Meissen porcelain has carried crossed swords, taken from the arms of the Saxon electors, since the 1720s. The mark was meant to identify the porcelain beyond doubt. The manufactory dates the idea to a proposal of November 8, 1722, and calls the swords the oldest trademark in Europe still in continuous use. The German Patent and Trade Mark Office is more careful. It says that other marks were still common until 1730, and it calls the swords eine der ältesten, wenn nicht gar die älteste deutsche Marke, one of the oldest, if not the oldest, German trademark.
art
A Pigment From 1935
In November 2006 the Lempertz auction house in Cologne sold Rotes Bild mit Pferden, Red Picture with Horses, for 2.4 million euros. It was said to be a work of 1914 by Heinrich Campendonk. In fact it was a forgery by Wolfgang Beltracchi. The paint contained traces of titanium white, a pigment first developed in 1935. Beltracchi had used a ready-made tube of zinc white that contained it. In October 2011 he was sentenced to six years in prison and his wife to four. The police identified 100 paintings that he had most likely forged.
For decades his forgeries had passed recognized experts and auction houses. A material analysis exposed them.
The Master Student
At German art academies, a student who completes the regular course with above-average results can stay on as a Meisterschüler, a master student, usually for one or two more years. At the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, students work from their third semester in the class of one professor, and the professor can put a student forward for the title of master student. Joseph Beuys entered the class of the sculptor Ewald Mataré in the winter semester of 1947/48. In 1951 Mataré named him his master student. In 1961 Beuys was appointed to the academy’s chair of monumental sculpture.
Failure as Opportunity
On 13 March 1998 the theater director and action artist Christoph Schlingensief founded a party called Chance 2000 in a circus tent at the Volksbühne in Berlin. It was first also known as the Partei der letzten Chance, the party of the last chance. Its slogan was Scheitern als Chance, failure as opportunity. For one action Schlingensief invited six million unemployed people to bathe in the Wolfgangsee in Austria. In the federal election of 1998 the party received 0.058 percent of the vote.
Measured Art
In 1525, Albrecht Dürer published in Nuremberg his Underweysung der messung mit dem zirckel und richtscheyt, instruction in measurement with compass and ruler. It was the first comprehensive textbook of geometry in the German language, written for painters and craftsmen. His Vier Bücher von menschlicher Proportion, four books on human proportion, were printed in October 1528, five months after his death. The third book shows how the proportions of the human figure change according to mathematical rules.
Seven Thousand Oaks
At documenta 7 in Kassel in 1982, Joseph Beuys began his work 7000 Eichen – Stadtverwaldung statt Stadtverwaltung, 7,000 oaks, city forestation instead of city administration. He piled 7,000 basalt columns on the Friedrichsplatz. Each tree was planted together with one of the stones. Beuys died in 1986. At documenta 8 in 1987, the last tree was planted next to the first one. Beuys said that planting trees could not be surpassed for Nachhaltigkeit, lasting effect.
A Performance of 639 Years
In the Burchardi Church in Halberstadt, an organ is playing John Cage’s piece ORGAN²/ASLSP, as slow as possible. The performance began on 5 September 2001 with a pause. The first pipes sounded about two years later. The performance is planned to end in 2640, after 639 years. The length counts back to 1361, when Nicolaus Faber completed an organ for Halberstadt Cathedral. The years from 1361 to 2000 are 639. The sound changes on dates fixed in advance. The most recent change came on 5 August 2026, and the next is scheduled for 5 October 2027. The foundation that runs the project has no institutional funding and relies on donations.
When the Whole Theater Decided
In the 1970s, two of Germany’s most innovative theaters tried full co-determination. At the Schaubühne in Berlin, from 1970, the general assembly of all staff elected three of the five members of the theater’s board and could veto all its decisions. At the Schauspiel Frankfurt, from 1972, the director Peter Palitzsch wanted a Mitbestimmungstheater, a co-determination theater, inspired by the ideas of 1968. The general assembly of the entire staff was its most important body. Palitzsch left in 1980. Under his successors, after a scandal, the city’s head of culture suspended the model.
The New Objectivity
In June 1925 Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub, director of the Kunsthalle Mannheim, opened an exhibition called Neue Sachlichkeit: Deutsche Malerei seit dem Expressionismus. The name stuck to an entire era.
Hartlaub described the artists as those who had retained or regained their fidelity to positive, tangible reality. Otto Dix put it more bluntly: they wanted to see things quite naked, clearly, almost without art.
It was a reaction against Expressionism — against the mystical, the subjective, the utopian. A culture that names an art movement after objectivity has a strong relationship with the idea.
Borrowed from the stage
Along with Theater, Schauspiel, Inszenierung. German dismissals of a negotiating performance. All four are borrowed from the stage, and all four mean the same thing: what you are watching was arranged in advance to produce an effect on you.