Nietzsche and Architecture by Lucy Huskinson;

Author:Lucy Huskinson;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK

FIGURE 4.8 Nietzsche Temple design. Phase 2. Sketch of front elevation with Feststraßen, 1912. Collection ENSAVE – La Cambre, Bruxelles, inv. 4521. © Henry van de Velde Foundation (Pays-Bas).

Kessler supplemented his instructions for the revised design method, with details of what he had in mind by a ‘heroic, joyful’ temple to Nietzsche. First and foremost, the ‘Memorial and especially the temple’ ought to express ‘the transposition of Nietzsche’s personality into a grand architectural formula’. It must be ‘an expressive rather than constructive architecture, a grand formula inspired by Nietzsche’s personality alone’. Kessler suggests van de Velde look to Wilhelm Kreis’ monument to Otto von Bismarck as a successful example of the translation of a heroic personality into a powerful design. According to Kessler, Kreis was able to convey in his monument a ‘massive and balanced force, which was the personality of Bismarck: something like a stormy and armoured serenity, concentrated, threatening too, but more defensive than offensive’. By the same token, Kessler thought van de Velde could do the same with Nietzsche’s personality in a temple building that would express, he says, ‘the unity of the immense feeling of lightness, joy, and strength’, with ‘lyrical rhythm’ (12 December 1911; KV,351: 607–8; Kessler 1880–1918/2011:573–4).

Kessler concedes it is easier to design to express sensations of ‘lightness’ than emotions of ‘joy’, and he recommends to van de Velde that he start with a light structure in mind: ideally, ‘a light monument, soaring, so to speak, on its heights before the massive stadium’; an ‘aerial monument’ like ‘certain Italo-Muslim monuments of the Indies that appear constructed by djinns, but nervous and strong and even slyly massive beneath this appearance of lightness’ (Kessler 1880–1918/2011:573–4). If Kessler had stopped here his suggestions may have been useful, even persuasive to van de Velde, especially if Kessler had been aware and referred to Nietzsche’s love of the Mole Antonelliana with its massive appearance combined with its desire for the heights, and aerial vista, looking towards the mountains. But Kessler refers instead to a temple that expresses ‘the physiognomy of Nietzsche himself, with his formidable Bismarckian bone structure under the exquisitely delicate Greek surfaces of his brow and mouth’. Kessler concludes: ‘I would like not only joy but almost irony in the monumental expression of this opposition, the triumph of finesse over force. A complete orchestration of these two motifs leading to a joy and serenity, an almost ironic purity and lightness’ (Kessler 1880–1918/2011:573–4).

Van de Velde certainly has his work cut out! Such abstract and subjective requirements are, as Hindley notes, ‘almost impossible to realize’ (2012:50). Not only must he transpose the ideas of Nietzsche into a building, he is tasked also with imbuing it with the physiognomy and personality of the philosopher himself. Unsurprisingly, the pressures of design brief made him unhappy. As Föhl notes, although van de Velde was enthusiastic in his works ‘and loyal to his hero’, Nietzsche, he was ‘also grumpy in the tow of Kessler, who constantly changed the requirements and goals in the course of the project to include comprehensive requirements’ (2000:15).

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