Swedish philosopher, socialist, feminist, pacifist, pedagogue, and design theorist, was one of th... more Swedish philosopher, socialist, feminist, pacifist, pedagogue, and design theorist, was one of the most influential intellectuals of her time. She was famous not only throughout the Scandinavian countries, but in continental Europe and the United States as well. More than forty books and hundreds of essays and journal articles flowed from her pen. Most of these works grew out of the many hundreds of lectures she gave: in the Scandinavian countries, in France, Italy, Finland, and most extensively in Germany. Her major publications were translated not only into English but into almost all European languages before the First World War. 1 By 1900 she was able to make a living (though a frugal one) from her books and lecture tours. 2 A great many of Key's works dealt with aesthetics-with the importance of the love of beauty in all realms of life. 3 In an early essay ("Beauty, " 1897-98) she speaks of a "religion of beauty" and calls for "a visionary prophet. .. to preach fanatically. .. the laws of beauty and the evangelism of the personality. " 4 The "prophet, " of course, was Key herself. She foretells a new era, a "Third Empire" of reason, social justice, creativity, peace, and beauty. 5 She predicts that when a new art has conquered industry, "making everyday life festive and beautiful, for rich and poor, " the beauty of the home will spread outward to society, to architecture and city planning. Then, "under. .. modern social conditions, beautiful cities, monuments, and buildings [will] be created. " 6 In "Beauty in the Home, " translated here into English for the first time, Key asserts that the new aesthetic sensibility must begin in the domestic setting. 7 The beautiful, she writes, is that which is practical, useful, informed by its purpose, and expressive of the soul of its user or creator. All people, she adds, need to create beautiful surroundings for themselves, and this creation begins in the home. If beauty exists in the home, Key writes, lives will be transformed, and so, ultimately, will every aspect of society. The new aesthetic would not be restricted to the wealthy, or to artists and connoisseurs. Ordinary people-farmers and workers-would achieve it more easily in fact because their taste had not been corrupted by fashion and because they possessed fewer things. Every worker, Key once wrote, is a potential artist. 8 19 Key also believed that every woman is a potential artist. The new taste and the new aesthetic would be created principally by women, partly because of their devotion to utility-"that whatever is useful is worthy of respect, all women realize"-but also in their role as nurturers and artists of the home, "of which [the woman] is the soul. " 9 The mother, in particular, is the fountainhead of change, Key believed, as both the artist of the home and the educator of the children within it. By educating a new generation, mothers would found a new era, beginning with "the century of the child" (the title of Key's most famous book, published in 1900). 10 Outside the home, Key said, women also had a special role to play: they were the source of nurturing, caring, and indeed passion, within society. Their tasks were those of "motherliness, " which she saw as the fostering of creative individuality and the reeducation of taste among all walks of life. 11 In addition to writing on design and on art education, Key was an outstanding liberal and an early proponent of women's political rights. 12 A committed yet idiosyncratic socialist, she insisted that social justice be combined with personal self-expression and creativity. 13 There was a strain of anarchism in her thought too, stemming partly from her powerful commitment to individualism, and partly from her rebellious and contentious nature. 14 She was a leading pacifist before, during, and after the First World War. She condemned Christianity, saying that it and asceticism were the enemies of beauty, art, and culture. She developed a personal religion, prophetic of modern existentialism, in which holiness is immanent in nature, in ordinary people, and in everyday life. 15 Many of the origins of Key's ideas lie in her childhood and youth. As a girl growing up at the family estate in Sundsholm, she learned to care deeply for the condition of the poorer farmers; she taught their children and involved herself in the "folk high school" movement. 