All posts by Cora Buhlert

[May 4, 1965] The Op and the Pop: New Movements in Modern Art

May 4, 2020 Cora Buhlert 4 Comments

by Cora Buhlert

News from West Germany

May 1 is not just a public holiday in all of Germany, but also the traditional holiday of the labour movement. The day was celebrated with marches and rallies in both East and West Germany. In East Germany, the marches were the usual propaganda affairs. In West Germany, Turkish, Portuguese, Spanish and Italian flags were spotted at the Mayday marches, as immigrant workers from Southern Europe joined their West German colleagues to demand higher wages and better working conditions. Concerns about the political situation and lack of freedom in the home countries of some of the immigrant workers were raised as well.

May Day parade in Magdeburg, East Germany

May Day rally Cologne — May Day rally in Cologne, West Germany

Turkish flag May Day — A Turkish flag at a May Day march in Cologne, West Germany.

In other news, 32-year-old war correspondent Horst Faas became the first West German ever to win a Pulitzer Prize for his haunting photos of the war in Vietnam. Happy as I am for Mr. Faas, I still hope that he will soon have to find more pleasant subjects to photograph.

Horst Faas photograph — One of Horst Faas' haunting photographs of the war in Vietnam that won him a Pulitzer Prize.

Maybe one day in the future, press photos like Horst Faas' will hang alongside fine art in museums and galleries around the world. Because there are certainly exciting movements afoot in the art world.

Art News

That's that for current events. Now for the meat of the article — a review of current art movements in this most modern year of 1965 (apropos given our show coming up in a few days):

The Reign of Abstract Expressionism

In the art world, Abstract Expressionism has been ruling supreme since the end of World War II, at least in the West. An outgrowth of prewar movements such as Futurism, Cubism, Constructivism, Expressionism, Surrealism, Dadaism and the Bauhaus, Abstract Expressionism is the art world's equivalent of the International Style in architecture and interior design. It is ubiquitous, wins awards, has the highest prestige and commands the highest prices. Abstract Expressionism also has widespread political support in the West, most likely because the Communists really, really don't like abstract art and prefer what they call Socialist Realism. There are even rumours that the CIA has been promoting abstract expressionism via the so-called Congress for Cultural Freedom, which certainly makes for strange bedfellows.

As a result, what was avantgarde and daring only twenty years ago had now become the very establishment that newer artists are rebelling against. And this rebellion is taking some very exciting forms.

Less is More: Minimalism

One reaction to the dominance of Abstract Expressionism was to take abstraction to its utmost extreme and simultaneously return to roots of modernism and the graphic simplicity of Russian Constructivism, the Dutch "De Stijl" movement or the German Bauhaus. This school, dubbed Minimalism, objects to the expressionist part of Abstract Expressionism and believes that art should not reflect its creator and his or her moods. Instead, art should be neutral, objective and refer only to itself. 29-year-old Frank Stella, one of the most notable figures of the Minimalist movement, sums up the aims of Minimalist art as "What you see is what you see."

Marriage of Reason and Squalor by Frank Stella — "Marriage of Reason and Squalor" by Frank Stella, one of his "Black Paintings"

So what do you see, when you look at a work of Minimalist art? You'll see simple patterns, geometric shapes, hard edges, primary colours and monochromatic palettes. The so-called "Black Paintings" by the above mentioned Frank Stella consist of concentric stripes painted on raw canvas in the black wall paint that Stella uses in his day job as a house painter. Canadian artist Agnes Martin paints grids and stripes in pastel watercolours. Meanwhile, Dan Flavin eschews paint altogether and instead creates artworks from tubes of neon lights arranged in various geometric patterns.

Summer by Agnes Martin — "Summer" by Agnes Martin

A Primary Picture by Dan Flavin — "A Primary Picture" by Dan Flavin

Minimalism is also a new trend for sculptures, as artists such as Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt or Tony Smith create sculptures that consist of geometric shapes such as cubes, prisms or triangles. So far, many of those sculptures only exist as sketches or cardboard models, but some such as "Cigarette", a 1961 Minimalist sculpture by Tony Smith made from twisted flat planes of steel, or "Free Ride", another Tony Smith sculpture inspired by the Aurora 7 mission, can be already seen in parks and on museum grounds.

The minimalist sculpture "Free Ride" by Tony Smith was inspired by the "Aurora 7" space mission

So where can you see Minimalist art in the flesh? So far, New York City is ground zero for Minimalism and that's where you can find the respective artworks in galleries and exhibitions like Sixteen Americans at the Museum of Modern Art. So far, there hasn't been a dedicated exhibition of Minimalist art, though there are rumours that there is one planned for next year.

More is More: Pop Art

While the Minimalists responded to what they considered the excesses of Abstract Expressionism by reducing art to pure geometric forms, the Pop Art movement took a different path.

Pop Art arose in the UK in the 1950s, when a group of young artists calling themselves the Independent Group realised that both the prevailing Abstract Expressionism as well as the academic fine art of previous eras had very little to say about them and their lives. So these young artists began to incorporate the imagery they saw in their everyday lives into their works, imagery drawn from advertising, movies, pop music and comic books.

British artist Richard Hamilton describes pop art as follows:

Pop Art is: Popular (designed for a mass audience), Transient (short-term solution), Expendable (easily forgotten), Low cost, Mass produced, Young (aimed at youth), Witty, Sexy, Gimmicky, Glamorous, Big business

The Independent Group incorporated pop culture imagery into their works by reviving the collage, a form associated with early Modernism and Surrealism. Scottish artist Eduardo Paolozzi inadvertently gave the new movement its name, when his collage "I was a rich man's plaything", named after the headline of a True Confessions magazine, that was part of the collage, also included the word "Pop", fired out of a gun.

I Was a Rich Man's Plaything by Eduardo Paolozzi — The collage "I was a Rich Man's Plaything" by Eduardo Paolozzi inadvertedly gave Pop Art its name

Meanwhile, British artist Richard Hamilton responded to the theme of an exhibition called This Is Tomorrow by cutting up some American magazines a friend had brought back from the US. The result was a collage called "Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?" which uses aspirational pop culture imagery to create a futuristic interior to brighten up the dreary postwar Britain. Across the pond in the US, Tom Wesselmann created a series of "Still Life" collages assembled from advertising images. Another American artist, Robert Indiana uses the typography and imagery of road signs and company logos to create his brightly coloured paintings.

"What is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?" by Richard Hamilton — The collage "What is it that makes today's home so different, so appealing?" by Richard Hamilton. Could it be the bodybuilder with the strategically placed sign?

Still Life No. 30 by Tom Wesselmann — "Still Life No. 30" by Tom Wesselmann

Four Star Love by Robert Indiana — "Four Star Love" by Robert Indiana

On the wall of the apartment Hamilton pictured in "Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?", the framed cover of an American romance comic hangs next to works of fine art. And indeed comic book imagery plays a big role in the nascent pop art movement.

Finding Beauty in Everyday Imagery

Whaam! by Roy Lichtenstein — "Whaam!" by Roy Lichtenstein after Irv Novick

When his young son showed him a Mickey Mouse comic and said, "I bet you can't paint as good as that, eh, Dad?", American artist Roy Lichtenstein rose to the challenge and began copying and enlarging panels from comic books and even included the characteristic Ben Day dots of the printing process. Lichtenstein is clearly a fan of National/DC Comics and frequently copies panels from DC books such as Secret Hearts, Girls' Romance or All-American Men of War. And so Secret Hearts inspired the Lichtenstein paintings "Drowning Girl" and "Crying Girl", while All-American Men of War inspired "Whaam!", "As I Opened Fire" and "Okay, Hot-Shot". The comic book fan in me rejoices in seeing comic books elevated to fine art, though I wish that Lichtenstein would give credit to the artists whose work he copied, artists like Jack Kirby, Russ Heath, Tony Abruzzo, Irv Novick and Jerry Grandinetti.

Drowning Girl by Roy Lichtenstein — "Drowning Girl" by Roy Lichtenstein after Tony Abruzzo

Crying Girl by Roy Lichtenstein — "Crying Girl" by Roy Lichtenstein

Okay, Hot-Shot by Roy Lichtenstein — "Okay, Hot-Shot" by Roy Lichtenstein after Russ Heath

While Roy Lichtenstein finds inspiration in comic books, his fellow American pop artist Andy Warhol looks to his local supermarket, magazine photos and advertising imagery for inspiration, which is not surprising, since he began his career as a commercial artist, specialising in shoe ads. Shoes do not feature prominently in Warhol's art. Instead, he creates large silkscreen prints featuring product packaging such as cans of Campbell's soup, bottles of Coca Cola or packages of Brillo scouring pads.

"32 Campbell's Soup Cans" by Andy Warhol — "32 Campbell Soup Cans" by Andy Warhol

Green Coca Cola Bottles by Andy Warhol — "Green Coca Cola Bottles" by Andy Warhol

Reproductions and Originals

Magazine photographs are another source of inspiration for Warhol and so he transformed a publicity shot of Marilyn Monroe for Niagara into his so-called "Marilyn Diptych" and a publicity still of Elvis Presley for the western Flaming Star into prints with titles like "Eight Elvises" or "Double Elvis".

"Marilyn Diptych" by Andy Warhol, created shortly after Marilyn Monroe's untimely death.

But Warhol also tackles more serious subjects in his art. His print series "Death and Disaster" uses magazine photographs of car crashes, race riots and suicides as well as the Sing Sing electric chair and a mushroom cloud and reproduces them over and over again, because – as Warhol said in a recent interview – "when you see a gruesome picture over and over again, it doesn’t really have an effect."

Electric Chair by Andy Warhol — "Electric Chair" by Andy Warhol, part of his "Death and Disaster" series. The bright colours don't make the subject any more cheerful.

West German artist Gerhard Richter eschews the Pop Art moniker, but he also makes paintings based on photographs, slightly blurred to create an estrangement effect. Unlike Warhol and other American artists, Richter's paintings are based on snapshots and family photos such as "Tante Marianne", the haunting portrait of the artist as a baby posing with his then fourteen-year-old aunt Marianne Schönfelder. The portrait becomes even more haunting, if you know that Marianne Schönfelder was mentally ill and was murdered by the Nazis as part of their euthanasia program.

"Tante Marianne" by Gerhard Richter is based on a family photo showing the artist as a baby with his then 14-year-old aunt Marianne Schönfelder

The Democratisation of Art

In the beginning, many art critics were outraged by Pop Art's seemingly uncritical use of "low" subject matter such as comics, movies and advertising imagery. Furthermore, critics accused the Pop Artists of being mere copyists, incapable of creating something original. It seems those art critics have forgotten their art history, because using found objects in art is not exactly a new idea. Marcel Duchamp already did the same thing fifty years ago with his so-called "Readymades" such as his famous 1917 work "Fountain", a commercially produced urinal that Duchamp simply signed. Marcel Duchamp is still alive, though retired, and I like to think that he gets a smile out of the young Pop Artists taking up his methods.

Thirty years ago, philosopher Walter Benjamin wrote a notable essay entitled "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction", wherein he postulates that a work of art loses its aura of uniqueness, when it can be infinitely reproduced via new filmic, photographic and printing technologies, and how this influences our perception of art. Benjamin also discusses the political dimensions of the then new mass media both as propaganda for Fascist (and Communist) regimes as well as its potential to democratise art.

Elizabeth Taylor by Andy Warhol — "Liz" by Andy Warhol is a portrait of actress Elizabeth Taylor

The Pop Artists follow the latter path, because their art is both a reproduction of an existing work (comic books, magazine photographs, film stills, product packaging) as well as infinitely reproduceable in itself. Andy Warhol does not create individual paintings, but silk screen prints that he produces in his own workshop in New York City, the so-called "Factory". This makes his works much more affordable than traditional fine art to the point that a Warhol print is not out of reach of the middle classes who want to brighten their homes with some modern art. Though personally, I would go with Marilyn, Elvis, Liz or even the Campbell's soup can rather than the electric chair or a car crash. And if you cannot afford a Warhol print, Pop Artist Robert Indiana is creating a line of greeting cards for the Museum of Modern Art, so you can own a piece of Pop Art for less than a dollar.

Black and White: Op Art

The latest movement to shake up the art world is Op Art, short for Optical Art. The movement got its name last year when the Martha Jackson Gallery in New York City exhibited the works of Polish-born artist Julian Stanczak in the show Julian Stanczak: Optical Paintings.

Julian Stanczak has a tragic history – he was incarcerated in a Soviet labour camp as a teenager and lost the use of his right arm. Now forced to paint with his non-dominant left hand, Stanczak turned to abstract art as a way to escape his painful past. At the show in New York City, he exhibited striking black and white paintings whose patterns seem to flash, blur and vibrate in front of the observer's eyes due to his use of optical illusions. Look too long at a Stanczak painting and you might well get dizzy.

Meanwhile in the UK, a young artist named Bridget Riley chanced to see the painting "The Bridge at Courbevoie" by pointillist French painter Georges Seurat. The painting and its use of dots to create optical effects impressed Bridget Riley greatly, so much that she copied it and placed the copy in her studio.

"Movement in Squares" by Birdget Riley — "Movement in Squares" by Bridget Riley

Inspired by Seurat, Bridget Riley began to create pointillist paintings of her own. She started out with landscapes, but her paintings quickly turned abstract and also made use of black and white contrasts and optical effects.

Another Op Art pioneer, Hungarian-French artist Victor Vasarely was inspired both by the Bauhaus and Russian Constructivism and began to create abstract geometric artworks, which also exploit optical illusions much like the works of Julian Stanczak and Bridget Riley.

Supernovae by Victor Vasarely — "Supernovae" by Victor Vasarely

It is not known whether Stanczak, Riley and Vasarely were aware of each other's work, but curator William C. Seitz brought their work and those of other optical artists together in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City entitled The Responsive Eye. The exhibition concluded two weeks ago and should help to bring Op Art into the mainstream.

Beyond Modernism: The Future of Art

Whether you prefer Pop Art, Op Art or Minimalism, contemporary art has not been so exciting since the heady avantgarde days of the interwar period.

But unlike the avantgarde of the first few decades of the 20th century, today's contemporary art is a lot more accessible and democratic. You don't need to be wealthy to purchase a print by Andy Warhol, a greeting card by Robert Indiana or the work one of the other exciting new artists. And who knows, if those artists take off, you may find yourself in possession of a very valuable piece someday.

Furthermore, you might even be inspired to create some art of your own. At any rate, the pop art collages by Richard Hamilton, Eduardo Paolozzi and Tom Wesselmann inspired me to grab a stack of magazines as well as some scissors and glue and make some collages of my own. Maybe I'll share them here someday!

