The true spirit of the Bauhaus had as much to do with Giotto and Duccio, and with ancient Egyptian and pre-Columbian art, as with modernism. What counted were the aspects of vision that are universal and timeless. Issues of precise location, or epoque, or the personal history of the individual artist were all secondary to something far more essential in the artists’ and designers’ works.
Everyone at the Bauhaus was, of course, very different from one another. Klee, Kandinsky, Gropius, Mies: each was as independent and strong-willed as the other. The Alberses’ sharp opinions were mild by comparison. But with Anni and Josef as my way in, I came to see the shared values of these powerful individuals and the reasons for their mutual respect. What became clear was the passion for artistic excellence, the love for life itself, and the reverence for nature that unified the best of the Bauhauslers.
But their personal quirks and the realities of their circumstances and their families were also immensely significant. This was apparent to me because of my good fortune in having a link to the last living Bauhauslers. In focusing on six of the people at the school who went far beyond the issues of one period or place, and were geniuses for all time, and in trying to sketch them as human beings, I have attempted to show how they created and lived out a dream that was never equaled before or since.
ANNI ALBERS died in May 1994, just shy of her ninety-fifth birthday.
With the death of Nina Kandinsky fourteen years earlier, Anni was the last major Bauhaus figure still alive. At times, that position conferred a certain stature on her, but on other occasions, given what a major artist she was, the lack of recognition was equally remarkable.
To her delight, Maximilian Schell filmed her for a scene in his documentary about Marlene Dietrich. Anni, at age ninety-one, went to Berlin so he could do this, and she was fascinated to hear her beloved Maximilian direct the cameramen and instruct her on what to do. He had the authority and artistic definiteness that she adored, and she relished complying with his instructions. She showed no interest in Berlin itself, no apparent nostalgia for her colorful and luxurious childhood; she cared only about her new adventure.
In the documentary, Anni is shown going through lots of discarded 32-millimeter film, running it between her fingers as she might have once handled thread. She is the perfect foil to Dietrich, for while Dietrich appears to be a vain prima donna, Anni is seen with little makeup and with uncolored white hair, and her intellectual curiosity is made manifest as she studies the celluloid.
Yet after the documentary appeared, Gabrielle Annan, in her review for The New York Review of Books, while pointing out that “the name Anni Albers appears on the cast list,” asks of Anni, “Who is Schell’s dark lady? … Can she be the widow of the irresistible Hans Albers, a German cross between Gérard Depardieu and Maurice Chevalier, the raffish darling of the Berlin public before the war? … Whoever the old lady is, we can read her as a symbol of the last years of the Weimar Republic, when Dietrich was in her prime. Her look of displacement haunts and disturbs.” Annan describes the mysterious Anni as “a small old German-Jewish lady, bewildered and bewildering”—all in contrast to Dietrich.5
When I read this, I took a fit. I immediately fired off a snippy letter to the editors of The New York Review of Books, identifying the world’s foremost textile artist and saying that the Albers to whom she had been married was not Hans but Josef, the renowned painter and color theorist. I also pointed out that Anni stood five-foot-seven, which is not normally considered short for a woman, and asked if Annan had determined Anni’s religion because of the shape of her nose. There was no other reason for declaring Anni Jewish, since no reference is made to this in the film.
Annan replied in a letter that was forwarded to me. She said that she now realized that Anni Albers was her cousin and godmother, whom she “had last seen at the baptismal font.” She offered no further explanation.
I HAD DETERMINEDLY KEPT all of this—the review, my response, Annan’s letter—from Anni, since I felt that the “small old German-Jewish” description would have greatly upset her. But then Maximilian sent her Annan’s piece, along with some other reviews.
I phoned him and asked why he had done so. He said he thought Anni would not be bothered by Annan’s description of her—after all, Annan’s overall take on his film was very positive—and that Anni was used to bizarre criticism and was even excited by it.
In this last statement, he was right. But she was, of course, irked by what Annan had written. Once I knew she had read it, I showed her my letter to the Review’s editor and Annan’s subsequent response. Anni thought for a moment and said, “Of course, her father was Louis Ullstein, the youngest brother. But she was Lotte’s godchild, not mine.” It made sense to both Anni and me that Annan had reconstructed history to have her godmother be the Fleischmann sister who ended up being famous and important in the eyes of the world. This, Anni reminded me, was the way that people falsified the past. “Anyone who was at the Bauhaus or Black Mountain, and then read all the nonsense, should understand.”
OTHER PEOPLE, however, knew exactly who Anni was.
In 1978, my wife brought Jacqueline Onassis to meet Anni. Katharine and Jackie had spent the day looking at American country antiques, mainly in a barn and former chicken coop in South Windsor, Connecticut, and were ending their outing at the Alberses’ house, from which Jackie’s driver would continue with her back to New York, while Katharine would go home with me.
