Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack (11 July 1893, in Frankfurt-am-Main – 7 January 1965, in Allambie Heights, in Sydney) was a German-born Australian artist. His formative education was 1912–1914 at Debschitz art school in

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Ha ...

. He studied 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 ...

from 1919–24 and remained working there until 1926 where, along with Kurt Schwerdtfeger, he further developed the ''Farblichtspiele'' ('coloured-light-plays'), which used a projection device to produced moving colours on a transparent screen accompanied by music composed by Hirschfeld Mack. It is now regarded as an early form of

multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to tradit ...

. He was a participant, along with the former Bauhaus master

Gertrud Grunow Gertrud Grunow (8 July 1870 – 11 June 1944) was a German musician and educationalist who formulated theories on the relationships between sound, colour and movement and was a specialist in vocal pedagogy. She taught courses in the "theory of harmo ...

, in ''den II. Kongreß für Farbe-Ton-Forschung (Hamburg 1. - 5. Oktober 1930)'' (English: Second Congress for Colour-Sound Research,

Hamburg (male), (female) en, Hamburger(s), Hamburgian(s) , timezone1 = Central (CET) , utc_offset1 = +1 , timezone1_DST = Central (CEST) , utc_offset1_DST = +2 , postal ...

). In 1923 he participated in the prestigious film festival "Der Absolute Film in Berlin with other film producers such as Hans Richter Viking Eggeling, Walter Ruttmann, Fernand Léger. Francis Picabia and Renée Clair. Music and colour theory remained lifelong interests, informing his art work in a number of media, and it was the inspiration for his well-respected and influential teaching.

Life

Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack was born in

Frankfurt am Main Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , "Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its na ...

where he grew up. He attended the

Musterschule The Musterschule ("model school") is a Gymnasium (Germany), gymnasium in Frankfurt, Germany. It was founded on 18 April 1803 by Wilhelm Friedrich Hufnagel as a ''Realschule'' and is Frankfurt's second oldest higher school after the Lessing-Gymna ...

, a progressive Frankfurt high school for musically gifted children, which still exists today. He was later taught by

Hermann Obrist Hermann Obrist (23 May 1862 at Kilchberg (near Zürich), Switzerland – 26 February 1927, Munich, Germany) was a Swiss sculptor of the Jugendstil and Art Nouveau movement. He studied Botany and History in his youth; the influence of those s ...

and

Wilhelm von Debschitz Wilhelm Siegfried Kurt von Debschitz (21 February 1871 – 10 March 1948) was a German painter, interior designer, craftsman, art teacher and founding director of an influential art school in Munich. Early life and education He was born on 2 ...

in Munich, taking art history with

Heinrich Wölfflin Heinrich Wölfflin (; 21 June 1864 – 19 July 1945) was a Swiss art historian, esthetician and educator, whose objective classifying principles ("painterly" vs. "linear" and the like) were influential in the development of formal analysis in ar ...

and Fritz Burger. During the First World War, Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack was an infantry officer.

Bauhaus

Hirschfeld Mack completed a craftsman apprenticeship at his father's leather factory before studying at the Teaching and Experimental Studios for Applied and Free Art under

and Wilhelm von Debschitz in Munich in 1912. He then enrolled at the

University of Munich The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich or LMU; german: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Germany. It is Germany's sixth-oldest university in continuous operatio ...

and attended lectures in art history by

and Fritz Burger.Bauhaus100. Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack
Retrieved 30 November 2018 In 1919 he went to study at the

Art Academy An art school is an educational institution with a primary focus on the visual arts, including fine art – especially illustration, painting, photography, sculpture, and graphic design. Art schools can offer elementary, secondary, post-seco ...

in Stuttgart under

Adolf Hölzel Adolf Richard Hölzel (13 May 1853 – 17 October 1934) was a German painter. He began as a Realist, but later became an early promoter of various Modern styles, including Abstractionism. Biography Hölzel was born in Olmütz. His father was ...

(colour theory) and Ida Kerkovius, but later the same year enrolled at the

, where he studied under

Johannes Itten Johannes Itten (11 November 1888 – 25 March 1967) was a Swiss expressionist painter, designer, teacher, writer and theorist associated with the Bauhaus (''Staatliches Bauhaus'') school. Together with German-American painter Lyonel Feining ...

