LEIPZIG
October 1929 – February 1931

Carole Naggar, July 15, 2007

Arriving in Leipzig today, a city plagued by high unemployment and depopulation where wisps of smoke are curling in a desolate winter sky, where many derelict buildings, factories and housing projects, are slated for demolition and show boarded windows, one hardly feels a sense of excitement. The melancholy is profound. It is as if Leipzig has been cast away, forgotten by Europe, and by history. True, there are signs of renovation: Ornate buildings from the beginning of the century are being restored, and the Karl Liebknecht Street in the center, has fashionable stores, restaurants and coffee shops where you could sip an expensive latte.

But in early October of 1929, when nineteen-year old David Szymin stepped off the train, things were very different, and the city was in full bloom.  He had just obtained his « Diploma of Maturity », the equivalent of a baccalaureate, at the Ascola Gymnasium. His marks were good, but not high: for instance he could speak and understand German but not with ease. He was extremely bright but it seemed as if his studies had not engaged him completely, only second in his heart to studying piano, playing chess, and attending the numerous evenings with prestigious Yiddish and Polish writers that flocked at his parents’ house, writers such as Sholem Aasch, Sholem Aleichem, Leon Feinberg or Moshe Mandelman. Jonah Rosenfeld and Barukh Glazman had been guests at their house.

Szymin had enrolled at the Staatliche Akademie für Graphische Künst und Buchgewerbe (Academy for Graphic and Book Arts) to gain the skills he would need to take on his father’s business.

For a prospective student, he was rather formally dressed, in a grey suit, polished black shoes, sweater, and shirt. He clutched a smallish but heavy leather satchel, like that of a country doctor: he would rather have traveled without a change of clothing than without his beloved books.

After Warsaw, it was like arriving into a different century: history had its place, but signs of a new age were everywhere. It was the first time that Szymin was away from his family, from his familiar world, and he was feeling exhilarated and scared at the same time. He missed most of all perhaps his lively conversations with his sister, Halina, who was a student at the Journalism School in Warsaw.

Missing just by a few days the huge September 22 demonstrations against fascism, he had arrived at the Hauptbahnhof, the largest, and most modern train station in Europe, a far cry from Warsaw’s almost provincial building. It was a monumental modernist structure of stone, concrete, glass, and steel with glazed skylights, 26 quays, and a huge entrance vault, almost 30 meters high, completed by William Lossow and Max Hans Kühne in 1915.

There were horse-drawn carriages waiting in line near the station but he decided to walk and take in the rhythm of the streets; it was different, too, swifter, lighter: tramways, cars, and bicycles competed with few carriages. Walking from the station to the town center, he admired art nouveaubuildings such as the famous Restaurant Riquet, built by Paul Lange in 1908, which boasted a facade with Asian motifs. Two large, gleaming bronze elephant heads protruded from the sculpted stone and cast their shadows on the pavement.

In one aspect though Leipzig’s cityscape was similar to Warsaw: the numerous covered passages, such as the historical Mädler Passage, and courtyards linking the paved streets, just like in his old neighborhood of Nalewski Street where the Central Publishing House was nestled next to a women’s corset shop and an umbrella store. Here street vendors were fewer, but the passages were teeming with flâneursbrowsing through books at small bookstores, crowding the shops, cafés in the Vienna style, and beer-vending establishments: the passages created a different, more quirky geography, allowing stops and loops.

Szymin soon found lodgings near the school and as he discovered the city in his spare time, he became amazed at how rich the cultural life was, a far cry from Warsaw; Leipzig, then a city of 680.000 inhabitants — the third largest in Germany — boasted twenty-four museums, the most recent being the beautiful Grassimuseum, just completed two years before on Johannisplatz. The new museum hosted three separate collections: Applied Arts, Ethnology, and one of the largest collections of musical instruments in the world. Next to it, the 13^thcentury cemetery, with its Baroque and Rococo monuments, was one of the oldest in Europe.

He did not like the opera, which was big in Leipzig, but Bach had been since childhood one of his favorite composers and he knew that the musician had headed the St Thomas Music School for twenty-seven years and had worked at the town’s four churches. He felt that the composer’s spirit was still floating under the dark Gothic vaults, the stone and wooden galleries of St Thomas and St Nikolai churches, and he developed the habit of going there each time he needed solitude and meditation, a sense of connection with the past. He imagined that he could hear the voices of the boys’ choir, the continuous sound of the harpsichord that Bach played while directing the choir and the orchestra.

