The Failed Utopia of the Crystal Chain

Bruno Taut, Glasshouse Pavilion, Cologne Werkbund 1914 Exhibition

THE FAILED UTO PI A O F THE CRYSTAL CHAIN

By Darran Anderson It is in the darkness that we dream, and the light was dim in Germany, 1919. Almost two million of the country’s young men died in the Great War. Countless were permanently maimed. A blockade stunted the growth of thousands of children through hunger. The Spanish Flu pandemic killed many thousands more. Any hope that the war’s cessation had brought had shrank before the consequences of defeat. Any hope that the revolution had brought died when t h e re p u b l i c u n l e a s h e d r i g h t - w i n g paramilitaries, the future gravediggers of the

republic, against the Spartacists. The brutal torture and murders of Rosa Luxemburg, beaten with rifle butts, shot and thrown into Landwehrkanal, and Karl Liebknecht, shot in the back in the Tiergarten, would be an echo of the colossal horrors to come.

There were those however who imagined another future. In the grim tumultuous post-war environment, German architects would somehow dream up much of what we now recognise as the 20th century. They did so by focusing on, among other matters,

Wenzel Hablik— “Der Weg des Genius” ("The Path of the Genius"), 1918

Wenzel Hablik— “Große bunte utopische Bauten” (“Big colorful utopian constructions”), 1922

light, and by splitting it into its component colours. Initially, this movement was articulated not in blueprints or buildings but in the unlikely form of a letter. Started by the architect Bruno Taut, it was called the Crystal Chain. It passed between members located in cities across the country – Berlin to Stuttgart, Tuttlingen to Emden and so on. Each of the respondents was impacted by the war but all were enthused by the fact it had swept away the stagnant old world of the House of Hohenzollern.

science fiction and would eventually starve himself to death protesting the war, Scheerbart had moments of lucidity amongst the celestial fantasy. He envisaged towers of light, floating cities, transient and modular architecture, and, above all, translucent spaces enabled by developments in glass production. Inspired by botanical gardens, he envisaged dank urban hovels being replaced with jewelled dwellings “as splendid as in the gardens of the Arabian Ni g h t s ” . Fo r a l l h i s e x t r a v a g a n c e, Scheerbart’s point was a valid one,

Reading their words now, there is a sense of intoxication and near-religious fervour at the thought that a new Germany would have to be built and they might well be its builders. This calling was reflected in their collective influences; the transcendent spaces of Gothic cathedrals, the visionary rants of Friedrich Nietzsche, and the writings of the recently deceased Paul Scheerbart. The latter’s book Glass Architecture (1914) had a profound impact on his younger compatriots. A prophetic drink-sodden figure who wrote early extra-terrestrial

«We live for the most part in closed rooms. These form the environment from which our culture grows. Our culture is to a certain extent the product of our architecture. If we want our culture to rise to a higher level, we are obliged, for better or for worse, to change our architecture. And this only becomes possible if we take away the closed character from the rooms in which we live. We can only do that by introducing glass architecture, which lets in the lights of the sun, the moon, and the stars, nor merely through a few windows, but through every possible wall, which will be made entirely

2

Wenzel Hablik— “Planets”

of glass — of coloured glass. The new environment, which we thus create, must bring us a new culture.»1

when Europe was riven with nationalist enmity. It seemed messianic or even crazed but Taut’s reasoning was that if the nations of Europe could send their young men to live like troglodytes in trenches and be slaughtered in their millions then no progressive idea, however outlandish, could be dismissed. If dystopia was reigning across the continent, why discount utopia?

By the time the Crystal Chain letter began to circulate, Scheerbart was already dead but his message lived on, most obviously in the work of Bruno Taut, to whom Scheerbart had dedicated his book. Taut became the instigator of the letter and the centre point of the group between its more utopian and more grounded members. Taut had delved into the fantastical with his Alpine Architecture project2 (1917) but the impetus was bitterly, viscerally real. The pacifist Taut articulated his opposition to the war by proposing, through a series of texts and drawings, a glowing multicoloured crystal city to be built on mountain-tops to radiate a message of universal humanity at a time

Taut was not some idle cloud-dweller. He had already built fragments of his glass utopia in the form of enchanting though ephemeral pavilions before the war - TragerVerkaufskontor (Berlin, 1910), Monument des Eisens (Leipzig, 1913) and, most significantly, his Glass Pavilion at the Werkbund Exhibition (Cologne, 1914). The latter was engraved with Scheerbart’s maxims such as “Glass in tints: Hate

1Quoted

in Bruno Taut (translated by Matthew Mindrup and Ulrike Altenmüller-Lewis), The City Crown (Routledge, 2015) p.10 2

Collected and published by Prestel, 2004.

