“Deutsches Holz”: Wood, Wirkung, and the Werkbund in 1933
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Freyja Hartzell
FREYJA HARTZELL teaches the history of modern design, architecture, and art at Bard Graduate Center in New York City. Her first book,Richard Riemerschmid’s Extraordinary Living Things , appears with MIT Press this fall. She is currently working on a new book and related exhibition on dolls and the concept of likeness.
Abstract
In the wake of Germany’s ascension to nationhood in 1871, “deutsches Holz”—the stuff of half-timbered houses, Bierkellers, and three-legged chairs—became the building material of a new nationalist politics. But in 1933, after a decade of modernist innovations in steel, glass, and concrete, wood appealed once more to the German cultural consciousness. Amidst economic depression, social upheaval, and political turmoil, wood felt familiar and trustworthy, warm and reassuring—ubiquitous and cheap. But whose Holz was it? This essay employs wood as both substance and symbol to investigate the entangled crises of the German nation, the German Werkbund, and, in particular, Werkbund leader and architect-designer Richard Riemerschmid, in the teeth of the Nazi propaganda machine.
About the author
FREYJA HARTZELL teaches the history of modern design, architecture, and art at Bard Graduate Center in New York City. Her first book, Richard Riemerschmid’s Extraordinary Living Things, appears with MIT Press this fall. She is currently working on a new book and related exhibition on dolls and the concept of likeness.
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Photo Credits: 1 author. — 2, 9–12, 14, 17, 18 Architekturmuseum der Technischen Universität, Munich, photo: © 2022 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn (all reproductions of the work are excluded from the CC BY license). — 3, 8 Münchner Stadtmuseum, Munich, photo: © 2022 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn (all reproductions of the work are excluded from the CC BY license). — 4 from: Martin Gerlach, Formenwelt aus dem Naturreiche (Die Quelle, 5), Vienna 1904, pl. 5. — 5 photo: 石川 Shihchuan (URL: https://www.flickr.com/photos/40891106@N08/4569896543 [last accessed June 29, 2022]); CC BY-SA 2.0. — 6 Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington DC. — 7 Kunstgewerbemuseum, Berlin, photo: © 2022 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn (all reproductions of the work are excluded from the CC BY license). — 13 from: Olivier Gabet and Anne Monier (eds), The Spirit of the Bauhaus, trans. by Ruth Sharman, London 2018, 160. — 16 URL: https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/image/hitler-youthswastika-formation (last accessed June 29, 2022). — 19 from: Heinrich Lauterbach, Vom Holz: Eine Bildfolge, in: Die Form 8, 1933, no. 6, 181.
© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Themenschwerpunkt: Art and environment in the third reich
- Introduction: Race and Landscape in Nazi Germany*
- August Sander’s Regional Photobook Series, Nazification, and the Politics of Cultural Landscape
- Tainted Trees: Uncovering the Long Shadow over Germany’s Medieval Maypoles and Ancient Tree Cults
- “Deutsches Holz”: Wood, Wirkung, and the Werkbund in 1933
- The Painter Werner Peiner, the Culture of the German Oil Industry, and the Nature of Hitler’s State
- Buchbesprechungen
- Italienische Barockzeichnungen im Teyler Museum
- America’s Virtues
- Kunst für »breite Bevölkerungsschichten«
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Themenschwerpunkt: Art and environment in the third reich
- Introduction: Race and Landscape in Nazi Germany*
- August Sander’s Regional Photobook Series, Nazification, and the Politics of Cultural Landscape
- Tainted Trees: Uncovering the Long Shadow over Germany’s Medieval Maypoles and Ancient Tree Cults
- “Deutsches Holz”: Wood, Wirkung, and the Werkbund in 1933
- The Painter Werner Peiner, the Culture of the German Oil Industry, and the Nature of Hitler’s State
- Buchbesprechungen
- Italienische Barockzeichnungen im Teyler Museum
- America’s Virtues
- Kunst für »breite Bevölkerungsschichten«