The Staatl Akademie für Graphische Kunst and Buchgewerbe was one of the most renowned in Germany. The study of new color printing techniques, also on the school’s program, would enable him to operate the most up-to-date color lithography presses that his father had just purchased.

With more than 200 printing firms, Leipzig was then the book capital of Germany, and the school had one of the biggest reputations in Germany and in Europe. Over the years many had come to study there, among which Walter Peterhans, who went on to create the photography course at the Dessau Bauhaus, and René Zuber, who later became a well-known photographer in Paris and a friend of Ergy Landau (1) and Andre Kertesz (2). Under the direction of Max Seliger, a painter and photographer whose cityscapes and landscapes were in a pictorialist style and Walter Tienman, a prominent book designer, the orientation of the teaching content was geared to the book in its highest quality in terms of design and workmanship.

Out of the 224 students that enrolled the same year as David, 151 were German. But 37 were from Switzerland, Austria, Poland, Russia, Czechoslovakia, Rumania and France and 10 came from as far as Turkey, China, Japan and the United States. This was David’s first exposure to an international community of his peers, his first chance to rub against people coming from other, different cultures.

The Academy had been founded in 1764, originally as an Academy for Painting, Drawing, and Architecture. But photography had been introduced as early as 1893 and the school had hosted Germany’s first professional chair for artistic photography.

Though the old Academy building was in great part destroyed between 1943 and 1945, it was rebuilt in 1947 and when I researched, their archives and the archives of the city of Leipzig still kept track of Szymin’s curriculum and of his principal teacher, Carl Blecher, a prominent specialist in printing techniques. Blecher’s textbook, along with Renger-Patzsch and other classics, is still on the shelves of the school’s library. In 1908, Blecher had written a classic manual Lehrbuch der Reproduktionstechnik

(Textbook of Reproduction Techniques) in which he explained the methods for reproductions of originals in the printed press. Szymin studied with him and also with Professor Treman, who taughtBuchdruck: Klischeeherstellung (Book Printing: Photoengraving). He also underwent some practical training: two weeks in Abteilung Chemigrafie(The Chemical Graphics Department), eight days in Abteilung Aetzerei  (Etching Department) and eight days in Rundstereotypie und Maschinensaal Voluntiert(Apprenticeship in the Stereotype Machines Hall). All these were hand-on classes where he learnt to use the most up to date techniques of typography, etching, and photo-reproduction in book making. As his good grades show (the school has kept students records in their archive until now), Szymin succeeded both in the more intellectual seminars and in the hands-on courses. He loved the relationship with the modern machines and technical problem solving and loved the idea of producing a perfect object with the highest printed reproductions. By graduation, he would have mastered the whole cycle of book production from beginning to end in terms of choice of paper, typography, design and image reproduction, black-and-white, or color.

But beyond these specialized studies in the reproduction techniques of printing, that occupied his curious, precise and mathematical mind, the city at large, and the school had much to offer. Photography, in particular, was an important element in the cultural scene.

Photography in Leipzig was flourishing. Numerous professional studios specialized in architecture or portraits, one of them run by the famous German pictorialist Arnold Genthe. Genthe, who had become famous for his pictures of San Francisco’s Chinatown before the 1906 earthquake, also had a New York studio where he photographed, among others Isadora Duncan and Greta Garbo. Photography was an important part of everyday life and even though Leipzig did not have its own photo magazines, photojournalism flourished in Leipzig as it had in Berlin. Reporters such as Johannes Mühler covered parades, festivals and political events, Albert Hennig photographed small trades street workers and children, while portraitists like Hans Gehler, E.Hoenisch and Ursula Richter sometimes collaborated in Ateliers such as the Helinovum. Photographers like Hermann Walter, Eugen Ravenstein and Alfons Trapp specialized in architecture.

Leipzig boasted 8 theaters and 10 concert halls. Famous dancers such as Emmy Krüger, inspired by Isadora Duncan, Marga Pannenberg, Margarethe Bokov, Milda Goldberg-Thiele appeared in regular productions.

But the school itself is probably where Szymin became exposed to the finest photography of his time and where he developed his interest for photography. Classes went far beyond the merely technical, and some were led by photographers with an international reputation, well aware of the latest developments in the medium through their meetings with their peers and participation in international exhibitions. Among those outstanding teachers were Walter Peterhans (known for his modernist close-ups of everyday objects, who alternated classes in the Bauhaus in Dessau, and the school in Leipzig), and Hugo Erfurth, a photographer noted for his portraits of artists and intellectuals as well as his experiments with photograms. Erfurth was teaching a « Publicity Photographic Techniques » course that Szymin attended.

