Francesco Mazzaferro. Lights and Shadows of the Two Versions of the Anthology "Artists on Art" by Hans Eckstein (1938 and 1954). Part Two

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Francesco Mazzaferro

Lights and Shadows of the Two Versions of the Anthology "Artists on Art" by Hans Eckstein (1938 and 1954)

Part Two

[Original Version: April 2017 - New Version: April 2019]

On the Cassirer Family, please see: https://letteraturaartistica.blogspot.com/2019/11/cassirer-family.html

Fig. 13) Wilhelm Trübner, The Battle of the Giants, 1877

In the first part of this post, we raised many questions about the anthology "Artists on Art" by Hans Eckstein. We have interpreted the 1938 edition as the work of an 'internal emigre', that is an opponent who did not want to conform to Nazism. At the same time we set ourselves the question whether the author committed plagiarism, by not mentioning earlier anthologies he took inspiration from. We even asked ourselves whether he benefited - from a commercial point of view – from the fact that one of these was withdrawn from book market in 1937 since it was authored and published by Jews. Let us now inspect the two editions of 1938 and 1954 in search of the thrust ir contents.

Go back to Part One

The goal of the 1938 anthology

  

The introduction of the 1938 edition (see Part Three) explained in clear terms that Eckstein did not want to write either an alternative history of art or a biography of the artists. His purpose was to study the process of art creation, looking at it from the angle of artists creating art works and developing a formal art language to that aim (see for instance the letter by Alfred Rethel to the brother Otto, dated February 1844, which described in great detail the process leading him to draw a head, and the connexion between the final product and his initial idea) [14]. To this end, Eckstein did not hesitate to mention in his 'collection of letters' some passages which were not letters from the artists, but which he still saw useful to quote, as they reproduced the authors’ original perspective (Chodowiecki, Koch, Friedrich, Trübner, and Corinth). This was one of the most original aspects of the book compared to the other anthologies of Cassirer and Uhde-Bernays.

Fig. 14) Anselm Feuerbach, Young lost in thought, undated

Eckstein also wanted to document how nineteenth century artists were often in a state of dissent against society. It was the birth of the myth of the misunderstood artist, even when, as he said in the case of Feuerbach, it was a merely medical depression, and not a refusal from the society, causing alienation. The champion of this type was Wilhelm Trübner, whose writings Eckstein included in the anthology (while they were present neither in the Cassirer collection nor in that of Uhde-Bernays). For Trübner, what mattered was not the image, as required by the public, but the ideal content, expressed in the idealistic category of 'form', or art in pure form (today, we would speak of style). Also von Marees and von Hildebrand (both with a rich correspondence with the art critic Konrad Fiedler) belonged to this kind of artists, who could not be understood by the public, because they were looking for a higher form of art. Karl Stauffer-Bern was a misunderstood artist too: a restless painter who wanted to experience all techniques, never being happy with the results, he was locked up in prison in Italy for having an affair with a married woman, and then committed suicide for love. The theme of misunderstood artists was extraneous to Nazi culture, which instead saw artists as recognised interpreters of the culture of a people (Volk) and accused modern art to produce - for pure reasons of commercial speculation - an art which a common man could not appreciate.

Fig. 15) Adolf von Hildebrand, Monument to Bismarck, 1910. Bremen

In the two introductory pages dedicated to each author, Eckstein combined synthesis and judgment. He expressed reservations on the art of the Nazarenes (Cornelius, Schwind), but published two beautiful texts of them: as to the former, a 1814 letter, sent from Rome to the philosopher Joseph Görres in defence of the introduction of the fresco as a new genre for the development of a renewed German art [15]; as to the latter, an undated letter to a young unknown painter, about the existential difficulty of choosing an artistic orientation at the beginning of the career [16]. Against the Nazarenes, Eckstein took instead a clear position in favour of the romantic aesthetics of Runge, Friedrich and Carus, whose texts he published to document their programmatic closeness. He identified in Thoma and van Marees the great painters of the last part of the nineteenth century, as they best integrated the spiritual tradition of German art.

