MINING SCHWITTERS (PART 3): DENKEREI

THE KURT SCHWITTERS SOCIETY NEWSLETTER June 2020 page 11 HELMUT ALLEMAND AND GWENDOLEN WEBSTER MINING SCHWITTERS (PART 3): DENKEREI Mining Schwitters is a series by Helmut Allemand and Gwendolen Webster that appears intermittently in our online Newsletter. The title derives from an essay by Michael White, in which he discusses the extent to which Schwitters’ collages point beyond themselves, either to the world of social reality or to parallel artistic contexts. ‘Whether the collages should be, as Schwitters himself suggested on more than one occasion, approached only on the basis of their ‘forming’ (which is not quite the same as ‘form’), or should be mined for buried messages that can be unearthed with clever detective work, is a problem that has dogged Schwitters scholarship for a considerable time.’ 1 As its name implies, the Mining Schwitters series unapologetically adopts the mining method, and is not recommended for readers who for whatever reason suffer qualms about the art-historical acceptability of such detective work. Kurt Schwitters’ Untitled (Maas), dating from 1922 (Fig. 1), is a tiny collage measuring no more than 15.5×12.30 cm. Its provenance is impeccable: the artist’s son sold it to Lord’s Gallery London in 1961, and it passed to the Tate Gallery in 1999.2 It’s not currently on show, which is a shame, as it would be instructive to watch the reactions of visitors who stop to examine it. The collage takes us aback at first glance, confronting us with a disconcerting image of what looks like a four-legged woman, and we automatically tilt our head to the left to try and make sense of the surrealistic image and the surrounding lettering. On further inspection, we can quickly dispense with the fleeting illusion of a female quadruped, and with our head still at an angle, can begin to distinguish the various elements and ponder on the artist’s excisions. With an additional modicum of research, one conspicuous element of the collage will propel us from sartorial indulgence to the unsavoury career of a depraved Nazi and on to a controversial project sparked off by an even more controversial art historian. But let’s look at what Schwitters has to say first. Fig. 1 Untitled (Maas) THE KURT SCHWITTERS SOCIETY NEWSLETTER June 2020 page 12 MINING SCHWITTERS: DENKEREI (2) Untitled (Maas) is mounted on a sheet of paper 30.7×22.0 cm, but is rarely depicted in full with the whole support.3 The Kurt Schwitters Catalogue Raisonné identifies it as a Merzzeichnung, Schwitters’ misleading term for his collages (as opposed to Merzbild, used for assemblages).4 The main part of the collage consists of a rectangular newspaper cutting turned 90 degrees to the left. Presumably part of an advertisement, it shows the skirts and feet of two elegantly dressed women facing in different directions. Now that the context has been established, we see that the two little arched shapes top left of the collage (also juxtaposed in reverse) are not merely decorative but are most likely cropped from some bargain offer that is ‘nur 49’. The most prominent letters, ‘Maa’, makes no sense in English or German — possibly an animal sound? Some connection to mother? But the clipped-off letter is surely an s. In 1922, a German would have read this as Maas — the great waterway that courses through what were for centuries some of Northern Europe’s most contested frontiers. Rotating the collage 90⁰ will make this clearer (Fig. 2). Fig. 2 The original collage (left) and rotated 90⁰ (right) The Maas (or Meuse) was familiar to all Germans, who laid vociferous claim to the river at the opening of ‛Das Lied der Deutschen’: ‘Von der Maas bis an die Memel, von der Etsch bis an den Belt/ Deutschland, Deutschland über alles, über alles in der Welt!’ (Fig. 3).5 Composed in 1841 on the then British island of Heligoland, the Deutschlandlied was delared the official German national anthem in 1922, the same year as our collage was created. Ominously, the Maas was no longer on German territory by 1920.6 In 1919, the Treaty of Versailles had lopped vast tracts off the former Reich, leading to the widespread perception that after such humiliating ‘amputations’, Germany’s identity was at stake.7 We may pause here to recollect that the embittered border discourse of ‘ours’ against ‘theirs’ and ‘us’ against ‘them’ that haunted the Weimar Republic ran counter to Schwitters’ deepest convictions. Fig. 3 ‘Von der Maas…’ THE KURT SCHWITTERS SOCIETY NEWSLETTER June 2020 page 13 MINING SCHWITTERS: DENKEREI (3) The Maas was in many ways synonymous with the Western Front of the Great War. In 1918, the Allies’ Maas offensive had played a crucial role in Germany’s defeat, and it is noticeable that in this collage, the thick black letters and parallel vertical lines serve to drag the composition, including the contrasting sections of lightweight typeface, downwards. However skewed and unstable the area with female figures appears, it is this that ensures the composition’s precarious equilibrium. Fig. 4 The two parts of the collage (right) and the original for comparison (left) Let’s now turn to the pasted-on cutting, in the form of an irregular hexagon, that shows the central figure of the collage (Fig. 4). She is obviously on a yacht, as foregrounded over the lower edge of her dress is a block and tackle (or pulley and rope, for the benefit of landlubbers). She is dressed in a simple outfit typical of the fashions of the early 1920s, if hardly practical for sailing as a physical activity. She is leaning dreamily, or expectantly, over a railing that runs almost parallel to the partially visible legs of the other figures. Dream she may, but in this position, her gaze is directed not at a seascape but at a rectangle with the words Abgabe nur je and below Änderung u. Zusendung. The wording further confirms that the lower sheet of the collage is part of an advertisement for clothes; it implies that customers may purchase only a limited number of articles, and that alterations and postage will be charged separately. The collage, like the year in which it was created, can offer our yachtswoman no prospect of wide horizons or romantic destinations, only restrictions and admonitions. As for the other women, we see only their shoes and a glimpse of voluminous skirts that for most were quite beyond reach; in 1922 there was still a shortage of materials in Germany, and hyperinflation was on the march. The two models hover in a loosely sketched setting of nearby woodland. At this point the artist intervenes and tells us that of course we can make sense of all this. For all the marketing industry’s free-floating intimations of idyllic pastoral-nautical vistas, we’re firmly on urban ground, and all we have to do is follow the trail he has kindly provided in the address below right: Oranienstrasse 165, Am Oranienplatz.8 Our search takes us to Berlin’s district of Kreuzberg, and a brief investigation will reveal that this was once the address of a fashion emporium named Warenhaus Maassen.9 At last Maa and the content of the collage make sense. Reinhardt Moritz Maassen’s department store opened for the production and sale of women’s wear in 1904, proudly advertising itself as Germany’s largest specialist shop for ladies’ clothing (Fig. 7). The handsome five-storey Art Nouveau building, with its imposing granite and glass frontage, was designed by the distinguished architect team of Breslauer and Salinger.10 Its corner location meant that it faced in two different directions — an apt appendage to this multi-directional collage. THE KURT SCHWITTERS SOCIETY NEWSLETTER June 2020 page 14 MINING SCHWITTERS: DENKEREI (4) Fig. 5. Warenhaus Maassen, 1909 Fig.6 Reinhardt Moritz Maassen’s gravestone, Luisenstadt Friedhof Fig. 7 Warenhaus Maassen; advertisement, c. 1915 (artist: Ernst Deutsch) In the late 1920s Max Taut (brother of Bruno) undertook numerous alterations to the site; in 1935 the Deutsche Arbeitsfront (DAF) took over.11 The DAF had been set up to replace the former trade unions, and was headed by the disreputable Robert Ley, who was chronically drunk with power (and, as it happens, with alcohol). Even in terms of the Nazi regime, his abuse of authority was excessive. As Richard Evans remarked, ‘the DAF quickly began to gain a reputation as perhaps the most corrupt of all the major