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 '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 and 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 , Technology, much quicker than anyone had expected ... with a chaotic Culture, and Politics in 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 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 (: 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.

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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 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 , 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 and later can give the impression that the Werkbund lacked hegemonic , 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 .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, "-the 1914 Debate: two-dozen buildings, it attracted more than four hundred thou- Hermann Muthesius versus ," companion to Contem- porary Architectural Thought, ed. Ben Farmer and Hentie Louw (London: sand paying visitors.7 The Kunstgewerbe Ausstellung in Dresden of Routledge, 1993), 462-67. 1906 was certainly a turning point in the Kunstgewerbe's attempt to 10. Ulrich Conrads's attempt, so-to-speak, to manifesto-ize the pre- aggrandize its position and demonstrate its relevance in national- World War I debates and make them part of a modernist drama can political debates. The exhibition involved a large force of the new potentially skew our understanding of the way theoretical discourses were conducted in the first decades of the century; Ulrich Conrads, Programme Kunstgewerbe leaders and a who's who of the future Werkbund: und Manifeste zurArchitektur des 20.Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Berteldmann Fach Peter Behrens, Justus Brinckmann, Alfred Greander, Herman Verlag, 1971), 8-29. Muthesius, Franz Pankok, Bruno Paul, Fritz Schumacher, and 11. Julius Posener, "Between Art and Industry, the Deutscher Werkbund," in The Werkbund, History and Ideology, ed. Lucius Burckhardt, others. It was, so Muthesius proclaimed, "the victory that trans. Pearl Sanders (Woodbury, New York: Barron's Educational Series, cemented the modern spirit."8 1980), 7, 10, 14. Joan Campbell, The German Werkbund, the Politics of Reform in the Applied Arts (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), though an excellent monograph on the Werkbund, contextualizes the organization in the narrow perspective of the Werkbund itself. Sibylle 4. See for example, David L. Gross, "Kultur and its Discontents: The Wilhelm's Kunstgewerbebewegung, Aesthetische Welt oder Macht durch Kunst? Origins of a 'Critique of Everyday Life' in Germany 1880-1925," in Essays (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1989) takes a more critical perspective on Culture and Society in Modern Germany, ed. Gary D. Stark (College on aesthetic issues of the time. Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1982), 71-97. 12. Recent essays by Werner Oechslin, Gabriel Schinckel, and Til- 5. See "Berlin. Vom deutschen Kunstgewerbe," Beilage zu Die Christ- mann Buddensieg on Friedrich Ostendorf, , and Peter liche Kunst 4.5. 1 (February 1908): 54. Behrens, respectively, explore important theoretical issues of Wilhelmine 6. For a history of the Kunstgewerbemuseen movement in the nineteenth architecture. Moderne Architektur In Deutschland 1900 bis 1950 Reform und century, see Barbara Mundt's Die deutschen Kunstgewerbemuseen im 19. Tradition, ed. Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani and Romana Schneider Jahrhundert (Munich: Prestel, 1974). See also Sibylle Wilhelm's Kunstgewer- (Stuttgart: G. Hatje, 1992). None of these authors, however, deal with the bebewegung, Aesthetische Welt oder Macht durch Kunst? (Frankfurt am Main: problems inherent in the discursive practices that underline much of the Peter Lang, 1989). theoretical speculations that they deal with. This is not to fault the 7. Andrew Lees, "Civic Pride of the German Middle Class, 1890- authors, as it is a consequence of the monographic nature of their articles. 1918," in Another Germany: A Reconsideration of the Imperial Era, ed. Jack R. As I outline in "Ready-made Traces in the Sand: the Sphinx, the Chimera Dukes and Joachim Remak (Boulder: Westview Press, 1988), 43-44. and other Discontents in the Practice of Theory," Assemblage 19 (1993): 8. Quoted in Fritz Schumacher, Stromungen in Deutscher Baukunst seit 73-95, we have to look beyond the circularly constructed notion that 1800 (Braunschweig: Friedrich Vieweg, 1982), 123. architecture has theories which are contextualized by the architect's work

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The essential framework for the Kunstgewerbe and Werkbund to differentiate between two types of middle classes. In one of his ideology of aesthetics lay in a highly moralized discourse surroun- novels, Gustav Freytag, for example, made the ugly, dishonest, ding what came to be known as die Kultur des Sichtbaren (the rootless, and Jewish Veitel Itzig a symbol of an "unreliable" culture of the visible).13 Though its theoretical roots can be traced international middle class which threatens the equanimity of an back to the German Enlightenment, we are, by the turn of the "honest" German middle class.18 The new middle class, even if it century, not dealing with philosophical expressions, but with the was forward looking, still had to bear the torch of civil order and rapid popularization and polemicizing of aesthetic concerns.14 cultural morality. Gartenlaube rejected feudalism and promoted Kunst auf dem Lande (Art in the countryside, 1905), which emancipated egalitarianism; yet it retained respect for aristocratic included articles by leading advocates of visual culture, such as conceits; it rejected political polemics and promoted seculariza- Peter Jessen, Karl Schmidt, and Paul Schultze-Naumburg, all tion, but questioned the excesses of capitalism while preaching an future Werkbund members, was one of several works meant to almost autocratic idealism of national unity. Aesthetic issues also educate its readers to the importance of domestic aesthetics. began to be subsumed into the debate, largely because of Richard Schultze-Naumburg's own Hduslische Kunstpflege (Cultivation of Wagner's influential Deutsche Kunst und deutsche Politik (1866), domestic art), first published in 1898, immensely popular and which took up the cause of anti-Semitism and anti-commercialism. going through seven reprintings before the war, had chapters on The paradox inherent in the relationship between the founder the decoration of walls and ceilings, on the placement of paintings generation's search for a modern identity and their demand for an and clocks, and on the principles of clothing, bodily hygiene, and internal critique of the middle class would become increasingly pet care.15 This book, which addressed "well established bureau- pronounced during the Wilhelmine era. Max Nordau's Entartung crats, professors, and educated merchants" and other elements of (1893), for example, became a rallying cry for aestheticians.19 the Bildungsbirgertum (the educated middle class), emphasized not Authored by a Jew, it criticized rampant individualism and the only the capacity of art to create an enlightened quietude, but that decadence of modern life. Just as influential was Julius Langbehn's Kunst was not something that could be simply purchased; it had to Rembrandt als Erzieher (1890).20 Langbehn, who included Jews emerge from within the context of a fully evaluated life.16 among those who had contributed to the current decadence of The liberal political identity of the Bildungsbirgertum had begun society, envisioned art in a desperate struggle against itself. to take shape in the mid-nineteenth century and was reinforced Whereas much art only enfeebled the German spirit, true Kunst, if through the writings of Georg Herwegh, Hoffmann von Fallers- it were to base itself on modesty, quietude, and aristocratic leben, and Gustav Freytag, and by journals such as the widely nobility, would emerge victorious in Germany's attempt to retake popular Gartenlaube.17 Search for a national identity, slow emanci- control of its destiny. pation from the feudal aristocracy, and the suppression of one's Kunstgewerbe leaders took up this call for a radical aestheticiza- individuality for the greater good were the important themes. But tion of life. According to Alfred Lichtwark (director of the mid-century liberalism, as George L. Mosse and Hans Meyer Museum), the middle-class German, if he were to have described, carried with it the roots of prejudice as it tended avoid the vices of rootless capitalism, would have to be taught not so much how to behave, vote, or think, but "how to dress, how to furnish his room and his house, even how to walk down the and life. The history of theory in its broader sense (that is, broader than the history of theories of architects) has to take into account not only ideological formations but also complex discursive practices that impinge on theory formations. 18. Being a liberal, Freytag also evokes the "good" Jew, namely one 13. This was one of several similar terms associated with Wilhelmine who has become as German as possible. For a discussion see Steven cultural aesthetics. Die Kultur des Sichtbaren was a favorite of Paul Beller, Vienna and the Jews 1867-1933, a Cultural History (Cambridge: Schultze-Naumburg, who used it in his Kulturarbeiten. See Paul Schultze- Cambridge University Press, 1989), 122-23; George L. Mosse, Germans Naumburg, "Vorwort zum ersten Bande," Kulturarbeiten 4: Stdtebau and Jews: the Right, the Left and the Search for a 'Third Force' in pre-Nazi (Munich: Georg D. W. Callway, 1909), n.n. Germany (London: Orbach and Chambers, 1971), 38-39; and Gordon A. 14. For a discussion of the rise of the theater in this context, see Craig, "Irony and Rage in the German Social Novel: Theodor Fontane Stanford Anderson, "Peter Behrens's Highest 'Kultursymbol,' The and Heinrich Mann," in Essays on Culture and Society in Modern Germany, Theater," Perspecta 26 (1992): 103-34. ed. Gary D. Stark (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1982), 15. Paul Schultze-Naumburg, Hdusliche Kunstpflege, (Jena: Diederichs, 98-121. 1910). For a recent monograph see Norbert Borrmann, Paul Schultze- 19. The term Entartung, known to most people in the context of the Naumburg, 1869-1949. Maler, Publizist, Architekt. Von Kulturreformer der Nazi exhibition of 1937, began to emerge in cultural discourse from Jahrhundertwende zum Kulturpolitiker im Dritten Reich (Essen: R. Bacht, around the turn of the century onward. The term received its theoretical 1989). importance, however, not in the context of reactionary politics, but 16. P. Schultze-Naumburg, Hausliche Kunstpflege, 9. because of the book by Max Nordau, Entartung (Berlin: C. Duncker, 17. For a discussion, see Ernest K. Bramstedt, Aristocracy and the Middle 1893). Nordau wrote the book-highly influential at the time, but now Classes In Germany, Social Types in German Literature, 1830-1900 (Chicago: rarely studied-as a historical-psychological study of the concept of University of Chicago Press, 1964). It was first published in 1937 under decadence in contemporary European consciousness. the author's former name, Ernst Kohn-Bramstedt (London: P. S. King & 20. Julius Langbehn, Rembrandt als Erzieher. Von Einem Deutschen Son). (: Hirschfeld, 1891).

