scharoun and haring's east-west connections

7/18/2019 Scharoun and Haring's East-West Connections

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Among Hugo Häring’s papers in the Häring archive

of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin are the minutes

of six meetings entitled Discussions about Chinese Architecture held on Fridays and once on a Saturday

dating from November 1941 to May 1942.1 The

persons involved are Hugo Häring, Hans Scharoun,

Chen Kuan Lee and John Scott. Of Scott, a

Germanised American, we know little: it seems his

wife Gerda worked at Häring’s art school.2 But Chen

Kuan Lee is a key figure in this story. Born in

Shanghai in 1919, he had arrived in Berlin in 1935 to

study architecture under Hans Poelzig, completing

the course in 1939. He then became Scharoun’s

assistant until 1941, working on the private houses

that provided a limited creative opportunity under

the Nazis.3 Lee returned to Scharoun’s office in 1949,

remaining there until 1953, one of only four

assistants during the crucial period of 1951/19524

when Scharoun’s new architecture was under

development with key projects such as the

Darmstadt School and Kassel Theatre. In between,

Lee served as an assistant to Ernst Boerschmann

(1873–1949),5 the great German investigator of

Chinese culture and author of several books on

Chinese architecture.6 Boerschmann had visited

China from 1906 to 1909, when he was sent by the

German government to make a comprehensive

cultural study, rather as Hermann Muthesius had

been sent to England in 1896.7 To complete Lee’s biography, in1954 he set up as an architect on his

own account, building several Chinese restaurants,

more than 30private houses and some apartment

blocks in a Scharoun-like manner [ 1 ], some spatially

very interesting,8 but this kind of work went out of

fashion with the advent of postmodernism in the

1980s and Lee died quite recently in obscurity.

Since Lee had by 1941 already been Scharoun’s

assistant for four years with every opportunity for

discussion, the meetings about Chinese architecture

were presumably convened for Häring’s benefit. The

minutes were left in his possession, and he emerges

in them as the leader of the discussion. Lee is themain provider of material, which according to the

minutes included books on traditional Chinese

architecture by Ernst Boerschmann and Rudolf

Kelling, sketches and diagrams of his own, and

publications or photos of modern buildings in

Shanghai. Lee later claimed in a CV to have spent the

years 1941–43 working with Häring.9 The following

extract from the minutes of the first meeting shows

how the conversation began:

‘The contemplation of this material suggests the existenceof fundamental rules behind the building principles of Chinese architecture. The temple layout seems to have

provided an example which is carried even into thedwelling, especially the strong north-south axes. Therooms are not orientated on a practical basis, but for religious reasons In comparison with other great

historyHugo Häring and Hans Scharoun’s discovery of the religious and

symbolic dimensions of traditional Chinese architecture sheds

new light on central concerns of their mature work.

The lure of the Orient: Scharounand Häring’s East-West connectionsPeter Blundell Jones

1 Chen Kuan Lee,

private house in

St tt t l t 6

1a

1b



arq . vol 12 . no 1 . 2008 history30

2a3a

3b

1

22

4

5

6

78

10 11

12

13 14

15

16

9

3

2b

2 Illustrations from

Ernst Boerschmann

article, 1911

a ‘Ground plan of

temple at Kiatingfu’

b ‘The ancestral

temple of the Ch’en

family at Canton.

The reception hall’

c ‘Ground plan of

T’ai-miao, thetemple at the foot of

the sacred

mountain, T’ai-shan,

in Shantung’

3 Hugo Häring,

‘Chiweb’ project

a Original pencil

drawing, scale

1/2000, dated 4 June

1942

b Diagram. This is

the author’s

retraced version of

Häring’s drawing.

The marked central

axis of the

essentially

symmetrical north-south orientated

plan leads from the

motorway (1) across

a basin (2) via triple

bridges (3) to a

‘great forecourt’ (4),

culminating in the

central

administration and

curatorium of the

Werkbund (5).

Behind is a greatcomplex of ateliers

and workshops for

artists and

craftspersons (6).

To left of the

curatorium is the

administration and

economic direction

(7), to right a great

exhibition hall (8)

with school

administration and

library behind. In

front of this to south

is the publicity

section (9). Outside

this main central

square enclosure

and across the basinare the municipal

administration (10)

and the planning

office (11). On the

right flank are a park

(12), an area of

parking and shops

(13), a residential

suburb with

courtyard houses

(14), and the regional

planning office (15).Across the motorway

are a hotel (16) along

with further shops

and parking. The

drawing was left

incomplete, but

one can presume

that the outer part

on the right would

have been mirrored

on the left, especially

the residential

suburb

4 Häring, Krutina

garden pavilion,

Badenweiler

a Whole drawing

b Sectionc, d Elevations

2c



architecture it is the cultural and symbolic side of oldChinese buildings that needs researching. Topics such asthe motifs of water, forest, and sky, or water, clouds, andsky. Also the timber construction, skeleton construction,lack of diagonal bracing, and the restriction mainly to asingle-storey. The construction of the roof is discussed.

Major buildings in China have a stone foundation like a

hill with retaining wall. In this the motif of the [holy]mountain can be recognised. Form-elements of stoneconstruction depend on timber-construction.’10 [ 2 ]

Orientation, the dominance of the roof, and the

crucial role of carpentry were thus well understood.

