Nazi exhibition design and modernism

308 Pages·2018·23.849 MB·English

by  Tymkiw, Michael

NAZI EXHIBITION DESIGN
AND
MODERNISM
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N A Z I E X H I B I T I O N D E S I G N
A N D
M O D E R N I S M
Michael Tymkiw
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA PRESS
MINNEAPOLIS • LONDON
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Every effort was made to obtain permission to reproduce material in this book.
If any proper acknowledgment has not been included here, we encourage
copyright holders to notify the publisher.
Copyright 2018 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
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Minneapolis, MN 55401- 2520
http://www.upress.umn.edu
Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper
The University of Minnesota is an equal- opportunity educator and employer.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Tymkiw, Michael, author.
Title: Nazi exhibition design and modernism / Michael Tymkiw.
Description: Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017056082 (print) | ISBN 978-1-5179-0056-4 (hc) | ISBN 978-1-5179-0057-1 (pb)
Subjects: LCSH: Art–Exhibition techniques–Social aspects. |
Art exhibition audiences–Germany–History–20th century. | National socialism and art. |
Modernism (Aesthetics)–Germany–History–20th century. | BISAC: ART / Art & Politics. |
ART / History / Modern (late 19th Century to 1945). | HISTORY / Europe / Germany.
Classification:LCC N4396 .T96 2018 (print) | DDC 700/.4112–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017056082
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To
Didier
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CONTENTS
Introduction Experimental Exhibition Design
under National Socialism 1
Part I. Entangled in Debates on Modern Art and Architecture
1. Falling into Line Three Early Experiments in
Visualizing Collectivity Formation 21
2. Reconfiguring Expressionism Otto Andreas Schreiber and
the Mass Production of Factory Exhibitions 73
Part II. The Persistence of Formal Dialectics
3. Photomurals after Pressa 119
4. Fragmentation and the “Jewish– Bolshevist Enemy” 169
Epilogue German Exhibition Design after National Socialism 221
Acknowledgments 239
Notes 241
Index 285
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Figure I.1. Egon Eiermann, Hall II from the exhibition Gebt mir vier Jahre Zeit (Berlin, 1937). Courtesy
of the Dittrick Medical History Center, Case Western University.
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introduction
EXPERIMENTAL EXHIBITION DESIGN
UNDER NATIONAL SOCIALISM
T
he two images on the opposite page cut to the heart of the potential for
experimental approaches to exhibition design in National Socialist Ger-
many. Both photographs depict the central portion of a hall designed by
the architect Egon Eiermann for the 1937 exhibition Gebt mir vier Jahre Zeit (Give
me four years), which, among other goals, celebrated Germany’s transformation
since Adolf Hitler had become the nation’s chancellor four years earlier. Taken
from opposite ends of the hall, the pair of images show a series of eight enor-
mous photomurals, which, interconnected and installed on a zigzagged display
structure, were meant to recall a supersized version of an accordion-f old pam-
phlet, a popular format at the time for advertisements, magazine inserts, and
book illustrations. While the resemblance to a foldout pamphlet provided a not-
so- subtle plug for the printing and photography companies whose products and
services appeared later on in the show, the photomurals offered visual evidence
of Germany’s economic, technological, and cultural achievements under National
Socialism— for example, through images of brand-n ew factories and public build-
ings, or of planes, trains, ships, and zeppelins circling the globe. To drive home
the point that such accomplishments were real and not just an illusion concocted
out of flattering pictures, the photomurals were surrounded by a dense jungle
of live industrial machines and various other objects, including a race car, a giant
propeller, cranes, pulleys, and an extensive model of the Autobahn under con-
struction. Broadly speaking, this ensemble of objects was meant to give the im-
pression that the achievements depicted in the photomurals had “exploded” from
two- dimensional, representational space into the three-d imensional, real space of
the exhibition hall, an explosion that also characterized the portion of the hall
that focused on the Wehrmacht, or German army, visible near the right of the
first image in Figure I.1. There, a series of photomurals depicted soldiers, tanks,
planes, military operations, and clouds of gun smoke— images that seemed to
spill out into the exhibition space through various war machines that included a
1
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