16 Key loved the Swedish countryside, with its age-old handcraft and folk traditions (fig. 2). She also admired traditional rural buildings, especially the typical red-painted farmsteads of the provinces and the simple rustic classicism of her own home and others like it (figs. 3 and 4). 17 As a teenager, she began to gather artifacts for historian and ethnographer Artur Hazelius (1833-1901), who was collecting and recreating early buildings, furniture, and fabrics; these collections ultimately became the world-famous museum at Skansen (fig. 5). 18 Later, in "Beauty in the Home, " Key came to see the traditional architecture and crafts of rural Sweden as potential models for a new kind of design. The love of painting that informs all Key's writings also began at an early date. In 1873, on the way to the Vienna World's Fair with her father, she visited the most important art museums of Europe (in Berlin, Dresden, Florence, Paris, London, Kassel, and Vienna). She repeatedly revisited these museums, as well as those of Copenhagen, Rome, and Munich. Like the German museum director Alfred Lichtwark (1852-1914), whom she came to admire, she believed that looking at works of artistic genius offered unique educational benefits for children and untutored people. 19 Key took this idea further, though, arguing in her publications and speeches that even reproductions of good paintings were better for the viewer than ugly originals. Educated almost entirely at home, Key early on formed a lifelong habit of voracious reading and self-education. In addition to her admiration for English women novelists, and for the greatest works of German Romanticism, she was deeply influenced by the writings of Herbert Spencer, John Stuart Mill, Charles Darwin, and Auguste Comte. Thus her early philosophical stance can be characterized as strongly rationalist and positivist, yet based on a fundamental attachment to a rural way of life, and with an undercurrent of Romantic beliefs. When around 1875 she moved to Stockholm and began to act as informal secretary to her father, Emil Key (1822-1892), a landowner and member of the newly
Book Reviews 449 of doctrinaire individuals used to feed slogans to a Mittelstand thirsting for a... more Book Reviews 449 of doctrinaire individuals used to feed slogans to a Mittelstand thirsting for a way out of its dilemmas. The Marxist revolutionary and sometime National Bolshevik Ernst Niekisch used his Resistance Press to advocate a reconciliation between socialism and nationalism in response to western domination and the Versailles treaty, while the extremely conservative Oswald Spengler sought to save Prussian values by postulating a Prussian socialism aimed at integrating the working class into the value system of the past. Finally, Ferdinand Fried and his colleagues on Die Tat played upon the misery which united all elements of the Mittelstand during the depression and upon the breakdown of the international economy to advocate a Third Front which would unify the disaffected Mittelstand in support of a new autarkic order in a German-dominated Mitteleuropa. Lebovics is careful to point out that the relationship between social conservatism and nazism was a parallel rather than a direct one. Both movements appealed to the Mittelstand, and the Nazis were "vulgar" social conservatives. The author suggests that, "deviations notwithstanding," there was a correspondence between the theoretical tendencies in the two movements, the social conservative Center (Sombart and Spann), Left (Niekisch), and Right (Spengler) having counterparts, respectively, in Gottfried Feder, the Strasser brothers, and Fritz Thyssen. Ultimately, it was Hitler who determined Nazi economic policy by implementing the social conservative doctrine of the primacy of politics over economics and subordinating the fate of the nation to a racism alien to most social conservatives and to an imperialism beyond their wildest dreams. While Lebovics correctly emphasizes Hitler's opportunistic acceptance of private property in order to win over big business, he gives undue emphasis to Hitler's connection with Emil Kirdorf, whom the author erroneously identifies as the head of the defunct Zentralverband deutscher Industrieller. Such minor criticisms should not detract from the excellence of this book which should encourage further research into the Mittelstand and into the way in which social conservative ideas were "molded into the cliches at the beerhall Stammtisch, at the innumerable meetings of the societies and clubs to which so many members of the middle class belonged, at the political rallies, and in the pages of magazines of political commentary" (p. 179).
