The eye of the expert: Walter Benjamin and the Avant Garde

Art History

Volumn 24, Issue 3, 2001, Pages 401-444

  Schwartz, Frederic J ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LONDON   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 34548360966     PISSN: 01416790     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1467-8365.00272     Document Type: Review

References (131)

1. Unless otherwise noted, my references to the Artwork essay will be to the standard English translation, 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction', in W. Benjamin, Illuminations, trans. H. Zohn, New York, 1968, here pp. 231, 241. This is a translation of the third German version of the essay, which Benjamin prepared after revising a second version and translating it into French with Pierre Klossowski; this latter text is the only one to have appeared in Benjamin's lifetime. I will also cite the original German texts of Benjamin's works as they appear in the Gesammelte Schriften, R. Tiedemann and H. Schweppenhäuser (eds), Frankfurt am Main, 1974-89, here vol. 1, pp. 492, 505
2. From the first version of the essay: Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 1, p. 440. Unless otherwise cited, translations are my own
3. Benjamin, 'Theses on the Philosophy of History', Illuminations, p. 255
4. Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 1, p. 695
5. One-Way Street, p. 45 (trans, modified)
6. Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 4, p. 85
7. For example in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 3, pp. 187-9 ('Der arkadische Schmock')
8. and Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 2, p. 383 ('der photographische Schmock')
9. Benjamin, Moscow Diary, Gary Smith (ed.), trans. R. Sieburth, Cambridge, MA, p. 23
10. Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 6, p. 305
11. The details of Benjamin's biography are widely availably. In English, see, most recently and readably, Momme Brodersen, Walter Benjamin: A Biography, trans. M.R. Green and I. Ligers, London and New York, 1996
12. G, published between 1923 and 1926, was edited by Richter, Gräff and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. The list of thirty-eight names includes El Lissitzky, Ludwig Hilberseimer, Adolf Behne, Kurt Schwitters, Raoul Hausmann, George Grosz and Walter Ruttmann. It is reproduced in Eckhardt Köhn, 'Die Intelligenz des Fotografierenden', in Sasha Stone, Fotografien 1925-39, Berlin, 1990, p. 9
13. Benjamin's friend Ernst Schoen, a composer, musician, writer and later radio official, probably introduced Benjamin to the group. On Benjamin's involvement with the G group, see Hans Richter, Köpfe und Hinterköpfe, Zurich, 1967, pp. 69, 87-8, and Köhn's very important essay 'Konstruktion des Lebens
14. Zum Urbanismus der Berliner Avantgarde', Avant Garde. Revue interdisciplinaire et internationale, no. 1, 1988, pp. 33-72 passim
15. i10 was published between 1927 and 1929 by Arthur Müller-Lehning. On i10 and Müller-Lehning, see the essays and documents in H. Gaßner, K. Kopanski and K. Stengel (eds), Die Konstruktion der Utopie. Ästhetische Avantgarde und politische Utopie in den 20er Jahren, Marburg, 1992, and the i10 bibliography compiled by Suzanne Frank in Oppositions, no. 7, Winter 1976, pp. 67-77
16. Ten letters from Benjamin to Müller-Lehning are reprinted in Benjamin, Gesammelte Briefe, vol. 3, Frankfurt am Main, 1997
