FORMER WOLFSONIAN LIBRARY INTERN RETURNS AS TEACHER

Yehudis Benhamou first came to the Wolfsonian Library as a Master’s candidate at Florida International University, earning academic credit with an internship in our library. She returned yesterday morning leading a class of Hillel Community High School students studying the Second World War and the Holocaust. This was the last of a large number of school visits this month by teachers and students studying the subject. The Wolfsonian’s unparalleled collection of propaganda from this period has made us a popular field trip site for teachers.

The students at Hillel, like the Shenandoah Middle School students who visited earlier in the month, had the privilege of seeing a wealth of primary source materials laid out on the main reading room table. In trying to come to terms with the Holocaust, the Hillel students received a first-hand glimpse of the propaganda Hitler and the Nazis created to sow hatred and distrust of Jews in Germany and later in the territories occupied by the Germans during the Second World War.

In addition to fostering a German “master race” myth with images of beautiful and handsome Aryan-types, National Socialist propagandists also worked to create a counter-image aimed at uniting the country against a common enemy: the Jew. Ironically, before the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, one might have thought Germany the least likely European country to initiate an all-out war against the Jews. In the pre-Third Reich era, Jews had been emancipated, and the Jewish population had largely assimilated into German society, with high rates of Jewish-German intermarriage. Following Hitler’s rise to power, however, the National Socialist dictatorship began to foster and create stereotypes and unflattering images of Jews and other “degenerate” races to promote fear, distrust, and hatred of the supposed “enemies” of the Third Reich.

The Nazi campaign for “cleansing” the fatherland of foreign and “degenerate” cultural influences that began with the banning and burning of books and the publication of anti-Semitic propaganda, soon escalated into government-sanctioned harassment of Jews, the passage of racist legislation prohibiting intermarriage, the forced segregation of Jews into ghettos, and ultimately, deportation to so-called “work camps” during the Second World War.

The Wolfsonian has just this month received another donation to the collection of a pamphlet with a photomontage illustration by John Heartfield. Born in Berlin in 1891, Helmut Herzfeld became an ardent Communist, Anglicized his name to disassociate himself from the Nazis, and moved to neighboring Czechoslovakia following Hitler’s rise to power where he continued to satirize Fascism and Nazism. Rightly fearing a Nazi take-over, in 1938 he fled to England, ultimately returning to (East) Berlin after the war. Even as Heartfield used his artwork to counter Nazism and racial hatred in the 1930s, the Wolfsonian’s rich collection of political propaganda from this period will enable us to continue to educate present and future generations of students and to ensure that the world will not forget.

GIFT OF FRANCIS XAVIER LUCA &

CLARA HELENA PALACIO-DE LUCA

SPACED-OUT…

DESIGNS FOR THE FUTURE UNABLE TO FIT IN OUR UNREAL(IZED) ARCHITECTURE EXHIBIT

Often in the course of sifting through materials for inclusion in our library exhibits, we come across an item or two perfectly in fitting with our theme, but which, nonetheless, have to be left out given the constraints of limited space in our display cases. Such was the case in setting up our most recent exhibit, Unreal(ized) Architecture. The Wolfsonian-FIU library has some impressive holdings of the work of numerous architects from the early to mid-twentieth century whose projects, even though they were never actually constructed, had an enormous impact on future designers and architects.

The library holds a number of rare works showcasing the designs of Antonio Sant'Elia (Italian, 1888-1916). Sant’Elia became a disciple and leading light in the Futurist movement in pre-World War One Italy. Drawing inspiration from Viennese architects such as Adolf Loos and Otto Wagner and the skyscrapers just beginning to appear in American cities, Sant’Elia envisioned a futuristic urban environment in a series of drawings rendered between 1912 and 1914. His Città Nuova designs imagined an industrial city where huge skyscraper buildings with setbacks and terraces were connected by bridges and walkways. When the First World War broke out, Sant'Elia enlisted in the Italian army and died fighting the Austrians sometime during the Battles of the Isonzo in 1915. As a result of his premature death, most of his futuristic architectural designs remained unrealized, but many were widely published during the second Futurist wave of the interwar period and exercised considerable influence on generations of urban planners and architects.

The library also holds important examples of the Constructivist artwork and architectural ideas of famed Russian designer, El Lissitzky (Russian, 1890-1941). In the years between 1923 and 1925, Lissitzky came up with designs for a series of identical structures which he proposed be constructed at the intersections of a boulevard ringing central Moscow and the Kremlin. To save precious ground space, these enormous L-shaped three-story buildings were to be raised 50 meters off the ground by three pylons to be connected to tram stations and an underground subway. Lissitzky’s horizontal skyscrapers, (referred to as Wolkenbügel, or “Iron clouds” in the literature of the time), were never built, but the designs were printed in ASNOVA, the influential journal for the Association of New Architects in the Soviet Union, and in several important German publications and periodicals.