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street."21 Despite the sweeping implication that without aesthetics Eating Properly" and on "Deepening One's Appreciation for the the middle class would undermine its own modernity, Lichtwark Monarchy in the Modern Age," as well as on Die Kultur der felt that it was only a matter of years before "a major cultural Ausseren Erscheinung (Culture of external appearances), which progress" would evolve, that would bring about "a true and discussed the dress code and even what it considered to be the healthy art" based on a "healthy and happy body ... .The healthier appropriate gait of the modern gentleman and lady. Karl Schef- and happier the soul, the more satisfying the art, that corresponds fler, the influential critic and supporter of the Kunstgewerbe and to its essence."22 Lichtwark also explained that the German the newly-founded Werkbund, contributed a discussion of the aristocracy that had once controlled the aesthetic life of Germany, work of Richard Riemerschmidt, Bruno Paul, Henry van de was weakening in relation to the ever-strengthening upper- Velde, and Peter Behrens, all of whom were to become leading middle class. But time was running out, for "as long as the middle Werkbund members. These architects, Scheffler pointed out, had class is not in the possession of a deep culture and an artistic combated the forces of Unkultur in order to create an environ- education, the cultural inheritance of the aristocracy will be lost ment of harmony, elegance, simplicity, energy, and Stilreinheit forever."23 (stylistic purity). Journals such as Dekorative Kunst, Kunstgewerbeblatt, Deutsche Moderne Kultur-one of the early examples in Germany of the Kunst und Dekoration, and Kunstwart und Kulturwart (its subtitle emergent commodification of culture-embodied the very es- was Halbmonatsschau fur Ausdruckskultur auf allen Lebensgebieten sence of the upper-middle-class ambivalence towards modernity. [Bimonthly journal for cultural expressions in all aspects of life]) Though it accepted the inevitability of industrialization, it hoped were instrumental in defining the purchases, practices, lifestyles, to counteract its negative impact. Rapid demographic changes, and cultural inheritance of the middle class, as were hundreds of workers' unrest, destruction of the landscape, inequities in the urban and national organizations. The Gesellschaft fir aesthetische political system, and hosts of other problems created unheard-of Kultur (Society for an aesthetic culture) in Frankfurt-am-Main tensions in German society.26 Scheffler hoped that through a had display windows with exhibitions of books and art; the process of aesthetization the middle class could be built into a Stettiner Verein initiated competitions for middle-class houses, as powerful, political unit with an agenda that at least could appear to did the Verein fur Vierldnder Kunst und Heimatkunde. The Freie look beyond the self-serving politics of the reactionaries and the Biinde zur Einbiirgerung der bildenden Kunst, organized in 1911 by socialists, both of whom were all too eager to tap into the general Werkbund member Friedrich Wickert, director of the Mannheim disenchantment with the moral and political direction of the Kunsthalle, sponsored lectures and provided pamphlets on how to nation. Moderne Kultur, with its interdisciplinary scope, dealing arrange furniture and how to design beautiful shop windows in with everything from tablecloths to world history, attempted a an attempt to promote "spiritual and cultural sensitivity through- type of grand synthesis that explained all social and cultural out the bourgeoisie."24 actions in terms of a larger whole, the formation of which, One of the first atempts to synthesize the principles of this Scheffler explained, "was not a game with arbitrary rules, but... a cultural pedagogy into a full-fledged bourgeois ideology was the two-volume book, Moderne Kultur (1907), that contained articles by leading critics and writers.25 There were entries on "The Art of

grosse Gemeinschaft," 151-206; W. Fred, "Kultur der ausseren 21. Quoted in Waentig, Wirtschaff und Kunst (see n. 2), 272, 273; see Erscheinungen," 207-302; W. Fred, "Die Kunst des Essens," 303-34; E. also David Gross, "Kultur and its Discontents" (see n. 4), 70-97. Heyck, "Die Weisheit des Trinkens," 335-60; E. Heyck, "Die Kultur des 22. Hans Prlffcke, Der Kunstbegriff Alfred Lichtwarks (Hildesheim: Reisens," 361-88; Herman Hesse, "Der Umgang mit Biuchern," 389- Georg Olms, 1986), 249. Alfred Lichtwark (1852-1914) began his studies 402; K. Scheffler, "Das Theater," 403-24. as an independent student ofJustus Brinckmann. In 1884 he became the 26. The following bibliography will help guide the interested reader: librarian at the Kunstgewerbemuseum in Berlin and started publishing. In David Blackbourn, Class, Religion and Local Politics in Wilhelmine Germany 1886 he became director of the Hamburg Kunsthalle, which soon became (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980); David Blackbourn and one of the leading museums in Germany. Richard J. Evans, editors, The German bourgeoisie: essays on the social history of 23. Alfred Lichtwark, "Aus Berlin," Pan 2.1 (1898): 66. the German middle class from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century 24. Anna-Maria Lindemann, Mannheim im Kaiserreich (Mannheim: (London: Routledge, 1991); Roger Chickering, We Men Who Feel Most Quadrat, 1986) 184-85. German (Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1984); Jack R. Dukes and Joachim 25. Eduard Heyck, ed., Moderne Kultur: ein Handbuch der Lebensbildung Remak, editors, Another Germany: A Reconsideration of the Imperial Era und des guten Geschmacks, 2 vols. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, (Boulder: Westview Press, 1988); , 1907). Vol. 1 consists of: Eduard Heyck, "Zur Einfiihrung," 3-16; Karl (Berlin: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1937); Gerhard Kratzsch, Kunstwart Scheffler, "Kultur und Kunst," 17-92; K. Scheffler, "Kunst und Leben," und Duirerbund Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Gebildeten im Zeitalter des 93-112; W. Fred (pseud. for Alfred Wechsler), "Einwirkung fremder Imperialismus (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck, 1969); , The Crisis Kulturen auf Deutschland," 113-48; K. Scheffler, "Kultur und Ge- of German Ideology, Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich (New York: Grosset schmack des Wohnens, 149-268; Karl Stork, "Musik," 269-314; Georg & Dunlop, 1964); Abraham J. Peck, Radicals and Reactionaries (Washington Lehnert, "Die Liebhaberei des Sammelns," 315-410. Volume Two D.C.: University Press of America, 1978); Fritz Richard Stern, The Politics consists of: Marie Diers, "Die Personlichkeit und ihr Kreis," 1-72; W. of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology (Berkeley and Fred, "Die Gesellschaft," 73-150; E. Heyck, "Der Einzelne und die Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1961).

