Tableau: Spiegelverhältnisse und Kontinuitäten / Mirror Ratios and Continuities

TEXTS: ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS

Texts by names (alphabetical order)

Theodor Gustav Wanner
(*1875 in Stuttgart; † 1955 ibidem)
The entrepreneur Theodor Wanner was actively involved in the development of the Württemberg Association for Commercial Geography, founded by Karl von Linden twenty years earlier, from 1902; from 1928 to 1953 he was its chairman. The association was the initiator and sponsor of the Linden Museum. In 1917, Wanner also founded the German Overseas Institute (today the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen) ‘for the study of German people abroad’. Both Stuttgart institutions belonged to the Verein, which had been founded specifically to organise the 1928 Colonial Exhibition. Wanner himself conceived the exhibition together with Carl Hagstotz, director of the Stuttgarter Handelshof. Wanner was one of a group of people who campaigned vigorously in the 1920s for the resumption of colonial activities by German politics and the private sector.

Texts by dates (chronological order)

1882
Württembergischer Verein für Handelsgeographie und Förderung deutscher Interessen im Ausland
Württemberg Association for Commercial Geography and the Promotion of German Interests Abroad
The Association for Trade Geography was initially based at the Gewerbehalle Stuttgart, which also housed its collection of ethnological objects until 1911. When the rooms at the Gewerbehalle were no longer sufficient, the idea of building a separate house on the wasteland of the burnt-down Hoftheater on Schloßplatz was considered. In 1911, the collection finally moved into its new home on Hegelplatz under the name Linden-Museum. Two years later, the art building on Schloßplatz was opened. Theodor Wanner was a member of the steering committee of the Great Art Exhibition, which was held for this occasion. He was the driving force behind the Linden Museum and the Colonial Exhibition of 1928. Today, the collection of the Linden Museum is the subject of critical research and restitution demands because of its links to German colonialism.

nach 1902 (after 1902)
Advertisement for the North German Lloyd shipping company, Bremen, for their new steamer ‘Kaiser Wilhelm II’, which in the montage obscures the New Palace on Stuttgart's Schlossplatz.

1905–1950er Jahre (1905–1950s)
Verein Württembergischer Kunstfreunde
In 1905, Theodor Wanner and others founded the Verein Württembergischer Kunstfreunde (VWK), which began building a studio building in Im Schellenkönig that same year. In 1937, as with the WKV, many Jewish members of the VWK resigned in protest at the all-too-rapid alignment of the associations with the regime and were forced to do so by the National Socialist regime. The VWK, which had been reduced in size as a result, was in danger of being expropriated by the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts, according to the minutes of the WKV's board of directors. To prevent this, it was decided to incorporate it into the WKV. A deed of donation from 1938 stipulated that the property of the VWK, including that of a former member of its board of directors, be administered by the WKV in trust and that the studio building remain in existence. Tenants of the studio building at the time included the artists Gustav Adolf Bredow, Olga and Arnold Waldschmid. In 1911, Bredow had created the racist architectural sculptures at the entrance to the Linden Museum. Arnold Waldschmidt, a confidant of Hitler and Himmler, was at that time the regional director of the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts in Stuttgart. He and Bredow were included in Hitler's ‘God-blessed list’.
After the Second World War, Bredow and Wanner re-established the VWK and demanded its legal succession. Their aim was to rebuild the studio building destroyed during the Second World War. Their claim was rejected in court and the assets of the old VWK were finally awarded to the WKV. The WKV finally built a new studio building at the end of the 1960s, which it still operates today. In the course of research for the 200th anniversary of the WKV, the complex circumstances surrounding the studio building Im Schellenkönig are to be examined.

1924
Der kurze Stuttgarter Kunstsommer
Stuttgart's brief summer of art: the Neue Deutsche Kunst (New German Art) exhibition in the art building
Organisers: Verein Württembergischer Kunstfreunde, WKV, Stuttgarter Galerienverein
In 1924, a summer of art was declared in Stuttgart. One of the highlights was the New German Art exhibition curated by the then director of the State Art Collection, Otto Fischer, which came about through a collaboration between WKV, the Württembergischer Kunstverein and the Stuttgarter Galerieverein. The focus was on works by expressionists such as Emil Nolde, Erich Heckel, Max Pechstein, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Carl Hofer. It was hoped that this would be an ‘essential beginning of a renewal’ for art in Stuttgart. While the exhibition was enthusiastically received by the art scene, it was met with scathing criticism from other circles, in particular from the confessional women's associations, students and the Nazi fighting newspaper Völkische Wacht. The latter used the term ‘degenerate’ for the first time. In 1962, art historian Bruno Bushart wrote: ‘The renewal of artistic life had not survived the ‘essential beginning’ … The ‘guardians of national art’, who had already announced themselves in 1924, took care of the rest … Stuttgart was once again left in peace by modern art and, after the deadly winter of consequences in 1945, was allowed to start again where it had failed 20 years earlier.’ (from: Bruno Bushart, ‘Kurzer Stuttgart Kunstsommer’, in: Die Zwanziger Jahre in Stuttgart, p. 35, no year given [1962])

1924
Oberbürgermeister Karl Lautenschlager zur Eröffnung der Ausstellung Neue Deutsche Kunst
Lord Mayor Karl Lautenschlager at the opening of the Neue Deutsche Kunst (New German Art) exhibition in Kunstgebäude
‘Year after year, the art building should become the place where artistic culture unfolds before the eyes and in the hearts of all who long for beauty and nobility... May all hopes and wishes that are linked to the renewal of artistic life in Stuttgart and thus also to the living conditions of our artists now and in the future be fulfilled in abundance, to the benefit of our beloved homeland.’
(from: Bruno Bushart, ‘Kurzer Stuttgart Kunstsommer’, in: Die Zwanziger Jahre in Stuttgart, p. 29, no year given [1962])

1927
Die Wohnung (The Dwelling)
1928
Kolonialausstellung (Colonial Exhibition)
In 1927, the Werkbund organised the The Dwelling project in Stuttgart. The Weissenhof Estate built for the occasion attracted particular attention. The project also included a large exhibition in the Stuttgart Trade Fair Hall, designed by Lilly Reich and Mies van der Rohe. In Hall 4, they presented modern living space concepts with lots of glass and reflective surfaces, in which the boundaries between inside and outside seemed to dissolve. The model living spaces contained only sparse furnishings. The middle-class home, already crossed out on one of the exhibition posters, had been thoroughly cleared out.
A year later, the colonial exhibition was shown in the same rooms on the occasion of the conference of the German Colonial Society in Stuttgart, which also addressed the topic of living. Here, however, the aim was to present the living environment and home decor of the colonised as primitive and backward in racist and racialising scenarios – thus emphasising the supposed own progressiveness and superiority all the more.
In her text Othering ausstellen (2023) (Exhibiting Othering), Regine Heß points out that Theodor Wanner, the designer of the 1928 colonial exhibition, drew his spatial concept directly into the plan of Reich and Mies van der Rohe. This gesture literally shows how strongly modernism and colonialism permeated each other.

Stuttgarter Sommer 1928:
Kolonialrevisionismus und Nationalismus
Stuttgart Summer 1928:
colonial revisionism and nationalism
The colonial exhibition and its catalogue propagate a deeply revisionist attitude towards the Treaty of Versailles (1919), which required Germany to cede its colonial territories. This is presented in the harshest terms as an injustice to the German population. In reference to Hans Grimm, who was originally invited as a speaker at the Colonial Society's conference, the image of the ‘Volk ohne Raum’ (Grimm) is repeatedly invoked. It is suggested that the colonial appropriation of territories in Africa was the right and national duty of the Germans. A new departure to the colonies was called for, which, according to Reinhard Köstlin, could tie in with the German ‘master race’ that had supposedly already grown up there. The colonial enterprises were supposed to give the nation more youthful vigour and more ‘leaders’.

1928
Oberbürgermeister Karl Lautenschlager im Geleitwort zum amtlichen Führer der Kolonialausstellung
Lord Mayor Karl Lautenschlager in his foreword to the official guide to the Kolonialausstellung (Colonial exhibition)
‘Through its explorers, its economic and cultural pioneers, its ever-active and wanderlusty sons, Swabia is closely linked to our colonial development. Our industry has increasingly processed colonial raw materials and Württemberg has always been a stronghold of the colonial idea.’

1928
‘Our colonies were snatched from us under the pretext that we did not know how to colonise. No greater injustice has ever been done to any other people.’
Heinrich Fischer, curator of the Linden-Museum, in: Catalogue of the Kolonialausstellung, p. 27

1928
‘In most settlement areas, there is also an [indigenous] population that provides the settlers with the necessary labourers. The feeling of belonging to the superior race gives self-confidence.’
Reinhard Köstlin, former district officer in Daressalam and Usambara (and descendant of a founding member of the WKV), in: Catalogue of the Kolonialausstellung, p. 52