Swedish philosopher, socialist, feminist, pacifist, pedagogue, and design theorist, was one of th... more Swedish philosopher, socialist, feminist, pacifist, pedagogue, and design theorist, was one of the most influential intellectuals of her time. She was famous not only throughout the Scandinavian countries, but in continental Europe and the United States as well. More than forty books and hundreds of essays and journal articles flowed from her pen. Most of these works grew out of the many hundreds of lectures she gave: in the Scandinavian countries, in France, Italy, Finland, and most extensively in Germany. Her major publications were translated not only into English but into almost all European languages before the First World War. 1 By 1900 she was able to make a living (though a frugal one) from her books and lecture tours. 2 A great many of Key's works dealt with aesthetics-with the importance of the love of beauty in all realms of life. 3 In an early essay ("Beauty, " 1897-98) she speaks of a "religion of beauty" and calls for "a visionary prophet. .. to preach fanatically. .. the laws of beauty and the evangelism of the personality. " 4 The "prophet, " of course, was Key herself. She foretells a new era, a "Third Empire" of reason, social justice, creativity, peace, and beauty. 5 She predicts that when a new art has conquered industry, "making everyday life festive and beautiful, for rich and poor, " the beauty of the home will spread outward to society, to architecture and city planning. Then, "under. .. modern social conditions, beautiful cities, monuments, and buildings [will] be created. " 6 In "Beauty in the Home, " translated here into English for the first time, Key asserts that the new aesthetic sensibility must begin in the domestic setting. 7 The beautiful, she writes, is that which is practical, useful, informed by its purpose, and expressive of the soul of its user or creator. All people, she adds, need to create beautiful surroundings for themselves, and this creation begins in the home. If beauty exists in the home, Key writes, lives will be transformed, and so, ultimately, will every aspect of society. The new aesthetic would not be restricted to the wealthy, or to artists and connoisseurs. Ordinary people-farmers and workers-would achieve it more easily in fact because their taste had not been corrupted by fashion and because they possessed fewer things. Every worker, Key once wrote, is a potential artist. 8 19 Key also believed that every woman is a potential artist. The new taste and the new aesthetic would be created principally by women, partly because of their devotion to utility-"that whatever is useful is worthy of respect, all women realize"-but also in their role as nurturers and artists of the home, "of which [the woman] is the soul. " 9 The mother, in particular, is the fountainhead of change, Key believed, as both the artist of the home and the educator of the children within it. By educating a new generation, mothers would found a new era, beginning with "the century of the child" (the title of Key's most famous book, published in 1900). 10 Outside the home, Key said, women also had a special role to play: they were the source of nurturing, caring, and indeed passion, within society. Their tasks were those of "motherliness, " which she saw as the fostering of creative individuality and the reeducation of taste among all walks of life. 11 In addition to writing on design and on art education, Key was an outstanding liberal and an early proponent of women's political rights. 12 A committed yet idiosyncratic socialist, she insisted that social justice be combined with personal self-expression and creativity. 13 There was a strain of anarchism in her thought too, stemming partly from her powerful commitment to individualism, and partly from her rebellious and contentious nature. 14 She was a leading pacifist before, during, and after the First World War. She condemned Christianity, saying that it and asceticism were the enemies of beauty, art, and culture. She developed a personal religion, prophetic of modern existentialism, in which holiness is immanent in nature, in ordinary people, and in everyday life. 15 Many of the origins of Key's ideas lie in her childhood and youth. As a girl growing up at the family estate in Sundsholm, she learned to care deeply for the condition of the poorer farmers; she taught their children and involved herself in the "folk high school" movement. 16 Key loved the Swedish countryside, with its age-old handcraft and folk traditions (fig. 2). She also admired traditional rural buildings, especially the typical red-painted farmsteads of the provinces and the simple rustic classicism of her own home and others like it (figs. 3 and 4). 17 As a teenager, she began to gather artifacts for historian and ethnographer Artur Hazelius (1833-1901), who was collecting and recreating early buildings, furniture, and fabrics; these collections ultimately became the world-famous museum at Skansen (fig. 5). 