Even during the first meeting the dominating topic

of the later ones emerges:

‘Häring stresses the seriousness of the work, and thenecessity of assuring its good effect, and suggests setting up a Chinese cultural organisation like the DeutscheWerkbund.’11

Parallel with these meetings was a project in the

Häring archive marked Chiweb: the most finished

general plan dates from 4 June 1942 [ 3 ]. This was the

project on which Lee claimed to have helped Häring,

and it is perhaps significant that one of the last

meetings involved Häring and Lee alone, having

moved on from general study to work on the Chinese

Werkbund idea. Chiweb is a kind of ideal town,

placing the arts and crafts organisation – its

administration and its Kuratorium – at the focal

point, with private studios behind and bureaucracies

such as the civic administration and building

departments in front. Recognisably Chinese are the

hierarchical use of the north-south axis with a

southern entrance only, the canal-like basin to south

crossed by triple bridges, and the grouping of

facilities into walled precincts around courtyards,though the symmetrical and axial layout also repeats

aspects of Häring’s general plan for Zagreb of 1929.12

Some of the detailed thinking relates to Häring’s

experience with the art school Kunst und Werk which

he led in Berlin from 1935–43, the former

Reimannschule. This large and progressive institution

with departments of photography and film as well as

arts and crafts had been a rival to the Bauhaus, and

under Häring it re-employed former Bauhaus staff

like Walter Peterhans and Georg Muche, struggling

on through the Nazi years until its building was

bombed in1943.13 Häring had become deeply

interested in education and made various ambitiousand idealistic plans to rehouse and redefine the

school both before and after its destruction. In all

these schemes education, as the provider of spiritual

direction and as the determiner of all significant

form, is given the central place, hence the proposed

werkbund’s temple-like status. Here work would be

done on ‘the secret of form’, Häring’s great final

theme in his theoretical writings of the early 1950s.14

‘Den Musen geweiht’

Chiweb is not the only example of oriental influence

in the late work of Häring. Among the few buildings

he was able to plan during the War – though

unexecuted – was a tiny garden pavilion for his

writer/actor friends Krutina15 in Badenweiler [ 4 ], for

whom he had built a familyhouse in 1937 8 Besides

acting as a greenhouse and tool-shed, this tiny

structure was to contain a writing place for the

owner. It was called a ‘hermitage’ with a beam

inscribed ‘Den Musen geweiht’ – ‘dedicated to the

muses’, and was to have had carved lions at the ends

of the main beam sculpted figures drawn with great

history arq . vol 12 . no 1 . 2008

4c

4a

4b

4d



care and reminiscent of Chinese figures in Kelling’s

book, although Häring also cited Roman precedents.16

The cranked building made its architectural

statement through the expressed timber frame and

daringly low-pitched thatched roof. Its studied

primitiveness is reminiscent of Japanese Minka and

the Ise shrine, and may reflect Häring’s already well-

established interest in Japanese architecture.In the early 1930s as secretary of the Ring, Häring

had entertained at least three of the key figures of

west-east transfer, Tetsuro Yoshida, Mamoru Yamada

and Chikadata Karata. The preface of Yoshida’s

famous book Das japanische Wohnhaus of 1935 names

Häring and Hilberseimer as the two instigators of the

book project,17 so he knew its contents, including Ise

and Katsura, and must have spent considerable time

with Yoshida. Berlin was the base for Yoshida’s

European trip, and he came and went from there five

times between October 1931 and May 1932, spending

no less than four and a half months in the city.18

Concerning the earlier visit of Yamada in 1930, Hyon-

Sob Kim has turned up more precise information.

They met no less than five times, and Häring guided

him on visits to Siemensstadt, to see Haesler’s work,

and to visit Poelzig. Yamada had discussions with

Häring about architectural form and sympathised

with his organic approach. But Yamada’s description

also includes the claim that he was ‘haunted by the

memory of Häring’s dexterous use of chopsticks’.19

Kurata was introduced to Häring by Yamada and

stayed in Berlin for some time, living in the new

siedlung Onkel Tom’s Hütte designed by Häring,

Taut, and Salvisberg, and writing articles on German

architecture for Kokusai Kenchiku.20

That Häring was also interested in the Japaneseteahouse is proved by his essay on the subject,

though it was probably written later.21 But returning

to his ‘hermitage’, it is fascinating to consider the

dates. The main drawing is marked December 1941,

neatly couched between the first meeting about

Chinese architecture on 14November and the second

on 16 January 1942. The plan includes an interesting

skew, but in the absence of siting information its

rationale is not clear.22 The essential architecture

however appears more in the section and elevation.

As with the Chinese architecture they were studying,

more or less the whole thing is roof, some timber

members are round trunks, and the humped endgives hierarchical priority to the ‘spiritual’ study.

That Häring had always been interested in the

expressive potential of roofs is obvious from much of

his work – one only has to think of the added accent

produced by the silo at Garkau – but it can hardly be

coincidence that in February 1942, just as he was

working on the details of the Krutina ‘hermitage’, he

also produced an essay entitled ‘Conversation with

Chen Kuan Lee about some roof profiles’ (see

translation in this issue, pp. 26–28). This seems to be

the report of a meeting held in addition to the

minuted ones, and hangs on a group of sketches

reproduced with it when it was first published in

1947.23 The original drawing is in my possession,

bequeathed to me by Häring’s assistant Margot

Aschenbrenner [5] and the curious thing is that the

sketches are bunched up together and drawn every

way round on the paper, not following the order of

the argument. It seems this drawing was the original

centre of discussion, pushed to and fro across the

table, though the hand seems to be entirely Häring’s.

