The Merzbauten

The Hannover Merzbau (1923 - 36) “A new domain in art…”

To understand the significance of Schwitters’ English works, in particular the development of the Elterwater Merz Barn, it is important to begin with the Hannover Merzbau. This, the first of Schwitters’ Merzbau experiments, was a pioneering hybrid art and architecture and part installation project that he constructed in his parents’ house in suburban Hannover between 1923 and 1936.

The Hannover Merzbau (1923 – 33)

This continuous creative project was a work without precedent, and one that even his closest friends found difficult to grasp. Schwitters himself struggled to explain what he was doing, for art at this time was what you looked at, not what surrounded you, and our now familiar terms of ‘Environment’ and ‘Installation’ had not yet been invented.

The Schwitters family house in Waldhausenstrasse, Hannover

Describing the work as heralding ‘a new domain in art..,. Schwitters later referred to his Merzbauten as forming one continuous creative project, his life’s greatest work.

The Hannover Merzbau was destroyed during an Allied bombing raid on the city in 1943. When Schwitters heard the news in far-off exile, many months later, he was devastated at the loss of what he called his ‘life’s work’ and ‘a new domain in art’. “For what did I actually live?” he wrote sadly; “I don’t know.”

Even during exile in England, he never gave up his dream of completing another Merzbau to leave to posterity. The concept of a Merzbau programme remained a central concern and major theme for Schwitters for a quarter of a century - that is, from about 1923 almost to the day he died - and he returned to this idea again and again, in Nazi Germany and later in the painfully difficult personal and political circumstances of his years of exile as a poverty-sricken artist in Norway and England.

In 1983, Swiss theatre designer Peter Bissegger was commissioned to construct a full scale architectural replica of the Merzbau on the basis of three wide-angle photographs of the original dating from 1933. He was also aided by the recollections of Schwitters’ son Ernst. A second version was made for the Dada and Constructivism exhibition (1988–9) at Annely Juda Fine Art, London, so that there are now two versions of the Merzbau reconstruction: one is permanently installed in the Sprengel Museum in Hannover and the other is a ‘Travelling Version’ for loan to museums.

Reconstruction of the Hannover Merzbau at the Sprengel Museum, 1983

The Norwegian Merzbauten (1937 - 40)
I The Lysaker Merzbau (Haus am Bakken), near Oslo (1937 – 40)

Schwitters produced two further Merzbauten during his time in Norway. After fleeing from Hannover in early 1937, he began work on a new Merzbau that he called the Haus am Bakken, (House on the Slope), in the garden of the apartment he rented in Lysaker, near Oslo. This work no longer exists, and virtually all that remains are some plans of the exterior drawn up by Ernst Schwitters. There are no known visual records of its interior, though according to Ernst Schwitters its structure was very similar to that of the Hannover Merzbau.

sketch by Kurt's son Ernst Schwitters

Schwitters began to make plans for the two-storey Haus am Bakken around July 1937, and started work on the exterior in earnest in the autumn of that year. As there was so little interest in contemporary art in Norway, his idea was to make a portable Merzbau that could eventually be moved to a location where it would be accessible to a more interested public.

Trial sketches of the ‘Haus am Bakken’ by Kurt Schwitters

Lysaker floorplan sketch

The sketches by his son Ernst were made on tracing paper and prepared for the local Planning Department in Oslo in early 1938. The building department first demanded he tear the Merzbau down, then grudgingly granted him official planning permission, then withdrew it once more. Merzbau II survived, however, and by May 1938 Schwitters had started on the interior. He worked intermittently on the upper and lower room of what had become a combined studio/Merzbau until 1939/1940, and it was almost completed when Nazi troops invaded Norway in April 1940. After a perilous flight to the far north, he left Norway for Britain in June 1940, never to return. The Lysaker Merzbau was destroyed by fire in 1951.

II The Hjertoya Merzbau – Schwittershytta, near Molde (1934 – 39)

Between the two wars Schwitters, his wife Helma and son Ernst spent part of their summer holidays on the Norwegian island of Hjertoya, which is located near Molde on the west coast. In the summer of 1934 Schwitters rented a section of a small stone hut (the other half was a potato store) on Hjertoya, using it as a summer studio and also as accommodation. In time he began to create an interior of abstract sculptural forms similar to those of the Hannover Merzbau. During this period, he also produced one of his most successful large-scale outdoor sculptures, the Merzsäule (or pillar), around 1937.

Although exposed to the harsh fjord winters for more than 60 years, the entrance lobby and central room of the Schwittershytta are still endowed with a rich collection of fragments of collaged surfaces, and 2D assemblages; pieces from other damaged art works still litter the floor and shelves. Although the hut has been known about and also visited by art experts over the years, no detailed research or conservation survey has yet been undertaken of the art works in the Schwittershytta. The Hjertoya Merzbau contains important clues to the construction and stylistic development of the Elterwater Merz Barn, to which it is closely related.

Details of collage works located inside the entrance to the Schwittershytta

(L-R), Jarle Sanden Director of the Romsdal Museum, Ian Hunter Littoral, Adam Lowe Factum Arte, and Derek Pullen Tate Britain on Hjertøya June 2008

The Merzbauten

THE MERZ BARN

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