18 Later, in "Beauty in the Home, " Key came to see the traditional architecture and crafts of rural Sweden as potential models for a new kind of design. The love of painting that informs all Key's writings also began at an early date. In 1873, on the way to the Vienna World's Fair with her father, she visited the most important art museums of Europe (in Berlin, Dresden, Florence, Paris, London, Kassel, and Vienna). She repeatedly revisited these museums, as well as those of Copenhagen, Rome, and Munich. Like the German museum director Alfred Lichtwark (1852-1914), whom she came to admire, she believed that looking at works of artistic genius offered unique educational benefits for children and untutored people. 19 Key took this idea further, though, arguing in her publications and speeches that even reproductions of good paintings were better for the viewer than ugly originals. Educated almost entirely at home, Key early on formed a lifelong habit of voracious reading and self-education. In addition to her admiration for English women novelists, and for the greatest works of German Romanticism, she was deeply influenced by the writings of Herbert Spencer, John Stuart Mill, Charles Darwin, and Auguste Comte. Thus her early philosophical stance can be characterized as strongly rationalist and positivist, yet based on a fundamental attachment to a rural way of life, and with an undercurrent of Romantic beliefs. When around 1875 she moved to Stockholm and began to act as informal secretary to her father, Emil Key (1822-1892), a landowner and member of the newly
Barbara Miller Lane D URING HIS fourth and last visit to West Berlin, in May 1958, John Foster Du... more Barbara Miller Lane D URING HIS fourth and last visit to West Berlin, in May 1958, John Foster Dulles told the city's House of Representatives that "here in Berlin cooperation has become real in stone and mortar."! The Secretary of State was referring, first , to the coopera tion of West Germany and the United States in protecting West Berlin from Soviet encroachments, an'd second, to a building called the "Con gress Hall," The Congress Hall, which in reality had little stone and mortar in it, since it was built ofsteel and concrete, was a center for international conferences and an occasional meeting place for the West German Bund estag, The building was erected by the United States government as its contribution to the International Building Exposition held in Berlin in 1957. Designed by the American architect Hugh Stubbins, the Congress Hall was supervised by a committee of the American Institute of Architects led by Ralph Walker, and was also overseen by Eleanor Lansing. Dulles, sister of John Foster Dulles, who acted as client for the Department of State. The building was strikingly unusual, Consisting of a double-arched roof above a curving audirorium and glass-enclosed circulation spaces, the Congress Hall appeared to hover like an alien visitor amid the wreckage of wartime destruction (Fig. 1). It was located at the heart of Berlin's historic center, near the Platz der Republik, the Reichstag, and the Brandenburg Gate. It was also, therefore, in close proximity to the sector border, and surrounded by the worst of the bomb damage of 1945: the site of Hitler's bunker was nearby (Fig. 2). The Congress Hall was greeted by fanfare and publicity almost from its inception. In press releases and elaborate ceremonies from 1955 on, 2. Statement made for the cornerstone ceremony, quoted in Department olS/ate Bulletin, Oc• robee 29, 1956, p. 670. Reprinted in Kongresshalle Berlin, brochure prepared for [he opening in the Fall of 1957, in Hugh Stubbins Papers (Cambridge, Mass.
Skilled stonemasons and stonecarvers are now difficult to find, and there are few books in print ... more Skilled stonemasons and stonecarvers are now difficult to find, and there are few books in print on these hard crafts. The Stones of the Vienna Ring, subtitled Their Technological and Artistic Significance, is an extraordinary volume.
of doctrinaire individuals used to feed slogans to a Mittelstand thirsting for a way out of its d... more of doctrinaire individuals used to feed slogans to a Mittelstand thirsting for a way out of its dilemmas. The Marxist revolutionary and sometime National Bolshevik Ernst Niekisch used his Resistance Press to advocate a reconciliation between socialism and nationalism in response to western domination and the Versailles treaty, while the extremely conservative Oswald Spengler sought to save Prussian values by postulating a Prussian socialism aimed at integrating the working class into the value system of the past. Finally, Ferdinand Fried and his colleagues on Die Tat played upon the misery which united all elements of the Mittelstand during the depression and upon the breakdown of the international economy to advocate a Third Front which would unify the disaffected Mittelstand in support of a new autarkic order in a German-dominated Mitteleuropa.
