Visual Cultures and German Contexts – serie

How to Make the Body: Difference, Identity, and Embodiment brings together contemporary and historical readings of the body, exploring the insights and limits of established and emerging theories of difference, identity, and embodiment in a variety of German contexts. The engaging contributions to this volume utilize and challenge cutting-edge approaches to scholarship on the body by putting these approaches in direct conversation with canonical texts and objects, as well as with lesser-known yet provocative emerging forms. To these ends, the chapter authors investigate “the body” through detailed studies across a wide variety of disciplines and modes of expression: from advertising, aesthetics, and pornography, to social media, scientific experimentation, and transnational cultural forms. Thus, this volume showcases the ways in which the body as such cannot be taken for granted and surmises that the body continues to undergo constant--and potentially disruptive--diversification and transformation.

Curating Transcultural Spaces asks what a museum which enables the presentation of multiple perspectives might look like. Can identity be global and local at the same time? How may one curate dual identity? More broadly, what is the link between the arts and processes of identity construction? This volume, an indispensable source for the process of engaging with colonial history in Germany and beyond, takes its starting point from the 'scandal' of the Humboldt Forum. The transfer of German state collections from the Ethnological Museum and the Museum for Asian Art, located at the margins of Berlin in Dahlem, into the centre of Germany's capital indicates the nation’s aspiration of purported multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism; yet the project’s resurrection of the site’s former Prussian city palace, which was demolished during the GDR, stands in opposition to its very mission, given that the Prussian rulers benefited from colonial exploitation. By examining the contrasting successes of other projects, such as the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC, Curating Transcultural Spaces compellingly argues for the necessity of taking post-colonial thinking on board in the construction of museum spaces in order to generate genuine exchange between multiple perspectives.

Curating Transcultural Spaces asks what a museum which enables the presentation of multiple perspectives might look like. Can identity be global and local at the same time? How may one curate dual identity? More broadly, what is the link between the arts and processes of identity construction? This volume, an indispensable source for the process of engaging with colonial history in Germany and beyond, takes its starting point from the 'scandal' of the Humboldt Forum. The transfer of German state collections from the Ethnological Museum and the Museum for Asian Art, located at the margins of Berlin in Dahlem, into the centre of Germany's capital indicates the nation’s aspiration of purported multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism; yet the project’s resurrection of the site’s former Prussian city palace, which was demolished during the GDR, stands in opposition to its very mission, given that the Prussian rulers benefited from colonial exploitation. By examining the contrasting successes of other projects, such as the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC, Curating Transcultural Spaces compellingly argues for the necessity of taking post-colonial thinking on board in the construction of museum spaces in order to generate genuine exchange between multiple perspectives.

Material Modernity explores creative innovation in German art, design, and architecture during the Weimar Republic, charting both the rise of new media and the re-fashioning of old media. Weimar became famous for the explosion of creative ingenuity across the arts in Germany, due to experiments with new techniques (including the move towards abstraction in painting and sculpture) and inventive work in such new media as paper and plastic, which utilized both new and old methods of art production. Individual chapters in this book consider inventions such as the camera and materials like celluloid, examine the role of new materials including concrete composites in opening up fresh avenues in the plastic arts, and relate advances in the understanding of color perception and psychology to an increased interest in visual perception and the latent potential of color as both architectural ornament and carrier of emotional force in space.While art historians usually argue that experimentation in the Weimar Republic was the result of an intentional rejection of traditional modes of expression in the conscious attempt to invent a modern art and architecture unshackled from historic media and methods, this volume shows that the drivers for innovation were often far more complex and nuanced. It first of all describes how the material shortages precipitated by the First World War, along with the devastation to industrial infrastructure and disruption of historic trade routes, affected art, as did a spirit of experimentation that permeated interwar German culture. It then analyzes new challenges in the 1920s to artistic conventions in traditional art modes like painting, sculpture, drawing, architecture, textiles, and print-making and simultaneously probes the likely causes of innovative new methods of artistic production that appeared, such as photomontage, assemblage, mechanical art, and multi-media art. In doing so, Material Modernity fills a significant gap in Weimar scholarship and art history literature.

Herbert Bayer was one of the most extraordinary artists associated with the Bauhaus school. A true multimedia artist, he united graphic design, art, and architecture in a unique style that came to represent the bold aesthetic approach of the movement. A teacher with the school until 1928, Bayer went on to become a highly successful graphic designer in Germany, and later one of the most prominent figures in the 20th-century art scene of the United States.This broad biographical account, which presents previously unseen archival photographs and episodes from the life of Bayer and other influential Bauhaus artists such as Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer and László Moholy-Nagy, follows Bayer through the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany and finally to his exile in the United States. Shining a light on Bayer’s time in Berlin during the Weimar Republic, and his route out of the Nazi state, Rössler provides rich new insights into how Bauhaus artists navigated a protracted period of social upheaval and dictatorship, where commercial success was fraught with a deep hostility towards the regime and the temptations of emigration.Revealing the tensions of an avant-garde artist struggling to practice during a period of repression, Herbert Bayer, Graphic Designer speaks to both the memory of those who left Nazi Germany, but also the perseverance of artists and intellectuals throughout history who have worked under authoritarian regimes. Drawing on never before interpreted documents, letters and archival material, Rössler tells Bayer’s compelling story – documenting the life of a unique artist and offering a valuable contribution to research in émigré experiences.

In light of the recent rise of right-wing populism in numerous political contexts and in the face of resurgent nationalism, racism, misogyny, homophobia, and demagoguery, this book investigates how historical and contemporary cultural producers have sought to resist, confront, confound, mock, or call out situations of political oppression in Germany, a country which has seen a dramatic range of political extremes during the past century. While the current turn to nationalist populism is global, it is perhaps most disturbing in Germany, given its history with its stormy first democracy in the interwar Weimar Republic; its infamous National Socialist (Nazi) period of the 1930s and 1940s; and its split Cold-War existence, with Marxist-Leninist Totalitarianism in the German Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany’s barely-hidden ties to the Nazi past. Equally important, Germans have long considered art and culture critical to constructions of national identity, which meant that they were frequently implicated in political action. This book therefore examines a range of work by artists from the early twentieth century to the present, work created in an array of contexts and media that demonstrates a wide range of possible resistance.

Jeanne Mammen’s watercolour images of the gender-bending ‘new woman’ and her candid portrayals of Berlin’s thriving nightlife appeared in some of the most influential magazines of the Weimar Republic and are still considered characteristic of much of the ‘glitter’ of that era. This book charts how, once the Nazis came into power, Mammen instead created ‘degenerate’ paintings and collages, translated prohibited French literature and sculpted in clay and plaster—all while hidden away in her tiny studio apartment in the heart of Berlin’s fashionable west end. What was it like as a woman artist to produce modern art in Nazi Germany? Can artworks that were never exhibited in public still make valid claims to protest? Camilla Smith examines a wide range of Mammen’s dissenting artworks, ranging from those created in solitude during inner emigration to her collaboration with artist cabarets after the Second World War. Smith's engaging analysis compares Mammen's popular Weimar work to her artistic activities under the radar after 1933, in order to fundamentally rethink the moral complexities of inner emigration and its visual culture. The examination of Mammen’s life and work demonstrates the crucial role women artists played as both markers and agents of German modernity, but the double marginalisation they have nonetheless encountered as inner émigrés in recent history. It will be of interest to students of German studies, art history, literature, history, gender studies and cultural studies.

