Magazine

TEUFELSBERG - about places and ruins

A Berlin Ruinology

Chris Wunsch

But what ruins are there, piled – layer upon layer – upon one other ? And what secrets lie beneath ?

Teufelsberg is not the site of one ruin, but of many. Beneath the rubble of WWII Berlin lies the ruins of Germania. A forest covers the mountain, and perched on top are the ruins of an Allied forces' listening station.

And city air meet: a place to escape to, a places to breathe. Above all it is a place of longing: a place to reflect on other places, and other times.

„Berlin is not ugly. It just dosn't have any surface. Because if Berlin would be finished, with a homogeneous protective layer, then it would no longer stimulate imaginations, people would no longer be premanently invited to grapple with their enviroment (….)“

It is Berlin's Sehnsuchtsmotiv ( motif of longing ), but sans sentimentality or distortion, without sorrow or pathos. The popularity of Teufelsberg reflects the desire for people to find their own path instead of being shown the way. In a word where ever far-flung corner has been interpreted and narrated, people search for spaces they can discover, places where they can have there own unique experiences and develop their own tales

These places are often closer to home than you may think. As one visitor proposed, at Teufelsberg you can discover your own city, as if it were a far away place.

It may just be the last great adventure the city has to offer.

Words taken from :
TEUFELSBERG, Die Berliner Ruinologie, by Chris Wunsch
published by : Vergangenheitsverlag/Berlin
Publisher and Shop

BAUHAUS from Heinz Stade

100 years of BAUHAUS

In 2019 Germany celebrates the centenary of the Bauhaus with partners from all over the world.
After coming to life in 1919, the Bauhaus had to move to Dessau in 1925 and to Berlin just a few years later.

Once there, it was forced to close in 1933 by the Nazis. Although it only existed for 14 years in total, the Bauhaus is still considered the most renowned modern art and design school.

Constantly forced to begin again for political reasons, the Bauhaus partially reinvented itself under its three directors Walter Gropius, Hannes Meyer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

The ambition of rethinking design from the ground up and not accepting inherited certainties paved the road for the explosion of modern art.

This high ambition was formulated by Alfred Arendt, one of the Bauhaus masters, in his speech at the inauguration of the Bauhaus Dessau: “We’re still at the beginning, despite all the work already done! The house stands… it is the foundation for consciously working to construct a new world.”

Bauhaus? Walter Gropius came up with the name. He was inspired by the medieval lodges in which all the crafts and arts worked together on equal footing. The Bauhaus sought to reunite the arts that the academies had separated, in order to produce art and architecture appropriate for their time.

The artistic avant-garde gathered at the Bauhaus wanted to become a force capable of changing society and shaping modern individuals and their world. An interdisciplinary working community would be able to devise and create the “building of the future”, and even the future itself.

The Bauhaus sites in Dessau and Weimar were included in the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1996.

New Bauhaus museums will be built in Weimar, Dessau and Berlin on the occasion of its 100th anniversary. But it is already worthwhile to pay a visit to see the authentic Bauhaus-designed buildings, located mostly in the centre of Germany.

Authentic BAUHAUS: BERLIN

A tour following the traces of the Bauhaus in the German capital beyond the Bauhaus Archive leads, for instance, to the Kant-Garagen-Palast (Kant Parking Palace) built in 1929-30 in the Charlottenburg district. However, the existence of the oldest multi-storey carpark in Europe is now at risk.

The AEG turbine factory, designed by the painter and self-taught architect Peter Behrens, is located in Moabit. The structure, built in 1908-09, is a key work of German industrial architecture.

The bright houses with balcony access that can be found in Steglitz, with their accessible ceiling terraces and front gardens, are also worth visiting.

The Bauhaus was located in Berlin for less than a year. The Nazis forced its dissolution in 1933.

Design at the BAUHAUS

At the Bauhaus, craftsmen and designers wanted to develop functional, simple products. There was a lot of craftsmanship at first, but after 1923 they wanted to develop industrial products, affordable by everyone and distinguished by their functionality.

Some were produced serially in the Bauhaus workshops, but many were also manufactured industrially through licenses.

These included lamps, cutlery, tea canes, but also tables and chairs.

Rhino Westentaschen-Bibliothek Volume 52: Bauhaus
Price: € 5.95; 96 pages; format: 8 x 11.5 cm

Hardcover, thread sewn binding, glossy foil
43 images
ISBN: 978-3-95560-052-5

Go to publishers shop

About the author:
Heinz Stade was born in 1945 in Arnstadt, Thüringen, and works as independent journalist and author in Erfurt. He studied journalism and literature in Leipzig. He has worked independently since 1983 and is the author or co-author of over 20 books, most of them travel biographies and books about Thüringen as a travel destination. He received the 2003 Deutschen Denkmalpreis for his book Leben und Arbeiten im Denkmal (Living and working with monuments). The following year he received the Thüringer Journalistenpreis. The Rhino Westentaschen-Bibliothek series has already published 9 of his books.

