris and his followers were themselves the original critics of Victorian social, industrial, artistic and imperial life. To such champions of the Arts and Crafts, an embrace of the future such as Pevsner’s could only appear as a gesture of defeat: a capitulation to the industrial revolution and imperialism rather than a considered response to them. No longer would there be calls to adapt labour to the human condition; rather, humans would be expected to bend to the speed and values of industry. Presented as inevitable, such an account of the modern reveals a sense of entrapment and passivity that did not sit well with all readers. Meyer Schapiro was not the only one to express dissatisfaction with Pevsner’s assessment of industrialisation as both the cause of and solution to the problems of art, design and society.60 As an ardent reader of the American historian of technology Lewis Mumford, Mairet could only have seen such an identification of technological modernity with a ‘cold’ world as a continuation of the older ‘paleotechnic’ society, and one that ignored the promise of the emerging ‘neotechnic’ age. Neotechnic technology, on the other hand, would enable the flourishing of human values and, as Mumford advocated, the ‘integration of work and art and life’.61 For Mairet, the European modernists’ insistence on ‘not looking backwards’ ironically concealed the fact

58 Isobel Armstrong, Victorian Poetry: Poetry, Poets and Politics (New York and London: Routledge, 2002), 7. 59 Paul Stirton, ‘From “The Stones of Venice” to “The Stones of Transylvania” ’, Journal of the Scottish Society for Art History 9 (2004), 47–​8. 60 Schapiro, ‘A Critique’, 157. 61 Lewis Mumford, Civilization and Technics (New York and London: Harcourt and Brace, 1934), 267.

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that they were continually looking back –​to the fully industrialised condition that their nineteenth-​century precursors had perceived and rejected.62

Conclusion As Schwartz has argued, the Bauhaus after 1923 asked ‘that its validity be judged in relation to its modernity and that modernity be judged in relation to techniques of production and function. By and large, critics and historians have obliged.’63 Instead of focusing on techniques of production and debates pitting the hand against the machine, Mairet conceived of modernity in design as a critical and creative approach aiming ‘to create the future, in addition to knowing the past on which to build’.64 For Mairet, it was only via the thoughtful investigation of the past that a genuine union of human values and technology could be achieved. Amid today’s urgent discussions of imperialism, globalisation and sustainability, her approach can only gain further resonance.

62

On the other hand, Pevsner’s ‘cold’ world of ‘no personal security’ reflected his –​and many of the former Bauhauslers’ –​reality as exiles and Pevsner himself, though a Jewish refugee form Nazism, was interned by the British as an 'enemy alien' in 1940. 63 Schwartz, The Werkbund, 2. 64 Ethel Mairet, ‘The Background of Modern Textile’, 5. EM CSC.

Karen Koehler

8 Walter Gropius and Herbert Read: Architecture, Industry, Transitions and Translations

Walter Gropius, the Berlin architect, educator and theorist moved to London in 1934, leaving behind his no longer tenable career in Nazi Germany. From there on, his life was intertwined with that of Herbert Read, the British poet, curator and art critic. Through a focus on the publication of their near-​simultaneous books, Gropius’s New Architecture and the Bauhaus and Read’s Art and Industry, this paper will address the shared issues of itinerancy, nationality and translation.1 The parallels of their lives, the intertextualities of their many lectures and publications, and the broad similarities of their approaches to art, design and politics are beyond the scope of this short essay. I will, however, begin with one formative experience that surely bound their friendship, their psyches and all their future work: both Read and Gropius were soldiers in the First World War, and deeply shattered by their involvement. It’s possible that these one-​time enemies could have been on opposite sides of the trenches. Both came to see the war as futile.

1

Walter Gropius, New Architecture and the Bauhaus, trans. Morton Shand, with an Introduction by Frank Pick (London: Faber and Faber, 1935); Herbert Read, Art and Industry (London: Faber and Faber, 1934).

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War, art and activism The First World War was unquestionably brutal: both sides employed a military strategy including mechanised weapons, poison gas, tanks and howitzers. Coupled with horrific conditions in the field and in the trenches, these tactics brought about a level of killing and mutilation previously unimaginable. Thirteen million Germans fought in the war and two million of them died, leaving behind still more millions of orphans and widows. More than 800,000 British soldiers died, and more than a million were wounded. Their generations were inextricably marked by the war. Both Gropius and Read returned to their home countries full of disillusionment, and haunted by nightmares of death and destruction. They were determined to set their lives on a different course. In his letters, Gropius described in shocking detail the horrors of war –​of being repeatedly ambushed and watching his comrades die. On one particularly gruesome mission, he was sent to explore a forest in the Vosges: ‘I already knew this terrible wood and entered it with a hammering heart. I got out of it alive after two dreadful days and nights without sleep, steadily buzzed by bullets, the cries of the wounded and dying in my ears … For two days my nerves were absolutely shattered … After one hour we had lost 80 men out of 300.’2 Throughout the war and for years afterwards, Gropius suffered from nighttime terrors. Gropius was repeatedly wounded, patched up and sent back to the Front; he was mortared, shot and crashed in an airplane. At one point he was buried under a bombed-​out building for days –​the only one of his regiment to survive. His correspondence and his post-​war revolutionary activities make it clear that Gropius was determined to create a new life for himself after the war. As he wrote to his mother near the end of the conflict: ‘For four years I have given my all to this insane war and have lost, lost, lost …’3 2 3

Walter Gropius, letters to his mother, 14 September and 7 October 1914; quoted extensively in Reginald Isaacs Walter Gropius: der Mensch und Sein Werk (Berlin: Mann, 1983–​4), Bd. I, 131–​5. Gropius, letter to his mother, June 1918, in Isaacs, (1984), Bd. I, 137.

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Herbert Read’s losses were also profound. Writing in his journal in 1918, he described a scene of mutilated soldiers, so dismembered that they were indistinguishable from one another.4 On the back of a postcard depicting his regiment, Read wrote the names of those few who survived, under the title: ‘All that was left of them.’5 Years later he wrote that he and his comrades ‘left the war as we entered it: dazed, indifferent, incapable of any creative action … But between us was a dark screen of horror and violation: the knowledge of the reality of war. Across the screen I could not communicate. Nor could any of my friends who had the same experience. We could only stand on one side, like exiles in a strange country.’6 Read tried for many years to write his way out of his misery; his friends and critics complained that, in fact, he wrote too much about the war. In his 1919 book, Naked Warriors, (Figure 8.1) he wrote: ‘We, who in manhood’s dawn have been compelled to care not a damn for life or death, now care less still for the convention of glory and the intellectual apologies for what can never be to us other than a riot of ghastliness and horror, of inhumanity and negation’.7 Yet, he ends with a call for a different future: ‘From the sickness of life revealed let us turn with glad hearts to the serenity of some disinterested beauty.’ He did not blame any particular nation, but the way in which all humans were forced to act during war.8 He asked for a more direct realisation of natural values: ‘In that way’, he wrote, ‘we may so progress that our ethical rage give us duly an aesthetic sanction.’9 In order to mitigate the rage of combat, he wanted to live an artistic life. And that is just what Read did. While on leave during the war, and after the war, Read had been drawn into the artistic and literary circles of T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Wyndham Lewis, Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, 4 Read, The End of the War (London: Faber and Faber, 1933), 16–​18. 5 Reproduced as a frontispiece in Herbert Read, All That Was Left of Them, ed. Benedict Read, introduction James Read (Leeds: Orage Press, 2014). 6 Herbert Read, The Contrary Experience: Autobiographies (London: Faber and Faber, 1963), 217. 7 Read, “Preface” from Naked Warriors, n.p.; reprinted in All That Was Left of Them, 46. 8 Read, In Retreat (London: Faber and Faber, 1933), 28. 9 Ibid.

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Figure 8.1.  Herbert Read, Naked Warriors (London: Arts & Letters, 1919) Cover design, Wyndam Lewis.

Henry Moore and others. He collaborated with artists groups such as ‘Unit One’, contributed to other avant-​garde associations, worked as an editor, was employed to study the ceramics collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and taught briefly at University of Edinburgh. He was often strapped financially and wrote introductions, reviews and criticism to earn a living; when he could, Read tried to maintain his career as a poet. His life was deeply interwoven into that of the British literary, artistic and architectural modernists, including those with whom he often clashed –​like Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury group. He curated and promoted the work of those whose art he felt matched his aesthetic beliefs; he struggled

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with tensions between abstraction, Vorticism and Imagism, and between his desire for formal objectivism and his leftist, anarchist political thinking.10 After the war, Gropius also worked with artists’ groups, and with determined fervor called for a new social structure to emerge from the destruction of the war. Gropius joined the Arbeitsrat für Kunst (AfK), the Workers’ Council for Art, one the many activist artists’ groups founded in the heat of the revolution. The AfK followed the example of a Workers’ and Soldiers Council, the governing model favored by the left; the activities and publications of this artists’ soviet reveal their radical inclinations.11 Bruno Taut founded the AfK, and was soon joined by the critics Adolph Behne, Wilhelm Valentiner and Gropius, who wrote at the time: ‘The atmosphere is highly charged and we artists too must strike while the iron is hot.’12 In one of his most radical essays, published in 1919 in the Deutscher Revolutions Almanach, (Figure 8.2) Gropius wrote: ‘We need a 10 Many of Read’s autobiographical pieces were published together as: Herbert Read The Contrary Experience: Autobiographies by Herbert Read (London: Faber and Faber, 1963). See also: James King, The Last Modern: A Life of Herbert Read (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1990); George Woodcock, Herbert Read: The Stream and the Source (London: Faber and Faber, 1972); Herbert Read: An Introduction to His Work by Various Hands, ed. Henry Treece (London: Faber and Faber, 1944); Herbert Read: A Memorial Symposium, ed. Robin Skelton (London: Methuen, 1970); Herbert Read: A British Vision of World Art, eds, Benedcit Read and David Thistlewood (London: Lund Humphries, 1993). 11 Marcel Franciscono, Walter Gropius and the Creation of the Bauhaus in Weimar: The Ideals and Artistic Theories of Its Founding Years (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971) includes a useful, clear and concise outline of the history of the AfK as an appendix, 275ff. For in-​depth studies of the AfK see Joan Weinstein, The End of Expressionism: Art and the November Revolution in Germany, 1918–​1919 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990); Iain Boyd Whyte, Bruno Taut and the Architecture of Activism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). See also Arbeitsrat für Kunst Berlin, 1918–​1921: Ausstellung mit Dokumentation (Berlin: Akademie der Kunst, 1980); and Thomas Köhler, Ralf Burmeister and Janina Nentwig, Freedom: The Art of the Novembergruppe, 1918–​1935 (Munich: Prestal, 2018). 12 Gropius to Karl Ernst Osthaus, 23 December 1918; 6 January 1919, Osthaus-​Archiv, Karl-​Ernst-​Osthaus-​Museum, Hagen, in Wolfgang Pehnt, ‘Gropius the Romantic’, Art Bulletin 53/​3 (September, 1971), 379.

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new collective spirituality for the whole nation. … It is not yet the political but rather the completed spiritual revolution that can first make us “free”. Capitalism and power politics have made our race creatively indolent, and a broad bourgeois philistinism is suffocating living art.’ The old spirit must be ‘overthrown and now in the midst of being recast in a new form’.13

Figure 8.2.  Ernst Friedegg and Ernst Drahn, eds, Deutscher Revolutions Almanach für das Jahr 1919: über die Ereignisse des Jahres 1918 (Hamburg: Hoffmann & Campe, 1919). Cover design Ernst Drahn. 13

Walter Gropius, ‘Baukunst im Freie Volkstaat’, in Deutscher Revolutions-​Almanach für das Jahr 1919 (Hamburg /​Berlin: Hoffmann and Campe Verlag, 1919), 134–​5. Translation by Ellen van Benschoten, 2018.

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Figure 8.3.  Walter Gropius, New Architecture and the Bauhaus (London: Faber and Faber, 1935).

Gropius is best known as the Director of the Bauhaus, the experimental art school he founded in Weimar, Germany in 1919, in the revolutionary aftermath of the First World War, a school’s whose history is well known. The Bauhaus immediately came under attack from conservative elements in Weimar, and in 1925, the school reopened in Dessau –​in buildings designed by Gropius and outfitted by the Bauhaus workshops –​one of the most important and influential modernist buildings of the twentieth century. After a decade of opposition from nationalist and racist groups, Gropius resigned as Director and returned to private practice in 1928.

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Closed in 1932 by the Nazis, the Bauhaus briefly reopened in an abandoned telephone factory in Berlin, until it was searched and shut down by the Gestapo in 1933. Both Gropius and the Bauhaus experienced what might be called a state of internal exile, or the very least a politically determined, forced itinerancy.

Emigration and exhibitions Gropius made two trips to Britain preceding his emigration. In 1933, he stayed for three weeks at Dartington Hall in Devon, hoping to have some influence, and possibly a commission, connected to their experimental arts programmes being developed there. He may have laid the groundwork for a second trip later in the year to lecture on the occasion of a traveling exhibition of his work in Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and London. Reginald Isaacs wrote that it was the Hungarian artist and fellow Bauhaus teacher Lázló Moholy-​Nagy who suggested to a group of British architects that they hold an exhibition of Gropius’s work. Gropius also had a trip to London planned to meet with the organising committee of the Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne, (CIAM) that year. There is no doubt that Morton Shand was at the heart of the invitation. Shand actively promoted modern German architecture, and was keen to bring Gropius to Britain. Early in 1933 Gropius sent Shand sample materials from Berlin, and eventually an agreement was reached for the visit and exhibition, after much correspondence with Shand and with Maxwell Fry, who represented RIBA in the exchange.14 Shand also arranged for Gropius to deliver a lecture on ‘The Formal and Technical Problems of Modern Architecture and Planning’.15 On 16 May, Gropius spoke to the 14 See Isaacs (1984) Bd. I, 673; Leyla Daybelge and Magnus Englund, Isokon and the Bauhaus in Britiain (London: Pavilion Books, 2019), 82–​4; Alan Powers, The Bauhaus Goes West: Modern Art and Design in Britain and America (London: Thames and Hudson, 2019), 74–​81. 15 Shand’s translation of the lecture was published soon after: Gropius, ‘The Formal and Technical Problems of Modern Architecture and Planning’, R.I.B.A. Journal 41 (1934), 679–​94.

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Design and Industries Association, to members of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and to the Modern Architecture Research Group (or MARS) whom he knew from CIAM. According to Isaacs, Gropius worked with Shand on the both the translation and the content of the lecture. Shand wrote to Gropius that he should present himself as a ‘pure German national’ in contrast to Erich Mendelsohn, who was ‘denationalised’. Mendelsohn was a fellow ex-​patriot architect working in England, who was singled out by Shand, in the same letter, for being a Jew.16 After many delays, Gropius’s wife suggested that perhaps the speech should be translated by Herbert Read. In the end, Shand completed the translation, and both the exhibition and the lecture were an enormous success. In London, Gropius presented his address to an overflow crowd of students, teachers and architects. Despite his broken English, the young architects in particular were excited by Gropius’s ideas about the social role of architecture, and his desire to counter the effects of the machine on modern civilisation. The German ambassador had declined the invitation to introduce Gropius, claiming a conflict, but most likely out of concern for promoting Gropius’s work. He was, instead, introduced by Raymond Unwin, President of RIBA. Regardless of the slight, Gropius returned to Berlin having been treated like a superstar. This was a clear contrast to the situation in Germany. When he reopened his practice in Berlin in 1928, Gropius designed automobiles, housing, furniture and a number of important, and controversial, exhibitions. Yet, it was growing increasingly difficult for Gropius to find work in Germany in the early 1930s after the National Socialists came to power. After his visit to London, Gropius returned to Berlin to find that Nazi-​sanctioned artists groups like the Reich Chamber for the Visual Arts had grown even more censorial and authoritative, and his involvement in the Ausstellung Deutsches Volk, Deutsche Arbeit was now problematic.17 On 5 September 1934, Hitler gave his now infamous Nuremburg speech, 1 6 Shand to Gropius, February 17 1934 in Isaacs (1984), Bd. II, 674. 17 Cf. Michael Tymkiw, Nazi Exhibition Design and Modernism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018), 21–​58; Jonathan Petropoulos, Artists Under Hitler: Collaboration and Survival in Nazi Germany (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014), 73–​87.

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and modernist architecture that had initially just been disfavored by Nazi commissioners was now outlawed –​a condition that caused Gropius to confront the president of the Reich Chamber for Art in 1934. ‘How do you think’, Gropius wrote: a German like myself must feel …. My homeland … shuts me up and people like me while [others] mislead the public opinion …. Is it now really true that this strong, new architectural movement of German origin shall be lost for Germany? I cannot accept always being labeled from a merely formalist point of view as originators of cubes with flat roofs; this point of view ignores the comprehensive work in design and sociology, which we have been doing for German society as a whole …

He goes on: ‘You demand the German man. I feel very German –​and who can make himself a judge over what is German and what is not … I feel … that I am outlawed in Germany along with all that I have built in my life.’18 In June 1934, Gropius had already told Shand that he would try to look for work in England: ‘… there is absolutely no prospect of work here in Germany for me.’19 Shand continued to advocate for Gropius, and that summer Jack Pritchard invited Gropius to collaborate with him on some projects. RIBA made him an honorary member, and he entered into a partnership with Maxwell Fry.20 In October, Gropius and his wife 18

Walter Gropius to Eugen Hönig, Berlin, 27 March 1934, in Isaacs (1984), Bd. II; 649–​52. 19 Gropius to Shand, 7 June 1934, Pritchard Papers, University of East Anglia, quoted in Leah Hsiao, ‘Correspondence between Walter Gropius and Morton Shand’, in Desk in Exile: A Bauhaus Object Traversing Different Modernities, Bauhaus Tachensbuch 20 (Dessau: Bauhaus Dessau, 2016), 60. Gropius ability to work under National Socialist government changed as his views grew to be more hostile; Winifred Nerdinger argues that his position was more ambivalent; see ‘Bauhaus Architecture in the Third Reich’, in Kathleen James-​Chakraborty, ed., Bauhaus Culture: From Weimar to the Cold War (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), 139–​ 52, translated and excerpted from Nerdinger ‘Bauhaus-​ Architekten in Dritten Reich’, in Winifried Nerdinger, ed., Bauhaus-​Moderne im Nationalsozialismus: Zwischen Angiederung und Verfolgung (Munich: Prestal, 1993), 153–​78. 20 For more on Gropius, Fry and Pritchard, see Daybelge and Englund (2019); Powers, (2019) and Jack Prichard, View from a Long Chair: The Memoirs of Jack Pritchard (London: Routledge, 1984).

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Ise left for a conference in Rome, after which they left for England. They immediately moved into the Lawn Road Flats in Hampstead –​a housing project designed by Wells Coates, and developed by Jack Pritchard, who had been among those who invited Gropius to come and work in London. Intended for the cosmopolitan man and woman on the move, this experimental community ironically became a haven for many painters, architects and designers, then in exile from Nazi Germany. Lawn Road Flats was also part of the larger avant-​garde milieu in Hampstead, which included Julian Huxley, George Orwell, Nicholson, Hepworth and Moore. Among the artists-​emigrés were John Heartfield, Piet Mondrian, Naum Gabo, Marcel Breuer and Lázló Moholy-​Nagy. During Gropius’s stay in England, he worked with the architect Maxwell Fry on a handful of projects, most notably the Ben Levy House in London, and the Cambridge Village College at Impington. Most of their large-​scale housing projects, however, remained on paper –​including the possibility of further projects like Lawn Road Flats, which was a specific inducement for Gropius. Pritchard commissioned Gropius to design some furniture and objects for his design firm, Isokon.21 But most importantly, he published as much as he could –​essays, texts of his many speeches, pamphlets and reports. And he networked: often in the same circles where Herbert Read was orchestrating the schmoozing.

Architecture and industry In 1935, Gropius published his first book in English, The New Architecture and the Bauhaus (Figure 8.3). In March 1934, Gropius met the director of Faber publishing, Richard de la Mare at a party.22 Shortly thereafter, at the instigation of Herbert Read, de la Mare contacted Gropius to pursue 2 1 See Dayblege and Englund, 102–​4. 22 See Isaacs, (1984) Bd. II., 731–​2; David Brady, ‘David Brady Explores “The New Architecture and the Bauhaus” by Walter Gropius’, The History Vault 4 (15 January 1914), 1–​5, available at: .

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the idea of the book that became The New Architecture and the Bauhaus. Gropius was deeply concerned with every aspect of the content and the look of the book –​the layout, typeface, size, illustrations, quality of the paper, and the book jacket, designed by Lázló Moholy-​Nagy (Figure 8.4). Gropius began by asking: Can the real significance of the New Architecture be conveyed in words? And he quickly answered: ‘A breach has been made with the past, which allows us to envisage a new aspect of architecture corresponding to the technical civilization of the age we live in. The morphology of dead styles has been destroyed; and we are returning to honesty of thought and feeling …’ He chastised those who thought of

Figure 8.4.  Walter Gropius, New Architecture and the Bauhaus (London: Faber and Faber, 1935). Book jacket design, Lázló Moholy-​Nagy.

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modern architecture as a style. Modern architecture had, in fact, liberated architecture from a ‘welter of ornament’. The New Architecture was ‘a bridge uniting opposite poles of thought’, he wrote, in which the functionalism of structure was united with the humanistic and the aesthetic.23 Alongside an illustration of the glass corner of the Bauhaus in Dessau, Gropius described how the new architecture could throw open its walls like curtains to admit a plenitude of fresh air, daylight and sunshine. These new buildings ‘poise lightly … upon the face of the earth’, creating an aesthetic that meets the current material and psychological needs. After a highly editorialised history of the Bauhaus, Gropius concluded that the ethics of the New Architecture fulfilled a need to ‘get at what lies at the back of all materials and every technique, by giving semblance to the one with the intelligent aid of the other’.24 Reviews of the book were extensive and positive, in literary journals and in the press; Herbert Read was among those who reviewed the book for the journal Scrutiny, in December 1935. Read wrote that Gropius’s architecture made use of new technologies, but stressed that it was more than functional –​for Read, Gropius’s architecture was ‘a formal art of spatial harmony’. Read focused on what he saw as the ‘aesthetic significance’ of Gropius’s work, and ‘more particularly … certain sociological aspects which determine the aesthetic development of that work’. He made the claim that Gropius’s Bauhaus changed the face of German industry, as well as European and American industry –​influencing the look of design everywhere by introducing modern art into the equation. ‘The Bauhaus gave conscious direction to a new aesthetic impulse’, based on the machine and its products, and created a new canon of beauty. Read also cited his own book, published earlier in 1934. Art and Industry where he tackled the role of aesthetics in the dialogue between the functional and the spiritual. For Read, the practical object, whether hand-​made or mass-​produced, derived from the need for humans to have useful things. The spiritual properties of art, in contrast, come from a deeper place –​an inner necessity –​a need to produce feeling in the making of 2 3 Gropius, New Architecture and the Bauhaus, 32–​3. 24 Ibid., 80.

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Figure 8.5.  Herbert Read, Art and Industry (London: Faber and Faber, 1934). Cover design Herbert Bayer.

outward forms. There is an aesthetic union between materiality and the ‘intuitional’, but art is a psychic and biological compulsion, and has aesthetic properties that functional objects simply cannot. Yet, abstract art, in its echo of machine made forms, presented possibilities for a new contemporary, expression of harmony between art and objects. Read’s book is regarded as a tribute to the Bauhaus. Gropius is quoted at length, Moholy-​Nagy supplied the illustrations, and Herbert Bayer designed the layout and typography (Figures 8.5 and 8.6). Robin Kinross has written about the many challenges involved in producing the book: Bayer was in Berlin, his English was horrible, and the press demanded serifs –​in contrast to the san-​serif, lower case type-​design for which Bayer was well known. At one point, the typographical advisor Stanley Morison referred to Bayer as a ‘maniac’, followed by a disturbing comment about Jews in

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Figure 8.6.  Herbert Read, Art and Industry (London: Faber and Faber, 1934). Cover design Herbert Bayer.

Germany. Still, the final product was regarded as a huge success, in part because the design of the book matched its contents.25 Comparison of the two jacket covers –​with their explorations of solid and void, transparency and shadow, of abstract forms that look like tools, and tools that look like abstractions –​brilliantly demonstrates the shared aesthetic theories elaborated in the texts. 25 Robin Kinross, ‘Herbert Read’s Art and Industry: A History’, Journal of Design History 1/​1 (1988), 35–​50.

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Read wrote that Gropius’s architecture made use of technical research and scientific discoveries, but stressed that the architecture was more than functional –​for Read, Gropius’s architecture represented ‘a formal art of spatial harmony’. Read states that he will leave the technical aspects to others more suited to analyse it, and instead will focus on the ‘aesthetic significance’ of Gropius’s work, and ‘more particularly … certain sociological aspects which determine the aesthetic development of that work’. Read briefly reviews Gropius’s role in setting up the Bauhaus, and makes the claim that Gropius’s Bauhaus changed the face of German industry, as well as European and American industry –​influencing the look of design everywhere by introducing the modern. The Bauhaus created ‘a new consciousness of aesthetic form’, based on the machine and its products, and creating a new canon of beauty.26

Transitions and translations But there is more at work in the interchanges between these books and in Read’s review of the New Architecture and the Bauhaus in Scrutiny. Read wrote that the ‘spatial harmony’ in Gropius’s architecture was significant because of its ‘extra-​linguistic properties’, a potential, non-​translatable ‘aesthetic negation’. Gropius’s architecture was not like the modishness of the French, which Read compared to the passing appreciation of women’s fashion. He also critiqued the reactionary architecture of the Russians whose aesthetically starved people ‘babble in the dead language of bourgeois styles’; and the senile academicians who could not comprehend Gropius’s hard logic and tempered idealism. In this essay, Read was thinking in terms of ethnicities and nationalist languages –​of particular forms emerging out of the contemporary context, yes –​but also in specific countries. He underscored the challenges of translating the New Architecture to other locales in the troubled political moment: Europe 26 Read, Art and Industry, 39.

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in the mid-​1930s, with nationalist ideologies and border mentalities on the rise.27 Read specifically called out the political context in Germany, where the ‘experimental tendencies of the Bauhaus, which admittedly involved social questions, became associated with revolutionary tendencies … when a reactionary fascism finally triumphed in Germany, the Bauhaus and all it stood for was immediately abolished’. Read then corrected himself: perhaps not abolished but scattered, he wrote: its ‘headquarters’ was now international; ‘only a new dark age could suppress a force so firmly based in social and aesthetic values’.28 Of course these are exactly the kinds of comments that Gropius feared, and indeed in 1935 he had to write to the head of the Reichskammer der bildenden Kunst to qualm rumors that he had left Germany, or that his work was international and therefore not German; his official permission to stay in England was based on the idea that he was representing German art abroad. These ideas also appear in Gropius’s correspondence with Frank Pick, who was convinced by Herbert Read to write the introduction. After reading a draft, Gropius wrote to Pick, asking him to focus less on the ‘negative work’ of rejecting antiquated forms, and more on the way in which modern architecture was about the ‘original new creation’. The new architecture was about the harmony between technique and beauty –​themes picked up by Read in his review. Moreover, Gropius asks Pick to please not discuss his status in England: ‘The conditions in Germany are very strained and complicated’ and any reference to him remaining in England ‘might entail some very unpleasant results … [and] difficulties with [German] authorities’. With regard to conditions in Germany, he asks Pick to replace the word ‘crisis’ with ‘transition’.29 If we consider these questions of transitions and translation, I think there are some important questions that could be asked at this juncture. What was the purpose of Gropius’s book? In house correspondence at Faber

27 Read, ‘Gropius: The New Architecture and the Bauhaus’, Scrutiny 3 (December 1935), 313–​15. 28 Ibid. 29 Isaacs, (1984) Bd. II., 731.

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and Faber suggested that book be considered a kind of ‘propaganda’, and indeed we might read the book as a soft manifesto. But directed at whom? What is the mode of address here –​who is speaking to whom? It was not the German authorities, or a German audience. Still, Gropius turned down many teaching, speaking and publishing opportunities because of his inability to convey his theoretical ideas in English. Shand, who translated The New Architecture and the Bauhaus, struggled with Gropius’s ‘metaphysics’. At one point he completely removed a sentence he could not translate.30

Fare and farewell During his stay in England, Gropius made only a few brief return trips to Germany, each time under increasing threat. In 1936, in a complicated series of events, he was repeatedly intercepted, detained, questioned and searched. He continued to be cautious about his relationship with German authorities –​fearing both for members of his family, his former colleagues and Bauhaus students still in Germany, as well as for his funds which were held at that time by the Nazi authorities. When asked by a London newspaper to write about the arts in Germany he refused; to do so, he said, would be ‘risking very unpleasant consequences’.31 Despite the support of Pritchard, Fry and others, Gropius’s attempts at finding architectural work in England were only partially successful, and when he was invited to join the faculty at Harvard in 1937, he of course accepted. The night before Gropius left England for the United States, there was a gala farewell dinner at the Trocodero, a ‘Good-​bye Gropius’ party that spared little expense. It is almost as if his British colleagues were trying to court him in a way that belied their ability to provide him with meaningful work. Alan Powers has recently written that the fact that RIBA could not ‘keep’ Gropius haunted architectural circles for years; yet his admiration

3 0 Brady, 2. 31 Isaacs, (1984) Bd. II, 780.

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for the United States was long standing, and combined with the prestige of Harvard make it unlikely that any changes in his productivity during his years in London would have made a difference in his decision to leave.32 The cover for the evening’s pamphlet was designed by Moholy-​Nagy, and includes what was becoming a signature of his work at the time: a wide swash of paint beneath the lettering and other graphic forms (Figure 8.7). The word ‘fare’ is prominent on the pamphlet published for Gropius’s party –​a word that can function for us as a way to think about Gropius

Figure 8.7.  László Moholy-​Nagy, Bill of Fare [Gropius Dinner, 9 March 1937] (London: Lund Humphries, February 1937). Photo: Royal Institute of British Architects Archive.

32

Powers, 79.

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leaving England: as a phase of interim exile, and a moment in between his German life and his American future. There are many definitions for ‘fare’ in the Oxford English Dictionary including ‘a going, journeying; course, passage, way’; or a ‘voyage’, an ‘expedition’. It is also defined as the ‘condition, state, welfare; state of things, prosperity, success’, implying good fortune. Fare is also defined as ‘a passage or excursion for which a price is paid’. If we think of the many times that Gropius was both willingly and unwantingly uprooted, we might think in terms of what kind of price was being paid, not only by Gropius but by the many exiles from Nazi Germany, struggling to complete some kind of journey to a better place. Fare also refers to eating, and is defined as in: ‘Food, regarded with reference to its quality’; or, the ‘supply or provision of food …’. These various definitions offer insights into the event at the Trocadero, and its role in Gropius’s ongoing itinerancy. The many-​ edged meanings, of ‘fare’ as a leaving or a journey, an un-​settledness, but also best wishes and good fortune, ‘prosperity and success …’ can serve as a metaphor for Gropius’s departure.33 At the Trocodero, the food was elegant, the wine flowed and plenty of cigars were smoked. All told over 100 important people attended: Ove Arup, Serge Chermayeff, Wells Coates, Geoffrey Faber, Ernst Freud, Maxwell Fry, Julian Huxley, Moholy-​Nagy, Henry Moore, Henry Morris, Nicholas Pevsner, Jack Pritchard, Morton Shand, John Summerson, H. G. Wells and many others. And, of course, Herbert Read, who introduced Gropius’s farewell address. Gropius spoke of when he first came to England –​how he had been ‘in a state of bewilderment’; now, again, he was being ‘plunged into an entirely new world’. Yet, he hoped his upcoming appointment at Harvard: [would be] further proof of the American ability to reconcile … the most diverse type of people to create a new form of life of typical American stamp. My stamp is definitely German and to Germany I owe the whole of my education and the possibilities of building up a world of my own. The greater part of my life has been spent there and very often I feel rather homesick. But in the different stages of my life I have always found it impossible to tackle new problems with my head turned back ….34 Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 5th edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), v. I, 925. 34 Walter Gropius, ‘Farewell Address’, 9 March 1937, [Walter Gropius Archive, Houghton Manuscript Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA]. 33

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Despite these claims, Gropius did look backward and forward, with a profound awareness of yet another impending war. The lives and ideas of Gropius and Read continued to overlap. Gropius mounted what would become the canonical exhibition ‘The Bauhaus, 1919–​ 1928’ at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1938.35 In a parallel exhibition, Read was instrumental in finalising Twentieth Century German Art, held in London in 1938. As Lucy Wasensteiner has uncovered, Read was initially outside of the core curatorial team for the exhibition but he eventually took over as chairman of the project and redirected the work away from its political origins. Much like Gropius, who insisted that any political issues be covered up in his MoMA exhibition, Read also sought to play down that Twentieth Century German Art was meant as a direct counterpoint to the Entartete Kunst exhibition in Germany. Neither Read or Gropius made reference to the Nazi declaration that modern art was degenerate and illegal, and both insisted that references to Jews be removed from the publications about their respective shows.36 Gropius returned to London many times, after his first return visit to Berlin in 1947 as part of the American recovery effort, and again in 1956 after he received the Goethe Prize. Visits by Read to United States began in 1946; he was the Charles Eliot Norton lecturer in at Harvard in 1953, one of his many teaching and speaking appointments in the United States.37 In 1967, Read came again to Harvard, this time to read his poetry, shortly before both he and Gropius died, in 1968 and 69, respectively.

35 The catalogue was for many years considered to be an accurate, primary source: Bauhaus 1919–​1928, eds, Herbert Bayer, Ise Gropius and Walter Gropius (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1938). 36 Lucy Wasensteiner, The Twentieth Century German Art Exhibition: Answering Degenerate Art in 1930s London (New York: Routledge, 2018). For a discussion of Gropius and the Bauhaus exhibition, see Karen Koehler, ‘ “The Bauhaus, 1919–​ 1928”: Gropius in Exile and the Museum of Modern Art, N.Y., 1938’, in Richard Etlin, ed., Art, Culture and Media Under the Third Reich (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 287–​315. 37 His Charles Eliot Norton lectures were published as: Herbert Read, Icon and Idea: The Function of Art in the Development of Human Consciousness (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1955).

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In his essay on Read in a posthumous Festschrift published in 1969, Gropius referred to Read as a kindred soul, and he outlined ideas that they shared: that thought can be expressed through form, but that it will sometimes be conscious and sometimes unconscious; that we have to fight against a civilisation filled with hideous objects; that we live in an era of sick minds and divided societies. We need to fight against a world seized with destructive madness through creativity. Art needed to be taught, according to Gropius, according to Read, in order to heal the mind and make environments beautiful. We must unite man with nature and nation with nation –​a sentiment that Gropius names as Read’s ‘courageous fight for creative education’.38 As this essay suggests, with so much of their thinking, this was an ideal which Gropius could have surely called his own.

38 Walter Gropius, ‘On Herbert Read’, in Robin Skelton, ed., Herbert Read: A Memorial Symposium (London: Methuen, 1969), 29.

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9 Metropolitan Exile: London, Refugee Artists and Places of Contact in the 1930s and 1940s

Cities were changed by the influx of exiled artists and –​conversely –​ urban topographies shaped the actions and interactions of these artists. This essay seeks to elaborate the thesis that the topographies in which the artists moved and worked had an impact on their professional lives and influenced their cultural and linguistic assimilation.1 Émigré artists often settled in certain urban areas –​today described under the term ‘arrival cities’2 –​gathering there due to low rental costs, because immigrants were already settled there and/​or because these areas were favoured by other artists and intellectuals, enabling new contacts to be made. In the London of the 1930s and 1940s many emigrants, among them Walter Gropius, László Moholy-​Nagy and Ernö Goldfinger, lived and worked in Hampstead, where avant-​garde artists like Ben Nicholson or Barbara Hepworth had long been living. An estimated 14,000 refugees lived in the Hampstead area by 1940.3 This leads to questions about the 1 This text was made possible by the ERC Consolidator Grant ‘Relocating Modernism: Metropolises, Modern Art and Exile (METROMOD)’, Horizon 2020, Grant agreement No. 724649. The research project (2017–​22) looks at six global arrival cities for artists and intellectuals forced to flee in the first half of the twentieth century. London is one of these cities with different ‘exile locations’ and contact zones. For more information see METROMOD’s archive on the website of the project, available at: , accessed 21 August 2021. 2 See Doug Saunders, Arrival City. How the Largest Migration in History Is Reshaping Our World (London: William Heinemann, 2010). 3 Monica Bohm-​Duchen, ‘Modernist Sanctuary: Hampstead in the 1930s and 1940s’, in idem, ed., Insiders Outsiders. Refugee from Nazi Europa and Their Contribution to British Visual Culture (London: Lund Humphries, 2019), 157–​64.

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importance of neighborhoods for the life and work of emigrants. Proximity and distance to other émigrés but also access to infrastructures might have impact on the ‘arrival’ in exile. In the following essay I shall map contact zones in London such as art institutions, social venues and private homes, zones where exiled and local artists met and worked together or where joint exhibitions were organised. The essay aims to rethink how the actors (the émigrés), the output of their work (the art objects and concepts) and the relevant urban places interacted, conceiving them as part of a dense network. Here I take up Walter Benjamin’s idea of translating key markers in a life into a sign system like that of a city map: ‘For a long time –​for years, in fact –​I have toyed with the idea of representing the space of life –​bios [den Raum des Lebens –​Bios] –​graphically through the form of a map.’4 The overall aim of the following is twofold: to inform exile studies with an understanding of how networks function in a metropolitan or urban setting, while integrating perspectives on life in exile into urban studies. It is important to note at the outset that only certain emigrants in London had the opportunities enjoyed by figures such as Ernö Goldfinger, to build their own house, for example. The vast majority of emigrants who fled the European continent after 1933 lived in the British capital in financially difficult circumstances. They often had to work in professions that did not correspond to their education. Many of them changed quarters and neighborhoods several times, as shortly after their arrival they found only provisional accommodation –​furnished rooms and lodgings. Others, on the other hand, were unable to free themselves from the precarious living conditions and were therefore repeatedly on the lookout for even cheaper dwellings and studios. The changing residential addresses of artists such as Jussuf Abbo, of Ludwig and Else Meidner or of the art historian Rosa Schapire illustrate the difficult living and working conditions of many German-​speaking emigrants in British exile.5 Nevertheless, 4 5

Walter Benjamin, Berliner Chronik (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1970), 12. The translation was taken from Leland De La Durantaye, Georgio Agamben: A Critical Introduction (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2009), 145. The addresses of Abbo, Meidners and Schapire were researched and published by the author in: Burcu Dogramaci, ‘Still Fighting for Modern Art. Rosa Schapire in England’, in idem and Günther Sandner, eds, Rosa und

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the urban environment with its access to museums, galleries and libraries was elementary for their work in London. Although their work did not inscribe itself into the matrix of the city as much as Goldfinger did, who gave his stay in London with his own house an architectural visible form, Schapire and the Meidners were also metropolitan exiles.

Maps, metropolises and émigrés Migration largely takes place in the metropolis and it is certainly there that it becomes most visible. This not only holds for the present day, but also for historical instances of migration. Claus-​Dieter Krohn described German émigrés during the Nazi period as a ‘metropolitan population’: Berlin, Frankfurt, Cologne, Breslau were the departure stations for an escape that led them in turn to mainly foreign metropolises: to Paris, Prague and London, to New York and Los Angeles, to Mexico City and Buenos Aires, to Jerusalem and Shanghai […].6

Metropolises were the preferred destination for emigrants –​immigrants sharing the same language and background were already living here, an infrastructure supporting immigration was already in place (aid organisations, religious institutions, cultural associations, etc.) and there were better opportunities to earn a living than could be hoped for in the

6

Anna Schapire –​Sozialwissenschaft, Kunstgeschichte und Feminismus um 1900 (Berlin: Aviva, 2017), 229–​56; idem, ‘Meidners Londoner Jahre: Produktion und Rezeption im Zeichen des Exils /​Meidner’s London Years: Production and Reception in Exile’, in Erik Riedel and Mirjam Wenzel, eds, Ludwig Meidner. Expressionismus, Ekstase, Exil /​Exile, Ecstasy, Expressionism (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 2018), 257–​78; idem, ‘Abbo in Exile, oder: Von der Schwierigkeit kulturellen Übersetzens’, in Dorothea Schöne, ed., Jussuf Abbo (Cologne: Wienand, 2019. Claus-​Dieter Krohn, ‘Vorwort’, in idem and Lutz Winckler, eds, Metropolen des Exils (Exilforschung. Ein internationales Jahrbuch, 20) (Munich: edition text + kritik, 2002), 7.

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countryside. Moreover, prejudices towards strangers were possibly less pronounced than in rural areas. However, metropolises had to be first deciphered by the arriving emigrants: address books like the one belonging to the Viennese psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, exiled in London, were extremely important for renewing old or adding new contacts. Street atlases provided orientation: Sandor Grosz (Alexander Gross) was a Jewish emigrant from Hungary who founded the Geographers’ Map Publishing Company in London and published a London street atlas in 1913. His daughter Phyllis Pearsall in turn published the first A to Z Atlas in 1936, at a time when a particularly large number of emigrants were arriving in the city. This atlas followed the logic of newer city maps, which enlarged the streets over the built areas and integrated house numbers. Convenient to handle, the street atlas was distributed by W. H. Smith, which ran bookstores and kiosks at London’s railway stations, and proved a great success.7 To find their way around London, it is very likely that emigrants purchased this popular street atlas. Besides already established art academies, exhibition venues and cafes, an array of other contact zones existed in these metropolises, where emigrants had taken the initiative. Jack Bilbo’s ‘Modern Art Gallery’, which existed between 1941 and 1948, was an important forum for presenting modern art. Initially located in 12 Baker Street, in 1943 Bilbo moved to premises at 24 Charles II Street in Haymarket. In his gallery rooms he showed exhibitions of works by British woman artists such as Ena Croom-​ Johnson and Doris Hatt (1944) as well as by émigré artists like Samson Shames (1942 and 1943), Kurt Schwitters (1944) and Jacob Bauerfreund (1942).8 That many emigrants were able to exhibit their work in the gallery 7

8

Phyllis Pearsall, A to Z. Atlas to London and Suburbs (London: Geographers’ Map Co Ltd, 1936). See Phyllis Pearsall, A to Z Maps: The Personal Story –​From Bedsitter to Household Name (London: Geographers’ A–​Z Map Co Ltd, 1990), 49f. See also Sarah Hartley, Mrs P’s Journey: The Remarkable Story of the Woman Who Created the A–​Z Map (London: Simon & Schuster, 2002). See Merry Kerr Woodeson, ‘Jack Bilbo und seine “Modern Art Gallery”. London 1941–​1946’, in Kunst im Exil in Großbritannien 1933–​1945, exh. cat. Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst (Berlin: Fröhlich & Kaufmann, 1986), 50f.; see also the memories of Bilbo: Jack Bilbo, An Autobiography. The First Forty Years of the Complete and Intimate Life Story of an Artist, Author, Sculptor, Art Dealer,

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is presumably due to the fact that Bilbo –​whose real name was Hugo Baruch –​was himself an emigrant, having fled Berlin he had finally settled in London after stays in France and Spain. This emigrant experience was certainly a contributing factor to the interest and appreciation he showed for other emigrants. Being able to speak German was another factor of course, meaning that he was a dialogue partner for German-​speaking artists, one they could deal with even without any command of English.9 Bilbo was able to provide artists who had fled to London with an opportunity to establish a public presence, although they had little or no access to functioning networks and often had scarcely any financial resources at their disposal. While Bilbo’s Modern Art Gallery was a classical art institution, in the following I would like to look at two unorthodox locations shaped by emigrants, both of which were immensely important for interaction between artists in the city and establishing classical modernism in Britain.

The Goldfingers’ private house and the exhibiting of modern art In 1937 the architect Ernö Goldfinger, who was born in Hungary and had studied in Paris, designed and built a complex of three townhouses in the London suburb of Hampstead (Figure 9.1),10 employing reinforced concrete. Goldfinger and his family moved into the middle townhouse, while the other two were with leased or sold.11 The complex was designed with

9

10 11

Philosopher, Psychologist, Traveller, and a Modernist Fighter for Humanity (London: Modern Art Gallery, 1948). See Jutta Vinzent, ‘Muteness as Utterance of a Forced Reality –​Jack Bilbo’s Modern Art Gallery (1941–​1948)’, in Shulamith Behr and Marian Malet, eds, Arts in Exile in Britain 1933–​1945. Politics and Cultural Identity (Amsterdam /​New York: Rodopi, 2005), 310. See Nigel Warburton, Ernö Goldfinger. The Life of an Architect (London /​New York: Routledge, 2003), 100–​1. Ibid., 81–​3.

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Figure 9.1.  Ernö Goldfinger, 2 Willow Road, Hampstead, London, 1939, the street facade, photo: Sydney W. Newbery, 1940 (Architectural Press Archive /​RIBA Collections, RIBA3394-​55).

the local architectural tradition in mind, but broke with traditional ideas of domestic living in Britain by adopting features of continental modernism such as the outer Cubist appearance, the broad window façade and the pilotis on the front side, borrowing heavily from Le Corbusier.12 Most notably however, the flexible floorplan was out of the ordinary, 12

See Miranda H. Newton, Architect’s London Houses. The Homes of Thirty Architects in the 1930s (London /​Oxford: Butterworth, 1992), 3.

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allowing for a variable use; moveable walls meant that the rooms on the first floor could be converted into one large room13 according to the needs of the inhabitants (Figure 9.2). For social occasions, but also for exhibitions, which the Goldfingers staged here, a private apartment could thus be turned into a (semi-​) public venue with an accordingly representative floorplan.

Figure 9.2.  Ernö Goldfinger, 2 Willow Road, Hampstead, London, 1939, Interior, Dining Room, photo: Dell & Wainwright, 1939 (Architectural Press Archive /​RIBA Collections, RIBA8557).

13 Ibid.

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In 1942, when the major museums in London had closed because of the war,14 Ernö Goldfinger and his wife, the artist Ursula Goldfinger, organised the sales exhibition Aid to Russia (Figure 9.3). It featured seventy works by contemporary artists, the venue open to the public every day for several hours. In 1942, the signing of the Anglo-​Soviet Treaty, which cemented the political alliance between the UK and Soviet Union against Nazi Germany, contributed to increasing the solidarity of the British public with their wartime ally.15 Reports on the fighting on the Eastern Front also played a role in public pronouncements of sympathy. For the benefit exhibition held in the Goldfingers’ residence at 2 Willow Road, contemporary artists were invited to contribute two works each; in return, they were guaranteed half of the sales price. The remaining amount was then donated to the Aid to Russia fund.16 As with a museum exhibition, an admission of one shilling was charged; arranged on the walls of the Goldfingers’ modernist townhouse were works by Hans Arp, Max Ernst, Barbara Hepworth, Kurt Schwitters, Henry Moore and others.17 A work loaned from Hugh Willoughby, La Niçoise by Pablo Picasso (1937, today known as the Portrait of Nusch Éluard, Figure 9.4) was also amongst the works –​thus not all were for sale.18 Running from 5 to 21 June 1942, the exhibition Aid to Russia attracted over 1,700 visitors, whereby the generous opening hours of 3.00 to 9.00 p.m. on workdays and 11.00 a.m. to 6.00 p.m. on Sundays certainly contributed to the success. In addition, posters in underground stations and shops had promoted the exhibition.19 Barbara Pezzini, ‘Aid to Russia and Its Art’, in Flyer of the exhibition Aid to Russia, 2 Willow Road (London, 2002, Archive of 2 Willow Road), n.p. 15 See Warburton, Ernö Goldfinger, 101. On the Anglo-​Soviet treaty, which was signed 26 May 1942, see Ben Wheatley, British Intelligence and Hitler’s Empire in the Soviet Union, 1941–​1945 (London /​New York: Bloomsbury, 2017), 97. 16 Warburton, Ernö Goldfinger, 101. The exhibition was supported by the Association of Architects, Surveyors and Technical Assistants (AASTA) and its president Colin Penn, member of the Communist Party. 17 See the exhibition and sale catalogue of Aid to Russia, 1942, Archives of 2 Willow Road. 18 See the exhibition and sale catalogue of Aid to Russia, 1942, 6, Archives of 2 Willow Road. See also Michela Parkin, ‘The Goldfinger Collection. Hampstead’s Modernist heritage’, Apollo 141/​398 (1995), 48; Warburton, Ernö Goldfinger, 102. 19 Warburton, Ernö Goldfinger, 102. 14

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Figure 9.3.  Catalogue of the Aid to Russia exhibition, 1942. Photo: Archive 2 Willow Road, National Trust Collections. With kind permission of the Goldfinger Family. Copyright Ernö Goldfinger.

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Figure 9.4.  Aid to Russia exhibition in 2 Willow Road, 1942, with Pablo Picasso’s La Niçoise, 1937 –​today known as the portrait of Nusch Eluard. With hat: Nancy Cunard. Photo: Archive 2 Willow Road, National Trust Collections. Collections. With kind permission of the Goldfinger Family. Copyright Ernö Goldfinger.

The Goldfingers’ home in Hampstead was thus a location where solidarity with Russia was expressed and anti-​fascist engagement demonstrated. At the same time, modernist art was promoted, and the usual boundary between private and public space dissolved. This was noted in a letter by a visitor to the exhibition: ‘The clear light, the spaciousness and subtle simplicity of your delightful rooms gave an atmosphere more conducive to ‘art appreciation’ than the usual run of shows. I feel that we should aim more at this method of picture showing.’20 Eighteen works were sold at the exhibition, and the Goldfingers themselves purchased a few works, amongst them Henry Moore’s sculpture Head (1938). Goldfinger’s exhibition at 2 Willow Road should be placed in a larger context of (semi-​)private exhibition and modern exhibition practice. These 20 Parkin, ‘The Goldfinger Collection’, 48.

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included the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874 in Nadar’s Paris studio and an exhibition by Japanese artist Koichiro Kondo in his private apartment. This show, which took place in 1931 at 10, avenue Camoens in the 16th district of Paris, was reported in the daily newspaper.21 Goldfingers, who lived in the French capital at the time, may have been familiar with the exhibition. Ernö and Ursula Goldfinger had been collecting art since their time in Paris during the 1920s and 1930s, purchasing many pieces from their circle of friends and acquaintances or receiving them as gifts. The artists who were part of the private and professional networks of the couple included Man Ray, Max Ernst and Amédée Ozenfant; Ursula Goldfinger studied under the latter.22 Works by all three artists were found in the Goldfinger collection, along with the lithograph La tour (1910) by Robert Delaunay.23 Max Ernst was a regular guest at Willow Road. Ernst’s painting Jardin gobe-​avions (1935) is also part of the collection.24 At Ernst’s solo exhibition of 1937 in the Mayor Gallery in London, the Goldfingers purchased the artist’s diptych Le passé et le présent (1934/​5).25 Another work in the collection is by the British Surrealist and art patron Roland Penrose. The Goldfingers were also on very friendly terms with Penrose and his wife, the artist Lee Miller.26

21

For informations on the less known exhibition of Kondo and the press review see Kuniko Abe, ‘Malraux et le peintre Kondo’, in Présence d’André Malraux sur la Toile (PAMT). Revue littéraire et électronique, Article 71, December 2009, available at: , accessed 30 July 2019. 22 Barbara Pezzini, ‘ “For an Appreciation of Art and Architecture”. The Goldfinger Collection at 2 Willow Road’, Apollo 153/​470 (2001), 56. 2 3 See Parkin, ‘The Goldfinger Collection’, 46f. 24 See Werner Spies, Sigrid Metken and Günter Metken, Max Ernst. Werke 1929–​1938 (Cologne: DuMont, 1979), 321, cat. 2181. 25 Spies/​Metken, Max Ernst, 296, cat. 2142. Pezzini writes, that Ernst’s La Joie de Vivre (1936) was bought by the Goldfingers at the London solo exhibition in 1937, see Pezzini, ‘ “For an Appreciation of Art and Architecture” ’, 57. But the catalogue raisonné says that the painting belongs to the collection of Roland Penrose. 26 Parkin, ‘The Goldfinger Collection’, 46.

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The works of the collection were presented in the home and could be easily viewed by friends and acquaintances when visiting; the Goldfingers also lent them for exhibitions.27 With the matter-​of-​fact presence of modern art in their private home, the Goldfingers were promoting the art of their time. Moreover, this art was understood as an integral component of the interior architecture, as evidenced, for example, by the large display frame installed in the living room (Figure 9.4),28 which enabled alternating objects, pictures and books to be put on show. At the Aid to Russia exhibition from 1942, it was the Picasso work that was featured in this frame. A similar gesture of exhibiting and showing is evident in the entrance area to 2 Willow Road. The front door was inset in a glass wall, which was simultaneously used to display objects and sculptures, enabling the works of the collection to be staged and highlighted.29 Presenting the works was thus understood as part of the architecture from the outset.

Intellectual and social spaces in the context of emigration Around ten minutes’ walk from 2 Willow Road, also in the suburb of Hampstead, were the Lawn Road Flats (Figure 9.5). Designed by Wells Coates and commissioned by Jack Pritchard, the flats were completed in 1934. The conception was based on principles of urban ‘good living’ and a reduced living space that was to nonetheless offer all the conveniences deemed necessary for comfortable living, such as built-​in cupboards, Two works of Max Ernst in the collection of the Goldfingers, Loplop présente (1931) and Jardin gobe-​avions (1935), were shown at an exhibition at Tate Gallery in 1961. See Max Ernst, exh. cat. Tate Gallery, London 1961, 48, 51. Ernst’s Le Passé et le present (1934/​35) and Jardin gobe-​avions (1935) were loans from the Goldfinger collection to an exhibition in Paris in 1959. See Max Ernst, exh. cat. Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris 1959, cat. 47, 52. 28 Parkin, ‘The Goldfinger Collection’, 46; see also Kathryn Felus, ‘The furniture of Ernö Goldfinger at 2 Willow Road’, Apollo 143/​410 (1996), 49. 2 9 Photography of the entrance hall in Felus, ‘The furniture of Ernö Goldfinger at 2 Willow Road’, 48. 27

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Figure 9.5.  Wells Coates, Lawn Road Flats, Hampstead, London, 1934 (Architectural Press Archive /​RIBA Collections, RIBA2508-​9).

sliding doors, a dressing room and a small kitchen.30 In addition, service and community facilities were planned, for example, a large kitchen on the ground floor that was to provide residents with meals to order. In 1937 this kitchen was converted into a restaurant with bar, the ‘Isobar’,31 which became the social hub of the building. 30 On the architecture and dwelling see Elizabeth Darling, Well Coates. Twentieth Century Architects (London: RIBA Publishing, 2012), 65–​73. 31 ‘Isobar’ constituted itself from ‘Iso’ for Isokon und ‘bar’ for barometer referring to Molly Pritchard’s passion for weather forecasts –​a barograph was prominently installed. See Florentina-​Aventura Freise, Asketischer Komfort. Das Londoner Servicehaus Isokon (Artififium: Schriften zur Kunst und Kunstvermittlung, 29) (Oberhausen: Athena, 2009), 124; see also John Allan, ‘The Isobar. The Social Hub’, in Isokon Gallery Trust, ed., Isokon Gallery. The Story of a New Vision of Urban Living (London: Isokon Gallery, 2016), 63.

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Figure 9.6.  Lawn Road Flats, Hampstead, London: The Isobar, photo: Dell & Wainwright, 1937 (Architectural Press Archive /​RIBA Collections, RIBA5745).

The Isobar was fitted with furniture by Isokon (Figure 9.6), designed by the émigré Bauhaus artist Marcel Breuer. A map of northwest London was pinned to the wall next to the bar. City, map and bar were thus brought together conceptually and the Isobar marked as an urban location for amusement and conversation. The tenants of the Lawn Road Flats socialised in the Isobar, rubbing shoulders with prominent guests, including the artists Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth, who lived nearby, or the writer Julian Huxley and the sculptor Naum Gabo.32 The Isobar was also home to the ‘Half-​Hundred Club’, founded in 1937 by Jack Pritchard. The twenty-​five members could bring one guest each and be served a multi-​course meal for ten shillings, whereby the members were responsible for the dishes to be served, either arranging the preparation or cooking themselves.33 The Isobar 3 2 33

Allan, ‘The Isobar. The Social Hub’, 63. Ibid., 66.

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was thus a site where food was celebrated as a social act. It was also a venue for talks and exhibitions –​for instance with works by Bob Wellington and John Piper shown during July 1938.34 With respect to the history of exile in London, the bar was a prominent contact zone and location for forming a social community –​and a place to be for the residents of Lawn Road Flats. Among them were the founder and director of the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau, Walter Gropius and his wife Ise Gropius.35 While Gropius had tried to establish himself as a freelance architect, he had also worked as the Art Director of the Isokon Furniture Company. As noted above, the owner of Isokon was Jack Pritchard, the initiator of the Lawn Road complex. Marcel Breuer, another Lawn Road resident, was similarly involved with Isokon. He was responsible for a collection of plywood furniture for the company, for which he translated his seating furniture out of aluminium into an aesthetic appropriate for wood.36 In the manifesto Circle (1937), co-​written by British avant-​gardists and emigrants, Breuer described in an essay the metamorphosis of the materials from aluminium into wood.37 The aforementioned émigrés –​together with their artistic and intellectual circle –​came together in 1937 to send off Walter Gropius, who had decided to leave Britain for Harvard University. The farewell dinner, hosted by the biologist Julian Huxley, took place on 9 March at the Trocadero Restaurant on Coventry Street.38 34 See Freise, Asketischer Komfort, 127. 3 5 On the architecture of and the people living at Lawn Road Flats see ibid., 86ff; see also David Burke, The Lawn Road Flats. Spies, Writers and Artists (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2014), 50f.; Alan Powers, Bauhaus Goes West. Modern Art and Design in Britain and Amerika (London: Thames & Hudson, 2019); Leyla Daybelge, ‘The Lawn Road Flats’, in Monica Bohm-​Duchen, ed., Insiders Outsiders. Refugee from Nazi Europa and Their Contribution to British Visual Culture (London: Lund Humphries, 2019), 165–​71. 36 See Alastair Grieve, Isokon (London: Isokon Plus, 2004), 34f. 37 Marcel Breuer, ‘Architecture and Material’, in J. L. Martin, Ben Nicholson and Naum Gabo, eds, Circle. International Survey of Constructive Art (London: Faber & Faber, 1937), 193–​202. 38 Peder Anker, The Bauhaus of Nature (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2010), 9. See the essay of Karen Koehler in this volume.

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The Trocadero was a representative and well-​known venue in London, with a history going back to the nineteenth century and having undergone a redecoration in 1930.39 The guest list of 135 shows that both Londoners and foreigners were invited, amongst them artists and architects such as László Moholy-​Nagy and Wells Coates as well as the prominent historians of architecture Sigfried Giedion and Nikolaus Pevsner.40 The menu card was designed by Moholy-​Nagy, the Bauhaus artist who had also fled to London and was responsible for the brochures of Isokon.41 Such a farewell dinner, in honour of an émigré, with guests comprising both fellow émigrés and figures from Britain, underlines that a transnational community of artists had gathered in London in 1937. The guest list for the Gropius dinner also underlines how many of the invitees departed London after 1937. Of course, Gropius himself was foremost here, moving to the United States where he continued his architectural practice and teaching at Harvard, and became the ‘American Gropius’. László Moholy-​Nagy moved to Chicago and became the director of the New Bauhaus. Nikolaus Pevsner however remained, spending several years working on his monumental study The Buildings of England. The architect Ernst L. Freud, the son of Sigmund Freud, also continued to live in London, where he designed residential buildings and was involved in planning housing for migrants.42 The places connected with the figures mentioned mark out a unique and unconventional map of life and work in exile London. They refer us to urban topographies, to inner-​city districts, outlying suburbs and streets, to places where interaction took place, but also to the venues used for exhibitions and collaborative projects. Urban locations were of particular importance not only for communicating, forming networks and formulating theories; they were also stations on the diverse paths of exile. Of course, to give an authentic picture of the situation, the other side of life

39 For the illustrated history of the Trocadero Restaurant see , accessed 10 October 2021. 40 See the designs in the Archive of Tate Gallery. 41 Grieve, Isokon, 28f. See also the essay of Leah Hsiao in this volume. 42 On Ernst L. Freud see the essay of Volker M. Welter in this volume.

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as an emigrant needs to be included on this biographical map, for example, the public administrative offices or travel agencies, locations of increasing agitation for the emigrant community following the outbreak of war and as the threat of German occupation grew. In his autobiography The World of Yesterday (1943), Stefan Zweig noted: I will never forget the sight which once met me in a London travel bureau; it was filled with refugees, almost all Jews, every one of them wanting to go –​anywhere. Merely to another country, anywhere, into the polar ice or the scorching sands of Sahara, only away, only on because, their transit visa having expired, they had to go on, on with wife and child to new stars, to a new language-​world, to folk whom they did not know and who did not want to receive them.43

In this way, the ‘bios’ imagined by Walter Benjamin as a ‘space of life’ is a time-​bound map, for places change just as situations and personal and historical narrative(s) do. In summary, both the Goldfinger house and the Isobar, presented within the matrix of London, were ‘sites of interchange’ in the best sense of the term. They were sites where contact was established and communication took place, but they were also both venues where modernist art was presented to the public. While the Isobar addressed a more select and intellectual clientele, which included emigrants, the Goldfingers’ private residence was open to a broader public and neighbouring residents. Here the specific setting in a modernist house may have added to the interest shown. These settings were important forums for establishing and spreading both British and European modern art. Given that the involved artists included

43 Stefan Zweig, Die Welt von Gestern. The World from Yesterday (Munich: E. Mühlthaler’s Buch und Kunstdruckerei, 1997), 720. For the original see the first edition of the book: Stefan Zweig, Die Welt von Gestern. Erinnerungen eines Europäers (Stockholm: Bermann-​ Fischer, 1942), 481f.: ‘Nie werde ich vergessen, welch Anblick sich mir bot, als ich einmal in London in ein Reisebureau geriet; es war vollgepfropft mit Flüchtlingen, fast alle Juden, und alle wollten sie irgendwohin. Gleichviel, in welches Land, ins Eis des Nordpols oder in den glühenden Sandkessel der Sahara, nur fort, nur weiter, denn die Aufenthaltsbewilligung war abgelaufen, man mußte weiter, weiter mit Frau und Kind unter fremde Sterne, in fremde Sprachwelt, unter Menschen, die man nicht kannte und die einen nicht wollten.’

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figures such as Kurt Schwitters and Max Ernst, they were also sites where a counter-​project could perhaps be realised to the 1937 Nazi exhibition Degenerate Art held in Munich, where the very same artists were amongst the outcast, defamed and branded as deranged. Translation by Paul Bowman

Volker M. Welter

10 Berlin in London, Hiddensee in Walberswick: On Ernst L. Freud’s Exile Architecture in England

The architect Ernst L. Freud (1892–​1970), the son of Sigmund Freud and the father of the late figurative painter Lucian Freud, twice set up home and office in a foreign country. At the end of 1919, the Austrian Freud moved to Berlin, where in early 1920 he married Lucie Brasch (1896–​1989), the daughter of a wealthy grain merchant in the German capital. In the final months of 1933, the couple and their three sons then fled Nazi Germany, going into exile in London. Thus, Freud was an ‘immigrant’ when he moved to Weimar Germany, and an ‘émigré’ when he fled to Great Britain, where he lived ‘in exile’ for at least as long as National Socialism dictatorship ruled Germany and occupied Austria.1 How the exile experience has shaped Freud’s domestic architectural works in Great Britain is the topic of this essay. It begins with some thoughts on how the experience of exile influences and may even make impossible any notion of a home, an issue of great importance to Freud’s life and work as an émigré domestic architect. It then turns to a close analysis of a selection of Freud’s domestic buildings in England, specifically to examples that illustrate how as an architect Freud dealt with the exile situation by repeatedly referencing modern domestic architecture from Weimar Germany –​and occasionally Austria –​in his English works.

1

According to Erin McKean, ed., The New Oxford American Dictionary, 2nd edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), an immigrant ‘comes to live permanently in a foreign country’ (845), an émigré has left his ‘own country in order to settle in another, usually for political reasons’ (553), and exile denotes ‘the state of being barred from one’s native country, typically for political or punitive reasons’ (591), a condition that can extend beyond the existence of the punitive etc. reasons.

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Exile, emigration and architecture Much has been written about exile, emigration and architecture during the time of the National Socialist dictatorship in Germany.2 Focusing on Great Britain, Freud’s new home country, Charlotte Benton was one of the first architectural historians who collected basic data about émigré architects in Britain, while arguing that beyond the shock of the exile, these architects helped to establish a firmer grounding for modernism in British architecture.3 Behind such generalising characterisations hide, however, numerous individual biographies. According to Iain Boyd Whyte, ‘no single and shared experience of exile’ exists. Instead, Whyte refers to the experiences of Theodor Adorno and Vilém Flusser as exemplifying diametrically opposing evaluations of the exile.4 Adorno’s Minima Moralia paints a rather dire picture of the situation of émigrés. One aphorism specifically reflects on whether one can and should build a house or decorate a home while in exile. Aphorism no. 18, ‘Refuge for the Homeless’, ends with Adorno’s famous statement that ‘[t]‌here is no righteous life within a wrong life’.5 It nevertheless holds out hope for 2

3 4 5

See Bernd Nicolai, ed., Architektur und Exil: Kulturtransfer und architektonische Emigration 1930 bis 1950 (Trier: Porta Alba Nigra Verlag, 2003) for an overview of German-​speaking émigré architect worldwide. See also Andreas Schätzke, Deutsche Architekten in Großbritannien: Planen und Bauen im Exil 1933–​1945 (Stuttgart: Edition Axel Menges, 2013); Alan Powers, ‘Refugees from Nazi Europe and their Contribution to British Architecture’, in Monica Bohm-​Duchen, ed., Insiders Outsiders: Refugees from Nazi Europe and Their Contribution to British Visuals Culture (London: Lund Humphries, 2019), 39–​49. Charlotte Benton, A Different World: Émigré Architects in Britain 1928–​1958 (London: RIBA Heinz Gallery, 1995), for Freud see 155–​6. Iain Boyd Whyte, ‘Nikolaus Pevsner: Art History, Nation, and Exile’, RIHA Journal 0075 (23 October 2013), available at: , accessed 1 August 2019. Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life, trans. E. F. N. Jephcott (London: NLB, 1974), aphorism 18, ‘Refuge for the Homeless’, 38–​9 (39). I amended the translation of the final sentence as this edition’s translation of ‘Wrong life cannot be lived rightly.’ misses the sense of the German original that if the container is bad, the contents cannot be good. The German original reads, ‘Es gibt

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Adorno, who specifically states too that attempting ‘to lead a private life’ remains most appropriate as long as the émigré does not ‘attach weight to it as to something still socially substantial and individually appropriate’.6 By comparison, Vilém Flusser ascribes to the émigré a positive, even active role within the new home country or society, because he ‘is the Other of the others, and this is the only identity that he can form for himself ’. The arrival of the émigré forces ‘settled inhabitants to discover that they can create their identity only in relation to him’. Recognising that the relationship between émigré and native is a dialectical one in which both sides give and take, Flusser concludes that exile ‘is the incubator for creativity in the service of the new’.7 Adorno hinted at a third attitude towards exile when he borrowed the quote, ‘It is even part of my good fortune not to be a house-​owner’ from Nietzsche’s The Gay Science;8 Nietzsche had specifically commended the book to ‘those who may call themselves homeless ones’.9 As cited by Adorno, Nietzsche’s phrase would seemingly endorse the pessimistic overtone of aphorism no. 18. However, Adorno’s source, aphorism no. 240, ‘At the Sea’, from The Gay Sciences, concludes with Nietzsche pondering that if he should build a house, he would build it into the sea in order to partake in the latter’s secret powers.10 In a later aphorism, no. 291, which reflects kein richtiges Leben im falschen.’ [Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflexionen aus dem beschädigten Leben [1951] (Frankfurt/​Main: Suhrkamp, 1964), Aphorismus 18 ‘Asyl für Obdachlose’, 40–​2 (42).] 6 Adorno, Minima Moralia, 39. 7 Vilém Flusser, The Freedom of the Migrant: Objections to Nationalism, trans. Kenneth Kronenberg, ed. Anne K. Finger (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003), 86–​7. 8 Adorno, Minima Moralia, 39. Jephcott’s translation references the 1910 English translation of Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft, which, however, translates the passage differently (see below footnote 10). 9 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Joyful Wisdom (‘La Gaya Scienza’), trans. Thomas Common (Edinburgh: T. N. Foulis, 1910), aphorism 377, ‘We Homeless Ones’, 342–​6 (342). 10 Nietzsche, The Joyful Wisdom, aphorism 240, ‘On the Sea-​Shore’, 203–​4: ‘I would not build myself a house (it is an element of my happiness not to be a house-​owner!). If I had to do so, however, I should build it, like many of the Romans, right into the sea, –​I should like to have some secrets in common with that beautiful monster.’

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on the city of Genoa and its private villa architecture, the sea symbolises a sense of adventure, while the building of elaborate private houses by enterprising, individualistic (Genoese) citizens is equated with lastingly capturing the freedoms signified by the oceans.11

Architect in Berlin and London Born in Vienna in 1892, Ernst Freud studied architecture at the city’s Technische Hochschule [Technical University] (TH) from 1911 to 1913.12 Among his fellow students was his school friend Richard Neutra, who had already enrolled in 1910, and Felix Augenfeld, with whom Freud would later co-​operate on designs for Anna Freud.13 During his second year at the TH Vienna, Freud also attended the first semester of Adolf Loos’ private Bauschule. Augenfeld characterised Freud as ‘not a very conscious participant or fanatic disciple’ of the Bauschule, but still strongly influenced by the Viennese modernist.14 From 1913 to 1914 Freud enrolled at the TH in Munich, to where he returned for the winter semester 1918–​ 19 to complete his studies once his military service during the First World War had ended.15 Towards the end of 1919, Freud moved to Berlin, the hometown of Lucie Brasch, his fiancée and future wife, who for a few semesters had studied classical philology in Berlin and Munich. In Berlin, Freud established himself as a domestic architect designing detached houses and

11 Nietzsche, Joyful Wisdom, aphorism 291, ‘Genoa’, 225–​6 (234). 1 2 Historisches Archiv Technische Universität München (HATUM), student file, Ernst Freud, 33. 13 Ruth Hanisch, ‘Felix Augenfeld: Modern Architecture, Psychoanalysis, and Antifascism’, in Alison J. Clarke and Elana Shapira, eds, Émigré Cultures in Design and Architecture (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 159–​71. 14 Felix Augenfeld, ‘Erinnerungen an Adolf Loos’, Bauwelt 72 (1981), 1907, author’s translation. 15 HATUM, student file, Ernst Freud, 22–​41.

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interiors. Another emphasis of his work was designing psychoanalytical consulting rooms, including the couches.16 His clients were mainly from the bourgeoisie and the educated middle classes (Bildungsbürgertum) and often, though not exclusively, of Jewish background. Freud’s interior designs ranged from individual pieces of furniture to the outfitting of entire apartments. His detached houses were of eclectic designs, following the clients’ wishes rather than pursuing aesthetic ideals or modernist experiments with floorplans, materials and construction techniques. The experience of London exile began for Ernst Freud some months before his final departure from Germany. From the end of June 1933 onwards he stayed in the city for a few weeks to prepare the exile of his family.17 Such exploratory visits were not entirely unusual: the writer Gabriele Tergit, in exile in London together with her husband, the Berlin architect Heinz Reifenberg –​himself a friend of Freud’s –​noted that ‘even as late as 1937 one could meet elegant people in London hotels […] who […] were Berlin or Frankfurt Jews preparing their emigration’.18 During his preparatory stay, Freud wrote to his wife almost daily, sometimes twice a day. His first two letters, dated 26 and 27 June 1933, describe the first days in London and capture the purpose of the trip, most notably to arrange work, to find housing and organise schooling for the boys.19

16 17

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Volker M. Welter, Ernst L. Freud, Architect: The Case of the Modern Bourgeois Home (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2012), ­chapter 6. Lucie Freud and the three sons left Berlin in late September 1933, Ernst Freud followed in mid-​November, after the shipment of the family apartment’s furniture was on its way. Letter Ernst Freud to Lucie Freud, 22 September 1933 and 13 November 1933 (London, Collection Esther Freud). I wish to thank Esther Freud for letting me read her (rough) English translations of the original letters. All references are to the translated letters. Gabriele Tergit, ‘How they Resettled’, in Association of Jewish Refugees in Great Britain, ed., Britain’s New Citizens: The Story of the Refugees from Germany and Austria (London: De Vere Press, n.d. [1951]), 61–​9 (61). Letters Ernst Freud to Lucie Freud, 26 and 27 June 1933 (collection Esther Freud). Unless noted otherwise, all information in this section is drawn from these two letters. Concerning the schooling issue, the Freuds decided to enrol the sons at the boarding school Dartington Hall, Dartington, Devon, England.

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Freud met with various British architects during this visit, among them the younger and older Lutyens,20 Francis Rowland Yerbury, the secretary of the Architectural Association, who offered help with publicising Freud’s buildings, and Serge Chermayeff, the British partner of Erich Mendelsohn. Chermayeff asked Freud back for cocktails and supper the day following their meeting, when Mendelsohn, his wife and the Dutch architect Hendrik Theodorus Wijdeveld joined them. Reporting on the evening, Freud hinted at the stress that preparing the exile caused. He called the evening lovely but also wrote that while Mendelsohn’s future had been discussed extensively, nobody had bothered asking about his life in exile. Twice Freud described his impressions of London as a déjà vu, taking him back to 1919 when he and Lucie had begun their life together in Berlin. In a letter of 28 June 1933, he noted how his room in an English boarding house reminded him of his earliest rented room in Berlin.21 The second déjà vu is noted in a letter of 16 August, when Freud confessed to his wife that a new family home in London would not be quite as beautiful as their old one in the Tiergarten quarter in Berlin. He added however that there were areas in London that recalled Berlin’s old West.22 Some similarities did indeed exist between the St John’s Wood area, where the Freuds would eventually make their home in London, and the Tiergarten quarter where they had lived in Berlin. The latter was located to the west of the historical royal hunting grounds that had been converted into a public park; the former was just to the north of Regent’s Park, which was of comparable royal origin. Both locations were thus close to the city centre, on the other side of a large park. Upon arrival in London, Freud soon received commissions from within two social circles.23 Some of his earliest clients were psychoanalysts who 20 Letter Ernst Freud to Lucie Freud, evening of 30 June 1933 (collection Esther Freud). 21 Letter Ernst Freud to Lucie Freud, 28 June 1933 (collection Esther Freud). 22 Letter Ernst Freud to Lucie Freud, 16 August 1933 (collection Esther Freud). ‘Old West’ refers to the Tiergarten area to the west of Berlin’s historic city centre. 23 It is not known if Freud teamed up with a British architect in order to overcome legal restrictions on émigré architect working independently in the UK. One letter mentions as a possible partner Robert Lutyens (1901–​71), architect son of Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens. Letter Ernst Freud to Lucie Freud, 30 June (evening)

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were either British, foreigners living in London or who had recently fled to Britain. The Vienna-​born psychoanalyst Melanie Klein, for example, supported Ernst Freud in 1933 with a commission to remodel her St John’s Wood house; she had lived in London since 1926. The project included creating a living room-​cum-​psychoanalytical consulting room for which Freud designed a couch that Klein could use either as a daybed or as a consulting couch.24 Other commissions came from among fellow émigrés. In 1934, for example, Fritz Hess, a Jewish refugee businessman from Berlin, and his wife, Elisabeth (Tisa) von der Schulenburg, an artist and sculptor, approached Freud for advice on the interior of their rented apartment in the Highgate area, in London-​Hampstead. The Hesses had fled Berlin in 1933 and met Freud for the first time in London.25 The job was small, the design of two fitted cupboards, the ordering of some furniture and to find suitable wallpapers and curtains, but nevertheless conveyed to both clients and architect a sense of (a return to) normality.26

Dahlem and Zehlendorf in London Some early London clients of Freud’s had already been his clients in Berlin. Just like their architect, they had often left Germany early in the 1933 (Collection Esther Freud). Freud was naturalised on 30 August 1939, when these legal restrictions would have been lifted. 24 Before her death, Klein gave chair and couch to the psychoanalyst Donald Meltzer (1922–​2004) (Conversation of the author with Donald Meltzer, Oxford, October 2002), who still used both in late 2002. What happened especially to the couch after Meltzer’s death in 2004 is not known. Inquiries with the Donald Meltzer Psychoanalytic Atelier () and the Donald Meltzer Development Fund have remained without reply. 2 5 Tisa von der Schulenburg, Ich hab’s gewagt: Bildhauerin und Ordensfrau –​ein unkonventionelles Leben (Freiburg: Herder, 1992), 100–​1. 26 Letters Ernst Freud to Lucie Freud, 27 March 1934, 28 March 1934 (Collection Esther Freud).

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Nazi dictatorship, when taking money and possessions such as furniture with them –​sometimes also designed by Freud –​was still feasible, even if difficult. For example, from 1935 to 1936 Freud designed his first detached English house for Dr Adolf Marx, formerly a banker in Berlin, and his wife, Heide Marx. Contacts between the couple and the architect harked back to Freud designing the furniture for the Berlin-​Dahlem home of the couple’s daughter, Annie Marx, who had married the art historian Wolfgang Herrmann; both later also emigrated to London. Adolf and Heide Marx had probably left Berlin as early as 1932, taking their extensive collection of Expressionist and other modern paintings with them.27 Their house is also one of the earliest of Freud’s English buildings best understood by tracing the modern German architecture that Freud cites in the design. The Marx house is a rather inconspicuous exposed brick building overlooking Hampstead Heath. Towards the garden, on the ground floor Freud arranged tri-​partite metal windows and slender mullions in a continuous band (Figure 10.1). A narrowly protruding lintel extends the horizontality of this arrangement into the flat concrete roof covering an adjacent loggia. On the upper level, three windows are cut symmetrically into the wall without emphasising a central middle axis. This façade treatment recalls the garden façades of, for example, the Charlton house (1928–​9) and the Wiertz house (1928, Figure 10.2), both in Berlin-​Dahlem, which were designed by the architect Otto Rudolf Salvisberg. Had Freud not seen these houses in situ in Berlin, he could have studied both in the 1932 book Neue Wohnbauten.28 Most likely, Freud also knew Salvisberg’s house for Julius Flechtheim (Berlin-​Dahlem, 1928–​9), a director of IG Farben. The Marx house shares similarities with these three houses, in particular in the composition of the garden façades and the position of the covered terraces. A far more complex relationship to Berlin architecture is embodied in the ‘The Weald’ (1937–​9) in Bletchworth, Surrey, which Freud designed for Mrs D. D. Cottington-​Taylor, the director of the Good Housekeeping 2 7 28

The history of the art collection is not known. Hans Eckstein, Neue Wohnbauten (Munich: F. Bruckmann, 1932), 9–​11.

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Figure 10.1.  Ernst L. Freud, Marx house, London, 1935–​1936, garden façade. Photo: RIBA Collections.

Figure 10.2.  Otto Salvisberg, Wiertz house, Berlin, 1928, garden façade, from Neue Villen (Stuttgart: J. Hoffmann, c. 1929). Photo: Canadian Centre for Architecture.

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Institute. The English house refers to a Berlin house that Freud had designed, and which, in turn, was published in 1934 by Homes & Gardens as an alternative to recent modernist English architecture. The most remarkable architectural feature of The Weald is a half-​ circular bay extending the dining room on the ground floor and the master bedroom on the first floor (Figure 10.3). The exterior recalls modernist (German) architecture as alternating white stucco bands and horizontal windows structure the curved extension and the entire façade. The flat roof doubles up as a terrace and while the interior does not feature an open plan, the spacious living room and an adjacent study, separated only by foldable glass doors, occupy nearly half of the ground floor.29 The Bletchworth house reworked Freud’s design for a house in Berlin-​Lankwitz for the perfume manufacturer Ludwig Scherk, a patron of modern architecture. The solid-​appearing Scherk house (1930–​1, Figure 10.4) is dominated by the expressive curves of bay windows, balconies and the entrance canopy, features that were inspired by Mendelsohn’s metropolitan Berlin architecture but, true to the home’s suburban location, did not dynamically swing but slowly crawled around corners. In March 1934, Homes & Gardens contrasted the Scherk house with George Checkley’s Willow House (1932) in Cambridge. Architecturally, the comparison set a house still perceived as mass against one already expressing its volume, and thus emphasised the Freud-​designed modern houses as opposed to modernist ones.30 Freud’s design skilfully fused what appeared to be modernist forms –​for example, the semi-​circular bay windows and the flat roof –​with more traditional aspects of bourgeois homes. Reassuringly, the Scherk house used brick instead of unconventional materials like concrete, for example. The sash windows –​typical for British architecture while unusual in Germany –​now gave this Berlin house an almost familiar English face.

29 Dorothy Daisy Cottington Taylor and Ernst L. Freud, ‘To Buy or to Build? Mrs. Taylor’s Long Years of Experience at Good Housekeeping Institute Are Being Turned to Good Account Now that She Is Building a House for Herself ’, Good Housekeeping ( June 1937), 76–​7, 146–​8. 30 ‘Two Modern Houses’, Home & Gardens (1934 March), 504–​6.

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Figure 10.3.  Ernst L. Freud, Cottington-​Taylor house (‘The Weald’), Bletchworth, Surrey, 1937–​1939, exterior view from garden, 1939. Photo: The Courtauld Institute of Art, London.

From 1937 to 1939 then, Freud turned the suburban Scherk house into a modernist house, hidden deep in the English countryside. Further clues to the genealogy of The Weald –​the most modernist-​appearing house that Freud ever designed in either Berlin or England –​can again be found in the garden façade. The façades of the German house and its English twin are regularly punctuated on the upper level by three equally sized windows. On the lower level, banks of tall windows and sliding doors extend the interiors into the adjacent gardens. At the Bletchworth house, the ground floor openings are covered by two slightly projecting roofs which, in turn, mimic the ledges protruding above the garden-​side windows of the Berlin house. In 1937, Freud also began working on six townhouses in Frognal Close, in London-​Hampstead, a speculative development that inserted into London’s urban fabric memories of a small suburban housing scheme that Neutra had designed for Mendelsohn in Berlin-​Zehlendorf from 1922 to 1923. The Frognal Close project developed around a cul-​de-​sac that

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Figure 10.4.  Ernst L. Freud, Scherk house, Berlin, 1930–​1931, garden façade. Photo: RIBA Collections.

ensured privacy whilst maintaining ‘a proper urban unity’.31 Initially, Freud had envisioned two detached houses either side of the cul-​de-​sac and two semi-​detached properties at the far end; both the number of houses and their placement were similar to the scheme for Berlin-​Zehlendorf. In that case, the builder Adolf Sommerfeld32 –​from 1938 onwards also an émigré in England –​had commissioned a suburban development of ten detached houses. Four were placed along Onkel-​Tom-​Straße with the remaining six grouped behind them in a cul-​de-​sac, two to either side and two at the end. While these six were never built, their grouping inspired Freud’s original scheme, the plan of which is however today lost. 31 32

‘A Group of Houses in Hampstead’, Architectural Review 84 (August 1938), 54–​ 6 (54). Celina Kress, Adolf Sommerfeld –​Andrew Sommerfield: Bauen für Berlin 1910–​1970 (Berlin: Lukas Verlag für Kunst-​und Geistesgeschichte, 2011).

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Planning stipulations forced Freud to amend his design to three pairs of semi-​detached buildings (Figure 10.5). Due to the sloping site, the two front-​most homes are a storey taller than those in the rear, allowing Freud to keep all rooflines at the same height and thus achieve a stronger visual unity. The buildings are cubic, the exposed brick relieved with the occasional stone dressing, while the metal windows are framed by projecting layers of brick, features that recall the Frank country house (Lake Schwielow near Berlin, 1928–​30), the largest private home Freud designed during his Berlin and London years.33 Another reference to the Berlin-​Zehlendorf scheme is the manner with which, at the houses flanking the entrance into the cul-​de-​sac, the window-​cum-​brick bands on the first floor are pulled around the corner of the brick piers that rise above the thin, horizontally projecting entrance canopies.34

Figure 10.5.  Ernst L. Freud, Frognal Close townhouses, London, 1937–​1938, from The Architectural Review. Photo: Canadian Centre for Architecture. 33 Volker M. Welter, Ernst L. Freud und das Landhaus Frank: Ein Wohnhaus der Moderne bei Berlin (Berlin: Hentrich & Hentrich, 2014). 34 See Thomas S. Hines, Richard Neutra and the Search for Modern Architecture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 37.

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Vienna in London, Hiddensee in Walberswick References to German architecture are even detectable in Ernst and Lucie Freud’s townhouse in London and their weekend cottage in Walberswick, Suffolk, two existing buildings that Freud remodelled in 1935 and 1937, respectively. In case of the London home, these references, combined with citations of modern Austrian architecture, were primarily confined to the interior of the approximately 100-​year-​old terraced home on London’s St John’s Wood Terrace. At the same time, the house offered Freud an opportunity to define his ideas about modern architecture and interiors within the English and the exile context.35 The design focused mostly on the efficient use of space and limited economic means. Accordingly, Freud combined rooms into larger spaces that faintly echoed the suites of rooms of the family apartment in Berlin. He re-​installed family furniture imported from Berlin in an intricate three-​dimensional puzzle of built-​ in cupboards, wardrobes and storage cabinets wherever wall surface was available. Especially in the living room-​cum-​office, Freud’s intervention created the impression of a cube that was inserted into an existing space, thus recalling Loos’ idea of the interior as a space and a design task that were separate, even if not independent from the shell of a building. The installation of under-​ceiling heating panels increased the useable interior space,36 as this allowed for most existing fireplaces and chimney flutes to be removed. The interior exemplified Freud’s claim that the ‘idea of the house centred around the hearth was gone’; a statement made during a lecture on ‘Modern Architecture in England?’ earlier in 1935.37

35 Noel L. Carrington, ‘Ernst L. Freud. Interviewed at His New London House’, Decoration 7 (November 1937), 22–​5; Ernst L. Freud and H. Bright, ‘The Conquest of Space with the Aid of Electricity’, Good Housekeeping (October 1936), 60–​ 1, 104–​5. 36 Freud and Bright ‘The Conquest of Space’, 60–​1, 104–​5. 37 Letter Marshall McLuhan to Elise, Herbert and Maurice McLuhan, 27 February 1935 (M. Molinaro, C. McLuhan and W. Toye, eds, Letters of Marshall McLuhan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987)), 62–​3.

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During their time in Berlin, the Freuds owned one half of a holiday home on the island of Hiddensee, off Germany’s Pomeranian coast in the Baltic Sea. When they acquired an old cottage in Walberswick, Suffolk in 1937, they named it Hidden House, an alliteration evoking Hiddensee. Even the architectural changes that Freud made when refurbishing the cottage recall summer homes on Germany’s Baltic islands. Freud expanded the living room by adding a circular bay at one corner with a multi-​paned horizontal window that followed the curve of the extension (Figure 10.6). Together with the thatched roof, this modern bay window made the remodelled cottage reminiscent of modern 1920s cottages on the island of Hiddensee –​and on the neighbouring island of Rügen –​built by such architects as Harry Rosenthal (later another émigré in London) and Max Taut. In 1924, for example, Taut designed a summer house on Rügen for the Berlin interior architect Walter Pingel. The Pingel house featured a steep, thatched roof above a low-​lying cube with horizontal, multi-​paned corner windows and slightly projecting oriel windows that stretched around

Figure 10.6.  Ernst L. Freud, Freud cottage ‘Hidden House’, Walberswick, Suffolk, 1937, view of the added circular bay window. Photo: Volker M. Welter.

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the corners.38 Freud’s addition of a curved bay window to his Walberswick cottage reads almost like a comment on Taut’s design. From the outset of his work in England, Freud also actively sought to link his architecture with English architectural traditions. For reasons of space, the music room at Pine House, Churt, Surrey (1936) has to suffice as an example of this aspect of Freud’s early exile architecture. The room is a stand-​alone addition to an existing country house. The silhouette of a brick volume underneath a hipped roof recalls the Marx house, the serene garden façade of alternating slender piers and five tall and narrow windows faintly echoes the Kings Gallery (1695–​6) at Kensington Palace. More recently, the building has also been compared to contemporary Neo-​Georgian architecture.39 For the interior, Freud combined diverse design elements such as wooden sideboard, designed by himself and built by Ian Henderson, a travertine room divider with an integrated fireplace, deep club chairs, bronze light fittings with silk shades, wallpaper made from Japanese grass cloth, and rugs by Marion Dorn. The resulting room appears elegant and comfortable while transcending any singular reference point in modern German or Austrian architecture, or in English architectural traditions. Freud’s architectural practice in England never reached the volume of his work in Berlin, and even his detached single houses in and around London were much smaller in scope than many of his German commissions. But Freud could at least work as a self-​employed architect until the outbreak of the Second World War. During the war, his practice suffered –​ as did every architect’s office. When Great Britain subsequently embarked on creating a social welfare state including large social housing projects, Freud’s expertise of individual domestic designs was increasingly out of sync with the architectural demands of the time. Accordingly, his architectural career gradually slowed until its end in the 1960s.

38 Manfred Faust, Das Capri von Pommern. Geschichte der Insel Hiddensee von den Anfängen bis 1990 (Rostock: Ingo Koch Verlag, 2001), 177. 39 Powers, ‘Refugees from Nazi Europe’, 46.

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Freud in German architectural history Once Freud was in exile, knowledge about his successful architectural practice in Weimar Berlin quickly faded. Architecture guides published in West Berlin occasionally recorded a selection of his buildings, though without showing any further awareness of the architect.40 Literature published in East Germany ascribed Freud’s aforementioned Frank country house –​commissioned by a Jewish manager of Deutsche Bank–​to either Henry van de Velde or even to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.41 It was only in the early 1990s that architectural historians from former West Berlin rediscovered Freud’s architecture, most notably the journalist Lily Thurn und Taxis. She not only pointed out that Freud was the architect of Frank house, but also that this identification was not all that difficult, as lists of his architecture had been published in the 1920s.42 In recent German literature, references to Freud’s Weimar Republic œuvre appear with increasing regularity. Usually however, his works are discussed as illustrating a teleological search for true modernist architecture.43 Thus 40 For example, Rolf Rave and Hans-​Joachim Knöfel, Bauen seit 1900 in Berlin [1968], 4th edition (Berlin: Verlag Kiepert, 1983). 41 For Van de Velde see Institut für Denkmalpflege, ed., Die Bau-​und Kunstdenkmale in der DRR –​Bezirk Potsdam (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1978, 270; for Mies van der Rohe see Rat des Kreises Potsdam, ed., Denkmäler im Kreis Potsdam (Potsdam: Rat des Kreises Potsdam, 1985)), 18. See also above note 33. 42 Lilly Thurn und Taxis, ‘Rätsel um das Haus am Schwielowsee. Eine Villa der Moderne im Wechsel der Zeit’, Die Tageszeitung, 13 November 1991. For an early list of Freud’s works see: E. M. Hajos und L. Zahn, Berliner Architektur der Nachkriegszeit (Berlin: Albertus-​Verlag, 1928), 113. In the early 1990s I researched the architectural history of the country house for a feasibility study conducted by Dipl.-​Ing. Architekt Christoph Fischer, Berlin in preparation of a restoration of the building. [Volker M. Welter, Bauhistorisches Gutachen zum Landhaus Frank in Geltow (Berlin, 1992)]. 43 For example, Barbara Ingeweyen, ‘Villa Frank and Park in Geltow Near Potsdam, Built by Ernst Ludwig [sic] Freud’, in Lars Scharnholz, ed., From Luckenwalde to Löbau: The Unknown Modernism (Berlin: Philo & Philo Fine Arts, 2004), 14–​19. Also, Ulrich Borgert, ‘Villa Frank in Geltow: Ein Bau des Architekten Ernst Ludwig [sic] Freud’, in Brandenburgisches Landesamt für Denkmalpflege, ed., Modernes

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while Freud and a selection of his bourgeois clients are finally being acknowledged, they are still being denied the recognition that at the heart of their design and building activities was the pursuit of a home, not of a style, and certainly not of architectural modernism.

Exile, emigration and architecture: The case of freud Exile has two distinct, though closely related meanings for an émigré domestic architect such as Freud. The domestic architect is exiled both as a private individual and professionally as a designer who depends on people making a home. Read in this light, Adorno and Nietzsche’s critical references to architecture, interior design, buildings and dwellings constitute a contextual framework for the questions of whether and how an exiled domestic architect may continue to make a home for himself and, by designing houses, also for his clients. Except for the letter depicting the evening at Chermayeff ’s, the sense of pessimism in Adorno’s aphorism no. 18 is difficult to trace in Freud’s exile life, mostly because few personal letters and no diaries seem to exist that could tell about the stress or even despair the exile may have caused Freud. However, the same aphorism’s indecisive oscillation on deciding whether an émigré can create and make a home or not within highly adverse circumstances sheds light on Freud’s constant back and forth between citing German, Austrian and English architectural influences in his early exile architecture. The citations are more than memories; they are efforts to decide, architecturally, in which country or city home may be. The Pine House music room may, accordingly, be a first tipping point where, metaphorically speaking, any Adornoian doubt of Freud gives way to an emerging confidence, comparable perhaps to Nietzsche’s citizen of Bauen zwischen 1918–​1933: Bauten im Land Brandenburg und ihre Erhaltung (Potsdam: Potsdamer Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1999), 60–​7; Klemens Klemmer, Jüdische Baumeister in Deutschland: Architektur vor der Shoah (Stuttgart: DVA, 1998), 144, 244.

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Genoa, that he can design a home rooted in one country while drawing on the world beyond. Flusser does not specifically refer to architecture, but his idea of a dialectical relationship between émigré and native is relevant for comprehending the dynamics of the impact which the Nazi refugees, including émigré architects, exerted on British culture and society at large.44 There is one important caveat however. When Freud and other architects fled from Germany and Austria to Britain, they did not find refuge in a country wholly unknown to them. Rather, they moved, in terms of architectural history, within the framework of an established exchange (if not competition) among British, German and Austrian architectural cultures. Architectural and design contacts among the countries hark back at least to the time of Prince Albert and the Great Exhibition of 1851 and found exemplary expression in Herman Muthesius’s The English House in the early twentieth century, to name just one instance especially relevant to Freud’s field of domestic architecture.45 Loos’ fascination with Anglo-​Saxon civilisation and architecture was another instance of this ongoing dialogue. Perhaps it is of little surprise then that Freud’s early domestic buildings in England often referenced modern German and Austrian architecture while aiming at new homes in a new home country for both their inhabitants and their architect.

Conclusion The discussion of a small selection of Freud’s English designs makes visible some patterns of when and how Freud referenced modern German architecture. In the case of émigré clients who knew the architect from 44 On this impact see, for example, Daniel Snowman, The Hitler Émigrés: The Cultural Impact on Britain of Refugees from Nazim (London: Chatto & Windus, 2002) and, more recently, Monica Bohm-​Duchen, Insiders Outsiders. 45 Hermann Muthesius, Das englische Haus: Entwicklung, Bedingungen, Anlage, Aufbau, Einrichtung und Innenraum, 3 vols (Berlin: Ernst Wasmuth Verlag, 1904–​5).

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Berlin, Freud’s designs evoked Berlin houses; the social background and cultural knowledge of the clients suggest that they may have recognised if not known outright the sources of inspirations. For English and (presumably) non-​émigré clients, such as the gentleman who commissioned the Frognal Close townhouses, the design inconspicuously blends into the surrounding contemporary English architecture, modern or not. Freud cites Berlin designs and urban schemes, references which, however, may have been lost on the client.46 This example inverts Freud’s practice of often borrowing details and inspirations from English domestic architecture when designing houses in Berlin. Finally, for English clients who were committed to architectural modernism, Freud conceived a distinctly modernist house, but it was modernism considered as a style rather than a principle.

46 Client information from Jeremy Gould, Modern Houses in Britain, 1919–​1939 (London: SAHGB, 1977), 49.

Ina Weinrautner

11 9, Carlton House Terrace: The German Embassy in London as Showcase for Nazi Ideology

In summer 1938, the landmark exhibition Twentieth Century German Art presented German avant-​g arde art to London audiences for the first time, a statement against Nazi cultural policy.1 This essay considers how, at the same time, the Third Reich presented itself to a British audience through its official representation, the German Embassy in London. Just as in Munich, where the slanderous exhibition Degenerate Art had been juxtaposed with the officially sanctioned Great German Art Exhibition, so in London too, two ideologically opposing positions of contemporary German culture came face to face. From September 1936 to May 1937, the German Embassy underwent a costly renovation commissioned by then-​Ambassador Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–​1946). As war approached, the Embassy was used to present the new Germany, as a strong economic power with high organisational and technological capabilities, and as a National Socialist state.

The Embassy at Carlton House Terrace and early reconstruction measures under Ambassador Leopold von Hoesch Between 1827 and 1833, court architect John Nash was commissioned to erect two apartment buildings on the site of the recently demolished 1

See Lucy Wasensteiner, The Twentieth Century German Art Exhibition: Answering Degenerate Art in 1930s London (New York: Routledge, 2018).

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Carlton House. The new Carlton House Terrace, which exists to this day, consists of two building complexes, each 140 m long, the western part comprising houses numbers 1–​9. Access to the properties is from Carlton Terrace. Open stairs connect this higher road with the lower Mall running along the rear. The south façade of the buildings faces the Mall and St James Park.2 From March 1849 until the end of the Second World War, the corner house at 9 Carlton House Terrace was first the seat of the Prussian legation, then of the German Embassy.3 While the Embassy and residence were initially housed at number 9 alone, number 8 Carlton House Terrace was additionally rented in 1925. The remilitarisation of Nazi Germany during the mid-​1930s had an immediate impact on the Embassy buildings in London. The increase in Embassy staff, with numerous new military, naval and air attachés, made a further spatial expansion necessary.4 Fortuitously, this coincided with an opportunity, when the neighbouring house at 7 Carlton House Terrace was offered for sale by the heirs of the former owner, the Duke of Marlborough. Due to the notorious shortage of foreign currency of the German Reich, it was decided not to purchase the house however, but rather to rent it for an annual sum of £1,200. The rental became effective from 1935, the rental costs being shared between the German ministries involved.5 Building work to combine the three Embassy buildings was now unavoidable. In January 1936 the German Ministry of Finance approved extraordinary repair costs for Carlton House Terrace, not to exceed the

2 3

4 5

Michael Mansbridge, John Nash: A Complete Catalogue (Oxford: Phaidon, 1991), 296–​7. A year later, in 1850, the house was put up for sale and bought by the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm IV. for 17,000 £. ‘In October 1876, the house was formally sold by the King of Prussia to the German Nation and became the property of the Foreign Office.’ Petra Krüger The Prussian Legation in London (ca. 2011) quoted from copies made available by the library of the Royal Society, London. With thanks to Rupert Baker. Document ref. R 128232, Politisches Archive (‘PA’), Auswärtiges Amt [German Foreign Office] (‘AA’), Berlin. The contract was meant to last until 1961. R 128232, PA AA, Berlin.

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maximum amount of 75,000 Reichsmarks.6 The alterations consisted primarily of three openings between houses 7 and 8 at basement, ground floor and first floor levels, the installation of a central heating system for 7 Carlton House Terrace, an overhaul of the elevator systems and paint work in both houses.7 Most of the work had been completed by July 1936, on schedule, and –​with a total cost of RM 73,732.52 –​under budget.8 Leopold von Hoesch did not enjoy the benefits of these reconstructions, however. He died unexpectedly in London on 10 April 1936, after less than four years as Ambassador.

Paradigm shift: The conversion work under Ribbentrop When Joachim von Ribbentrop was appointed ‘Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador of the German Reich’ on 10 August 1936, the structural situation at the Embassy was generally good. The shortage of office space had been solved by the rental of 7 Carlton House Terrace. The unpleasant construction measures that interfered with the operation of the Embassy during early 1936 had just been completed. And –​ as a courtesy to von Hoesch’s successor –​the interior decoration of the Ambassador’s office had been left open, to suit the tastes and needs of the new appointment.9 However, neither the recently completed construction measures, nor his relatively short stay in London, would keep Ribbentrop from undertaking a complex and highly expensive reconstruction of the German 6 7 8 9

Reichminister der Finanzen, 13 November 1935. R 128232, PA AA, Berlin. Schedule of Structural Alterations and Specification of Decorative Work proposed to be executed at Nos: 7, & 8 Carlton House Terrace, Westminster, S.W.1. for the Chancellor of the German Embassy, December 1935. R 128232, PA AA, Berlin. R 128233, PA AA, Berlin. ‘Unvollendet geblieben ist lediglich der als Botschafterarbeitszimmer vorgesehene Raum, um dem neuen Botschafter die Möglichkeit zu geben, die Dekoration seinen Wünschen entsprechend ausführen zu lassen‘. Von Bismarck to Auswärtiges Amt Berlin, 23 July 1936, R 128233, PA AA, Berlin.

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Embassy during his time as Ambassador.10 Only two weeks after his appointment in August 1936, Ribbentrop received the first architectural plans for renovations of the Embassy from Albert Speer’s office in Berlin. Three weeks later, on 21 September 1936, the Office of Commissioners of Crown Lands communicated their permission for structural alterations at 7, 8 and 9 Carlton House Terrace. Just four days after this, on 25 September 1936, Ribbentrop’s Embassy received more than thirty pages of detailed plans from the British architect A. L. Abbott.11 It was not until this date, however, that the German Foreign Office in Berlin was informed of Ribbentrop’s plans. As Foreign Minister Konstantin von Neurath wrote directly to Ribbentrop on 26 September 1936: ‘I have been informed of the intention to carry out major alterations to the buildings of the German Embassy in London […] The Foreign Office has no funds available for a major reconstruction of the Embassy in London.’12 Ribbentrop was unimpressed. His confident reply to von Neurath –​ his clear superior –​was dated 30 September: ‘[…] since my appointment as German Ambassador to London, I have […] examined the question of the spatial design of the German Embassy and have come to the conclusion that a conversion inside the building is necessary.’13 Ribbentrop argued threefold for the continuation of his plans. First, Adolf Hitler himself had approved the reconstruction. Secondly, the main architect of the Reich, Albert Speer, was already busy with the planning. And thirdly, the necessary money would come from a special fund –​not specified in detail. As Ribbentrop’s letter set out:

10 Ribbentrop was notorious for spending much of his term of office in Berlin instead of London. See also: Douglas Glen, Von Ribbentrop Is Still Dangerous (London: Rich & Cowan, 1941), 144. 11 Albert Speer as well as representatives of the Vereinigte Werkstätten (‘VW’) met with the Ambassadors’s wife, Annelies von Ribbentrop from 25–​31 August 1936 in London. VW an AA, 19 January 1937, R 128856, PA AA, Berlin. Regarding the Abbott plans, R 128854, PA AA, Berlin. 12 K. v. Neurath to J. v. Ribbentrop, Berlin, 26 September 1936, R 128233, PA AA, Berlin, author’s translation. 13 J. v. Ribbentrop an K. v. Neurath, 30 September 1936, R 128233, PA AA, Berlin, author’s translation.

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As far as the costs of the conversion are concerned, they will be covered by a special fund without the budget of the Federal Foreign Office being burdened. The Führer and Chancellor of the Reich gave his consent to the restructuring some time ago. The plans are currently being submitted to him by the architect Speer, who is in charge of the conversion. […] I suppose I may assume that unless I hear otherwise from you, you agree.14

Ribbentrop’s dismissal of the Foreign Ministry’s concerns shows his power as a party functionary. Clearly, the Ambassador did not see himself bound by the Foreign Minister’s instructions, but felt subordinate to Hitler alone. The German Foreign Office gave way to Ribbentrop. Until the spring of 1937 however, the administration struggled tenaciously with questions of how high the costs could be estimated, where exactly the funds would come from, and whether future costs may arise if the English Crown –​as owner of the properties –​should later demand construction measures be revoked. Cleary, the German Foreign Office found themselves in unchartered waters, a fact made clear when we compare Ribbentrop’s actions with the standard procedures under Leopold von Hoesch. Hoesch had been made to enter into extensive correspondence with the Foreign Office to justify even small purchases: in a two-​page letter of November 1933, for example, we see the Ambassador personally requesting the installation of two kitchen sinks, and providing detailed reasons. By May 1934 the sinks had still not been installed.15

A conversion without limits Ribbentrop’s renovations soon developed into a project of unprecedented proportions. Though the listed facade of Carlton House Terrace was not touched by the work, inside barely a stone was left unturned. 14 J. v. Ribbentrop an K. v. Neurath, 30 September 1936, R 128233, PA AA, Berlin, author’s translation. 15 R 128232, PA AA, Berlin.

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The conversion essentially covered the three main floors, transforming the three formerly separate houses into one coherent unit. In their edition of 31 January 1937, The Sunday Times described the work: A comprehensive scheme for rebuilding the interior of the German Embassy will transform three of the finest houses of Carlton House Terrace into an epitome of contemporary German Art […] All had rich interiors, with decorated panels, ceilings, staircases, and fireplaces from the Nash period […] To-​day, with the permission of the Commissioners of Crown Lands […], much of the rich decoration is being ripped away to transform the three houses into one for Herr von Ribbentrop who will then have the finest suites of reception-​rooms of any diplomat in London. […] A few of the fireplaces, frescoes, and other decorative features have been saved in the interior demolition […] Three fireplaces are incorporated in the new designs, while two have been packed in cases and stored in the basements […]. Permission was refused for some of the magnificent ceilings to be pulled down, and instead they have been boxed in, a procedure which has lowered the height of the rooms by about three feet. […] In place of the moulded cornices, which were a feature of these Nash rooms, the joins between the walls and ceilings are marked by horizontal bands of plaster, and smooth plain surfaces are left where once were ornamental scroll and other detailed panelling on the walls.16

The conversion also included a change in the concept of use. The representative rooms, previously spread over two floors, were now completely relocated to the ground floor of 7–​9 Carlton House Terrace. To affect these changes, together with an expansion of the Ambassador’s private rooms, office space in the Embassy had to be reduced, an astonishing fact given the initial impetus for the renovation works under Leopold van Hoesch.17

16 17

Anon., ‘Rebuilding the German Embassy’, The Sunday Times (31 January 1937), R 128233, PA AA Berlin. ‘Der Architekt fand eine außerordentlich glückliche Lösung in der Zusammenfassung der Räume des Erdgeschosses zu einem Kranz aufeinanderfolgender Räume, die vor allem gesellschaftlichen Zwecken dienen‘. Report Regierungsbaurat Listmann, R128233, PA AA Berlin. Listmann is to clarify in a second business trip which official residences have been omitted and to what extent (in square meters) the Ambassador’s private rooms have increased. R 128233, PA AA, Berlin.

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‘A House […] Designed Entirely out of the Spirit of our New Germany’18 The interior design in use under Ambassador Hoesch had very much followed traditional schemes of state representation. Apart from being ‘representational’ there was no uniform style concept nor a focus on a particular historical period for furniture and fittings, as Ambassador v. Hoesch remarked in a letter to Berlin.19 The richly ornamented walls of the Nash period thus provided a lavish setting for a range of period furniture of varying qualities and old master paintings as evidenced in photographs of the Embassy published in Der Silberspiegel. As a friendly tribute to the host country a painting from British history by the Scottish artist John Pettie –​Edward VI Signing his First Death Warrant of 1879 –​had prominently been placed in one of the main reception rooms (Figure 11.1).20 With Ribbentrop in place, not was only John Pettie’s history painting removed as ‘dispensable’,21 but the whole interior underwent a complete redesign. Now, the period furniture was to be exchanged for contemporary pieces. The interior of Ribbentrop’s Embassy was completely redesigned according to a uniform, all-​encompassing concept. This large-​scale commission went to the Munich-​based Vereinigte Werkstätten für Kunst im Handwerk [United Workshops for Art in Crafts] (hereafter ‘Vereinigte Werkstätten’). Founded in 1898 its rich programme included not only furniture but also textiles and arts and crafts. Wilhelm Lotz, ‘Deutsche Kunst in der deutschen Botschaft in London‘, Schönes Heim, vol. 8, part 12 (September 1937), 354. 19 L. v. Hoesch an Pannwitz, 21.01.1935, London 1434, PAA AA Berlin. 20 The art inventory also mentions a “Judith” by Guido Reni. See London 1434, PA AA, Berlin. Illustration see Der Silberspiegel, No. 13 (3rd March 1936), 190. Der Silberspiegel, formerly Sport im Bild was an entertainment magazine as the self-​ description ‘The beautiful magazine for fashion and the beautiful things in life’ underlines. 2 1 ‘List of paintings that have become dispensable at the German Embassy in London’ see London 1434, PA AA Berlin. 18

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Figure 11.1.  Interior of the German Embassy before the remodelling showing an array of period furniture. The caption reading: ‘The staircase in the building of the German Embassy in London’ and ‘The red room, a room in the flight of public rooms’. Photo: published in Der Silberspiegel (March 1936). Copyright: bpk/​Hilmar Pabel.

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Paul Ludwig Troost, one of the leading German interior designers of the 1910s and 1920s, was closely connected with the Vereinigte Werkstätten. From 1930, Troost was Hitler’s key advisor on artistic-​political matters, later serving as his chief architect. Indeed, even after his death in 1934, Troost’s ideas continued to have a major influence on state architecture and interior design in the Third Reich. Troost‘s blueprints provided the basis for Hitler‘s apartment at the Old Reich Chancellery in Berlin (1933), and for Hitler’s Berghof residence on the Obersalzberg (1935), both furnished by the Vereinigte Werkstätten. With these and further commissions –​like furniture for the New Reich Chancellery, for the Foreign Ministry in Berlin and for Hitler’s partner Eva Braun –​the Vereinigte Werkstätten were gradually evolving into a ‘production plant of furniture for the representatives of the Third Reich’.22 So, when Ribbentrop asked Albert Speer,23 Troost’s successor as Hitler’s chief architect, for architectural plans, and commissioned Vereinigte Werkstätten with the furniture, he was clearly in line with the aesthetic preferences of Nazi regime. The 1937 Carlton House Terrace interior has not survived as an ensemble. However, the Ribbentrop project lives on in an elaborate leather-​ bound photo album, its cover bearing the Nazi insignia, comprising fifty-​three black and white photographs of the property following the completion of the work.24 The album –​probably a unique piece –​derives its impact solely from the large-​format photographs. There is no 22 Sonja Günther, Design der Macht: Möbel für epräsentanten des ‘Dritten Reiches‘ (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlangs-​Anstalt, 1992), 9. 23 In a letter to Sonja Günther from 1974 Albert Speer states that he was hardly involved in the planning. Günther, Design der Macht, 46. According to the documents in the PA AA, however, Speer was indeed involved, traveling to London and Munich, receiving correspondence like cost estimation and being asked to authorise the planning. Albert Speer, as stated in articles of that time, seems to have overseen the project as leading architect, while architect Carl Piepenburg supervised the construction. Architect Hans Rußwurm of Vereinigte Werkstätten was in charge of the furnishing. See R 128856, PA AA, Berlin. 24 Deutsche Botschaft, London 1937, album with interior views of the German Embassy in London following the 1937 renovations, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington DC (hereafter ‘Album Deutsche Botschaft London 1937’).

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explanatory text, only brief descriptions of the individual photos such as ‘music room’; if outstanding objects appear in a picture, the name of the artist is mentioned. An editor is not named, nor is the photographer; he can however be identified from contemporary press responses as Hugo Schmölz.25 Confiscated by US military authorities in 1945/​46, the album is now housed in the Library of Congress in Washington.26 This album, together with the archives of the Foreign Office in Berlin and those of the Vereinigte Werkstätten, allow us to piece together the form of the Ribbentrop renovations, and how they were organised.

A showcase of German craftsmanship For Ribbentrop’s Embassy, every armchair, table, sofa and chest was made to measure. Some 223 design plans and 58 material samples for the London project survive in the archives, together with detailed invoices for each item.27 All the furnishings –​from the representative rooms, the 25

Hugo Schmölz (1879–​1938) is credited as photographer in an article by Wilhelm Lotz on the German Embassy in London in Moderne Bauformen, 1938. Wilhelm Lotz, ‘Die deutsche Botschaft in London‘, Moderne Bauformen, vol. XXXVII (1938), 345–​55, 345. Hugo Schmölz (1879–​1938) had his studio in Cologne and was specialised in architectural photography. His last commissions, executed with the help of his son Karl-​Hugo in autumn 1937, were series of photographs of both the German Embassy in London and the ‘German House’ at the Paris world exhibition. Karl-​ Hugo Schmölz and Rolf Sachsse, Hugo Schmölz. Fotografierte Architektur 1924–​1937 (Munich: Mahnert-​Lueg Verlag, 1982), XXV. 26 Deutsche Botschaft, London 1937, views of the German embassy in London, a John Nash building from 1826 for which Albert Speer designed the interior renovations and the Vereinigte Werkstätten designed the furnishings, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington DC. It is unclear for whom this album was made. However, as Hitler was involved from the beginning, the album may have possibly been produced to present the project to the ‘Führer’. In a similarly elaborate manner, the paintings of the so-​called ‘Linz collection’ were presented to Hitler in bound photo albums. 2 7 Sonja Günther, Vereinigte Werkstätten für Kunst im Handwerk. Archivbestände, catalogues I-​III (Munich: self-​published, 1974–​6), 13–​33. As of July 2019, the

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dining hall, reception and music room, the offices and the conference room to the Ambassador’s private dwellings and rooms for employees and servants –​were produced by the Vereinigte Werkstätten. Alongside the furniture, lamps, mirrors, curtains and carpets were also delivered by the Munich firm. Nymphenburg porcelain, gold and silverware by Emil Lettré and enamelwork from the art school Burg Giebichenstein in Halle completed the new ensemble. At least eighteen railway wagons filled with furnishings were sent from Germany to London.28 To complete the commission quickly and efficiently, the Vereinigte Werkstätten made use of existing samples from their extensive furniture collection. Many of Paul Troost’s designs were rebuilt or modified for the London Embassy.29 In lengthy correspondence between the architect Hans Rußwurm30 and the Ambassador’s wife Annelies von Ribbentrop, colours and fabrics were selected, including the armchair upholstery with woven swastika motif for the library or the music room. The work was executed in amazingly short time. All in all, it took nine months from the first planning to completion. In various letters, the Vereinigte Werkstätten describe their working pressure: We are perfectly aware of how important it is for you to have these things there on time on 3 May. However, it is technically impossible to produce such high-​quality work […] in only 4 weeks. By working overtime and on Sundays the completion of the furniture can only be promoted to a limited extent, because the most important thing is that the individual parts can be sufficiently maintained and dried during the processing.31

archive of Vereinigte Werkstätten, owned by Amira Verwaltungs AG Munich, is not accessible. For the invoices see R 128856, PA AA, Berlin. 28 This 18th transport is dated 15 April 1937. R 128856, PA AA, Berlin. 29 Günther, Design der Macht, 18. 30 The architect Hans Rußwurm (1878–​?) worked from 1919 to 1927 in Troost’s studio before moving to the Vereinigte Werkstätten für Kunst im Handwerk. According to Timo Nüßlein, Rußwurm became ‘chief architect’ for the Vereinigte Werkstätten with own designs based on Troost’s ideas. Timo Nüßlein, Paul Ludwig Troost (1878–​1934) (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2012), 256. 31 VW an J. v. Ribbentrop, 10 April 1937, in: R 128856, PA AA, Berlin, author’s translation.

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In addition to British craftsmen, approximately 150 German skilled workers –​among them parquet and tile layers, stucco plasterers, electricians, painters and carpenters –​were brought to England for the project. This fact was not only commented on in the British press, but also prompted discussion in the House of Commons. In January 1937, George Hicks, Labour Member of Parliament for Woolwich East, asked Home Secretary Sir John Simon ‘[…] whether plastering and whitewashing [have] now become part of the German Diplomatic Service?’.32 He inquired again in February 1937, ‘Is it not possible for us to have some information why these 150 building trade operatives were brought into this country when there are any number of men capable of doing the same class of work at the Employment Exchanges?’33 Why German workers, indeed? Hiring German craftsmen certainly helped to save scarce foreign currency.34 However, there seems to be more than just sober economic sense behind this decision. ‘The Germans are mostly young […], and wear white overalls and peaked forage caps […]’,35 as a journalist in The Sunday Times described their uniform appearance. A photograph of a group of these German craftsmen in London was published in a German newspaper, with the caption ‘for the renovations at the Germany Embassy in London, eighty Germany specialist workers have arrived in London’36 (Figure 11.2). The group of young Germans, with their Hansard, HC, Oral Answers to Questions, vol. 319, col. 42, 28 January 1937, ‘German Embassy (Repairs, London)’, available at: , ­accessed 22 August 2019. 33 Hansard, HC, Oral Answers to Questions, vol. 319, col. 27, 4 February 1937, ‘German Embassy (Repairs, London)’, available at: , accessed 22 August 2019. 34 R 128854, PA AA, Berlin; Stefan Scheil, Ribbentrop. Oder: Die Verlockung des nationalen Aufbruchs. Eine politische Biographie (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot Verlag, 2013), 82. 3 5 Anon, ‘Rebuildung the German Embassy’, The Sunday Times (31 January 1937), R 128233, PA AA Berlin. 36 ‘Zur Durchführung von Umbauarbeiten an der Deutschen Botschaft in London sind achtzig deutsche Spezialarbeiter in London eingetroffen‘, Unknown German newspaper, photograph of the workers on the German Embassy renovation project, c. early 1937, cutting from PA AA R 128233. 32

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Figure 11.2.  Up to 150 German skilled workers arrived in London to carry out the renovation of the German Embassy. In the streets of London they were easily recognisable by their typical work clothes. Unknown German newspaper, c. 1937, cutting from the Politisches Archiv Auswärtiges Amt Berlin, R 128233.

matching attire, appear visibly staged as irreplaceable specialists, a London demonstration of a self-​confident and skilled German work force.

Inside the German Embassy How did the new German Embassy present itself ?37 Immediately upon entering, National Socialist style elements were particularly evident. The entrance hall (Figure 11.3) had been transformed to a vast space, twelve

37

This essay shall contain only brief descriptions of the rooms’ essential features, as an in-​depth analysis of the furnishing concept is still pending (and beyond the scope of this text).

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Figure 11.3.  German Embassy, London, entrance hall, 1937. In the entrance hall, immediately upon entering the renovated Embassy, the austere National Socialist aesthetic was particularly palpable. The furniture was based on designs by Paul Troost, the bust of Adolf Hitler is by Josef Thorak. Deutsche Botschaft, London 1937, album with interior views of the German Embassy in London following the 1937 renovations, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington DC (hereafter ‘Album Deutsche Botschaft London 1937’). Photo: Hugo Schmölz.

metres long and seven metres wide, gained by merging a series of smaller rooms. Instead of lavish stucco decorations, plain limestone blocks prevailed. An idealised bust of Adolf Hitler on a high pedestal by Nazi sculptor Josef Thorak made the ideological position of the Nazi Germany unmistakably clear. Origin became an issue: not only design, but also material was supposed to be German. Therefore (and again to save foreign currency) the stones for both walls and flooring had been shipped from Germany. The furniture was modelled on designs by Paul Troost, as noted above Hitler’s favourite architect and designer. The austere design of the entrance hall was not continued in the adjoining reception and living areas, however. These rooms present a different aesthetic, recalling the showy ‘Steam Liner Style’ that Troost was

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Figure 11.4.  German Embassy, London, living room with view through the dining room and anteroom into the library, 1937. With fireplace, lamp and tables by Paul Troost; seating by Hans Rußwurm; sculpture by Georg Kolbe; paintings by (among others) Arnold Böcklin loan from the Kronprinzenpalais Museum in Berlin; porcelain by Paul Scheurich, Meissen; gold cup by Emil Lettré. Album Deutsche Botschaft London 1937. Photo: Hugo Schmölz.

famous for.38 The sequence of representational rooms running through all the three houses on the first floor created long, dramatic vistas. Soft upholstered furniture dominated the living rooms. Sophisticated, individually manufactured pieces, valuable materials and a coordinated colour scheme39 evoked a bourgeois elegance (Figure 11.4). 38 Sonja Günther, Vereinigte Werkstätten für Kunst im Handwerk München. Archivbestände, catalogue III ‘Interieurs auf Luxusschiffen aus den Vereinigten Werkstätten für Kunst im Handwerk‘ (Munich: self-​published, 1976). Nüßlein, Paul Ludwig Troost, 63–​5. Here also a critical analysis of the term ‘Dampferstil’ (steam liner style), that was coined to describe those interiors. 39 Art critic Lotz dwells extensively on the colour scheme of fabrics, carpets, curtains etc. Wilhelm Lotz, ‘Die deutsche Botschaft in London‘, Moderne Bauformen, vol. XXXVII (1938), 345–​55; Wilhelm Lotz ‘Deutsche Kunst in der deutschen Botschaft in London‘, Das schöne Heim, vol. 12 (September 1937), 353–​64.

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The high quality craftsmanship in interior design is particularly striking in these spaces. The chest in the living rooms, for example, display intricately crafted inlays with a trompe-​l’oeil motif referring to models from art history. The parquet floor is worked in a similarly sophisticated craftsmanship, but here with the swastika motif of the Nazi state (Figure 11.5).40 Further swastika motives were woven into the fabrics for armchairs and piano stool. The rooms of the servants and employees were much simpler, yet still designed in accordance with the overall concept of the Vereinigte

Figure 11.5.  Outstanding craftsmanship was of great importance. The inlays in tromp-​ l’oeil technique on the chest quote historical models known from the Renaissance, whereas the swastika motif on the parquet provokes with its explicit statement to Nazi ideology. German Embassy, London, 1937. Album Deutsche Botschaft London 1937. Photo: Hugo Schmölz. 40 Thanks to Rupert Baker, librarian at the Royal Society, London, a collection of photo copies and newspaper clippings concerning the Royal Society was made accessible. Judging from a photocopy there the parquet designed by Bembé, Bad Mergentheim, is still in situ.

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Figure 11.6.  The new overall design was not limited to the public spaces alone. The entire Embassy was uniformly refurnished, even the rooms for the employees. German Embassy, London, maid’s bedroom, 1937. Album Deutsche Botschaft London 1937. Photo: Hugo Schmölz.

Werkstätten. Wooden series production such as the bedroom model ‘Grete’ or the dining room model ‘Heidelberg’ were used in these spaces (see, for example, Figure 11.6). According to the German art critic Wilhelm Lotz, this unified concept placed the Carlton House Terrace development firmly within the context of National Socialist ideology. As he wrote in the journal Das Schöne Heim in September 1937: It is precisely the close connection of our present-​day state, ethnic artistic life that raises the question of whether an Embassy or legation in a foreign country cannot be an image of this whole unified German life, an organism that shows German imprint in everything that goes on there and state: expresses itself in forms and in visible design.41 41

Wilhelm Lotz, ‘Deutsche Kunst in der deutschen Botschaft in London‘, Das schöne Heim, vol. 12 (September 1937), 353–​64, 353, author’s translation.

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Though the incorporation of decorative swastika motifs and ‘Führer’ portraits indicate clearly the political position of the new Nazi state, there was no clearly defined National Socialist style of furnishing evident in the Ribbentrop Embassy, the Vereinigte Werkstätten drawing on a repertoire of already-​existing forms. Troost’s furniture made use of historical references, for e­ xample –​as illustrated by the wardrobe and armchairs in the entrance hall (Figure 11.3) –​at the same time, modern technology was undeniably present, and also considered worthy of publication in the album (Figure 11.7). What is perhaps most interesting is what is absent: contemporary avant-​garde furniture such as tubular steel

Figure 11.7.  The technical equipment of the Embassy, as here in the kitchen, was state-​ of-​the-​art. German Embassy, London, electric kitchen, 1937. Album Deutsche Botschaft London 1937. Photo: Hugo Schmölz.

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chairs, glass tables or chrome racks as designed by Bauhaus disciples are nowhere to be found.

The Cost of Ribbentrop’s Embassy In the end, the remodelling of the Germany Embassy in London was not subject to any planned budget management. Not only did Ribbentrop insist that the costs for the conversion be covered by a secret account,42 the sums involved seem also to be excluded from the annual reports of Vereinigte Werkstätten for the 1937 fiscal year.43 The costs were indeed immense, however. While the Hoesch renovations had cost just under RM 74,000 (and thus remained within the approved budget), the final bill for Ribbentrop’s stood, as of 3 November 1937, at RM 2,198,128.99, almost thirty times more than Hoesch’s expenditure. The total costs were divided between RM 1,436,810.47 for the building works and RM 761,318.52 for the furnishings.44

Two parallel shows of German art ‘When finished the transformed Embassy will be an epitome of contemporary German art’45 a journalist in The Sunday Times predicted. Indeed, 42 10 November 1936 ‘Der Botschafter wünscht, dass die Kosten für den Umbau der Londoner Botschaft von einem Sonderkonto (Geheimkonto) der Adjutantur bestritten werden‘. R 128854, PA AA, Berlin. 43 Annual Report and Balance sheet of the Vereinigte Werkstätten, 31.12.1937, available via the ZBW –​Leibnitz-​ Informationszentrum Wirtschaft, digitilisation project ‘Retrospektive Digitalisierung von historischen Presseartikeln auf Papier, Rollfilmen und Mikrofische der Archive des HWWA und des Wirtschaftsarchives des If W‘, ‘Firmenarchiv‘, available at: , accessed 25 September 2019. 44 R 101299, PA AA, Berlin. 45 Anon., ‘Rebuilding the German Embassy’, The Sunday Times (31 January 1937). R 128233, PA AA Berlin.

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the new decorations of the German Embassy not only provided a large-​ scale overview of current German handicraft production. In addition to the furniture, around 150 paintings and sculptures by historical and contemporary German artists had been sent to London for display in the Embassy, loaned from a number of German museums.46 But who had access to this very special German arts and crafts show in London? A public exhibition such as the 1938 show of Twentieth Century German Art would have –​in principle –​been open to everyone. The rooms of an Embassy in contrast are reserved for exclusive use. Entry is not possible with the simple purchase of a ticket, but by invitation only. Nonetheless, the German Embassy of 1937 was guaranteed a significant public impact. One day after the coronation ceremony of King George VI on 13 May 1937, the German Embassy was inaugurated with an event for 1,400 guests. Ribbentrop’s complete guest list was published in The Times: anybody who was anybody was present.47 As Douglas Glen later described in his 1940 pamphlet on the threat posed by Ribbentrop: He gave a great house-​warming party in May in honour of the German delegation to the Coronation, the invitation for which, written in German, intimated that ‘der Herzog und die Herzogin von Kent’ [The Duke and Duchess of Kent] had consented to be present. Close upon a thousand guests were there, but so spacious were the reception-​rooms that there was no overcrowding. The brilliance of the assemblage, the uniforms, and the display of military and diplomatic orders, made the affair the most picturesque diplomatic function seen in London for over twenty years.48

The size of the rooms and the crowds they could accommodate apparently prompted some of Ribbentrop’s colleagues in Berlin to refer to the

46 Anon., ‘Ein deutsches Haus im fremden Land. Die deutsche Botschaft in London‘, Völkischer Beobachter (19 May 1937). R 128233, PA AA, Berlin. 47 Reproduced in The Times (14 May 1937), 15. Writing in 1954, Annelies von Ribbentrop mentions 1,400 guests, which does not seem exaggerated, as The Times of 14 May 1937 lists more than 1,000 guests by name ‘in addition to many members of the Diplomatic Corps’. Annelies von Ribbentrop, ed., Zwischen London und Moskau. Joachim von Ribbentrop, Erinnerungen und letzte Aufzeichnungen (Leoni am Starnberger See: Druffel-​Verlag, 1954), 107. 48 Glen, Von Ribbentrop Is Still Dangerous, 151.

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London Embassy as ‘Frankfurt Central Station’.49 However, unlike at a train station, the crowd at Ribbentrop’s was not randomly assembled. The extravagant NS propaganda machine had found its target group, and the elaborate, brand new interior certainly did not go unnoticed. Numerous magazine articles reported on the renovations, some with rich illustrations, such as in Die Woche, Moderne Bauformen, Illustrierte Zeitung, Die Kunst or Das schöne Heim. The public relations exercise seems to have been successful. Even a school class from the city of Bremen a class trip in London asked for a viewing appointment.50

The German Embassy in London as a Beacon Project of the Nazi state As critic Wilhelm Lotz observed in the journal Moderne Bauformen in 1938, ‘the idea of transforming this important diplomatic representation into a visible expression of German culture with the help of exquisite German work was strongly supported by the Führer’.51 Indeed, the new German Embassy was far more than just a representative setting for diplomatic receptions. It was monumental piece of propaganda for the National Socialist state. The bust of Hitler in the entrance area demonstrated the new German Führer cult to all visitors, and the swastika motifs may also have been an ‘eye-​catcher’. However, these obvious Nazi emblems played only one part in a many-​voiced orchestration of the Nazi state. The permeation of the German Embassy with National Socialist ideology was more far-​reaching 49 Paul Schwarz, This Man Ribbentrop. His Life and Times (New York: Messner, 1944), 201–​2. Paul Schwarz was German Consul General in New York. In 1933 he resigned in protest against Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor and remained in New York. 50 R 128233, PA AA, Berlin. 51 Wilhelm Lotz, ‘Die deutsche Botschaft in London‘, Moderne Bauformen, vol. XXXVII (1938), 345–​55, 346.

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and subtle, going far beyond a Hitler bust or the swastika patterns in the fabric and flooring. Ribbentrop’s costly planning high-​handedly overrode any democratic checks and balances. For the conversion of the German Embassy no permission was sought nor budget requested. Ribbentrop deliberately ignored the bureaucratic channels of the Foreign Ministry, which, with its codified administrative regulations, is bound by law. Thus the conversion of the German Embassy appears as the articulation of the totalitarian Führerprinzip, the ‘Führer Principle’ under which Adolf Hitler alone had supreme authority. Also, as recognised by contemporary German critics, the uniform design principle of the Embassy reflected the desired uniformity of a new National Socialist society. Furthermore, it is not so much a clearly defined ‘Nazi style’ but rather the production process that positions the Embassy’s interior design ideologically: German quality craftsmanship –​‘deutsche handwerkliche Wertarbeit’52 –​was of the essence as opposed to industrial production. Not only the design, but also the materials all came from Germany. And German workers were called in to perform this miracle of speed and quality work, or in other words: efficiency. Similar to the ‘German House’ at the Paris World Exhibition, which was completed at about the same time, the London Embassy was used as a showcase for ‘German’ qualities: such as high quality work, efficiency and contemporary German design at a key position abroad. With the interior of the London Embassy, the Nazi regime effectively displayed its political ideas of a authoritarian and uniform society, its high organisational and technological capabilities and demonstrates with the rich and costly interior of the reception rooms Germany’s aspirations to renewed ‘World Power’ status at the eve of the Second World War.53

5 2 53

Ibid., 355. See also Hermann Giesler ‘Symbol des Großdeutschen Reichs‘, in Albert Speer, Die Neue Reichskanzlei (Munich: Franz-​Eher-​Verlag, 1940), 10–​14, 14.

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Aftermath: ‘Nazi Trophies under the Hammer’54 In February 1938, after barley eighteen months as Ambassador to the Court of St James’s, Ribbentrop was appointed Foreign Minister to the German Reich. His successor in London was the diplomat Herbert von Dirksen. Dirksen held the office until September 1939 when British declaration of war on Nazi Germany ended diplomatic relations between the two countries. The German Embassy in Carlton House Terrace was at this point closed down, its contents entrusted to the Swiss legation.55 Following the end of the Second World War, in November 1945 the auction house Knight, Frank & Rutley,56 directed by the Ministry of Works, announced an ‘Important Sale by Auction of the Contents of the late German Embassy removed from Carlton House Terrace’.57 Several hundred objects were offered in three sessions between late November and early December 1945. As set out in the illustrated catalogue, these included furniture, chairs, tables, bookcases and cabinets produced by the Vereinigte Werkstätten, paintings, carpets and rugs, china, glass and silverware, kitchen utensils, cinematographs and even a shredding machine. Many buyers and bystanders were attracted to the sale. As reported in The Times: Most of the buyers were dealers and representatives of hotels, clubs, and restaurants. Admission was by catalogue, costing 10s., but even at this price the demand was so great that among the hundreds of people attending many had to stand, all the seats being occupied.58 54 Headline of a news feature for ‘Welt im Film’, 33/​1945 (28 December 1945), Bundesarchiv Koblenz, Filmothek. ‘Welt im Film’ was a news reel produced by the United States and British allied forces at Bavaria Studios Munich. 55 Inventory list: ‘Protokoll. Verhandelt in der Deutschen Botschaft in London am 4. September 1939‘, Bern 4466, PA AA, Berlin. 56 Today operating as Knight Frank. See the company history, available at: , accessed 22 August 2018. 57 Anon., ‘Knight, Frank & Rutley: By Direction of the Ministry of Works’, The Times (20 November 1945), 10. 58 Anon., ‘Contents of Former German Embassy’, The Times (27 November 1945), 2.

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The proceeds were high. When the sale price of £500 for a Hitler bust made headlines,59 public attention to the Nazi memorabilia on sale became more critical. Letters of complaint were sent to the editor of The Times;60 further objections were raised at the Ministry of Works.61 The British government reacted: a color print depicting Hitler and some paintings of Berchtesgaden were withdrawn,62 as were piece of silverware with swastika motifs.63 The auction fetched a total of £72,500,64 the money put towards reparation payments. Since then, the furnishings of Ribbentrop’s Embassy have remained scattered.

Volte-​face of history After having been confiscated and used by British government departments, in 1967 the buildings at Carlton House Terrace were leased to the Royal Society. Moving in to the property, the Society brought with them a very special painting: a portrait of Albert Einstein executed in 1925 by the German impressionist painter Max Liebermann. Both Einstein and Liebermann had faced persecution in National Socialist Germany; and in 1938, this portrait had been shown in London as a key exhibit in the

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‘£500 For A Hitler Bust. […] At the second day’s sale […] high prices were again paid. […] A bust of Hitler went for £500. Eleven German flags, four of which were designed to fly over conquered London, made, £313’. Anon., ‘£500 for a Hitler Bust’, The Times (28 November 1945), 6. The flag ‘London-​Mitte’ can be seen in the contribution ‘Nazi Trophies under the Hammer’ in the news programme ‘Die Welt im Film’, 28.12.1945, 28 December 1945, Bundesarchiv Koblenz, Filmothek. J. C. Stamp, ‘Letter to the Editor: A Bust of Hitler’, The Times (1 December 1945), 5. Anon., ‘House of Commons: German Embassy Sales’, The Times (4 December 1945), 2. Anon., ‘News in Brief ’, The Times (7 December 1945), 2. Anon., ‘German Embassy Sales: Silver with Nazi Emblem withdrawn’, The Times (11 December 1945), 8.

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Twentieth Century German Art exhibition.65 Given Einstein’s renown as a scientist, the art historian Herbert Read had approached Sir William Henry –​then-​director of the Royal Society –​to encourage the Society to acquire the portrait from the exhibition. This they did. Today the painting is still in the possession of the Royal Society. Hanging in the rooms of Carlton House Terrace, the work has found its home in the very building once so central to National Socialist propaganda in London.

Conclusion While the 1938 exhibition Twentieth Century German Art remains the largest exhibition of German modern art ever shown in Britain, it was not the only major display of German visual culture in 1930s London. Completed in the spring of 1937, the reconstruction of the German Embassy in London became a showcase of Nazi ideology at the heart of the British capital. At this crucial moment in UK-​G erman relations, the London Embassy was used to highlight ‘German’ qualities: such as quality work and efficiency. It was also used by the Nazi regime to effectively display its political ideas of an authoritarian and uniform society, with high organisational and technological capabilities, and budgets in accordance with a renewed ‘World Power’ status. Ribbentrop began the large-​scale project without any inherent necessity and without formal authorisation from the German Foreign Ministry –​instead claiming Hitler’s direct approval, and by referring to Hitler’s personal architect Albert Speer as artistic director. The ambition and expenditure of the project were immense –​the interior furnishings were completely redesigned according to a uniform concept, carried out by German skilled workers, with German materials and designers.

64

Ibid.

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Unlike a public exhibition, Ribbentrop’s project was intended to impress the British elite, who indeed came in great numbers to the inauguration in May 1937. Yet there was clearly a broader audience for the works, and a general British interest in the nature of the renovations. This is evidenced not only by the wide reporting in the local press during 1936 and 1937, but also be the response to the 1945 auction following the closure of the Embassy at Carlton House Terrace.

Dirk Schubert

12 Planning the Modern City: The Neighbourhood Unit Idea in London and Hamburg before and after the Second World War*

Licht, Luft und Sonne –​‘Light, fresh air and sun’ –​were popular concepts for architects and town planners during the inter-​war years. Decentralisation and the construction of neighbourhoods units became key ideas, seen as increasingly vital interventions into the dense and amorphous urban mass. Methods of restructuring large cities and the paradigms of modern planning were widely discussed at international conferences, for example, those of the ‘International Federation for Housing and Town Planning’, a network of town planners and reformers.1 After 1945, these ideas became urgent, with urban planners dreaming of ‘organising communities’, of neighbourhoods using bricks and mortar to create a better world. This essay traces the influence of these ideas in London and in Hamburg, highlighting their significance for both cities, and how British-​German exchanges were central to their development.

*

1

This is a revised version of an essay originally published in 2014 as Dirk Schubert, ‘Transatlantic Crossings of Planning Ideas: The Neighborhood Unit in the USA, UK and Germany’, in Jeffry M. Diefendorf and Janet Ward, eds, Transnationalism and the German City (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 141–​60. The name of the institution was ‘The International Garden Cities and Town Planning Association’ when it was founded in 1913, then in 1922 ‘International Garden Cities & Town Planning Federation’, in 1924 ’International Federation for Town & Country Planning and Garden Cities’ and in 1926 ’International Federation of Housing and Town Planning’. The conference reports offer a useful surveys of relevant topics discussed.

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Origins of the vision: Decentralisation and restructuring urban areas by neighbourhoods As industrializsation progressed during the mid-​nineteenth century, agrarian romanticism and urban hostility grew in tandem. Social scientists such as the German Ferdinand Tönnies began to speak of ‘losing one’s roots’, particularly in large cities, Tönnies drawing a distinction between Gemeinschaft [community] and Gesellschaft [society]. ‘Community’, according to Tönnies, was formed by blood ties, by neighbourhood and friendship, with social interaction based on the evaluation of advantages, disadvantages and the expectations of reward. It was however ‘society’ which dominated the post-​industrialisation period, as he wrote in 1887, ‘in large cities, that is in capitals and the metropolis, the family is in decay […] large cities typify society as such’.2 Tönnies’ ideas became highly influential worldwide, particularly in the development of the Settlement Movement. The American social reformer Robert A. Woods, for example, following a period living in a settlement in London’s East End, started similar settlements in Boston, thus taking Tönnies’ ideas to the United States.3 Settlements, neighbourhood guilds and similar concepts became increasingly popular around the turn of the century, organising social life within small districts, and thus ‘[bringing] neighbours together, families together, different interests together’.4 These ideas were similar to the English Garden City Movement, based on the vision of Ebenezer Howard. Here too, decentralisation and planning were important, though Howard’s plans were for garden cities –​ not garden neighbourhoods –​structured around school-​centred wards. 2 3 4

Ferdinand Toennies, Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft: Abhandlung des Communismus und des Socialismus als empirischer Culturformen (Leipzig: Fues‘s Verlag, 1887, cited here from the 1922 edition), 244, 242, 246. Another example here is the American Robert E. Park, who studied in Germany, and later became the founder of the famous and influential ‘Chicago School’ of urban sociology. William Dwight Bliss, ed., The New Encyclopaedia of Social Reform (New York and London: Funk and Wagnalls, 1908), 821.

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Indeed, Howard did not mention the term ‘neighbourhood’, though there are certainly parallels with the later ‘neighbourhood unit’ idea discussed in detail below.5 It was the American urban planner Clarence A. Perry who first explicitly formulated the idea of neighbourhood units (Figure 12.1). Perry was a member of the Regional Planning Association of America (RPAA); his ideas published as part of the ‘Regional Plan of New York and its Environs’ in 1929.6 Perry attempted to transpose the positive experience of the Settlement Movement –​with its strong social links and networks to support a sense of community in existing residential areas7 –​to a planning concept of neighbourhood units in built-​up areas, new developments and areas of urban expansion.8 In 1939, Perry went on to identify the six principles which constituted a neighbourhood unit, namely ‘Size, Boundaries, Open Spaces, Institution Sites, Local Shops [and an] Internal Street System’.9 Central ideas included limiting the population to 5,000 for an area surrounding an elementary school, placing daily services on streets at the edge of estates, having facilities reachable on foot, the re-​routing of through-​traffic, cul-​de-​sacs and the necessity of a green belt. Perry also

5

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7 8

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‘A feature of Howard’s town plan was its division into neighbourhoods, each based on the population required for one school, and having its community sub-​centre’, Frederic James Osborn, Green-​Belt Cities. The British Contribution (London: Evelyn, Adams & Mackey, 1969), 30. See also Stephen V. Ward, The Garden City. Past, Present and Future (London: E & Spon, 1992). Clarence Arthur Perry, ‘The Neighbourhood Unit. A Scheme of Arrangement for the Family-​Life Community’, Regional Survey of New York and its Environs, vol. VII, ‘Neighbourhood and Community Planning’ (New York: 1929). Though Perry drew from many sources, it is he who has become known as the father of the neighbourhood unit. Christopher Silver, ‘Neighbourhood Planning in Historical Perspective’, Journal of the American Planning Association 1985/​2 (2007), 161–​71, 162. ‘That path led him from the neighbourhood to the neighbourhood unit: from a mere cohabitation to the creation of a new form and new institutions for a modern urban community’, Lewis Mumford, ‘The Neighbourhood and the Neighbourhood Unit’, Town Planning Review 24 (1953/​4), 260. Clarence Arthur Perry, Housing for the Machine Age (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1939), 34.

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Figure 12.1.  Clarence A. Perry, diagram depicting a neighbourhood unit. Photo: published in Clarence A. Perry, ‘The Neighbourhood Unit. A Scheme of Arrangement for the Family-​Life Community’, Regional Survey of New York and its Environs, Vol. VII, ‘Neighbourhood and Community Planning’ (New York: 1929).

recognised the importance of growing car ownership, as he wrote, ‘the cellular city is the inevitable product of the automobile age […] we are going to live in cells […] they require the organized neighbourhood’.10 Perry’s vision was published in many journals, including in Germany and Britain. Its first implementation came in Radburn, New Jersey from 1929.11 The concept was much admired and promoted by city planners worldwide, though it was in fact rarely realised in its entirety in practice. 1 0 Perry, ‘The Neighbourhood Unit’, 31. 11 Eugenie Ladner Birch, ‘Radburn and the American Planning Movement’, in D. A. Krueckeberg, ed., Introduction to Planning History in the United States (New Brunswick: Rutgers, 1980).

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From garden cities to council estates and new towns in Greater London Following the First World War, house building in Britain was dominated by private developers.12 There were however isolated examples of new public housing, most projects characterised by their large scale and their focus on decentralisation.13 Becontree in North East London for ­example –​built between 1921 and 1935 –​became the largest estate of publicly supplied housing in the world, constituting 25,000 dwellings to house over 110,000 people. Many found it difficult to adjust to this kind of suburban living, however. Working class people couldn’t afford the new public houses, while higher income families preferred to buy on the private market. The result was all too often a ‘one class estate’, a social disaster of badly planned, cultureless monotony. Though predating the term ‘neighbourhood unit’, it quickly became clear that Becontree was not a ‘community’, that it had no adequate local government and no social infrastructure. Critics complained of ‘commuter ghettos’ and vast dormitory deserts, as one wrote in 1939, ‘the loss of neighbourhood values has its further bearing on socially disorganized areas’.14 It became clear that housing had to be combined with community planning, structured by neighbourhoods to encourage social interaction.15 In this context, different models of decentralisation were discussed. In the report of the ‘Royal Commission on the Geographical Distribution of the Industrial Population’ of 1940, for example (known as the Barlow John Boughton, Municipal Dreams. The Rise and Fall of Council Housing (London: Verso, 2019). 13 John Burnett, A Social History of Housing 1815–​1985 (London and New York: Routledge, 1986). 1 4 W. R. Tylor, ‘The Neighbourhood Unit Principle in Town Planning’, Town Planning Review ( July 1939), 174–​86, 177. 15 The initial plans for Becontree had indeed made some provision for social life, with elements reminiscent of neighbourhood units. The final estate did not reflect these early plans however. See Andrzej Olechnowicz, Working-​Class Housing in England between the Wars: The Becontree Estate (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 219. 12

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Report), the authors suggested a new spatial distribution of Britain’s industrial population, with new towns and ‘mixed neighbourhoods’.16 Lower densities in inner city areas were suggested, making rehousing operations necessary. Decentralising industry also brought significant defence advantages, as one journalist noted in 1939, ‘London was the weakest place on earth […] the Achilles heel of Britain and the British Empire’.17 The bomb damage of the Second World War lent weight to these decentralisation arguments. Defence towns were discussed and plans made for the relocation of industries and population. The ‘Master Plan for London’, published by the Modern Architectural Research Group (‘MARS’) in 1942, was also based on neighbourhood units to structure the metropolis.18 Borough units and neighbourhood units, with schools and infrastructure based on public transport corridors, formed the basic idea: ‘only by forming clearly defined units, which in turn are part of larger units, can social life be organized’ (Figure 12.2).19 Neighbourhood units also formed the central planning element of official plans published by the London County Council in 1943 (Figure 12.3).20 This plan prescribed extensive action, even in areas that had escaped wartime destruction, as the authors set out in the foreword, ‘partial solutions are not sufficient’. The planning goals were demonstrated using a neighbourhood unit in Shoreditch and Bethnal Green in the East End, and in the community of Eltham, clearly structured on these principles. The redevelopment areas were to be similar in size to New Towns,21 housing 60,000–​100,000 inhabitants in neighbourhood units of 6,000–​10,000

Report of the Royal Commission on the Geographical Distribution of the Industrial Population (Barlow Commission), (London: 1940). 17 Quoted in: Andrew Lees, Cities Perceived. Urban Society in European and American Thought, 1820–​1940 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985), 263. 18 Arthur Korn and Felix Samuely, ‘A Master Plan for London, Based on Research Carried Out by the Town Planning Committee of the MARS Group’, Architectural Review 91 ( June 1942), 143. 19 Korn and Samuely, ‘A Master Plan for London’, 143. 20 John Henry Forshaw and Patrick Abercrombie, County of London Plan, prepared for the London County Council (London: His Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1943). 2 1 See Frank Schaffer, The New Town Story (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1970). 16

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Figure 12.2.  Neighbourhood unit plan from the MARS group’s ‘Master Plan for London’, 1942. Photo: published in Maxwell Fry, Fine Building (London: Faber and Faber, 1944), 95.

each. These neighbourhood units would include open spaces and all the necessary communal facilities: The composite plans which we have prepared provide a proportion of lofty blocks of flats, spaced well enough apart for groups of trees, with terraced houses dispersed in regular but not monotonous form, the whole interspersed with open space and organically related to the smaller neighbourhood centre and finally the centre of the whole community.22

22

Forshaw and Abercrombie, County of London Plan, 9.

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Figure 12.3.  John Henry Forshaw and Patrick Abercrombie, Neighbourhood units in London. Photo: published in John Henry Forshaw and Patrick Abercrombie, County of London Plan, prepared for the London County Council (London: His Majesty’s Stationary Office 1943), 10.

newgenrtpdf

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Already during the war, then, discussions had started on how post-​war England should look. It appeared unanimously accepted that a large-​ scale redesign of cities was necessary: town planning would not only play an important role, but occupy the central position in the creation of the peacetime nation.23 Because of his work on the 1943 London County Council Plan, Patrick Abercrombie of the Ministry of Country and Town Planning was commissioned to produce a broader plan for the Greater London area, published as the Greater London Plan in 1945.24 One element of the 1943 plan to be developed further was the concept of organic communities: Both the neighbourhood and the town should be given physical definition and unmistakable separateness, and the population should be socially stable […] We have used the community as the basic planning unit […] each community would have a life and character of its own, yet its individuality would be in harmony with the complex form, life and character of its region as a whole.25

The East End of London again served as a model for rebuilding according to modern principles of neighbourhood planning. As Abercrombie set out, the buildings and dwellings in the East End slum areas not destroyed by German bombs should be demolished. The plans included how the redevelopment areas would be established and how the necessary relocation of the population would be implemented.

Decentralising housing strategies in Germany and the Hamburg plans In Germany too, the 1920s similarly saw the construction of many large and modern housing estates, in cities such as Frankfurt, Berlin and See also Royal Institute of British Architects, Rebuilding Britain (London: Lund Humphries, 1943); Charles Benjamin Purdom, How Should We Rebuilt London? (London: J. M. Dent, 1945). 24 Patrick Abercrombie, Greater London Plan (London: Ministry of Housing, 1945). 25 Abercrombie, Greater London Plan, 112–​13. 23

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Hamburg. Though these estates often included new schools, the most pressing problem was the need for new housing –​modern, well-​ventilated flats to promote good health. In Hamburg, many pre-​1914 reform ideas were implemented after 1919, restructured to include parks and recreation areas and to ensure more light for individual flats. Such estates were often built on city-​owned land, with many flats per estate to save on costs. In Hamburg these developments were termed the ‘green belt’, a contrast to the nearby nineteenth-​century tenements. The architect and urban planner Fritz Schumacher was a central figure to Hamburg developments between 1909 and 1933. The distinctive red brick estates of the 1920s, termed ‘red Hamburg’, bear his signature; some 60,000 residential units were built at this time according to his ideas.26 Schumacher would define the planning concept and layout, plan green zones and coordinate architectural competitions for the design of the houses. With the involvement of cooperatives, each settlement took on its own character. Of vital importance were the schools, which were not just educational institutions but became cultural centers of the settlements.27 By involving various architects –​including modernists such as Karl Schneider –​a variety of architectural languages could be realised under Schumacher’s direction. Under National Socialism, housing policy quickly gained importance as a political and ideological issue. The regime saw a direct connection between urban planning, physical planning and the Volk ohne Raum [Volk without space]. Urban design was linked to anti-​urban sentiments; the city as ‘the seat of Judaism’ or the ‘place of Marxism’, in the words of National Socialist ideologist Gottfried Feder.28 Programmatic statements by the National Socialists called for a decrease of urbanisation, or even its reversal in a migration back to the land, supporting ‘blood and soil’ population policies as well as the practicalities of anti-​aircraft defence. 26 Schumacher was not just an architect, but a (social) reformer, urban and regional planner, a well-​educated artist and a writer, authoring a variety of articles and over thirty books. In 1933 Schumacher was forced to retire by the Nazis. 27 Fritz Schumacher, Das Werden einer Wohnstadt. Bilder vom neuen Hamburg (Hamburg: Georg Westermann, 1932). 28 Gottfried Feder, Die neue Stadt. Versuch der Begründung einer neuen Stadtplanungskunst aus der sozialen Struktur der Bevölkerung (Berlin: Springer, 1939).

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By the late 1930s however, the Nazis had come to see large cities as a necessary evil. They must however be thinned out and brought to order. As set out by Gottfried Feder, the Volksschule [Elementary School] could provide a basis for this order: ‘This urban organism will be composed of a series of cells, which will be grouped in cell associations within different sub-​cores around the centre of the city.’29 By means of urban development, the ‘health of the body of citizens’ could be achieved. North American and English plans for neighbourhood units had already been presented at international conferences, sparking considerable discussion among German planners and publications in German periodicals.30 Indeed, in Nazi Germany, it was not the Anglo-​American theory of the neighbourhood in itself that provoked criticism; rather the ‘backward world views’ of these regions which were prohibitive to the proper implementation of such theories. How then could these ideas be applied to the cities of the Third Reich, without merely imitating the ‘decadent’ western democracies? The idea of the ‘Die Ortsgruppe als Siedlungszelle’ [Local Group as Settlement Cell] (Figure 12.4) was a kind of a consensus which emerged from Nazi Party theory and planning practice. It took on neighbourhood unit theory, combined it with the Ortsgruppen [Local Groups] of the Nazi Party, and thus created a planning structure with a firmly National socialist bias to generate a congruence between the political and the spatial level. These ideas were first articulated in 1940 in a spatial form by architects around Konstanty Gutschow, who was responsible for urban planning in Hamburg at this time.31 Within this basic context the emphasis could be placed upon the Germanic-​national origins which linked community with kinship, neighbourhood and camaraderie. 29 Gottfried Feder, Die neue Stadt. Versuch der Begründung einer neuen Stadtplanungskunst aus der sozialen Struktur der Bevölkerung (Berlin: Springer, 1939), 19. 30 See Dirk Schubert, ‘The Neighbourhood Paradigm: From Garden Cities to Gated Communities’, in Robert Freestone, ed., Urban Planning in a Changing World, the Twentieth Century Experience (London: Routledge, 2000), 118–​38. 31 Konstanty Gutschow with Friedrich Heuer, ‘Die Ortsgruppe als Siedlungszelle’ 1940 (Staatsarchiv Hamburg A 42 und A 44). Regarding Gutschow: Sylvia Necker,

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Figure 12.4.  Konstanty Gutschow with Friedrich Heuer, depiction of the Ortsgruppe als Siedlungszelle idea. Photo: published in ‘Die Ortsgruppe als Siedlungszelle. Vorschlag und Methodik der großstädtischen Stadterweiterung’, Schriftenreihe B, no. 2, 20 December 1940, Staatsarchiv Hamburg 322–​323, A 42.

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We see these ideas reflected once again in a set of plans Gutschow developed for Hamburg in 1941.32 When these plans were drawn up there was only minimal war damage in Hamburg; they thus contain grandiose ideas for the modernisation of the city, including a new bridge over the Elbe and the only new skyscraper Hitler would permit in Germany. The Ortsgruppe units of the Nazi Party were reflected in the planning of new housing estates to represent a cross-​section of German Society –​Jewish people and other ‘unwanted’ groups of course excluded –​comprising a mix of owner-​ occupied terrace houses, small blocks and flats for rent. The Ortsgruppe als Siedlungszelle estates were planned for between 6,000 and 8,000 residents and included schools, shops and infrastructure.33 As Gutschow declared: The anonymity of the city is the result of an amorphic formation. It is necessary to make it more transparent again, to structure and design it to create order. For neighbourhoods to evolve the settlement units must be clearly set apart.34

Following the destruction of war-​time bombing, Gutschow created a second general plan for Hamburg in 1944 (Figure 12.5).35 He was well informed of plans for London thanks to the Nazi Secret Service –​he knew the central role of the neighbourhood concept in British wartime reconstruction. The 1944 plan again followed the principle of reducing housing densities with the goal of Ortsgruppe als Siedlungszelle, and developed it aggressively. A totally effective renewal, even if implemented gradually, was reserved for a very distant future, especially a reduction of the irresponsible population densities in the Konstanty Gutschow (1902–​1979) Modernes Denken und volksgemeinschaftliche Utopie eines Architekten (Hamburg: Dölling und Galitz, 2012). 32 Konstanty Gutschow, ‘Generalbebauungsplan 1941‘ (Staatsarchiv Hamburg, Der Architekt für die Neugestaltung der Hansestadt Hamburg), A 14–​131. 3 3 Elke Pahl-​Weber and Dirk Schubert, ‘Myth and Reality in National Socialist Town Planning and Architecture: Housing and Urban Development in Hamburg 1933–​ 45’, Planning Perspectives 6 (1991), 166–​81. 34 Konstanty Gutschow, ‘Generalbebauungsplan 1941’ (Staatsarchiv Hamburg, Der Architekt für die Neugestaltung der Hansestadt Hamburg), A 14–​131. 35 Skizze Generalbebauungsplan 1944, Manuskript Plassenburg, Staatsarchiv Hamburg Bestand Gutschow, A 44, D 38.

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Figure 12.5.  Konstanty Gutschow, Generalbebauungsplan Hamburg 1944, Erste Skizze. Photo: Archiv für Städtebau, Niels Gutschow.

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areas which had traditionally housed the Communist ‘electorate’. The new master plan is based on the reality of destruction and the entirely new possibilities it offered […] and the new master plan sees it as its task to build a city in which, despite its size, no Volksgenosse [national comrade] feels like a mere number, but is the member of a neighbourhood.36

In plans for the destroyed areas this concept was tested, intended to form the basis for spacious rebuilding of residential areas in Hamburg.37 The destroyed areas were divided into neighbourhood units corresponding to the organisation of the Nazi Party, with new green spaces utilised to delineate each Zelle [cell]. Though the Ortsgruppe als Siedlungszelle model was never built in its pure form, many plans drawn up by the Hitler regime illustrate its desired appearance. It was not only planned for Hamburg, but also as a restructuring element for the conquered cities of the eastern zones. Heinrich Himmler, the leader of the SS, saw the model as the ideal method to ‘secure German national tradition in the new east’. As he set out: The criteria for the structure of housing areas, with a view towards developing the community, can be drawn from the same source which guides the political structure of the Volksgemeinschaft [the community of all Germans in the National Socialist sense]. The structure of housing areas must thus, as far as possible, confirm with the political organizational structure of the Volksgemeinschaft, organized in Zelle, Ortsgruppen and districts. The urban form appropriate to the Ortsgruppe would, in this sense, consist of small cells and ultimately in small-​scale streets, as well as the clear arrangement of squares, residential courtyards and neighbourhood groups.38

Despite the international roots of these neighbourhood-​based planning techniques, National Socialist planners insisted that the idea offered a uniquely German solution to the problems of the city. Indeed, many sub-​models of neighbourhood cells were developed –​from the more ‘organic’, such as those of the architect Hans Bernhard Reichow, to the more 3 6 Ibid. 37 Pahl-​Weber and Schubert, ‘Myth and Reality in National Socialist Town Planning’. 38 Quoted in Ernst Lehmann, Volksgemeinschaften aus Nachbarschaften, Eine Volkskunde des deutschen Nachbarschaftswesens (Prague: Noebe & Co. Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1944), 13–​14.

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geometric, like those of Walter Hinsch. Nonetheless, these often-​detailed plans remained on paper, and were never wholly implemented during the Nazi period.39

The neighborhood planning vision after 1945: Divergences and convergences After 1945, the term ‘neighbourhood’ carried negative connotations in Germany, because of its links to Nazi mechanisms of discipline and control: the Ortsgruppe als Siedlungszelle method was entirely discredited. The idea of a Stunde Null [zero hour] however, of a completely fresh start in town planning, is misleading. Existing neighbourhood ideas were simply repackaged as ‘nodes’ or ‘estate units’. Because of Gutschow’s familiarity with the London plans, his claims for the ‘invention of the neighbourhood unit’ could be dismissed; these theories were instead presented as a western, democratically envisioned project (termed ‘estate nodes’ in Hamburg). Thus German post-​war reconstruction pursued the same planning goals as the National Socialists –​albeit without the racial-​ political reasoning. Many of the senior town planners from the National Socialist era were removed from their positions or allowed to resign. Gutschow himself was initially subject to a work ban by the British occupation forces, though this was lifted in 1949. He had to move in the second link, but all the old networks and cliques continued and helped for further assignments.40 Many of the pre-​1945 ‘Gutschist’ planners also found new jobs in Germany, allowing them to continue with concepts and practices developed during the Nazi era (and indeed, before).41 In 1946, Gutschow 39 Jörn Düwel and Niels Gutschow, eds, A Blessing in Disguise. War and Town Planning in Europe 1940–​1945 (Berlin: DOM Publishers, 2013). 40 Necker, Konstanty Gutschow, 303. 41 Jeffry M. Diefendorf, In the Wake of War. The Reconstruction of German Cities after World War II (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 181.

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himself wrote to Rudolf Wolters, former colleague of the Nazi chief architect Albert Speer: I have found, to my delight […] the idea of the residential cell in Abercrombie’s rebuilding plans [for London]. There they are called neighbourhoods. They are the central idea of the plan […] from now on these formations will be called, by my own defaming mouth, neighbourhood cells. I hope they do not identify these urban design ideas, which are so dear to me, as an infiltration of the totalitarian pretensions of the party.42

Gutschow’s former colleague from Hamburg, the architect Hans Bernard Reichow, also returned to work after 1945, having no trouble mutating National Socialist approaches into an apparently depoliticised terminology deriving from examples from nature. The concept of ‘branching’, for example, was used to create street patterns in post-​war housing estates, while ideas regarding the segregation of modes of transport were borrowed from the early articulation of Clarence Perry’s neighbourhood ideas in Radburn, New Jersey.43 Indeed, his various post-​war publications and projects –​in which he primarily propagated the ‘Radburn Principle’ –​were both highly popular and highly influential in Germany. In 1947, parts of Abercrombie’s Greater London Plan were published in German.44 In 1948, Town Planning by the British Thomas Sharp was also published in German translation, a book which also contained principles of the neighbourhood idea.45 Indeed, when the British occupying forces had arrived in Hamburg in 1945, they were surprised at the parallels of planning ideas. The extent of the war-​time destruction in Hamburg meant that many of the most ambitious planning visions could not be realised 42 Gutschow quoted in Werner Durth, Deutsche Architekten. Biographische Verflechtungen (Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1986), 257. 43 Sabine Brinitzer, ‘Hans Bernhard Reichow (1899–​ 1974). Eine “organische” Architekturgeschichte‘, DAM. Jahrbuch für Architektur 1991 (Braunschweig 1991), 270–​7. 44 Schneider, Karl, ed., London: Planungen für die Umgestaltung der Britischen Hauptstadt, in: Planung. Schriftenreihe für Landesplanung und Städtebau1, Hamburg 1947. 45 Thomas Sharp, Städtebau in England (Berlin: Ernst, 1948), originally published as Thomas Sharp, Town Planning (Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1940).

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post-​war. Nonetheless, the general Hamburg building plans of 1947 and 1950 contained many of the principles of the neighbourhood unit idea. The first major building project undertaken by the British in Hamburg was the so-​called ‘Hamburg Project’, a headquarters for the British Army in West Germany, initiated in 1945. An architectural competition was launched, eventually won by a group of architects from Hamburg (B. Hermkes, R. Jäger, R. Lodders, A. Sander, F. Streb, F. Trautwein and H. Zeß). The plans consisted of twelve skyscrapers, with offices and flats for British officers, to stand on the ‘Grindelberg’ site previously occupied by 185 apartment blocks (which had contained a total of 730 flats before the war-​time damage). Despite the desperate housing shortage in post-​war Hamburg –​where half the housing stock had been destroyed by bombing –​ these buildings were nonetheless demolished in 1946 to make way for the Grindelberg project. The planned estate was based on the visions of modern architecture, a first and unique project of its type in Hamburg, also in terms of its steel-​frame construction. The city would not ultimately house the British headquarters however. In 1947 was decided that the Western Allies would instead be headquartered in Frankfurt. After much discussion, the city of Hamburg decided to take over the project and finish the buildings as public housing. Over 2,000 flats were competed on the Grindelberg site between 1949 and 1956.46 While the original neighbourhood ideas of Perry et al included a mix of densities and housing types, the high-​rise Grindelberg flats were standardised, comprising blocks of only two different heights. Yet elements of the neighbourhood idea were included: many amenities were provided on site, among them shops, laundrettes, the borough Town Hall and even a gas station. Green zones and children’s playgrounds were integrated into the design, away from traffic. The rents were relatively high, placing the flats out of the reach of many working class families. But the estate had a positive image among the city’s residents, the tenants developing a new and modern employee living style. As the buildings of the estate were easy to 46 Axel Schildt, Die Grindelhochhäuser. Eine Sozialgeschichte der ersten deutschen Wohnhochhausanlage Hamburg-​Grindelberg 1945–​1956 (Hamburg: Dölling und Galitz, 2007).

