Hannes Meyer – Personality and Colour
Five. Five question marks is what Meyer needed to end the sentence “art or life?????” 1. However, one does not need this sentence, which he uttered in a Bauhaus publication in 1928, to gain the impression that Meyer stood in a complex relationship to issues of design. When I visited both the ADGB Trade Union School in Bernau near Berlin and the Freidorf in Basle last year, I inevitably experienced how the meaning of the concept of art was far from self-evident in Meyer’s work. What I found remarkable was the radicalness that Meyer exhibited in his relationship towards the concept of art — a radicalness that also may put common perceptions and preconceptions about modern architecture into question. The comparison between Freidorf and Bernau is not only a testimony to Meyer’s transition from a reduced classicist style to modernity. — a transition that took place between 10 eventful years. Something remarkable took place between those two designs when it comes to colour. The loss of the coloured surface that took place between those projects bears witness to a radical retreat in this specific question of design. While there is a “symphony in red”2 in the Freidorf that extends to the 150 buildings of the settlement, in Bernau there is somewhat of an absence of coloured surfaces. Something was simultaneously lost and gained with these facades composed of yellow brick and concrete elements in Bernau. What was lost was the coloured surface of the building as the expression of an artistic decision. What was gained was, in all its peculiarity, a new matter — the world of industrial production, the “new building materials”, that Meyer rhetorically welcomed in 1926.
Hannes Meyer: Freidorf , 1919-1921
It was this “new world”3, as Meyer called it, that challenged the spontaneity of design. What was the meaning of the coloured surface as an expression of artistic individuality confronted with a mass production which put it into question? Meyer’s functionalism, despite the confidence it exuded, rather pointed to an unsolved question in this respect. In his reflexion on a mass culture that seemed to outpace the expression of individuality Meyer grappled with the concept of art. This concept evidently had ceased to be self-evident in the turmoil of the 1920s. I’m quoting Meyer’s “The New world”, which was published in 1926, roughly two years before he designed the Trade Union School in Bernau:
“Each age demands its own form. It is our mission to give our new world a new shape with the means of today. But our knowledge of the past is a burden that weighs upon us, and inherent in our advanced education are impediments tragically barring our new paths. The unqualified affirmation of the present age presupposes the ruthless denial of the past. The ancient institutions of the old — the classical grammar schools and the academies — are growing obsolete. The municipal theatres and the museums are deserted. The jittery helplessness of applied arts is proverbial. In their place, unburdened by classical airs and graces, by an artistic confusion of ideas or the trimmings of applied art, the witnesses of a new era are arising: industrial fairs, grain silos, music halls, airports, office chairs, standard goods. All these things are the product of a formula: function multiplied by economics. They are not works of art. Art is composition, purpose is function. The composition of a dock seems to us a nonsensical idea, but the composition of a town plan, a block of flats . . . ? ? Building is a technical not an aesthetic process, artistic composition does not rhyme with the function of a house matched to its purpose. Ideally and in its elementary design our house is a living machine.” 4
Art, therefore, in Meyer’s interpretation, became synonymous with individuality, which was rendered suspicious in an age of mass production. Through the lack of personality in this “new world” of industrial production the justification for colouring the surface of the building was lost. Colour now appeared as something that Meyer could subsume under the dubious thing that “art” had become. “Instead of painted material, the colour of the material itself”5 was Meyer’s credo to which he returned to on multiple occasions. According to him, the “colour of the material” should “come into being automatically” out of something that he called “pure construction”.
As the Vitrine Co-op demonstrated, “pure construction” meant a seemingly neutral way of arranging standardised products — a retreat from design which was supposed to leave the appearance of what was taken out of the sphere of industrial production unchanged. The Vitrine Co-op, which was made in 1924, is an example of Meyer’s search for his own approach to the new modern form. It illustrates on a small scale what should subsequently guide the architectural approach. The inconspicuous task of exhibiting co-operatively produced foodstuffs turned out to be a typical avantgarde creation in the hands of Meyer. The Vitrine Co-op becomes avantgarde through its distance to artistic convention. Following the omnipresent enquiry for the value of the work of art in the 1920s, Meyer had reservations about what was usually a concern of aesthetic judgement. The task of arranging packaging of uniform appearance turned out to be a chance to try to overcome manifestations of artistic individuality. The goods in the Vitrine Co-op speak for themselves. Nothing was added, everything was merely arranged. Seemingly, the mass-produced, rather the result of standardisation than of artistic imagination, freed Meyer from the obligation to introduce personality into the material. “The surest sign of true community is the satisfaction of the same needs by the same means. The upshot of such a collective demand is the standard product.”6 — as Meyer concluded in “The New World”. The notion of materiality which literally presented itself in the Vitrine Co-op explains the loss of colour design. With the same insistence on the self-explanatory appearance of the commodity as the “element” of design Meyer took the “colour of the material” of the “new building materials” for granted. The loss of colour design which took place between the Freidorf and Bernau thus referenced the issue of commodity production. Central to the issue of design now was the relationship to the material that the industry provided. In a world of mass production Meyer turned to such a rejection of everything individual which in the end also affected the coloured surface of the building. Materiality no longer was the result of a conscious decision in design but transferred to the supposedly impersonal process of industrial production.
