This article appeared in Harvard Design Magazine, Fall 1998, Number 6. To order this issue or a subscription, visit the HDM homepage at .

© 2001 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and The MIT Press. Not to be reproduced without the permission of the publisher

Reflections on a Polished Floor

Ben Willikens and the Reichskanzlei of , by Iain Boyd Whyte

IN CHOOSING IMAGES of National So- family in 1796 and then to the newly cialist buildings as the subject for a re- formed German state in 1875, at cent group of paintings, the German which time it became the official resi- artist Ben Willikens asks questions dence of the first chancellor of the new about the nature of German Reich, . and about the role of the artist in ex- Among its obvious attractions were its plicating the trauma of the Nazi tyran- location, adjacent to the Foreign Min- ny. One of these paintings, , istry, and its ample garden, which Reichskanzlei (Ehrensaal), depicts the stretched westward to the edge of the so-called Mosaic Hall of the new Re- Tiergarten. Remodeled and modern- ichskanzlei (Chancellery of the Reich); ized in 1878, the Reichskanzlei en- and it provides the inspiration for this joyed a life of shabby gentility well essay. Designed by Albert Speer and into the , before the built for in record time demands of government made an ex- between January 1938 and January tension desirable. 1939, the Reichskanzlei was the repre- A competition was announced in sentational epicenter of Hitler’s power, March 1927 and the winner was the and, as one of the very few Speer de- Berlin architect Ernst Jobst Siedler. signs actually completed, it enjoyed a Laying the foundation stone for the particular preeminence among the ar- building, Chancellor Wilhelm Marx chitectural initiatives of the Nazi Par- stressed that while the extension ty. Lavish, full-color photographs of its should be worthy of its purpose, exces- marbled halls were widely published in sive grandeur or luxury would be inap- the architectural and popular press of propriate to the spirit of the times. “It the day, and Willikens’s work derives should,” he said, “announce that with from these propagandistic images. unpretentious simplicity, but in fear- The core of the Reichskanzlei was a less confidence, we are engaged in the Baroque Stadtpalais, built by Graf von reconstruction of our great German der Schulenberg in the late 1730s. It house, the German state.”1 Unpreten- was subsequently sold to the Radiziwill tious simplicity in public building,