17. 'Now on the afternoon in question I was sitting inside the Café des Deux Magots at St.-German-des-Prés ... Suddenly, and with compelling force, I was struck by the idea of drawing a diagram of my life, and knew at the same moment exactly how it was to be done. With a very simple question I interrogated my past life, and the answers were inscribed, as if of their own accord, on a sheet of paper that I had with me. A year or two later, when I lost this sheet, I was inconsolable. I have never since been able to restore it as it arose before me then, resembling a series of family trees.' 'A Berlin Chronicle', in Benjamin, One-Way Street and Other Writings, trans. E. Jephcott and K. Shorter, London, 1979, pp. 318-19
18. Benjamin's 'Berlin Chronicle' was, in fact, originally dedicated 'to four of my dear friends[:] Sascha [Stone,] Gerhard [Scholem,] Asja Lazis and Fritz Heinle'. On the dedication and Stone, see Gershom Scholem, Walter Benjamin und sein Engel, Frankfurt am Main, 1983, p. 177
19. On improvisation and the Berlin avant-garde, see Köhn, 'Konstruktion des Lebens', op. cit., 33-5
20. A. Dambron, 'Sasha Stone', Gebrauchsgraphik, no. 7, June 1930, p. 27
21. For biographical information on Stone, see Köhn, 'Die Intelligenz des Fotografierenden'
22. Stone's statement originally appeared in his essay 'Photo- Kunstgewerbereien', Das Kunstblatt, no. 3, 1928, p. 86
23. See, for example, his montages combining views of different cities such as 'If Berlin were New York'. Sasha Stone, Fotografien 1925-39, p. 34
24. Twice, for example, in his 'Small History of Photography': Benjamin, One-Way Street and Other Writings, op. cit. (note 11), p. 247 (with no mention of Moholy), p. 254 (with a reference to Moholy)
25. Benjamin quotes Moholy directly and cites him as his source in a review of Karl Bloßfeldt, Urformen der Natur (1928), Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 3, p. 151
26. Franz Hessel's diary contains a mention of an 'art debate' between Moholy and the composer and director Otto Klemperer in Benjamin's flat on 5 July of the same year. Excerpt repr. in Hans Puttnies and Gary Smith, Benjaminiana, Giessen, 1991, p. 149
27. And in an important essay on Benjamin, Adorno also mentions Moholy: 'In the late 20s and early 30s ... he was in regular contact with Kurt Weill, [Otto] Klemperer, Moholy-Nagy.' Theodor W. Adorno, 'A l'écart de tous les courants', in Adorno, Gesammelte Schriften, R. Tiedemann (ed.), Frankfurt am Main, 1997, vol. 20, p. 187
28. Several important notes and fragments on the problem of visual perception and representation have now been translated and appear in Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 1, M. Bullock and M.W. Jennings (eds), Cambridge, MA, 1996
29. These have been studied in greatest depth by Howard Caygill, who considers them in light of the neo-Kantianism prevailing in German philosophy at the time of Benjamin's youth. See Caygill, Walter Benjamin: The Colour of Experience, London and New York, 1998
30. See, for example, the ink drawing Composition with Telegraph Cables and Railway Signal, c. 1920, private collection, Hamburg, reproduced in C. David (ed.), Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Kassel, 1991, p. 62
31. Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, 'Zeitgemäße Typographie Ziele, Praxis, Kritik' (1925), trans, in Krisztina Passuth, Moholy-Nagy, London, 1985, p. 294
32. Moholy-Nagy, 'Zeitgemäße Typographie', in Passuth, op. cit. (note 20), p. 294
33. Josef Albers, 'Zur Ökonomie der Schriftform', Offset. Buch- und Werbekunst, no. 10, 1926, repr. in Gerd Fleischmann (ed.), Bauhaus. Drucksachen, Typographie, Reklame, Düsseldorf, 1984, p. 23
34. Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Malerei, Fotografie, Film (1925), 2nd edn., Munich, 1928, p. 38
35. The title page and one text page from the 1928 Rowohlt edition are illustrated in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 7, pl. 17