“Today we have new building materials at our disposal for building a house: aluminium and duralumin in plates, rods and bars, Euböolith, Ruberoid, Fortoleum, Eternit, rolled glass, Triplex sheets, reinforced concrete, glass bricks, faience, steel frames, concrete frame slabs and pillars, Trolith, Galalith, Cellon, Goudron, Ripolin, indanthrene paints, etc. We organize these building elements into a constructive unity in accordance with the purpose of the building and economic principles. Architecture has ceased to be an agency continuing the growth of tradition or an embodiment of emotion. Individual form, building mass, natural colour of material and surface texture come into being automatically and this functional conception of building in all its aspects leads to pure construction.”7
Hannes Meyer/Hans Wittwer: ADGB Trade Union School in Bernau , 1928-1930
There was a time when Meyer didn’t treat the individual and the collective as such extremes. The Freidorf, which was constructed from 1919 to 1921, conveyed a certain joviality in the issue of materiality compared to his later conception of it. That he was able to work with colour in the framework of a composition contrasts the turmoil which subsequently affected his stance on matters of design. Therefore, it is even more remarkable that the question that guided the design of the Freidorf was the same — namely: What makes material authentic? The design of the Freidorf Meyer therefore described as “a struggle for the truth”. A truth that should also reveal itself through colour. “No accentuation of individual elements by colour, no contrast between roof and wall, no emphasis on differences of material”8 — such was Meyer’s description of his design that was developed in opposition to the stylistic extravagance of the 19th century.
Especially the social dimension of the Freidorf as co-operative project pushed Meyer towards abandoning ornamentation. The Freidorf was exemplary of the will for renewal that engulfed society in a time of social upheaval in the early 20th century. Inspired by the ideas of social reform which he shared with the co-operative responsible for the settlement Meyer dedicated himself to overtly practical issues. There was a trace of Meyer’s later functionalism. However, the material could be subsumed under an “order” of that was considered “artistic” at that point. 9 For the standardised shape of the building components, the so called “Freidorf standards”, he didn’t consult the industry but Palladio. To Palladio, whom he meticulously studied in his youth, he traced back the proportions of the buildings in the settlement. Therefore, the relationship towards artisanal traditions, that provided the basis for the “Freidorf standards”, was as unproblematic as the architectural tradition he placed himself in. In a similar way Meyer took up colour design. The reduction to a single colour was subject to the claim of an “authentic materiality” — an effort to abstain from everything that is beyond necessary. At the same time, Meyer succeeded in working out this reduction through an act of composition. Aesthetic conventions and the focus on practicality were not opposed to each other at this point, as the colour of the Freidorf shows. As unproblematic as the handicraft that was the basis for the construction of the settlement was Meyer’s contribution of design.
Cooperative house in the Freidorf Settlement
Back to the example Bernau. As it could be seen, it was especially the altered perception of production that brought Meyer towards a new approach to colour. “Instead of painted material, the colour of the material itself” — this meant a retreat from design, a doubtful attitude towards the worth of the individual in mass culture, uncertainty about the meaning of the aesthetic judgement in the impersonality of the industry. It’s therefore not surprising that Meyer further pursued these issues at the Bauhaus — where the details of the design of the Trade Union School in Bernau were worked out. “Art and technology — a new unity” — the meaning of this motto which Walter Gropius proclaimed had become uncertain before Meyer set foot in the Bauhaus in 1927.10 The new Bauhaus Dessau was all about practical experience. The success of this institution to open itself up to society really put this motto to the test. What was it that changed with the first Bauhaus products for mass consumption? What were the tasks that the Bauhaus faced with the “Volkswohnung” [“popular housing”]? How could the artistic “Vorkurs” [“preliminary course”] be aligned with the involvement in industrial production? Was art and technology really a unity?
Starting from 1928 Meyer had to face these questions as the director of the Bauhaus. The Trade Union School in Bernau thus also serves as an example of his contribution as the director of the institution and of his approach towards those questions. His refusal of the concept of art, his refusal of everything which could be seen as a testimony to individuality, guided his approach towards the question of the future of the Bauhaus pedagogy.
