Christiane Wachsmann "This school is also a piece of democracy" – Gert Kalow and the HfG

Portrait Kalow
The writer Gert Kalow at the HfG, 1959. HfG Archive. Photo: Wolfgang Siol

I met Gert Kalow at the beginning of June 1991. At that time I interviewed him for my essay on the Information Department at the Hochschule für Gestaltung, which was to appear in our catalogue on photography at the HfG.1 Our conversation was not long, and I very much hoped to be able to continue it on another occasion, to learn more about his concept of the Information Department – but when the exhibition opened a few weeks later, Gert Kalow had died.

In 1997, I handed over the management of the HfG archive and devoted myself to bringing up our daughters and writing literary texts. I attended seminars organised by the Förderkreis Deutscher Schriftsteller in Baden-Württemberg – [Support Circle of German Writers in Baden-Württemberg] Gert Kalow was one of its founding members – and founded my own writing workshop at the Ulm adult education centre. Writing is a craft that can be learnt: Teaching this was one of Kalow's central concerns. During my editorial traineeship at the a Stuttgart newspaper, I myself had enjoyed such practical training.

When I returned to the HfG archive in 2008, I found almost two metres of files from Gert Kalow's estate: Documents from his time at the HfG. His widow Kirsten Kalow had sent them to Ulm in 2004 when she vacated their flat in the old Heidelberg Brückentor.

Thanks to the funding of inventory measures by the state of Baden-Württemberg, I was able to process this estate as part of my work in the HfG archive at the beginning of 2014 to make it accessible to academic research.

The research for this article, the reading of Kalow's books and texts, is for me like a continuation of the conversation that Gert Kalow and I were no longer able to have 25 years ago. Two aspects were particularly close to my heart: his concept for teaching in the Information Department, with which Kalow broke new ground compared to traditional higher education in the humanities, and his understanding of democracy. As chairman of the rector's council of the HfG (1960-61) and during its crisis of 1962/63, he tried in vain to persuade the conflicting parties at the HfG to compromise. He clashed especially with Otl Aicher, with whom he shared a basic anti-fascist attitude and an interest in the Information Department – but their ideas about how to achieve ones goals in the new, democratic world of the young Federal Republic of Germany were too different.

 

Gert Kalow was born in Cottbus in 1921. His father was a teacher and his son attended a humanistic grammar school. Gert Kalow probably began playing the piano at an early age and showed some talent: In the last two years before his A-levels, he received lessons at the Berlin Conservatory. His elective subject in the Abitur [A-levels] in March 1939 was also music; however, Kalow then chose Protestant theology as his subject of study.2 In his CV from 1957, with which he applied to work at the HfG, Kalow also states: "February '34. Hitler Youth (through forced incorporation of the youth group I previously belonged to). November '37. Resigned from the Hitler Youth. No membership of any political organisation since then." 3

Before Kalow could begin his studies, he had to complete the "Reich Labour Service" [Reichsarbeitsdienst]. He began studying in Jena at the beginning of November 1939 – and was drafted into the Wehrmacht just one month later. Kalow spent the years between the ages of 19 and 26 in the war and as a prisoner of war.

He took part in the French campaign and was deployed in the construction of the "Atlantic Wall". In 1944, a military court sentenced him to three weeks in prison "for failing to report anti-fascist subordinates". Kalow spent the last months of the war as "commander of a company on the invasion front" in France, where he was taken prisoner in 1945.4 He was released two years later.

He returned from the war with a sincere desire to face up to the Nazi past and draw conclusions for his emerging civilian life from the events of the past.

 

"I had come to Heidelberg from French captivity as a prisoner of war in August 1947. (…) With a rucksack and a cardboard box containing all my belongings, I arrived in Heidelberg in a rotten Wehrmacht uniform. After I had found emergency accommodation in a garret in Sandgasse, I turned to Jaspers (…) During my imprisonment I had written a long manuscript by hand on the (then hotly debated) question of whether Nietzsche had been a 'spiritual forerunner of Hitler'. I sent it with a short letter to Karl Jaspers. (…) Personal contact with Jaspers was maintained from then on." 5

Unlike Otl Aicher, who was a year younger, Kalow now focussed on the question of responsibility and the reasons for the catastrophe of National Socialism. Although he was only 18 when the war began, he felt complicit. "Hitler seemed like a saviour to many because he promised to possess what everyone lacked (…) His magical source of power was that he himself believed in his game. How gladly we joined in!" writes Kalow in his essay "Order and Lies", written in 1949 directly after his return from captivity as a prisoner of war 6.