On the ground floor, the School had a large exhibition space and Erfurth’s photographs were exhibited there. In 1929, Szymin, who then knew little about contemporary architecture, also had the occasion to see photographs of recent buildings by Swiss modernist architect Le Corbusier, including the controversial Villa Savoye, built in France («Austellung Moderner Französisch Architekturbilder von le Corbusier »).

More importantly, Lazlo Moholy-Nagy, then the head of the Bauhaus in Dessau, commuted once a week to Leipzig to teach students the techniques of photo collage. His recently published book Malerei, Photographie,Film (Painting, Photography, Film)was on the students’ reading list. Predicting photography’s growing role in the years to come, Moholy stated the importance of the sequence in articulating the photographic message, and wrote that “the analphabet of the future would be the man incapable of reading a photograph.”

Moholy-Nagy’s influence on Szymin was profound and could be observed only two years later, in the first photographs he took in Paris, where the dynamic geometric patterns, the exploration of different perspectives, the strong light and shadows oppositions, the bird’s eye and close-ups, all reflected Moholy’s teachings, as did his fascination for the posters of Cassandre, Colin and other French masters.

The school encouraged the students not only in learning printing and photographic techniques, but in their own production, and in 1930, students and teachers’ work was included in the Austellung für Deutsche Lichtbildkunst in Munich.

While strolling the streets and browsing the small bookshops that reminded him of his father and his days in Warsaw, Szymin must have seen a recently published album with a light-blue linen cover which was unlike any other book of the time: it was purely photographic, with full-page pictures: the terse captions were relegated to the end of the book so that you had to read the photographs for themselves, not in relationship to text. The goal of the author, Albert Renger-Patzsch, was to record phenomenologically the exact appearance of objects, their essence, rendering it with a sober, unsentimental vision. “The secret of a good photograph” he had written two years earlier in the magazine Das Deutsche Lichtbild“which can possess artistic qualities just as a work of visual art can, resides in its realism.”

Titled Die Welt ist Schön (The World is Beautiful)—the photographer had wanted it to be titled simply Things—the album came to symbolize the school of the Neue Sachlichkeit, the New Objectivity. Reacting against the painterly pretensions of pictorialism, it stated that photography was independent from painting and should be dedicated to the observation of the world as it was.

The year 1929 has been called « the second birth of photography ’: the new art extended in two directions. One was the « new objectivity » of which this album was a striking example; the other was the birth of photojournalism and the illustrated press. As the social landscape in Germany was darkening, magazines such as the magazine A.I.Z. (Arbeiter Illustrierten Zeitung), started in 1925, dealt with social distress and the mounting forces of National Socialism. Armed with new portable cameras such as the Leica, which gave photography edge, speed, and immediacy, photojournalists constructed stories where the articulation of the sequence gave added meaning to the photographs.

We do not know if Szymin was aware of the publication of Deutschland, Deutschland Uber Alles, a strong piece of social criticism by the journalist Kurt Tucholsky where he used text as an ironical counterpoint to archival or contemporary photographs to give a terrifying image of war. John Heartfield, known for his photomontage contributions for A.I.Z. (Illustrated Workers’ Magazine) had designed the book, which was one of the main publishing events of 1929.

We can see the year 1929 as a year of paradox, both promise and menace, where some could proclaim that the world was beautiful while others- as evidenced by John Heartfield – saw it in a much cruder, crueler light: in one of his montages, a German helmet, floating in the sky, hides the sun like a monstrous eclipse.

A quick train ride to Stuttgart would have taken Szymin to the most extensive international photography and cinematography exhibition of the time, Film Und Foto.It had been organized by Gustav Stotz for the Deutsche Werkbund Association, but in the spirit of a growing fascination for America and its technological standards, much admired in Germany at the time, Edward Weston and Edward Steichen had also been invited as curators. Lazlo Moholy-Nagy, who represented the Bauhaus aesthetics, Piet Zwart and El Lissitsky, constructivism, also organized some sections of the exhibition. There were about 1,000 photographs and it was the biggest concentration of new research in photography ever organized. In his presentation text, Gustav Stotz stressed the difference between painting and photography and announced the beginnings of a new photography:

“Today’s photographer only uses the technical means provided by the camera to do his work. Thus he obtains results that man’s hand cannot attain…He can get extremely close to his object, seize it from the side, from up, from down, revealing entirely new aspects of what he photographs. Therefore, it is not surprising that new domains are opening to photographic activity. Without the extraordinary success in the realm of reportage, the numerous illustrated magazines would not be possible. Their exactitude and the integrity of their representations made them indispensable to science and technique. Progressively, photography conquers all of the publicity sector. All these realizations are shown for the first time in this Stuttgart exhibition, thanks to the best works coming from the whole world.”