Swedish philosopher, socialist, feminist, pacifist, pedagogue, and design theorist, was one of th... more Swedish philosopher, socialist, feminist, pacifist, pedagogue, and design theorist, was one of the most influential intellectuals of her time. She was famous not only throughout the Scandinavian countries, but in continental Europe and the United States as well. More than forty books and hundreds of essays and journal articles flowed from her pen. Most of these works grew out of the many hundreds of lectures she gave: in the Scandinavian countries, in France, Italy, Finland, and most extensively in Germany. Her major publications were translated not only into English but into almost all European languages before the First World War. 1 By 1900 she was able to make a living (though a frugal one) from her books and lecture tours. 2 A great many of Key's works dealt with aesthetics-with the importance of the love of beauty in all realms of life. 3 In an early essay ("Beauty, " 1897-98) she speaks of a "religion of beauty" and calls for "a visionary prophet. .. to preach fanatically. .. the laws of beauty and the evangelism of the personality. " 4 The "prophet, " of course, was Key herself. She foretells a new era, a "Third Empire" of reason, social justice, creativity, peace, and beauty. 5 She predicts that when a new art has conquered industry, "making everyday life festive and beautiful, for rich and poor, " the beauty of the home will spread outward to society, to architecture and city planning. Then, "under. .. modern social conditions, beautiful cities, monuments, and buildings [will] be created. " 6 In "Beauty in the Home, " translated here into English for the first time, Key asserts that the new aesthetic sensibility must begin in the domestic setting. 7 The beautiful, she writes, is that which is practical, useful, informed by its purpose, and expressive of the soul of its user or creator. All people, she adds, need to create beautiful surroundings for themselves, and this creation begins in the home. If beauty exists in the home, Key writes, lives will be transformed, and so, ultimately, will every aspect of society. The new aesthetic would not be restricted to the wealthy, or to artists and connoisseurs. Ordinary people-farmers and workers-would achieve it more easily in fact because their taste had not been corrupted by fashion and because they possessed fewer things. Every worker, Key once wrote, is a potential artist. 8 19 Key also believed that every woman is a potential artist. The new taste and the new aesthetic would be created principally by women, partly because of their devotion to utility-"that whatever is useful is worthy of respect, all women realize"-but also in their role as nurturers and artists of the home, "of which [the woman] is the soul. " 9 The mother, in particular, is the fountainhead of change, Key believed, as both the artist of the home and the educator of the children within it. By educating a new generation, mothers would found a new era, beginning with "the century of the child" (the title of Key's most famous book, published in 1900). 10 Outside the home, Key said, women also had a special role to play: they were the source of nurturing, caring, and indeed passion, within society. Their tasks were those of "motherliness, " which she saw as the fostering of creative individuality and the reeducation of taste among all walks of life. 11 In addition to writing on design and on art education, Key was an outstanding liberal and an early proponent of women's political rights. 12 A committed yet idiosyncratic socialist, she insisted that social justice be combined with personal self-expression and creativity. 13 There was a strain of anarchism in her thought too, stemming partly from her powerful commitment to individualism, and partly from her rebellious and contentious nature. 14 She was a leading pacifist before, during, and after the First World War. She condemned Christianity, saying that it and asceticism were the enemies of beauty, art, and culture. She developed a personal religion, prophetic of modern existentialism, in which holiness is immanent in nature, in ordinary people, and in everyday life. 15 Many of the origins of Key's ideas lie in her childhood and youth. As a girl growing up at the family estate in Sundsholm, she learned to care deeply for the condition of the poorer farmers; she taught their children and involved herself in the "folk high school" movement. 