Barbara Happe, Martin S. Fischer
The Auerbach House by
Walter Gropius with Adolf Meyer
Table of contents Private Houses Designed by Gropius, 1919 - 1924
10
Short History of Reception
12
The Dissolution of Symmetry | Overcoming Gravity | The Creation of a Floating Building
13
The Building Volumes
16
Harmony and Proportion
20
Durable, Cheap, and Beautiful
22
History of Construction
26
Traditional und Functional Spatial Configurations
29
Floor Plan and Arrangement of Rooms
32
Conservatory
38
The Flat Roof
38
Windows and Doors
43
The Garden
46
The interior Color Schemes by Alfred Arndt
56
Arndt’s Color Design in the Bauhaus Context
76
Biographical Notes on Alfred Arndt
81
Gropius and the Auerbach Couple
82
The Clients
85
Anna Auerbach
85
Felix Auerbach
90
The Social and Cultural Life of the Auerbachs
97
Portrait of Felix Auerbach by Edvard Munch
103
Edvard Munch in Thuringia – the Meeting with the Auerbachs
109
Suicide
113
Art for the Auerbach House
116
Sculpture by Utz Brocksieper for the Auerbach House
116
Wall Tapestry by Frank Stella
118
The Oil Painting by Peter Halley
120
Photographic works by Oster+Koezle
122
Endnotes
124
Selected Bibliography
132
Archival sources
135
Illustration credits
135
Foreword by Wolfgang Tiefensee, Thuringian Ministry for Economic Affairs, Science and Digital Society
When studying the Auerbach House in Jena and the present book, it is hard to maintain objectivity. Particularly since today objectivity (Sachlichkeit) is misunderstood as a kind of icy coolness, that is hard to get excited about. Yet this is what I’ve real ized: the house just as the book have earned our enthusiasm and praise, as have the architects and the authors respectively. This book offers a dense description of a house, and as such leads the reader to a much deeper understanding of the multifaceted intellectual milieu of the 20s and 30s of the previous century. Allow me to present a few of these terms: Reckoning with Pre-conceptions
A persistent and uniformed pre-conception holds that the “Bauhaus Style” exhausted itself through cold, white cubes. But in fact, what one learns once again in this book is that the Bauhaus was never about a specific style, but rather an attitude towards the present, bound to an emphatic commitment to design their own era by first “inventing” it. For the Auerbach House, Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer invented a living space of cheerful, relaxed seriousness, congenial not only to the experience of the moment, but also to the productivity and creativity of its users. The external building forms thus reflected the inner functionality, but indeed not in any preconceived style. The building is only “white” in the first casual glimpse. In its interior it reveals itself through a sophis ticated, almost psychedelic, variety of colors, taking the observer on a time trip back to the laboratory of new objectivity. Not least, the Auerbach House then becomes a: Monument of Modernism
And as this book shows, in two different respects. Even if classic modernism created a new aesthetic world, it nevertheless did not come out of nowhere. The concepts and deliberations of the Bauhaus members may sometimes appear esoteric, yet they also show their deep roots in aesthetic and musical traditions. Here, the Auerbach House first reveals itself as a comprehensive work through its proportions and its rhythms, as constructed harmony. Along with these revolutionary design concepts rooted in tradition, appeared the use of new materials and construction systems. This ranged from linoleum, already long in production but first finding its expression in the architecture of the 20s, to torfoleum and JURKO blocks, conceived as substitutes but later becoming accepted building materials, to the flat roof, first used in residential application at the Auerbach House. Not least, the use of the flat roof in residential building made the New Building in Germany overall, and at the Auerbach House in particular, into a:
Political Scandal
In this context, there were and continue to be witnesses to a learned world in Jena, in which scholarship in natural science around the turn of the century, artistic openness, and political progressiveness were united. Anna and Felix Auerbach stand as exemplars of this milieu. Their end in this house also stands for the end of the intellectually free era before the dictatorship. Particularly in the political sphere, it is clear that the Bauhaus was not at all homogenous. Walter Gropius remained under political suspicion, and had to emigrate. Alfred Arndt, responsible for the colors in the house, became a “follower,” thus making his living in Nazi Germany. It is no coincidence that the GDR dictatorship long held an inimical position towards the Bauhaus. That the Auerbach House in Jena survived this period may be seen as a particularly fortunate case. Out of this conglomeration of the meanings, history, and fortunate circumstances of the Auerbach House grew a: A Humanistic Challenge
Specifically, to preserve a place – as a building of historic importance, as a memorial to Anna and Felix Auerbach, as well as to the cultural and political struggles of their period, and even as an historic warning to the future. I have been privi leged to know the Auerbach House and its current owners for many years, in connection with the photo campaign, “This is Thuringia.” I was impressed that this challenge was not real ized through the creation of museum, but through real-life use. Perhaps the greatest affirmation of the Bauhaus is that such “real-life use” is still possible after almost ten decades. I thank Barbara Happe and Martin S. Fischer for their devotion to this house, as well as for this book. There is only one more thing to confirm: this house is a work of enlightenment, and this book is its ambassador! Both will be and should be read. I wish you much pleasure in this.
