Imre Lepsényi: COLLECTIVE ORNAMENT a L N A

S R E S E A R C H • H U N G A R I A N U N I V E R S I T Y O F F I N E A R T S D O C T O R A L S C H O O L • A R T A S R E S E A R C H A R T A H L U O N O G H A C R S I A L N A R U O N T I C V O E D R S S I T T R Y A O E F N F I I F N F E O A Y R T T I S S R D E O V C I T N O U R A N L A Imre Lepsényi: COLLECTIVE ORNAMENT COLLECTIVE Lepsényi: Imre I S R C A H G O N O U L H R A A T E R S A E S H C R • U H A G N A I R U N E V I N T I S R O Y I F F A E N S T R C O D R O T S L A O H C • L O R A S A T S E R R A E H C Imre Lepsényi COLLECTIVE ORNAMENT 2018 Foreword Modern proposal 1 Introduction 7 Modern proposal 11 A detour – propaganda and advertisement. Prescription or proposal? 25 NSDAP corporate identity 37 NSDAP corporeal identity 61 Final proposal 113 Literature 129 List of figures 137 Zalaegerszeg, Hungary, 1947–1989 141 Zalaegerszeg, Hungary, 2016 159 FOREWORD Digital technology has altered the concept of “the crowd” and multiplied the number and total area of communication surfaces similarly to the “explosion of surfaces” in the Weimar Republic. When facing the attempts of manip- ulation carried out by organized trolls, the perplexity and defenselessness digital communities experience echo the surprise caused by the political orator traveling by air- plane and reaching tens of thousands of people by means of electro-acoustic technology and radio broadcasts in the previous century. The advantage stemming from the surprise has influenced economic processes and determined elections ever since. At the beginning of the 20th century, the avant-garde wiped out the traditional ornament and then, in collabo- ration with psychoanalysis and electronic developments, modern branding technology went on to recycle the systems of recurring shapes. The new approach detached the ornament from the traditional world order, liberated it, and arranged it in the form of economic and political adver- tisements in the service of a power with an engineer’s precision. The sign systems of influence, let them be political, commercial advertising, branding, or traffic systems, possess the eternal characteristic of consistency, the need for repetition and prevalence. These systems of recurrent signs, in turn, seep into the quotidian life as ornaments. The ornament is a point of view, a suspicious device that needs to be detached from its surroundings and carefully examined. In every instance, ornaments carry on themselves the traces of the fields of will that created them, and by examining ornaments we may approach this system of intentions. The examination of ornaments is a key to the world, an access to the system through its pat- terns. The character of the pattern, its material, its sources, extent, economic background, playfulness, and durability offer important information about a commercial brand or a political system. This book contains a part of my investigation into the realm of ornament. It is centered around my writing called Modern Proposal, which examines national socialist communication from the aspect of modern branding techniques. Modern Proposal offers a hypothesis: at the beginning of the 20th century, the knowledge and the concepts that determine modern branding did not yet exist. When examining the problem in detail, it becomes surprising how close the totalitarian state came to the realization of a “totalitarian brand.” The book contains a small picture gallery to present the ornament of another system aiming at totality: Hungarian socialism (Zalae- gerszeg, Hungary, 1947–1989), followed by another set of images (Zalaegerszeg, Hungary, 2016) recording the conditions in the same town 27 years later. The frame- work of the socialist ornament has become encrusted with the layers of country DIY culture and neocapitalist pride. The sequences of images trust themselves to the reader with no further comment. The graphic images on the front cover and on the endpaper were created for an exhibition entitled Collective Ornament (Kassák Museum, Budapest, 2014), which endeavored to present the topic of “the ornament as a point of view.” MODERN PROPOSAL MODERN PROPOSAL 3 In Ornament and Crime (Ornament und Verbrechen1) (1908) Adolf Loos classifies the things of the world with the modern man standing on top of everything with his ornament-free, clear vision of history, overseeing the rest of the things, objects, food, clothing, music, body, and buildings from that position. Evolution ends with him, and history is linear: Voltaire “is victorious over” Socrates, but before that Socrates had defeated the German people, who were still better than the Papuans, who, in turn, were better than dogs. The physicist cherishes secrets for the fu- ture. The modern