BERLIN METROPOLIS
BERLIN METROPOLIS
1918–1933
Edited by Olaf Peters
Preface by Ronald S. Lauder, foreword by Renée Price
With contributions by:
Leonhard Helten
Sharon Jordan
Jürgen Müller
Janina Nentwig
PRESTEL
MUNICH • LONDON • NEW YORK
Olaf Peters
Dorothy Price
and
Adelheid Rasche
This catalogue has been published in conjunction with the exhibition
BERLIN METROPOLIS: 1918–1933
Neue Galerie New York
October 1, 2015 – January 4, 2016
Berlin Metropolis: 1918–1933 is supported by a generous grant from A. Lange & Söhne
With additional support from
This exhibition is made possible in part by the Neue Galerie President’s Circle.
Curator
© 2015 Neue Galerie New York;
Olaf Peters
Prestel Verlag, Munich •
London • New York;
and authors
Exhibition design
Richard Pandiscio,
William Loccisano / Pandiscio Co.
Director of publications
Scott Gutterman
Managing editor
Janis Staggs
Editorial assistance
Liesbet van Leemput
Book design
Richard Pandiscio,
William Loccisano / Pandiscio Co.
Translation
Steven Lindberg
Prestel Verlag, Munich
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FRONTISPIECE: Hannah Höch (1889–1978),
World Revolution, 1920, gelatin silver print.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ford Motor
Company Collection, Gift of Ford Motor Company
and John C. Waddell
PAGE 6: George Grosz, Memory of New York,
1915–16, Plate I of the First George Grosz Portfolio,
published by Malik-Verlag, Berlin, 1916–17,
lithograph. The Museum of Modern Art, New York
PAGE 9:
Raoul Hausmann (1886–1971), Dada
Triumphs (The Exacting Brain of a Bourgeois
Calls Forth a World Movement), 1920, watercolor
and collage on wove paper mounted on board.
Private Collection
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Heinrich Schulze Altcappenberg, Berlin
Carey Jung, New York
Cora Rosevear, New York
Catherine Amé, Berlin
Art Installation Design, New York
Jamie Aydt, St. Louis
Julie Jung, New York
Katrin Käding, Berlin
Katy Kane, New Hope
Jeff Rosenheim, New York
Rainer Rother, Berlin
Thomas Bauer-Friedrich, Halle/Saale
Jennifer Belt, New York
Cheryl Karim, New York
Randy Kaufman, Berlin
Harold Koda, New York
Gerald Köhler, Cologne
Anett Sawall, Berlin
Andreas Schalhorn, Berlin
Uwe Schaper, Berlin
Hans-Jörg Schirmbeck, Berlin
Peter Cachola Schmal, Berlin
Anja Besserer, Munich
Tobia Bezzola, Essen
Nina Bingel, Stuttgart
Franziska Bohr, Leipzig
Thomas Köhler, Berlin
Hulya Kolabas, New York
Chris Korner, Marbach
Sriba Kwadjovie, San Francisco
Rainer Laabs, Berlin
Dieter Scholz, Berlin
Sandy Schreier, Southfield
Robert Schreiner, New York
Antje Seeger, Halle/Saale
Luise Seppeler, Berlin
Susanne Brüning, Essen
Antonia Bryan, New York
Thomas Campbell, New York
William Chiego, San Antonio
Andrea Cobré, Munich
Heather Lammers, San Antonio
Liesbet van Leemput, New York
Michael Lesh, New York
Rebecca Lewis, New York
Steven Lindberg, Molkom
Annemarie Seyda, Berlin
Julie Simpson, Washington, DC
Michael Slade, New York
Ute Smeteck, Berlin
Maggie Spicer, New York
Brenna Cothran, New York
Crozier Fine Arts, New York
Corey D’Augustine, New York
Markus Dennig, New York
Margit Diefenthal, Berlin
Fernando Eguchi, New York
William Loccisano, New York
Susan Logan-Ferry, Detroit
Glenn Lowry, New York
LP Art, Paris
Norbert Ludwig, Berlin
Janis Staggs, New York
Judy and Michael Steinhardt, New York
Henrik Strehmel, Berlin
Hana Streicher, Berlin
Elizabeth Szancer, New York
Peter Marx, Berlin
Masterpiece International
Maria Fernanda Meza, New York
Hedwig Müller, Cologne
Jürgen Müller, Dresden
Christian Tagger, Berlin
Elisa Tamaschke, Halle/Saale
Guy Tosatto, Grenoble
Monika Tritschler, Berlin
Isabelle Varloteaux, Grenoble
Hans-Dieter Nägelke, Berlin
Allison Needle, New York
Janina Nentwig, Berlin
Vlasta Odell, New York
Richard Pandiscio, New York
Hannah Vietoris, Essen
Wolfgang Voigt, Frankfurt am Main
Michael Voss, New York
Barbara Weber, Bonn
Wolfgang Welker, Frankfurt
Stefanie Heckmann, Berlin
Leonhard Helten, Halle/Saale
Wolfgang Pauser, Vienna
Klaus-Dieter Pett, Berlin
Andreas Piel, Berlin
Carina Plath, Hanover
Dorothy Price, Bristol
Nara Wood, Middleton
Moritz Wullen, Berlin
Claudia Zachariae, Berlin
Tom Zoufaly, New York
Lutz Herrmann, Berlin
Sibylle Hoiman, Berlin
Ara Howrani, Detroit
Cynthia Iavarone, New York
Annemarie Jaeggi, Berlin
Ellen Price, New York
Sami Rama, New Haven
Adelheid Rasche, Berlin
Juliane Reckow, Halle/Saale
Phyllis La Riccia, New York
We also acknowledge those individuals
Joachim Jäger, Berlin
Joelle Jensen, New York
Ryan Jensen, New York
Sharon Jordan, New York
Mary Winston Richardson, New York
Ingrid Rieck, Berlin
Julia Riedel, Berlin
Jerry Rivera, New York
Brent Benjamin, St. Louis
Stephan Berg, Bonn
Merrill C. Berman, New York
Johannes Evers, Berlin
Conrad Feininger, Westport
Matthias Finke, Berlin
René Finke, Berlin
Emily Foss, New York
Melissa Front, New York
Joyce Fung, New York
Kristina Georgi, Bonn
Wendy Griffiths, Fort Worth
Scott Gutterman, New York
Jeffrey Haber, New York
Hasenkamp, Germany
who prefer to remain anonymous.
CONTENTS
8
Ronald S. Lauder
Preface
10 Renée Price
Foreword
DADA AND STREET LIFE
14 BE RLIN METROPOLIS
Art, Culture, and Politics Between the Wars
Olaf Peters
36 ART AND ANTI -ART IN BE RLIN AROUND 1920
Dada and the Novembergruppe Janina Nentwig
58 PLATES I
ARCHITEC TURE , THEATER , AND FILM
114
MODE RN ARCHITEC TURE IN 192 0s BE RLIN
136
BABE LSBE RG/BABYLON
Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” Reinterpreted
162
Leonhard Helten
Jürgen Müller
PLATES II
THE NEW WOMAN , FASHION, AND POLITICS
246
“THE RHY THM OF OUR TIME IS JAZZ”
Popular Entertainment during the Weimar Republic
274
THE NE W WOMAN IN 1920s BE RLIN
294
BE RLIN AS A CIT Y OF FASHION
311
PLATES III
370
Checklist
388
Selected Bibliography
394
Index
400
Photograph and Copyright Credits
Sharon Jordan
Dorothy Price
Adelheid Rasche
PREFACE
With this exhibition, we celebrate a magical time in the history of Berlin. The period from 1918 to 1933 saw tremendous
advances in art, film, literature, even social relations in the German capital. One thinks of Alfred Döblin and his epic novel,
Berlin Alexanderplatz; groundbreaking films such as Metropolis by Fritz Lang, and great stars like Marlene Dietrich; brilliant
painters such as Otto Dix, Georg Grosz, and Christian Schad; the fantastic musical theater of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill;
and the design innovations of the late Bauhaus—all happening in the same place and time. Berlin was, in a sense, the only
truly international German city, the one in which the modern era was born. Tragically, the rise of the Nazis brought an end to
this miracle of civic enlightenment.
My own involvement in Berlin began in my student days of the 1960s. I returned numerous times over the intervening
decades. I am proud to have developed the former Checkpoint Charlie site, contributing to this once barren area’s revitalization, and to have worked on the preservation and development of the historic Tegel airport. It is gratifying to have played
a small part in reestablishing Berlin as a major world capital. At the same time, I have always been drawn to the art of this
incredible city, and I am proud that the Neue Galerie serves as a home to so many masterpieces of early twentieth-century
German art.
I am delighted to have Olaf Peters as the curator of this exhibition, because he shows the period in all its richness and diversity. The results are truly stunning.
I wish to thank the Consul General for the German Consulate General in New York, Brita Wagener, as well as our partners
in Visit Berlin. They are helping welcome new generations of visitors to this important cultural center, from its world-class
museums and opera to its concert halls to its lovely Tiergarten.
Our own exhibition reminds us of the key role Berlin has played in European culture. In so doing, it also invites new visitors
to learn more about this once and future great city.
Ronald S. Lauder
President, Neue Galerie New York
Raoul Hausmann, A Bourgeois Precision Brain Incites a World Movement (later known as Dada Triumphs), 1920, watercolor and collage
on wove paper mounted on board. Private Collection. © 2015 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
FOREWORD
For many Americans, the phrase “Berlin in the 1920s” conjures a single image: that of madcap nightlife, of decadence set
against a deteriorating social landscape. In short, it is the Weimar world of Cabaret, as indelibly depicted on film and on stage.
But the truth of this time was far more complex. Agonizing political realities set the stage, from the ruinous economy that
developed in the wake of Germany’s defeat in World War I to the rise of Nazism toward the decade’s end. The culture that
developed in this unique time and place had its share of spectacular moments. Yet Berlin was, and is, more than the sum of
these disparate parts.
In presenting “Berlin Metropolis: 1918–1933,” the Neue Galerie New York seeks to move beyond the clichés. Our goal is to
examine the cultural and social realms, and to witness the birth of many aspects of modern culture: the society of the spectacle, the prevalence of advertising, the rise of the Neue Frau (New Woman), the intersection of art and power. By exploring
these important trends, in particular as they are evidenced by the paintings and drawings of the period, we hope to illuminate
the true nature of the social transformation that took place in Berlin in just over a decade.
My thanks extend first to our esteemed curator, Dr. Olaf Peters. Dr. Peters has organized several major exhibitions for the Neue
Galerie, including “Degenerate Art: The Attack on Modern Art in Nazi Germany, 1937” and “Otto Dix.” He is a remarkable
scholar, superb colleague, and great friend, and he has created an exhibition and catalogue of impressive scope and depth.
We are deeply indebted to the many lenders to this exhibition, who have parted with major works in order to allow us to
tell this important story in full. Some institutions and individuals have contributed to the exhibition in an extremly generous
manner and we are very grateful for having received an enormous amount of help and advice. In particular, I wish to thank
the Berlinische Galerie and Dr. Stefanie Heckmann, the Archive of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin and Dr. Hans-Jörg
Schirmbeck, the Bauhaus-Archiv in Berlin and Dr. Sibylle Hoiman, the Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek in Berlin and Julia
Riedel, the Kunstbibliothek of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and Dr. Adelheid Rasche, the Architekturmuseum der TU
Berlin and Dr. Hans-Dieter Nägelke, the Theaterwissenschaftliche Sammlung of the University of Cologne and Dr. Hedwig
Müller and Dr. Gerald Köhler, the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen in Stuttgart and Dr. Nina Bingel, the Metropolitan Museum
of Art and Thomas Cambell, and The Museum of Modern Art and Glenn Lowry for their important support of our exhibition.
I would like to give special thanks to two individuals who have contributed so much to the fashion component of our catalogue
and exhibition. Sandy Schreier, couture collector extraordinaire, has generously lent several important pieces from the period,
which show her keen eye and boundless devotion to this field. Harold Koda, esteemed Curator in Charge of the Costume
Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, has been a crucial influence in the worlds of art and fashion for decades. He is
also a trusted friend and advisor. We also owe a debt of gratitude to Merrill C. Berman and to Michael and Judy Steinhardt
for making superb loans available from their extraordinary and extensive private collections.
Our catalogue authors have provided new insights and original research, which are invaluable to our efforts. A special
mention and my sincere thanks to Adelheid Rasche, Weimar fashion expert, who, in addition to writing a fascinating essay
for this catalogue, has been invaluable in locating vintage fashion accessories from 1920s Berlin. Richard Pandiscio and
Bill Loccisano have brought great ingenuity to the design of the both the exhibition and this catalogue. At the Neue Galerie,
I would like to give special thanks to Scott Gutterman, Deputy Director and Chief Operating Officer; Janis Staggs, Associate Director, Curatorial and Publications; Melissa Front, Chief Registrar and Director of Exhibitions; Michael Voss, Head
Preparator; and Liesbet van Leemput, Graphics Manager, for their efforts on behalf of this great exhibition.