The text shows how well Häring understood the

critical importance of the roof in Chinese

architecture:‘How did this […] remarkable Chinese roof […] comeabout? It is a saddle roof with an exaggerated rounding of the ridge and wide outswinging eaves, and the surface israised to the highest shine through the intensity of

gleaming glazed tiles which display all the colours of nature […] Through the wave profile of the over- andunderlapping tiles, which add to the formal effect, it survives every kind of weather. And these tiles lie in a thick mortar-bed, so that the whole becomes extraordinarily heavy. It is supported by a most elaborate structure of intersecting beams, struts and columns, which seems lessthe result of calculation than of a will to form and image[… The structure] connects this skin to the great tree-

trunks which convey these extraordinary loads to theearth. It would be wrong to group these tree-trunks withthe columns of the west, for they are the precise opposite.

They are proportional to the heavy load and the wind- pressure, there are few of them, and they are of slender growth. Between them are set partitions of clay, morescreens than true wall construction, and not in theslightest load-bearing. The roof is the whole building: allelse is subordinate. When it takes the form of a gate it evenstands alone with no house beneath, just a roof held highon tree-trunks.’24

For brevity I will summarise the argument that

follows with the help of his sketches [ 6 ]. The special

roof, which represents Chinese Wesen or ‘beingness’,rises from the ground without attaining a peak, then

falls back again to rejoin the earth. Its form reflects

the Chinese landscape and the surrounding

mountains whose shapes are always significant, and

it also finds a parallel in the flow of characters in

Chinese script. Some of these ideas seem to derive

directly from Boerschmann’s magnum opus of 1925:

‘[…] But to bring life, the play of living forces, into thebuilding and make it felt, they also used the specialChinese motif of the curving roof. The swinging lines andsurfaces of this roof, and the tremendous life it gives to theornament, is nourished to the fullest extent through

images furnished by nature herself. These are found in the forms of plain and mountain, in trees, in water, and evenin passing clouds. In a purely formal sense, the light rooflines very often lend the buildings a grace and charmof the personal. But at the same time they awakentranscendent voices to inform us of the great primary source in religion, which is further reflected in a wholeseries of other building characteristics.’25

Later in the essay, Häring contrasts the Chinese roof

profiles with modernist ones. Two sketches in

particular make a stark contrast [ 7 ]. One shows a

seated figure at peace in the ancestral hall – the

religious focus of Confucianism – with subordinate

dwelling rooms to the side. The other is a

representation of a modernist building which seems

to squash the poor inhabitant. The latter type is

explicitly attributed to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe




who is accused of an obsession with the horizontal:

‘[…] Exclusively horizontal energy […] spreading ever outward without limit. Nothing competes with thishorizontality: the rising triangle of gods in the Greek temple falls away and Promethean man no longer proudly

carries the earthly load of the architrave […] Everything submits to the horizontal expansion of power, there is noescape. The earth and its riches are protected andarranged in horizontal harmony, expressive of the hereand now. Expensive materials and the noblest work areinvolved, but not for their essential meaning, rather for their corporeal display.’ 26

Häring finds an alternative to Mies in the work of his

friend Scharoun, who uses ‘no single roof-form, but

rather roofscapes’ [ 8 ]. His multiple roofs are

approved by Häring as being-like and present ‘amusical elevation in space like an orchestra’.27 Häring

was presumably thinking of the roofs depicted in

Scharoun’s visionary sketches of the wartime period,for those of the private houses had had to follow

conventional vernacular forms.

Courtyard plans, orientation and cosmology

Reference to Chinese or Japanese sources was equally

important for questions of plan. Among Häring’s

numerous projects between 1945 and 1950 for

housing schemes, some seem East-Asian both in their

inspiration and in the way they are drawn [ 9,10 ],especially the ones with private courtyards and

protective enclosing walls, emphasising the outdoor

spaces as contained rooms. Orientation was also a

primary consideration, and in his essay on the

ground plan, Häring claimed that a house must

present itself to the sun like a flower,28 while he

planned all dwellings after about 1936 with north-

headed beds. Here East-Asian practice confirmed

ideas already present and supported by other

sources, such as water-divining and earth-radiation.29

This was much more than the mere climatic issue

subscribed to by other modernists like Gropius: it

was a deeper and more spiritual sense that directionin architecture is important, and is a matter to which

one should never remain indifferent; it was a


5

6

7a

7b

8

6, 7, 8 Sketches,

as published in

‘Conversation with

Chen Kuan Lee

about roof profiles’,

Neues Bauen:

Schriftenreihe des

Bundes Deutscher

Architekten, vol. 3

(1947)

5 Sketches for roof

profiles, original

drawing



conviction that every building needs to be located,

both in relation to the planet and the cosmos. Far

from being new, this was an ancient and widespread

attitude that had been lost, for anthropologists

studying pre-industrialised peoples have so often

reported on rules of orientation for buildings that a

regular reader comes to expect them almost as a

matter of course.30

Boerschmann certainly presenteda resounding case for the Chinese, stressing from

beginning to end of his various books the religious

connotations of building and the intended

reflection of nature: first a summary text:

