Goodbye Berlin!

Berlin life is a definite whirlwind. I've been milking my last days with all my wonderful new friends here, only to come down with an epic cold. Gross.

Despite feeling terrible, I went last night to the Berliner Ensemble to see the Kaukasische Kreidekreis. It was so good. I was super impressed by the acting, production, etc. I also find it hilarious how long German curtain calls are. Anyway, I have proceeded to spend this entire day packing and being sick.

Tomorrow is my last day in Berlin. My to do list is long: I have to finish packing, do laundry, meet friends, meet landlord, move out, etc. etc. I wish the last moments could be a bit more leisurely, but moving out of places never is.

All in all, this month has been amazing. My academic achievements have been questionable in their usefulness to my original purpose, but I don't feel like the time was wasted. I discovered some really interesting things and went to a record number of museums. I was really worried when I was planning this trip that I would be super lonely, but somehow I managed to meet a bunch of great people (thanks Ox!) and it's been just fabulous.

Thanks for the support, Herr Prof. Shahan, Friends, Family, etc.

I think I will keep blogging in Freiburg, but much less often.

Parks, James, and Photography

The past few days have been great.

On Tuesday, I basically just walked more. I took the train out to Ostkreuz, then checked out Treptower Park, Görlitzer Park, and various little things on the way. The memorial at Treptower was just as shocking as I had remembered it (Frau, if you are reading, know that I did not roll down anything this time). Yesterday, I went to the Berlinische Galerie. This was probably my favorite art museum I've seen so far in Berlin.

The highlight of the gallery, for me, was an exhibit by a photographer named Nan Goldin. She's American, but did some work in Berlin and other places in Europe. There wasn't anything specific about her work that impressed me; she just seems to have a gift for capturing some of the most real portraits I have ever seen. There was one photograph of a friend of hers sitting on a bed, with that recently-crying but now just sad, wet-looking expression. Good stuff.

There was also an exhibit of photography by Arno Fischer, which was awesome. His work is black and white, with some really awesome shots of Berlin. Upstairs in the museum, they had various post-Wende architectural proposals on display, mostly that never happened. It was sort of crazy to see what they could have/might do to Alexanderplatz.

Yesterday afternoon I went to meet my friend Lilly so she could show me around her neighborhood in Schöneberg. It was cool; West Berlin has a super different feel to it than East Berlin. I liked to see the differences. It was much quieter, with a lot more old people. Also just "prettier," for obvious reasons (nobody in West Berlin had architectural plans like Stalinallee).

After we parted ways I sat down and read the entirety of Washington Square by Henry James. I was impressed with myself, because I don't usual consume literature at that speed, but something about being in a foreign country makes English Lit seem so great. Plus, it's a great book, even though I found it extraordinarily frustrating and problematic. Something to look forward to discussing with my English teacher parents (does one capitalize languages in English? I don't think so...oy vey).

Today I visited Brecht's grave (and Hegel's). Not too exciting, but I felt I should pay homage. Then, falafel and more pick up soccer. Berlin. The way life should be. (doesn't have the same ring to it as Maine)

Sun! And Berlin oddities

I've spent the past two days almost strictly spazieren because it's been warm and today there was even some sun!

On Sunday, I went with a couple of my friends to an awesome Brunch place called Entweder Oder in Prenzlauer Berg. Best idea ever. The German conception of brunch basically means a huge platter of fixins and a basket of warm brötchen. So good. Then we walked to the Mauerpark to check out the Flohmarkt, which was cool, but apparently it is cooler in good weather. We took some compulsory pictures of paint, au Ramsey/Herr Dr. Prof. Shahan:

Then, we headed further out, to this cool park near Gesundbrunnen. There is a huge tower that was previously an anti-aircraft tower during the war, according to my friend Dan. It is a super creepy remnant of the war, and the Soviet-style monument on top doesn't make it much cheerier. But, it was a super cool park and an interesting spot. Here's a picture of one side that people use as a climbing wall:

Today I finally went to look at the Gendarmenmarkt for the first time on this trip. Cool, but not as fascinating as some of the more gritty remnants of German history, in my opinion. I met up with my friend Lilly around lunch. We ate Dada Falafel, then proceeded to have one of the most Kafka-esque experiences of my time in Berlin: getting her a replacement for her lost HU Ausweis/Bahn card. Now, this sounds like something that might take a little bit of bureaucratic finagling, but the reality of the situation far exceeded my expectations. For one, the office in question is open two hours a day, two days a week. Second, the official person in question wasn't there at first. She/I kept getting pointed to different rooms within the Hauptgebäude, which would have been fine, except for the appearance of that place. It was almost impossible to navigate, complete with interrogation-like lighting and various Baustelle that made things impassible. A sample:

I seriously felt like the Maus in "Kleine Fabel." Anyway, it was fun in its own way and we survived, ready for an outdoor excursion: Tempelhof! Woo!!

