Photographs by Thomas Altmann

With an open mind and expertise regarding the actors and idea generators of the Bauhaus, Thomas Altmann juxtaposes his architectural photographs with selected quotes from various works by the writer Paul Scheerbart.

Paul Scheerbart (1863–1915) wrote moon and hippopotamus novels, astral novellas, and cat poetry. He was a pacifist, enjoyed drinking beer, lived on scraped herring on bread due to lack of money, built a perpetual motion machine, and wrote to Erich Mühsam: "Perpeh is finished; it just doesn't move yet."

Above all, Paul Scheerbart, speaking modestly of paradisiacal suns, Gothic enthusiasm, and the natural philosophy of Gustav Theodor Fechner, built sunlit palaces with emerald domes and opal towers. He constructed twinkling castles, crystal cathedrals, and star towers; he built floating, suspended, and mobile architectures; he cultivated the earth, the stars, and the seabed; and increasingly, he erected colored glass palaces atop iron frameworks as crystalline symbols of the future. In his architectural fantasies, he elevated the architect to the role of world builder, one who, together with nature, was to create a supernatural realm on the path to his own stellar development.

Scheerbart influenced the circle around the architect Bruno Taut, the builders in the "Workers' Council for Art" and the world builders of the visionary association "The Glass Chain", associations to which Walter Gropius actively or passively belonged.