Alexander Eisenschmidt | Rethinking the Metropolis: Perception Theory and the Emergence of a New Urban Space
In order to address the relationship between urban space and its rethinking through other media, this paper proposes to revisit an episode of German modernity in which literature, architecture, urbanism, and philosophy intersected – challenging the common perceptions of urban space and altering the course of these discourses. The paper will focus on the philosopher and psychologist-turned-architect August Endell, who’s writing on the modern city changed the way urban space was perceived.
Influenced by empathy theory of his professor Theodor Lipps, the sociology of Geog Simmel, and the literary work of his friends Lou Andreas-Salomé and Rainer Maria Rilke, Endell developed a new reading of the modern city through a new way of seeing. His small but influential book Die Schönheit der Großen Stadt (The Beauty of the Big City, 1908) called for a suspension of knowledge and an absorption into optical perception. Seeing in the totality of the formless urban environment a multiplicity of distinct emotionally resonating forms, he reevaluated the so-called “formless” aspects of the city and sought to reveal its latent beauty. “This is the most astonishing,” Endell wrote, “the great city – despite all it ugly buildings, its noise, despite all one can criticize – is for the one who can see a wonder of beauty and poetry (23).” Wandering through Berlin, Endell would focus only on aspects of the modern city, its industrial sites, marginal spaces, and transient situations. While architectural writing was so far either concerned with the historical monuments of the city or proposed urban visions for a remaking of the urban realm, Die Schönheit der Großen Stadt was concerned with a rethinking of urban space. It helped to perceive a different kind of metropolis.
Endell’s intellectual projects of revising the perception of urban space by drawing from scientific aesthetics and psychology animated modern thought far beyond the architectural discourse. Wassily Kandinsky’s non-objective art that sought to destroy the relationship between form and content, Rilke’s Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge (The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, 1910) in which the protagonist “learns to see” the city of Paris (14), László Moholy-Nagy’s early films such as Berliner Stilleben (Berlin Still-Life, 1931) that sought to expose a new “vision in motion,” or Gyorgy Kepes’ search for a Language of Vision (1944) are all influenced by Endell’s theory. Therefore, Endell’s perception theory is not only essential for architectural modernity but also for a trans-disciplinary understanding of the city – thinking urban space across disciplinary boundaries.