16 Key loved the Swedish countryside, with its age-old handcraft and folk traditions (fig. 2). She also admired traditional rural buildings, especially the typical red-painted farmsteads of the provinces and the simple rustic classicism of her own home and others like it (figs. 3 and 4). 17 As a teenager, she began to gather artifacts for historian and ethnographer Artur Hazelius (1833-1901), who was collecting and recreating early buildings, furniture, and fabrics; these collections ultimately became the world-famous museum at Skansen (fig. 5). 18 Later, in "Beauty in the Home, " Key came to see the traditional architecture and crafts of rural Sweden as potential models for a new kind of design. The love of painting that informs all Key's writings also began at an early date. In 1873, on the way to the Vienna World's Fair with her father, she visited the most important art museums of Europe (in Berlin, Dresden, Florence, Paris, London, Kassel, and Vienna). She repeatedly revisited these museums, as well as those of Copenhagen, Rome, and Munich. Like the German museum director Alfred Lichtwark (1852-1914), whom she came to admire, she believed that looking at works of artistic genius offered unique educational benefits for children and untutored people. 19 Key took this idea further, though, arguing in her publications and speeches that even reproductions of good paintings were better for the viewer than ugly originals. Educated almost entirely at home, Key early on formed a lifelong habit of voracious reading and self-education. In addition to her admiration for English women novelists, and for the greatest works of German Romanticism, she was deeply influenced by the writings of Herbert Spencer, John Stuart Mill, Charles Darwin, and Auguste Comte. Thus her early philosophical stance can be characterized as strongly rationalist and positivist, yet based on a fundamental attachment to a rural way of life, and with an undercurrent of Romantic beliefs. When around 1875 she moved to Stockholm and began to act as informal secretary to her father, Emil Key (1822-1892), a landowner and member of the newly
Book Reviews 449 of doctrinaire individuals used to feed slogans to a Mittelstand thirsting for a... more Book Reviews 449 of doctrinaire individuals used to feed slogans to a Mittelstand thirsting for a way out of its dilemmas. The Marxist revolutionary and sometime National Bolshevik Ernst Niekisch used his Resistance Press to advocate a reconciliation between socialism and nationalism in response to western domination and the Versailles treaty, while the extremely conservative Oswald Spengler sought to save Prussian values by postulating a Prussian socialism aimed at integrating the working class into the value system of the past. Finally, Ferdinand Fried and his colleagues on Die Tat played upon the misery which united all elements of the Mittelstand during the depression and upon the breakdown of the international economy to advocate a Third Front which would unify the disaffected Mittelstand in support of a new autarkic order in a German-dominated Mitteleuropa. Lebovics is careful to point out that the relationship between social conservatism and nazism was a parallel rather than a direct one. Both movements appealed to the Mittelstand, and the Nazis were "vulgar" social conservatives. The author suggests that, "deviations notwithstanding," there was a correspondence between the theoretical tendencies in the two movements, the social conservative Center (Sombart and Spann), Left (Niekisch), and Right (Spengler) having counterparts, respectively, in Gottfried Feder, the Strasser brothers, and Fritz Thyssen. Ultimately, it was Hitler who determined Nazi economic policy by implementing the social conservative doctrine of the primacy of politics over economics and subordinating the fate of the nation to a racism alien to most social conservatives and to an imperialism beyond their wildest dreams. While Lebovics correctly emphasizes Hitler's opportunistic acceptance of private property in order to win over big business, he gives undue emphasis to Hitler's connection with Emil Kirdorf, whom the author erroneously identifies as the head of the defunct Zentralverband deutscher Industrieller. Such minor criticisms should not detract from the excellence of this book which should encourage further research into the Mittelstand and into the way in which social conservative ideas were "molded into the cliches at the beerhall Stammtisch, at the innumerable meetings of the societies and clubs to which so many members of the middle class belonged, at the political rallies, and in the pages of magazines of political commentary" (p. 179).
