CONTENTS 8 RonaldS.Lauder Preface 10 Renée Price Foreword DADA AND STREET LIFE 14 BERLIN METROPOLIS Art,Culture,andPoliticsBetweentheWars Olaf Peters 36 ART AND ANTI-ART IN BERLIN AROUND 1920 Dada and the Novembergruppe Janina Nentwig 58 PLATES I ARCHITECTURE, THEATER, AND FILM 114 MODERN ARCHITECTURE IN 1920s BERLIN Leonhard Helten 136 BABELSBERG/BABYLON Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” Reinterpreted Jürgen Müller 162 PLATES II THENEWWOMAN,FASHION,ANDPOLITICS 246 “THE RHYTHM OF OUR TIME IS JAZZ” Popular Entertainment during the Weimar Republic Sharon Jordan 274 THE NEW WOMAN IN 1920s BERLIN Dorothy Price 294 BERLIN AS A CITY OF FASHION Adelheid Rasche 311 PLATES III 370 Checklist 388 Selected Bibliography 394 Index 400 Photograph and Copyright Credits Hannah Höch, Cut with a Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany, 1919–20, photomontage and collage with watercolor. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie. © 2015 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn DADA AND STREET LIFE ø BERLIN METROPOLIS ø ART AND ANTI-ART IN BERLIN AROUND 1920 ø PLATES I BERLIN METROPOLIS ART, CULTURE, AND POLITICS BETWEEN THE WARS Olaf Peters MYTHOS BERLIN “Weimar was Berlin, Berlin Weimar.”1 That was Weimar in 1919 and moved in the mid-1920s 1. The clock at the Bahnhof howthehistorianEricWeitzintroducedthe to Dessau. An icon of modern architecture Zoo, Berlin, a popular chapteronBerlininhislaudablestudyofthe (Neues Bauen) wasrealizedintheensembleof meeting point, 1935. Photo: 2 Friedrich Seidenstücker. Weimar Republic. The statement is both accu- Bauhaus building and master houses. Not until From: Die Metropole. rate and inaccurate. It is accurate because Ber- 1932 did the institution move, briefly, to Berlin, Industriekultur in Berlin im lin,asthecapitalofPrussiaandGermany,as owing to political developments, but it had no in- 20. Jahrhundert (Munich, the industrial and cultural center, and by its size fluence there.4 The outstanding painters of the 1986), p. 191 alone, stood out among Germany’s other cities WeimarRepublicdidnotliveinBerlin,oratmost [Fig.1].Inthe1920s,GreaterBerlin,including did so only briefly: the Bauhaus masters Josef its numerous recently incorporated areas (and Albers, Lyonel Feininger, Vasily Kandinsky, and twotothreehundredthousandexiledRussians) Paul Klee were tied to the institution in Weimar had a population of over four million residents. In andtheninDessau.MaxBeckmann—proba- terms of area, Berlin was the second largest city bly the most important figurative painter of the intheworld,afterLosAngeles.3 Forthatrea- time, along with Klee—lived in Frankfurt am son,comparingBerlintothecoreoftheRuhr Main from 1915 onward and, after he was dis- region is more appropriate than comparing it to missed from his teaching position in Frankfurt otherGermanmetropolises.Butthestatement in 1933 by the National Socialists, only came to is also inaccurate with regard to art, because themetropolisthatpromisedanonymityforfour numerouscrucialachievementsoftheWeimar years before going into exile in Amsterdam.5 era were produced and worked out in other cit- iesandregionsinGermanyandradiatedfrom Bycontrast,itshouldberememberedthatthe thereacrosstheentireGermanReich.Several most prominent painters in Berlin during this examples will underscore that, since the myth of period were probably Lovis Corinth and Max Berlin,whichhasoftentakenonalifeofitsown Liebermann. Both of them had successful andbeenconfusedwithreality,shouldnotbe careers in imperial Germany before the First reproduced uncritically here, even against the World War and could be regarded as represen- backdropofthecurrententhusiasmforthecity. tativesofanearlierera.ThetributeintheBerlin Secession, the burial of Lovis Corinth in 1925, The Bauhaus—the all-but-unparalleled sym- andthegreatposthumousexhibitionsinthe bolofthemodernist1920s—wasfoundedin Nationalgalerie and the Akademie der Künste 14 BERLIN METROPOLIS in Berlin in 1926 were official events and tes- Max Horkheimer, and Siegfried Kracauer were tifiedtotherankofthepainter,whowasespe- partofthiscircle.Moreover,itshouldbenoted cially brilliant in his late work.6 Karl Hofer, who that the important German philosophers of the wasalsoresidentinBerlinandafamousrep- period—Ernst Cassirer, Martin Heidegger, and resentative of a younger generation, did indeed MaxScheler—taughtinHamburg,Freiburgim produce an important oeuvre, but today he has Breisgau, and Cologne, respectively. Neues been largely forgotten.7 In retrospect, George Bauen also demonstrated new possibilities in Groszseemsmorelikeapoliticaldraftsman themetropolisontheMainRiver,withmunici- and graphic artist than a significant painter,8 palarchitectErnstMay,theconceptfortheso- and Christian Schad, who did not arrive in