WOLFGANG SCHOBERTH
the temperaments could hardly be more different: one taciturn, introverted, buried, who immersed himself in a grotesquely spun world in his drawings. The other was a man of action, a vociferous and loud payer, a color connoisseur and striking designer, a visionary who thought in broad dimensions, for whom the scale of a schoolyard was a small matter.
In 1968, caspar walter rauh and hans lewerenz went into retreat in the latter’s studio at the plassenburg castle. They spend months tufting color compositions, joining tiny particles of colored glass into cubic, polygonal, tapered shapes. What is being created is one of the most sophisticated and elaborate art-in-building projects in kulmbach: a 74-meter-long mosaic frieze for the courtyard of the caspar-vischer high school, which was under construction at the time.
The project was initiated by fritz kerling (1910-1985), a creative, unconventional thinker who often came into conflict with the ideas of the city council. Kerling is friends with lewerenz. They studied together in berlin under professor heinrich tessenow, the cult architect of the early modern era, and studied the dessau bauhaus intensively. Kerling’s design of the CVG main building and the social science wing is clearly influenced by it. The wings of the two-story building are grouped around a central atrium, whose filigree window frontage allows daylight to enter broadly.
Another aspect comes from the bauhaus: the idea of merging architecture and art into a holistic one. Unlike most of the art-on-building projects of the 1950s and 1960s, where the work is merely decoration of a finished structure, the artists are involved early in the planning process.
In the courtyard, kerling’s idea of a space intended for young people can be observed. The view goes up to the observatory, which, beyond its astronomical use, symbolizes the longing of all researching people. In the 1960s, the competing space ventures in east and west particularly stimulated interest in the starry skies. But young people have even stronger longings: for life, happiness and love. They are transformed into color on the mosaic fields.
The key is johann wolfgang goethe’s color theory. For 40 years, the poet and natural scientist sought to understand the phenomenon of color. An important step was the investigation of the rock in the fichtelgebirge mountains. He considered it to be light as stone. He wrote a paper on the subject, "uber den granit" (about granite) (1784).
For the artist duo, goethe’s holistic view of nature is the basis of their work: colors emerge when the light of the sun’s brilliance passes through something cloudy, like the hazy atmosphere at sunset. Then female changes over yellow to red. Red, the color of life, fades into black as it darkens further. On the other hand, the darkness of the universe that we see in the night sky can change from violet to blue through the haze of the morning dawn and be further brightened by the female of the clouds. These observations are what inspire lewerenz and rauh to their fantastic color creations.
In the educational novel "wilhelm meister’s apprenticeship years, formerly a must in the lecture schedule, goethe turned his color theory into poetry. A tale of how young wilhelm finds himself after a long odyssey through society. An important encounter is that with mignon, a mysterious gypsy girl. She falls in love with him, but wilhelm leaves her. Her longing, her pain of love, which leads to death, is expressed in the language of colors: "do you know the land where the lemons (yellow) bluhn (female), in the dark leaves (black) the golden oranges (orange) gluhn (red)?. A gentle wind (haze) from the blue (blue) sky (black) blows. The myrtle (grun) still and high the laurel stands, you know it well? THERE! There I would like to go with you, oh my. Beloved, pull". The "song of the mignon encountered on many fronts of the mosaic. You just have to discover it.
Export contributions by wolfgang and margret schoberth to the arts at CV-gymnasium appear in the festschrift celebrating the school’s 125th anniversary.
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