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 JARZOMBEK: THE AESTHETICS OF CULTURE IN THE WILHELMINE PERIOD 11 serious enterprise ... relating to and emerging naturally out of the Italians exhibited things "of little value."30 By way of contrast, as power of a well-organized society."27 Georg Swarzenski, another future member of the Werkbund, Nothing was too small or insignificant for this "serious affirmed for the audience back home that the Germans made enterprise." Ferdinand Avenarius, another influential promoter spaces that were "formed and conceived in a fully architectonic of aesthetics and principal editor of Kunstwart und Kulturwart, manner... .They are clear, self-aware, and pure."31 Paul Klopfer, organized a competition in 1907 for the design of new postage director of the Grossherzogliche Baugewerbeschule in Weimar, and stamps, the jury for which included such notables as Peter Jessen, later a member of the Werkbund, felt in 1906 that much of the Paul Schumann, Bruno Paul, Paul Schultze-Naumburg, George pioneering work had been done and that Lebenskunst had success- Wruba, and Alfred Lichtwark, all directly or indirectly involved in fully made the transition from exhibition hall to living room. the planning of the Werkbund.28 As Avenarius claimed, it was a Germany, he claimed, had at last a "healthy, reasonable, impres- new moment. sive middle class culture," that exists "not as some utopia but as a real equal to England."32

And we can happily say that it is the deepening of the German The sudden interest in aesthetic matters had less to do with the aesthetic culture, the push to go beyond appearances to the essence. improvement of artistic quality, though that is often how it is still And that, as a basic moral sense, is connected with the will to culture. 29 viewed, than with an increasing confidence in art's political or rather its meta-political role. Adherents of cultural aesthetics, The essential premise for this group of critics and social following up on themes defined in the context of nineteenth- commentators was that Kunst was inseparable from life; it was century bourgeois liberalism, claimed that Lebenskunst might synonymous with Lebenskunst (life-art), which was, however, not serve to mitigate the confrontational politics of the radical right what might be called individual expression, but the individual's and radical left that had emerged in the wake of Germany's rapid expression of the cultural spirit. Backed by a slew of writings by industrialization. As writer and historian Albert Dresdner ex- popular philosophers such as Julius Langbehn, and by the age-old plained in his Der Weg der Kunst (The path of art, 1904), "through theory that the visual world and the ethical world were mimeti- art we can find the foundation for understanding reality that cally related, Lebenskunst emerged as the underlying theme of politics has not given us. Because politics has failed us, art can Wilhelmine cultural aesthetics. This theme was repeated with now summon its own forces to unite the opposition of political such insistence that it became a self-fulfilling prophesy. Already at parties into a new ideal."33 Cultural aesthetics thus offered an the Saint Louis International Exhibition of 1904, reviewers ingenious way to sidestep the crisis of capitalism without actually praised the German contribution, with buildings, interiors, and confronting it, necessitating, however, a radical expansion of the furniture by Erich Kleinhempel (director of the Bremen Kunstge- notion of aesthetics. As Scheffler explained: werbe Museum), Alfred Grenander, , Hermann Billing,

and Bruno Mohring, all of whom would in time become Life cannot be separated into separate components, and therefore the Werkbund members, as a victory of the new aesthetic-ethical aesthetic is totally interconnected with economic, social, ethical, sensibility of the middle class. Hermann Muthesius, co-founder spiritual, and religious questions.34 of the Werkbund, was convinced that the French "used typical historical styles and represented no progress"; the English "made The Enlightenment principles supposedly at the heart of no impression"; the Austrians "showed only cheap fantasy cultural aesthetics were expected to counter not only political pieces"; the Belgians "offered nothing of meaning," and the extremism, but also the perceived arbitrariness of the still- powerful feudal aristocracy. Nonetheless, the emphasis on order- liness, harmony, and discipline appealed to the spirit of the German aristocracy. The incontrovertible ideals of order and 27. Karl Scheffler, Moderne Baukunst (Berlin: Julius Bard, 1907), 3; and idem, Der Deutsche und seine Kunst (Munich: Piper, 1907). For a discussion harmony were no longer the old-fashioned values of a Prussian of Scheffler as an art critic and as editor of Kunst und Kiinstler, see Peter officer class, but had become subsumed under the notion of Kunst Paret, The Berlin , Modernism and its Enemies in Imperial Germany (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980), 210-19. 30. H. Muthesius "Aus den Reiseberichten der vom K6nigl. Preuss. 28. Kunstchronik N.F. 18.31 (23 August 1907): 519. Ferdinand Ernst Ministerium fur Handel und Gewerbe 1904 nach Amerika entsandten Avenarius (1856-1923) was a leading polemicist of cultural aesthetics. Kommissare," Kunstgewerbeblatt 17.11 (January 1906): 221. After his studies in Leipzig and he moved to Dresden and founded 31. Georg Swarzenski, "Die Austellung Kiinstlerischer Innenrlume in 1887 the journal Kunstwart. It was to become one of Germany's leading der Firma A. S. Ball in Berlin," Kunstgewerbeblatt 6.11 (1905): 201-15. literary magazines. Friedrich Naumann, Stephan George, and Paul 32. Paul Klopfer, "Das Einzelwohnhaus der Neuzeit," Illustrirte Zeitung Schultze-Naumburg were only a few of the prominent figures who were 3308 (22 November 1906): 845, 847. On Klopfer's pedagogy, which in published in it. For further discussion, see Kratzsch, Kunstwart und some respects foreshadows the , see Klopfer, "Baugewerbeschule Durerbund (see n. 22). und Heimatschutz," Kunstgewerbeblatt 23.9 (June 1912): 176-79. 29. Ferdinand Avenarius, "Zur Weihnachts-Einkehr," Kunstwart 20.6 33. Albert Dresdner, Der Weg der Kunst (Leipzig: Jena, 1904), 37. (December 1906): 312; see also idem, "Ausdrucks-Kultur," Kunstwart 34. K. Scheffler, "Moderne Unkultur," in Moderne Kultur, E. Heyck, 20.14 (April 1907): 96. ed. (see n. 25), 1:22.

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as the strategy by which the middle class would liberate itself Clearly, Lebenskunst involved more than dressing well in the from individualism, arbitrariness, and ostentation. Guided by the morning; within the image of its inevitable fulfillment lay a moral hand of the ennobled artist, the new bourgeoisie, so felt Karl imperative, which, by exploiting the buzzwords of harmony, Ernst Osthaus, Werkbund member and founder and director of health, order, purity, and monumentality, could easily shift from the Deutsches Museum fur Kunst In Handel und Gewerbe, would generous, self-flattering inclusiveness to hard-nosed exclusive- bring about the long-awaited Golden Age: ness. "Back to honor, beauty, and nobility!" Osthaus proclaimed, snubbing his nose at those who were contaminated by the "Our burning desire for beauty and purity ... will liberate us."35 "capitalist plague," and were otherwise "untrue, irrational, and