Jeanne Mammen’s watercolour images of the gender-bending ‘new woman’ and her candid portrayals of Berlin’s thriving nightlife appeared in some of the most influential magazines of the Weimar Republic and are still considered characteristic of much of the ‘glitter’ of that era. This book charts how, once the Nazis came into power, Mammen instead created ‘degenerate’ paintings and collages, translated prohibited French literature and sculpted in clay and plaster—all while hidden away in her tiny studio apartment in the heart of Berlin’s fashionable west end. What was it like as a woman artist to produce modern art in Nazi Germany? Can artworks that were never exhibited in public still make valid claims to protest? Camilla Smith examines a wide range of Mammen’s dissenting artworks, ranging from those created in solitude during inner emigration to her collaboration with artist cabarets after the Second World War. Smith's engaging analysis compares Mammen's popular Weimar work to her artistic activities under the radar after 1933, in order to fundamentally rethink the moral complexities of inner emigration and its visual culture. The examination of Mammen’s life and work demonstrates the crucial role women artists played as both markers and agents of German modernity, but the double marginalisation they have nonetheless encountered as inner émigrés in recent history. It will be of interest to students of German studies, art history, literature, history, gender studies and cultural studies.

Unsettling traditional understandings of housing reform as focused on the nuclear family with dependent children, Single People and Mass Housing in Germany, 1850-1930 is the first complete study of single-person mass housing in Germany and the pivotal role this class- and gender-specific building type played for over 80 years—in German architectural culture and society, the transnational Progressive reform movement, Feminist discourse, and International Modernism—and its continued relevance.Homes for unmarried men and women, or Ledigenheime, were built for nearly every powerful interest group in Germany—progressive, reactionary, and radical alike—from the mid-nineteenth century into the 1920s. Designed by both unknown craftsmen and renowned architects ranging from Peter Behrens to Bruno Taut, these homes fought unregimented lodging in overcrowded working-class dwellings while functioning as apparatuses of moral and social control. A means to societal reintegration, Ledigenheime effectively bridged the public-private divide and rewrote the rules of who was deserving of quality housing—pointing forward to the building programs of Weimar Berlin and Red Vienna, experimental housing in Soviet Russia, Feminist collectives, accommodations for postwar “guestworkers,” and even housing for the elderly today.

Photography and fascism in interwar Europe developed into a highly toxic and combustible formula. Particularly in concert with aggressive display techniques, the European fascists were utterly convinced of their ability to use the medium of photography to manufacture consent among their publics. Unfortunately, as we know in hindsight, they succeeded. Other dictatorial regimes in the 1930s harnessed this powerful combination of photography and exhibitions for their own odious purposes. But this book, for the first time, focuses on the particularly consequential dialectic between Germany and Italy in the early-to-mid 1930s, and within each of those countries vis-à-vis display culture.The 1930s provides a potent case study for every generation, and it is as urgent as ever in our global political environment to deeply understand the central role of visual imagery in what transpired. Photofascism demonstrates precisely how dictatorial regimes use photographic mass media, methodically and in combination with display, to persuade the public with often times highly destructive—even catastrophic—results.

Germany developed a large colonial empire over the last thirty years of the 19th century, spanning regions of the west coast of Africa to its east coast and beyond. Largely forgotten for many years, recent intense debates about Africa’s cultural heritage in European museums have brought this period of African and German history back into the spotlight.German Colonialism in Africa and its Legacies brings much-needed context to these debates, exploring perspectives on the architecture, art, urbanism, and visual culture of German colonialism in Africa, and its legacies in postcolonial and present-day Namibia, Cameroon, and Germany.The first in-depth exploration of the designed and visual aspects of German colonialism, the book presents a series of essays combining formal analyses of painting, photography, performance art, buildings, and space with the discourse analysis approach associated with postcolonial theory. Covering the entire period from the build-up to colonialism in the early-19th century to the present, subjects covered range from late-19th-century German colonial paintings of African landscapes and people to German land appropriation through planning and architectural mechanisms, and from indigenous African responses to colonial architecture, to explorations of the legacies of German colonialism by contemporary artists today.This powerful and revealing collection of essays will encourage new research on this under-explored topic, and demonstrate the importance of historical research to the present, especially with regards to ongoing debates about the presence of material legacies of colonialism in Western culture, museum collections, and immigration policies.

