Journal der Künste 09 (EN)

JOURNAL DER KÜNSTE

THE SHIFT TO THE RIGHT A DYSTOPIC RADIO PIECE

BY GEORG SEESSLEN AND MARKUS METZ THE POGROM OF 1938 WOLFGANG BENZ ON THE FAILURE OF CIVIL SOCIETY BAUHAUS GRET PALUCCA IN THE MASTERS’ HOUSES WILFRIED WANG ON THE MYTH OF THE BAUHAUS

ENGLISH EDITION JANUARY 2019

09

P. 3

P. 34

EDITORIAL

THE WALK – NO RETROSPECTIVE Jochen Gerz

P. 6

P. 52 NEWS FROM THE ARCHIVES

GRET PALUCCA IN THE EYES OF LÁSZLÓ MOHOLY-NAGY Helene Herold

P. 36

THE SHIFT TO THE RIGHT Georg Seeßlen and Markus Metz

“THINGS FALL APART” OR WHY TECHNOCRATIC MODERNISM HAS BEEN INEVITABLE

P. 58 NEWS FROM THE ARCHIVES

Wilfried Wang

HEINRICH MANN DIGITAL – AN INTERNATIONAL COOPERATIVE PROJECT

Georg Seeßlen

P. 40

Marcel Lepper

P. 16

“I WANT TO GO TO THE LABOR FÜR AKUSTISCH-MUSIKALISCHE GRENZPROBLEME!”

P. 60

P. 15

THE PATH TO THE RIGHT

KUNSTWELTEN

MUSICAL MONSTERS IN KÖTHEN

Frederic Rzewski and Gerhard Steinke in conversation with Gregorio García Karman

Benjamin Scheuer

NEWS FROM THE ARCHIVES

THE CERTIFICATE OF HONORARY MEMBERSHIP FOR OTTO VON BISMARCK

P. 43

Ulrike Möhlenbeck

MENTALLY DIS-ORDERED MUSIC FROM “LABOR BEETHOVEN 2020”

P. 63

P. 18

STAGING VIOLENCE: “REICHSKRISTALLNACHT” AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

Caspar Johannes Walter

OBLIVIOUSNESS TO SOCIETY

Wolfgang Benz P. 46 P. 24 CARTE BLANCHE

“THE TIME FOR KEEPING A LOW PROFILE IS OVER”

COMMENTARY

Rudolf de Lippe

KUNSTWELTEN

HOPE FOR THE BITTERFELD PALACE OF CULTURE

P. 64

Günter Kowa

FREUNDESKREIS

P. 48

LEADERSHIP: A QUESTION OF MUSIC – NO ONE CAN LEAD IF THEY ARE STRIVING

Klaus Staeck

Stephan Frucht P. 30

(POST-)COLONIAL INJUSTICE AND LEGAL INTERVENTIONS Wolfgang Kaleck

I CAN ONLY COMPARE MY CONNECTION WITH SINN UND FORM TO A LOVE AFFAIR Durs Grünbein in conversation with Matthias Weichelt

P. 65 OBITUARIES

ROBBY MÜLLER Wim Wenders P. 33

P. 50

THE MANY

NEWS FROM THE ARCHIVES

Kathrin Röggla

FINDS – HANNS EISLER DELETED MARGINAL NOTES MADE READABLE AGAIN Peter Deeg

ARMANDO Robert Kudielka

EDITORIAL

The challenges cultural institutions increasingly have to face The international cooperation project to digitise the Heinrich run through this volume like a connecting thread. Art and culture Mann archives, which aims to make a key work of the socio-­ are not comfort zones. This is about the defence of basic dem­ political upheavals from the 1920s to the 1940s accessible, also ocratic values such as respect for diversity and openness, about fits into this context. Marcel Lepper, head of the Literature re-­evaluating concepts like homeland and nation, which are Archives of the Akademie der Künste, presents the idea of a virclearly being appropriated by racist and nationalist initiatives. It is tual reconstruction of Mann’s legacy, which has been distributed about Europe, about the independence of cultural institutions, around the globe through exile. and also about a vital culture of memory.

The Academy will not be giving up on the topic of Colonial In their radio play Der Rechtsruck, Georg Seeßlen and Repercussions in 2019 either. At a follow-up conference in Markus Metz analyse our present (the time period from 2011 to Windhoek (Namibia), we will continue the dialogue of the “(Post-) 2019) from a future perspective (in 2054), so as to understand Colonial Injustice and Legal Interventions” symposium of 26 and how the dissolution of democratic and liberal forms of government 27 January 2018 with representatives of the Herero and Nama. In could have come about and how the disaster of the right-wing collaboration with the Goethe-Institut and the European Center populist takeover of power paved the way for the resulting global for Constitutional and Human Rights, we are taking the next step civil war. One consolation: in 2054, the opposition forces have toward a joint dialogue through the medium of art and culture. succeeded in effecting a reinvention of democracy. At Pariser Against this background, human rights lawyer Wolfgang Kaleck Platz, we are planning a “nationalist funnel” installation with examines the colonial chapter of German history, which is far Georg Seeßlen that will illustrate the destructive extent of na­- from closed. tionalist, “völkisch”, and racist thinking.

And finally, the anniversaries: In 2019, we celebrate 100 years On 9 November 2018, two cultural events took place at Pariser of the Bauhaus. In his essay, architect Wilfried Wang reflects on Platz. In the morning, the Erklärung der Vielen (declaration of the the myth of the Bauhaus and the results of technocratic modernmany) campaign was launched in Germany at a press conference ism. The Academy Archives present a photo series, in which of three hundred cultural institutions, in parallel to further press László Moholy-Nagy portrays the dancer Gret Palucca.

In an interim report from the Labor Beethoven 2020, which is conferences held in Düsseldorf, Hamburg, and Dresden. In her statement, Kathrin Röggla, vice president of the Akademie der preparing the Academy’s own contribution for 2020, the Year of Künste, explains why the Academy seeks to stand shoulder to Beethoven, composer Caspar Johannes Walter discusses the shoulder with cultural institutions in Berlin and across Germany in potential of classical music for current experimental music. order to represent the values of an open society together.

In an interview with Matthias Weichelt, Durs Grünbein At an evening event, President Jeanine Meerapfel, together looks back at the significance of the magazine Sinn und Form in with the federal president and the historian Wolfgang Benz, terms of cultural politics and aesthetics on the occasion of its remembered the pogrom of 1938, the violence against Jews 70th anniversary. throughout Germany, and the suspension of civil responsibility In parallel with this edition, a complete German version of and social resistance. The contribution by Wolfgang Benz is a the Journal der Künste is being published. We see ourselves as a European project rooted in the tradition of the Enlightenment. depressing analysis of collective failure.

In his Carte Blanche, the graphic designer and publisher Klaus Johannes Odenthal Staeck focuses on the creeping changes in standards that are allowing racism, anti-Semitism, and contempt for democracy to Programme Director of the Akademie der Künste enter the public sphere. He accompanies his plea for a resilient democracy with a selection of posters that have not lost any of their relevance, even after decades.

How dramatically the situation has changed was among the issues highlighted at a KUNSTWELTEN workshop. Benjamin Scheuer, who was awarded the Busoni Composition Prize 2017 by the Academy, reflects on the possibilities of cultural actions under extraordinary circumstances.

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THE SHIFT

TO THE RIGHT

EXCERPTS FROM A RADIO PLAY

BY GEORG SEESSLEN AND MARKUS METZ

Sound: voices murmuring [Over the murmuring] SPEAKER/PRESIDENT Ladies

and Gentlemen,

please take your seats Sound: murmering, chairs clattering, etc.

PRESIDENT So, if we are ready and can have a little quiet in the House

The photographs on pages 4/5, 8, 12/13: ESPEN EICHHÖFER traces populist and nationalist tendencies in Hungary, the Netherlands, and France. In right-wing conservative circles, he observes that past times are idealised. In reportage-like series on public events or local festivals, and in individual portraits, he looks at radicalisation trends in mainstream society. Eichhöfer is one of twenty photographers from the OSTKREUZ agency

of the New World Organisation … (noise subsides) … maybe even a little more quiet … (noise subsides even more) then we can start with our work.

As you probably all know, we are starting our third session in 2054 with a report from the Historical Commission. The four world regions are currently in a fairly stable state, as is guaranteed by our ten permanent trade agreements. However, we are receiving quite alarming reports of destabilising trends and conflicts. The propaganda and economic tensions between the West and East regions, which we believed to have been resolved, are growing again. If we are to learn something from the past, then it is this: That we can learn from the past, and that by studying the historical roots of differences and conflicts we can gain means to at least mitigate the impact of current and coming crises, if not completely avert them. This is why the House of the New World Organisation has made it its task to always convey historical awareness to its members, not only, but above all to act as a united force to prevent social, economic, and cultural crises like those that resulted from the triumph of right-wing populists, right-wing extremists, and neo-totalitarian autocrats around 2020.

Please welcome Professor Anders, who played an important role in preparing the report by the High Commissioner of the New World Organisation in 2054. She will give us a short summary and will then be happy to answer your questions. Professor Anders, welcome, you have the floor.

of photographers, with which the Akademie der Künste is planning an exhibition project on Europe for 2020.

Applause

[Over the applause] SPEAKER/ANDERS Ladies

and Gentlemen, Today, I turn to the representatives of the four major regions of the world who are gathered here, to draft a crisis plan. In order to understand the situation in which we find ourselves today, we must once again look at how the democracies of the West and then the entire world order collapsed in the first quarter of this century.

Obviously, there were ten major misconceptions in the self-­ understanding of the European post-war societies and their intellectual, political, and journalistic representatives.

The first misconception: That the concepts of democracy, tolerance, rule of law, and humanity were viewed positively by an overwhelming majority of the population and applied as fundamental values on which we agreed without any big words, and which we were willing to defend in case of doubt. The values of freedom, justice, solidarity, and tolerance had been hard-won in many places, with many victims along the way, so it was difficult to understand, even for analytical historians such as ourselves, how quickly and easily they could be sacrificed.

The second misconception: That the experience of historical fascism and the world war it had triggered was enough to at least prevent a direct return of this ideology and this strategy, regardless of a more or less successful culture of remembrance. Only a few critical sociologists and psychologists offered explanations as to why totalitarian, racist, nationalistic, and anti-democratic ideas were able to spread so rapidly, especially among young people.

The third misconception: That nations and democracy were firmly linked together in stable and progressive citizenship, along with a balance between a democratic state and liberal society, on the one hand, and a more or less free-market economy and

The fifth misconception: That the guarantee of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and artistic freedom would automatically lead to an open, vibrant, and civilised culture of discourse, tastes, and interests. In fact, too many democratic states had left this cultural freedom to the market forces, where more and more powers jostled, that had less of a democratic civil society in mind than a heated movement of haters, influencers, trolls, and con­spiratorial networks. Just as the market discovered the right-wing extremist potential in the media world, the right discovered a model by communist Antonio Gramsci, who was murdered under Mussolini, according to which the struggle for power is not just about government and economy, but also about cultural hegemony. From 2015, the right engaged in a form of culture war almost everywhere in the world, in which they exploited every form of entertainment, fashion, pop, and subculture provided by the vaunted diversity of media in the West. This culture war was flanked by targeted campaigns against everything in culture and in the media identified as left, liberal, humanistic, or cosmopolitan, in particular the major news­ papers of civil democracy and the public service radio and TV broadcasters who withstood the pressure from the right for a time.

Unfortunately, as we now know, not for long enough.

The sixth misconception: That trade and economic networking would automatically lead to a peaceful relationship both ex­­ ternally and internally. Under neo-liberalism, trade had lost its peace-making function in the world to the same extent as consumption had lost its social balance function. The principle of unconditional competition, winning and losing, deal-making, which led to cheating and even the destruction of others, was transferred from day-to-day economics to the those between nations as well.

For global enterprises, a derelict, conflict-ridden, and competition-driven world is more profitable than a united and peaceful world of solidarity.

economic differentiation, on the other. Instead, during those years, The latest in the succession of customs wars triggered by the presthe national identity split from the democratic and the economic ident of the United States, and the erupting isolation of countries split from the political. The concept of “nation” became decoupled in Europe against the so-called floods of refugees, meant that the from that of democracy, and economic success only seemed to be solidarity between nations and the hope of finding conflict soluachievable if one broke the rules of the social market economy and tions on a global scale or at least at the level of continents or world the rule of law. regions were gone. In the economic wars, the former democratic The fourth misconception: That the concept of post-democ- nations finally lost sight of what had been their original mandate, racy, which had already become a little strained, described a the happiness of their inhabitants, the fairness of their society, and reduced and formalised form of the parliamentary democracy the development of their cultural energies. Added to this was the implemented in the West that was permeated by anti-democratic fact that the international corporations had even less interest in elements but did not necessarily mean the transition to autocratic, global agreement, because they appreciated conflicts and differpopulist, and quasi-fascist regimes. However, every loss of a ences between the various regions of the world in the search for democratic element, in form and in spirit, meant a chance for right- cheap labour, new markets, raw materials and, last but not least, wing populism to occupy the area of public discourse. tax and other advantages granted by regional and national

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governments – and unfortunately a certain percentage still appreciate this. For global enterprises, a derelict, conflict-ridden, and competition-driven world is more profitable than a united and peaceful world of solidarity.

Speaking before the General Assembly of the United Nations in September 2018, President Donald Trump had already announced his programme: “We reject the ideology of globalism.

Make our nations greater! Let us choose a future of patriotism.”

Before the forum of an organisation that was created to ensure the unity of human society around the world, this appeared to be more than a programme, namely a declaration of war.

The seventh misconception: That economic growth (at any price) would automatically lead to social differences and economic inequalities being reduced and that interests would be balanced out. Whereas up to the 1970s every family had reason to hope that the next generation would be better off than they were, now it was just about the distribution of opportunities in an increasingly tough struggle for the distribution of resources. Instead of the basic living conditions of the people converging, despite all the subtle differentiations, the gap between rich and poor was continuing to grow, new areas of poverty and relative destitution were created and large sections of the middle class were being pushed into precarious employment situations. General social insecurity was perhaps even worse than real material impoverishment. The once

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stabilising prospect of modest prosperity for more or less everyone became a ruthless game of winning or losing.

The eighth misconception: That a united Europe would automatically develop into a cooperative new democracy, in which the economic and political developments would adapt to each other in a process of stable and open exchange, and that a spirit of international cooperation would emerge. The united Europe could have been a model of cooperation for other regions of the world, but exactly the opposite happened. Anti-European impulses not only arose from the nationalist right, but also from the critical public, who above all saw the European Community as a political and economic hybrid for market control, but not as a means to promote the political and cultural unity of the nations. In addition to fear of the migration flows and, as it was called back then, “foreign infiltration”, anti-European thinking as a model for the rejection of all transnational organisations was a cornerstone of right-wing and anti-­democratic arguments. And, we have to admit, many representatives of the European Community, in the European Parliament and the Commission, did a great deal to confirm these prejudices.

The ninth misconception: That digital acceleration and social networking in the no-longer entirely new media would introduce another chapter of democratisation and liberalisation and develop new forms of discussion and balancing of interests. However, what developed here in particular was a lack of culture among the

And it quickly became clear on both sides that the narrative of the new identity against the other and the foreign could not be achieved by any means other than violence. So the seeds of global civil war were sown, a war that paradoxically used the universal media and communications networks, not to mention the technology and the products of the global market. People who went to the same fastfood restaurants, listened to the same pop music, drove the same vehicles, followed the same television series, communicated using the same smartphones, took the same drugs, saw the same advertising posters, and followed the same fashion influencers massacred each other in the name of their identity. The catastrophe of the right-wing populist seizure of power was at its core also a cultural catastrophe. Because it was only through these networks that right-wing extremist ideas could be positioned so freely in the centre of post-democratic societies, it was only through these that the absurd situation was enabled whereby nationalism, fascism, and totalitarianism could re-emerge following a similar pattern all over the world. And so it seemed at the beginning of the anonymous hate and contempt campaigns; bullying and denun­ 2020s that individual democracies were as hopelessly lost as the ciation; and manipulative reporting and fake news – not least, the transnational institutions that were supposed to support them in network functioned perfectly as a means of recruiting for extreme, their efforts toward a more just and peaceful world order with greater militant, and terrorist groups. Cultural critics of the time empha- solidarity. The critical voices – they existed then too of course – sised that without the Internet the new right-wing extremism could were silenced, first by the sheer ignorance of those media that used any means necessary to survive in the economic struggle, to keep never have spread so quickly in the West and in the East.

The tenth misconception: That our mainstream media, which audiences in a good mood with entertainment and attractions, and not to spoil that mood with criticism and analysis, though increashad long exceeded national organisational frameworks and merged with European or global corporations, despite all doubts as to taste ingly with the help of more or less open repression as well. With and education, would at least develop a uniform terminology, a the help of violence. Finally, the fact that there was almost no place universal language to convey ideas such as freedom, happiness, of refuge, that there appeared to be no place on earth where democlove, and understanding. All in all, one could say that in the years racy, tolerance, human and civil rights, or justice were guaranteed before 2020 the grand narrative was collapsing and shared lan- as inviolable, immutable values of the state, society, and culture, contributed to the hopelessness of those who criticised the foreguages and images were dissolving.

This grand narrative of integration, exchange, and unity was seeable emergence of a universal obliteration of democracy. Our predecessors certainly must have felt that they were experiencing replaced by a different one – that of breaking apart, isolation, and division. This applied for the major supranational relationships the last days of a culture of humanity, which was always imperfect just as much as for individual societies, and ultimately for micro-­ and contradictory, but still shared a common goal. Freedom. Jussocial units, workplaces, schools, families, and neighbourhoods tice. Solidarity. Not for a few. But for all.

In any case, they knew that: The solution would not be found too. For some people in the first quarter of the new millennium, this rupture ran right through their own personality, the simplest rela- in a return to the old situation, even if the spectre of global neo-­ tionships of belonging, trust, security – or to put it more dramati- nationalism, right-wing populist regimes, and the erosion of democracies were to do away with itself contrary to expectations. The cally – of home, didn’t work anymore.

The degree to which we see an illusion, wishful thinking, the solution could only be a redefinition, so to speak, a reinvention of confusion of dream and reality at work in the first narrative, shows democracy. Fortunately, today we can say that: We have overcome how much the second narrative speaks the language of ideology this major crisis in the history of mankind. We are in the middle of and propaganda. It also ignores everything that contradicts it. a democratic new beginning. But, there is still a lot of work ahead While the first narrative denied everything in the underground and of us. I thank you for your attention and I am open to your quesat the edges of societies that spoke against the official consensus, tions and objections. the second narrative ignores all opposing movements for more democracy, greater openness, and recourse to human and civil Sound: applause rights. The story of division, isolation and exclusion, reduced identity, and an exceptionalism where people see their own nation, their [...] own people, their own gender, “race”, their own religion, their own culture as chosen, superior, and unassailable demands totality. VOICE But how could it have gone so far?

This grand narrative of integration, exchange, and unity was replaced by a different one – that of breaking apart, isolation, and division.

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ANDERS

Well, the economic media, advertising, marketing, and so on, had long convinced people that freedom was nothing other than unlimited greed. There were three major freedoms that neo-­ liberalism promised its victims:

– The freedom to consume whatever you could get your hands on

– The freedom to fully realise your egotism and egomania

– The freedom to behave however you liked, including social violence toward your fellow human beings In this way, the population that had mutated into an angry, violent, and anti-democratic people became a band of thugs for capital interests. In the conspiracy fantasies of European as well as Turkish and Russian populists, for example, an entrepreneur who opposed the dogmas of neo-liberalism and neo-classical economics, namely George Soros, did not become enemy number one for no reason: they accused him of infiltrating and destabilising the nations in a targeted manner.

In the post-communist countries, many people must have seen themselves as having been betrayed twice. On the one side, the system of protection by the strong if not totalitarian, sometimes

“In fact, the parties of the centre-left – claiming to modernise the social democratic project in order to adapt it to the globalised world – ‘capitulated’ to neo-liberalism. Convinced that there was no real alternative for political action, they accepted the system that had been created. That is why the policies of various parties are so difficult to distinguish from each other.”

But it was not only this lack of difference between the major parties and the dissolution of the major projects along with the dogma of there being no alternative that caused the taste for democracy to turn stale; large sections of the population had also lost their political or even their cultural homes. In parallel with social democracy, which by then had long come to include the former communist parties of the West, such as those in Italy and France, the unions also lost their social position. On the one hand, this was because all of the neo-liberal leaders gained infamy for having put down strikes, in part through brutal violence, just as Maggie Thatcher did in England. And on the other hand, because the unions, in their claim to protect vested interests, did not know how to adjust to the new conditions on a deregulated labour market. Scandals such as the real estate transactions of the trade

The structure of neo-liberal society is built less on traditional classes and layers, and more on different segments of winners and losers. Circulation does not simply put people in a constant state of euphoria, it puts them in a state of permanent panic.

brutal, but at the same time always caring state had ceased to exist, having sold the idea of its walls as “anti-fascist protective boundaries”, whereby a similar “outside” was constructed, only the West was not barbaric and wild, but instead was “decadent” and “imperialistic”. But after being liberated from the yoke of communism, as it was called in the narrative, the promises of the “golden West” were not fulfilled either, and in place of those “blossoming landscapes” came impoverishment and a sense of being “left behind”. The resulting anger at this double betrayal was often redirected toward minorities, outsiders, and “foreigners”.

A significant proportion of the overall development toward the right was attributable to the self-abolition of a project which, in the first few decades after World War II, at least had a corrective effect on the development of capitalism and democracy, namely the European left in general and social democracy in particular. The theoreticians of the so-called post-democracy model, such as Colin Crouch or Chantal Mouffe, identified the leader of the British Labour Party Tony Blair and the German Chancellor and SPD leader Gerhard Schröder, along with their reforms from 1999, as important protagonists of this process.

Chantal Mouffe recapitulated in 2011:

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union’s own “Neue Heimat” in Germany completed the picture. But in a society of total competitive struggle, the unions could no longer be seen as an instrument of equalisation and advancement for the working population, but rather seemed to have degenerated into mere vehicles for group egotism.

It is no wonder that the working people sought new political points of reference. One of the consequences was a fundamental depoliticisation. Voting no longer meant much more than a kind of casting show, where decisions were made based more on personal taste than on political programmes.

Within this vacuum, only the right was able to promise a return to the political, a return to the decisive, a return, paradoxically, to what had originally been promised by democracy, the unity of government and the people. The right-wing arguments were able to latch onto a feeling that the politicians as well as sections of the media, science, culture, and so on, as the “elites”, had become alienated from the people. And now, these arguments held that they were also responsible for new threats, new competitors, new provocations coming into the country with the refugees. By opening the borders, these elites wanted nothing more than to cheat the people out of their hard-earned share of the neo-liberal model of success.

only – forms such organisations took beyond and even against the democratic state and the liberal society of circulation is the extreme right wing or neo-fascism.

If everyone can get everywhere, everyone is replaceable.

VOICE

Do you mean to say, Professor Anders, there was no chance of escape, so to speak, from the global shift to the right?

ANDERS

As they say: One is always wiser in retrospect. Something I, by the way, doubt as a historian. It seems to me that it would be easier to define those points where a return to the democratic and cosmopolitan relationships of the short period in which freedom bloomed was impeded and made more or less impossible. I hope I have conveyed a little of the logic behind the events at the beginning of the 21st century to you. Unfortunately – or fortunately, depending on how you see it – we cannot write history in reverse.

But perhaps we can prevent it from turning into an endless spiral where we carelessly lose what we have worked and fought so long for time and time again.

You asked about the subjective factor? We must try to understand the foundations on which cohesion in Western societies at the beginning of the 21st century was based. Namely: 1. That the dirty, pathetic, violent, sick world stopped at the borders of democracies and could be kept away from us forever.

The so-called Third World was the screen onto which this idea was projected. The West was willing to help them to a certain extent, but not so much that it would cease to be a Third World, something Sound: applause other in contrast to their democratic-capitalist homeland. Awareness that a good part of their own wealth was based on the ex­ploi- [Over the applause] PRESIDENT Now, Professor Anders, before we let tation of people and natural resources in the Third World was you go, would you be so kind as to give us a brief outline of the either completely suppressed or resolved in moral discourses. It events that led to the establishment of the new democracies and was about more than material poverty, it was also a question of the new world order we currently enjoy … even if that applies to moral impoverishment. Outside of democracy, not only hunger and one more than the other. poverty, but also crime, ignorance, and cruelty reigned. Any threat to this feeling of living in a heavily guarded secret paradise from Sound: agreement and scattered rejection, laughter which the harsh reality of the world was banished caused huge waves of fear.

ANDERS The democratic renaissance and overcoming the national 2. Within this protected area of Western democracies, and nationalist state models, as you all know, did not happen everything was based on an organisation of open circulation. This overnight or in every region of the world. Therefore, it is undoubtmeans not only the circulation of labour, goods, money, and con- edly difficult to draw a grand narrative, so to speak, from what sumption, but also of subjects. Anyone can go anywhere; you can happened. But I will try anyway. The seizure of power by the rightmake it from the bottom to the top through imagination, drive, and wing populists, autocrats, and Mafia warlords at the beginning of ruthlessness. Small disadvantage: If everyone can get everywhere, the 2020s, even and especially in the former centres of democeveryone is replaceable; the structure of neo-liberal society is built racy, could never fulfil the promises the right had made to their less on traditional classes and layers, and more on different peoples. On the contrary: social conflicts intensified because now segments of winners and losers. Circulation does not simply put the new rulers were also unrestrainedly involved in the game of people in a constant state of euphoria, it puts them in a state of enrichment. The few good deeds they did at the beginning of their permanent panic. power proved to be a flash in the pan or pure propaganda. The liv3. And yet in addition to constant pressure to perform and ing conditions of the people under right-wing populist and neo-­ compete, there is also constant pressure to have fun in this soci- fascist regimes, on the other hand, deteriorated dramatically: The ety. You have to feel young, relax, and do everything you can to stay trade wars destroyed jobs and made goods more expensive; the fit and have fun. Paradoxically, everything that seemed to have militarisation and arming of the police and secret police devoured been banished from this world image of the democratic paradise government revenues that were desperately needed elsewhere. came back through the entertainment machines. The constant state The new rulers could continue to ignore the institutions and the of excitement left humans with no sense of time; and in contradic- individuals but not the financiers with whom they had developed tion, they yearned for something that would give them the strength close and mutually dependant bonds. Projects were pushed of discipline they lacked. The winners primarily armed themselves through without any ecological, social, or cultural consideration; technologically and socially, while the losers were looking for their the people had to pay for this, on the one hand through increased salvation, preferably in the archaic, tribalistic, and communitarian taxes and reduced social benefits and on the other through forms of organisation. One of the most attractive – though not the work services and compulsory labour cloaked in ideology. You could

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only explain this development by categorising it as a permanent state of emergency and ultimately as a war economy. The new masters reacted to the growing discontent with even more violence, even more propaganda, even more state power. They had come to power with the help of the people, but in the long run, could only rule against the people. And with this realisation, democratic civil society, which had long been a minority and even became an underground opposition here and there, gained new strength.

What was decisive was perhaps the first, still very sketchy ten-point programme of the New Democracy: 1. The first aim of the democratically elected government is to establish social justice. The aim is a social market economy worthy of the name. Economic, social, and cultural differences must never become so great that conflicting political interests distance themselves from the social consensus that has been achieved. To this end, it is essential that a society which, in the notorious words of Thatcher, should no longer exist at all, is defined anew as a community of the free and equal.

2. Instead of populist phrases and myths created by the central authorities, democracy should really come from the everyday lives and needs of the people. They should be involved in organising the immediate world in which they live. You do not have democracy, democracy does not rule. You have to live democracy. From primary school on, democratic action and democratic organisation are the utmost educational goals.

3. The state becomes a guarantor of the development of democratic civil society. It must ensure a free political culture that is not impaired by economic constraints or by lobby and pressure groups.

4. A new world order of migration is to be created. Nobody needs to fear open borders, if the opportunities and goods are distributed equally around the world, if labour, education, freedom, and health are guaranteed everywhere. Just as, on the one hand, regional and local institutions must be given more opportunities to shape the world we live in, transnational institutions, on the other, must be given more political and cultural mandates and must be freed of political and economic paternalism and hegemony. In short: democracy must be applied to the micro-social units as well as in the transnational workshops.

5. The fairness of a new world order includes the basic ecological principle. There are an infinite number of reasons for humanity to unite peacefully, one of the most important being the equally banal and dramatic impetus to save the planet on which we live.

6. In a digitalised and mechanised world, we are working on a project for the new constitution of the subject. For over a century, not least in the handling of artificial intelligence and the physical and mental hybrid function of cyborgs, we have defined consciousness as the ability to think and say, “I”. Perhaps in the future, we will manage to develop the subject based on the ability to say “you”.

7. Step by step, the economy of money is to become an economy of time. This, by the way, is an integral part of precautions

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against the decay of democracy and the decline into tyranny as diagnosed by Plato, namely the loss of the discipline of time.

Wealth is not what the new subject desires, but rather a fulfilled life.

8. As we have seen, a cultural decline, in entertainment and the constant background noise, in fun and in spectacle, contributed significantly to the disintegration of democracy. It is necessary, therefore, to distinguish very carefully between a democratic and a populist culture. In democratic culture, every person has the same right to and the same opportunities to participate in education, art, and science, and can contribute equally to both production and criticism. A populist culture, on the other hand, demands that everyone submit to the majority taste constructed by the media, that every individual deviation be condemned as “elitist”, and that regression, ignorance, and cultural infantilisation be established as fundamental rights. The new democracy grants its subjects many rights; the right to ignorance, as it was once posited by a German Federal president, is not one of them.

9. Religions are fundamentally protected (not least from each other), as long as their real institutions are subject to democratic checks, their requirements do not come into conflict with humanistic, educational, and democratic principles; as long as all forms of militant proselytising are excluded and rites and symbols are limited to private or common – as previously mentioned: democratically controlled – spaces. Democracy, humanism, and en­­ lightenment take priority over every religion.

10. The new democracy is not a guarantee of a paradise on earth either. It requires constant work, revision, self-enlightenment, and criticism. It is a work in progress, and it will always be based on the decisions and alternatives for a future that remains open.

And those of us who have gathered here in the name of democracy cannot rest on our laurels either, but rather have to work toward its realisation in debate, controversy, and criticism. We do not know what the future holds, we just want to prevent one thing: that the past appears to be the only way open, as happened at the beginning of the 21st century. We will not stop fighting, ladies and gentlemen, but we have developed a democratic culture for this fight.

We can be proud of this.

Sound: applause

GEORG SEESSLEN, born in 1948 in Munich, studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and is a freelance journalist and author living in Kaufbeuren and Vendone. He has been a member of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Film and Media Arts Section since 2013.

MARKUS METZ, born in 1958 in Oberstdorf, studied journalism, politics, and theatre at FU Berlin. He is a freelance journalist and author living in Munich. Their most recent joint publications with Suhrkamp Verlag are Freiheit und Kontrolle: Die Geschichte des nicht zu Ende befreiten Sklaven (2017) and Geld frisst Kunst: Kunst frisst Geld; Ein Pamphlet (2014).

EXCERPTS FROM A PROJECT OUTLINE

BY GEORG SEESSLEN

THE PATH TO THE RIGHT

The installation has essentially been kept very simple.

It is about expressing the path to the right in a comprehensible and compelling manner, from a “harmless” enthusiasm for one’s homeland, German folksiness, and traditionalism; to the discourse of the “concerned citizens”, everyday racism/sexism/nationalism, right-­wing populism, and fascist chic; to the provocations of right-wing youth cultures, the theoretical structure of the “identitarian” movements, and the new rights and their press to right-wing violence, open anti-Semitism, and terrorism.

The installation is in the shape of a funnel. Ten sections are joined together, with the individual “chambers” becoming narrower and narrower. However, they also become more and more closed to the outside; the sides of the first three are still open, the next three still have emergency exits, and after that there is no way out. The “bouncers” become increasingly militarised (from people wearing traditional Bavarian dress, to members of the “citizen’s militia” and skinheads, to strict Nazi stewards).

Of course, like any staging, there are a few basic premises: 1. There is a clear link between seemingly harmless, entertaining, and folkloristic “Heimattümelei” (excessive pride in one’s homeland) and the attraction of “völkisch” (folk-nationalist), nationalistic, and racist sentiments and the fantasy of another (perhaps “old”) order not based on democracy and reason but rather on hierarchy and emotion. This is not to say that all folklore, all regionalism, all retrospective “revivre” is automatically right-wing or even extremely right-wing. It is more about the danger (as experienced in recent months) that the politicisation of the folkloristic and the “folklorisation” of politics will follow this pull to the right or even pave the way for it. The cross as a political

JOURNAL DER KÜNSTE 09

symbol (and as a symbol of the native or local), for example, makes it virtually invisible/worthless as a religious symbol: We see how “fundamentalism” is generated.

2. The path to the right and a new wave of fascism cannot be depicted as interest, discourse, and “ideology” alone (an insecure middle class, insecure masculinity, fear of competition, etc.), but to a large extent also in terms of aesthetics, semantics, and everyday communication. It is more than just the question as to why individuals or a group of people drift to the right; it is rather a question of why this gradually becomes “normal” and is rewarded rather than being excluded in a society. About how such a society becomes used to its transformation.

3. Consequently, violence, terror, and the replacement of democracy by autocracy, populism, and nationalistic (“völkisch”) regimes are integral to the development of every kind of right-wing extremist movement. There is no peaceful right-wing extremism. And there is no rightwing extremism with which a democratic civil society can exist peacefully.

We are aware that what you see and hear at the end of the installation touches and even crosses the boundaries of the unbearable. We can draw the audience’s attention to this, but we don’t want to spare anything either. Because what we are showing is not a sci-fi ghost train but rather the reality of what is happening right now.

Project: Georg Seeßlen, assistant: Markus Metz

The “nationalist funnel” installation by Georg Seeßlen will be shown at the Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz, Berlin.

15

KUNSTWELTEN

MUSICAL MONSTERS

Benjamin Scheuer

Arrival at the train station in Köthen on board a delayed IC at about 10 p.m. It is Sunday. As I drag my overstuffed suitcase through the deserted hall of the train station, masked police officers with machine guns come toward me. On the forecourt, a welcoming committee of dozens of police vehicles is lined up; not a taxi in sight.

The wheels of my suitcase clatter loudly over the cobblestones on the half-hour walk to the guest house where I am staying. The city is completely empty, not a single person out on the street. A few Köthen inhabitants can be seen between the curtains, peeking out of their windows at the police patrols. As I roll past various checkpoints unmolested, I feel like an intruder.

First, an explanation is probably due as to what had brought me to the old residential town on such a day. The Akademie der Künste, Berlin, has sent to me to conduct a music workshop with junior pupils from An der Rüsternbreite Secondary School. It bears the title “Musical Monsters” – my suitcase is full of grunting rubber pigs, foghorns, hooters, toy synthesizers, and speaking plush seagulls, as well as cameras, audio equipment, and cables. It is the first time that I have taken sole responsibility for the content of a workshop with school

children. I have thought out a rough concept and, due to lack of experience, am not quite sure whether everything will go according to plan. It was only by chance that I found out on the train that evening that, two weeks after the attacks in Chemnitz, there had also been a death in Köthen on Sunday night. After a man intervened in the dispute between two refugees, they attacked him. He later died as a result of a serious pre-existing cardiac condition. The right-wing scene in East Germany is now mobilising, vigils are to be held; the government is to be demonstrated against. Köthen is essentially under siege and is awaiting the arrival of hordes of AfD functionaries and organised neo-Nazis. I am very concerned about this news. Under such signs, it seems absurd to go ahead with my humorous monster project in this town.

The target group for the workshop is twenty-two children from grades 5 to 7 at An der Rüsternbreite Secondary School. Participation is voluntary; lots of girls have signed up – and one boy. The school building, a renovated prefab, lies on the outskirts of town in a residential area. My way to work is lined by works of art celebrating some big anniversary or other of the German Democratic Republic. As soon as I meet the pupils, we get started with a round of introductions. With the exception of one girl who took melodica lessons for a while – as a precursor to the accordion – the children have no previous musical training. We practice a little bit of music history. I ask: “So who can name a composer?” As this is Bach’s town, of course Bach is named first – I position him quite far to the left of the board, on the timeline to be constructed. This is followed by Mozart, then Michael Jackson and Die Lochis. Thanks to Jan Böhmermann’s “Kinderfolge” on the TV satire Neo Magazin Royal, I know who that is. Just for fun – according to the motto “There are living composers too” – I make a cross by the year I was born, 1987. Most of the other pop and youth stars who are added, however, are placed to the right of this on the board; I am learning a lot of new names and, in the end, I look quite old on the timeline too. Between Mozart and Michael Jackson, on the other hand, there is a huge gap.

My goal from the outset is to see the gaps as opportunities. If there is no concept of classical forms, there can be no misconceptions; and if you don’t know anything about traditional playing techniques, you cannot “expand” them. Or to put it another way, you are ready to make music immediately. In the workshop, we work with musical language games, toys, and other sound objects.

Over the course of the week, each child is to compose a “sound poem” and perform it either alone or in a group. I hope to show as many videos of musical pieces as possible and to talk about these. The workmanship of Georges Aperghis’s vocal composition Récitations serves as a formal model, we recite the beginning of Kurt Schwitter’s Ursonate and look for our own elemental sounds. Mark Applebaum’s Aphasia and some of my own compositions serve as inspiration for the musical use of everyday objects and the incorporation of choreographic elements into experimental pieces of music. From the outset, we take an interdisciplinary view of music and art; boundaries are not applied at all.

In the evening, after finishing work, I take a walk through Köthen. The ancient brewery recommended to me had been closed on the day I arrived out of fear of

My goal from the outset is to see the gaps as oppor­t unities.

16

IN KÖTHEN

riots. On the way there now, I mix in with people who are getting ready for a demonstration. I ask myself: Are they on the left or on the right? There are no clear signs; I seem to be among “normal” people. When the first speaker takes to the microphone, it suddenly becomes abundantly clear who I am dealing with. As I eat dinner, shouts of “lying press” come from the nearby Holzmarkt.

Police helicopters circle above the town. When the smartly dressed, inflammatory right-wing politician André Poggenburg, accompanied by two ladies, takes his seat at the neighbouring table and jokes with the waiter, I leave the restaurant. On the way home, a mounted police squadron followed by about a hundred officers on foot comes toward me. Unpleasant memories of the rioting in my hometown of Hamburg – in the Schanzenviertel district – are awakened.

The next morning, the children work at different stations, the “listening”, “speaking”, and “movement” laboratories. Self-invented elemental sounds are combined with onomatopoetic speech bubbles and excerpts from

newspapers to form “musical” notation. The pupils choose Aldi advertisements, not political headlines. Each child can reach into my suitcase and look for their own sound, which is then given a name and graphically recorded using a self-invented symbol. Rubber pigs are very popular; drums and the Stylophone mini-synthesizer have to be shared too. At the end, each student creates a collage à la Aperghis on a large sheet of paper, which can also be enhanced with movements. “Boom”, “bam”, “splash” is what you read in the newly created scores between little pictures of pigs and drums. In several cases, the pupils have even added a little key to explain the symbols, without being asked to do so. At the end, there is far too little time to rehearse. I decide on a video shoot instead of a final performance. Later, I edit the individual compositions from the various run-throughs.

The week is over far too soon; we still had so much more to discover together.

While I sift through the videos after I have departed, images of Köthen Marktplatz painted with symbols of peace as part of a wonderful campaign are on the news. The following considerations come to mind again: Was it a huge contradiction to compose seemingly

JOURNAL DER KÜNSTE 09

Was it a huge contradiction to compose seemingly “apolitical” sound poems at a school during such worry­i ng events?

“apolitical” sound poems at a school during such worrying events? The workshop was by no means intended to give the pupils the illusion of a perfect everyday life. It remained open in terms of content; the next day was only ever planned in response to the most recent developments and impulses of the pupils. But it did not seem to be an issue for the 10- and 12-year-olds to discuss the events openly, also or maybe precisely because they were happening all over the streets. I did not want to force the matter.

What legitimacy did my workshop have at such a time?

The sound poems by the pupils were close to Dadaism, an art form that sees itself as a counter-position to “serious” art, which on an intellectual level seeks to explain and categorise while pointing the finger. The main objective of the exercise is to search for a music that is sensory in a different way; that is both thought-provoking and fun at the same time. It should have the same effect as the elemental sounds in Schwitters’ sonata, funny, but also as the articulation of a primitive need for human expression, which is precisely why it is universally understandable, because all semantic meaning has been lost. In this sense, composing a sound poem is an exercise in tolerance.

Let’s look at the composition of sound poems as basic research in the field of free and open thinking, applicable to all spheres of life. It fascinated me to see how unprejudiced and open the children in Köthen were regarding the absurd inventions of their classmates. I am sure that, in terms of creativity, openness, and seriousness, they are quite a bit ahead of us adults in this beautiful country!