Ber- called Frankfurt kitchen [Figs. 2 and 3] by Mar- lin until the spring of 1928, was an outstanding garete Schütte-Lihotzky, and the journal Das portraitistwholackedarelevantapproachto Neue Frankfurt.11 Other centers of modern ar- painting beyond that.9 chitecture included the central German cities MaxBeckmann’snewhome,Frankfurtam of Dessau and Magdeburg and such regional Main,was,moreover,anintellectualcenter centers as Celle, Duisburg, Kassel, Karlsruhe, oftheWeimarRepublic,withtheheadquar- Cologne, Nuremberg, and Stuttgart (the Weis- ters of the Frankfurter Zeitung and the Institut senhof housing development) [Fig. 4].12 für Sozialforschung (Institute for Social Re- search)10—andafter1945itseamlesslycon- Otto Dix, whose aggressive art sometimes tinued this tradition with its university and the made him the scandalous painter star of the Suhrkamp publishing house. Theodor Adorno, young republic, began his career as an artist OLAF PETERS 15 12. GEORGE GROSZ CostumedesignforKokotteVeronika,forIwanGoll’s“Methusalem,”1922 70 BERLIN METROPOLIS 13. GEORGE GROSZ Set design for the police station for Georg Kaiser’s “Side by Side”, 1923 14. GEORGE GROSZ Setdesignforthedistributionofthespiritfor“TheAdventures of the Good Soldier Schweik, 1928 PLATES 71 Placed in an abstract industrial landscape on terrain with cussed issues as different as inheritance law, the question a regular pattern, three well-dressed gentlemen appear of ownership, and economic goals to benefit the community. before the viewer, ruling over the industrial empire behind After the First World War, Rathenau worked on an agree- them. Nature has been completely repressed; nothing left mentbetweenbusinessleadersandworkerstoovercome recallsit.Anonymousarchitecture,gasometers,andbelch- the consequences of the defeat for the Reich by establish- ing smokestacks illustrate a checkerboard production facili- ing domestic peace and balance. Above all, however, as the ty, of which it is impossible to say what is produced there or German foreign minister Rathenau became a figure who by whom. Whereas in the print Newspaper Carriers (Work Is washeavilyattackedfromtheright,sincehebecamethe No Cause for Shame) of 1921, Georg Scholz still depicted symbol of the Erfüllungspolitiker (fulfillmentpolitician).For thehaggardnewspapercarrierwithhissonand,bycontrast, example, Rathenau participated in the Spa Conference and the pig-faced industrialist in an automobile with the top was largely responsible for negotiating with the Russians in down in front of a very similar industrial landscape, this con- Rapallo.Justafewweeksafterthetreatyofthatnamewas trastislackinginthepaintingpresentedhere.Thedialecti- signed, Rathenau was assassinated by members of the rad- cal composition of thesis and antithesis, capitalism and pov- ical right Organisation Consul.2 erty, above and below, ostentatiously juxtaposed with intent toexpose,whichtheKarlsruheartistGeorgScholzcould Next to Rathenau in the painting is the industrialist Hugo studysointenselyintheworkofhisfriendtheBerlinDadaist Stinnes, who lent his name to the Stinnes-Legien Agree- George Grosz, is avoided here in favor of a group portrait of ment between industry and unions, which Rathenau helped power. The calculating mind of the engineer and corpulence negotiate. Stinnes symbolized the war profiteer par excel- bursting at the seams come together in order to rule. lence;in1924,theyearhedied,hewasestimatedtohave an interest in more than 1,600 companies. The period of Initially in naturalistic and then in symbolist drawings and il- hyperinflation had made that possible. On the other side of lustrations and a few Cubo-Futurist paintings, Georg Scholz Rathenau is Frank A. Vanderlip, an American industrialist, took part in the “Erste Internationale Dada-Messe” in Ber- whoalsoadvisedtheAmericangovernmentonissuesof lin with his ironic, caricaturing painting Industrial Farmers reparations. Of Things to Come thus shows Scholz’s view of 1920.1 Themotifwassoimportanttohimthathealso ofthefuture,whichwouldbedeterminedbyafewpowerful produced a print of it. Of Things to Come is one of the most people from industry with no possibility of controlling them. importantworksofthisphase,anditexpandsitsgazeto ThispaintingwasalsoreworkedasaprintbyScholz,with national and international politics. The unusual title is an al- the more direct title TheLordsoftheWorld.Intheprint,the lusion to a famous book by the industrialist and politician same protagonists are standing on a tall railway bridge over Walther Rathenau, who is also portrayed in the center of this anidyllicvalleyandarebeingwatchedbyanuncompre- group of three. The son of the founder of AEG (Allgemeine hending farmer. A machine and a prostitute taking a picture Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft; General