5
South Elevation
The Sommerfeld House, 1920/21
The Otte House, 1921/1922
Private Houses Designed by Gropius, 1919-1924 On April 1st, 1919, the provisional government in Saxon-Weimar-Eisenach of the Grand-Ducal Saxon Academy appointed Walter Gropius (1883-1969) to be the director of the Grand Ducal Saxon School of Fine Arts as well as the Grand Ducal Saxon School of Applied Arts. The latter was founded by Henry van de Velde, who in fact was the one who nominated Gropius. With the approval of the government Gropius named the new combined institute the “State Bauhaus in Weimar” (Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar) and together with the Bauhaus masters appointed on his initiative, he made it into one of the most important centers for the unification of artistic, handcraft, and technical design in the modern era. The Bauhaus, which strove for a synthesis of all aspects of design, from rational to intuitive approaches, developed into an aesthetic movement influenced by leading artists. Or as Gropius himself formulated it, a “Laboratory for Design Research,” which sought to permeate all aspects of life with artistic design.1 As a visionary, shortly after the founding of the Bauhaus in 1919, he was convinced that the, “great holi stic art work, this cathedral of the future, would illuminate the smallest things in daily life”.2 Through the elimination of the boundaries between art and handcraft, architecture would become a total work of art (Gesamtkunstwerk) uniting all “artistic activities.” Gropius received astonishingly few building commissions as an architect during his time at the Weimar Bauhaus from 1919
10
to the beginning of 1925, when the Bauhaus moved to Dessau after its forced breakup. According to Winfried Nerdinger he had a total of fifteen commissions from 1919 -1924/25, but according to Annemarie Jaeggi, twenty-one. However, only seven projects were realized.3 As the Director of the Weimar Bauhaus, he built only four single-family houses: the W 194 Sommerfeld Log House (1920/21), the W 21 Stöckle House (1921/22), and the W 23 Otte House (1921/22), all of which were located in Berlin,5 with the exception of W 33, the Auer bach House. A comparison of these four houses shows the radical shift that Gropius realized with the Auerbach House in 1924. The Auerbach House is his first “Bauhaus”. Even in comparison with the W 22 Kallenbach House (1922), and the W 27 Rauth House (1922) projects in Berlin, both already clearly more volumetric than the earlier Gropius houses, and featuring flat roofs and asymmetrically arranged building elements, the Auerbach House still stands in a different category. At the same time, the Auerbach House is the first systematic realization of Gropius’s “large-scale building blocks” concept (W 30). Within Gropius’s work, the Auerbach House displays for the first time all the significant characteristics of the “New Building” (Neues Bauen). It is a floating, asymmetrical building, which only reveals itself through the movements of the observer. It is a cubic ensemble of interpenetrating architectural forms, economically built using new materials.
The Stรถckle House, 1921/1922
The Auerbach House, 1924
The Building Volumes The Auerbach House consists of two interpenetrating rectangular volumes. The floor plans of the two overlapping rectangles, one dedicated to service and the other to living, largely determine the forms of the building exterior. In the Rauth House and the Hausmann Villa (Pyrmont), two interpenetrat ing volumes already are recognizable, each assigned to living and service, yet this clear separation of uses is downplayed on the exterior. For Jaeggi, the “phase of experimentation” ends with the Auerbach House, completing the move from the enclosed block to interpenetrating volumes, leading to the final form.55 At the 1923 International Architecture Exhibition in Weimar Gropius introduced the “large-scale building blocks.” The concept of the large-scale building block fol lowed the principle of building blocks, such that standardized building forms could be assembled together to create new house types. Gropius, already long occupied with the question of standardization, had written in 1911 to his friend and supporter Karl Ernst Osthaus: “I have the intention of realizing my idea of the industrialization of small houses through all possible means…. Innovation in fact lies with the industrialization of drawing: I have a set of Anker building blocks of single individual building forms, which according to local and individual needs can be assembled into houses through the
Serial House Types by Walter Gropius Large-scale building blocks that can be added together to create “living machines,” according to the number of occupants and their needs, following pre-prepared assembly diagrams
help of existing building contractors. No one needs to know anything about this system.”56 [*Translator’s note: Anker is a well-known German manufacturer of building blocks.] At the same time, in a letter to his wife Alma Mahler he introduced his idea of a house construction company based on unified artistic principles.57 The program for this company, which he presented to Emil Rathenau, already contained numerous proposals for the standardization and mass-production of houses. His efforts were conceived in the context of the rationalization of construction made possible through the simplification and economization of building methods, including the use of new building materials in place of natural building materials long in use, such as hewn stone, brick, and wood. Through the prefabrication of individual elements, a substantial amount of time was to be saved. A preliminary form of the building block system was drawn up in respect to the Bauhaus settlement planned in Weimar, displayed there as a colored plaster model in 1923 with the description “honeycomb construction” [Wabenbau]. Together
Honeycomb construction: great variability for the same basic type, through the systematic addition and construction of connected cellular rooms, depending on the number of inhabitants and their needs, using flat accessible roofs
16
17
Individual “Spatial Bodies” 1 – 6, Detail from the Previous Illustration
with Fred Forbat, Gropius had already begun preparations in May 1922, for the Bauhaus settlement on the Horn. Under Gropius’ direction, Forbat designed eight “spatial cells” [Raumzellen], which could be combined with each other in different ways. The core cell of each house was the two-story basic unit G, consisting of the smallest house type with three rooms and a kitchen, including a central, rectangular living room. Additional room units could be added to this core in any combination. The principle of this “honeycomb construction” allowing for a free combination and addition of building units, meant a: “great variability for the same basic type, through the systematic addition and construction of connected cellular rooms, depending on the number of inhabitants and their needs, using flat accessible roofs.” By adding more basic units, a variation of this serial house type with a fixed core could be achieved, although the different model combinations primarily form symmetrical compositions and configurations. Gropius obviously wanted to create a standard module for a model settlement, as Fred Forbat remembers.58 In addition, Gropius was convinced that not every house had to have a different floor plan and exterior form, since peasant and middle class houses in the 18th century display a unified, almost standard floor plan and site layout.59 The private dwelling was a “typical group form,” an element within a larger whole that demanded uniformity. He skeptically judged individual solutions as signs of arbitrariness. An established type was therefore, “always the final, most mature result of the sum
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of many solutions.” “It becomes a common denominator for an entire period.” For Gropius the quality of the type is even a gauge of civilization, which moreover raises the entire level of society.60 All objections to standardization arose from abstract interpretations and economic interests. For Gropius the qualified handling of standardized construction depended upon the creative talent of individual architects, and he was indeed intent not to impose any limits on individual design.61 The “honeycomb construction” system of purely external addition and expansion was further developed by Gropius alone and carried to a higher qualitative level, no longer tied to the ideal of the solid block.62 The “large-scale building blocks” consisting of over six spatial units, had a slightly stepped, rectangular two-story core unit, with further one-story units of varying form, for example two L-shaped rectangular masses. The large-scale building blocks differ from honeycomb construction in that they overcome the pure addition of forms through spatial interpenetration of the building volumes. It is just this “interweaving” of spatial components, of threedimensional blocks as elementary bodies that becomes a basic architectural concern for Gropius. If one compares the large-scale building block paradigm with the Auerbach House, then a more complex reading of the form types of the house becomes possible, beyond the straightforward interpenetration of two cubes. In addition to the rectangular “spatial bodies” in the building block system, there are the two L-shaped spatial bodies, numbered 2 and
Individual Volumes of the Auerbach House
3. L-shaped spatial body 2 is used in all five of the illustrated combinations. The simplest combination is composed of spatial bodies 1 and 2, such that service spaces in the rectangular prism and living spaces in the L-shape volume could be envisioned. The Auerbach House also may be readily interpreted as a combination of a three-story version of spatial body 1 with a two-story spatial body 2. Following this logic, the shortening of both legs of the L of spatial body 2, and the interpenetration of spaces in plan creates a more exciting relation between the two volumes. This scheme is reinforced by additional L-shaped volumes in the Auerbach House. Along with the volume to the south the conservatory, originally planned as a terrace that also formed an L, was further reflected in the northeast retaining wall, the latter an essential component of the entire arrangement. Accordingly, the conservatory is not to be understood as a third cubic spatial structure. The entire composition instead may be perceived as a central rectangular volume wrapped with L-shaped forms. This reading clearly establishes the Auerbach House as a predecessor to Gropius’ own Masters’ House in Dessau, which prominently features an L-shaped upper story. Obviously the front and rear facades of the Auerbach House do not share a symmetrical relationship. By contrast, the subtly recessed, almost windowless entryway represents a classical symmetrical portico; a prominent central entrance is also found in earlier Gropius houses, such as the Otte House in Berlin.