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however, was not a quality esteemed stances could either the purely admin- with an appropriately enlarged Reich- by Adolf Hitler, who had cut his criti- istrative tasks or the representative skanzlei as the focus of the new impe- cal teeth on the vast public buildings functions that were necessarily con- rial power. The plans to enlarge the of the Ringstraße in . On com- nected with this be satisfied any longer building, however, could not be made ing to power in 1933, he lost no time by the old Reichskanzlei. I therefore public before Hitler’s ambitions to- in damning the new extension to the commissioned Generalbauinspektor wards Austria had been secured. And Reichskanzlei: “Siedler has spoiled the Professor Speer with the rebuilding of this could only occur when all the con- whole of Wilhelmsplatz. Why, that the Reichskanzlei in Voßstraße on 11 ditions were right and all opposition to building looks like the headquarters of January 1938, setting as the comple- the plan suppressed. This situation a soap company, not the center of the tion date 10 January 1939.”4 was reached in January 1938, with the Reich.”2 No less damning was Hitler’s This account of the commission, dismissal on 26 January of General critique of the interiors; he described which finds support in Speer’s mem- Werner von Fritsch from his position his office in the Siedler extension as oirs, is entirely fictitious.5 For detailed as Commander-in-Chief of the Army, “something like the tasteless room of a planning had begun in 1935, the year followed by the dismissal a day later of general agent in a medium-sized ciga- in which Hitler himself made a sketch Field Marshall Werner von Blomberg, rette and tobacco company.” 3 In setting out the axial ordering of the in- the Minister of War.7 They were soon search of grander coulisses before terior and the broadening of the street joined in retirement by sixteen other which to enact the role of chancellor, to form a court of honor on the Voßs- high-ranking generals and by Baron Hitler turned to the architect Albert traße. Indeed, the state began to buy von Neurath, the Foreign Minister. Speer. houses on Voßstraße in 1935, and With command of the armed forces Speer was brought in at first to their demolition was under way by and the administration of foreign af- work with Paul Ludwig Troost, who 1936. The submission by Speer in fairs firmly in his grasp, Hitler initiat- blisher had been summoned by Hitler in the June 1936 of a cost estimate for the ed the annexation of Austria, which autumn of 1933 to redesign the interi- design of the new extension along was accomplished on 12 March 1938. ors of the existing Reichskanzlei. Later Voßstraße shows how advanced the Less than a year later and exactly on that year, however, Hitler gave Speer project was by that time. Why, then, schedule, Albert Speer’s extension to his first independent commissions for the great disparity between the official the Reichskanzlei was complete. As the Reichskanzlei: the conversion of a history and the actual, documentable the plan reveals, the largest part of the hall overlooking the garden into a new history of the Reichskanzlei’s gestation newly enclosed volume was empty office for Hitler, who wanted to escape and planning? space: reception areas, strangely empty the mob that thronged the street in The answer is simple: in Hitler’s halls with no function whatsoever, and the early days of National Socialism, scheme of things, the grand new ex- long, long corridors. Offices were hoping to view the Führer. In com- tension to the Reichskanzlei symbol- squeezed in along the Voßstraße front, pensation, however, Speer was also ized the Greater German Reich, and again with excessive corridor space asked to insert the “historic bal- could only be revealed as such after and poor vertical circulation. Even cony”—as it is called in his memoirs— Austria had been absorbed into the along the central axis, the planning is working from Hitler’s own sketch. Greater . Back in the 1860s, entirely one-directional. Having This was a brilliant device; the small- Bismarck had employed an anti-Aus- walked the ceremonial route from est of interventions transformed the trian policy to identify the Prussian Wilhelmsplatz to Hitler’s inner sanc- Wilhelmsplatz into a theater, in which cause with that of German unity. This tum, the visitor has no obvious way to the masses could pay homage to the unity, however, was never intended to return, and simply retracing one’s leader. embrace Austria.6 After the Prussian steps is a slightly risible option. In this The “historic balcony” was used to defeats of Austria in 1866 and design, as in Speer’s unbuilt set pieces promote Hitler’s self-presentation to in 1870, a unified German Reich un- for the National Socialists, the haptic an adoring German public. The major der the leadership of was es- and tectonic qualities of architecture redevelopment of the Reichskanzlei tablished in 1871, comprising eighteen were made entirely subservient to the was intended to promote the selling of German states but not including Aus- visual and thus the reproducible. The the new Nazi Reich to the wider tria. This was named at the time the process of transmission is more impor- world. Indeed, in his account of the “Kleindeutsches Reich”—the Small tant than the building itself. Through rebuilding published in Die Kunst im German Reich. As a pan-Germanist the media of photography and film, dritten Reich, Hitler linked the two is- born in Austria, Hitler’s first expan- the political event is bound neither to sues: “In December 1937 and January sionist ambitions involved the annexa- its space nor time: it can be relayed 1938 I decided to resolve the Austrian tion of Austria and the belated anywhere through the visual media question, thus establishing a Greater creation of a “Großdeutsches Re- and reviewed repeatedly. This, of

German Reich. Under no circum- ich”—the Greater German Reich— course, is the theme of Walter Ben- of Harvard the President and Fellows © 2001 by College and The MIT Press. Not to be reproduced without the permission of the pu

