80. Artist Education

A few days ago, I had a dream. I dreamt of an editorial in the "Zukunft". I read very clearly a sentence about Kant in an argument about the justification of the Farmers' Union, Stirner, Nietzsche and the monarchical feeling. I couldn't believe my eyes, but this sentence literally said: "the category of the imperative". I was - in a dream - very surprised, because Maximilian Harden doesn't give himself any such airs. He once wrote a sentence in an editorial in the "Zukunft" in which he showed that he had no real concept of Kant's "Categorical Imperative"; but that he even wrote "The Category of the Imperative" instead of "The Categorical Imperative": that astonished me - even in my dream. I woke up, rubbed my eyes and said to myself: oh, you dreamer, that came again from such anger about writing. You are so terribly annoyed by all the nonsense you see every day in the "Knights of the Pen" that the anger haunts you in your sleep. But my dreams exaggerate. It is not true that "The category of the imperative" ever appeared in an editorial in the "Future".

They will probably be right, my dreams. Because Alfred, my Kerr, once told me: I don't really want to get down to business and rant to my heart's content. It must be the bitter resentment that haunts me in my sleep as a nightmare.

I got dressed, drank some coffee, and then I had to get something from a store on Potsdamer Strasse. I saw the two sculptural "works of art" erected on the Potsdamer Brücke for the first time. A staid, jovial man sits there with mild features. I could take him for a well-behaved foreman of a factory where cable ropes and electrical appliances are manufactured. He is supposed to be Werner Siemens, the greatest electrical engineer. As I had not gone out to study the secrets of the plastic arts, I passed by, not particularly dissatisfied at not having found them. C. Moser had made the monument.

I reached the other end of the bridge. There sits another man. A schoolmaster who is thinking about how to teach the children their ABCs. But no - it's supposed to be Hermann Helmholtz. I have always believed that a sculptor should pass on a man's significance to posterity along with his external features. And in Helmholtz's case, it doesn't seem so difficult to me. Anyone who delves into his writings will get a clear idea of this man's personality. And anyone who compares this idea with the features of his face will recognize the harmony of his physical and mental physiognomy, which was so striking in him. And Helmholtz also wrote memoirs. Anyone who has ever seen him must think of the researcher's outward appearance with every line. The man who, sculpted by Max Klein, is supposed to adorn one end of the Potsdam Bridge is in no way reminiscent of the writer of this memoir.

But even more. Like few researchers, Hermann Helmholtz is a type within a certain scientific movement of the present day. He is not a genius like his great teacher Johannes Müller. He did not provide the initial impetus for the discoveries and inventions that are associated with his name. If you don't want to believe me, read about it in the memoirs I mentioned. With great perspicacity and tireless work, he drew the conclusions from the achievements of his predecessors. I would like to single out the invention of the ophthalmoscope. When Helmholtz began the investigations that led him to this invention, the work carried out by his predecessors had progressed so far that only a small detail was needed to construct the important instrument, a final step on a path that had been precisely mapped out. And it was the same in the other fields in which Helmholtz worked. He lived in a time that was ripe for very specific scientific discoveries, because there was an abundance of preparatory work for them. This time demanded precise scientific workers who, through astutely constructed tools, careful laboratory work and tireless experimentation, carried out the scientific ideas of a previous era in detail. Johannes Müller, Purkinje and others gave leading ideas in the first half of the century; Helmholtz, Brücke, Ludwig, Du Bois-Reymond came to epoch-making individual discoveries from the points of view they adopted. The keen eye for the details of natural phenomena, for experimental research, for tireless observation are the characteristics of the type of natural scientist that Helmholtz represents. If you want to visualize this type by its contrast, you need only remember Ernst Haeckel. He is quite different from those belonging to this group. He too drew the consequences of a great predecessor. But he not only went beyond Charles Darwin in detail. He constructed a building for which his predecessor had provided the substructure; Helmholtz and the others mentioned provided the furnishings for a finished building, albeit one that was still empty inside. This typical significance of Helmholtz should be illustrated by the pictorial representation of his figure.

But to do so, the artist who was given such a task would have had to study the scientific nature and significance of Helmholtz from his works. I am naïve enough to believe that every artist does this before depicting a man. However, the Helmholtz monument on Berlin's Potsdamer Brücke convinced me of the opposite.

There were books at the researcher's feet, on top of which was a book on the spine - O physicist, quickly turn your eye away before it gets too offended - "The Physiology of Optics." So the visual artist didn't even get as far as the title page - or even the spine of a bound copy - of Helmholtzens "Physiological Optics".

What my dream of a writer only led me to believe: a visual artist turned it into reality. Because saying "The physiology of optics" instead of "Physiological optics" is just like saying "The category of the imperative" instead of "Categorical imperative". But not even an editorial writer does that. We writers are better people than that.

But "The Physiology of Optics" is not the only thing that characterizes the "education" of a visual artist. Beneath this "Physiology of Optics" lies another book. This one is about four centimeters thick. On its spine it says: "The Conservation of Force." Helmholtz wrote a treatise of only a few pages on this concept that dominates modern physics. Mr. Max Klein did not even glance at Helmholtz's existing works, but he saw a non-existent one in his mind.

The scholars of the Berlin newspapers have rebuked the sin against the spirit of all education; and therefore the - one of the mistakes has been made good. I do not know whether the words that were to be read at the Helmholtz monument for a few days to the annoyance of passing educated people in order to conceal the disgrace have been changed to the correct reading at nightfall. Today, however, we read the corrected version: "The physiological optics." On the other hand, a benevolent proofreader will have to make another effort because of the second "mistake". It will not be possible to make this second book thinner; but you can ask a better newspaper reader, and he will advise you to go for this work: "Tonempfindungen", because a better newspaper reader knows that Helmholtz wrote a "Lehre von den Tonempfindungen".

Whoever calls me a petty grumbler for writing this, I reply: I don't really care what is written on the monuments on the Potsdam Bridge, but to me it seems like a sad symptom. What must the "education" of visual artists be like if such "mistakes" happen to them? And what image can an artist pass on to posterity of a man whom he knows as well as the creator of the Helmholtz monument knows his writings?

Just listen to them, the visual artists, when they are amused by the omissions that writers make about their works. And if you are a writer walking across the Potsdamer Brücke in Berlin, take comfort in the fact that a "writer" is unlikely to write the same kind of nonsense about a "visual artist" as a "visual artist" has written about a "writer" here. Yes, yes, we writers are better people, and it cannot happen to any of us that, however thoroughly ignorant we may be of Kant's philosophical views, we write "The category of the imperative" instead of "Categorical imperative". Only a wicked, malicious dream can make us believe such a thing.