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Making an Exhibition of Himself: Aleister Crowley in Berlin 1930-32
by
Tobias Churton
He certainly was an artist and had due respect, and wonder for the things of the senses (and there are many!)
Initiation is never what you think it is going to be: If it were, you would already be initiated. (Aleister Crowley, Diary, 8 January 1932)
Aleister Crowley his Berlin on 18 April 1930. His purpose: to secure from Karl Germer, shareholder in the Leipzig Thelema Publishing Company, a projected £2,000 for reconstructing Crowley's London-based publishers, Mandrake. Wires soon crossed. On 28 April, Germer himself applied for £1000 to produce Thelema Verlag editions of Crowley's work—from Mandrake!
Germer's application followed a discussion held on 23 April at the Berlin home of potential backer, Henri Birven, editor of Hain der Isis, a Theosophical magazine. This meeting initiated a second purpose for Crowley's remarkable Berlin connection.
Crowley was introduced to sculptor Heinz Worner (1910-2008) and to Berlin-trained artist, Walter Plantikow, of Lütticher Strasse 2 (N65). Born in Georgenberg, Bavaria, in 1893, Plantikow had illustrated Félicien Mallefille's erotic Memoirs of the Nights of Don Juan. Crowley reckoned Plantikow's art 'good'. It was probably Plantikow who secured an invitation to Hans Steiner's studio the following day.
Painter, stage designer and caricaturist Hans Steiner (1891-1957) was so captivated by the English revolutionary philosopher-artist that he, in turn, telephoned the Berliner Tageblatt to alert the city to Crowley's arrival. In the evening, Steiner introduced Crowley to his model, artist Fraulein Hanni Larissa Jaeger. Bowled over, Crowley returned to Steiner's the next day, 'quite in love' with Hanni.
Though Berlin-born, the tall, blond, sexy, 19 year old Hanni was in fact German-American, her gardener-florist father having brought the family to California in 1924. Having attended high school in Santa Barbara, über-modern Berlin radiated magnetism as irresistible to Hanni's creativity, as it was for Crowley's.
Inviting Steiner and 'Miss Jaeger' to dinner on the 30th a fresh impulse stirred in the Beast's kaleidoscopic mind. Evidence for the impulse appeared on 3 May when, having interviewed Crowley, a respectful Berliner Tageblatt announced the fifty-five year old legend was in Berlin to prepare 'an exhibition of his paintings taking place this Autumn.'
This would not be Crowley's first exhibition. In New York, in 1919, his artwork appeared at Greenwich Village's 'Liberal Club', above a restaurant run by anarchist couple Polly Holladay and Hippolyte Havel in MacDougal Street. Having briefly impressed members of New York's artistic community, disgusted complaints of anti-Christian blasphemy soon closed the exhibition. More recently, Australian publisher Percy Reginald Stephensen (1901-1965), made serious efforts to exhibit Crowley's artworks at Mandrake's offices, 41 Museum Street WC1, London (from 5 November 1929). Freaked out by Crowley's demonic reputation, Stephensen's Mandrake partner Edward Goldston (1892-1953), opposed the plans and while some pictures appear to have been hung, the exhibition never really got off the ground.
The day after Berlin's Tageblatt heralded Crowley's epiphany, the Beast himself was en route to London, exploring Hamburg's St Pauli nightlife. Thirty years before the Beatles succumbed to its charms, Crowley described the Reeperbahn area as 'an utter washout: a cross between Broadway and Coney Island.'
In London, Crowley's hopes for an OTO headquarters based at the Mandrake-linked Aquila Press dissolved when Aquila's capable manager and key financial asset, Wyn Henderson, quit for Nancy Cunard's Hours Press in Paris on 22 May.
Crowley then alienated Mandrake backer Edward Goldston with a lawsuit on 3 June over transport costs for Crowley's paintings. This suit, and Aquila's financial collapse, led to Mandrake's bankruptcy on 27 August. Only unsold Mandrake stock and a pfennig-less Thelema Verlag now remained of Crowley's publishing hopes. While hope itself remained, Crowley's mind turned to Art; he lunched twice with Daily Mail and Observer art critic Paul George Konody (1872-1933).
Crowley also lunched with, Lt-Col John Fillis Carré Carter (1882-1944), Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, on 5 June. Carter liaised between Special Branch and British Intelligence. This occasion probably secured Crowley's third purpose in returning to Berlin. He would use his Berlin activities as cover for intelligence gathering on the German political situation: a gentleman's understanding.
On 2 August, the Beast was back in Berlin, dining on the 5th with the 'Monster' (as he called Fraulein Hanni Jaeger) at the Eden Hotel on Budapester Strasse, central Berlin. The couple then departed for a crazy fortnight's holiday with Karl Germer and his acerbic wife, Cora. Germer drove Beast and 'Monster' to southern Germany, Czechoslovakia and Austria and nearly drove Crowley to distraction with erratic tantrums, appalling driving, and insane outbursts. Dependent on Karl and Cora's support, Crowley tolerated the madness. In Vienna, he compared notes and mutual admiration with world-renowned psychologist Alfred Adler (1870-1937).
Returning to Depression-hit England on 23 August, four days before Mandrake's crash, Crowley confided to his diary that manager Stephensen was 'hysterical', 'vomiting accusations' at fellow 'Mandrakes' Robert Thynne and J.C.S. McAllan. Declaring London 'hellish', Crowley seized a get-away-from-it-all invitation from Portugese poet, Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935), now recognised as one of the greatest poets in the Portugese language.
Boarding the Alcantra for Lisbon on 29 August, Crowley and Pessoa launched a famous suicide stunt to raise publicity (dead authors sell!) before steaming through France to Berlin, hot in pursuit of 'The Monster' who had quit the Beast in Portugal after another neurotic 'scene'; Hanni, it transpired, was mentally unstable, requiring professional care. Crowley had long experience of attracting, and coping with, intelligent people on the edge of sanity.
From 30 September until June 1932, a radiantly sane Crowley lived as Berlin's most colorful resident, attempting to initiate a cultural revolution through the power and magick of art, while struggling to exist from day to day through a pitiless global economic crisis that brought the West to its knees and the Nazis to the brink of power.
The road to Crowley's great exhibition in Berlin began promptly on 1 October 1930 when Crowley met one of Berlin's three most significant art dealers and patrons:
Who effected the meeting is unknown. Perhaps Nierendorf was responding to the Tageblatt feature:
While art critic Konody may have prepared the ground, the initiative was probably Steiner's. No neophyte to modern art, Karl Nierendorf (1889-1947) had begun mounting exhibitions in Cologne in 1920, with his brother Josef. In 1923, Karl took over the 'Graphische Kabinett' of J.B. Neumann in Berlin. The brothers ran the 'Galerie Neumann-Nierendorf GmbH' under that name from 1926 until 1933, moving, in November 1930 from Lützowstrasse 32 to Königin Augusta Strasse 22, where the gallery remained until the beginning of 1932.
Tormented by the Nazis, Karl would establish a gallery in New York, where, dying intestate in 1947, his estate was confiscated; Nierendorf had only German heirs. The Guggenheim acquired the estate in 1948 for $72,000. It included more than 150 works by Paul Klee.
Nierendorf had been the most devoted promoter of new German artists, as is revealed in his assessment of Crowley's critical faculties in Crowley's 1931 Berlin exhibition catalogue:
Early October 1930 saw Crowley introduce friendly science writer and Observer correspondent J.W.N. Sullivan to Berlin. Sullivan brought writer Aldous Huxley with him to share time with Crowley and to gather material for a book about modern scientists. When Crowley temporarily 'lost' Sullivan, he found him through Albert Einstein and Erwin Schrödinger, which says much for Crowley's contacts.
Sullivan and Huxley drank a lot and submitted Crowley to a questionnaire on the nature of existence and progress. Doubtless encouraged by Nierendorf's professional interest, Crowley painted portraits of Huxley and Sullivan. These would grace his Berlin exhibition (cat. nos. 23 and 55 respectively).
To provide fresh work for an exhibition expected in early 1931, Crowley needed a studio. He and Hanni moved from a cheap 'Pension' in Savigny Platz on 11 October to a temporary berth in the Germers' posh apartment by the shaded waters of the Lietzensee in fashionable Charlottenburg while the Germers went to London. The next day, 'Anu' (Crowley's other nickname for Hanni) found a 'fine studio' at 1A Würzburger Strasse, about half a mile south of the Budapester Strasse. Crowley would spend his Berlin sojourn in the crowded, invigorating streets around the central Kurfürstendamm and Budapester Strasse boulevards, full of noisy trams, cars, horse-drawn wagons, and police in flat, black helmets: fast-moving, materially spare, eager, and sometimes rough. Crowley pawned his watch.
On 31 October, after conferring with Nierendorf, Crowley moved from the Pension Medenwaldt on the Kurfürstendamm into the studio. Anu had another breakdown. Desperate to help, Crowley consoled her in a Privat-Klinik, where conversation of high intelligence would suddenly descend into angry incoherence. Crowley took respite in the gay club Mikado where he flirted with 'Fanny', apparently a transvestite, to 'realize how passionately I love Anu'.
Temporarily recovered, Anu showed Crowley her previous work: 'Much of it is very good. I like the child-simplicity. These are pictures of the Aeon of Horus.' Was Hanni the first 'flower-child'? A striking portrait in crayon, dated autumn 1931, suggests something of the kind ('Anu': cat. no. 15. October Gallery exhibition, London, 1998.)
In late November Crowley committed himself to art: 'I have been doing some good drawing these days. Today went back to Indian Ink, and did a bust of Anu which she likes very much.'
By 8 December Crowley rejoiced to find himself in a proper studio for the first time since 1919 but—ironically—with no materials to paint with! Hanni compensated: 'In the whole sky's round is no light except love of Anu—and this pays royally for all.'
Tues. 9 [December]. A wonderful day—Anu and I both working hard at art.
Two days later Crowley had a 'terrible row' with Karl Germer over obtaining oil paints. Conclusion: 'Got 'em!' He began a 'square picture' the next day, of a mulatto. This soon became 'Mulatto-Gods-the Ethnologist' and may be the 'Mulatto girl' ('Mullattenmaedchen') numbered 57 in the Berlin catalogue. On the 14th he was 'painting hard' at mountain scenes, but felt it was getting too easy, or too boring, reflecting that 'Painting, like golf, is an old man's game' while entertaining intuitive doubts about the likelihood of an early 1931 Nierendorf-backed exhibition. An I Ching divination: 'Change' (Ko, hexagram 49), suggested delays.
Crowley tried vainly to force himself to paint as grey midwinter enclosed him in its pauper miseries. Feeling a constant urge to transcend his own limitations, Crowley reflected on the essence of what modern art ought to do, gaining a premonition of how such art would be condemned by extreme reactionary opinion in Germany, and why. He noted on 27 December how 'primitive fear' makes the 'WALL' into a sacred object. Crowley related the insight to the word 'debauch' denying its negative connotation. As far as Crowley was concerned, 'debauch' simply meant 'to go out of doors' and was identical in German: 'Ausschweiffung': 'It is the fear of all activity that lies behind Philistinism.' The Nazis appealed to primitive fears, subconsciously active in the bourgeoisie obvious in the lower classes. Art would have to Get Out There! His intuition touches on a very tangible 'sacred object' whose erection in Berlin in 1961 the DDR commanded, ironically, to preserve East Germany from 'fascism'. Relics from the object's fall in 1989 are now treasured.
Thirty years earlier, Crowley's insights distinguished him from Germer's patrician obsessions. Crowley complained of Karl's 'always blithering about the "German Spirit" '. But Germer was not always the boor he appeared. On 8 February 1931, he had an inspired idea. He wrote to Crowley's recently dismissed 'treasurer', Gerald Yorke, in London, suggesting Yorke persuade Aldous Huxley return to Berlin to give a promotional talk about Crowley's consciousness-expanding work, under the aegis of the international 'PORZA' Association. PORZA shared artistic interests with the Nierendorf Art Galleries. The Huxley idea fell on stony ground, but the 'PORZA' idea would bear fruit—and needed to, for three days later, Nierendorf and Steiner called by Crowley's in the evening to announce all exhibition plans were up in the air; Nierendorf was practically broke. 'What,' Crowley asked the I Ching, 'is to be done about the pictures?' Answer: 'Education' (a role, as we shall see, PORZA embraced). Crowley wondered what Nierendorf's 'real' motive was. Hexagram 'Yu', suggesting Harmony, reassured him.
The next day, Nierendorf reassured the frustrated Crowley. There were, he said, 'only three living painters to be classed with' him. Crowley 'could get RM [Reichmarks] 25,000 for picture IF. . . .' That was about £1,225 sterling, a figure Crowley considered 'fine'. Revitalized by Nierendorf's personal encouragement, he took time to visit a Berlin gallery housing 'bad examples of Great Masters e.g. Van Gogh, Cézanne, Gauguin and Matisse.'
As for the three living painters to be classed with Crowley, Nierendorf may have had in mind three (now universally recognised) 'Expressionist' masters whose work he was promoting: Emil Nolde (1867-1956) and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (1884-1976) being, I suspect, the first two.
It may be no coincidence that after having been shown works by these three men, Crowley's Berlin exhibition would include 'Gypsy Girl' (cat. no. 59, begun 16 March 1931), and 'Papuan Woman' (cat. no. 33). Nolde painted his 'Gypsy Girl' in 1920-21 in a style not dissimilar to Crowley's portraiture (MOMA, New York), and 'Papuan Head' in 1914, again in a kindred 'primitive' style to Crowley's (MOMA, New York).
Certainly no unbiased observer would find anything amiss were Crowley's best paintings exhibited alongside those by Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, whose paintings were 'exhibited' in the Nazis' 1937 'Degenerate Art' exhibition and who, in 1941, was forbidden to paint absolutely.
Three possible candidates vie for Nierendorf's third painter to be compared to Crowley. Georg Scholz (1890-1945) and Otto Dix (1891-1969) both shared something of Crowley's corrosive sarcasm and black humour. Scholz was declared a Degenerate Artist after the Nazis' ascendancy and was forbidden to paint in 1939. Dix, also condemned as Degenerate, was dismissed from his Dresden Academy teaching post.
Nierendorf's 1931 Crowley exhibition catalogue notes refer to the 'Naïve' oeuvre of Erfurt-born Aldalbert Trillhaase (1858-1936), another original artist condemned as 'Degenerate' by the Nazis—surely a badge of honour—and possibly the third comparable artist in Nierendorf's assessment of Crowley's place among his peers in modern art.
Nierendorf's authoritative observations must make us re-think what we understand by low British journals' description of Crowley as 'degenerate'.
On 17 February 1931 Crowley entered the fabulous four-storey Romanisches Café, a haven for artists and the intelligentsia. Completed in monumental neo-Romanesque fashion in 1899, the café occupied a corner of the beautiful Budapester Strasse, not far from PORZA's Berlin headquarters. Targeted by the Nazis for violence as early as 1927, unknown artists continued to establish first contacts there while established figures gathered behind psychological walls. Crowley's art-status did not fit either category. He was not exactly unknown, nor was he an established artist. Crowley would, however, have attracted a few cool, even nervous, glances while Hans Steiner regaled him with 'wild tales of the insane Birven'. Before the cream of the crop departed under Nazi pressure, the Romanisches played host to Bertolt Brecht, Otto Dix, Georg Grosz, Erich Maria Remarque, Billy Wilder, and many more luminaries of the German art scene.
Spurred on by Nierendorf, Crowley painted 'desperately hard—with some of the self-confidence he [Nierendorf] inculcated.' Detractors of Crowley should note Crowley's sincere modesty.
On 23 February, he got Miriam, from Timbuktu, to model. The result: 'Timbuktu—Maedchen' (no. 67 in Crowley's 1931 catalogue).
Ever ready to draw general axioms from his activities, Crowley concluded, after painting Miriam for a couple of days: 'Old-style painters—Gerald Kelly and Co.—still like naughty schoolboys copying out painfully 30,000 lines of Vergil.' Crowley knew Gerald Kelly well. Painter by appointment to the Royal Family and President of the Royal Academy (1949-54), Kelly introduced Crowley to the Parisian artistic scene of 1902 and became Crowley's brother in law in 1903.
Crowley relished the energy and intensity of pictorially revolutionary art, so long as it was genuinely inspired (of the True Will) and not 'new for new's sake'; painting he had realized, was a living language, not a process of nature-copying.
As March 1931 began with Crowley still 'painting madly one picture after another' he met 28 year old Louise Zschaetsch, from Rhinish Alsace, now living at Wielandstrasse 17, off the Kurfürstendamm. Dinner at Traube's was followed by her posing for him. Crowley's output was now so frantic that he began to 'feel cheap': 'Fagged on at finishing pictures —put away 12 "approximately done." 5 remain. Working desperately on them—can't stop—can't go on—can't sleep.
Anu's quitting the studio (again) removed a mountain of angst, and Crowley felt he was painting 'great stuff' again, despite Karl's letting him down over Crowley's taking over the Germers' Lietzensee Ufer 9 apartment. Crowley divined 'harpy' Cora was the problem: 'The only difficulty about Cora is how to get rid of the body. Nobody would miss her!' 'Harpy' was Gerald Yorke's father Vincent's name for Cora, after she outrageously sought to touch him for investment funds in 1930.
Louise posed for 'Carnival' on 14 March (no. 37 in the 1931 catalogue): 'Masturbated her and licked her cunt: she come very wonderfully. Then went and ate Stuffed Tomatoes because I love my marvelous Anu—'.
Crowley began 'Gypsy Girl' on 16 March (compared above to Nolde), first studying her without pencil or brush: 'The Gipsy girl was really scared of me—took refuge with the Lady Char (not in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha as was right!) and all because I didn't whip out pencil and paper, and work like a bloody student!!!! (P.S. But it's a damn good panel. [1931 cat. no. 59])'
Louise came round a couple of days later to cheer him up. Together, they found a 'perfect studio' at Kurfürstendamm 126, a continuation of Budapester Strasse in the east, south of Lutzoqplatz. Then he began a 'self-portrait—on crazy background—big square', finishing it the following day. Though a 'damned sardonic picture' it expressed a sense of triumph.
Nierendorf arrived to inspect on the 20th; and he liked Crowley's new work 'immensely'.
Tues. 24 [March 1931]. With some (insignificant) assistance from Karl [Germer] and another vulgarian, I packed all the pictures for show in 3 boxed marked S, Single-handed! Older or less photogenic ditto in 3 cases marked O. I will next pack pictures to be framed for show in a box marked F. Posters can be stored loose at Karl's Café Hahnen (Good: one of the best in Berlin. 1 Nollendorf Platz [a little south of Kurfürstendamm]. Only faults: a little too big and music [Crowley hated 'background music', calling it 'the opium of the people'.]
Louise joined him in the evening, but the shine was wearing off. The Beast mixed his drinks and lusted after 'Fanny', probably a male transvestite. A vain search for Fanny the next night revealed: 'She was fucking somebody else.'
He returned to Louise as the model for 'Conscientious Nude' on 8 April, 9probably no. 48: 'Denkerin' or 'Female Thinker' in the 1931 catalogue), and then found another model, Gertrude [sic] Howe, 'cousin of [the US] President Hoover', a brief relationship that followed an encounter at chess-oasis, the König Café.
Meanwhile, Louise spent a Sunday wandering round the Lietzensee hoping her beloved artist would see her from the Germers' window, but Crowley had left for another cheap Pension near Lützowplatz.
By April's end, Crowley was having magical sex with new model Gertrud (note the German spelling; the 1939 Berlin phone book lists a 'Gertrud Howe' as a 'Filmdarst.', [from 'Darstellerin'=film actress] dwelling at Lietzenburger station). A Crowley portrait of 'Gertrud Howe' has survived and is now in a private collection.
Crowley completed his 'best picture yet' on 30 April, a 'very strange obscene Walpurgis-Nacht [Spring Festival]', before producing 'an even better picture' on Mayday. On 4 May he finished 'Mulatto with Toadstool' (possibly No. 57 'Mulattenmaedchen' in the 1931 catalogue), then tried to paint a landscape:
Crowley's touchingly innocent oil 'a Tree and bathers on rocks', 'a long narrow canvas' painted on 16 May, has survived, full of May-time spirit. Its sparkling tree motif appears in other Crowley works, such as that painted on 17 May: 'a superb picture—tree in storm at sea—the love between myself and Hanni Jaeger.' (possibly 1931 cat. no. 60: 'Sturm und Drang') Is this a 'tree of knowledge'? Serpents are comfortable frequenters of Crowley's work. In Gnosticism, the serpent offers precious knowledge.
In the summer's burgeoning blur of fleeting romance, Crowley met Renate Gottsched. They had magical sex on 28 May. Crowley's comment: 'Ahebah'. The Hebrew AHBH: 'love'. like ACHAD, 'unity', is numbered 13 according to kabbalist gematria.
On 3 June, having produced a 'pure portrait' ('Renate Gottsched', 1931 cat. no. 51), Crowley felt 'really satisfied at last'. Recuperating at the lake-beach resort Strandbad-Wannsee, south-west Berlin, he embraced 'real pagan life' (possibly inspiring 'Wannsee', 1931 cat. no. 73). Steiner appeared next day. He liked the new pictures too, but Crowley found the cumulative effect of Germer's insane outbursts 'washed out all my ambition to paint, or anything else.'
Pola Henckels of Güntselstrasse (south of Hohenzollerndamm) duly appeared as the latest flame: the gods were kind. Revived, Crowley hung his pictures, and ran out of cash. He pawned his Knight Templar Ring and, on 18 June, his 33° (Ancient & Accepted Rite) Eagle. He then had magical sex with Pola for Energy and Health ('Opus 3'), with immediate effect, and went to visit the great Berlin Art Dealer, Alfred Flechtheim.
Alfred Flechtheim (1878-1937) occupied a fine house at Bleibtreustrasse 15, between the east-end of Kurfürstendamm and Kantstrasse. Crowley was elated to see 'the finest collection of modern masters I have seen anywhere!' Flechtheim was proud of Picasso's telling him that while there was genius among painters, art required genius art dealers. Flechtheim collected and sold works by Cézanne, Braque, Monet, Matisse, van Gogh, Redon, and—among many other modern masters—Crowley's hero and 'Gnostic Saint', Paul Gauguin. Flechtheim's clients included Paul Klee, Georg Grosz, and Pablo Picasso.
Otto Dix painted 'The Art Dealer Alfred Flechtheim 1926', an unflattering portrait of a man who had put Expressionism and Cubism on the global map with over 150 exhibitions that brought him under the hateful eye of the Nazis. Forced to divorce his wife (for her own sake) and flee Germany in 1933, Flechtheim was pilloried as 'The Jew', 'the head manager' of Degenerate Art at the Nazis' 1938 Düsseldorf Degenerate Art exhibition.
Stolen by Nazis and Nazi sympathizers, significant numbers of Flechtheim's and his clients' works came eventually into the possession of New York's MOMA, a result of the Nazi-backed 'fence' system operated, under duress, by Flechtheim's former exhibition manager, Curt Valentin. Valentin established a New York gallery that sent profits to Germany in exchange for 'Degenerate Art' to sell. Flechtheim died broke in London in 1937. Attempts by his and Georg Grosz's families to obtain reparation from museums have so far failed.
When Crowley visited, Flechtheim's business was suffering from the Depression, forcing him temporarily to cease exhibiting.
Perhaps Flechtheim put in a good word for Crowley with PORZA Director, Werner von Alvensleben, currently in town, for the week following Crowley's visit marked a watershed in hopes for a Berlin exhibition.
Calling to peruse on 22 June, Nierendorf liked 'most of' Crowley's new pictures 'very much'. Three weeks later, out of bed the Degenerate crawled and pawned his ring in time for a 6pm appointment with von Alvensleben 'and others'. In the event, nobody came but Dr. Eli Nierendorf of Nürnbergerstrasse 23 (intersecting Kurfürstendamm from the south), whom Crowley had met on the 15th. Von Alvensleben did show up the day following, annoyingly during one of Germer's 'scenes'. Crowley had been coughing all night for lack of money to buy medicine; Germer jeered and lectured.
Von Alvensleben inspected Crowley's paintings: 'He [von Alvensleben] likes my work even better than Nierendorf does, I think.' Crowley had scored; von Alvensleben mattered.
Extant fragmentary references to Crowley's 1931 exhibition tend to credit Nierendorf exclusively, some even suggesting that 'Porza' was a Neumann-Nierendorf gallery name. On the contrary, it was Werner Alvo von Alvensleben who would actually house the exhibition and publish the catalogue at PORZA's German headquarters' exhibition rooms, Budapester Strasse 3.
Sadly, the Porza site is now an access road to a recently erected 'Europa Centre'. To get an idea of Porza's vanished grandeur one should look to Dorreand's elegant furniture gallery at No. 5, Porza's former neighbour and a survivor of both war and post-war reconstruction.
Researching von Alvensleben's life reveals how much he and Crowley the artist had in common.
Werner Alvo Konstantin August von Alvensleben was born to a noble Prussian family at Kassel in 1889. Studying law and economics in Geneva, Munich, Berlin and Marburg, he collapsed from tuberculosis before his final exams, spending eight years recovering in Switzerland. Unfit for military service in World War One, he worked for the Red Cross in Hessen. After the war, Alvo craved the free life of a painter. Inheriting a fortune from Generals Gustav and Konstantin von Alvensleben Eichenbarlaben, he had exhibitions and published his poetry.
In 1923, in the Swiss village of Porza, Alvo shared his social and artistic visions with Arthur Bryks (b. 1894, Poland), a painter, and Swiss-Italian sculptor Mario Bernasconi (1889-1963). Between 1927 and 1929, the 'Porza Association' grew from a dream into an international movement to help intellectually independent, creative people, establishing non-profit offices and galleries across Europe (the Paris gallery was represented by industrial designed Jacques Vienot, 1893-1959, for Porza's last exhibition in 1939, before the Nazis invaded).
Crowley was certainly intellectually independent and creative, and with a brief like that, it is not surprising von Alvensleben came under Nazi scrutiny, even as inflation depressed his fortune. The Nazis seized Alvo's mother's home in Darmstadt. Stored at a depot, his furniture, library, archives and images would be destroyed by an American bomb during Word War Two. Perhaps some of Crowley's lost Berlin paintings were obliterated there.
Alvo took Swiss nationality. Fortunes dwindling, he eventually moved with his wife, the Baroness Gisela von Bothmer (1893-1982), to a rented house and plot in Torricella, Italy. There they raised a large, happy family by selling berries, flowers and vegetables. Kindly gentleman Alvo died in Bioggio on the Swiss side of the border with Italy in 1962.
A week after Alvensleben's visit, Crowley attended a meeting at UFA, the great Berlin film studios. Returning, a week later, from a three-day swimming break with Pola Henckels at the Anglerheim Inn by the Glindowersee, west of Potsdam, Crowley found all the banks shut. The Danat-bank had gone bust, launching an international banking crises, Berlin's stock market was closed and panic ensued; the Germer's lost money. On 18 July Crowley's shew-stone and Tibetan Bell were burgled.
On a windy, cold Friday (24 July), Crowley had lunch with writer Peter Supf (1886-1961) of Mittelstrasse 15 (parallel with the Unter den Linden, up Schadowstrasse).
In 1919, after service as a fighter pilot, Supf published poems based on his experiences, following up this innovatory work with more poems, adventure-fiction and books on aviation. In World War Two, Supf would write glorifying Luftwaffe achievements. It is impossible to tell whether Crowley had an intelligence angle on Supf (German rearmament ambitions?) or whether cultivating Supf's artistic interest arose from Crowley's belief Supf could get his play Mortadello (1912) to the right film producer at UFA—or both.
Like millions of others, Crowley was now financially desperate.
On 2 August Crowley wrote from Germer's Lietzensee apartment to the trustees of the EA Crowley Settlement c/o Dennes & Co, 22 Chancery Lane, London, about Lola Zaza, his second daughter from first wife Rose (1874-1932). Now that Lola enjoyed a good income as a nursery governess, as well as a home in case of need, Crowley requested 'the whole of the [Trust] income' 'while the present acute situation lasts'. He was now 'entirely destitute save for the good will of friends in Germany, and these friends are themselves financially embarrassed owing to the terrible conditions prevailing here now.'
The next day, heading up the Unter den Linden for bacon and eggs at the König, Crowley stopped to look in a travel agents window. A stranger, one Bertha Busch, approached and asked him where he planned to go.
Crowley planned to go for dinner with her and Peter Supf two days later. It turned out Bertha, or 'Bill' as she liked to be known (b. 1895, Zurich), knew Crowley's old friend Frank Harris (1856-1931). Bill's politics were deep red and Harris had run the socialist monthly Pearson's Magazine in the U.S., travelling to Berlin in 1922 to publish his scandalous autobiography, My Life and Loves.
As the Beast's own love life inflated considerably with the libidinous Bill, he took a night off for a 'crack' (great drinking-talk session) with Peter Supf on the 10th. Having dictated a scenario for a film production of Mortadello, Crowley and Bill, after spending more hours with Supf at the Taverne, got Supf to forward it to a top man in Max Reinhardt's organization. Trying to get into films was now a motif of Crowley's artistic life.
On 28 August, Germer started raging and screaming again. Why? Because Crowley had asked him to phone to see whether or not von Alvensleben was in Berlin. Crowley reckoned the Iron Cross-decorated Prussian was too scared to phone! 'The girl might ask who was calling!! Etc., etc.) And he dare not come here lest he see Frau Kreutzer!' Frau Kreutzer was landlady of the Pension Crowley believed had the makings of a 'young brothel'. The police would raid it on 1 September, advised, apparently, by the Gräfin Ellen von Stauffenberg, miffed after Crowley declined to provide sexual services, dozing off in her company.
Crowley pawned more possessions and gave Billie 10 Reichsmarks. 'God help us all!' he added, then set off to find a flat he could share with Bill, while Frau Kreutzer made a 'song and dance' about her staying the night.
On Friday 4 September, Germer conferred with Werner von Alvensleben and Karl Nierendorf. Germer was doubtless delighted to meet the cultured aristocrat von Alvensleben; it quite mollified him. Consulting Cora, Germer promised to pay off all of Billie's debts as well as the first month's rent for a new studio.
The following Monday, with an exhibition now a certainty, Crowley began choosing pictures. He even took tea with Cora Germer and Billie at the Eden Hotel, Budaperter Strasse 18, across the boulevard from the PORZA offices, heading west. We may assume the unlikely trio finalized payment for the new studio, for the following day, Crowley and Billie agreed with Frau Mattner to rent at Karlsruher Strasse 2, intersecting Kurfürstendamm's west end.
Having chosen the pictures, what of the frames?
'The Lord God Almighty Germer will (if you please!) condescend to select the frames for my pictures HIMSELF.'
With the flat contract signed, Crowley worked up a list of invitees. He wanted faithful OTO stalwart, retired schoolteacher Martha Kuntzel (1857-1942) to come, offering to pay her fare from Leipzig, but Germer dissuaded her.
Having pawned a watch for RM 110, Bill and the Beast moved in while Germer started 'messing up the Catalogue'. Crowley and Bill made an inventory and a list of addresses to which to send the catalogue.
On Saturday 19 September, Crowley inspected Porza's exhibition rooms, meeting up with Nierendorf and Steiner. Crowley's comments: 'They seem to be making a good job of it.' Crowley's exhibition was set to run from 11 October to 5 November.
To attend that Porza meeting, Nierendorf took a break from his latest exclusive exhibition, launched six days earlier with a modest wine party (one little barrel on a table). Nierendorf's exhibition, Die Welt von Unten, the 'World from Below' manifested, appropriately, in a rented cellar at Magdevurger Strasse 5 (roughly where Kluckstrasse now runs, north of Kurfürstendamm), about a third of a mile east of Porza. The cellar was situated close to the canal on the old junction with Königen-Augusta Strasse (now Reichpietschufer), near the Reichswehr Ministry (now demolished). The main Galerie Neumann-Nierendorf stood at Königin Augusta Strasse 22, on the corner of Matthai-Kirch-Strasse (now gone), 200m to the east of the bridge-junction with Magdeburger Strasse. (Mistaking Nierendorf's gallery address is another error common to references to Crowley's exhibition).
Nierendorf's powerful, rough-and-ready cellar exhibition featured works by Dix, Grosz, Masereel, Scholz, Beckmann, Fuhr and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, among others—'degenerates' together. Paul Westheim's review of Die Welt von Unten in Das Kunstblatt declared, poignantly: 'It may be a sign of the times that art flees under the earth [...] a cellar [...] five steps of a stair under, in which Nierendorf offers the homeless art a shelter.
Westheim's vision of Nierendorf's 'homeless asylum' under the asphalt, in the guts of Berlin is powerful; the Art: 'Protests against a world order that is the opposite of order.' Westheim remarked that most of the artwork exhibited in Die Welt von Unter was a decade or more 'old', but 'what appeared to be an exaggeration ten years ago, seems to fit the situation nowadays.'
A few amazing photographs of Nierendorf's cellar exhibition have survived. They show not only a kind of daring, prescient 1980's 'punk/alternativen' aesthetic (into which Crowley would have fitted perfectly), but also the impoverished character of Berlin's last hour of freedom before the hideous jackboot goose-stepped through the canvas of a generation's best dreams.
On 21 September, with Billie in pain from gynaecological problems, and after 'working with her to get addresses of possible people to interest in [the] exhibition', the Bank of England went 'kaput!' Great Britain abandoned the gold standard. Serious depreciation followed a run on sterling, and the US banks went into crisis. Crowley's luck could be truly awful and this was a severe case. The Germers and Yorke must have heaved.
While Crowley savoured having a new 'Babalon' by his side (Bill was consecrated, with Oath, as the Beast's 'Scarlet Woman' on 30 September), Nierendorf's health began to buckle under exhibition pressures, financial straits, critical opposition to the art he loved, and peaking emotional, physical and nervous strain. From 4 October to 4 November, he suffered acute inflammation of the veins and had to spend three weeks in bed: weeks in which his name was up as co-presenter, with PORZA, of Aleister Crowley. Nierendorf's enforce absence must have had an effect on Crowley's exhibition.
The dealer's suffering was in marked contrast to the Beast, undisturbed by world events whose more profound causes he believed he understood. Crowley awoke 'full of energy and youth' on 6 October, to be greeted with a phone call from Frau von Alvensleben, anxious about Germer's 'insanity'. Germer's mental condition can hardly have passed Nierendorf by either; Germer was supposed to be contributing to the show's expenses.
The next day, anxious to resolve the Germer situation, action was delayed by a New York Times correspondent. Having been interviewed and photographed with two of his artworks, Crowley consulted Dr. Breitling about Germer. Breitling told him psychologist Alfred Adler was in town. Crowley borrowed RM 50 from Breitling, then called in at Porza 'on business'.
'Germer was there', noted Crowley in his diary, as if a dreaded gong had struck. Unwilling to accept Bill as 'Scarlet Woman' (too 'common') Germer insulted her publicly. When Crowley refused Germer his hand, the apoplectic Prussian stormed out to tell von Alvensleben and Steiner he would not 'pay up'! What an auspicious beginning to the enterprise! Unruffled, Crowley sought Cora. Cora insisted Karl would 'go on with [the] Show'. Crowley secured an appointment with Dr Adler for 2pm the next day.
Crowley awoke on the Friday to an 'utterly mad' letter from Germer, accusing him of suffering from an 'inferiority complex' (Adler's 'invention'), berating Crowley as crazy to expect respect to be shown to 'street-walkers' like Bill. The Beast headed for Düsseldorfer Strasse 36 (due south of Bleibtreustrasse, across Kurfürstendamm and Lietzenburgerstrasse) to see Dr. Adler, residing with a Dr. Guttman.
Adler listened, then suggested the case be addressed to Dr. Weidling, whom Crowley knew from Hanni Jaeger's breakdowns. Crowley took some books to Porza before going out to spend the evening with highly talented celebrities, Margo and Marcellus Schiffer at Kurfürstendamm 31 (the east end near Budapester Strasse).
Crowley's relationship with the Schiffers would permeate his life for the next six months. The Schiffers rode high on Berlin Art's cutting edge.
Painter, graphic designer, song lyricist and humourist, Jewish Berliner Marcellus Schiffer's real name was Peter Winter (1892-1932). Teaming up with Russian composer, Mischa Spoliansky, the duo had created fresh, sparkling shows, blending elements of Cabaret with Revue to pioneer the German musical, most notably 'It's in the Air' (Es liegt in der Luft, 1928).
'It's in the Air' featured the wondrously gifted French performer Margo Lion (1899-1989) singing the risqué bisexual number 'When the best friend is with the best girlfriend' (Wenn die beste Freundin mit der besten Freundin . . .). Margo sang it as a duet with girlfriend Marlene Dietrich and they had a hit record.
Margi had met and fallen in love with Peter in Paris in the early 20s; life, however was not all a bed of roses. In spite of Peter's being the Weimar Republic's most in-demand cabaret performer, he suffered from a chronic depression exacerbated by the gathering Nazi storm that threatened his, and many others' life's work. He took an overdose of sleeping tablets in 1932.
Crowley's chief interest in the Schiffer's, other than the joy of good company, was probably films. Margo had appeared in ten movies by 1931, the year that saw her shine as 'Pirate Jenny' in G.W. Pabst's French language film version of The Threepenny Opera, written by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. It is possible that the bisexual Bill had contacts with the Schiffers' circle and that Crowley's exhibition provided the best opportunity for introducing the multi-talented Crowley to the multi-talented couple.
The day before the show (10 October), Crowley entered Porza at 11am to find that Germer had, unexpectedly delivered his share of Thelema books. On target one minute, he was wildly off the next. While one of the Schiffers talked to Bill at Porza, Crowley dropped in on the Germers: 'both perfectly insane', Crowley noted how he himself remained calm and polite and 'took no notice' when Karl thrust his face into Crowley's saying he wanted to murder the Beast and his Scarlet Woman!
Later, very nervously, Bill and the Beast performed 'Opus 42' (sexual magic) to bring success to the show. Crowley noted that they were 'slow to start and quick to finish', adding: 'Oh for a quiet life!'
And so, the big day arrived: Sunday 11 October 1931, Berlin's art scene took its hat off to Aleister Crowley, Artist. Crowley's only diary comment is curiously understated: 'Show about normal.' Normal for him? The Berliners? The comment has a hint of exhausted resignation about it, and probably disappointment.
The exhibition catalogue cover announces the joint enterprise in capitals. Beneath is a photograph, probably taken in North Africa, of Crowley in a bernous, wearing a loose turban, looking (otherwise) completely normal.
Original cover of Crowley's exhibition catalogue 1931.
The exhibition invitation card to Crowley's 1931 showing.
As is clear from the catalogue, the exhibition was a joint venture, and, thanks to von Alvensleben, an economical one. It is possible that Karl Nierendorf was unable to attend personally on account of his enflamed veins and general condition; this would obviously have disappointed Crowley. Nierendorf's presence in his catalogue comments, however, was fulsome in recognition of Crowley's essential superiority to much British art, which, according to Nierendorf, perennially consisted of safe, perennially behind-the-times, imitations and variations of styles emanating chiefly from Paris, whether impressionistic, abstract, futuristic, cubist or surreal. Crowley's pictures, on the other hand, were truly his. An untypical Englishman, Crowley was both appreciable and intellectually respectable to informed Berlin observers.
The critical evaluation of his [Crowley's] pictures is not my business [wrote Nierendorf]. An enormously vivid and eager outsider, a real man of elementary, instinctive power is behind them.
That is high praise of an order barely accessed by English-speaking critical opinion.
Fellow artists have often been impressed, but artists seldom write reviews. Journalists write for journals; artists make art. Artist Nina Hamnett (1890-1956) would praise his 1920s work in her autobiographical Laughing Torso (1932).
For twenty-six days of 1931, while Crowley used Porza as a kind of temporary base of operations, the world had the chance to look inside Aleister Crowley's imagination. It would be marvellous to be able to show you what visitors saw, or thought they saw. Tragically, it appears that of the 73 works exhibited, few are extant. The whereabouts of the majority of the works exhibited we shall discuss in hue course. As things stand, my information is that of the 73 works, eight had previously been intended to adorn the Mandrake office 'exhibition' in November 1929. They are The Holy Family; The Gate of the Desert; Mont Blanc; Petersburg; Fishing Boat (apparently 'Fishing Boat in Japan'); Laura Brown; Fountainebleau; and The Red Turban. The whereabouts of only two of these images is known, one being a copy, 'Laura Brown' exists as a black and white photograph in the Yorke Collection (NS74, p. 156): a head and shoulders portrait of a black American prostitute in a white blouse. Numbered '14'. a typed, cheeky caption informs us that Laura is grinning 'in the most subtle and knowing manner at her audience', with lips cosmetically crimson, 'proud of the unusual amount of kinky hair piled high on head' and he sumptuous white silk blouse with 'collar and front in Robin's egg blue'.
Crowley performed an afternoon act of sex magic for 'Energy' with 'mulatto wench' Laura on 13 June 1915. He described her as 'very vile, horrible and fascinating'. According to Crowley's diary Rex de Arte Regia, ('The King on the Royal Art', Opus LXVII) it proved an 'astonish success', resulting in a 'burst of energy that I have not had the like of since I landed in New York. Poetry, dress-designing, magazine-conceiving, regular work, etc., all in a bunch.'
The Yorke Collection appears to have the original of The Holy Family. It can also be seen (along with 90 other Crowley photographic reproductions of originals in various media) at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.
The Holy Family is a work in black crayon depicting two alarming looking women, though one might be male or androgynous. The lascivious-looking 'mother' figure (?), possibly of African origin, wears a plain headscarf over long hair. We see only heads and shoulders. They smile rather sinisterly, even deliriously, over what looks liked a disturbingly mature, very round-faced 'baby', possibly in a cradle. The other head, seen from the front, grins ecstatically, as if bobbing, at the viewer: Crowley's point of view, perhaps. He/she looks like one of Crowley's more 'Secret Chief'-like self-portraits.
The 'baby' also has bulbously rounded, Crowleyan, oriental and all-knowing characteristics. The figures are framed by what appears to be an overarching, diamond-encrusted tree trunk and branch that makes the dense-grained, heavy image an unsettling wave. The background consists of those curious Crowleyan phallic or poppy-like cupolas that emerge out of serrated mountains, perhaps like an otherworldly city seen in an 'astral vision', with Himalayan peaks in the distance. The image is satirical, as is the title. The hint of a perverted Christmas crib scene, but we cannot be sure. Crowley's sardonicism and peculiar vision is startling. Its disconcerting, black-humorous elements would definitely upset Mrs. Grundy, but she wouldn't like Otto Dix either.
The Yorke Collection also has a black and white photographic copy of the oil painting The Mekong Valley (NS 74, p. 161), possibly the 'In the Mekong Valley', exhibited at Porza (cat. no. 7). Numbered '4', it includes Crowley's typed caption.
This is a "Lake Orgy". The artist used lakes as a medium and the result is a brilliant transparency. But that is not all—for the mountains above the blue water tower into the vivid sky. They give one a feeling of tremendous height and infinite extent.
The same collection also includes a black and white photographic copy of the oval-framed oil 'Leah Hirsig' (NS 74, p. 165) which may also be the work of that name exhibited at Porza. A head and shoulders portrait, Lea, in what might be a leopard-skin wrap, looks gaunt and grim, hair solidly bobbed, gazing away from the artist.
Only seven other works from the Berlin catalogue have definitely been seen publicly since 1931. The Harry Ransom Center has a photograph of Lion-Hunt (Porza cat. no. 16), while a work entitled Camille L'Apache ('Camille the Apache'; Porza cat. no. 29) may possibly be identified with a photographic image at the Harry Ransom Center: 'Camille Frojens (Martinique)' (Harry Ransom Center, Crowley Collection no. P-80), though it should be said that the Yorke Collection has a crayon portrait entitled 'Lea an Apache' from 1919 (NS 74, p. 152).
The head and shoulders image of 'Camille Frojens (Martinique)' depicts a proud but sensitive and attentive mood expressed by a large-eyed 'Martinique', dressed in a suit and tie with a cropped, centre-parted man's haircut. Bisexuality is inherent to the image and in Crowley's soubriquet 'Apache', a name given to vicious Parisian gangs in the late 19th century: running loose and dangerous. One feels Crowley liked this woman and expressed her soul.
The April 7-18 1998 London October Gallery exhibition 'An Old Master—the Art of Aleister Crowley' revealed the following five works to the public: Norman Mudd (in two [version one & version two] similar versions); Mali and Igel; Man with Cigarette; Stromboli; and The Dwarf Juggert (possibly a typo for 'The Dwarf from Touggourt').
There are interesting things we can say about some of the five Porza works exhibited in London in 1998.
The title of the powerful, dramatically coloured Mali and Igel (Porza cat. no. 34) alerts us to an alarming, true story about what happened in the Berlin Crowley knew during his sojourn and what befell it shortly after.
The title 'Mali and Igel' seems surreal. 'Igel' is German for a hedgehog, but the title is not one of Crowley's conceits. Mali and Igel was, in fact, a remarkable women-only club, situated at Martin-Luther Strasse 16, which ran north-south, south of Kurfürstenstrasse, within sight and clanking, roaring sound of the ultra-modern overhead S-bahn train system between Wittenberg Platz and Nollendorf Platz.
The Mali and Igel club's main door always sported a sign saying 'Closed for Private Party'; entry was by reservation, with numbers limited to 60. Among the exclusive throng were women intellectuals, artists, singers, actresses and performers. Further up the street, the Scala Theatre at o. 22 hosted a bi-annual, sell-out, women-only ball, in association with the 600 member Club Bijou of the West. The thriving free-women, bisexual and lesbian scene would not survive the Nazis. Claudia Schoppmann has tried to discover what happened to Mali and Igel.
'Mali' was Elsa Conrad, the club-owner's nickname. The 'hedgehog' was her girlfriend. She had a crew-cut. Denounced as a lesbian by a lodger in 1937, Elsa was arrested and sent to Moringen women's camp in Prussia where she was accused of concealing that she was half Jewish, of having an affair with Rudolph Hess, and of listening to the BBC. After a year in Moringen, the Gestapo considered what to do with her. The 'hedgehog', who was not Jewish, appealed for Elsa's release. Elsa's detention only ended on condition she and the 'hedgehog' immediately emigrate. Mali and Igel took a boat to Nairobi during the anti-Jewish 'Kristallnacht' pogrom of November 1938 when synagogues and Jewish businesses were torched and smashed all over Germany. 91 Jews were killed and 30,000 sent to concentration camps. Berlin's synagogues were erased from maps.
A less disturbing story lurks behind Crowley's portrait of the nonetheless tragic professor of mathematics, Norman Mudd (1899-1934), sometimes acolyte of the Beast. One of the two Mudd portraits exhibited at the October Gallery, London, 1998 ('Frater O.P.V.' cat. nos. 8 and 9) may be the 'Norman Mudd' numbered 30 in the Porza catalogue. I asked Britain's abstract expressionist painter Vanilla Beer (b. 1950) to assess Crowley's treatment.
Aleister Crowley's drawing of Norman Mudd is a beguiling study, full of what seems to me to be light-hearted humour. (Never having seen the original sitter it's hard to tell). The balance of eye, nostril and mouth packed into a shadow strip leave the ear as the central motif of the study, making the image about listening—and the ear itself looks like a dancing figure. AC has taken care to draw the hair as a continuation of the shirt pattern, a witty touch, uniting artificial and natural matter. The naïf element lies in the neck alone; had AC pushed the collar and backbone to continue the line of the shirt front, so that the diagonal line begun above the corner of the paper on the left continued to slightly above half way up on the right, the picture would be a marvellous portrait. He allows it to jar, to prevent the aesthetic from clouding the message. It shows what an uncompromising man he must have been—to have this ability and to refuse it a successful traditionally acceptable outcome.
Critical studies of the remaining works exhibited at Porza October-November 1931 must wait until the works are recovered for view, if they are recoverable. At present we can only guess what we missed by not seeing the following titles (I exclude artworks already mentioned in this essay; Porza catalogue numbers are in brackets): HP Blavatsky (1); Marie (3); Negress (4); South-East Asia (5); The World an Opal (8); Montigny-sur-Loing (9); Tunis (ensemble) (11); El-Oued (12); Sunset in the West (13); On the Coast of Japan (15); [untitled] (17); Elise Dream (18); The Maiden (19); Girlfriends (21); Ella Burgin and her Work (22); Swiss Girl (24); My Dream (25); The Procuress (28); Anna (31); Expectation (32); Portrait (35); Gift (36); Sketch (39); The Poong-jye (40); The Widow (41); Innocence (43); The Old Man (44); Odalisk (45; a woman); Mona Lisa (49); Wife with Lizard (50); The Barca (53); Maidens in Sessel (56); Radio City (58); Ackerstrasse (61); The Hills of Skye (63); The Holy City of the Sahara (64); Djerba (66); Coloured Sketch (68); Don Quixotes (69); The Gletscher Glacier (70); Rhythms (71); and Interval (72).
We have missed Crowley's image of the world, a world that to him was decidedly curious, but always inviting. Much is folly, sometimes misbegotten, abortive, but always of an ambiguous beauty, whose darker side Crowley also embraces, for, unlike many mystics, he is a scientist, though for him, nature is a continuum, not an object. He will not separate the created from the spirit that animates it, and he knows the creation is full of rot, and Man largely beneath it. Unlike surrealists, he does not delve into the unconscious to paint pictures of his dreams. He lets the unconscious loose: easy since he is so in touch with it. The Unconscious becomes the Perceiver, or if you like, the True Will paints, and is painted. Crowley will write: 'Poetry is the geyser of the unconscious', As Carl Jung also tells us, Gnostics know that what you do not bring forth from within you, will destroy you. Perceiving evil in 'degenerate' Crowley, his detractors may comfortably avoid seeing the evil in themselves.
We can now step outside of Porza's exhibition rooms on Budapester Strasse and follow the artist and his Scarlet Woman, Bill, home to Karlsruher Strasse 2. There Crowley will receive a call from The Times Berlin correspondent, Gerald Hamilton (1888-1970). Although a communist, Hamilton will become Crowley's friend, even as the Beast spied on him.
While Germer was now, according to Crowley's diary, 'calmly determined to go permanently insane', Bill met up again with one of the Schiffers at Porza on 13 October, while Crowley fulfilled an appointment with Hamilton and 'his boy' (Hamilton was homosexual). Crowley then returned to Porza where he met 'two dear old ladies', friends of Martha Küntzel (herself in her seventies), eliciting Crowley's comment: 'Devotion is the one asset of life.' Crowley must have insisted Martha herself come to the show, for the following Saturday she stayed with 666 and the Scarlet Woman at Karlsruherstrasse, where, unfortunately: 'we had to waste all out time discussing what ought to be done about poor Karl.'
The next day Crowley had a long conference with Marcellus Schiffer.
Crowley's effort to establish himself as an original visual artist made a step into films, or shows, a natural one, since he could also write drama, lyrics, ritual and fictional adventure. Discussion so far, however, had proved. 'N.G.'—No Good. Crowley persisted.
Ex-'treasurer' and sometime pupil, Gerald Yorke (1901-1983) came over from England to see Crowley's Porza show. On 19 October, having witnessed the 'totally insane' Germer, Yorke put aside doubts about funding the Beast from the E.A. Crowley Trust established for Lola Zaza Crowley (1907-1990), and recommended trustee George Cecil Jones forward £50 from it as Crowley's need was so great.
Yorke went for a 'Golden October' stroll in the woods (probably the Tiergarten) with Crowley and Bill: 'We were just three happy children'. commented Crowley in his diary.
After Yorke's departure on the 23rd, Crowley met regularly with the Schiffers, sometimes at the home (or possibly, restaurant) of famous German movie actor and comedian, Henry Bender (1867-1933). Henry had opened BENDER in 1929, at Bleibtreustrasse 33, close to Alfred Flechtheim's home and two still intact synagogues.
Three weeks after the launch, Crowley had another meeting with potential backer Jacques Krabo at Porza, following a walk through the Tiergarten where Crowley observed six 'lugubrious' business gentlemen camping out on the ruins of the old city walls: a sign of the times, even as the prematurely 1960s-looking, steel and glass Columbus Haus was being erected in Potsdamer Platz, the busiest thoroughfare in Europe, over the demolished ruins of the Grand Hotel Bellvue.
The following day (2 November), Crowley and Bill called at artist Max Bruning's studio at Nordstrasse 50, well known as a 'salon' for visiting artists. A stylish draughtsman, Bruning (1887-1968) had a penchant for dramatic compositions and mildly erotic subjects. Crowley asserted him as a 'sort of inferior Dix or Rops, with a studio imitating well enough an Oriental junkshop. [Bruning possessed an outstanding collection of Asian art.] He gave us lots of bad cognac. Bruning also executed a strong charcoal and crayon portrait of Crowley smoking a pipe, probably playing chess with Bruning's guest, Ernst Schertel (1884-1958), whose chess skills Crowley praised as 'really brilliant'.
Schertel should have had much to discuss with Crowley. A student of history and philosophy at Jena, he had been inspired by meetings with esoteric poet, Stefan Georg (1868-1933). Georg would have a great personal influence on Claus von Stauffenberg's mystical and poetic idea of a 'Secret Germany' that must destroy Hitler and redeem Germany's bartered soul.
Schertel's novel The Sin of the Eternal, or This is my Body (1918) launched a literary career that took in ancient religion, naturism, sexual liberation, sado-masochism, occultism and dance culture. He wrote a history of Magic (1023) campaigned for abolition of sexual censorship, the virtue of flagellation, and erotic liberty in general. He was imprisoned by the Nazis for seven months in 1937 and deprived of his university doctorate. Other than praise for chess, Crowley's first opinion of the man who had long embraced the thelemic principle 'The word of Sin is restriction' was blunt: Schertel 'writes vaguely on Magic—bad novel with sham sex-appeal.'
It is interesting that Crowley was being invited to places where sexual liberation was a major interest, probably in a cinematic as well as purely artistic context. (The ground-breaking Czech-Austrian film, Ekstase, starring Hedy Kiesler [later 'Lamarr'] would be shot the following year). Schertel had corresponded with Sigmund Freud to promote his campaign to abolish censorship laws: healthy psychology involved guiltless attitudes to sexuality.
Returning home high on cognac, Bill had a jealous fit over 'three cheap whores' at Bruning's and Crowley 'strangled her', presumably taking inspiration from Schertel's Flagellation as a Literary Motif (4 vols. 1929-1932). Perhaps Bruning had been Bill's idea all along.
The next day Crowley began clocking up regular cinema attendances with the now classic Berlin—Alexanderplatz, whose anti-hero Franz Biberkopf suffered every indignity of unemployment, poverty and frustrated love in Depression-hit Berlin. Crowley's review: 'a medium good film'.
The evening before his exhibition closed Crowley spent with the Schiffers, joined by Henry Bender at 9pm. Bender's film Kyritz-Pyritz (US title: Errant Husbands) was on German release; Bender played Anton Piepenberg alongside co-stars Max Adalbert and Hansi Arnstaedt in Carl Heinz Wolff's comedy. Rotund with a big face, Bender looked rather like Crowley; perhaps that's why the Schiffers first brought him to the Beast's attention.
The following day, Crowley's exhibition ended; the artist dined again with the Schiffers, 'bei [at the home of] Henry Bender' (as they would again on 3 December). Crowley and Bill got food poisoning from Bender's fish. This did not deter them from visiting Bender's again, or from seeing Henry as Hugo Kunkel in another Bender film vehicle Ein ausgekochter Junge (1931) on 21 December.
On 9 November, Crowley collected 'some pictures and books from Porza' and had Bruning to dinner: 'May be a good man if he listens to sense.' On 17 November, Crowley was again at Bruning's, this time with the Schiffers. Crowley probably had ideas for Bruning in his schemes, schemes that required a visit, on Friday 13th, to Dr. Jacob at Ullstein Verlag. Big Publisher Ullstein's massive Ullsteinhaus dominated Berlin Templehof, producing Berlin's main newspapers and many books. Dr. Jacob wanted short stories: no problem for Crowley. (A Jewish concern, the Nazis would 'aryanize' Ullstein three years later).
Having dined again with the Schiffers, and having again pawned his 33° Masonic Eagle for ready cash or rent, Crowley wrote from Karlruherstrasse 2, Berlin Halensee, to explain his schemes to Gerald Yorke:
On the Saturday, having observed the Scarlet Woman and Frau Schiffer (Margo Lion) translating the 'Berlin Manifesto' (possibly connected with the October-founding of the SPD-breakaway Sozialistische Arbeiter Partei, or Socialist Workers Party), Crowley went to see the thrilling Berge in Flammen ('Mountains in Flames'), described by Crowley as 'a really fine mountain war film'. Speaking from experience, he recognized both a good story and the fact that experienced mountaineers stood behind the film's scintillating black and white photography. He must have relived old times.
Crowley's artistic and cinematic ambitions very soon coalesced strangely with Berlin street politics.
Sunday 15 November was Totensonntag: 'Dead' or 'Eternity Sunday'. Established in 1816 as a holy day for Lutheran churches to remember the dead, especially Prussian war dead, Philipp Nicolai's Awake, the voice calls us was sung. That chant would now ring with all the hoarse insistence of a summons to resistance by anti-republicans eager to restore a Hohenzollern monarchy that had collapsed with Germany's bitter surrender in 1918.
The venue for the anti-republican demonstration was the Gethsemanekirche, a red brick church at Stargarder Strasse 77, in the north of the city. Intended by the abdicated Hohenzollern Kaiser Wilhelm II at its dedication in 1893 as a bulwark against socialism, communism and atheism, it had instead become a shelter for radical republican, socialist groups. When pro-monarchy 'Hohenzollerns' chose this particular church to 'crowd', they could hardly have been more politically provocative. The war dead would indeed be remembered—Germany had been betrayed!
A strikingly modern ticket to the Porza Gallery Neumann-Nierendorf show survived at the Warburg Institute, London. On its reverse is a secret, hand-written note from Crowley to 'Nick'—Lt. Col. Carter of Special Branch—about the 'Dead Sunday' demo:
Believing Hitler would back Hohenzollern restoration, the ex-Kaiser had permitted sons August Wilhelm and Oskar to join the Nazi Party in 1930. Hitler played the Hohenzollerns along. As the art-show ticker poignantly demonstrates, Crowley foresaw the imminent end of the Weimar Republic.
A letter from Crowley to Yorke of 12 December 1931 brings the Royalists and the movies together in Crowley's schemes:
Only two days earlier, Crowley had commented on producer Erich Pommer and director Erik Charell's brilliant musical Der Kongress Tanzt. ('The Congress Dances') a UFA film set during the Congress of Vienna. Crowley considered it a 'very good film, said to be Royalist Propaganda', adding: 'These are the people to do Mortadello.'
The film contains a breathtaking, almost endless, uninterrupted tracking shot of a coach and horses trip through town and countryside to palace, while the pretty heroine sings gaily: a bravura shot not only confirming Charell's reputation as 'the German Ziegfeld' but marking him out in visual élan as a kind of proto-Orson Welles. The legendary stage director-producer Charell (1894-1970) could have taken German cinema to the skies but for his career being truncated by Nazi interference.
De Kongress Tanzt is also notable from Crowley's standpoint in that it starred another Crowley lookalike, Otto Wallburg, as Bibikoff, adjutant to Czar Alexander. After a café conference with the Schiffers with Jacques Krabo on 21 October, Crowley mentions meeting 'one Otto at Herr Bender's.' This possible reference to Bender's fellow actor Otto Wallburg (1889-1944) might seem a long shot were it not the case that Crowley was seeing films starring people he was being introduced to. On 29 November he went to see a 'gorgeous film', Wer nimmt die Liebe Ernst? ('Who takes love seriously?'). It starred Otto Wallburg. Wallburg also worked for Max Reinhardt's Deutsches Theater. Crowley saw Wochenend im Paradies ('Weekend in Paradise') on 23 November, praising it highly: 'an excellent film.' It too starred Otto Wallburg.
After the Nazis cancelled Otto's UFA contract, Wallburg escaped to work in Jewish cabaret in Amsterdam. Arrested, when the Germans invaded Holland, Otto Wallburg was murdered in the gas chamber at Auschwitz Berkenau on 29 October 1944.
Poverty and anxiety stymied Crowley's health. On Christmas Eve, he was 'very ill' all day with asthma, the disease that would plague him for much of the rest of his life. A card headed 'EDEN HOTEL BERLIN W, VIV-A-VIS VOM ZOO [Zoologische Garten Bahnof]. BUDAPESTER STRASSE Nr. 18' was addressed to Gerald Yorke: 'We have NOT got the £50—Do for God's sake make Dennes send it.' Dennes was the lawyer handling Crowley's Trust Fund. The £50 would not arrive until 1 February; Gerald Hamilton brought it by hand from London.
Christmas Day 1931 brought relief in the form of a big dinner with Karl Germer, Gerald Hamilton, and Hedy Nevermann, an occasion further enlivened by the arrival for a pub-crawl of W.H. Auden's close friend, novelist Christopher Isherwood (1904-1986), and Isherwood's friend, poet, Stephen Spender (1909-1925). In 1939 Crowley would refer to the 'pansy poetastry of W.H. Auden'.
The pub crawl took them to Besselstrasse in Kreuzberg where Crowley and Bill 'both went after Hedy' in a 'Cosy Corner' before the Beast had 'great fun with the boys' at 'Charley's' and at the Johanniter Keller. Later, Isherwood and Spender could look out for attractive men in Friedrichstrasse, Berlin's theatre district, before getting completely sauced at the Friedrichskeller café.
Crowley had tea with 'Christopher' (he must have liked him) on 24 January 1932 and introduced Isherwood to 'Fanny' (real name Peter) at another teatime meeting on 5 February. It is possible young Isherwood introduced Crowley to the young, highly talented Jean Ross, for Crowley dined with her on 3 February.
Jean is well known as the 'inspiration' for Isherwood's fictional character, 'divinely decadent' Sally Bowles, in his short novel, Goodbye to Berlin (1939). The Sally Bowles of the novel, the play I am a Camera, and the musical Cabaret was in fact very different from the beautiful, liberated actress, dancer, singer, writer, journalist and humourist, Jean Ross. Jean excelled at everything she did and was anything but the tarty Sally of the fiction. Jean Ross felt undervalued by the identification and considered 'Sally Bowles' coloured by Isherwood's inability to assess independence in a woman, confusing personal freedom with diminished feminine virtue—an error Crowley would never have made.
Since Crowley met up with the Schiffers at the 'Jester' the previous night, the meeting may have come through cabaret contacts. Contact may also have come through communist Gerald Hamilton, for Jean Ross was a committed Party member. This commitment may also have served as an aspect of Crowley's interest in her, if only an aspect, for Jean had played Anitra in Max Reinhardt's 1928 production of Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt at the Deutches Theater, working subsequently as a journalist and writer of film scenarios; Jean was useful as well as attractive.
Crowley's schemes were still not bringing any money in. On 4 April, Bill's fur coat was pawned. More items entered the pawnshop in May. By June, not only the financial situation was impossible. Politically, the drama of the Weimar Republic had reached it final Act before Hitler's absolute ascendancy in 1933. On 30 May, Franz von Papen (who had witnessed Crowley's involvement with German spying in the U.S. during World War One) succeeded Heirich Bruning as chancellor under Hindenburg's presidency, partly as a result of the fatal cunning of Kurt von Schleicher. Von Schleicher, who had met Hitler secretly, considered himself Germany's required 'strong man'. He thought he could exploit, then destroy, Hitler (Hitler would have him murdered in 1934). While Chancellor Bruning had banned the Nazi SA and the SS, von Papen had them reinstated on 15 June. Three days later, Crowley began packing his bags.
Lt. Col. Cater had warned Crowley about German police interest in his mail, demanding he cease sending reports to London. Crowley's return to England on 22 June 1932 marked the end of his amazing Berlin sojourn.
We know that with the de facto coming to power of the Nazis, Crowley's, and many, many others', artistic ambitions in Germany collapsed. How this affected Crowley personally, we shall probably never know; he had already lost so much.
What became of the lost pictures?
According to a letter in the OTO archives, Friedrich Lekve wrote to Crowley on 8 October 1936, alerting him to six crates of artworks left in Germany. Lekve presumably obtained this information from Martha Küntzel whom he met that year. A year later, Lekve begged Crowley to cease corresponding because he feared the Gestapo (Karl Germer had been arrested on 2 February 1935 in Leipzig and sent to Esterwegan concentration camp for disseminating the works of 'High-Freemason Crowley'). Since Martha claimed the authorities also interviewed her (Theosophists were persecuted under Hitler), there is an outside possibility, no more than that, that the Gestapo purloined Crowley's pictures (if indeed they were in Martha's care in Leipzig), but there is no evidence for this.
According to William Breeze, the largest surviving cache of Crowley's pictures was in storage with other possessions at his death in 1947. They were shipped to Karl Germer (1885-1962), successor Head of the OTO, in the U.S. After Karl's second wife Sascha died in 1975, the pictures were held for the OTO by Phyllis Seckler, (1917-2004), pupil and friend of OTO member Jane Wolfe. When Phyllis tired of their taking up garage space, Helen Parsons Smith (1910-2003) offered to 'take care of them'. According to Breeze, Smith chose to sell Crowley's artworks to collector, Jimmy Page, in the early 1980's, without the knowledge of Grady McMurtry, the Head of the OTO.
It may be hoped that the likelihood of bringing more of Crowley's Porza exhibits and many other lost works to light will increase with the accomplishing of a complete catalogue raisonné of the Art of Aleister Crowley. Such vital work can only increase the growing recognition of Aleister Crowley as a significant 20th century artist, a recognition for which Karl Nierendorf and Werner Alvo von Alvensleben paved an untrodden path.
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