Swedish philosopher, socialist, feminist, pacifist, pedagogue, and design theorist, was one of th... more Swedish philosopher, socialist, feminist, pacifist, pedagogue, and design theorist, was one of the most influential intellectuals of her time. She was famous not only throughout the Scandinavian countries, but in continental Europe and the United States as well. More than forty books and hundreds of essays and journal articles flowed from her pen. Most of these works grew out of the many hundreds of lectures she gave: in the Scandinavian countries, in France, Italy, Finland, and most extensively in Germany. Her major publications were translated not only into English but into almost all European languages before the First World War. 1 By 1900 she was able to make a living (though a frugal one) from her books and lecture tours. 2 A great many of Key's works dealt with aesthetics-with the importance of the love of beauty in all realms of life. 3 In an early essay ("Beauty, " 1897-98) she speaks of a "religion of beauty" and calls for "a visionary prophet. .. to preach fanatically. .. the laws of beauty and the evangelism of the personality. " 4 The "prophet, " of course, was Key herself. She foretells a new era, a "Third Empire" of reason, social justice, creativity, peace, and beauty. 5 She predicts that when a new art has conquered industry, "making everyday life festive and beautiful, for rich and poor, " the beauty of the home will spread outward to society, to architecture and city planning. Then, "under. .. modern social conditions, beautiful cities, monuments, and buildings [will] be created. " 6 In "Beauty in the Home, " translated here into English for the first time, Key asserts that the new aesthetic sensibility must begin in the domestic setting. 7 The beautiful, she writes, is that which is practical, useful, informed by its purpose, and expressive of the soul of its user or creator. All people, she adds, need to create beautiful surroundings for themselves, and this creation begins in the home. If beauty exists in the home, Key writes, lives will be transformed, and so, ultimately, will every aspect of society. The new aesthetic would not be restricted to the wealthy, or to artists and connoisseurs. Ordinary people-farmers and workers-would achieve it more easily in fact because their taste had not been corrupted by fashion and because they possessed fewer things. Every worker, Key once wrote, is a potential artist. 8 19 Key also believed that every woman is a potential artist. The new taste and the new aesthetic would be created principally by women, partly because of their devotion to utility-"that whatever is useful is worthy of respect, all women realize"-but also in their role as nurturers and artists of the home, "of which [the woman] is the soul. " 9 The mother, in particular, is the fountainhead of change, Key believed, as both the artist of the home and the educator of the children within it. By educating a new generation, mothers would found a new era, beginning with "the century of the child" (the title of Key's most famous book, published in 1900). 10 Outside the home, Key said, women also had a special role to play: they were the source of nurturing, caring, and indeed passion, within society. Their tasks were those of "motherliness, " which she saw as the fostering of creative individuality and the reeducation of taste among all walks of life. 11 In addition to writing on design and on art education, Key was an outstanding liberal and an early proponent of women's political rights. 12 A committed yet idiosyncratic socialist, she insisted that social justice be combined with personal self-expression and creativity. 13 There was a strain of anarchism in her thought too, stemming partly from her powerful commitment to individualism, and partly from her rebellious and contentious nature. 14 She was a leading pacifist before, during, and after the First World War. She condemned Christianity, saying that it and asceticism were the enemies of beauty, art, and culture. She developed a personal religion, prophetic of modern existentialism, in which holiness is immanent in nature, in ordinary people, and in everyday life. 15 Many of the origins of Key's ideas lie in her childhood and youth. As a girl growing up at the family estate in Sundsholm, she learned to care deeply for the condition of the poorer farmers; she taught their children and involved herself in the "folk high school" movement. 16 Key loved the Swedish countryside, with its age-old handcraft and folk traditions (fig. 2). She also admired traditional rural buildings, especially the typical red-painted farmsteads of the provinces and the simple rustic classicism of her own home and others like it (figs. 3 and 4). 17 As a teenager, she began to gather artifacts for historian and ethnographer Artur Hazelius (1833-1901), who was collecting and recreating early buildings, furniture, and fabrics; these collections ultimately became the world-famous museum at Skansen (fig. 5). 18 Later, in "Beauty in the Home, " Key came to see the traditional architecture and crafts of rural Sweden as potential models for a new kind of design. The love of painting that informs all Key's writings also began at an early date. In 1873, on the way to the Vienna World's Fair with her father, she visited the most important art museums of Europe (in Berlin, Dresden, Florence, Paris, London, Kassel, and Vienna). She repeatedly revisited these museums, as well as those of Copenhagen, Rome, and Munich. Like the German museum director Alfred Lichtwark (1852-1914), whom she came to admire, she believed that looking at works of artistic genius offered unique educational benefits for children and untutored people. 19 Key took this idea further, though, arguing in her publications and speeches that even reproductions of good paintings were better for the viewer than ugly originals. Educated almost entirely at home, Key early on formed a lifelong habit of voracious reading and self-education. In addition to her admiration for English women novelists, and for the greatest works of German Romanticism, she was deeply influenced by the writings of Herbert Spencer, John Stuart Mill, Charles Darwin, and Auguste Comte. Thus her early philosophical stance can be characterized as strongly rationalist and positivist, yet based on a fundamental attachment to a rural way of life, and with an undercurrent of Romantic beliefs. When around 1875 she moved to Stockholm and began to act as informal secretary to her father, Emil Key (1822-1892), a landowner and member of the newly
Barbara Miller Lane D URING HIS fourth and last visit to West Berlin, in May 1958, John Foster Du... more Barbara Miller Lane D URING HIS fourth and last visit to West Berlin, in May 1958, John Foster Dulles told the city's House of Representatives that "here in Berlin cooperation has become real in stone and mortar."! The Secretary of State was referring, first , to the coopera tion of West Germany and the United States in protecting West Berlin from Soviet encroachments, an'd second, to a building called the "Con gress Hall," The Congress Hall, which in reality had little stone and mortar in it, since it was built ofsteel and concrete, was a center for international conferences and an occasional meeting place for the West German Bund estag, The building was erected by the United States government as its contribution to the International Building Exposition held in Berlin in 1957. Designed by the American architect Hugh Stubbins, the Congress Hall was supervised by a committee of the American Institute of Architects led by Ralph Walker, and was also overseen by Eleanor Lansing. Dulles, sister of John Foster Dulles, who acted as client for the Department of State. The building was strikingly unusual, Consisting of a double-arched roof above a curving audirorium and glass-enclosed circulation spaces, the Congress Hall appeared to hover like an alien visitor amid the wreckage of wartime destruction (Fig. 1). It was located at the heart of Berlin's historic center, near the Platz der Republik, the Reichstag, and the Brandenburg Gate. It was also, therefore, in close proximity to the sector border, and surrounded by the worst of the bomb damage of 1945: the site of Hitler's bunker was nearby (Fig. 2). The Congress Hall was greeted by fanfare and publicity almost from its inception. In press releases and elaborate ceremonies from 1955 on, 2. Statement made for the cornerstone ceremony, quoted in Department olS/ate Bulletin, Oc• robee 29, 1956, p. 670. Reprinted in Kongresshalle Berlin, brochure prepared for [he opening in the Fall of 1957, in Hugh Stubbins Papers (Cambridge, Mass.
Skilled stonemasons and stonecarvers are now difficult to find, and there are few books in print ... more Skilled stonemasons and stonecarvers are now difficult to find, and there are few books in print on these hard crafts. The Stones of the Vienna Ring, subtitled Their Technological and Artistic Significance, is an extraordinary volume.
of doctrinaire individuals used to feed slogans to a Mittelstand thirsting for a way out of its d... more of doctrinaire individuals used to feed slogans to a Mittelstand thirsting for a way out of its dilemmas. The Marxist revolutionary and sometime National Bolshevik Ernst Niekisch used his Resistance Press to advocate a reconciliation between socialism and nationalism in response to western domination and the Versailles treaty, while the extremely conservative Oswald Spengler sought to save Prussian values by postulating a Prussian socialism aimed at integrating the working class into the value system of the past. Finally, Ferdinand Fried and his colleagues on Die Tat played upon the misery which united all elements of the Mittelstand during the depression and upon the breakdown of the international economy to advocate a Third Front which would unify the disaffected Mittelstand in support of a new autarkic order in a German-dominated Mitteleuropa.
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