The realm of the Film Und Fotoexhibition was very large, encompassing reportage, illustration, publicity, still life…and for a young student like Szymin there was much to discover, for instance photographers based in Paris such as Atget, Man Ray, Berenice Abbott, Florence Henri, George Hoyningen-Huene, Andre Kertesz, Germaine Krull, Eli Lotar and Maurice Tabard. Abstract research and techniques such as solarization and photogram were shown in Man Ray’s work; Bauhaus work was well represented, and Rodtchenko and other Russian photographers explored unusual perspectives and daring geometric effects.

Another important show that took place the same year in Berlin was Franz Roh and Jan Tschichold’s Foto-Auge/Œil et Photo/Foto-Eye. As Tschichold was the most famous typographer and book designer in Germany. He had created hundreds of fonts and designs, and any student at the Leipzig Institute would not only have been aware of him, but have used his creations. Two thirds of the selected photographers, such as Herbert Bayer, Anna Biermann, Max Burchartz, Hans Finsler, Albert Renger-Patzsch, Willy Zielke, and Herbert List…were pioneering German.photographers who were open to all kinds of experiments.

Maybe, Szymin wondered, to reproduce photographs in books was not all that he could do. Maybe he too could create photographs and express his own vision. We do not know it for sure, but it is very possible that he purchased a small camera that year and tried his hand at street photographs. Too shy and self-contained to approach people, he would have limited himself to architecture and landscape photography, maybe still life. The school possessed an excellent photography lab where he could have developed and printed his first images.

In his almost two years in Leipzig, another cultural event was to be important to him: When in 1930 the play The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahogannyby Bertold Brecht, opened at the Leipzig Opera, Szymin was in the public. To get in he had had to fight his way through a picket mounted by the Nazi youth. The great singer Lotte Lenya was starring. The music was by Kurt Weill and Gustav Brecher. The story line had three fugitives from the law creating the city of Mahogany, where no one works, pleasure is the order of the day and money rules. The opera explores scenarios of greed, gluttony, lust, and a justice system where a murderer can buy his way to freedom. The heroine, Jenny, is a prostitute, her lover, John Mahoney, a lumberjack. The next year, the opera would be banned after its Berlin representation and would not be produced again in Germany until the 1950s.  This was Szymin’s first exposure to Bertold Brecht. He did not know that a few years later, in Paris, he would be making his portrait.

Each year, just before graduation, the students organized a great feast: the Mummenschanz, Maskenfest der Akademie:it was a masked party with music, drinks, food and desserts. Liberated by the masks they created and wore, the students could let go of their usual sedate ways and behave differently without inhibitions and no fear of being recognized. They also designed and printed a prospectus to commemorate the event.

Walking around masked on February 12, 1931, just sixteen months after he had arrived, was the last thing that Szymin would do in Leipzig, before returning to Warsaw. He expected to settle there and find a ready-made place for himself in the world.

But the world was changing fast, and Warsaw would turn out to only be a short stop before he launched into another life, another city, and the unknown.

Notes

• Ergy Landau, a Hungarian-born photographer and friend of Moholy-Nagy, worked in Paris and adopted the style of the New Vision after participating in the 1929 Werkbund exhibition in Stuttgart.
• Andre Kertész, a famous Hungarian photographer who had arrived in Paris in 1925, was an important influence on both photojournalism and the art of photography. He immigrated to New York and lived there as of 1936, slowly gaining recognition.

Sources

Herbert Molderings, La seconde découverte de la photographie(The Second Discovery of Photography), in Paris-Berlin catalogue, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1978.

Archives of the Museum für Geschichte der Stadl Leipzig(Historical Museum of the City of Leipzig), with thanks to Christoph Kaufmann for his welcome and guidance in the collections.

Library archives of the Staatl Akademie für Graphische Kunst and Buchgewerbe, Leipzig.

The New Leipzig Schoolby Arthur Lubow, in The New York Times, January 8, 2006.

Les années de formation: Leipzig, in ‘René Zuber: La Nouvelle Objectivité’ by Christian Bouqueret, Editions Marval, Paris, 2003.

(With thanks to Richard Whelan for his referral to the book)

The librarians, archives of the City of Leipzig, years 1929-1930.

(for Szymin’s school records)

Beginnings, in Chim: The Photographs of David Seymour, by Inge Bondi, Bullfinch Press, New York, 1996.