Read Online Fromms: How Julis Fromm's Condom Empire Fell to the Nazis by Michael Sontheimer, Götz Aly, Shelley Frisch - Free Book Online
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The distinction between wall and window would dissolve, since “the wall is this window itself, or, in other words, this wall is itself the window.” This dissolution of the exterior boundary of a building is mirrored in an interior innovation: “The interior dividing walls are reduced to glass walls and configured in many different forms.” 25 The slides of the Köpenick factory document that at Fromms Act, even the two managing directors worked in a glassed-in cube.
The factory on Friedrichshagener Strasse in Berlin-Köpenick, 1931
With evident pride, Julius Fromm guided guests and architectural enthusiasts through his factory, which was “impressive,” “unique,” and constructed “according to the principles of functionality and a healthy work environment.” “An abundance of light” would “suffuse” the production and administration wings, making it possible (as Julius Fromm was firmly convinced) “to fill the factory and office workers with pleasure in carrying out their duties.”
The aesthetically ambitious functionality and the minimalism of the surrounding outer shell, which Korn called “barely perceptible,” was a fitting counterpart to the main product manufactured here. To keep the boundary between inside and outside to an absolute minimum, a Fromm condom could not weigh more than 0.053 ounces. As a result, “a very thin skin” was fashioned, “so translucent” that the protective material was “barely perceptible to the naked eye.” 26 Korn’s book described his architecture in similar terms: the “disappearance of the outside wall” and the use of glass yielded a “great membrane, full of mystery, delicate yet tough … heightening the effect through the occasional glimpses of the load-bearing supports in its interior.”
In the 1920s, Arthur Korn and Siegfried Weitzmann were part of an avant-garde movement that set trends throughout the world. Korn was born in 1891 in Breslau; his father was a businessmanwho sold machines, and his mother was a painter. Korn grew up in Berlin. After completing an apprenticeship in carpentry, he graduated from the Royal School of Applied Arts in Berlin. He learned the basics of architecture on his own and by working as an assistant in various offices. In 1914 he was hired by the office of urban planning in Berlin. Korn was intrigued by Herwarth Walden’s journal,
Der Sturm
, and by his gallery, where the works of Chagall, Klee, and Kandinsky were displayed, along with early designs by future masters of the Bauhaus.
In July 1914, he volunteered for the Fifth Grenadier Guards Regiment. Decorated with the Iron Cross, he returned to Berlin in 1918. A year later, the architect Erich Mendelsohn invited Korn to become his partner. Together they designed a forty-two-unit housing development in Luckenwalde, near Berlin. “But after six months of working together, we couldn’t put up with each other any longer,” Korn wrote in a brief autobiographical sketch. Timeswere hard for creative young architects, so he turned to interiors and store fixtures, which allowed him ample time for discussion and theorizing.
Boardroom and switchboard at the Köpenick plant, ca. 1935
His manifesto,
Analytical and Utopian Architecture
(1923), shows how profoundly his early theories were shaped by expressionism: “Architecture is a passionate act of love. Writhing. Circling. Pressing down and leaping up. Symbol. Beacons.” He insisted “that trenchant analytical construction and the utopia born in the realm of the unconscious intersect in one point.”
Just as Korn was publishing his manifesto, the first major commission of his career came his way. A banker named Goldstein hired him to build a fifty-room villa in Berlin-Charlottenburg. Since money was no object, Korn and Weitzmann, who had become partners in 1922, were able to hire the sculptor Rudolf Belling to design several fountains and a water mobile. Richard Neutra added a stylish swimming pool. On the
The factory on Friedrichshagener Strasse in Berlin-Köpenick, 1931
With evident pride, Julius Fromm guided guests and architectural enthusiasts through his factory, which was “impressive,” “unique,” and constructed “according to the principles of functionality and a healthy work environment.” “An abundance of light” would “suffuse” the production and administration wings, making it possible (as Julius Fromm was firmly convinced) “to fill the factory and office workers with pleasure in carrying out their duties.”
The aesthetically ambitious functionality and the minimalism of the surrounding outer shell, which Korn called “barely perceptible,” was a fitting counterpart to the main product manufactured here. To keep the boundary between inside and outside to an absolute minimum, a Fromm condom could not weigh more than 0.053 ounces. As a result, “a very thin skin” was fashioned, “so translucent” that the protective material was “barely perceptible to the naked eye.” 26 Korn’s book described his architecture in similar terms: the “disappearance of the outside wall” and the use of glass yielded a “great membrane, full of mystery, delicate yet tough … heightening the effect through the occasional glimpses of the load-bearing supports in its interior.”
In the 1920s, Arthur Korn and Siegfried Weitzmann were part of an avant-garde movement that set trends throughout the world. Korn was born in 1891 in Breslau; his father was a businessmanwho sold machines, and his mother was a painter. Korn grew up in Berlin. After completing an apprenticeship in carpentry, he graduated from the Royal School of Applied Arts in Berlin. He learned the basics of architecture on his own and by working as an assistant in various offices. In 1914 he was hired by the office of urban planning in Berlin. Korn was intrigued by Herwarth Walden’s journal,
Der Sturm
, and by his gallery, where the works of Chagall, Klee, and Kandinsky were displayed, along with early designs by future masters of the Bauhaus.
In July 1914, he volunteered for the Fifth Grenadier Guards Regiment. Decorated with the Iron Cross, he returned to Berlin in 1918. A year later, the architect Erich Mendelsohn invited Korn to become his partner. Together they designed a forty-two-unit housing development in Luckenwalde, near Berlin. “But after six months of working together, we couldn’t put up with each other any longer,” Korn wrote in a brief autobiographical sketch. Timeswere hard for creative young architects, so he turned to interiors and store fixtures, which allowed him ample time for discussion and theorizing.
Boardroom and switchboard at the Köpenick plant, ca. 1935
His manifesto,
Analytical and Utopian Architecture
(1923), shows how profoundly his early theories were shaped by expressionism: “Architecture is a passionate act of love. Writhing. Circling. Pressing down and leaping up. Symbol. Beacons.” He insisted “that trenchant analytical construction and the utopia born in the realm of the unconscious intersect in one point.”
Just as Korn was publishing his manifesto, the first major commission of his career came his way. A banker named Goldstein hired him to build a fifty-room villa in Berlin-Charlottenburg. Since money was no object, Korn and Weitzmann, who had become partners in 1922, were able to hire the sculptor Rudolf Belling to design several fountains and a water mobile. Richard Neutra added a stylish swimming pool. On the
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