Paul Scheerbart
Paul Scheerbart was a German architect and writer born on January 8, 1863, in Danzig, Prussia (now Gdansk, Poland). Initially aspiring to be a missionary, he shifted his focus to architecture and philosophy, emerging as a significant figure in the realm of modern architecture. His work coincided with advancements in float glass technology, enabling the creation of large glass structures. Scheerbart was particularly captivated by glass's transparency, which he believed raised intriguing philosophical questions about existence and materiality.
In addition to his architectural pursuits, he explored the realms of language and poetry, experimenting with tone poems that prioritize sound over meaning. His literary contributions extended to surrealistic novels filled with imaginative beings, drawing comparisons to the works of contemporary writer Olaf Stapledon. One of his notable posthumous works, "Das graue Tuch und zehn Prozent Weiss," tells the story of a woman constrained by her husband's colorful glass designs as they embark on a journey to find ideal building sites. Scheerbart passed away in 1915 in Berlin, just as the modernist architectural movement began to flourish.
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Paul Scheerbart
Writer
- Born: January 8, 1863
- Birthplace: Danzig, Prussia (now Gdansk, Poland)
- Died: October 15, 1915
- Place of death: Berlin, Germany
Biography
Paul Scheerbart was born in January 8, 1863, in Danzig, Prussia (modern Gdansk, Poland), where his father was a carpenter. In his youth he wanted to be a missionary, but as he grew older, he became increasingly interested in architecture and philosophy. He was one of the leading figures in the development of modern architecture and was particularly fascinated by the possibilities of plate glass as an architectural element.
By the time Scheerbart came into his own as an architect, the modern technique of float glass, which uses a large pool of mercury or other heavy metals to make possible the production of sheets of glass, had become feasible for uses on industrial scales. As a result, it became thinkable to create huge buildings with whole curtain walls made entirely of glass. Scheerbart was particularly fascinated with glass because of its transparency, which in his mind posed interesting questions about the nature of being and substance.
Even as he was pioneering the architecture of glass, in which huge chambers of light could be created in the giant buildings made possible by steel-skeleton construction, Scheerbart was also becoming increasingly fascinated by the possibilities of pure abstraction in language. He particularly delighted in the possibilities of the tone poem, in which words are used not for their semantic content, but entirely for the aesthetics of their sounds. He wrote several collections of poetry that are full of dense, surrealistic images that sometimes dissolve entirely into pure tonality.
Scheerbart was not entirely unwilling to touch straightforward narrative prose, although even in those works he often delved into the surreal. He wrote a number of novels in which he populated his fictional cosmos with grotesque and memorable beings as thoroughly imaginative as the wild variety of creatures who would later occupy the cantina in George Lucas’s Star Wars movies. Some critics have compared Scheerbart to his contemporary Olaf Stapledon.
Scheerbart also wrote a work of realistic fiction, Das graue Tuch und zehn Prozent Weiss (the gray cloth and ten- percent white), which was published posthumously. It deals with a woman who is constrained to wear nothing but gray so that her clothes will not compete with her husband’s colorful glass creations. Together, they travel the world in an airship (which at the time of his writing was the epitome of futuristic travel) to locate possible sites to construct more buildings of colorful glass. Scheerbart died in 1915, in Berlin, just as the modernist architectural school was launching in earnest.