3

relents”, “A colourful future / Only in glass culture”, “Flight from colour? All the duller!” and gleefully decadent statements like “Without a glass palace, life is a burden”.

The author had lived long enough to step inside and be bathed in the strange luminescence from all sides, in a building that served little purpose other than to be meditative, immersive and help the visitor escape the everyday. It would be, like Taut’s City Crown idea, a secular church.

Transcendent surroundings would lead to transcendent human beings. A stultifying culture would be revitalised in the process.

Scheerbart’s death and the grotesque senseless waste of the war only encouraged Taut’s cosmic cosmopolitanism. He was building a church in which humanity and the celestial bodies would be venerated, in the absence of a peaceful loving God.

So, they did. They gave themselves absurd nom de plume like Stellarius, Berxback 7 and Antischmitz. They exchanged notes and drawings of “floating, impractible models: stars and absolute fantasy” which Taut saw as necessarily unbuildable “probably the most important starting point for the new architecture. A frivolous world!” There was a Dada-like disgust and opposition to the ‘civilised’ traditions that had brought so much destruction and misery, articulated in a wilfully naive way as if attempting to start over (it was no coincidence that many of the group side-lined in toy design).

This searching took them back to nature’s architecture in the form of crystals, which appeared organic and futuristic, subjective and spiritual, full of meaning and devoid of it. The architectural sketches of Hermann Finsterlin (known as Prometh in the Crystal Chain) are still staggeringly unusual. They seem to grow and morph and bloom like alien flora and fauna. The work of Wassili and Hans Luckhardt (Zacken and Angkor respectively; revealing an interest in the architecture of other, lost, civilisations) are just as unusual but jagged and mountainous rather than soft and biological. They suggest, in a numinous way, the distant past or distant future, which Finsterlin underlined, “I beg you to lay aside the illusion that the purpose of human building is to create dwelling-places, that is to say sheltering caverns, for objects, plants, animals, men, and gods. All predetermined purpose falls like a heavy, inhibiting hand upon the motive force of a divinely free, pure will.

Forget that you exist, create vast divine vessels… where there is a will, there is a way.

Think of the enormous cave sculptures of the Incas, of the monolithic temples of India, of the possibilities of iron and artificial stone, and the gigantic glass flux of the future.” 4

The Crystal Chain letter moved between the artists, designers and architects for just over a year. Initially, the utopian aspect dominated. There was little alternative.

Germany’s economy had been decimated and there was little building work beyond factories and basic reconstruction.

«Dear Friends,» Taut wrote in his opening to the letter on November 24th, 1919, «I want to make this proposal to you. Today there is almost nothing to build, and if we build anywhere, then we do it in order to live. Or are you lucky enough to be working on a nice commission? My daily routine almost makes me ill, and it is basically the same for all of you. As a matter of fact, it is a good thing that nothing is being built today.

Things will have time to ripen, we shall gather our strength, and when building begins again we shall know our objectives and be strong enough to protect our movement against botching and degeneration. Let us consciously be “imaginary architects!”»3

Rose-Carol Washton Long, German Expressionism: Documents from the End of the Wilhelmine Empire to the Rise of National Socialism (University of California Press, 1995) p. 136 3

4

Ulrich Conrads, Programs and Manifestoes on 20th-Century Architecture (MIT Press, 1976) p. 86

4

As surreal as these images are, they have discernible structure, however much they warp or defy convention. There were other moments from those in the Crystal Chain where the renderings seem to explode into riotous colour and formless sensations. In the work of Wenzel Hablik (W. H.), kaleidoscopic crystals burst ecstatically from mountain peaks and seem to envelop the viewer. Occasionally, a figure will be detectable, providing a sense of gargantuan scale and the suggestion of a Nietzschean quest to reach some kind of physical or philosophical pinnacle. Other figures lie shattered and broken along the treacherous path to enlightenment. The work of Paul Gösch (Tancred) pushes even further. His Outsider Art-esque depictions are inventive, childlike and disturbing, with their unravelling chess-board saints and teeming castles. Like Hablik’s soaring palaces, there is an exquisiteness at play and also a sense of menace, though his is hallucinatory rather than vertiginous. A misstep either way and destruction seems to await.

nonetheless swept up in the group’s enthusiasm. He shared Taut’s belief in the primacy of light, his desire to revive the spirit of the Gothic and his progressive politics. Indeed, Gropius had already achieved it in architecture with his outstanding glass curtain wall for the Fagus Factory in 1913, providing the workers with a safe bright environment. Gropius had worked under his mentor Peter Behrens’ on the AEG Turbine Hall in 1909 and had seen the re volutionar y spatial and humanistic potential of glass (Steiff ’s teddy bear factory the Jungfrauenaquarium was another crucial influence). His translucent spiral staircase for his factory at the First Werkbund Exhibition (Cologne 1914) was another huge advance. Remarkably, Gropius was creating modernism before the Kaiser had even abdicated.

With the benefit of hindsight, the members of the Crystal Chain who had the most influence were those who could translate the lofty sermons and apparitions into a buildable language. All of them shared a sense of righteous purpose, harnessing their imaginations for social progress and regeneration (they were political with a small p and undogmatically left-wing), but only some could make those declarations achievable outside the flat-land of paint and ink.

Johannes Itten — Farbkreis, 1961

The most practical of the group was Walter Gropius, a fact reflected in his pen-name ‘Maß’ meaning ‘measure’ (or ‘dimension’). He shared the belief that a better world was possible and a belief in the redemptive (or at least ameliorating) power of architecture.

Gropius, however, was a stoical war veteran, who’d survived a plane crash, machine gun fire, a direct mortar hit and the experience of being buried alive for several days. He was

In the same year as the Crystal Chain letter, Gropius set up what would become the most influential art and design school of the 20th century — the Bauhaus. Alongside this, he continued with his own architecture, streamlining his utopian proclamations but steadfastly believing in the possibility of better living for all through design (and

5

arguably achieving it by bringing organic and quasi-spiritual qualities to the machine age). His underlying interest in light was evident in his buildings but also his appointments of Bauhaus teachers who would explore, among other things, colour theory in ways both utilitarian and esoteric.

There was the cultish monk Johannes Itten who believed, “Only those who love colour are admitted to its beauty and immanent presence. It affords utility to all but unveils its deeper mysteries only to its devotees.”5 There was the painter Paul Klee, or ‘the magician’ as he was known at the school, who railed against the “much-too-muchseen and tiresome white”6 and announced, “Colour possesses me; I don’t have to pursue it.”7 There was the abstract Russian painter Wassili Kandinsky who claimed “Colour directly influences the soul. Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or

become more harmonious and enlightened, through the subliminal application of paint.

another purposively, to cause vibrations in the soul.”8 There were others doing remarkable work in exploring colour and how it affects us at that time (from Hilma af Klint to the Delaunays, František Kupka to De Stijl) but the Bauhaus teachers had a resounding influence with their colour wheels and stars, their rigorous lessons and their wide-eyed hopes that society could

categorically denounce the absence of colour even if the house is in the midst of nature” as he’d declared in his Call for Colourful Architecture). Hans Scharoun kept his head down in internal exile, working on Expressionist designs surreptitiously.

Finsterlin only avoided being sent to a concentration camp by agreeing to paint for the Nazis. Carl Krayl was banned from

In the end, the utopian ideas failed.

Architecture and design shape us but they have distinct limitations in terms of saving us, especially from ourselves. Coloured glass did not, and could not, destroy all hatred. By the time Kristallnacht (or the Night of Broken Glass) arrived, with Nazi thugs smashing the windows and ransacking over 7000 Jewish businesses (and sending tens of thousands of Jewish men to concentration camps), the Crystal Chain was a distant memory. The Bauhaus had been coerced into closing five years previously. Hablik was dead. Gropius was in exile in the U.S. Bruno Taut had fled to Switzerland then Japan then Turkey, where he would die soon thereafter having built his last home — a curious hybrid Turkish-Japanese pagoda on stilts, glowing red among the trees and surrounded on all sides with windows (“We

5

Jane de Sausmarez, Basic Colour (A&C Black, 2009) p. 98

6

Rainer K. Wick and Gabriele Diana Grawe, Teaching at the Bauhaus (Ostfildern-Ruit, 2000) p. 244

7

Roland Doschka, Paul Klee (Prestel, 2001) p. 205

8

Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art (Dover Publications, 2000) p.45

6

Color variations of door and entrances in the Hufeisensiedlung by Bruno Taut — 1925-1933

architecture and found work with the railways. Paul Gösch was also prohibited from painting and was locked away in a psychiatric institution. In 1940, in what is seen in retrospect as a trial run for the Holocaust, he was murdered by the Nazis in their Aktion T4 campaign against those deemed mentally ill and thus subhuman.

The messianism the Crystal Chain had once extolled did not survive the demagogue at the head of the Third Reich.

had a lasting resonance, resulting in a brighter, less monochrome world. Lightfilled glass skyscrapers did not just grow out of the earth. Colourful kindergartens and restfully-tinted hospitals did not always naturally exist. Whereas once they’d talked about alpine or orbital architecture, the ideas of the Crystal Chain, with their emphasis on light, colour, creativity and community, were brought down to earth and partially, gradually and modestly implemented, sometimes Trojan Horse-like, in real life. It’s there in Bruno Taut’s Tuschkastensiedlung (‘Paintbox Estate’) and the multi-coloured doors of his Hufeisensiedlung (‘Horseshoe Estate’), built with vibrancy and imagination

It seems a grim finale, but the story of the Crystal Chain does not end there. Ideas, like buildings and art, can live beyond their creators. Their legacy would come in less immediately-utopian forms but they still

7

Fagus Factory by Walter Gropius — 1911

for working class citizens; both are now UNESCO World Heritage sites. Co-signed by several of his Crystal Chain colleagues, Taut’s Call for Colourful Architecture (1919) guided his work and others, “We do not want to build any more joyless houses or see them built. Colour is not expensive like moulded decorations and sculptures, but colour means a joyful existence. As it can be provided with limited resources, we should, in the present time of need, particularly urge its use on all buildings which must now be constructed.” Appointed by Taut, Carl Krayl’s painted facades in Magdeburg evoke a spirit of light-hearted joy instead of an oppressive and depressive industrial cityscape.

The Crystal Chain spirit is also evident in Max Taut’s light-drenched auditorium in Berlin, now named after the architect.

Similarly, Hans Scharoun’s architecture never lost the crystalline angular quality (e vident in his acc laimed Ber liner Philharmonie for one), while Wenzel Hablik’s museum in Itzehoe has brought his multi-coloured interiors to life in a way that still seems to point to the future; being somehow modernist, post-modernist and beyond. The bizarre alien architecture of the Brothers Luckhardt and Finsterlin have found descendants in Hadid, Gehry, Libeskind, Cook and so on. The architecture writer Reyner Banham even suggested that the birth of the modern skyscraper had shared roots with the Crystal Chain in

8

Scheerbart’s teachings9; a viable theory given the latter’s impact on Gropius but also in terms of how Mies van der Rohe’s unbuilt but Crystal Chain-esque Friedrichstrasse Tower led eventually to his Seagram Building (it is pleasing to think of a functionalist icon originating in so dysfunctional a setting).

aiming for the impossible. It is a reminder that the utopian impulse, while never reachable in its ultimate aims, can nevertheless improve our lives immeasurably through its failing. The times in which we live demand their own expression too. On the cover of that manifesto was a gothic cathedral woodcut, by the Bauhaus master Lyonel Feininger, with light erupting around it as if from fireworks, stars or crystals; not a historical reconstruction from the past but an invitation from the future, and one that challenges us still.

Despite these advances, there is still a sense of unfulfilled yearning studying the Crystal Chain. Light and glass may be omnipresent but there is still a sense that architecture is crucially lacking colour here. One of the reasons we obsess online with the nocturnal neon of Japan, pastels from Eastern Europe to North Korea, and the buildings of Barragán or Mamani Silvestre is because we know they are an escape from the drab homogenised monochrome of our surroundings. They defy the puritan reluctance to stand out, to appear utopian, to dream, and dream publicly and without apology. So too did the Crystal Chain.

Pe r h a p s t h e i r l e g a c y g o e s b e yo n d camouflage, into the kind of immersive environments we see in teamLab’s work or in the infinite spaces of Yayoi Kusama; places that might instil awe and a feeling of the sublime in even the most tepid or cynical of souls.

We might return to the Bauhaus Manifesto (1919), written at the same time as the Crystal Chain correspondence and sharing much of its almost biblical language, “Let us strive for, conceive and create the new building of the future that will unite every discipline, architecture and sculpture and painting, and which will one day rise heavenwards from the million hands of craftsmen as a clear symbol of a new belief to come.” Its author, Walter Gropius, had claimed in 1913, “The new times demand their own expression”10 and he found it, by 9

Nigel Whiteley, Reyner Banham: Historian of the Immediate Future (MIT Press, 2001) p. 40

10

Marcel Franciscono, Walter Gropius and the Creation of the Bauhaus in Weimar (University of Illinois Press, 1971) p. 36

9

SOURCE OF IMAGES: 01 — © Wikicommons, https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/File:Taut_Glass_Pavilion_exterior_1914.jpg 02 — © Wikicommons, https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/File:Wenzel_Hablik_Der_Weg_des_Genius.jpg 03 — © Wikicommons, https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ File:Wenzel_Hablik_Große_bunte_utopische_Baute n.jpg 04 — © Wikicommons, https:// commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ Category:Wenzel_Hablik#/media/ File:Wenzel_Hablik.jpg 05 — © Wikicommons, https://it.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Bauhaus#/media/ File:Farbkreis_Itten_1961.svg 06 — © Wikicommons, https://it.wikipedia.org/ wiki/File:Stiftungbauhaus_logo_old.png 07 — © Wikicommons, https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Hufeisensiedlung#/media/ File:Hufeisensiedlung_Tueren_Details_divStrassen_ 2011.jpg 08 — © Wikicommons, https://it.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Officine_Fagus#/media/ File:Fagus_Gropius_Hauptgebaeude_200705_wiki _front.jpg

graphic design by Valentino Danilo Matteis

10