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Werkbund, and the Aesthetics of Culture in the Wilhelmine Period

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Werkbund, and the Aesthetics of Culture in the Wilhelmine Period The Kunstgewerbe, the Werkbund, and the Aesthetics of Culture in the Wilhelmine Period MARK JARZOMBEK Cornell University Joseph Goebbels'famous claim about the connection between politics and that concept back to its nonreactionary, Wilhelmine roots.1 This paper, art in his letter to Wilhelm Furtwdngler in 1933 epitomizes Nazi theories which looks at the discourse on cultural aesthetics as it emerged in the first concerning the cultural benefits of art. In it he attempts both to legitimize decade of the twentieth century, also challenges some received notions about and cunningly obscure an underlying reactionary agenda: the Werkbund, an organization of artists, architects, and industrialists founded in 1907. With the Werkbund, the utopian potential of cultural We who are giving form to modern German politics, see aesthetics that emerged in the context of liberal bourgeois theory long before it ourselves as artists to whom has been assigned the great was co-opted by the right wing revealed itself for the first time as a powerful responsibility of forming, from out of the brute mass, the instrument of cultural definition. This paper will also discuss some of the solid and full image of the people. early formulators of Wilhelmine cultural aesthetics in various disciplines, Though there are many studies of post-World War I cultural aesthetics, Karl Scheffier (art critic), Heinrich Waentig (economist), Hermann especially in the context of Hitler'sfinal solution, little has been done to trace Muthesius (architect), and Georg Fuchs (playwright), among others. BY THE TURN OF THE TWENTIETH century, the German This article forms part of a larger work that analyzes the full spectrum Kunstgewerbe began to champion a full spectrum of aesthetic, of related political and economic issues in this period. I would like to economic, and patriotic issues that directly involved it in debates thank the librarians at Sibley Library, Cornell University, and at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, where I was a visiting member in concerning Germany's national identity and international Weltpoli- the School of Historical Studies, for their kind assistance. All translations tik. As the domain where industry and domesticity met head-on, are by the author unless otherwise noted. the Kunstgewerbe, so it was promised, could alleviate the crisis of 1. Reinhard Merker, Die bildenden Kunste im Nationalsozialismus (Co- logne: Dumont, 1983), for example, avoids discussions about Wilhelmine rapid industrialization without abandoning the essential premises theories of cultural aesthetics even though they fed into Hitler's program. of modernity. But the task, according to the calculations of The general tendency, exemplified by Merker, as well as by Henry Kunstgewerbe defenders, was enormous. As Heinrich Waentig, Grosshans, Hitler and the Artists (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1983), is to professor of economy and cultural history at Berlin and Munich see Hitler only in the context of radical anti-Semitism as it began to gain momentum at the turn of the century, and to not implicate other cultural and a prominent Kunstgewerbe promoter, pointed out, "Modern, theorists. large industrial technology took control of the domestic forms An important work is Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism, Technology, much quicker than anyone had expected ... with a chaotic Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). The writers who interest Herf most are Oswald confusion of styles as the result."2 And this confusion, it was Spengler, Ernst Junger, and Werner Sombart. Herf, concentrating on the argued, left Germany in danger of self-victimization. Karl Gross, 1920s and 1930s, attempts to provide a new methodological balance to the professor of metal sculpture in Dresden and an important study of the rise of Hitler, which he discusses not as a single political narrative but as a reconciliation between-and a collapse of-irrationalist Werkbund theorist, basing himself on the biblical story of Jacob traditionalism and industrial, technological modernism. Herf moves away and Esau, explained that "the creative energies of the nation are from simplistic notions that the reactionary movement had its origins in not being supported, instead industrialists and store owners, either volkisch ideology or technocratic authoritarianism. Unfortunately, driven by greed, will sell the spirit of the nation for a lentil soup."3 Herf does not deal with pre-World War I Wilhelmine theories of cultural aesthetics, which are in his work, as in Merker's, ignored because they were not overtly tainted by reactionary politics. As I try to show, the