The more society participates in Kunst, the stronger it will be.36 banal."42 Similarly, Scheffler divided Germans between "good people, who work toward a happy patriotic cultural unity" and Only the penetration of our whole land with the spirit of art can lead us to that summit of national life which is rarely reached, but, when "bad people who still aren't happy and question this or that, or reached, is like an age of gold, uplifting in its beauty and pride.37 even the whole thing."43 Language like this, used to inspire the upper-middle class to break down the lethargy preventing collec- The Werkbund will restore the destroyed unity among the profes- sions.. .and restore the true spirit of creativity and orient all human tive action, nurtured an oppositional framework that implied a activity toward the highest level of culture.38 separation of us from them that had political implications, even if these were not expressed as demagogic exclamations. When Heinrich Waentig, a leading advocate of cultural aesthetics, Kunstgewerbe supporter Karl Boll wrote that "anyone who likes explained not only the internal political, but also the economic cute, capricious, and odd things has no understanding of the and world-political significance of Kunst and Kunstgewerbe. In his good, the monumental, and the strong," he was stoking the fire of Wirtschaft und Kunst (Economy and art, 1909), he argued that peer pressure and shame to guide the middle class toward a Germans, in reconciling the Lebensform (form of life) with a proper aesthetic-national behavior.44 unified national identity, could achieve "a complete and enno- Joseph August Lux, an Austrian author living in Germany and a bling resolution of class differentiation."39 Like an art work, the signer of the appeal that led to the founding of the Werkbund, Kulturbild (cultural picture) was to be designed, perfected, and made it quite clear in his Das neue Kunstgewerbe In Deutschland made beautiful; it also had to have a strong ethical component. (1908) that the creation of an aesthetic as the basis for the national This artistically created society, guided by the Kunstgewerbe, identity of the future required unflinching dedication. Since would, by the sheer force of its mimetic stimulus, transform and "form will become victorious in the physiognomy of everyday elevate Germany into what he called "a purified cultural nation." life," anyone who opposed it undermined for everyone else the efforts of "the educators of a new elegance" and allied themselves Art follows society and simultaneously brings it to completion as it raises with the "ugly dragon of negation."45 the economic reality of culture and makes it only then worth living in.... A form of life that has been raised by the artistic will yield a strong national unity. The problem transcends the question of whether our Satire and criticism, though they can work to benefit society, have houses, furniture, clothes, or jewelry are fully within the bounds of their limits ... The ugly dragon of negation ... [has to be matched good taste, but whether we have the right to call ourselves a cultural with] the positive direction given by the discoverers, creators, and users of new things.. .The snickering has become ridiculous because nation in the highest sense of the word. We have gone a long way, but we still have difficult battles ahead of us.40 . . .finally there are German artists that have become educators of a new elegance-Elegance, how you set the table, put flowers in a vase, I have observed how people under the influence [of the aesthetic hang a picture and all the other small artistic reforms of the rebirth] have cleaned out their house, torn down all the little day .... This is what we need, a bit of elegance without a lot of hot air ornaments and curtains [literally "washrags"], thrown out all those ... that is what Bruno Paul tries to do; he is an artist of good taste.46 cheap trinkets and doodads in order to begin a new life in the true sense of the word.... [One that corresponds] to the true needs of a The tone of this discourse that combined the self-policing and purified cultural nation [emphasis added].41 the self-heroization of the middle class required that the aesthetic be natural, egalitarian, universal, and ennobling; moreover, it

35. , "Deutscher Werkbund," Das Hohe Ufer 1.10 demanded discipline, self-correction, and highly visible public (Oct. 1919): 238. acts as a display of conformity. The result was that the possibility 36. Osthaus, "Umgestaltung der Museen im Sinne der Neuen Zeit," Schriften zur Zeit und Geschichte 8 (1919): 83. 37. Osthaus, "Der Hagener Raum in der 3. Deutschen Kunstgewerbe- 42. Osthaus, "Deutscher Werkbund," 238. Ausstellung in Dresden" (Archiv des Karl Osthaus-Museums in Hagen, 43. Heyck, Moderne Kultur (see n. 25), 1:3. Signatur-Nummer Z160, 1906). 44. Karl Boll, "Etwas uiber den Gescmack," Siiddeutsche Monatshefte 9.1 38. Osthaus, "Deutscher Werkbund," 238. (1911-12): 230. 39. Waentig, Wirtschafi und Kunst (see n. 2), 414. 45. Joseph August Lux, Das neue Kunstgewerbe in Deutschland (Leipzig: 40. Waentig, Wirtschaff und Kunst, 409-10, 415. Klinkhardt & Bierman, 1908), 249. 41. Waentig, Wirtschaft und Kunst, 408. 46. Lux, Das neue Kunstgewerbe, 137-41.

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of liberation was mixed with a language of distrust and intoler- the domain of the aesthetic. People such as Muthesius saw little ance. Hermann Muthesius used a free sprinkling of military problem, therefore, in arguing that a unified German aesthetic metaphors to ridicule the "sickness" ofJugendstil and its "exagger- would in the long run legitimate itself; the good taste of Germans, ated forms and superficial ornaments." The new leaders of art he presumed, was the taste toward which all industrial societies represented "a closed front against this false culture" (Scheinkul- aspire. If Germans could establish the hegemony of their "good tur) and are "a spiritual aristocracy watching out over the treasures taste," the German Kunstgewerbe would move quickly from Kunst of the spiritual gems of our people." They will "eradicate the to Kultur to Weltmarkt.50 unharmoniousness" and prepare us for a "true art; let us build a In essence, defenders of visual culture imagined two types of true Kultur and a true purity on a happy ground."47 And if this was post-industrial societies that, though more or less equally paired intended to educate the grownup, the children were not forgotten at present, were battling for supremacy. The future of interna- either. They too had to be reformed. Alfred Lichtwark and Peter tional modernism was portrayed in terms of arbitrariness and Jessen, the latter the director of the Konigliche Kunstgewerbemuseum political diversity; it was open to capitalist excess, socialist revolt, in Berlin and a leading Werkbund theorist, collaborated on a book and moral degeneration. The other future, proudly German, was published in 1908 that aimed to teach students that the proper to be guided by the Kunstgewerbe and was to be determined by a drawing style was not free expression, but one that expressed moral and aesthetic Ordnung. Michael Haberlandt's Die Welt als sobriety, health, clarity, and truth. "A spiritual energy and Schonheit (The world as beauty, 1905) made this duality clear. The self-disposition that convinces others of its own accord. . .does "process of aestheticization for the benefit and elevation of life," not tolerate anything strange or complicated," Lichtwark and in which German-speaking countries were "to become the leader, Jessen warned.48 foundation, and measuring tool" for world culture, was pitted in With striking irony, the emancipatory thought subverted the the international arena against another, preexistent form of very freedom it claimed to set in place. This was true even in the modernity, namely that embodied not only by capitalist arbitrari- theories of Henry van de Velde. Though known as an individual- ness and other forms of "unharmoniousness," but also by "the ist, he was not shy to speak of aristocracy and racial purity in his Jewish spirit, Parisian sexuality, and Greek homosexuality."51 praise of Osthaus's work as director of the German Museum in When Werkbund member Hermann Billing designed the Mann- Hagen. He lauded the pedagogical mission of the museum, heim Kunsthalle in 1907, it was, as its director Friedrich Wichert which was to ennoble society by presenting it with models of a explained, so "that the desired sense of Ordnung brought about by type of new royalty to replace antiquated biological lineages with art and its indisputable truth and one of the strongest factors in modern ones of industrial production. His demand that this new our salvation will spread through the consciousness of the city."52 aristocracy be investigated for its purity of blood was not yet a call And salvation from degenerate modernity by means of a unified for Aryan lineage, but demonstrated the presence of what would aesthetic would, so the theory went, brings economic rewards for later become a fully reactionary concept. all. Werkbund co-founder Fritz Schumacher, in the opening address to the Werkbund in 1907, blithely announced that "quality Industrial products much as living things have to be racially pure, rises out of the indescribable inner force" of a "harmonious from the side of both the father and the mother; their family tree has culture," and for this reason "aesthetic energy transforms itself to be as clear as any human or animal race! The German Museum in into the highest economic value."53 The refusal to participate in Hagen, if it is to have a meaning, must determine the aristocrats among the products!49 this "aesthetic energy" and in the making of a "harmonious culture" in opposition to the supposedly clear dangers inherent in

All these expressions had in common the fear that Germany's an inharmonious, international culture was equivalent to an new middle class, surrounded by industrialization, and thus almost traitorous refusal to participate in the economic well-being theoretically best suited to transform the nation, would be unable of Germany. to assume the responsibilities that came with the underlying The code word "quality" served an important double purpose agenda of Weltpolitik. Theorists were especially nervous that the in this context. It served as rallying cry in the German bourgeois, proximity of Weltpolitik and internationalism could be used by nationalist-industrialist cause. It also translated the aristocratic more reactionary circles to question the ascendancy of the middle 50. Hermann Muthesius, "Die Bedeutung des Kunstgewerbes," Deko- class. Defenders of visual culture thus argued that Weltpolitik and rative Kunst 10.5 (February 1907): 177-78. internationalism could be separated from each other precisely in 51. Michael Haberlandt, Die Welt als Schonheit (Wien: Wiener Verlag, 1905). 47. Hermann Muthesius, "Kultur und Kunst," Deutsche Monatsschrift 52. Quoted in: Anna-Maria Lindemann, Mannheim im Kaiserreich fur dasgesamte Leben der Gegenwart 3 (1904): 72-87. (Mannheim: Quadrat, 1986), 185; also in Friedrich Walter, Schicksal einer 48. Alfred Lichtwark and PeterJessen, Deutsche Kunsterziehung (Leipzig: deutschen Stadt 1 (1949):188. Teubner, 1908), 155-57. 53. Fritz Schumacher, "Rede zur Grundung des Deutschen Werk- 49. Henry van de Velde, "Kunst und Industrie," Suddeutsche Monatshefte bundes," in Kurt Junghanns, Der Deutsche Werkbund Sein erstes Jahrzehnt 7.1 (1910): 88. (see n. 9), 141.

