CONTENTS

8 RonaldS.Lauder Preface

10 Renée Price Foreword

DADA AND STREET LIFE

14 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 , 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 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 (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- , 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. 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 Electricity Company), flank the group, making anonymous technology and bold Ernst Rathenau, Walther Rathenau was a modern manager eroticismtheattributesofpower.3 inindustryandultimatelyeitherheldacentralpositioninor was a member of the board of 130 companies. His book Olaf Peters Von kommenden Dingen (translated as In Days to Come) was published in 1917 and became a bestseller. In it he dis- Translated from the German by Steven Lindberg

1 On Scholz in general, see 3 See Siegmar Holsten, Georg Georg Scholz: Ein Beitrag zur Scholz: Gemälde-Zeichnungen- Diskussion realistischen Kunst, Druckgraphik,Beihefteder exh. cat. (Karlsruhe: Badischer Staatlichen Kunsthalle Karlsruhe Kunstverein, 1975) and see p. 47. 13 (Karlsruhe: Kunsthalle, 1990), 2 In general, see Shulamit Volkov, 22–23. Walther Rathenau: Weimar’s Fallen Statesman (New Haven, CT: YaleUniv.Press,2012).

76 BERLIN METROPOLIS 19. GEORGE SCHOLZ Of Things to Come, 1922

PLATES 77 28. HERMANN MAX PECHSTEIN AttheLantern,1919

29. KARL JAKOB HIRSCH Vote Spartakus, 1919

86 BERLIN METROPOLIS 30. JULIUS USSY ENGELHARD Bolshevism brings War, Unemployment, and Famine, 1919

PLATES 87 31. GEORGE GROSZ and JOHN HEARTFIELD The Middle-Class Philistine Heartfield Gone Wild (Electro-Mechanical Tatlin Sculpture), 1920 (reconstruction by Michael Sellmann 1988)

88 BERLIN METROPOLIS 32. JOHN HEARTFIELD and RUDOLF SCHLICHTER Prussian Archangel, 1920 (reconstruction by Angelika Mende 2004)

33. HANNAH HÖCH Dada Puppets, 1916 (reconstruction by Isabel Kork and Barbara Kugel)

PLATES 89 47. RAOUL HAUSMANN Untitled (View of the Kaiser-Friedrich-Strasse), October 1931

100 BERLIN METROPOLIS 48. RAOUL HAUSMANN Untitled (View of the Charlottenburg Platz from the Kaiser-Friedrich-Strasse), ca. 1931

49. RAOUL HAUSMANN Untitled (View of the Charlottenburg Train Station from the Kaiser-Friedrich-Strasse), ca. 1931

PLATES 101 Erich Mendelsohn, Ufa Premierenkino Universum, Berlin, 1925–28. Architekturmuseum der Technischen Universität Berlin ARCHITECTURE, THEATER, AND FILM

ø MODERN ARCHITECTURE IN 1920s BERLIN

ø BABELSBERG/BABYLON: FRITZ LANG’S “METROPOLIS” REINTERPRETED

ø PLATES II 5. Erich Mendelsohn, view oftheEinsteinTower, Potsdam, 1917–21

6.Detailfromaletterfrom Erwin Finlay-Freundlichs to Erich Mendelsohn with afrontalviewandfloor plan to an observatory, 1918. In Regina Stephan (editor), Erich Mendelsohn (Ostfildern, 1998, p. 31)

