Architekten- und Designer-Ehepaar Jacques und Jacqueline Groag

This manuscript is based on the results of a research project (No. 7726), carried out at the Institute for the History of Art (University of Vienna) under the direction of Professor Dr. Peter Haiko, and sponsored by the Jubilee Funds of the Austrian National Bank. The artists Jacques Groag (b. Olomouc, February 5, 1892, d. London, January 26, 1962) and his wife Jacqueline (née Hilde Blumberger, b.Prague, April 6, 1903, d. London, January 13, 1986) belong to those representatives of the Viennese Modernists between the two World Wars who are now forgotten, due to the fact that, being Jews, they were forced to emigrate in 1938. In the early phase of his career Jacques Groag worked as an assistant and executing architect for Adolf Loos (Moller house, 1927) and Ludwig Wittgenstein (Wittgenstein house, 1928) and co-operated with the interior designers Friedl Dicker and Franz Singer (Heller tennis club house, 1928). After that, in independent practice he realized a considerable number of remarkable architectural projects in Vienna and native Moravia (now Czech Republic), among others a pair of semi-detached houses at the Werkbundsiedlung, a house for the actress Paula Wessely, a country house for the industrialist Otto Eisler, several houses for other private clients, but also industrial buildings. At this time he was regarded as one of the most important followers of Adolf Loos. He also enjoyed remarkable success as a designer of interiors, and was befriended to many Viennese artists such as the painters Sergius Pauser and Josef Dobrowsky, the sculptor Georg Ehrlich and the photographer Trude Fleischmann. His wife Jacqueline, a student of Franz Cizek and Josef Hoffmann at the Wiener Kunstgewerbeschule, between the wars was active as a designer of textiles for the Wiener Werkstätte and for fashion houses in Paris. After the couple's emigration to England in 1939 Jacques Groag could only find commissions as a designer of interiors and furniture, but found no opportunity to realize architectural projects. As a team, Jacques and Jacqueline made important contributions to prominent exhibitions on British design in the post-war period. Jacqueline, who outlived her husband for more than twenty years, continued her career as a successful textile designer until her late age

Wind und Wand : de neoconstructivistische binnendecoratie van Gerhard Wind in de St. Antoniuskirche in Düsseldorf-Oberkassel (1984-1986) : een eigenzinnig abstract-geometrisch concept in theorie en praktijk

In 1984 ontving Gerhard Wind de opdracht van het aartsbisdom Keulen voor de binnendecoratie volgens zijn abstract-geometrisch PATIO concept van het kerkinterieur van de St. Antoniuskirche in Düsseldorf-Oberkassel. De vele vragen die dit oproept luiden samengevat: Hoe dient men dit kerkinterieur en deze kunstenaar in de West-Duitse naoorlogse stijlontwikkelingen kunsthistorisch te plaatsen en tot welke conclusies leidt dit? Mijn onderzoek hiertoe is opgebouwd uit twee delen: I De kerk en het nieuwe kerkinterieur en II Het werk van de kunstenaar Gerhard Wind (1928-1992) in de artistieke context van de West-Duitse naoorlogse periode. Door de consequente wijze waarop en de schaal waarin Wind zijn neoconstructivistisch PATIO ontwerp in dit belangrijke katholieke kerkinterieur kon uitvoeren, beschouw ik deze casus als een kunsthistorisch novum en door de specialiteit niet herhaalbaar. Om dit kerkinterieur volgens het ontwerp van Wind kunsthistorisch in de ontwikkelingen van het naoorlogse West-Duitsland te kunnen duiden en plaatsen, is ook ingegaan op de daaraan voorafgaande perioden van het Hitler regime (1933-1945) en van de Amerikaanse bezettingsmacht (1945-1949). Hieruit blijkt, dat dit kerkinterieur, om met Kandinsky (1911) te spreken, ondanks de voor een sacrale ruimte ongebruikelijke wandschilderingen “Kind seiner Zeit” is.LEI Universiteit LeidenModern and Contemporary Studie

Nietzsches Begriff der décadence : kritik und analyse der moderne

Includes bibliographical references.Nietzsche himself has placed the problem of décadence into the centre of his thinking. But he mistrusts any definitions which tear concepts out of the context of their becoming and reduce them to a static 'meaning. In his analysis of décadence there a no unambiguous causes and effects. The very historical breadth and ambivalence of the word ' décadence ' does not allow the unambiguous assignation of the word to a 'meaning. Nietzsche's remarks about décadence allow us to postulate two hypotheses as their basis: the first, 'Darwinist' hypothesis would be that occidental culture impedes the development of humanity because it makes 'natural selection' ineffective. The second, 'historico-philosophical' hypothesis would be: everything has existed before, nothing changes, there is neither progress nor degeneration. Nietzsche uses the discoveries of the natural sciences of his time to question radically the separation between biology and culture, natural history and human history, physis and psyche. One of the dominant themes of physiology of the 19th century was the boundary between the pathological and the normal. Nietzsche transfers the medical scheme of diagnosis, aetiology and prognosis to a social and cultural phenomenon such as décadence. In contrast to a conservative critique of culture Nietzsche does not bemoan the disintegration of eternal values, which are supposed to underpin a High Culture, but questions the values of religions and philosophies themselves which pretend to be eternal but subordinate life to false aims. Nietzsche drafts a psycho-pathology of the type of the décadence, the embodiment of which is the Christian. Nietzsche sees the "nihilist religions all as: systematis[ed] stories of illness in a religious-moral terminology". In the centre of the psychopathology of Christianity Nietzsche makes out the negation of the body. Nietzsche terms the movement which opposes all idealisms a nihilism. Nihilism derives from the understanding that the highest philosophical, religious and ethical values have become devalued. The understanding that truth is based on mere appearance and that it is no 'thing as such', as believed by Platonic and Christian tradition, leads to a renunciation of the truth claim

Knowledge, Science, and Literature in Early Modern Germany

Early modern Germany saw the dissemination of vast quantities of information at unprecedented speed. Popular knowledge, scientific inquiry, and scholarship influenced the political order, poetic expression, public opinion, and mechanisms of social control. This collection presents twelve essays by distinguished scholars regarding the transcendent nature of the Divine, the natural world, the body, sexuality, intellectual property, aesthetics, demons, and witches. The contributors are Thomas Cramer, Walter Haug, C. Stephen Jaeger, Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Jan-Dirk Måller, James A. Parente, Jr., Stephan K. Schindler, Gerhard F. Strasser, Lynne Tatlock, Elaine Tennant, Horst Wenzel, and Gerhild Scholz Williams