Unlike Kalow or the children of the Scholl family, Aicher, on the other hand, had already resisted any appropriation by the Hitler Youth as a teenager.7 He consistently and uncompromisingly resisted the encroachments of the state. During the war, he had fought his way through as a simple soldier and eventually deserted.8 After his return to Ulm, which was occupied by the Americans, he looked to the future, organised lectures and became involved in the founding of the Ulm adult education centre. Freed from the pressure to conform to fascist society, Aicher set about realising his ideas for a democratic society.

"Can Germany become a democracy?" is the title of a programmatic text from 1948, of which Aicher was one of the authors – and the answer that immediately followed is the proposal to found a "new school" in which the necessary awareness for democratic behaviour could grow.9

 

Gert Kalow also found his place in society during this time. Thanks to Jaspers' intercession, he is admitted to Heidelberg University. He financed his studies himself, "until the currency reform by donating blood, then through various jobs: Insurance agent, tutor, advertiser, etc." 10 In 1950 he began to publish, first in newspapers and magazines, then also on the radio. His first book contribution in an anthology was reviewed in the FAZ [editor's note: a big German newspaper from Frankfurt] in 1954 as a "masterpiece" by a previously unknown author. "From then on, I am a freelance writer; the dissertation I had started (on Heidegger's language) is abandoned. Joined the Writers' Association. His first book ('Zwischen Christentum und Ideologie' [Between Christianity and Ideology]) is published in early '56." 11

Kalow strives forwards and, like Aicher, is committed to democracy as a form of government – but at the same time he looks back. Again and again, he deals with the question of his own guilt, how the Third Reich could come about and what consequences should be drawn from it for the life of the individual. In his introductory essay to "Between Christianity and Ideology" 12, Kalow complains that "ten years after Hitler (…) today's world" has learnt nothing "from that historical example." 13 "We pretend to be spiritually pious, but around us, in our relationships with fellow human beings and fellow things, dissipation abounds (…) We cannot manage without repression and suppression." 14

Kalow opposes any kind of ideology, any projection of life into a utopian, paradisiacal form of society. One cannot assume that humans are good: good and evil are within them. Ideologies, "like all pseudo-religions since time immemorial, attempt to segregate good and evil. They are based on the utopian assumption of possible human perfection, on the belief that the eternal hole, the eternal minus of our moral balance sheets could be stopped up." 15

 

Gert Kalow teaching at the HfG, 1959. HfG Archive, Depositum Beck, photo: Peter Beck

Ideas would become commodities that are passed on without reflection and have nothing to do with the individual's ability to cope with life and the order that emanates from him. Christianity appears as a way out in the sense that Kalow refers to Christ himself: all worldly rule should be surrendered and one should concentrate only on God, on love and truth. Every individual should constantly rethink themselves in order to overcome the evil within themselves. In doing so, they must endure the emptiness caused by the absence of god, supported by love.

In this book, Kalow opposes the tendency in the young Federal Republic of Germany to let the past rest and turn its attention to day-to-day business. He calls on each individual to reflect, to come to terms with the evil within themselves and to overcome it. One of Kalow's key strengths is already evident in this book: He was able to do justice to each individual voice – Lautréaumont, Weil, Musil and Auden – allowing their statements to exist side by side and challenging the reader to form their own thoughts and come to their own conclusions.