Tempelhof airport closed recently, and now the runway/field is open as a park. This place is so awesome. The building, for one, is huge. It also has a super imposing style that is a stunning example of Nazi-era architecture. The airfield is also amazing because of its sheer size. It is super bizarre to walk through Berlin and suddenly hit such a massive open space, accompanied by an extremely scary-looking building. Plus, there were guys wind-skateboarding. Yes, that exists. Pictures:

(ahh ugly me!)

This entire post sort of makes Berlin seem like a cold, harsh place, but in reality, all of this stuff just gives the city a kind of life and visible history that makes it what it is.

After the spazieren, I proceeded to start working on Berlin Alexanderplatz. It is hard, but doable. I've also come to the point in this trip where I know I won't achieve any more hard core research, so I'm just trying to see as much and learn as much as I can while I'm here. This includes: Berlinische Galerie, Tacheles, Brecht Haus, more parks, more reading, more library fun, etc. I know I'll come back here, but the pressure is still on to really live it.

Mapplethorpe, "Shoot!", more Buchstaben, Plans

This morning I went to C/O Berlin to see the Mapplethorpe exhibit. Mapplethorpe is intense stuff. For those of you who know the TV show the L Word, you might remember an extended debate in the show about art, sexuality, voyeurism, etc. Mapplethorpe's work was featured on the show. I know, unfortunately, very little about photography, but the images he captured are indeed some of the most beautifully, if sometimes shockingly, framed photos I've ever seen.

What I found even more interesting was the other exhibit the museum had up, called "Shoot!" The exhibit was about fairground booths that would take a picture of you shooting if you hit the bulls-eye of a target. Pay to try, then get your photo as a prize. The exhibit showed some of these pictures, then others by photographers who explored the idea of "shooting" yourself, almost literally with a gun, and a camera. It was really cool.

The fairgrounds shots are funny, because there are usually various family and friends standing around watching, and the picture sort of oddly captures an instant of interest and surprise. The shooter is the photographer, shooting his/herself. The other pictures were awesome. A couple of the photographers (names forgotten already; forgot to bring in my notebook) actually shot a gun through the lens of the camera, which somehow cause the film to capture the image of the shooter, but with a weird black hole in the middle and shatter marks around it. The result is an image that has literally been "shot" in two ways.

The museum also had a booth set up where you could try the game yourself, but the two euro was a no-go for me.

In the afternoon, I went back to the Letter-Museum to talk to one of the co-directors, Barbara Dechant. It wasn't really a formal interview, but she had some interesting thoughts to share about her experiences with graphic design and starting the museum. I liked talking to her; she told me she has always loved letters and collected them, and that opening the museum was like an extension of her hobby. Cool stuff.

I bought Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin today, so that I can attempt to pretend that I will read it. Tomorrow I'm going to Prenzlauer Berg for Bruch and Mauerpark, and hopefully have some time to read, either Döblin or more from Brecht's journals. I also bought tickets for Die Kaukasische Kreidekreis today. Yay!

A day of Lufting and Reading

Frische Luft. My IES Berlin friends (Oxnard and company) have taught me the importance of frische Luft and opening windows every day in Berlin. They have affectionately named this process "lufting." Today was a lufting day.

I spent most of it walking all over the place in Mitte, gabbing with my language exchange partner Lena, while my open windows at home lufted everything. Marvelous.

At the library, I spent the rest of the day paging through Brecht's Arbeitsjournal, which is a fascinating window into his life and work. Each entry is super short, mentioning only a few events or thoughts of the day. I was mostly going through the part from when he lived in the US. He expressed a few times how tiring it was to work on the translation for Galileo, especially, he wrote, the sentence from scene one: "da es so ist, bleibt es nicht so."

In the journal I also came across a new Vorwort he added to Leben des Galilei after the atomic bomb; whether this part was also translated I don't know. Either way, I think it's really interesting. The rhyme scheme struck me as quite Shakespearean, with couplets. It almost resembles some of Shakespeare's famous comic openings. But, of course, the Vorwort is not comic. Note the interesting use of Großbuchstaben; I didn't change anything from how it appeared in the Arbeitsjournal:

geehrtes publikum der Breiten Straße

wir laden Sie heut in die welt der kurven und maße

zu entschleiern vor Ihrem kennerblick

die geburtsstunde der physik.

Sie sehen das leben des großen Galileo Galilei;

den kampf des fallgesetzes mit dem gratis dei,

der wissenschaft mit der obrigkeit

an der schwelle einer Neuen Zeit.

Sie sehen die wissenschaft jung, geil und drall

und Sie sehen ihren sündenfall.

sie muß essen und ihr wird gewalt getan

und so kommt sie auf die schiefe bahn

und wird, die meisterin der natur

billige gesellschaftshur.

noch ist das wahre nicht die ware

doch hat es schon dies sonderbare

daß es die vielen nicht erreicht

und macht ihr leben schwer statt leicht.

solches wissen ist aktuell

die Neue Zeit läuft ab besonders schnell

wir hoffen, Sie leihen Ihr geneigtes ohr

wenn nicht uns, so doch unserm thema, bevor

infolge der nicht gelernten lektion

auftritt die atombombe in person.