36. I am not the first to do so. In 'Konstruktion des Lebens', op. cit. (note 9), Eckhardt Köhn argues for a reading of One-Way Street as what he calls 'technical self-representation', a genre he locates in the Berlin avant garde. My point here is a different one, though I have learned much from Köhn's argument. A 'surrealist' reading of the book can be found already in Ernst Bloch's review of 1928 in the Vossische Zeitung, repr. (slightly altered by the author) in Bloch, Heritage of Our Times, trans. N. and S. Plaice, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1990, pp. 334-7
37. For a recent example of this profitable line of thought, see Josef Fürnkäs, Surrealismus als Erkenntnis. Walter Benjamin - Weimarer Einbahnstraße und Pariser Passagen, Stuttgart, 1988. I should also add that the approach I take here to Benjamin's analysis of attention in modernity should not be seen as an attempt to deny the importance of the well-known amalgam of Simmel and Freud concerning shocks and memory that emerges in his work on Baudelaire. My intention is simply to establish points of reference more helpful to an understanding of the axis connecting One-Way Street and the Artwork essay
38. On Lissitzky's study of engineering and architecture in both Germany and the Soviet Union, as well as his work in graphics, painting, typography and photography, see Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers (ed.), El Lissitzky: Maler, Architekt, Typograf Fotograf, Dresden, 1967
39. '4. The design of the book-space, set according to the constraints of printing mechanics, must correspond to the tensions and pressures of content. 5. The design of the book-space using process blocks which issue from the new optics. The supernatural reality of the perfected eye.' El Lissitzky, 'Topographie der Typographie' (1923), trans, in Robin Kinross, Modern Typography: An Essay in Critical History, London, 1992, p. 87
40. Jan Tschichold, The New Typography (1928), trans. R. McLean, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1995, p. 224. Several images of the Mayakovsky/ Lissitzky project are reproduced in Tschichold's book, which was well known at the time
41. I explore the Constructivists' use of architecture as a paradigm of visual attention in 'Book Space: Walter Benjamin, the Kunstwerk-Aufsatz and the Avant-Garde', Kritische Berichte, no. 3, 2000
42. Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Painting, Photography, Film, trans. J. Seligman, London, 1969, pp. 23-4
43. Iwan [Jan] Tschichold, introduction to 'elementare typografie', Typographische Mitteilungen, vol. 22, no. 10, 1925, p. 212
44. Richard Hamburger, 'Das psychotechnische Problem in der Ingenieurwissenschaft', Industrielle Psychotechnik, vol. 1, 1924, p. 71
45. On psychotechnics, see Peter Hinrichs, Um die Seele des Arbeiters. Arbeitspsychologie, Industrie- und Betriebspsychologie in Deutschland, 1871-1945, Cologne, 1981
46. the essays by Irmingard Staeuble, Mitchell Ash, Siegfried Jaeger and Ulfried Geuter in M. Ash and U. Geuter (eds), Geschichte der deutschen Psychologie im 20. Jahrhundert, Opladen, 1985
47. Joan Campbell, Joy in Work, German Work: The National Debate, 1800-1945, Princeton, 1989, chaps 7-12 passim
48. Anson Rabinbach, The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue, and the Origins of Modernity, New York, 1990, chaps 7-10 passim
49. and Ulfried Geuter, The Professionalization of Psychology in Nazi Germany, trans. R.J. Holmes, Cambridge, 1992, chaps 2-4
50. Psychotechnics emerged from, and saw itself as part of, a larger field of Arbeitswissenschaft, or the 'sciences of work'. It had roots not only in experimental psychology but in philosophy, social policy and historical economics (thus one of the early contributions to the problem of the psychology of work came from Max Weber; see his 'Zur Psychophysik der industriellen Arbeit' of 1908-9 in Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Soziologie und Sozialpolitik, Tübingen, 1924)