1928
Kommerzielle Aussteller*innen der Kolonialausstellung
Commercial exhibitors at the colonial exhibition
selection
According to the catalogue, the local companies presenting themselves at the trade fair hall as part of the colonial exhibition included Rominger Travel, Feinkost Böhm, the Lindemanns bookshop and the Otto plantation in Kilosa, Tanzania. Otto Böhm, who in 1889 together with his brother Alfred had founded the grocery store specialising in colonial goods, was a member of the WKV board of directors from 1924 to 1929. The Lindemanns bookshop, which sold books on colonial subjects, was located in the former house of Gottlob Heinrich Rapp, founder of the WKV. Albert Schwarz was co-founder of Heinrich Otto's cotton plantation and was a member of the WKV's administrative board from 1924 to 1930. The Rominger travel agency was the first of its kind in Germany. It was founded by Johannes Rominger in Stuttgart in 1842 during the great wave of Germans emigrating to the United States. Theodor Wanner's father Otto, who had married Rominger's daughter, became a partner and later the owner of the company, which made a profit from shipping traffic between Germany and its colonies in cooperation with the North German Lloyd, the Woermann Line and the German East Africa Line. After Otto Wanner's death, his son took over the business.

1928
PRESSA (Presseausstellung), Köln
Press Exhibition, Cologne
The PRESSA exhibition, which presented the latest developments in photography and print media in Cologne in 1928, is considered one of the milestones of modern exhibition design. The USSR pavilion, designed by El Lissitzky, became iconic. On the initiative of Konrad Adenauer, the then Lord Mayor of Cologne – and later President of the German Colonial Society – a colonial special exhibition was also shown as part of this exhibition. It argued, entirely in line with Hans Grimm's novel Volk ohne Raum (People without Space), published two years earlier, that Germany was suffering from a lack of space and raw materials. Therefore, it urgently needed colonies in Africa, which was presented as a space supposedly without population.

1935 –1948
Vorsitzender des WKV (Chairman of the WKV)
Karl Lautenschlager
(*1868 in Stuttgart; † 1952 ibidem)
Karl Lautenschlager was Lord Mayor of Stuttgart from 1911 to 1933. He was Chairman of the WKV from 1935 to 1948. He had been involved with the WKV and contemporary art in Stuttgart since the 1910s.

2023
Lídia Chaves, Neben dem Kakaofeld (Next to the cocoa field)
As part of the Groundbreaking Festival 2023, the artist Lídia Chaves commemorated the 1928 colonial exhibition. Using steel edges, she punched a sentence from the exhibition catalogue into the lawn of Stuttgart's Stadtgarten – where the exhibition hall where the colonial exhibition was held used to be: ‘Next to the cocoa field, right next to the entrance, stands a ghost house.’

Captions (selection)

Ateliergebäude (Studio building) Im Schellenkönig, 1907

Gustav Adolf Bredow, racialising portal relief (left figure), Linden-Museum, Stuttgart, photo: Karl Heinrich

Official exhibition guide Die Wohnung (The Dwelling), design: Willi Baumeister, 1927

Poster for the exhibition Die Wohnung (The Dwelling), design: Karl Ludwig Straub, 1927

Poster for the exhibition Die Wohnung (The Dwelling), design: Willi Baumeister, 1927

Feinkost Böhm's first store in Schlossstraße

First Feinkost Böhm store at Calwer Straße 18, 1970s

Gewerbehalle
Trade Hall, built around 1895; built by Adolf Wolff in 1880–1881, destroyed in 1944

Gewerbehalle (Trade hall) and city garden during the 1881 Landesgewerbeausstellung (State Trade Exhibition)

Hallenplan der Ausstellung Die Wohnung
Floor plan of the exhibition The Dwelling, Stuttgart 1927, with the plan of the Colonial Exhibition, Stuttgart 1928marked inside, from: Regine Heß, ‘Othering ausstellen’, 2023

Official exhibition guide Kolonialausstellung (Colonial Exhibition), 1928

Racialising poster of the Kolonialausstellung (Colonial Exhibition), designed by Herdtle, 1928

Racialising advertising poster for the Norddeutschen Lloyd (North German Lloyd shipping company), Bremen, and the Rominger travel agency, Stuttgart, designed by Ludwig Hohlwein, 1913

Lindemann's Bookstore, former home of the Rapp family, Stiftstraße 7, around 1920
Poster of the PRESSA exhibition, Cologne, 1918

Racist advertising poster for the Woermann Line, the German East Africa Line, the Rominger travel agency, Stuttgart, and others, designed by Albert Gessner, undated

1927
Lilly Reich, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, exhibition views Hall 4, Die Wohnung (The Dwelling)

1928
Exhibition views of the racialising dioramas at the Kolonialausstellung (colonial exhibition)

1928
Exhibition view of El Lissitzky's ‘Pavilion of the USSR’ at the Press Exhibition (PRESSA), Cologne

1928
Exhibition view of the racialising display of the ‘Colonial Special Exhibition’ at the Press Exhibition (PRESSA), Cologne