from Luckenwalde, and the department store (Alpine architecture). There were Mies van owner Salman Schocken enabled him to realize derRohe’smodelsofglasstowers,but his ideas for a new art of building. His magnum no buildings by him since before the war. opus was the Einsteinturm (Einstein Tower) in Thatcanbesaid,byandlarge,ofGropius Potsdam[Fig.5],builtfrom1920to1922—an aswell.InadditiontoMendelsohn,people observatory that, thanks to the new method mentioned above all Artur Korn, then Alfred of cast concrete, rises up like a monumental Gellhorn, Harry Rosenthal. Anyone who sculpture in the center of the garden designed wished to talk about Scharoun or Finsterlin byRichardNeutra.Writingin1969,JuliusPo- or the other masters of the Gläserne Kette sener emphasized Mendelsohn’s unique posi- (Glass chain), who Taut had united around tion in Berlin in the 1920s: him—Gropius and the Luckhardt brothers belongedaswell—hadtobeverywellin- Between1918and1924ErichMendel- formed. Mendelsohn was undisputedly the sohn was the most visible figure among the great man of the era: the most powerful modern architects—in Germany, at least. force of a revolutionary architecture.24 ThereweretheDutcharchitectsandthere was Wright. Le Corbusier was just con- TheEinsteinTowerinPotsdamlookslikea ducting his first experiments. In Germany, largeconcretesculpture,asubmarinecrash- was an architectural curiosity: ing forward under its own technological pow- the head of the municipal planning and er.However,itsappearancemerelysimulates building office in Magdeburg who had the themodernconstructiontechnologyofcast buildings painted; the author of strange lit- concrete, since the Einstein Tower was con- tletreatisessuchas“DieStadtkrone”(The structed using a technique combining bricks crown of the city) and Alpine Architektur andconcrete.TheideathatMendelsohnorigi-

120 MODERN ARCHITECTURE IN 1920s BERLIN nally planned to use pure concrete construction 7. Erich Mendelsohn, but then had to resort to a mixed technique in one of the first sketches for the Einstein Tower, 1920–21whenforcedtoreducecostsasthe 1918. In Regina Stephan inflation began is just as much part of the realm (editor), Erich Mendelsohn of art historical legend as its description as a (Ostfildern, 1998, p. 32) “white volume.”25 In fact, a bright ocher originally underscored the building’s plasticity, which was reducedbythelaterwhitepaintofthe1950s, following the brown-olive camouflage paint of the war years. In the sources, with the excep- tion of a single passage in a letter, Mendelsohn alwaysspokeofusingmixedconstruction.26 Themodernconstructiontechnologyofcast concrete was merely simulated with the ocher plaster; the curving and modeled forms, the streamlined windows, the projecting string- boards of the entry stairway—a classic example This unprecedented rise in Berlin began with of Expressionist architecture—are not just the his commission for the Einstein Tower, whose lucid expression of the new construction mate- function he soberly described in the mono- rial of concrete. Paul Virilio has spoken of it as graph on his buildings in 1930: an “unreal monument” and directed attention to adynamismthatdoesnottrytorepeattheex- The tower-telescope and astrophysical cesses of Jugendstil, which had fallen into disre- laboratory are used for the exploration of pute, and recognizes the risk of mere intellectu- spectroanalytic phenomena, especially 28 al games in the positions of the Elementarists: Einstein’s theory of relativity. 8. Erich Mendelsohn, perspective sketch of The reduction of all forms to simplest geo- How did Mendelsohn get this prominent as- theEinsteinTower, 1919. In Regina Stephan metrical principles is essentially the first re- signment? Through his future wife, Luise Maas, (editor), Erich Mendelsohn quirement for an original beginning. […] Yet MendelsohnmettheastrophysicistErwinFin- (Ostfildern, 1998, p. 33) when this graphic method in two dimen- sions is transported into space—without any real connection to the third dimension, the depth (without which a spatial organ- ism composed of the elemental forms of cube,sphere,andcylindercannotbecre- ated)—the dangers of intellectualized con- struction surface immediately.27

The combination of dynamics and function runs through Erich Mendelsohn’s entire oeuvre in ever new approaches; the well-organized of- fice of his Berlin period grew to be one of the largestinEurope,withmorethan40employ- ees at times.

LEONHARD HELTEN 121 66.LUDWIGMIESVANDERROHEFriedrichstrasse Skyscraper project, perspective of northeast corner, 1921

164 BERLIN METROPOLIS 67.LUDWIGMIESVANDERROHEGlass Skyscraper 68.LUDWIGMIESVANDERROHEFriedrichstrasse project, view of lost model, 1922 Skyscraperproject,model,Berlin-Mitte,1921

PLATES 165