Brecht makes it very clear from his notes on Galileo that he doesn't see Galilei as either a hero or a bad guy, but the Vorwort on the atom bomb definitely seems to change, or strengthen, or perhaps even weaken the original effect of the play, whatever that might have been. I find the line "noch ist das wahre nicht die ware" particularly interesting. If science really does represent what is "wahr," how it is used (to make money off of selling a telescope, to win a war by destruction) doesn't necessarily logically coincide with the pursuit of reason. The Neue Zeit, in all caps, is also fascinating. This kind of language was everywhere even in the original play, and after 1945 took on a whole new meaning.

Tomorrow I'm going to the Buchstabenmuseum one more time to talk to the director(s). Also high on my list: Tacheles and c/0 Berlin, which has a Mappelthorpe exhibit I still have yet to see. Hopefully the sun will come out eventually--I think I've forgotten what it looks like. Frische Luft is even better with some sun to go with it, I would imagine.

Demo, Pick up Fussball, Galileo

Last night I went with my roommate to Friedrichshain to check it out, and we walked right into a huge demonstration about squatters getting evicted from an apartment! There were tons of young people angrily shouting, and even more police. Very exciting.

Today I finished Galileo in the morning and then got extremely distracted by a pickup soccer game in the afternoon. So, I haven't done much with it, but I will be revisiting Brecht's notes on the play and thoughts on the American version, which are both published in the same volume from his notebooks.

Stay tuned.

Failure of Reason, more Brecht, OSS, FBI, etc.

Over the past couple days my impulse to read Brecht has compelled me to look a bit further into German Exilliteratur/reception in the U.S./investigation and/or collaboration with government agencies, including, but not limited to, the State department, the OSS, and the FBI. Ironically, more sources for this particular topic are available in the U.S. even though I came to Germany because of sources, but the library here has tons of Brecht's writings that I can look at in conjunction with whatever documents I might find on the internet. And, I'm reading the literature as I go along because history, literature, theater, etc. are all, of course, interconnected (this assertion may or may not be why DAAD gave me money, so I'm going to go with it).

So, I started reading Leben des Galilei as my next play, because it is one of Brecht's plays from exile (written in Denmark) and it was performed in California as one of the first Brecht plays in the United States. Plus, there is an interesting dimension to that production, which is that the United States used atomic bomb while the Brecht and Charles Laughton were working on adapting the play for American audiences. As Brecht wrote of the event in a notebook, which was published later, "Das >>atomarische Zeitalter<< machte sein Debüt in der Mitte unserer Arbeit. Von heute auf morgen las sich die Biographie des Begründers der neuen Physik anders. Der infernalische Effekt der Großen Bombe stellte den Konflikt des Galilei mit der Obrigkeit seiner Zeit in ein neues, schärferes Licht."

Wowza. This brings immediately to mind the Dürrenmatt play Die Physiker, which I love. I haven't finished reading Galilei yet, so I'm unprepared to make any statements about the message, etc. (I also haven't read the American adaptation, which might be even more interesting), but I think that Brecht's statement about the atomic bomb is good to think about while reading, and reminds me of some assertions I have heard from a certain professor about the failure of the Enlightenment. At what point is the pursuit of reason futile because of the inevitable misuse of science by politicians and military strategists? How do you fight the "Obrigkeit" of traditional society without discovering things that humankind can't even deal with?

In scene four of Galilei, Galilei speaks of his telescope. Remember, this is from the orginial German version, written in 1938/9: "Die Wahrheit ist das Kind der Zeit, nicht der Autorität. Unsere Unwissenheit ist unendlich, tragen wir einen Kubikmillimeter ab! Wozu jetzt noch so klug sein wollen, wenn wir endlich ein klein wenig weniger dumm sein können! Ich habe das unvorstellbare Glück gehabt, ein neues Instrument in die Hand zu bekommen, mit dem man ein Zipfelchen des Universums etwas, nicht viel, näher besehen kann. Benützen Sie es. [!!]"

Wowza again! I'm dying to know how they ended up translating this/performing in a post-war American production! Brecht wrote more on this text in his notebooks, and I will revisit as soon as I finish reading the play.

I have also been perusing various sources pertaining to the OSS, FBI and German writers. The OSS (Office of Strategic Services), the precursor to the FBI, worked extensively with anti-Hitler Germans to develop strategies of "psychological warfare" in addition to on the ground spying, etc. Part of what the OSS did was work with German exiles to form societies for the freedom of Germany among prominent German exiles. In the few OSS documents I read today, I found repeated reference to Thomas Mann as an invaluable influence on "all Germans" even though he and his family were also closely investigated by the FBI for Communist activities. Go figure. I have yet to figure out if he actually did cooperate with the OSS or not, and to what extent. I also need to figure out what Brecht's involvement with these pseudo-organic (i.e. grassroots) organizations was, but I might need to submit a Freedom of Information request to get the full scoop on the OSS communications with various German exiles.