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sense of purpose into a principle of visual culture. No one wanted is a matter of creating an organic life, of harmonizing, thanks to to notice that this aesthetic that aimed to resolve modernity unto a special education; the country is its inhabitants; to create with rhythm itself and heal political divisiveness only expanded the potential a moral and aesthetic architectural identity for your house; to elevate rhythm to the height of a social institution and to prepare a new style that would for divisiveness. Instead, the call for discipline, unity, harmony, be the natural expansion, the authentic product of the soul of its and quality was understood as a plea for resistance and solidarity inhabitants [emphasis added].59 in the face of what was seen as a downward slide toward a

modernist distopia, especially since distopia might take root While the autocratic implications inherent in the design of within an all-too-susceptible, wealthy, upper-middle class. Karl Hellerau were carefully concealed behind its creator's infatuation Scheffler, while admitting that "the private house should of with the platitudes of visual culture, this was not the case with course be the expression of one's personality," warned that Theodor Fritsch's Die Stadt der Zukunft (The city of the future, "individualism does not mean one should express any old mood, 1896). Fritsch, a German arch-nationalist and author of the or expose uncultivatedness. That is shameful and vain."54 Schef- popular anti-Semitic handbook, Antisemiten-Katechismus (1891) fler, much like Osthaus, Muthesius, and Waentig, hoped that that claimed to wage "a war so as to preserve the ideal goods of German society, since it had the useful model of the aristocratic, our society," was one of the first to tap into cultural aesthetics and Prussian military, would escape the clutches of uncultivatedness subvert it to the cause of the right wing.60 Intentionally moderate and chaos, and evolve into "an organic whole" that "will repress in tone, his book laid the theoretical groundwork for Hellerau. the arbitrary and allow the simplicity and uniformity of the Even though the founders of Hellerau might not have agreed individual to evolve into an ideal type."55 with Fritsch's reactionary line and radical anti-Semitism, they Die vornehme Gastlichkeit der Neuzeit (Upscale entertaining in the could hardly have disagreed with his desire to put cultural modern age, 1909) exemplified the potential for compulsive- aesthetics into practice. Fritsch envisioned a society of modest ness.56 Etiquette was not simply a matter of good taste and garden cities that would blossom forth while the decaying decorum but a weapon for upper-middle-class purification. "The metropoli elsewhere would fall into disuse. The goal was to create higher the cultural development, the nobler its etiquette," so it "a strong sense of community nurturing the arts and crafts.. .so was explained, "but the improving standard of living has brought that in the span of a few decades it could develop into a new with it the danger in art and literature of a hyperculture and all artistic style." But even more than that, the community was to sorts of miscreations (Entartungen) .... [What we need] is an provide "the free undisturbed environment for the development aesthetic-spiritual understanding of culture."57 Learning how to of the German spirit, morals, and tastes, similar to that of properly set the table, it was assumed, would go a long way to medieval city life." In short, the new city was to produce "a protect society from Entartung. German life-art (Lebenskunst) and an artistically determined life The systemic reach of this theorizing can be seen in the ideas (kunstgestaltetes Leben)-in short, a true German culture."61 behind the creation of the new town of Hellerau in 1910 by Karl The political amorphousness of Wilhelmine cultural aesthetics Schmidt, the Dresden industrialist, in collaboration with August was in some sense its trademark. It was conservative but even Lux, Fritz Schumacher, Richard Riemerschmidt, Hermann Mu- when used by a reactionary it could hold onto the promise of thesius, , and others. Though generally dis- cultural harmony; it was pro-industrial but criticized capitalist cussed as "the first German garden city," Hellerau should not be excesses; it was not overtly political, but held out the promise of a lumped together with English reform efforts. It was not envi- meta-political purification. Given the heightened political situa- sioned in opposition to the large industrial city, but to the cultural tion in pre-World War I Germany, these ambiguities could be diversity of the city, diversity being one of the sore points for easily rehearsed as a legitimate theory of reform in anticipation of German visual culture proponents. Hellerau, something between a utopian outcome. Muthesius, for example, speaking to the a factory town, echt deutsches Dorf (a true German village), and a Werkbund just before the war and, of course, assuming a German cult headquarters, was meant to promote happiness, prayer, art, victory and new international markets for German goods, ex- and national unity in a highly controlled environment.58 As one of plained that only when Germans "come to master such things as its founders wrote: Clarity, Order, and Form" will they appear in the world "as a

54. K. Scheffler, "Das Landhaus," Moderne Kultur, E. Heyck, ed. (see n. 25), 1:207. 55. H. Waentig, Wirtschaft und Kunst (see n. 2), 414. 56. Richard Gollmer, Die vornehme Gastlichkeit der Neuzeit (Leipzig: J. J. 59. This passage, quoted in DeMichelis, "Modernity and Reform," Weber, 1909). 155, was part of the letter from Emile Jacques-Dalcroze to Wolf Dohrn. 57. See Wisbrenner, "Die moderne Geselligkeit," Illustrirte Zeitung DeMichelis cites Adolphe Appia, Oeuvres completes, ed. Bablet Hahn, vol. 3 3414 (3 December 1908): 1025. (Lausanne: Age d'homme, 1983). 58. For a discussion of Hellerau, see Marco DeMichelis, "Modernity 60. Theodor Fritsch, Antisemiten-Katechismus: Eine Zussamenstellung des and Reform, Heinrich Tessenow and the Institute Dalcroze at Hellerau," vischtigsten Material zum Verstdndiss derJudenfrage (Leipzig: Fritsch, 1891). Perspecta 26 (1992): 142-70. 61. Theodor Fritsch, Die Stadt der Zukunft (Leipzig: Fritsch, 1896), 7.

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nation worthy to be trusted."62 In Muthesius' speech, the word It should be clear by now that by the time the Werkbund was "reform" alternates between being a bland cliche of visual culture founded most of the theoretical work had been done. Though and an assertion of the latent heroic potential of the middle class. there were debates and differences of opinion, these involved Despite the pervasiveness of a paranoid moralism, misplaced merely questions of tactics; no one questioned or debated aestheticism, and hypocritical speculations, we are not dealing strategy. The consequence of the absence of critique and perhaps here with the radical right, which, though growing in strength, even of its impossibility is apparent in Albert Scheibe's article had not yet come to dominate German politics or the theories of "Das Kriegsschiff" in the WerkbundJahrbuch of 1915. Schiebe, cultural aesthetics. Rather what we have is an admittedly conser- accepting the thesis that a strong national unity must reflect itself vative but nonetheless modern theoretical principle of reform in a strong visual unity, portrayed the battleship as appealing to (which some Germans of the time might have understood as "our artistic sensitivity" in the same way other domestic and "liberal") that was based, on the one hand, on the awareness of the industrial objects do. inevitability of industrialization, and on the other, on the need to