BENJAMIN SCHEUER, born in 1987, studied in Hamburg and Karlsruhe, most recently with Wolfgang Rihm. His music has been performed internationally by renowned ensembles, including the sounds of Zeitraum (2012) for six hundred players, at Hanover football stadium. As a co-founder of Musicians Without Borders, he regularly travels to Ecuador to teach disadvantaged young people. In his music, electronic sounds are generated using simple, cost-­ effective means and everyday objects. It is not technology but rather human individuality and fallibility that are central for him. The Akademie der Künste, Berlin, awarded the Busoni Composition Prize to Benjamin Scheuer in 2017.

The photographer ÓSCAR ESCUDERO, born in 1992, studied composition and oboe in Zaragoza, Spain. This was followed by studies with Simon Steen-Andersen and Niels Rønsholdt in Aarhus, Denmark. His work can be characterised by that of composers such as Michael Beil, Stefan Prins, or Carola Bauckholt, for example in the hybrid world of Generation Y, with analogous concepts of body, time, and stage. The Akademie der Künste, Berlin, honored Escudero in 2017 with the Busoni Composition Prize. From 22 to 26 October 2018, he and Belén Moreno Gil explored virtual reality and empathy in our world with girls and boys from the 9th and 10th classes of the secondary school in Köthen. The photos shown were taken during his project.

17

STAGING VIOLENCE

Graz – Burning of the ceremonial hall at the Jewish cemetery

A LECTURE BY WOLFGANG BENZ ON THE OCCASION OF THE COMMEMORATION CEREMONY FOR THE “1938 POGROM” IN BERLIN ON 11 SEPTEMBER 2018

How do you gain an understanding, eighty years after the events, of the violence perpetrated against Jews in November 1938? The image of the pogroms is made up of many individual scenes, one of which played out in Dinslaken in the Lower Rhine region. Since 1885 the town had been home to a Jewish orphanage, which had been of central importance to the entire Rhine Province. On the morning of 10 November, about twenty men appeared and smashed everything to bits; the thirty-two Jewish orphans, aged between 6 and 16, fled through the window into the garden. While the synagogue and some of the Jewish houses were burning, the police chief decided to hold a “Jews Parade”: The children and the staff of the orphanage were driven through the town on carts – for the amusement of onlookers – to the yard of the Jewish school where the members of the Jewish community had already been assembled. For one week, all Jewish inhabitants of the town were held captive in a public building, crammed tightly together on beds of straw. Dinslaken was not an isolated incident. Similar events played out in many other parts of the German Reich.

But the perpetrators were not just fanatical Nazis. The silent gawking majority – the quiet and open joy of the uninvolved at the plight of the Jews – characterised what was happening. The perpetrators were not just the SA and other party members who set fire to synagogues on command, destroyed Jewish shops, decimated homes; taunted, abused, and hunted people to their deaths.

Too many looked upon these goings-on with mere indifferent apathy, probably in silent rejection as well, and too many watched the disaster with joyful excitement.

On 9 November 1938 – and in some places in Germany immediately before that, such as Kassel and Dessau, and in many towns and villages in broad daylight the next day – civilisation collapsed in the form of the pogroms against the Jews of Germany. The word pogrom comes from the Russian and means “devastation” in the sense of taunting, violence, robbery, and plunder; a lust for murder unleashed against people who are marginalised as a minority.

Most of the victims were Jews. The barbaric times when, as in the tsarist empire at the end of the 19th century, pogroms were used as a policy method against Jews are not over. After the Holocaust, citizens lived out their resentment against the still unwanted Jews in Poland, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia. The joy over the re­united German nation was clouded over in the summer of 1992 by the pogrom events in Rostock, which were not directed against Jews but rather the Roma and then people from Vietnam, who for days tried to escape their burning accommodation in mortal fear, amid the applause of citizens. In our time, we are once again experiencing people being hunted down in German cities. In Mügeln it was Indians, in Dessau and in Freital Africans, in Chemnitz asylum seekers, and elsewhere refugees from Syria. Following these shameful excesses of brute force, we experienced the undignified cynicism in discussions as to whether the victims had been hunted at all. That was just as unoriginal as the debate about whether the events in Rostock could be called a pogrom.

Pogroms never happen spontaneously; they always require preparation; they must be instigated and staged. The psychology of the pogrom also involves unleashing man’s apparently intrinsic dark drive toward violence, abuse, and destruction, which has been painstakingly tamed under the thin veneer of civilisation and culture. The initial spark was once the ukase of the Tsar (or the assertion that it existed), as in the case of the Jewish pogrom in Kishinev in 1903, during which forty-nine people died and hundreds were injured. In 1938, it was the meeting between Goebbels and Hitler at Munich’s Old City Hall. Media escalation through rabble-rousing, the spreading of rumours, and the kindling of resentment by populist demagogues (today they are called populists, which sounds nicer and more harmless) is part of it – and the word given is always met by the willingness of citizens, friendly neighbours, colleagues, and passers-by to turn into a mob that

“REICHSKRISTALLNACHT” AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

rages against stigmatised undesirables. It also requires an occa- Germany. The Nazi leaders, who had gathered at Munich’s Old sion, the pretext for violence, as was the case in Kielce, Poland, in City Hall, as they did every year for their traditional commemora1946, when a rumour that was going around revived ritual murder tion of the coup attempt of 1923, received the news of the diplomyths against the Jews and claimed forty-seven deaths. mat’s death on the evening of 9 November. It was the right moment The pogrom is the result of the interaction between political for the staging of the pogrom. The general mood had already been staging by guiding hands and social atavism. What happened in inflamed by a press campaign that began after the assassination Germany in November 1938, which at the time became known as in Paris. Hitler and Goebbels arranged the further details, then “Reichskristallnacht”, was the epitome of the pogrom. “Reichskris- Hitler left the room and Goebbels unleashed his tirade of hatred tallnacht” is not entirely correct, as the excesses of violence had against the Jews, preaching revenge and retribution. already begun the day before and continued to run rampant over The upper echelons of the NSDAP and the leaders of the SA the next few days. The new German term “Reichspogromnacht” is understood his message and passed it on to their subordinates: completely wrong – characterised by insecurity and hypocritical the group leaders and local group leaders throughout the Reich. concern, or used to circumvent perceived taboos – as it revives the The party members jumped out of their beds. Whether in civilian semantics of Nazi language. The November pogroms in Germany clothes or in uniform, from midnight on they demonstrated and eighty years ago were not only a particularly heinous example of exercised the alleged “righteous indignation of the German people”. Anti-Semites, fanatical Nazis, hangers-on, and opportunisstaged mass insurrection and violence against Jews. Following the verbal, social, and formal exclusion of and discrimination against tic beneficiaries of the Nazi regime turned the streets into places the Jews, “Reichskristallnacht” marked the commencement of the of terror against a minority. Arson and blind rage against people and property, the destruction of Jewish businesses, looting, abuse, physical destruction of this unwanted minority.

On the night of 9 November 1938, the holocaust began, and and the murder of Jewish citizens were glaring signs that the fruits in the days that followed the Nazi regime dropped the mask of of the Enlightenment had been scorned and squandered in the civilisation, revealing its true nature. The assassination of the Third National Socialist state. Germany demonstrated to the world that Secretary to the German Embassy in Paris, Ernst vom Rath, by it no longer wanted to be a land of reason and justice.

The night of terror and the days that followed were the same 17-year-old Herschel Grynszpan at the embassy on 7 November, provided the pretext. The attack by the young Jew was in protest everywhere. The riotous hordes appeared outside Jewish commuagainst the brutal deportation of Jews of Polish nationality from nity buildings, outside synagogues, outside the businesses and homes of known Jews, screaming hatred of the Jews, breaking down the doors, destroying the interiors, and finally setting off the fire. The fire service had explicit orders not to extinguish burning synagogues, only to protect neighbouring buildings if the fire threatened to spill over. All over the country, the mob led by the SA leaders, mayors, and Nazi functionaries did as it pleased, forcing its way into Jewish homes, destroying furniture and terrorising Jews, abusing and humiliating respected merchants, lawyers, rabbis, and other reputable persons, chasing them through the streets in their nightshirts.

The demand for a pogrom by the NSDAP was in line with the dormant demand for action held by many party members since the “movement’s time of fighting”. For the first time in quite a while, those in the SA and other divisions of the party were again encouraged to exercise violence, which they were now able to act upon in good faith. The awareness that they were taking part in a party-­ compliant demonstration of power and the memory of the period of fighting before 1933 formed the main motive for the aggression, for the destructive rage against people and their property.

The vandalism that raged during the organised pogrom spilled over to involve the bystanders – as the product of anti-Semitic propaganda, as the result of Nazi indoctrination, or driven by blunt aggression, by an unbridled lust for sensation and destruction.

Examples have been passed down from smaller towns in particular, perhaps because the perpetrators were less anonymous than in the big cities. “Reichskristallnacht” was the most convincing lesson in how easily people can be steered by demagogy. In Siegen – Burning of the synagogue

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In a time when seas are rising, climate disaster is drawing ever closer, powerful rulers are playing with their “nuclear weapon” buttons, human bodies are changing into robots, and mechanical algorithms are increasingly controlling human behaviour, we could well ask ourselves whether looking back at the past, remembering 9 November 1938, is really still important.

You will have noticed: this is a rhetorical question. Because in Germany, once again, we have demonstrations at which calls are being made for acts of violence against “foreigners”, at which the Nazi salute is displayed and racist or nationalistic slogans are shouted out.

If we forget what has happened and don’t value remembrance, we surrender the field to the enemies of democracy.

Jeanine Meerapfel, quoted from the opening speech for the “1938 Pogrom” memorial event on 9 November 2018 at the Akademie der Künste, Berlin

Hoyerswerda and Rostock, this psychological effect repeated The proportion of women involved in these acts of violence is itself in the first few years after German reunification; in Freital substantial. In Middle Franconia in 1947, a woman was brought and Cottbus, in Dresden, Chemnitz, and many other places, the before the court because she arranged for the SA to return to an rekindled rage of frightened citizens reinforced in their fear and already decimated Jewish property and demanded its further spurred on by populist agitators against minorities – Muslims, ref- destruction shouting that “nowhere near enough has been ugees, asylum seekers, “foreigners” – can once again be seen. smashed up at Gutmann’s yet”. In another house, she slit open Contrary to the self-reassurance of decent people, the per- beds and soft furnishings; she brought petrol to set fire to the synpetrators of violence in 1938 were not just SA men and members agogue, trampled goods in the window of a Jewish shop, and of the NSDAP. Contrary to the widespread, readily believed myth screamed at a Jewish woman calling for help: “Make sure you get out, Jew pig! Otherwise we will kill you!” that the activists had to be brought in from other locations because locals would not have been prepared to riot against Jewish Pogroms provide the opportunity to live out sadistic and neighbours, business acquaintances, and fellow citizens, the sexual aggression. This was also the case on “Reichskristallnacht”. locals gladly participated in those acts of violence. This was It is remarkable that the unleashing of these instincts did not demonstrated by the processes implemented in the early post- require the cloak of anonymity, such as a strange town or the big war years by the German justice system under the occupying city, but rather that such excesses were committed in peoforces, and is also evidenced by countless victims’ accounts of ple’s home towns, in their immediate neighbourhoods, where their experiences. victims and perpetrators knew each other as neighbours and The pogrom events unleashed by Goebbels during the night of fellow citizens.

9 November 1938 were staged and centrally controlled. The acts In Rimbach in the Odenwald, the events followed a typical of violence against the Jewish minority were willing demonstra- course. On the evening of 9 November, there was a Nazi party tions by the state and the party. By no means did they go against meeting at the village tavern, where the local group leader called the mood of the public. Because too many gladly took part. Indi- for the abuse of the Jews and the destruction of their property. At viduals who had initially been uninvolved rapidly became caught around midnight, the participants gathered in the schoolyard and up in the maelstrom of the vandalising avant-garde – sensation- were divided into groups by the local group leader. One of those alists and gawkers mingled with the raging fanatics to become a groups consisted of six men aged between 24 and 41. They went marauding, jeering, violent mob that swept through the streets of to the house of the Weichsel family, who were Jewish, surrounded the towns, joined by women, children, and youths. Sensationalism it for a while, and then broke the front and back doors down and drove the people onto the streets where, in reaction to the events, dragged Mr and Mrs Weichsel from their beds. While the husband neighbours became plundering invaders; individual citizens managed to escape to freedom after being severely abused, his wife, dressed only in a nightgown, was sprayed with water; three became part of a collective frenzy.

JOURNAL DER KÜNSTE 09

21

Ober-Ramstadt – Synagogue fire in 1938

Tiengen – Burning of the synagogue furnishings

men then turned her upside down and “beat her with a broom decency are not invalidated by the numerous records of collective between her legs and poured water between them”. barbarism. Nevertheless, they have to be positioned within a far On the evening of 8 November in Wachenbuchen in the district more unpleasant overall picture. of Hanau, a day before the centrally staged vandalism against the The perpetrators of the pogrom were in turn far more subdued Jews began, the NSDAP local group leader and mayor organised after the fall of the Third Reich than during the pogrom; they could a public rally at the local tavern, which was attended by more than not remember, they had supposedly not been at the scene of the two hundred people, including fifteen to twenty SA men. Those crime, they protested their innocence and claimed that they had attending the meeting were ordered to demolish the Jewish school- nothing against Jews, as did a pharmacist from Mannheim who on house and to give the Jewish teacher “a working-over”. The mayor – “Kristallnacht” behaved like a berserker to such an extent that his as an NSDAP functionary – was not only aware that this intention colleagues – in March 1946 – unanimously distanced themselves was unlawful, rather, at 11 p.m. he warned those called in to carry from him in disgust at “inhuman behaviour unworthy of his position”. out the destruction to be careful not to “become acquainted with The fact that adults involved children and youths in the the public prosecutor”. Lookouts were put in place so they would pogrom is an indication that there was little difference between not be surprised by the police; there was a crowd of about three the mentality in small rural areas and the intentions of the regime hundred onlookers and thirty-five to forty people were constantly with respect to the Jewish minority. In two Hessian villages, on the in the schoolhouse where the teacher was attacked with an axe morning of 10 November, under the leadership of the NSDAP local while the activists began to tear the tiles off the roof, throw group leader and the mayor, a growing crowd moved around committing acts of violence against Jews. At the request of the mayor, furniture out of the windows, and tear down walls.

The examples of solidarity from non-Jews passed down in the rector ordered about two hundred schoolchildren to demonthe recollections of the victims, the identifiable condemnation of strate, led by their teachers. They roamed through the community the organised outbreak of violence in the accounts of critics of and followed the call to smash the windows of Jewish homes – until the regime, and the shame at the violation of standards of civil they turned completely wild.

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This stands in sharp contrast to the dignity of the victims. 76-yearold Hedwig Jastrow, a retired school principal, poisoned herself in her apartment in Berlin Wilmersdorf on 29 November 1938. She left behind a letter in which she stressed that the members of her family had been loyal German citizens for over one hundred years.

She forbade any attempts at resuscitation and wrote that it was not an accident and not a case of melancholy: “I taught German children for forty-three years and took care of them through every emergency; I spent much longer doing welfare work among the German people in times of war and peace. I do not want to live without a fatherland, without a homeland, without a home, without civil rights, disrespected and insulted.”

Jewish life in Germany had been wiped out in the aftermath of the pogroms. On 12 November 1938, representatives of the state and the NSDAP conferred under the chairmanship of Göring. They decided on the expropriation of the injured Jews, discussed the “Aryanisation” of Jewish property, and dictated that a special tax was to be imposed on German Jews to the amount of one billion marks. The measurable – that is, physical and economic – damage inflicted on “Reichskristallnacht” is far greater than that accounted for by the instigators of the pogrom in November 1938. More than 1,400 synagogues burned out and plundered, at least 177 residential

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buildings destroyed, 1,300 to 1,500 killed, and 30,756 Jewish men arrested, thousands of whom did not survive the concentration camps in Dachau, Sachsenhausen, and Buchenwald or died as a consequence of their imprisonment. The political, social, and emotional damage is beyond any account and it is permanent.

Many citizens became violent criminals, demonstrating how thin the veneer of civilisation is over every form of so-called bourgeois respectability. Therefore, an awareness of the November pogroms must not only consist of acknowledging the fact that anti-Semitism is still alive eight decades later and has to be combated. Remembering and commemorating the shame of the Christian majority and the suffering of the Jewish minority is essential. But it is not enough. The lessons of history have only been learned and understood when discrimination against all minorities, whether because of their religion or culture, where they come from, their social situation, their sexual orientation, or any other reason, is condemned. As long as the fears of the majority can be alleviated by resentment against minorities perceived as “foreigners”, outbreaks of civil brutality are to be feared. This is why the success of demagogues – who keep their followers politically active with populist phrases and the denunciation of “foreigners” – is cause to fear a new outbreak of the “people’s wrath”. In Hoyerswerda and Rostock, this happened at the beginning of the 1990s and was explained as part of the reunification crisis. In Dresden and Freital, in Cottbus and Chemnitz, right-wing extremists, and even those who consider themselves to be in the centre, rage against refugees and asylum seekers, against Muslims, because they are supposedly different and in fact unwelcome. We must not allow this history to be repeated against victims through discrimination, hatred, and violence. We remember the pogroms in November 1938 with sadness, but are also aware that the state of mind that paved the way for them is still alive or is being revived.

The above version of the lecture is slightly abridged.

The welcome addresses that preceded the lecture were made by Academy President Jeanine Meerapfel and Federal President Frank Walter Steinmeier.

They can be read online at www.adk.de / www.bundespraesident.de The images on pages 18–23 are taken from the book Pogrom 1938: Das Gesicht in der Menge, edited by Michael Ruetz and published in November 2018 by Nimbus Verlag. The “1938 Pogrom” book and exhibition project was realised with the kind support of the Society of Friends of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin.

WOLFGANG BENZ is a historian and prejudice researcher.

From 1990 to 2011 he taught at the Technische Universität Berlin, where he was director of the Centre for Research on Anti-Semitism, and published, among others, the Handbuch des Antisemitismus. He was awarded the Hans and Sophie Scholl Prize in 1992 and the Against Forgetting – For Democracy Prize in 2012. In May 2018 he published the monograph Wie es zu Deutschlands Teilung kam. And in November 2018 he published Gewalt im November 1938 Die “Reichskristallnacht” – Initial zum Holocaust.

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CARTE BLANCHE KLAUS STAECK

“THE TIME FOR KEEPING A LOW PROFILE IS OVER” 24

November 2018 challenges us to look back over the last hundred years, to when the Weimar Republic was formed; to look at the end of the war, the abdication of the Hohenzollern, the Kiel mutiny when sailors from Kiel and Wilhelmshaven revolted and, on 9 November, marched through the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin and occupied the capital together with striking workers. In just a few days, the old order collapsed. Nobody wanted the enthusiasm for war that in 1914 had captivated a great many people, including artists and intellectuals, to be remembered any more.

The Kaiser went into exile, supposedly to do his country one last service. Friedrich Ebert was appointed Reich Chancellor as the leader of the largest parliamentary group, in the vain hope of the remaining aristocratic elite, those around Max von Baden, that he could still allow a loophole for the monarchy. Meanwhile, the social democrat Philipp Scheidemann had proclaimed Germany a republic from the balcony of the Reichstag, with the communist Karl Liebknecht proclaiming a Freie Sozialistische Republik (Free Socialist Republic) from outside the gates of the Berlin Palace shortly after.

“The German revolution, if you can call it that, was good-natured. And yet, at that time it resembled an earthquake nobody was able to do anything against,” wrote Sebastian Haffner in his review of the century.

After the armistice on 11 November and the demobilisation of the war-weary troops, the good-naturedness was over. Volunteer corps (“Freikorps”) were formed from the fanatical groups within the military loyal to the Kaiser and Ludendorff. The street battles at the Marstall in Berlin and “Spartacus Week” were followed by long years of a sometimes open, sometimes hidden, creeping civil war that accompanied the Weimar Republic right up to National Socialism. Even in times of peace and economic rise, a subliminal hatred remained between the forces for restoration, the defenders of a civil, democratic constitution, and the communists who dreamed of a Soviet Germany. It remained a country torn apart, which surrendered the remnants of the Weimar parliamentary democracy to a reign of terror only fifteen years after the war. The legally elected National Socialists suspended the constitution, did away with basic civil rights, and immediately arrested their left-wing political opponents.

With the burning of books on 10 May 1933, the opposing political and intellectual spirit was to be driven out of the nation. Even the Academy had been attacked just weeks before because of an election appeal against the NSDAP (signed by Heinrich Mann and Käthe Kollwitz) that was posted in February 1933. The new rulers threatened to dissolve the Academy and, as a result of repression from outside as well as the adaptation of compliant parties within the institution, the exclusion and departure of many prominent members followed. For some years now, anyone who comes through the door at the entrance to our building at Pariser Platz is confronted with the names of those members. Reading them simply as a sign of defeat does not do them justice. Because they still act as a warning that civic courage and integrity have to be defended as the fundamental stance of a democrat.