For the Auerbach House Gropius designed a flat roof, his first for a private house. Gropius, a staunch supporter of the flat roof, had conducted an “international survey on the technical feasibility of horizontally covered roofs and balconies” in 1926 in Bauwelt, summarized in that journal later that same year. His five questions primarily concerned current technological possibilities, and the different types and solutions for drainage as well as insulation.63 His evaluation of this survey was intended to demonstrate the advantages over the traditional pitched roof, namely a better utilization of space, a lower risk of fire than with wooden roof structures, and the, “possibility of using the roof for domestic purposes (roof garden, drying clothes).” The latter was true for the Auerbach House, which had a removable wooden post attached to the roof terrace pipe rail for hanging clothes lines. Finally, for Gropius cubic building structures presented advantages for construction and remodeling, and further, there were no structures that would catch the wind, thus reducing necessary maintenance. “the successful experience of the past twenty years with the construction of accessible and inaccessible horizontal roofs, have convinced me that the technologically progressive person will exclusively use the horizontal roof in the future.... the use of accessible, planted roof gardens is an effective means of including nature in the stone desert of the big city. with their gardens on their terraces and roofs, the cities of the future as seen from the air will give the impression of one enormous garden.”64
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history of construction The house built by Walter Gropius with Adolf Meyer in 1924 for the married couple Anna and Felix Auerbach is situated at the foot of a south-facing slope, of the so-called Sun Hills (Sonnenberge) in the west of Jena. Since it was developed at the beginning of the twentieth century, the western quarter of the city has been the preferred location for the upper middle class, such as professors or the financially independent, and is characterized by middle-class homes and mansions in the usual historicist styles. On April 15th, 1924, Adolf Meyer representing Walter Gropius as sole proprietor of the architectural firm submitted a request for a building permit to the local building authority. As early as April 23rd the Building Advisory Board concluded that: “…following the receipt of the presentation and the standard consultation…. The design does not fit in the urban scheme. However, since the location of the building is such that in the future it will not disturb the townscape, an objection will not be raised.”102 Only two votes were cast against the decision of the Building Advisory Board. The building contractor Carl Gretscher strongly protested against the permit, although only a few years later he was involved in the construction of the Zuckerkandl House in Jena, also designed by Gropius.103 Even the mayor, Alexander Elsner, who was very favorably disposed toward modern architecture in the city fabric of Jena, showed some reservation toward Gropius’ architecture: “It is however, just as self-evident that in a city where functional building forms have long appeared in such a prominent manner, that the modern desire for objectivity in home building has found acceptance. Here, in the villa districts on the hillside, the appearance of the flat-roofed dwelling as a foreign body must be avoided. Yet there is no reason why this kind of building with its refined sensitivity to contrasting massing effects should be prohibited.”104 The building permit was granted on May 12th, and construction work began immediately, so that by July 30th the rough construction work had been completed, and by October 31st, the house was finished.105 Construction was carried out by the Building Office of the Social Building Company for Jena and Vicinity, Inc. (Bauhütte Jena and Umgebung Soziale Baugesellschaft G. m. b. H.). A letter from Felix Auerbach dated June 6th, 1925, refers to some of the individuals involved in the construction: “Dear Sir, upon receipt of your postcard I have looked through my receipts again and determined that in fourteen payments to six different recipients (Sturtzkopf, Arndt, Volger, Neuffert, Necker, and Gropius) I have paid a total of 1,705 M[arks].”106 Bernhard Sturtzkopf was a student at the Bauhaus and beginning in 1924/25 worked in Gropius’ private office. He also signed the construction documents.107 Hans Volger
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was at the Bauhaus from the winter semester of 1923 to the winter semester of 1929, participated in Itten’s foundation course, and trained in the workshop for wall painting, where he completed his journeyman exam in the winter semester of 1925.108 Ernst Neufert, who was in charge of construction, had been working in the Gropius office since 1919 and was promoted in 1924 to firm’s technical director in 1925. After the departure of Adolf Meyer he became the office director.109 Wilhelm Necker was the attorney for the Bauhaus from July 1st, 1924, to October 31st, 1925.110 The Auerbach House was erected on a 1,203-m2 lot (District of Jena, plot 16, sub-plots 109 and 110), containing two plots extended towards the south to the street today named Humboldtstrasse. This street, also known as federal highway B7 to Weimar, was first expanded to a main connecting link between Jena and Weimar in the 1930’s. The northern property border is Schaefferstrasse, a narrow paved road, there only built-up on one side. The body of the building is set back three meters from the northern property boundary. The building description by Walter Gropius is as brief as possible: “Building description for the new dwelling construction for Herr Professor Dr. Felix Auerbach, Jena. The house is located on lot numbers 5428 and 5433 of the Jena District on Schaefferstrasse. The official setback from Schaefferstrasse has been observed. The entrance is on the Schaefferstrasse side. The house will be erected as a dwelling in a massive, solid manner of construction. The terrace roofs and the [main] roof are also solid [Berra hollow block floors]. The façades are to be smoothly plastered; the roof surfaces are to be covered with Ruberoid. The house is equipped with central heating.”111 The building application and construction drawings are all signed by Adolf Meyer (p. p.) next to the company seal of the “Architecture Office of Walter Gropius in the State Bauhaus of Weimar” (“Architekturbüro Walter Gropius Staatl. Bauhaus Weimar”), with Walter Gropius as sole proprietor. This leads to the frequently raised question at to the relative authorship of Gropius and Meyer for the Auerbach House. After Meyer rejoined the Gropius firm as employee and office director in March 1919, he obviously did so on the condition that he be named equally on further collaborative projects.112 For many reasons it is beyond a doubt that Meyer exerted a decisive influence on the formal development and design process. Solely the fact that he worked together with Gropius for many years naturally provides sufficient evidence of his creative design input. In addition, it is known that Gropius was not capable of producing the simplest drawings and even as an architecture student he engaged a draftsman to draw up his ideas.113 However, in the time from 1919-1923 in published projects in which Meyer was involved Gropius
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Floor Plan and Arrangement of Rooms The three main living spaces, dining room, music room, and study, are located on the ground floor, with the first two only separated by a sliding glass door. The removable panes of the three-light window between the conservatory and dining room and the outward-opening window in the conservatory not only provide for optimal ventilation, they also allow the three rooms to merge into one large, continuously flowing space. The horizontal and vertical three-light arrangement of all window elements in these three rooms generates a similar rhythm, recurring in the tripartite composition of the built-in shelving. The former “gentleman’s room” (the study)
32
is reached by climbing three steps from the lower level of the living room, and it also contains built-in shelving. A few small changes from the planning submission were realized in the layout of the ancillary rooms. The vestibule on the ground floor, which originally ran the almost entire length of the pantry, and the anteroom in front of the toilet room, was originally planned to provide direct access from the vestibule to the cellar with no connection with the toilet. The structure of the central wall between the two volumes is a frame construction consisting of reinforced concrete beams and vertical masonry supports of Jurko blocks of greater than
Windows and Doors Except for the steel construction in the conservatory, all windows in the house are made of wood. Great care was taken to ensure that individual window construction would meet the demands of corresponding rooms. Where possible, inwardly opening windows were avoided. Gropius chose five types of casement window: horizontal bottom pivot with sliding action, vertical center pivot, horizontal center pivot, horizontal bottom pivot, and horizontal top pivot.132 He did not use the most common crank casement window. In the music room and study, horizontal bottom pivot sliding windows with a cable mechanism and counterweight were installed. While the upper row of these three- and two-light windows are removable, a spring mechanism allows the wings of the lower-pivot windows to tilt inwards individually, held in a stable horizontal position for cleaning.133 The windows on the east side of the northern volume, in the kitchen, bathroom, and laundry, were originally equipped with horizontal center pivot windows, because they provide good ventilation. In the bathroom the lower section was fitted with milk glass for privacy (see Ill. p. 31).134 At the time of the renovation in 1995 the original windows were no longer there, thus the windows on these three floors were replaced with banks of two-light casement windows with integral storm sashes. Remarkably, the sill height in the kitchen is 157 cm, and in the bathroom as well as the laundry 80 cm. The unusual and impractical sill height in the kitchen is a concession to the façade design, made to maintain a continuous lintel height and regular intervals between the floors. The window on the west side of the study also has a sill height of 151 cm. Horizontal bottom pivot windows are found in small rooms and storage rooms such as the pantry, the walk-in closet in the bedroom, in the vestibule, on the south and west side of the attic, and in the cellar rooms. In 1995 the two windows in the bedroom were no longer serviceable and together with the balcony door were replaced by casement windows with integral storm sashes. The large hallway on the upper floor was equipped with three vertical off-center pivot windows, a technical innovation at the time. Their pivots were located a third of the sash width from the inner edge of the window so that they opened primarily outwards.135 Because of their deteriorated condition they were replaced in 1995 with vertical pivot windows with a fully integrated outer storm sash. In the two guest rooms and the maid’s room the original vertical center pivot windows may still be found, with additional interior sashes installed decades ago. The so-called Gropius door handle of 1922 was not used for the door and window fittings136, but rather the usual handles
available at the time made from black horn and presumably rosewood. The door handle plates are made of duroplast. The window sills and the parapet along the terrace are all covered with zinc flashing so that the window groups always appear as a unified composition from the exterior. The doors on the ground floor all share a conventional height of 215 cm, but on the first floor are 190cm high.137 While the doors on the ground floor are plain, those on the upper floor are subdivided into three rectangular panels.
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Design for the “Living Garden” (Wohngarten); Copy of the Lost Original
Detail of Signature
New Drawing of the Original Plan by Michaela Kümritz, 1998
of a lawn edged with perennial beds blooming in seasonal succession, a U-shaped path in the middle, and border plant ing. The lawn area, then habitually referred to, as the core of the modern living garden, was to convey a sense of rest and spaciousness. The garden space was to be kept as free as possible from any showy ornaments.145 The outer border of the garden on the west is lined with berries, shrubs, and fruit trees, and on the east by a hornbeam and thuja hedge. “Two-armed Gordons” (which certainly refers to “cordons,” a form of espalier fruit cultivation) flank the path to the lawn. A dry retaining wall divides the large lower lawn from the higher lying section of the site, leaving a favorable open spot front of the conservatory for sitting. An ailanthus in the southwest corner of the property provides shade for a seat beneath an arbor. From a bench in the eastern part of the garden one looks along the axis of the path to the rose beds situated at its end. The site design of followed the aesthetic of the modern house, with a simple and quiet lawn surface similar to that at architect Ernst May’s villa in Frankfurt Main.146 The natural plant growth contained within rectangular perennial beds was to provide a contrasting effect to the geometric architecture of the house. The free and unrestrained plant growth along with the berry shrubs and fruit trees impart a sense of practicality, creating a kind of tension with the clearly defined building masses. “These kind