educate the upper-middle class to the national duty to vaccinate [That the warship] creates a harmonious visual effect demonstrates Germany against the disease of international modernism in on the one hand that . . . our artistic sensitivity, our [national] will, anticipation of military victory and the promise of global hege- and material appearance conform to overarching laws, and on the other hand that the solution, though in some respects a subjective mony. To discuss these reform efforts without reference to their artistic product.. .has reached a high level of perfection.65 restrictive agenda and cultural paranoia-as I believe was fre- quently done-is to perpetuate the very myth of an autonomous The inability to differentiate between a beautiful machine and theory that Wilhelmine reformers assumed was within reach. The an instrument of death and mass destruction was symptomatic of Werkbund, instead of initiating a process, codified it and trans- a terrible blindness that made Form the foundation on which formed it into a jargon dangerously uncritical of a theoretical rested the historical and military legitimacy of the German nation. platform that bestowed immense political power on the forces of As an exhibition of German self-control, the aesthetically satis- art. fying battleship was supposed to convince opponents not only to Manfredo Tafuri and Francesco Dal Co recently wrote that run up the white flag, but now that Germany had mastered Form "the Werkbund championed no particular artistic language but and Order, to go out and buy A. E. G. arc lamps. only the principle of a reform ... on the basis of quality."63 This The promises of cultural aesthetics could only be fulfilled misunderstanding of the German scene-all the more amazing through a radical self-observation on the part of the bourgeoisie; given their Marxist critical perspective-treats emergent moder- but this translated into a confrontational stance vis-a-vis all nist theory as if it were untouched by the problematics of its opponents of harmony and order, whether real or imagined. pattern language. The theorists and practitioners of the visual Leipzig Museum director Richard Graul claimed that the newly- culture envisioned an art of life that rose above life itself. As a founded Werkbund would bring about "a new age.. .based on a result, they created a narcissistic delusion that art would protect common cultural need and be a leader of our national life.. .in the the upper-middle class from its love affair with modernist battle against Unkultur."66 This aggressive and self-conscious disharmony, disorderliness, and capriciousness, all of which were moralizing language of Werkbund discourse found a perfect target perceived as even more of a threat than a real war, even though the in the Expressionists of the Sturm. That the language used to possibilities of war were openly discussed from 1903 on. As attack Sturm artists bears strong similarity to that used by the Muthesius and others argued, if the internal dangers, which were Nazis a few decades later to attack entartete Kunst is no accident. to be solved by cultural aesthetics, could be surmounted, then the Werkbund member and sculptor Karl Gross wrote in his grandly external ones would take care of themselves. Georg Fuchs, friend titled article of 1906, "Unser Bediirfnis nach Aestheticher Kultur" of Peter Behrens and supporter of the Kunstgewerbe movement, (Our need for an aesthetic culture), that one finds in the work of explained outright in 1907 that "the power of war = the power of the Sturm artists "all the moanings and troubles of daily life the navy = the power of Form. Only out of this unity, which without artistic cleanliness"; the danger is that this "misguided constitutes culture itself, will there emerge a true political artistry will lock us in with it and send us into an agitated domain culture."64 that is abnormal, over-strained, sick, and perverse."67 Avenarius also felt that since art should reflect the inner life of its period, it 62. H. Muthesius, "Wo stehen wir?" Jahrbuch (Jena: Eugen Dieder- ichs, 1912), 25-26. 63. Manfredo Tafuri and Francesco Dal Co, (New 65. Albert Scheibe, "Das Kriegsschiff," WerkbundJahrbuch (Munich: F. York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc, 1986), 93. Bruckmann, 1915): 65. 64. Georg Fuchs, "Der Kaiser und die Zukunft des Deutschen 66. Richard Graul, "Neue Organisationen zur F6rderung von Kunst Volkes," Kunstwart 19.17 (1906): 240. Fuchs collaborated with Behrens on und Gewerbe," Kunstgewerbeblatt 19.3 (1908): 41. the famous festival performance Das Zeichen that opened the 67. Karl Gross, "Unser Bedurfnis nach Aestheticher Kultur," Kunst- Kiunstlerkolonie Exhibition in 1901. wart 19.14 (April 1906): 57-58.

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 16 JSAH 53:1, MARCH 1994 had to tend to its cultural, moral, and political mission and that tion of life, an affirmation which, though it recognized both good thus Sturm artists were a "dangerous disease": and evil, is at its best in the form of creative energy bursting into expression and molding past and present experiences into a [Radical artists] feel themselves as representatives of decay; they are higher, more spiritual unity and order. Art was essential, as it probably proud of it and feel themselves, along with their related unified mankind's striving for a spiritual expression and for a life hysterical friends, as "better" than the healthy ones. They need to cleansed of anguish. In his influential book, Geistige Strdmungen der whip up exaggeration, shrillness, rawness, and sensationalism. The Gegenwart (Spiritual movements of the present, 1904), Eucken main danger for culture is that it might catch [like a disease].68 explained that art in this sense was particularly important for the "Nordic Man" as opposed to the "Mediterraneans": This language could easily have been drawn from Karl Scheffler's Der Deutsche und seine Kunst (The German and his art, Germans find it difficult to create a path from the inner to the outer; 1907). Scheffler blasted the "idiots and the unworthy" for it is easy for them to refrain from articulating things that are deep in challenging the high ideals of harmony and modesty and for their soul. Art becomes, therefore, an essential aspect in his attempt undermining with their "pathological weaknesses" the very spirit to find himself, control his possessions, and close the gap in his of life and nation.69 The Sturm responded by attacking Scheffler, essence.75 asking disdainfully, '"Who is this Karl Scheffler? An industrious office worker.. .a friend of Kunstgewerbe?"70 And Richard Dehmel Given the importance of art for the Nordic Man, the aesthetic sneered: domain takes "its place in world history.. .and carries with it a spiritual necessity based on the concept of permanence." In Potentates, financial barons, ministers, parliamentarians, political contrast, bad modernity is rooted in and promotes "a fluctuating parties, congresses, demagogues, university professors, teachers, of moods, a superficial moving from extreme to extreme, and a literary groups, and newspapers all swing the word "culture" around sadness of life."76 in their mouths and are always ... looking for "true culture."71 Karl Schmidt, one of the founders of Hellerau and creators of the Werkbund, let it be known on which side the Kunstgewerbe Klopfer, standing on the same side of the cultural divide as stood in Eucken's equation. In 1912 he pointed out that, Gross, Avenarius, and Scheffler, pointed out in raptured self- following "the single plan of an indivisible totality," the German praise that because of the Kunstgewerbe and the Werkbund, "indu- Kunstgewerbe now exhibited a "uniformity of style" and a "goal- stry and art have found themselves.... The development of space oriented communality moving towards a single image."77 ... the use of glass and steel, the reduction of ornamentation, and Sturm artists were identified as dangerous not only because the use of historical forms have all united into a true art ... an their art was considered outside the historical determinism that architecture that is modern in the good sense."72 And "good visual culture claimed for the upper-middle class, and was thus modernity," so the theory went, resulted in an "ethical.. . and antithetical to its ideal of a happy, post-industrial modernity, but healthy culture that forms our life in a way that is simultaneously also because of their alleged skepticism towards the Wilhelmine happy, healthy, moral, and meaningful."73 cultural project itself. Werkbund supporter Karl Joel, professor of Klopfer derived the concept of "good modernity" from the philosophy at the University of Basel and famous for his book, philosopher Rudolf Eucken, one of Germany's most illustrious Nietzsche und die Romantik (1905), saw all forms of skepticism as professors, who had received the Nobel Prize for literature in equivalent with the growing internationalism and urbanity of 1908.74 Eucken's philosophy centered on man's relentless affirma- society, and ultimately with the degeneration of German national-

68. F. Avenarius, "Gesundheit!" Kunstwart 12.13 (1899): 3; idem, ism. In his Seele und Welt, published in 1912 by the same company "Perversismus," Kunstwart 21.11 (1908): 267. and with the same typography as the Werkbund Jahrbiicher, he 69. K. Scheffler, Der Deutsche und seine Kunst, eine notgedrungene Streit- wrote that a "full organic understanding of life and art" is schrtfi (Munich: R. Piper, 1907), 56-58. 70. Der Sturm 87 (November 1911): 692. destroyed by the skeptic, who "tears the spirit of life into 71. Richard Dehmel, "Nationale Kulturpolitik," Der Sturm 27 (Septem- fragments and flutters about in inconsequential fickleness."78 The ber 1910): 211-12. groundwork for what can only be described as a kind of 72. Paul Klopfer, "Kunstgewerbe undArchitektur," in Schaffen und Schauen, Ein Fiihrer ins Leben, ed. Alfred Giesecke (Leipzig: B. T. Teubner, 1909), 1:159. 73. W. Schumann, "Ueber den Diirerbund," Durerbundflugschrifi (1919): Lebensanschsuung (Leipzig: vib Viet, 1907); and Konnen wir noch Christen 34. sein? (Leipzig, 1911). 74. Very little recent critical work has been done on Rudolf Christoph 75. RudolfEucken, Geistige Stromungen der Gegenwart (Leipzig: vib Viet, Eucken (1846-1926), professor of philosophy at Jena from 1874 until his 1909), 341. death. The essential thrust of his work centered on the importance of life 76. Ibid. and life experiences. His principal works are, among others: Geschichte und 77. Karl Eugen Schmidt, "Die Miinchener Kunstgewerbler in ," Kritik der Grundbegriffe der Gegenwart (Leipzig: vib Viet, 1878); Der Sinn und Kunstchronik 22.1 (October 1910): 11-15. Wert des Lebens (Leipzig: Quelle & Meyer, 1908); Grundlinien einer neuen 78. Karl Joel, Seele und Welt (Jena: Eugen Diederich, 1912), iii.