In recent times, I have read more and more analogies between the dissolution of the Weimar Republic and current events involving open contempt for and threats to democracy. Although most caution against spur-­­­of-the-moment parallels, symptoms are

described that nevertheless cannot be underestimated as warning signals.

We cannot dismiss the historical parallels when we draw attention to the threat caused by self-endangerment of freedom. The consequences of the apparent erosion of the party system in democracies are just one example.

Donald Trump’s two-year presidency to date – as a mob leader and wayward politician who ignores international agreements – had been inconceivable up until his election. The populist prelude to and consummation of the Brexit movement and the associated rejection of the concept of Europe, which not only encompasses an economic order but also a framework for peace, is leading the continent into a continuous crisis situation. And in Germany, we are experiencing how right-wing populists look for connections to the arguments and practices of their predecessors in the Weimar Republic – for example in the attention they receive for breaking taboos.

They call themselves the true representatives of the people against the political establishment, against the power of the elites; they also style themselves as fighters against the excessive power of dangerous “foreigners” who are supposedly jeopardising the nation both culturally and ethnically. The only rhetoric they know is friendor-foe, which does not have to take the complexity of the world into account. Stirring up fear of foreigners becomes open xenophobia. Criticism of political opponents becomes the defamation of elected politicians as traitors. What was until recently still only to be heard as the language of Pegida – delivered on Dresden platforms – moved into the Bundestag a year ago with Gauland, Weidel, and von Storch.

The events in Chemnitz, the marching of right-wing extremists accompanied by officials of a party represented in the Bundestag and concerned citizens, represent a new quality. We can feel it: This is the borderline for the self-protection of democracy against a “national resistance” that is well networked in the media and can be mobilised at any time to protest in the streets.

The “Wir sind mehr” (There are more of us) concert held days later in the same place, which was attended by sixty thousand, was meaningful because it was a gesture of hope. But it did not stop the nightmare, and Gauland’s words “We will hunt them!” – this much we now know – are not only directed at the hated politicians from the “old parties” but also at foreigners and anyone who is identified as an opponent. The setting up of online denunciation registers designed to publicly attack teachers who admit to being opposed to the AfD is just another small step in the ongoing process of dismantling democracy that is supposed to gradually spread through society. In reference to the State, Götz Kubitschek, a writer who would not be offended to be called a right-wing intellectual, said that they wanted “to bring about a turnaround in tendency through a strategy of cultural hegemony”.

Great attention should therefore be paid to the upcoming European Parliament elections in May 2019. Because it is a declared objective of European right-wing populists to demonise the EU as an attack on national sovereignty and, at the same time, to use the opportunity to create a European alliance, an “international for nationalists”. Victor Orbán already sees an “historic year” coming for all opponents of multiculturalism and migration; “we say ‘goodbye’ to liberal democracy in Europe”.

No wonder, then, that the former “president maker” Steve Bannon, who was dismissed from Trump’s inner circle, has now moved his battlefield to Europe. He believes that the “populist-nationalist movement” in the United States and on the Old Continent is on the rise. His sympathies are with the rise of the AfD, Brexit, and Italy’s Lega Nord politicians. Roger Köppel from Zurich’s Weltwoche helped Bannon make his first major appearance in Europe, where he met an enthusiastic Alice Weidel, who revealed to Neue Zürcher Zeitung that she had sought the meeting because she “wanted to learn from the best.” She envisages a media concept for her party based on the ultra-right US Internet portal Breitbart (developed over the years by Bannon as an electronic militant publication) and making the AfD a gathering point for a movement “of intellectual circles who very clearly support us”. No wonder she appropriated the online platforms Tichys Einblick and Die Achse des Guten – as well as Erklärung 2018 (Declaration 2018), initiated by Vera Lengsfeld – for the AfD. At least now the signatories to the declaration, the many lawyers, doctors, psychologists, historians, and other academics, know quite clearly which sticky track they have landed on with their signatures against the refugee policy.

Other AfD officials also strongly support the new media offensive and are crazy for their great inspiration, Bannon. As “politically engaged journalists”, they are going to have to build a media counter-power, because they wrongly believe they have found themselves in an information war. The opponent who is to be fought from the “war room” is the “mainstream media”, the public broadcasting in which the AfD does not feel adequately appreciated or represented; and the press, where rightwing populists are still met with criticism and information rather than submission. Weidel is already dreaming of her own Internet television channel and that “at some stage, Germans will watch AfD, not ARD”.

In the meantime, Steve Bannon has set up his headquarters in Brussels where he has established a foundation called “The Movement”. From here, he travels to the politicians of the European right. He visited Orbán, was introduced to the Czech President Miloš Zeman by AfD Bundestag member Petr Bystron, and of course graced the Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini with a visit too.

Roberto Saviano has actually had enough enemies since he achieved global fame with his anti-Mafia book Gomorrha. And he has now taken on Salvini, following his appointment as Italian Minister of the Interior.

He calls him the “minister of darkness” – who speaks the language of a Mafioso – and sometimes simply calls him a fool. But he also describes, in very specific terms, the xenophobic politics, the lies and threats the Lega politician and vice premier uses for his populist propaganda.

Salvini has paid him back by announcing that he could withdraw the money for Saviano’s protection at any time, and simply have the Carabinieri who guarantee his survival reassigned. Saviano knows the risk he is taking with this feud.

Six years ago, I invited him to Berlin to give a talk at the Academy introducing his book about resistance against the Mafia and corruption, and found him to be sharp-minded and clear-headed. He is a political activist in the fight against the most criminal excesses of capitalism and the latest attacks on democracy and civil

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rights in his country, which has changed so massively since the last elections and the strengthening of neo-­ fascist groups.

The absence of opposition makes it easy for the right to convince large numbers of the uncertain, often economically disadvantaged citizens that the EU and migrants are the source of all evil and fear. Salvini sees the alliance of European right-wing populists in the forthcoming European Parliament elections as “the last chance to rescue Europe”. His goal is a new alliance, so the right can form the largest group in the future parliament. That is why he maintains good contacts with the AfD. And Hungary’s Prime Minister Orbán certainly will not have only spoken about agreeing on the same goals in regard to refugee policy during the meeting with Salvini.

In July 2018, Saviano published an appeal against the silence, which is being given far too little attention.

“Where are you? Why are you hiding? All you authors, journalists, bloggers, philosophers, actors: today we can no longer allow ourselves to be just that. In these times, everyone who has the opportunity to speak to an audience must see it as their duty to take a stand.”

After seventy years, Italy is again becoming receptive to the slogans of xenophobic parties. Anti-fascist and anti-racist democracy is in serious danger if the government no longer respects the values that are at the heart of the constitution. Therefore, there are moments when it is no longer enough to assign resistance to your own art. “The time for keeping a low profile is over. There are only accomplices or rebels.”

The political upheavals of the present offer many occasions to remember a century of extremes. Democracy, as I understand it, must be defended against the representatives of an “illegitimate democracy”, the public media must be defended against those who would destroy it and who already sit on the broadcasting boards, and support for culture and arts must be defended against the propagandists of an identitarian concept of culture that sets only ethnicity, one’s own ancestry, as the standard.

We live in a time in which standards are gradually changing – of how far one can go with misanthropic agitation, with threatening foreigners and dissenters, with the denial of historical guilt.

As writers, filmmakers, musicians, visual artists, theatre people, and representatives of all other sectors of public art, we have a responsibility for the future of our society as a democratically organised community. We shall not leave this to the right-wing populists in view of the one hundred years since the disintegration of the old Europe at the end of the 1914–18 war.

KLAUS STAECK, graphic designer and publisher, is a member of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Visual Arts Section. He was president of the Academy from 2006 to 2015 and has been honorary president since 2015.

(POST-)COLONIAL INJUSTICE

AND LEGAL INTERVENTIONS Wolfgang Kaleck

Exhibit at the Swakopmund Museum

“In view of customary international law, it can be said that individuals, on the other hand, already enjoyed rudimentary protection by the beginning of the twentieth century, which was derived from the rules of humanity and civilisation. The legal conviction of the international community at that time, however, excluded what in their eyes were the ‘uncivilised’ indigenous peoples from even these minimum standards.” This is according to the Scientific Service of the Bundestag in an expert opinion from 2018 on the case of the genocide of the Herero and Nama.

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For many, colonialism may represent a closed chapter of the past that is merely of academic or art historical significance. The “(Post-) Colonial Injustice and Legal Interventions” joint symposium by the Akademie der Künste and the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) on 26 and 27 January 2018 in Berlin offered a different perspective.

International Law Professor Antony Anghie from the TWAIL group (Third World Approaches to International Law) not only presented the central role of international law in the processes of colonisation and imperialism, but also analysed the consequences of the differentiation between civilised and uncivilised nations. In addition to this, Anghie reminded the audience that the basic

View of Swakopmund

principles that made the economic exploitation and inequality of a large part of the population of the Global South possible during colonial times still apply to some extent today, such as a lack of sovereignty over natural resources or a lack of legal and political responsibility on the part of transnational corporations.

At the same session, Esther Muinjangue from the Ovaherero Genocide Foundation in Namibia and former Namibian Minister Bernadus Swartbooi emphasised how much the lives of their own ethnic groups continue to be influenced by colonialism and its consequences today – not least due to the fact that (German) colo­ nialism has still not been addressed. The extent to which the debate itself hit a nerve with the descendants of perpetrators

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and victims at this session is demonstrated in an article in the (German-speaking) Allgemeine Zeitung from Namibia. Although the conference contributions are available to view on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6STsECy-tqs), the author of the article presents Swartbooi’s contribution in a completely different context and claims that, while in Berlin, Swartbooi called for farm occupations like those in Zimbabwe. In the same article, the German Ambassador to Namibia, Christian Schlaga, expressly distances himself from the event.

Over the course of the year, the debate about the return of colonial property (in particular looted art) and human remains gained further momentum. In May, Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media Monika Grütters presented a guide from the German Museums Association advising museums on how objects from the colonial period should be dealt with. It is once again stated therein that the return of looted objects may be ethically necessary but not legally possible. Thus, the guide continues to uphold the principle of inter-temporality. This implies that the historical facts under international law are to be assessed under the laws applicable at the time of their occurrence. The guide does not question this dictum regarding the evaluation of colonial times, it says nothing different to what the former minister president of Baden-Württemberg and naval judge Hans Filbinger claimed, namely “what was just at the time cannot be treated as unjust today”. However, this principle has long been disregarded for good reason in Germany – in the treatment of National Socialist crimes as well as in cases of human rights violations in the former GDR. Although the historical facts do not lend themselves to comparison on the same level, a debate is at least called for as to whether the categorisation of peoples as “uncivilised” and the conclusions drawn based on this, namely that those affected are not to be afforded even minimal legal protection, represent such an intolerable degree of injustice that such a principle of law should no longer be applied today.

However, it is not just the museum guide that fails to ad­­dress this topic. The lawyers representing the Federal Republic of Germany in the compensation case of the Herero and Nama before the Court for the Southern District of New York used a similar line of argument. In a brief dated March 2018, they claim that: “History cannot be re-written as far as its legal framework is concerned. Legal rules change as time goes by, but the law of the twenty-first century cannot be introduced back more than 110 years in history.”

There may be reasons to oppose the civil claim for damages asserted by the relevant representatives of the Herero and Nama in the United States. But the fact that official representatives of present-day Germany, which subscribes to peace, human rights, and international understanding, are not sickened when such arguments are put forward is a dramatic political and legal omission.

But that is not all. Because some of the representatives of the Herero and Nama community, who feel excluded from the current official government negotiations between Namibia and Germany, have sought legal recourse, the official representatives of Germany

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Neither German nor international funds have to date been made available for the reappraisal of the colonial crimes.

now refuse to speak with them at all. They argue that you cannot negotiate with someone who has filed suit against you. As if this were not commonplace, for example in legal disputes between landlords and tenants or between two companies. So why not between the victims of human rights violations and the governments responsible?

The Federal Republic of Germany itself reasonably sought an amicable solution to the compensation claims of Jewish forced labourers. Unfortunately, it would appear that the compensation negotiations between Namibia and Germany have currently stalled – and not just because not all of the most important delegates chosen to speak on behalf of various parties are involved in the negotiations.

The demand of the Herero and Nama – acknowledgement on the German side that genocide did in fact take place – is relatively easy to meet. The Bundestag demonstrated this when it passed its Armenia Resolution. Of course, this did not concern German crimes, which clearly made it much easier for the Parliament. But such an acknowledgement ought to and could, of course, have taken place in the case of the Herero and Nama, along with an official apology from high-ranking German representatives.

The demand for compensation is a more difficult matter. Representatives of the Herero and Nama, however, have been willing to talk in relation to this issue as well. It is less about large sums of money for individuals than a significant development boost for the affected communities that were and still are marginalised – and about the land question at least being partially resolved.

Because between 1904 and 1908, the German colonial rulers not only murdered tens of thousands of Herero and Nama, often in concentration camps, they also robbed them of their livestock and land. To this very day, the descendants of the predatory soldiers own large areas of the country and Namibia’s independence since 1990 has changed very little about this.

Still, the Herero and Nama have managed to make this issue part of the public agenda. At the ceremony for the return of human remains to Namibia in September 2018 at the French Cathedral in Berlin, it was not only high-ranking representatives of Germany who were present. German and international media also reported on the event in a variety of ways. Berlin Senator of Justice Dirk Behrendt (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen) received a non-governmental

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delegation of Herero and Nama and apologised expressly on behalf of the people of Berlin. He was not authorised to make such an apology in the name of the Senate. But all the same.

A visit by a small ECCHR delegation to Namibia in August 2018 revealed how essential such courageous appearances by German politicians would be. There were no representatives of the federal government, the German Embassy, the churches, or the foundations at the commemoration of the Battle of Waterberg on 11 August 2014, which marked the beginning of the genocide. An indictment not only of the Germany administration but also of civil society.

The picture is just as bleak at the planned memorial to the genocide near Otjinene, where German General Lothar von Trotha gave the infamous extermination order in the autumn of 1904. Only a locked gateway indicates that this is the site of a memorial. Neither German nor international funds have to date been made available for the reappraisal of the colonial crimes. The sight of the mass graves in the dunes of Swakopmund is just as devastating. The Germans murdered and left thousands of Herero and Nama to die in the surrounding area. The corpses were dumped into makeshift graves among the dunes, which is right next to a well-kept green cemetery for the whites who died.

Encouraged by the trip to Namibia and the visit of the Herero and Nama delegation to Berlin, as well as by the response to the Conference – also from Namibia – the Akademie der Künste and the ECCHR decided to continue their joint work on the topic of (post-)colonial injustice and to organise a series of events in Namibia with various stakeholders in March 2019.

Rarely has William Faulkner’s often cited quote – “the past is never dead, it is not even past” – been so true as in the case of the German genocide in former German South West Africa.

WOLFGANG KALECK is a specialist attorney for criminal law, focusing on European and international criminal law and human rights. In 2007, together with lawyers working in an international context, he founded the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) in Berlin, of which he has been secretary general and legal director ever since.

Most recently, together with Dr. Miriam Saage-Maaß of the ECCHR, he published Unternehmen vor Gericht: Globale Kämpfe für Menschenrechte (“Taking corporations to court: global struggles for human rights”) (2016).

Following on from the “Colonial Repercussions – (Post-)Colonial Injustice and Legal Interventions” conference on 26 and 27 January 2018, the Akademie der Künste is going to Windhoek at the end of March 2019 to create opportunities for artistic and cultural encounters and to develop the conditions for joint strategies for the future. In cooperation with the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights e.V. (ECCHR) and the Goethe-Institut.

THE MANY On 9 November 2018, the DECLARATION OF THE MANY campaign began in Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Dresden, and Berlin. Cultural institutions in these cities have joined together and, as well as signing the DECLARATION OF THE MANY, have founded regional forums for exchanging experiences with regard to the endangering of artistic freedom and the questioning of the foundations of democratic co-existence by popular national authoritarianism.

Over 140 cultural institutions had added their binding signatures to the BERLIN DECLARATION OF THE MANY by the start of the campaign, and by so doing they are standing up for solidarity, against racism, and for a cohesive society. The text of the Berlin declaration, and the signatories to date, can be found on the web pages of the German Cultural Council: kulturrat.de

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DIE VIELEN DIE VIELEN DIE VIELEN DIE VIELEN THE MANY THE MANY THE MANY THE MANY THE MANY THE MANY THE MANY THE MANY THE MANY

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The position of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, has been outlined by its vice president, Kathrin Röggla:

The Akademie der Künste has joined THE MANY initiative because, as a representative of all artistic disciplines, it sees a need to defend the freedom of art against the voices of exclusion and agitation. At this moment, when there is an intention to nullify basic democratic principles by means of conscious manipulation and hate speech, we regard deliberately setting and discussing a boundary as a continuation of our work as the Academy.

Today in particular, it is once again a question of making it clear that art is situated in the critical tradition of the Enlightenment, and not to be pressed into service to glorify one’s own nation, as right-wing extremists demand. Artistic freedom is one of the most fiercely protected values of our constitution. In addition, we see it as our obligation to undertake historical remembrance work, not least through our large archive of modern art, which is characterised by its focus on the arts in exile.

The Academy is distinguished by two other things: we are an interdisciplinary society of artists with over four hundred important members who are active internationally, and we are autonomous. The question of political independence has been of highest importance for the Academy since 1696. It is an achievement that has been fought hard for and which continues to be defended, and nowadays this is also accepted by the state. In the history of the Academy, however, this was not always the situation The bitter experience of excluding numerous members, and the headlong subjection of such a mighty institution to the rulers of National Socialism, places a duty upon us.

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Other cultural bodies do not enjoy the Academy’s present-day autonomy. They depend on political committees; they are vulnerable, and we must show solidarity with them – particularly with theatres, museums, and organisers of cultural events far from Berlin.

In politically unsettled times, the theatre occupies the focus of attention. But it is important to emphasise that museums such as the Martin Gropius Bau, and galleries and literary institutes like the Literaturhaus Berlin, the LCB, the Literaturwerkstatt, or the Lettrétage, have also signed the declaration – the large institutions as well as the small, even the Berlin Central and Regional Library, MACHmit! Museum for children, or festivals such as Maerzmusik.

We live in an age of emerging authoritarianism, where language has shifted towards the right.

Everything is going according to the principle that, to paraphrase the Chinese proverb, “One tree that falls makes more noise than a thousand that grow”. And the right are supplementing this proverb with the addition: “If that’s the case, let’s cut them all down now!”

Destructive powers are at work, against which we not only want to send a signal, as is fortunately happening numerous times today, but to visibly identify ourselves with a binding act of solidarity.

It is important to make the voices raised against destruction heard more clearly, and to not only draw the boundary but also make it a topic of discussion – which has nothing in common with a breakdown of dialogue, but rather with a very careful examination of the instrumentalisation of the arts.

We, the Akademie der Künste, stand for diversity and pluralism in our society.

THE WALK – NO RETROSPECTIVE

Jochen Gerz

LEHMBRUCK MUSEUM DUISBURG

THE WALK – inside/outside

This exhibition is not an exhibition and it doesn’t take place inside the museum: THE WALK, a 100-metre path, takes visitors along the iconic glass front of the museum, where they can read a text that interweaves the artist’s life and works with eight decades of contemporary history. A look back: an unusual look from the outside at the museum and its influence on the city; and a look forward: towards the future of civil society. The text transforms the museum into a giant book: each pane of the seven-metre-high glass front is a column in an exemplary narrative. The biography becomes a reference to the world – and to the view from outside.

This is Jochen Gerz’s first museum show in fifteen years. He is one of a number of artists who, since the beginning of modernity, have condemned museum practice and eschewed the commercial dictates of the art world. The Duisburg exhibition was preceded by two years of intense discussion, doubt, and self-doubt. Gerz comments: “It’s always the first exhibition.” According to his catalogue raisonné, this is his 170th solo show. The museum’s invitation to organise a retrospective turned into a commission to produce a work for public space. THE WALK is not a retrospective. Not a single original work is displayed. Instead, as part of the show’s preparation, the e_Catalogue Raisonné has been produced, which makes Gerz’s complete works accessible online at www.jochengerz.eu from everywhere and at any time.

THE WALK describes a path – the artist’s as well as the visitor’s – through turbulent times: war, the 1950s “stone age” of the Federal Republic of Germany, the birth of civil society in the 1960s, the topos of memory in the 1970s, the technological invasions of everyday life, the discovery of sustainability, and Europe’s increasingly unstable perspective from the 1980s and 1990s to the present day. Someone narrates his life, is the author of this story, and at the same time asks: how do you experience this time? Is this your story? How do you imagine our future? Authorship means contemporaneity. If you want to see yourself in the world you must become its author. THE WALK is a shared path, even though each of us walks it alone.