Hans Karl Zeisel’s world

Hundred and more

CLARITY – SIMPLICITY – VARIETY

We were so excited about Hans Karl Zeisel’s project from the beginning that we didn’t think twice about asking him to cooperate with us.

During the preliminary talks, it quickly became clear that our projects had a lot in common. A look at the resulting photographs probably suffices to understand our excitement. The clear shapes and colours seem made for each other.

ENDLESS POSSIBILITIES

Engaging in the near endless configuration and shaping possibilities of this art-design-game-book is definitely worth it. Contrary to other tile-based-games and puzzles, Hundred and more doesn’t set any limits to fantasy, be it through rules, shape-parameters or other constraints.

The room for free configuration is wide open.

After a few moments, you become overwhelmed by everything that can be built with so little means.

Hundred and more is a tool for creativity training, an art game, a design game, a meditation aid. It can be used for taking a thought break, for finding ideas, for study purposes, to create art, to stimulate fantasy, as anchor for the soul to achieve relaxation, to play at being a builder, to activate both sides of the brain, to experiment, build sculptures, find new variants – to have endless fun – ages 4 to 100.

Despite its short existence, to this day the Bauhaus is considered one of the 20th century’s most important schools of architecture, design and art. Next year, the Bauhaus celebrates its 100th anniversary. Inspired by the ideas of the Bauhaus masters, author, designer and concrete artist Hans Karl Zeisel created a unique art-design book titled Hundred and more.

BUILDERS PLAY WITH BAUHAUS

It is an interactive book. The users can play at being builders and discover the Bauhaus world by themselves.

It is no coincidence that Hundred and more is being published by Edition Canz. “The publisher became internationally famous with the Bauhaus. In 1968, Canz published the catalogue of the famous Bauhaus exhibition in Stuttgart that later travelled the world. Since then, Canz has a name in the art world. So I am very pleased that Edition Canz is showcasing this unique art-design book on the Bauhaus anniversary”, explains editor and director Heinz Wurzel.

Hundred and more is both book and game. Hans Karl Zeisel proves how many abstract sculptures can be built with four simple wooden building blocks in red, yellow, blue and green, each one 7.4 x 7.4 centimetres long. In the enclosed booklet he creates 100 sculptures himself, and with the title “Hundred and more” he invites the users to explore even more variations. As Stuttgart journalist Adrienne Braun writes in the preface: “Suddenly one is astonished to discovery how exciting the interaction of profane surfaces, corners and borders, colours and shapes everywhere in this world is.”

As a designer, graphic artist and concrete artist, Hans Karl Zeisel has always considered himself a Bauhaus-oriented creator. “I came up with Hundred and More when I was once again looking for something playful that could be configured in different ways, something that could help foster, heighten and preserve creativity”, he explains. He had already designed a magnet-tile-based game with four coloured, two-dimensional squares on the occasion of the 100 years of Stankowski exhibition at the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart. With Hundred and More, he wanted to look into the third dimension and create small-scale sculptures for everyone. “With every new positioning or change, every builder becomes an artist”, Hans Karl Zeisel says.

MORE ABOUT HANS KARL ZEISEL

Hans Karl Zeisel has consistently put the fundamental idea of variety in simplicity into practice in numerous other works and concrete pieces.

Besides numerous concrete art works, he created a variable wall clock. A watch designed by him will also appear in 2019. Another game-design-book is likewise in development.

HANS KARL ZEISEL

Typographer, graphic artist, designer, author

Lives and works in Korb, near Stuttgart, and in Budapest

He has held exhibitions in Berlin, Budapest, Munich, Paris, Pecs, Potsdam, Rome, Stuttgart, and many other cities.

INFLUENCED BY THE BAUHAUS

Faithful to linearity. Play with life’s shapes, circle, square, triangle. Exhaust, sound out, what is possible, what doesn’t yet exist. What can be done without abandoning clarity, concreteness. Experiment with colours, materials.

Curiosity towards new shapes, other combinations. Explore the material: what does it yield, how and where does it influence the work?

Discover new spaces, perspectives, points of view: always surprise with concrete art’s endless variety. Hans Karl Zeisel’s work can be briefly characterised this way. With his interactive book Hundred and more and his wall clock The M.O.M he has achieved this once again in an impressive, creative way.

HUNDRED AND MORE

Hundred and more is in German and English, and is composed of a 220-page, 14.8 × 14.8 cm book, and four colour, 7.4 × 7.4 cm wooden squares, which come in a stable cardboard box.

Available in well-sorted design and museum shops and in any place with books. Or directly from the publisher.

34.95 EUR (D)
35.95 EUR (A)
40.00 CHF (CH)

More about Hans Karl Zeisel
Go to the publisher’s shop