“we are not seeking
a bauhaus style or a bauhaus fashion.
no modishly-flat plane-surface ornamentation
divided horizontally and vertically and all done up in neoplastic style.
we are not seeking
geometric or stereometric constructions,
alien to life and inimical to function.”11
This is what Meyer wrote 1929 for the Bauhaus magazine. The absence of colour design in Bernau therefore was a proof of Meyer’s conflict with the Bauhaus itself, as paradoxical as it may sound. “As Director of the Bauhaus I was fighting against the Bauhaus style.” — Meyer openly acknowledged the “tragicomic situation” in which he put himself. The conception of materiality which he assumed through his turn towards modernity was in fact opposed to any established Modernist style. He not only brusquely rejected a Modernism in white — “we avoid a pure white finish for the house: we consider the body of the house to be a storage cell for the heat of the sun . . .”12 Apart from that, his judgement was particularly harsh when it came to transferring the formal language of abstract painting to architecture. This is precisely what he disapprovingly considered as a new form of ornament. It was the same conflict between the individual and the collective that reproduced itself in this refusal of a Modernist style. “The clover field of young Bauhaus painters, cultivated by the most extraordinary painter individualist, will lie fallow in our age when social upheaval and the collective shortage of vital necessities are at their greatest.”13 With “painter individualist” he meant someone like Vassily Kandinsky, who was already responsible for the colour seminar before the arrival of Meyer. The dismissal of art therefore affected anything about the Bauhaus that seemed established, recognisable, or stylistic. Here, two themes collided. On the one hand Meyers personal path to modernity that led him towards a radical conception of art — on the other hand the unresolved conflict about the meaning of the concept of art at the Bauhaus itself, an issue that became unavoidable in the Dessau era as Philipp Oswalt underlined in his introduction to the joint publication Hannes Meyers neue Bauhauslehre.14 In the Trade Union School in Bernau there was an absence of what Meyer considered as a lack of modernity — painting as a means to deal with the surface of the building.
Corridor in the ADGB Trade Union School in Bernau , 1928-1930
It is difficult to arrive at a verdict when it comes to this conflict at the Bauhaus. However, this is not only due to the end of the Bauhaus that the politics of the thirties brought about. The conflict concerning the future of the pedagogy of the Bauhaus already escalated under the directorship of Meyer. Kandinsky as well as Josef Albers and Ludwig Grote perceived Mayer’s plans as a threat to their activities and convinced the city of Dessau to dismiss him in August 1930.15 Their contentious accusation that Meyer tried to politicise education as a communist can be put into question. Meyer explicitly prevented the instrumentalization of the Bauhaus in party politics and despite his sympathies for Soviet Marxism, he was not yet well versed in it.
With this incident the problematisation of the concept of art allegedly became something political. On top of that, Meyer himself chose to further politicise the question of art through emigrating to the Soviet Union under Stalin. In connection to the project of a planned economy during the first five-year plan (1929-1933) the ideology of Proletkult once again emerged with the prospect of a novel culture of the masses, for the masses. The end of modern architecture in the Soviet Union and the “national style” called Socialist Realism in the 1930s laid bare the questionable nature of this attempt. Equally questionable was Meyer’s commitment to the politics of Stalinism that prevailed even after his return from the Soviet Union in 1936.
What then was the value of the individual that Mayer problematised incessantly? The political reaction of the 1930s, to which Meyer subjected his architecture, shunned this question while at the same time it pretended to have solved it. The issue of the collective became brutally real through the subjugation of the individual in the totalitarian state, between the simultaneous proclamation of a liberated society and the omnipresence of political terror. Considering this, the political dimension of Meyer’s architecture could be explained concretely through his convictions. Beyond that, however, there seems to be a political content in the prevailing question of the value of the individual in Meyer’s work when viewed in its entirety. There is an enormous connection that reveals itself in the question of art from his debut in the Freidorf to his contribution to modernity in Basle and Dessau and his attempt at a socialist architecture in the Soviet Union.
Art or life? What initially could seem like an inconspicuous issue, the colour of the building, reveals itself as an intriguing inquiry into the worth of the forms of individual expression in a period of time that had to come to terms with the phaenomena of mass society. The rejection of colour as an expression of personality was thus indicative of a search for the collective whose meaning remained unclear amidst the hopes of the 1920s and the tragedy of the 1930s. What remains of Meyer’s modernity in light of this disruptive and politically controversial end? Can his radical approach to the concept of art nevertheless challenge our conception of what it means to be modern?
1. Meyer, H., 1928, cited in Schnaidt, Claude (ed.): Hannes Meyer. Buildings, Projects, and Writings. Teufen: Niggli, 1965, p. 95.
2. Meyer, H., cited in Schnaidt, Claude, ibid., p. 13.
3. Meyer, H., 1926, cited in Schnaidt, Claude, ibid., p. 91.
4. Ibid., p. 93.
5. Ibid., p. 95.
6. Ibid., p. 92.
7. Ibid.
8. Meyer, H., cited in Schnaidt, Claude, ibid., p. 13.
9. Meyer, H., cited in Schnaidt, Claude, ibid., p. 21.
10. Cf. Oswalt, Philipp, Hannes Meyers neue Bauhauslehre: Von Dessau bis Mexiko (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2019), pp. 9-10.
11. Meyer, Hannes, 1929, cited in Schnaidt, Claude, Hannes Meyer, p. 99.
12. Meyer, Hannes, 1928, cited in Schnaidt, Claude, ibid., p. 97.
13. Meyer, Hannes, 1930, cited in Schnaidt, Claude, ibid., p. 105.
14. See note 10.
15 Cf. Oswalt, Philipp, Hannes Meyers neue Bauhauslehre, pp. 14-15.