Finally, my greatest thanks are to our President, and Co-Founder, Ronald S. Lauder, whose passion and curiosity for Berlin
and the art of this time know no bounds.
Renée Price
Director, Neue Galerie New York
Christian Schad, Sonja, 1928, oil on canvas. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie. bpk, Berlin / Nationalgalerie / Photo:
Joerg P. Anders / Art Resource, NY. © 2015 Christian Schad Stiftung Aschaffenburg / ARS, New York / V6 Bild-Kunst, Bonn
Hannah Höch, Cut with a Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany, 1919–20, photomontage and collage with watercolor. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin,
Nationalgalerie. © 2015 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn
DADA AND STREET LIFE
ø
BERLIN METROPOLIS
ø
ART AND ANTI-ART IN BERLIN AROUND 1920
ø
PLATES I
BERLIN METROPOLIS
ART, CULTURE, AND POLITICS BETWEEN THE WARS
Olaf Peters
1. The clock at the Bahnhof
Zoo, Berlin, a popular
meeting point, 1935. Photo:
Friedrich Seidenstücker.
From: Die Metropole.
Industriekultur in Berlin im
20. Jahrhundert (Munich,
1986), p. 191
MY THOS BE RLIN
“Weimar was Berlin, Berlin Weimar.”1 That was
how the historian Eric Weitz introduced the
chapter on Berlin in his laudable study of the
Weimar Republic.2 The statement is both accurate and inaccurate. It is accurate because Berlin, as the capital of Prussia and Germany, as
the industrial and cultural center, and by its size
alone, stood out among Germany’s other cities
[Fig. 1]. In the 1920s, Greater Berlin, including
its numerous recently incorporated areas (and
two to three hundred thousand exiled Russians)
had a population of over four million residents. In
terms of area, Berlin was the second largest city
in the world, after Los Angeles.3 For that reason, comparing Berlin to the core of the Ruhr
region is more appropriate than comparing it to
other German metropolises. But the statement
is also inaccurate with regard to art, because
numerous crucial achievements of the Weimar
era were produced and worked out in other cities and regions in Germany and radiated from
there across the entire German Reich. Several
examples will underscore that, since the myth of
Berlin, which has often taken on a life of its own
and been confused with reality, should not be
reproduced uncritically here, even against the
backdrop of the current enthusiasm for the city.
The Bauhaus—the all-but-unparalleled symbol of the modernist 1920s—was founded in
14
BERLIN METROPOLIS
Weimar in 1919 and moved in the mid-1920s
to Dessau. An icon of modern architecture
(Neues Bauen) was realized in the ensemble of
Bauhaus building and master houses. Not until
1932 did the institution move, briefly, to Berlin,
owing to political developments, but it had no influence there.4 The outstanding painters of the
Weimar Republic did not live in Berlin, or at most
did so only briefly: the Bauhaus masters Josef
Albers, Lyonel Feininger, Vasily Kandinsky, and
Paul Klee were tied to the institution in Weimar
and then in Dessau. Max Beckmann—probably the most important figurative painter of the
time, along with Klee—lived in Frankfurt am
Main from 1915 onward and, after he was dismissed from his teaching position in Frankfurt
in 1933 by the National Socialists, only came to
the metropolis that promised anonymity for four
years before going into exile in Amsterdam.5
By contrast, it should be remembered that the
most prominent painters in Berlin during this
period were probably Lovis Corinth and Max
Liebermann. Both of them had successful
careers in imperial Germany before the First
World War and could be regarded as representatives of an earlier era. The tribute in the Berlin
Secession, the burial of Lovis Corinth in 1925,
and the great posthumous exhibitions in the
Nationalgalerie and the Akademie der Künste
in Berlin in 1926 were official events and testified to the rank of the painter, who was especially brilliant in his late work.6 Karl Hofer, who
was also resident in Berlin and a famous representative of a younger generation, did indeed
produce an important oeuvre, but today he has
been largely forgotten.7 In retrospect, George
Grosz seems more like a political draftsman
and graphic artist than a significant painter,8
and Christian Schad, who did not arrive in Berlin until the spring of 1928, was an outstanding
portraitist who lacked a relevant approach to
painting beyond that. 9
Max Horkheimer, and Siegfried Kracauer were
part of this circle. Moreover, it should be noted
that the important German philosophers of the
period—Ernst Cassirer, Martin Heidegger, and
Max Scheler—taught in Hamburg, Freiburg im
Breisgau, and Cologne, respectively. Neues
Bauen also demonstrated new possibilities in
the metropolis on the Main River, with municipal architect Ernst May, the concept for the socalled Frankfurt kitchen [Figs. 2 and 3] by Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, and the journal Das
Neue Frankfurt.11 Other centers of modern architecture included the central German cities
Max Beckmann’s new home, Frankfurt am
Main, was, moreover, an intellectual center
of the Weimar Republic, with the headquarters of the Frankfurter Zeitung and the Institut
für Sozialforschung (Institute for Social Research)10—and after 1945 it seamlessly continued this tradition with its university and the
Suhrkamp publishing house. Theodor Adorno,
of Dessau and Magdeburg and such regional
centers as Celle, Duisburg, Kassel, Karlsruhe,
Cologne, Nuremberg, and Stuttgart (the Weissenhof housing development) [Fig. 4].12
Otto Dix, whose aggressive art sometimes
made him the scandalous painter star of the
young republic, began his career as an artist
OLAF PETERS
15
2. Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, the Frankfurt Kitchen,
1926. From: Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani, Vol. 1
(Berlin, 2011), p. 348
3. Ernst May, Herbert Boehm, Wolfgang Bangert, and Eugen Kaufmann, Praunheim
housing complex, Frankfurt am Main 1926-30, axonometric projection showing
the color concept. From: Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani, Vol. 1 (Berlin, 2011), p. 351
in Dresden and then in the Rhineland (Düsseldorf).13 He did live briefly in Berlin in the 1920s
but then taught in Dresden as a professor at
the Kunstakademie from 1927. His famous
triptych Metropolis [Fig. 5] was painted there,
and referred to Dresden, though as a symbol
of the 1920s it has mistakenly become asso-
4. Weissenhof housing
development
ciated with Berlin. It is, however, conceptually
connected to that city, if not in terms of subject
matter, since, interestingly, in his first sketches for the triptych Dix referred to the famous
street scenes of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, which
were produced in Berlin in 1913–14. In this
specific case, it can be said that the experience of Berlin and the knowledge of Kirchner’s work based on it prodded Dix’s ambition
to create a magnum opus of the painting of
Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) that focused the age and its twists and turns. In that
sense, Berlin pulses through the painting,
even though it is not depicted in it. 14
ABOUT OUR E XHIBITION
The exhibition should not once again wrongly
make Berlin out to have been the center of the
modern developments of the Weimar Republic.
Nevertheless, it should help us to begin to experience visually the Berlin of the 1920s, the
capital of the first German democracy, in all
16
BERLIN METROPOLIS
5. Otto Dix, Metropolis, 1927–28, oil on panel. Kunstmuseum Stuttgart. Archiv of IKARE of the Martin-Luther-University,
Halle-Wittenberg. © 2015 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn
its complex, multifaceted heterogeneity. That
can only succeed in segments and fragments,
especially because our exhibition cannot be a
survey of the history of culture or even of the
history of the city but is rather an art exhibition
that sets out from important individual works
and expands on them by adding essential aspects of the cultural history of Berlin’s modernity. 15 For that reason, the fields of architecture
(public housing), film and photography, fashion
and advertising, and the role of the modern
woman are prominently represented, and there
are separate essays to provide more detail on
these topics [Fig. 6]. In these areas especially, Berlin’s modernity is evident in sometimes
striking ways, though of course it could also
be experienced in Cologne or Hamburg as a
phase of modernization specific to the era.
ed in the example of its capital, Berlin, since
the cultural development cannot be separated
from the political and social development.16
Artists reacted to this phase of dramatic political upheaval with the fall of the German Reich and the revolutionary birth of the Weimar
Republic with decidedly political art—aimed at
6. Dancing the Black Bottom,
1926. From: Die Metropole.
Industriekultur in Berlin im 20.
Jahrhundert (Munich, 1986), p. 197
At the same time, the exhibition concept has
been shaped by our intention to allow the political history of the Weimar Republic be reflect-
OLAF PETERS
17
the consolidation of the republic in the return
to old elites—and with utopian blueprints for
the future. The relative economic prosperity
of the Weimar Republic from 1924 onward
brought with it the comprehensive triumph of
Neue Sachlichkeit as the representative art
movement, as became manifest by 1925 with
the exhibition in Mannheim of that name.17 At
the same time, there were social and political
changes—reduced working hours, the continued development of a culture of salaried em-
7. Ludwig Meidner, I and
the City, 1913, oil on
canvas. Private Collection
ployees and associated new consumer and
leisure behaviors—that were perhaps especially evident in Berlin because of the quantitative larger scale. In the final phase of the
republic, Berlin and its streets become a politically contested space. The National Socialists
tried to conquer “Red Berlin,” which was characterized largely by industry and its associated
workers. This political confrontation was once
again reflected in art, while mass unemployment and existential uncertainty put an end to
the brief, sham vitality of the metropolis, which
had primarily been an illusion constructed by
the media.
18
BERLIN METROPOLIS
Based on the developments roughly sketched
here, the exhibition is organized chronologically and thematically in three parts: 1) the beginnings of the republic in Berlin in the context of
defeat in the First World War, revolution, and
political and economic crisis; 2) the political
easing of the situation and the rise of consumer industries in the capital as part of relative
economic stabilization; and 3) the decline of
the republic in the face of economic catastrophe and sometimes violent political confrontations. These three main phases of the Weimar
Republic are also the three central moments
in the history of Berlin, which structure the
extensive visual materials that our exhibition
brings together.
THE C ALL FOR CONTE MPOR ANE IT Y
Our exhibition has an ideal programmatic prelude: I and the City, the famous self-portrait by
Ludwig Meidner from 1913 [Fig. 7]. In addition
to Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, already mentioned,
it was the Expressionist painter, graphic artist, and poet Meidner who early on called for
addressing the modernity of the metropolis, which in his case meant Berlin.19 In 1914
he published his important text “Anleitung
zum Malen von Großstadtbildern” (translated
as “Instructions for Painting Pictures of the
Metropolis”), which made the programmatic
demand: “We must at last begin to paint the
home where we live, the metropolis that we
love without reserve. With feverish scrawling
hands we must cover canvases without number, and large as frescoes, with everything
that is strange and splendid, everything that
is monstrous and striking, about our great
avenues and railway stations, our towers and
factories.” 20 In Meidner we feel the influence
of Italian Futurism, prominently exhibited by
Herwarth Walden in 1913, when he writes of
“tumultuous streets” and the “roaring colors of
the buses.” He also makes a pointed settling
of accounts and breaks with a traditional ca-
nonical aesthetic of earlier centuries that no
longer satisfied the needs of the present: “And
would not the drama of a well-painted factory
chimney then move us more deeply than any
Fire in the Borgo or Battle of Constantine, more
than any number of Raphaels?” 21 This is precisely where the Berlin Dadaists would pick
up after the First World War was lost in 1918,
albeit with an anti-Expressionist, fundamental
critique of bourgeois culture, which had been
de-legitimized by the First World War.
In Meidner’s self-portrait, the artist’s head
appears cut off, his hand is raised anxiously to his chin, and his eyes are turned to the
viewer in shock. Above his head, a vedute of
the metropolis thunders like garish sheet lighting; buildings slide; church spires and factory
smokestacks loom; people teem like ants; and
a yellow hot-air balloon strays through the towers of clouds. The programmatic call to address
the themes of the metropolis was realized by
the painter in a phantasmagoric vision that was
able to capture the oppressive impressions of
the big city. In addition to Kirchner’s famous
street scenes, this self-portrait and Meidner’s
apocalyptic landscapes met the challenge of
grappling with the reality of the city prior to
the First World War. With his apocalyptic landscapes, Meidner recorded the crisis of the age
like a seismograph, before the German Reich
engendered its own fall with its flagrant miscalculations in the First World War.22
A BIRTH AMID CRISIS
Germany’s defeat in the First World War came
as a shock to its people. Although they had to
deal with enormous losses and deprivations
during the war, the military supreme command
had left politicians and the general public
largely in the dark about the true extent of the
military catastrophe. Beginning on November
4, 1918, there were signs of revolution: workers and soldiers seized power; right-wing cir-
cles were circulating the fable that the undefeated German army had been stabbed in the
back, and the Mehrheitssozialdemokratische
Partei Deutschlands (MSPD; Majority Social
Democratic Party of Germany) failed to compel the military elite to accept responsibility for
the desolate situation [Fig. 8]. This would prove
to be a heavy burden for the democracy proclaimed in November 1918, although initially it
appeared to rest on a stable foundation. The
leader of the MSPD, Friedrich Ebert [Plate 37],
was elected chancellor of the Reich, and the
elections for the National Assembly on January 19, 1919, represented an overwhelmingly
clear vote for the new democracy, with nearly
75 percent of the votes going to democratic
parties. Ebert became the president of the Reich and Phillip Scheidemann succeeded him
as chancellor.