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 JARZOMBEK: THE AESTHETICS OF CULTURE IN THE WILHELMINE PERIOD 17 skeptophobia (xenophobia is much too narrow a concept for this) becoming increasingly clarified."83 Taken out of context these had been already laid by Friedrich Nietzsche, who, when drawing statements might appear harmless and unproblematical; while in on the premises of neo-Kantian aesthetics, argued that the arts, actuality they disguise their theoretical, national, and economic having to fulfill the highest possible mandate, could not embody a agendas behind a discourse of normalcy. negative outlook: Kunstchronik took up the cause of the Werkbund against the Sturm in its "Berlin Notizen" of August 1912.84 The first of its Pessimism in the arts?. .. The essence of the arts is its capacity to notes dealt with a recent exhibition of Sturm artists. According to bring existence to completion, to bring it into fulfillment; art is the anonymous author, their work "knows no respect," and is essentially an affirmation, a blessing, a celebration of life .... What characterized by "wild ecstasy," "a doctrinaire strudel of ," does pessimism mean in the arts? Is that not a contradiction in terms? "rawness and barbarism," and "meaningless color eccentricities." Yes.79 This tirade against modern painting was followed by a note reporting that Paul Schultze-Naumburg, already famous for his The dispute between the Kunstgewerbe and the Sturm paralleled Kulturarbeiten and his struggle against the Entartung des Volkes and drew strength from the long struggle in German politics (degeneration of the nation), had just finished his designs for the against the socialists who rejected the principles of Kaiser garden of the Potsdamer palace for the crown prince, with, of Wilhelm's imperial government. They opposed Weltpolitik, milita- course, "the full and proper authorization" of the imperial rization, feudal hegemony of the aristocracy, and governmental family.85 The Kdnigliche akademische Hochschule der bildenden Kiinste hypocrisies. As a result, socialists had been portrayed for decades zu Berlin also joined in by publishing "Die kranke deutsche Kunst" by the Kaiser, as well as by liberals, as internal enemies. A political (The sick German art), in which the authors, elaborating on commentator in Avenarius's Kunstwart explained: Julius Langbehn's critique of decadent art and on Avenarius's discussion of "artistic sickness" and "spiritual contagion," warned The Social Democratic workers are separated from the other citizens against "the false paths of modern art."86 In 1912 a traveling by a clearly perceivable gap ... .They threaten the spiritual total- ity.... One would hardly think that we belong to the same age or exhibition was organized from Berlin to demonstrate how art even to the same race.80 should function in a morally correct, industrial context. Stdtten der Arbeit (Work places) toured Germany, proclaiming that "futurists, With this oppositional discourse in mind, Max Seliger, director cubists, and expressionists... believe shortsightedly that what of the Konigliche Akademie fir graphische Kunst und Buchgewerbe in constitutes originality is transformation of creativity into a chaotic Leipzig, reminded Werkbund members in his address before the heap of geometric things."87 Artur Fuirst, who authored the assembly in 1913 that "good, pure spiritual actions flow from the exhibition catalogue, went on to explain that impressionism, once same source as concrete, good (artistic) actions," with the rejected as French, had now found itself in the context of German implication that good actions are not contaminated by skepticism, national modernity because it had finally begun to depict workers and certainly not by socialist revolutions or international immoral- and factories. It was thus the "true art of the modern age, ity.81 The Werkbund promoted its message of cultural correctness

through a telltale jargon. Thuro Balzer, for example, explained 83. Robert Breuer, "Alfred Grenander," Moderne Bauformen 12.6 (1913): the work of Paul Korff by pointing out that he "harmoniously 273. 84. "Berlin Notizen," Kunstchronik 23.37 (30 August 1912): 577. united new architectural thoughts with old forms" and that he 85. Kratzsch, Kunstwart und Direrbund (see n. 22), 125. nurtured not only "happy feelings" among the craftsmen, but also 86. Albrecht Haupt, Die kranke deutsche Kunst (Leipzig: H. A. Ludwig, "correct and unpompous" behavior in the inhabitants of his 1911), 18. houses.82 Robert Breuer, author and critic, wrote that his Werk- [Modern art] has totally destroyed our inheritance, our education and the foundation of our cultural development; it has ripped open a chasm bund colleague, Alfred Grenander, was an architect "conscious of between us and the time of our fathers. the continuity of stylistic developments... he is not a stormy Haupt, an architect who favored a German Renaissance style, published revolutionary, but builds as a true service to a culture that is the work anonymously. He was also co-founder of the Hannover Kunstgewerbemuseum and a professor at the Technische Hochschule in Hannover. He authored several important books on architecture and architectural history. This particular work, quite negative in its outlook, is a caustic critique of German society and suggests that German art, in its 79. Friedrich Nietzsche, "'Umwertung aller Werte'. Fragmente zur desire for modernity, vacillates between empty newness and wasted 'Psychologie der Kunst,' " Die Insel 12 (September 1901): 248. antiquitarianism. Haupt was not anti-progressive; he demanded a sense of 80. Julius Ferdinand Landsberg, "Die volkische Bedeutung der sozial- moderation. The irony, however, is that the almost nihilistic picture he demokratischen Ideale," Kunstwart 27. 3 (November 1913): 199. portrayed suggests anything but moderation as a resolution to all the ills 81. Max Seliger, "Die Schulmassige Pflege der Technik zur Forderug that he feels were infecting German society. See an editorial comment on unserer Gewerbe- und Industriekunst, Referat auf der Werkbundtagung this work in Der Sturm 99 (February 1912): 787. See also: Ferdinand vom 6.Juni 1913," Kunstgewerbeblatt 25.6 (March 1914): 119. Avenarius, "Perversismus," Kunstwart 21.11 (March 1908): 265-69. 82. Thuro Balzer, "Architekt Paul Korff," Moderne Bauformen 12.5 87. Artur Furst, Das Reich der Kraft (Berlin: Vita Deutsches Verlagshaus, (1913): 241. 1912): 18.