man who has his body tattooed is either a criminal or degenerate, whereas the Papuan was only savage and animalistic. Buildings, toilets, objects, food, and bodies are full of erotic insignia, ornaments, denot- ing the degenerate or criminal or as yet underdeveloped modern man, the child. The ornament is alien to modern culture, to the modern world-order, and is incapable of evolution. The modern man does not only not need it, but despises the ornament: he sees it as a sign of corruption, as an economic pest, as a crime. Nomadic herdsmen had to distinguish themselves by painting various colors on their bodies; the modern man uses his clothes for hiding himself, as a mask. So immensely strong is his individu- ality that it can no longer be expressed in articles of clothing. The freedom from ornament is a sign of spiritual strength. The modern man uses the 1 Adolf Loos, Sämtliche Schriften (Wien: Herold, 1962), 276. 4 COLLECTIVE ORNAMENT ornaments of earlier or alien cultures as he sees fit. He concentrates his inventiveness on other things.2 Loos lists the surfaces from where ornaments should be removed or whose ornamental nature is unacceptable and unsustainable. In the following order: the skin, the face, walls, lavatory walls, utilitarian objects, bric-a-brac, urban streets, cigarette cases, clothes, death chambers, furniture, language, gingerbread, food, plates, desks, shoes, and art. In his writing, history and the surfaces of remembrance are just as free of ornaments as clear as “the walls of Zion are;” the cohabitation of cultures is, from the perspective of the modern man, an economic burden. One single type of human being is on top and – knowing their primitive function – he reigns over the rest. Loos cleared ornaments off the surfaces of the human being, of language, clothes, food, utilitarian objects, furniture, residential areas, streets, cities, and memory. A lot of things became clear (Figure 1). The infertile monologue of cultures was replaced by potential. Which new notion is asking now for a place on the liberated platform? What is crawling up the rhythmically–geometrically empty facade, and what new thought is wrinkling the ornament-free, smooth, forehead of modern male? 2 Ibid., 288. MODERN PROPOSAL 5 Figure 1 MODERN PROPOSAL 7 INTRODUCTION The industrialization of commerce, the 19th-century emer- gence of department stores, put an end to the personal communication between customer and salesperson.3 By the end of the 19th century, the trust-based relationship between the salesperson and the customer had been replaced by another entity: the brand. At the beginning of the 20th century, the science of branding, that of “im- personalized selling,” recognized the importance of the re establishment of the other trust-based relationship, the one between the customer and the product. The personifi- cation of the product by way of branding and the inclusion of the psychological knowledge of the time significantly changed the forms of selling. By the 1930s, branding (Mar- kentechnik) had become the science of the production of mental weaponry, a secret art of war.4 Using its techniques and devices, the national socialist brand evolved from the commercial brand of the time. From the 1920s on, Hitler purposefully built the political identity of his own and that of the NSDAP; until his political takeover in January 1933, the national socialist brand was competing with the concurrent economic and political 3 Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Geschichte der Eisenbahnreise: zur Indus- trialisierung von Raum und Zeit im 19. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verl, 2007), 166. 4 Holm Friebe, “Branding Germany: Hans Domizlaff’s Markentechnik and Its Ideological Impact,” in Selling Modernity: Advertising in Twentieth-Century Germany, eds. Pamela E. Swett, S. Jonathan Wiesen, and Jonathan R. Zatlin (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), 89. 8 COLLECTIVE ORNAMENT brands for the attention of their prospective consumers. After 1933, the degree of violence in the national socialist worlds of excitement and political advertising increased, and the latter intertwined with propaganda tools aimed at the ideological synchronizing of its target group. After the collapse of the Third Reich, the methods of the transference of volition established the toolkit of the persuasion indus- try, which has remained in use ever since. Several aspects of the national socialist brand have been examined to date. The Hitler brand has been ex- plored,5 the history of the swastika is known, the corporate identity elements have been interpreted from the aspect of the commercial brands of the time.

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