An interesting tidbit from one memorandum that I was able to read (one OSS officer to another) was their take on "The German" and how "he" must be influenced. This comes from a memo on the need for organizations of prominent exiles: "Any attempt to influence the German people requires a special kind of approach in view of the methodical and orderliness of the German Mind [yes, in caps]. The German is always "German." His history has disciplined him to do as he is told and, consequently, he is an unusually good citizen. He is sentimental, but not emotional, and any attempt to influence him must proceed on highly logical lines." This analysis is actually pretty valid, maybe, but I find the wording super weird, not to mention sexist, and the precedent this kind of "warfare" set for the Cold War is a whole other problem (cf. Iran coup, Guatemala coup, Bay of Pigs, etc.).

Anyway, the FBI was a whole different aspect of the Exile/US Gov relationship, and Brecht's FBI file is available online! Yay! It is hundreds of pages long, but from what I skimmed through, it is almost humorously repetitive and focused on the meaning of texts. The investigation looks more like a German Studies notebook that an FBI investigation. I knew that during the Cold War the Feds were preoccupied with hidden meanings and cultural infiltration, but it looks really weird on paper to have a translation and then one sentence with something like "example of revolutionary writing; will get back to you when I have more." (I made that up, but it's not too far off.) I also found it hilarious that Brecht split the country the day after his HUAC hearing in October, and acknowledgement of that fact doesn't show up in the file until mid-January. The file keeps going after that because they still thought he would come back.

I also went to the Pergamon Museum yesterday, for fun. It was cool, I guess (I liked the cuneiform tablets, of course), but I couldn't help wondering the whole time: What the heck is all of this stuff doing in Germany!? Colonialist/Archeological/"Ethnological" claim of other people's ancient treasures, anyone? P.S. I also find it somewhat unsettling that "Ethnologie" is still a subject in Germany. What exactly is this, and what does it mean?

More on all of this to come.

One more thing

Listen to this recording. Brilliant.

Brecht

After I went to the Volksbühne, I got an overwhelming desire to change direction (again). I still love typography and I'm not over the street sign idea at all, but it's a complicated topic that I'm having trouble figuring out how to deal with. I also can't decide if this is something that I actually want to do research on. So, instead of forcing myself into discovering a brilliant research topic, I decided to just read some literature.

After seeing SCHMEISS DEIN EGO WEG! I started feel guilty about how much I pretend to love Brecht without having read very many of his works. So, I read Die Dreigroschenoper today. When I finished after only getting up to use the rest facilities once, I felt extremely confused and also couldn't really feel my feet. I admit that I went straight home to look up a synopsis to try to decipher what I had missed. Turns out, plot-wise, I didn't miss anything. So, three cheers for my German reading and zero cheers for my play/opera-understanding. But, here are my thoughts:

1. I'm extremely disappointed that there are no productions of this show happening in Berlin in the next two weeks. If I had to pick out one major point that I got out of our Woyzeck class last year, it is the importance of production. The Dreigroschenoper, even more than a standard play, is so different in on stage than in writing. As a student of literature it is sometimes tempting to read plays like novels. We've being doing since middle school with our requisite one Shakespeare play per year of high school. Reading the text is also important; close-reading and a really excellent understanding of the play is the goal, but not really the purpose. We read it to analyze it, but Brecht wrote it for production. All of this seems extremely obvious, but it goes back to the original issue of typography (ho ho!) and perception--my experience of reading the Threepenny Opera in 12 pt. Garamond in a cafe in Berlin removes the removal of the vierte Wand and, perhaps more importantly, the music. The argument that reading a drama is not the same as watching a drama is pretty basic, but it is nevertheless necessary to point out.

2. Women!?! I don't quite know how to start discussing this aspect of this text. I actually would much rather be dealing with this in a class than on a blog, but this is not an option right now. Again, an analysis of the female roles would be a lot more interesting with an Inszenierung to work with. In any case, I find the role of prostitution extremely interesting. The men in the play are beggars; the women are prostitutes, of one sort or another. Mac, at the beginning, seems to effortlessly dodge the law, get what he wants (in an absurdly easy fashion), etc, but he is first brought down by his new wife (ish)'s family, then "verraten von den Huren" and given away by women at various moments. Women constantly are his weakness, even though they seem to innocently grovel before him. I don't really know how to read these relationships. Any commentary would be helpful. Also, I thought it was interesting how often the characters used the expression "gnädige Frau." The inappropriateness of this term in the context of prostitutes and beggars might be part of Brecht's alienation.

3. I love how Brecht makes it confusing who the protagonist/antagonist is. This (I think) is one of his most important theatrical devices, and it works so well to make the reader/viewer question what is happening in a critical way. I want to go back and read some secondary sources on Brecht again before I go into this stuff too much, because I don't want to misread.