of building structures logically demand that they be extended and complemented in kind by the plantings. How varied are the possibilities provided here for the garden designer! How much stimulating beauty can be created from the harmonious play between flowers and lawn surfaces, from freely growing to carefully shaped shrubbery, from the single vertical tree, to the cubic mass of the tree grouping, to the horizontal lawn surface,” writes Otto Derreth in 1929.147 Ulrich Müller attributes the garden design to Heinz Wichmann who was active in Weimar Bauhaus at the time.148 This attribution is based on stylistic characteristics and the “contemporary constellation” of relationships, and the fact that Wichmann dictated to “Gropius’s secretarial assistant, a memorandum for the establishment of landscape architecture as a course of instruction at the Bauhaus.”149 However, an enlarged scan of the signature on the Auerbach House site plan does not prove this attribution to Müller. Al though the signature cannot be identified150, the initials are certainly not those of Heinz Wichmann. Leaving aside the question of the signature, in comparison with other plans by Wichmann, the graphic quality of this plan is not very accomplished, casting further doubt on this attribution. By contrast, Wichmann’s plans for the Mauxion House in Weimar, and the Rose Garden at the 1926 Dresden Garden Show are marked by a clear sense of order and graphic definition. 151 The garden for the Auerbach House cannot be compared with any of the plans for earlier private houses by Gropius. At the Kallenbach House the expressive forms of the building mas-
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The interior color Schemes by Alfred Arndt In 1924 the Auerbach House interiors were painted following color schemes designed by Alfred Arndt, firmly corroborat ed by evidence found during the restoration of the house in 1994/95.152 Through the restoration of the original Arndt col or schemes, assumed to have been covered with wallpaper since the mid-1930’s, a prime example of the connection between architecture and color in early Bauhaus design thinking has been recovered. Shortly after the discovery of the color schemes in the Auer bach House during restoration, additional original color schemes were uncovered in other Bauhaus houses such as the Masters’ Houses in Dessau,153 the Zuckerkandl House in Jena,154 the House on the Horn in Weimar,155 as well as in other Gropius houses in Berlin. It must be emphasized here that only for the Auerbach House can the original interior paint colors be correlated in detail with the schemes of the original designer, in this case Arndt. Because of the great complexity of the color schemes, only through Arndt’s design drawings could the detailed color schemes be accurately recreated on all of the relevant walls by the Bruhm & Serfling restoration firm (Jena). Originally, the paint was brushed on a fresco style lime-
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based primer. For reasons of durability and light resistance, interior silicate paint made by the KEIM GmbH was used to recreate the original schemes accurately. Paints identified by number were delivered by the manufacturer, and some special colors were mixed on site by hand. In collaboration with conservators, the painting contractor, the manufacturer, and the clients, and guided by the results of research and investigation, long lost authentic color schemes were brought back to life. However, in her outstanding dissertation Morgan Ridler correctly demonstrates that the new paint materials could not perfectly reproduce the original color effects.156 Until the publication of the restoration results, nearly all historians assumed without question that the Arndt color schemes were not originally executed. In the Probst & Schädlich complete list of Gropius’ works the Arndt color design is not mentioned,157 and in Nerdinger’s inventory,158 only illustrated excerpts without commentary are included. Other authors insisted that it was never realized. For example, Wolsdorff of the Bauhaus Archive in Berlin concludes his description of the Arndt scheme noting only that: “The scheme was not carried out.”159 Winkler is somewhat more cautious: “The execution of the color study by A. Arndt
Evidence of Historic Colors Uncovered by the Bruhm and Serfling Restoration Team
cannot be proven.”160 Jaeggi surmises that the painting work in the Auerbach House was done by the Bauhaus workshop; “However, nothing is known about the design concept. A design by the student Alfred Arndt exists, but his proposal was not realized.”161 This new discovery disproves the cliché of the Bauhaus preference for all-white color schemes, offering a more differentiated evaluation of how Gropius understood the relationship of architecture to color. In his overview of the restoration of the original coloration of modernist buildings conducted since the beginning of the 1980’s, Herrel corrects the “white modern” prejudice, and determines among other things that in Germany alone between 1925 and 1930 over one million buildings were painted or stuccoed in color.162 Thus, the rejection of color or at least a reserved attitude towards its use in architecture, as has always been attributed to Gropius, stereotyping him as a defender of white architecture, finally can be corrected.163 His skepticism towards color was manifested on the exterior, especially through the stucco. In his 1919 vision of the “Building of the Future,” everything was to be unified in one design, “architecture, painting, sculpture.” The comparison with other evidence of color schemes in Bau-
haus interiors such as the Masters’ Houses in Dessau or the color frescos by Oskar Schlemmer in the Rabe House in Zwenkau near Leipzig, clearly demonstrate the great variety within the spectrum of color design in the Bauhaus, unsurprising in light of the individuality of artistic personalities such as Klee, Kandinsky, or Feininger and their works. The variety of color media also indicates that the use of color in the architecture was an intuitive, creative act, with no didactic enforcement or application of a homogenous or stringent Bauhaus color theory. In 1924 Walter Gropius commissioned Alfred Arndt (1898 1976) to design the color schemes for the Auerbach House interiors. In his drawings, which he later assembled for the great 1968 Bauhaus exhibit in Stuttgart, Arndt commented: “when I received the contract to paint haus auerbach from grop, neufert was the construction director at the time. so we drove over, i with my portfolio, and showed it to the lady and the prof, they found them really beautiful, grop took no position.”164 Possibly, the Auerbachs had been very involved with the question of the color design of their interiors, perhaps also in the context of the “Color-harmonic drawings. Fantasies on the Color Organ” (“Farbenharmonischen Zeichnungen.