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jamin’s celebrated essay on the work of achievement as the product of wealth and sustain the whole destiny of Germany, art in the age of mechanical reproduc- tranquillity. . . . As a consequence of the to that extent can the German nation tion, written in 1936.8 first power struggle that took place with- face the future with calm confi- Speer’s Reichskanzlei received in its walls, which served the completion dence.”12 A year later the Berliner Il- much publicity. Besides the pre- of the Großdeutsches Reich, this building lustrierte Zeitung adopted Breker’s dictably lavish coverage in the popular has already entered into the annals of the giant figures to illustrate the point, in press, dedicated books and journal ar- Reich.10 a drawing entitled “Party and Army ticles appeared, aimed at every level of Defend the Peace of the Reich.” Peace consumption. At one end of the mar- The power struggle to which was far from Hitler’s mind, however, ket were paperback collections of pho- Giesler refers is the scene that oc- as Hácha ascended the steps and en- tographs. At the other end were curred in the New Reichs-kanzlei on tered a vestibule that led into the Mo- luxurious folios with reproductions of 14 March 1939, when the aged and in- saic Hall, a top-lit space whose paintings and drawings of the Reich- firm President of Czechoslovakia, awesome emptiness is articulated in skanzlei under construction and com- Emil Hácha, was bullied into placing both plane and volume by the geome- pleted. There was even a collection of the fate of the Czechs in Hitler’s try of the marble panels and inlays. dry-point engravings in a leather- hands. As Hitler reported to Speer: Following the imperative of a line bound case, presumably intended to “At last I had so belabored the old of inlaid marble stretching from door impress visiting dignitaries. The same man that his nerves gave way com- to door, President Hácha would have descriptive texts do the rounds in these pletely, and he was on the point of found himself in a small circular room, publications, detailing not only the structure, but also the furnishings and In this design, as in Speer’s unbuilt set pieces for the National fittings, and the sculptural contribu- Socialists, the haptic and tectonic qualities of architecture blisher tions of Arno Breker and Josef Tho- rak. were made entirely subservient to the visual and thus the One of these texts was by the archi- reproducible. The process of transmission is more important tect Hermann Giesler. As Gitta Sereny than the building itself. has shown, Giesler developed into one of Speer’s most implacable enemies signing. Then he had a heart attack. In again top lit. Pragmatically, Speer used and conspired with the adjoining room Dr. Morrell gave this transitional space to correct the to prevent the centralization of build- him an injection, but in this case it was clumsy shift in his axis and to ing authority in Speer’s organization, too effective. Hácha regained too negotiate a substantial change in floor the GBI.9 Under Giesler’s name, how- much of his strength, revived, and was levels. Emotionally, the visitor is ever, a hymn of praise was penned to no longer prepared to sign, until I fi- plunged here into a space both dark the Reichskanzlei. Entitled “Symbol of nally wore him down again.”11 The and disorienting, with the guidelines the Großdeutsches Reich,” it makes German army marched into Prague on the floor perversely abandoning the explicit the ideological ambitions that the next day. ritual path. With this almost subter- informed the project. Hácha’s fateful interview was held ranean chamber, Speer created the de- Albert Speer has constructed the first in Hitler’s study. To get there he drove sired sense of tension and compression state building of the Großdeutsches Re- into the courtyard at the eastern end necessary for the coup de théâtre to fol- ich, which in its significance and scale of Speer’s addition and climbed the low. For on leaving the dark, claustro- carries on the great achievements of Ger- steps to the main portal, flanked by phobic drum, Hácha entered the vast man architectural history. The building Arno Breker’s two massive bronze fig- Marble Gallery, nearly 150 meters was begun and completed in a year in ures, both over four meters tall, repre- long but only twelve meters wide, a which the world was full of anxiety and senting the Party and the Army. In a space whose extraordinary dimensions nervousness, in which Europe mobilized speech delivered at Stettin in June conspired to create an almost sublime and the nations surrounding Germany 1938, Hitler identified these two insti- impression of immeasurability and barely retained their sense of the peace- tutions as the pillars of Nazi society. “I thus incomprehension. able way of life. The wonderful discipline am increasingly convinced of the ne- None of this was arbitrary or un- and vigorous alertness that marked the cessity to secure on foundations which planned. In his memoirs, Speer German nation particularly during 1938 cannot be shaken two pillars in the records Hitler’s delight that the Mar- are symbolically immortalized in this state: on the one side the undying Na- ble Gallery was twice as long as the building, which at the same time reflects tional Socialist Party sustaining the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. This re- the external successes of that year. It is an political life of the State, and on the calls a comment by , the outstanding accomplishment, the refuta- other side the German Army. To the widow of Hitler’s first official archi-

tion of the liberal view of cultural extent that these two pillars unite to tect, , when asked by of Harvard the President and Fellows © 2001 by College and The MIT Press. Not to be reproduced without the permission of the pu