Hyeana Stomp by Frank Stella — Hyena Stomp by Frank Stella

Our last three Journey shows were a gas! You can watch the kinescope reruns here). You don't want to miss the next episode, May 9 at 1PM PDT, a special Arts and Entertainment edition featuring Arel Lucas, Cora Buhlert, Erica Frank…and Dr. Who producer, Verity Lambert! Register today and we'll make sure you don't forget.

4 Comments Leave A Comment

Fashion, music, politics, sports

[April 10, 1965] Furnishing the Home of the Future: Interior Design for the Space Age

April 10, 2020 Cora Buhlert 6 Comments

by Cora Buhlert

Today's article is on architecture in the modern age, but first, I have a couple of news tidbits for you — one public and one personal:

For a Few Westerns More

While the "western" appears to be a declining genre in the United States, at least on the silver screen, West German audiences are currently flocking to the cinemas to watch an Italian western. Yes, you heard that correctly. After entertaining us with a seemingly endless stream of sand and sandal epics, Italian filmmakers have decided to try their hand at a new genre, the western.

German poster for For a Fistful of Dollars — The German film poster for "Per un pugno di dollari" a.k.a. "For a Fistful of Dollars"

The movie in question is called Per un pugno di dollari, which translates as "For a Fistful of Dollars". It features Clint Eastwood, star of the American western TV series Rawhide, as a nameless gunslinger. West German actress Marianne Koch, mostly known for sappy romantic fare, plays a Mexican damsel in distress. Per un pugno di dollari is an exciting movie, full of action and a lot more graphic violence than is commonly found in Hollywood westerns. However, if the plot of a nameless stranger getting involved in a feud between two rival gangs seems a tad familiar, that's probably because it is. Only four years ago, Akira Kurosawa told the same story, albeit set in 19th century Japan, in Yojimbo. And Kurosawa didn't come up with the plot either, but borrowed it from Dashiell Hammett's 1927 crime novel Red Harvest.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed it, and I'm looking forward to more of this Italian spin on an American genre!

A Happy Couple

Spring is also the time for weddings. And even though April has been cold and wet so far, I nonetheless attended a family wedding yesterday. Here are some photos of the happy couple.

Even twenty years after the end of WWII, there are still housing shortages in West Germany and therefore, the young couple above is thrilled to have found an apartment to start their new life together. I don't know what that apartment will look like, but thinking about it led me to contemplate contemporary interior design in general. So strap in for a tour of what's in, literally.

The Workplace of the Future

Last year, I brought you an article about the exciting modern buildings that are going up all over Europe and elsewhere. Futuristic buildings need futuristic interiors. Thankfully, today's designers are on the ball and are creating some amazing furniture that looks like nothing ever seen before.

In many areas, the so-called International Style, which emerged after World War II from the Bauhaus style of the 1920s and early 1930s, is still dominant. And indeed the clean lines and functional design of the International Style are perfectly suited to hotel lobbies, airport lounges and office buildings.

Companies like Vitra of Switzerland and Knoll International and Herman Miller Inc., both from the US, supply the headquarters of international companies with a mixture of classic thirty to forty year old Bauhaus designs revived for the postwar era as well as new chairs, desks and tables created by designers like Charles and Ray Eames. Of particular note is "Action Office", designed by Robert Propst and George Nelson for Herman Miller Inc. The mobile and modular "Action Office" system breaks up the rigid rows of desks which characterise many modern offices and allows for moving around chairs and desks. Shelving units and filing cabinets serve as dividers, allowing office workers more privacy. "Action Office" makes work seem like fun.

"Action Office" furniture system, designed by George Nelson and Robert Propst, with chairs by Charles and Ray Eames.

Of course, a modern office also needs modern equipment. The Italian company Olivetti produces some of the best and most functional office equipment currently on the market such as the "Praxis 48" typewriter with its bright green keys or the strikingly futuristic "Programma 101" programmable calculating machine. Owning an Olivetti typewriter or an IBM "Selectric" is the dream of many a writer.

An Olivetti store in Italy. What an innovative idea, a shop devoted only to the products of a single manufacturer of office equipment.

Olivetti Praxis 48 typewriter — The Olivetti "Praxis 48" typewriter, designed by Ettore Sottsass

Northern Exposure

But while the International Style may excel at furnishing office buildings, its minimalist purism does feel a little too cold and bland for the home. Thankfully, our Northern neighbours are on the case with furnishings that manage to be both modernist and cosy.

In the past three decades, Scandinavia has emerged as a source of beautiful and functional design to the point that Scandinavian Modern has become a recognisable style found in many homes in Europe (including my own) and beyond.

Traditionally, Scandinavian Modern has been associated with clean lines, neutral palettes and natural materials like wood, leather and wicker. A prime example is the beautiful "Hammock" chair by Danish designer Poul Kjærholm. However in recent times, Scandinavian designers have branched out and embraced materials like plastics as well as brighter colours.

Paul Kjaerholm hammock chair — Don't you just want to lie down in this "Hammock" chair by Danish designer Paul Kjaerholm?

A few years ago, Danish designer Arne Jacobsen created the incredibly comfortable organic forms of the so-called "Egg" and "Swan" chairs for the SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen, Meanwhile, his countryman Poul Volther designed the striking "Corona" chair, inspired by witnessing a solar eclipse.

Egg chair by Arne Jacobsen — The "Egg" chair by Danish designer Arne Jacobsen. Doesn't it look super comfortable?

Swan chair by Arne Jacobsen — The "Swan" chair by Arne Jacobsen

Arne Jacobsen interior for the SAS Royal Hotel — Arne Jacobsen's interior for the SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen, featuring the "Egg" chair.

Corona chair by Poul Vohler — The "Corona" chair by Danish designer Poul Vohler was allegedly inspired by witnessing a solar eclipse.

Another Dane, Verner Panton, came up with such innovative designs as the "Moon" ceiling lamp, the "Cone" chair and a cantilever chair from a single piece of injection moulded plastic which is sadly only a prototype for now, though the Swiss company Vitra is looking at possibilities for mass production.

Moon lamp by Verner Panton — The "Moon" lamp by Danish designer Verner Panton brightens up this lobby.

Cone chair by Verner Panton — The "Cone" chair by Verner Panton

Panton chair — This chair prototype by Verner Panton is made from a single piece of plastic.

Eero Saarinen from Finland is mainly known as the architect responsible for such stunning buildings as the Trans World Flight Center, the Washington Dulles International Airport and the St. Louis Gateway arch. However, Eero Saarinen is also a talented furniture designer and the plastic "Tulip" chair he designed for Knoll International can be found in homes and boardrooms around the world. Meanwhile, Eero Aarnio, also from Finland, created the fabulous "Ball" chair, which is perfect for curling up with a good book.

Tulip chairs by Eero Saarinen — These "Tulip" chairs were designed by Finnish designer eero Saarinen for Knoll International

Ball chair by Eero Aarnio — Who wouldn't want to curl up with a good book in this futuristic "Ball" chair by Finnish desinger Eero Aarnio?

But Scandinavian designers also excel in fields beyond furniture design. In 1960, Jacqueline Kennedy made the colourful fabrics of the Finnish company Marimekko world famous, when she bought six Marimekko gowns for her husband's presidential campaign. Those carefree days may be over, but Marimekko is still producing striking and brightly coloured fabrics such as the "Unikko" (poppy) pattern, designed last year by Maija Isola.

Jacqueline Kennedy in Marimekko — Jacqueline Kennedy wearing a Marimekko dress on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

Marimekko Unikko — The brightly coloured "Unikko" (Poppy) pattern was designed by Majia Isola for Marimekko last year.

Meanwhile, Danish designer Bjørn Wiinblad has shaken up the stuffy Rosenthal porcelain company with his elegant and modern designs such the "Romanze" dinnerware line, which can be found on many West German tables, including mine.

Rosenthal Romanze by Björn Wiinblad — The "Romanze" dinnerware with its organic forms and embossed oval pattern was designed by Björn Wiinblad for Rosenthal porcelain.

Juggler candlestick by Björn Wiinblad — Danish designer Björn Wiinblad also created this striking "Juggler" candlestick for Rosenthal.

From Italy with Love

If Scandinavia is the centre of North European design, the style heart of Southern Europe beats in Italy.

Designer Joe Columbo from Milan may be only 34, but he has already created such revolutionary designs as the stackable "Universale" No. 4860 chair, the desk lamp "Acrilica", the "Combi-Centre" flexible storage cabinet and the "Elda" chair which would not look out of place on the bridge of a starship.

Acrilica Lamp by Joe Columbo — The "Acrilica" desk lamp by Joe Columbo is the most beautiful way to light up your desk.

Joe Columbo Combi-Centre — Get organised with this "Combi-Centre" storage cabinet by Italian designer Joe Columbo

Universale No. 4860 chair by Joe Columbo — Coloruful and practical: The stackable "Universale No. 4860" chair by Joe Columbo

Elda chair by Joe Columbo — A chair fit for a starship captain: The "Elda" armchair by Joe Columbo

The "Arco" lamp, designed by brothers Pier Giacomo and Achille Castiglioni, is not just beautiful, but also combines the simplicity of a floor lamp with the illumination provided by a ceiling lamp. An "Arco" lamp currently brightens up my living room and was well worth both the price and the hassle of transporting the large and heavy lamp home in a small car. A few years earlier, the brothers Castiglioni also designed the deceptively simple "Mezzadro" stool.

Mezzadro stool by the brothers Castiglioni — The "Mezzadro" stool, designed by the brothers Castiglioni

But Italian design is not just beautiful – no, the Italians also pioneered the use of space age plastic materials for home furnishings. Above, I already mentioned the "Universale" chair from brightly coloured ABS plastic and the stunning "Acrilica" desk lamp, which turns a sheet of acrylic glass into an stylised ocean wave and lights up your desk, too. Another example of innovative plastic use is the line of "Throw Away" sofas and armchairs designed by Willie Landels for the Milanese company Zanotta. Outwardly, the boxy "Throw Away" armchairs and sofas may not look particularly exciting, but if you were to cut one open – not that you should – you'd find only polyurethane foam inside, no wooden frames or steel springs needed.

Throw Away armchairs — The "Throw Away" line of armchairs and sofas was designed by Willie Lendel for Zanotta

Throw Away armchair by Zanotta — Someone took the name of the "Throw Away" armchair by Zanotta a little too seriously. On the plus side, you can see that the armchairs are so light that they float on water due to their innovative polyurethane core.

Making Household Appliances Beautiful

In West Germany, interior and product design are still very much influenced by the purist Bauhaus style of the 1920s and early 1930s. The rise of the Third Reich scattered the Bauhaus alumni all over the world, though some like Wilhelm Wagenfeld remained in West Germany. A son of my hometown of Bremen, Wilhelm Wagenfeld has created both lamps and tableware such as this teapot from heat-resistant borosilicate glass or the salt and pepper shaker combination "Max and Moritz". Wagenfeld's designs can be found in many West German homes, including mine.

Wilhelm Wagenfeld teapot — This teapot from heat resistant borosilicate glass was designed by Wilhelm Wagenfeld.

Wilhelm Wagenfeld Max and Moritz — The salt and pepper shaker combination "Max and Moritz", designed by Wilhelm Wagenfeld

The original Bauhaus in Dessau has sadly vanished behind the Iron Curtain, but its spiritual heirs may be found at the Ulm School of Design, whose alumni found employment at corporations like Lufthansa airlines and the Braun AG.

The Braun AG has long been known as a manufacturer of high-quality radios, clocks, electric shavers, kitchen and household appliances. However, in the past few years, Braun has also become known for its functional and beautiful product design, courtesy of designers Dieter Rams, Hans Gugelot and Reinhold Weiss.

Braun's most famous product is probably the "Phonosuper SK4", which combines a radio and a record player in a single white box with a lid of clear acrylic. Due to its appearance, the "Phonosuper SK4" quickly gained the nickname "Snow White's coffin". But never mind the somewhat morbid nickname, your Beatles records have never sounded better.

Braun Phonosuper SK4, designed by Dieter Rams and Hans Gugelot — Play your Beatles and Motown records on this stylish "Phonosuper SK4" radio and record player combination. Designed by Dieter Rams and Hans Gugelot for Braun AG, the "Phonosuper SK4" is also nicknamed "Snow White's Coffin".

I'm fortunate that my uncle works for the Braun AG and can hook me up with their latest products. And so I'm not only the proud owner of a "Phonosuper SK61", the improved follow-up of "Snow White's Coffin", but also of a Braun KM32 food processor and the HL1 desk fan, which keeps my office cool in the summer.

This Braun HL1 desk fan will keep you cool in summer. Designed by Reinhold Weiss.

This Braun KM 32 food processor is the envy of every homecook.

Braun kitchen scale — This striking circular kitchen scale was designed by Dieter Rams for the Braun AG.

Good Design for the Masses

The many striking examples of modern interior design I have presented above all have one thing in common. They may be beautiful, but they're also very pricey. So what is a couple with a limited budget like our newlyweds above to do? Stick with grandma's Victorian hand-me-downs, until they have saved up enough to be able to afford the stunning pieces seen above?

Not necessarily, because all over Western Europe companies are springing up to bring modern design to the masses at affordable prices. The foremost among those companies is IKEA of Sweden. Founded by Ingvar Kamprad, IKEA was originally a mail order business offering furniture for self-assembly. In 1958, IKEA opened its first furniture store in Älmhult, Sweden, followed soon by many others. Whether ordered by mail or purchased at a store, IKEA furniture always comes in a flat box, the contents of which the customer can assemble themselves. IKEA furniture is modern, practical and – most importantly – much cheaper than the expensive designer pieces seen above. Sadly, IKEA only operates in Scandinavia so far, but I hope that the rest of us will get to enjoy their products soon.

The 1965 IKEA catalogue offers Scandinavian Modern for the masses.

Ingvar Kamprad and Hans Ax — IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad and store manager Hans Ax outside the IKEA store in Älmhult, Sweden.

Over in Britain, a young designer named Terence Conran had a similar idea. In 1956, Conran created his "Summa" range of furniture, to be sold in flat boxes for self-assembly at home. However, Conran found that few stores would sell his products, so last year he opened his own shop, called Habitat, on Fulham Road in London. Like IKEA, Habitat offers good design at affordable prices. However, Habitat doesn't just sell furniture, they also offer kitchenware and other accessories from around the world to make your home beautiful. And so Habitat's most popular product is not furniture at all, but storage jars for dry pasta.

A look into the Habitat store on Fulham road in London

Terence Conran with Habitat staff — British designer Terence Conran poses with the staff of his Habitat store in London.

The Return of Victorian Whimsy

But even though practical and beautiful modern furniture is available at increasingly affordable prices these days, the Victorian furniture and accessories of our grandparents, long considered old-fashioned and passé, is currently undergoing something of a Renaissance as well.

Particularly the Art Noveau style of the turn of the century with its flowing, organic designs is back en vogue both due to high profile retrospectives in museums in Paris and London and because the swirling designs of Art Noveau also happen to echo the psychedelic experience, something which would probably have baffled the great Art Noveau designers and artists such as Henry van de Velde, Alphonse Mucha or Aubrey Beardsley.

So far, the Victorian and Art Noveau revival seems to be confined to London, where the walls of trendy apartments are covered in vintage enamel advertising signs and the Biba boutique offers the latest fashions amidst an eclectic mix of Victorian furniture, Art Noveau wallpapers and ostrich feathers. So if you still have some of grandma's old furniture in the attic, by all that's holy don't throw it away, because it's about to come back into fashion.

The interior of London's trendy Biba boutique mixes Victorian furniture with up to date fashions.

Biba Boutique London — Miniskirts go well with Art Noveau wallpaper inside the Biba boutique in London.

But what do you do if you don't happen to have inherited any authentic Victorian or Art Noveau objects from your grandparents and if you can't find any at your local antiques store either? Luckily, companies like Dodo Designs of Tunbridge Wells, England, offer a range of tins, mugs, wall plaques and milliner's heads that look as if they fell out of a time warp.

Dodo designs — A store display of Dodo design products in the Victorian style on Carnaby Street in London.

Hold onto your seat

With so many different styles and movements currently vying for customers, what will the home of the future look like? Of course, it's always difficult to predict trends with any certainty, but I do think that we will be seeing brighter colours and more furniture made from plastic. We will also be seeing stores like IKEA or Habitat expand and similar enterprises springing up in other countries. Finally, we will also be seeing older styles – whether it's the recently rediscovered Art Noveau of sixty to seventy years ago or the Bauhaus style of the 1920s and 1930s which never truly went away – coexist with the latest designs.

But one thing is certain. The home of the future will be bright, fun and exciting.

We had so much success with our first episode of The Journey Show (you can watch the kinescope rerun; check local listings for details) that we're going to have another one on April 11 at 1PM PDT with The Young Traveler as the special musical guest. As the kids say, be there or be square!

6 Comments Leave A Comment

Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[December 11, 1964] December Galactoscope

December 11, 2019 Cora Buhlert 4 Comments

by Cora Buhlert

The season of giving is upon us. For women, perfumes like the classic scent Tosca are the most popular gifts, while men tend to find ties, socks and underwear under the tree.

Personally, I think that books are the best gifts. And so I gave myself Margaret St. Clair's latest, when I spotted it in the spinner rack at my local import bookstore, since I enjoyed last year's Sign of the Labrys a lot. Even better, this book is an Ace Double, which means I get two new tales for the price of one. Or rather, I get six, because one half is a collection of five short stories.

Message from the Eocene by Margaret St. Clair (Ace Double M-105)

An alien in trouble

The first half is a brand-new science fiction novel called Message from the Eocene. The protagonist, a being named Tharg, is tasked with transporting a cosmic guidebook across hostile territory. The reader learns in the first paragraph that Tharg is not human, because he has a triple heartbeat. Tharg lives on Earth, but the Earth of billions of years ago (long before the Eocene, so the title is a misnomer), a world of volcanos and methane snow, devoid of oxygen. Tharg "breathes" via microorganisms inside his body that break down metallic oxides to oxygenate his blood and has extrasensory perception.

Tharg is in trouble, for a mysterious enemy is trying to thwart his mission. This enemy turns out to be the Vaeaa, a legendary alien race, who are believed to have deposited Tharg's people on Earth in the first place.

Tharg is taken is taken prisoner, but not before he manages to hide the book inside a volcano (it has a protective casing). Under interrogation, Tharg has an out-of-body experience. As a result, his consciousness remains, when his body dies during an escape attempt, to witness the extinction of both his people and the Vaeaa, though the Vaeaa manage to set up a projector on Pluto to keep out further cosmic guidebooks first.

Over billions of years, Tharg's spirit observes life arise and evolve on Earth. Tharg realises that the book might help with his condition, but he has no way to retrieve it. So Tharg decides to ask the Earth's new inhabitants for help. But how to make himself known, considering that Tharg is a bodyless spirit being and never was human in the first place?

Misadventures and miscommunications

The rest of the novel chronicles Tharg's attempts to communicate. Tharg's first attempt targets the Proctors, a Quaker family in 19th century England. This goes disastrously wrong, because not only do the Proctors come to believe that their house is haunted – no, Tharg also gets trapped in the house. Taken on its own, the Proctor segment feels like a Victorian ghost story, except that the ghost is a desperate disembodied alien. The insights into the lives of 19th century Quakers are fascinating, but then Margaret St. Clair is a member of the Society of Friends.

Tharg's next attempt targets Denise, who lives with her husband Pierre in a French colony in the South Pacific. Denise has extrasensory perception, making her the ideal subject. But once again Tharg only succeeds in giving Denise nightmares and causing hauntings in the mine Pierre oversees. Worse, the superstitious miners blame Denise for the hauntings. They kidnap the couple and give Denise hallucinogenic herbs to increase her abilities. Now Denise is able to communicate with Tharg long enough to realise that he wants them to recover the book.

So Pierre uses his mining job to blast a hole into a mountain at the very spot where Denise insists the book is hidden. After some trouble with Vietnamese workers – an incident St. Clair uses to explain that oppression during colonial times has left the Vietnamese angry and frustrated, which leads to violence, a lesson that is highly relevant to the situation in Vietnam today – Denise and Pierre manage to retrieve the book. Alas, once they open the protective casing, the book bursts into flame and is destroyed.

Tharg now sets his sights on the projector the Vaeaa installed on Pluto to keep future cosmic guidebooks away from Earth. For if another book were to arrive, Tharg might finally be able to escape his condition.

Sacrifices and success

There is another time jump to 1974, when strange things happen. An experiment detects a purely theoretical particle, a sea captain sees a mermaid, Canadians dance under the Northern lights and a Tibetan monk has a vision. Tharg views these events as signs that another guidebook is on the way. But due to the projector on Pluto, it will never reach Earth.

In order to shut down the projector long enough to let the book through, Tharg has to dissolve himself in the collective consciousness of humanity, which will also mean his annihilation. So Tharg sacrifices himself and the book is picked up by an expedition to Venus. The novel ends with Tharg waking on the astral plane in a replica of his original body, just as the US-Soviet crew of the spaceship to Venus is about to open the book.

This is a strange and disjointed, but fascinating novel. Though Tharg is one of the rare truly alien aliens of science fiction, he is nonetheless a likeable protagonist and the reader sympathises with his plight. Tharg is also an unlikely messiah, sacrificing himself to assure the future of humanity.

Humanity being uplifted and our minds and bodies evolving is a common theme in our genre. However, Message from the Eocene offers a very different variation on this theme compared to what you'd find in the pages of Analog, even if psychic abilities are involved. The enlightenment offered by the book is reminiscent of both Buddhism and various occult traditions, while its arrival alludes to the so-called Age of Aquarius that astrologers believe will arrive soon.

In a genre that is still all too often peopled solely by white American men, the humans Tharg encounters are of all genders, races, nationalities and religions and all are portrayed sympathetically. For if the alien Tharg does not discriminate based on superficial criteria, then maybe neither should we. It is also notable that even before they receive the book, St. Clair's near future Earth is a more peaceful place than our world, where China has withdrawn from Tibet and the US and USSR cooperate in space.

Message from the Eocene is a story of failed communication, but also a story of evolution and enlightenment and overcoming one's limitations. Given the state of the world today, this may be just the message humanity needs.

Four and a half stars.

Three World of Futurity by Margaret St. Clair

Three Worlds and five stories

Three Worlds of Futurity, the other half of this Ace Double, is a collection of five short stories originally published between 1949 and 1962. The three worlds in question are Mars, Venus and Earth.

In "The Everlasting Food", Earthman Richard Dekker finds that his Venusian wife Issa has changed after lifesaving surgery. One night, Issa announces that she is immortal now, that she no longer needs to eat and that energy sustains her. Soon thereafter, she leaves, taking their young son with her. Richard takes off after her to get his son back, Issa's human foster sister Megan in tow. After many trials and tribulations, they finally find Issa – only for Richard to lose his wife and son for good. But while Richard is heartbroken, he has also fallen in love with Megan.

"The Everlasting Food" is a curious mix of domestic science fiction in the vein of Zenna Henderson and Mildred Clingerman and planetary adventure in the vein of Leigh Brackett, and never quite gels. I did like Megan, who is described as dark-skinned, by the way, but Issa is hard to connect to and Richard, though well meaning, falls for Megan a little too quickly. Furthermore, the villain feels like an afterthought who comes out of nowhere.

"Idris' Pig" opens on a spaceship to Mars. George Baker is the ship's resident psychologist. His cousin Bill is a courier and passenger aboard the same ship. When Bill falls ill, it's up to George to deliver the object Bill was supposed to deliver, a blue-skinned sacred pig. However, Bill can only give George very vague instructions about where to deliver the pig and so the pig is promptly stolen. And so George has to retrieve it with the help of Blixa, a young Martian woman. As a result, George gets mixed up with drug dealers and Martian cults, involved in an interplanetary incident and lands in jail. He also completely forgets about the woman he has been trying very hard not to think about and falls in love with Blixa.

This is an utterly charming story, a science fiction screwball comedy reminiscent of Howard Hawks' Bringing Up Baby. A hidden gem and true delight.

"The Rages" is set in an overmedicated Earth of the future. Harvey has a perfect life and a perfect, though sexless marriage. However, he has a problem because his monthly ration of euphoria pills has run out. And without euphoria pills, Harvey fears the oncoming of the rages, attacks of uncontrollable anger, which eventually lead to a final rage from which one never emerges. The story follows Harvey through his day as he meets several people and tries to get more pills. Gradually, it dawns upon both Harvey and the reader that the pills may be causing the very rages they are supposed to suppress. The story ends with Harvey throwing all of his and his wife's pills away.

This is a dystopian tale in the vein of Brave New World and Fahrenheit 541. The future world St. Clair has built is fascinating, if horrifying, and I would have liked to see more of it. However, Harvey is a thoroughly unlikeable character, who almost rapes two women in the course of a single novelette. Maybe Harvey could have rediscovered his messy humanity without resorting to sexual violence.

"Roberta" is the shortest and most recent story, first published in Galaxy in October 1962, reviewed by our editor Gideon Marcus here. Roberta is a confused young woman with the unfortunate tendency to kill men. Robert is the phantom who won't leave her alone. Eventually, it is revealed that Roberta had a sex change operation and that "Robert" represents her former self, as do the men she kills.

Transsexualism is a subject that science fiction almost never addresses, even though our genre is ideal for it. After all, there are transsexuals living in our world right now and science offers possibilities to make it much easier for them to live the lives they want to. So I applaud Margaret St. Clair for tackling what is sadly still a taboo topic (and for having her heroine utter another taboo word, "abortion"), though I am troubled that science fiction's only transsexual heroine (so far) is also a multiple murderer.

In "The Island of the Hands", Dirk dreams about his wife Joan who died in a plane crash at sea. He hires a plane to check out the coordinates from his dream and crashes on an invisible island. Dirk finds Joan's plane and a dead body and also meets Miranda, a young woman who suspiciously resembles Joan. He is on the Island of the Hands, Miranda informs them, where everybody can shape their heart's desire from mythical mist. Dirk tries to shape Joan, but fails. He spends the night with Miranda, who confesses that Joan is still alive, but trapped in the mist. Dirk goes after her and rescues Joan, only to learn that there is a very good reason why Miranda looks so much like an idealised version of Joan.

It's no surprise that this story was first published in Weird Tales, since it has the otherworldly quality typical for that magazine. "The Island of the Hands" reminded me of the 1948 Leigh Brackett story "The Moon That Vanished", where another heartbroken widower finds himself faced with a magical mist that shapes one's heart's desire.

All in all, this is an excellent collection. Not every story is perfect (though "Idris' Pig" pretty much is), but they are all fascinating and make me want to read more of Margaret St. Clair's work.

Four stars for the collection.

[But wait! There's more!]

by Gideon Marcus

False Finishes

After such a remarkable pair of books, I hate to sully this edition with less than stellar reviews. But the year is almost up, and there are a lot of books to get through. So, here is a trio of novels that start promisingly and then fizzle out.

The Greks Bring Gifts, by Murray Leinster

If you can get past the punny title, Gifts grabs your interest from the first. In the near future, the humanoid Greks land in a miles-long spaceship. They were just sailing by, training a class of Aladarian engineers, and thought they'd pop in to give humanity a myriad of technological gifts. The aliens are welcomed with riotous joy — after all, soon no one will have to work more than one day a week, and all the comforts of the world will be evenly distributed.

But one fellow, Jim Hackett, is suspicious. Despite being a brilliant young physicist, he was rejected as a candidate to learn Grek science after failing to comprehend it. Was he just not bright enough? Or were the Greks feeding us gobbledegook to keep us ignorant? And then, why did the Greks abruptly leave after six months, just as desire for the fruits of their wondrous technology was peaking, but the ability to sate said desire was lacking? Finally, after the Grek ship had left, why did an archaeologist party find the bones of Aldorians in the ship's waste ejecta? And worse yet, those of humans?

So Hackett and his fiancee, the capable Dr. Lucy Thale, work together to reverse engineer the Grek technology so that, when they return to a world whose populace is fairly begging for them to come back, Earth can stand against them and provide for its own.

What begins as a fascinating mystery quickly proves overlong. Leinster is much better with short stories, before his Hemmingway-esque style can wear thin. The endless repetition of certain phrases and epithets brings to mind the devices Homer used to make The Illiad easier to recite from memory, but they don't do a reader any favors. As for characterization, Leinster might as well have named the characters A, B, and C for all the color they possess. A shorter story would have made that issue stand out less.

Anyway, it's an interesting storyline; it would make a good movie, but as is, it's a mediocre novel. Three stars.

Arsenal of Miracles (ACE Double F-299), by Gardner F. Fox

From the notable pen of comics writer and, now, SF author Gardner Fox, we have a brand new ACE novel. And this one isn't a short 120-pager. No, this time we've got 157 pages devoted to the adventures of Bran Magannon, formerly an Admiral of a Terran space fleet, vanquisher of the invading Lyanir, and now a discredited exile, wandering across the known and unknown galaxy. Arsenal starts off beautifully, like a space age Fritz Leiber fantasy. A nearly penniless Bran arrives on the desolate world of Makkador to make traveling funds through gambling. There, he throws dice against, and loses to, the lovely Peganna, queen of the Lyanir. And then we learn Bran's tragic past: how he divined how to defeat the seemingly invincible Lyanir ships; how he negotiated for the Lyanir to be given a sanctuary world within the Terran Cluster of stars. How Bran was betrayed by an ambitious subordinate, who sabotaged the talks, discredited Bran, and condemned the Lyanir to inhabit a radioactive wasteland of a planet.