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Music and Dining Rooms, View to North
Ground Floor Hall, View to West
Upper Floor Hall, View to West
Arndt’s Color Design in the Bauhaus Context After fellow Bauhaus members Hinnerk Scheper and Oskar Schlemmer, Alfred Arndt certainly designed the most interior color schemes, establishing his own direction within Bauhaus decorative wall painting, beginning with the polychromatic interiors of the Auerbach House. His activities included color selection as well as studies of the relationship of color and space. His color selections were based on combinations of light and delicate pastel tones, which did not follow the contrast theory of the Bauhaus, being based instead on a complex harmony of colors. He only seldom used saturated colors, in order to accentuate the lighting levels in dark rooms or passages. His use of color can be classified neither with the purely tectonic nor with the decorative, sculptural style of wall painting, especially since he treated every room individually. He tried to express the character of rooms through form as well as color, giving each space its own special color design. He designed his color schemes in reaction to specific spatial qualities, such as the size, lighting levels, and function of the room, each demanding a specific color atmosphere. Wall friezes, frames, color accentuated baseboards, and room-defining bands of color, as well as axially located, asymmetrical color ceiling areas are recurring, personal characteristics of his style. The unification of parts of the ceiling and wall areas through color is his original design principle, distinguishing him from many other modernist architects such as Le Corbusier, who demanded an “architecture camouflage,” as an optical dissolution of building masses through color variations along the edges.191 For Le Corbusier, polychromy creates spaces: “it separates the essential from decorative details. Polychromy is just as powerful a medium in architecture as the floor plan and the section. Even more than that: polychromy is a component of the floor plan and the section.”192 However, his room colors reinforce the three-dimensionality of the space, as he implies through the colors of natural materials, which intensify the spatial illusion. If one analyzes Arndt’s use of color following the specifications in, Natural Color Systems193, an atlas containing ca. 1,300 colors, with 40 chromatic tones and grey scales, then the following picture emerges. The large surfaces on the walls and the ceiling areas in the living rooms of the Auerbach House are characterized with few exceptions by great brightness. The white content of the color paint is almost always 70% 80%, the black content ranges from 5% -20%, and the color content as a rule is not more than 20%. Only the ochre-sand colored walls in the first guest room have a color content of 30%, and the strong orange area in the second guest room has 40%. This leads to a bright, cheerful color effect, lending the whole house a truly welcoming air. In comparison with
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Le Corbusier’s color design for Salubra wallpaper, he used a significantly greater percentage of color pigmenting, meaning that his schemes were much more intense. The consequence of the high brightness value and the relatively low degree of saturation in Arndt’s schemes is that the adjacent color tones almost always have the same nuances and there are almost no light-dark contrasts. Arndt’s color harmony is based on combinations of equal brightness or the arrangement of different nuances of one color tone, such as in the study. The similar tonal value binds the colors together. Arndt only uses strong colors on the walls and ceilings of hallways. The dark blue, windowless passage to the guest rooms on the upper floor, and the sunken entrance in front of the bedroom, with adjacent sections of light yellow-beige and tender antique pink on the walls, generate some of the few light-dark contrasts in the entire house. At the same time, the lower, darker passages create the effect of making the rooms they open into appear more spacious. It is striking that Arndt uses no pure primary colors, and also never works with complementary contrasts. The softness of the pastel color harmony, intended to connect with the architecture, was rejected as a sentimental gesture by the purists of the De Stijl Group.194 Interestingly, this idea of creating spatial relationships and combinations through color, corresponds to Ise Gropius comments on the Gropius’ own master’s house in Dessau. The other Masters’ Houses were too colorful in her opinion, and the individual rooms appeared to her to be too strongly distinguished from one another by their color schemes. In a possible allusion to the animated color schemes of the Kandinsky House, where each room was like an “architectonic individual,”195 and following her perception of the other Masters’ Houses, Ise Gropius wrote: “according to my conception, an entire house or a whole floor must somehow have a common thread. it is not necessary for each room to be so incredibly different! i recall immediately the fatal memory of earlier houses, with green wallpaper in one room, red in the second, and yellow in the third! ... i think one should treat it [the color scheme] much more carefully and rely less on paint, which is after all only an aid, and more on the color of the material itself.”196 Color was for Gropius a means of emphasizing spatial organization, which however brought about “strong simultaneous variations in the effects of the same rooms.”197 And it was exactly that, namely the emphasis on spatial organization and structure that Arndt realized through the color design of the Auerbach House. Gropius, who strove for a synthesis of all the arts in building, considered the unity of a work to be achieved when the independent contribution of each artist or craftsman remained intact in the common work, while at the
same time mastering the formal theme through repetition of the fundamental unit and maintaining proportional relationships among all of its parts.198 A practical theory of harmony was proposed, based on the fundamental unity of tone, color, and form. Because the, “person who shapes and builds must learn a special language, in order to make his ideas visible. Their means of communication are the elements of forms and colors and their constructive principles.”199 The Auerbach House Color Scheme in the Context of Arndt’s Oeuvre During his time at the Bauhaus, the first wall painting project that Arndt carried out was for the interior of the House on the Horn in Weimar, together with Joseph Maltan.200 The color schemes for each room of the House on the Horn were extensively investigated during a complete restoration of the house in 1999. Countless trial strokes were discovered, proving that Arndt had developed the color scheme on location, an approach that he often used.201 Arndt’s color designs for the exteriors of the Dessau Bauhaus Masters’ Houses are highly celebrated. In 1925, immediately after the Auerbach House, Arndt de signed a color scheme for the neo-renaissance mansion built in the 1920’s for the Hergt family in Mellingen, a small town near Weimar.202 The color range and room-connecting elements of this design clearly correspond with the Auerbach House color scheme, for example in the asymmetric elements, axially positioned color areas on the ceilings, and color friezes.203 The use of dark colors for the doorframes and the accentuation of the rather dark passages through color also can be seen in the Hergt house. The gentleman’s bedroom there is painted in similar blue tones as the main bedroom of the Auerbach House, and in the Hergt study, color combinations intended for daytime use are similar to those in one of the Auerbach guest rooms. The design for the Hergt House is the last surviving color scheme that Arndt prepared for interiors.204 Unlike his famous contemporaries in the Bauhaus and other celebrated proponents of modernism, Arndt said almost nothing theoretical or programmatic about his color concepts, so we can only draw conclusions from his work. He only explained his intentions for the color schemes for the children’s play rooms in the State sanatorium in Roda (Thuringia). In the rooms for the children he did not attempt to realize a distinct aesthetic design concept, but instead he wanted above all to arouse the children’s fantasies, preventing them from becom ing bored in the room. Therefore, the colors are intended to stimulate the world of their perceptions and to positively influence their emotional state.
Arndt explained: “until now ceilings and walls in children’s rooms and halls in nurseries and reform schools were painted a uniformly monotone light color (white). Here was also found an oil paint baseboard, while on the upper part of the walls the painters stenciled the usual children’s friezes of animals, flowers, and children, repeated over and over, so that the child was delighted at first glance, but after a few hours knew everything exactly and lost interest. boredom set in, the children and animals didn’t move because they were dead and didn’t excite the fantasy of the children in the least; on the contrary, this kind of painting had a dulling effect. In complete opposition to the old, I tried to find a more lively and variable solution. I settled on color compositions following spatial relationships - window, doors, fireplace front, radiators, and so on. i chose the color scale yellow-red-blue in order to make the room amusing and friendly, so that the children would feel good there and be put in a cheerful mood. on the one hand, the non-colors white, black and grey enhance the colorfulness; on the other hand, they prevent a motley effect.” 205 It is not known if after his departure from the Bauhaus Arndt himself painted the interiors or facades of houses for which he had provided designs, such as for the Bauer House in Probstzella. At the latest, after he left Jena in 1948, polychrome interiors could no longer play a role in his architecture, as was the case for many other Bauhaus members.206 The Color design of The Auerbach House: A “Psychological Matter”? The various approaches taken by Arndt and other Bauhaus masters to the design of interior color schemes raises the question of color as a “psychological matter” (as per Josef Albers). Johannes Itten, who in 1919 directed the foundation course, and for a time the wall painting workshop, attached great value to the psychological effect of color, which he himself tested through experiments.207 Itten was convinced that colors radiated energies, which exerted positive or neg ative effects on people. Since color and color design had an intrinsic “sensual-moral“ effect, the color theory of Goethe and the initial findings of color psychology around 1800 were investigated through experiments, which have been scientifi cally verified since then. 208 Because Arndt had completed Itten’s foundation course, he was familiar with this purposeful approach to color. In the Bauhaus Archive in the papers of Alfred Arndt there exists an essay by an unknown author: “Color and Space: The Old Master Goethe’s Investigations.”209 Kandinsky was also convinced that each color possessed its own spiritual power of expression, and in 1924 he named the investigation of the psychological effects of color as one of the central tasks for the workshop for wall painting. 210
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Historic Photo of the Music Room. The painting on the right wall is of the HeĂ&#x; family. The painting on the left is a copy of the Concerto Musicale after a painting by Giorgione, or according to another source, Titian. Shown are a harpsichordist, a singer, and a viola da gamba player. It was one of Gustav Mahler’s favorite paintings.