I will come back to this opera a bit more after I read some criticism, but I also want to read a couple more plays (suggestions, please!) and see a few more. As to the history research, fear not, this does lead somewhere, and somewhere I really like:

Part of what made me want to read Brecht was because of something I read early this morning in a book called "Brecht in der USA," which I sort of randomly decided to look at. The book had translations into German of various reviews and interviews from the period that Brecht lived in the U.S. Threepenny was one of only three or four Brecht plays that was performed in the U.S. at the time. I am somewhat considering looking into Brecht/other German "exiles" in the U.S. during the Second World War and the Cold War, so I thought going back to the texts was important. Anyway, the point I wanted to make had to do with a tidbit in this book about the OSS (the Office of Strategic Services), which was a precursor to the CIA. Get this: even though Brecht was under serious watch from both HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee) and the FBI, the OSS thought seriously about using Brecht as part of their secret propaganda programs! According to the document I read today, they decided not to ask him because they didn't think he had enough influence among the "common man" because his audience was mostly the intelligentsia. I find this so incredibly ironic and fascinating on so many levels. I would love to know if the OSS ever contacted him, and if so, how that went over. The thought of Bertolt Brecht, of all people, writing propaganda for the U.S. seems truly incredible to me.

As I do more reading, I'm going to investigate more on Brecht's interactions with Americans and his reception in the U.S. I find this intriguing. I'll also be able to do more of this back the the U.S. where I'll have more access to American sources. Who knows, I might pursue this further, though I'm changing my mind daily at this point.

Apologies that this all took such a sudden turn. Hopefully I come out of this trip actually having achieved something somewhat specific-ish.

A relaxing weekend, Volksbühne and all

I've taken a couple days off of working (if that's what I'm going to call what I do) to relax a bit and hang out with friends. Tonight I went to a show called SCHMEISS DEIN EGO WEG at the Volksbühne. It was exactly as outrageous and way over my head as I expected. One more thing I wished Herr Shahan were there for to explain. There were only about three characters, all arguing about Seele and Körper and the vierte Wand, which there physically was on the stage separating the audience from the set, back and forth from which the actors would move throughout. Whenever they went back behind, a strange camera projection would show on the wall above. I got the Brecht reference and bits and pieces of the humor, but I basically missed the whole point, I think. It was still pretty awesome. I might go back to see Tod eines Praktikanten.

Potsdam, Zierfische

Yesterday I rode a bicycle to Potsdam with some friends, then came back to go to the Zierfische opening of the Buchstabenmuseum. Check out their website for the story of the sign. I also tested out the panorama feature on my little camera, which turned out pretty well. Hopefully you can click on them to see full size.

Tonight is the Lange Nacht der Museen. It's an evening where you buy a single ticket and can get bussed around to as many museums as you want until two a.m. I generally like doing one museum per day, taking my time, etc, but I might have to do this just for the sake of it. It also might be a good way to see some museums I wasn't planning on going to. We shall see.

By George, I may or may not have it.

In the search for a thesis topic, I might have finally come up with something while trying to fall asleep last night. In my sleepy haze it might have seemed way more brilliant than it actually is, but I like it at the moment, so I'm going to run with it.

Everything I've done and seen so far has made me ask a lot of questions. This is good. Now, many things I've come across are pushing me to ask more questions about signage (blogger is telling me signage is not a word; it is definitely a word) in Berlin. After watching a few Spiekermann interviews and reading some of his stuff, I've learned that he is the designer of the typeface and look of Deutsche Bahn (except the red DB logo, which I believe was designed by Weidemann). I also observed that the typeface of street signs in Berlin is an interesting mix of modern and old-fashioned elements; it is a sans serif type, yet uses versions of the old Esszet and z. Here are some examples:

Another observation I have is that the street names in Berlin have changed a LOT. Between the Kaiser, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, the occupation, the Cold War, the Berlin Wall, DDR, BRD, reunification, and the continuing struggle for a solid national and city identity, place names in Berlin have been in an almost constant state of flux throughout history. So, the signs must have changed!

So, who has designed all of these different signs? Where have those signs gone? Do people care when the names change? Do they care when the signs change? If they don't care, do they even notice? Who decided all the names? Who decided on the typeface? How does the print through which geographic orientation is communicated affect the experience of orientation and identification with a given place?

Most importantly: a street or Platz name means nothing if it's not on a sign. Period. The design of the sign matters. Erik Spiekermann designed the current Bahn signs in the subway, but what else has happened in to the graphic design of signs in the history of Berlin's place-name-process?? I am making this question my mission for my last two weeks (along with continued museum visits...).

I also may or may not decide to connect this with Paris, which I know nothing about, but also has a super interesting history that I'm sure connects to street names and signs. This is something for another day, though.

So, today I went to the Märkisches Museum, the museum for Berlin history. Museums are generally only good for extremely introductory info, but I wanted to see what they had in the way of pictures of street corners, reproductions of old maps, and information on the history of different neighborhoods. It was a good start. There were tidbits about the development of the Kurfürstendamm, Wilhemstrasse, etc. I also found out the details about Stalin Allee: part of Frankfurter Allee was renamed Stalin Allee in 1949, then in 1961 renamed again, part Frankfurter Allee and part Karl-Marx-Allee. It's still that way now.

After the museum, I decided to go back to the Buchstabenmuseum to take some pictures to post. I have a lot, but here are the ones of the HAUP from the old Ostbahnhof and the RUNDFUNK from the DDR radio, along with a couple others that I forgot to identify but demonstrate the awesomeness of the museum:

(HAUP) (RUNDFUNK)

This stuff also all relates to my initial questions--somebody clearly cares about saving letters, but how about street signs with historical names and typefaces?