But now Bran has an ace up his sleeve — he has discovered the ancient portal network of the Crenn Lir, a precursor race that once inhabited countless worlds. If Bran and Peganna can find the Crenn Lir arsenal before they are caught by Terran and Lyranir agents, they might be able to negotiate with the Terrans as equals and secure a sanctuary for the weary aliens.

I tore through the first third of this book, but things slowed halfway through. I grew irritated that there was exactly one female character in the book, though I did appreciate the natural and loving relationship Peganna and Bran shared. What promises to be a galaxy-trotting adventure with big scope and ideas ends up a rather conventional story on a very few settings. Things pick up a bit in the final third, but I found myself comparing the endeavor unfavorably to Terry Carr's Warlord of Kor, a somewhat similarly themed Ace novel from last year.

Three and a half stars.

Endless Shadow (ACE Double F-299), by John Brunner

With the Fox taking up so much space in the Ace Double, the second title must needs be short. Luckily, John Brunner's Bridge to Azazel, which came out in February's issue of Amazing, fit nicely. Both lengthwise and thematically: Endless Shadow also features teleportation across the stars, in this case involving a Terra reestablishing contact with farflung space colonies.

The general consensus among the Journey's various readers is that this was a premise with a lot of potential, but that Brunner failed to deliver satisfactorily. Ratings ranged from two to three and a half stars. Call it an even three.

Books to Come

These days, there are almost more books coming out than a fellow (or even a band of fellows) can read! So, to make sure we cover all of the important books of 1964, there will be a second Galactoscope in a couple of days. May they be more akin to the stellar St. Clairs than the disappointing Leinster/Fox/Brunner.

[Holiday season is upon us, and Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1958-1963), containing some of the best science fiction of the Silver Age, makes a great gift! Think of it as a gift to friends…and the Journey!

4 Comments Leave A Comment

Book, Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[November 5, 1964] The State of the Solar Empire: Perry Rhodan in 1964

November 5, 2019 Cora Buhlert 3 Comments

[Don't miss your chance to get your copy of Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1958-1963), some of the best science fiction of the Silver Age. If you like the Journey, you'll love this book (and you'll be helping us out, too!)

by Cora Buhlert

Here in Germany, the Iron Curtain just got a tiny hole, because since November 2, East German pensioners are allowed to visit friends and family in the West. In the first few days, hundreds of elderly people availed themselves of the opportunity to see loved ones they had’t seen in years.

East German pensioners at the Oberbaumbrücker border crossing in Berlin, visiting family, friends and loved ones for the first time in many years.

This elderly lady from East Berlin got to embrace her son for the first time since the Wall was built three years ago.

Nobody is under any illusion that this is anything but a propaganda coup for East German leader Walter Ulbricht. Pensioners are considered more of a burden than an asset to the so-called German Democratic Republic, so the East German state does not mind if they decide to stay in the West. But the many families who are finally reunited do not much care about Ulbricht’s political machinations – they are just happy to see their loved ones again.

Meanwhile on the music front, the West German charts have been dominated by a curious song called "Das kommt vom Rudern, das kommt vom Segeln" (That's from rowing, that's from sailing) by Peter Lauch & die Regenpfeifer, a band which has made its name with mildly risqué novelty songs. Hint, the lyrics are not really about rowing and sailing, but about other physical activities in which adults engage. Personally, I find the song rather silly, but it has clearly hit a nerve, because it was playing all over this year's Freimarkt, the annual autumn fair which has been held in my of my hometown of Bremen since 1035 AD. Yes, you read that correctly. This year was already the 929th Freimarkt.

The Freimarkt has changed a lot in the past 929 years. In fact, it has even changed a lot in the past ten years. The technology of fairground rides is improving steadily and new rides are debuting every year. This year, we even had two space themed rides, the rocketship ride Titan and Sputnik, a spectacular ride where a tilting ring of cars orbits a globe that represents the Earth. Both rides are a lot of fun and probably as close as an ordinary human like me will get to outer space in the foreseeable future.

The "Titan" rockship ride as well as the old standby "Wellenflug", a chain swinger ride and "Round-up" at the Bremer Freimarkt.

The spectacular Sputnik ride, built by Anton Schwarzkopf, at the Bremer Freimarkt.

Checking in on Perry Rhodan

Talking of outer space, it has been more than a year since I last discussed Perry Rhodan, Germany’s most popular science fiction series. So it’s high time to check in on Perry again to see what he’s been doing this past year.

Quite a lot, it turns out. Since the Heftroman issues of Perry Rhodan are published weekly now, the plot moves at a brisk clip. Furthermore, a monthly companion series of so-called Planetenromane (planet novels), 158 page paperback novels, premiered in September. The third issue just came out. Many Heftromane have paperback companion series, but most of them just republish old material, occasionally by literally stapling unsold issues together and adding a new cover. The Planetenromane, on the other hand, offer all-new stories, often side stories, which don't quite fit into the main series.

The cover of the first "planet novel", "Planet of the Mock" by Clark Dalton a.k.a. Walter Ernsting

The lives of Perry Rhodan and his friends remained busy in the regular series as well. Perry Rhodan in particular had to deal with a series of personal losses. First, his Arkonian wife Thora, a mainstay of the series since issue 1, died last year. Next, another character who has been in the series since the very first issue, Perry's friend and brother-in-law, the Arkonian Crest, heroically gave his life in issue 99.

The Arkonian Crest dies in issue 99 of Perry Rhodan

A Universe With Too Few Women

Particularly, the loss of Perry's wife Thora in issue 78 is still keenly felt after more than a year, because Thora was one of the few female characters in the male-heavy Perry Rhodan universe. There are women in the Mutant Corps that Perry Rhodan founded, a female intelligence agent named Fraudy Nicholson who fell in love with her target played an important role in a recent mini plot-arc and there are other women guest characters as well, but Thora was the only consistent female presence in the series.

Of course, Perry Rhodan is immortal and so it is to be expected that he would eventually move on. And indeed, he gradually fell for Akonian scientist Auris von Las-Toór, whom he met in issue 100. Auris also developed feelings for Perry, even though they found themselves on different sides during a conflict with the Akon. And when Auris finally deserted her family and homeworld to be with Perry, she was killed in the ensuing battle in issue 125.

Perry Rhodan and Auris von Las-Toór on the cover of issue 107.

Perry Rhodan's tendency to kill off its few female characters is troubling, especially since half of the cast is immortal. Though it has to be said that quite a few male characters were also built up, sometimes over several issues, only to be unceremoniously killed off. Perry Rhodan fans have taken to calling this practice "voltzen" after writer William Voltz in whose stories this frequently happens.

What Perry Rhodan really needs is some women on its writing staff, which currently is all male. Perry Rhodan co-creator Walter Ernsting a.k.a. Clark Dalton frequently translates stories by female American science fiction authors, so he isn't averse to science fiction written by women at all. So why doesn't he invite some German woman writers to join the Perry Rhodan staff? Plenty of women read Perry Rhodan, so it would only be fair of some of them got to write for the series.

A Family Tragedy

Being related to Perry Rhodan is clearly a risk to your health, as the example of Perry and Thora's estranged son Thomas Cardif shows, for Thomas became increasingly hostile and tried to depose his father. I was not a huge fan of the Thomas Cardif story arc, if only because Cardif's initial motivation is only too understandable. After all, Thomas Cardif was raised in secret, not knowing who his parents were, supposedly for his own safety. And once he learns the truth, Thomas blames Perry Rhodan for his difficult childhood, not entirely without reason. After his first attempted coup, Perry Rhodan orders Thomas Cardif's memories hypnotically wiped (because keeping him in ignorance of his true origin worked so well the first time). As a result, Thomas becomes even angrier when he recovers his memories and goes on a worse rampage than before. He even captures and impersonates his father for a while. Thomas eventually dies of old age, when his cellular activator, the device which grants Perry Rhodan and his close associates immortality, fails.

Thomas Cardif is killed, when his cellular activator explodes in issue 116.

The story of Thomas Cardif is a tragedy, but a preventable one. Furthermore, our hero Perry Rhodan does not come off at all well in this story arc, because his bad parenting decisions were what caused Thomas to go rogue in the first place. Conflicts between a parent generation still steeped in the propaganda of the Third Reich and a younger generation that demands the truth about all the ugly history that was swept under the rug are currently playing out all over Germany, so it is only natural that a series as popular as Perry Rhodan would reflect that conflict. However, the overwhelmingly young readers did not expect that Perry Rhodan of all people would side with the reactionary parent generation.

Thomas Cardif was not the only one who challenged Perry Rhodan's rulership over the Solar Empire. A group calling itself the Upright Democrats was also disenchanted with Perry's policies and tried to assassinate him. Naturally, Perry survived – he is immortal, after all – and had the malcontents exiled to a distant planet, where they tangled with friendly and hostile aliens for several issues.

In fact, Perry Rhodan introduced several new alien species over the course of the last year, such as the invisible Laurins (named after the invisible dwarf king of medieval legend) and the duplicitous Akonians, who are distant ancestors of the generally benevolent Arkonian race, hence the very similar (and confusing) names. Another welcome new addition to the series are the positronic-biological robots, Posbis for short, a cyborg race that lives on planet with one hundred (artificial) suns. The Posbis were initially hostile towards the humanity, but eventually became close allies after Perry Rhodan reprograms their brains.

The Posbis fight the humans on the cover of issue 144.

The planet of the Posbis, orbited by one hundred artificial suns.

No article about Perry Rhodan would be complete without recognizing artist Johnny Bruck, who has created every Perry Rhodan cover as well as all interior illustrations and spaceship schematics to date. His sleek spaceships, futuristic cityscapes, quirky alien creatures such as the fan favourite character Gucky, the mouse beaver, and – when the plot allows – beautiful women have contributed a lot to Perry Rhodan's success. Bruck is a true phenomenon, not just West Germany's best science fiction artist, but one of the best in the world. Unfortunately, his work is little known outside the German speaking world, but I hope that he will eventually receive the international recognition he deserves.

Quo Vadis Perry Rhodan?

Johnny Bruck's covers are one of the few constants in a series that is in a period of transition, as unceremoniously killing off long-term characters such as Thora and Crest shows. The writing team headed by co-creators Clark Dalton and K-H. Scheer has well and truly outrun their initial outline for a series of fifty Heftromane by now. This is also why Perry Rhodan has felt somewhat disjointed of late, focussing on mini-arcs which last for a couple of issues each and sometimes don't include Perry or any of the other main characters at all. It is obvious that the writers are experimenting, introducing new characters and concepts, while looking for a new direction for the series as a whole. In fact, issue No. 166, which came out this week, doesn't feature any of the main characters and introduces yet another new alien race.

The latest alien race introduced in issue 166, rendered in Johnny Bruck's inimmitable style.

The most successful of the newly introduced characters is Atlan, an ancient Arkonian who crash-landed on Earth in prehistoric times and spent millennia asleep in a dome under the ocean, waking every couple of centuries to protect and guide humanity. During his latest awakening, Atlan not only learned that humans had become a spacefaring civilisation in the meantime and even made contact with his own people, he also encountered Perry Rhodan. After some initial misunderstandings, Perry Rhodan and Atlan became close friends – after all, they both share the same goal, to protect humanity.

Perry Rhodan and Atlan fight on the cover of issue 54. But don't worry, it's all a misunderstanding.

Since his introduction in issue 50, the character of Atlan quickly became a fan favourite, to the point that the covers frequently announce "A new Atlan Adventure", even though the series itself is still named Perry Rhodan. The popularity of Atlan is also part of the reason why longterm series mainstays such as Crest and Thora were written out. And indeed, Atlan has pretty much taken over the role as Perry Rhodan's alien best friend that was once filled by Crest. I am not as enamoured with Atlan as many other readers seem to be and also wonder why Perry cannot have more than one Arkonian friend. But the character of Atlan is clearly here to stay and has become an intrinsic part of the series, as Perry Rhodan searches for a new direction that will take it to issue 200 and beyond.

[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]

3 Comments Leave A Comment

Movies, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[September 26, 1964] A Mystery Mastermind Double-Feature: The Ringer and The Death Ray of Dr. Mabuse

September 26, 2019 Cora Buhlert 2 Comments

by Cora Buhlert

After a wet and cool summer, the rain continued right into September. We can only imagine what carpenter Armando Rodrigues de Sá thought when he arrived in rainy Cologne from sunny Portugal and became the one millionth so-called "guest worker", immigrant workers from Southern Europe contracted to work in West German factories to alleviate the labour shortage. In Cologne, Mr. Rodrigues de Sá was welcomed by journalists, cameras and a representative of the employers' association and presented with a flower bouquet and a motorbike.

One millionth guest worker — Portuguese immigrant worker Armando Rodrigues de Sá is welcomed to West Germany with a flower bouquet and a brand-new motorbike

Another visitor who received a warm welcome in Germany was American Civil Rights icon Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., when he visited Berlin earlier this month. The official reason for the visit was a memorial service for John F. Kennedy, but Dr. King also used the opportunity to visit the Berlin Wall, where only hours before a young man had been shot during an attempt to flee East Berlin and only survived due to the heroic actions of an US Army sergeant who pulled him to safety, a sad reminder that about fifty people have already been killed trying to surmount the Berlin Wall.

Martin Luther King at the Berlin Wall — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the Berlin Wall

The East German government is hostile to religion, but supportive of the Civil Rights movement in the US. And so Dr. King was allowed to visit East Berlin, where he held a sermon in the packed Marienkirche and spontaneously intoned "Let My People Go". I'm not sure if the East German authorities got the message, but the people of East Berlin certainly did.

Martin Luther King in Berlin — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Berlin with West Berlin's mayor Willy Brandt and Otto Dibelius, Lutheran bishop of Berlin-Brandenburg.

Rainy days are perfect for going to the movies and luckily, West German cinemas have plenty of thrills to offer. A few months ago, I introduced you to the two series of science fictional thrillers, which are currently dominating West German cinemas, namely the Edgar Wallace and the Dr. Mabuse series. Fans of both have reason to rejoice, because this fall has brought us both a new Edgar Wallace and a new Dr. Mabuse film.

A New High for Edgar Wallace

Der Hexer (The Ringer) is the twentieth Edgar Wallace adaptation produced by Rialto Film and one of the best, if not the best movie in the series so far. The Ringer is a pure delight and a distillation of everything that has made the Edgar Wallace series so successful. The balance of humour and thrills is just right and The Ringer will have you both rolling on the floor with laughter and on the edge of your seat with suspense. There are nefarious crimes, a mysterious figure – for once not the villain – whose true identity is not revealed until the final reel and a twisting and turning plot that still has a twist or two in store, even after the Ringer has been unmasked.

The Ringer is based on Edgar Wallace's 1925 novel The Gaunt Stranger and its 1926 stage version The Ringer, though the literal translation of the German title would be "The Witcher". It's certainly apt, for the titular character is not just a master of disguise, but also has nigh sorcerous abilities to evade Scotland Yard's finest.

Apprehending an antagonist is cunning as the Ringer certainly requires the best Scotland Yard has to offer and so The Ringer is the first film to unite the three actors who usually play inspectors in the Edgar Wallace movies, namely the young and dashing Joachim Fuchsberger and Heinz Drache and the older and decidedly not dashing Siegfried Lowitz. They are aided – or hindered, depending on your point of view – by Wallace veteran Siegfried Schürenberg in his customary role as Sir John Walker, head of Scotland Yard.

Like most Edgar Wallace movies, The Ringer begins with a murder before the title sequence. A young secretary is spying on her boss, dodgy lawyer Maurice Messer (Jochen Brockmann), when she is strangled by an unseen assailant. The movie then cuts to her dead eyes staring at us from the glass dome of a mini-submarine that slowly dives into an underground pool. Cue the titles and Peter Thomas' delightfully squeaky theme music.

That Ain't Witchcraft

Unbeknownst to the killers, the murdered woman was Gwenda Milton, the younger sister of Arthur Milton, the vigilante known only as the Ringer for his uncanny ability to disguise himself as anybody he pleases. Years ago, Arthur Milton had given up his career of vigilantism and retired to Australia, far beyond the reach of the British law. But now he is back to take revenge on the murderers of his sister. Of course, both the villains and Scotland Yard are only too eager to capture the Ringer. There is only one problem. No one knows what he looks like.

What follows is a merry chase, as the Ringer pits the villains, four pillars of society who operate a human trafficking ring out of a church-run home for wayward girls, against each other, while three police inspectors and Sir John fall over each other's feet to arrest him. Also along for the ride are Archibald Finch (Edgar Wallace stalwart Eddi Arent), a reformed pickpocket (or is he?) turned butler, and Cora Ann Milton (Margot Trooger), the Ringer's glamorous and loyal wife. The result is so much fun that you barely notice that the plot doesn't make a whole lot of sense (but then, Edgar Wallace movies often don't) and that occasionally the Ringer has to move things forward by handing either Scotland Yard or the villains a clue – literally on a silver platter in one case.

Siegfried Lowitz and Margot Trooger in The Ringer — Inspector Warren (Siegfried Lowitz) confronts Cora Ann Milton (Margot Trooger) in "The Ringer"

Women in Edgar Wallace movies usually come in one of two flavours, the wide-eyed ingenue who will go on to marry the dashing inspector after he has saved her from certain death and the villainous femme fatale who will usually end up dead, after vamping her way through the movie. The Ringer breaks this pattern, for while Margot Trooger as Cora Ann takes the part of the femme fatale, she is neither a villainess nor does she die. Cora Ann is not a henchwoman, but a true partner to her husband and also very much in love with him. She is my favourite female character in the Edgar Wallace series so far. The ending leaves open the possibility of a sequel and I for one would love to see the continuing crime fighting adventures of Arthur and Cora Ann Milton.

Sophie Hardy, Joachim Fuchsberger and Siefried Lowitz in The Ringer — Inspector Higgins (Joachim Fuchsberger) and Inspector Warren (Siegfried Lowitz) have just survived a murder attempt via venomous snake, while Elise (Sophie Hardy) screams.

The heroine is played by French actress Sophie Hardy as Elise Fenton, the girlfriend of Inspector Higgins (Joachim Fuchsberger). Elise is no wide-eyed ingenue either – indeed it is quite openly hinted that she and Higgins are living together, even though they are not (yet) married. Elise probably seemed modern and liberated on paper. Alas, she comes across as annoying in the movie itself, a nagging, jealous and catty woman whose only goal in life seems to be to entrap Higgins (or "Higgy", as she calls him) into marriage. Maybe Karin Dor could have given the character more depth – alas, she was too busy playing Winnetou's true love Ribanna in Horst Wendlandt's other hugely successful film series. As it is, I found myself hoping that Higgins would ditch the annoying Elise for Sir John's attractive secretary Jean (Finnish actress Ann Savo).

Ann Savo and Joachim Fuchsberger in The Ringer — Inspector Higgins (Joachim Fuchsberger) flirts with Jean (Ann Savo) in "The Ringer"

The Ringer Unmasked

While the romance subplot isn't quite successful, the movie excels in keeping the audience guessing the identity of the Ringer. The script steers suspicion towards two characters, the mysterious Australian James Westby (Heinz Drache) and pickpocket turned butler Archibald Finch (Eddi Arent), who always seems to know much more than he should. To anybody who's been watching the Edgar Wallace movies for a while, both suspects seem equally unlikely, for Heinz Drache usually plays heroic inspectors, while Eddi Arent inevitably plays bumbling comic relief characters. However, the Wallace movies are not afraid to cast against type on occasion: the heroic investigator is revealed to be the villain in The Red Circle (1959) and in Feburary's Room 13, the wide-eyed ingenue turned out to be a cold-blooded murderess.

Inspector Higgins (Joachim Fuchsberger) and Sir John (Siegfried Schürenberg) confront the mysterious Archibald Finch (Eddi Arent) in "The Ringer"

In the end, the Ringer is revealed to be a character no one ever suspected, even though the rest of the cast and the audience have no reason to believe or trust him. It’s a testament to the cleverness of the story that we don’t even notice this until the final unmasking. And indeed, producer Horst Wendlandt and director Alfred Vohrer went to great lengths to keep the true identity of the Ringer secret even from the cast and crew. The final few pages of the script were locked away in Wendlandt's safe to prevent leaks. When the Ringer is finally unmasked, the face behind the latex mask is that of Luxembourgian actor René Deltgen. Portly, balding and fifty-four years old, Deltgen is no one's idea of a criminal mastermind and dashing vigilante, but then the entire movie defies expectations and shows that the Edgar Wallace series still hasn't gone stale after twenty instalments.

Cast of The Ringer — The cast of "The Ringer" implores audiences not to spoil the ending.

Dr. Mabuse Returns – Again

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the latest movie in the other great West German thriller series. For while the Dr. Mabuse series has been very good at reinventing itself in the five movies made post WWII (plus two made during the Weimar Republic) so far, the latest instalment Die Todesstrahlen des Dr. Mabuse (The Death Ray of Dr. Mabuse) shows definite signs of the series going stale.

When we last saw Mabuse in 1963's Scotland Yard vs. Dr. Mabuse, he had not only failed to establish a reign of crime and chaos in the UK, but his malevolent spirit had also vacated the body of psychiatrist Professor Pohland (Walter Rilla), leaving the poor man uttering "It wasn't me, it was Mabuse. He used my brain" over and over again. Pohland was locked up in an insane asylum, because that worked so wonderfully when Mabuse was apprehended in The Testament of Dr. Mabuse – twice. The opening of The Death Ray of Dr. Mabuse finds Pohland still in the asylum and still muttering the same lines over and over again. When the British send intelligence officer Major Bob Anders (Peter van Eyck) to interrogate Pohland, Pohland utters the word "death ray" and promptly vanishes. This is the third time German-American actor Peter van Eyck takes the lead in a Mabuse movie after The 1000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse and Scotland Yard vs. Dr. Mabuse. All three characters have different names, though Major Bill Tern from Scotland Yard and Major Bob Anders from Death Ray are so similar they might as well be the same character.

A Game of Spies

Not long after Pohland's disappearance, Anders is given a new assignment – to investigate spy activities in Malta, where a scientist named Professor Larsen is working on an invention that will change the world. And that invention just happens to be a death ray. Anders no more thinks that this is a coincidence than the audience does. So he hastens to Malta, taking along Judy (former Miss Greece Rika Dialina), one of his many girlfriends, to pose as a newlywed couple on their honeymoon.

Since everybody in Malta knows who Anders is anyway, the ruse is completely unnecessary. And indeed, I wish that the movie had omitted Judy, who adds nothing to the plot except prancing about in bikinis and scanty nightwear and moaning that Anders isn't paying enough attention to her. Because if Elise from The Ringer was annoying, Judy is certainly giving her a run for her money. As with Elise, Judy's sole aim in life seems to be to entrap Anders into marriage. I really hope that the appearance of two similarly grating female characters in two high profile West German movies in the space of less than a month is just a coincidence and not a new trend. After all, it's 1964 and young women these days are focussed on more than just snagging a husband.

Peter van Eyck and Rika Dialina in The Death Ray of Dr. Mabuse — Major Bob Anders (Peter Van Eyck) spies on Mabuse, while Judy (Rika Dialina) has other ideas.

In Malta, we are quickly introduced to the rest of the players, Professor Larsen (O.E. Hasse), his assistant Dr. Krishna (Valéry Inkijinoff), Larsen's niece Gilda (Yvonne Furneaux), Gilda's fiancé Mario Monta (Gustava Rojo), whose brother Jason (Massimo Pietrobon) owns the local fishing fleet and may be working for Mabuse as well as Fausto Botani (Claudio Gora), an elderly man who always tends to the grave of his late wife in a cemetery that is a hotbed of suspicious activities. We also get a techno-babble laden introduction to Professor Larsen's death ray projector, which can burn every city on Earth to a crisp.

Valery Injikoff and O.E. Hasse in The Death Ray of Dr. Mabuse — Professor Larsen (O.E. Hasse) and Dr. Krishna (Valery Injikoff) in the death ray lab.

The bulk of the movie is a succession of action sequences, as Mabuse and his henchmen try to infiltrate Professor Larsen's laboratory, while Anders tries to stop them. And indeed the action sequences, whether it's a fist fight in a church tower, a car chase or an underwater fight involving several scuba divers, are exciting and well choreographed. Director Hugo Fregonese is best known for helming B-westerns in Hollywood and his experience certainly shows.

Scuba Divers in The Daeth Ray of Dr. Mabuse — Mabuse's scuba diving henchmen report for duty

Regarding the identity of Mabuse, the script directs suspicion at Larsen's assistant Dr. Krishna, playing on unpleasant yellow peril stereotypes. In the end, however, the seemingly harmless Fausto Botani is unmasked as Mabuse's latest host body, just in time for Mabuse's spirit to leave and seek his fortune elsewhere. In one of the most chilling sequences of the film, Botani is left to mutter "It wasn't me, it was Mabuse. He used my brain" over and over again, while his faithful dog Pluto – implied to be the same German shepherd that already accompanied Wolfgang Preiss as Mabuse in The 1000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse – runs off, presumably to seek out his master's next host body.

Mabuse goes Bond

The greatest strength of the Dr. Mabuse series is its versatility. Mabuse's nature as a body-hopping malevolent spirit allows producer Artur Brauner to plug the character into any kind of scenario. And so Mabuse's postwar adventures have ranged from exploring Cold War paranoia and economic fears via offbeat gangster films and science fiction horror movies to a Mabuse film pretending to be an Edgar Wallace movie. With this latest movie, Dr. Mabuse tries out yet another genre, namely that of the James Bond influenced spy thriller.

Yoko Tani and Peter Van Eyck in The Death Ray of Dr. Mabuse — The villainous Mercedes (Yoko Tani) tries to get in a shot at Major Bob Anders (Peter Van Eyck)

The James Bond movies – the most recent one of which, Goldfinger, premiered in the UK on the same day as The Death Ray of Dr. Mabuse, though West German audiences won't get to see it until January – are enormously popular in Europe. Exotic locations, pulpy adventure and outlandish villains are a large part of the appeal of the Bond movies and since these ingredients can also be found in the Mabuse series, Mabuse and Bond should be a match made in heaven. And while Peter Van Eyck is no Sean Connery and a little old for an action hero (fifty-one compared to Connery's thirty-four), he certainly has the required charm and square-jawed handsomeness to play a Bond stand-in.

Yvonne Furneaux and Peter Van Eyck in The Death ray of Dr. Mabuse — Major Bob Anders (Peter Van Eyck) tangles with Gilda Larsen (Yvonne Furneaux) in "The Death Ray of Dr. Mabuse"

There is only one problem. The Death Ray of Dr. Mabuse just doesn't work, neither as a Mabuse movie nor as a Bond look-alike. The main issue here is that the James Bond movies present their exotic locations and beautiful women in full Technicolor glory, while the Mabuse films have always worked best when imitating the atmospheric black and white look of the expressionist cinema of the Weimar Republic which gave birth to the character. Mabuse thrives in the shadows, but Death Ray drags him into the bright Mediterranean sunshine. As a result, the exterior scenes feel overlit and washed out, while the extensive underwater scenes seem blurry and murky. I have no doubt that the coast of Malta – or rather the coast of Italy standing in for the coast of Malta – is beautiful, but in this movie it is just grey.

Would Death Ray have worked better, if it had been shot in colour? I suspect we'll never know. However, I'm not the only one who is dissatisfied with the movie, since the box office performance of Death Ray has been underwhelming so far. Opening against Winnetou II, one of the most highly anticipated movies of the year, didn't help either.

So what's next for Dr. Mabuse? Producer Artur Brauner has indicated that he still has plans for two more Mabuse movies. And the nature of the character and the series allows Brauner to forget that Death Ray ever existed and just start over with a new lead actor in a new location. The only question now is, what form will the next incarnation of Dr. Mabuse take.

[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]

2 Comments Leave A Comment

Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[August 11, 1964] Leigh Brackett Times Two: The Secret of Sinharat and People of the Talisman (Ace Double M-101)

August 11, 2019 Cora Buhlert 8 Comments

by Cora Buhlert

So far, this summer has been cold and rainy. Even the cheery tunes of "Liebeskummer lohnt sich nicht" (Heartache does not pay) by Swedish singer Siw Malmkvist, which has been number 1 in Germany for almost as long as it has been raining, can't dispel the summer gloom.

However, rain outside means it's the perfect time to read. And so I was lucky to spot Leigh Brackett's latest in the spinner rack at the local import bookstore. Now a new novel by the queen of space opera, is always a reason to rejoice. And the latest Ace Double offers not one but two new novels by Leigh Brackett.

Though upon closer examination The Secret of Sinharat and People of the Talisman are not so new after all, but expansions of two novellas first published as "Queen of the Martian Catacombs" and "Black Amazon of Mars" in Planet Stories in 1949 and 1951 respectively.

The two novels are more closely connected than Ace Doubles usually are, because not only are both by the same author, but they also feature the same character, Eric John Stark, intergalactic mercenary and outlaw and hero of several stories by Leigh Brackett.

The Wild Man from Mercury

Eric John Stark is a fascinating character. An Earthman born in a mining colony on Mercury, Stark was orphaned as a young child and adopted by natives who named him N'Chaka, the Man Without a Tribe. A few years later, Stark was orphaned a second time, when the tribe that adopted him was exterminated by miners from Earth who wanted the natives' resources for themselves. The miners put Stark in a cage and would have killed him, too, if Stark hadn't been rescued by Simon Ashton, a police officer from Earth. Ashton took the young Stark in and raised him to adulthood.

Though outwardly a civilised man, inside Stark is still N'Chaka, the wild boy from Mercury. There are parallels between Eric John Stark and Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan, who was one of the inspirations for the character according to the foreword by Edmond Hamilton, Leigh Brackett's husband. Eric John Stark is also a black man, something which is sadly still much too rare in our genre. Though you wouldn't know it from the covers, as both Planet Stories cover artist Allan Anderson as well as Ed Emshwiller, covers artist for the Ace Double edition, portray Stark as white.

Stark has little time for human civilisation, but a lot of sympathy for the plight of downtrodden natives throughout the solar system. He involves himself in an endless chain of uprisings and guerrilla campaigns, which are reminiscent both of the Indian wars, which were still within living memory when Brackett was born, as well as the various anticolonial movements currently sweeping through Africa and Asia. Stark's activities as a mercenary and weapons smuggler naturally bring him into conflict with the Terran authorities.

This conflict comes to a head in the opening pages of The Secret of Sinharat, which finds Stark on the run with Terran police officers led by Stark's mentor and surrogate father Simon Ashton in hot pursuit. Stark is facing twenty years in prison due to his role in a failed native uprising on Venus, but Ashton offers him a deal. Kynon, a Martian warlord, is planning to lead the desert tribes into a holy war with the help of off-world mercenaries. If Stark joins Kynon's army as an agent for Ashton, the Terran authorities will forget about Stark's crimes.

I really enjoyed the relationship between Stark and Ashton. Both men clearly have a lot of respect for each other and Ashton is probably the only person in the solar system Stark truly cares about. Ashton also clearly cares about Stark, but is not above using their relationship and Stark's sympathies for barbarian tribes, who – as Ashton reminds him – will suffer most from Kynon's holy war, to get Stark to agree to the deal. I would have loved to see more of Simon Ashton and his past with Stark. Alas, he only appears in the opening chapter, then Stark is on his own.

Martian noir

Stark meets with Kynon and steps into a nest of snakes. For starters, Kynon is a fraud who claims to have rediscovered the titular secret, a device which can transfer a person's consciousness into a new body and therefore guarantees eternal life. Kynon is also surrounded by a cast of shady characters who wouldn't seem out of place in the one of the noir movies for which Leigh Brackett wrote the screenplay. There is Delgaun, a Martian gangster, Luhar, a Venusian mercenary and old enemy of Stark's, the Martian femme fatale Berild, who is both Kynon's and Delgaun's lover and seduces Stark as well, and Fianna, Berild's sweet and innocent maid who also takes a shine to Stark. None of these characters are what they seem and all but one will be dead by the end of the novel, either at each other's hands or at Stark's.

The Secret of Sinharat is chockfull of exciting action scenes and atmospheric descriptions of the dying Mars. Stark takes us on a tour of a Martian opium den, survives a deadly sandstorm and a gruelling trek through the blistering desert and explores the ancient city of Sinharat and the mysteries that lurk in its catacombs.

A Strangely Familiar Story

The Secret of Sinharat is a highly entertaining novel, which also seemed oddly familiar, though I knew that I couldn't have read the earlier magazine version. However, I realised that The Secret of Sinharat bore several parallels to a novel I reviewed two months ago for Galactic Journey: The Valley of Creation by Leigh Brackett's husband Edmond Hamilton, the expanded version of a story first published in 1948. The protagonist of both novels is a mercenary recruited to fight someone else's holy war, who realises that he is fighting on the wrong side. Both novels feature ancient technology which can transfer human consciousness into other bodies and both protagonists find themselves subjected to said technology. Both protagonists even share the same first name, Eric.

Of course, there are also differences. The Valley of Creation is set on Earth, in a hidden valley in the Himalaya, while The Secret of Sinharat is set on Mars. And Eric John Stark is a much more developed and interesting character than the rather bland Eric Nelson. Nonetheless, the parallels are striking. Edmond Hamilton and Leigh Brackett are not known to collaborate like C.L. Moore and her late husband Henry Kuttner did. But given the similarities of both stories and the fact that they were written around the same time, I wonder whether Brackett and Hamilton did not both write their own version of the same basic idea.

Into the Gates of Death

People of the Talisman, the other novel in this Ace Double, opens with Eric John Stark once again in a fistful of trouble. A dying friend entrusts Stark with the story's plot device, the talisman of Ban Cruach, an ancient king who founded the city of Kushat to guard a mountain pass known as the Gates of Death in the polar regions of Mars. Stark's friend stole the talisman, but now wants to return it, because without the talisman, Kushat and all of Mars are in grave danger.

Stark wants to honour his friend's dying wish. But before he can fulfil his mission, he is captured by raiders who take him to their leader, Lord Ciaran, yet another Martian warlord who wants to unite the tribes and lead them to victory over the decadent cities. Though Lord Ciaran is a much more interesting and memorable character than Kynon from The Secret of Sinharat. Ciaran is the illegitimate child of a Martian king who never acknowledged him. Hungry for revenge and power, Ciaran dresses in black armour, wields a battle axe and always wears a steel mask.

Ciaran wants Stark to join his army, but Stark is wary, probably due to his previous bad experiences with Martian warlords. Of course, Ciaran also wants the talisman and since Stark refuses to hand it over or say where it is, Ciaran has him brutally whipped.

Stark escapes. Half dead, he makes it to Kushat to warn the city of Ciaran's attack, but has a hard time convincing the city guard of the danger. Nor can Stark reveal that he has the talisman, for the rulers of Kushat have kept its disappearance a secret and would kill Stark to preserve it.

Ciaran Unmasked

Ciaran's forces attack after all and in the pitched battle that follows, Stark faces off against Ciaran himself. Before striking the killing blow, Stark rips off the warlord's mask and gets a surprise that has already been spoiled both by Ed Emshwiller as well as by Allan Anderson on the original Planet Stories cover. For underneath the black mask, the warlord is a striking woman. The unmasking scene is reminiscent of a similar scene in "Black God's Kiss" by C.L. Moore, the story that introduced the swordswoman Jirel of Joiry to the world.

Ciaran is a fabulous character, a strong warrior woman, which is still all too rare in our genre even thirty years after Jirel of Joiry first took off her helmet. Though fascinated by Stark, Ciaran immediately decks him after he has unmasked her. Later, Ciaran tells Stark, "I did not ask for my sex. I will not be bound by it." I suspect Leigh Brackett agrees with her.

Every woman Stark meets in the two novels falls for him and Stark is only too happy to dispense "kisses brutal as blows" (apparently, Simon Ashton's education did not include how to properly treat the other sex). And so Stark falls in lust with Ciaran, even though she had him whipped half to death only days before.

Stark escapes with the talisman and a caravan of refugees through the Gates of Death to seek Ban Cruach's secret with Ciaran and her forces in hot pursuit. A battle ensues in which Ciaran is taken prisoner.

Now the novel takes a sharp turn into Lovecraftian territory. For beyond the Gates of Death lies an ancient city inhabited by alien beings (unlike the humanoid Martians Stark normally deals with). Initially, the aliens claim that they just want to be left in peace. But they quickly show their true colours and attack the humans.

Stark and Ciaran wind up fighting back to back. They escape and Ciaran agrees to leave Kushat alone and conquer the city of her deadbeat father instead. Stark goes with her in what may well be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Fiction versus Reality

I thoroughly enjoyed both novels, though they are clearly relics of an earlier age. Leigh Brackett's Mars with its deserts, ancient cities and even older ruins most likely does not exist, just as Mariner 2 revealed that the fog-shrouded Venus with its swamps and oceans that is a staple of pulp science fiction does not exist either. In fact, I suspect that the reason why Ace has not reprinted the third Eric John Stark adventure "Enchantress of Venus" (which I read in German translation a few years ago) is that the red gas ocean of Venus which Brackett described so evocatively is no longer plausible in our brave new age of space exploration.

Of course, it is the fate of most science fiction that it will eventually become outdated as science and knowledge march on. But even though we know that the solar system Leigh Brackett described is not plausible, the Eric John Stark stories still remain glorious adventure tales with a protagonist who is a lot more complex than the standard square-jawed heroes of pulp science fiction.

Something everyone can enjoy, rain or shine!

Bremen City Parliament building topping out — It stopped raining long enough to celebrate the topping out of Bremen's new city parliament building, sitting right next to the 13th century St. Petri cathedral

[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]

8 Comments Leave A Comment

Movies, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[July 8, 1964] The Immortal Supervillain: The Remarkable Forty-Two Year Career of Dr. Mabuse

July 8, 2019 Cora Buhlert 7 Comments

by Cora Buhlert

The Sincerest form of Flattery

Last month, I talked about the successful West German film series based on the novels of British thriller writer Edgar Wallace as well as the many imitators they inspired. The most interesting of those imitators and the only one that is unambiguously science fiction is the Dr. Mabuse series.

Dr. Mabuse is not a new character. His roots lie in the Weimar Republic and he first appeared on screen in 1922 in Fritz Lang's Dr. Mabuse – The Gambler, based on the eponymous novel by Luxembourgian writer Norbert Jacques.

By day, Dr. Mabuse is a respected psychoanalyst and by night he runs a criminal organisation. Mabuse uses his position to infiltrate the corrupt high society of the Weimar Republic and then uses his powers of hypnosis as well as his talent as a master of disguise to commit crimes. Mabuse also employs science fictional technology such as an automobile that turns into a motorboat at the pull of a lever. Dr. Mabuse – The Gambler clearly reflects the fears of the early Weimar Republic with its hyperinflation which plunged many Germans into poverty, while the profiteers of the First World War were partying.

In the movie, Mabuse (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) is a much more unambiguous villain than in the novel. And while Norbert Jacques' Mabuse wants to establish a utopian colony in Brazil, Lang's Mabuse wants to install a reign of terror right there in Berlin. In retrospect, it's obvious why the Nazis did not like the Mabuse films.

At the end of the novel, Mabuse apparently falls to his death from an airplane. In the film, Mabuse is captured alive, but insane, leaving open the possibility of a sequel. That sequel, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, was made in 1933.

Mabuse, still played by Rudolf Klein-Rogge, is now an inmate in a mental asylum run by Dr. Baum and spends his days scribbling plans for elaborate crimes onto scraps of paper, which he calls his testament. When Berlin is hit by a wave of crimes based on Mabuse's scribblings, this attracts the attention of Kommissar Karl Lohmann (Otto Wernicke) of the Berlin police. Based on the real life Berlin police officer Ernst Gennat, Lohmann first appeared in an unrelated movie, Fritz Lang's 1931 crime drama M. where he hunted down a child killer played by Peter Lorre.

Mabuse is the logical suspect. But he cannot have committed the crimes, since he is incarcerated in Baum's asylum. The solution to the mystery lies once more in Mabuse's hypnotic powers, which he uses on Dr. Baum. In a chilling sequence, Mabuse's spirit takes over Dr. Baum, while his body dies. The movie ends with Mabuse, now occupying the body of Dr. Baum, once more locked up in the mental asylum, madly scribbling away. With this film, the Mabuse series not only crosses over into the supernatural, but also opened up the possibility of a revival.

The film was supposed to premiere in March 1933, two months after Hitler had come to power. Joseph Goebbels, head of the newly established Ministry of Propaganda, found the movie very exciting, but banned it anyway for incitement to crime. But then, Mabuse's modus operandi bore some uncomfortable parallels to the way the Nazis spread fear and terror, while passages of Mabuse's testament were copied almost verbatim from Mein Kampf. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse became the first movie banned by the Nazis and remained unseen in Germany until 1951. Fritz Lang left Germany the day after the film was banned and went to Hollywood. Meanwhile, the evil Doctor was forgotten, as Germany descended into terror on a scale that would have exceeded even Mabuse's imagination.

But this was not the end. For Mabuse's creator Norbert Jacques sold the rights to film producer Artur Brauner, who also persuaded Fritz Lang to return to West Germany, not to adapt Mabuse, but to remake his 1921 movie The Indian Tomb.

Inspired by the success of the Edgar Wallace movies, Artur Brauner wanted to remake The Testament of Dr. Mabuse as well and asked Fritz Lang to direct. Lang, however, wanted to make a sequel. Norbert Jacques had died in 1954, so Lang adapted the dystopian novel Mr. Tot Buys a Thousand Eyes by Polish-German writer Jan Fethke a.k.a. Jean Forge. Mabuse was inserted into the storyline and the movie was released as The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse in 1960.

The Night has a Thousand Eyes

Most of the film is set at the Hotel Luxor, a luxury hotel built by the Nazis and equipped with hidden surveillance cameras in every room (the thousand eyes of the title). The hotel is now owned by a criminal organisation headed by none other than Dr. Mabuse, who after laying low during the Third Reich (or did he?) is up to his old tricks again. He records wealthy hotel guests in compromising situations and then blackmails them. If compromising situations don't happen on their own, Mabuse and his gang engineer them.

But luckily, Kommissar Kras (Gert Fröbe) is on the case. Kras is basically Kommissar Lohmann in everything but the name and also remembers Mabuse's reign of terror during the Weimar Republic, linking the old and the new Mabuse movies and making it very clear that The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse is a sequel rather than a remake. There is only one problem. Dr. Mabuse very definitely died in 1933, so who is behind this new wave of crimes?

In the end, the blind fortune teller Peter Cornelius (Wolfgang Preiss) is revealed to be Mabuse. Though Cornelius isn't his real name nor is he really a fortune teller nor really blind. Instead, he is one Professor Jordan, a psychiatrist who feels compelled to continue Mabuse's work. It is implied that Professor Jordan is the same psychiatrist in whose mental hospital Mabuse was incarcerated back in The Testament of Doctor Mabuse, even though the character names are different. But then, it is also implied that Kras and Lohmann are the same person.

Kommissar Lohmann and Mabuse — Kommissar Lohmann (Gert Fröbe) confronts Dr. Mabuse (Wolfgang Preiss)

The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse moves away from the stylish expressionism of the earlier movies towards a quasi-documentary style. The scenes inside the Hotel Luxor are implied to be footage recorded by Mabuse's cameras, turning the viewer into a voyeur. The science fiction elements are fairly light. It would certainly be possible to recreate the Hotel Luxor and its surveillance cameras with 1960s technology and indeed the new East German Interhotels are real life versions of the Hotel Luxor.

Thousand Eyes ends with Mabuse presumed dead once again. However, the film was a big commercial success and so Mabuse was promptly resurrected barely a year later. Fritz Lang had retired, so Harald Reinl, who previously worked on the Edgar Wallace series, took over the directing duties for Im Stahlnetz des Dr. Mabuse. The international title is the unimaginative The Return of Dr. Mabuse, a literal translation would be In the Steel Web of Dr. Mabuse. Shot in atmospheric black and white, Steel Web is stylistically closer to the expressionist Mabuse films of the Weimar Republic than Fritz Lang's Thousand Eyes.

Mabuse's organisation now works with the Chicago mob in his quest to conquer the world. As a favour to his new allies, his gang murders a woman who is burned alive by a flamethrower that emerges from a flap in the side of a truck. Her burning body is seen lying on the sidewalk for several seconds in a scene that is shockingly brutal by the sedate standards of West German cinema.

The Berlin police once again puts an inspector played by Gert Fröbe on the case. This time, the character is actually called Kommissar Lohmann and it is strongly implied that this is the same Kommissar Lohmann as before. We also briefly meet Lohmann's wife and children at the beginning of the movie, a pleasant contrast to the many lone wolf investigators who dominate the crime genre.

Because of the mob connection, the FBI sends an agent named Joe Como (former Tarzan and current Old Shatterhand Lex Barker). Together, they uncover Mabuse's latest scheme: using a mind control drug on prison inmates to force them to commit crimes. In the end, prison warden Wolf is unmasked (literally, via ripping off a rubber mask) as Mabuse (still played by Wolfgang Preiss). During the final battle with the police, Mabuse escapes into a railway tunnel and is apparently killed by an oncoming train. Or is he?

The second postwar outing of Dr. Mabuse is a curious mix of gangster film and science fiction thriller. The gangster film elements are clearly influenced by the popularity of the German pulp hero G-Man Jerry Cotton – also note the similarities of the names Jerry Cotton and Joe Como. There are plenty of creepy moments, such as the vacant eyed convicts converging upon a power station, while a sound truck blasts out the words "I have only one lord and master, Dr. Mabuse" over and over again.

Flirting with SF

The science fiction elements were ramped up for the third movie, Die unsichtbaren Krallen des Dr. Mabuse (The Invisible Dr. Mabuse), which premiered in March 1962, directed once more by Harald Reinl.

Lex Barker is back as Joe Como, this time working with Kommissar Brahm (Siegfried Lowitz, a regular of the Edgar Wallace series), since Kommissar Lohmann has apparently taken the long deserved holiday he had to postpone in the previous film. Together they tackle the case of an invisible man who haunts a theatre and stalks the dancer Liane Martin (Harald Reinl's wife and Edgar Wallace regular Karin Dor).

In spite of the title, the invisible man stalking Liane Martin is not Dr. Mabuse but Professor Erasmus, who has invented an invisibility device. An accident left the Professor disfigured and so he uses his device to visit his beloved Liane Martin, failing to realise that being stalked by an invisible man is a lot more terrifying than a scarred face.

Joe Como and Professor Erasmus — Joe Como (Lex Barker) and Professor Erasmus (Rudolf Fernau), not invisible for once.

Mabuse appropriates the device and the movie ends with Mabuse's army of invisible killers converging on a plane to kill a passenger. However, the police have placed strings with bells around the airfield and then make the invisible killers visible by spraying them with water. This time around, Mabuse is even captured, though he has gone insane.

The Invisible Dr. Mabuse seems to be two separate movies, for the haunted theatre plot and the invisible man plot don't come together until the end. Gert Fröbe is sorely missed as well. Nonetheless, the film has several memorable moments such as Liane Martin getting (almost) guillotined no less than three times, Joe Como confronting the invisible Professor in a steam bath and the army of invisible killers becoming slowly visible again in a spray of water. The special effects are surprisingly good by West German standards.

A New Testament

The next movie, released in September 1962, was a remake of The Testament of Dr. Mabuse. Mabuse is now incarcerated in a mental hospital run by Professor Pohland (Walter Rilla) and still manages to give orders to his gang via hypnotising the hapless Professor. Gert Fröbe makes a welcome return as Kommissar Lohmann, though Lex Barker's Joe Como is sadly absent, since Barker has found a more lucrative gig as Old Shatterhand in the film adaptations of Karl May's Winnetou novels. As before, Mabuse's body seemingly dies, while his spirit takes over Pohland's body.

Testament is a solid entry in the series, though it suffers in comparison with the 1933 original. It also doesn't help that anybody who has seen the original already knows the big twist. And while Mabuse's plan of causing economic collapse via flooding the market with forged banknotes clearly plays on the fears of the 1920s and 1930s with its hyperinflation, the Black Friday and the Great Depression, it feels anachronistic in postwar West Germany in the middle of a so-called economic miracle. Harald Reinl's atmospheric direction has been replaced by the more pedestrian Werner Klingler as well. I'm not the only one who feels that Testament was rather lacklustre, since the movie bombed at the box office.

Scotland Yard jagt Dr. Mabuse (Scotland Yard vs. Dr. Mabuse) premiered in September 1963. Mabuse, still in the body of Professor Pohland, has had enough of the Berlin police continuing to thwart his attempts to establish a world reign of crime and so decamps to Britain to continue his villainous ways. This time around, Mabuse steals a mind control device and plans to use it to destabilise the British government. He also stages impressive demonstrations, such as inducing a hangman to hang himself in a memorable scene.

But Major Bill Tern of Scotland Yard (Peter van Eyck,) and Kommissar Vulpius of the Hamburg police (Werner Peters) are on Mabuse's trail. Luckily, it turns out that people wearing a certain hearing aid are immune to Mabuse's mind control device and so the police manages to arrest Mabuse and his gang. Alas, Mabuse's spirit has already moved on, leaving a hapless Professor Pohland repeating "It wasn't me, it was Mabuse. He used my brain" over and over again.

It is notable that the mind control motif – whether via hypnosis, drugs or electronic devices – appears again and again in the Mabuse series. And Professor Pohland insisting over and over again that he is completely innocent of the crimes Mabuse committed does bring to mind many former Nazis who make the same claim, though with far less justification.

Scotland Yard vs. Dr. Mabuse is a thoroughly entertaining film and curiously prescient, since one of the crimes committed by Mabuse's gang eerily mirrors the recent Great Train Robbery in Britain. Though the tendency to reuse the same actors in completely different parts (e.g. Werner Peters appeared in four of five postwar Mabuse movies, playing a different character in each one) is getting confusing by now. Of course, the Edgar Wallace films also tend to reuse the same actors over and over again (and to make matters even more confusing, several actors appear in both series). But unlike the Wallace movies, the seven Mabuse movies to date have an internal continuity.

Though like Mabuse himself, the movies tend to change their appearance from film to film. In the past forty years, the series has moved from reflecting the economic anxieties of the Weimar Republic (Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse) via Cold War paranoia (The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse) and offbeat gangster thriller (The Steel Web of Dr. Mabuse) to science fiction thriller cum theatre horror (The Invisible Dr. Mabuse) back to economic fears (The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, take two). With Scotland Yard vs. Dr. Mabuse, the Mabuse series has morphed into an Edgar Wallace movie. And indeed, the screenplay is a loose adaptation of the 1962 novel The Device by Bryan Edgar Wallace, son of Edgar.

Whither Mabuse?

The flexibility of the Mabuse series and the character himself ensures its longevity. Dr. Mabuse has terrorised Germany for forty years now and may well continue for years or even decades to come, for Mabuse's nature as a malevolent spirit allows him to jump from body to body, plotting new crimes and leaving behind muttering hosts who insist that they didn't do anything, Mabuse did.

What form will the Mabuse series take next? Rumours suggest that the next Mabuse movie Die Todesstrahlen des Dr. Mabuse (The Death Rays of Dr. Mabuse), due out in September, is inspired by the popular James Bond movies.

I certainly will be in the cinema, watching as Germany's greatest supervillain plots yet again to conquer the world and establish a reign of crime and chaos.

[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]

7 Comments Leave A Comment

Movies

[June 4, 1964] Weird Menace and Villainy in the London Fog: The West German Edgar Wallace Movies

June 4, 2019 Cora Buhlert 10 Comments

by Cora Buhlert

The biggest phenomenon in West German cinemas in the past five years is none other than Edgar Wallace, Britain's king of thrillers.

The enduring popularity of Edgar Wallace in Germany may seem baffling, since Wallace died in 1932 and most of his thrillers were written in the 1910s and 1920s. American readers will probably best remember Wallace as the creator of King Kong and screenwriter of the eponymous movie.

Edgar Wallace

However, Germans have long loved Edgar Wallace, which is odd, since Edgar Wallace did not particularly like Germany, as many of his writings show. Nonetheless, his thrillers were hugely popular in Germany in the 1920s and early 1930s, until the Nazis banned them along with the entire crime genre as "too subversive". In the 1950s, paperback publisher Goldmann started reissuing the Edgar Wallace thrillers to great success. And as always when something is successful, others took note. One of them was "Heftroman" publisher Pabel, whose Utopia Kriminal line of science fiction thrillers was directly inspired by the popularity of the Edgar Wallace novels.

German film producers also took note and indeed there were a few German Edgar Wallace adaptations during the silent and early talkie era. However, plans to adapt Edgar Wallace novels in 1950s repeatedly failed, because crime and thriller movies supposedly did not sell in postwar West Germany, since viewers allegedly demanded harmless musicals and romances set in beautiful landscapes rather than tales of crime and murder. In 1959, Danish film producer Preben Philipsen took a chance and adapted the Edgar Wallace novel The Fellowship of the Frog for German audiences. The result was a huge success and led to a wave of more or less faithful Edgar Wallace adaptations (nineteen to date) and copycats that show no sign of abating.

Poster for Face of the Frog (1959)

The Edgar Wallace movies are primarily crime thrillers, though there is nothing remotely realistic about them. Instead, the films are set in a fog-drenched England and particularly London that never was, full of dodgy harbour bars where nefarious crimes are plotted as curvy sirens sing torch songs, where the River Thames is used a convenient corpse disposal and where Scotland Yard is headed by a dim-witted gentleman named Sir John (played by Siegfried Schürenberg who serves as a sort of link between the various movies) with a taste for buxom secretaries. Inspectors are handsome and dashing, played by either Heinz Drache or Joachim Fuchsberger, unless they are played by the plump and balding Siegfried Lowitz, in which case he has a dashing Sergeant. There is always a comic relief character, often a bumbling butler, who is usually played by Eddi Arent.

Joachim Fuchsberger, Siegfried Schürenberg and Eddi Arent in The Squeaker (1963)

Women in Edgar Wallace movies come in three flavours, mysterious elderly ladies, usually played by veteran UfA actresses, who may or may not be involved in the villain's machinations, buxom femme fatales who are involved with the villain and often end up paying the ultimate price for their villainous ways (Eva Pflug in Face of the Frog was the best of them) and finally, young and pretty damsels in distress (often played by Karin Dor), who find themselves pursued and often kidnapped by the villain, before they are rescued and end up marrying the dashing Inspector.

Eva Pflug being admired by Jochen Brockmann in Face of the Frog (1959)

Occasionally, the Wallace movies manage to subvert expectations. And so the dashing detective is unmasked as the killer in The Red Circle (1960), while the wide-eyed ingenue is revealed to be the showgirl slashing killer in this year's Room 13.

Poster for The Red Circle

Wallace villains are never just ordinary criminals, but run improbably large and secretive organisations with dozens of henchmen. At least one of the henchmen is deformed or flat out insane, played either by former wrestler Ady Berber or a charismatic young actor named Klaus Kinski, who gave the performance of his life as a mute and insane animal handler in last year's The Squeaker.

Klaus Kinski threatening Inge Langen in The Squeaker

The crimes are extremely convoluted, usually involve robberies, blackmail or inheritance schemes and are always motivated by greed. Murder methods are never ordinary and victims are dispatched via harpoons, poison blow guns, guillotines or wild animals. The villains inevitably have strange monikers such as the Frog, the Shark, the Squeaker, the Avenger, the Green Archer or the Black Abbot and often wear a costume to match. Their identity is always a mystery and pretty much every character comes under suspicion until the big reveal at the end. And once the mask comes off, the villain is inevitably revealed to be a staunch pillar of society and often a member of Sir John's club.

The Frog kidnapping Eva Anthes in Face of the Frog (1959)

The Green Archer terrifies Karin Dor in The Green Archer (1961)

Eddi Arent attempts to apprehend the the Black Abbot in the eponymous film (1963)

The Edgar Wallace films are cheaply made, with Hamburg or Berlin standing in for London and German castles standing in for British mansions. Nonetheless, they have a unique visual flair, courtesy of directors Harald Reinl, Jürgen Roland and Alfred Vohrer. All films are shot in stylish black and white, using the widescreen Ultrascope process. Contrasts of light and shadow are used to great effect, such as the shadow of a dangling noose falling onto a stark white prison wall in Face of the Frog. Strange camera angles are common and scenes are shot through the eyes of an unseen killer, through the dial of a rotary telephone and in one memorable case, though the mouth of Sir John chomping on a carrot. The highly stylised look of the Edgar Wallace films is uncommon in contemporary German cinema. Instead, the Edgar Wallace films take their visual inspiration from the expressionist cinema of the 1920s and early 1930s, returning German filmmaking to where it was before the Nazis took over.

Karin Dor spies on The Terrible People (1960)

Are the Edgar Wallace films science fiction? Well, they are mainly crime thrillers, though they also include horror elements and take visual inspiration from the German horror cinema of more than thirty years ago. The Dead Eyes of London from 1961 is probably the closest the Wallace series has come to pure horror to date, largely due to the performance of Ady Berber as the blind and supernaturally strong killer Jack.

Program book for The Dead Eyes of London, featuring Ady Berber threatening Karin Baal

Science fiction elements also frequently appear in the Edgar Wallace movies, often in the form of death traps and complicated murder methods. The Green Archer (1961) uses the old standby of the underground chamber (in which the villain, played by the excellent Gert Fröbe, has kept the lover who spurned him imprisoned for decades) that slowly fills with water. The Strange Countess (1961) features a deadly electrified grid, which protects the jewels the titular villainess has stolen. The Countess, played with chilling haughtiness by silent era veteran Lil Dagover, is eventually electrocuted by her own death trap. Meanwhile, in The Dead Eyes of London, a domed glass tank in the basement of a church-run home for the blind is used to drown wealthy men before their bodies are thrown into the Thames, allowing the villainous Dead Eye gang to claim their life insurance. And in The Squeaker, the titular villain dispatches his opponents via a blow gun shooting crystals of snake venom. As mentioned above, the criminal plots and murder methods in the Wallace are always convoluted and often don't make a whole lot of sense. But that doesn't matter, because you're usually much too captivated by the going-ons on screen to worry about such little matters as logic.

Lil Dagover prowls her castle in The Strange Countess (1961)

The 1962 film The Door With Seven Locks even features a bona fide mad scientist, played by Wallace film regular Pinkas Braun, who conducts medical experiments such as brain transplants in a hidden vault underneath a country mansion. This makes the otherwise not particularly remarkable The Door With Seven Locks the most science fictional Edgar Wallace film to date.