Fig. 16) Hans von Marées, Horse conductor with nymph, 1881-1883

Fig. 17) Hans Thoma, Under the lilac flowers, 1871

The section of the 1938 anthology "Artists on Art" devoted to architecture

Before reading the section of the anthology on architecture, one should remember that Eckstein was a big supporter of the movement Neues Bauen (New Construction), inspired by the principle of American rationalism and the Chicago school. Starting in 1910, Neues Bauen spread in the German world and in the Netherlands (and also elsewhere, such as in Russia and in the current Israel) a functional architectural design, linked to rationalist reasons, testing new materials and finally pursuing social purposes.

Fig. 18) The volume of Hans Eckstein, 1932 on New residential homes. Examples of contemporary single-family homes.

Fig. 19) The first issue of the magazine "New Frankfurt" 1926

Neues Bauen aimed at building beautiful and spacious houses for large population groups, in new green urban areas, preferably to be built on the outskirts of large cities (think of the project New Frankfurt, which developed around the architectural magazine published between 1926 and 1933). Suburbs, at that time, were indeed considered opportunities, not problems. Neues Bauen brought to the birth of the world of the Bauhaus, and from there to the German contribution to modern architecture. With the arrival of Nazism, Neues Bauen was blacklisted and condemned as Kulturbolschewismus (cultural Bolshevism).

Not surprisingly, Eckstein’s latest publications before the anthology were Neue Wohnbauten (New residential houses) and Die schöne Wohnung: Wohnräume der Gegenwart in 225 Abbildungen (The beautiful house: Living spaces from the present in 225 illustrations). They were gorgeously illustrated essays on how modernist architecture could revolutionize the way to live in single and multi-family homes. We already said that Nazi architects like Schultze-Naumburg certainly condemned those texts. Thus, for Eckstein, the Nazi era was also a period of forced inactivity on the subjects that really fascinated him. Not surprisingly, just after the war the author set up, in Munich in 1948, the circle Freunde de Neues Bauen (Friends of the Neues Bauen) and started an activity as a publicist on architecture and design which led him to become director of Die Neue Sammlung (New collection), the museum of the history of design, again in Munich between 1958 and 1964.

Fig. 20) Hans Eckstein, The beautiful house: Living spaces from the present in 225 illustrations, 1934

Let us now return to the 1938 anthology. While Eckstein was impeded to devote himself fully to the themes fascinating him, he was still the first to include a section on architecture (pages 238-261) in the genre of history of art sources anthology. He let precede it with a programmatic introductory text (pages 232-237), explaining that visual arts and architecture had different characteristics, requiring separate treatment. If it was true that architecture is an art, however, the problem of form, dominating visual arts, had different terms in its case: "The architect is not a free former in the same way as a painter or a sculptor. He is much less the creator of the forms in which he builds than their organizer and administrator. And in fact the forms of construction are not the work of one man only, but the result of thousands of well-established experiences and of the sensitivity of many generations. Only within narrow boundaries, the system of forms which we call style is flexible. Yet this residual space of freedom, which still remains available to the artistic talents in architecture, is what really counts: that is where we affirm the strength of personality." Even in a second sense, the architect had limited room for manoeuvre: in fact, he depended completely from the terms of the commission and was never free to create in an absolute manner: "Every construction is subjected to the constraints of the requirements resulting from the construction, from the material, the formal tradition and the technical capacity building of the time." These were the reasons why an architect depended more than any other artist from "meta-artistic, social, economic, technical, scientific and generally organizational factors".