Paul Klee Paul Klee (; 18 December 1879 – 29 June 1940) was a Swiss-born German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented ...

and

Wassily Kandinsky Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky (; rus, Василий Васильевич Кандинский, Vasiliy Vasilyevich Kandinskiy, vɐˈsʲilʲɪj vɐˈsʲilʲjɪvʲɪtɕ kɐnʲˈdʲinskʲɪj; – 13 December 1944) was a Russian painter a ...

, and was apprenticed to

Lyonel Feininger Lyonel Charles Feininger (July 17, 1871January 13, 1956) was a German-American painter, and a leading exponent of Expressionism. He also worked as a caricaturist and comic strip artist. He was born and grew up in New York City, traveling to Germa ...

in the print workshop, obtaining a Bauhaus graduate diploma in lithography in 1924. When Itten did not offer a course devoted to colour at the Bauhaus, Hirschfeld-Mack offered to conduct a colour course during the winter semester of 1922/23. While this course was not officially recognised, it was at times attended by Masters Kandisky and Klee. He remained at the Weimar Bauhaus until its closure in 1925 and conducted experiments in light projection, following German sculpto
Kurt Schwerdtfeger
(1897–1966) in developing the "Farbenlichtspiele" (colour-light play), producing an apparatus that combined moving projections of coloured light through mechanically operable geometric stencils displayed to music created by Ludwig himself. Its first performance was at the Bauhaus Lantern Festival 21 June 1922. Ludwig described the kinetic projection as "fugue-like, strictly structured plays of colour, always derived from a definite colour-form theme". In 1963, Hans Maria Wingler, the director of the newly established Bauhaus Archiv in Darmstadt, Germany, invited Ludwig to reconstruct his colour light plays, which required him to reconstruct the apparatus and rewrite the scores from his notes and his memory as well as prepare the music for the performance at the Bauhaus Archiv in Darmstadt. In early 1964 he and his second wife Olive departed for Europe and spent some time in Darmstadt training assistants for the performance. With the assistance of sponsors, a film of the black and white play Kreuzspiel was subsequently made by the trained assistants after his death and two copies of this film remain. In 2000 under the direction and assistance of Hirschfeld-Mack's grandson Kaj Delugan performances of the plays were filmed in colour by Corinne Schweizer and Peter Böhm with a musical sound-track for the 2000 Exhibition in Bolzano, Italy.

Further teaching

In 1926, Hirschfeld Mack began teaching art in the Free School in Wickersdorf in Thuringa. In 1929 he was appointed as a teacher of colour and general morphology at the Bauhochschule University of Craft and Architecture in Weimar. The school was established in Weimar after the Bauhaus left in 1925, and reopen in Dessau in 1926. In 1930 the director Otto Bartning was replaced by Paul Schlze-Naumberg, an advocate of Nazi architecture, resulting in the dismissal of most of the staff. He then became professor at the Pedagogical Academy in Frankfurt (Oder) until its closure in 1932. He taught at the Teacher Training Academy in Kiel in northern Germany from 1932 until it too was closed by the

Nazis Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in N ...

in 1933. He moved in April 1933 to Berlin where he was able to obtain casual employment teaching the construction of musical instruments at the Jöde-Schule/Güntherschule and other institutes. Hirschfeld Mack had married Elenor Wirth in 1917 and her father had established an acquaintance with the a member of the Clark family, who were members of the Quakers (Society of Friends) in England. After realising that his part Jewish Heritage made it impossible to obtain any permanent employment, Hirschfeld-Mack left Germany in early 1936 boundfor Britain in search of permanent employment.