8. Reichswehr troops
behind a tank in Berlin
during the post-war period,
1919-20. From: Der
Gefährliche Augenblick.
Eine Sammlung von Bildern
und Berichten, edited by
Ferdinand Bucholtz with
an introduction by Ernst
Jünger (Berlin: Junker und
Dünnhaupt 1931), p. 160
In art, the radical, distinctly anti-bourgeois and
anti-artistic expressions of the Dadaists symbolized a rigorous turn away from established
forces. Expressionism had been the avant-garde of Germany since 1905, and was increasingly gaining recognition, which was manifested not least in Expressionist works entering
OLAF PETERS
19
soon characterized the culture of the Weimar
Republic.24 Initially, however, joyful destruction
and a utopian will to rebuild clashed.
9. Poster for the “First
International Dada Fair,”
held at the Otto Burchard
gallery, Berlin 1920
10. Opening of the “First International Dada Fair,” in Otto Burchard’s gallery, Berlin, June
1920. Left to right: Raoul Hausmann, Hannah Höch (seated), Otto Burchard, Johannes
Baader, Wieland Herzfelde, Margarete Herzfelde, Dr. Oz (Otto Schmalhausen), George Grosz,
and John Heartfield. Archiv of IKARE of the Martin-Luther-University, Halle-Wittenberg
German museum collections.23 Nevertheless,
from 1920 at the latest, Expressionism was
regarded by many as outmoded or even dead.
Representationalism, naturalism, realism, and
Sachlichkeit were the slogans of the new decade, which could be called the decade of
New Objectivity. Neues Bauen in architecture,
Neues Sehen (New Vision) in photography,
and Neue Sachlichkeit in painting and design
20
BERLIN METROPOLIS
As early as May 1919, the important Berlin art
dealer Jsrael Ber Neumann presented a Dada
exhibition that showcased above all the technique of assemblage. In Berlin in 1920 the now
famous “Erste Internationale Dada-Messe”
(“First International Dada Fair”) was held in
the gallery of Otto Burchard, who usually
sold Asian art but also funded this exhibition
[Fig. 9].25 The participants included the Berlin Dadaists Johannes Baader, George Grosz,
Raoul Hausmann, John Heartfield, Wieland
Herzfelde, and Hannah Höch. But other Dadaists and associated artists from other cities
were represented as well—for example, Hans
Arp from Zurich, Otto Dix from Dresden, Max
Ernst from Cologne, and Rudolf Schlichter and
Georg Scholz from Karlsruhe. The few surviving photographs of the event show the artists
themselves posing reverently in front of their
works [Fig. 10], as if a bourgeois audience
had appeared at the opening. The public was
confronted with a seemingly arbitrary assembly of posters, collages, and drawings, a few
paintings—including the now lost major works
War Cripples (45% Fit for Work) by Otto Dix
and Germany: A Winter’s Tale by George Grosz—and several sculptures, all of which are also
lost, replicas of which we are able to include in
our exhibition [Plates 31–33].
It is not possible to identify a common denominator or origin among the many different artists collected here, but in general the political,
inflammatory aspect of the Berlin Dadaists
reflecting on the situation of revolutionary upheaval in Germany came through clearly. So did
the anti-bourgeois attack on art—one poster
announced: “Die Kunst ist tot. Es lebe die neue
Maschinenkunst Tatlins” (Art is dead. Long live
Tatlin’s new machine art; Fig. 11)—that was
presented in the form of collage, which destroyed the traditional concept of the organic
work of art,26 and offered ironic “improvements
on ancient masterpieces.” The bourgeois German conformist concerned with security and
stability was thus made the central target and
attacked in two ways.27
By contrast, but also in part connected with
Dadaism, organizations in Berlin such as the
Novembergruppe (November Group) and the
Arbeitsrat für Kunst (Work Council for Art)
used the situation of social upheaval as an
opportunity for constructive artistic design.28
These approaches alternated between utopian
ideas beyond any realistic dimension and very
concrete, practical questions. For example, the
members of the utopian-tending architecture
group Die gläserne Kette (The Glass Chain)
corresponded with one another in 1919–20,
and individual members philosophized about
the crystal as a futuristic symbol of coming
architecture29 or about the architectural redesign of the massif of the Alps. The members
included renowned architects such as Walter
Gropius, Hans Scharoun, and Bruno Taut, who
over the course of the Weimar Republic would
indeed build, putting their modernist stamp
on the republic in cities such as Berlin, Dessau, and Magdeburg [Fig. 12].30 Gropius and
Taut also signed the program of the Arbeitsrat für Kunst, whose catalogue of questions
concerned information about urgently necessary construction of public housing or about
the connections between modern art and the
people. If their utopian projects may have been
a certain compensation for the inevitable lack
of architectural activity after defeat in the First
World War, the Novembergruppe and the Arbeitsrat were concretely involved in rebuilding
a postwar order of a democratic and socialist
character. One necessary prerequisite for that,
however, was a reasonably stable economic
situation in the young republic.
11. George Grosz (left) and John Heartfield at the “First
International Dada Fair,” standing in front of a sculpture by Vladimir
Tatlin, Otto Burchard’s gallery, Berlin, June 1920. Archiv of IKARE
of the Martin-Luther-University, Halle-Wittenberg
12. Walter Gropius (design) and Stefan Sebök (drawing), sketch
showing the perspective of the foyer for the Berufsdoppelschule
Berlin-Köpenick, wash and sprayed ink on paper, 1930.
Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin. © 2015 Artists Rights Society (ARS),
New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, for Walter Gropius
OLAF PETERS
21
13. The correspondence
department of the Berliner
Handelsgesellschaft,
Charlottenstrasse, Berlin
1920. From: Die Metropole.
Industriekultur in Berlin im
20. Jahrhundert (Munich,
1986), p. 34
14. Salaried employees in
Berlin during the 1920s.
From: Die Metropole.
Industriekultur in Berlin im
20. Jahrhundert (Munich,
1986), p. 169. Archiv of
IKARE of the MartinLuther-University, HalleWittenberg
22
PREC ARIOUS STABILIZ ATION
“From 1914 to 1924, Berlin was stagnating—
indeed, the cityscape [was] declining increasingly.”31 And much of what followed should be
seen as, among other things, an attempt at
self-stylization and compensation as “symbolic overcoming of the past.”32 The year 1924
marked the beginning of a phase of relative
stabilization in the Weimar Republic, which
from 1920 to 1923 had been standing on the
abyss, with attempted political coups from
both the left and right, political assassinations
(Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, 33 and
Walther Rathenau34), the occupation of the
Ruhr region and the “Battle of the Ruhr,” the
humiliating Treaty of Versailles and enormous
payments of reparations (Article 231 attributed sole responsibility for the war to Germany
and in 1922 the Allied forces demanded reparations totaling 132 billion gold marks), and
inflation that devalued financial assets. 35 The
inflation had, however, liberated Germany from
its debt, and it became possible to initiate innovative social policies with such achievements
as unemployment insurance, regulations on
working hours with an eight-hour day, and the
construction of public housing.
BERLIN METROPOLIS
In terms of foreign policy, the German Reich,
under the leadership of Gustav Stresemann,
was able to introduce a policy of better understanding with France; with respect to Poland,
however, the peace settlement, which entailed
awarding of considerable territory, was not
accepted. Loans from the United States in
particular ensured that Germany was able to
pay its reparations to the United Kingdom and
France, on the one hand, and invest in Germany to produce an economic upswing, on the
other. Germany’s industrial production grew
nearly eight percent annually from 1924 on;
coal and steel production soon exceeded prewar levels; exports were increasing, and real
wages grew. By comparison to other countries,
it was not necessarily always in front but—despite the biggest problem, agriculture—it provided some peace concerning domestic policy.
Berlin, as a central location for large industry (Siemens, Borsig, and others) and as the
capital of Prussia and of the German Reich,
focused several developments like a magnifying glass. In particular, the new culture of salaried employees was of central importance to
modernity and fashion, consumer and leisure
activities, and the history of attitudes. 36 Siegfried Kracauer’s study Die Angestellten (translated as The Salaried Masses) was published in
1930 and was based on empirical studies its
author had done in Berlin between April and
July 1929 [Figs. 13 and 14].37 Kracauer had
gone to those concerned and spoken to them
and looked closely at their workplaces. The
book became a journalistic sensation and triggered vehement discussion, because Kracauer had scrupulously depicted both the milieu
of the salaried employees and their habitus.
Kracauer found himself the target of intense
anti-Semitic attacks—from Ernst Niekisch, for
example, who even threatened him with expulsion, persecution, and extermination. 38
From 1920 onward, Kracauer made a name for
himself nationally, first as a freelancer and then
as the film critic for the Frankfurter Zeitung.
From 1930 onward, Kracauer was reporting
from Berlin, where he had been sent because
of increasing conflicts with the management
of the newspaper, and he headed the editorial
staff of the local feuilleton. His film reviews of
the 1920s and early 1930s—which later provided the foundation for the book on film he
wrote after his exile in America, From Caligari
to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film (1947)—offer a fascinating overview
of the film production of the Weimar years. 39
Again and again, Berlin played a central role
in outstanding productions.40 For example, in
Menschen untereinander (People to Each Other) of 1926, Gerhard Lamprecht described the
situation in a Berlin apartment building and
sketched the social coexistence there, which
oscillated between poverty and modest prosperity, exploitation and empathy. Lamprecht’s
Unter der Laterne (Under the Lantern) of 1928,
by contrast, showed the fate of a girl who, after
a fight with her father, becomes a high-class
prostitute then heads for social decline. Robert
Siodmak’s Menschen am Sonntag (People on
Sunday) [Fig. 15] is about the weekend culture
of salaried employees in Berlin, who travel to
the Wannsee for amusement. Amateur actors
perform in the film. It has features of the reportage or documentary film and is a major
work of cinematic Neue Sachlichkeit.
Robert Siodmak and Edgar Ulmer directed
Menschen am Sonntag; Eugen Schüfftan was
the cameraman, and Billy Wilder wrote the
script—all these names can illustrate in a flash
how the destruction of Weimar culture by the
National Socialists from 1933 onward drove
Germany’s creative potential into exile, not least
to the United States.41 That was also true of the
makers of the film Kuhle Wampe; oder, Wem
gehört die Welt? (Kuhle Wampe; or, Who Owns
the World?), which came out in 1932. It was
made by Slatan Dudow in collaboration with
Bertolt Brecht and Ernst Ottwalt, as well as
Günther Krampf (camera), Karl Ehrlich (production management), and Hanns Eisler (music).
The problems of unemployment, resignation,
suicide, petit-bourgeois and proletarian life in a
mass housing complex in the early 1920s and
the communist orientation of the film—symbol-
OLAF PETERS
15. Film still from Menschen
am Sonntag (People on
Sunday), directed by Robert
Siodmak and Edgar G.
Ulmer, 1930. Stiftung
Deutsche Kinemathek
23
ized by optimistic, athletic, working-class youth
looking toward the future—immediately caused
problems with the censors and resulted in this
political film being banned.42
to position oneself within metropolitan modernity. In their work, the comparison of Paris, the
capital of the nineteenth century, and Berlin,
which managed to become the most attrac-
SMALL FORM
How could one grapple appropriately with the
manifold metropolis and its heterogeneous
phenomena? Since the lucid essays of the Berlin sociologist Georg Simmel, the relationship
of the individual and the city has been a central
theme. His famous essay “Die Grossstädte und
das Geistesleben” (“The Metropolis and Mental
Life”) attempted, already in 1903, to describe
specific means of perception and habitual attitudes (world-weariness) that city dwellers
necessarily developed in order to exist in accelerated modernity.43 Intellectuals of Weimar
modernism continued these approaches in different ways. Today, the names Walter Benjamin
and Siegfried Kracauer stand for the attempt
tive metropolis in Europe (alongside Moscow,
which was rising rapidly but culturally sterilized
by Stalin’s policies), played an obvious role.
Berlin’s new modernity, which was in part influenced by America, was measured against the
classic modernism of the late nineteenth century as manifested in Paris.
16. The Tietz department
store on the Alexanderplatz,
designed by Cremer and
Wolffenstein 1904–11.
From: Die Metropole.