Fig. 21) Heinrich Gentz, Goethe Theater, Bad Lauchstädt, 1802

Despite the diversity of visual arts and architecture, some of Eckstein's themes were common to both. In painting, he considered conceptual art as a "non-art": instead of being inspired by subjects related to nature, like Ekstein preferred, enlightened and romantic artists desired in fact to express abstract concepts. In the same vain, he condemned history artists, as they searched inspiration in a far away, no longer current world. Even in the case of architecture, there was a clear rejection of the forms of conceptual abstraction of neoclassical architects and of the historicism of romantic ones. Buildings – in Eckstein’s view – should not be the expression of moral concepts, but have a practical function, creating links between interiors and exteriors. Both for visual arts and architecture, artists should express themselves through the discovery of a formal language encoding all necessary links (spirit-nature for painting and sculpture, interior-exterior for architecture), in line with the needs of their times.

By collecting passages from letters (and especially programmatic texts) by German architects of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Eckstein did not give, on the whole, a positive assessment of that age. Although the architecture of previous centuries had already been directed by idealistic motives of abstract type, in this period programmatic reasons clearly prevailed on the real needs that architects should practice, more than at any other stage of the history of architecture. It was a logic which Eckstein disagreed with most clearly.

Fig. 22) Heinrich Gentz, The New Mint in Werder Square in Berlin, 1798-1800. Print by Leopold Ludwig Müller, 1800

Among the quoted architects, only very few attracted his sympathy. Heinrich Gentz (1766-1811) was an exponent of the so-called "revolutionary architecture", originating from Enlightenment. Writing in 1800 on the reasons that led him to build a simple and solemn facade for the New Mint in Berlin, rather than searching inspiration from Greeks, Romans or Ancient Egyptians, he explained that this was a public building, and that it should remain suitable for coin production. Gentz defined himself as "an architect who thinks about the character of the building according to the needs of the interior and its intended use." Also Ludwig Catel (1776-1810), an architect specialized in interior, wrote in 1802 about the need to ensure consistency between the use of the building and its features.

Fig. 23) Friedrich Gilly, Project for a monument to Frederick II, 1797

But these were exceptions. Everything else was characterized by a total lack of interest in the use of the buildings and an orientation to abstract aesthetic criteria, expression of the idea that architecture was a monument and not a functional object. The result, Eckstein wrote, was that many projects - often characterized by real gigantism, like those of Friedrich Gilly (1772-1800), a precocious genius who died at the age of only 28 - were never achieved because they were expensive and essentially useless. Eckstein criticised Gilly’s design of a Monument to Frederick II, because of the "stereometric use of simple shapes: spheres, cylinders, pyramids, cubes" to achieve "pure architectural fantasies of a monumental order". Considering the plans of Albert Speer for Berlin, presented in 1939, I wonder whether the criticism against the unfortunate Gilly was not actually addressed to the most famous regime architect, who was at that time finalizing a monumental project for Berlin as the "capital of the world".

Eckstein’s judgment on the XIX century was indeed severe (to the point that it seems he wanted to apologize to the reader, because he wrote on an architectural era that seemed so negative). It was true that neoclassicism did not arise merely a task of preservation, and wanted to actually identify a new formal language for modern times. And yet that ambition failed, not because it referred itself to the distant past, but "because it refused to consider a restructuring and a re-foundation of that language, which would be in line with the broader needs. In this way, it did not create a new convention which would be full of vitality. There was no lack of talents worthy of attention, but no formal system was created, which would be binding and have a real tradition. Without such a system, even talented architects were able to rely solely on their personality, on their own subjective feelings. Yet any form of arbitrariness is a violation of all the supreme principles of any architectural form."

Eckstein even disliked Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781-1841), the greatest architect in early nineteenth century Berlin. While Schinkel tried to overcome neoclassicism, he however continued to refer to meta-artistic concepts. Schinkel wrote, for example, that buildings had to produce the result of shaping a moral ideal, more than satisfy a material necessity: "Buildings must arouse deep feelings or even create moods that are the basis of higher moral tendencies, which lead to moral points of view, and from which they can draw their own moral expressions origins." Repeating three times the term 'moral' in a single sentence was certainly not accidental. For Schinkel, architecture had a symbolic and educational value, rather than a functional one; it was not an object, but the materialization of an idea.