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distinguish from the surrounding areas, the tenants also developed a distinct identity based on their vertical neighbourhood. As noted above, when British planners made lecture tours in German cities under the auspices of the British Council they were surprised by the similarity of German and British planning ideas. As urban historian Gordon Cherry notes of the time, ‘ “Planning” was a popular word […] the notion of town planning for the future cities had widespread support. It all seemed so simple; planning was winning the war and planning would win the peace.’47 Despite different political systems and a diversity of urban situations, the planning models of Britain and Germany seemed to have developed in tandem. There was an almost universal agreement that reconstruction combined with slum clearances would be necessary, and that cities needed to be planned rather than left to the free play of the market. Indeed, planning was seen as the key to post-​war rebuilding –​for optimised land use, for new housing production and for restructuring dense urban area based on the neighbourhood principle. A further London example of the continuing faith in neighbourhoods is provided by the Lansbury Estate in Stepney, a demonstration project or ‘Live Architecture Exhibition’ which formed part of the 1951 Festival of Britain.48 The first compulsory purchase orders for the site were made in 1949. The land was then comprehensively redeveloped on the basis of a neighbourhood. While the layout was prepared by the London County Council’s Architecture Department, many private architects were also involved. The estate was planned with numerous social facilities, including a nursery, a primary and a secondary school, two churches, a pedestrian shopping centre and public open spaces. Various different housing types were offered: three-​and six-​storey blocks of flats, four-​storey maisonettes, two-​and three-​storey houses and houses where the top floor served as a flat. The Lansbury project formed part of the wider Stepney-​Poplar Comprehensive Development Area, which covered approximately 100,000 47 Gordon E. Cherry, ‘Reconstruction: Its Place in Planning History’, in Jeffry M. Diefendorf, ed., Rebuilding Europe’s Bombed Cities (London and New York: Macmillan, 1990), 213. 48 Mary Banham and Bevis Hillier, Tonic to the Nation: Festival of Britain 1951 (London: Thames & Hudson), 138–​40.

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residents. American architectural critic Lewis Mumford described the estate as ‘one of the outstanding examples of post-​war urban planning’.49 By 1954 the ‘exhibition area’ was almost complete. Quickly however the Lansbury estate was deemed a ‘major disaster’, not only be tenants but also by visitors.50 Many residents complained of the ‘tenement’ structure (‘model dwellings for the poor’) and of the relatively high density. The perhaps romantic vision of a social balance did also not function well. The majority of residents were working class ‘East Enders’ with their own distinct social and cultural traditions. Residents not originating from this group –​among them the more middle-​class tenants –​found this homogeneity difficult.

Conclusion The Second World War forced a degree of modernisation, making interventions in economics, society and town planning necessary. A core element of this ‘modernization’ became the expansion of the housing programme connected with urban renewal. Planning ideas from the United States, as the winner of war, became important in Europe. In both Britain and Germany, slum clearance and urban renewal were part of the post-​war consensus.51 There was widespread international support for clearing unhealthy housing, and replacing it with public accommodation –​with more light, air and access to green space –​in the form of neighbourhood units. Only the form and architecture of these neighbourhood units varied from country to country: the multitude of examples 49 Quoted in: Percy Edwin Alan Johnson-​Marshall, Rebuilding Cities (Edinburgh: E dinburgh University Press, 1966), 4. 50 John Westergaard and Ruth Glass, ‘A Profile of Lansbury’, Town Planning Review 25/​1 (1954), 33. 51 See Dirk Schubert, Stadterneuerung in London und Hamburg. Eine Stadtbaugeschichte zwischen Modernisierung und Disziplinierung (Braunschweig and Wiesbaden: Vieweg, 1998).

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are too numerous to be considered here.52 Important modernist thinkers such as Walter Gropius also supported the neighbourhood theory and the goals it denoted. As he wrote in 1956, lower densities, and not the complete diffusion of the city, was the goal of organic neighbourhood planning.53 Certain key issues could not be resolved, however. These included problems of land ownership, building costs and problems of creating a new social community from scratch.54 A further problem was the gap between the notion of minimum acceptable housing conditions, and the quality of accommodation which poorer households could afford. In some respects state intervention widened this gap, for example, with the payment of compensation to landlords following acts of slum clearance. The neighbourhood unit approach provided clear technical instruments for planning, making it highly attractive in many countries including Britain and Germany.55 As examples from these countries illustrate however, it also contained elements of social engineering and ideology. It is perhaps for this reason that the theory fell out of favour as the twentieth century progressed.

52 See James Dahir, The Neighbourhood Unit Plan Its Spread and Acceptance. A Selective Bibliography with Interpretative Comments (New York: Russel Sage Foundation, 1947). 53 Walter Gropius, Architektur. Wege zu einer optischen Kultur (Frankfurt am Main und Hamburg: Fischer Bücherei, 1956), 107. Published in English as Scope of Total Architecture (London: Allen & Unwin, 1956). 54 Jeffry M. Diefendorf, Axel Frohn and Hermann-​Josef Rupieper, eds, American Policy and Reconstruction of West Germany, 1945–​1955 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 338. 55 Elsewhere, some of the most important housing estates based on the neighbourhood unit theory are Vällingby near Stockholm, Sondergaardsparken and Gyngemorung in Copenhagen and Linda Vista in San Diego.

Shulamith Behr

13 Reframing Exilic Identity for a German Audience: Joseph Paul Hodin’s Encounter with Else and Ludwig Meidner and Its Aftermath

After VE-​week in May 1945, the writer and publisher associated with the Bloomsbury group John Lehmann gathered poetry and writings from Britain and abroad under the title New Writing and Daylight. Of the experience of breaking old habits associated with war-​time, he wrote: We are still dazed, we still find we are reluctant to recognize the fact of peace and to assess the kind of world the earthquake has left us to live in, the kind of Britain, the kind of Europe to which Britain, the Janus country, must, with one face always look for partnership […] And the most urgent of all questions is: Can Europe find an integration of thought and belief that will prevent it from further near-​mortal strokes […] and if so, by what strength and from what source?1

His words are resonant with the existential trauma of post-​war Britain and Europe. In the wake of the defeat of Nazi Germany and the ongoing threat of an authoritarian Soviet Union, like many anti-​fascist intellectuals of the time, Lehmann sought a complex and nuanced form of Western democracy. Such conditions would enable free philosophical enquiry and political association, a balance between government and people, between tradition and creative impulse, a state in which ‘ethical scruples and metaphysical perplexities play a never negligible part’.2 Britain had a political and cultural mission of spiritual reconciliation with a ruined Europe, one that had been loosely defined by the émigré Arthur Koestler

1 2

John Lehmann, ‘In Daylight I’, in New Writing and Daylight (London: Hogarth, 1945), 7–​15. Lehmann, ‘In Daylight I’, 8.

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in his essays The Yogi and the Commissar (1945) as a ‘Western revolutionary humanism’, a truly socialist movement and antidote to Russian pseudo-​Communism.3 There are several reasons for introducing my chapter with this watershed volume of essays and poetry. First, it included submissions not only from British authors, such as Edith Sitwell and Stephen Spender, but also from émigrés and continental Europeans. Second, although Lehmann seized on the art of poetry in England as the flag-​bearer of a new European humanism, he gave space to the visual arts, theatre, film and dance. Third, it contains early British writing by the art historian and critic Joseph Paul Hodin (1905–​95, Figure 13.1) that reveals common ground with this literary circle, albeit nuanced by a Central European epistemological framework. In his essay ‘Oskar Kokoschka’, Hodin focused on the artist’s series of political pictures that were painted in exile. He linked Kokoschka’s activist humanism –​the foregoing of his Austrian nationality in favour of a Czech passport –​to the mission of the seventeenth-​century Czech philosopher and educator John Amos Comenius. Hodin’s Jewish heritage, Prague-​born origins and commitment to the Czechoslovak government-​in-​exile embedded him in the task of combating brutal nationalism via the pansophic creed of Comenius: ‘Cosmopoliti, we are all citizens of the world.’4 As an émigré art historian who had lived in Czechoslovakia, Germany, France and Sweden before fleeing to England in 1944, Hodin had insight into artistic and intellectual circles across Europe and Scandinavia.5 Indeed, 3 4 5

Arthur Koestler, The Yogi and the Commissar and Other Essays (London: Jonathan Cape, 1945), 225. Joseph P. Hodin, ‘Oskar Kokoschka’, in Lehmann, New Writing and Daylight, 159. On Hodin’s early biography and career see Vladimir Vanek, ‘Joseph Paul Hodin: A Biographical Study’, in Walter Kern, ed., J. P. Hodin: European Critic (London: Cory, Adams and Mackay, 1965), 83–​104. Born in Prague of German-​Czech Jewish parentage, Hodin trained as a Doctor of Law (his memories of Prague remain unpublished in manuscript form: J. P. Hodin: Tate Britain Archive TGA. 20062). After graduating from the Charles University in Prague in 1929, he turned his attention to the history of art and the general history of culture; initially in Dresden in 1931, where he met his first wife the Swedish choreographer Birgit Åkesson (1908–​2001), and subsequently in Berlin (1932–​3). From 1933 the couple spent two years in exile in Paris and, thereafter, immigrated to Stockholm. There he acculturated in elite

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Figure 13.1.  Joseph Paul Hodin, 1960s. Photo: Ida Kar, National Portrait Gallery London.

as Alexandra Lazar has shown in her cataloguing of his estate in the Tate Archive, notwithstanding Cold War politics, Hodin bridged the divide between East and West and was an active participant at the international congresses of Art Criticism and Aesthetics organised by the Association Internationale des Critiques d’art (AICA).6 At the heart of the argument,

6

circles as well as being active in the Czechoslovak Resistance movement. In 1944 he fled alone to Britain, where he served as a press attaché to the exiled Norwegian government in London until the war’s end. For Hodin’s Swedish period, see Ragnar Hoppe, ‘A Decade in Sweden’, in Kern, J. P. Hodin, 105–​9. Alexandra Lazar, ‘J. P. Hodin: A Bridge between Europe and Britain’, available at: , accessed 10 October 2018.

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I trace Hodin’s shift from art historian to critic, the ideas of which evolved in the 1950s. He brought a dynamic agency to this role, one that is borne out by the manner in which he conducted interviews with artists and observed the creative process according to a method he defined as ‘living art criticism’.7 The art historian Rachel Smith has shown how Hodin distributed questionnaires to artists associated with St Ives, with a view to publishing a major article on his findings in The Studio magazine.8 While the latter did not come to fruition, Smith examined the responses of eleven artists that testify to Hodin’s efforts to formulate his project. Interestingly, in the case of his encounter with Ludwig Meidner (1884–​1966) and his wife Else (1901–​87) in the summer of 1953, I focus on Hodin’s use of an unnamed photographer to document the proceedings.9 What role did these photographs serve in Hodin’s critical practice and how did they relate to contemporary photographers’ intrigue with the theme of portraiture of modern writers and artists in the studio or domestic setting? Did Hodin already have a project in mind in 1953? As will be shown below, while in exile in London, Hodin’s Central European outlook was modified to a form of empiricism. This was sustained via his role in the ICA and contact with British contemporary artists and photographers: a forceful example of cultural transmission and exchange. The critic’s methodological analysis of Meidner’s oeuvre in exile reframed such experiences for a German audience. Hence, this chapter rearticulates the notion of ‘sites of interchange’ as a dialogical rather than static phenomenon in destabilising historiographic narratives in the post-​war West German context and forging a niche for the field of exile studies. Prior to examining these factors, I have selected examples of Hodin’s early writing so as to chart his theoretical turn. 7 8

9

Joseph P. Hodin, ‘Problems of Living Art Criticism’, The Dilemma of Being Modern (Abingdon: Routledge, 1956), 220–​4. Rachel Smith, ‘J. P. Hodin: Questioning St Ives’, in Tate Research Workshop, ‘J. P. Hodin and Edith Hoffmann: Émigré Voices,’ (November 2013), available at: , accessed 7 October 2018. Joseph P. Hodin, Ludwig Meidner: Seine Kunst, seine Persönlichkeit, seine Zeit (Darmstadt: Justus von Liebig, 1973), 99.

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The critic In the immediate post-​war years, Hodin published a monograph on Munch in Swedish10 and, as in the case of émigré art historian Edith Hoffmann, brought Expressionism to the attention of a British audience.11 He contributed the essay ‘Expressionism’ to the notable magazine Horizon, an arts and literary review published monthly in London between December 1939 and January 1950.12 Here he revealed his penchant for a theory of aesthetics as lying in modern psychology. Familiar with the art-​ historical writing of Heinrich Wölfflin and Wilhelm Worringer, Hodin advanced the relationship between style and personality. Suspicious of artistic schools and collectives, he nonetheless argued that the creative processes have their source in the unconscious. Here he seized on the work of the Czech-​born Max Dvorak, who saw the history of art as the history of spirit and who remained suspicious of the materialist outlook of natural science. Via these means, Hodin claimed that Kokoschka, for instance, in his portraiture, in view of the spiritual conflicts of his generation, ‘penetrates far below the surface in an attempt to interpret the psychological states in relation to their mysterious moorings deep in the human psyche’.13 We detect in this essay an impassioned form of Geistesgeschichte that is Spenglerian in its methodology of viewing art and art criticism against the larger issue of the malaise of modern culture and science. Within a matter of a year, however, there are signs of transformation in his theoretical position. No doubt valued for his internationalism and adaptability, in March 1949 Hodin was appointed the first Librarian and Director of 1 0 Joseph P. Hodin, Edvard Munch: Nordens Genius (Stockholm: Ljus Forlag, 1948). 11 For further information on Edith Hoffmann (1907–​2016), see Lucy Watling [Wasensteiner], ‘Émigré to Editor: Edith Hoffmann and the Burlington Magazine 1938–​1951’, in Tate Research Workshop, ‘J. P. Hodin and Edith Hoffmann’, available at: , accessed 7 October 2018. 12 Joseph P. Hodin, ‘Expressionism’, Horizon 19/​109 ( January 1949), 38–​51. 13 Hodin, ‘Expressionism’, 48–​9.

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Studies of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, a position he held until 1954. Established by Roland Penrose and Herbert Read, among others, by 1951 the ICA was based in 17 Dover Street, Piccadilly, and was dedicated to an active programme of exhibitions, lectures, discussions and film performances.14 In December 1950, in correspondence with the editor of The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Hodin communicated the news of his appointment and expressed the hope, ‘of doing something towards introducing the wide range of contemporary empirical and realistic aesthetics into England. For this the assistance of such a body as The American Society for Aesthetics will be invaluable.’15 Indeed, in examining ‘Herbert Read’s Philosophy of Modern Art’, Hodin claimed, ‘It must be mentioned here that a science of art in the sense of the German Kunstwissenschaft with its discipline and “laboratory” work does not exist in England.’16 Hodin was one of many émigré art historians who turned to wide-​ ranging empirical studies as a means of resistance to Nazi ideological methodologies that had hijacked the discipline.17 As he argued in an essay of 1955, ‘Art History or the History of Culture: A Contemporary German Problem’, recent publications in Germany were the ‘product of the struggle between a nationalist ideal which has dominated intellectual life in Germany for decades and a unitary European attitude’.18 Hans Sedlmayr’s ideas in the book Verlust der Mitte [Loss of the Centre] (1948), with its clinging to an anti-​modern world order of man as an image of God, received equally short

14 See Anne Massey, Institute of Contemporary Arts, 1946–​1968 (London: Institute of Contemporary Arts, 2014). 15 ‘International News and Correspondence’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 9/​2 (December 1950), 155. 16 Joseph P. Hodin, ‘Herbert Read’s Philosophy of Modern Art: Four Generations of English Art Critics’, in The Dilemma of Being Modern, 242. First published in The Norseman 4 (1951). 17 See, for example, Anne-​Françoise Béchard-​Léauté, The Contribution of Émigré Art Historians to the British Art World after 1933 (Doctoral dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1999). 18 Joseph P. Hodin, ‘Art History or The History of Culture: A Contemporary German Problem’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 13/​4 ( June 1955), 474.

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shrift.19 In place of God’s ordered universe, Hodin called on German art historians to reject cultural pessimism in favour of a humanistic interpretation of science. Here he advised Sedlmayr to consult the writings of contemporary physicists, Werner Heisenberg, Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein in order to gauge changing conceptions of the world.20 Hodin’s empirical turn, though, must also be considered in light of his interaction in the British artworld. Since his second wife, Pamela Simms, inherited a house in Carbis Bay, he and his family spent much time in Cornwall. He thus became closely involved with the group of artists and sculptors –​Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Bernard Leach and Ben Nicholson –​who were associated with or settled in St Ives at the outbreak of the Second World War. Summarising his views in a paper entitled ‘The Empirical Approach to Aesthetic Problems in Modern Art’, whether dealing with geometric or organic abstraction, Hodin proposed that the art critic’s quest was governed by the scientific imperative.21 Thereby modern art was considered a natural phenomenon and, with Goethe as a referent, the aesthetician should take part in the living process not only through contemplating the works, but also through personal contact with artists by visiting their studios, conducting interviews and examining their writings. To this he added that a detailed analysis of structure, composition, technical methods and materials was required when engaging with new, emerging art forms. Art historian Judith Walsh contends that it was through this 19 Hodin, ‘Art History’, 476. Hans Sedlmayr, Verlust der Mitte: Die bildende Kunst des 19 und 20 Jahrhunderts als Symptom und Symbol der Zeit (Salzburg: Otto Müller, 1948). Critical to post-​war reconstruction of the arts in West Germany, the Darmstädter Gespräche encompassed both exhibitions and symposia. In 1950, the theme ‘Das Menschenbild in unserer Zeit’ was fiercely debated by Willi Baumeister and Sedlmayr, the issues of Abstraction/​Figuration being high on the list of considerations. See Hans Gerhard Evers, ed., Darmstädter Gespräch. Das Menschenbild in unserer Zeit (Darmstadt: Neue Darmstädter Verlagsanstalt, 1950). 20 Hodin, ‘Art History’, 476–​7. 21 Joseph P. Hodin, ‘The Empirical Approach to Aesthetic Problems in Modern Art’, in Modern Art and The Modern Mind (Cleveland: Case Western Reserve University, 1972), 210–​12. For a discussion of Hodin’s empiricism see W. Eugene Kleinbauer, Modern Perspectives in Western Art History: An Anthology of Twentieth-​Century Writings on the Visual Arts (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989), 98.

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approach, of deploying scientific reasoning as a method of art criticism, that Hodin engaged with the notion of the ‘real’ and ‘reality’ in British art in the 1950s.22

London Hodin’s publications were wide-​ranging, spanning classic modernists, émigré connections and contemporary manifestations, whether abstract or figural. In the May of 1953, during his stint at the ICA, he received a letter of introduction from fellow exile Ludwig Meidner. This letter is a fascinating and multi-​layered document, which reveals the themes of this volume through the prism of the artist’s eventual remigration to Germany, his reasons for approaching Hodin, their meeting and subsequent interaction across transnational boundaries: From your publications, I see that you are also interested in German Expressionism. A special exhibition of the Berlin ‘Brücke’ at the last Venice Biennale has taken place there. I saw the same selection in winter at the Kunstsalon Möller in Cologne, they made an excellent impression […] The undersigned [Ludwig Meidner], a member of the ‘Brücke’ generation, who was friends with them, but followed a different trend in those years before the First World War, also produced works no less than the paintings of the ‘Brücke’ […] Unfortunately, in later years I devoted myself to literature; but here in London, in emigration, I worked artistically again, as far as was possible under the prevailing circumstances. If you would like to see something of my current production, please come visit me, sir. It is definitely worth looking at.23 22 See Judith Walsh, ‘J.P. Hodin’s Concepts of Realism in the 1950s’, Tate Research Workshop, ‘J. P. Hodin and Edith Hoffmann’, available at: , accessed 9 October 2018. 23 ‘Sehr geehrter Herr Dr. Hodin! Aus Ihren Veröffentlichungen ersehe ich, daß Sie sich auch für den deutschen Expressionismus interessieren. Eine Sonderausstellung der Berliner “Brücke” auf der letzten Biennale in Venedig hat dort sehr gefallen. Dieselbe Auswahl sah ich im Winter im Kunstsalon Möller in Köln […] Der Unterzeichnete, ein Generationsgenosse der “Brucke” –​Leute, der mit ihnen befreundet war, aber etwas anderen Tendenzen folgte, hat in jenen Jahren, vor dem

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A prolific correspondent, Meidner’s letters are well versed in the formalities of complimenting the recipient prior to calling upon their services. While addressed from London, we learn that Meidner was concerned with cultural matters not in his adoptive abode, but back in Germany, having briefly visited the country in 1952. As an orthodox Jew, what led him to the unthinkable? After all, in January 1940, writing of the separation from homeland he confided: ‘And this disdainful fatherland is yet now for us no longer a fatherland but in the memory a treacherous step-​fatherland, to which I never want to return, not even as a guest.’24 He and his wife Else Meidner fled Cologne in August 1939 and, from the outset, their situation was precarious: Else worked in Sydenham as a house servant and Ludwig attempted all means of professional viability in London after his internment. This included an application for permission from the Home Office via the Jewish Refugees’ Committee to work on his own account as a ‘Portrait Painter’ during his period of stay in the country.25 Yet, his list of paintings and drawings produced on commission between 1939 and 1949 is woefully thin, the most lucrative for £100 being his second portrait of the Rabbi Dr Leo Baeck, painted between 1946 and 1948, which was commissioned by the London Leo Baeck Lodge of B’nai B’rith.26 In 1949, a joint exhibition of his and ersten Weltkrieg, ebenfalls Werke hervorgebracht, die nicht geringer sind als die Malereien der “Brücke” […] In späteren Jahren habe ich mich dann leider sehr der Literatur gewidmet; aber hier in London, in der Emigration, arbeitete ich wieder künstlerisch, soweit es unter den obwaltenden Umständen möglich war. Sollten Sie Verlangen haben, etwas von meiner jetzigen Produktion sehen zu wollen, so kommen Sie mich doch, bitte, einmal besuchen. Es lohnt durchaus, sich das anzusehen.’ (13 May 1953). Joseph Paul Hodin, Ludwig Meidner: seine Kunst, seine Persönlichkeit, seine Zeit (Darmstadt: Justus von Liebig, 1973), 64–​5. 24 ‘[…] und dieses schnöde Vaterland ist ja für uns kein Vaterland mehr, sondern in der Erinnerung ein perfides Stiefvaterland, in das ich nimmer zurückkehren möchte, nicht einmal besuchsweise […]’ Meidner to Hilde Rosenbaum, 26 January 1940, in Gerda Breuer and Ines Wagemann, Ludwig Meidner: Zeichner, Maler, Literat, vol. 2 (Stuttgart: Hatje, 1991), 470. Stadtarchiv Darmstadt, Nachlaß Ludwig Meidner (hereafter NLMD). 25 NLMD ST45 Meidner Nr. 482, 28 July 1942. 26 NLMD ST45 Meidner Nr. 1491.

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Else Meidner’s works held at the Ben Uri Gallery did not, moreover, result in a lasting improvement of their situation. Understandably then, in December 1952, following several invitations of the then Senior Public Prosecutor Ernst Buchholz, Meidner travelled to Hamburg. During this sojourn, as a guest of the SPD politician Adolf Arndt in Bonn, the artist received an official portrait commission from the Bundespräsident Theodor Heuss, who had previously commissioned another well-​known exile –​Oskar Kokoschka –​to do likewise.27 Amidst much debate, the founder of the CDU Party and architect of West Germany’s post-​war reconstruction Chancellor Konrad Adenauer adopted an approach of Wiedergutmachung, reflecting a particular ethical path of dealing with the past, one which involved the recognition of the ‘Right of Return’ of German Jews. In some cases, cities invited former residents to return, as in 1946, when the city of Frankfurt-​am-​Main extended such invitations to Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer. Evidently, Meidner’s visit apprised him of the Federal Republic’s efforts to present itself not according to notions of the Stunde Null but as the continuity of a modern, living form of German Kulturnation, which eclipsed the World Wars and two collapsed political systems. In 1952, for the national pavilion at the Venice Biennale, General Director of the Bavarian National Museums Eberhard Hanfstaengl selected paintings of the artists associated with the Brücke from the period 1907 until 1922, along with twenty-​five sculptural works by Gerhard Marcks, spanning the period 1927 until 1951.28 Instructively, many of the loans were derived from the collection of the art dealer Ferdinand Möller, who had moved his gallery from the devastation in Berlin to Cologne in 1951.29 Having witnessed the 27 Oskar Kokoschka, Portrait of Theodor Heuss, 1950, oil on canvas, 104.5 × 79.5, Ludwig Museum, Cologne. 28 See Daniel Koep, ‘Modernity and Tradition: Public Sculpture by Gerhard Marcks 1944–​1967’, in Figuration/​Abstraction: Strategies for Public Sculpture in Europe 1945–​1968, ed. Charlotte Benton (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), 89–​90. 29 In the 1920s, Möller promoted the Brücke artists as a conservative enthusiast of German nationalism. During the Third Reich, Möller’s involvement as one of the four dealers to carry out the infamous auction of ‘degenerate art’, held in Lucerne by the Galerie Fischer, led to his salvaging of many of the confiscated works and selling them to private collectors and dealers. Consequently, he was one of the

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Brücke artists so presented in Cologne, it is reasonable that Meidner saw an art-​historical niche for his pre-​1914 oeuvre and elicited Hodin’s attention via this genealogy to his current production in exile. In his monograph on Meidner, ultimately published in 1973, Hodin expressed his disbelief that it was only after nine years in London exile that he discovered the well-​known Expressionist’s presence in Finchley, not too distant from his own home in Hampstead.30 Yet the contrasts between their respective fates in exile could not be more explicit. We can ascertain from the archive, however, that Hodin’s initial encounter with the artist couple in June 1953 developed into a sustained friendship. Not only did he patronise Else Meidner, presenting one of her formative drawings to the Tate Gallery in 1983, but he also served as the executor of her estate.31 The photographic material of their meeting during summer 1953 is also housed in the Tate Gallery archive, consisting of thirty-​eight negatives as well as a selection of photographs thereof.32 Collectively, they disclose the visual acuity and gaze of the anonymous photographer. They are compositionally challenging, making use of stark contrasts of natural light both in-​and out-​doors. In juxtaposing portraiture, oeuvre and domestic clutter, the photographs invite the viewer to dwell on the sitters’ relationship to their environment as well as intensifying the intimacy between the photographer and the humble subject (Figures 13.2–​13.5). Certainly, Hodin was acquainted with the émigré photographer Ida Kar, whom he commissioned in the 1960s (see, for example, Figure 13.1). Kar focused on monumental and engaging portraits of modern artists, sculptors and writers in interiors as worthy of display in their own right.33 most important figures in the post-​war reassessment of Expressionism. See John-​ Paul Stonard, Fault Lines: Art in Germany 1945–​1955 (London: Ridinghouse, 2007), 194–​9. 30 Hodin, Ludwig Meidner, 1973, 65–​6. 31 J. P. Hodin: Tate Britain Archive TGA. 20062, Box 140. (Else Meidner, Death and the Maiden, c.1918–​1925, watercolour, charcoal and graphite on paper, 55 × 49 cm. Tate Gallery, T03694, presented by John P. Hodin in 1983). 32 For the negatives see J. P. Hodin: Tate Britain Archive TGA. 20062, Box 159. The photographs are housed in Box 90. 33 Russian-​born and of Armenian parentage, Ida Kar (1908–​74) arrived in Britain from Egypt in 1945 with her second husband, Victor Musgrave (1919–​84), the

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Figure 13.2.  Ludwig Meidner, London, 1953. Photo: Unknown photographer, © Tate.

She was a pioneer in this regard and her first solo exhibition Forty Artists from Paris and London was launched in her husband Victor Musgrave’s Gallery One in Soho in 1954. Nevertheless, the height of her success was the well-​received solo exhibition staged at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1960.34 Whoever was responsible for them, the photographs of Hodin’s meeting with the Meidners served as part and parcel of the art critic’s

poet, art dealer and founder of Gallery One. The couple became a celebrated part of London’s post-​war bohemia. See Clare Freestone and Karen Wright, Ida Kar: Bohemian Photographer (London: National Portrait Gallery, 2011). 34 From the viewpoint of the dissemination and reproduction of this theme in the popular press, Douglas Glass ran a weekly ‘Portrait Gallery’ in the Sunday Times between 1949 and 1961.

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Figure 13.3.  Ludwig Meidner and J. P. Hodin (seated), London, 1953. Photo: Unknown photographer, © Tate.

tools in assembling evidence. There are no markings or stamps on the rear, except in the case of two shots where Hodin had written notes in German. Instructively, these notes amplify on the creative process (see Figures 13.3–​ 13.5),35 as Hodin later noted in detail: 35

J. P. Hodin: Tate Britain Archive TGA. 20062, Box 90: notes in pencil on the rear of relevant examples: ‘Ludwig Meidner porträtiert den Autor im Hof des Hauses wo er in London wohnte: Sommer 1953’ [Ludwig Meidner portrays the author in the courtyard of the house where he lived in London: Summer 1953]; ‘Ludwig Meidner zeichnet. Er beginnt bei einem Porträt nicht mit der Kontur; er Komponiert von innen nach außen, nicht von außen nach innen. Zuerst wird das Äuge erfasst, dann sind die Stirnrunzeln dran usw.: London 1953’ [Ludwig Meidner draws. He does

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Figure 13.4.  Ludwig Meidner, London, 1953. Photo: Unknown photographer, © Tate.

Figure 13.5.  Ludwig Meidner, London, 1953. Photo: Unknown photographer, © Tate.

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Once I came in the middle of the day. I wanted to have photographs made, and to do this we needed as much light as possible in the room, which was gloomy even in the daytime […] Since I desperately wanted a photograph of [Meidner] at work, we carried out his drawing board, put it on a chair, and he began to draw me. The photographs show his way of working very clearly. He began to draw a head not with the outer contour, but drawn from the inside out; he put in the eye, which is the light and window of the soul, and worked from there, following the traces and adjacent planes, always shading, and so giving depth, before he gives contour and demarcates the volumes against each other. He did not seem to be satisfied with the result, however, so I had to once again sit in the electrically lit room on one of the following evenings. He liked to talk at work, often making sarcastic, often profound remarks, always keeping his eye on me or the paper.36

In addition to the critic’s anecdotal account of time, place and temperament of the artist, the photographs served as the departure for Hodin’s appraisal of the draughtsmanship in giving shape to the evolving portrait. The serial nature of the photographic exercise did justice to Hodin’s methodology of ‘living art criticism’; wittingly or unwittingly, the empirical basis of his project also gave testimony to the penury and human dignity of creativity in exile.

36

not start with the contour in a portrait; he composes from the inside out, not from outside to inside. First, the eye is caught, then the frown is on it, etc.] ‘Einmal kam ich mitten am Tage. Ich wollte Fotografien anfertigen lassen und dazu brauchten wir in dem, auch am Tage düsteren Raum, soviel Licht als möglich […] Da ich unbedingt ein Bild des Meisters bei der Arbeit wünschte, trugen wir sein Zeichenbrett hinaus, setzten es auf einen Stuhl und er begann mich zu zeichnen. Die Fotografien zeigen seine Arbeitsweise sehr deutlich. Er begann einen Kopf nicht mit der äußeren Kontur, sondern von innen nach außen zeichnend, setzte er am Auge an, das ja das Licht und Fenster der Seele ist, und arbeitete von da aus, den Zügen folgend und die naheliegenden Flächen stets erst schattierend, also Tiefe gebend, ehe er konturierte und die Volumen gegeneinander abgrenzte. Er schien mit dem Resultat jedoch nicht zufrieden und so mußte ich an einem der folgenden Abende im elektrisch beleuchteten Raum nochmals Modell sitzen. Er sprach gerne bei der Arbeit, machte oft sarkastische, oft tiefsinnige Bemerkungen, das Auge stets gespannt auf mich oder das Papier gerichtet.’ Hodin, Ludwig Meidner, 99.

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Darmstadt There was an afterlife for these photographs, though with different and unforeseen results. In August 1953, Meidner returned to Germany permanently –​albeit without his wife, who chose to remain in London. Meidner initially settled in a Jewish retirement home in Frankfurt, along with fifty co-​lodgers –​all Jewish refugees from the Eastern zone of Germany –​so he informed Hodin.37 Significant here was the fact that the Hessian state Minister of Finance Heinrich Tröger was very receptive to Meidner’s claim for reparations.38 In 1955, he moved to Marxheim, a part of the city of Hofheim am Taunus, where the dealer Hanna Becker vom Rath secured a studio for him at a fraction of his former rental. Rath, who was well known for safeguarding her private collection of ‘degenerate art’ throughout the Third Reich, was another conduit for the artist’s re-​entry in the public sphere.39 Indeed, the journalist Hans Stahl visited the studio in 1956 and published an essay, which announced the rediscovery of an old master of German Expressionism in the seclusion of a village in Hesse.40 Fortunately, Stahl was accompanied by the 28-​year-​old

37 Hodin, Ludwig Meidner, 1973, 126; Eva Scheid, ‘Ich will nur, das eine grosse Empfindung über mich kommt und in mir wohnt wie ehedem …, ‘ in Jugend und Alter: Ludwig Meidners Porträts aus den 1950er und 1960er Jahren, exhibition catalogue (Hofheim am Taunus: Stadtmuseum Hofheim am Taunus, 2016), 20. 38 The reparation laws –​legislated in October 1953, June 1956 and July 1957 –​dictated aspects of restitution and the return of exiles. For example, the Federal Compensation Law (1956) bestowed, among other things, an unconditional grant of support for returning expatriates upon arrival. See Claus-​Dieter Krohn, ed., ‘Exil und Remigration’, in Exilforschung: Ein Internationales Jahrbuch 9 (1991). 39 For the biography and patronage of Hanna Bekker vom Rath (1893–​1983), see the catalogue Brücke und Blaues Haus: Heckel, Kirchner, Schmidt-​Rottluff und die Sammlerin Hanna Bekker vom Rath, exhibition catalogue (Hofheim am Taunus: Stadtmuseum Hofheim am Taunus, 2010). 40 Hans Stahl, ‘Besuch bei Ludwig Meidner: In Stiller dörflicher Zurückgezogenheit lebt in Hessen ein Altmeister des deutschen Expressionismus’, Das Schönste 5 (1958), 34–​7.

