CAUGHT IN THE TITOTALITY MACHINE.
THE BAUHAUS ARTIST FRANZ EHRLICH
FRIEDRICH VON BORRIES, JENS-UWE FISCHER
SUHRKAMP, BERLIN (DE) GERMAN
315 PAGES, 20 €
ISBN 978-3-518-12801-5
Recently, an exhibition at the Berlin Museum of Decorative Arts left us perplexed: "The forgotten Bauhaus artist Erich Dieckmann," read its subtitle. It illuminated the design oeuvre of Erich Dieckmann, who had already joined the NSDAP in 1933. Dieckmann was thus forgotten because he was, well, a Nazi. However, this important point was insufficiently addressed in the exhibition itself. His Bauhaus training is used almost 100 years later as a marketing cliché. For if the Bauhaus is good for anything today, it is for selling. Design theory all-rounder Friedrich von Borries, together with Jens-Uwe Fischer, seems to be hitting a similar nerve, having taken on another dubious Bauhaus artist's biography – though much more extensively and nuanced. The book "Caught in the Totality Machine. The Bauhaus Artist Franz Ehrlich" deals with the life of a complex character whose decisions and motivations are not always comprehensible. Franz Ehrlich, born in 1907, studied for three years at the legendary design school but remained without a Bauhaus diploma his entire life. His oeuvre includes both the inscription "Jedem das Seine" (To each his own) on the gate of Buchenwald concentration camp, which Ehrlich created as a political prisoner in that very camp, the Funkhaus Nalepastraße in Berlin (1951/56), and the "602" series of type furniture popular in the GDR. Franz Ehrlich glides seemingly effortlessly through the various "totality machines" (a coinage by Ehrlich) of his life in the course of this biographical essay, working in the central SS construction department after his imprisonment in the concentration camp, staging himself as a victim of the Nazi regime in the nascent GDR, and from the 1950s onwards, working as a secret informant for the Stasi. Von Borries and Fischer critically classify these points in the life of a turncoat and at the right places leave room for one's own opinion formation, which is good and important for empathizing with a life that allowed little individual room for maneuver. "It is the nature of the totality machine, [...] that one cannot always comprehend its motives," the authors write. The same applies to the people within it. Thus, the reading can also be read very much in the present. There is no shortage of totality machines in this world today either. YOU, AR
THE BAUHAUS ARTIST FRANZ EHRLICH
FRIEDRICH VON BORRIES, JENS-UWE FISCHER
SUHRKAMP, BERLIN (DE) GERMAN
315 PAGES, 20 €
ISBN 978-3-518-12801-5
Recently, an exhibition at the Berlin Museum of Decorative Arts left us perplexed: "The forgotten Bauhaus artist Erich Dieckmann," read its subtitle. It illuminated the design oeuvre of Erich Dieckmann, who had already joined the NSDAP in 1933. Dieckmann was thus forgotten because he was, well, a Nazi. However, this important point was insufficiently addressed in the exhibition itself. His Bauhaus training is used almost 100 years later as a marketing cliché. For if the Bauhaus is good for anything today, it is for selling. Design theory all-rounder Friedrich von Borries, together with Jens-Uwe Fischer, seems to be hitting a similar nerve, having taken on another dubious Bauhaus artist's biography – though much more extensively and nuanced. The book "Caught in the Totality Machine. The Bauhaus Artist Franz Ehrlich" deals with the life of a complex character whose decisions and motivations are not always comprehensible. Franz Ehrlich, born in 1907, studied for three years at the legendary design school but remained without a Bauhaus diploma his entire life. His oeuvre includes both the inscription "Jedem das Seine" (To each his own) on the gate of Buchenwald concentration camp, which Ehrlich created as a political prisoner in that very camp, the Funkhaus Nalepastraße in Berlin (1951/56), and the "602" series of type furniture popular in the GDR. Franz Ehrlich glides seemingly effortlessly through the various "totality machines" (a coinage by Ehrlich) of his life in the course of this biographical essay, working in the central SS construction department after his imprisonment in the concentration camp, staging himself as a victim of the Nazi regime in the nascent GDR, and from the 1950s onwards, working as a secret informant for the Stasi. Von Borries and Fischer critically classify these points in the life of a turncoat and at the right places leave room for one's own opinion formation, which is good and important for empathizing with a life that allowed little individual room for maneuver. "It is the nature of the totality machine, [...] that one cannot always comprehend its motives," the authors write. The same applies to the people within it. Thus, the reading can also be read very much in the present. There is no shortage of totality machines in this world today either. YOU, AR