Patrizia McBride - The Chatter of the Visible: Montage and Narrative in Weimar Germany

Page ii The Chatter of the Visible: Montage and Narrative in Weimar Germany has all the intellectual makings of becoming a major go-to and reference for Weimar culture studies written in English. It is one of the theoretically most accomplished studies in that field, which will simultaneously fulfill a complementary need for more historically oriented scholarly work in the area and era. This is the case for literary scholarship as well as for culture and visual studies, to all of which this book is of eminent importance.

Rainer Rumold, Northwestern University

Patrizia McBrides seminal study examines the relationship between montage and narrative in Weimar Germany. In its masterful analyses, the book provides a detailed presentation of the various facets of montage narratives as an interface of technology, perception, and materiality. In doing so, it develops a theory of narrative that spans different media and discourses and is thus pathbreaking for Literary Studies oriented toward the history of knowledge and media studies.

Elisabeth Strowick, Johns Hopkins University

Patrizia McBrides study impressively complexifies our understanding of montage. Without simply rejecting its modernist conceptualizations as a primarily antinarrative force of rupture, the readings presented show how in response to the contemporary crisis of narrative sensemaking, Weimar authors and artists profiled montage as an innovative, phenomenological means of narration.

Claudia Breger, Indiana University

Reconstructing the complex ecology of old genres and new media in the interwar years, McBride develops a striking vision of montage as a practice of storytelling native to the modern technological surround. Against one-sided interpretations of montage as a strategy of deconstruction and protest, The Chatter of the Visible reminds us that every montage cut also entails a suture, and that political interventions can be found not just in critique but in connection and correspondence as well.

Devin Fore, Princeton University

This is by far the best book written on the topic of montage and narrative in Weimar culture so far. It establishes historical and theoretical parameters one will have to work with in the future. McBride states that the aesthetic means of montage appeared as a most fitting correlate to the multiple traumas woven into the historical fabric of Weimar Germany.

Paul Michael Lutzeler, Washington University

Patrizia C. McBride

University of Michigan Press Ann Arbor

Page iv Copyright 2016 by Patrizia C. McBride
All rights reserved

This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publisher.

Published in the United States of America by the
University of Michigan Press

A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: McBride, Patrizia C., author.
Title: The chatter of the visible : montage and narrative in Weimar Germany / Patrizia C. McBride.
Description: Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, [2016] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015031993| ISBN 9780472073030 (hardcover : acid-free paper) | ISBN 9780472053032 (pbk. :acid-free paper) | ISBN 9780472121700 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: PhotographyGermanyHistory19181933.
Classification: LCC TR73 .M43 2016 | DDC 770.943dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015031993

I would like to thank the Humboldt Foundation for a generous grant that allowed me to spend summer 2010 conducting research at various sites in Berlin. At the Free University I am especially indebted to Peter Sprengel, whose help and advice has been invaluable in completing this project. I owe a debt of gratitude to Ralf Burmeister and Christian Tagger at the Berlinische Galerie for their support in accessing the Galeries holdings on Hannah Hch. I am also grateful to the staff at the Bauhaus Archiv and the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin for their help and assistance. This side of the ocean I would like to thank Tim Shipe, curator of the International Dada Archive at the University of Iowa Libraries, for his help and kindness over the years. Special thanks also go to the anonymous readers who reviewed the book for the University of Michigan Press. Their generous, incisive feedback was crucial in helping me sharpen central arguments in this study. Last but not least, I have tremendous gratitude for the colleagues and graduate students in the Department of German Studies at Cornell University. Their conversations and intellectual engagement have sustained my work in countless ways, not least by reminding me of how rewarding and fun it can be to work together on a common undertaking.

Two chapters of this book have appeared in earlier versions. A shorter incarnation of chapter 5 was published as Narrative Resemblance: Weimar Germanys Photography and the Modernist Photobook of Hannah Hch, New German Critique 115, 39.1 (Winter 2012): 16997. A version of chapter 6 appeared as The Game of Meaning: Collage, Montage, and Parody in Kurt Schwitters Merz, in MODERNISM/Modernity 14.2 (April 2007): 24972. Parts of chapter 6 have also appeared in Montage and Violence in Weimar Culture: Kurt Schwitters Reassembled Individuals, in Violence, Culture, Aesthetics: Germany, 17891938, ed. Carl Niekerk and Stefani Engelstein Page viii (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2011): 24565. I thank the publishers for granting permission to include these materials.

Every effort has been made to find the copyright holders of the images reproduced in this book.

I dedicate this book to Brent and Giovanni. Amori miei, grazie.

Hannah Hch, The Multi-Millionaire, in Lszl Moholy-Nagy, Painting Photography Film (1967; 1925, 1927)

Hannah Hch, Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany (1919). Photomontage and collage on paper

John Heartfield, Whoever Reads Bourgeois Newspapers Becomes Blind and Deaf: Away with These Stultifying Bandages! A.I.Z. 9.6 (1930)

American tire advertisement, from Lszl Moholy-Nagy, Painting Photography Film (1967; 1925, 1927)

Lszl Moholy-Nagy, advertisement for a garden exhibition (1930), in Rasch and Rasch, eds., Gefesselter Blick

Lszl Moholy-Nagy, first and second two-page spread from Dynamic of the Metropolis, in Painting Photography Film (1967; 1925, 1927)

From Lszl Moholy-Nagy, From Material to Architecture (1929)

Cesar Domela-Nieuwenhuis, advertisement for metal containers (1930), in Rasch and Rasch, eds., Gefesselter Blick

Albert Renger-Patzsch, selected photographs from Die Welt ist schn (1928)

Hannah Hch, Deutsches Mdchen (1930). Photomontage and collage on paper

Page from Hannah Hch, Album (193334). Photomontage

Two-page spread from Hannah Hch, Album (193334). Photomontage

Two-page spread from Hannah Hch, Album (193334). Photomontage

Hannah Hch, Album, final two-page spread (193334). Photograph