Industriekultur in Berlin im
20. Jahrhundert (Munich,
1986), p. 39
24
BERLIN METROPOLIS
The historian Felix Gilbert, who later became
famous after going into exile and was a fellow
at the renowned Institute for Advanced Study in
Princeton, New Jersey, mentioned the comparison of Paris and Berlin in his memoirs and underscored the exciting intellectual atmosphere
of the metropolis on the Spree: “My enthusiasm
for Paris did not, however, diminish my love for
Berlin. I knew instinctively—and I believe most
people of my generation shared this belief—
that one was very fortunate to live in Berlin in
the 1920s. Berlin was certainly not a particularly beautiful city. […] Above all, however, Berlin
was an intellectually stimulating city.”44
Striking aspects of the French capital—for example, its display windows, department stores,
and arcades, its illumination at night, and the
specific figure of the metropolitan flaneur—
became topics for Berlin [Fig. 16].45 In 1929 a
book by Franz Hessel was published with the
title Spazieren in Berlin: Ein Lehrbuch der Kunst
in Berlin Spazieren zu gehen ganz nah dem Zauber der Stadt von dem sie selbst kaum weiss;
Ein Bilderbuch in Worten (Walking in Berlin: A
Textbook on the Art of Walking in Berlin, Very
Close to the Magic of the City of Which It Is Itself
Hardly Aware; A Book Illustrated with Words).46
Hessel, a good friend of Walter Benjamin,
chose for his guide to experiencing the metropolis the concept of Spazierengehen (walking),
which should not be confused with Flanieren
(strolling). It seems that Berlin’s distinct urban
structure provided ways of perceiving and impressions different from those Paris offered.47
In any case, the book sketches only a partial
image of the accelerated metropolis, instead
breaking it repeatedly with side glimpses in the
form of topographically structured descriptions
of specific parts of the city: Tiergarten, Kreuzberg, Tempelhof, and also Hasenheide.
17. The Universum movie
palace at the Kurfürstendamm at night, Architect:
Erich Mendelsohn 1928.
From: Die Metropole.
Industriekultur in Berlin im
20. Jahrhundert, (Munich,
1986), p. 162
things about this are remarkable: First, the
planning for Berlin provided for the traffic of
a cosmopolitan city that bore no relationship
to the actual number of existing automobiles.
At two or three traffic junctions, at most, was
there an appreciable volume of motor vehicles.
Second, traveling through Berlin by car had an
effect that did not conform to the metropolis’s
self-image: “Traveling by car slowly through
Berlin, one comes from one small city to another.”48 It was only traveling rapidly that could
produce the illusion of a world-class city, since
Greater Berlin was given its physical stature
due to an immense number of incorporations.
In that sense, the desire and the reality, the
yearning to be a cosmopolitan city and the pro18. Advertisements for the
competition “Berlin and its
Trade Mark,” 1930. From:
Gebrauchsgraphik International,
Vol. 5 (Berlin, 1930)
At the same time, however, the walker Hessel
also explored the city, somewhat paradoxically, on lengthy auto journeys. Traveling by car
seemed necessary to get an overview of a
dispersed and rambling Berlin, something that
was by no means guaranteed by its urban form.
That was not the least of the reasons behind the
image of Berlin as ugly, as the city had grown
rampantly in an uncoordinated way during the
industrialization of the nineteenth century. Two
OLAF PETERS
25
19. Dust jacket for Walter
Benjamin’s Einbahnstrasse,
designed by Sasha Stone,
1930. Archiv of IKARE of
the Martin-Luther-University,
Halle-Wittenberg
20. Siegfried Kracauer,
1930, official photograph
for the Reichshandbuch
der deutschen Gesellschaft
(Imperial Handbook of
German Society). Archiv of
IKARE of the Martin-LutherUniversity, Halle-Wittenberg
vinciality of a small town, created a tension. The
models pursued could not be achieved, and
that was clearly recognized, for example, when
the architect Bruno Taut described Berlin’s
neon signs as “small-town” [Fig. 17] compared
to those of New York, or when the writer Joseph Roth denounced the imitation of international flair as “failed [Berlin] originals.”49 Berlin’s
long-serving mayor, Gustav Böss, had to concede realistically at the end of 1928: “I know:
Paris, London, and New York are still above us.
Soon we have to and will catch up to them.”50
The wish expressed here was satisfied first by
propaganda and advertisement, although the
cosmopolitan character of the city being marketed for tourism was intended not least to persuade its former wartime enemies that national
chauvinism had been overcome [Fig. 18].
Walter Benjamin was well aware that his Berlin
book Einbahnstrasse, (translated as One-Way
Street) owed a great deal to his image of Paris.51 That is already evident from the fact that
he foisted on his essay the aesthetic maxim
Charles Baudelaire formulated in the mid-nineteenth century when he remarked to Hugo von
Hofmannsthal: “Precisely in its eccentric elements, the book is if not a trophy then indeed a
document of an inner struggle out of which the
object can be expressed in the words: to grasp
actuality as the reverse of the eternal in history
and to take the impression from this covered
side of the coin. For the rest, the book is greatly
indebted to Paris.”52
Benjamin’s surreal montage technique, on the
one hand, and his particular perspective, which
he had learned from Siegfried Kracauer, on the
other hand, are still fascinating today. But the
actual absence of the flaneur—which existed
as a specific social type in nineteenth-century
Paris but not in Berlin of the 1920s—and the
political objectives of his approach limited the
scope of his ambitious experiment. The book
26
BERLIN METROPOLIS
Einbahnstrasse, whose cover was impressively
decorated by a montage evoking the metropolis by the photographer Sasha Stone, and
which perhaps had an inherent perspective on
the history of philosophy determined by the teleological irreversibility of the one-way street,
was fragmentary and confusing [Fig. 19]. It oscillated between Franz Kafka’s mysteriousness
and Ernst Jünger’s heroism, between journalism and philosophy. Benjamin’s view of Weimar culture was considerably blurred not least
because he made the historically distinct paradigm of Paris his contemporary guiding principle, and because of his overly affected championing of a politicized literary intelligentsia to
which he himself was at pains to belong.53 Benjamin was thus unable to come up with a lively
and immediate view of Berlin.
For deep insights into the Berlin of the Weimar
era, we are indebted less to Franz Hessel and
Walter Benjamin than to Siegfried Kracauer,
who lived in Frankfurt am Main [Fig. 20]. His
talent for precise observation, sensitized to
urban contexts by his study of architecture,
and his humanist cultural criticism, influenced
by his teacher Georg Simmel, resulted in texts
that dovetail aesthetics and sociology in ways
that are still intellectually impressive and also
quite moving.54 Kracauer’s figures of thought
constituted a fascinating synthesis and sought
to avoid a predetermined, ideological, systematic analysis. They were based on philosophical
and theoretical concepts, but they brought with
them miniature descriptions of phenomena and
surfaces. They follow a principle of surface
phenomena that shed light on one another
by analogy, on the one hand, and a basic tendency of the era, on the other, as Inka MülderBach worked out in her pioneering study of
the early Kracauer.55 The whole ambivalence
of his position is revealed, among other ways,
in his famous description of the Tiller Girls, a
contemporary revue troupe, along with others
of this ilk, that caused a sensation in Berlin
[Fig. 21].56 The crucial thing is that Kracauer
no longer wished to damn the newly emerging
mass society from the perspective of cultural
criticism, but at the same time recognized in
the entertainment industry the signs of instrumental reason,57 which were breaking free of
the emancipatory claim of the Enlightenment
and themselves turning into a myth, as Max
Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno would soon
point out while in exile in America.58
ALE X ANDE RPL ATZ
Kracauer’s and Hessel’s brief descriptions
contrast with another major literary work of the
era. Alfred Döblin, most of whose novels address exotic and fantastic as well as historical
and mythological subjects, published his novel
about the metropolis Berlin with S. Fischer Verlag in the fall of 1929: Berlin Alexanderplatz.59
The subject of Berlin had been on the agenda
for Döblin for some time, but the public pressure was steadily increasing, and it was as if
such a book had been expected of him. The author finally provided it, and with 45,000 copies
sold by 1932 and a predominantly positive response from the press, it was quite successful.
The book is a magnum opus of literary modernism and Neue Sachlichkeit.
Döblin imbued the novel with his intense preoccupation with the city, making use of his personal impressions from long walks, newspaper articles, billboards, statistical yearbooks, telephone
books, popular songs, reference works on Berliner expressions and histories of the city, but
also from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, and Heinrich von Kleist. His description of the metropolis assembled all of this
like a montage. It relates the story of Franz Biberkopf, who wants to become a better man after being released from prison having served a
sentence for manslaughter [Fig. 22], and whose
personal inability and guilt will prevent him from
living up to this simple resolution: “One doesn’t
21. The Scala-Girls in front
of the Scala-Revue-palace,
1929. Photo: Herbert
Hoffmann. From: Die
Metropole. Industriekultur
in Berlin im 20. Jahrhundert
(Munich, 1986), p. 203
OLAF PETERS
27
22. Film still from Berlin
Alexanderplatz, directed by
Phil Jutzi, 1931, showing
Heinrich George as Franz
Biberkopf. Stiftung Deutsche
Kinemathek, Berlin
begin one’s life with good words and intentions;
one starts it by recognizing and understanding,
and with the right person next to you,” read the
collaged and montaged “text of texts” on the
original dust jacket, designed by Georg Salter.60
It is perhaps idle to speculate whether Walther
Ruttmann’s film Berlin: Sinfonie der Großstadt
(English title Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis),
which premiered in Berlin on September 23,
1927,61 and was in turn influenced by László
Moholy-Nagy’s early film sketch,62 inspired
Döblin’s novel. The cinematic technique of
montage of this period certainly made an impression on Döblin. At the same time, by means
of the story told and the cinematic montage
structure, he failed to meet certain expectations, such as the desire expressed from the
political left that blame be placed squarely on
capitalist society. Johannes R. Becher polemicized against the book for that reason in the
Communist Party journal Die Linkskurve, arguing that the main character, Franz Biberkopf,
had been sketched as politically ignorant, with
no class consciousness. But conservative
readers were also put off by the author siding with his stumbling protagonist and by the
sometimes harsh light shed on the milieu of
Berlin’s semi-criminals.
With Döblin’s collaboration, Berlin Alexanderplatz was quickly turned into a film, with Heinrich George in the role of Franz Biberkopf. But
28
BERLIN METROPOLIS
cinematically the film did not realize the possibilities of the medium that the novel itself
had demonstrated in the competing medium
of literature. Emil Jannings had originally been
planned as the leading man, but he was unavailable as he was playing Professor Unrat,
alongside Marlene Dietrich, in the film version
of Heinrich Mann’s novel Der blaue Engel (The
Blue Angel). George had read Döblin’s novel while in the United States and immediately
became enthusiastic about the character of
Biberkopf. He wrote Döblin, initially with the
idea of a theater adaptation. But when Döblin
himself brought the new media of radio and film
into play, the actor was initially surprised by this
progressive request. Directed by Phil Jutzi, the
film was produced in the spring of 1931, but
critics found it disappointing, despite George’s
performance, because it did not live up to its
masterly literary model.
In his review of the film on October 13, 1931,
Siegfried Kracauer even spoke of a failure and
offered a crucial argument that was expanded
with an eye to the increasingly eerie political
atmosphere: “The film’s inadequacy derives not
least from that fact that it is decidedly a star’s
film. Its title is revealing: ‘Heinrich George in
Berlin-Alexanderplatz.’ Indeed, all its content is
related to George and is held together by him.
But that is doubly nonsensical with a hero who
does not rule over his milieu but is crucially influenced by his milieu. […] Whereas elsewhere
the actors physically embody existing times,
in Germany many people are, at best, formed
according to actors. The habitat in which we
are living is unreal; the air pregnant with ideologies; the ground gives way under our feet.”63 In
this typical style, Kracauer’s review from 1931
connected the specific production and acting
of Berlin Alexanderplatz with the critical state
of the republic and the rise of Hitler’s movement, which he sketched in grand style in his
Caligari book.
INTO THE ABYSS
Berlin owed its prominent position in the intellectual and cultural life of the Weimar republic
above all to music—Wilhelm Furtwängler, Bruno Walter, and Otto Klemperer were conducting there—literature, theater, and film, and less
so to art [Fig. 23]. The historian Felix Gilbert
stated categorically: “But the best thing Berlin
had to offer in those years was and remained
the theater; the new plays and the revolutionary directors were the main topics of conversation in many discussions. […] The theater in
Berlin was the focus of interest not only because it was often artistically stimulating but
also because it was highly political: The theater
scorned traditions and was a place for critique
of society; every limitation on freedom was denounced there.”64 Max Reinhardt outshone the
scene; he directed plays in Vienna and Berlin.
Bertolt Brecht and Erwin Piscator, who directed the Volksbühne am Bülowplatz, brought politics to the stage in a new way. Piscator acted
like a second author when he adapted plays for
the theater and transformed them into mass
productions that recalled the political events
of Communists, as was the case with his productions of Rudolf Leonhard’s Segel am Horizont (Sail on the Horizon) and Alfons Paquet’s
Sturmflut (Storm Tide), for example.65
23. George Grosz, Sketch
of Police Headquarters, for
the play “Nebeneinander”
by Hans Kaiser, 1923,
watercolor and ink on paper.