51. As a field of study, psychotechnics was far broader based and more intellectually self-conscious than the simpler, and occasionally naïve, problematics of Taylorism and other rationalizing tendencies coming from America. Psychotechnics' reception of Taylorism was therefore largely negative; for one example, see Fritz Giese, Psychotechnik und Taylorsystem, Langensalza, 1920. The importance of Taylorism is probably to be sought more in the technological imagination of the Weimar era than in business management or occupational psychology, though it did serve in these areas as the focus of debates
52. C. Heydt, 'Eignungsprüfung für den Rangierdienst', Industrielle Psychotechnik, vol. 1, 1924, p. 140
53. 'Fireworks from the Lunapark. Speeding along WITH the scenic railway.' Painting, Photography, Film, op. cit. (note 36), p. 129
54. See, for example, 'Die Aufmerksamkeitswirkung der Reklame', in Theodor König, Reklame-Psychologie, 3rd edn., Munich and Berlin, 1925, pp. 70-114
55. or 'Aufmerksamkeit und Interesse', in H.F.J. Kropff, Psychologie in der Reklame, Stuttgart, 1934, pp. 108-49
56. 'Bauhaus Dessau. Druckerei u. Reklame-Abteilung', advertisement in Offset, no. 7, 1926, repr. in Fleischmann (ed.), op. cit. (note 23), p. 12
57. Moholy-Nagy, 'Die neue Typographie' (1923), repr. in ibid., p. 15
58. The Bauhaus print and advertising studio was led from 1923 to 1925 by Moholy-Nagy, from 1925 to 1928 by Herbert Bayer, and from 1928 to 1932 by Joost Schmidt. On typography in the Bauhaus studio, see Das A und O des Bauhauses. Bauhauswerbung: Schriftbilder, Drucksachen, Ausstellungsdesign, Berlin, 1995
59. 'Typographie in der Reklame-Werkstatt', in W. Herzogenrath (ed.), bauhaus utopien. Arbeiten auf Papier, Cologne, 1988, pp. 103-15
60. Ute Brüning, 'Die Druck- und Reklamewerkstatt: Von Typographie zur Werbung', in Experiment Bauhaus, Berlin, 1988, pp. 154-97
61. Fritz Giese, Girlkultur. Vergleiche zwischen amerikanischem und europäischem Rhythmus und Lebensgefühl, Munich, 1925
62. On 'Girls' and Giese, see Günther Berghaus, 'Girlkultur: Feminism, Americanism, and Popular Entertainment in Weimar Germany', Journal of Design History, vol. 1, no. 3/4, 1988, pp. 193-219
63. 'The Mass Ornament' (1927), in Kracauer, The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays, trans. T.Y. Levin, Cambridge, MA, 1995
64. and 'Girls and Crisis' (1931), in A. Kaes, M. Jay and E. Dimendberg (eds), The Weimar Republic Sourcebook, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1994, pp. 565-6
65. 'Psychologie und Psychotechnik der Werbung': 'studien- und arbeitsplan der werbe-werkstatt, druckerei und fotoabteilung', in the pamphlet junge menschen, kommt ans bauhaus!, 1928, Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin. Reproduced in Fleischmann (ed.), op. cit. (note 23), pp. 132-3
66. Riedel was appointed to the 'Meisterkollegium' by Hannes Meyer and was a member from 1929 to 1931. See H.W. Wingler (ed.), The Bauhaus, trans. W. Jabs and B. Gilbert, Cambridge, MA, 1969, pp. 140, 164, 487
67. and Martin Kipp, Arbeitspädagogik in Deutschland. Johannes Riedel, Hannover, 1978, p. 13
68. One might, for example, compare Kandinsky's famous colour questionnaire, canvassing Bauhaus students on the correct synaesthetic correspondence of colours (red, yellow, blue) to shapes (square, triangle, circle), with the attempts to determine levels of attention and pleasure, for men and women separately, corresponding to different colours and colour combinations. On Kandinsky's questionnaire, see Rainer Wick, Bauhaus-Pädagogik, Cologne, 1982, pp. 202-206
