dieser beitrag wurde verfasst in: deutsch (ger/deu/de)
+: Bauschmuck v.a. im Offizierskasino (vgl. Donath, 2004)
Finally, after waiting some time, we [Ione Robinson and Dorothy Oechsner, the wife of Alfred Oechsner] were taken into a large drafting room. There must have been a hundred archictects bending over their drafting boards. The director spoke excellent English and I was surprised at his knowledge of our country [the USA]. He laughed a great deal about the W.P.A., and said that in Germany there weren't any relief projects; what people did in Germany each day was a permanent thing towards sharing the rebuilding of their country. He said that it was a pity that a country as great as America had no "organisation or definite direction". And then he went on to explain that when an artist was commissioned to paint a mural in Germany, he worked as a co-ordinated unit with the architect. No wall painting was selected by competition; artists were chosen according to their established merits, given a plan of the building, and a knowledge of everything that was to be placed in it — and then they worked together with the craftsmen who were selected to supply the interior furnishings, etc., so that a finished room was a perfect unit.
As we walked through this building and came across the murals, I was surprised that they did not contain some propaganda message. Most of them were purely decorative — each room was furnished with exquisite taste. But in spite of it all, one felt the meaning of everything that represented Nazi Germany. Hitler's face would pop up, lighted dramatically, at the end of a long hallway, or there would be a streamlined eagle fiercely flying across an empty wall. The symbols of the Third Reich were used in telling the story of this new Germany. There were no pictorial "illustrations" on the meaning of National Socialism. I came across many beautifully designed iron gates, and through the scrolls of metal there was always an insignificant but perfectly conceived symbol. As the afternoon wore on, I realized the effect these symbols had on me. One's imagination is set free to improvise by a symbol, one is not caught in a vacuum of looking at another's conception of an idea. This is what happens in a purely pictorial manifestation, when one finds his mind groping to understand what the artist felt. Symbols leave one as free as the moon, sun, or stars. The imaginations can reach almost any height of adoration — or fear!
Die von Gudrun Baudisch gestaltete Stuckdecke im grossen Festsaal ist heute unter einer abgehängten Decke verborgen. Wappen, Standarten und Waffen verschiedener Zeiten vom Heer Friedichs des Grossen bis zur Wehrmacht Adolf Hitlers sind in ein geometrisches Muster eingebunden. Das Offizierskasino verfügt über einen rustikalen Bierkeller, dessen ursprüngliche Ausstattung mit Kachelofen, Holzbänken und farbigen Wandbildern noch vorhanden sind. Man sieht Ritter beim Gelage, einen Teufel und im Vorraum die mächtige Gestalt des Königs Gambrinus, des sagenhaften Erfinder des Bieres. Im Flur sind Bauern bei der Ernte und Winzer bei der Weinlese dargestellt. Mehrere Bilder in Putzkratztechnik erzählen die Geschichte von Don Quichotte und Sancho Pansa.