Germany developed a large colonial empire over the last thirty years of the 19th century, spanning regions of the west coast of Africa to its east coast and beyond. Largely forgotten for many years, recent intense debates about Africa’s cultural heritage in European museums have brought this period of African and German history back into the spotlight.German Colonialism in Africa and its Legacies brings much-needed context to these debates, exploring perspectives on the architecture, art, urbanism, and visual culture of German colonialism in Africa, and its legacies in postcolonial and present-day Namibia, Cameroon, and Germany.The first in-depth exploration of the designed and visual aspects of German colonialism, the book presents a series of essays combining formal analyses of painting, photography, performance art, buildings, and space with the discourse analysis approach associated with postcolonial theory. Covering the entire period from the build-up to colonialism in the early-19th century to the present, subjects covered range from late-19th-century German colonial paintings of African landscapes and people to German land appropriation through planning and architectural mechanisms, and from indigenous African responses to colonial architecture, to explorations of the legacies of German colonialism by contemporary artists today.This powerful and revealing collection of essays will encourage new research on this under-explored topic, and demonstrate the importance of historical research to the present, especially with regards to ongoing debates about the presence of material legacies of colonialism in Western culture, museum collections, and immigration policies.

The harsh realities of wartime and Weimar-era Germany called for a new kind of art. Dada, followed by Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity), confronted social and political issues in new and bold ways. This book highlights how Otto Dix (1891–1969) – one of the leading artists connected to these artistic movements – employed these new approaches to reveal the injustices of wartime and post-World War I Germany. Having spent 38 months on the frontline, his pictures revealed the brutalities of the conflict and helped establish him as one of Europe’s leading modernists.Offering substantial new research and presenting numerous primary sources to an English readership for the first time, the book examines Dix’s war pictures within the broader visual culture of war in order to assess how they functioned alternatively as cutting-edge modernist art and transgressive war commemoration.Each chapter provides a case study of the first public display of one or more of Dix’s war pictures at key exhibitions and explores how their reception was subjected to changing socio-political and cultural conditions as well as divergent attitudes to the lost war. It pulls together a number of key approaches and texts: contemporary reviews, contemporary cultural productions (such as novels and cartoons), and theoretical and historical approaches from history, memory studies and art history.Bringing a unique perspective and original scholarship to Dix’s war works, this book is essential reading for art historians of World War I and the visual culture of Weimar Germany.

The harsh realities of wartime and Weimar-era Germany called for a new kind of art. Dada, followed by Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity), confronted social and political issues in new and bold ways. This book highlights how Otto Dix (1891–1969) – one of the leading artists connected to these artistic movements – employed these new approaches to reveal the injustices of wartime and post-World War I Germany. Having spent 38 months on the frontline, his pictures revealed the brutalities of the conflict and helped establish him as one of Europe’s leading modernists.Offering substantial new research and presenting numerous primary sources to an English readership for the first time, the book examines Dix’s war pictures within the broader visual culture of war in order to assess how they functioned alternatively as cutting-edge modernist art and transgressive war commemoration.Each chapter provides a case study of the first public display of one or more of Dix’s war pictures at key exhibitions and explores how their reception was subjected to changing socio-political and cultural conditions as well as divergent attitudes to the lost war. It pulls together a number of key approaches and texts: contemporary reviews, contemporary cultural productions (such as novels and cartoons), and theoretical and historical approaches from history, memory studies and art history.Bringing a unique perspective and original scholarship to Dix’s war works, this book is essential reading for art historians of World War I and the visual culture of Weimar Germany.