‘The basis of Chinese architecture is religious resonance.Once we understand this, we have the key tounderstanding the buildings themselves. The finest considerations of the Chinese people found their expression in religion. Here lies the root of all action. Theinner forces released by it should move us when weconsider the outer image of the Chinese landscape, of nature and what people have added to it – when weconsider what it was, and how through works of architecture the Chinese give their land its soul.’ 31

Then a more profound one, from the end of his two-

volume study:

‘In works of architecture the Chinese see […] an image of the cosmos, and they naturally strive to build inaccordance with this way of thinking. For when, as theChinese also believe, everything living is to be regarded as aunity, this must also embrace the works of men. Since the

pure reflection of this cast of mind also appears in the formof architecture […] one can read it in the forms of the great

sites. The harmony of the All, of stars, sun, moon, andearth, the rhythm of the becoming and the departing, of theseasons, of day and night, were discovered by the Chinesein ancient times as the foundations of our being and laidout in visible symbols, among which numbers gained asupreme importance. Primarily numbers, but also lines,surfaces, and spaces in their manifold divisions anddependant relationships […] form the elements of thebuilding art and are used to produce rhythmic andharmonic order. This close relation between a rhythmicinterpretation of the world and the conscious adoption of it in one’s own forms of life can […] scarcely beoveremphasised. Connected with this was the symbolism of energy forces working in nature and in us, which people

longed to make visible. Among the great conceptions that they […] tried to show in their buildings were a highest

principle, interpreted as the extreme transfiguration andalso as the void itself, then superimposed on this a dualismof the two forces found within that unity, third a soul-likeagent, which is immanent everywhere, and f inally humanity which lets godliness remain in balance.

Examples which express these thoughts throughorganisation and ordering of buildings are (1) the great central axes of courtyards and halls as the holy routeleading away from the midday sun, (2) the tripartitedivision of the axis, which is much demanded for religiousbuildings and also customarily used for gates and halls, (3)

the arrangement of the principal seat for the master of thehouse, the God, duke or patriarch, in the principal place inthe middle or at the end of the whole layout, and (4) thesame arrangement with temple and dwelling housethrough worship of ancestors, and even of the living

family-head.’32

In a way typical of the German 1920s, Boerschmann

stressed the relativity of cultures and the way each

reflected a world-view that had to be understood in

detail within its own terms. His books are full of

respect for the Chinese, despite the colonial

circumstances of his original visit and the then

normal assumption of European superiority. The very

title of his final chapter ‘Das Wesen chinesischer Architektur’ (The Beingness of Chinese Architecture)

resonated with Häring’s own views about the Wesen of

the building task, and sentences like ‘the unity of

inner being and external appearance, of being and

creation, is the secret of the deep affect of Chinese art

(das Geheimnis der tiefen Wirkung chinesischer Kunst )’,33

must have held an immediate appeal. If

Boerschmann did not provide the primary example

of how architecture can reflect a world-view (for

Häring was already widely read), he did at least

confirm the idea, offering a new sample for Häring’s

developing view of architectural history. In this the

various earthly regions were the Werkräume of the

various peoples who had their duties allotted to them

as part of the unfolding divine purpose – Häring

never quite broke away from his protestant roots but


9

10

9 Häring, floor plan of a courtyard house

with community

building on the north

side facing south, in

the Chinese manner

10 Häring, isometricprojection of a

courtyard house,

1950

11 Häring, Schmitzhouses, Biberach,

1950

a, b, c exteriors

d interior



his God was necessarily a universal one that all

religions attempt to grasp.34

Both Boerschmann and Häring acknowledged

cultural – and racial – differences as part of the rich

variety of the world, but generously accepted the

cultural ‘other’ as an equal, with fascinated respect

rather than with any presupposition of superiority.

Although both of the Chinese-inspired textsconsulted in the meetings dated from the 1920s,

belonging essentially to the open-minded and

relativist era of the Weimar Republic,35 they were

being read in1941–2 in very different outer

circumstances. There was the chaos of war, the threat

of bombing, the Gestapo taking a tighter grip, and

for architects a total cessation of active work.

Häring’s art school had depended f inancially on

foreign students who no longer came, and it limped

on until bombed in 1943. Scharoun was employed as

a surveyor of bomb damage. For both, the private

excursion into Chinese architecture must have

provided the welcome refuge of another world.

By 1942, Häring’s active career was almost over.

Although he hoped for a new start after the war and

produced dozens of buildable designs, he only

completed a couple of houses in 1950 for his patron

Guido Schmitz. They seem almost oriental in their

spare simplicity and exposed timber framing,

particularly the interiors [ 11 ], but it was also a time

of austerity and economic struggle, of making do

with limited means. Häring spent his last years in

writing and contemplation, living in a simple attic

room, and as his assistant Margot Aschenbrenner

describes, even here was a touch of the Orient:

‘In front of the window of the attic room […] where he

worked on his intended book, he made a tiny “roofgarden”


11a

11b

11c

d




12a

b



in a clay trough, “at the scale of 1:100”, as he explained to visitors. The arrangement of small plants, mosses, andstones awakened the impression of a territory to beentered with the eyes. Amidst the greenery a small bronze

Buddha found his place, with a socket in its hand for anincense stick. Instead of this, Häring set in his grasp asharp pencil, sticking up diagonally against the sky, far

beyond its holder. Delighted with his creation, Häring interpreted the Buddha’s gesture with the words “Up herethings will be written!”.’36

Scharoun and Chinese influence

Hans Scharoun was only 52 in 1945, with a full public

career still ahead of him. During the twelve years of

Nazi rule he had been obliged to ghost for others on

housing schemes, and he put his architectural

creativity mainly into a series of private houses.