 

In 1956, Gert Kalow and his wife at the time, Marianne Kalow, née Bürgel, moved into the old bridge gate in Heidelberg. The architect Rudolf Steinberg, according to Kalow "both an art historian and a staunch anti-Nazi" 16, had been commissioned to rebuild the destroyed bridge after the war and used this opportunity to convert the Brückentor into a flat, which he initially moved into himself. By the end of the 1940s, it had already become "a secret 'cultural centre' of Heidelberg". When Steinbach accepted a call to Aachen Technical University in the early 1950s, he left the flat to the young writer Gert Kalow – on the condition that he continued to run the Brückentor as a cultural centre.17

Kalow's brother-in-law Ulrich Bürgel and his wife Gunhild Bürgel were also studying in Heidelberg at the time. They well remember the lively exchange between musicians, painters, thinkers and poets: "They often came after events in Frankfurt or Mannheim and met in the tower."

There were wonderful parties, there were always wine crates around. Sausages were served for dinner, which were heated as required in a big water kettle. They celebrated carnival – for three days. The actors from the Zimmertheater met up, but also many intellectuals: Nikolaus Sombart, Hanno Kesting, Erwin Wickert (Ulrich Wickert's father). Many Heidelberg professors came: Reinhart Kossellek, Alexander Mitscherlich, Walter Bräutigam and Viktor von Weizsäcker, Jürgen Habermas, plus the political scientist Iring Fetscher and the editor of the Frankfurter Hefte Eugen Kogon. Erich Fried was almost a permanent guest, and there were people from the PEN Club and Gruppe 47.18

In his review, Kalow himself mentions Heinrich Böll, Hans-Magnus Enzensberger, Peter Rühmkorf, Helmut Heissenbüttel, Ernst Bloch, Jürgen Habermas, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hilde Domin and Karl Jaspers as guests.19

 

Despite all the joie de vivre, the discussions were always serious and intense, recalls Ulrich Bürgel. They dealt with the era of National Socialism and considered how society could be better organised.

During these years, Kalow made a name for himself as a freelance journalist. He wrote for the feature pages of the FAZ, the Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung, the Heidelberger Tageblatt and the Frankfurter Rundschau, worked for numerous radio stations, including SWF, WDR, HR and Radio Bremen, and wrote articles for the Frankfurter Hefte, Texte und Zeichen and numerous other magazines, among others.20

When he was working, Kalow sat at the top of the tower and wrote. According to the Bürgels, when the bell rang, his wife tried to prevent him from noticing and coming down, because then the work would stop. Kalow was very hospitable: nobody was sent away.

He had a large table that he could fold up after securing all the sheets on it with metal brackets. When Kalow was writing, everything was always done "in the last 10 minutes". When he was writing a big article, people from the FAZ would call every quarter of an hour to see if he was finished. Gert Kalow was still writing while Marianne Kalow was already passing on the text over the phone.

The financial situation was always difficult. There weren't always enough coins for the electricity machine in the tower. Kalow often went to the "commission woman" in Alt Heidelberg, where you could sell all kinds of junk, and sold what he could spare or what he received as a gift and didn't want to use. Marianne Kalow, who had studied foreign languages, worked for a while at "Amt Blank", the predecessor of the Federal Ministry of Defence. She was responsible for translating technical texts – and was therefore a person who kept secrets. That's why the telephone was tapped: when you picked up, there was a characteristic clacking sound when someone joined in.

According to the Bürgels, life in the tower was very strenuous.

When the Kalows moved into one of the lecturers' studios on Ulm's Kuhberg in January 1960, they did not give up their Heidelberg home. Gert Kalow's commitment to the HfG opened up new opportunities for him in two respects: As a lecturer, he could realize his ideas of practice-oriented teaching – and in the political self-administration of the university, a piece of democracy.

 

Gert Kalow, Work plan for the Information Department (draft), 1957

Teaching at the HfG: Language as a subject

In October 1957, Gert Kalow came to Ulm for the first time to teach the subject "Texting" 21 On 22 September, he had sent Tomás Maldonado a "work plan for the third semester (Oct. – Dec.) 1957 Information Department". Kalow's enthusiasm for the new task is expressed in the accompanying letter: "I am therefore sending you a draft work plan for the entire Information Department. Will it be agreeable for you? Of course, this is only an outline. Needless to say, that changes are possible if desired. The decisive factor is that we do serious, concrete and at the same time enthusiastic work, that we succeed in teaching the students to enjoy expression. I think we will achieve that." 22