JOCHEN GERZ (photo/text, video, performance, and public space) has been a member of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, since 1994.

THE WALK – no retrospective is on view until 5 May 2019 at the Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg.

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View of Eileen Gray's holiday home E.1027 (1926 –1929), Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France

However, modern architecture was broader than the positivistic technocratic modernists of the International Style and the Bauhaus. There were architects who emphasized the need for an integrated, holistic, organic approach to the design of forms, spaces, and their elements. Amongst these were Alvar Aalto, Josef Frank, Eileen Gray, Hans Scharoun, Knut Knutsen, Dimitris Pikionis, and Sigurd Lewerentz, to name but a few.

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“THINGS FALL APART” OR

Wilfried Wang

WHY TECHNOCRATIC MODERNISM HAS BEEN INEVITABLE

Underlying developmental processes have defined people, societies, and their environments, most notably the process of civilisation, which, according to Norbert Elias, has ordered people’s behaviour vis-à-vis each other in such a way that communal life has become tolerable. Or, put in a dystopian way: the process of civilisation has numbed people’s atavistic sense of justice to make them tolerate otherwise untenable living conditions such as existence in so-called informal settlements across the world or mass housing schemes in the post-industrialized regions; or the not-so-temporary compaction in a mass transport vehicle while moving from one of these untenable dwellings to work and back.

Where the modernism of around 1900 promised an entirely new world for everyone, not just the elite, a world full of comfort and delight from the teapot, the kitchen, and the communal settlement to the verdant public landscapes and mass transport systems, in reality, “the dream of reason” gave birth to a technocratic form of modernism that has produced weapons of mass destruction, world wars and, for the interlude between these, inhospitable built environments for large segments of the world’s population.1 In hindsight, it was not the process of civilisation that provided the key impulse behind humanity’s “ascent” from the dark ages to the “smart cloud”, but the process of autonomisation. This process is particularly decipherable across the millennia in the built environment. The rationalisation, mechanisation, and now “acumulisation” (from cumulus=cloud) of all aspects of life has logically, if not teleologically, resulted in the formal abstraction of things and in society’s alienation from these things.

The process of autonomisation is one in which humans make themselves independent from everything: from the context; from nature and climate; from time, history, and culture; and ultimately from each other. Perhaps it is the letter “I” in the product names of a North American technological company that best describes

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this concentration on the self. This autonomisation process affects all interfaces of a natural and artificial kind. The ultimate unwritten goal is to achieve complete freedom of choice over where and when, under which circumstances, and for which duration a human activity may or may not take place.

In the field of architecture, the development of the theatre as a building type shows this process of autonomisation. If the ancient Greeks embedded their theatres in their landscapes, then the Romans sought freedom from natural sites and constructed freestanding theatres in their colonies. Vela provided shades: water was sprayed to provide evaporative cooling, even perfumes were used to improve the audience’s sense of comfort. During the Renaissance, candles were introduced to allow plays to be seen at any time of the day. In the 19th century, artificial ventilation brought heat to large auditoria. The black box theatre was the penultimate version until directors found that performances in disused factories made them independent from all the restrictions of a conventional theatre. But not only has the human activity sought complete independence from the medium that once gave people the possibility of performances, within the way that the theatre as a building type is constructed, over time its components can be seen to have become autonomous systems: stage from auditorium, ventilation ducts from building fabric, structure from cladding, façade from building.

Technocratic modernism is but a small subset of the process of autonomisation, architectural modernism is but a small subset of technocratic modernism, and indeed the few decades of the International Style and the fourteen years of the Bauhaus are even smaller subsets of architectural modernism. All the same, Hannes Meyer’s manifesto-like essay “Bauen” of 1928, in which he replaces the term “architecture” with “building” to suggest that its future – the future of architecture – will be the mere organisation of components through specialists with the architect’s role reduced to that of an organiser, was singularly prescient at the time, accurately describing the status of the profession in the 21st century.2 Architecture has thus fallen apart.

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However, modern architecture was broader than the positivistic technocratic modernists of the International Style and the Bauhaus.

There were architects who emphasized the need for an integrated, holistic, organic approach to the design of forms, spaces, and their elements. Amongst these were Alvar Aalto, Josef Frank, Eileen Gray, Hans Scharoun, Knut Knutsen, Dimitris Pikionis, and Sigurd Lewerentz, to name but a few. Their work was and remains eclipsed by the media system and the dominant corporatist’s predilection for the simplistic application of rules, such as Meyer’s organisational ideal or other Swiss reductive canons.

Modern architecture has always been more, more than just those buildings inducted into the hall of fame of the International Style and more than just the fourteen years of the Bauhaus, but it has not been allowed to be more in the consciousness of the architectural profession and in that of the general public, neither in the 20th century nor today. Instead, what we are left with are cities all around the world with sprawling settlements based on segregated functions and social groups, car-centred infrastructures, and reductive architectural expressions of repetitive and alienating objects.

The most visible aspect of technocratic modernism is the effect of the process of formal abstraction – basic geometric shapes with flat surfaces – something that Otto Wagner predicted in 1895.3 Concomitant with the process of autonomisation, the process of formal abstraction paved the way for such blunted objects to be dropped anywhere around the globe, regardless of climate or culture. The “other” modern architectures, however, have sought to relate their buildings to specific contexts, to local materials, to the transformation and rejuvenation of local traditions, to prevailing climatic conditions. There are some architects today who have understood the value of these connections, the importance of the ethical, aesthetic, and artistic integrity of a work of architecture, in short, of the organic coherence between purpose and cultural embodiment; but there are too few to make a difference.

So, things continue to fall apart. The role of culture as the matrix for the sustenance of human existence continues to be marginalised, as is proven by the undifferentiated celebration of a moment in the history of German architecture that left more dystopian realities than either politicians or professionals would care to admit. Because the contemplation of selected images of lionized architects is more gratifying than the confrontation of the thousands of failed social housing estates that grew out of the teachings of the Bauhaus. And with these ignored buildings, the socio-­political dispositions of their alienated inhabitants are equally shut out of the minds of the celebrants. Rather than being honest with the overall effects of the Bauhaus, this one hundredth anniversary will cast a selective spotlight on how official Germany wants to see reality. The official Germany is desperate to hold onto an idea of an artistic and architectural movement that it believes to have been for the good. In other areas of Germany’s history, there has been a more thorough review of the facts. As long as the key errors are not recognized, there will not be any changes in the underlying attitudes and specific regulations to the way the

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environment is developed in Germany. Functional and social segregation, and urban sprawl, will continue. Things will continue to fall apart, culture cannot hold.

The quotes in the title and at the end of the text are taken from the W. B. Yeats poem “The Second Coming”.

1

L ewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization (London: Routledge, 1934), pp. 100, 337.

2 Hannes Meyer, “Bauen ... alle dinge dieser welt sind ein produkt der formel (funktion mal ökonomie) alle diese dinge sind daher keine kunstwerke: alle kunst ist komposition und mithin zweckwidrig. alles leben ist funktion und daher unkünstlerisch. ... das neue haus ist als trockenmontagebau ein industrieprodukt, und als solches ist es ein werk der spezialisten: volkswirte, statistiker, hygieniker, klimatologen, betriebswissenschaftler, normengelehrte, wärmetechniker ... der architekt? ... war künstler und wird ein spezialist der organisation! ... bauen is nur organisation: soziale, technische, ökonomische, psychische organisation.”

Bauhaus – 2-2 (Dessau: Bauhaus,1928), pp. 12–13.

O tto Wagner, “But our feelings must indeed say to us 3 today that the antique horizontal line, the panel-like organization of the surfaces, the greatest simplicity, and an energetic prominence of construction and materials will thoroughly dominate future development and novel art forms; this is demanded by modern technical science and by the means at our command.” Die Baukunst unserer Zeit (Wien: Schroll, 1895), p. 124; Eng. tr. of quotation in 9H, no. 6 (London, 1983): p. 85.

With Barbara Hoidn, WILFRIED WANG founded Hoidn Wang Partner in Berlin. Since 2002, he has held the O’Neil Ford Centennial Professorship in Architecture at The University of Texas at Austin. With Nadir Tharani, he co-edited the 9H magazine; with Ricky Burdett, he co-directed the 9H Gallery. He has also edited and curated various architectural monographs and exhibitions. Wang chairs the Schelling Architecture Foundation. He is a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts and is a member of CICA and of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin.

He received an honorary doctorate from the Royal Technical University Stockholm; and is an honorary member of the Portuguese Chamber of Architects.

Installation of the main bedroom at E.1027, curated by Wilfried Wang, Austin, Texas, USA (2017).

The installation is on view at the Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz, from 12 April until 10 June 2019.

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39

“I WANT TO GO TO THE LABOR FÜR

AKUSTISCH-

Gerhard Steinke and his team at the Studio für akustisch-musikalische Grenzprobleme, 1960s

BERLIN RE-ENCOUNTER – FREDERIC RZEWSKI AND GERHARD STEINKE IN CONVERSATION WITH GREGORIO GARCÍA KARMAN

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MUSIKALISCHE GRENZPROBLEME!”

In the autumn of 1964, as part of the Berliner Festwochen, a “Week of Experimental Music” was held at the Akademie der Künste studio on Hanseatenweg in Berlin. The five-day series of events, including lectures, films, and concerts, offered a comprehensive overview of the work being done at the leading electronic studios in Berlin, Brussels, Munich, New York, Paris, Tokyo, Stockholm, and Warsaw. In this context, in the middle of the Cold War and shortly after the construction of the Berlin Wall, composer Frederic Rzewski, who was spending the year in West Berlin as a guest of the Ford Foundation, met Gerhard Steinke, who was the director of the East Berlin Studio für akustisch-musikalische Grenz­probleme (Laboratory for Problems at the Acoustics-Music Border) and responsible for the development of the Subharchord. On July 11 2018, in an interview with Gregorio García Karman, Rzewski (born in 1938) and Steinke (born in 1927) discussed this encounter and the resulting composition Zoological Garden (1965) in the context of the “EM4” concert series co-organized by Berlin's electroacoustic music studios.

GREGORIO GARCÍA KARMAN How did you meet?

GERHARD STEINKE We were here from 29 September

to 3 October 1964. I had been invited by Dr Fritz Winkel, head of the electronic music institute of the Technische Universität. On one of these days, I met Maestro Rzewski; he played an interesting composition by Elliott Carter in the ensemble under Bruno Maderna.1 I knew Maderna because I had seen the studio in Milan. And I had the great honour of inviting Frederic Rzewski and other guests who were interested in getting to know our studio in East Berlin. I needed permission from the Minister of Post and Communications. It worked because he himself was a fanatic, avid listener of electronic music.

We were here, Frederic! You played fantastically with the ensemble under Bruno Maderna, and I was able to drag Franco Evangelisti, Elliott Carter, Delia Derbyshire from the BBC – all these great artists – to East Berlin. On 3 October they were with us. Frederic was, if I may say so, very interested in the Subharchord and said: “Here, I could actually produce something!”

FREDERIC RZEWSKI I was fascinated! I was only 27!

Something like this had never happened to me before!

GS You indeed played this difficult composition by Elliott Carter incredibly well!

FR We all travelled to East Berlin and visited the studio.

GS Incredibly, that was in 1964, three years after the Wall had been built, with ten special permits! And then, one year later, on 6 August 1965, he was allowed into East Berlin and at the border he was asked – do you still remember? “Where are you going?” And what did he say?

“I want to go to the Laboratory for Problems at the Acoustics-Music Border” – “Problems at the border?!” the soldiers at the Wall said. But, thank God, he had some paper or other that happened to have Rundfunk­zentralamt (Central Broadcasting Office) and Deutsche Post or whatever on it. But he did that three times in the week! And there were different gentlemen there every time! Can we say gentlemen? The guards there at the border!

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The Subharchord: Prototype at the Studio für akustische-musikalische Grenzprobleme, c. 1964

FR Yes, I remember! And they replied: “What are you doing there?” And I said: “Yes, we’re trying to find acoustic and musical solutions to problems at the border” – “Oh right, right!”

GS Every time, it took him several hours to get across the border.

FR That is where the title of the piece, Zoologischer Garten, comes from. The inhabitants of this city were like animals in the zoo. The ones on this side of the border thought they were free. The ones who lived on the other side knew that they were not free. They were smarter!

GS We often kept our mouths shut! That was the difference!

FR Everyone was in the same situation – in a cage!

On this side, for example, there were these receptions organised by the Ford Foundation. And I went along sometimes after I had come back from working in the East. And once I met a very nice man. He came from the state of Virginia, with his wife and two daughters. He was very interested in our work and wanted to know, for example, what kind of tape recorders we had: Telefunken, and so on. Then I asked him: “What do you do?” And he said: “I'm head of intelligence at the military mission!” I disappeared as quickly as I could!

GGK Mr Steinke, at that time you visited

many studios. You visited Hermann Scherchen, for example.

GS I owe a great deal to Scherchen! Of course, I’m only four years younger than broadcasting, absolutely ancient. Through this, I got to know Hermann Scherchen

and produced The Art of Fugue with him in Dresden in 1948. He said: “You’re quite ingenious, you take care of the Trautonium and stereophony.” We were familiar with the Trautonium from Oskar Sala’s broadcasts. We were hooked. Perhaps one day we would manage to develop a device like that. I found a so-called quartet Trautonium

by Oskar Sala in the music archive. We had to move out of Masurenallee in 1952 and it came with us. Sala then came to me in Adlershof: “You found the old device?” he said, “It sounds terrible!” – “So what does it look like?” – “With the lack of materials,” he said, “I couldn’t do anything else!” “Well, okay!” I said. “But we like the idea! I will develop a new mixture Trautonium with my laboratory.” “Ha, good boy!” he said, “You’ll never do it!” I was able to demonstrate it to him later and he thought it was really good that we had managed to do it. But without these artists, without Paul Dessau from the Akademie der Künste, without the support of Siegfried Matthus and the artists here, we would never have been able to run our laboratory. Then came this man, I always forget his name, [Nikita] Khrushchev, who said, “That’s all cacophony, we cannot bring this music to our people, we must protect them from it.” And we were “protected” by our culture guy, whose name I believe was [Kurt] Hager, in that we had to stop our work in 1968. But before that, we managed to produce and export six devices.

GGK What’s so special about the Subharchord?

GS The special thing about it is – I learned afterwards –

that you have to build a device, not like a computer with a couple of buttons, but with access for the artist. That’s

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pseudo-socialism, because we had a brilliant Postal Minister for a short period of time, who himself emphatically believed it was right.

FR And what do we have now? Pseudo-democracy?

GS “Dictocracy”, yes, that's right!

GGK Mr Rzewski, you are considered to be a

politically engaged composer.

FR No! Wrong! That’s not true! I can't say any more

about it.

GGK You’ve written, if I may quote you, that, “Music probably cannot change the world. But it’s a good idea to act as though it could.”4 FR Yes. Yes, I would say that, yes. If you don’t act as though music can change the world, then the music probably won’t be very good.

GGK Mr Steinke, do you want to run the risk of a From left: Gregorio García Karman, Frederic Rzweski, and Gerhard Steinke during the discussion at the Akademie der Künste, Berlin.

why I decided to install a keyboard first and then perhaps a wire string, which Oskar Sala would have liked to operate. What is also special is that you can divide the sounds, from 1/2 to 1/29. This was not technically achieved with Sala’s mixture Trautonium because he was a composer and musician, not an engineer. And then I met another artist in Munich, at the Siemens studio, Josef Anton Riedl, a brilliant composer, who sadly passed away, and he said to me: “If you’re building such a device, you have to build in Mel filters!” – “What are Mel filters?” – “Yes, a composer, a musician hears differently! You take frequencies 1:2:4, that’s completely wrong!” We hear differently as musicians. We have different octave leaps. “Take a look at these Mel filters and build them in!” This is what really sets them apart from other musical instruments. And of course Frederic recognised these wonderful filters immediately. Klaus Bechstein showed him ingenious tricks.2 Today, you heard sounds that sounded like everyday, new instruments. And they were produced fifty-three years ago by these two guys here at the table.

GGK Let’s talk about the piece itself! Mr Rzewski,

you mentioned that the title Zoologischer Garten comes from …

FR The title actually has nothing to do with the content. It’s a normal, serial piece. Quite formal, abstract.

Formalism in its purest form. Anything but socialist realism!

GS You have always emphasised that there must be silence in there too.3 GGK What role does silence play in the piece?

FR There’s this notion that there is no such thing as

silence. It comes from John Cage. Yes, there is no silence.

You always hear your heart beating. And why silence?

That was a long time ago, you know! Anyway, why is not important in art. It’s only important that you do something. Not that you understand what you are doing. And how you … no, this is not important. It’s important to others, musicologists, perhaps, but not in art – probably not in technology either.

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conclusion?

I have already given my conclusion: without such artists, technologists can’t accomplish anything good either. And we’re grateful as representatives of technology for such artists, with whom we have been able to work! In cooperating we create something great!

FR This is the only thing that counts!

GS And I’m very proud of this and very grateful for having got together with such artists as Siegfried Matthus, Paul Dessau, Kurt Masur, and Hermann Scherchen.

That’s the most important thing in life, that you understand art.

GS

GGK A human voice can also be heard in the piece.

FR This is the daughter of my philosophy professor,

Jacob Taubes, who taught hermeneutics here at the Freie Universität Berlin. He was my professor at Harvard.

Both of us were here. And his daughter came to visit and I recorded her in conversation. You can’t hear everything she says, and that was intentional. It’s too complicated to explain it all now, but at a certain point she said she wanted to be like her mum. She recounts her mum saying “We’re going to kill de Gaulle ...”. You can hear it when you know what’s there.

GGK Did Gesang der Jünglinge play a role for you?

FR Let’s say that the piece would be unthinkable

without Gesang der Jünglinge. I was very heavily influenced by Stockhausen. That’s quite clear.

GGK Over the course of time, the Subharchord

ended up at the Akademie der Künste. Georg Katzer, who could not be with us tonight – much to his regret – wrote the following for us: “In the 1980s, we had already brought the instrument from the Postal Museum to the Academy studio.

The engineer Georg Morawietz repaired the device and by 1987 I was already able to use the Subharchord for sound processing on Dialog Imaginär Nr. 2 (piano and electronics).”

GS I had given it to the museum because I thought nobody needed the prototype any more – it’s a bit prone to faults. So I gave it to the museum and we now have type No. 2; this allows us to produce better. More possibilities. But Georg Katzer was the brilliant man who got the thing out and said, I need such a device at the Akademie der Künste immediately. You have always brought it back to life!

GGK Thank you!

GS Thank you very much!

O n 1 October 1964, as part of the Berliner Festwochen 1 programme, Elliott Carter’s Double Concerto for Harpsichord and Piano was performed at the Universität der Künste, under the direction of Bruno Maderna with Mariolina de Robertis on harpsichord and Frederic Rzewski on piano.

2 Klaus Bechstein is a former a radio play engineer at the Rundfunk- und Fernsehtechnisches Zentralamt (RFZ – Central Office for Radio and Television), who played an important role in the production of Zoologischer Garten.

3 See Frederic Rzewski, “Dimensions of Sound and Silence: Notes on Zoologischer Garten", in Nonsequiturs: Writings & Lectures on Improvisation, Composition, and Interpretation” (Cologne: MusikTexte, 2007), pp. 374–88.

4 Rzewski, Nonsequiturs, p. 30

GGK But you find it annoying that the Subharchord

has been repeatedly associated with socialism in the press.

GS Yes, that’s a mistake! First of all, we didn’t have any socialism at all, did we? It was a kind of “pseudo-socialism”! We were allowed to develop it in spite of this

GREGORIO GARCÍA KARMAN is the artistic director of the Studio für Elektroakustische Musik at the Akademie der Künste, Berlin.

MENTALLY DIS-ORDERED MUSIC

Caspar Johannes Walter

FROM “LABOR BEETHOVEN 2020” “Labor Beethoven 2020” – an initiative of the Music Section of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin – gives young composers from Israel, Greece, Germany, and Kosovo the chance to develop and realise their visions of a musical future without external pressure. Reliance on commercial interests is of as little importance here as the idea, unfortunately often encountered, that one specific kind of musical thought has precedence over all others. The involvement of artists from the margins of Europe is deliberate: the universities and music academies of Thessaloniki (Greece), Tel Aviv (Israel), and Basel (Switzerland), with their mentors Dimitri Papageorgiou, Ruben Seroussi, and Caspar Johannes Walter, have each assembled a team of three younger composers, who are discussing the problems of today’s art at annual meetings, and have the opportunity to perform new works in collaborative projects, whether this occurs within or deliberately outside conventional forms of performance. Partnerships not only between composers and performers, but also with artists in other disciplines, receive targeted support to enable them to develop their artistic ideas over the course of several years.