Externally they acknowledged the Nazi planning

restrictions with a vernacular appearance, but their

living spaces were freely-planned and of daring,

unprecedented fluidity [ 12 ].37 Most of them have

gardens by Hermann Mattern or his wife Herta

Hammerbacher, a couple for whom Scharoun had

designed a modest house completed in 1934 which is

unusual in its reticence [ 13 ]. The Matterns were part

of Karl Foerster’s plant nursery at Bornim and

became the leading German landscape architects of

their generation. Their informal approach to

gardens and their love of creating natural-looking

landscapes in miniature suggest influence from

China and Japan, but more striking still is a sensitive


14a

14b

13a

13b

12 Hans Scharoun,

weekend house forthe art dealer

Ferdinand Möller

in Zermützelsee,

Brandenburg,photographed after

recent restoration

13 Scharoun, Mattern

house, Bornim, nearPotsdam, 1934

14 Three examples of

M tt ’ k



use of irregular paving stones counting on the

uniqueness of each piece, which is reminiscent of

Katsura [ 14 ]. The Scharoun houses repeatedly

employed such irregular or ‘crazy’ paving in the

living areas, both to link inside and out and to

eschew the space-defining effect of geometric tiling.

It probably came from the Matterns to Scharoun

rather than vice versa, and it may in turn reflect theinfluence of Camillo Schneider, the plant hunter

from the Bornim school who spent 1913 and 1914 in

China and returned via the United States.38 He

certainly visited Chinese gardens and brought back

photographs, though the connection with the

Matterns has yet to be proved.

In Scharoun’s case the most blatant outcome of the

discussions about Chinese architecture is a long

essay on Chinese city planning dated January 1945 –

three months before the end of the war.39 He had

been Professor at Breslau from 1925–33 but had not

taught for twelve years except perhaps for the odd

lecture at Häring’s art school which closed in 1943, so

we can take it that this essay was written for his own

private purposes with no lecture or publication in

mind. Its length is such that it is better summarised

than quoted.

For Scharoun, the traditional Chinese city was an

admirable model because of its clarity, consistency,

and phenomenal wholeness. He writes of its cell-like

structure, open-ended but following natural growth.

He acknowledges the importance of the relation with

the surroundings and the consideration of cosmic

and symbolic relations. He identifies a powerful

form-tradition, but questions its continuing

relevance, fearing that the world of the ancestor-cult

will be sacrificed to western ideas. In the second partof the essay he lists the contributing elements,

starting with the wall that defines the spatial dasein.

It can act alone, freestanding, unlike house walls in a

western street. Next come the axes, that as ‘soul axes’

bind people to cosmos and nature. Third is light, and

Scharoun notes the southward orientation of the

main hall, which links people to the course of the

sun in a way not found in the west. The buildings are

also un-Western in their openness, forming

thickenings not divisions within the spatial cell, like

a wood in a landscape. Their roofs contain and

project like clouds over the earth, keenly symbolic

and showing relative status in subtle ways. Thehouses have raised terraces, but they are sparingly

used and do not divide life from the ground.

Everything is in proportion. The streets form a

hierarchy. Private houses open onto them by window

or door, and the main streets can take nine riders

abreast. Between houses are narrow walled lanes: the

drama of family life starts only behind the walls, not

spilling onto the street as in the west. Scharoun

concludes his list by noting that the landscape has

many scales, and whether planted or built, it

continues outside the city in its cared-for order.40

City as a whole and ‘Stadtlandschaft’

In 1946 Scharoun became Berlin City Architect and in

1956 he won the Philharmonie competition: this was

his most fertile decade Returning to a public

architecture after 12 years of isolation meant facing amajor change in scale, tackling the city, and

providing a new public setting for democratic life in

contrast with the overscaled monumentality of

Albert Speer. Although what he proposed for Berlin

and elsewhere differed greatly from the Chinese city

he so admired, study of the latter arguably served as a

catalyst. Most important in this respect was

Scharoun’s conviction that the city should be

considered as a whole, integrated into its landscape

as Stadtlandschaft (city-landscape). Such large-scale

thinking implied a duty to design each building not

only in response to its immediate context but also

within the greater context of the city as a whole.Projects such as the school at Darmstadt of 1951

and the theatres at Kassel and Mannheim of 1952 and

1953 included context plans showing the whole city

[ 15 ], and indicating how the new building would

make reference to existing plan features and existing

public monuments. This question of location and

integration did not merely engage the existing city

but also responded to its historic growth, registered

in the case of Mannheim in a series of redrawn city

plans from its foundation in 1606 taken at century

intervals [ 16 ]. These plans were drawn by Alfred

Schinz (1919–1998), Scharoun’s principal research

assistant between 1950 and 1955.41 He was only one of

four assistants in 1951/2 alongside Chen Kuan Lee,

and he adds another Chinese connection. His father

Leopold Schinz had been a civil engineer in China for


15a

15b



eighteen years working in Jinanfu, and Alfred was

brought up in the export quarter of Berlin,

interested in things Chinese from his earliest

childhood. Having been Scharoun’s student and then

assistant, Schinz became a town planner and went to

work in China, returning to complete a doctorate on

Chinese town planning in 1976. This was the basis of his magnum opus The Magic Square published in 1996,

