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Paul Scheerbart

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by Glass! Love!! Perpetual Motion!!!-A Paul Scheerbart Reader Josiah McElheny


  contemporary sources, both the replica and its glass container were experienced as

  giant kaleidoscopes. See Arnaud Maillet, “Kaleidoscopic Imagination,” Grey Room 48

  (2012): 46.

  12. Brewster, The Kaleidoscope: 1.

  Hand-drawn plan of Bruno Taut’s Glass House. Note the custom-built kaleidoscope and

  motorized projector at the rear of building, the 4-foot (1.2 meter) screen just in front of the

  projector, and the special recess used to darken the viewing space in front of the screen. The

  Glass House projector has previously been misidentified as a cinematograph but was a possi-

  bly unique motion-producing kaleidoscope with a lamp for projecting the images created by

  artists, a visual program commissioned by Taut specifically for this project.

  117

  “Glasarchitektur” by Bruno Taut was published March 1921 in Die Glocke (The

  bell), the German socialist journal edited by the historian and economist Max

  Beer from 1919 to 1921. Writing in response to the growing interest in architec-

  ture made of glass, Taut attempted to record the history of his collaboration with

  his “Glass Papa,” Paul Scheerbart. Taut hoped to remind people of the central

  historical importance of Scheerbart’s ideas, especially as a source of inspiration

  for his own group of architects and writers, the soon to disband Crystal Chain.

  Published in the midst of the German Revolution, with the country on the brink

  of a civil war, Taut’s essay can also be seen as a defense of the political ideals

  inherent in Scheerbart’s vision for a translucent, colored glass architecture, a

  world view central to the work of both Taut and Scheerbart.

  118

  Bruno Taut

  Glass Architecture

  Dear Editors:

  You seek from the notorious glass architect an historical account of glass

  architecture, this “foible” for which al are so eager to take him to task. Glass

  architecture: seemingly a matter of materials, comparable to wood or stone

  architecture. But this is a complete misunderstanding: from a spatial per-

  spective, architecture or building is nothing other than the bringing of light.

  Glass is light itself, and wood and stone architecture have always striven to

  bring light, so “glass architecture” is nothing more than the final link in the

  chain of building. The history of glass architecture is therefore the history

  of architecture itself.

  For us, the prominent use of glass and its preeminence among materials

  is so obvious that it hardly bears discussion. But today –isms are the fash-

  ion, and nothing can happen without being a “school” or a trend. In the

  last centuries, concrete and iron have provided easy ways to play with form,

  and yet now, when the most exquisite of al materials is in ready circula-

  tion, such play is cal ed a foible. The Gothic masters worked in the glass

  crucibles of huts and experimented with the ultimate possibilities of flow

  and had no concrete or iron, only stone, and they stretched light between

  grids of stone.

  “But, before the glass is made, the architect, by his knowledge of arrange-

  ment, makes the stone framework like a filter in the waves of God’s Light

  and gives to the whole edifice its individual lustre, as to a pearl.”

  (Paul Claudel: L’Annonce faite à Marie)

  This is where the history of real glass architecture begins.

  Paul Scheerbart cal ed the Gothic cathedral the prelude to glass archi-

  tecture. In truth: what we want is more than the mounting of panes in a

  framework. The most magnificent example of that to date was London’s

  Crystal Palace of 1853. Giant greenhouses are also beautiful, and I should

  119

  BRU NO TAUT

  in no way be counted an opponent of greenhouse cultivation. What beckons

  us, and what Scheerbart anticipated, however, is actual construction with

  glass — an uncomfortable prospect that “we” wil nonetheless make into a

  comfortable reality. Concrete and iron as a framework wil not disappear,

  but this “framework” wil shrink in proportion to the glass prisms — thick,

  stonelike forms bound with a little cement and thin iron bars into a honey-

  comblike tissue, creating a wal truly made of glass. Stones can be thrown

  at such a wal and only the proverb breaks; here the ful reality of glass

  architecture is born. It is an unpleasant idea for skat players in their cozy

  hideaways. But this is the ful reality of the idea, and it is with this idea that

  the history of glass architecture begins.

  Writing this history means writing poetry. Scheerbart’s writings, and

  his Glass Architecture in particular, are this history and my utopias. This

  history of what is to come is no more a fantasy than our hindsight into a past

  on which the lamp of the present casts only a smal beam of light. Cogito

  ergo sum. I am what I think; what I think is my present. And this present

  can do anything, it can move mountains! Therefore onward! Down with the

  ghost of the past and its lead “weight,” up with our will. “O thoughts of men

  accurs’d! Past and to come seems best; things present, worst.”