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photographer Stefan Moses, whose photographic series poignantly conveyed the alterity of the elderly Jewish artist.41 In 1963, due to illness, Meidner moved to a retirement home in Darmstadt. However, he was still publicly feted and, in 1964, became a member of the Akademie der Künste Berlin. But it was the admiration of Meidner’s early career –​the apocalyptic-​laden city landscapes, Expressionist self-​portraits and graphic works –​that dominated exhibition planning, particularly the commemoration of his eightieth birthday. On this occasion, 200 of his works travelled from the Kunsthalle in Recklinghausen, to the Haus am Waldsee in Berlin and, thereafter, to the Kunsthalle in Darmstadt.42 As one reviewer commented, it was the historic Meidner as avant-​gardist (between 1910 and 1920) that was of interest to the curators, to the exclusion of the contemporary, more reassured artist.43 It goes without saying that the works relating to his fourteen years in exile were entirely omitted from the show, as they were from all exhibitions in his lifetime. Following his death in early 1966 however, the Darmstädter Tagblatt commissioned Hodin to write an illustrated series of articles devoted to ‘Ludwig Meidners Londoner Jahre’. These appeared in five parts over the November and December of 1966 (see, for example, Figure 13.6).44 41 For the photographic series, see Jugend und Alter: Ludwig Meidners Porträts, 46–​63. Stefan Moses (1928–​2017) was dedicated to the portrait as a genre and, simultaneously, to a multi-​faceted psychological image of German society (from the Federal Republic of Germany to Reunification). In 2012, the gallery Johanna Breede in Berlin exhibited his photographs ‘Germany’s Emigrants’, which included his portraits of individuals who had been forced into exile in 1933 (like Thomas Mann) and re-​émigrés, Theodor Adorno and Ernst Bloch. 42 Ludwig Meidner, exh. cat. (Recklinghausen: Aurel Bongers, 1963). 43 Ernst Buchholz, ‘Im Nacken das Sternemeer. Gestern vergessen, heute wiederentdeckt: der Maler Ludwig Meidner’, Der Zeit 14 April 1964, as cited in Jugend und Alter, 33. 44 J. P. Hodin, ‘Ludwig Meidners Londoner Jahre’, Darmstädter Tagblatt (5/​6 November 1966), 30; ‘Meidners Studio in London’, Darmstädter Tagblatt (19/​20 November 1966), 16; ‘Ludwig Meidner hatte Erscheinungen’, Darmstädter Tagblatt (3/​4 December 1966), 30; ‘Traurige Jahre –​neue Motive’, Darmstädter Tagblatt (25 December 1966), 20; ‘Ludwig Meidner der Mystiker’, Darmstädter Tagblatt (6/​7 January 1967), 17.

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Figure 13.6.  J. P. Hodin, ‘Meidners Studio in London’, Darmstädter Tagblatt (19–​20 November 1966), 16. Photo: © Tate.

It is difficult to ascertain whether this was a planned or serendipitous outcome of Hodin’s encounter with the artist couple some thirteen years earlier. Reframed in this unexpected context, the photographic series loses its coherence and the frisson associated with time and place. Moreover, while they are provided with captions, the function of the photographs is unanchored from Hodin’s narrative and divorced from its critical apparatus. In view of its constituencies and readership, though, Hodin’s journalistic approach was astute, reminding a German audience of the hardships of life in exile and Meidner’s artistic responses to the crimes of the Holocaust.45 Indeed, aligned with his own research over the last decade 45 For the controversial debates between Thomas Mann and Frank Thieß regarding exile and inner emigration, see J. F. G. Grosser, ed., Die Grosse Kontroverse: Ein Briefwechsel um Deutschland (Hamburg: Nagel, 1963).

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into ‘The Problem of Jewish art and its Contemporary Aspect’,46 Hodin attempted to promote an allegiance of cultural experiences between modern German and Jewish artists. As he wrote in the second of his articles, published in the 19/​20 November edition of the newspaper: Strange how related the German and the Jewish artists are in the world. Only the Jews in art started much later. The German master can draw on a tradition of several hundred years. Actually, the Germans also came late, in relation to the Latin nations.47

Of course, such musings require their own, serious interrogation. But given that the Gesellschaft für Exilforschung [Society for Exile Studies] was only founded in 1984, and that the first selective showing of Meidner’s exile works came in 1991,48 Hodin’s writings and activities make valuable and provocative interventions in the historiography of the period that deserve closer attention.

46 Hodin, ‘The Problem of Jewish Art and Its Contemporary Aspect,’ was written in 1953 but only published in Modern Art and The Modern Mind, 113–​57. 47 ‘Sonderbar, wie verwandt doch der deutsche und der jüdische Künstler im wesen sind. Nur haben die Jüden in der Kunst viel später angefangen. Der deutscher Meister kann auf eine Tradition von mehreren hundert Jahren zurückgreifen. Eigentlich sind die Deutschen auch spät gekommen, im Verhältnis zu den lateinischen Nationen.’ Hodin, ‘Meidners Studio in London.’ 48 See Breuer and Wagemann, Ludwig Meidner: Zeichner, Maler, Literat.

Keith Holz

14 Witness to Global Realignments and Human Suffering: Oskar Kokoschka in Post-​War London

Oskar Kokoschka arrived London from Prague on a flight over Rotterdam on 17 October 1938. Accompanied by his partner, the 23-​ year-​old Olda Palkovská, she was the one who had the foresight to acquire tickets just days before. No stranger to England, Kokoschka had lived for seven months in London in 1926, and held a solo exhibition of thirty-​four paintings at the Leicester Galleries in June 1928. Olda too had visited London for few months in 1934–​5, partly to improve her English, and partly her parent’s design to remove their teenage daughter from the clutches of the womanising, elder Kokoschka. But the circumstances facing the pair in 1938 were different. In contrast to the painter’s pursuit of optimal city views and other sights to paint during Kokoschka’s earlier London stay –​and part of a gallery-​sponsored multi-​ year tour to several European cities, in late 1938, the artist was among the desperate throngs fleeing Nazi Europe seeking refuge and asylum in the Western democracies. Olda’s parents, Lida and Karel B. Palkovsky, were also among the refugees to England, unlike Kokoschka’s sister (Bertha) and brother (Bohuslav) who remained behind in Prague and Vienna, respectively. The couple’s timing was prescient, for within days of their arrival in London, the Sudetenland was occupied by Nazi troops. By May 1939, Prague and the rest of Czechoslovakia had also fallen. Touching down on the Croydon airport tarmac, Oskar and Olda could not have foreseen that London would remain their war-​ravaged base of operations and home for the next fifteen years. Whether in London or taking protracted excursions around Scotland and Wales, the United Kingdom became an outpost where Kokoschka observed and commented upon the violent reordering of Europe and its peoples as he had known it. He also

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joined in the cultural and political endeavors of German and Austrian exiled artists’ groups, all while pressing on with his practice painting and drawing. Nor would the pair have imagined in 1938 that their relocation from London in 1953, would be to Villeneuve, Switzerland to a house –​ the Villa Delphin –​they would have built on a patch of land overlooking Lake Geneva. But as abrupt as the pair’s departure from Prague had been they did not arrive London entirely unprepared. To judge by the dense schedule of appointments arranged with luminaries of London’s artworld within days of arriving (e.g. Kenneth Clark, John Rothenstein, Thomas Boase and Roland Penrose), and recorded by Olda in her pocket calendar,1 it appears Kokoschka had given some forethought to his second sustained attempt to enter the London artworld. The first years of Kokoschka’s exile to the United Kingdom have received considerable attention by art historians. The same cannot be said for the immediate post-​war years leading up to his return to the continent. Through the end of the war Kokoschka continued the public role he had begun to rehearse in Prague as the face of the anti-​Nazi resistance among modern visual artists from Germany persecuted or vilified as degenerate by the Nazis. After the war, the artist endeavoured to relaunch his fettered career all while coming to terms with his family’s misfortunes, the reconfigurations of Europe, Britain’s relations to its former colonies and to Britain’s emerging diplomatic alliances. A question sometimes asked of exiles residing in the UK is what was their position within or towards Anglo-​German interchange, and in Kokoschka’s case one might add Anglo-​Austrian interchange? But for Kokoschka such queries have already been addressed in the literature.2 1

2

Olda Kokoschka, Agenden, 17 October 1938–​11 November 1938, Nachlaß Olda Kokoschka, E 2004, Handschriftenabteilung, Zentralbibliothek Zürich, hereafter ZBZ. The arrival is recounted in more detail in Keith Holz, ‘The Politics of Mobility and Mutilation in Kokoschka’s Exile Years (1934–​1939)’, in Régine Bonnefoit and Ruth Häusler, eds, ’Spur im Triebsand’: Oskar Kokoschka Neu Gesehen. Briefe und Bilder (Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag, 2010), 77–​92, 83–​4. Kokoschka’s place within the range of Anglo-​German relations during the Third Reich find him opposed to the German government of the Nazis. This is something of a truism permeating the literature. Less obvious and straightforward are his views towards Austria and Anglo-​Austrian relations. On this later topic, see: Bernadette

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A similar, more fruitful question is: what conception of Britain did Kokoschka come to identify with, begin to envision and possibly support during his extended UK residency? When considering conceptions of nations, one need only recall the stark contrast between the concept of Germany fashioned under Adolf Hitler in Germany and the ‘other Germany’ proposed, claimed and partially developed in the western democracies by exiled political and cultural figures, including Kokoschka.3 But in London after the war, Kokoschka’s view of the world was heavily shaped by British views of Britain’s place in the post-​war world order. Both the artworks and the troves of documents he and Olda left behind allow us to more clearly identify the contours of his understanding of his place, in relation to Britain’s place and role in the post-​war world. Kokoschka’s correspondence after the Second World War reveals an artist taking the measure of timely world-​historical crises and devoting his attention to several ambitious visions to reorganise international global relations. Those documents also show that he was also working to re-​establish his reputation through museum exhibitions and sales while marshalling aid for his siblings and their families who continued to suffer deprivations after the war in Prague and Vienna. An early post-​war letter to art critic Michelangelo Masciotta illuminates Kokoschka’s outlook on world affairs: ‘I see the most sinister world still to come, at least for Europe, if our whole philosophy (or rather lack

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Reinhold, Oskar Kokoschka und Österreich: österreichische Kulturpolitik und Identitätskonstruktion im Spiegel einer wechselvollen Biografie, doctoral dissertation, University of Vienna, 2017. The idea many exiles held of a different, ‘other Germany’ beyond German borders and the actual Germany within its borders between 1933 and 1945, one epitomising goodness, the other evil, is hardly adequate. Not only was Nazi culture at home more diverse than previously assumed, but those who fled the Nazis were far from a homogenous lot. Clear distinctions between German culture at home and abroad have been further eroded (and clarified) by the recent scholarship of Benjamin G. Martin, The Nazi-​Fascist New Order for European Culture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016). Martin examines the scope and ideological adaptability of Nazi Germany’s cultural programmes in foreign countries. On the architectural representation of Nazi Germany in London, see the essay by Ina Weinrautner on the German Foreign Office in London in this volume.

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of philosophic thought) does not change in time. A mechanistic mathematical conception of the world, life and society is the direct refutation of humanist values, it is against a humane world. The creative man, the artist, has to say it […].’4 Humanist values endangered by new technology would become a constant drumbeat pulsing through the next decades of the artist’s thoughts and pronouncements. But, between 1945 and 1949, other timely issues of global importance also occupied Kokoschka and caused him to speak out, namely: the Second World War, the annihilation of European Jewry, decolonisation and global racial inequality. Scholars have examined these engagements less, surely because Kokoschka ultimately did little to advance or implement them. But there were exceptions. This paper revisits four of these moments of engagement and enthusiasm for each before he abandoned them for more conventional art-​centred projects. Historian Mark Mazower described the immediate post-​war years as ones of ‘competing universalisms, all struggling to determine the course of global history’.5 From 1947 to 1949, several nation-​states took on new forms, each derived from pre-​war events already in motion. Art historian Barbara McCloskey’s recent book on George Grosz excels in stationing that exiled artist in relation to several global projects, from Wendell Willkie’s One World movement, the Soviet’s World Congress of Intellectuals in Defense of Peace, and the US-​led United World Federalist’s endeavours through the United Nations to implement one world government.6 Kokoschka too was dialled in to competing plans to reorganise Europe at home and globally. His letters also document his attention and criticism of the Czechoslovak government of Eduoard Beneš’ violent expulsion of millions of ethnic Germans from the new Czechoslovakia, and his concern for Europe’s displaced and orphaned children, particularly those impacted by the Four 4 5 6

The remainder of this quotation reads: ‘If no other people are willing to risk saying the truth or do not wish to be outspoken for want of vision.’ Letter from Kokoschka to Michelangelo Masciotta, 20 July 1946, Vorlaß Heinz Spielmann, ZBZ. As summarised by Leela Gandhi and Deborah L. Nelson, ‘Editor’s Introduction’, to ‘Around 1948: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Global Transformation’, in Leela Gandhi and Deborah L. Nelson, eds, Critical Inquiry (Summer 2014), 285–​97, 294. Barbara McCloskey, The Exile of George Grosz. Modernism, America, and the One World Order (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015), 49–​50, 82–​90, 153–​6.

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Powers occupying his native Vienna.7 His letters also reveal the artist’s initial precarity as a Czech citizen in Britain who barely spoke Czech.8

The Holocaust and UNESCO Kokoschka’s concern for the fate of European Jewry surfaced in summer 1946. The exiled Vienna publisher, then based in New York, Robert Freund reconnected with his boyhood friend Kokoschka and asked him to produce a series of lithographs depicting scenes from the war and the annihilation of European Jewry. Kokoschka had painted oil portraits of Freund around 1909 and again around 1930. Notoriously, the earlier portrait of Freund had been lacerated during the Anschluß in a Gestapo apartment search of Freund’s Bastei Verlag colleagues in Vienna. A testament of Nazi barbarism against modern art, it became a sensation when exhibited in Paris in November 1938. Freund, who unlike Kokoschka had lost family members to Nazi genocide, detailed for the artist the scope and content of an edition of 300–​400 he wished to publish with his New York Twin Editions press: I think that in 32 to 40 lithos the whole story can be told. There should be four lithos about Hitlers Gestapo tortures and the concentration camps, especially the starving 7

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For example, writing to California-​based Alfred Neumeyer to thank him for publishing an open letter in the Magazine of Art, Kokoschka advocated for the plight of Austrian children: ‘Enclosed you will find a short story I wrote to help the Austrian children. In Vienna they die now at a catastrophic rate due to the artificial famine wave created by the occupying powers. The Big Four are only interested in their gambling for power and peoples are not human beings but mere ciphers and pawns on the political chessboard.’ Letter from Kokoschka to Alfred Neumeyer, 28 June 1946, Fasc. Neumeyer, Alfred, Vorlaß Heinz Spielmann, ZBZ, photocopy, original in Germanisches Museum, Nürnberg. Kokoschka received British citizenship in February 1947. Kokoschka wrote letters to Augustus John (24 April 1946) and Kenneth Clark (29 April 1946) asking each to sign his citizenship application forms. Olda Kokoschka and Heinz Spielmann, eds, Oskar Kokoschka. Briefe III 1934–​1953 (Düsseldorf: Claassen Verlag, 1986), 170–​1.

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keith holz of Buchenau and the hangings at Dachau, one of the bombing of Rotterdam, another or two of the bombing of London. Eight about the martyrdom of the Jewish people, beginning with the burning of the synagogues, the Ghettos and the Jewish sign on the clothes, the extermination of the Ghetto in Warsha [sic.] u., the masskilling [sic.] of the Jewish children, the gassing at Oswiecim. Four other lithos about the killing of the Polish prisoners, the forced labor of the French, the extermination of the Ukraine and Lidice, the burning of the village and the shooting of all the men. Now on the other side: The bombing of Hamburg, Cologne, Berlin and Dresden –​four lithos. The Atom bomb two lithos. The cruelties committed by the Tito-​Government, by the Poles, deporting the Germans. Three about the infamies of the Benes Government (with the Jewish Star) crying for help in German language? Let’s slay him …. People five centuries later should shudder when seeing what kind of humanities [sic.] existed in our time […].9

To goad Kokoschka’s competitive bent, Freund claimed he had asked Marc Chagall ‘why he did not start etchings on the suffering of the Jews[?]‌’, and that Chagall replied ‘he would first need an offer from a publisher’.10 Yet Kokoschka did not follow through on picturing the singular graphic scenes enumerated by Freund. This sets him apart from Ludwig Meidner, who between 1942 and 1945 completed a similar, more focused cycle The Suffering of the Jews in Poland comprised of forty-​five watercolours.11 The rich, if prickly, dialogue between Kokoschka and Freund often addressed the annihilation of European Jewry, and other events 9

Letter from Robert Freund (NY) to Kokoschka, 12 June 1946, Nachl. O. Kokoschka, Signatur 383.34, ‘Twin Editions, Robert Freund‘, ZBZ. 10 Letter from Robert Freund (NY) to Kokoschka, 12 March 1946, Nachl. O. Kokoschka, Signatur 383.34, ‘Twin Editions, Robert Freund‘, ZBZ. 1 1 Shulamith Behr, ‘Ludwig Meidner: Exile, Creativity and Holocaust Awareness’, in Museum Giersch der Goethe-​Universität, Jüdisches Museum der Stadt Frankfurt am Main and Birgit Sander, eds, Eavesdropper on an Age: Ludwig Meidner in Exile [Horcher in die Zeit –​Ludwig Meidner im Exil] (Munich: Hirmer Verlag, 2016), 148–​67; and Shulamith Behr, ‘Ludwig Meidner’s cycle Leiden der Juden in Polen (1942–​45) and Holocaust Knowledge: Towards a Methodology’, in Erik Riedel and Mirjam Wenzel, eds, Ludwig Meidner: Expressionismus, Ekstase, Exil [Ludwig Meidner: Exile, Ecstasy, Expressionism] (Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 2018), 279–​97.

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of mass human suffering including expulsion of ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia in 1945–​6, which Kokoschka considered as wretched as the crimes of the Nazis. Despite, if not because of, the specificity and scope of atrocities enumerated by Freund, the publisher’s elaborate pictorial cycle was nothing Kokoschka could be coaxed to deliver.12 Striking, however, is that both the exiled Viennese publisher and Kokoschka deliberated reengaging with issues of timely world-​historical gravity through their professions (publisher and artist), not through other means. Also in summer and fall 1946, Kokoschka followed the founding of UNESCO and exchanged brief letters with its first director-​general, evolutionary biologist and proponent of scientific humanism, Julian Huxley.13 During UNESCO’s first two years under Huxley (1946–​8) the organisation advanced a radical idealistic vision for international peace through global citizenship and one worldism, or cosmopolitanism, considered ‘as a necessary step for mankind in the evolution from tribes and nations to “One World” ’.14 Kokoschka’s public identification with UNESCO concurred with its Exposition international d’art moderne of late 1946 at the Musée 12

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Furthermore, this correspondence involved Kokoschka’s solicitation of Freund to send CARE packages to his surviving relatives in Prague and Vienna, and Freund’s ongoing generous responses. Kokoschka’s sister Berta lived with her Czech husband in Prague, and his brother Bohuslav with wife and son in Vienna. 31 May 1946, 21 August 1946, 30 September 1946, 10 December 1946 letters from Robert Freund (NY) to Kokoschka, in: Nachl. O. Kokoschka, Signatur 383.34, ‘Twin Editions, Robert Freund’, ZBZ. Letter from Kokoschka to Professor J. Huxley, 3 October 1946, thanking Huxley for the letter of invitation to participate in the Paris exhibition. See also: letter from Kokoschka to Alfred Neumeyer, 16 October 1946, regarding the Paris exhibition. Kokoschka mentions Julian Huxley and the UNESCO exhibition to Neumeyer and wants to sell What we are fighting for to an American. Fasc. Alfred Neumeyer, Vorlaß Spielmann, ZBZ. Glenda Sluga, ‘UNESCO and the (One) World of Julian Huxley’, Journal of World History 21/​3 (September 2010), 393. In a 16 October 1946 letter to Alfred Neumeyer, Kokoschka states that through Huxley What we are fighting for will be exhibited together with three other paintings in the Paris UN exhibition, Fasc. Alfred Neumeyer, Vorlaß Spielmann, ZBZ. The exhibition is: Musée d’Art Moderne, Exposition international d’art moderne. Peinture, art graphique et décoratif, architecture, Paris, 18 November–​28 December 1946.

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d’Art Moderne Paris. Kokoschka participated with What we are fighting for (1943) and three paintings from the collection of Edward BeddingtonBehrens. As Kokoschka put it: 'three other (minor) political paintings of mine' (Evelyn [Threnody], The Crab and Le Bosquet Magique [Capricchio]).15 As Anna Müller-​Härlin has deftly demonstrated, Beddington was among Kokoschka’s closest and loyal of British friends during the war and his most generous and supportive British collector and patron.16 Beddington furnished Oskar and Olda’s flat at 55 Park Lane, and for years paid the rent for it and Kokoschka´s studio.17 He also funded the edition of 1000 posters In Memory of the Children of Europe who have to die of cold and hunger this Xmas (December 1945).18 Beddington also facilitated the 1000 lb. purchase of Kokoschka’s Portrait of Ambassador Ivan Maisky (1942/​ 43) by his friend the businessman and chairman of British Celanese, Dr Henri Dreyfus, who gifted it to the Tate. Kokoschka donated the proceeds to the ’Joint Committee for Soviet Aid’ to benefit children at Stalingrad Hospital where Kokoschka’s name was to be inscribed on a plaque.19 After Nazi Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, Kokoschka, together with the Hampstead-​based Free German League of Culture to which he served as president, became increasingly and outspokenly pro-​ Soviet. Kokoschka’s wartime proximity to the promises of Stalinism is also echoed in a book in his library –​The History of the Communist Party of the 15 The four paintings exhibited in Paris were from the collection of Edward Beddington Behrens. Letter from Kokoschka to Alfred Neumeyer, 16 October 1946, Fasc. Alfred Neumeyer, Vorlaß Heinz Spielmann, ZBZ. See also: photocopy of letter from Kokoschka to Curt Valentin, 11 November 1946, Fasc. Curt Valentin, Nachlaß OK, ZBZ (original in Curt Valentin Papers, Museum of Modern Art Library, New York), cited in Gloria Sultano und Patrick Werkner, Oskar Kokoschka: Kunst und Politik 1937–​1950 (Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 2003), 269, n. 31. 16 Anna Müller-​Härlin, ‘A European Friendship: Oskar Kokoschka and His English Collector Edward Beddington Behrens’, unpublished paper presented at Place, Nation, and Politics in Oskar Kokoschka’s Writings, and Career, 1934–​1953, annual conference of the Council for European Studies, Columbia University, NY (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 25 June 2013). 17 Müller-​Härlin, ‘A European Friendship’, 1–​2, n. 7, 8, 9. 18 Müller-​Härlin, ‘A European Friendship’, 7. 19 Müller-​Härlin, ‘A European Friendship’, 5.

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Soviet Union (1941) –​a copy that came into his library through his father-​ in-​law and inscribed: ‘B. Palkovsky London 1941 /​from the Embassy of the USSR London.’20

Race, empire and atomic powers Another volume Kokoschka acquired around this time, Hell in the Sunshine (1943),21 stands out –​not only for its catchy title that plays on Winston Churchill’s recent claim that Japan was ‘making hell while the sun shines’ –​but for its synoptic, historical grasp and interpretation of global issues, particularly related to race-​based global inequality, a condition all too familiar to its author. Kokoschka’s painting What we are fighting for may also take cues from it. The author was the Calcutta-​born, self-​ proclaimed ‘half-​caste’ biologist turned historian and cultural-​theorist on race and racism, Cedric Dover (b. 1904–​61), a prolific author, best known for the book Half-​Caste, a defence of mix-​raced peoples worldwide.22 Amid India’s long struggle for independence from British rule, Dover had followed his parents to London in 1934. As with Kokoschka, Dover came to admire the Soviet Union as an ally in the struggle against racism and global inequities. Densely narrated, recent political histories of eastern nations and peoples interweave throughout Hell in the Sunshine and readers are urged to build bridges between Eurasian and African diasporas while appealing to people of colour to affirm their hybrid identities.23 Coloured 20 Commission of the C.C. of the C.P.S.U., eds, History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union /​Bolsheviks Short Course (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1941), ref.: 110266; OK-​Kult 4293V; Auflage 1941 Oskar Kokoschka Bibliothek, Archiv und Sammlung, Oskar Kokoschka-​Zentrum, University of Applied Arts Vienna, hereafter as OKZ, Vienna. 21 Cedric Dover, Hell in the Sunshine (London: Secker and Warburg, 1943), ref.: 109851; OK-​Kult 4279/​V, Oskar Kokoschka Bibliothek, OKZ, Vienna. 22 Cedric Dover, Half-​Caste (London: M. Secker and Warburg, 1937). 23 Dover later wrote the best-​seller American Negro Art (Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society, 1960).

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pencil markings allow us to follow Kokoschka’s attentiveness to specific points in its text. The volume opens with a ‘Dedicatory Letter to a White Woman’, crossing a ‘colour line’ right off the bat.24 The book’s anti-​Imperial message is grounded in an impressively wide-​ranging, global history of contemporary Asia and its peoples at the moment Japan was imperilled by the British and Allied war effort. Accenting 1942 as a turning point in the war, Dover wrote: ‘The common people of Britain and America, the men and women who are tightening their belts and offering their lives, must know what they are fighting for and what they should be fighting for.’25 ‘[…] They must know, too, what the coloured peoples are being asked to fight for.’ Dover questioned whether British-​US policy actually offered hope, as the ‘coloured countries are only seen by them as sources of revenue and materials.26 Given the large canvas What we are fighting for on which Kokoschka was working at this time, and its staging of British capitalist greed and military violence pitted against the leading figure of independence from British rule, Mahatma Gandhi, it is possible to station Kokoschka in sympathetic alignment with Dover’s anti-​colonialist arguments if not his actual examples. Coloured pencil marks in Kokoschka’s copy, repeatedly underscore the recent history of Chinese relations with Russia and especially Japan, as well as the blindness of US-​British foreign policy towards Japan. Kokoschka also underlined sections on African-​American inequality, and a visit of African Americans to Japan at the invitation of Prince Konoye that included gifts of Japanese prints.27 In the chapter ‘Waiting on Roosevelt’, Kokoschka marked one of Dover’s citations of Pearl Buck, who stressed ‘[…] the war against Nazism carries race equality or inequality as one of its main issues’ (Figure 14.1).28 24 ‘Dedicatory Letter to a White Woman’ includes, in reference ‘to many in Asia’ […] ‘They agree with Mr. Churchill that Japan is “making hell while the sun shines”, but they’re convinced that the day is approaching when the Japanese will be put firmly in their place and the Eastern Empire will return happily to the fold to make and mend and grow vegetables for the custodians of “civilisation” ’. Dover, Hell, 8. 25 Dover, Hell, 11. 26 Dover, Hell, 11. 27 Dover, Hell, 166–​7. 28 Dover, Hell, 168.

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Setting aside further inquires into the book’s relationship to What we are fighting for, reading such passages against a later canvas, Acrobat Family

Figure 14.1.  Kokoschka marked page in Cedric Dover, Hell in the Sunshine (London: Secker and Warburg, 1943), 168. Photo: © University of Applied Arts Vienna, Oskar Kokoschka Centre, Inv. No. OK-​Kult 4279/​V p. 168.

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Figure 14.2.  Oskar Kokoschka, Acrobat Family [Gauklerfamilie] (1946), oil on canvas, 50 × 61 cm, Albertinum | Galerie Neue Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Leih.-​Nr. L366, permanent loan from a private collection. Photo: © Albertinum | Galerie Neue Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Elke Estel/​Hans-​Peter Klut; VG Bild-​Kunst, Bonn 2019.

[Gauklerfamilie] (1946, Figure 14.2) raises related questions. Initially titled Slum [Armenviertel], one must ask whether the painting actually depicts a poor urban district. And, does it refer to the notorious but hardly unique slums of India? Affirmative answers to these questions are supported by Jutta Hülsewig-​Johnen’s reading of the painting as showing ‘an idyllic scene of Southern, easy-​going everyday existence’, lived between base desires and truth, but lacking a larger world view as it takes place behind a (background) wall.29 At left a woman bends to feed a cat turning away from her baby. 29 ‘[…] der Szene die Idyllik südländisch-​unbeschwerten Alltagsdaseins […]’ Jutta Hülsewig-​Johnen, Oskar Kokoschka Emigrantenleben Prag und London 1934–​1953 (Bielefeld: Kerber Verlag, 1994), 285–​6.

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A female personification of Eros hovers on the shack’s upper wall left. At right, above a foreground critter, a woman sits within a curtained booth and reaches out towards a black cat –​like a street-​fair fortune-​teller forecasting the truth. From a clothesline above, white britches wave in the breeze beside a spoked wheel set into the upper façade –​possibly the spinning wheel of Indian independence.30 Hülsewig-​Johnen suggests the canvas addresses common everyday existence between base desires (Eros), and truth telling; or, the futility to determine truth amid poverty and squalor.31 But, other than a suggesting a slum, little about Acrobat Family specifies India. This derelict everyday could be set anywhere including the badly destroyed cityscapes of post-​war London or Vienna, scenes Kokoschka knew first-​hand. A related painting , Circus or Atomic Energ y Unchained (1946–​7, Figure 14.3), followed closely after Acrobat Family and addresses the threat unleashed upon humanity with the US bombings of Hiroshima

Figure 14.3.  Oskar Kokoschka, Circus or Atomic Energy Unchained (1946–​1947), oil on canvas, 61 × 91.5 cm, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem. Photo: Bridgeman Images. 30 Hülsewig-​Johnen suggests this may be a spinning wheel, but does not relate it to Indian independence. Hülsewig-​Johnen, Oskar Kokoschka, 285. 31 Ibid.

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and Nagasaki (early August 1945). Kokoschka had spoken to this issue in his ‘Petition of a foreign Artist to the righteous people of Great Britain for a secure and present Peace …’ of late 1945: ‘The fate of the atomic bomb is still veiled in secrecy. Our eyes are fixed on Dancing Death holding this devilish device, counting the hours of our life. The complete absence of any hope of peace-​to-​come is a characteristic feature of the technical structure of present-​day civilisation.’32 In the canvas, a fool wearing a red vest and conical hat ambles across the foreground, back turned to a horrified woman and child stationed before a deadly circus lion exiting its newly opened cage door. Brandishing the key in his right hand –​an allegory of uncaged atomic energy –​this buffoon waters a towering tree behind a poster of Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin of the Yalta Agreement labelled ‘PEACE’. The trio of world decision makers observe this mad fool’s diabolical Dance of Death –​ ineffectual to address the world’s newest danger. Above, a peace dove flies away, while an earthbound dove gestures towards the newly uncaged monster. On a line above, a row of pennants include the Nazi swastika, hammer and sickle, and flags of the United States and Britain. Kokoschka’s alignment with anti-​Imperial British views and politics assumed a new intensity in the days after 30 January 1948, when Mahatma Gandhi, the 79-​year-​old leader of the Indian independence movement was assassinated by a fanatical Hindu. Kokoschka had come to regard Gandhi ‘as the greatest example of humanism’.33 Since summer 1947, he had sought to arrange to paint Gandhi through his friend in Winterthur, journalist and attorney Friedrich Gubler. Regarding Gandhi as nothing less than a ‘miracle’, Kokoschka wrote Gubler (with no lack of hubris): ‘Today, only I alone can paint such a godlike human being, who sacrifices himself for the peace of the world, without relying upon state police, concentration camps, army, navy, bank capital, or official rank as means of power

32 ‘Petition from a Foreign Artist to the Righteous People of Great Britain for a Secure and Present Peace, humbly tendered and signed by Oskar Kokoschka London, December 1945’, in: Edith Hoffmann, Oskar Kokoschka Life and Work (London: Faber and Faber, 1947), 250–​1. 33 Hans-​Dieter Mück, Alles OK: Oskar Kokoschka. Schule des Sehens 1906–1976 (Apolda: ARTeFACT, 2003), 204.