United Kingdom

Upon arrival Hirschfeld Mack spent some time in Haselmere in Surrey before moving to London, where he was eventually offered employment under the Quaker Subsistence Program, which aimed to teach unemployed miners in Wales new skills, where he was in charge of the carpentry workshop. After returning to Germany to finalise his papers and spending some time in a carpentry workshop, he returned to England to commence his employment in Cwmavon, Wales in the Eastern Valley of Monmouthshire in South Wales around May 1936. Elenor (d.1953) remained in Germany with the two youngest daughters, while his eldest, Marga, followed him into English exile. Sadly his second daughter Ursel (17) died by suicide in April 1938. The

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

, New York, included his work in its Bauhaus retrospective of 1938

Australia

In 1940 Hirschfeld Mack was deported to Australia as an

enemy alien In customary international law, an enemy alien is any native, citizen, denizen or subject of any foreign nation or government with which a domestic nation or government is in conflict and who is liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured and ...

on the ship

HMT Dunera HMT (Hired Military Transport) ''Dunera'' was a British passenger ship which, in 1940, became involved in a controversial transportation of thousands of "enemy aliens" to Australia. The British India Steam Navigation Company had operated a pr ...

, spending time in

internment camps Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simpl ...

Hay Hay is grass, legumes, or other herbaceous plants that have been cut and dried to be stored for use as animal fodder, either for large grazing animals raised as livestock, such as cattle, horses, goats, and sheep, or for smaller domesticat ...

Orange Orange most often refers to: *Orange (fruit), the fruit of the tree species '' Citrus'' × ''sinensis'' ** Orange blossom, its fragrant flower *Orange (colour), from the color of an orange, occurs between red and yellow in the visible spectrum * ...

and

Tatura Tatura is a town in the Goulburn Valley region of Victoria, Australia, and is situated within the City of Greater Shepparton local government area, north of the state capital (Melbourne) and west of the regional centre of Shepparton. At the ...

, before being granted

Australian citizenship Australian nationality law details the conditions in which a person holds Australian legal nationality. The primary law governing nationality regulations is the Australian Citizenship Act 2007, which Coming into force, came into force on 1 July ...

. Imprisonment and the longing for freedom were the theme of his small, stark, poignant

relief print Relief printing is a family of printing methods where a printing block, plate or matrix, which has had ink applied to its non-recessed surface, is brought into contact with paper. The non-recessed surface will leave ink on the paper, whereas t ...

s of this period, including the

woodcut Woodcut is a relief printing technique in printmaking. An artist carves an image into the surface of a block of wood—typically with gouges—leaving the printing parts level with the surface while removing the non-printing parts. Areas tha ...

br>''Desolation, Internment Camp, Hay'' 1941
He was mentor to other internees including Erwin Fabian. His release from detention was secured in April 1942 through the intercession of Dr J.R. Darling, principal of Geelong Church of England Grammar School in Victoria, who appointed Hirschfeld Mack as the Art master. "Dr Hirschfeld", as he was known, and as recorded by one of his pupils the prominent curator David Thomas, was held in high regard by students and staff alike, and proved to be an inspirational teacher, consistently propounding the Bauhaus principles of self-knowledge, economy of material and form, and reform of society through art. Hirschfeld introduced the boys to such things as colour-coded guitars and colour 'organs' and in 1965 some of the instruments were donated to the 'Occupational Centre for Mental Handicapped Children' in Geelong.

Recognition

Hirschfeld was amongst a number of European wartime refugees who contributed to the renewal of Australian Art. As Professor Joseph Burke then Professor of Fine Arts, Melbourne University, notes in 1954: "Among the leaders of this "New Australian" contribution may be mentioned

Desiderius Orban Desiderius Orban, (; 26 November 18844 October 1986) was a renowned Hungarian painter, printmaker and teacher, who, after emigrating to Australia in 1939 when in his mid-50s, also made an illustrious career in that country. One of The Eight i ...

(b. 1884), a distinguished painter whose teaching has made a profound mark in Sydney in the post-war years; Dr. Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack, an original member of the Bauhaus staff, a close colleague and friend of

, whose work has influenced his own highly original abstract paintings;

Sali Herman Sali Herman (12 February 1898 – 3 April 1993) was a Swiss-born Australian artist, one of Australia's Official War Artists for the Second World War. Life and career Herman arrived in Melbourne in 1937 and enlisted in the Australian Army in ...

(b. 1898), and the recent winner of the Blake Prize for religious art,

Michael Kmit Michael Kmit ( uk, Михайло Кміт) (25 July 1910 in Stryi, Lviv – 22 May 1981 in Sydney, Australia) was a Ukrainian painter who spent twenty-five years in Australia. He is notable for introducing a neo-Byzantine style of painting ...

