Hitler Hated Concrete!

“How I wish I had been an architect!” Hitler

“Concrete is the second most widely consumed substance on earth, after water.”  US National Building Museum

 Young Adolph Hitler was rejected twice by the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (1907–1908), citing "unfitness for painting," and was told his abilities lay instead in the field of architecture.  When Hitler’s rejection by the art community was fully realized, he turned to “painting” and “designing” more than just a 2D work but an entire race of “beautiful” living “works:” the Aryan race.  However, his love for architecture never left him.  Hitler was entranced by the monuments of ancient Rome, considering Rome to be an Aryan civilization.  Hitler envisioned creating a world of beautiful people in beautiful homes who paid homage to him and his regime through the awe of impressive, beautiful monuments.  German romanticism fueled this vision of architecture.  The German architects of the school of Pragmatism realized their architectural vision was diametrically opposed to the Romantic and Baroque vision; that is, concrete, simple rectangular forms verses the dramatic, monumental Romanticism of Nazi architecture. Hitler saw architecture as “the word in stone," a method of imparting a message to the people.  Perhaps the subject of another post: a discussion of the difference between the Stone becoming Word and the Word becoming Flesh. 

So what does this have to do with concrete?  Well, the title of this post is a bit misleading.  Hitler did not exactly hate concrete.  He hated architecture that was built simply to fulfill a basic function, and thereby lacked beauty.  Hitler would use any material in order to fulfill his grand design of making buildings “words in stone.”  But the pragmatists, fleeing Germany, brought the dream of a New Concrete Modern World with them.  Why?  Because concrete is the most pragmatic building material in the world.  It is terribly cheap compared with other materials.  When it is reinforced with steel, it is virtually impregnable.  In other words, the perfect building material of the Pragmatic school of architecture—and incidentally, perfect for the Communistic ideals of the time.  Cheap.  Conformist.  Ugly. 

After living in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina for a year, I pondered what the city would look like had Hitler won the war.  I imagine that instead of the shrapnel-pocked cement monstrosities that fill the mountainous valley, the valley would look more like a German village strewn with gaudy, monuments of eagles in celebration of the Third Reich.  

I cannot imagine which is more hideous. 

Mark

 Thanks to Chris Pipkin for your insight and ideas about Hitler

 

Some Reflections from London on Doris Salcedo's Shibboleth

Among the many unsavory biographical sketches presented in Judges, Jephthah comes out particularly poor. Born the son of a prostitute in the Northern Kingdom of Israel, his rash and violent personality has its lasting showing in this infamous conflict with the Southern Ephraimites, wherein after a major victory against the Ephriamite army he succeeds in massacring the retreating stragglers.

Jephthah captured the shallow crossings of the Jordan River, and whenever a fugitive from Ephraim tried to go back across, the men of Gilead would challenge him. “Are you a member of the tribe of Ephraim?” they would ask. If the man said, “No, I’m not,” 6 they would tell him to say “Shibboleth.” If he was from Ephraim, he would say “Sibboleth,” because people from Ephraim cannot pronounce the word correctly. Then they would take him and kill him at the shallow crossings of the Jordan. In all, 42,000 Ephraimites were killed at that time. (Judges 12, NLV)

Of course, Jephthah was probably not the first to use language pronunciation as an identification tool, and he was hardly the last. This US War Department produced comic was intended to instruct soldiers stationed in China during World War II (and really, it's worth a glance):

Most unique about Jephthah's “shibboleth” (a simple word meaning stream or flowing water) is how the idiom was picked up and developed into a relatively common word in the English language meaning a word or phrase which is used to distinguish groups of people, or simply a word or phrase unique to a given group. In fact, I heard Hillary Clinton toss it out the other night on Meet the Press. So it was particularly interesting to me when I heard the new exhibit which would occupy the Tate Modern's large Turbine Hall concourse was called: The Shibboleth.

Salem, my brother and narrator this fine video, visited me in London at the beginning of 2008 and it was then he shot this little clip. The Shibboleth is essentially an artificially constructed crack in the concrete floor of the concourse, running some 500 feet. For the artist, Colombian Doris Salcedo, the crack represents racism as the "dark side of modernity," stretching along the length of its development. Her work wants to call into question "the shaky ideological foundations on which Western notions of modernity are built." In a recent interview she remarks:

The presence of the immigrant is always unwelcome. The presence of the immigrant is seen as jeopardising the culture of Europe. Europe has been seen as a homogeneous society, a democratic society that has learned, through centuries of development, has learned to resolve the issues through dialogue. And if that is the case then where do we place these outbreaks of racial hatred?...

...As you look in you can get the feeling of catastrophe in there but nonetheless outside it is quite subtle and I wanted a piece that intrudes in the space, that it is unwelcome like an immigrant that just intrudes without permission, just gets in slowly and all of a sudden it’s there and it’s a fairly big presence...

A closer inspection reveals the jagged sides of the crack are inlaid with a sort of wire mesh. Says Salcedo:

It was a Spanish invention actually. The first one was built in Cuba in 1896 by General Arsenio Martínez Campos. Then the British began to use concentration camps in the Boer War, followed by the Germans of course. Now it has come back full circle to Cuba, with Camp Delta in Guantánamo Bay. Fencing is so normal nowadays, it's everywhere, it's literally embedded in our lives and we don't even notice.

I have to say, I was tremendously impressed and found yet a bit of room in my heart for modern art. Well done, Doris. While the art is tremendously worthy of discussion in and of itself, yet I found myself thinking more about the inspiration behind it.