Kalow not only teaches the (four in total) students in the Information Department throughout this year, but also gives an "Introduction to Publishing/Journalism [Publizistik]" for the basic course. In an "experience report to the rector's board" in December 1957, he reports on introductory lectures on language theory, several "carefully practised text studies" 23, and at the end of the academic year he explains: "the information department completed a radio play on 11 June 1958." 24

Kalow's book "Poetry is Message" [Poesie ist Nachricht], which he expressly dedicated to his former students in Ulm, provides information about the content of his lectures. Particularly interesting is the text "Music and Language" [Musik und Sprache], in which Kalow discusses language in radio plays.25

In a "report on the work of the Information Department 1960/61",26 he vividly describes his way of teaching: "As in previous years, I began each exercise by reading and critically discussing selected texts (Kraus, Pound, Kerr, Walser, etc.). This was followed by detailed discussions on technical problems related to the respective text, for example: The sequence of tenses in German, overtones and fields of meaning, the individual word genres and their inherent laws, the flashback and other tricks of storytelling.

In the previous year, we had analysed Dylan Thomas' radio play 'Under Milk Wood' down to the last corner (with a graphic recording of the entire process). This analytical work was continued, somewhat less excessively, this year (…) The purpose of this task: not 'literary business' (which is none of our concern), but training in the ability to recognise forms, linguistic building systems.

In between, as a finger exercise, paper presentations and glosses were practised (…). The main project of the department's work last year was the manuscript for a radio feature on 'The Party; Forms of Today's Socialising'. The topic was chosen from many possible subjects (after consultation with Radio Frankfurt), the literature was gone through together and each student was given a section to work on. The most instructive part was putting together the huge amount of material into a comprehensibly structured text. Despite voluntary Sunday and night work, the manuscript was not completed by 30 June 61. The finalisation will take place in October." 26

The feature "The Party" by the authors Dolf Sass, Alf Poss and Erdmann Wingert was finally broadcast by Hessischer Rundfunk in 1962.27

 

Caricature by Richard Bairstow, output 10 (carnival edition), 1962. From left to right: Rectorate secretary Johanna Rösner (seated), Gert Kalow, Erdmann Wingert, Walther Eichenberger, Ute von Seydlitz, Christian Staub

 

In his teaching, Kalow follows the Anglo-Saxon model of creative writing, a term that was still largely unknown in Germany at the time.28 In his essay on H. W. Auden in Christianity and Ideology [Christentum und Ideologie], he points to a "general, highly recommendable trend in American literary life": "One wishes that our European universities would likewise decide to appoint language artists themselves to their chairs of German, Romance, English, etc., instead of only philologists." 29

In Europe, literary writing was viewed more from the perspective of genius: as a talent that is only bestowed on a few and is present at the first attempt. Kalow, on the other hand, emphasises the craft aspect: "You can learn to write, just as you can learn to draw nudes or compose," he said in an interview with the author in 1991.30

Kalow also follows this approach at the HfG. In free exercises, for example, students are given the task of characterising a person through the language the person uses or they have to describe a process in detail. "The exercises were then read out in the seminar, and the lecturer and fellow students then decided whether it was comprehensible. Whether the message was received. If not, they carefully considered why not." 31

Kalow was not the only one to use this method during this period. In the most famous writers' group of the time, Gruppe 47, textual criticism was also at the centre of the meetings – only there was one decisive difference: the "criticism in Gruppe 47, which was so harsh and never considerate" 32 was used to judge the texts of colleagues. In the protected space of the classroom at the Ulm school, however, the focus was on technical work. The texts were based on concrete tasks. They were written and discussed for the purpose of practice. It was explicitly not about writing brilliant texts and facing – potentially devastating – criticism. It was about the personal development of the students and gave them the opportunity to develop their own profile and style through such writing experiences.

Under the title "Language as a 'subject'?" [Sprache als „Fach“], Kalow published an article in 1962 in "output", the HfG's student magazine, in which he expanded on this aspect.33 Starting with the question: "Do we need writing schools?", he first draws a parallel with other arts: "But don't we have conservatories with masterclasses for composition, art academies with lessons in graphics, painting, sculpture?" 34 and then calls not only for a more solid education for the next generation of journalists, but also "a better language education (…) for everyone".35

"In the upper classes there is the indispensable German essay, but higher language teaching is almost completely lacking. Expression exercises in the smallest and largest forms, word-by-word analyses of foreign texts, experimental penetration into the secrets of syntax, etc., in short: concrete instructions for the creative use of language are missing. (…) Of course, German teachers are not or only indirectly to blame for this. They pass on what they have received. (…) The great physicists sit in our chairs of physics, the philosophers in our chairs of philosophy, the architects in our chairs of architecture. The chairs of German literature are occupied exclusively by historians." 36

Gert Kalow received confirmation of these ideas from Peter Ladiges, head of the NDR [Northern German Radio] radio drama department: "I often have to think about your little essay on the possibility of learning to write or not. In the last three weeks I have had a batch of over twenty original English television plays to judge. So you can see the extent to which pure writing technique can be learnt. Almost all of these people come from the BBC school and can simply do it. And that's what we need today. Good craftsmen who can be given a theme or a few well-rounded characters and then they turn it into a TV play. Of course, that has nothing to do with art. But the concept of art has not only ruined literature in Germany, but much more. (…) What use are the best intentions if they do not find expression or are not adequate to the technical means?" 37

In order to give the Information Department more weight and professional equipment, Kalow set up a recording studio at the HfG – a "word workshop" to complement the other HfG workshops.38 Here, students were to learn how to produce their own radio plays and radio programmes.

Even in the early programmes for a "Geschwister-Scholl-Hochschule", the fields of radio, television and film had been given equal status alongside other subjects. While film established its own department at the HfG in the early 1960s, radio remained a stepchild – setting up a complete studio for learning purposes initially seemed too costly. Kalow, with his good connections to the West German radio stations, now succeeded in obtaining the necessary equipment donations and ensuring their professional installation.39

Kalow's ideas for teaching writing were ahead of his time. He pointed a way in which the Information Department of the HfG could indeed have developed and sharpened its own profile. In September 1963, he hopes that the inauguration of the recording studio will be a "new start for the Information Department" 40 – but that did not happen. The personal differences between Kalow and the school management under the new rector Otl Aicher were too strong.

 

Kalow's involvement to the HfG management

In January 1960, Gert Kalow was given a permanent position as a lecturer in the Information Department and became its head. He soon begins to become involved in the self-administration of the school. For him, the legacy of the Scholl siblings is synonymous with the task of organising a democratic community: "The Scholl siblings … This school is also a piece of democracy, or it wants to become one", this note can be found in his estate.41 In June 1960, Kalow is elected chairman of a rectorate committee, whose other members are Horst Rittel and Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart.

"From the very beginning, the aim of my rectorate was to reduce the largely pointless tensions within the HfG, which lead to a useless waste of energy," Kalow wrote to Walter Zeischegg in July 1961, in whom he believed he had found an ally for a short time.42

The first major crisis at the Ulm school had been the conflict with Max Bill. When he left the school in 1956, a committee of rectors had taken over the management, and in the years that followed, the school seemed to stabilise – even if there were repeated upheavals and reorientations, such as in March 1958, when Max Bense left the HfG and thus both the teaching of the Information Department and the entire "general education" area at the HfG had to be reorganised.

A number of new lecturers now came to Ulm, including the sociologist Hanno Kesting, the mathematician Horst Rittel and the photographer Christian Staub. Gert Kalow and Bernd Rübenach from Südwestfunk [Southern German Radio] were the main lecturers in the Information Department this year. They took over the practical part of Bense's lessons under the heading "Texting". The subjects of methodology and information theory were the responsibility of Horst Rittel. In June 1959, Rittel presented a concept for a new "Planning and Organisation" department to the "small convent" of the HfG [Kleiner Konvent, one of the self-administration boards].43 Already during this meeting, initial discontent arose: "Leowald/Maldonado showed only limited enthusiasm for these expansion plans", noted Kalow.44

What followed was a three-year power struggle over the leadership of the HfG.45 The question was whether the theoretical subjects should have equal status with the design subjects at the HfG or whether the design subjects should be given priority, while science and technology should only be aids to the designer.

However, the dividing lines were not between scientists and designers, but between long-established and newly appointed lecturers – and not even on a disciplinary level. Gert Kalow, for example, the head and only permanent lecturer in the Information Department, was not a proven theorist. His teaching and his commitment to the recording studio testify to his endeavours to give his students practical training for their future careers. The same applies to the photographer Christian Staub, who left the HfG in 1963, and to Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart, who died in 1962.

Kalow addressed this clearly in a report from June 1962. "Frankly, all these disputes, which are very disruptive to the work of the school (…), are the struggle of the 'old lecturers' for their privilege over all colleagues who joined later (…). The HfG still lacks a firm internal structure, a canon of rules that is recognised as inviolable by all those involved, lecturers and students alike." The HfG was still "predominantly a mere idea or 'ingenious improvisation'." 46

Kalow points out that one cannot appoint highly qualified lecturers on the one hand, but then deny them a full say in the management of the university. This has led to many new appointees leaving "after a short time with bitterness".

"There is also the even more reprehensible, and in its idealism truly terrorising idea that everything and anything presented by lecturers in Ulm must be 'design-related'. If you realise, for example, that Ulm students need to hear about sociology, (…) then the best sociology lecturer available is the right man. If you are looking for the most 'design-orientated' sociologist, you will find a fool. The students have to establish the relationship between theoretical matter and practical work in their own heads."

The HfG, Kalow notes, suffers from "an idealistic over-demanding of itself". It was based on the idea "that the Ulm School, without the constraint of any rules, should actually function on the basis of a close bond of friendship." 47

The school had initially been created and developed within the small circle of friends in Ulm around Inge Scholl and Otl Aicher. Here, people who had seen themselves as dissidents threatened by National Socialism and war came together. In the first setup office on Hirschstraße, they worked as a sworn community, with the goal of inventing a new school, a new society. However, they did not act without, but according to their own – unspoken – rules. Max Bill was already an alien element in this structure; not only did many students leave the school with him, but also a number of lecturers.

With the new appointments in 1958, a number of "strangers" came to the HfG. They were all enthusiastic about the school's ideas, but each brought their own interpretations and ideas with them. As the school grew, the lack of a binding school constitution for everyone became increasingly apparent (until December 1962 there had only been a provisional one).48

Gert Kalow himself felt a strong sense of belonging to the community of anti-fascists and democrats that had initially come together in Ulm around the adult education centre. The ideas formulated in the early programmes of the Geschwister-Scholl-School appealed not only to him and many lecturers who came to the Ulm school, but above all to the students. For a long time, Kalow refused to recognise that this ideal of a democratically constituted, cosmopolitan school could not be realised in Ulm – this is the only way to understand his tireless attempts to reduce the disputes to a tolerable level and to help shape the future fate of the school in a democratic process.

In the crisis year of 1962, the physical distance was a further difficulty for him: through the mediation of Hannah Ahrendt, Gert Kalow had received a scholarship for one year from the Rockefeller Foundation in October 1961. He then resigned as chairman of the rectorate, took a leave of absence as an Information Department lecturer and retreated to Heidelberg to write a series of essays on the subject of dealing with the National Socialist past.49 Kalow feverishly searches for a replacement to teach in the Information Department during this time – and encounters resistance of various kinds: on the one hand, Otl Aicher's reluctance to continue working with Kalow or one of his confidants, such as the sociologist Harry Pross,50 on the other hand, there are proposals from the HfG's lecturers to dissolve the department altogether.

"At the meeting of the permanent lecturers on 30.4.62, colleague Zeischegg spoke of cancelling the Information Department," notes Kalow. "Only afterwards did I hear the same from Risler. That such a plan is even considered without saying a single word to me is a style, a way of dealing with people, colleagues, (…) that is mean and undignified and which I – no matter how many other lecturers before me have swallowed it – will not put up with under any circumstances." 51

The obvious reason for such a request is, of course, the vanishingly small number of Information students. Kalow had always resisted advertising the department too much as long as the sound studio was not operational: "We could hardly advertise a department for which there were no concrete working possibilities at the HfG," he writes in June 1962.52

At this point, he was still confident that he would be able to realise his plans. He planned to inaugurate the recording studio in March 1963, then in October.

In the meantime, however, the crisis at the HfG had reached a new peak: a highly polemical article about the Ulm School published by the weekly magazine Der Spiegel in March 1963 brought the smouldering conflicts to the public's attention. Gert Kalow is quoted several times in the text, including statement: "The 'Ulm style', which characterises the climate within the school, consists of unfriendliness, resentment, coldness, mutual hatred and an inability to talk to each other." 53

Kalow appears here in the role of the accuser, who turns to the public in his powerlessness. Although this approach became almost common in the last years of the HfG's existence, it is surprising that a person of integrity, a loyal HfG lecturer and experienced journalist like Kalow should have resorted to such means. In fact, these quotes come from a letter dated December 1962, which Kalow had sent to the Chairman of the GSS [the Scholl Siblings Foundation, the legal owner/provider of the school], Thorwald Risler, the members of the GSS Executive Board and the Chairman of the GSS Board of Directors. The print-ready statements with which Kalow is quoted in Der Spiegel were made available to the responsible editor through an obvious indiscretion by one of the participants.54

Gert Kalow was not only hit hard by the Spiegel reporter's actions, but above all by the reaction of his Ulm colleagues: Otl Aicher called on him to leave the HfG,55 Herbert Lindinger and Claude Schnaidt accused him and others – lecturers and students alike – of a "press campaign" against the school in a letter pinned to the notice-board.56 Kalow, always keen to strike a balance, was himself caught between the fronts. And defended himself to the best of his ability. In a detailed letter to Aicher, he writes: "Especially now, after the Spiegel affair, the conclusion I have to draw can in no way be that I withdraw silently, but only that I work with all my strength to eliminate the mistakes I see (…) Are you sure that I wouldn't have just as many reasons to ask you to leave the HfG as you thought you had against me (…)?" 57

Kalow refers here – as in other letters – to the original programme of the HfG as laid down in the constitution of the Geschwister Scholl Foundation, for which Aicher and Scholl "received the approval of important personalities and public funds", and demands its fulfilment. He sees himself as an advocate of a democratic community based on loyalty and mutual respect and refers to the example set by the Scholl siblings. Kalow's analyses of the events at the school are often accurate, his calls for fairness justified, but this does not give him the power to enforce his ideas: With the help of the advisory board of the Geschwister Scholl Foundation, to which a number of Aicher's close confidants from the founding period of the HfG belonged, Aicher manages to implement a constitution largely determined by his ideas.58

Even in April 1964, just a few months before his own final departure from the Ulm school, Kalow complained to Aicher: "If the public inauguration of the recording studio had not been repeatedly prevented or postponed since January '63, we would have long since had plenty of student applications for this department." 59

In the following, Kalow proposes another date for the recording studio inauguration and also makes suggestions for a potential successor as head of the Information Department. The letter is written in a friendly, sober tone and reflects Kalow's unreserved interest in the HfG and especially its information branch: "We have always agreed on the content, the programme of this department, Mr Aicher. After all, it was your idea. Such a department, in which information theory and language practice complement and interpenetrate each other, is still extremely important. (…) There is pioneering work to be done here, and the HfG would be the right place." 60

 

Recording studio of the Information Department, 1967. HfG archive. Photo: Hartwig Koppermann

After the HfG

In July 1963, Gert Kalow secured a permanent position at Hessischer Rundfunk as head of the Literature Department. He continues to teach as a guest lecturer at the HfG until September 1964, during which time the remaining students in the Information Department were already attending classes in the Visual Communication and Film Departments. A successor to Kalow as head of the Information Department could not be found – despite renewed joint efforts of Aicher and Kalow. Hans Magnus Enzensberger had already advised Kalow around 1962 to finally "break away from this muddled business" 61 and politely declined when Aicher invited him back to Ulm for a longer stay in 1963.62 Also under discussion were Uwe Johnson, Peter Rühmkorf, Walter Jens, Wolfgang Hildesheimer and Jean Améry – Otl Aicher also drew on his own connections to these writers and to Gruppe 47 in these considerations.63 His interest in rebuilding the department remained unbroken; in his opinion, it would be "closely linked to a revised programme". The previous concept, Aicher wrote to Gert Kalow in May 1964, was "too arts and crafts-like without a scientific dimension"; he suggested a "substructure based on today's information sciences." 64

Aicher thus not only discredits Kalow's work as head and lecturer of the Information Department of the previous years as "arts and crafts" (a term that had an almost insulting connotation at the HfG), but once again calls for the spirits he had driven away – in particular Horst Rittel, who left the HfG in anger in 1963 and whose subject was precisely the information sciences now demanded – and he confirms Kalow's assessment of the HfG, which as an institution was "predominantly a mere idea or 'ingenious improvisation'".65

In May 1965, Kalow became head of the "Abendstudio/Feature" department at Hessischer Rundfunk, and in 1967 his book "Hitler – Das gesamtdeutsche Trauma" [Hitler – The All-German Trauma], which he had written during his Rockefeller Fellowship, was published. He publishes further books, some of them in collaboration with Alexander Mitscherlich 66, as well as two volumes of poetry 67 and the volume Sind wir noch das Volk der Dichter und Denker? [Are we still the people of poets and thinkers?].

Kalow's work for the Information Department and his constant campaigning for an education in writing 68 bore fruit late in life: in 1974 he was offered a teaching position at the Offenbach University of Art and Design, where he has been an honorary professor since 1977. The Offenbach University, which took on the name "Hochschule für Gestaltung" in 1970 after its transformation from a university of applied arts to an university of art and design, tied directly to the Ulm ideas with Kalow's appointment. The area of "Language and Aesthetics" was integrated into the Visual Communication Department and still exists today – since 2012 under the title "Philosophy and Aesthetics." 69

 

"Some Ulm students have nicknamed me 'little Luther'. Ergo: hic sto [Therefore: here I stand]", Kalow wrote to Thorwald Risler in December 1962.70 In his endeavours to mediate between the disputing parties at the HfG, he had to learn that one cannot be a mediator and an actor at the same time. Nevertheless, Kalow lived his ideals with astonishing perseverance and was willing to put others first for the sake of the good cause. In doing so, he unexpectedly found himself in competition with Otl Aicher – both had good connections to the literary-intellectual scene of the young Federal Republic, both were filled with the desire to build a new society, not to repeat the mistakes of the past. While Aicher sought to assert his ideas of community with the same uncompromising attitude that had made him refuse to join the Hitler Youth and made him never look back – unlike Kalow, he probably didn't have the feeling that he had become guilty – Kalow found his way precisely in the confrontation with fascism. Aicher's answers to what had happened were juxtaposed with Gert Kalow's questions.

Are we still a nation of poets and thinkers? – 14 essays by leading intellectuals of those years, including Ernst Bloch, Walter Dirks, Hildegard Hamm-Brücher, Hermann Kesten, Hans Mayer and Arno Schmidt, are collected in the book with this title, which goes back to a series of lectures organised by Kalow at Hessischer Rundfunk in 1963/64. "The intention was not a judgement, but a symposium, an exercise in conversation, in dealing better with ourselves. Self-esteem and self-criticism are not mutually exclusive, but rather: each is worthless without the other," writes Kalow in his epilogue.71

This is where his greatest talent is revealed: he was able to bring people together and encourage them to think independently and exchange ideas. At the HfG he was only able to realize his talent to a limited extent – primarily in his teaching in the Information Department. He was open to his students, interested in their different personalities and willing to support each individual in their development.

 

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Zitation
Christiane Wachsmann "„Diese Schule ist überdies ein Stück Demokratie“ – Gert Kalow und die HfG" in: David Oswald, Christiane Wachsmann, Petra Kellner (eds) Rückblicke. Die Abteilung Information an der hfg ulm. Ulm, 2015, pp. 124–135, online unter http://www.hfg-ulm.info/de/abteilungsleiter_gert-kalow.html

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