reactionary implications of Wilhelmine aesthetics were concealed behind thinkers are today considered to be Germany's principal pre-World War I their commitment to seemingly liberal notions of national unity, organic theorists is unfortunate, for it gives the illusion that the Nazi movement culture, and political harmony. can only be discussed in the context of reactionary theory, as if liberal Analysis of Wilhelmine aesthetics, however, cannot be the analysis of bourgeois discourses were not complicit in the emergence of fascism. individual theorists-as is the focus of Herf's book-but rather of 2. Heinrich Waentig, Wirtschafi und Kunst, Eine Untersuchung Uber discursive practices, largely because Wilhelmine aesthetics emerged not as Geschichte und Theorie der modernen Kunstgewerbebewegung (Jena: Gustav a single theory encapsulated in the writings of one or two leading Fischer, 1909), 272. intellectuals, but in the domain of a group of influential thinkers, of which 3. Karl Gross, "Kunstgewerbliche Zeit- und Streitfragen," Kunstgewer- only a small number are represented in this paper. That none of these beblatt 19 (1908): 116. JSAH 53:7-19, MARCH 1994 7 This content downloaded from 128.59.106.243 on Mon, 01 Aug 2016 17:06:43 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 8 JSAH 53:1, MARCH 1994 These were not solitary voices. The crisis of the German When the Werkbund was founded in 1907, most of its members bourgeoisie in the wake of that country's now legendary transfor- had known each other for years. What drew them together was a mation from an agrarian to an industrialized nation has been the mutual feeling that the time had come for a smaller organization subject of numerous studies. But histories of the period tend to than the Verband des deutschen Kunstgewerbes, one that would define emphasize the more illustrious critics, such as Georg Simmel, more precisely the political, national, and pedagogical mission of Georg Luklcs, and Max Weber, and leave the Kunstgewerbler to the the Kunstgewerbe, while demonstrating that the longed-for recon- art history specialists.4 The Kunstgewerbe, in actuality, played an ciliation between the bourgeoisie and industry was not a distant important role in linking aesthetics to questions of modernity and utopia but an imminent reality. Fritz Schumacher, professor of national identity. Its supporters were convinced that aesthetics architecture at the Technische Hochschule in Dresden, claimed that would play the key role in Germany's status as a modern nation as the Werkbund aimed for nothing less than "the reconquest of a it was the only place where the interests of culture, life, industry, harmonious culture."9 and politics, both internal and external, could come together and Despite these polemics, the Werkbund is usually portrayed as a find a common voice. If the rapidly expanding and increasingly quiet revolution, a type of calm before the storm of a bolder and wealthy middle class could only educate itself to its new cultural more aggressive modernism.10 Julius Posener, for example, task, then the numerous threats to German social stability might argued that the Werkbund comprised individuals with "different be alleviated. To this end, the Verband des deutschen Kunstgewerbes, a and even opposing opinions" and that they "had no well-defined large organization of over seventeen thousand members and doctrine" except that, as "good Germans" interested in improving presided over by Hermann Muthesius, sponsored hundreds of the aesthetic appearance of industrial objects, they were "ad- public lectures, 210 in 1906 alone.5 But the real emphasis lay on vanced and progressive," supporting "quality" and the "well- the creation of Kunstgewerbe museums and Kunstgewerbe schools, being of the worker."1l The danger of this assumption is that it like the one in Diisseldorf, headed by Peter Behrens and later can give the impression that the Werkbund lacked hegemonic Wilhelm Kreis, and the one in Berlin opened in 1901 by Emperor tendencies and that it had little to do with certain theoretical Wilhelm II himself and headed by Bruno Paul.6 Furthermore, the speculations that by 1907 were not only well-defined, but that had government helped underwrite numerous exhibitions in which already degenerated into a powerful jargon.12 the Kunstgewerbe played important roles, such as the vast German 9. KurtJunghanns, Der Deutsche Werkbund-Sein erstesJahrzehnt (Berlin: city exhibition in Dresden in 1903. Representing 128 cities, more Henschelverlag Kunst und Gesellschaft, 1982), 141. For further discus- than 400 manufacturers, and thousands of artists, and occupying sion, see Stanford Anderson, "Deutscher Werkbund-the 1914 Debate: two-dozen buildings, it attracted more than four hundred thou- Hermann Muthesius versus Henry van de Velde," companion to Contem- porary Architectural Thought, ed.
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