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Hitler at a dinner in the Reichs in 1946 amid the ruins of the Reich- ly: “It provided for four traffic levels kanzlei what she thought of Albert skanzlei that “Speer’s taste was impec- linked by escalators and elevators, and Speer. Had Hitler asked her husband cable and it is remarkable that so cold was to surpass New York’s Grand Cen- for a building one hundred meters and correct a piece of architecture tral Station in size.”19 long, she said, he might have conclud- should exhale such malevolence.”17 Rather than to formal devices, ed that structural and aesthetic factors This cold severity is also central to the Speer’s Reichskanzlei owes its moder- demanded that it be only ninety-six fascination exercised by Nazi architec- nity to its relationship to building meters long. But if Hitler were to ask ture, a fascination that draws a painter types central to modern urban life: the Speer, she continued, for a building like Ben Willikens to reexplore its aes- department store, the theater, and the one hundred meters long, he would thetic devices. cinema. Indeed, as Dieter Bartetzko instantly say: “Mein Führer, two hun- In reworking the photographic im- has noted, Nazi architecture derived dred meters!”13 Speer’s penchant for age of Speer’s Mosaic Hall, Willikens much of its impact from the applica- the overblown and overdimensioned strips the walls and floors of their red tion of the techniques of display devel- was shared by Hitler, however, who marble cladding, removes the mosaic oped in the department stores and gloated over the distances foreign dig- garlands and decorations from the wall shopping emporia of the late 19th and nitaries would have to walk: “On the panels and pilasters, and offers instead early 20th centuries.20 As a virtual em- long walk from the entrance to the a monochrome space whose flatness is porium, known through publication to Reception Hall they’ll get a taste of relieved simply by gridded, rectangu- every adult in the state, the Reichskan- the power and grandeur of the Ger- lar planes and by the blind doorways. zlei was intended to sell the Party and man Reich!”14 But while Speer wor- The message is unmistakable. Beneath its policies to both domestic and inter- ried about the safety of polished the surface decoration, this was a mod- national audiences. marble floors, Hitler was perversely ern building, conceived by the Nazi The emporium was an obvious blisher delighted: “That’s exactly right,” he hierarchy as an expression of the model through which to propose im- insisted, “diplomats should have prac- modernity and technical know-how of ages of unity and reconciliation to a tice in moving on a slippery surface.”15 the National Socialist state. Although gullible and politically naive public. In one of the deft cartoons in which he Speer’s design nodded to antiquity in Max Weber famously insisted around satirized the megalomaniacal preten- its detailing, the cultural comparison is the turn of the century that the world sions of Nazi architecture, Hans not with Athens, but Washington. of industrial production and of the di- Stephan—who worked with Speer in Hitler made this ambition explicit vision of labor had become “eine the GBI—shows a diplomat caught in in a speech given to mark the topping entzauberte Welt,” a world stripped of the spotlight as he begins his precari- out ceremony of the New Reichskan- its magic. One response to this loss, ous voyage across the slippery acres of zlei. Having detailed the extraordinary located firmly within the parameters the Marble Gallery. At the halfway speed with which the “Haus des of capitalism, was to “remagify” the point on the right-hand side the diplo- Großdeutschen Reiches” was planned fragmented culture of the industrial mat would reach the door to Hitler’s and built, Hitler concluded: “That city through the realm of exchange. office, overlooking the gardens, where [speed] . . . is no longer the American This was the rationale of the arcade Hácha and Czechoslovakia met their tempo, but already the German tem- and the department store. The princi- doom. po.” Making reference to the annexa- pal aesthetic device in this process was The formal intentions of Speer’s tions of Austria and Czechoslovakia, the frame. In 1902 the sociologist design are easily listed: powerful, cubic he added: “If it is possible to integrate Georg Simmel wrote an essay on the massing, flat wall planes, deep window a state in three or four days into the picture frame as an essential precondi- reveals, hard-edged moldings, vigor- Reich, then it must also be possible to tion for what he called the aesthetic ap- ous repetition, and an insistence on ax- erect a building in one or two years.”18 preciation of a painting. The work of iality and symmetry. Speer himself Just as the United States had repre- art, he insisted, “closes itself off characterized the “new way of think- sented dynamic modernity for the against everything external to it, as a ing about architecture” as “austere and German avant garde of the 1920s—for world unto its own. Thus its borders . severe, but never monotonous. Simple the likes of Georg Grosz and Otto . . [are] an absolute end which enact a and clear, and without false ornamen- Dix—so it also set standards of techni- rejection of and defense against the ex- tation. Sparing in its decoration, but cal know-how and dynamism against ternal as well as an internal unifying with each decorative motif placed in which Hitler and Speer measured their concentration [Zusammenschluß] in one such a way that it could never be own ambitions. Describing in his act. What the frame of the artwork ac- thought superfluous.”16 Exactly these memoirs the plans for the railroad sta- complishes is that it symbolizes and qualities of austerity and severity are tion at the southern end of the giant strengthens this double function of the those alighted on by the distinguished axis that he planned for Berlin, for ex- border. It closes off the artwork from