, from the Ukraine. Hirschfeld was also a guest lecturer at the

University of Melbourne The University of Melbourne is a public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in Victoria. Its main campus is located in Parkville, an inner suburb no ...

, where he had his first exhibition in Australia in the Rowden White Library in 1946, possibly organised by fellow ''Dunera'' passenger Franz Philipp, and in the same year his work was included in group exhibitions of the

Contemporary Art Society The Contemporary Art Society (CAS) is an independent charity that champions the collecting of outstanding contemporary art and craft for UK museum collections. Since its founding in 1910 the organisation has donated over 10,000 works to museums ...

(CAS) in Sydney and in Melbourne during its most radical period under

John Reed (art patron) John Harford Reed (10 December 1901 – 5 December 1981) was an Australian art editor and patron, notable for supporting and collecting of Australian art and culture with his wife Sunday Reed. Biography Early life Reed was born at 'Logan' ...

. He showed also at the Peter Bray Gallery in Melbourne, in 1953. In 1949–1950, 1958 and 1964 he visited Europe. When

Walter Gropius Walter Adolph Georg Gropius (18 May 1883 – 5 July 1969) was a German-American architect and founder of the Bauhaus School, who, along with Alvar Aalto, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, is widely regarded as one ...

came to lecture at the Royal Australian Institute of Architects convention in Sydney in 1954 he made a special trip to Geelong Grammar School to visit his former colleague. In 1955 Hirschfeld married Miss Olive Russell, a leading Quaker whom he had met at Tatura, and teacher of social studies at the Melbourne Church of England Girls Grammar School. In 1957 he retired from Geelong Grammar School and they moved to Ferny Creek, Victoria. In 1960,

Clement Meadmore Clement Meadmore (9 February 1929 – 19 April 2005) was an Australian-American sculptor known for massive outdoor steel sculptures. Biography Born Clement Lyon Meadmore in Melbourne, Australia in 1929, Clement Meadmore studied aeronautical ...

selected works from Hirschfeld Mack's own collection to curate the first significant exhibition of Bauhaus ideas and work in Australia, "The Bauhaus - Aspects and Influences", at Gallery A in Melbourne (July–August 1961). Included were Hirschfeld Mack's own works and colour-coded musical instruments and proof prints he had made for other Bauhaus artists as well as numbers of works given to him during his period at the Bauhaus. After Hirschfeld Mack's death, Gallery A held a commemorative exhibition of his watercolours. Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack died on 7 January 1965 at Allambie Heights, a suburb of Sydney.

Exhibitions

* Work represented in ''Bauhaus: 1919-1925'' MOMA New York 1938 * University of Melbourne, 1946 *Solo exhibition Peter Bray Gallery, 435 Bourke St., Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 1953 *Memorial exhibition at University Gallery Melbourne, 1981 *''The Great Australian Art Exhibition 1788-1988'' Art Gallery of South Australia, 1988 * ''Bauhaus Centenary: Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack'', Feb 23, 2019–May 26, 2019 Geelong Gallery, 55 Little Malop Street, Geelon

Publications

He produced an explanatory text of the Farbenlichtspiele in 1923, also an article, "Reflected-Light Compositions…" (1925) In retirement in 1963 he published ''The Bauhaus: An Introductory Survey''.

The Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack Collection

Th
Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack Collection
was presented Melbourne University in 1971 and 1980 by Hirschfeld Mack's widow, Olive Hirschfeld. The collection contains over six hundred works by Hirschfeld Mack, including almost three hundred drawings, over two hundred prints, ninety-one watercolours and sixty-nine paintings. In addition the University of Melbourne Archives houses material including correspondence, teaching aids, drawings, photographs and slides. Olive Hirschfeld also donated a collection of her late husband's paintings, prints and drawings to the

National Gallery of Australia The National Gallery of Australia (NGA), formerly the Australian National Gallery, is the national art museum of Australia as well as one of the largest art museums in Australia, holding more than 166,000 works of art. Located in Canberra in th ...

, and a number of his works, many from his internment at nearby Tatura, can be found at the Geelong and Shepparton Regional Art Galleries.