the most detailed history of Chinese town planning

that we have in the West.42

A second aspect of Scharoun’s architecture

catalysed by the Chinese experience was the

necessary continuity between a building and its

surroundings, each new work not imposed as an

isolated object, but joining in a continuous chain of

indoor and outdoor spaces. His best known works,

the Philharmonie and State Library in Berlin, are

unfortunately somewhat anomalous in this respect,

because the contextual intentions were so repeatedly

traduced. The work that would best have shown the

idea of Stadtlandschaft unfortunately remained

unexecuted, but plans and model photographs

remain This was the prize winning competition


16a

16b

16c

17

8

16d

15 Scharoun,Mannheim Theatre

Competition, 1953,

location plan

16 Mannheim TheatreCompetition, plans

showing the

development of the

city submitted along

with the design

17, 18, Hans Scharounand Hermann

Mattern, Kassel

Theatre

Competition, 1952–3



design for a new theatre at Kassel of 1952, produced

jointly and on equal billing with landscape architect

Hermann Mattern [ 17,18 ].The site on Friedrichsplatz near the centre of the

city lay between the formal square and the hillside

which drops into the Fulda valley. In the other

direction the square lay between the old medieval

centre and the Baroque gridded new town. To add tothe complexity, the Baroque gardens of the Schloss

in the valley had to be restored, and a new ring-road

had to be accommodated between theatre and

square. These elements and their attendant

geometries were taken into account, and the

building was set in the side of the hill, partly

absorbed in terraces and topped with a fly-tower that

added a new signature to the city landscape.

Scharoun and Mattern’s design promised to

reconcile and recombine historic elements, creating

a seamless flow of public spaces between park and

city centre. It was developed for construction but

abandoned under scandalous circumstances, to be

replaced by a poor design by local architect Paul

Bode. Mattern successfully reworked the Baroque

park and hillside, but the crucial chance of

collaboration with Scharoun on a large public site

was lost.43

Axes and angles

An outstanding quality of the Kassel project in the

context of the early 1950s is the daring geometric

irregularity both of plan and section, and the multi-

angularity of Scharoun’s post-war work might now

be regarded historically as its most essential and

innovative quality. Doubts about its constructability,

let alone its ‘rationality’, contributed to the project’sdemise. At first sight this irregularity seems

completely at odds with Scharoun’s admiration of

the rectangular orientated Chinese city, its regular

grid of streets, its dominant central axis, and the

underlying idea of the magic square: they could even

be considered complete opposites. But of course the

old imperial Chinese cities were embodiments of a

society that was hierarchical in the extreme, with the

emperor living in a ‘forbidden’ city at the core, and

the central axial route reserved exclusively for his

use, with instant execution for trespassers.

Something of the same axial and hierarchical nature

had appeared in the work of Speer. The new democratic city of the Federal Republic needed, by

contrast, to avoid all such hierarchy, gaining a more

complex form to reflect the egalitarian exchange of

views. This theme occurs repeatedly in Scharoun’s

texts about his post-war work. A clear example is the

‘aperspective’ auditorium of the Mannheim project

that aimed to give the theatre audience varied but

equally valid views, as opposed to the old Baroque

version which set the Duke’s box on axis and laid outthe audience according to the aristocratic hierarchy.

Once understood in relation to its politics and

supporting cosmology, the Chinese city provides a

fascinating case of how geometric discipline can bear

meaning in a manner quite outside the conventions

of the classical tradition, especially a classicism

shorn of social and political meaning and practised

as empty formalism.44 The Chinese encounter may

have induced an increased consciousness of

direction registered by both Scharoun and Häring,

and an increased consciousness of axiality which is

essential to Scharoun’s mature work. Though some

contemporaries saw in his plans only a kind of wilful

disorder, they were on the contrary highly

disciplined, for without the crutch of the grid he had

to have a reason for every dimension and every angle.

Around1932–3 Scharoun had discovered the

advantages of shallow swings in angle to control

movement through a building both visually and

haptically, typically leading the visitor from staircase

to staircase.45 This developed into a hierarchy of

directionality which is immediately evident in the

foyer at the Philharmonie. It all depends on a special

kind of axial thinking which gives priority to the

route and to what one sees at each point, to how far

one turns and how the building reveals itself as one

moves through it.Directionality and specificity are the hallmarks of

the organic architecture of Hugo Häring and Hans

Scharoun, and both were present in different ways in

traditional Chinese architecture. The interpretation

of Ernst Boerschmann also stressed how buildings

reflected Chinese social mores and a whole ancient

Taoist cosmology, which he summarised as Wesen or

being, a direct parallel to Häring’s frequent demand

that architecture be wesenhaft , being-like. For the two

architects, the imagined trip to the Orient in the

darkest days of the War must have been a relief and a

spur to the imagination, as well as providing fresh

examples of eternal qualities in architecture that lay outside the classical tradition.




Notes

1. The heading of the first sheet is

‘Besprechung am 14November

1941’: as yet unpublished and

untranslated. Where the meetings

were held and who took the

minutes is unclear. From the style

and intellectual grasp of the

content Margot Aschenbrenner is

a possibility, but I never asked her.