It should be noted here that Eckstein thus provided a diametrically opposed interpretation of Schinkel’s architecture to that which Else Cassirer had given in her previous anthology of artists’ letters 1913; in that collection, Schinkel was represented by numerous letters from Italy and reports to the authorities on the progress of his works of Berlin (e.g. the Concert Hall and the Altes Museum), which instead revealed a highly rationalistic approach, focusing on the choice of materials, the use of rooms inside buildings and even safety rules against accidents. Eckstein did not deny that Schinkel combined "a spiritual dimension with a consideration of concrete problems" (as testified in a letter to King Maximilian II of Bavaria 1834), but saw them in a permanent conflict. In short, Eckstein shared contemporary criticism against Schinkel. For instance, there were those who stated that his Concert Hall on Gendarmenmarkt square in Berlin, one of the most monumental sites of the city, was a pure expression of theatricality, based on “buildings placed on gigantic plinths and enormous stairways without any practical purposes, connected to monstrous and totally unnecessary colonnade spaces". In general, Eckstein saw elements of permanent eclecticism in the work of Schinkel, contrasting his neo-Gothic visions (Babelsberg Castle) with his futuristic plans for a department store, which led him to the conclusion that even the greatest architect of the early nineteenth century did not have his own style. Schinkel also designed a pavilion in the park of the Charlottenburg Castle, which is now considered an anticipation of Neues Bauen. Eckstein made no reference to it in his text on the architect, but this was the only building reproduced in the eight pictures included in the anthology.

Fig. 24) Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Concert Hall, Berlin, 1818-1821

Fig. 25) Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Ludwig Persius and Johann Heinrich Strack, Babelsberg Castle, 1815

Fig. 26) Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Department store project, 1827

Fig. 27) Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Pavilion in the park at Charlottenburg Castle, 1821-1825

Eckstein opposed equally firmly to historicism dominating the second half of the nineteenth century. In fact, historicism confirmed the classical conception that every building "can acquire a 'character' only thanks to the 'dress' it wears, and thus independently of its functions." So, according to Gottfried Semper (1803-1879), the architect had to "learn from all times" (1845), in fact respecting specific conventions, whose 'subliminal' meaning was at that time as evident as today it has become difficult to grasp. Eckstein noted: "all style battle turned into battles on the choice of the historical traditions to be adopted." In fact, in this blog we have already seen in a review on the architecture around the Ring in Vienna in those years the clash between supporters of the neo-Baroque style (adherent to the Habsburg rule) and the neo-Renaissance style (sign of political inclination in favour of national autonomies in the Empire).

Fig. 28) Jacques Ignace Hittorff, Gare du Nord, Paris, 1861-1864.
One of the iron pillars bearing the roof on the tracks, in the form of a Greek column.

That was not all: industrialization - Eckstein wrote - required architects to build new types of buildings, and they did not know how to do it, if not by historicising them, i.e. taking forms from the past, according to rules of thumb that became rigid. Fluting was borrowed from Greek columns to build the poles on which light lamps, all of Roman origin in term of design, would rest. From this historicist period derived aesthetic conventions that eventually spread throughout Europe and survived for decades.

Fig. 29) Gaetano Ratti, Central Station, Bologna, 1871-1876 (1900 postcard)

Eckstein wrote, with a sense of horror, that architects-engineers had even created a false and abstruse canon, according to which a railway station had necessarily to remember a Medici palazzo. This was indeed the case: I can for instance think of the architect and engineer Gaetano Ratti (1813-1913), who between 1871 and 1876 designed the train station of my city, Bologna, exactly with a Florentine bossage. I do not believe it was a coincidence. Ratti’s master, the French Jean Louis Protche (1818-1886), not only built the Porrettana railway line (the first crossing the Apennines) and designed the current railway route between Bologna-Florence, but since 1872 was also director of the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna. Evidently Ratti helped strengthen a common aesthetic canon in those years throughout Europe, according to which railway stations were to be built in neo-Renaissance style (in the German-speaking world it was for example the case of Zurich in 1871, in Frankfurt from 1883 to 1888, in Bremen in 1885-1889 and in Dresden in 1892-1898). Well, that world and that logic were completely unrelated to Eckstein.