institutions of the Third Reich. For this, Ley himself had to shoulder a large part of the blame.’12 THE KURT SCHWITTERS SOCIETY NEWSLETTER June 2020 page 15 MINING SCHWITTERS: DENKEREI (5) Fig. 8 Oranienplatz 2, 1999 Oranienplatz 165 suffered considerable damage in the Second World War, but its structural framework remained intact, only to be subjected to a soulless post-war overhaul (Fig. 8). Luckily this episode can be glossed over, as in 20o2 the architects Thomas Müller and Ivan Reimann undertook a sensitive reconstruction of the building with discreet recollections of its former flair.13 Schwitters’ 1922 essay on Merz architecture specifies that old materials and unattractive buildings can and should be integrated into new designs, while not necessarily determining the form of the finished structure,14 and he would surely have been delighted with Müller and Reimann’s methodology for what is now (after renumbering) Oranienplatz 2: Both inside and outside, individual historical layers and architectural elements from various eras remain visible everywhere. The new and the old form a creative unity. Within the original sections that still exist — the courtyard, stairwells, foyers — nearly all the important architectural elements such as doors, lifts, lights and wall coverings had to be redesigned and integrated into the existing rooms.15 Fig. 9 Oranienplatz 2, 2002 THE KURT SCHWITTERS SOCIETY NEWSLETTER June 2020 page 6 MINING SCHWITTERS: DENKEREI (6) Fig. 10 Oranienplatz 2, inner courtyard, 2002 This is not the end of the story, for between 2011 and 2019, a ground-floor office of Oranienplatz 2 provided the backdrop for a host of intellectual, not to say recondite, discussions.16 A recent photo (Fig. 9) shows a simple oblique sign adorning the doorway where a once scantily clad neo-classical couple presided over Warenhaus Maassen’s grand arched entrance. The Denkerei — a ‘Thinking Office for Work on Insoluble Problems’ — was the brainchild of the maverick art historian Bazon Brock.17 In this divisive cultural institution, Brock led regular symposiums on complex social problems of international significance in the company of the prominent philosopher Peter Sloterdijk and other intellectuals. The aim was to initiate a dialogue with politicians, business and civil society by means of readings, exhibitions and seminars. To quote Brock: ‘If people in the future have anything at all in common, it will not be illusions of cultural identity such as a common language, religion or table manners but the universal confrontation with insoluble problems.’ 18 Fig.11 Bazon Brock as Merz in Zurich, 2010 Brock is not only an avowed admirer of Schwitters, but represented him in a performance at Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich in 2010. According to the programme, when Schwitters invented Merz he therewith deconstructed Commerz [i.e. commerce], which in truth bore the burden of guilt for the calamitous 1914-18 war. Moreover, according to Brock, it was Schwitters’ bargain basement of Merz bits and pieces, leftovers and loose ends that marked the birth of post-war art. But, he proclaimed, the time had come to revoke Schwitters’ bold act of liquidation, for nowadays the art market rules. The performance correspondingly celebrated the remarriage of Com and bridegroom Merz, played by Brock himself. 19 From here it’s a short step back to Untitled (Maas), which cocks an eye at commerce from the angle of Merz – that is, from the perspective of deconstruction. As the collage is now owned by the Tate, we may consult the gallery’s website for further information: [It] belongs to a small but significant group of works that the artist made between 1920 and 1923 that are suggestive of themes of fashion, romance and feminine sexuality. In these works women tend to be shown in terms of their modern mass cultural representations – as mannequins or fashion plates… The art historian Dorothea Dietrich has suggested that Schwitters’s collages showing women in this period ‘call attention to the cultural suppression of individuality in favour of the creation of types’.20 THE KURT SCHWITTERS SOCIETY NEWSLETTER June 2020 page 7 MINING