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to support himself.’34 Fascinated after the war with advancements in the quality of colour printing technologies to reproduce and popularise his paintings, Kokoschka planned to have his planned Gandhi portrait reproduced ‘a hundred-​thousand times’, to attach his name to the great Gandhi. He continued: ‘In a dimension for propaganda previously only available for ideologues to exploit, the technical possibilities must be secured in order to ensure peace, for which this incarnation of the Buddha, Gandhi, has sacrificed himself.’35 Ever impatient with Gubler, by mid-​December 1947, the step-​son of pro-​independence movement literary giant Rabindranath Tagore (d. 1941), had intervened and arranged for Kokoschka to travel to India to paint Gandhi’s portrait.36 Just five days before the assassination, Kokoschka had informed a friend: ‘I will presumably be called to Delhi in order to portray Gandhi. He is the greatest, wisest human being nowadays and living proof, that one needs neither the OGPU nor Atom bombs or even money to awaken human reason.’37 Six weeks after the assassination, writing the salesman Ernst Pisk: I always admired him as the greatest example of humanism, and recently his invitation reached me. That the venerable old man, the only one who preached love against the hatred in the world, met the bullet of a mechanized brute, in which our technical

34 Letter from Kokoschka to Friedrich T. Gubler, 11 September 1947, in Kokoschka and Spielmann, Briefe III, 192. 35 ‘In einem, wie bisher bloß die Propaganda von Ausmaß, Ideologien es sich zunutzen machen konnte, muß die technische Möglichkeit für eine Weltpropaganda gesichert sein, um den Frieden zu sichern, für welchen Gandhi, diese Incarnation Buddhas, sich aufopfert,’ … hunderttausendfach‘. Ibid. Kokoschka’s plan to produce large editions of color reproductions of the anticipated Gandhi portrait, also included an edition of the painting Das rote Ei [The Red Egg], Sultano and Werkner, Oskar Kokoschka, 205. 36 Oskar Kokoschka addendum to letter from Olda Kokoschka to Friedrich T. Gubler, 16 December 1947, Vorlaß Spielmann, ZBZ. 37 ‘ich vermutlich nach Delhi berufen werde um Ghandi zu portraitieren. Der ist der grösste, weiseste Mensch heutzutage und ein lebendiger Beweis, dass man weder OGPU noch Atombomben, nich [sic.] einmal Geld braucht um die menschliche Vernunft zu wecken […]’, letter from Kokoschka to Martin Hürlimann, 20 January 1948, Vorlaß Spielmann, ZBZ.

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keith holz civilisation has horrifyingly parodied itself. I cried the entire day and more or less lost the courage to lift up my weak voice any longer against this shameless age.38

But Kokoschka did more than cry following the assassination. He spent his days clipping and compiling British newspaper articles, reports (many with photos) of the assassination, the funeral and related events (Figure 14.4).39 In

Figure 14.4.  Collage of several newspaper clippings collected by Kokoschka regarding the death of Mahatma Gandhi, 1948. Photo: © University of Applied Arts Vienna, Oskar Kokoschka Centre, Permanent loan by the Oskar Kokoschka Documentation in Pöchlarn. 38 ‘Ich hatte ihn immer bewundert als das größte Beispiel des Humanismus, und vor kurzem erreichte mich seine Einladung. Da mußte den ehrwürdigen Greis, der die Liebe gegen den Weltenhaß als einziger gepredigt hatte, die Kugel des mechanisierten Vieh treffen, in welchem sich unsere technische Zivilisation so grauenerregend selber parodiert hat. Ich weinte den ganzen Tag und verlor mehr oder weniger den Mut, meine schwache Stimme länger gegen dieses schamlose Zeitalter zu erheben’, letter from Kokoschka to Ernst Pisk, 13 March 1948, Kokoschka and Spielmann, Briefe III, 203. 39 ‘Press Clippings’, Nachl. Von Oskar und Olda Kokoschka, OKZ, Wien.

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1943, Kokoschka had already included a cropped portrait of Gandhi pulling a rickshaw at the right border of his major political allegory What we are fighting for, recently exhibited with UNESCO in Paris. That figure on the margin would remain the most vivid portrayal of the patriarch Kokoschka would ever paint.

Retreat to Switzerland and political reorientation Kokoschka’s engagement with issues of global social and political importance subsided by the early 1950s, concurrent with his and Olda’s plans in 1951 to build a retirement home on Lake Geneva. Designated the Villa Delphin, the home the couple moved into in September 1953 was largely financed by proceeds of a portrait commission and suggestion of further income from industrialist Emil Bührle.40 Kokoschka’s pursuit of this portrait of a major armaments manufacturer confound his self-​proclaimed pacifism and anti-​Imperialist, wartime sentiments.41 His geographic retreat from urban public life also marked a break with his previous engagement in organised exiled German and Austrian artists’ groups in London throughout and just after the war years. Those engagements had included Kokoschka’s service as president of the Free German League of Culture, his Portrait of the Soviet Foreign Minister Ivan Maisky (1942/​43), the major painting What we are fighting for (1943), and the poster Christ helps the starving children of Europe (December 1945). This political reorientation is significant. Beyond the Bürhle portrait, the fifties would witness Kokoschka going on to partner with the art dealer in Salzburg, 40 Régine Bonnefoit, ‘Kokoschka –​Portraitist of the Powerful’, unpublished paper presented at Place, Nation, and Politics in Oskar Kokoschka’s Writings, and Career, 1934–​1953, annual conference of the Council for European Studies, Columbia University, NY (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 25 June 2013). 41 Bonnefoit, ‘Kokoschka –​Portraitist of the Powerful,’ See also letters from 1952 to 1956 by Kokoschka to Bürhle reprinted in ‘Oskar Kokoschka to Emil Georg Bürhle (Archiv Stiftung Sammlung Emil G. Bürhle, Zürich)’, in ‘Spur im Triebsand’ (2010), 153–​4.

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Friedrich Welz, who had cooperated with Nazi art looting and liquidation operations. Later, Kokoschka would hitch his public image to the retired Christian Democratic Chancellor Konrad Adenauer.42 Also by the early 1950s, his intolerance for abstract art solidified as he maligned abstraction as being attuned with the dehumanising effects of ‘technical civilisation’, even going so far as to ridicule action painting as something apes could produce.43 However, by looking to the correspondence, writings and artworks during this oft-​overlooked phase of Kokoschka’s career just after the war, the then senior artist’s progressive engagement with timely global issues and events impacting peoples around the globe is reanimated. This reading complicates interpretations of his views and practice which align him during these years with reactionary positions or causes, whether political or artistic. In the immediate post-​war years, it is fair to regard Kokoschka as a figure not solely interested in his own career, reputation and the security of his immediate family (as much as those charges also still ring true today as when his friend, the publisher, Robert Freund accused him of such in 1946),44 but also as an agent for human rights and equality within and beyond Europe. Kokoschka’s serious interest in the aspirations, struggles and global conditions of non-​White peoples evident in his active reading of Cedric Dover’s Hell in the Sunshine and his near maniacal obsession with Gandhi reveal a more nuanced and expansive aspect of Kokoschka’s vision of his contemporary world than is usually recognised. And while Kokoschka was no Robert Freund, Julian Huxley, Cedric Dover or Gandhi, his purposeful dialogues with each of them informed his vigilant attention to the emerging and shifting policies of the Soviet Union, Britain,

42 Sven Simon, Adenauer und Kokoschka Bilder einer Freundschaft (Düsseldorf: Econ-​ Verlag, 1967). 43 ‚Konservative Wende: Gegen Picasso, gegen „die Abstrakten,“ ‘ in: Sultano und Werkner, 253–​60. 44 12 March, 31 May, 12 June, 30 September, 15 October, 10 December 1946 letters from Robert Freund (NY) to OK, in: Nachl. O. Kokoschka, Signatur 383.34, ‘Twin Editions, Robert Freund,’ ZBZ.

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the United States, Czechoslovakia, UNESCO and the Four Powers in Vienna. Striking is that the issues and concerns of these men, governments and institutions were often ones he embraced as his own. This essay has revisited a few of Kokoschka’s key responses to these issues in pictures and texts, representations he often made public.

Notes on Contributors

lee beard is an art historian, curator, editor and teacher. He is an established scholar of the work of Ben Nicholson (1894–1982) and is coeditor of the forthcoming catalogue raisonné. He has recently published Ben Nicholson: Writings and Ideas (2019) and co-curated the exhibition Ben Nicholson: From the Studio at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester (2021). He holds a PhD in Art History from the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, where he was subsequently British Academy Post-Doctoral Research Fellow. antonia behan is Assistant Professor of Design History and Material Cultures in a Global World at Queen’s University, in Kingston, Ontario. Her work focuses on the global legacies of the Arts and Crafts movement and cosmopolitan modernism, particularly in the domains of textiles, craft and technology. shulamith behr is an honorary research fellow at The Courtauld Institute of Art. She specialises in German Expressionism and has published widely on issues of cultural identity, politics and gender. Her most recent publication on art and exile can be found in the chapter, ‘Ludwig Meidner’s cycle Leiden der Juden in Polen (1942–​ 5) and Holocaust Knowledge: Towards a Methodology’ in Ludwig Meidner: Expressionismus, Ekstase, Exil ( Jüdisches Museum Frankfurt a.M., 2018). valeria carullo is Photographs Curator at the Royal Institute of British Architects. Her background includes a Master’s Degree in architecture and an extended collaboration with architectural photographer Richard Bryant. She has recently published Moholy-​Nagy in Britain 1935–​ 1937 (2019) and co-​curated Beyond Bauhaus: British Modernism 1933–​66 at the RIBA. Her exhibitions also include Framing Modernism: Architecture and Photography in Italy 1929–​1965 and Rationalism on Set: Glamour and Modernity in 1930s Italian Cinema, both at the Estorick Collection of

304

Notes on Contributors

Modern Italian Art. Her principal area of research is the relationship between modern photography and modern architecture in the inter-​ war years. burcu dogramaci is Professor of Twentieth-​ Century and Contemporary Art in the Department of Art History at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Her research focuses on exile and migration, photography, architecture, sculpture and fashion. In 2016 she received an ERC Consolidator Grant for her project ‘Relocating Modernism: Global Metropolises, Modern Art and Exile (METROMOD)’. She is co-director of the Käte Hamburger Kolleg ‘Dis:connectivity in processes of globalization’ established 2021 at LMU Munich. Her main books include Arrival Cities: Migrating Artists and New Metropolitan Topographies in the 20th Century (Leuven University Press, 2020, ed. with M. Hetschold et al., Open Access), and Handbook of Art and Global Migration. Theories, Practices, and Challenges (Berlin/​ Boston: de Gruyter 2019, ed. with B. Mersmann). michelle henning is Professor in Photography and Media at the University of Liverpool. She writes on photography, modernism, new media and museums. She also works as an artist and designer. Her publications include Museums, Media and Cultural Theory (Open University Press 2006) and Museum Media (Wiley-​Blackwell 2015). Her latest book is Photography: The Unfettered Image (Routledge, 2018). keith holz is Professor of Art History at Western Illinois University, and publishes on German art, artists and institutions, ca. 1910–​50. His research on exiled German art, artists and artists’ organisations has enjoyed the support of major foundations and been published widely. Currently he is preparing a book on Kokoschka in the thirties and forties. leah hsiao is a research affiliate of the Department of History of Art of the University of York and Lecturer at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts. Hsiao completed her PhD in History of Art at the University of York in 2018, with a thesis on I. M. Pei’s Museum Architecture. Her research is published in the Architectural Review and West 86th. She has

Notes on Contributors

305

recently contributed a chapter on the new Bauhaus museums to 100 Jahre Bauhaus: Vielfalt, Konflikt und Wirkung (Berlin: Metropol Verlag, 2019). karen koehler is Professor of Architectural and Art History at Hampshire College and Visiting Professor in Art and the History of Art at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts. In addition to her edited volumes The Built Surface: Architecture and the Pictorial Arts, and the special issue of Art in Translation, on translation and architecture, she has published widely on dialogues between buildings, texts and pictures, and on the topic of the Bauhaus, most recently in Bauhaus Bodies (Bloomsbury Press, 2019). Current projects include the edited volume and exhibition “Architectural Ghosts” and an intellectual history of the architect Walter Gropius (Reaktion Books / University of Chicago Press). ulrike meyer stump is a curator, writer and Lecturer in the Knowledge Visualisation programme at the Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland. She holds a PhD in Art History and the History of Photography from Princeton University and an MA in Museology from the Ecole du Louvre in Paris. Selected publications include Swiss Photobooks from 1927 to the Present (co-author, 2011), No Two Alike: Karl Blossfeldt, Francis Bruguière, Thomas Ruff (2018) and Karl Blossfeldt: Variations (2021). dirk schubert is Professor Emeritus for Urban Planning, Comparative Planning History, Housing and Urban Renewal at the HafenCity University Hamburg. His research focuses on urban, planning and housing history and urban renewal, with particular focus on the revitalisation of harbour and waterfront areas. He has published widely on waterfront transformations and is (co-​) editor of several journals. His last two books considered the urban thinker and theorist Jane Jacobs. He was President of the International Planning History Society, and President and Chair of the Scientific Committee of the Porto Vecchio Trieste. He is a co-​editor of the journal Planning Perspectives and a regular contributor to Portus+ (RETE). lucy wasensteiner is Director of the Liebermann-​Villa am Wannsee in Berlin. She studied Law at the Universities of Bristol and Oxford

306

Notes on Contributors

and holds a PhD in Art History from the Courtauld Institute of Art. Her research focuses on modern art in German-​speaking Europe from 1871, National Socialist cultural policy and its international implications and provenance research. She has worked as Associate Lecturer at the Courtauld Institute and was from 2018 to 2020 Lecturer at the University of Bonn, at the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation Centre for Provenance Research, Art and Cultural Heritage Law. ina weinrautner studied art history and political science. Her research focuses on German nineteenth-​century art. She has worked for and reported on the art market (among others for Ketterer in Munich, Hauswedell & Nolte in Hamburg and for the Handelsblatt newspaper). Having previously worked for both the German Bundestag and the European Parliament, since 2013 she is engaged as a Provenance Researcher for the German Foreign Office. volker m. welter is Professor for History of Architecture at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Among his publications is Ernst L. Freud, Architect: The Case of the Modern Bourgeois Home (Oxford, 2012). His most recent book is Tremaine Houses: Private Patronage of Domestic Architecture in Mid-​Century America, 1936–​1977 (Los Angeles, 2019). artemis yagou is an Athens-​born historian of design and technology. She is a research associate at the Research Institute for the History of Science and Technology of the Deutsches Museum (Munich), working on the project ‘How they Played: Children and Construction Toys (ca. 1840–​1940)’ with funding by the DFG (German Research Foundation) (2016–​21). Additionally, she is preparing a monograph on luxury in early modern south-​eastern Europe. She has been serving on various editorial boards, has lectured internationally and published extensively, including Fragile Innovation: Episodes in Greek Design History (2011).

Index

Abercrombie, Patrick  248–​9 Adenauer, Konrad  272, 300 Adorno, Theodor  196–​8, 212 Aid to Russia (exhibition)  184–​6, 188 Almásy, János  49 fn 53 Ambassador, British Ambassador to Germany see Embassy, British Embassy in Berlin Ambassador, German Ambassador to Britain see Embassy, German Embassy in London Anglo-​German Club  45, 51–​71 Anglo-​Soviet Treaty  184 Anker  13–​22 Architectural Review (periodical)  79–​ 84, 100 Arkirecto  17 Arp, Hans  184 Arthur Tooth and Sons Gallery, London  58 Arts and Crafts movement  148, 153 Arup, Ove  174 Ashbee, C. R.  137 Asquith, Margaret Emma Alice ‘Margot’, née Tennant  130 Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux see Science Museum atomic bomb  291–​9 Augenfeld, Felix  198 Auswärtiges Amt see Foreign Office Baeck, Leo  271 Barlow Report  245–​6 Baruch, Hugo see Bilbo, Jack

Bassett-​Lowke, Wenham Joseph  24–​7 Bauerfreund, Jacob  148 Bauhaus School  1, 4, 6, 36, 55, 74, 89, 91–​2, 111, 115, 120, 131, 136–​54, 161–​2, 167–​76, 190–​2, 233 New Bauhaus, Chicago  92, 192 Bayer, Herbert  168–​9 Beales, Percy  141 Becker vom Rath, Hanna  278 Beddington-​Behrens, Edward  290 Behrens, Peter  26 Ben Uri Gallery, London  1, 272 Berger, Otti  142–​3 Berghof Residence  223 Bernadetta, Mary see The Street Markets of London Betjeman, John  78 An Oxford University Chest (book)  93, 104–​10 Bilbo, Jack (also Hugo Baruch)  180–​1 Bing Bros  24–​6 biocentrism  123, 130, 133 Bloomsbury Group  34, 158, 263 Blossfeldt, Karl  5, 81, 32–​3, 36, 40, 46–​7, 81 Board of Trade, Great Britain  15, 52 Bossert, Helmut  117, 125–​6 Brasch, Lucie see Freund, Lucie Braun, Eva  223 Breuer, Marcel  36, 165, 190–​1 Brighton Toy and Model Museum  20 Britain Can Make It (exhibition)  28 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)  33, 40, 52, 83 British Council  45, 259

308 Index British Industries Fair  19 British Intelligence Objectives Sub-​Committee  27 Brücke Group  270–​3 Bruguière, Francis  32–​3, 40–​1, 46, 76, 81 Bürhle, Emil  299 Burra, Edward  59, 67 Cambridge University  132 Camera Club  76 Chagall, Marc  288 Checkley, George  204 Chermayeff, Serge  174, 200, 212 Circle (publication)  191 Clark, Kenneth  284, 287 fn 8 Congres Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM)  162–​3 Coomaraswamy, A. K.  140 Cottington-​Taylor, D. D.  202, 205 Council of Industrial Design of Great Britain  28–​9 Craske, John  34 Crawford, William  76, 87 Cunard, Nancy  64, 186 D’Abernon Club see Anglo-​German Club D’Abernon, Edgar Vincent Viscount Germany see Embassy, British Embassy in Berlin Dartington Hall  162, 199 Das Junge Rheinland (artists group)  42, 44 De Cronin Hastings, Hubert  78 De la Mare, Richard  165 Degenerate Art (Entartete Kunst)  exhibition  57 fn 14, 70, 194, 215 National socialist concept  62, 67, 71, 175, 272 fn 29, 278, 284 Delaunay, Robert  187 Dell & Wainwright  83–​8, 183, 190 Der Querschnitt (periodical)  39, 42

Der Sturm (gallery and periodical)  40 Design and Industries Association of Great Britain  Design Industries Association of Great Britain  23, 25, 163 Deutscher Revolutions Almanach (perodical)  159–​60 Deutsches Volk, Deutsche Arbeit (exhibition)  163 Disdéri, André Adolphe Eugène  127 Dover, Cedric  291–​3, 300 Edzard, Kurt  70 Einstein, Albert  238–​9, 269 Eliot, T. S.  140–​1, 157 Embassy, British Embassy in Berlin  45, 66 D’Abernon, Edgard Vincent Viscount (Ambassador)  45, 52, 54 Rumbold, Horace (Ambassador)  51 Embassy, German Embassy in London  6, 23, 39, 54, 216–​40 von Dirksen, Herbert (Ambassador)  237 von Hoesch, Leopold (Ambassador)  56, 63, 215–​17, 219–​21, 233 von Neurath, Konstantin (Ambassador)  52, 218 von Ribbentrop, Joachim(Ambassador)  216–​40 Entartete Kunst see Degenerate Art Epstein, Jacob  60, 68 Ernst, Max  42, 184, 187–​8, 194 Eton College  96–​100, 110 Faber and Faber  140, 165, 172, 174 Faber, Geoffrey see Faber & Faber Film und Foto (exhibition)  78, 117 Finanzministerium see Ministry of Finance

309

Index Flechtheim, Alfred  66–​7, 69–​70 Flechtheim, Julius  202 Foreign Office -​German Foreign Office (Auswärtiges Amt)  218–​19, 224 von Neurath, Konstantin  52, 218 Fotografie der Gegenwart (exhibition, also International Photographs)  78 Free German League of Culture  290, 299 Freud, Ernst  174, 195–​214 Freud, Lucie (nee Brasch)  195, 198, 199 fn 17, 200, 208 Freud, Sigmund  180, 192, 196 Freund, Gisèle  117, 119, 127–​8 Freund, Robert  287–​9, 300 Fry, Maxwell  163–​5, 172, 174 Gabo, Naum  3, 165, 190 Gandhi, Mahatma  292, 296–​300 Gertler, Mark  59, 67 Goldfinger, Ernö  177–​9, 181–​8, 193 Grant, Duncan  44, 68–​9 Great Exhibition,  10, 213 Great German Art Exhibition (Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung) (exhibition)  215 Greater London Plan  249, 257 Grindelberg Project  258 Gropius, Walter  78, 99 fn 31, 103, 135–​54, 155–​76, 176, 191–​2, 261 Gross, Alexander see Grosz, Sandor Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung (exhibition) see Great German Art Exhibition Grosz, Sandor (also Gross, Alexander)  180 Gubler, Friedirch  296–​7 Gulberg, Else  140, 142 Gurlitt, Hildebrand  45, 47, 55–​9, 62, 70 fn 42, 71 Gutschow, Konstanty  251–​7 Guttmann, Heinrich  117, 125–​6

Hamburger Kunsthalle  52, 62 Hampstead  110, 165, 176, 177–​94 201–​2, 205–​6, 273, 290 Hanfstaengl, Eberhard  272 Harvard University  143, 172–​5, 191–​2 Havinden, Ashley  87 Havinden, John  86–​7 Hegemann, Werner  79 Hepworth, Barbara  60–​1, 67, 177, 184, 190, 269 Hess, Fritz  201 Hess, Tisa (nee Elisabeth von der Schulenburg) see Hess, Fritz Heuss, Theodor  272 Hitler, Adolf, involvement in the German Embassy renovations  218–​19, 223 Hodin, Joseph Paul  263–​81 Hoffmann, Edith  267 Holocaust, response to  280, 287–​91 Hornby, Frank  14 Howard, Ebenezer  242–​3 Huxley, Julian  165, 174, 190–​1, 289 Imperial Airways  100–​2 Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA)  266, 268, 270 International Federation for Housing and Town Planning  241 International Photographs (exhibition) see Fotografie der Gegenwart International Textiles (periodical)  103 Internment  114, 271 Isokon Flats see Lawn Road Flats Pritchard, Jack  102, 164–​5, 172, 174, 188, 190–​1 Isokon Furniture Company  102–​3, 165, 190–​2 John, Augustus  34 fn 11, 40, 44, 67, 84, 287 fn 8

310 Index Kar, Ida  273–​4 Kirchbach, Kurt  56 Klein, Melanie  201 Kleine Galerie, Berlin  43 Kliptiko  17, 19 Kokoschka, Oskar  264, 267, 272, 283–​301 Kolbe, Georg  31–​2, 38, 40–​4, 47, 229 Kunstverein Hamburg see Neue Englische Kunst (exhibition)  45, 47, 51–​ 2, 55–​7 Lansbury Estate, Stepney  259–​60 Lawn Road Flats (also Isokon Flats)  88, 165, 188–​91 see also Wells Coates Lawrence, D. H.  34–​6, 41–​2, 48 Le Corbusier  77, 146, 182 Leach, Bernard  140, 152, 269 Lehmann, John  263–​4 Leicester Galleries, London  33, 58, 283 Leischner, Margarete  142–​3 Lett-​Haines, Arthur  64–​9 Lewis, Wymondham  157–​8 Loos, Adolf  198, 208, 213 Lott, Ernest  18–​25 Lotts Bricks see Ernest Lott Löwenstein, Prince Leopold zu (author)  39 Lund Humphries Gallery, London  76 Lutyens, Edwin Landseer Maass, Lenore  143 fn 26 Macnamara, J. R. J ( Jack)  64–​7, 70–​1 Mairet, Ethel  135–​54 Mantz, Werner  79–​80 Marcks, Gerhard  272 Märklin  14, 17 Marx, Adolf (house designed by Ernst L. Freud)  202–​3, 210 Mathias, John  99

Mayor Gallery, London  33–​4, 187 Mayor, Fred see Mayor Gallery, London McGrath, Raymond  83 Meccano  14, 17–​18, 21 Meidner, Else see Ludwig Meidner Meidner, Ludwig  178–​9, 263–​81, 288 Mendelsohn, Erich  163, 200, 205 Mettoy  26 Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig  41, 78, 211 Mitchell, Arnold  21–​2 Mitford, Unity  49 fn 53 Modern Architectural Research Group (MARS)  163, 246–​7 Moholy, Lucia  89, 91 fn 1, 113–​33 Moholy-​Nagy, László  74, 78, 81, 87, 91–​ 111, 113–​33, 162–​74, 177, 192 Moholy-​Nagy, Sibyl  91–​111 Möller, Ferdinand  272 MoMa see Museum of Modern Art, New York Moore, Henry  34–​6, 45–​9, 58, 60–​3, 67, 158, 165, 174, 184, 186, 269 Morison, Stanley  168 Morris, Cedric  64–​5, 67 Morris, William  135–​7, 145–​54 Morton Shand, Philip  78, 81–​3, 147, 149, 162–​4, 172, 174 Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg see Sauerlandt, Max Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMa)  118, 136 fn 6, 175 Muthesius, Hermann  22–​3, 213 Nash, John  215 Nash, Paul  44, 46, 67 Neutra, Richard  198, 205 Neven du Mont, Mark  52, 64–​5 New Architecture and the Bauhaus (book) see Gropius, Walter Newhall, Beaumont  118–​19, 125, 132

311

Index Nicholson, Ben  58–​9, 61, 67–​8, 157, 165, 177, 190, 269 Nicholson, William  58 Nicholson, Winifred  58 Nurnberg, Walter  77, 88–​9 Olympics,  1936 Berlin 91–​2, 95–​9, 110 Orlik, Emil  117, 128–​9 Oxford University  104–​11 Palkovská, Olda  283–​5, 290, 299 Pelican Specials see Penguin (publisher) Penguin (publisher)  113 Penrose, Roland  187, 268, 284 Perry, Clarence Arthur  243–​4, 257–​8 Pevsner, Nikolaus  28, 135–​54, 174, 192 Pick, Frank  171 Pingel, Walter  209–​10 Pritchard, Jack see Isokon Furniture Company see also Lawn Road Flats Read, Herbert  45–​8, 57, 61–​2, 66–​7, 155, 239, 268 Reich Chamber for the Visual Arts (Reichskammer der bildenden Künste)  67, 163–​4, 171 Reichow, Hans Bernhard  255, 257 Reichskammer der bildenden Künste see Reich Chamber for the Visual Arts Renger-​Patzsch, Albert  74–​5, 77–​8, 130 Richter, Adolf see Anker Riess, Frieda  39–​40 Roberts, William  59, 67 Roh, Franz  117, 120, 124–​6 Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA)  162–​4, 172 Royal Photographic Society  75–​6, 83, 89 Royal Society  238–​9

Rumbold, Horace see Embassy, British Embassy in Berlin Rußwurm, Hans  223 fn 23, 225 Salvisberg, Otto Rudolf  202–​3 Sander, August  74, 78 Sander, Ernst  60 Sauerlandt, Max  45–​6, 61–​2, 70 Saxl, Fritz  39 Schapiro, Meyer  147, 153 Scherk, Ludwig  204–​6 Schmölz, Hugo  224 Schreiner, Carl Moritz  42 Schumacher, Fritz  250 Schwarz, Heinrich  117, 120–​1, 125–​ 6, 128–​9 Science Museum, London  101 fn 39, 120, 132 Sharp, Thomas  257 Sickert, Walter  44, 58, 67 Sieveking, Lance  33–​4 Simms, Pamela  269 Simpsons (menswear store)  101–​3, 110 Sitwell, Edith  40, 264 Speer, Albert  218–​19, 223, 239, 257 Spencer, Stanley  59, 67 Spender, Stephan  264 St Ives Group  266, 269 Stahl, Hans  278 Stenger, Erich  118–​21 Stölzl, Gunta  140–​3 Straub, Marianne  138 fn 10, 139–​40, 143 Taut, Bruno  159 Taut, Max  209–​10 The Street Markets of London (book)  100, 105 Thorak, Josef  228 Tönnies, Ferdinand  242 Townsend Warner, Silvia  34–​5

312 Index Troost, Paul Ludwig  223, 225, 228–​33 Trotter, Philip  37, 48–​9 see also Warren, Dorothy Twentieth Century German Art (­exhibition)  44 fn 37, 70, 175, 215, 234, 239 Ullmann, Phillipp  26 UNESCO  287–​91, 299, 301 Unit One  67, 158 United Workshops for Arts and Crafts (Vereinigte Werkstätten für Kunst im Handwerk), Munich  221, 223–​5, 231–​3, 237 Venesta Plywood Company  102, 103 fn 45 Vereinigte Werkstätten für Kunst im Handwerk see United Workshops for Arts and Crafts (Vereinigte Werkstätten für Kunst im Handwerk), Munich Victoria and Albert Museum, London  28, 120–​1, 132, 158 von Dirksen, Herbert see Embassy, German Embassy in London

von Hoesch, Leopold see Embassy, German Embassy in London von Neurath, Konstantin see Embassy, Germany Embassy in London von Papen, Franz  65 von Ribbentrop, Annelies see Embassy, German Embassy in London von Ribbentrop, Joachim see Embassy, German Embassy in London Voysey, C. F. A.  152 Wadsworth, Edward  59, 67–​8 Warren Gallery, London see Warren, Dorothy Warren, Dorothy  31–​49 Wells Coates  165, 174, 188 see also Lawn Road Flats Wells, H. G.  102, 133, 174 Werkbund, Deutscher Werkbund  23–​ 5, 28, 78 Whitechapel Art Gallery, London  78, 274 Wilenski, Reginald Howard  47, 51, 57 Wiltschek, Rudolf  43–​4 Zweig, Stefan  193

GERMAN VISUAL CULTURE series editor Dr Christian Weikop, Senior Lecturer, Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh

German Visual Culture invites research on German art across different periods, geographical locations, and political contexts. Books in the series engage with aesthetic and ideological continuities as well as ruptures and divergences between individual artists, movements, systems of art education, art institutions, and cultures of display. Challenging scholarship that interrogates and updates existing orthodoxies in the field is desirable. A guiding question of the series is the impact of German art on critical and public spheres, both inside and outside the German-speaking world. Reception is thus conceived in the broadest possible terms, including both the ways in which art has been perceived and defined as well as the ways in which modern and contemporary German artists have undertaken visual dialogues with their predecessors or contemporaries. Issues of cultural transfer, critical race theory and related postcolonial analysis, feminism, queer theory, and other interdisciplinary approaches are encouraged, as are studies on production and consumption, especially the art market, pioneering publishing houses, and the ‘little magazines’ of the avant-garde. All proposals for monographs and edited collections in the history of German visual culture will be considered, although English will be the language of all contributions. Submissions are subject to rigorous peer review. The series will be promoted through the series editor’s Research Forum for German Visual Culture (https://www.eca.ed.ac.uk/research/research-forum-german-visual-culture), which he founded at the University of Edinburgh in 2011, and which has involved various symposia and related publications, all connected to an international network of Germanist scholars.

Vol. 1

Deborah Ascher Barnstone and Thomas O. Haakenson (eds) Representations of German Identity. 312 pages. 2013. isbn 978-3-0343-0841-0 (hb) 312 pages. 2018. isbn 978-1-78874-255-9 (pb)

Vol. 2 Jennifer L. Creech and Thomas O. Haakenson (eds) Spectacle. 313 pages. 2015. isbn 978-3-0343-1803-7 Vol. 3 Deborah Ascher Barnstone (ed.) The Doppelgänger. 277 pages. 2016. isbn 978-3-0343-1961-4 Vol. 4 Irene Noy Emergency Noises: Sound Art and Gender. 336 pages. 2017. isbn 978-3-0343-1987-4 Vol. 5 Deborah Ascher Barnstone and Barbara McCloskey (eds) The Art of War. 318 pages. 2017. isbn 978-1-78707-383-8 Vol. 6 Michael Mackenzie Otto Dix and the First World War: Grotesque Humor, Camaraderie and Remembrance. 448 pages. 2019. isbn 978-3-0343-1723-8 Vol. 7

Thomas O. Haakenson and Tirza True Latimer with Carol Hager and Deborah Barton (eds) Becoming TransGerman: Cultural Identity Beyond Geography. 338 pages. 2019. isbn 978-1-78874-426-3

Vol. 8 Lucy Wasensteiner (ed.) Sites of Interchange: Modernism, Politics and Culture between Britain and Germany, 1919–1955. 336 pages. 2022. isbn 978-1-78997-391-4 Vol. 9 Matt Wates Disorders at the Borders: In Search of the Gesamtkunstwerk in the Paintings of Anselm Kiefer. 320 pages. 2021. isbn 978-1-80079-179-4