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[evoking] the underlying inspirational and ethical quality of the modern industry. This applied knowledge and applied art will reach far modern factory."88 and wide into all aspects of cultural production.. .and produce a new totality. This new totality will be a new culture [emphasis added].90 That the Wilhelmine theories of harmony and beauty, of which the Kunstgewerbe and many Werkbund members were leading Fuchs went on in his highly nationalistic and militaristic book, protagonists, embodied autocratic ideals based on a passion for Der Kaiser, die Kultur und die Kunst, to envision an artistically conceptual abstractions, is evidenced in the final works I will formed, racially pure, and culturally strong society able to mention, Deutsche Form (1907) and Der Kaiser, die Kultur und die conquer its enemies as it understands its own "rhythm," "form," Kunst (Emperor, culture, and art, 1904) by Georg Fuchs, a noted "harmony," and "life-design," in short, Lebensgestalt. One can playwright and theorist of the theater.89 As a defender of the only shudder when reading some passages that eagerly envision a Kunstgewerbe, Fuchs, like so many others, felt that industry should poetically mechanized extermination of die Anderen (the others), be subsumed into a totalizing aesthetic that would define the as he himself calls them, on behalf of "beauty." "Others," in essence of post-industrial German society. The Kunstgewerbe, as which he includes Viehjuden (beastly Jews) and Huguenots, do vanguard of this new transformation, would create what he called not fit into the harmonious whole. "They have to be understood a "new unity" that was to be industrial, yet God-fearing; as foreign objects."91 Fuchs was no political reactionary, yet his conscious of the past, yet able to make its own type of monu- heroically aestheticized world foreshadows the Holocaust: ments; spiritualized, disciplined, and ordered, yet productive and active, in short, a new entity groomed for its role of world leadership. Not all men who belong to the classification German are part of the living members of our race, its rhythms, and its ennobled spirit; not all are capable because of their inadequacies, to assist in the designing We should be educated enough to know that man is entitled to live of the spiritual.92 and to have honor; only then can he control life by stamping the imprint of power, stamping his acceptance of God, and that means: beauty. Who is it that infests our chambers and tears our children from our arms. It is the Entartete. We have now recognized him and we know [So today] when we look at a new work of art, we don't ask any more, his origin and we know his goals. We can not get rid of him, but we is it good or bad? We think of other things. With passionate and almost can make him ineffective. We can not prevent that he propagates irrepressible skepticism we ask if the creator of the work was one of us, of himself among our masses but we can exterminate the dens out of noble blood and proud spirit. which he crawls.... We can now direct our weapons in the right direction and create a new positive organization based on an attack. It comes down to the active life; the businessmen, engineers, architects, We will give him culture. We make him rhythmical, ... and create politicians,journalists, doctors, and educators can do infinitely more than the individual artist, . . for it is they who can regulate the incredible massive new foundations for the swarming and chaotic masses in life-energies of the world. which we sink our pipes so that the poisonous gasses can be removed.93 This means a new culture; it means the possibility that the internalized form principles in society will emerge into consciousness. Modern architecture is often portrayed as a response to What we need is not a mere transformation of the Kunstgewerbe, but a industrialization and to industrialized culture. The A. E. G. heightened aesthetic capacity that will find parallels in the development of Turbine Factory by Peter Behrens has become the monument that supposedly proclaimed the new direction. Nikolaus Pevsner, 88. Ibid. in arguing that this architecture was "pioneering," implied that its 89. Georg Fuchs (1868-1949) was in his early days friends with Peter Behrens, Stefan George, and Karl Wolfskehl. He got a degree in philology modernity was still nascent and glorified the civilizational struggle and history at Giessen, then edited the Kunstchronik, and in 1901 worked of the early modernists.94 Here for the first time, Pevsner claimed, with Behrens at the Darmstadt Kunstlerkolonie. In 1904 he moved to "the imaginative possibilities of industrial architecture were Munich where he became the art editor for the Munchner Neusten Nachrichten and the artistic advisor to the city government. He was visualized."95 In reality, by the end of the first decade of the instrumental in theater reform and in promoting Volksfestspiele, some of twentieth century, German modernism had already been seasoned which were performed in front of thousands. After the war he joined the in a battle of its own making. And the "imaginative possibilities" separatist movement in Bayern and was arrested and sent to prison. He was released in 1927. He remained in Munich during the war, but little is had already expressed themselves in a blind and protracted battle known about him during these years. Der Kaiser, die Kultur und die Kunst against imagination. appeared in three editions, the first two were published anonymously. The title of the third edition in 1906, where Georg Fuch's authorship was 90. Georg Fuchs, Deutsche Form (Munich: Georg Muller, 1907), 398, recognized, was entitled Der Kaiser und die Zukunft des deutschen Volkes (the 404,411-13. emperor and the future of the German nation). For Fuch's summary of 91. Fuchs, Der Kaiser, 24, 37. his position, see "Der Kaiser" (see n. 64), 236-41. For a discussion of 92. Fuchs, Der Kaiser, 47. Fuchs at the Darmstadt Kiinstlerkolonie Exhibition, see Anderson, "Peter 93. Fuchs, Der Kaiser, 39. Behrens," (see n. 14), 103-34. Lenz Prutting's book, Die Revolution des 94. Nikolaus Pevsner, An Outline of European Architecture (Baltimore: Theaters, Studien uber Georg Fuchs (Munich: J. Kitzinger, 1971), though a Pelican, 1970), 401. good analysis of Fuchs's theories, does not place him in any kind of 95. Pevsner, Pioneers of Modern Design from William Morris to Walter discursive-theoretical context. Gropius (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1960), 204.

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Similarly, Reyner Banham in Theory and Design in the First the principles of a new communal purpose that they, as recipients Machine Age (1960) saw the history of modernism as a linear of the benefits of industrialization and Weltpolitik, could now advancement in which successive generations pass the baton of define. There was, however, no motivation and, given the progress on to the next. It is ironic that 1912 is the year in which oppositional character of the discourse, no outlet to explore the Banham argued that one can see a "cultural revolution" that dangers of such radical bourgeois moralism. The Enlightenment initiated advanced modernity. Industrialization was no longer project, as Adorno and Horkeimer articulated so well, was thus viewed with incomprehension but "accepted and understood," doomed to turn against itself and transform the quest for human he claimed, and writers "no longer treated the world of techno- emancipation into a system of oppressions. The oppositions it logy with hostility or indifference." One can now differentiate created to solve its internal crisis with industrialization were, of "the men from the boys."96 This mythologizing of progress course, meant in the long run to resolve themselves into an covers the tracks of a different and more tragic cultural revolu- enlightened transcendence. But the very abstractions that defined tion, one in which the same progressive reformers-namely those this transcendence based as it was on cultural masochism and on who so insightfully accepted industrialization-openly and suc- bourgeois ambivalence about its identity were waiting to be filled cessfully tested the power of a self-legitimizing stereotyping and with flesh and blood. The artists of Der Sturm were in a sense the scapegoating. In looking at the aestheticization of the machine first victims. and the factory we have neglected to observe the aestheticization In 1919, Karl Ernst Osthaus continued the same old themes as of theory itself, and the relationship between theory, critique, and if Wilhelmine cultural aesthetics were not implicated in the jargon. tragedy of war. In fact, the war, if anything, could now help reveal In Wilhelmine cultural aesthetics, the future world was to be all the more clearly the difference between good and bad, thus without artifice even if it had to be initiated as a self-conscious allowing for the ultimate and true "liberation" of the German strategy in the moralized framework of bourgeois discourse. To spirit from its lethargy, fickleness, and banality.97 The Werkbund, accomplish this it had to set up a boundary between true art and Osthaus hoped, would continue to lead the way in a grand false art, which became an opposition between forces of affirma- celebration of rhythmic gymnastics, theater, architecture, and the tion and forces of negation, and between participation and arts. But the pathos of Osthaus's writings had long since rung exclusion. Thus Wilhelmine cultural aesthetics, though it preached hollow, at least in the context of a quasi-liberal enlightened liberation from within the context of the upper-middle-class idealism. It was now taken over by those who were not shy to social order, could perceive other forms of liberation, whether exploit the politics of aesthetics in a direct way. Ernst Juinger and, socialist or Sturm expressionist, only as a stereotypical negative in France, Robert Brasillach, among others, promoted it in the that, like the influence of "Parisian sexuality" and "Jewish context of an emergent fascism, as did in Mein Kampf capitalism," threatened the self-enclosed domain of a national, (1925): "I began to examine carefully the names of all the creators cultural morality. Defenders of visual culture created this argu- of unclean products in public and artistic life."98 "This cleansing ment in an attempt to force the upper-middle class to internalize of our culture must be extended to all fields. Theater, art, literature, cinema, posters, and window displays must be cleansed 96. Reyner Banham, Theory and Design in the First MachineAge (London: Architectural Press, 1960), 11-12. Banham, though he noticed the of all manifestations of our rotting world and placed in the service connections between industry and the aesthetic movement, argued that of a moral, political and cultural idea."99 As history came to prove, the architects of the so-called First Machine Age were members of an elite the more powerfully the oppositional language was expressed, the who designed for the few, and it was only in later decades with mass marketing that the aesthetic had a direct impact on the middle class more politically eloquent and lethal it grew. Lebenskunst became (10-11). For Banham, the Werkbund debates were highly theoretical and Toteskunst. personal, could be reduced to one or two texts, and were untouched by cultural discourse. In reality, the so-called machine aesthetic emerged in the context of Lebenskunst that governed all aspects of life, even that of the 97. K. E. Osthaus, "Deutscher Werkbund," Das Hohe Ufer 1.10 machine-especially the machine-as its aesthetisized format was seen as (October 1919): 237-45. embodying self-control and awareness. The aestheticized machine was a 98. See Herf, Reactionary Modernism (see n. 2); and David Carroll, symbol of the coming of age of the upper-middle class that could control "Literary Fascism or the Aestheticizing of Politics: The Case of Robert not only the economic means of industrial prosperity, but also the Brasillach," New Literary History 23 (1992): 691-726. Adolf Hitler, Mein environment around them, whether that be the products made by the Kampf, trans. Ralph Manheim (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1943), 58. machines and purchased, or the machines themselves. 99. Hitler, Mein Kampf (see n. 98), 255.

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