69. H. Schulz, 'Die Ermüdung des Auges', Industrielle Psychotechnik, vol. 2, 1925, p. 5
70. Friedrich Wilhelm Hartwig, 'Die wirtschaftspsychologische Betrachtung der Lichtreklame und ihr Verhältnis zur Reklame in wirtschaftspolitischer Hinsicht', Inaugural-Dissertation, Leipzig, 1927, pp. 11-12
71. For Benjamin, only labour mediated by the machine is performed in a state of distraction corresponding to cinema (producing the kind of non-cumulative experience he terms 'Erlebnis'); he relates traditional craft labour to the concentration of the traditional work of art (and the communicable and cumulative experience he terms 'Erfahrung'). His typology of experience and labour is discussed with great insight in Esther Leslie, 'Walter Benjamin: Traces of Craft', Journal of Design History, vol. 11, no. 1, 1998, pp. 5-13
72. Since Benjamin wrote his essay in France, his example of this sort of criticism, Georges Duhamel, is French. 'The Work of Art', pp. 238-39
73. 'The Work of Art', p. 238
74. Wilhelm Wundt, Einführung in die Psychologie, Leipzig, 1911, pp. 23-4
75. An Introduction to Psychology, trans. R. Pinter, London, 1912, pp. 35-6 (trans, modified)
76. The psychologist and psychotechnician Hugo Münsterberg disagrees, seeing voluntary attention as decisive in the viewing of drama and film (the reception of which he equates). Münsterberg, The Photoplay, New York, 1916, chap. 4 ('Attention')
77. Richard Couvé, 'Bericht über die psychotechnische Untersuchung von zwei Einsenbahnzugszusammenstößen', Industrielle Psychotechnik, vol. 1, 1924, p. 162
78. K. A. Tramm, 'Die Bewährung des psychotechnischen Prüfverfahrens für Straßenbahnführer', Industrielle Psychotechnik, vol. 1, op. cit. (note 70), p. 37
79. Dr.-Ing. [Johannes] Riedel, 'Bemerkungen zur Eignungsprüfung bei Fahrzeugführerberufen', Zeitschrift für angewandte Psychologie, vol. 19, 1921, p. 203
80. Maria Schorn, 'Monotonie der Arbeit', in F. Giese (ed.), Handwörterbuch der Arbeitwissenschaft, op. cit. (note 49), col. 3364
81. Indeed, we should say that he fails to argue the matter through adequately in this essay. Benjamin was surely aware of the difference between voluntary and involuntary attention, but, oddly, cinema, labour and traffic did not provide him with concepts with which to think it through. As Heiner Weidmann has recently argued, the notion around which Benjamin explored the problem and paradoxes of 'presence of mind' was that of gambling; here he began to think through a kind of quick, accurate, habitual kind of action precisely where one thought least. Thus Weidmann comes to the conclusion that, for Benjamin, 'the condition in which presence of mind can be established is the opposite of intense concentration ... Presence of mind is absent-mindedness.' Weidmann, 'Geistesgegenwart: Das Spiel in Walter Benjamins Passagenarbeit', MLN, vol. 107, 1992, pp. 537, 539. Benjamin's discussions of gambling and 'presence of mind' can be found in notes and writings from the end of the 1920s through the essays on Baudelaire and the notes for the Arcades Project from which these essays emerged. In various contexts, Benjamin experimented with moving the notion of 'presence of mind' between the realms of work and leisure, but clearly he seems to have extracted this complex of concepts a bit hastily for inclusion in the Artwork essay
82. A. Kolodnaja, 'Beiträge zur Berufsanalyse des Lokomotivfü hrerberufes', Industrielle Psychotechnik, vol. 5, 1928, p. 278
83. 'Constructivism and the Proletariat' (1922), trans, in R. Kostelanetz (ed.), Moholy-Nagy, New York, 1970, p. 186
