The German Genius

undulating organic lines of nature might recover, regenerate, rejuvenate what was in the process of dying gave rise first to the title of George Hirth’s art nouveau journal, Jugend , and then to “Jugendstil” for the whole art form. The Munich Sezession played an important role in the dissemination of Jugendstil ideas: in 1899 it mounted its most important show, combining the fine and decorative arts, featuring entire living rooms, dining rooms and bedrooms, with entries from Scotland (Charles Rennie Mackintosh), France (René Lalique) and Russia (Peter Carl Fabergé)—everything from embroidered tablecloths to jewelry to framed mirrors. 18
    One final founding member of the Munich Sezession who soon went his own way, and made a name for himself in doing so, was Peter Behrens. Born in Hamburg in 1868, Behrens studied at that city’s school for the applied arts before going on to the Karlsruhe School of Art and the Düsseldorf Art Academy. He was in Munich from 1890, working as a painter and graphic artist, an early advocate of Jugendstil, producing woodcuts, designs for bookbindings and other artifacts. In 1897, together with Hermann Obrist, Richard Riemerschmid, and Bernhard Pankok, he was one of those who founded the Vereinigte Werkstätten für Kunst und Handwerk, which produced handmade utilitarian objects as part of the general approach to reducing the ugliness of everyday life.
    Behrens received his big break in 1906 when he secured his first commission from AEG. 19 He shared many friends with Walter Rathenau, and this may account for the commission. He was asked to design advertising material, after which Emil Rathenau chose Behrens as an artistic consultant on a wide range of projects, including the Turbinenhalle in Berlin, one of the first concrete and glass factories, housing for the factory’s workers, and a number of electrical appliances, standardizing their components so as to make them interchangeable. He designed salesrooms, sale catalogs, even price lists, famously creating for the first time a “corporate image” for the company, which gave it an immediately recognizable identity.
    A year later, together with Peter Bruckmann, Fritz Schumacher, and Richard Riemerschmid, he founded yet another organization, the Deutscher Werkbund. 20 This took its color from the British Arts and Crafts movement, and the aim was to produce everyday objects with standardized interchangeable parts that would be within reach of everyone’s pocket, but of high quality like handmade goods, the underlying rationale being to remove the alienation from life. At much the same time, Behrens founded his own architectural and design practice in Berlin where, over the next few years, in the run-up to war, Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Le Corbusier also worked. Among the firm’s architectural commissions were the German Embassy in St. Petersburg and the IG Farben Höchst headquarters in Frankfurt. 21
    B ROTHERS M ORDANT AND M ELANCHOLIC
     
    But there was more to Munich than its painters. The two Mann brothers (Heinrich was born in 1871 and Thomas four years later) were sons of a prominent grain merchant in the Baltic port of Lübeck. Heinrich developed faster than Thomas, qualifying for university at the age of eighteen, the same year that two of his stories were published in the local Lübeck press. He left school and worked in a Dresden bookshop, later transferring, in April 1890, to Berlin to work for the publisher Samuel Fischer.
    After their father died in October 1891, and the family firm was liquidated, both brothers received a settlement that enabled them to embark on their literary careers without too much hardship. Two years later, Frau Mann moved to Munich with the three younger children. Having already published anonymously in his school magazine, Der Frühlingssturm , Thomas then published a novella and some poems under his own name in the avant-garde monthly Die Gesellschaft and, joining his family in Munich, started working in an insurance company. 22 At his mother’s suggestion (she wanted him to be a journalist) he started attending lectures at the Technische Hochschule and, on the strength of that, and because he had received an encouraging note from Richard Dehmel, submitted a story, “Der kleine Professor,” to the new quarterly Dehmel edited, called Pan .
    Heinrich had by now accepted the editorship of a new magazine, Das Zwanzigste Jahrhundert (The Twentieth Century). The magazine