British critic Lionel Brett, who noted ample, Speer boasted, symptomatical- the surroundings and thus also from of Harvard the President and Fellows © 2001 by College and The MIT Press. Not to be reproduced without the permission of the pu

4 HARVARD DESIGN MAGAZINE FALL 1998 Representations/Misrepresentations Reflections on a Polished Floor the beholder, and thus helps to place it ion. In the process, the image becomes ment but by cubic massing, axiality, in the distance from which and only ever more potent, contact with any ex- and symmetry. which it can be aesthetically enjoyed.”21 ternal reality ever more distant. At night, under the more biddable The violent act of isolation and con- Not by chance did the German conditions of artificial lighting, these centration imposed by the frame was a pavilion in Paris look exactly like a de- qualities could be stressed even more strongly. Recalling her first meeting Speer’s penchant for the overblown and overdimensioned was with Hitler at a preview of the New shared by Hitler, however, who gloated over the distances Reichskanzlei, Speer’s personal secre- foreign dignitaries would have to walk: “On the long walk from tary, Annemarie Kempf, described the lighting as having a magical quality: “A the entrance to the Reception Hall they’ll get a taste of the huge celebration was planned for the power and grandeur of the German Reich!” opening, but Hitler came to meet us the night before. We all went around recurring device in the public scenog- partment store, housing all manner of the building with him and Speer, we raphy of the Nazi Party. An early ex- desirable goods, from the celebrated walking behind them. I thought it was ample masterminded by Albert Speer Mercedes-Benz Silver Arrow to grand beautiful, I don’t care what people say was the transformation of the Lust- pianos and writing desks. As Karen now. I was very proud that night. One garten in Berlin from an urban park Fiss has noted, Woldemar Brinck- has to imagine—well, it’s almost im- into a parade ground whose granite mann, the designer of the interior, possible to imagine—the lights, the slabs and spacers formed a regular “created a luxurious interior to make flowers everywhere, the excitement of grid. This intervention was unveiled the disparate clusters of commercial it.”23 As in a theater set, the impact of for the Party celebrations held on 1 goods look more glamorous.”22 To d o the mise-en-scène derives from the blisher May 1936 to mark German Labor this, Brinckmann used the display framing power of the proscenium and Day. The strict grid on the horizontal techniques of the department store, the selective intensity of the stage plane was reinforced on the long sides with an insistent system of enframing lighting. Indeed, the Reichskanzlei of the square by rows of vertical ban- that focused attention on the main looks especially convincing in night- ners that isolated the space created for commodity—the Nazi Party and its time photographs, when the aperture the display of party loyalty from both ideology. All connection with an exter- of the sky, which punctures a hole in its physical and historical contexts. nal existence or a wider context is de- the framed-off world, is closed off. In The scene became the subject of nied, and the isolated object is offered conditions of darkness, the isolation contemporary paintings by artists like as a figure of unity, promising a self- from external space and external time Rudolf Hengstenberg and August contained perfection. becomes total, and the internal spaces Blunck: the spectacle set inside the ur- The lighting at the pavilion was im- become self-referential, a law unto ban frame captured and set again with- maculate, with floodlights on the exte- themselves. There is simply no outside in the frame of the painting that rior and elaborate chandeliers and and no sense of orientation beyond brings with it the challenge of aesthet- sconces in the interior adding sheen that allowed by the architecture itself. ic contemplation in Simmel’s sense. and glitter to the products on display. This quality becomes manifest if an Newsreels of the same spectacle car- For the Reichskanzlei, Speer perfected image of the Reichskanzlei courtyard ried the same message at will to the the theatrical lighting techniques first at night is simply inverted. The court- cinemas of the nation. By a happy co- developed for Party rallies and then yard seen with the heavens below and incidence, Hengstenberg’s painting applied to the Paris pavilion. The the earth above leads persuasively to was copied on a large scale for one of spotlights in Hans Stephan’s cartoon Ben Willikens’s painting of the Mosaic the tapestries hung in the side aisles of of the foreign emissary, stranded on Hall. the German pavilion at the Paris In- the marbled acres, emphasize the obvi- In the Willikens version the floor is ternational Exhibition of 1937, again ous point that the Reichskanzlei was dematerialized: it has no surface, no designed by Speer. The sequence of the site of loud theatrical performance substance, and offers no sense of re- framing now takes on almost infinite rather than the quiet art of administra- sistance or support. The space in the dimensions: the framed space of the tion. Lighting was key, and Speer ma- painting is literally floorless. It rises up Berlin parade ground encloses the nipulated both daylight and artificial and flows around us as we fall through geometric ranks of soldiers who are light with enormous virtuosity. The endless space, and the response is one then painted and enclosed within the official daylight photographs of the of vertigo. The German term picture frame. This image is then re- courtyard, for example, use the fall of “bodenlos” comes to mind. Its literal cast as tapestry, framed, and displayed shadow onto the central axis to rein- meaning is “bottomless,” but its figu- in one of the rectangular bays within force the idea of an architecture rative meanings include “fathomless,”