Then I scurried back to my apartment to start looking around the internet for stuff on the graphic design of street signs. I'm really bad at using the search engines on German libraries, but I did manage to find a book that is essentially a Lexikon of street names in Berlin, with a volume for each neighborhood. It was published in the mid-nineties, presumably to ease any place-name-freakout/identity crisis Berlin probably went through during that period. Who knows if it worked, but it briefly explains the names of streets since the beginning of Berlin. Some haven't changed since the 17th century, and others seem to have changed since the book was published in 1995. I want to go beyond what the names have been to what the signs looked like, but this is a great resource.

I also found an interesting essay about the politics of cartography called "Kartographie und Politik: Anmerkungen zum Stadtplan >>Berlin - Hauptstadt der DDR<<" Definitely interesting stuff. Plus, the footnotes pointed me to the Landesarchiv Berlin, where I should be able to look at a whole archive of maps. Maps are good, but still don't get me to where the signs went. I'm a little unsure of where to go on this one, but I found a news article about a German typographer who has taken an interest in/inspiration from old street signs in Berlin. Verena Gerlach lives in Berlin, and I'm going to try to get an interview with her. She seems to know her stuff when it comes to signage in Berlin. I'm still contemplating trying to interview Spiekermann. He's pretty high profile, but hey, it can't hurt to ask.

Tomorrow I am going on a bicycle adventure to Potsdam with some friends of Dave Oxnard's, so I probably won't make any progress on the research. The Buchstabenmuseum has an opening for a new exhibit in the evening, though, so I should have some pictures from both that and the Fahrradtour. Happy Weekend!

Schrift in Berlin, pt. 2: Im Kiez

From what I gather, "Kiez" is a Berlin slang term for neighborhood. In my attempt to sound cool, I named this section "In the neighborhood." This may or may not be a misuse, but I'm over it. These specimens come from my walk between the Humboldt library and my apartment on Tucholskystrasse. The dog at the end was just sitting in the window of a super fancy boutique!! They really took "how much is that doggy in the window" to heart! I think he deserves better than Helvetica, though!

History of typography vs. typography as history

As I've been reading about the history of typography, I see that the history of type fits into the history of Germany (and everywhere else) as evidence cultural and political trends. Like any other aspect of aesthetic culture, especially those that are so closely tied with perception bzw. consumerism bzw. politics, etc, typography has changed with various movements like Modernism, Expressionism, and Punk (yes, Punk is included in encyclopedias of typeface, CS). So, why is typeface just as or more important to history than art, music, photography, etc (in my opinion)? It might not be, but for the sake of argument, here's mine:

Type, as a subset of graphic design, is both art and communication. A lot of things are art and communication, but, in our society (I'm going to go ahead and be ethnocentric for a moment), almost everyone can read. Definitely everyone who has power can read. So, our perceptions of information like personal messages, advertisements, laws, etc. are all conveyed through type.

If you read the link I posted yesterday about the Eszet, or even some of it, you know that Germans take spelling very seriously. I think typography is particularly significant here because of the cultural meaning type and spelling have taken on throughout history. In the United States type has similar effects as far as how we perceive information, but I would argue that the historical/aesthetic significance is less. The fact that Germans still argue about the Rechtschreibreform (which stems from a debate over the extent to which Fraktur should still be a part of the German Roman alphabet!) is testament to the importance of type here in Germany. This is not to say it's not important other places; I always think back to the designer on the film Helvetica who said that she always equated the font Helvetica with the Vietnam War.

This is getting repetitive with my previous posts, but I'm working on how to fit all this into my academic life, so the repetition is helpful, please bear with me.

Even though I somewhat take issue with some of Weidemann's ideas, his book has a long section on "Schrift und Geschichte" that I need to revisit. Also, I think I'm going to try to set up some interviews. I need to pose some questions before people who know what they are talking about.

I checked out the Mauerpark today. Very cool, but I still don't really know what to say about graffiti. It's a subculture I find mysterious and daunted by. On the agenda for tomorrow: more Weidemann, Berlinische Galerie (maybe) and a trip back to the Buchstabenmuseum.

Also, I saw this on Schönhauser Allee and I found it interesting:

P.S. Double post day! Exciting!

The epic linkage of the blogosphere!

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Is a picture really worth a thousand words?

I think I might have opened a can of worms I totally can't handle by bringing up graffiti, but, alas, it's still something to think about. Re: Cyrus questions about Die Dame I think I will work on tomorrow, hopefully in conjunction with a post about the results of the contest on Miss Mia.