Theaterwissenschaftliche
Sammlung, Universität zu
Köln. © 2015 Estate of
George Grosz / Licensed
by VAGA, New York
ber (The Robbers) on September 11, 1926. The
critics responded accordingly: “But Herr Piscator would be better off arranging marches for
the Roter Frontkämpferbund (Alliance of Red
Front Fighters) than slaughtering the classics
in the state theater.”67
The domestic political situation of the German
Reich from 1929–30 onward was characterized
by increasing violence and an economic and
political crisis [Fig. 24]. In Berlin, the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP;
National Socialist German Workers’ Party) and
the Sturmabteilung (SA; Storm Troopers tried
to achieve a political breakthrough that did not
ever truly work out in the metropolis, which
was industrial and tended to be politically
leftist. Nevertheless, Joseph Goebbels, the
Gauleiter (Regional Party Leader) of Berlin,
24. Reichswehr troops during
a street fight in the north of
Berlin. From: Der Gefährliche
Augenblick. Eine Sammlung
von Bildern und Berichten,
edited by Ferdinand Bucholtz
with an introduction by Ernst
Jünger (Berlin: Junker und
Dünnhaupt 1931), p. 154
The so-called Russian films, which were well
received in Berlin, played their own role. Sergei Eisenstein’s pioneering Battleship Potemkin premiered at the Schauspielhaus Berlin on
January 18, 1926, and was shown at the Apollo-Theater from late April onward; Eisenstein’s
October: Ten Days That Shook the World was
released in early April 1928 at the Tauentzien-Palast in Berlin. Edmund Meisel composed
the original music for both films and Egon Erwin
Kisch, nicknamed the “Racing Reporter,” prepared the intertitles for October [Plate 167].66
Piscator continued his political polarization on
stage with his production of Schiller’s Die Räu-
OLAF PETERS
29
25. John Heartfield,
Goering – Henchman of
the Third Reich, Cover of
AIZ, September 14,1933.
Archiv of IKARE of the
Martin-Luther-University,
Halle-Wittenberg. © 2015
Artists Rights Society
(ARS), New York / VG
Bild-Kunst, Bonn
26. Film still from Der
Fürst von Pappenheim,
directed by Richard
Eichberg, 1927, showing
Curt Bois (left) and Mona
Maris. Stiftung Deutsche
Kinemathek, Berlin
who in 1933 was promoted to propaganda
minister of the Third Reich, did succeed with
his coldly calculating strategy of confrontation.
He was not timid about using the Communists
for propaganda purposes and he carried a
sometimes hard-fought political battle into the
ranks of his opponents. By means of provocative
marches and disturbances with political events,
the NSDAP tried to occupy the streets and the
public political space, attacking the Communists
in their own hangouts. From the perspective of
contemporaries, it was soon reaching a state of
civil war, even though the monopoly on power of
the state—which, admittedly, sympathized rather
openly with the right-wing political camp—was
never really called into question.
John Heartfield’s brilliant political graphic work
of these years conveys impressively the themes
and debates that dominated at the time or were
imposed from the left, such as the alleged financing of the NSDAP by large industry and
the unholy alliance between the old elites and
30
BERLIN METROPOLIS
the entourage around Hitler, which was characterized by parvenus and often failures from
a bourgeois perspective.68 But the aggressive
visual language on the covers of the ArbeiterIllustrierte-Zeitung provide clearly enough information about the pointed situation, which had
become caught up in and gave vent to an uncompromising thinking in terms of friends and
enemies. When Hitler came to power, Heartfield only barely escaped the Schutzstaffel (SS;
Protection Squadron) and fled to Prague.69
There he continued to make his powerful photomontages: Hermann Goering was shown, for
example, as Prussian Minister President with
an executioner’s ax and blood-smeared apron
in front of a burning Reichstag (published September 14, 1933; Fig. 25) and a victim of the
Third Reich was broken on a swastika, in an
image reminiscent of the medieval depictions
of the sufferings of martyrs (published May
31, 1934). It speaks volumes that the National
Socialists had previously protested a new film
project by Fritz Lang titled M: Eine Stadt sucht
einen Mörder (English title: M), which alluded to
their brutal approach.70
In the end the National Socialists were able
to take power in Berlin as well, and during the
twelve years of their destructive and murderous
rule, they reconceived the capital on a megalomaniacal scale as a new center of a subjugated
and culturally sterilized world.71 At first, the Berliners were forced to take refuge in their dreaded
wit.72 But over the years the situation changed
dramatically and they watched the emerging
tragedy of German Jews, who had so enduringly
influenced modern German culture, especially
in Berlin. The proposition of a German-Jewish
symbiosis may be problematic, in part because
it separates what belongs together, but by looking at the cultural wealth of Berlin between the
wars, many sections of our exhibition remind us
of the specific contribution of German Jews.
an impressive summary of Bois’s career and his
personality. Bois—a lonely, small, elderly man—
is walking in a cage of his memories, spoken as
an off-camera monologue, of a Berlin scarred
by war and division. He saw it all: Berlin during
the late imperial era and the Weimar Republic;
he escaped the Third Reich by fleeing into exile. He returned to a war-scarred and divided
Berlin in the early 1950s, and had an opportunity to experience German reunification just
before he died. Perhaps he celebrated that
event, which provided the original dynamic to
the current cosmopolitan Berlin, with one of his
successes of the early 1930s. Then perhaps
a smiling Bois would have stood up and proposed, “Come, let’s dance a little rumba.”
Translated from the German by Steven Lindberg
In conclusion, Curt Bois can be mentioned as
a representative of the cultural flourishing of
Berlin after the First World War. On the stage in
1923 he played a bloodthirsty Roman wearing
a swastika on his thin chest. He appeared in
revues with Kurt Gerron and sang songs such
as “Ich mache alles mit den Beinen” (I do everything with my legs) and “Ich hab’, ich bin, ich
wär’” (I have, I am, I would be), and in the film Der
Fürst von Pappenheim (The Prince of Pappenheim) of 1927, he put on women’s clothing [Fig.
26]. In his film Der Himmel über Berlin (Wings of
Desire, 1987), Wim Wenders managed to give
1
Eric D. Weitz, Weimar Germany:
Promise and Tragedy (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton Univ. Press, 2007), p. 41.
2
The most important surveys of the
history of the Weimar Republic are
Detlev J. K. Peukert, Die Weimarer
Republik: Krisenjahre der klassischen
Moderne (Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 1987); Hans Mommsen,
Die verspielte Freiheit: Der Weg
der Republik von Weimar in den
Untergang 1918 bis 1933 (Berlin:
Acknowledgement:
This is the third exhibition I was able to realize at
the Neue Galerie New York—”Otto Dix” (2010)
and “Degenerate Art” (2014). I would like to express my deep gratitude to Renée Price, Scott
Gutterman, Janis Staggs, and the entire staff
of the museum and for their trust and generous
support over the past years: Thank you! I also
extend thanks to Elisa Tamaschke for her support in Halle (Saale).
For Alice, Undine, and Carina
Propyläen, 1989); Heinrich August
Winkler, Weimar, 1918–1933: Die
Geschichte der ersten deutschen
Demokratie (Munich: C. H. Beck
1993); and Hans-Ulrich Wehler,
Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte,
vol. 4, Vom Beginn des Ersten
Weltkriegs bis zur Gründung der
beiden deutschen Staaten, 1914–
1945 (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2008).
My historical remarks are essential
based on these overviews and are
not detailed further in the notes.
On the economic and historical
development of Berlin, see Otto
Büsch, Geschichte der Berliner
Kommunalwirtschaft in der Weimarer
Epoche, with a foreword by Hans
Herzfeld (Berlin: de Gruyter 1960),
Die Metropole: Industriekultur in
Berlin im 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Jochen
Boberg, Tilman Fichter, and Eckhart
Gillen (Munich: C. H. Beck 1986),
and, for a summary from a general
3
OLAF PETERS
31
and comparative perspective,
Friedrich Lenger, Metropolen
der Moderne: Eine europäische
Stadtgeschichte seit 1850 (Munich:
C. H. Beck, 2013), 275–399.
On the era as a whole, see also
Jahrhundertwende: Der Aufbruch in
die Moderne, 1880–1930, ed. August
Nitschke et al., 2 vols. (Reinbek bei
Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1990), including
the essay by Klaus Strohmeyer:
“Der Kumpel liebt Berlin nicht …”:
Metropole und Industrielandschaft,”
ibid., 1:25–55.
4
See Magdalena Droste, The
Bauhaus, 1919–1933: Reform and
Avant-Garde (Cologne: Taschen,
2013).
5
For overviews, see Reinhard Spieler,
Max Beckmann (Cologne: Taschen,
1994), and Uwe M. Schneede, Max
Beckmann: Der Maler seiner Zeit
(Munich: C. H. Beck, 2009).
6
See Horst Uhr, Lovis Corinth
(Berkeley: Univ. of California Press,
1990), and Lovis Corinth, ed. PeterKlaus Schuster and Christoph Vitali,
exh. cat., Nationalgalerie, Staatliche
Museen zu Berlin; Haus der Kunst,
Munich (Munich: Prestel, 1996).
7
See Karl Hofer, exh. cat., Staatliche
Museen zu Berlin (Berlin: Frölich &
Kaufmann, 1983).
8
See especially George Grosz:
Berlin—New York, ed. PeterKlaus Schuster, exh. cat., Neue
Nationalgalerie Berlin et al. (Berlin:
Nicolai, 1994).
9
See Christian Schad, 1894–1982,
exh. cat., Kunsthaus Zürich et al.
(Rottach-Egern : G.A. Richter,
1997) and Christian Schad and the
Neue Sachlichkeit, ed. Jill Lloyd and
Michael Peppiatt, exh. cat., Neue
Galerie, New York (New York: W. W.
Norton, 2003).
10
See Richard Faber and Eva-Maria
Ziege, eds., Das Feld der Frankfurter
Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften vor
1945 (Würzburg: Königshausen &
Neumann, 2007).
11
See Gerd Kuhn, Wohnkultur und
kommunale Wohnungspolitik in
Frankfurt am Main 1880 bis 1930:
Auf dem Wege zu einer pluralen
Gesellschaft der Individuen (Bonn: J.
H. W. Dietz Nachfolger, 1998), and
32
BERLIN METROPOLIS
Neues Bauen, Neues Gestalten: Das
Neue Frankfurt/die neue stadt; Eine
Zeitschrift zwischen 1926 und 1933,
ed. Heinz Hirdina (Berlin [West]:
Elefanten, 1984).
12
See the survey by Wolfgang Pehnt,
Deutsche Architektur seit 1900
(Ludwigsburg: Wüstenrot Stiftung;
Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt,
2005), 128–56. On Berlin, see KarlHeinz Hüter, Architektur in Berlin,
1900–1933 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer,
1988; orig. pub. Dresden: Verlag der
Kunst, 1987).
13
See Olaf Peters, Otto Dix: Der
unerschrockene Blick (Stuttgart:
Reclam, 2013).
14
Birgit Schwarz, Otto Dix, Großstadt
(Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 1993),
and James A. van Dyke, “Otto
Dix’s Philosophical Metropolis,” in
Otto Dix, ed. Olaf Peters, exh. cat.,
Neue Galerie, New York (Munich:
Prestel, 2010), 179–197, and, on the
connection to Kirchner, Peters, Otto
Dix (see note 13), 163–65.
15
On Berlin in general, see
Berlin, Berlin: Die Ausstellung zur
Geschichte der Stadt, ed. Gottfried
Korff and Reinhard Rürup, exh. cat.,
Martin-Gropius-Bau (Berlin: Nicolai,
1987), and David Clay Large, Berlin
(New York: Basic Books, 2000).
On the city as cultural metropolis,
see also Berlin, 1910–1933: Die
visuellen Künste, ed. Eberhard
Roters (Berlin: Berlin Kunstbuch
Verlagsgesellschaft, 1983); Bärbel
Schrader and Jürgen Schebera, ed.,
Kunstmetropole Berlin, 1918–1933:
Dokumente und Selbstzeugnisse
(Berlin: Aufbau, 1987); Der Traum
von einer neuen Welt: Berlin,
1910–1933, exh. cat., Internationale
Tage Ingelheim (Mainz: Phillip von
Zabern, 1989), and Berlin: Culture
and Metropolis, ed. Charles W.
Haxthausen and Heidrun Suhr
(Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota
Press, 1990).
16
The so-called spectator letters by
the theologian and philosopher Ernst
Troeltsch bear impressive witness
to the early years of the Weimar
Republic. See Ernst Troeltsch, Die
Fehlgeburt einer Republik: Spektator
in Berlin, 1918 bis 1922, comp.
Johann Hinrich Claussen (Frankfurt
am Main: Eichborn, 1994).
17
See Neue Sachlichkeit, exh. cat.
(Mannheim: Städtische Kunsthalle,
1925), and, most recently, New
Objectivity: Modern German Art in
the Weimar Republic 1919-1933,
ed. Stephanie Barron and Sabine
Eckmann, exh. cat., Los Angeles
County Museum of Art (Munich:
Prestel; New York: Delmonico, 2015).
18
See Helmut Plessner, “Die
Legende von den zwanziger Jahren,”
in idem, Gesammelte Schriften, vol.