Here is an example. In the Piano Sonata in D minor, op. 31, no. 2 (“The Tempest”), he causes a harmonically expansive recitative (“Largo, con espressione e semplice”) to become blurred by the sustaining pedal, creating an impression of distance. Without forewarning, the music then continues “Allegro” – enharmonically confused, without pedal, dry as dust. We are abruptly wrenched from a place far away to the here and now. In this sense, his music is mentally “dis-ordered” – in other words, it moves things from the positions they normally occupy.

And in this, he was by no means alone in his time. [ fig. 1]

Beethoven stretches the boundaries of a work and forces them open at the same time.

Akkad Izre’el

BEETHOVEN TODAY With his characteristic obstinacy, Beethoven transcended the boundaries of the existing norms in his own day.

Which makes it all the more refreshing to see him acting as a catalyst for a young generation of artists who also cross borders. From the perspective of the present, we can see in Beethoven an inventive spirit whose music, at certain spectacular moments, goes far beyond the limits of the language and conventions of his time: he provides an example of how strong and visionary music can be. Conventional music theory, with its desire to order different phenomena and systematise this order – thereby creating a model of reality – cannot grasp him accurately, since at many important moments in his music, Beethoven steps outside reality and, precisely for this reason, becomes pure sonic sensation.

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BEETHOVEN AND THE ALCHEMIST’S KITCHEN AROUND 1800 AS CREATIVE MODEL Following their youth together in Bonn, Anton Reicha’s and Ludwig van Beethoven’s paths repeatedly crossed.

In the electoral court orchestra of Bonn, Reicha was a flautist and Beethoven a viola player. They met again in Vienna; later, Reicha moved to Paris, where he enjoyed high regard as a composer, theorist, and teacher – with students including Berlioz and Liszt. At first, Beethoven and Reicha developed on similar lines, but then their ways separated entirely. While Beethoven became the embodiment of an era, even during his lifetime; Reicha dedicated himself to the unusual, the bizarre, and the unexplored.

Today Beethoven is anchored in our consciousness to an extent that is perhaps already too universal. The multi-­ talented Reicha, by contrast, is mainly known for his utilitarian music for wind ensemble; his innovations are largely forgotten. It is worth taking a look at the two together. It must have been a highly productive time for revolutionary ideas and visions. This fertile soil, from which Beethoven drew a great deal of his power, can be seen in the last section of Reicha’s Cours de composition musicale, where he is concerned with opposites that “have not been discussed until now”. In addition to a theoretical and practical reappraisal of quarter tones,

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1

2

Excerpt from Beethoven’s Sonata, op. 31, no. 2, Offenbach am Main, n.d.

3

From the first publication of Ernst Florens Friedrich Chladni’s work Die Akustik (Leipzig, 1802), p. 353

5

Liquid-filled subwoofer from the performance Cymatics, Berlin, 2018

4

From the performance Psychobjectivity, Berlin, 2018

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Guy Rauscher / Batya Frenklakh, lucasbox, score excerpt

he also demands composite time signatures such as 7/4 time, in order to abandon “the habit of hearing only two types of time signature and the slowness of learning and teaching new ones”. Particularly challenging is his appeal to “learn from physicists and mathematicians” the forms that audible sound waves describe in the air, so as to “determine the various grades of enmeshment of which music is capable” by analysing these forms.

Here, moreover, the reference to Ernst Florens Friedrich Chladni is obvious – of whom Napoleon said: “This man makes sounds visible.” Chladni was a physicist and astronomer, but in 1802 (the same year as Beethoven’s “Tempest” sonata) he also presented an

have already presented two projects which engage with the surface structures of images and sounds, and reveal common ground between them in a reduced, strict form.

One aim of these works is to sharpen perception, allowing the viewer to identify microscopic changes in the surfaces as an inherent dynamic force. Their planned “sound robot” project will continue this line of investigation: the acoustic and visual spaces are redefined by means of (relatively minimal) movements.

Psychobjectivity is a collaborative installation by Akkad Izre’el and Ari Rabenu. Cables are connected to a member of the audience, who walks around and hears sounds via headphones, which are related to the

Beethoven’s work is characterised by the search for extremes, the maximisation of sonic possibilities, and the development of new conceptions of form.

Adrian Nagel

THE FUTURE OF THE “LABOR” – THE “LABOR” OF THE FUTURE The next working meeting will take place in February 2019, at both sites of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin. The focus will be on two areas of activity: artistic exploitation of the Academy’s spaces, and preparation for the subsequent events. The Black Box is an exciting performance space in the basement floor of the Academy at Pariser Platz – a charismatic, stone-built hall with a viewers’ gallery – and powerful but also beautifully interesting acoustics that are worth using as a topic in themselves. The “Labor” composers will consider the properties of this space in their compositions, and perhaps even make them a central concern. On 24 February 2019, “Labor Beethoven 2020” is inviting everyone to an open day in the spaces at Pariser Platz.

CASPAR JOHANNES WALTER is professor of composition at the Musik-Akademie Basel. He has received important prizes for his work in the fields of orchestral composition (Irino Prize, Japan, 1992; Wien Modern, 1995) and ensemble music (Stuttgart, 1991), as well as awards such as a fellowship from the Villa Massimo in Rome. In 1998, the portrait CD featuring chamber music by Caspar Johannes

important study of acoustics, in which – besides brilliant speculations on the tuning system of music – he set out his theory of “sound figures”: patterns that become visible when various high notes cause a metal plate that has been dusted with powdered resin to vibrate.

The decisive idea for these experimenters was the unity of music and science, and it characterised the age just as much as the idea of a universal art transcending the individual disciplines. Beethoven and quarter tones or “sound figures”? It scarcely sounds imaginable. But with Beethoven, we must always reckon with the crossing of boundaries – and with the fact that these transgressions, for all Beethoven’s popularity, are seldom understood. [ fig. 2]

THE “LABOR BEETHOVEN 2020” STUDIOS Beethoven’s transgressions and singularities are now inspiring the “Labor” participants, alongside the thoroughly concrete materials of the alchemist’s kitchen of his day. The freedom of the spirit to create something unique is as exciting as its individualisation of form. On the basis of these resources, some of the young artists involved in “Labor Beethoven 2020” have started projects that they are working on in several stages, in selfelected teams. In their studios, aspects of materials research are combined with reflection and artistic experiment. Here are some examples from the multitude of individual “Labor” projects and events: The “Cymatics” studio by Anda Kryeziu can be seen as a direct descendent of the Chladni/Reicha tradition.

Kryeziu is working together with physicist Andrea Heilrath, electronics expert Justin Stewart, and clarinettist Djordje Kujundzic to incorporate coincidences between sound and form in an installation. This will provide interfaces (open mikes), with which forms can be improvised spontaneously. [ fig. 3] An interdisciplinary collaboration is taking place in the studio of Adrian Nagel and visual artist Eva Gentner. They

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objects in the surroundings. At the same time, these objects “speak” acoustically: they are fitted with loudspeakers without membranes (so-called transducers), which use the object itself as a resonating body. “An approach to the inner and outer perception of sound”: perception and imagination, inner and outer, reality and virtual space overlap. [ fig. 4]

Walter, issued by the German Music Council on the Wergo label, received the German Record Critics’ Award.

His interests as a performer – he is a cellist in the Thürmchen Ensemble, which he co-founded in 1991 – are mainly oriented towards younger composers in the fields of experimental music and music theatre. Since 2014 he has been a member of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Music Section.

HITZACKER SUMMER MUSIC DAYS

THE PARTICIPANTS at the first working meeting at the

In July 2018, the “Labor Beethoven 2020” was a guest at the Summer Music Days in Hitzacker, one of the most important German music festivals which, this year, was entirely focused on the music of Beethoven. The concept of networking had top priority for the premieres of all the “Labor Beethoven” composers’ works. In Hitzacker, cooperation with the prizewinners of the German Music Competition, who performed the new works, gave rise to partnerships that will continue to enrich the “Labor” in future projects as well.

Eleni Ralli projected sounds across a lake, and thereby achieved such a concentration of listening that even very quiet sounds were perceptible across vast distances.

Faidra Chafta Douka and Thanos Sakellaridis explored the Paetzold recorders, which are rarely found on the concert scene: huge, deep-sounding instruments with an impressive mechanism that almost appears machinelike. This pairing will compose further works for the prizewinning duo of Elisabeth Wirth and Maximilian Volbers. One event that impressed everybody was the first performance, by Julius Schepansky, of the accordion piece lucasbox by Guy Rauscher and Batya Frenklakh: a composition that uses open, sometimes graphic forms of notation to express certain things in the piece with greater precision. The successful co­­ operation between the young composers and interpreters was rounded off with a composition for the entire prizewinners’ ensemble by Manolis Ekmektsoglou, which he also conducted. [ fig. 5]

Academy at Hanseatenweg, Berlin, in 2017: Thanos Sakellaridis (Thessaloniki), Manolis Ekmektsoglou (Thessaloniki), Faidra Chafta Douka (Thessaloniki), Anda Kryeziu (Basel), Adrian Nagel (Basel), Eleni Ralli (Basel), Guy Rauscher (Tel Aviv), Dimitri Papageorgiou (mentor, Thessaloniki), Caspar Johannes Walter (mentor, Basel), Oliver Wille (artistic director of Hitzacker Summer Music Days), Ruben Seroussi (mentor, Tel Aviv), Ari Rabenu (Tel Aviv), Akkad Izre’el (Tel Aviv)

Further events: The “Labor” is giving a guest performance in May 2019 at the Experimental Center of Arts, Thessaloniki.

During the concluding events in March 2020, commissioned works by all nine composers will be pre­s ented. Alongside this, a publication will appear, installations will be created, and podium discussions conducted, in which, as well as all the participants, subject-­s pecific experts and guest performers will be involved.

“Labor Beethoven 2020” has been created to mark “BTHVN2020”, a series of projects to commemorate Beethoven’s 250th anniversary, and is supported by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.

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KUNSTWELTEN 46

HOPE FOR THE BITTERFELD PALACE OF CULTURE

Günter Kowa

The legendary East-rock band The Puhdys was the last act on the stage, before the lights went out, perhaps forever. It was the year 2015 and their once glorious hit “Alles hat seine Zeit” must have sounded like a requiem for the Bitterfeld Palace of Culture as an event venue. The time had come for it to give in to the changing times. Since then that most famous of the many “cultural temples” scattered throughout the former German Democratic Republic, the East German “state of the workers and peasants”, has not only been standing empty and idle, but has also been isolated in deserted surroundings.

The widespread clearances on the site of the former electro-­chemical plant have left behind a wasteland, even if some locations have been revived by individual companies of the chemical industry, bringing in new technology. Next door, the sleek appearance of a flatroofed glass and steel structure attracts attention, but the vocational training centre opened by the district council in the EXPO-year 2000 has recently been shut down due to the discovery of carcinogenic substances in the wall insulation.

The Palace of Culture is still standing, thanks to its status as a protected historic monument. But in 2017 the company running the industrial estate, the “Chemieparkgesellschaft”, which also owns the Palace, submitted a demolition application to the State Administration Office, indicating that it intended to dispose of its legacy.

That news did not go down well with the people of the town, although it was largely the older generation that raised their voice and launched petitions. They were the people who as school children had celebrated their “Jugendweihe” (the coming-of-age ceremony that was hugely popular in East German times) in the theatre hall of the Palace. And many had gone on to do painting, dancing, and writing classes in the Palace, in the working men’s circles that used to operate there. In 1996, the actor and director Stephan Stroux passed through Bitterfeld and saw it in the twilight of its decline, when there was only one remaining “Kassenfräulein” (ticket girl) and her “retired husband”, who told him how they had helped to build the Palace “in the many voluntary building hours in the 1950s, when they still believed in it.”

A telling memory of this communal spirit of the period are the numerous canvases in the style of socialist realism which used to hang in the long corridors under neo-baroque wall lights. But the paintings and other artworks were all taken from the site after the Treuhand­ anstalt (the trust agency for the privatisation of East German enterprises) sold them to the Land (the federal state) of Saxony-Anhalt. A total of 265 items is in the custody of the State Administration Office in Halle. If and when any of these will be seen in Bitterfeld again is an open question. Similarly, the Mitteldeutscher Verlag (MDV), a publishing company in Halle, gave the State Archive in Magdeburg all its documents relating to the

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“Bitterfelder Weg” (Bitterfeld Way), an initiative kicked off by MDV author Otto Gotsche in 1959. Gotsche was a personal advisor to Walther Ulbricht, the all-powerful Socialist Party secretary, and together they turned the annual Bitterfeld conference of MDV authors into the politically charged cultural conference which was meant to pave the way to a new working-class culture, particularly in literature.

From 2004 to 2015 the Palace hosted visiting per­ formances, thanks to the private passion of Jürgen Preiss-Daimler, the owner of the Chemieparkgesellschaft at the time. But that was only a faint echo of its former glory and has had no future under the auspices of his successors, whose paramount interest is the balance sheet. “Running the building is not economically feasible”, they say, and not without reason, given the crippling costs from maintenance and heating to pumping out the ground water which is on the rise again since mining ended. The mining company used to pay for this work, but the pumping station is to be shut down soon, and so the basement is bound to be flooded.

At this point, the “Zukunftswerkstatt”, a student project of the Academy’s KUNSTWELTEN teaching programme for schools, comes into play. Under the direction of the architect and Academy member Michael Bräuer from Rostock, who led the rebuilding of the town centre in East German times and later became the general secretary of the government expert panel on urban conservation, “Zukunftswerkstatt” has been organising projects with the schools of the Bitterfeld region since 2005. Bräuer was joined by his Academy colleague Theresa Schütz, a Vienna-based architect. Together, they sparked off a totally new enthusiasm for the site. More than a dozen young people from the Heinrich-Heine-­Gymnasium, a grammar school in nearby Wolfen, came together under the direction of their art teacher Volker Neuhaus for a five-day workshop, which was not only an intense experience for everyone but also produced viable results. In particular, there was “a new freedom of mind”, as Schütz says of the students, who had almost no prior knowledge of and hardly any connection through their families to the Palace of Culture. But the youngsters went out of their way to rediscover it as a place of their own. And that may well be its salvation, says Schütz: “It needs people who are willing to get involved.”

The Chemieparkgesellschaft came on board, too. They opened the generally inaccessible building and took the students on a guided tour. Bitterfeld museum director Uwe Holz gave an introduction to the industrial history of the plant and to East German cultural politics of the 1950s. The regional representative of the State Office for the Protection of Historical Monuments, Holger Brülls, acquainted the youths with the architectural history and raised awareness for the material qualities of the former workers’ temple, with its many references to upper-class culture made accessible to the working man. The resulting air of aspiring but trashy taste took on a whole new charm for the young people; for them the interior design seemed “cool” and out of the ordinary. From this perspective, the yearning for the past, which had been the driving force among the defenders of the building, no longer played a role.

This was eventually demonstrated impressively in the presentation of the mock-ups and ideas that were the culmination of the workshop. The theatre hall was the subject of one of the proposals, which looked at the room in the light of present-day entertainment: nowadays concert audiences are standing, gathering in front of the stage. Rising rows of seats are therefore superfluous and could be taken out, perhaps to be informally distributed around adjoining rooms. The floor could be levelled and the stage lowered, so that “those above are not looking down on those below.” With large-scale discos and You Tube stars, the building would draw a whole new audience – with the many rooms formerly used for the art circles now offering space for new leisure activities that could be organised like a club.

Among the observers of the workshop was one who was not only convinced of the potential of such ideas, but also of their economic feasibility. Matthias Gossler, director of the “Splitter” event agency based in nearby Sandersdorf, sees the Palace of Culture as a promising event location. Not only music stars, but also the universities and companies in the region might be interested in holding festivals and conferences there, he says, no longer limited to Leipzig as the nearest place with comparable event capacities. According to him, preparations are already “in full swing”, and by the end of 2020, following a few conversions, the building could be ready to go into operation.

“A realistic idea is needed for such a place to survive, not castles in the sky”, says Schütz. The fact that the Academy student workshop demonstrated a way out of the years of lethargy in regard to the Bitterfeld Palace of Culture is a result which few of the participants would have expected. In line with its long-standing tradition, the “Zukunftswerkstatt” has given impressive proof of its own future viability.

Born in 1954, GÜNTER KOWA works as a journalist in Berlin. He studied history and art history at the University of London, and art history, archaeology, and Italian studies at the University of Bonn. In 1990 his Architektur der Englischen Gotik was published by DuMont.

From 1991 to 2008 he worked as an editor for the arts section of the Mitteldeutsche Zeitung in Halle. Since then he has been working freelance, including further work for the Mittel­deutsche Zeitung. In 2017 he published Reformation Revisited: Trips to Luther Country (Mittel­d eutscher Verlag, Halle).

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TO A LOVE AFFAIR”

“I CAN ONLY COMPARE MY CONNECTION

ON THE OCCASION OF THE SEVENTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF SINN UND FORM: DURS GRÜNBEIN IN CONVERSATION WITH MATTHIAS WEICHELT

MW The time when you were first published in Sinn und Form was a particularly historical moment: In issue 4 (1988), in the late phase of the GDR, you made your debut with poems. How did it come about?

You were in your mid-twenties and hadn’t published anywhere yet.

DG It came about through a ruse by Heiner Müller.

He had sent some of my poems that he endorsed to Suhrkamp Verlag. Now the rule was that if an author wanted to publish in the West, he had to publish in East Germany first. So Müller thought it would be best to offer my poems to Sinn und Form. Of course, I was familiar with the magazine; it had a good reputation, even in the independent scene. We admired the legendary founding editor-­­in-chief, the poet Peter Huchel. You could say that Sinn und Form had a certain extra-territorial status; it was almost a piece of neutral ground.

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MW This kind of independence has been part of the profile of the magazine since it was founded, seventy years ago. Due to its literary renown, from the very beginning it had an influence that extended beyond the borders of East Germany. Even Huchel’s successors defended this reputation, including Wilhelm Girnus, who was appointed editor-in-chief in 1964 because he was regarded as an ideological counterpart to Huchel. In the 1960s and 1970s, he published controversial texts by Christa Wolf, Ulrich Plenzdorf, and Volker Braun that could not have appeared elsewhere. So it appears that Sinn und Form has somehow educated its editors … The famous issue 4 (1989), under editor-in-chief Max Walter Schulz, not only contains a greeting by Erich Honecker on the fortieth anniversary of the magazine, but also Christoph Hein’s “Die Ritter der Tafelrunde” as a farewell to the sclerotic Politburo.

Such opposites were possible here. How did you perceive the development of the magazine in the post-1989 period?

DG My ongoing history with Sinn und Form was determined by the fact that we experienced the same radical changes. After 1989, nothing was the same as before, either for me or for the magazine. Sinn und Form had to reorient itself; I wrote my next book and travelled a lot.

But I stayed in touch with the magazine. Through Sebastian Kleinschmidt, the new editor-in-chief, I heard about plans and projects as well as the debates about Sinn und Form. During this period, I thought about solidarity again and again and was relieved to hear that the united Akademie der Künste had decided to continue with the magazine. Today, it is one of the most enjoyable appearances on the publishing landscape due to its consistency; you can always rely on its quality. This continuity has been hard won.

MW The magazine founded by Johannes R. Becher and Paul Wiegler was published by the Academy of Arts in East Germany from issue 5 (1950), so from the second year. In the fifties, the editorial team revolved around Huchel, who insisted on the fundamental freedom of their decisions and was subjected to severe attacks again and again, because they did not hold to the political and cultural requirements.

Later, the Academy served as guarantor for the continued existence of the magazine.

DG Since the beginning of the last century, magazine projects have almost always been connected to an institution, usually a publisher, such as Neue Rundschau with S. Fischer, and later on, Akzente with Hanser or Zwiebelfisch with Wagenbach. In this sea of magazines, Sinn und Form has always been an independent ship that sailed its own course. This means that the mix of authors has never been lopsided in the sense of a preference for the authors of a specific publishing house. And the magazine never became a podium for a specific world view. Even after the fall of the Berlin Wall, both were always present, more left-wing views and more conservative ones. That is why it never lacked explosive material. And that is why a dazzling figure like Heiner Müller fitted in so well here too. During the GDR era, his texts were printed in Sinn und Form, while at the same time the magazine contained fierce discussions about him.

As the Academy’s president, he then became the magazine’s great protector, like Brecht in the early years. In addition to this, I may add, at a time of increasing provincialism, of GDR separatism, Sinn und Form always stood for internationality, for world culture. That is why the magazine was home for me from the very beginning. Everything else was much too sectarian.

Here, on the other hand, land was in sight.

MW As you have just mentioned two of the im­por-

tant Sinn und Form authors: Does such a magazine also create a circle, in the sense of a com­munity, where you have a sense of belonging and support?

DG It has always been the case that some authors appear more frequently of course. But above all, there is a broad spectrum, a full range, from free literary writing to far more confessional writing. The different ideological outlooks also find their place here. For me, it is also particularly important that each issue contains finds from different layers in time, archival materials, correspondence, drafts of novels, and so on. And all of this is combined with the contemporary. Of course, it is an honour to see your own contribution next to one by Elias

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Canetti or Eric Voegelin. These neighbourhoods and contemporaneities create a new intellectual world. This always seems to me to be the editors’ ideal, allowing such a unique intellectual world to emerge across all camps. Nothing is pre-sorted here. Similarly, I have always been impressed by how naturally the genres and forms are placed side-by-side. There are of course examples of publications that only contain poetry or stories or novel excerpts. This was never the case in Sinn und Form. Here, equality always ruled; you knew that every issue would contain a wide variety of forms, essays, conversations, letters, prose, and above all poetry, time and time again. This is what makes it so varied.

MW In your memoir, Die Jahre im Zoo, you speak of “the adventure of reading”. What you have just described is something along these lines. The un­­ predictable, the inconsistent, the ambiguous require a certain desire for adventure from the person who is reading this material.

DG Literary magazines are, in the best sense of the word, places of discovery; here I stumble across new, unknown names, across traces that I often continue to follow thereafter. This stimulating factor is very important for me; it is present in Sinn und Form to a considerable degree. That is why I always open the magazine immediately, as soon as I get my hands on it, during every reading and study phase. For the sake of the surprises that await me. From the sum of these new encounters, an overall picture has gradually evolved. In Sinn und Form, I have often been able to get to know texts by colleagues in the workshop stage. And I have often been able to try out contributions here that later found their way into books. The editorial team always tries to compose the publication in a certain way, and sometimes holds something back for longer periods until a context arises.

MW Looking at today’s media landscape, you could get the impression that Sinn und Form is a very untimely publication. Because of the Internet, we have become accustomed to having free access to many things – often without paying for them – and to being able to seek out what we are interested in. In a printed magazine, on the other hand, you are dealing with a selection made by an editorial team, with a very special extract that you also have to pay for in advance. This really doesn’t sound very attractive.

DG With Sinn und Form, you always know that the selection has been made with careful consideration and examination, along with a high degree of idiosyncrasy.

This makes it interesting. In other places, you often get the impression that what has just arrived has been swept together. Thematic publications dedicated to a particular subject have recently come into fashion. For some this may be appealing, but it seems rather pre­ dictable to me. You can assume that certain authors are mentioned; that the contributions have been collected for a specific purpose. With Sinn und Form, I know the composition of each issue is preceded by editorial discussions; a certain judgement of taste is at work here. It is always about questions of style, too, which is why a theoretically appealing but linguistically unsuccessful text will not appear in the magazine. In the public sphere today, there is a noticeable acceleration of change in

the debates: emotionally charged writing is playing an increasingly important role. What is included in an issue of Sinn und Form is generally somewhat more mature. This also has to do with the editorial care taken, with the scrupulous editing. These are quality standards that I am familiar with from good publishers. I can only compare my connection with Sinn und Form to a love affair. I publish in many places, but this really is something special.

Draft of the cover for Sinn und Form

by Eduard Stichnote (1948)

DURS GRÜNBEIN, born in 1962 in Dresden, lives and works as a poet, translator, and essayist in Berlin and Rome.

He has won numerous awards for his work, which has been translated into several languages, including the Peter Huchel Prize, the Georg Büchner Prize, the Salzburg Easter Festival Literature Prize, the Friedrich Nietzsche Prize, and the Berlin Literature Prize. His most recent publications include Die Jahre im Zoo: Ein Kaleidoskop (2015) and Zündkerzen: Gedichte (2017). Durs Grünbein is a member of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Literature Section.

MATTHIAS WEICHELT, born in 1971 in Lichtenstein/Saxony, has been an editor at Sinn und Form since 2006 and editor-in-chief since 2013. He is co-editor of the annotated Nelly Sachs edition. In 2017, he published Dieter Janz: Nebensachen Ansichten eines Arztes (co-edited with Sebastian Kleinschmidt), and in 2018, Peter Huchel: Leben in Bildern.

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NEWS FROM THE ARCHIVES

FINDS – HANNS EISLER DELETED MARGINAL NOTES MADE READABLE AGAIN

Peter Deeg To a certain extent, composers can determine which objects and information are to be omitted from their legacies and therefore – if included in an archive – will not be available in the music archive later on. The “safest” method is undoubtedly the physical destruction of the document in question, such as a failed score or an early work later seen as embarrassing: for example, you could search Hanns Eisler’s legacy in the Akademie der Künste Archives in vain for the opera fragment for Leonce and Lena after Georg Büchner, which Eisler (1898–1962) consigned to the flames as an unfinished torso toward the end of the 1920s. On the other hand, more than thirty romantic compositions from his youth, which Eisler had written as a 20-year-old and given to his then girlfriend as a gift, turned up again shortly after his death, even though they had already been completely eradicated from his legacy and from the catalogue of his works. The above-mentioned girlfriend had faithfully kept the scores for decades and even took them with her to the United States when forced into exile; from there, she transferred Eisler’s discarded early works – which, among other things, bear testament to the influence late-­Romantic composers such as Gustav Mahler and Hugo Wolf had on the “composer of the working class”– to the newly founded Hanns Eisler Archive in East Berlin in 1965.

A second method frequently used by Eisler to withhold certain information from posterity involved the sometimes astonishing rigorous crossing out and erasure of headers, dates, and notes, as well as bars or entire lines of notes in his own autographs. In some cases, the original entries were so thoroughly scribbled over that, until recently, all attempts to decipher them had

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Original with final comment repeatedly scribbled over (Hanns Eisler, Vierzehn Arten den Regen zu beschreiben, 1941, last page of the autograph in its current condition)

failed (see figure above). This unsatisfactory situation has now changed fundamentally for some of the scores in the Hanns Eisler Archive: after the relocation of an external storage facility in 2014, a box of small-format negatives came to light, the importance of which had previously been overlooked. As it turned out, they were photographs that he had commissioned to be taken of his most important works just prior to his return from exile in the United States in 1948 – a total of more than four hundred images of almost twice as many score pages. The best bit: many parts of the autographs that are no longer decipherable today are easily readable in these images because the subsequent deletions are absent (see figure opposite). A treasure trove for musicology – the scores are suddenly available to us again in their pre-1948 condition!

And so, in the case of the song Der Mensch, a previously unknown dedication to Brecht’s son Stefan and the date “25 Sept 1944 Hollywood” were revealed, which seems to finally refute the statement added to the first printed edition published in 1956 that the song came from Eisler’s controversial opera project Johann

Faustus (1952). In the sonata for violin and piano known as Reisesonate, the places of origin of the three movements (Prague, New York, and Mexico City) are readable for the first time, which Eisler may not necessarily have wanted to see printed as a blatantly obvious reference to his “emigration to the West” that had long been frowned upon in East Germany. And the note on the last page of the score for Vierzehn Arten den Regen zu beschreiben (1941; “Fourteen ways to describe the rain”) can finally be deciphered, showing us that the last bars of the composition not only marked the end of the film the score was written for (Rain by Joris Ivens) but also the end of the positive “mood” the composer had needed for this work. With this spectacular find of photos, these and many more entries that Hanns Eisler made illegible in his scores after 1948 are, for the first time, accessible to musicological research.

PETER DEEG works at the Music Archives of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin.

“ENDE / (des Films) / [und meiner Laune] ” (END / (of the film) / [and my mood]) The composer’s final comment (including the date), which was made illegible in the original, is easy to read in this source. Hanns Eisler, Vierzehn Arten den Regen zu beschreiben (1941) the last page of the autograph, black-and-white photograph from 1948

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NEWS FROM THE ARCHIVES GRET PALUCCA

IN THE EYES OF LÁSZLÓ MOHOLY-NAGY

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In the 1920s, at the beginning of her solo career, Gret Palucca developed a great love for the world of the visual arts. Through Hilde Goldschmidt, who was living in the room beside hers while training with Mary Wigman, Gret Palucca came into contact with the Gruppe 1919 and, through them, became acquainted with the Bauhaus artists Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and László Moholy-Nagy; the painter Lyonel Feininger, the sculptor Georg Kolbe, and the two photographers Charlotte Rudolph and Genja Jonas. The encounters between Palucca and the visual artists bore reciprocal fruits. The “Bauhauslers” addressed topics such as space and form in their work, as did Palucca in her dancing. To Moholy-­ Nagy, because of the geometric accuracy of her figures, Palucca was “the clearest of today’s dancers” and embodied “the newly found law of motion”. The great closeness and friendship between the Bauhaus artists and Palucca is reflected in the photographs taken by Moholy-Nagy around 1927, when she was visiting one of the Masters’ Houses in Dessau. In addition to Palucca, the wives of Lyonel Feininger and Herbert Trantow can be seen in the pictures. The Masters’ Houses were semi-detached buildings. Moholy-Nagy and Feininger lived in the semi-detached house where the pictures were taken, which are now kept in the Gret Palucca Archive at the Akademie der Künste, Berlin.

HELENE HEROLD is an archivist at the Performing Arts Archives at the Akademie der Künste, Berlin.

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NEWS FROM THE ARCHIVES

HEINRICH MANN DIGITAL – AN INTERNATIONAL COOPERATIVE PROJECT Marcel Lepper

Heinrich Mann: Outlines for the essay Zola (1915), on the back of an envelope from 5 March 1914

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Anyone who wants to study the manuscripts and letters of Heinrich Mann has to travel to Berlin and Frankfurt, Los Angeles and Moscow, Zurich and Marbach, Prague and Munich. A few years ago, Germanist Peter Stein determined that bringing the legacy back together again was a utopian dream; even a virtual reconstruction was nowhere in sight.1 This dispersion is no coincidence, but rather a consequence of the fractures and dislocations of the 20th century. As chairman of the Section for Poetic Arts of the Prussian Academy, Mann fought for the freedom of art

until he was forced to resign and emigrate in 1933. He did the same thing as president of the German Freedom Library and of the German exiles’ PEN Club in Paris, and again from 1940 when in exile in the United States.

After 1950, the holding segments arrived in the archives step by step, after making some complicated detours. At the Akademie der Künste in East Germany, where Heinrich Mann could no longer assume the presidency, Alfred Kantorowicz (1899–1979) built up the initial holding. But parts of the legacy were also archived in Los Angeles, Prague, and Marbach. During the Cold

War era, the fact that the inventory was split up impeded accessibility for research and for the public. Fortunately, in recent years, an awareness of the importance of the reconstruction of provenances and transmission paths essential to interpretation has awoken in the archives and in research.

The time has come, not just in political and scientific terms, for the desideratum of a virtual reunification formulated by Peter Stein to be honoured. In 2021 the copy­right for Heinrich Mann will expire. Over the next three years, 30,000 scans will be taken at the Akademie der Künste Archives: of manuscripts, pre-press, and notebooks. In 2021 Heinrich Mann’s oeuvre will be made available to research and the public in digitised form through the databases and digital presentation forms of the participating institutions.

A shared platform will make this virtual reunification possible, both in terms of text genetics and the history of textual transmission. By revealing the “jigsaw puzzle” of the archive holdings, it will become a digital model far beyond Heinrich Mann. It will demonstrate for the first time how a transnational approach can be used to elevate scattered literary holdings from the 20th century to a new level of visibility, structured according to chronology, provenances, holdings, and locations. This digital cooperation project provides corresponding impetus for edition philology, literary history, and provenance research.

The search for the Berlin manuscripts and books from the period between 1928 and 1933, which were confiscated after Heinrich Mann’s flight, has been on­ going to this day. The digital search for clues in Eastern Europe and Scandinavia, in France and the United States can contribute to bringing Heinrich Mann’s work more intensively back into discussion in research and among the literary community, at seminars and on the book market. This is not difficult: lines Mann wrote in the essay Zola about undesirable political developments, about the guilt of the “ideological sympathisers”, seem as clear and explosive a century later, as if they were from the present day.

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eter Stein, Heinrich Mann (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2002), P p. 164.

MARCEL LEPPER is the director of the Literature Archives of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin.

The digital Heinrich Mann platform is a cooperative project by the Literature Archives of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, with the Heinrich Mann Society, the University of Southern California, Feuchtwanger Memorial Library, the German Literature Archive Marbach, ETH Zurich, and the Czech Literary Archive in Prague, among others, in agreement with the current edition projects and the publishers S. Fischer and Aisthesis.

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NEWS FROM THE ARCHIVES

THE CERTIFICATE OF HONORARY MEMBERSHIP FOR OTTO VON BISMARCK A DOCUMENT FROM THE AGE OF LOYALTY TO THE KAISER Ulrike Möhlenbeck

In 2017 the Akademie der Künste Archives acquired the honorary membership certificate for Otto von Bismarck at an auction by the book and art antiquarians Reiss & Sohn. In addition to artists’ estates, the Archives also keep testimonies to the history of the Academy. The Historical Archives, for example, holds evidentiary documents pertaining to the approximately two thousand artists who have been members of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, over the last 322 years.

However, membership patents were presented to the members themselves and only rarely found their way back into the Archives through the acquisition of legacies – Georg Kaiser and Walter von Molo can be mentioned here. Therefore, the auction offered a welcome opportunity to acquire a particularly grand honorary certificate to add to the Historical Archives.

On the occasion of his 80th birthday, the Royal Prussian Academy of Arts elected Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898) as an honorary member in 1895. According to the Statutes, personalities who – without being artists themselves – performed services of merit for the benefit of the Academy or for art in general could be elected honorary members. There is no documented evidence that Reich Chancellor Otto von Bismarck actively supported the interests of the Academy during his time in office from 1871 to 1890. Nevertheless, the Academy decided, at a time when Bismarck was venerated, to make the former chancellor an honorary member. The Bismarck cult not only led to the construction of the Bismarck monuments that can still be seen today in numerous locations, but also meant that virtually every company and institution from business and industry, every association of civil society, honoured Bismarck with a congratulatory address and a special gift. The Prussian Academy of Arts, which was also caught up in the national-conservative zeitgeist, joined in honouring Bismarck.

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In January 1895 the joint meeting of the Senate and the members of the Visual Arts Section accepted the proposal of the outgoing President Carl Becker and his successor Hermann Ende with only one vote against.

Which member voted against has, unfortunately, not been passed down. A little later, approval was received from the Prussian Ministry of Culture as the super­ visory authority. The gracious letter of thanks from Bismarck accepting the election was dated 20 February 1895. However, because of scheduling difficulties, a seven-­member delegation from the Academy led by the painter Anton Werner did not travel to Friedrichsruh to present the certificate to Bismarck in person, along with an address, until December 1895.

The design of the certificate of honorary membership was much more elaborate and ornate than the patent for ordinary members: a large handwritten document (70 × 54 cm) on parchment, decorated with calligraphy, bearing a hand-painted coat of arms and seal, with a leather case featuring leather binding, with silk lining and a gilt inner edge. Moreover, the certificate is not only signed by President Carl Becker and the first permanent secretary Hans Müller, but also by seventy-­five members of the Visual Arts Section and the Music Section, including Alexander Calandrelli, Adolph Menzel, Paul Meyerheim, Franz Skarbina, Anton von Werner, Herrmann Ende, Franz Schwechten, Joseph Joachim, and Max Bruch. The unique combination of the original members’ signatures and the splendid design make the honorary certificate particularly valuable.

But the current whereabouts of the address presented to Bismarck at the same time is unknown. The address, also referred to as the title sheet, was created by Friedrich Geselschap (1835–1898), a history painter of the Düsseldorf School and a member of the Academy from 1882. His best-known work today is the painting of

the dome of Berlin’s Zeughaus on the occasion of the reconstruction of 1879. Studies for this are held in the art collection of the Akademie der Künste today. The title sheet by Geselschap was shown at a charity exhibition in the Academy building at Unter den Linden in March 1895, before being presented to Bismarck. An image of it has not been passed down, but a contemporary report in the Vossische Zeitung describes the work in minute detail: On the left-hand side, looms the gigantic, elevated, iron-clad warrior figure of Bismarck; looking up, he proffers the sparkling imperial crown to the inclined Germania. A monster writhes helplessly at his feet, symbolising evil. On the right, paying homage, dressed in folded vestments, the ideal figures of the four arts – Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, and Music – are to be seen. Three putti are grouped around the warrior, the first with a sword in a golden scabbard; the second and third bearing panels with the inscriptions “Law” and “Constitution”. The image is crowned by three young singers rejoicing and holding a banner with the inscription “Salus germaniae suprema lex”.

Geselschap’s work exemplifies the imperial era’s patriotic taste in art, to which the Academy felt fully committed. In accordance with the demands of its protector, Kaiser Wilhelm II – that art should either depict ideal beauty or serve the fatherland – the Academy stood for the preservation of traditional perceptions of art and for driving back modern tendencies. Although the Berlin Secessionists had already drawn attention to themselves with their first public exhibitions, it was only the reforms primarily initiated by Max Liebermann after the end of the First World War that were to drag the Academy out of its torpor.

ULRIKE MÖHLENBECK is head of department at the Historical Archives of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin.

The certificate of honorary membership for Otto von Bismarck with the signatures of seventy-five members of the Academy, 1895

COMMENTARY A COMMENTARY ON MATHIAS GREFFRATH’S CONTRIBUTION “THE ADDED VALUE OF MARX” IN ISSUE 7 OF THE JOURNAL DER KÜNSTE

OBLIVIOUSNESS TO SOCIETY Rudolf de Lippe

RUDOLF DE LIPPE. For his last chair, at Witten/Herdecke University, he created the title “Philosophy of the Forms of Life”. Since his retirement, he is an artist, anew, in gestural painting, exhibiting in several countries. He is also pursuing his activities for the exchanges between cultures, beginning with his “Jaspers Lectures on Matters of Our Time”, with fellows from four continents, and then with his foundation “Forum of Cultures on Matters of Our Time”. His principal publications include a history of the body in the Renaissance titled Naturbeherrschung am Menschen, 2 vols; a basic approach to an anthropological aesthetics: Sinnen­bewusstsein, 2 vols; and most recently, works on plural economy and the philosophy of change and movement. He is the editor of a volume on the mutual learning of cultures for a common future.

JOURNAL DER KÜNSTE 09

not really change the structures of the bourgeois econWhat Heidegger called obliviousness to being, in his omy. He complained about the “narrow-mindedness of metaphysics, should rather be called obliviousness to life. These late modern societies forget what invigor- the artisan’s artistic instincts”, but did not envisage ates life and what finds expression in a truly lived life. how to unfold them in all human beings at work. These Regarding this, Mathias Greffrath once again clearly and other dimensions of being human continue to fall presented us with the socio-theoretical conditions victim to our “asocial societies”, as Kant has put it, established by Marx. because of the antagonistic mechanism of the market.

But we have to take, together with his warning, a dif- To the contrary. Digitization presupposes ever more ferent approach. In the whole of society our contempo- controllability. Accelerated rationalization. raries only for proper functioning. For the individual, life How are we to understand our freedom? Amitav is only about “successfully” getting by or earning a nice Gosh emphasizes that, nowadays, we need to free ourselves for our relations with nature – the world around living. Individual identity is confused with the pretension us – as human beings. Marx commendably promoted an to importance. awareness of “our metabolism with nature”. Yet, how is Of course, the tasks of Marxian criticism still matter, even though at present they seem to be obscured by the “expropriation of land and labor” to be reversed from other antagonisms. Compared to the tasks of Marxian the standpoint of economic anthropology? He did not, criticism, the strategies of digitalization and of algorith- explicitly, take this task into consideration, even when mic thinking present an even more significant threat: automation was already becoming recognizable as a pseudo-rational anonymisation. Thus now the battle- fundamental problem. Marx became too much preoccufield is being prepared for the seamless power to dis- pied by one dimension of the balance to be gained: the pose of the potential of the individual. Against self-­ abstract aspect of economy. What Brecht coined as determination and democracy. “the third cause” for political people, for revolution, Marx This is about fostering homogeneity. The national state did not envisage in enough of a concrete sense in his had already elevated homogeneity to an ideology under Das Kapital or in later works: The concrete concern of the guise of patriotism and cultural identity. Now this all people for each other, for the earth, and for themideology is used for ultimate controllability serving the selves; to thus participate in life’s interactions in all power of the few. When factions of the student move- its dimensions: historic, cosmic, and individual. Aleida ment began to become numb as cadre groups that called Assmann has recently accentuated human responsibilities as completing the concept of human rights. The themselves communist, they began to hide behind people of the other continents have always refused the their “objectivities”. Much to their anger and to the one-sidedness of this concept because it is blind on delight of many, in a contribution to Kursbuch, edited behalf of the equal need to protect the relationships

by Enzensberger and Karl Markus Michel, I argued in favour of irreducible subjectivity as an “objective fac- between people and their communities and their interactions with the world with us. All the dimensions which tor”. In this sense, however, Marx had already laid the have until now been denied or lost or endangered in the ground for a fatal course. He positioned humankind on western world and in the westernized global world are one social class as “the subject of history” far too schematically. How were concrete human beings to con- to be rediscovered through the search for the potentialities we desire. stitute, with one another, the living humanity? Their According to Hans Georg Gadamer, the cosmology of relationships thus appeared to be secondary to the structures of the machinery of production. The indus- antiquity, when forced out by Christianity, was further pursued in the particular obstinacy of art. Some call it trial structures that anonymised the people remained in place; the revolution that actually took place had just “the governess for the utopian” – against the dominant imposed a more systematic system. Leading to an abso- delusionary system of the so-called reality. The same applies in particular to the realities possible in a future lute. Thus revolution is conceived of as a Hegelian experiment in thought: the sheer “negation of the nega- that is to emerge between passionate criticism and even tion”. In the high sphere of the abstract. The slogans of more passionate enthusiasm for the process of wishing.