The essays in this collection address the German television series Babylon Berlin and explore its unique contribution to contemporary visual culture.Since its inception in 2017 the series, a neo-noir thriller set in Berlin in the final years of the Weimar republic, has reached audiences throughout Europe, Asia, and the Americas and has been met with both critical and popular acclaim. As a visual work rife with historical and contemporary citations Babylon Berlin offers its audience a panoramic view of politics, crime, culture, gender, and sexual relations in the German capital.Focusing especially on the intermedial and transhistorical dimensions of the series, across four parts—Babylon Berlin, Global Media and Fan Culture; The Look and Sound of Babylon Berlin; Representing Weimar History; and Weimar Intertexts—the volume brings together an interdisciplinary and international group of scholars to critically examine various facets of the show, including its aesthetic form and citation style, its representation of the history and politics of the late Weimar Republic, and its exemplary status as a blockbuster production of neoliberal media culture.Considering the series from the perspective of a variety of disciplines, Babylon Berlin, German Visual Spectacle, and Global Media Culture is essential reading for students of film, TV, media studies, and visual culture on German Studies, History, and European Studies programmes.

The essays in this collection address the German television series Babylon Berlin and explore its unique contribution to contemporary visual culture.Since its inception in 2017 the series, a neo-noir thriller set in Berlin in the final years of the Weimar republic, has reached audiences throughout Europe, Asia, and the Americas and has been met with both critical and popular acclaim. As a visual work rife with historical and contemporary citations Babylon Berlin offers its audience a panoramic view of politics, crime, culture, gender, and sexual relations in the German capital.Focusing especially on the intermedial and transhistorical dimensions of the series, across four parts—Babylon Berlin, Global Media and Fan Culture; The Look and Sound of Babylon Berlin; Representing Weimar History; and Weimar Intertexts—the volume brings together an interdisciplinary and international group of scholars to critically examine various facets of the show, including its aesthetic form and citation style, its representation of the history and politics of the late Weimar Republic, and its exemplary status as a blockbuster production of neoliberal media culture.Considering the series from the perspective of a variety of disciplines, Babylon Berlin, German Visual Spectacle, and Global Media Culture is essential reading for students of film, TV, media studies, and visual culture on German Studies, History, and European Studies programmes.

For years following reunification, Berlin was the largest construction site in Europe, with striking new architecture proliferating throughout the city in the 1990s and early 2000s. Among the most visible and the most contested of the new projects were those designed for the national government and its related functions. Berlin Contemporary explores these buildings and plans, tracing their antecedents while also situating their iconic forms and influential designers within the spectacular world of global contemporary architecture. Close studies of these sites, including the Reichstag, the Chancellery, and the reconstruction of the Berlin Stadtschloss (now known as the Humboldt Forum), demonstrate the complexity of Berlin’s political and architectural “rebuilding”—and reveal the intricate historical negotiations that architecture was summoned to perform.

How did German aesthetic values change during the Weimar Republic and after its immediate collapse at the beginning of the National Socialist period? Contrary to conventional narratives that depict modernist aesthetics as static, shaping principles of modern art and design, this volume argues for their complexity and ever-shifting nature.Illuminating the vital exchanges that occurred across multiple art forms during a period of unmatched cultural activity, this multi-disciplinary volume explores the cultural transition between Weimar- and National Socialist-era Germany and offers a fresh perspective on the fate of modernism during a time of censorship and social stigma. Featuring essays on architecture, painting, photography, film, sculpture, cabaret, typography, and commercial design, the volume explores competing and comparable themes across German art from 1919-1945 and addresses how modern approaches like New Vision coexisted with more traditional and established artistic modes.Such visual complexity is evident from the volume’s eclectic coverage: these include ‘sexology’ and eroticism, visual grammar in typography and architecture, the reception of Weimar art in the National Socialist period, and the formation and transformation of queer and Jewish identities. The volume encompasses subjects as different as shadow in the animated films of Lotte Reininger, filmic adaptations of Heinrich Zille’s social commentary in the 1920s, the photography of László Moholy-Nagy, and depictions of female sexuality in Magnus Hirschfeld’s oeuvre. By bridging multiple artistic fields, this highly interdisciplinary work provides a fresh perspective on the ever-changing art and aesthetic principles of early-20th-century Germany.

How did German aesthetic values change during the Weimar Republic and after its immediate collapse at the beginning of the National Socialist period? Contrary to conventional narratives that depict modernist aesthetics as static, shaping principles of modern art and design, this volume argues for their complexity and ever-shifting nature.Illuminating the vital exchanges that occurred across multiple art forms during a period of unmatched cultural activity, this multi-disciplinary volume explores the cultural transition between Weimar- and National Socialist-era Germany and offers a fresh perspective on the fate of modernism during a time of censorship and social stigma. Featuring essays on architecture, painting, photography, film, sculpture, cabaret, typography, and commercial design, the volume explores competing and comparable themes across German art from 1919-1945 and addresses how modern approaches like New Vision coexisted with more traditional and established artistic modes.Such visual complexity is evident from the volume’s eclectic coverage: these include ‘sexology’ and eroticism, visual grammar in typography and architecture, the reception of Weimar art in the National Socialist period, and the formation and transformation of queer and Jewish identities. The volume encompasses subjects as different as shadow in the animated films of Lotte Reininger, filmic adaptations of Heinrich Zille’s social commentary in the 1920s, the photography of László Moholy-Nagy, and depictions of female sexuality in Magnus Hirschfeld’s oeuvre. By bridging multiple artistic fields, this highly interdisciplinary work provides a fresh perspective on the ever-changing art and aesthetic principles of early-20th-century Germany.

In what ways can erotica chart the story of a nation in transition? What can it reveal about the discontinuities – and uncomfortable parallels – between the periods of political and economic turmoil that characterize modern German history?The rapid modernization of the German Empire in 1871 led to large-scale transformations in the cultural, social, and political spheres. Exploring a rich diversity of erotic visual art – from paintings and photographs, to postcards and graphic folios – this volume reveals the impact of these changes on the erotic interests of the nation.Across diverse forms of artistic production, reception, and circulation, Erotic Art in Modern Germany argues for the significance and cultural value of erotica. It presents work by both highly regarded and lesser-known artists and examines themes such as legal cultures and the impact of censorship, sexuality and sexual reform, and changing political frameworks, from imperialism to fascism. 10 chapters study diverse topics that engage with philological and ethnographic approaches to erotic art, demonstrate how scientific developments shape erotica, and investigate the ways in which works intersect with debates on gender and sexuality.With its holistic, cross-disciplinary approach-drawing from the fields of anthropology, film theory, Marxism, feminism, and trans- and queer theories – the book complicates simplistic understandings of 'modern' erotica and powerfully underlines its enduring significance as a site of dissent and experimentation.

A century after the Bauhaus’s founding in 1919, this book reassesses it as more than a highly influential art, architecture, and design school. In myriad ways, emerging ideas about the body in relation to health, movement, gender, and sexuality were at the heart of art and life at the school. Bauhaus Bodies reassesses the work of both well-known Bauhaus members and those who have unjustifiably escaped scholarly scrutiny, its women in particular. In fourteen original, cutting-edge essays by established experts and emerging scholars, this book reveals how Bauhaus artists challenged traditional ideas about bodies and gender. Written to appeal to students, scholars, and the broad public, Bauhaus Bodies will be essential reading for anyone interested in modern art, architecture, design history, and gender studies; it will define conversations and debates during the 2019 centenary of the Bauhaus’s founding and beyond.

A century after the Bauhaus’s founding in 1919, this book reassesses it as more than a highly influential art, architecture, and design school. In myriad ways, emerging ideas about the body in relation to health, movement, gender, and sexuality were at the heart of art and life at the school. Bauhaus Bodies reassesses the work of both well-known Bauhaus members and those who have unjustifiably escaped scholarly scrutiny, its women in particular. In fourteen original, cutting-edge essays by established experts and emerging scholars, this book reveals how Bauhaus artists challenged traditional ideas about bodies and gender. Written to appeal to students, scholars, and the broad public, Bauhaus Bodies will be essential reading for anyone interested in modern art, architecture, design history, and gender studies; it will define conversations and debates during the 2019 centenary of the Bauhaus’s founding and beyond.