Wilhelmine Berlin

Art in America, April, 2000 by Franz Schulze

For all the richness of the total experience, indeed largely on account of it, this writer left the museum sobered by a profound awareness of the tragedy that grew out of the relationship--a veritable symbiosis--of the Jews and the Berlin of the time in question. It is impossible to forget what happened in Germany following the Wilhelmine period and the later Weimar Republic, but that memory is made all the more poignant by the closeness of the people and the place in an earlier day. In his essay, Paul Mendes-Flohr (of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem) speaks of Walden as "an unapologetic Grenzverwischer--an eraser of boundaries--as Jewish cosmopolitans were frequently pilloried," and he quotes Walden himself:

Berlin is very large and therefore she is the capital city of the United States of Europe.... Is it not a great city, in which Russians live in the west, the Germans in the south and the Italians in the north? A city in which the Germans speak French, the Russians German, the Japanese a broken German, and the Italians English.... Berlin is a microcosm of America. Berlin is timeless motion and timeless life. Perhaps the United States of America has a Berlin. But Berlin lacks a United States of Europe. One should establish the United States of Europe as quickly as possible. Not only for the sake of Berlin, but also for the sake of Europe.

Mendes-Flohr concludes: "These last words of Walden's cosmopolitan vision of Berlin, from today's perspective, resonate with an uncanny prophetic ring."

To this it is worth adding that Bilski was attracted to the idea of the exhibition to some degree by the favorable impression she has formed of a vibrant contemporary Berlin. In view of the new European Union and the German capital's developing place in it, how will the catalogue, the chief record of this exhibition--which is sponsored by Deutsche Bank--read to us a generation from now?

"Berlin Metropolis: Jews and the New Culture, 1890-1918" was curated by Emily D. Bilski for the Jewish Museum, New York [Nov. 14, 1999-Apr. 23, 2000]. The exhibition is accompanied by a 266-page catalogue.

Author: Franz Schulze is a professor of art at Lake Forest College. His books include Mies van der Rohe: A Critical Biography (1985) and Philip Johnson: Life and Works (1994).