84. Kostelanetz and Sibyl Moholy-Nagy attribute this text to Moholy-Nagy, but it appears signed by Egon Egelien in Ma, May 1923. See Eleanor M. Hight, Picturing Modernism: Moholy-Nagy and Photography in Weimar Germany, Cambridge, MA, 1995, p. 218, n. 2
85. The characterization of Tretyakov's audience is Johannes R. Becher's, and it is negative. It appeared in Linkskurve, the organ of the Bund proletarisch-revolutionärer Schriftsteller, an organization much closer to official Soviet cultural policy of the time than Tretyakov was. See Helga Gallas, Marxistische Literaturtheorie, Neuwied and Berlin, 1971, p. 124
86. Tretyakov held a lecture on 'The Writer and the Socialist Village' in Berlin on 21 January 1931, and repeated it in several other cities in Germany and Austria. Kracauer reports on a lecture with similar contents held in Berlin in April of the same year. See Hugh Ridley, 'Tretjakov in Berlin', in K. Bullivant (ed.), Culture and Society in the Weimar Republic, Manchester, 1977
87. Fritz Mierau, 'Tatsache und Tendenz. Der 'operierende' Schriftsteller Sergej Tretjakow', in Tretjakow, Lyrik, Dramatik, Prosa, ed. F. Mierau, Leipzig, 1972, pp. 502-510
88. and Siegfried Kracauer, 'Instruktionsstunde in Literatur. Zu einem Vortrag des Russen Tretjakow', Frankfurter Zeitung, 26 April 1931, repr. in Kracauer, Schriften, vol. 5, no. 2, Frankfurt am Main, 1990, pp. 308-11
89. 'Der Schriftsteller und das sozialistische Dorf is reprinted in Sergej Tretjakov, Die Arbeit des Schriftstellers, ed. H. Boehncke, Reinbek, 1972, pp. 117-34
90. Kracauer, 'Instruktionsstunde in Literatur', op. cit. (note 88), p. 309
91. Kracauer frames his discussion around an essay by Peter Suhrkamp which takes journalism as paradigmatic of a modern form of writing. Kracauer, who would have known of the connections of both Suhrkamp and Tretyakov to Brecht, relates the ideas to the 'new type of the writer' which Tretjakov had discussed. Kracauer, 'Über den Schriftsteller', Die neue Rundschau, vol. 42, 1931, repr. in Schriften, op. cit. (note 88), vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 343-6
92. Suhrkamp's essay appears in O. von der Gablentz and C. Mennicke (eds), Deutsche Berufskunde. Ein Querschnitt durch die Berufe und Arbeitskreise der Gegenwart, Leipzig, 1930, in which he also wrote on education and artistic professions
93. On Tretyakov, Brecht and Benjamin, see Heinz Brüggemann, Literarische Technik und soziale Revolution, Reinbek, 1973, pp. 139-64
94. Kracauer, 'Der Fachmann', Die neue Kundschau, vol. 42, 1931, repr. in Schriften, op. cit. (note 88), vol. 5, no. 2, p. 402
95. Benjamin cites Tretyakov's Feld-Herren, Berlin, 1931, in which Tretyakov describes his own role as an 'operative writer'. 'The Author as Producer', in Benjamin, Reflections, trans. E. Jephcott, New York, 1986, pp. 223-4
96. On Benjamin and Tretyakov, see Chryssoula Kambas, Walter Benjamin im Exil. Zum Verhältnis von Literaturpolitik und Ästhetik, Tübingen, 1983, pp. 39-45
97. On the making of the 1922 'Telephone Paintings', see Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, The New Vision and Abstract of an Artist (1929), trans. D.M. Hoffman, New York, 1947, pp. 79-80
98. and Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, Moholy-Nagy: Experiment in Totality, Cambridge, MA, pp. 43-4
99. Moholy's then-wife Lucia was an active photographer from the end of the 1910s. On her claim regarding Moholy's lack of technical expertise and her involvement in his photographic work, see Rolf Sachsse, Lucia Moholy, Bauhaus Fotografin, Berlin, 1995
100. The colour of Moholy's overalls is identified in Irene-Charlotte Lusk, Montagen ins Blaue. Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Fotomontagen und-collagen 1922-1943, Giessen, 1980, p. 2
