Bauhaus and a Spirit of Subtle Resistance State, Including the Fi Rst Old and 1720S

Review beginnings of the welfare starts around the 1710s Bauhaus and a spirit of subtle resistance state, including the fi rst old and 1720s. The collection age pension. embodies a pre-imperial idea It is hard not to be caught of understanding, for two Two items from the up with the director’s reasons. First is so that you exhibition tell revealing enthusiasm as he delves into can trade with the world, stories about life in Germany’s history. Using but if you compare diff erent Germany in the 20th Gutenberg’s Bible, he societies, you can get a better Century. Both have a link portrays Mainz in southern idea of your own. So above all to the Weimar School of Germany as the start-up it’s about tolerance. Architecture and Design, capital of the world in the ‘The major worry for any called the Bauhaus, which 15th century. government in the early 18th pioneered modern design All the skills and century was how you stop civil in the 1920s. Because of its who got their just deserts. connections were there war on the basis of religion. socialist and internationalist Intriguingly, the typeface – advanced metallurgy One of the best ways is to look outlook, the Nazis set out is a product of Bauhaus to make the revolutionary at other religions and then see to destroy it. design. It was made by a movable type, wine presses there’s no one true way. The The fi rst item is a ceramic camp inmate, the communist to provide the model for the point of this collection is to vase, above, by Greta Marks. architect Franz Ehrlich, who fi rst printing press, and the show that we all do the same Displaying African was imprisoned on a charge Frankfurt fair, where thing in diff erent ways and infl uences, it is a striking of treason in 1934. The font Gutenberg could order high there’s no best way.’ piece even today. Goebbels, displayed what MacGregor quality paper from Italy for If you want to see a ‘trophy the Nazi propaganda calls ‘a spirit of subtle delivery every six months. museum’, the place to look is minister, singled it out as resistance’, which the inmates Most important, there was the Louvre which is about the ‘decadent art’. Marks fl ed understood to mean that a large literate population state and France’s place in the to Britain and continued one day the Nazis would linked by the trade network of Mediterranean world. The working but never again get justice. German rivers which ensured British Museum, he insists, is found the inspiration of Ehrlich was set free in he could make a profi t. about the citizen and it is ‘the her early work. 1939 and, uniquely for a ‘You have an unusually high private collection of everyone’. The second is the communist, allowed to work concentration of courts, What’s next after Germany? inscription Jedem das Seine through the Nazi period. each of them with their own An exploration of Australia – to each his due – on the At the end of the war he bureaucracy. So you have the through Aboriginal eyes, gate of Buchenwald was fêted as a hero in the public to support a growing using the Museum’s early and concentration camp, where East Germany. The story book market. There was well-documented collection many Jews and communists of how he negotiated life nowhere else in Europe of Aboriginal material. This were incarcerated, including with two kinds of tyrannical with that concentration of exhibition is being organized two prime ministers of regime does not end there, cities linked by trade routes jointly with the National France, and 56,000 people however. and rivers.’ Museum in Canberra with died. Unlike the more famous ‘We fi nd the story of MacGregor raises his voice the engagement of indigenous inscription on the gate at Ehrlich the good communist in irritation only once, when people, as part of Australia’s Auschwitz, this one faces moving. But when the Stasi I suggest that the British attempt to renegotiate its inwards and was designed to archives were opened, it Museum – ‘the world in one relationship with the past... be seen by prisoners every emerged that he’d been a place’ – can be seen abroad as ‘another piece of history that day. The wording is one of very energetic informant – an imperial venture, showing we need’. the fundamental principles of and one of a very disagreeable Britain’s dominance of the Roman law. The Nazis sort,’ says MacGregor. world, rather than an attempt ‘Germany: Memories of a subverted it to show that it ‘This is a story that makes me to understand it. Nation’ is on at the British was they – not university extremely glad not to have ‘No, imperialism was a later Museum until January 2015 intellectuals – who decided been German at that time.’ phenomenon,’ he responds. and will be broadcast on BBC ‘The museum’s collection Radio 4 through October 46 | the world today | october & november 2014 REVIEWS 04.indd 46 30/09/2014 14:40.

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