DOI issue:
Germany
DOI article:Deubner, Ludwig: German architecture and decoration
DOI Page / Citation link: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.41878#0123
GERMAN ARCHITECTURE AND DE-
CORATION. By L. Deubner
IN the last volume of this Year Book I referred to the gratifying
progress of German applied art, and claimed for it that it had
become a matter of national concern to which our people were
devoting themselves with the same sacrifice and the same enthu-
siasm as they have to the accomplishment of other great revolu-
tions in the domain of intellect or economics. In seeming contradiction
to this development, it has now to be recorded that in the fitting up
of the latest of the great German liners—the Imperator—which
its builders proudly claim to be the largest ship in the world, our
native art-industry has been deliberately ignored ; that the Director-
General of the Hamburg-America Line, and those of his subor-
dinates who were responsible for the interior equipment of the
giant steamship, have given tangible evidence of their undisguised
aversion to our ambitions by entrusting the equipment of the principal
saloons provided for the social intercourse of passengers to an English
and a French architect, as though no one in Germany could be found
who was equal to the undertaking.
It is distressing to have to record this fact in an international
publication such as this Year Book ; and it would indeed not have
been worth mentioning at all had it concerned anything else but the
Imperator, which has excited the astonishment of other nations as a
proud monument of German engineering and German enterprise,
and whose interior equipment ought, as a matter of course, to have
afforded substantial testimony to the high standard of German
achievement in the applied arts, instead of showing us dependent on
foreign countries. It cannot be a question, in a case like this, of
personal sympathies and taste, of praise and blame, but of under-
standing and encouraging the growth and maturation of creative
forces, and the furthering of a sincere and healthy ambition which,
with restless energy, seeks to attain the goal it has clearly discerned
and marked out for itself.
Of course, ambition by itself will not do it, and it is conceivable
that men in whose spheres of activity results are calculated with
mercantile or mathematical accuracy should also demand instant
achievement, and not be in a mood to rest content with tentative
efforts, however well meaning. No one, however, would expect
them, in the case of such a big undertaking as the fitting up of a huge
modern liner, to put up with experiments, and if we were unable to
point to such perfect and mature achievements as the interiors by
Bertsch, Niemeyer, Paul, and Riemerschmid, there would be no need
to waste any words about it. But here we have the products of
an artistic activity which has long outgrown the requirements of
91
CORATION. By L. Deubner
IN the last volume of this Year Book I referred to the gratifying
progress of German applied art, and claimed for it that it had
become a matter of national concern to which our people were
devoting themselves with the same sacrifice and the same enthu-
siasm as they have to the accomplishment of other great revolu-
tions in the domain of intellect or economics. In seeming contradiction
to this development, it has now to be recorded that in the fitting up
of the latest of the great German liners—the Imperator—which
its builders proudly claim to be the largest ship in the world, our
native art-industry has been deliberately ignored ; that the Director-
General of the Hamburg-America Line, and those of his subor-
dinates who were responsible for the interior equipment of the
giant steamship, have given tangible evidence of their undisguised
aversion to our ambitions by entrusting the equipment of the principal
saloons provided for the social intercourse of passengers to an English
and a French architect, as though no one in Germany could be found
who was equal to the undertaking.
It is distressing to have to record this fact in an international
publication such as this Year Book ; and it would indeed not have
been worth mentioning at all had it concerned anything else but the
Imperator, which has excited the astonishment of other nations as a
proud monument of German engineering and German enterprise,
and whose interior equipment ought, as a matter of course, to have
afforded substantial testimony to the high standard of German
achievement in the applied arts, instead of showing us dependent on
foreign countries. It cannot be a question, in a case like this, of
personal sympathies and taste, of praise and blame, but of under-
standing and encouraging the growth and maturation of creative
forces, and the furthering of a sincere and healthy ambition which,
with restless energy, seeks to attain the goal it has clearly discerned
and marked out for itself.
Of course, ambition by itself will not do it, and it is conceivable
that men in whose spheres of activity results are calculated with
mercantile or mathematical accuracy should also demand instant
achievement, and not be in a mood to rest content with tentative
efforts, however well meaning. No one, however, would expect
them, in the case of such a big undertaking as the fitting up of a huge
modern liner, to put up with experiments, and if we were unable to
point to such perfect and mature achievements as the interiors by
Bertsch, Niemeyer, Paul, and Riemerschmid, there would be no need
to waste any words about it. But here we have the products of
an artistic activity which has long outgrown the requirements of
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