101. Molzahn, for example, wrote in the Werkbund's organ Die Form: 'The attempts of a contemporary psychology of advertising to measure advertising effectiveness are highly misleading.' However, his rhetoric of turnover, efficiency, and circulation makes it clear that he is positioning his own work within another 'scientific' discourse: economics. Johannes Molzahn, 'Ökonomie der Reklame-Mechane', Die Form, no. 7, 1926, pp. 141-5
102. For the texts of the New Typographers, see the exhibition catalogues Typographie kann unter Umständen Kunst sein, 4 vols, Wiesbaden and Hannover, 1990, and Fleischmann (ed.), op. cit. (note 23), pp. 328-50
103. The most up-to-date historical account of advertising in Germany, and the one I rely on here, is Dirk Reinhardt, Von der Reklame zum Marketing. Geschichte der Wirtschaftswerbung in Deutschland, Berlin, 1993, esp. part 2
104. See also the list of names and contact addresses included in Tschichold's The New Typography, op. cit. (note 33), p. 235
105. The most official forum for the independent practitioners was the formation of the ring 'neue werbegestalter' in 1928 by Kurt Schwitters; it served until 1933 as a network and exhibiting society. See Ring 'neue werbegestalter', 1928-1933. Ein Überblick, Hannover, 1990
106. On Bayer's work for Dorland in Berlin from 1928 to 1939, see Magdalena Droste et al., Herbert Bayer. Das künstlerische Werk 1918-1938, Berlin, 1982, pp. 62-77
107. For example, Hans Meyer, 'Psychotechnik in der Reklame', Gebrauchsgraphik, vol. 1, no. 9 (1924/25), pp. 7-18
108. On Gebrauchsgraphik and the graphic arts profession, see Jeremy Aynsley, 'Gebrauchsgraphik as an Early Graphic Design Journal, 1924-1938', Journal of Design History, vol. 5, 1992, pp. 53-72
109. Herbert Bayer, 'typografie und werbsachengestaltung', bauhaus, vol. 2, no. 1, 1928, p. 10
110. Kracauer, 'Deutsche Berufskunde', Schriften, op. cit. (note 88), vol. 5, no. 2, p. 265
111. Ottoheinz von der Gablentz, 'Einleitung: Politische Volkskunde,' in Deutsche Berufskunde. Ein Querschnitt durch die Berufe und Arbeitskreise der Gegenwart, O. von der Gablentz and Carl Mennicke (eds), Leipzig, 1930, p. 8
112. Kracauer, 'Deutsche Berufskunde', op. cit. (note 107), p. 267
113. For an important discussion of the work of Sander, class and labour, see Andrew Jones, 'Reading August Sander's Archive', Oxford Art Journal, vol. 23, no. 1, 2000
114. Benjamin discusses Sander in 'A Small History of Photography', pp. 251-4
115. Sergei Tretyakov, Feld-Herren (1931), repr. in Tretjakow, Lyrik, Dramatik, Prosa, op. cit. (note 88), p. 156
116. The Soviet's need for 'bourgeois experts' during the NEP is discussed briefly in Leah Dickerman, 'The Propagandizing of Things', in Magdalena Dabrowski et al., Aleksandr Rodchenko, New York, 1998, p. 66
117. See also Sheila Fitzpatrick, 'The Problem of Class Identity in NEP Society', in Fitzpatrick, Alexander Rabinowitch and Richard Stites (eds), Russia in the Era of NEP: Explorations in Soviet Society and Culture, Bloomington, 1991, p. 20
118. On the move from reliance on 'bourgeois experts' to the training of 'Soviet experts', see the discussion of the Soviet intelligentsia in Fitzpatrick, 'Cultural Revolution as Class War', in Fitzpatrick (ed.), Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928-1931, Bloomington, 1978, pp. 8-40
119. The term 'Psychotechniker' was used almost exclusively to refer to non-academically trained practitioners; see Giese, Theorie der Psychotechnik, Braunschweig, 1925, p. 2
120. and Siegfried Jaeger, 'Zur Herausbildung von Praxisfeldern der Psychologie bis 1933', in M. Ash and U. Geuter (eds), Geschichte der deutschen Psychologie im 20. Jahrhundert, Opladen, 1985, p. 103