2. Supposition of Andrea Schmitz,

the executor to Häring’s secretary

Margot Aschenbrenner.

Correspondence reveals that the

Scotts moved to Denver after the

war.

3. Peter Blundell Jones, ‘Hans

Scharoun’s Private Houses’,

Architectural Review, vol. 174, no.

1042 (December1983), 59-67; also

chapters 1 and 4 of Peter Blundell

Jones, Hans Scharoun (London:

Phaidon,1995).

4. The others were Peter Pfankuch,

Sergius Ruegenberg who also worked for Mies, and Alfred

Schinz, about whom more below.

5. Mentioned in Alfred Schinz, The Magic Square: Cities in Ancient China(Stuttgart: Menges, 1996), p. 422.

See also C. K. Lee (catalogue of the

exhibition at Architekturgalerie

am Weissenhof 30, Stuttgart,

February to March 1985).

6. Ernst Boerschmann, Die Baukunst und religiöse Kultur der Chinesen(Berlin,1911-13); Chinesische

Architektur , 2 vols (Berlin:

Wasmuth, 1925); Baukunst und

Landschaft in China (Berlin: Wasmuth, 1926); Chinesische Baukeramik (Berlin,1927).

7. Ernst Boerschmann, Chinese Architecture and its Relation to ChineseCulture (Washington: Govt. Print

office, 1912).

8. The catalogue of the1985 Lee

exhibition in Stuttgart lists as

built 32private houses, eight

larger housing developments and

six Chinese restaurants.

9. Lee claimed to have worked with

Häring ‘on the idea of the Chinese

Werkbund’: ‘Lebensdaten’ in

catalogue just cited. It seemsunlikely that Lee worked for

Häring on a daily basis: probably

this was the only work of this time

that he later regarded as

significant.

10. Extract from the meeting dated14

November 1941, Häring Archive,

Akademie der Künste Berlin (my

translation).

11. Ibid.12. Competition entry, unexecuted.

This most ambitious of all Häring’s

town planning proposals is

described and illustrated in Peter

Blundell Jones, Hugo Häring: TheOrganic versus the Geometric(Stuttgart: Menges, 1999), pp. 115-

116.

13. For the story of the school Kunst und Werk see ibid., pp. 141-144.

14. Über das Geheimnis der Gestalt was

the title of his last great essay

published in 1954, while his

proposed book was to be titled Die Ausbildung des Geistes zur arbeit ander Gestalt , published in part as

Hugo Häring, Fragmente, ed. by

Margot Aschenbrenner (Berlin:

Gebr. Mann, 1968).

15. In1935-38Häring designed and

built a house in Badenweiler for

the writer Edwin Krutina (1888-

1953) and his wife the actress Anni

Mewes (1895-1980) who had been a

long-standing friend and

colleague of Häring’s wife the

actress Emilia Unda. Both actresses

were involved in Max Reinhardt’s

Berlin theatre operation in the

1920s. The Krutina House was one

of only three private houses

completed by Häring under the

Nazis and was somewhatcompromised by painful

alterations at the insistence of the

planning authorities. It was much

altered and extended after the war,

and so has remained uncelebrated

as a minor item in the Häring

oeuvre. The most detailed account

is in Matthias Schirren, Hugo Häring: Architekt des neuen Bauens(Stuttgart: Hatje Cantz, 2001), pp.

214-218.

16. Rudolf Kelling, Das chinesischeWohnhaus (Tokyo: Deutsche

Gesellschaft für Natur- und

Välkerkunde Ostasiens,1935), (oneof the two books noted in the

minutes). Schirren discovered

correspondence about them with

the sculptor Martin Scheible, and

reveals that the client thought of

‘Daniel in the Lion’s Den’, while

Häring wanted the kind of Roman

lions that have human-like faces:

Schirren, pp. 214-218.

17. Also mentioned in the preface to

later English editions, such as

Tetsuro Yoshida, The Japanese Houseand Garden (London: Pall Mall

Press, 1969).

18. According to a table of Yoshida’stravel dates based on his diary and

assembled from Japanese sources

by H. S. Kim, Sheffield, February

2007.

19. From Mamoru Yamada ‘Thinking

about Hugo Häring’, Kokusai Kenchiku (International

Architecture) (October 1931), and

quoted in: Mukai Satoru,

Kenchikuka Yamada Mamoru(Architect Mamoru Yamada)

(Tokyo: Tokaidaigaku-Shupankai,

1992), pp. 218-219 (trans. by H.S.

Kim, 14November 2006).

20. Information on Kurata from

Nakae Ken, Hugo Häring andorganhaft Architecture (proceedings

of the Kobe University conference

Deutschland in Japan, 2005/6).

21. This was published in1954 as a

supplement to Über das Geheimnisder Gestalt , and also appears in

Häring, Fragmente, pp. 309-10.

22. The south end with the writing

place is turned eastward by

around 27°, accompanied by a

three-step change in level

following the rising ground. This

differentiates utilitarian from

ceremonial functions but

probably also responds to features

of the site unknowable without

the missing site plan.

23.In Neues Bauen: Schriftenreihe des Bundes Deutscher Architekten, vol. 3

(Hamburg,1947).

24. From the reprinted version in

Jürgen Joedicke and Heinrich

Lauterbach, Hugo Häring: Schriften, Entwürfe, Bauten (Stuttgart: Karl

Krämer, 1965), pp. 60-63 (my

translation).