Jackie, in an old baggy sweater with small holes in it and well-worn corduroys, looked unbelievably beautiful that afternoon. Her hair was big and somewhat messy, and if she had makeup on, it was the type someone like me could not see; she had a magnificent vitality, and exuded energy and alertness that were almost savage.
As the former first lady walked up the half flight of stairs, Anni awaited her in her wheelchair on the landing. Jackie acted like a well-brought-up Miss Porter’s School girl being presented to royalty. In a tremulous voice, she told Anni what a great honor it was to meet her. And then, after just a few seconds of observing the living room with its walls bare except for the four Homages to the Square, Jackie said, without hesitation, “Just like Matisse’s chapel in Vence: all the white, and then the color.”
No one could have scripted the line for her, and rarely had anyone said anything as appropriate about the Alberses’ vision.
The two women began to discuss design, and the need for open space. Anni started a sentence with the words, “At zuh Bauhaus …,” and then interrupted herself to ask, “Have you heard of zuh Bauhaus, Mrs. Onassis?”
“Oh, Mrs. Albers, I have, and you just can’t possibly imagine what an honor it is to meet you!”
WHEN ANNI DIED, I phoned Maximilian right away. He expressed sadness, but we agreed that she had outlived herself. He would not be able to attend the funeral scheduled two days hence, he told me.
I knew, but he did not, that he was not mentioned in Anni’s will. Except for some of Josef’s paintings that she left to her brother and to the children of her late sister—a gesture she decided on in spite of their having nothing more than polite interest in the art she and Josef made, but that was meaningful now that Josef’s art had significant financial currency—she left everything to the foundation that was to continue their legacy. Besides, had she included Maximilian in her will, it would have suggested that her material wealth mattered to him. It was vital for her to maintain the idea that the intense love between her and the younger actor/director was based on purer, less worldly concerns.
As the executor of Anni Albers’s estate, I decided to send Maximilian two personal objects. One was a black cashmere scarf, very much his style, which I found among her possessions. Another was her gray Parker fountain pen, which was at her bedside, and which she had used for years, even when her hand trembled so severely that she needed me to hold it to guide her to make important signatures.
I wrote him a slightly smarmy, sanctimonious letter explaining the meaning of the objects and what they acknowledged about his and Anni’s personal connection. My secretary, who always suspected Maximilian of the worst, was delighted to send the package.
A few days later, Maximilian phoned, sounding irate. “Is this it? Is this all I get from Anni?”
“Yes, Maximilian.” I followed Anni’s cue in being among the only people close to him not to call him “Max.” “I thought you would be touched to have them.”
“Is there nothing more? She left me nothing more?”
I explained that Anni had left everything to the Albers Foundation, and I reminded him of how generous she had been to him in the past, giving him such wonderful paintings, even giving a splendid oil on paper to his stepson after he married Natasha, the lovely woman he met when he was shooting a film in Moscow a few years earlier.
“A foundation! A foundation! Motherwell had a foundation too, and Renate [Ponsold, Motherwell’s widow] was saying what a problem it could be. What about people? What about friends?”
He then calmed down, and told me, with the most ironic laugh, that the scarf was something he had given Josef many years earlier.
A FEW DAYS LATER, Maximilian’s sister, the actress Maria Schell, phoned. I had met her on various occasions with Anni, and, except for the time when Maria had insisted on deferential treatment at the opening of the Josef Albers Museum in his hometown of Bottrop in 1983, we had always gotten along well. In Bottrop, my issues with Maria had made Maximilian so furious, that, in front of Anni in her elegant room at the Schlosshugenpoet, a luxurious small country house hotel where we were all staying in nearby Essen, he and I nearly came to blows. What I remember most about the occasion is that as Maximilian and I were boiling over and looked as if we might start throwing right hooks, Anni looked more engaged than at any time during the inaugural festivities. In fact, I had rarely seen her as excited.
I was remembering that episode when I heard Maria on the phone after Anni’s death. For, as she had when she explained why she needed the mayor’s car at her beck and call in Bottrop, she again delivered a tremendous performance. She consoled me with incredible warmth, saying she knew how close Anni and I had been, and how much I must be feeling, and how wonderful I had been to her, adding, “But of course, dear Nick, she is now in another world, and must be serene there.”
Then, suddenly, Maria’s voice changed completely. Normally very deep, it went up an octave, and she had a new animation. “Did she really leave Maxy nothing? Nothing more?”
I explained to her, as I had to him.
“But he was so devoted to her. For so long. And you know, he has had financial setbacks. Even a great actor cannot always afford to direct his own films.”
The call quickly wound its way to conclusion, once Maria recognized that Anni’s will was inviolate.
IN WEIMAR OR DESSAU, who would ever have imagined any of this?