36. The First Lecture Evening of the Berlin “Freie Literarische Gesellschaft”

Presentation on a lecture by Georg Fuchs on "New Style"

The first lecture evening of the Berlin "Freie Literarische Gesellschaft" was dedicated to an energetic, subtle defense of the "New Style" given by the art writer Georg Fuchs. He found beautiful, meaningful words to characterize the recently emerging striving to get away from the "professor's bakel", which until recently imposed a foreign style on German art that was unsuited to its own needs and sensibilities. "Until now, when people in the German Empire asked about the style of the noble house, the palace and the temple, a mighty atlas was opened up. In the styles of Empire, Rococo, Baroque, German and Italian Renaissance; Gothic, Romanesque, Norwegian, Byzantine, Moorish, Egyptian, Persian, Indian and Assyrian - this is how the wealthy German built from the end of the nineteenth century. With great erudition, he researched the architecture and applied arts of all times and peoples, imitating them with unwavering conscientiousness." It was of no use that the Germans occupied a high rank among the cultural nations in painting, that the greatest visual artist Arnold Böcklin was a German. The works of our masters did not find their way into German homes. They were collected in galleries and exhibitions. They were therefore unable to provide works that would decorate the German home in such a way that the decoration would be an expression of the needs and feelings of those who live in the decorated room. Only the harmony between the purpose associated with a room and the artistic decoration of the same can lead to an individual style. "The most artistic should also be the most practical, so that we use beauty to a certain extent, need it." Outstanding art connoisseurs advocate such demands with powerful words: Bode, Lessing, Lichtwark, Jessen, Brinckmann. And artists began to fulfill such demands. What H. E. v. Berlepsch, Eckmann, Obrist, Schwindrazheim, Werle, Köpping, Melchior Lechter and others created in this direction was described by Fuchs in an attractive manner. He emphasized the importance of the magazine "Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration", published by Alexander Koch in Darmstadt. It has placed itself at the service of the "New Style". Fuchs does not see salvation in artistic individualism, which consists of the artist living out his individuality in his work. "Our painters had no purpose, they were not commissioned to create here or there within a given whole, so the artists saw nothing more in their art than a means of expressing their individuality. Each did this in his own way, as uniquely as possible, indeed uniquely to the point of impossibility." But it is not this expression of individuality that is the ideal of art, but the creation of a national style. "The purpose of the object determines its construction, the construction determines its form, and the decoration is nothing more than a kind of 'final feeling' of the constructive form. ... All the great, still incalculable forces of the people, which for a long, long time have been kept away from living art, from the art of feeling, are stirring and want to enter the great stream of development that leads to what we need: the new style!" It is not for me to pass judgment on the justification of individualism and nationalism in art here, where I only have to report.

A series of interesting lecture and recitation evenings are planned for the coming winter. In addition, the board has decided to create a meeting place for the exchange of opinions in the field of literature and intellectual life in the "Freie Literarische Gesellschaft". To this end, cycles of lectures followed by discussions are to be organized. Initially, the undersigned and Dr. Flaischlen will give such lectures. The undersigned will begin with a series of six lectures on "The main currents in German literature from the middle of the century to the present". The lectures will be held at fortnightly intervals, always on a Tuesday. The first will take place on December 7.