the orthogonal space of Speer’s pavil- marked not by decoration and orna- “unconscionable,” and “excessive.” of Harvard the President and Fellows © 2001 by College and The MIT Press. Not to be reproduced without the permission of the pu

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And the same is true on the horizontal not in front of me.”24 Space is not an apparatus of “Blut und Boden,” and plane: Speer’s tapestries become men- abstraction or a construction, but dreamed of rebuilding German great- acing apertures, the doorways dark re- rather the realm in which the body can ness through the labors and ethics of cesses leading one knows not where. act, a function of one’s own mobility the German peasant. Hitler courted The relationship of the viewer to and motility. both camps, while cherishing his own these spaces is ambivalent. The photo- It is precisely this shift in the per- dreams of an imperial splendor on the graphs of the New Reichskanzlei made ception of space that Willikens ex- scale of Rome. The ideology of Na- for official publication function almost plores in his work—in, for instance, tional Socialism offers few coherent as essays in linear perspective, with the his renderings of the Last Supper and patterns, and countless inconsistencies spaces stripped of meaning to become the School of Athens, which are emptied and contradictions coexisted behind its a rigid and highly ordered system of of figures. As he explained in a 1978 ordered facade. As William Carr has abstract linear coordinates. Just as per- interview with Rudij Bergmann: “The concluded, the Nazi state, “was no spective is a device for rendering omission of the figure is not an anti- monolith but a mosaic of conflicting three-dimensional space into two di- human gesture, the person [der authorities bearing more resemblance mensions, so a building designed ex- Mensch] is always present, I haven’t to a feudal state, where great vassals pressly to be publicized through banished him from my empty rooms, were engaged in a ruthless power photography, film, and painting was but have opened them up to him.”25 struggle to capture the person of the designed, not surprisingly, to lend it- Led by Willikens across the decades king who in his turn maintained his self to convincing perspectival presen- and back into the Mosaic Hall of the authority by playing one great lord off tation. In Renaissance and Cartesian Reichskanzlei, how are we to respond against another.”28 Subsequent at- theory, perspective was admired for to the monochrome spaces? What col- tempts to comprehend the Nazi combining mathematical tidiness and ors, figures, or events should we bring regime by historians and sociologists blisher exactitude with an order of things that with us and reinsert into the space as have, necessarily, reflected these ambi- was nothing less than God’s will. The the act of “becoming”?26 guities. Was the horror of the Nazi visible world was arranged for the One clue might be gained from the regime and its ultimate expression, the spectator as the universe was thought insistent grids of both plan and eleva- Holocaust, a delayed outburst of pre- to be arranged by God. tion. In a well-known essay published modernist irrational barbarianism? Or For Speer and his masters, this ho- in 1979, Rosalind Krauss identified the did it mark the point at which the in- mology between the visual microcosm grid as the device that “declares the tellectual project of the European En- of the Reichskanzlei and the Greater modernity of modern art.” Explaining lightenment and the industrial system German Reich was clearly appealing. the power of the grid in the hands of that it had spawned self-destructed, The marbled and unpeopled halls of Mondrian or Malevich to establish the and began to consume itself? the Reichskanzlei are offered not as modernist tabula rasa, Krauss notes, These Byzantine complexities nec- the site of a narrative to be developed “The grid’s mythic power is that it essarily influence the work of a painter over time, but as the eternal container makes us able to think we are dealing intent on engaging the Nazi past while of an immutable process. The occupi- with materialism (or sometimes sci- addressing the present. Since the Na- er of the space, the producer of the ence, or logic) while at the same time tional Socialist experience was read- image, and the viewer are all excluded it provides us with a release into belief mitted around 1970 as an inevitable in favor of a timeless eye that tran- (or illusion, or fiction).”27 This ambi- and unavoidable subject of German scends temporal duration. In the late guity is one shared by National Social- art, different critical and technical 20th-century world in which Ben Wil- ist ideology, which straddled two quite strategies have evolved through which likens is working, however, such a po- opposing and contradictory positions. to apprehend its ambiguities. Two sition is no longer supportable. We are On the one hand, leading figures in paintings of Speer’s Mosaic Hall at the offered no solace by the Enlighten- the party such as , Fritz Reichskanzlei make this point. Anselm ment project. Space is not a Cartesian Todt, and Albert Speer were essential- Kiefer’s Das Atelier des Malers, Innen- abstraction, viewed with a geometer’s ly modernist in their thinking, nurtur- raum (The Artists’ Studio, Interior) of eye outside and above the scene it sur- ing visions of an economy based on 1981 proposes that there is no privi- veys, but phenomenological space. As high technology that would outstrip leged form of knowledge to be derived described by Maurice Merleau-Ponty: the American economy in its commit- from science or rationality. Kiefer re- “It is, rather, a space reckoned starting ment to scientific research, product enacts the Mosaic Hall as the painter’s from me as the zero point or degree design, and industrial rationalization. studio, in his case a site where Nordic zero of spatiality. I do not see accord- Others, however, including Heinrich myths are retold, and alchemy and ing to its exterior envelope; I live it Himmler, Walther Darré, and Alfred Jewish scripture reexamined, all to the from the inside; I am immersed in it. Rosenberg, had a mystical attachment rhythms of the blacksmith’s forge. In

