My beloved Sam,
As I write
this, the semester is in full-swing and I have accordingly settled into a rather
strict, but in no way sober, study routine. Each morning I try to get up
between 7 and 8 o’clock, an endeavor that, I must confess, I still find hard
without you here, meowing at my door to wake me up so I can bring you your
food. To be completely honest, there have been days where my desire to sleep in
has gotten the better of me, but still I make an honest effort. I am somewhat strengthened in my
resolve by the fact that I regularly meet up with a couple of fellow students
(the same from the reading circle I told you about) who share the same
workaholic mentality. I arrive at the university between 9 and 10 and basically
study until about 5 in the afternoon. After which I go home to cook dinner,
maybe play a videogame, read some science-fiction (currently Samuel R. Delany's Nova, a read I can heartily recommend) and then go to bed.
You will
agree that my routine is strict. But how is my routine anything else but sober,
I hear you ask? Besides the fact that I do
get out every now and then, it is mostly because of where I am able to study.
You see, people would tell you that Frankfurt has no real historic urban
landmarks. Do not believe a word they say! Sure, it’s true, a lot of the city
was destroyed during the Second World War, some sites have been preserved, of
course, but what’s left of Old Frankfurt is spread out rather thin. Accordingly
I would direct fans of the ‘typical’ German Fachwerk
housing elsewhere. But really, now, who likes Fachwerk anyway? In my opinion, anyone with even a remote aesthetic
and/or cultural sensitivity would do well not to get too enthusiastic about
some rotting wood and crumbling brick that represent nothing more than some
touristic illusion of folkloric culture. The exemplary horror made flesh would be Frankfurt's infamous Alt Sachsenhausen pub-district. I regret to say that I have visited this place twice and hope to do so never again.The promise of such authenticity is
bad enough when it is made in earnest, it is hell when it is a thin veiled
attempt to leech off of gullible tourists.
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| A picture can hardly convey the full experience of dread I associate with this place, but it still gives you an idea |
So much for
Old Frankfurt. Luckily, there is also a New Frankfurt. In 1925, Ludwig
Landmann, then mayor of Frankfurt, initiated a comprehensive city-wide project
of modernization under the auspices of architect Ernst May. This project
encompassed almost anything you could imagine. From housing projects and the
design of such things as kitchens, central heating, doorknobs and phones, to
sketches for a new coat of arms for the city, to the famous typeface Futura. There are some common
denominators, however: it’s modern, it’s social, it’s functional and I am
absolutely in love with it. The influence of this project, both concretely in
Frankfurt and more abstractly worldwide, both the actual architectural
artefacts it spawned and the design principles that drove it, can hardly be
overestimated. If your kitchen is not quite a Frankfurt Kitchen, chances are, nevertheless, that its design
stands in direct lineage to that of Schütte-Lihotzky. If you’ve somehow managed
to stay oblivious to the omnipresence of Futura,
at least you must be familiar with some other typeface that was inspired by it.
Because of the historical importance of this project, coupled with its relative
obscurity, living in Frankfurt becomes something like uncovering the secret
history that underpins modern urban life in general. I exaggerate, again, of
course, but I assure you that it is something like this, a sense of adventure
that could just as well be the theme of a Dan Brown mystery, that never fails
to brighten my day. Maybe it is best illustrated by way of a concrete example.
The IG
Farben Building, officially called the Poelzig-Bau nowadays, is not exactly a
result of the New Frankfurt project (its architect, Hans Poelzig, actually got
the commission by beating Ernst May in a design contest), but it stands in the
same tradition of modernity nonetheless. You could devote an entire volume to
the history of this building (and, in fact, there are several). Here is just a
rough outline: it was commissioned at the end of the 1920’s by the IG Farben conglomerate, then the fourth largest company in the world and notable for willingly
supplying the Nazi regime with the deadly chemicals that were used in the
concentration camps in exchange for slave labour and a monopoly. After the war
it was used by the U.S. army and government, amongst other things for the
implementation of the Marshall Plan and as European headquarters of the CIA,
before it was sold in 1995 to its current owner, the Goethe-Universität
Frankfurt.
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| The front of the building bringing out its massivity... |
The
building itself is massive. At the time of its construction (until well into
the 1950’s) it was the largest office-building in existence. However, Poelzig’s
decision to give the building its characteristic curve has paid off well: its
sheer proportions are almost never imposing, because from any angle there is
always some part of the building that hides itself from view. In a very
Heideggerian sense, the space that it opens up, it does through and on
condition of its simultaneously enclosing. I don’t expect you to understand
this, Heidegger really does not translate very well. The point is rather that
this exemplary work of New Objectivity (again a very poor translation of the
much more suggestive Neue Sachlichkeit)
achieves (in my opinion) the same kind of quality Heidegger praised in his famous example of a Greek temple, and this precisely in the kind of
structure that resembles more the detested powerplant from his Question Concerning Technology than any
hut in the Black Forest.
Its mass
becomes apparent only when trying to walk through or around it or when trying
to zoom in on one of the many tiny windows, windows that are actually
man-sized. One of these windows belongs to the Literaturcafé Anna Blume, I kind of common room for students that,
like so many other student-locales here, is decisively left-winged. In this
very adequate setting, I have my weekly autonomous tutorial on Adorno’s Ästhetische Theorie. Another window, on
another floor, in another section, belongs to dr. des. Stefan Deines, whom I
have my tutorial with on the functions of art. Yet another window, on yet
another floor, in yet another section, is the one I frequently look out of,
when seated in the library to study. It gives me a moderately enjoyable view of
the Frankfurt sky-line, but its biggest selling point is that the sun shines at
it from such an angle, as to liven up my desk, without yet blinding me or
rendering the pages/tablet-computer in front of me unreadable. So despite its
size, I think I’ve made it clear that the building is able to communicate a
sense of intimacy to me. On a very primal level the building cries out for
interaction; Poelzig’s vocation as an architect is clear. He was trying to find
solutions not merely of a logistical nature, but more ambitiously, relating to
living in the broad sense. The solutions expressed in the building are offered
up to the discretion of the inhabitant, not as claims but rather as open-ended
musings, to be engaged with on a pre-reflective, tactile or visceral level. An
example will again serve to illustrate this rather abstract point.
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| ... and the back, high-lighting its idyllity. |
Another
thing that marks the IG-Farben Building’s peculiarity is the fact that it
remains one of the last buildings on the planet with operating paternosters.
They are so beloved by students, I am told, that the university has pledged to
keep them operating forever. Apparently, the peculiar lifts were even the subject
of an episode of Tatort once, though
I have been unable to verify this.[1]
I admit, it is not hard to see their appeal: watching their steady rise and
descent or actually using them, is enough to spark fantasies of possible
alternate histories. I have no idea whether the paternoster actually represents
a viable alternative to the lift in terms of costs and/or efficiency and thus I cannot say
whether such an alternate history, where it was the paternoster that is
omnipresent in office-buildings instead of the lift, could lay claim to any
sort of realism. Two things I know for certain, however. For one, it takes some
time getting used to a paternoster. At first one can only awkwardly hop on and
off, especially getting on to a descending paternoster and the reverse case,
getting off an ascending one, represent distinctive breaks from a daily
routine. This obtrusiveness, today all too quickly taken as the cardinal sin in modern design, together with increased safety hazards, are probably the reason
why the paternoster is not so much in vogue anymore. Once you accustom yourself
to the paternoster, however, they have one great redeeming quality: they quite
literally take you on a tour of the building. This is what I meant with the
solutions-as-open-ended-musings I alluded to in the previous paragraph. As I
make my slow and steady descent of the building, I get a sense of its rhythm.
Men’s bathrooms on even floors, women’s on the uneven floors (or vice versa
depending on which installation you take). Seminar rooms on the
ground level, entrance to the library on the first, institute of philosophy on
the second. Alternate periods of daylight and darkness as you travel between
floors. It really is something over and above getting from A to B. It’s getting
from A to B in style. There’s a kind
of harmony to the whole experience that renders it more akin to a ride on the
Efteling’s Droomvlucht, than actually
taking the lift. The latter now seems to me little more than a stressed
convulsion of claustrophobic nausea, an unsure, unsteady journey in a confined steel
box uncomfortably cramped together with total strangers.
The
building is even subject of several rumours, the wildest of which is that it is
said to have a tunnel underneath it, which leads from there all the way to
Frankfurt’s central station (believe me, that would be some tunnel). So when
people tell you that Frankfurt has no history, do not believe them! How boring
Utrecht University’s ‘historic’ library seems in comparison, its biggest claim to fame being that king
Louis Napoleon couldn’t bear to live there for more than four months. The
IG-Farben complex has more history in its dépendance, than the UU’s
Drift-buildings combined (this is not just a figure of speech, the “Casino-bau”
of the complex was once the site of an RAF-bombing).
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| See? Not kidding. |
I find
myself wondering if you could ever feel at home in this building as I do.
Surely the possibilities for exploration are endless and the great diversity of
its uses practically makes it a given that we could find you a nice ‘base of
operations’. However, for all its concern for an architecture that was both
living and liveable, New Objectivity still seems somewhat preoccupied with the
standards set by humans. In my opinion, the possibility of a new New Objectivity would have to
address this issue or forever remain a melancholic pipedream. Until that time,
I remain,
Yours, in earnest concern for
your well-being,
Clint
[1] The German obsession with Krimis extends well beyond a mere peculiarity
of taste, it is not an overstatement to say that the Krimi has an actual and important
cultural function. This, however, would merit its own blog entry.
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