121. Hinrichs writes that most of those trained in Walther Moede's Institut für Psychotechnik at the TH Charlottenburg (Berlin), the most prominent of the insititutes, were engineers; see Hinrichs, op. cit. (note 40), p. 226. The Psychotechnische Institut of the TH Darmstadt sought to train 'psychotechnically schooled engineers': Industrielle Psychotechnik, vol. 1, 1924/25, pp. 58-9
122. In the quite typical 'physiognomic' classification of the Deutsche Berufskunde, engineers are classed as part of a broad range of 'technical employees' and undifferentiated from others: 'For "technical employees", there are three different tracks in terms of training: the academics, the middle-school technicians, and the traditional masters. In today's industry, there are 228,844 "technical employees and experts (Fachpersonal)" and 298,148 "foremen and supervisors". The division according to training has nothing to do with these statistics. Managers (whatever their training) are not included; and in the group of technical employees and even the foremen there are academic engineers, middle-school technicians and technicians with no particular education.' Von der Gablentz, 'Die Industrie', in Deutsche Berufskunde, op. cit. (note 108), p. 145
123. The history of the professionalization of engineering in Germany is that of the efforts of those with academic degrees to distinguish themselves from those with vocational or on-the-job training and to achieve social and financial parity with those who had humanistic degrees from the traditional universities. In an analysis similar to von der Gablentz's, Hans Speier classes engineers as 'technical employees' and describes the tension between two main groups: the academics asserting their distinction from non-academics and parity with university graduates, and the non-academics asserting distinction from industrial workers and parity with the academics. Each group was represented by a different professional organization (The Verband deutscher Diplom-Ingenieure or Association of German Academic Engineers and the Bund der technisch-industriellen Beamten or Association of Technical-Industrial Employees, respectively). Hans Speier, German White-Collar Workers and the Rise of Hitler, New Haven and London, 1986, pp. 180-22
124. Neither group prevailed: Mary Nolan writes that Weimar engineers of all kinds 'enjoyed neither economic security nor social status' due to their 'incomplete professionalization', and that because 'the line between engineers and technicians could not be drawn with clarity', their position was 'ambivalent and contradictory'. Mary Nolan, Visions of Modernity: American Business and the Modernization of Germany, Oxford, 1994, p. 184
125. On professionalization in Germany and the problem of engineers, see Konrad H. Jarausch, The Unfree Professions: German Lawyers, Teachers, and Engineers, 1900-1950, Oxford, 1990
126. and Charles E. McClelland, The German Experience of Professionalization, Cambridge, 1991
127. Arnolt Bronnen, O.S. (1929), Klagenfurt, 1995, p. 36
128. On skilled workers and the problem of 'embourgeoisement', see H.A. Winkler, Der Schein der Normalität. Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung in der Weimar Republik, 1924 bis 1930, 2nd edn, Berlin/Bonn, 1988, pp. 161-73
129. Winkler, Der Weg in die Katastrophe. Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung in der Weimar Republik, 1930 bis 1933, Berlin/ Bonn, 1987, pp. 100-19
130. and Hans Speier, 'The Worker Turning Bourgeois' (1931), trans, in Speier, Social Order and the Risks of War, New York, 1952, pp. 53-67
131. On the position of 'monteurs of all kinds' in the proletariat, see Carl Mennicke, 'Handwerk und Proletariat', Deutsche Berufskunde, op. cit. (note 108), p. 76