Fig. 30) Hermann Eggert, Railway Central Station, Frankfurt, (1890 postcard)

If all nineteenth century architecture had to be thrown away (including Otto Wagner, the architect of the Vienna Secession), the light after the tunnel was represented by Adolf Loos (1870-1933), enfant terrible of Viennese architecture, rationalist, great enemy of all historicism, but also of secessions and every social convention. It was he, in 1909, to propose to cancel the Pitti Palace from the memory of his contemporaries. Eckstein wrote on him that he was the "most important precursor to a new architecture. His insights have become common heritage of modern architecture." And thus speaking of "neue Architektur" (of course, a synonymous with Neues Bauen), he left us an implicit message: the heart of the author started beating just where the anthology ended.

Fig. 31) Adolf Loos, Steiner House, 1910

The 1954 version of the anthology

It has already been said that the version of the anthology dating back to 1954 was different in terms of both geography and history. It did not include only letters and texts by German artists, and was extended up to the thirties of the twentieth century, excluding however the texts of the eighteenth century. The space intended for introductory texts was reduced by half, while the number of authors increased (from twenty-seven in 1938 to thirty-nine in 1954). The texts of ten German painters and sculptors (Gessner, Cornelius, Schwind, Feuerbach, Carus, Chodowiecki, Schadow, Trübner, Stauffer-Bern and Corinth) were not any more included. To the contrary, those of six Germans who could not be included in 1938 for political reasons (Liebermann, Kirchner, Beckmann, Klee, Marc and Schlemmer) and nine major European painters (Constable, Corot, Delacroix, Rodin, Cezanne, van Gogh, Gauguin, Picasso, and Braque) were now present. The 1938 selection of the architects was substantially preserved (only Catel was not anymore there), but also enriched by German architects who could not be included in 1938, again for political reasons (Gropius, Mies van der Rohe), other Germans who in 1938 were not yet sufficiently established (Häring, Eiermann and Schweizer) and foreign architects (de Baudot, Le Corbusier).

Fig. 32) Comparison between the authors quoted in the 1938 and 1954 anthology

The reader who bought the book in 1954 did most probably not compare the introductory texts with those of 1938 (the book was even presented by the publisher as a first edition). And yet style and contents of the texts must probably have looked like outdated. The language did not reveal the lexical renewal of art criticism imposed in Germany after the publication of Gombrich’s History of Art (published in English in 1950 and in German in 1952), the most famous example of a German-speaking critic who radically simplified his vocabulary after having being confronted with the Anglo-Saxon world. The choice of words, the sentence construction, and the sequencing of the arguments were all still typical of the German culture of the early twentieth century.

Fig. 33) Theo van Doesburg, Composition in grey (Rag-time), 1919

Obviously, there were new references to the movements of art renewal of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, albeit simply in a list form: "neo-impressionism (which systematize the development of impressionism and its instinctive application), analytical cubism, the treatise "Concerning the spiritual in art", Mondrian and Doesburg’s theories." With a reference to the latter two, Eckstein also concluded the introductory text on architecture, stating that they were the new meeting point between style of painting and sculpture. And yet we must say that Eckstein did not seem to make a real effort to rethink the anthology and his views on art. Indeed, a brief phrase recalled his own old wariness of 1938 about abstract art: "When form is separated from subject, art continues to be misunderstood."

End of Part Two
Go to Part Three 

NOTES

[14] Eckstein, Hans - Artists on art. Letters, reports, writings of German painters, sculptors and architects [Künstler über Kunst. Briefe, Berichte, Aufzeichnungen deutscher Maler, Bildhauer, Architekten], Ebenhausen – Munich, Wilhelm Langewiesche-Brandt, 1938, 267 pages. Quotation at page 51.

[15] Eckstein, Hans - Artists on art. (quoted), p. 43.

[16] Eckstein, Hans - Artists on art. (quoted), p. 57.