I'm not going to attempt to say anything about what graffiti is or is not in general terms anymore, because there is so much that ranges every bit of any spectrum that can ever exist. But, I think it is safe to say that graffiti IS typography, just as much as any other written word is. At the same time, it seems to be self-conscious (or rather, the artist is self-conscious) about the medium, and therefore the Schrift itself tends to fall into categories just as much as mass advertisements, books, etc. I'm going to stop writing and starting quoting, because what other people say is probably more useful at this point. First, Dittmar on typography/graffiti:

"Nicht nur die Bedeutung der Worte selbst wird also mitgeteilt, sondern durch die Angestaltung der Schriftzeichen wird auch auf weitere Bedeutungen reflektiert. Die Schrift spiegelt dabei den Sinn, der abhängig vom jeweiligen zeitlichen, dringlichen oder personalen Kontext ist."

To this I respond by saying that the same is true for all typeface. Graffiti might resemble pictures more closely than a book's typeface, but any type is chosen for a certain purpose. Part of what makes graffiti so interesting is the interplay between images and words. I suppose the same is true for any visual media.

In his book Wo der Buchstabe das Wort Führt, typographer Kurt Weidemann addresses graffiti in a different way, in the context of a discussion on "Das nachalphabetische Zeitalter," or, the post-alphabet age. On graffiti:

"Graffiti-Sprayer erfinden Zeichnen. Aber die besagen keine Wort mehr. Das Nachalphabet, das auf Zügen und Bahnhöfen, Wänden und Mauern, Über- und Unterführungen manchen Ärger und manche Schönheit offenbart, demonstriert den Ausdrucksbedarf der Wortlosen."

I'm not sure if I buy that graffiti-ers are "wortlos," but I like a point he makes about pictures vs. words later in the chapter in a caption to a picture of one of those emergency escape directionals in the seat-back pocket of an airplane:

"Mit der Weltweite des Verkehrs und des Handels in großem Umfang haben Schrift und Sprache ihre nationalen Grenzen und Kommunikationsschwierigkeiten aufgezeigt. Die Sprache der Bilder verschafft unmittelbares Verständnis und is auch für eine Gefahrensituation- harmloser als Worte es sein können. Das Bild hat nicht die Autorität des Wortes. [my italics]"

I can't decide how I feel about this! I definitely agree that a word can express something concrete, but how concrete is it? More so than pictures? In the context of the card in the seat-back pocket, pictures definitely serve to soften a potentially alarming idea, but does that idea apply to all things?

I've also noticed that in Germany road signs and things use pictures a lot more than in the US, z.B. road work signs here are all graphic instead of our huge orange ones that just say ROAD WORK. Maybe this is just another example of the Weltweite des Verkehrs Weidemann is talking about.

I think I need to think more about all this graffiti stuff (and read Herr Dr. Prof. Shahan's article) before trying to say any more. I seem to be winding myself into a confused knot.

Speaking of typography (when do I speak of anything else?), check out this clip of an interview with Erik Spiekermann. I keep hoping to run into him somewhere in Berlin, but this is unlikely.

I also went to the Deutsche Kinemathek museum today. It was pretty fun, especially the several-room shrine to Marlene Dietrich. The Germans wouldn't have it any other way.

Graffiti als Typographie?

First off, an answer to Herr Dr. Prof. Shahan's question about objectivity: no. As Spiekermann would tell you, even typeface can't be objective. Even those designers that attempt to achieve objectivity lose that goal in the process of trying to achieve it. But, a lot of people say that the best typeface is one you don't notice. Maybe that is the achievement of objectivity in visual representation? I still take issue with that because then you have to define "noticing." What do we notice without knowing we're noticing it? We read things graphically, so we must be noticing the typeface on some level.

Today I went down to look at the East Side Gallery. I liked it, but I sort of think that the art is predictably peace-loving and almost cheery in its post-unification-ness. It made me wish there were large sections of the wall still preserved with the original graffiti.

Which got me to thinking. I took a few pictures of graffiti in my little photo study of Alexanderplatz, because it seemed natural to include it. But, there isn't much talk of graffiti in the big books on Typographic eras, styles, and methods that I've been skimming through. This is mostly because graffiti artists aren't designers--at least in the traditional sense--who create images to sell products. But, graffiti is presumably trying to achieve something, whatever it may be, and it uses words--Schrift--to depict that whatever message. Typography doesn't seem like the right word because it implies the use of print, but in any case, graffiti is a definite form of Schrift with definite implications. I'm not sure what, yet, but I might start by taking more pictures, and reading this book:

Im Vorbeigehen: Graffiti, Tattoo, Tragetaschen: En-Passant-Medien von Jakob Dittmar.

I went back to Die Dame today as well, and found that the switch away from Fraktur happened in 1921, whereas for BIZ it never happened. Both were from the Ullstein publishing company. Clearly, design choices had to do with the audience (Berliner illustrierte Zeitung=everybody's magazine aka traditional German, Die Dame=high culture for the New Woman aka Modern, although still not in sans serif).

Tomorrow I think I'll go to the Museum for Film und Fernsehen, for fun, and read the Dittmar. Hopefully the sun comes out at some point!

Answers, Kollwitz, Spiekermann

When I went to the library today, Die neue Typographie was absent from the shelf. I hope it reappears. In any case, I will attempt to answer some questions my professor posed to my post from a couple of days ago, though without any Tschichold quotations to back me up.