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The Clients Named after the building clients, Felix and Anna Auerbach (née Silbergleit), the house is still known today as the Auerbach House or Villa, although Gropius never used the term “villa,” instead referring to it in the building specifications simply as a “dwelling.”257 Their requirements for the house may be reconstructed from their biographies and their life circumstances. They led an active social life, which often played out in the spacious, open area on the ground floor, equipped with a pantry adjoining the dining room, and a music room, while the guest rooms were located on the upper floor. Both of the Auerbachs loved music and organized musical evenings at home, and Felix Auerbach himself “was a highlevel dilettante,”258 a comment meant to be thoroughly positive, for at this time a “dilettante” was understood to be someone who, for example, played music without any professional training, or who played for a living. Picture rails were installed on the walls from the beginning, for hanging the Munch portrait of Felix Auerbach and their other pictures. He conducted his scientific work on the other side through the double door, in the almost hermetically sealed study. Gropius, for whom building meant the designing of life events, placed great importance on the clear establishment of individual functions within the overall organism: “the organism of a house results from the sequence of processes that occur in it.”259 With the exception of an historic photo of the former music room there is unfortunately no other documentation of the interior decoration of the house. This photo shows that the Auerbachs had brought their furniture from their previous apartment, and presumably did not possess any furniture made especially for the house by the Bauhaus workshops. Anna Auerbach
We encounter Anna Auerbach née Silbergleit in different ways in the history of Jena and Thuringia. Her manyfacetted involvement in public life was directed toward the achievement of equal rights for women, support for modern contemporary art through the Jena Art Association, and her later membership in the Social Democratic Party. A portrait of Anna as a significant Jena personality emerges from historic documents found in the University and Municipal archives in Jena, the Helene Lange Archive in Berlin, the Elisabeth FörsterNietzsche papers in the Goethe-Schiller Archive in Weimar, her husband Felix’s papers in the Berlin State Library of the Foundation for Prussian Heritage (Staatsbibliothek Berlin Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz), the State and University Library of Hamburg (Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg), and the Leo Baeck Institute in New York City.260 We are well informed about the family history of Anna Auer-
bach and her family relations through the Silbergleit family chronicle that she wrote for her mother in 1905 on the occasion her 70th birthday. Her humorous text written with a light touch, informs us that Anna Silbergleit was born on December 22nd, 1861, the fourth of five daughters in Breslau. After liquidating his haulage company, her father founded a commercial iron trade business in Breslau, with international trading connections. Anna grew up in a solidly middle-class Jewish milieu in Breslau, for whom the “desired simplicity,” in fact referred to all of the advantages of the living standards of a well-off business man. She reminisced about the big celebrations organized for her father’s foreign business connections, and the well-appointed kitchen with which she grew up. She recalled: “The importance with which foreign languages were treated, particularly French – a French nursemaid or governess belonged by necessity to the household – the previously mentioned preference for Italian Opera and other things, gave the physiognomy of our house an international flavor.”261There it was also important for the principle of “learning and applying,” in this case the English language that an American nursery teacher occasionally belonged to the household.262 Through the close contact among the Jewish families in Breslau she had known Felix Auerbach since she was six years old, when their life paths crossed for the first time in the fresh air of the summer of 1868: “For Felix and me, this summer became one of the shared milestones on the byway of childhood, where many jolly memories are frolicking about.”263 Occasionally, they also played together with neighborhood children in a Breslau garden that a number of families had rented for their children as a shared playground. In 1881, when she was twenty years old, she met Felix Auerbach again while on an extended two-month holiday in Italy, planned as a recuperation period for her father following surgery. Then in the best “phase of the reunion,” she sealed her relationship to him through the cult of Wagner.264 “He was cloaked in a gown of unheard of erudition. Science, which he had made the focus of his life, physics, as practiced by the learned, was something that filled even the most enlightened minds among us with pious humility. Furthermore, it seemed impossible to mention something in conversation of which he didn’t at least know the fundamentals.”265 “Just ask Dr. Auerbach, he knows everything and even a bit more’ was the motto among us girls in certain situations.”266 The engagement took place on April 8th, 1883, and on Septem ber 2nd of the same year Anna Silbergleit and Felix Auerbach were married. The new house that the Silbergleit family had built in the Neo-Renaissance style was festively decorated
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terpretations and assumed connections between Auerbach’s space-time-theory and Klee’s concept of flowing space have been strongly criticized.335 Even Ulrich Müller, who compared diagrams by Auerbach and Klee conceded that, “the diagrams [of Klee and Auerbach] show almost nothing in common in terms of content.”336 Two art historians are investigating the relationship between Auerbach and Kandinsky.337In 1914, Auerbach published Graphic Representation,338 which for him was an analytical and practical methodology. Just as language “had reached its highpoint…in mathematical formulaic language,” and natural history and the plastic arts have “the production of images” for all spatial entities, as a representative of the “exact sciences” he asked whether or not: “the non-spatial, that is the temporal, and even everything such as temperature and electricity, brightness and color, as related to material and spiritual quantities and qualities and hundreds of other things, could be captured through spatial forms and be represented graphically?” The self-evident truth that today we read into curve diagrams, for example, proves his prognosis: “An outwardly unas suming art, since it presents to the eye nothing more than lines and clusters of lines and yet more lines, and sometimes areas and in exceptional cases spatially modeled figures. But for those who have learned to read this language, they are in their own way more eloquent and richer than any other; in a limited space they tell an incredible amount; then one can, so to speak, read this writing from front to back, from top to bottom, analytically and synthetically; and each time one comes to the same concept through a new form, a new relationship,
