the 1920s were roaring and Berlin was a city of such culture and experimentation that any artistically inclined young man
could not help but be affected by the outpouring of emotion and expression. Heinrich was still living with his father, but the family had moved into an apartment that was in the heart of Berlin’s “Museum Island.” The streets hewalked each day were streets packed with galleries, theaters, and museums. Heinrich had a sketch pad that he carried with him, often drawing what he saw and taking notes on his surroundings.
There was one young artist in particular that made a deep and lasting impression on him. It was just after his mother had gotten ill. He’d wandered into a nearby museum and soon found himself standing in front of a painting called
Tower of the Blue Horses
1 by Franz Marc, a near-cubist rendering of a family of blue horses stacked one behind the
other in a landscape of yellow and red. In Marc’s painting, the horses look stern, tender, and vulnerable all at once; their faces are basking in the light on the page, but they also appear nearly blinded by it. The painting radiates power, a natural animalistic power, sweet and disarming all at once. In the years before and during the war, museums throughout Germany had to protect Marc’s blue horses and other paintings from people who wanted to destroy them, enraged by
the feelings they conjured.
Heinrich stared at the painting of the blue horses for a long time that day. And he went back to look at it again and again. Something changed for him with that painting. He started reading the writings and letters of Franz Marc, writings about the power of the natural and animal world and about mankind’s need for a renewal of feeling. Reserved and quiet with most, Heinrich only wrote about these things in long letters to a childhood playmate of his named
Charlotte. She was his best friend, a girl he had met and become close to shortly after moving to Berlin. In his letters, he wondered if perhaps it was only in nature that beauty could be truly perceived in its full and honest form: “not halfway, not dishonest, not unfinished” 2 is what he said.
Franz Marc fought in the same war that Heinrich fought in, but Marc died on the battlefield in 1916. In one of Marc’s letters home dated June 21, 1915, the artist writes: “No one should pride himself 3 on the belief that he is closer to ‘essence’ than others are. I prefer to have faith in others rather than in
myself … Thetime of this world war is not more evil than any time of profoundest peace; within the loveliest peace, there is always a latent war; but the individual can free himself and can help others to do the same.”
Heinrich, in the midst of reading Marc’s work and thinking of him during this time, was inexplicably saddened by the news of the artist’s death. What had been an emotional, adolescent attraction for Marc’s work became something mature and rich for Heinrich now. Later, in his twenties, he would continue to think of Marc as he studied engineering, finding that the intrinsic power and design of natural forms also applied to technical and engineering
ideas. Streamlining, for instance, was a process that looked to animals and insects for the principles of movement and speed, and these were then applied toward designing the shape and curves of the motor car.
Streamlining was a hot subject in industrial circles at the Technical University in Berlin, and debate about the upcoming “machine age” was another. Heinrich had one exceptional teacher toward whom he gravitated regarding these topics. His name was Georg Schlesinger, and he was a Jewish professor and designer acutely interested in how factories and machines could be integrated into the human side of labor and work. Schlesinger wondered at how an excitement
for mass production could be understood and appreciated without the loss of man’s soul: he feared that mass forms of communication and
could not help but be affected by the outpouring of emotion and expression. Heinrich was still living with his father, but the family had moved into an apartment that was in the heart of Berlin’s “Museum Island.” The streets hewalked each day were streets packed with galleries, theaters, and museums. Heinrich had a sketch pad that he carried with him, often drawing what he saw and taking notes on his surroundings.
There was one young artist in particular that made a deep and lasting impression on him. It was just after his mother had gotten ill. He’d wandered into a nearby museum and soon found himself standing in front of a painting called
Tower of the Blue Horses
1 by Franz Marc, a near-cubist rendering of a family of blue horses stacked one behind the
other in a landscape of yellow and red. In Marc’s painting, the horses look stern, tender, and vulnerable all at once; their faces are basking in the light on the page, but they also appear nearly blinded by it. The painting radiates power, a natural animalistic power, sweet and disarming all at once. In the years before and during the war, museums throughout Germany had to protect Marc’s blue horses and other paintings from people who wanted to destroy them, enraged by
the feelings they conjured.
Heinrich stared at the painting of the blue horses for a long time that day. And he went back to look at it again and again. Something changed for him with that painting. He started reading the writings and letters of Franz Marc, writings about the power of the natural and animal world and about mankind’s need for a renewal of feeling. Reserved and quiet with most, Heinrich only wrote about these things in long letters to a childhood playmate of his named
Charlotte. She was his best friend, a girl he had met and become close to shortly after moving to Berlin. In his letters, he wondered if perhaps it was only in nature that beauty could be truly perceived in its full and honest form: “not halfway, not dishonest, not unfinished” 2 is what he said.
Franz Marc fought in the same war that Heinrich fought in, but Marc died on the battlefield in 1916. In one of Marc’s letters home dated June 21, 1915, the artist writes: “No one should pride himself 3 on the belief that he is closer to ‘essence’ than others are. I prefer to have faith in others rather than in
myself … Thetime of this world war is not more evil than any time of profoundest peace; within the loveliest peace, there is always a latent war; but the individual can free himself and can help others to do the same.”
Heinrich, in the midst of reading Marc’s work and thinking of him during this time, was inexplicably saddened by the news of the artist’s death. What had been an emotional, adolescent attraction for Marc’s work became something mature and rich for Heinrich now. Later, in his twenties, he would continue to think of Marc as he studied engineering, finding that the intrinsic power and design of natural forms also applied to technical and engineering
ideas. Streamlining, for instance, was a process that looked to animals and insects for the principles of movement and speed, and these were then applied toward designing the shape and curves of the motor car.
Streamlining was a hot subject in industrial circles at the Technical University in Berlin, and debate about the upcoming “machine age” was another. Heinrich had one exceptional teacher toward whom he gravitated regarding these topics. His name was Georg Schlesinger, and he was a Jewish professor and designer acutely interested in how factories and machines could be integrated into the human side of labor and work. Schlesinger wondered at how an excitement
for mass production could be understood and appreciated without the loss of man’s soul: he feared that mass forms of communication and
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