Other Constructivist-minded architects expressed their revolutionary ideas in other publications, including Arkhitektura: raboty Arkhitekturnog o fakul’teta Vkhutemasa, 1920-1927, for which Lissitzky supplied the dust jacket cover artwork. The Vkhutemas architectural school in Moscow encouraged its students to experiment with and embrace the principles of Constructivism in projects designed to completely rethink the principles of construction. Such radical ideas, however, soon earned the scorn and derision of Joseph Stalin, and projects designed and built after his rise to power took a decidedly more conservative (neo-Classical) and Socialist Realist bent.

We also left some important American industrial designers and urban planners out of the exhibition for want of space. The library holds a number of books and ephemeral items highlighting the ideas of Norman Bel Geddes (American, 1893-1958), including his Magic Motorways (1940). Even before that publication went into print, however, Americans were introduced to his ideas at the popular Futurama exhibit he designed for General Motors for the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair. Bel Geddes’ created a gigantic indoor panorama of a city of the future, which visitors to the pavilion could look down upon while riding along in chairs on a conveyor belt. Although his vision of a futuristic metropolis failed to materialize exactly along the lines that he envisioned, his designs for superhighways, cloverleaf entrance and exit ramps, and many other features did have a profound influence on the design of American highways linking cities to the suburbs.

AFTER HOURS, LAST CALL: VIP TOUR OF THE LIBRARY, TALK AND BOOK SIGNING

After the museum closed to the general public this past Thursday evening, a few VIPs were brought up to the rare books and special collections library for a private tour and presentation of materials. The guests of honor included noted international, New York Theatre, and Broadway choreographer, director, and producer Jonathan Stuart Cerullo and Joy Abbott. Mr. Cerullo has been involved in such productions as “Say Goodnight, Gracie,” “Band in Berlin,” “RSVP Broadway,” “Anna Kerenina,” “Ray Qualey,” “Sandstorm,” “Under Fire,” “Those Wonderful Babes & Bill,” and countless others. Joy was the long-time companion, wife, and widow of George Abbott (1887-1995), the producer, director, and playwright whose long and impressive career earned him the moniker “Mr. Broadway.” Other guests included Joy’s friend, Carol Towle; Ann Scully of the Mad Cat Theatre Company; Suzi Cohen; Brian Schriner, Interim Dean of the College of Architecture and the Arts at FIU; Michael Yawney, Assistant Professor in FIU’s Theatre Department; Wolfsonian Museum Director, Cathy Leff; Deputy Director for Development & Marketing, David Skipp; and Ian Rand, who before assuming the duties of Assistant Director of Marketing, Member Relations, & New Media at the Wolfsonian, served as director of publicity for Livent Inc., in Toronto and as press agent for several Broadway productions for the Fred Nathan Company in New York.

Although The Wolfsonian is probably more renowned for other collection strengths, the library does hold a substantial number of rare and important works dealing with dance, theatre, musicals and song, and the performing arts in general. Our guests were treated to a display of rare materials beginning with some nineteenth century Swedish dance cards, commonly used in the days when socially-conscious parents dictated with whom their debutant daughters might dance with at a ball.

MITCHELL WOLFSON, JR. COLLECTION

The visitors appeared to be particularly taken with an extremely rare Russian oversized portfolio of plates that provided instructions in how to build library/theatre/community centers in the early post-revolutionary period. Plate illustrated ideas for setting up stages, curtains, and chairs, patterns for paper puppets and costumes, etc. The library also holds a number of a series of reviews of the Russian Ballet in 1919 by C. W. Beaumont decorated with color pochoir (stencil work) illustrations by Ethelbert White.

MITCHELL WOLFSON, JR. COLLECTION

The library also holds a few copies of several important performing arts periodicals, such as The Dance, Theatre Magazine, and La Revue des Follies Bergère.

MITCHELL WOLFSON, JR. COLLECTION

VICKI GOLD LEVI COLLECTION

Mr. Cerullo, who apparently has a large collection of theatrical playbills and programs, appeared to be especially excited at seeing our own relatively small collection of like materials from the 1920s, ‘30s, and ‘40s. Largely through the generosity of Vicki Gold Levi, we have been able to acquire through donation a number of rare Cuban sheet music covers, Times Square memorabilia, and Broadway programs, and we hope to be able to continue to build this important area of our collection.

MITCHELL WOLFSON, JR. COLLECTION

VICKI GOLD LEVI COLLECTION

On an different but related theme, last night The Wolfsonian held a talk by Daniel Okrent, author of the recently published book Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. The library holds a sheet music cover from the prohibition era, as well as a number of Cuban tourist trade ephemera reminding Americans that things were not so dry in the nightclubs of Havana.

GIFT OF DAVID ALMEIDA & GINA WOUTERS ; VICKI GOLD LEVI COLLECTION