Fritz Seitz: A Guar­an­tee for Some­thing Entire­ly Dif­fer­ent

The fol­low­ing is tak­en from the inau­gur­al address for the open­ing of the exhi­bi­tion, “Hom­mage à Baumeis­ter”, at the State Acad­e­my of Fine Arts in Stuttgart on March 2, 1979. Fritz Seitz (1926–2017) attend­ed Baumeis­ter’s class from 1948 to 1953. From 1962 to 1992 he held a pro­fes­sor­ship for the Foun­da­tions of Visu­al Art at the Ham­burg Col­lege of Fine Arts.

Those who came into close con­tact with the man quick­ly expe­ri­enced the warm charis­ma of his robust-sym­pa­thet­ic tem­pera­ment. One cer­tain­ly per­ceived ener­gy and inner activ­i­ty, but their expres­sion was gen­er­al­ly soft­ened by an easy-going qual­i­ty, by a bear-like charm, and by the gig­gling humor twin­kling through.

There was also the marked mild­ness, the weighed, in each case per­son­al, atten­tion dur­ing the dis­cus­sion of stu­dent works, the delayed form­ing of ver­bal expres­sion, the tact­ful judg­ing. We would casu­al­ly sit in a semi­cir­cle, Baumeis­ter among us. He avoid­ed any stilt­ed­ness or author­i­tar­i­an man­ner. It cer­tain­ly smoked where he sat, but that came from the inevitable cig­ar. We appre­ci­at­ed that. Those of us who had the infer­nal dron­ing of the Ger­man bar­racks yard behind us also saw in this a guar­an­tee for some­thing entire­ly dif­fer­ent, that which we had sought.

This good atmos­phere was also well “ven­ti­lat­ed”. Here I am refer­ring to the ratio­nal form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion that dis­tin­guished Baumeis­ter’s teach­ing. Dur­ing review­ing we learned to appre­ci­ate an aware­ness for method­ol­o­gy. Means and ways were con­sid­ered and that which could be said was ver­bal­ized as clear­ly as pos­si­ble. That quick­ly enabled us to explain our work our­selves and also grad­u­al­ly make our own judg­ments.

Much of what we picked up in the years after 1946 was cer­tain­ly only super­fi­cial­ly applied and came sec­ond­hand. This would be emp­tied out, since we had to grasp that the flour­ish and the dec­o­ra­tive, the hand­ed-down and super­ven­ing, could not be the orig­i­nal. Thus, the dec­o­ra­tive was seen as the dead­ly ene­my of expres­sion.

“We don’t paint pic­tures — we study.” That sen­tence occa­sion­al­ly stood over the works that were assem­bled for the review­ings. It was immense­ly pro­gram­mat­ic. And we also heard: “The artist must not want an effect — he must induce a state.” State — Path — Dis­cov­ery: this suc­ces­sion of cause and effect drew Baumeis­ter’s teach­ing close to the great tra­di­tion of East­ern civ­i­liza­tions. Also fit­ting in this con­text is this mean­ing­ful sen­tence: “The work must con­tain the great line of pas­siv­i­ty.” One notices: the uni­ver­sal shone through this man’s activ­i­ty, and also that which one calls the uni­ver­sal­ly human.

I am near­ing the con­clu­sion. As already sug­gest­ed, the occa­sion of the homage oblig­ed us to not make for­mer adver­saries the tar­get of sharp attacks. But I can­not pass over in total silence what was again thrown into Baumeis­ter’s path after 1946. We need to real­ize that there was the ambi­tion to trans­late Baumeis­ter’s teach­ing into insti­tu­tion­al prac­tice, which ulti­mate­ly would have restruc­tured the entire Stuttgart acad­e­my. Pow­ers stood opposed and in their way they knew how to pre­vent this. There were said to have been cer­tain boy­cotting attempts in the years before 1950. And when he turned 65 the punc­tu­al farewell came again, although in cer­tain cas­es there was always a love­ly excep­tion. Enough.

Ladies and gen­tle­men, let us con­sid­er that the major­i­ty of adver­saries of old prob­a­bly lie in their graves. Yes, today I would like, at least for this occa­sion, to ask for for­bear­ance. Let your­self also be con­nect­ed by a word of Baumeis­ter’s from the well-known Darm­stadt Debate. He con­fessed at the time: