Karola Bloch (born Karola Piotrkowska; January 22, 1905,
Łódź
Łódź, also rendered in English as Lodz, is a city in central Poland and a former industrial centre. It is the capital of Łódź Voivodeship, and is located approximately south-west of Warsaw. The city's coat of arms is an example of cant ...
— July 31, 1994,
Tübingen
Tübingen (, , Swabian: ''Dibenga'') is a traditional university city in central Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated south of the state capital, Stuttgart, and developed on both sides of the Neckar and Ammer rivers. about one in three ...
) was a Polish-German architect, socialist, and feminist. She was the third wife of the German philosopher
Ernst Bloch
Ernst Simon Bloch (; July 8, 1885 – August 4, 1977; pseudonyms: Karl Jahraus, Jakob Knerz) was a German Marxist philosopher. Bloch was influenced by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Karl Marx, as well as by apocalyptic and religious thinkers ...
.
Early life and education
Bloch was born into a Jewish-Polish textile manufacturing family that fled to Russia during the First World War. In Moscow she was an eyewitness to the
October Revolution
The October Revolution,. officially known as the Great October Socialist Revolution. in the Soviet Union, also known as the Bolshevik Revolution, was a revolution in Russia led by the Bolshevik Party of Vladimir Lenin that was a key mome ...
, an experience to which she attributes her lifelong devotion to socialism. In 1921 the family moved to Berlin, where she studied art with the Expressionist
Ludwig Meidner
Ludwig Meidner (18 April 1884 – 14 May 1966) was a German expressionist painter and printmaker born in Bernstadt, Silesia. Meidner is best known for his painted, drawn, and printed portraits and landscapes, but is especially noted for h ...
. She met her future husband, the philosopher Ernst Bloch, in 1926. Karola began her architectural studies in Vienna then returned to study at the Technische Hochschule in Berlin as one of a small group of women. Karola was a devotee of the
Neues Bauen; she was a student of
Hans Poelzig
Hans Poelzig (30 April 1869 – 14 June 1936) was a German architect, painter and set designer.
Life
Poelzig was born in Berlin in 1869 to Countess Clara Henrietta Maria Poelzig while she was married to George Acland Ames, an Englishman. Uncerta ...
and
Bruno Taut, and through her friendship with
Xanti Schawinsky she was able to spend time at the
Bauhaus
The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the Bauhaus (), was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., 20 ...
, though she was never officially enrolled. In Berlin she joined a leftist student club and devoted her energy to fighting fascism, joining the
Communist Party of Germany in 1932. She also took courses at the
Marxistische Arbeiterschule “Masch”, where she met the architect
Hannes Meyer
Hans Emil "Hannes" Meyer (18 November 1889 – 19 July 1954) was a Swiss architect and second director of the Bauhaus Dessau from 1928 to 1930.
Early life
Meyer was born in Basel, Switzerland, trained as a mason, and practiced as an architect ...
and the critic
György Lukács
György Lukács (born György Bernát Löwinger; hu, szegedi Lukács György Bernát; german: Georg Bernard Baron Lukács von Szegedin; 13 April 1885 – 4 June 1971) was a Hungarian Marxist philosopher, literary historian, critic, and aesth ...
. Friends of the Blochs in Berlin included
Walter Benjamin
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin (; ; 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German Jewish philosopher, cultural critic and essayist.
An eclectic thinker, combining elements of German idealism, Romanticism, Western Marxism, and Jewish ...
and
Siegfried Kracauer
Siegfried Kracauer (; ; February 8, 1889 – November 26, 1966) was a German writer, journalist, sociologist, cultural critic, and film theorist. He has sometimes been associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory. He is notable for a ...
. The Blochs lived in the left-wing
Künstlerkolonie Berlin in
Wilmersdorf
Wilmersdorf (), an inner-city locality of Berlin, lies south-west of the central city. Formerly a borough by itself, Wilmersdorf became part of the new borough of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf in Berlin's 2001 administrative reform.
History
The v ...
. When the Reichstag was burned in 1933 the colony was surrounded by Nazis; Karola was able to hide Ernst Bloch’s manuscripts and have them smuggled out. The Blochs fled to Switzerland where Karola finished her studies at the
ETH Zurich. Due to the increasingly anti-Semitic atmosphere, they moved to Vienna, where they married in 1934.
Work and life in exile
In Vienna Karola worked for the architect
Jacques Groag
Jacques Groag (5 February 1892 – 28 January 1962) was an architect and an interior designer, originally from Moravia.
Early life and education
Jacques Groag was born in 1892 in Olomouc to a well known Jewish family who lived in a malt ho ...
, a student of
Adolf Loos
Adolf Franz Karl Viktor Maria Loos (; 10 December 1870 – 23 August 1933) was an Austrian and Czechoslovak architect, influential European theorist, and a polemicist of modern architecture. He was an inspiration to modernism and a widely- ...
, and befriended
Elias Canetti
Elias Canetti (; bg, Елиас Канети; 25 July 1905 – 14 August 1994) was a German-language writer, born in Ruse, Bulgaria to a Sephardic family. They moved to Manchester, England, but his father died in 1912, and his mother took her ...
and
Alma Mahler
Alma Maria Mahler Gropius Werfel (born Alma Margaretha Maria Schindler; 31 August 1879 – 11 December 1964) was an Austrian composer, author, editor, and socialite. At 15, she was mentored by Max Burckhard. Musically active from her early yea ...
. In spite of the danger for Jews and Communists she also worked as an informant for the USSR, making risky trips to Poland. Her husband Ernst Bloch once said to her “You practice what I write in my philosophy.” After the
Anschluss
The (, or , ), also known as the (, en, Annexation of Austria), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into the German Reich on 13 March 1938.
The idea of an (a united Austria and Germany that would form a " Greater Germany ...
the couple fled to Paris, where Karola worked in the studio of
Auguste Perret
Auguste Perret (12 February 1874 – 25 February 1954) was a French architect and a pioneer of the architectural use of reinforced concrete. His major works include the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, the first Art Deco building in Paris; the C ...
. In 1936 the couple moved to Prague, where Karola had a private design practice with the Bauhaus textile designer
Friedl Dicker-Brandeis
Frederika "Friedl" Dicker-Brandeis (30 July 1898, in Vienna – 9 October 1944, in Auschwitz-Birkenau), was an Austrian artist and educator murdered by the Nazis in the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp.
Biography
Frederika Dicker was born i ...
and was the architect of a single-family house in the Tatra mountains. Her son Jan-Robert was born in 1937.
The couple emigrated to New York in 1938. Because Ernst Bloch did not speak English, Karola had to support the family alone by working as an architect. Karola worked as one of only two women in the office of Mayer & Whittlesey, where she worked on high-rises like
240 Central Park South
240 Central Park South is a residential building in Midtown Manhattan in New York City. Designed by Albert Mayer and Julian Whittlesey, it was built between 1939 and 1940 by the J.H. Taylor Construction Company, an enterprise of the Mayer fami ...
. In the United States, the couple was reunited with other émigrés like
Theodor Adorno
Theodor is a masculine given name. It is a German form of Theodore. It is also a variant of Teodor.
List of people with the given name Theodor
* Theodor Adorno, (1903–1969), German philosopher
* Theodor Aman, Romanian painter
* Theodor Blue ...
and
Hermann Broch
Hermann Broch (; 1 November 1886 – 30 May 1951) was an Austrian writer, best known for two major works of modernist fiction: '' The Sleepwalkers'' (''Die Schlafwandler,'' 1930–32) and '' The Death of Virgil'' (''Der Tod des Vergil,'' 1945).
...
. After moving to Cambridge, MA, Karola was commissioned to design a modern house for
Harry Slochower in Andover, NJ. She also worked as a draftswoman for
Stone and Webster
Stone & Webster was an American engineering services company based in Stoughton, Massachusetts. It was founded as an electrical testing lab and consulting firm by electrical engineers Charles A. Stone and Edwin S. Webster in 1889. In the early ...
, one of the largest engineering firms in the US, unaware that they were also working on the facilities for the
Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project w ...
. She also worked for
Leland & Larsen in Boston, and organized a group to help support Polish architects after the war.
In 1943 Karola’s parents, brother, and sister-in-law were murdered in
Treblinka
Treblinka () was an extermination camp, built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship. The cam ...
after being forced to live in the
Warsaw Ghetto
The Warsaw Ghetto (german: Warschauer Ghetto, officially , "Jewish Residential District in Warsaw"; pl, getto warszawskie) was the largest of the Nazi ghettos during World War II and the Holocaust. It was established in November 1940 by the G ...
.
Work and life in Germany
In 1949 the couple returned to East Germany, where Ernst Bloch took a teaching position at the University of Leipzig. Karola Bloch worked designing typical plans for kindergartens and daycare centers under commission from the
Deutsche Bauakademie (German Building Academy). 8,000 child care centers were built in the GDR during this time, many of them based on her plans. An example is two facilities that she designed and supervised at the
Baumwollspinnerei in Leipzig in 1955, which are now protected under historic preservation laws. However, Karola’s modern approach was controversial during a time when more ornate Stalinist architecture was promoted. For this reason she urged her friend Hannes Meyer not to emigrate to the GDR. In 1957 Karola, who was also politically anti-Stalinist, was forced out of the
Socialist Unity Party of Germany
The Socialist Unity Party of Germany (german: Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, ; SED, ), often known in English as the East German Communist Party, was the founding and ruling party of the German Democratic Republic (GDR; East German ...
, which meant that she could no longer work as an architect. For several years she anonymously published articles aimed at women, on topics like more efficient kitchen design and how to read building plans. She also became a founding member of th
International Union of Women Architects When the
Berlin Wall was erected on August 31, 1961, the Blochs, on a lecture trip in West Germany, did not return to Leipzig or the GDR, leaving all of their belongings behind. The couple moved to Tübingen where Ernst Bloch became a professor. After 30 years of practicing as an architect Karola Bloch devoted herself entirely to the politics of prisoners and abused women, co-founding the organization Hilfe zur Selbsthilfe (Help for Self-Help). She was also active in the pro-choice movement organized by prominent feminist
Alice Schwarzer
Alice Sophie Schwarzer (born 3 December 1942) is a German journalist and prominent feminist. She is founder and publisher of the German feminist journal '' EMMA''. Beginning in France, she became a forerunner of feminist positions against anti-ab ...
in the early 1970s. When she was 76 years old, she traveled to Nicaragua to support the
Sandinistas
The Sandinista National Liberation Front ( es, Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, FSLN) is a socialist political party in Nicaragua. Its members are called Sandinistas () in both English and Spanish. The party is named after Augusto Cé ...
.
Written works
* ''Aus meinem Leben (From My Life)'', Pfulligen (Nekse), 1981.
* ''Die Sehnsucht des Menschen, ein wirklicher Mensch zu werden. Reden und Schriften aus ihrer Tübinger Zeit (The Desire of the Human to Be a Real Human: Speeches and Writings from her Time in Tübingen)'', Mössingen-Talheim (Talheim Verlag), 1989.
* "For the Dignity of Woman" (1981), in ''German Feminist Writings'', New York (Continuum), 2002.
Edited volumes
* ''"Denken heißt Überschreiten": In memoriam Ernst Bloch 1885–1977 ("Thinking Means Transgressing": In Memory of Ernst Bloch 1885-1977)'', Eds. Karola Bloch and Adelbert Reif, Cologne/Frankfurt am Main (Europäische Verlagsanstalt), 1978.
* ''Lieber Genosse Bloch ...: Briefe von Rudi Dutschke, Gretchen Dutschke-Klotz und Karola Bloch 1968-1979 (Dear Comrade Bloch...: Letters from Rudi Dutschke, Gretchen Dutschke-Klotz, and Karola Bloch 1968-1979)''. Eds. Karola Bloch and Welf Schröter, Mössingen-Talheim (Talheimer Verlag), 1988.
* "Utopie und Hoffnung : Beiträge zur Aktualität Ernst Blochs (Utopia and Hope: Contributions to the Relevance of Ernst Bloch)", Eds. Karola Bloch and Jürgen C Strohmaier, Mössingen-Talheim (Talheim Verlag), 1989.
References
Sources
* Helge Redemeister (Dir), ''Karola Bloch: Dann nimmt die Frau die Geschicke selbst in die Hand (Karola Bloch: Then Woman Takes Fate into Her Own Hands)'', Documentary, BRD, 1982.
* ''Ich gehe zu jenen, die mich brauchen: zum 85. Geburtstag von Karola Bloch (I Go to Those Who Need Me: On the 85th Birthday of Karola Bloch)'', Ed. Anne Frommann, Welf Schröter, Mössingen-Talheim (Talheim Verlag), 1991.
* Ernst Bloch, ''Das Abenteuer der Treue : Briefe an Karola 1928-1949 (The Adventure of Loyalty: Letters to Karola 1928-1949)'' Frankfurt am Main (Suhrkamp), 2005.
* ''Karola Bloch – Architektin, Sozialistin, Freundin. Eine Neuentdeckung des Wirkens der Bauhaus-Schülerin Karola Bloch (Karola Bloch: Architect, Socialist, Friend. A New Study on the Work of the Bauhaus Student Karola Bloch)'', Eds. Irene Scherer, Welf Schröter, Mössingen-Talheim, (Talheimer Verlag), 2010.
* Helga Reidemeister (dir), ''Ernst und Karola Bloch : die Tübinger Zeit'' (DVD), Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 2008.
* ''Briefe durch die Mauer : Briefwechsel 1954-1998 zwischen Ernst & Karola Bloch und Jürgen & Johanna Teller (Letters Through the Wall: Correspondence 1954-1998 Between Ernst & Karola Bloch and Jürgen & Johanna Teller)'', Mössingen-Talheim, (Talheimer Verlag), 2009.
External links
Literature by and about Karola Blochin the Katalog der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek
Ernst Bloch Center
* http://www.karola-bloch-stiftung.de
* http://bloch-blog.de/
Karola Bloch obituary in ''Die Zeit'' Retrieved on April 13, 2015.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bloch, Karola
1905 births
1994 deaths
Architects from Łódź
20th-century German architects
Bauhaus
Women architects
20th-century German women artists
German women architects
Polish women architects
20th-century Polish architects
20th-century Polish women