SCHWITTERS: DENKEREI (7) Schwitters’s interest in fashion is well known (cf. the review of Maria Makela’s essay above, p. 9), and Untitled (Maas) certainly touches on the subject, if indirectly. Of more interest here is the last sentence of the above quotation, taken from Dietrich’s book on Schwitters. In its original context, it introduces a long line of reasoning; in short, Dietrich claims that Schwitters’ collages containing images of women bear a somewhat sinister sexist and antimodernist subtext.21 At this point we may ask ourselves if Dietrich’s overall interpretation of Schwitters as a misogynist whose art linked fashion and women to prostitution and portrayed women as a threat to male domination is also applicable to Untitled (Maas). What we can see of the women appears on cuttings of cheap paper, but then such scraps make up most of the content of Merz collages. By any standards the juxtaposition of the three women, all lightly delineated, all fractured, looks oddly animal-like. But for all that, this element serves as a motor in the collage, and the argument that artist’s intent is explicitly derogatory rests on shaky ground. Women had undoubtedly been the workhorses of the First World War and its aftermath, even if propaganda ensured that the men got the medals (Figs. 12, 13). In addition, the advent of Weimar Republic had introduced a handful of radical changes to the status of women, including the right to vote. However inadequate these were, our unfrilled, optimistic yachtswoman is clearly on an upright course in a topsy-turvy world. (It may be worth noting here that of all his colleagues, Schwitters was the least chauvinist and the only one who supported and encouraged female artists to the end of his life.) Fig 12 Women were employed in heavy industry and weapons manufacture in WWI… Fig 13 …but there was no doubt who the heroes were. THE KURT SCHWITTERS SOCIETY NEWSLETTER June 2020 page 8 MINING SCHWITTERS: DENKEREI (8) For interested readers, Dorothea Dietrich’s assessment that Schwitters’ art ‘suppresses women’s new-found political and social prominence’ and vindicates his desire for a ‘traditional, patriarchal power structure’ is expounded in detail in Chapter 7 of her study of Schwitters’ collages.22 Her conclusions have recently been challenged by Julia Nantke, who emphasises that in the case of Schwitters, the medium (that is, montage) is the message; his standpoint is never fixed and such narrow programmatic interpretations of his work are quite untenable.23 Nantke demonstrates that those collages that incorporate images of women touch on a variety of contemporary issues, and evoke a whole range of ideas about usage, travel, value and status; any supposed underlying message that females are threatening beings best subjugated to male control lies solely in the eye of the beholder. The case is not closed, and readers may like to join the jury and decide which party would have their vote. ******** In this essay we have ventured to experiment with Julia Nantke’s constructive analytical tool of Schwitters as space-maker — that is, as the creator of virtual dynamic spaces, whether literary or visual, in which we are free to orient ourselves and move around, spot contrasts and correspondences, parallels and differences, and ponder on a kaleidoscope of connotations. As such, we have come to the end of our brief excursion into the unexpectedly wide world of Untitled (Maas). We welcome readers’ comments and criticisms, and look forward to inviting you to another session of Mining Schwitters in the future. Helmut Allemand Gwendolen Webster The first two parts of Mining Schwitters can be found here: 1. Mining Schwitters 1: Left Half of a Beauty: 2. Mining Schwitters 2: It takes Allsorts… : KSS Newsletter 30, Oct. 2018, p. 24-32 KSS Newsletter 33, Aug. 2019, p. 24-27 Illustrations: Links: Fig. 3: Fig. 5: Fig. 6: Fig 7: Fig. 8 Fig. 9: Fig. 10 Fig. 11 Fig. 12 Fig. 13 Fig. 14 Fig. 14 . THE KURT SCHWITTERS SOCIETY NEWSLETTER June 2020 page 9 MINING SCHWITTERS: DENKEREI (9) Notes: (all URLs last retrieved 4 June 2020) 1. Michael White, “Black and White and Read All Over,” in Sch… The Journal of the Kurt Schwitters Society 2013, pp. 12-17. 2. It is listed on the Tate archive under https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/schwitters-measure-t12392. 3. The Tate gives the dimension of the mount, but does not show it. The authors would argue that this relatively large mount is an integral part of the collage, as it serves to distance the viewer. 4. Karin Orchard & Isabel Schulz (ed.) Kurt Schwitters Catalogue Raisonné 1905-22. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2000, cat. no. 1041, p. 503. 5. Only the third verse of the Deutschlandlied is sung nowadays. 6. In 1922 the Maas ran to the west of the German border. Today no part of four waterways mentioned in the Deutschlandlied lies in Germany. A vengeful fourth verse penned in 1921 never found official acceptance. 7. For a full discussion of this border discourse see Vanessa Conze, “‘Unverheilte Brandwunden in der Aufbau des Volkskörpers.” Der deutsche Grenz-Diskurs der Zwischenkriegszeit (1919-39),’ in Ordnungen in der Krise, ed. Wolfgang Hardtwig. Munich: Oldenbourg, 2007, pp. 21-48. 8. How Oranienplatz gained its name is a convoluted tale that leads from Barbarossa via William the Silent and Frederick I of Prussia to Louis XIV and onwards. Limits of time and space deterred us from further excavations at this point. 9. The present address is Oranienstrasse 164 or Oranienplatz 2. It is now a listed building. 10. Both were subjected to Nazi persecution. Paul Salinger died at the age of 77; he and his wife were both deported to Theresienstadt and presumably murdered. 11. Maassen, who was Jewish, died in 1907 and was buried in Luisenstädtischer Friedhof, later notorious as a cemetery for what were described as ‘Nazi martyrs’. 12. Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich in Power. London: Allen Lane, 2005, p. 463. 13. https://mueller-reimann.de/projekte/geschaeftshaus-oranienplatz 14. Merz bedeutet bekanntlich die Verwendung von gegebenem Alten als Material für das neue Kunstwerk. ’ ‛Schloss und Kathedrale mit Hofbrunnen̕, in Frühlicht. Eine Folge für die Verwirklichung des neuen Baugedankens, ed. Bruno Taut, vol. I, no. 3 (1922), p. 87, reproduced in Kurt Schwitters, das literarische Werk, ed. Friedhelm Lach, vol. 5. Cologne: Dumont, pp. 195-6. ‛Schwitters was utterly out on a limb here; none of his colleagues was interested in concepts of integration, whether of new and old architecture or architecture and environment (apart from sporadic efforts to preserve existing natural features like woods and parks). 15. As note 13. 16. Wolfgang Schäche, Ein Haus am Oranienplatz in Berlin. Berlin: Jovis Verlag, 2004, p. 310. 17. ‛Das Amt für Arbeit an unlösbaren Problemen stellt der Öffentlichkeit Denkmittel in Form von Besucherschulen, action teachings, cognitive tools und theoretischen Objekten in der Orientierung auf bildende Wissenschaften und Erkenntnis stiftende Künste zur Verfügung.̕ Bazon Brock, 2011, quoted in https://denkerei-berlin.de/gruendung/ See also https://denkerei-berlin.de/probleme/. Arbeitsgebiete: Evidenz-kritik/Müllkulte (Bazon Brock), Psychopolitik (Peter Sloterdijk), Technotheologie (Peter Weibel), Abendländische Epistemologie (Arno Bammé), Stoische Diätetik (Ulrich Heinen), Konsumforschung (Wolfgang Ullrich), Molekularbiologie (Roland Brock), Transformationsregeln des Rechts (Fabian Steinhauer). The Denkerei has now moved to Ritterstr. 8, 10969 Berlin. 18. For this and more quotes, see https://bazonbrock.de/ and https://www.facebook.com/Denkerei/ 19. Brock quoted from Ernst Jandl’s Schwitterian poem ‛Lichtung’. http://www.planetlyrik.de/volker-hagezu-ernst-jandls-gedicht-lichtung/2016/03/ 20. The Tate website (see note 2 above) gives the title of the collage as Measure. 21. Dorothea Dietrich, The Collages of Kurt Schwitters: Tradition and Innovation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, p. 134. Available online here. 22. Ibid. pp. 142 and 163. 23. Julia Nantke: Ordnungsmuster im Werk von Kurt Schwitters. Zwischen Transgression und Regelhaftigkeit. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017, 13-16, 97-101. Reviewed in the KSS Newsletter July 2018, no. 29, p. 22-31. 24. KSS Newsletter July 2018, p. 25.