25. Boerschmann,Chinesische Architektur , vol. 2, p. 50, from the

last chapter entitled ‘Das Wesen

chinesischer Architektur’ (my

translation).

26. From the reprinted version in

Joedicke and Lauterbach, pp. 60-63

(my translation).

27. Ibid.28. ‘A natural order will assert itself,

with the tendency for each part to

find its appropriate relation with

the sun, so that the house opens

towards the south and swings

round from east to west, while it

turns its back to the north. It behaves like a plant presenting its

organs to the sun.’ Extract from

Arbeit am Grundriss (Work on the

Ground Plan) (1952; my

translation). For further comment

see Blundell Jones, Hugo Häring ,pp. 150-153.

29. Andrea Schmitz, the daughter of

Häring’s last major client,

remembers a water-diviner being

consulted about the site of the

Schmitz house, and its position

being changed in consequence

(oral information).

30. Specific instances are toonumerous to list here, but many

cases can be found in Enrico

Guidoni, Primitive Architecture(London: Faber/Electa, 1987). In his

time, Häring certainly knew the

work of Frobenius which discussed

African examples. Interpretations

vary between cultures, and ideas

about fortunate directions can be

contradictory, but always there is a

system for giving direction

meaning. The only near universal

seems to be an association of east

and sunrise with birth, west and

sunset with death.

31. Boerschmann, Baukunst und Landschaft in China, pp. V to VII (my

translation).




University of Sheffield School of

Architecture and funded by the AHRC

(grant number AR119293). Much of

the material originated in the

Scharoun and Häring Archives at the

Akademie der Künste in Berlin,

particularly the typed minutes which

were the starting point for this

investigation, and I gratefully

acknowledge their cooperation over

the last thirty years. Andrea Schmitz,

daughter of Häring’s last patron, has

also provided material and crucial

information.

Biography

Peter Blundell Jones is Professor of

Architecture at the University of

Sheffield. His research, primarily

focussed on the alternative or organic

modernist tradition, has produced

many publications, including HansScharoun (London: Phaidon, 1995),

Hugo Häring: The Organic versus the

Geometric (Stuttgart: Menges, 1999),Günter Behnisch (Basel: Birkhäuser,

2000), Modern Architecture through CaseStudies (Oxford: Architectural Press,

2002), Gunnar Asplund (London:

Phaidon,2006) and Peter Hübner: Building as a Social Process (Stuttgart:

Menges, 2007). As a journalist and

critic, he is a frequent contributor to

The Architectural Review, The Architects’ Journal and other international

periodicals.

Author’s address

Prof. Peter Blundell Jones

Arts Tower University of Sheffield

Western Bank

Sheffield, S102TN

[email protected]

32. Boerschmann,Chinesische Architektur , vol. 2, pp. 48-53 (my

translation). I added the numbers

in the last sentence to clarify the

structure.

33. Ibid., p. 52.

34. For further discussion see Blundell

Jones, Hugo Häring , pp. 183-185.

35. Boerschmann’s key books were

published 1925-27, Rudolf Kelling’s

Das chinesische Wohnhaus was based

on a thesis written1920-23 in

Dresden, though not published

until 1935, and then in Japan (see

note 14).

36. Introduction to Häring, Fragmente,p. X (my translation).

37. See note 3.

38. See ClaudiaVierle,CamilloSchneider: Dendrologe undGartenbauschriftsteller, eine Studie zuseinem Leben und Werk (Berlin:

Technische Universität Berlin,

1998).

39. Hans Scharoun, Chinesischer Städtebau, included in Peter

Pfankuch, Hans Scharoun: Bauten, Entwürfe, Texte (Berlin: Gebr. Mann,

1974), pp. 121-123.

40. Ibid. (my summary). No full

English translation is yet available.

41. In a conversation in Berlin on 24

September 1993, Schinz told me

that not only had he prepared the

historical plans of Mannheim but

he had also conducted an

investigation for Scharoun into

different theatre types. He also

undertook research for the

Darmstadt school project,involved in discussions with

educators and doctors. He

confirmed that Ruegenberg was

the ace draughtsman, and indeed

the perspectives of the projects in

that phase are often his.

42. Schinz, The Magic Square.43. Mattern designed the garden for

the Philharmonie, but it was

something of an afterthought and

not maintained. Scharoun’s

intentions for the Kuturforum

were never carried through and

there were many changes of mind,

producing isolated objects rather

than the intended continuity.

Change of site after the

competition of 1956 to the then

completely barren Tiergarten

corner did not help.

44. I am thinking of the reductive

nature of Durand’s typologies and

of the way that ‘composition’

around axes became an automatic

process in early-twentieth-century

architectural education.

45. An advance specifically datable to

the Schminke House completed in

1933: sources as in note 3.

Illustration credits

arq gratefully acknowledges:

Author,1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 12, 13

Ernst Boerschmann, 2

Häring Archive at the Akademie der

Künste, Berlin, 3, 4, 9, 10, 15, 16

Hermann Mattern catalogue at the

Akademie der Künste, Berlin,14,

17, 18

Andrea Schmitz,11

Acknowledgements

This paper is an extended version of

the session paper given at the SAHconference in Pittsburgh, April 2007,

and it is part of the research on East-

west connections in modern

architecture undertaken at The




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scharoun and haring's east-west connections

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