Driven by criticism, this has to push itself off the sys1968 said “destroy what destroys you”.

Marx introduced into the social sciences a system- tems that force us into a false life.

It is for precisely such an initiative that I work with atic criticism of history: An analysis of the origins of the now evident turmoil were to found his claims for a students of the Zeppelin Universität in Germany: “Trucks revolutionary future. Justice as a finally well-balanced out of the delusionary system of so-called reality”. Kant evolution. An analogy to the epigenetics of evolution was at ease to ask, “what can I hope for?” in nature.

Meanwhile, purely rational analyses of the future How must, then, the present be lived politically? In leave us fearful of this question. So we should look in reality changes have to be accomplished by and together amazement at the elementary drive of life throughout evolution and ask ourselves how this drive can be the with those who live now. living force for a humanity that has moved so far beyond It is time to reflect how we can rejuvenate André Breton’s vision of revolution in conjunction with poetry – its biological course into historical consciousness – or, as it is, lack of consciousness. poetry as a transition of life.

In Marx’s critical anthropology we find revendications like this: Instead of the economic freedom to economi- What should we hope for? cally own something, we should enjoy the spiritual abundance of all. He even thought of past rule as possibly having something comfortable to it. But he did not consider how the faculties of the human spirit should find adequate conditions after that revolution that did

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FREUNDESKREIS

LEADERSHIP: A QUESTION OF MUSIC NO ONE CAN LEAD IF THEY ARE STRIVING Stephan Frucht

there is a significant correlation between authenticity and output. This is why, in the matter of “leadership”, focusing on the conductor – indeed, on the musician – is so valuable. Leadership is always a question of music as well. If only for the fact that listening, which is so important for music, is also an elementary ingredient of leadership.

The conductor, in particular, must be convincing not just cognitively but also emotionally. A deep knowledge of musical techniques should allow them to cast aside “wanting” in favour of “being”. This requires an authentic ability to suppress one’s own strivings, to reduce accents, to avoid excessive demands and also surrender operational design to others. The more professional the team to be led, the more strongly the expression “leading” means letting go and only – or “above all else” – providing the necessary stimuli. In times of crisis or periods of upheaval it may be otherwise, but not in the general routine.

BEING INSTEAD OF WANTING One of the less surprising discoveries is that almost every professional group can learn something from artists. In this connection, the occasionally overstressed notion of “leadership’” assumes a particular role. This is because, in the general public’s perception, the concept of “the artist” is regularly equated with that of the “the creative”, who is supposed to lead us to new insights. But it is also because a cliché has taken root, at least since the time of the German Romantics, according to which an artist aspires to convince at least the political classes, but if possible also the entire nation, that they should regard his or her own Weltanschauung as universally valid.

Neither of these really stands up to closer examination. Art history has repeatedly shown that socially relevant future issues play a role much earlier in the visual arts than, for example, in corresponding political administrations or economic subsystems. The pointillism of painters such as Georges Seurat, which more or less illustrated the principles of colour television many decades before it appeared, demonstrates some idea of the innovative power that can arise from art.

With writers, on the other hand, an immanent leadership potential exists in their capacity for spoken or written phrase design and text management, by means of which an author can spearhead the so-called “prevailing opinion”, but also occasionally furnish entire models of society with a corresponding sovereignty of interpretation. These insights are not meant to be a latter-day appropriation of Plato’s Republic, according to which the scribe is allocated a leadership role in the state sui generis. But one does not have to bother with György Konrád or Herta Müller to first derive a connection with leading ideas – breaking out or breaking up, as well as renewal and options for action – from the power of contemporary literature.

Architects also bring movement to the seemingly immovable: with stone, steel, and concrete they lead whole districts and societies into new eras. Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Walter Gropius, or Mies van der Rohe convince us of this – even if, unfortunately, it is precisely the architects, in their assumed or actual leadership roles, who have had to repeatedly allow themselves to be instrumentalised as ideological “Speer”-heads by so-called “leadership personalities”.

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With the Vienna Philharmonic, it is wonderful to observe this in the case of the Beethoven symphonies, towards which almost every orchestra member must have a defined artistic attitude as a result of their experience. It is precisely for this reason that a conductor like Christian Thielemann, who is himself not exactly renowned for weak opinions, demonstrates a maximum degree of leadership by the fact that ostensibly he does not exercise it. Although even Claudio Abbado was able to lay his “wanting” completely aside and, by excessive “being” INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCE at the concert, concentrate his musical leadership The image of the conductor as a “leader” who demands capacity in his left hand alone. unconditional obedience is, in any case, completely Not striving, letting things come, motivating by lisoutdated. Those who still perpetuate this causal con- tening, accepting others’ ideas – are all elements of modnection also forget that management and leadership do ern leadership behaviour. Or at least, as long as they are not function in the same way all over the world. The real- not just learnt, but internalised – indeed, when “being” isation that successful leadership behaviour requires a has replaced “wanting”. As long as a person is striving, they may want to lead, but they do not. distinctive intercultural competence may be the first Perhaps this is why everyone who lays claim to leadstep towards the realisation that leadership is not a ership should permit themselves an artistic perspective one-way street. on our existence. If we only fulfil expectations, we are For today’s conductors, intercultural competence is part of the professional requirements profile. Collabo- robots. As individualised machines, the latter will certainly execute humanoid decision scenarios more reliarating with Asian orchestras, for example, works in a completely different way than collaborating with bly than humans in the future. But whoever wants to lead Central European or American ensembles, or even human beings as a human being must be able to emancipate themselves from their own strivings. Dictators do ensembles in the Middle East. As keywords, I will refer here only to “more cooperative”, “more requirements-­ not lead; they exercise force. A true leader, however, oriented”, and “more innovation-oriented” leadership serves freedom and collective well-being. Certainly style, each of which can have enormous impact on they should not take leave of their own values. But rehearsal work and the success of the concert. they must harmonise their own personal aims with the What seems easy to understand and put into effect overarching goals. They should enable a symphonic for a layperson sometimes presents an immense prob- collaboration, even if others have initiated it. Because, lem for professional orchestral musicians: the conduc- nowadays, there is no king without the people who tor leading the orchestra can certainly change and adapt support him. their leadership behaviour, but in doing so, often they do not come across as authentic. But every manager who makes long-term plans knows this problem.

In music, the theme of “leading” often applies to the more detailed creation process. For example, we expect that a conductor – and today, fortunately, increasingly a female conductor – will exercise leadership in almost every relevant situation in their own working environment. But is a conductor at all capable of that? And are these ubiquitous expectations of “leadership” not somewhat passé nowadays?

LEADING MEANS OBEYING By means of cognitive adaptations of behaviour for everyday business life, it may be possible to establish an appropriate leadership model that is accepted in the relevant cultural environment. Although this approach does not usually produce any output worth mentioning. Particularly in an artistic/creative environment such as music,

STEPHAN FRUCHT has trained as a violinist, conductor, and medical doctor. He manages the Siemens Arts Program as artistic director, and is a member of the Society of Friends of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin.

HANS VENT d. 31 January 2018 Visual Arts Section

WILFRIED MINKS

OBITUARIES AT THE 52ND GENERAL ASSEMBLY, 16–18 NOVEMBER 2018

d. 13 February 2018 Performing Arts Section

JOACHIM JOHN d. 26 March 2018 Visual Arts Section

LOTHAR REHER d. 6 April 2018 Visual Arts Section

FRITZ MIERAU d. 29 April 2018 Literature Section

KARL-ERNST HERRMANN d. 13 May 2018 Performing Arts Section

DIETER SCHNEBEL d. 20 May 2018 Music Section

ARMANDO

Filming of Alice in den Städten (1973), camera: Robby Müller

d. 1 July 2018 Visual Arts Section

ROBBY MÜLLER d. 3 July 2018 Film and Media Arts Section

CLAUDE LANZMANN d. 5 July 2018 Film and Media Arts Section

KLAUS WILDENHAHN d. 9 August 2018 Film and Media Arts Section

KAZIMIERZ KARABASZ d. 10 August 2018 Film and Media Arts Section

ROBBY MÜLLER

ARMANDO

Oh, Robby!

It’s pretty much fifty years ago that we met each other.

You were an assistant to the legendary Dutch DoP Gerard Vandenberg, and I was still a film student. I had the good fortune to play a small part in the movie you were shooting in Munich: Liebe und so weiter (“Love and so forth”).

I was very impressed by this super-cool guy who could pull focus with one hand and roll a cigarette in the other.

Soon afterwards, we made our first short film together: Alabama. That was a long time ago …

Through your work, you pushed the boundaries of the craft and art of cinematography, both as an operator and through your innovative lighting style as Director of Photography. Like no other, you were able to seize moods and to describe situations in your imagery that revealed more about the characters than long dialogues or dramaturgical structures ever could. You knew how to create a distinctive atmosphere for each and every film, in which the respective actors were, in the truest sense of the phrase, “in good hands”. For a handful of filmmakers, among whom I was one, you were their most important companion, like Hans W. Geissendörfer, Jim Jarmusch, Lars von Trier, Steve McQueen. And you were a role model for a whole generation of young directors of photography.

Both of us came to Berlin in the late seventies and we lived in the same street for a while, him at Number 21, and me at Number 12. We did bump into each other sometimes when doing our shopping, but didn’t get to know each other. This neighbour gave off an aura of stand­ offishness somewhat, which kept others at bay. Years later, after reading some texts from the column Uit Berlijn that he wrote regularly for a Rotterdam paper, I was indeed glad I’d never asked him how it feels to be a Dutch person in Berlin.

The man calling himself Armando was born Herman Dirk van Dodeweerd in 1929 in Amsterdam. He was privileged enough to have violin lessons right from a young age up until he was 12. The fact that the family relocated to Amersfoort in 1935, where he stayed till 1950, was however more significant on the road to his becoming an artist. In the summer of 1941, something rather strange actually happened there. Quite out of the blue, on the land by the edge of the woods where gangs of youths fought over their patches, the sandy paths were tarmacked and truck convoys were sighted – voices bawling out orders could be heard. The grown-ups came up with all sorts of cryptic references to de Boskamp, the “camp in the woods”, whilst striving at the same time to make every day as normal as possible. The Amersfoort concentration camp was a transit camp, where prisoners were divided up into those to be sent to work camps, those to extermination camps, and those who were to be executed straightaway. What the youthful observer saw there haunted him all his life as de plek, the spot – the embodiment of the awful proximity between the civil duties of life, and the shameless suspension of them.

I miss you very very much.

You are badly missed by many.

WIM WENDERS, director, has been a member of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Film and Media Arts Section, since 1993.

JOURNAL DER KÜNSTE 09

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Armando, Gefechtsfeld (1986), oil on canvas, 165 × 226 cm

Being vigilant became a way of life, something that never quite slipped, even amongst friends.

But the role of Armando – meaning “armed man” (the Italian equivalent to the all too Germanic Herman) – still had to be found and established. First came the end of the war. Quite unprepared for the world of work in peacetime, the 17-year-old joined several bands as a violinist for a few years, playing swing and Romany music. He starts drawing, and in 1950 returns to Amsterdam, where he writes his first poems and studies history of art, before resolving to devote himself entirely to art. Armando enters the public stage in 1954 when his poems are published, and his first solo exhibition is held. A year later he published Credo 1, a manifesto anticipating the founding of the Nederlandse Informele Groep in 1958: “An art form must come into being, and all the indications are that it will. Not one that is beautiful, or ugly, neither good nor evil (...), rather an art form that is not an art form, but a fact in itself, like our paintings.” Titles of pictures such as J'ai tué mon frère Abel (1954) and Peinture criminelle (1955) indicate that the trauma of “the spot” had found a first expression in the abstract Art Informel.

When the Dutch group eventually changes into the group Nul in 1960, he is involved too. Similar to the Zero movement in Germany, they were working towards a closer connection to the hardware of modern reality. Although this genre enjoyed success on an international scale, Armando’s output dropped noticeably from the early sixties, and died off altogether in 1965.

The gaping wound in his approach to art is the reason for this. Between 1965 and 1967, he focused solely on a collaboration with the poet Jan Sleutelaar, publishing the book De SS’ers: Nederlandse vrijwilligers in de Tweede Wereldoorlog, which documents autobiographical interviews with eight Dutch collaborators. A wave of outrage tore through Holland when the book came out in 1967.

Even courts were involved, as the documentation violated the fundamental distinction for the post-war society of the Netherlands between “ware” and “verkeerde mensen”. The reported stories portray surprisingly normal fellow human beings, with their real emotions, false hopes, and ambitions, who fail to the point of

66

embarrassment. This experience, working on the book and then the public reaction to it, seems to have clarified Armando’s attitude as an artist: the aggressiveness of his early work rooted in his wartime memories gave way to a heightened empathy for the ambivalence inherent in human conduct.

But it is not due to this scandal, or through his pictures, that Armando left a lasting impression on his fellow countrymen. Almost exactly a decade after the social furore, the difficult artist achieved popular fame in the Netherlands as a comedian in the dry, deadly serious manner of Karl Valentin. The first episode of the play Herenleed, which he wrote together with Cherry Duyns, was broadcast in 1975 by Dutch television. A resounding success, the pair went on tour through theatres for two years, and after some delay, in 1988, the performance of Herrenleid at the Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz also rocked Berlin theatre-goers to the point of tears welling up in the eyes. The role of the clown, as far as Armando’s objective view of the arts was concerned, did not represent a contradiction in terms of content to the dark tenor of the paintings, it simply offered an equivalent alternative form of expression, along the lines of Samuel Beckett’s poetics: “The same obviously in a different way.”

At exactly the same time as the play was performed, in the mid-seventies, the mature style of the pictorial work developed, which demonstrates the complimentary nature of the roles. Judging solely by the titles of the paintings, nothing had clearly changed in terms of his fixation on “the spot”: Feindbeobachtung, Fahne, Waldrand, Gefechtsfeld, and so on. Wieland Schmied, who in 1979 welcomed Armando as a guest of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) in Berlin, was not far wrong in speaking of the “war hypochondria” of the artist. But what makes the difference to this pathological finding is that painting itself is now the “battlefield”, because the enemy, the “worst enemy” (according to a Nietzsche aperçu that Armando loved), was secretly opposing himself. Berlin, the “Capital of the Crime”, which was to become the centre of Armando’s creative life, was where he discovered a sort of self-

­therapy. In Uit Berlijn he records his reactions to everyday observations. In an artistically stumbling mon­o -­ ­logue, constantly interrupted by retractions – “That’s perhaps going a bit too far,” “No, I’d better leave it there” – he exposes with great perceptiveness, and slight amusement, the relative truth of our neighbours’ resentment towards their former occupiers. But he never misses the opportunity to turn the tables and confront his fellow countrymen with the hidden offence involved: the false communality generated by what he calls “Wärme der Abneigung” (warmth of aversion). A relentless observer, he also traces this flaw where we would least expect it – namely in the plaintiveness of the German self-loathing through which many of the post-war generation try to exculpate themselves.

In Berlin Armando becomes a radical realist, one who portrays, or attempts to portray, without judging. He of all people, who was so troubled by evil, ugliness, and the conflicting nature of human existence, imposed on his work the discipline to keep his pictures free from any aestheticising intention or moral load. Because only if they were good as art alone, that is, were “no good for anything else”, could they lay claim to bearing witness to reality. For him this included that “uncanny beauty” granted solely to artworks, which was what he admired in Goya’s horror scenarios – and this didn’t preclude his admiration for Pierre Bonnard’s intimism, though he wasn’t able to share in this artist’s “trustfulness”. “Mijn zwartgallige zaakjes” is what he called his pictures, using the translation from the Greek to emphasise the bitter touch of his melancholic realism.

The public success of the artist, who never aspired to a solo exhibition in New York, is irrelevant here. His rewards were of a different sort. For his 60th birthday he asked to invite The Royal Gypsy Orchestra Tata Mirando (that really is the band’s title, Het Koninklijk Zigeuner Orkest), as it reminded him of his youth. At the end of the performance, the leading fiddle player handed him a violin with the remark “Now you have to start practising again.” Which he duly did, true to his characteristic professionalism, and he was soon playing with Tata Mirando and other ensembles in the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. The same again in a different way: Melancholia à l'hongaraise, but with a swing.

Somewhat belated in 2010, we celebrated our member’s 80th birthday with an exhibition in the Kurt Tucholsky Literaturmuseum in Rheinsberg. He chose the title Melancholie himself. Much to the surprise of many, including his numerous fans who had travelled from the Netherlands, he read from some of his fairy stories to mark the opening. None of those present will forget him reading out, with the timbre of his Dutch voice, the tale of the impertinent little mouse, who gives the house owner pangs of guilt, making him feel somewhat selfish after having gobbled up the cheese the mouse wanted off him. There, Armando, the fully armed artist – the impeded moralist, the comedian, the painter, the writer, and the musician with the gypsy feeling – finally turned into “Armando” the lovable one.

ROBERT KUDIELKA, art theorist and journalist, has been a member of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Visual Arts Section, since 1997. From 2003 to 2012 he was director of the section.

CREDITS

COLOPHON

pp. 4/5, 8, 12/13 Espen Eichhöfer / OSTKREUZ | p. 15 Georg Seeßlen | pp. 16–17 photos Óscar Escudero | p. 18 © Universal­m useum Joanneum Graz / Multimediale Sammlungen, RF117951; p. 20 © Siegerländer Heimatund Geschichtsverein e.V., photo Erich Koch; p. 22 © Verein für Heimatgeschichte Ober-Ramstadt; pp. 22–23 © Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart, EA 99/001 Bü 305 Nr. 1765 | p. 25, pp. 27–29 © Klaus Staeck, VG BildKunst, Bonn 2019 | pp. 30–31 photos Wolfgang Kaleck | pp. 34–35 © Jochen Gerz, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2019, photos Sonja Rothweiler | pp. 36–39 photos Wilfried Wang | pp. 40, 41 Archiv Gerhard Steinke, p. 42 video still Akademie der Künste / Martin Wolff | p. 44 no. 1 International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP), no. 2 Bayerische Staatsbibliothek / Münchner Digitalisierungszentrum, Digitale Bibliothek, no. 3 photos Caspar Johannes Walter, no. 4 photo Ari Ranenu, no. 5 Guy Rauscher and Batya Frenklakh | p. 46 picture alliance / ZB, photo Jan Woitas | p. 49 Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Marbach | p. 50 Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Hanns-Eisler-Archiv, no. 160, fol. 21v; p. 51 ; Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Hanns-Eisler-Archiv, no. 11034, photo no. 21 | pp. 52–57 photos László Moholy-Nagy, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Gret-Palucca-Archiv no. 5982_006 (p. 52), no. 5982_005 (p. 53), no. 5982_008 (p. 54), no. 5982_012 and no. 5982_007 (p. 55), no. 5982_010 (p. 56), no. 5982_002 (p. 57) | pp. 58, 59 Archiv der Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Heinrich-MannSammlung, no. 3981, 1r-v | pp. 61, 62 Akademie der Künste, Berlin, PrAdK no. 1549 | p. 65 © Wim Wenders Stiftung, p. 66 Sammlung Piepenbrock, Osnabruck, photo Hölzen, Dinklage

Journal der Künste, Edition 9, English issue Berlin, January 2019 Print run: 1,000

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