1. Tschichold wrote an entire section about photography, but I'm at a loss as to specifics of his argument. But, I think a good response to your question is the general view that photography is objective (which it isn't) compared to say, expressionist painting. Jan has a problem with accompanying a Modern medium like photography with Schnörkel, etc. And, I think that as a man of the Neue Sachlichkeit, he not only has faith in technological wonders, but views them as superior and more beautiful than human creation. As he wrote, order=beauty.

2. To answer the question of "Beamtenschrift," going back to the woodcut commissioned by Maximilian I is useful. You're right! Fraktur in its original form had everything to do with pictures. It was created to accompany images that the public/visitors/admirers/whoever could appreciate, while historians were probably the only ones the Kaiser expected to read the actual text. Tschichold seems to reject Fraktur precisely because of its inaccessibility, both aesthetically and historically. He believed that basic functionality was the first priority of any typeface. In that sense, Fraktur could be connected with elitism, old structures of social order, despotism, etc. Ironically, several designers interviewed in the documentary Helvetica equated the ultimate modernist sans serif, Helvetica, with war, consumerism, uniformity, oppression, etc. Functionality, by the late 20th century, came full circle to become a typographic oppressor instead of liberator. At least that's what some post-modernists said. Don't quote me on this.

3. Tschichold thought EVERYTHING should be in Grotesk. Everything.

And, finally, I think the answer to the Grotesk vs. Law question, the only answer, from the Tschichold perspective, is that words themselves are not objective, but rather their graphic representation should be (hence the sans serifs). So, I think that posing Grotesk and Law against each other is invalid because one is a typeface and the other is something the typeface represents. Feel free to shoot me down on this one.

On to my ever-exciting activities of the day:

I went to the library to see if the Berliner illustrierte Zeitung ever switched out of Fraktur during the Weimar Republic. It didn't. While I was looking, I came across an interesting tidbit that goes back to my original topic: representations of the New Woman. In an October issue of the BIZ, 1927, the cover featured an image of a woman and a man, dressed and styled almost identically with fitted sport coats, ties, slick hair, and cigarettes, walking together with figures in the background looking on and evidently making snide remarks about the woman's androgynous appearance. Inside the front cover, the Zeitung posed a question with a competition for who could come up with the wittiest answer. It was similar to the New Yorker caption contest, but mean. Here is what it said:

"Das Bild auf der Titelseite zeigt eine Zeitgestalt "Fräulein Mia," einen neuen Mädchentyp, der sich in Arbeit, Lebensführung, und Erscheinung den Mann zum Vorbild genommen hat...Was sagen Sie bloß zu Fräulein Mia? 3.000 M für die witzigsten Lösungen."

Hilarious. (Not.) Coming into this topic, I was sort of expecting to have to interpret a lot of complex imagery with many meanings reflecting different views of women, but this is pretty blatant and straightforward. It will be interesting to compare this view with images from Die Dame in 1927 and 28.

I went to the Käthe Kollwitz museum in the afternoon. I have to say, of all the art I've seen so far, hers is easily the most beautiful, in my opinion. Even her political posters feature handwritten script, which is refreshing after thinking really hard about Modernist typeface lately.

I also started reading a book by a designer named Erik Spiekermann called Ursache & Wirkung: ein typographische Roman. To be honest, I don't really understand it. But, his basic thing is that modernists are bad because they make everything uniform, which is not the way things are. He is also just awesome, as demonstrated in this news clip.

Even though I find Spiekermann fascinating, his super precise and technical discussion of typeface in his book sort of made me realize that I am completely unequipped to actually study typography, mostly because of my lack of background in graphic design. So, I think I might change gears a bit and try to ground my investigations in history a bit more. We'll see how that goes.

Anyway, I guess the only Richtung to head at this point is forward, which I will do by looking more at Die Dame, maybe checking out the DDR museum (the Buchstabenmuseum has gotten me super interested in relics/material implications of the fall of the DDR), and attempting to get access to the poster archive of the Deutsches Historisches Museum. That would be truly epic, as kids these days would say. In any case, stay tuned.

Schrift in Berlin, pt. 1: Alexanderplatz

I went to the Bauhaus Archive museum today. It was very cool. I saw some more drawings, models and things by all the famous Bauhaus greats: Mies van der Rohe, Gropius, etc. I liked (of course) one quotation of Herbert Bayer the exhibit had up on the wall: "wir schreiben alles klein, denn wir sparen damit zeit." Bayer wanted to reject was he perceived as German over-use of capitals. Turns out a typeface has been developed based on his drawings: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ABayer.png

When I emerged from the U Bahn at Alex afterward, I decided to start a bit of a photo project to go along with my wanderings. There isn't much point, except to take pictures of Schrift in Berlin because I like it. Unfortunately, the photography is not good thanks to my low-level camera and perpetually bad light in Berlin. Alas, life goes on. So, for today, here is Schrift in Berlin, pt. 1: Alexanderplatz.

Tomorrow I will go back to the library (for real this time), then probably check out the Käthe Kollwitz museum. I might even take a break from talking about type/lettering. Maybe.