6 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
1982), 261–79. Plessner paints a
brief but eloquent image of Berlin and
emphasizes its position in the light of
the loss of power of the former royal
seats of Germany after the fall of the
Kaiserreich. See ibid., 273–77.
19
See especially Ludwig Meidner:
Zeichner, Maler, Literat, 1884–
1966, ed. Gerda Breuer and Ines
Wagemann, , 2 vols., exh. cat.,
Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt (Stuttgart:
Hatje, 1991).
20
Ludwig Meidner, “Instructions for
Painting Pictures of the Metropolis,”
trans. Nicholas Walker, in Charles
Harrison and Paul J. Wood, Art in
Theory, 1900–2000 (Malden, MA:
Blackwell, 2003), 167–71, esp. 168;
orig. pub. as “Anleitung zum Malen
von Großstadtbildern,” Kunst und
Künstler 12, no. 6 (1914): 312–14.
21
Meidner, “Instructions for Painting
Pictures of the Metropolis” (see note
20), 171.
22
On this development, see the most
recent, impressive survey by Jörn
Leonhard, Die Büchse der Pandora:
Geschichte des Ersten Weltkriegs
(Munich: C. H. Beck, 2014).
23
See Kurt Winkler, Museum und
Avantgarde: Ludwig Justis Zeitschrift
“Museum der Gegenwart” und die
Musealisierung des Expressionismus
(Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 2002).
24
Despite the countless detail
studies, the following remain
informative overviews: Peter Gay,
Weimar Culture: The Outsiders
as Insiders (New York: Harper
& Row, 1968); John Willet, The
New Sobriety: Art and Politics in
the Weimar Period, 1917–1933
(London: Thames and Hudson,
1978), and Jost Hermand and Frank
Trommler, Die Kultur der Weimarer
Republik (Munich: Nymphenburger
Verlagshandlung, 1978). The
Weimar Republic Sourcebook,
ed. Anton Kaes, Martin Jay and
Edward Dimendberg (Berkeley:
Univ. of California Press, 1994),
is an indispensable collection of
sources is. A methodologically upto-date account of a wide variety of
thematic areas, which nevertheless
does not make the early synoptic
approaches absolute, is found in
Politische Kulturgeschichte der
Zwischenkriegszeit, 1918–1939,
ed. Wolfgang Hardtwig (Göttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005),
and in Weimar Culture Revisited, ed.
John Alexander Williams (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
25
On the exhibition, see Helen
Adkins, “Erste Internationale DadaMesse,” Stationen der Moderne: Die
bedeutenden Kunstausstellungen
des 20. Jahrhunderts in Deutschland,
exh. cat., Berlinische Galerie (1988),
156–83, and Hanne Bergius,
Montage und Metamechanik: Berlin
Dada; Artistik von Polaritäten (Berlin:
Gebr. Mann, 2000), 233–97.
26
On this, see especially Peter
Bürger, Theorie der Avantgarde
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
1974); translated by Michael Shaw
as Theory of the Avant-Garde
(Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota
Press, 1984); and Hanno Möbius,
Montage und Collage: Literatur,
bildende Künste, Film, Fotografie,
Musik, Theater bis 1933 (Munich:
Fink, 2000).
27
See Hanno Ehrlicher, Die Kunst der
Zerstörung: Gewaltphantasien und
Manifestationspraktiken europäischer
Avantgarden (Berlin: Akademie
2001), 219–33.
28
See the essay by Janina Nentwig
in the present volume as well as
Arbeitsrat für Kunst Berlin, 1918–
1921, exh. cat. (Berlin: Akademie der
Künste, 1980); Eberhard Steneberg,
Arbeitsrat für Kunst Berlin, 1918–
1921 (Düsseldorf: Marzona, 1987);
Novembergruppe, exh. cat. (Berlin:
Galerie Bodo Niemann, 1993); and,
more broadly, Freiheit, Gleichheit,
Brüderlichkeit: Künstlergruppen
in Deutschland, 1918–1923
(Recklinghausen: Städtische
Kunsthalle, 1989).
29
See Regine Prange, Das Kristalline
als Kunstsymbol: Bruno Taut und Paul
Klee; Zur Reflexion des Abstrakten in
Kunst und Kunsttheorie der Moderne
(Hildesheim: Olms, 1991).
30
See the collections of sources
Die gläserne Kette: Eine expressionistische Korrespondenz über
die Architektur der Zukunft, ed. Iain
Boyd Whyte and Romana Schneider
(Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje, 1996), and
Bruno Taut, Frühlicht, 1920–1922:
Eine Folge für die Verwirklichung des
neuen Baugedankens (Berlin: Ullstein, 1963). On Taut, see Iain Boyd
Whyte, Bruno Taut and the Architecture of Activism (Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge Univ. Press, 1982); Bruno
Taut, 1880–1938: Architekt zwischen
Tradition und Avantgarde, ed. Winfried Nerdinger et al. (Stuttgart:
Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2001),
and, placing Taut in context, Timothy
O. Benson, ed., Expressionist Utopias: Paradise, Metropolis, Architectural Fantasy, exh. cat., Los Angeles
County Museum of Art (1993/94),
and Roger Fornhoff, Die Sehnsucht
nach dem Gesamtkunstwerk: Studien zur ästhetischen Konzeption der
Moderne (Hildesheim: Olms, 2004),
369–475.
31
Michael Bienert, Die eingebildete
Metropole: Berlin im Feuilleton der
Weimarer Republik (Stuttgart: J. B.
Metzler 1992), 99. Bienert offers an
excellent critical account that steels
one against subjective nostalgia.
32
Ibid., 100.
33
Alfred Döblin impressively
described the murder of Rosa
Luxemburg in all its shocking
brutality. See Alfred Döblin,
November 1918: Eine deutsche
Revolution, vol. 4, Karl und Rosa
(Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch
Verlag, 1978), 585–93.
34
See Martin Sabrow, Der Rathenaumord: Rekonstruktion einer Verschwörung gegen die Republik von
Weimar (Munich: R. Oldenbourg,
1994).
35
See the general accounts
indicated in note 2 and the pointed
summary in Ulrich Herbert,
Geschichte Deutschlands im 20.
Jahrhundert (Munich: C.H. Beck,
2014), 199-213.
36
I would like to take this opportunity
to express my sincere gratitude once
again to the authors of the essays in
the present volume; their different
focuses present precisely these
modern—though sometimes also
regressively interrupted—trends in
architecture, film, fashion, and leisure
culture.
37
Siegfried Kracauer, Die
Angestellten (Frankfurt am Main:
Frankfurter Societäts-Druckerei,
1930), reprinted and annotated
as idem, Werke, ed. Inka MülderBach and Ingrid Belke, vol. 1, Die
Angestellten, ed. Inka Mülder-Bach
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
2006), 211–310; translated by
Quintin Hoare as The Salaried
Masses: Duty and Distraction in
Weimar Germany (London: Verso,
1988).
38
See Inka Mülder-Bach,
“Nachbemerkung und editorische
Notiz,” in Kracauer, Werke, vol. 1 (see
note 37), 375–92, esp. 388.
39
See Siegfried Kracauer, Werke, ed.
Inka Mülder-Bach and Ingrid Belke,
vols. 6.1–3, Kleine Schriften zum Film,
ed. Inka Mülder-Bach with Mirjam
Wenzel and Sabine Biebl (Frankfurt
am Main: Suhrkamp, 2004), and
Siegfried Kracauer, From Caligari
to Hitler: A Psychological History
of the German Film (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton Univ. Press, 1947).
40
Richly illustrated surveys of
Weimar cinema are found in
Laurence Kardish, ed., Weimar
Cinema, 1919–1933: Daydreams
and Nightmares, exh. cat. (New York:
Museum of Modern Art, 2010), and
Hans Helmut Prinzler, Licht und
Schatten: Die grossen Stumm- und
Tonfilme der Weimarer Republik, exh.
cat., Versicherungskammer Bayern,
Munich (Munich: Schirmer und Mosel,
2012); translated by David H. Wilson
as Sirens and Sinners: A Visual
History of Weimar film, 1918–1933
(London: Thames & Hudson, 2013).
OLAF PETERS
33
41
See Jean-Michel Palmier, Weimar
in Exile: The Antifascist Emigration
in Europe and America (London:
Verso, 2006; orig. pub. in French
in 1987); Exiles + Emigrés: The
Flight of European Artists from Hitler,
ed. Stephanie Barron with Sabine
Eckmann, exh. cat., Los Angeles
County Museum of Art (New York:
Harry N. Abrams, 1997), and Das
Internationale Jahrbuch Exilforschung
21 (2003), which addresses the
themes of film and photography.
42
See Helmut Korte, Der Spielfilm
und das Ende der Weimarer
Republik: Ein rezeptionshistorischer
Versuch (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 1998).
43
Georg Simmel, “Die Grossstädte
und das Geistesleben,” in idem,
Gesamtausgabe, vol. 7, Aufsätze
und Abhandlungen, 1901–1908, 2
vols. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
1995), 1:116–31; translated by Kurt
Wolff as “The Metropolis and Mental
Life,” in Kurt Wolff, ed., The Sociology
of Georg Simmel (Glencoe, IL: Free
Press, 1950), 409–24. See also
Heinz-Jürgen Dahme and Otthein
Rammstedt, eds., Georg Simmel und
die Moderne: Neue Interpretationen
und Materialien (Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp 1984), and Klaus
Lichtblau, Kulturkrise und Soziologie
umd die Jahrhundertwende: Zur
Genealogie der Kultursoziologie
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
1996), 203–32.
44
Felix Gilbert, Lehrjahre im alten
Europa: Erinnerungen, 1905–1945
(Berlin: Siedler 1989), 95.
45
On flaneur, see the exemplary
Anke Gleber, The Art of Taking a
Walk: Flanerie, Literature, and Film
in Weimar Culture (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton Univ. Press, 1999), and
Ester Leslie, “Flâneurs in Paris and
Berlin,” in Histories of Leisure, ed.
Rudy Koshar (Oxford: Berg, 2002),
61–77. For an overview, that also
addresses the display window, see
Janet Ward, Weimar Surfaces: Urban
Visual Culture in 1920s Germany
(Berkeley: Univ. of California Press,
2001).
46
Franz Hessel, Spazieren in Berlin:
Ein Lehrbuch der Kunst in Berlin
34
BERLIN METROPOLIS
Spazieren zu gehen ganz nah
dem Zauber der Stadt von dem sie
selbst kaum weiss; Ein Bilderbuch
in Worten, with an introduction by
Stéphane Hessel and an afterword
by Berndt Witte (Berlin: Berlin
Taschenbuch Verlag, 2013; orig. pub.
1929). In 1927 Hessel published
the novel Heimliches Berlin, with
an afterword by Walter Benjamin
(Berlin: Berlin Taschenbuch Verlag,
2013).
47
Distinct perspectives on the
perception of the metropolis are
developed in Manfred Smuda, ed.,
Die Großstadt als “Text” (Munich:
Fink, 1992), and Burcu Dogramaci,
ed., Großstadt: Motor der Künste in
der Moderne (Berlin: Gebr. Mann,
2010). For a comparative perspective
on the relevant time frame, see also
Metropolis, 1890–1940, ed. Anthony
Sutcliffe (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago
Press, 1984).
48
Bernard von Brentano, “Berlin,
von Süddeutschland aus gesehen”
(1926–27), quoted in Bienert, Die
eingebildete Metropole (see note
31), 108.
49
See ibid., 122–23.
50
Berliner Tageblatt, no. 487,
October 14, 1928, quoted in Bienert,
Die eingebildete Metropole (see note
31), 96.
51
Walter Benjamin, Kritische
Gesamtausgabe, vol. 8,
Einbahnstrasse, ed. Detlev Schöttker
with Steffen Haug (Frankfurt
am Main: Suhrkamp, 2009; orig.
pub. Berlin: Ernst Rowohlt, 1928);
translated by Edmund Jephcott as
One-Way Street, in Walter Benjamin,
Selected Writings, ed. Michael W.
Jennings, vol. 1, 1913–1926, ed.
Marcus Bullock and Michael W.
Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Belknap
Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 1996),
444–88.
52
Walter Benjamin to Hugo von
Hofmannsthal, February 8, 1928,
in The Correspondence of Walter
Benjamin, 1910–1940, ed. Gershom
Scholem and Theodor W. Adorno,
trans. Manfred R. Jacobson and
Evelyn M. Jacobson (Chicago: Univ.
of Chicago Press, 1994), 325.
53
On this, see the rather critical
remarks in Jean-Michel Palmier,
Walter Benjamin: Le chiffonnier,
l’ange et le petit bossu; esthétique
et politique chez Walter Benjamin
(Paris: Klincksieck, 2006), 957–91.
54
On Kracauer, see especially
Inka Mülder, Siegfried Kracauer:
Grenzgänger zwischen Theorie und
Literatur; Seine frühen Schriften,
1913–1933 (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler,
1985).
55
See ibid., 103–15, which also
emphasizes the proximity and
distance of the approaches of
Kracauer and Benjamin.
56
See Siegfried Kracauer, “Das
Ornament der Masse, in idem: Werke,
ed. Inka Mülder-Bach and Ingrid
Belke, vol. 5.2, Essays, Feuilletons,
Rezensionen, 1924–1927, ed. Inka
Mülder-Bach with Sabine Biebl et al.
(Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2011), 612–24;
translated by Thomas Y. Levin as
“The Mass Ornament,” in Siegfried
Kracauer, The Mass Ornament:
Weimar Essays (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard Univ. Press, 1995), 75–86.
57
For a critical discussion of Helmut
Lethen’s simplifying but influential
theses, see Mülder, Siegfried
Kracauer (see note 54), 68–72.
58
See the chapter on the culture
industry in Max Horkheimer and
Theodor W. Adorno, Die Dialektik
der Aufklärung, Gunzelin Schmid
Noerr (Frankfurt am Main: S.
Fischer, 1987), 144–96; translated
by Edmund Jephcott as Dialectic
of Enlightenment: Philosophical
Fragments, ed. Gunzelin Schmid
Noerr (Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ.
Press, 2002), 94–136.
59
Alfred Döblin, Berlin
Alexanderplatz: Die Geschichte von
Franz Biberkopf (Berlin: S. Fischer
1929); translated by Eugène Jolas
as Alexanderplatz, Berlin: The Story
of Franz Biberkopf (New York: Viking,
1931). On the book and its historical
context, see Gabriele Sander,
“Tatsachenphantasie”: Alfred Döblins
Roman “Berlin Alexanderplatz: Die
Geschichte von Franz Biberkopf”
(Marbach am Neckar: Deutsche
Schillergesellschaft, 2007) and
Wilfried F. Schoeller, Döblin: Eine
Biographie (Munich: Hanser, 2011),
338–52. On issues of the novel’s
adaptations for radio and film and
issues of censorship, see Peter
Jelavich, Berlin Alexanderplatz:
Radio, Film, and the Death of Weimar
Culture (Berkeley: Univ. of California
Press, 2006).
60
See Sander, “Tatsachenphantasie”
(see note 59), 49–63.
61
On Ruttmann’s status as an avantgarde filmmaker, see Christine N.
Brinckmann, “‘Abstraktion’ und
‘Einfühlung’ im frühen deutschen
Avantgardefilm,” in Harro Segeberg,
ed., Die Perfektionierung des
Scheins: Das Kino der Weimarer
Republik im Kontext der Künste,
Mediengeschichte des Films 3
(Munich: Fink, 2000), 111–40;
translated by Brian Currid as
“Abstraction and Empathy in the
Early German Avant-Garde,” in
Christine N. Brinckmann, Color and
Empathy: Essays on Two Aspects
of Film (Amsterdam: Amsterdam
Univ. Press, 2015), 145–71; and
Karl Prümm, “Symphonie contra
Rhythmus: Widersprüche und
Ambivalenzen in Walther Ruttmanns
Berlin-Film,” in Geschichte des
dokumentarischen Films in
Deutschland, vol. 2, Weimarer
Republik, 1918–1933, ed. Klaus
Kreimeier, Antje Ehmann, and
Jeanpaul Goergen (Stuttgart:
Reclam, 2005), 411–34. On the
continuity of the most modern
montage techniques during the
“Third Reich,” using the example of
Ruttmann, who collaborated with
Leni Riefenstahl, see Kay Hoffmann,
“Rhythmus, Rhythmus, Rhythmus!
Avantgarde und Moderne,” in Ursula
von Keitz and Kay Hoffmann, eds.,
Die Einübung des dokumentarischen
Blicks. Fiction Film und Non Fiction
Film zwischen Wahrheitsanspruch
und expressiver Sachlichkeit, 1895–
1945 (Marburg: Schüren 2001),
169–91.
62
See László Moholy-Nagy,
“Dynamik der Gross-Stadt” (Skizze zu
einem Filmmanuskript, geschrieben
im Jahre 1921/22), in idem Malerei
Fotografie Film, ed. Hans M. Wingler
with a postscript by Otto Stelzer,
Bauhaus-Buch 8, (Mainz: Kupferberg,
1967; facsimile reprint of 2nd ed.,
1927; orig. pub. 1925), 122–35;
translated by Janet Seligman as
“Dynamic of the Metropolis,” in
László Moholy-Nagy, Painting,
Photography, Film (Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 1973), 122–37. On this,
see especially the dissertation of Jan
Sahli, Filmische Sinneserweiterung:
László Moholy-Nagys Filmwerk und
Theorie (Marburg: Schüren, 2006),
113–21.
63
Siegfried Kracauer, ““BerlinAlexanderplatz’ als Film,” in idem,
Werke, vol. 6.2, Kleine Schriften
zum Film, 1928–1932 (see note
39), 546–50, esp. 548–49. The
review was originally published in
the Frankfurter Zeitung, October 13,
1931.
64
Gilbert, Lehrjahre im alten Europa
(see note 44), 96–97.
65
For a summary, see Theater in
der Weimarer Republik, exh. cat.,
Rheinisches Landesmuseum
Bonn (Berlin: Kunstamt
Kreuzberg; Cologne: Institut für
Theaterwissenschaft der Universität
Köln, 1977); Lothar Schöne,
Neuigkeiten vom Mittelpunkt der
Welt: Der Kampf ums Theater in
der Weimarer Republik (Darmstadt:
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft,
1995), and Günther Rühle, Theater
in Deutschland, 1887–1945: Seine
Ereignisse—seine Menschen
(Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer,
2007), esp. 493–98 on Piscator. See
also the collection of contemporary
reviews in Günther Rühle, Theater für
die Republik: Im Spiegel der Kritik,
2nd ed., 2 vols. (Frankfurt am Main:
S. Fischer, 1988; orig. pub. 1967).
66
On Eisenstein, see David
Bordwell, The Cinema of Eisenstein
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ.
Press, 1993); Felix Lenz, Sergej
Eisenstein: Montagezeit; Rhythmus,
Formdramaturgie, Pathos (Munich:
Wilhelm Fink, 2008), and, with an
eye to his reception in Germany,
Eisenstein und Deutschland: Texte,
Dokumente, Briefe, ed. Akademie
der Künste, conceived and compiled
by Oksana Bulgakowa (Berlin:
Henschel, 1998).
67
Quoted in Rühle, Theater in
Deutschland (see note 65), 503.
For his political view of the theater,
see Erwin Piscator, Das Politische
Theater, rev. by Felix Gasbarra, with
a foreword by Wolfgang Drews
(Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt,
1963; orig. pub. Berlin: Adalbert
Schultz Verlag 1929).
68
See John Heartfield, exh. cat.,
Akademie der Künste zu Berlin,
Altes Museum (Cologne: DuMont
1991), and, most recently, Andrés
Mario Zervigón, John Heartfield and
the Agitated Image: Photography,
Persuasion, and the Rise of AvantGarde Photomontage (Chicago:
Univ. of Chicago Press, 2012), and
Anthony Coles, John Heartfield: Ein
politisches Leben (Cologne: Böhlau,
2014).
69
On this, see also Keith Holz,
Modern German Art for Thirties Paris,
Prague, and London: Resistance and
Acquiescence in a Democratic Public
Sphere (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan
Press, 2004).
70
Lang’s masterpiece, made
immortal by Peter Lorre, who was
later forced into exile, in the role of
the child murderer, hit cinemas in
1931. On the film, see Christoph
Bareither and Urs Büttner, eds.,
Fritz Lang: “M: Ein Stadt sucht
einen Mörder”; Texte und Kontexte
(Würzburg: Königshausen &
Neumann, 2010).
71
See, crucially, Hans J. Reichhardt
and Wolfgang Schäche, Von
Berlin nach Germania: Über die
Zerstörungen der Reichshauptstadt
durch Albert Speers
Neugestaltungsplanungen, exh. cat.,
Berliner Landesarchiv 5th ed. (Berlin:
Transit, 1990; orig. pub. 1984), and
Paul Jaskot, The Architecture of
Oppression: The SS, Forced Labour
and the Nazi Monumental Building
Economy (London: Routledge,
2000), 80–113.
72
“Who is to blame for everything?”
was an expression used to send up
Hitler in the metropolis of the Weimar
Republic. And the ironic answer of
the Berliners was: “The Jews and
the bicyclists.” Schöne, Neuigkeiten
vom Mittelpunkt der Welt (see note
65), 41.
OLAF PETERS
35
ART AND ANTI-ART IN BERLIN
AROUND 1920
DADA AND THE NOVEMBERGRUPPE
Janina Nentwig
Berlin around 1920 still clearly bore the traces
of the First World War, even if the fronts had
been far from the Spree River. The writer Carl
Zuckmayer later recalled the atmosphere at
the time:
People were nervous and ill-humored.
The streets were dirty and thronged with
beggars, war-blinded and legless men; in
passing them those shod in Oxfords and
spats quickened their pace; George Grosz
and Otto Dix have depicted such scenes.
[…] Berlin in the early 1920s was half-silk;
it smelled of Chypre [a heavy perfume],
makeup remover, and cheap gasoline; it
had lost its imperial and upper-middle-class
splendor, and only later did it explode into a
garish, hectic flower.1
It was not just those injured in the war who
kept alive the memory of the lost war and the
revolutionary chaos that followed in November
1918: the walls of buildings and the advertising
columns were plastered with countless posters and appeals from a wide variety of parties
competing for the favor of voters in the young
Weimar Republic. Demonstrations and strikes
were just as much part of daily normalcy as political assassinations and street fighting were.
For some, the Treaty of Versailles, in which
36
ART AND ANTI-ART IN BERLIN AROUND 1920
Germany accepted sole responsibility for the
war, was a shameful defeat and wounding of
national pride. For others, the abdication of
Kaiser Wilhelm II held out a one-time opportunity to introduce political, social, and cultural changes. More than ever before, artists felt
called upon to help shape the new society.
During the early years of the Weimar Republic, the strategies for such artistic participation,
ranging from destructive provocation to optimistic affirmation of democracy, were focused
as if by a magnifying glass.
Two avant-garde groups that influenced the
artistic events in Berlin at the time represented these two antithetical poles: the Dadaists
and the Novembergruppe (November Group).
The present essay will be about both organizations, especially in the years from 1919 to 1921
when they were in close contact with each other.2 The sometimes close connections between
Dada and the Novembergruppe seem surprising at first glance, since the self-concept, working methods, intentions, and artistic production
of those involved could not have been more
different. Whereas the Berlin Dadaists created
a highly politicized, ironic anti-art and declared
war with bourgeois society on all levels, the Novembrists did not question the traditional concept of art and the associated ideals, such as
aesthetic edification. Their declared goals were
“the closest possible relationship between the
people and art”3 and the perfection of a new
human being by means of modern art. The Dadaists, too, wanted to change the relationship
of art and life fundamentally, not through the
constant, patient work of education pursued
by the Novembergruppe, but rather by means
of provocation and the destruction of all traditional forms and concepts. Clearly, however,
these antithetical approaches were not regarded as unbridgeable opposites by artists
such as Hannah Höch, Raoul Hausmann, and
Jefim Golyscheff. They were part of the more
intimate circle of Berlin Dadaists, and yet they
exhibited jointly with the Novembergruppe as
well as with Otto Dix, Rudolf Schlichter, and
Georg Scholz, who were loosely associated
with Berlin Dada. In presentations by Dada and
the Novembergruppe, some of which were held
at the same time, they showed works that often
differed totally in style. Hausmann, one of the
leading Dadaist thinkers in Berlin and a master of the scathing manifesto, was even active
in Novembergruppe publications. In the end,
however, their contrary views did collide, and
in 1921 there was an open clash. That clash
has already been discussed in existing scholarship, but by enlisting sources that have been
little known and by putting things in the context of the time, it is possible to reevaluate it.
In this specific conflict, the relationship of artists and the state in the so-called crisis years
of the Weimar Republic is particularly evident.
We begin, however, by shedding more light on
the foundings of the Club Dada in Berlin and
the Novembergruppe. When and where did
the two groups come into contact, and how did
they react to the political upheavals in November 1918? A comparison of the manifestos and
exhibitions of 1919 and 1920 brings surprising things to light, since several of the statements from Dadaists can be interpreted in the
chronology of events as a satirizing appropriation of the strategies of the Novembergruppe.
1. Hannah Höch,
High Finance, 1923,
photocollage. Galerie
Berinson, Berlin. © 2015
Artists Rights Society
(ARS), New York /
VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn
“ HE Y, HE Y, YOU, YOUNG MAN .
DADA IS NOT AN ART MOVE ME NT” 4
Dada was launched in 1916, in the middle of
the war, on neutral Swiss ground. In a world
that had gotten out of joint, in which nations
were battling one another in technologically advanced trench warfare, a small group of
exiled artists were protesting at the Cabaret
Voltaire in Zurich. They wanted to express their
revulsion toward a society that not only allowed
all this but even in part expressly approved it,
and they sought new forms to do so. The group
JANINA NENTWIG
37
2. Raoul Hausmann,
A Bourgeois Precision
Brain Incites a World
Movement (later known
as Dada Triumphs), 1920,
watercolor and collage on
wove paper mounted on
board. Private Collection.
Exhibited at the 1920
“Dada-Messe.” © 2015
Artists Rights Society
(ARS), New York /
ADAGP, Paris
38
around Hugo Ball, Tristan Tzara, and Hans Arp
selected the meaningless name “Dada” to mirror their experience of an absurd reality. Ball
called Dada a “farce of nothingness in which
all higher questions are involved; a gladiator’s
gesture, a play with shabby leftovers, the death
warrant of posturing morality and abundance.”5
The parody and destruction of “conventional”
art was usually marked by subtle humor. Sound
poems without semantic meaning and grotesque, satirical performances were offered to
the distraught public. Even so, “Dada’s laughter”6 was a desperate sort, and it echoed largely unheard amid the roar of gunfire.
In early 1917 Richard Huelsenbeck brought
Dada from Zurich to Berlin. In that “city of tightened stomachs, of mounting, thundering hunger, where hidden rage was transformed into a
boundless money lust, and men’s minds were
concentrating more and more on questions of
naked existence,” 7 as Huelsenbeck wrote in
1920, he found Dada was already prefigured in
the circle of the politically left-wing journals Die
Aktion and Neue Jugend. Among those active
there were Hausmann, George Grosz, Wieland
Herzfelde, and John Heartfield, as well as Salomo Friedlaender, Franz Jung, and Otto Gross.
Their publications had an anarchist, oppositional thrust, and Dada in Berlin subsequently
became clearly more political and aggressive
than in Switzerland.8 Irony became once and
for all the central stylistic means that characterized Dadaist photomontages as well. This
technique is regarded as a genuine invention
of the Berlin Club Dada. Inspired by Cubist and
Futurist collages, artists in Zurich started gluing together everyday materials such as newspaper clippings, slips of paper, and fabric remnants. The Berlin Dadaists extended this technique to photographic reproductions that the
illustrated press made available daily and massively, not least of all political and cultural celebrities. Dadaist photomontages still surprise
ART AND ANTI-ART IN BERLIN AROUND 1920
us today, with their grotesque hybrids, daring
combinations of set pieces from “real life,” and
biting humor. Nationalism and militarism, standards and values emptied of meaning such as
unconditional obedience to state and church—
all these things provoked the artists to make
“Dadaist products” that they emphatically did
not wish to be art. [Figs. 1 and 2] This attack on
society, as creative as it was aggressive, was
also intended to destroy the idea of noble art
and beauty, and to avoid an aesthetic alterna-
tive world to the bloody reality. Dada was thus
not just an anti-art aimed against the petty
bourgeois and the Weimar Republic, which in
the view of the Dadaists wished to restore the
old order, but also an “anti-art art” in the stricter
and best sense.9 The “Dadaistisches Manifest”
(translated as “Dadaist Manifesto”), read at the
first Dada soirée in Berlin in April 1918, stated:
“For the first time Dadaism has made a break
with the aesthetic approach to life by rending
all the slogans of ethics, culture and inwardness, which are mere cloaks for weak muscles,
into their component parts.” This appeal closed
in the typically ironic manner: “If you are against
this manifesto you are a Dadaist!” 10
This Dada evening, at which not only lectures
but also poetry and dances were presented,
no one came to blows—as the press seemed
disappointed to report—but there was a racket.
The audience appears to have understood the
message of “experienced” Dadaism very well
and immediately made it reality. If one can believe the description of the art critic Willy Wolfradt, there were wild fits of laughter:
Everyone was standing on chairs, laughers
who could no longer continue fell around
one another’s necks; those with calmer
natures were smoking casually, as if in a
variety theater. Here and there someone
in the crowd betrayed himself as a Dadaist
by emphatically waving his arms, while the
boorishness at the lectern unswervingly
flung its grotesque cynicisms toward the
heads of audience members.11
Were there also artists present who, just a
few months later, would found the Novembergruppe? After all, the event took place in the
premises of the Berlin Secession, an important
meeting place for progressively minded artists in Berlin.12 The Expressionist painters and
later initiators of the Novembergruppe Georg
Tappert, Moriz Melzer, and Cesar Klein were
known for their work in Herwarth Walden’s
journal Der Sturm, along with Raoul Hausmann
and other authors associated with Dada such
as Friedlaender and Carl Einstein.13 Hausmann,
who had been a convinced Expressionist before coming into contact with Dada, also published regularly in Die Aktion during the war, as
did Tappert.14 It is thus reasonable to assume
that several of the artists from the circles of
these journals were sitting in the audience, if
they were not fighting on the front.15 How did
the Expressionists react to the harsh criticism
of their art that was expressed several times
that evening? In the above-cited “Dadaistisches Manifest,” Huelsenbeck vehemently
rejected “the anemic abstraction of Expressionism”: “Have the Expressionists fulfilled our
expectations of an art that brands the essence
of life into our flesh? No! No! No!!”16 Likewise in
his lecture “Das neue Material in der Malerei”
(New Materials in Painting), Hausmann made
a similar judgment: that Expressionism was focusing “more and more on the aesthetic overcoming of the world.”17 It is very likely that the
artists around Tappert would even have agreed
with the critique of the “L’art pour l’art” Expressionism of the prewar period in the final, senseless months of the war, which Germany had
quite clearly already lost. During the November
Revolution that followed Germany’s capitulation on November 9, 1918, this group founded,
together with other politically left-wing artists, the Novembergruppe in order to engage
socially and politically using the means of art.
This interdisciplinary union of painters, sculptors, and architects immediately set to work,
enlisting members and establishing contacts
to artists’ groups in other places with a similarly
progressive élan that wanted to participate in
the political and social revolution.18
THE NOVE MBE RGRUPPE :
“REVOLUTIONARIES OF THE MIND”
FOUND AN ASSOCIATION
The first documented meeting of the Novembergruppe was on December 3, 1918, in Berlin,19 and it sounds like it was quite conventional, in contrast to the Dadaist furor. Minutes of
the meeting were published, perhaps in revised
form, in the publication that the Novembergruppe put out for its tenth anniversary in 1928.
The names of all present were accurately listed and the unsatisfactory result of the evening
recorded: “It was expressed in the discussion
that all of those present probably agree that
JANINA NENTWIG
39
academic painting up to Impressionism, and
followed the avant-garde movements that had
been formed prior to 1914—Expressionism,
Cubism, and Futurism—from which many members produced a very original synthesis. This
“Cubo-Futuro-Expressionim”23 determined the
face of the Novembergruppe exhibitions, which
were held annually from 1919 onward.24 The
often metaphysical or transcendental orientation of the works—for example, by Tappert [Fig.
3], Hans Brass, Hans Siebert, Heister, and Max
Dungert [Fig. 4]—followed directly on the pathos of the prewar period and offered few connections in terms of subject matter to the social upheavals of the period. An undated draft
manifesto of the Novembergruppe, presumably
written in December 1918 or January 1919, is
still very much in the tradition of literary Expressionism and enthusiastically takes up the motto
of the French Revolution:
3. Georg Tappert,
Composition I, 1919, oil
on canvas. Germanisches
Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg.
Exhibited at the 1919
“Kunstausstellung Berlin”
in the Novembergruppe
section. © 2015 Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New
York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn
the formation seems necessary but opinions
are divided on the purpose and goals of the association.” 20 Just ten days later, however, this
circular was sent out:
Dear Sirs:
The future of art and the gravity of the present moment force all of us revolutionaries
of the mind (expressionists, cubists, futurists) into mutual agreement and close association.
Therefore we are directing an urgent summons to all artists who have broken with
old forms in art that they declare their
membership in the November Group.21
The letter, which typically for its time was addressed only to male avant-gardists,22 is a
strange mix of formality and revolutionary impetus. At the same time, it identifies the stylistic
coordinates that represented the common denominator of the Novembrists. They opposed
40
ART AND ANTI-ART IN BERLIN AROUND 1920
We are standing on the fertile soil of the
revolution. Our slogan is: Freedom, Equality, Fraternity! […] Our battle is directed at
all destructive forces, and our love at all
rebuilding ones. We feel young, free, and
pure. Our spotless love belongs to a young,
free Germany and we shall fight against all
backwardness and reaction, bravely, without reserve, and with all the power at our
command.25
The gulf between Dada and the Novembergruppe seems unbridgeable: destruction versus building up, radical critique of the “Weimar
view of life”26 versus passionate profession
of loyalty to the new state,27 an almost elitist,
closed club, membership in which was not least
based on longstanding friendships and family
connections versus an open forum for all progressively inclined artists.28 It has yet to be clarified whether the manifesto of the Novembergruppe was ever published in any form. If the
Dadaists had read the text, however, they would
certainly have stumbled over the Expressionist
pathos they so hated.29 The naive faith in the
future and the trust in politics heard in the Novembergruppe manifesto could not be shared
by the Dadaists. In their eyes, the “young, free
Germany” was perpetuating the old values and
political traditions of the prewar era. The Social Democratic government acted repressively
toward the radical left, as demonstrated not
least by the bloody suppression by government
troops of the uprising of the Spartakusbund
(Spartacus League) in January 1919.
DADA AND THE NOVE MBE RGRUPPE
IN 1919 : APPE ALS AND F IRST
E XHIBITIONS
Also in January 1919, the Novembergruppe
sent a letter with its “guidelines” and “statutes”
that laid out the terms of membership and of
the organization, in fulfillment of a bureaucratic
requirement to register as an official society.
Registered society and revolutionary attitude—
was that not self-contradictory? The guidelines
defined the meaning and purpose of the association—tidily numbered consecutively and
signed by the “Central Working Committee of
the November group.” Under point IV the group
demanded “a voice and an active role in”:
1. All architectural projects as a matter of
public concern, […]
2. The reorganization of art schools and
their curricula, […]
4. Max Dungert, The
Tower, 1922, oil on canvas.
Berlinische Galerie,
Landesmuseum für Moderne
Kunst, Fotografie und
Architektur. Exhibited at
the 1922 “Grosse Berliner
Kunstausstellung” in the
Novembergruppe section
3. The transformation of museums, […]
4. The allotment of exhibition halls, […]
5. Legislation on artistic matters […].30
It is highly probable that the Novembergruppe’s
letter also reached the Dadaists. In any case,
the manifesto “Was ist der Dadaismus und
was will er in Deutschland?” (What is Dadaism
and what does it want in Germany?), written
by Hausmann, Huelsenbeck, and Golyscheff,
and stapled to the first issue of the journal Der
Dada, reads like a satirizing appropriation of
the demands formulated in it. It was, however, not just the statements of the Novembergruppe but also a leaflet from the Arbeitsrat für
Kunst (Workers’ Council for Art) of April 1919
of similar presentation and nearly identical
content that may have been the backdrop for
the Dadaist declaration:31 The Dadaists chose
the same numbered outline but filled this form
JANINA NENTWIG
41
UNVERKÄUFLICHE LESEPROBE
Olaf Peters
Berlin Metropolis
1918-1933
Gebundenes Buch, Leinen mit Schutzumschlag, 400 Seiten,
23,5 x 28,5 cm
400 farbige Abbildungen, 40 s/w Abbildungen
ISBN: 978-3-7913-5490-3
Prestel
Erscheinungstermin: Oktober 2015
Wie Berlin zur Metropole wuchs und die Kunst revolutioniert wurde
Berlin in der Zwischenkriegszeit – ein reich illustrierter Band beleuchtet in ausführlichen
Beiträgen das Leben einer rasant wachsenden Metropole.
Von 1871 bis 1919 wuchs die Einwohnerzahl Berlins auf das Vierfache. Als neue Hauptstadt
Deutschlands wird Berlin Schauplatz gewaltsamer politischer Umbrüche und Bühne ebenso
radikaler künstlerischer Erneuerung. Nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg unterlaufen Künstler mit
dem Mittel der Collagetechnik hergebrachte ästhetische Wahrnehmungsmuster, die Berliner
Dadaisten verarbeiten die traumatischen Erfahrungen von Krieg, Unruhen und Revolution in
ihren Werken. Zwischen 1924 und 1929 hält der Geist der Moderne Einzug in Berlin. Jazz,
Plakatkunst, illustrierte Zeitschriften, Werbegrafik und Film bestimmen den urbanen Rhythmus
der Großstadt. Ende der zwanziger Jahre schließlich wird die Hauptstadt zum Austragungsort
der Konfrontation zwischen rechten und linken politischen Kräften, Weltwirtschaftskrise und
Massenarbeitslosigkeit drücken der Metropole ihren Stempel auf. In mehreren Beiträgen geht
das Buch den Umbrüchen in Gesellschaft, Kunst und Kultur in Berlin zwischen 1918 und 1933
nach und ordnet sie in den historischen Kontext ein.