Poster for The Door with the Seven Locks (1962)

Critics don't like the Edgar Wallace films, complaining about the lack of realism, the alleged predictability, the lurid and sensational nature of the crimes portrayed and the (by West German standards) high levels of violence. Those critics have a point, for the Edgar Wallace films are lurid and sensational, violent and completely unrealistic. However, the sheer artificiality is why I enjoy these movies so much and why I inevitably head for the neighbourhood movie theatre whenever a new Edgar Wallace movie premieres (and we currently get several of them every year). Even the lesser entries of the series are well worth watching and the standouts such as Face of the Frog, The Green Archer, The Dead Eyes of London, The Inn on the River, The Squeaker or The Indian Scarf provide excellent chills and thrills.

Poster for The Squeaker (1963) )

As for those who claim that the Edgar Wallace movies have nothing to do with real life, well, they're mistaken, for the Wallace films do reflect contemporary West German concerns, though through the distorted lens of a funhouse mirror. The fact that the motive for the bizarre crimes on screen is always greed reflects concerns about the rampant materialism in postwar West Germany. Just as the fact that the villain is inevitably revealed to be an upstanding pillar of society under his (or more rarely her) mask is all too reminiscent of recent revelations that quite a few politicians, judges, doctors, professors, civil servants and captains of industry used to be Nazis and still somehow managed to continue their careers unimpeded in postwar West Germany. As for the tendency of henchmen in Wallace movies to mutter, "But I was just following orders. You can't blame me", when captured – well, where have we heard that before?

Poster for The Terrible People (1960)

The Edgar Wallace movies offer pleasantly comforting shudders, as the viewer delves into a strange parallel world, where London is the murder capital of Europe and the Squeaker, the Frog, the Black Abbot and the rest of the Wallace menagerie stalk the fog-shrouded streets to commit bizarre crimes. And even though all movies stand alone, they are set in the same universe with Siegfried Schürenberg's Sir John acting as a link between the different stories. This shared universe concept occasionally shows up in literature such as the Cthulhu mythos, but has never really been tried in movies so far. The possibilities are limitless.

Sir John (Siegfried Schürenberg) is shocked that the latest villain turns out to be yet another member of his club.

The success of the Edgar Wallace movies quickly spawned a host of imitators. Producer Artur Brauner acquired the rights to several crime novels by Bryan Edgar Wallace, son of Edgar Wallace, while Constantin Film adapted several novels by Czech writer and Edgar Wallace imitator Louis Weinert-Wilton. Other imitations are more of a stretch, such as a series of Wallace style movies featuring G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown.

However, the most interesting of the many crime thrillers released in the wake of the Edgar Wallace movies are the Dr. Mabuse movies produced by Artur Brauner. Based on a supervillain character created by Norbert Jacques in the 1920s, they are not just unambiguously science fiction, but also a return to the glory days of German cinema during the Weimar Republic. But that's a subject for another day.

[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]

10 Comments Leave A Comment

Fashion, music, politics, sports

[March 21, 1964] Building the City of the Future upon Ruins: A Look at Postwar Architecture in Germany, Europe and the World

March 21, 2019 Cora Buhlert 2 Comments

by Cora Buhlert

[From Seattle's Sky Needle, to Chicago's Marina Towers, to the soon to be built World Trade Center in New York, the country is finally getting science fiction's buildings of the future. But the United States isn't the only nation undergoing an architectural revolution. Cora Buhlert is here with a report from Germany on what's going up…]

From the Ashes

Not quite twenty years ago, World War II left much of Europe in ruin. Bombing raids and ground fighting destroyed much of the infrastructure and reduced most cities to rubble.

Rebuilding Europe's cities after World War II posed both a challenge and an opportunity: architects could realise their vision of the ideal city of the future on a blank or almost blank canvas. Some of the most famous architects of our time rose to the task and created buildings both functional and unique.

The Bauhaus and the International Style

The dominant architectural movement of our time is the so-called International Style, characterised by unadorned rectangles of concrete, glass and steel. The name is certainly apt, for the International Style has spread across the globe from Europe to the Americas to the emerging nations of Asia and Africa. But its origins lie in Germany, in the provincial East German towns of Weimar and Dessau, home to the legendary Bauhaus school of architecture, art and design.

Under founder Walter Gropius, the Bauhaus took the maxim "form follows function", coined by Chicago architect Louis Sullivan in 1896, and reinterpreted it as purely functional architecture and design eschewing all ornamentation. The results, whether buildings, furniture or household goods, still look remarkably modern some forty years later. Even if you've never heard of the Bauhaus, I can guarantee you have seen and probably used some of their iconic designs.

Founded in Weimar in 1919, the Bauhaus moved to Dessau in 1925 and finally to Berlin in 1932, before the school was shut down by the Nazis. Many of the professors and alumni, including Gropius himself, left Germany, spreading the Bauhaus ideas all over the world, and eventually created the International Style, with some input from the Dutch De Stijl movement and Frenchman Le Corbusier.

The Bauhaus building in Dessau, designed by Walter Gropius in 1925, is an early example of a glass curtain wall construction, a technique Gropius himself had pioneered at the Fagus shoe last factory in the West German town of Alfeld an der Leine in 1911. Fifty years later, glass curtain wall constructions can be found all over the world and are the favoured architectural style for American skyscrapers such as the Seagram Building in New York, designed by Bauhaus alumnus Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and completed in 1958.

I had the chance to visit the Bauhaus building in Dessau a few years ago. It is still a vocational school, though the building itself was badly damaged in World War II and has been heavily altered since. However, there are plans to restore it to its original glory for the fortieth anniversary next year.

Housing for the masses

The main application of the architectural principles of the Bauhaus and the International Style lies not in representative office buildings, but in new housing estates that are going up all over Europe to provide desperately needed homes for the masses of refugees, displaced persons and people rendered homeless by World War II.

The solutions to the postwar housing crisis vary from city to city. Some municipalities prefer more traditional designs such as row houses with slanted roofs, built from traditional materials like red brick. Other cities go for high rise apartment blocks that can house thousands of people.

In 1957, West Berlin ran the Interbau exhibition, and invited world famous architects including Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, Alvar Aalto and Oscar Niemeyer to design and build their vision of the apartment block of the future. The resulting Hansaviertel neighbourhood is a housing estate that doubles as a showcase of modern architecture.

Meanwhile, a very exciting housing project, the Neue Vahr, was recently completed in my hometown Bremen. Like many other German cities, Bremen was badly damaged by World War II bombings and was missing about one hundred thousand homes by the early 1950s. The solution was to build a completely new neighbourhood for thirty thousand people on what had up to then been agricultural land on the edge of the city.

This new neighbourhood was designed by architects Ernst May and Hans Bernhard Reichow according to the "garden city" principle developed by Englishman Ebenezer Howard in the late nineteenth century, which involves housing tracts interspersed with extensive green belts and separation of functions such as housing, work, shopping and traffic.

The modern interpretation of a garden city implemented by the Neue Vahr project involves apartment blocks varying in size from four to fourteen stories interspersed with green belts. Two multi-lane roads cut through the neighbourhood, dividing it into four sub-neighbourhoods. Pedestrian bridges connect the sub-neighbourhoods to each other, keeping motorised traffic and pedestrians separated and accidents down.

At the centre of the Neue Vahr, there is a signature building, a sixty metre high, twenty-two storey apartment block designed by celebrated Finnish architect Alvar Aalto. Known as the Aalto building, it currently the tallest residential building in Bremen and towers above the Berliner Freiheit (Berlin freedom) shopping precinct that serves as a town centre for the new neighbourhood.

New approaches to shopping

Talking of shopping, retail buildings such as shops and department stores are another area where modern architecture asserts itself. World War II left in ruins the town centres of many European cities. Gone were their open air markets, narrow streets lined with small shops and grand department stores But this made room for new approaches.

Probably the most characteristic type of commercial architecture in the postwar era is the shopping centre or – as Americans prefer to call it – the shopping mall. These malls that are currently popping up like the proverbial weeds in the suburbs of American cities are usually enclosed indoor complexes, air-conditioned against weather extremes. Indoor malls exist in Europe, but they are rare. One example is the soon to be finished Bull Ring shopping centre in Birmingham, which combines an American style indoor mall with an outdoor market. But most of the time, Europeans prefer open air shopping precincts in the centre of old and new towns.

The prototype for many European shopping precincts is the Lijnbaan (rope makers' street) in Rotterdam. The Dutch port city of Rotterdam was almost completely destroyed by German bombs in May 1940. Designed by architects Jo van den Broek and Jaap Bakema and built between 1949 and 1953, the Lijnbaan is a street lined by sixty-six two-storey shops with apartment blocks set further back. Unusual for the otherwise car-friendly architecture of the postwar era, the Lijnbaan is a pedestrian zone and completely car-free. Delivery traffic has been moved to the back of the shops, allowing shoppers to promenade among flower beds, sculptures and bird cages and enjoy a cup of coffee or a glass of beer in one of the many outdoor cafés.

The Lijnbaan was an instant sensation. "Lijnbaanen" is now a Dutch verb. In 1960, the shopping street and the youth gangs who hang out at the cafés there even became the subject of a novel by John den Admirant fittingly entitled Lijnbaan Djungel (Lijnbaan Jungle). The idea of a pedestrian shopping precinct was soon copied all over Europe. One example is the Treppenstraße (staircase street) in the German town of Kassel, which was completed in 1953 a few months after the Lijnbaan.

These days, Lijnbaan architects Jo van den Broek and Jaap Bakema have established themselves as masters of retail architecture. Two other projects of theirs, the Ter Meulen department store and the H.H. De Klerk furniture store, both in Rotterdam, look like fairly unremarkable concrete boxes from the outside. Inside, both stores feature an arrangement of mezzanines connected by staircases that make the buildings seem much bigger than they look from the outside.

Department stores are the other great challenge of postwar retail architecture. For while the great department stores of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century – Harrod's and Liberty's in London, Galeries Lafayette in Paris or À L'Innovation in Brussels – are beautiful, their design with open atriums surrounded by retail space is not very efficient. Modern department stores do not have atriums and so offer more retail space – not to mention modern amenities such as escalators, elevators and safety features like sprinkler systems. However, the downside is that they tend to look like windowless concrete boxes from the outside.

There have been several attempts to make department store exteriors more visually interesting. For the De Bijenkorf department store in Rotterdam (completed in 1957), Bauhaus alumnus Marcel Breuer took a cue from the name, which means "beehive" in Dutch, and covered the façade with travertine tiles shaped like honeycombs. Combined with a 26-metre tall abstract steel sculpture by artist Gabo, affectionately named "Het Ding" (The Thing) by the people of Rotterdam, the result is spectacular.

German architect Egon Eiermann came up with a similar solution for the German department store chain Horten and developed white ceramic tiles in the shape of a stylized H, which are currently being applied to the façades of Horten stores all over West Germany for an iconic space age look.

Breaking out of boxes

The attempts to make department stores more visually interesting highlight a major problem with modern architecture and the International Style. Rectangular buildings may be functional, but they are also boring. And so we are increasingly seeing attempts to break out of the pervasive box shape of postwar architecture. Many of those attempts involve representative buildings such as theatres, events centres and churches, where architects have more leeway than with residential or retail buildings.

One of my favourite new buildings in my hometown Bremen is the Stadthalle, a multi-purpose arena for exhibitions, sports events and concerts. Designed by Roland Rainer and completed only this year, the Stadthalle is notable by the six concrete struts which jut out of the front of the building and hold both the stands as well as the roof in a design reminiscent of tents and sailing ships.

For the Kongresshalle conference centre in Berlin, built for the Interbau exhibition of 1957, American architect Hugh Stubbins designed a spectacular hyperbolic paraboloid saddle roof, inspired by the Dorton Arena in Raleigh, North Carolina. The people of Berlin quickly nicknamed the organic structure the "pregnant oyster".

Last year, Bremen got its very own "pregnant oyster" with the St. Lukas church in the Grolland neighbourhood. Designed by architects Carsten Schöck and Frei Otto, a specialist for lightweight roof constructions, the St. Lukas church has a saddle roof consisting of two frames of glued laminated timber which hold a net of steel wires, on which the actual roof rests. I recently had the chance to attend a service at St. Lukas and the stunning interior makes even the most boring of sermons exciting.

Indeed, some of the most exciting architecture of our secular times can be found in churches. When Egon Eiermann won the competition to rebuild the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in West Berlin, he was faced with a problem. The ruins of the original church, which had been destroyed by bombing in 1943, were still standing and could not be torn down because of massive protests. So Eiermann decided to keep the bombed out tower of the old church and built his new church, consisting of a hexagonal clocktower and an octagonal nave, all rendered in a concrete honeycomb design with glass inlays, around it. From the outside, the new church doesn't look like much, but once you step inside, the blue glass inlays, designed by French artist Gabriel Loire, light up with a truly otherworldly glow.

Completed in 1961, the new Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church became an instant landmark. The old church is nicknamed "hollow tooth" by the people of Berlin, the new church "powder box and lipstick".

Next stop: The World

It seems as if the spectacular designs described above are merely a harbinger of things to come, as architecture finally moves beyond the all-pervasive rectangular shapes of the International Style. New and exciting movements are emerging such as the British Archigram group, who have proposed such positively science fictional designs as the Plug-in City or the Walking City. So far, these are still concepts, but they might well be the cities of our future.

[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]

2 Comments Leave A Comment

Uncategorized

Spaceman's Punch (Raumfahrer Bowle)

December 31, 2018 Cora Buhlert 5 Comments

An authentic 1960s recipe courtesy of Cora Buhlert

Ingredients:

Squeeze the oranges and lemons and put the juice into a big punch bowl.
Add the pineapples and peaches to the punch bowl with the juice from the can.
Slice the bananas and unfreeze the strawberries and add them to the bowl as well.
Pour half a bottle of rum (either white or brown) and a quarter bottle of orange liqueur into the bowl and let it settle.
Just before serving, fill up the punch with ginger ale.

Because of the fruit, the punch usually doesn't need any sugar, but if you prefer it sweeter, you can add some. Use icing sugar – it dissolves more quickly.

If you use Barcardi or other white rum and Blue Curacao, the punch will take on an unearthly greenish-blue colour. However, we mostly use brown rum and Grand Marnier or Cointreau instead of Blue Curacao. Triple Sec or any other kind of orange liqueur work as well.

You can also add some kiwis for an extra alien look, but kiwis are unknown in Germany in the 1960s.

This punch packs a punch, but is remarkably hangover proof.

5 Comments Leave A Comment

Message from the Eocene by Margaret St. Clair (Ace Double M-105)

Three World of Futurity by Margaret St. Clair

55 years ago: Science Fact and Fiction