Auerbach
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a new genesis, which indeed in the end is always a new insight. It is no wonder, that the graphic representation, whose previous neglect can be explained by the oppressive tyranny of the abstract taste in thinking, in recent times and the immediate present has begun a true triumphal march through all fields of scientific research, from the exact natural sciences, to the statistical economic disciplines outwards, gradually conquering even the dry and driest terrain, finally reaching even the hearts of psychology and philosophy.” “Traces of Auerbach’s thesis” are found in Wassily Kandinsky’s essay “Point and Line to Surface” (1926).339 While the physicist thought about the visual character of science, for Kandinsky it was a matter of the objectives of art, or the calculable image, and interestingly for both this was primarily a matter of lines: “In the contemporary search for abstract relationships, the mathematical figure plays an especially important role. Each digital formulation is as cool as an icy mountain peak and of the highest regularity, as solid as a block of marble. It is cold and solid, as with every essential thing.”340 In particular, the figure captioned “Deformation of an Electrical Curve through Inductance and Capacity,” in Auerbach’s book Physics in Graphic Representations (1912; fig. 7 p. 173) became well known at the time. This is because Kandinsky took Auerbach’s original diagram and reflected about both axes, titling it, “Reformation of an Electrical Curve from Physics as a Graphic Representation by Felix Auerbach, Teubner Publishing.”341 From Ulrich Müller’s perspective, “the painter reshaped the curve and sacrificed physical objectivity for the stimulation of aesthetic appearance.”342
Kandinsky
Felix and Anna Auerbach (second and third from left) among a Group of Friends
The Social and Cultural Life of the Auerbachs The relationship of the Silbergleit family to their religion was distanced, a position that the Auerbach couple would later take up. Anna explains this to us in her family chronicle: “If in our generation we were really mature enough to leave the narrow confines of our religious and social community, we were still missing much that we wish had strengthened us absolutely and invincibly. Of course, we were thoroughly free of that inner sense of belonging to the belief of our fathers – and that of anyone else. That had been doused in pure sulfuric acid. If out of tolerance it was sometimes said that everyone was guilty of deep piety, nevertheless it also was assumed that everyone who was religious had to be an ass or a hypo crite, even if they were well educated.”343 This attitude was expressed in her reserved behavior toward the Jewish congregation in Jena. Since she did not support the congregation in any of her projects, and because she also did not seek the
approval of the State Ministry for the religious congregation, she was deemed a “foot dragger” by them.344 Intellectuals did not wholly accept the Jewish congregation in Jena since they repeatedly disbanded. The Auerbachs’ life in Jena was especially marked by their activity in the cultural life of the city, and their support for contemporary, modern art and they belonged to that circle of intellectuals who had an enduring influence on the cultural life in Jena.345 They were among the founding members of the Jena Art Association in 1903, and belonged to the Society of the Friends of Art in Weimar and Jena (Gesellschaft der Kunstfreunde von Weimar und Jena), which existed from 1904 - 1912. The latter was known above all as the donor and contractor of the picture by Ferdinand Hodler, “Departure of German Students in the War of Liberation in 1813,” for the university building built by Theodor Fischer in 1908.346 In addition,
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“Jena Schäfferstr. 9 The Auerbach House x there hangs the male half-figure on a red background, very well illuminated.”
Portrait of Felix Auerbach by Edvard Munch When on January 24th, 2018, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam publicly displayed the portrait of Felix Auerbach painted by Edvard Munch in 1906, the event was reported in many languages worldwide, for example in the Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung.375 It is thought to be one of the best portraits by Munch from this period of his career, but of a different character than that of Friedrich Nietzsche or his sister, or of that of Count Harry Kessler, which “are anchored in the collective awareness of pictures” (A. Platthaus). This portrait was up until now only available to the public in New York for a brief period, and after it was auctioned off at Sotheby’s in New York on May 14th, 1980376, it as good as disappeared.
We know for certain that this portrait hung in the music room of the Auerbach House on the narrow southern wall near the bank of windows, since Felix Auerbach drew it in this position on a postcard to Munch.377 And today it still has its typical black Jugendstil frame with golden filigree border, as recalled by Ruth Kisch-Arndt, Anna Auerbach’s niece twice removed. She was also the one who purchased the Munch portrait from the Auerbach estate, later bequeathing it to her son Arnold Kisch. During his stay in “Bad Ilmenau” Munch announced his visit. On February 12th Munch arrived at the Auerbachs and stayed with them for five to six days.378 The portrait of Felix Auerbach was done in February 1906, in the apartment in Mozart-
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Sculpture for the Auerbach House, 2003, H 265 cm, W 250 cm, D 280 cm, 20 mm red flat-rolled steel
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Art for the Auerbach House Sculpture by Utz Brocksieper for the Auerbach House
After a wall of Thuringian slate was built following the design of landscape architect Michael Dane, as part of the new garden design work in 2003, the idea of installing a sculpture to complement the ca. forty-ton wall emerged. The introduction of Corten steel in the garden further led to the idea of a steel sculpture. Through an introduction made by the Michael Schlieper Gallery in Hagen, the authors met with the sculptor Utz Brocksieper. This sculptor had a personal connection to the Bauhaus, for his father Heinrich Brocksieper (1898-1968 Hagen/ Westphalia) was a student in the first Bauhaus class, who influenced his son in that direction. Through this connection, Utz Brocksieper developed a unique affinity for the Auerbach
House.445 Utz Brocksieper designed the sculpture during an extended study period with his wife at the Auerbach house. During this time, a full-scale 1:1 model of the sculpture was produced, which was finalized and realized in 2003. The sculpture was made by the Strauß steel works in Dresden, who also installed it on location. According to Utz Brocksieper, the sculpture developed from a three-side pyramid – the side surfaces unfold – reducing down to a ray-like shape. It is formed of three connected wedge shapes that reflect and in turn receive the dynamic energy of the Auerbach House. The red wedge shapes symbolize the activities, strengths, and tensions, which radiate from the house, which are directed back towards it from the outside.
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