It is instructive that of all the places for the birthing of such a concept, the Bible was chosen. How clearly has the Bible itself been both a vehicle of salvation and a device of the wicked, a message of hope and a tool of indoctrination, quoted to start wars and quoted to cease from them. Maybe it is because the Bible so clearly presents to us our own humanity: our humanity with all of its brokenness and violence, right alongside of our greatest hopes and joys: "sorrow and joy flow mingled." Alongside Jehu, there is Jepthah, by the apostle John walks Judas. Maybe it is because in reading the Bible we are confronted by our own condition and even short biographies presenting obscure figures from the ancient Near East need not great amounts of inspiration for us to find in them an appraisal of our own tendencies. I for one, won't shy from pledging my allegiance to these words as sacred scripture, and aligning my hopes with those of the ancient Israelites: I look forward to and hope in and work towards "the day of the Lord" when the Son of Man will come again and heal our divisions and wars and prejudices, and once and for all remove the "shibboleths" from mankind's vocabulary.

Cheers from London,

Noah

These Are A Few (or one) of My Favorite Things

By: Amy M.

This is my favorite building in the world. I’ve really thought about this—my roommate and I “collect” buildings from around the world—and we do ridiculous things to see the one’s we’ve always dreamed about. Once, with little more than a few days notice, we packed up our bags, raced like mad to get to the airport, and arrived in Istanbul, Turkey with almost no money and absolutely no idea where we were or where we were going. It was a fantastic trip, and all of this was solely because we wanted to see the Hagia Sophia.

And as marvelous as the Hagia Sophia was, it is not my favorite building. The one pictured above, is.

It’s the Pantheon in Rome—a building most people are very familiar with, and many have visited personally. I love this building for so many reasons, and when I began thinking of the theme “concrete”, this jumped to mind in seconds.

The exterior of the Pantheon is classic, to say the least. Nothing remarkable, but worth looking at, to be sure—or at least it is from this angle. I wish I had a picture of the building from the side, but there is a reason I don’t have one—it’s ugly. It’s nothing more than a wall of concrete with an “almost dome” lumped on top of it, as if a scoop of ice cream were overflowing a square box (gelato, in this case, but I don’t know why anyone would put it in a box….). I digress. The sides of the building are unadorned and ash gray. The front of the building is typical; classic. But the inside is something that (and I try to not sound trite here, but I am going to fail miserably) really cannot be described, but must be experienced. (but there's a picture at the top anyways…perhaps a happy median)

Before the day I walked into the Pantheon, a building had never physically affected me, and none have since. I was among throngs of Italians and tourists walking around the ancient city (a dream of mine for years as I was a classical studies major at university). It was unbearably hot, busy and louder than anything I had ever experienced—not to mention I had made a horrific choice in walking shoes that afternoon and my feet were literally bleeding on the streets of Rome (thank goodness I was wearing red shoes!). Yet as I entered the inside of the Pantheon, none of these nuisances mattered.

There’s a second of darkness as you transition from the suffocating cement pediment of the building into a coffered dome with a small hole in the top allowing a beam of light to get through. As my eyes were drawn upwards to this almost Heavenly shine, my body was plunged into a sickening fit of vertigo. I almost fell. I can’t explain it, but the transition from the chaos of the exterior to the serenity of the interior—the darkness of the pediment and the sun-lit glow of this marble-floored temple left me physically distressed in the very best of ways. I had to sit down for a few minutes to take it all in.

The Romans invented concrete (or at least some form of it), and while I usually assume that concrete is not the most beautiful artistic meduim, I must say they managed to do one heck of a job on this building. To be horrifically trite just once more, this building embodies the spirit of the “you can’t judge a book by its cover” adage. Nothing from the exterior of this cement-covered building can prepare you for what beauty lies inside.

Walk in slowly. Take deep breaths. But if all else fails, rest assured -- there are far worse places in the world in which to fall down.

This Army (by Jason, obvi)

This army, the color concrete, used to be red.
Ghost towns, new and empty.
Rows like armies.
20 apartment blocks 10 floors each
Next to another 20
As far as you can see.

Clean, barren, concrete
Waiting, hoping, begging
For money, for tenants, for industry.

"Who will buy? Who will invest?
Who will make this Adam breathe?"

Build it and they'll come, hell,
1.2 billion of them.
They'll come.

On bicycle carts with canvas bags that hold everything.
Everything.
They'll come.
And things in canvas bags
Could fill wood, mud, straw, brick houses and huts,
But what can fill concrete? And who can afford it?

So much
Too much.
How could we ever have that much.
Money from job from education from money.
Maybe in the next life.

We'll live in dirty neighborhoods
Like the ones we left, but more crowded this time.
Like the ones we left, but with less dignity,
Like the ones we left, but with lucky ones looking down their noses at us.

"Peasants!" they'll say. "This is our city,
Do you have the right papers to live here?
Come work construction, that's ok.
And you may sell your fruit on the street,
It's cheaper than in the chain stores.
But please keep your filthy fathers
and brown-skinned mothers
and ignorant children off of the streets,
they get in our way and they make us feel bad.
And what will the foreigners think?"

We'll live in dirty neighborhoods,
Like the ones we left,
Like the ones they're tearing down to build
This army,
The color concrete.
Remember when it was red?

Topic. Title of Post.

by Chris Pipkin

This is a sample post. Were this a real post, it would likely be longer and would speak about the topic for this month, which is, apparently, "topic." Ah, how we love our "topics" in Western society, etc., etc... In conclusion, a funny picture of Noah:

And (why not?) a video of Prague as the New Year begins. Feel free to post videos as well:

I'll take this down when the posting begins.