The Hirschfeld-Mack Professorship in Germany and Australia

In 2008, the Institute of English Philology at the Free University of Berlin (Institut für Englische Philologie der Freien Universität Berlin (FU)) set up a Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack Visiting Chair of Australian StudiesFreie Universität Berlin. Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack Gastlehrstuhl für Australienstudien
(in English). Retrieved 18 January 2018 The professorship is named after Hirschfeld-Mack, "to stress the interdisciplinary nature of its teachers, their commitment to the role of culture in the public sphere, and the central transcultural German-Australian aspect of the project." The chair is funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the Australian Embassy in Berlin. Hirschfeld-Mack professors in Berlin included: Dr.

Stephen Muecke Stephen Muecke BA (Hons, Monash), Mes.L (Paris), PhD (UWA) FAHA is Emeritus Professor of Ethnography at the University of New South Wales, Australia and Adjunct Professor at the Nulungu Institute, University of Notre Dame, Broome. He studied l ...

, Professor of Cultural Studies at the

University of Technology Sydney The University of Technology Sydney (UTS) is a public research university located in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Although its origins are said to trace back to the 1830s, the university was founded in its current form in 1988. As of 2021 ...

; Dr. Philip Mead, Professor of Australian Literature at the

University of Western Australia The University of Western Australia (UWA) is a public research university in the Australian state of Western Australia. The university's main campus is in Perth, the state capital, with a secondary campus in Albany and various other facilitie ...

; Dr. Devleena Ghosh, Associate Professor in Arts and Sciences at the University of Technology Sydney; Dr. Lynn McCredden, Professor of Literary Studies at

Deakin University Deakin University is a public university in Victoria, Australia. Founded in 1974, the university was named after Alfred Deakin, the second Prime Minister of Australia. Its main campuses are in Melbourne's Burwood suburb, Geelong Waurn Ponds, ...

; Dr. Simon During, Australian Professorial Fellow at the

University of Queensland , mottoeng = By means of knowledge and hard work , established = , endowment = A$224.3 million , budget = A$2.1 billion , type = Public research university , chancellor = Peter Varghese , vice_chancellor = Deborah Terry , city = B ...

; Dr.

Anna Haebich Anna Elizabeth Haebich, ( ; born 18 December 1949) is an Australian writer, historian and academic. Career Haebich is a John Curtin Distinguished Professor and Senior Research Fellow in the Faculty of Humanities at Curtin University. She wa ...

, Distinguished Professor of

Human Rights Human rights are moral principles or normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for certain standards of hu ...

Education at Curtin University; Dr. Peter Otto, Professor of English and Theatre at the

;Dr. Chandani Lokuge, Associate Professor in

Creative Writing Creative writing is any writing that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, or technical forms of literature, typically identified by an emphasis on narrative craft, character development, and the use of literary ...

Monash University Monash University () is a public research university based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Named for prominent World War I general Sir John Monash, it was founded in 1958 and is the second oldest university in the state. The university h ...

; Dr. Verity Burgmann, Professor of

Political Science Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and la ...

at the University of Melbourne; and Dr. Andrew Milner, Professor of English and

Comparative Literature Comparative literature is an academic field dealing with the study of literature and cultural expression across linguistic, national, geographic, and disciplinary boundaries. Comparative literature "performs a role similar to that of the study ...

at Monash University. In 2010 DAAD established, in the reverse direction, a Hirschfeld-Mack Visiting Chair for German Studies at the German Department at the University of Western Australia. Through this reciprocal visiting professor program the exchange between the Australian and German higher education system is intensified. The first Hirschfeld-Mack professors in Perth were the Germanists Dr. Matthias N. Lorenz,

University of Bielefeld Bielefeld University (german: Universität Bielefeld) is a university in Bielefeld, Germany. Founded in 1969, it is one of the country's newer universities, and considers itself a "reform" university, following a different style of organization a ...

(2010), and Prof. Dr. Sven Kramer,

University of Lüneburg A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, t ...

(2011).

References

External links

Bauhaus100.Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mack, Ludwig Hirschfeld 1893 births 1965 deaths Australian painters 20th-century German painters 20th-century German male artists German male painters People educated at the Musterschule Bauhaus alumni Refugees in Australia Australian printmakers German printmakers 20th-century printmakers German emigrants to Australia German people of Jewish descent 20th-century German printmakers People interned during World War II Geelong Grammar School