After all, the world is all around me, to the German soil and to the whole support of the barbarian explanation, of Harvard the President and Fellows © 2001 by College and The MIT Press. Not to be reproduced without the permission of the pu

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the studio might carry as its motto a marked, “I had to do these paintings, Ekstase: Zur Theatralik von NS-Architektur passage from Friedrich Nietzsche’s Be- but I couldn’t do them any earlier.”31 (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1985), 118. yond Good and Evil: “Almost everything With his ghostly images of Nazi archi- 21. Georg Simmel, “Der Bildrahmen: Ein äs- we call ‘higher culture’ is based on the tecture, Willikens offers a richness of thetischer Versuch” (1902), in Zur Philosophie spiritualization and intensification of absence that challenges us to immerse der Kunst: Philosophische and Kunstphilosophische cruelty—this is my proposition; the ourselves in the historical reality of the Aufsätze (: Kiepenhauer, 1922), 46-47. ‘wild beast’ had not been laid to rest at subject in order to speak of it. Quoted in Frederic J. Schwartz, The Werkbund all, it lives, it flourishes, it has merely Notes (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 171. become—deified. That which consti- 1. “Ordnung der Feier zur Grundsteinlegung 22. Karen Fiss, “The German Pavilion,” in tutes the painful voluptuousness of für den Erweiterungsbau der Reichskanzlei am Ades, Benton, Elliott, Whyte, eds., Art and tragedy is cruelty; that which produces 18. 5. 1928, Bundesarchiv Koblenz, R Power: Europe under the Dictators, 1930-45 (Lon- a pleasing effect in so-called tragic 431/1585.” Quoted: Angela Schönberger, Die don: Thames & Hudson, 1995), 109. pity, indeed fundamentally in every- neue Reichskanzlei von Albert Speer (Berlin: Gebr. 23. Annemarie Kempf, quoted in Gitta Sereny, thing sublime up to the highest and Mann, 1981), 19. 151. most refined thrills of metaphysics, 2. Adolf Hitler, quoted in Albert Speer, Inside 24. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “The Eye and the derives its sweetness solely from the the Third Reich (London: Weidenfeld and Mind,” in Merlau-Ponty, The Primacy of Percep- ingredient of cruelty mixed in with Nicolson, 1970), 34 tion (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, it.”29 In the parlance of Holocaust 3. Adolf Hitler, “Die Reichskanzlei,” Die Kunst 1964), 178. Quoted in Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes studies, this is the intentionalist posi- im Dritten Reich, 3, no. 7 (July 1939), 279. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), tion. 4. Ibid., 280. 316. Willikens’s image of the same 5. Schönberger, 38-44. 25. Alexander Tolnay, “Der Bild-Raum als Büh- space, in contrast, points us towards 6. See Gordon A. Craig, Germany 1866-1945 nen-Raum bei Ben Willikens,” in Ben Wil- blisher the functionalist position, toward the (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), chap- likens, Dynamic der Leere (: engineer, the technocrat, and the bu- ter 1: “The Unification of Germany, 1866-71.” Klett-Cotta, 1989), 8. reaucrat. As summarized by the histo- 7. Schönberger, 44-51. 26. See Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, “Be- rian Christopher R. Browning: “The 8. Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the coming-Intense, Becoming-Animal, Becoming- Nazi murder of the European Jewry Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in: Illumina- Imperceptible,” in A Thousand Plateaus was not only the technological tions (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), 217- (London: Athlone Press, 1988), 232-309. achievement of an industrial society, 251. 27. Rosalind Krauss, “Grids,” in The Originality but also the organizational achieve- 9. See Gitta Sereny, Albert Speer: His Battle with of the Avant-Garde and Other Myths (Cambridge: ment of a bureaucratic society.” 30 The Truth (London: Macmillan, 1995), 236. MIT Press, 1986), 9, 12. vision of a fully designed, fully con- 10. Hermann Giesler, “Symbol des 28. William Carr, “Nazi Policy against the trolled society that admits no devia- Großdeutschen Reiches,” Die Kunst im Dritten Jews,” in Richard Bessel, ed., Life in the Third tion or madness is the menacing Reich, 3, no. 7 (July 1939), 283. Reich (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 69. context of a series of paintings focused 11. Adolf Hitler, reported in Speer, 116. 29. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, on institutional furniture, produced by 12. Adolf Hitler, speech at Stettin, 12 June trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Harmondsworth: Pen- Willikens in the 1970s. Hospital beds, 1938, in The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922- guin, 1973), 140. baths, lockable doors, and corridors August 1939, ed. Norman H. Baynes, ed., (Ox- 30. Christopher R. Browning, “The German with barred windows figure in these ford: Oxford University Press, 1942), vol.1, 451. Bureaucracy and ,” in Alex Grob- works, whose unspoken context is the 13. Gerdy Troost, quoted in Matthias Schmidt, man and Daniel Landes, eds. Genocide: Critical relationship enforced by the Nazis be- Albert Speer: The End of a Myth (London: Har- Issues of the Holocaust (Los Angeles: Simon tween physical, mental, and racial hy- rap, 1985), 44. Wiesenthal Center, 1983), 148. giene. The point is well illustrated by 14. Adolf Hitler, quoted Albert Speer, 102. 31. In conversation with the author, March comparing Willikens’s 1975 painting, 15. Ibid., 113. 1998. Badewannen Nr. 1/2 (Baths Numbers 16. Albert Speer, Die Bauten des Führers 1/2), with an interior from a BMW (Leipzig: Cigaretten-Bilderdienst Altona- factory in , fitted out accord- Bahrenfeld, 1936), 74. Iain Boyd Whyte is professor of architectural ing to the dictates of Robert Ley’s 17. Lionel Brett, “The Architecture of Authori- history at the University of Edinburgh. The “Schönheit der Arbeit” (Beauty of La- ty,” Architectural Review, May 1946, 133. essay above is based on a lecture given at bor) department. Behind the serried 18. Adolf Hitler, speech marking the topping Harvard’s Busch-Reisinger Museum in March rows of sinks we read: “Dreck gehört out of the new Reichskanzlei, Duetschlandhalle, 1998, in conjunction with an exhibition of Ben zur Arbeit, aber nicht zum deutschen Berlin, 2 August 1938, quoted in Schönberger, Willikens’s painting, Berlin, Reichskanzlei Arbeiter!”—“Dirt belongs to work, 179-180. (Ehrensaal); both lecture and exhibition were but not to the German worker!” 19. Albert Speer, Die Banten, 134. sponsored by the Friends of the Busch Reisinger

As Ben Willikens himself has re- 20. See Dieter Bartetzko, Zwischen Zucht und Museum. of Harvard the President and Fellows © 2001 by College and The MIT Press. Not to be reproduced without the permission of the pu

7 HARVARD DESIGN MAGAZINE FALL 1998 Representations/Misrepresentations Reflections on a Polished Floor blisher © 2001 by the President and Fellows of Harvard the President and Fellows © 2001 by College and The MIT Press. Not to be reproduced without the permission of the pu

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