  The present: not what we’ve built, but what we build, and if at this

  moment we cannot physical y build that which we desire (which, by the

  way, is a blessing for us), it is nonetheless building in us and wil therefore

  eventual y have to manifest itself in material. What has already been built

  of glass is legion: buildings for exhibitions, huge glass wal s in industrial

  buildings, warehouses, and al the merry, colorful glass kitsch of verandas,

  stores, Aschinger taverns, pastry shops, etc. Both inside and outside the

  Werkbund there are two distinct paths in current building that lead toward

  the architecture of light: the practical industrial dictate of plentiful light,

  and the blithe sensual thril of colorful kitsch and multifaceted glitter. I

  have tried to unite both these trends in the Glass House in Cologne; I

  have tried to replace the cold light of a greenhouse with the warm, lively

  light of architectural space. Of course, the Glass House was only a smal

  stepping stone. In order to depict the richness of the light-sounds — from

  organ fugue to the most delicate solo capriccio — in the endless variations

  of wal forms: straight, cambered, by no means always vertical, I would

  need many sizes of bel s, likewise to discuss the various technical problems

  that they create. But we do not wish to proselytize, nor can we; we too are

  building and sitting at our glass crucibles. In glass we lay our souls and

  capture yours, they fly to this mystery of creation, which knows no back or

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  G L A S S A R C H I T E C T U R E

  front but sparkles from al sides, ever anew, like moths to a flame. Be cap-

  tured! “The more thou art a prisoner, the more wilt thou be freed.” Being

  captured is painful. But pain is the creator. Each new creation hurts, and

  it hurts the true artist the most, since he can do nothing but create anew,

  draw from the wel of “creation.”

  “It is unfamiliar, therefore it is disturbing.” These are the words of a

  reviewer who is rarely honest and just as rarely humble, on my proscenium

 
; for “The Maid of Orleans.” And that was only latticework, panes between

  slats, hardly very new and yet — unfamiliar!

  Yes, that dear comfortable familiarity! But that too must be, that too is

  “wil ed by God.” The stone of difficulty only creates livelier sparks. And

  we have a “great” al y here: in children. Children rejoice in the festival of

  light, and women with them — perhaps not always, but whenever the um-

  bilical cord isn’t quite broken. And we win over children, who have been

  thrust into this cold, joyless life, through play. Our building is play: “our

  goal is the play of style.” And we make children into our master builders

  with real playthings (for example my glass construction kits with colorful,

  nearly unbreakable glass blocks). These master builders see with emotion,

  and when they are grown-ups they wil build with and through us, even if

  “we” are already dead.

  Dear editors, do not take al this “seriously.” I wish the same for the

  readers. It is real y unimportant whether this is said and written. Things

  are only truly important when they are said for the fun of it. And therefore

  al should read the works of our “Glass Papa,” Paul Scheerbart.

  Yours most faithfully,

  Bruno Taut

  Translated by Anne Posten

  121

  Rosemarie Haag Bletter

  Fragments of Utopia:

  Paul Scheerbart and Bruno Taut

  Paul Scheerbart’s direct impact on the arc of modernist architectural

  history — especially through his friend the architect Bruno Taut — is in-

  disputable. During the early 1960s, the proliferation of utopian archi-

  tectural groups like Archigram and the Japanese Metabolists marked a

  reemergence of an antirationalist undercurrent of modernism that had

  been completely displaced by the emphasis on rationalism in the work

  of historians such as Sigfried Giedion.1

  The widely varying interpretations of the new aesthetic concepts

  across the arts in the years leading up to World War I — many of them

  inspired by anarchist and poetic ideals — were later subsumed under a

  category mostly associated with expressionist painting. Marxist critics

  have tended to dismiss these explorations as primarily self-expression

  and, for this presumed reason, not meaningful socially. But especially

  in architecture, these developments and visionary proposals were in fact

  often focused on social ideals. At the outset I also need to distinguish

  my understanding of Scheerbart from that of the British critic Reyner

  Banham, who in his early appreciation of the writer’s importance for

  architecture, “The Glass Paradise” (1959), concentrates exclusively on

  his technological visions rather than his quirky fantasy.2 In fact, most

  of Scheerbart’s work provides an untamed blend of symbolist mysticism

  and synesthesia combined with dry wit, satire, and irreverent brevity.

  Most important, Scheerbart underscores the sensuous, emotive expe-

  rience of architecture, while at the same time he narrates his topics with

  Bruno Taut, Dandanah — The Fairy Palace, 1919–29. A set of colored glass building blocks.

  These hand-cast, rough-surfaced glass blocks in clear, red, blue, green, and yellow, were

  manufactured by the same company that produced the prismatic glass tiles of the Glass House

  of 1914, the Deutsches Luxfer Prismen-Syndikat, a franchise of The Luxfer Prism Company

  in Chicago (originally called The Radiating Light Company). With child-friendly edges and

  charming dappled refractions from marks made by the metal molds, these glass blocks match

  the soft color palette of Taut’s watercolors for his portfolio and book Alpine Architecture of

  1919 and likely reflect as well the palette of colors used in the original Glass House prism tiles.

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  ROSEM A R I E H A AG BLETTER

  a sharp sense of irony and a political skepticism typical of the anarchist

  groups active in Berlin before World War I.3 Because most of his novels

  and short stories depict an architect or architectural fantasy as the central

  catalyst for a new society, his import for the utopian phase of architec-

  tural design just after World War I, when there were few commissions

  to build, is understandable.

  In order to suggest a transformed society, Scheerbart uses imagery

  of mobility and ever-changing translucent polychrome effects. This is

  not the clear glass associated with rationalist modernism but glass that

  incorporates mysterious, dislocating qualities, produced by a multiplicity

  of reflective surfaces and settings that can be colored glass, gold, moving

  water, or even precious stones. Although Scheerbart’s architectural con-

  ceptions seem modern in their mutability, some relate to art nouveau’s

  interest in the ephemeral as a critique of the commercial, materialistic,

  and technocentric culture of the second half of the nineteenth century.

  Contributing to Scheerbart’s preoccupation with glass is a long liter-

  ary prehistory rooted in an ancient Judeo-Arabic tradition (Scheerbart

  had studied Arabic culture) that was indebted to one of the apocryphal

  biblical accounts of the queen of Sheba when she was invited to visit King

  Solomon’s palace in Jerusalem. In addition to having great power and

  wealth, the queen was rumored to have magical powers, and in order to

  reveal that, Solomon had a glass floor built in his throne room so that

  she would mistakenly perceive this as a pool of water and lift her skirt,

  exposing her legs. A sorceress was assumed to have hairy legs (a sign of

  the occult, but in reality also a sign of male power), and lifting her skirt

  would betray the hidden reason for her exceptional might as a ruler. In

  this suggestively eroticized tale, King Solomon, widely renowned for

  his wisdom, absorbs Sheba’s magical prowess for himself. Solomon is

  said to have then created an underwater dome of glass and an aerial city

  of crystal.4

  This fantastical tradition is carried on in Arabic architecture and

  poetry. It enters medieval stories associated with the search for the Holy

  Grail and becomes reified in actual buildings with the stained-glass win-

  dows of the Gothic cathedral. By contrast, the courtly literature of the

  later Middle Ages depicts the quest for the Stone of Wisdom and courtly

  love as a personal transformation. The imagery of architecture as a social

  agent disappears, replaced by a luminous, usually transparent stone that

  is discovered in the depth of a cave or a mountain. The allegory is used in

  this reduced form, as a translucent pebble that stands for the self, in the

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  FR AGMENTS OF UTOPIA

  romantic literature of Novalis, in Nietzsche, and in the symbolist work of

  Alfred Jarry. In Jarry’s Exploits and Opinions of Doctor Faustroll (1895),

  the philosopher’s stone is located in Vincent van Gogh’s brain. This fable,

  inspired in part by Rosicrucian mysticism, also uses the story of the queen

  of Sheba and King Solomon, demonstrating that these apocryphal bib-

  lical stories had regained currency in the 1890s.5 In Scheerbart’s works

  and later in the designs of Taut, and other underrecognized architects
r />   such as Wassili and Hans Luckhardt, or Wenzel Hablik, the symbolism

  becomes less personal and again more social: the imagery returns to the

  architectonic realm.

  Among Scheerbart’s longer texts, The Gray Cloth and Ten Percent White:

  A Ladies Novel is more characteristic of his allegorical style than is the

  better-known Glass Architecture, both of 1914.6 It depicts the world trans-

  formed by a master architect through colored glass structures together

  with the gradual liberation of the architect’s wife, who is in the end freed

  from the prenuptial contract that required her to wear only gray dresses

  with a few white details so that she did not clash with her husband’s

  polychrome buildings. In a sense, Gray Cloth is a sly protofeminist novel.

  Several of Scheerbart’s works demonstrate his integration of mobil-

  ity as social alternative: “Transportable Cities,” “Dynamite War and

  Decentralization,” and The Development of Aerial Militarism and the

  Demobilization of European Ground Forces, Fortresses, and Naval Fleets,

  all of 1909.7 In these short stories he suggests the decentralization of cities

  into smaller garden-cities as a pacifist, defensive gesture. In place of the

  old standing armies and their “fronts,” he foresaw (and feared) the use of

  aerial bombardment of major cities behind enemy lines. For this reason

  Scheerbart proposed that the madness of war could be avoided through

  the dissolution of old urban centers. In this he follows the anarchist

  Peter Kropotkin, who proposed the decentralization of cities. In a more

  facetious vein, he proposes confusing the enemy by renaming Paris “New

  Berlin” and Berlin “New Paris.”

  The quintessence of Scheerbart’s ironic attitude toward technology is

  his satirical novel of 1910, Das Perpetuum Mobile, in which he purports

  to invent a perpetual motion machine.8 He was as familiar with the laws

  of physics as anyone, but the project’s special attraction for him was pre-

  cisely his effort to contradict them: “There’s something dilletantish about

  always needing to see everything brought to fruition in reality. Ludwig II,

  who insisted on sailing around his artificial lake dressed in Lohengrin

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  ROSEM A R I E H A AG BLETTER

  armor to take full advantage of the Lohengrin ambience, always struck

  me as insufferable.”9 His book is a running diary of false starts, assumed

 

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