bauhaus faces

This episode of bauhaus faces is about the Bauhaus educated architect Pius Pahl. After being trained as carpenter and interior designer, he decided it was time to go to the Bauhaus and become an architect. He studied with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Ludwig Hilberseimer, who would both become essential for his approach towards designing buildings. Pius Pahl is also one of the students who made the Bauhaus move from Dessau to Berlin. After successfully graduating with his Bauhaus diploma in 1933 he went on a journey to Switzerland, Italy and North Africa before starting to work in different architecture offices. In World War II he was drafted by the military and became a prisoner of war. Although he set up his own building office in 1946 in fear for his four sons to also become soldiers in a war – it was the time of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the West – Pius Pahl decided it was time to emigrate. While he wasn’t allowed to go to the US to work with Mies van der Rohe in Chicago (this was his dream) the choice fell on South Africa, because his wife Jeanette was born there and could speak English fluently. Pius, however, struggled during the first years as his language skills were underwhelming. Once he and his family had relocated to Stellenbosch and he had started – once again – his own office Pius Pahl planned several public and private houses, adapted to the possibilities and materials there. Two of his four sons, Jan-Peter and Tyll Pahl invited me into their houses to talk to me about their father and his work.    ________________________________________ SHOW NOTES @bauhausfaces | bauhausfaces.com | YouTube https://www.vervemagazine.co.nz/african-bauhaus/ http://oharchitecture.blogspot.com/2011/07/oh6-pius-pahl-monograph.html https://www.stellenboschheritage.co.za/resource/pius-pahl-architectural-biography-part-1-pg-1-12 https://artefacts.co.za/main/Buildings/archframes.php?archid=2113 https://artefacts.co.za/main/Buildings/bldgframes_mob.php?bldgid=15093 COVER PHOTO: Pius Pahl, Detail of a self-portrait, Bauhaus Berlin, 1933, Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin

This episode of bauhaus faces is about a photographer that most Bauhaus fans today know: Lucia Moholy. She was the photographer who delivered the photos of the Bauhaus in Dessau and its masters’ houses that made the art school so iconic. But it wasn’t until the 1990s that art historians became alert to her when her photos and negatives made their way into the Bauhaus-Archive in Berlin. Until then they had taken a long reroute from Germany via the US, while Lucia Moholy had thought they were lost, when in fact Bauhaus founder and first director Walter Gropius had taken them with him, denied their possession for decades and made use of them to promote the Bauhaus as the ultimate epitome of the avantgarde without ever mentioning their creator: Lucia Moholy. But her life and work were so much more! When she was in danger of being arrested by the Nazis, Lucia left Germany and emigrated to London. Here, she worked as a portrait photographer and – as director – set up the microfilm archive ASLIB. She never succeeded in emigrating to the US like so many other Bauhauslers although she had an offer from her ex-husband László Moholy-Nagy to come and teach photography at the New Bauhaus in Chicago. Most of her adult life, Lucia Moholy struggled to make ends meet and gain recognition for her achievements. When she – once more – emigrated to Switzerland in 1959 (she would live and die in Zollikon near Zurich) Lucia started writing about her collaborative work with László Moholy-Nagy and her own share in it.For this episode the US art historian Robin Schuldenfrei helped to tell the story of Lucia Moholy. She has been researching Moholy for many years now.__________________________________SHOW NOTES⁠www.bauhausfaces.com⁠ | ⁠@bauhausfaces⁠EXHIBITION „Lucia Moholy: Exposures“ at Kunsthalle Praha from 30th May until 28th October 2024 https://www.kunsthallepraha.org/en/events/lucia-moholy-exposures AND at Fotostiftung Winterthur in Spring 2025 https://fotostiftung.ch/en/BOOKS BY LUCIA MOHOLY „A Hundred Years of Photography“ (Lucia Moholy, 1939) https://www.amazon.de/Photography-1839-1939-Fotografie-Bauhäusler-Bauhaus-Archiv/dp/3922613586„Marginalien zu Moholy-Nagy/Moholy-Nagy, Marginal Notes“ (Lucia Moholy, 1972)ABOUT LUCIA MOHOLY Lucia Moholy Bauhaus Fotografin (Rolf Sachsse, 1995) „‚What I Could Lose‘: The Fate of Lucia“ (Meghan Forbes) Moholyhttps://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?cc=mqr;c=mqr;c=mqrarchive;idno=act2080.0055.102;view=text;rgn=main;xc=1;g=mqrgLucia Moholy. Im Schatten des Bauhaus (Jochen Stöckmann, 2022) https://www.weltkunst.de/ausstellungen/2022/09/lucia-moholy-fotografie-bauhaus?pagination=1&fullviewABOUT LUCIA MOHOLY’S BOOKS AND NEGATIVES„Multiple Frames for Lucia Moholy“ (Sabine Hartmann) https://youtu.be/aB5ioylqVuM?si=1ggYQUgMXe6FWHic„Images in Exile: Lucia Moholy’s Bauhaus Negatives and the Construction of the Bauhaus Legacy“ (Robin Schuldenfrei) https://courtauld.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Schuldenfrei_2013_Images_in_Exile_Lucia_Moholys_Bauhaus.pdf„A Hundred Years of Photography 1839–1939“ (Burcu Dogramaci) https://archive.metromod.net/viewer.p/69/1470/object/5140-11251867PHOTOS BY LUCIA MOHOLY IN ARCHIVESBauhaus photos Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin https://open-archive.bauhaus.de/eMP/eMuseumPlus?service=direct/1/ResultDetailView/result.inline.moduleBottomContextFunctionBar1.bottomNavigator.back&sp=13&sp=Sartist&sp=SfilterDefinition&sp=0&sp=1&sp=1&sp=SdetailView&sp=93&sp=Sdetail&sp=0&sp=T&sp=0&sp=SdetailList&sp=6&sp=0Harvard Art Museums https://harvardartmuseums.org/collectionsNational Portrait Gallery https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp07323/lucia-moholyFotostiftung Winterthur, Switzerland https://fotostiftung.ch.zetcom.net/de/artists/artist/1395/MoMA, New York https://www.moma.org/artists/6922COVER PHOTO: László Moholy-Nagy, Portrait of Lucia Moholy, 1927, Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin

This episode is not about just one Bauhaus person, but about two. It’s the premiere of our first episode about a Bauhaus couple: Etel and Ernst Mittag, who were both students at the Bauhaus in Dessau, met there, fell in love, got married, had children and emigrated to South Africa when Etel – as a Jew – was in great danger in Europe.   About her time at the Bauhaus from 1928 to 1930 Etel later wrote in her autobiography: “This was a new world for me. Everything was completely different from what I knew. Nothing was taken for granted. Everything had to be discussed, examined anew from different angles. […] There was almost absolute freedom from prejudice. Of course, I was completely bewildered and intimidated.” Etel studied at the advertising department and then, when founded in 1929, at the photo class. She became prolific in it and could earn a living with it for some time. At a demonstration on the International Women’s Day Etel met two rough looking fellows who had arrived at the Bauhaus via the river Elbe by boat. One of them was Ernst Mittag. He was from Riesa and had studied in Dresden before coming to the Bauhaus to study architecture and carpentry. The two of them became involved in the communist movement, holding clandestine political meetings in their kitchen in a workers’ housing estate in Ziebigk, a suburb of Dessau, and publishing a communist paper in Berlin after leaving the Bauhaus. Even in South Africa they felt most comfortable with the members of a Left book club. While Etel Fodor-Mittag wrote her autobiography “Not an unusual Life, for the Time and the Place” (published by the Bauhaus-Archive Berlin in 2014), not much is known about Ernst Mittag. Until now. In this podcast their younger son Michael Mittag tries to remember as much as possible about both of his parents by remembering conversations with them, by looking at old papers of them and by talking about their work and projects. _________________ SHOW NOTES www.bauhausfaces.com | @bauhausfaces BIOGRAPHY ABOUT ETEL FODOR-MITTAG bauhauskooperation.com/wissen/das-bauhaus/koepfe Etel's autobiography Etel Fodor-Mittag: Not an unusual Life, for the Time and the Place / Ein Leben, nicht einmal ungewöhnlich für diese Zeit und diesen Ort, Bauhäusler. Dokumente aus dem Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin. Bd. 3, Berlin 2014. Photos by Etel Fodor-Mittag Photo study with toy pistol and sugar cubes, ca. 1928 & Advertising image for Idanthren-Farben, ca. 1929 ⁠bauhauskooperation.com/wissen/das-bauhaus/koepfe Portrait of Ricarda Schwerin, ca. 1931  kuenste-im-exil.de/KIE/Content/EN/Persons/schwerin-ricarda-en.html Portrait of Isaak Butkow, 1929 bauhauskooperation.com/wissen/das-bauhaus/koepfe RBB facts about Berlin after WWII rbb24.de/politik/thema/2015/70-jahre-kriegsende/beitraege/kriegsschaeden-berlin-2--weltkrieg.html/listall=on/print=true.html History of the Appletiser Farm in Elgin, ZA elginvalleyhistory.blogspot.com Cover photo Etel and Ernst Mittag, Bauhaus Dessau, 1929, unknown photographer. Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin