Category: Paul’s Story

THE ZOMBIE REVOLT

When I found a stack of poems, in Hungarian, dating from the 1930s I hoped I had a trove that would yield the secrets of Paul Weidlinger’s teenage years.   It turns out that most of them are drivel (sort of what you’d expect from a teenage boy) but there is a particularly dark one that […]

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PAUL AND LÁSZLÓ MOHOLY-NAGY

László Moholy-Nagy was an important person in my father’s life.  Moholy-Nagy or just Moholy as he often called, was one of the key figures of the Bauhaus Movement and School, founded by German architect Walter Gropius.  The Bauhaus ideal was to foster a culture in which ordinary, everyday utilitarian objects, buidings, furniture, textiles, utensils were designed […]

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THE GANG OF 13

My father was part of a group of thirteen Hungarians Jews who had been classmates at the German Technical institute in Brunn. They all immigrated to Bolivia in 1939 and 1940.   They called themselves   “The Gang of 13.” Arriving in La Paz they immediately put into practice their idea of a utopian communist community. They […]

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BOLIVIA’S FIRST MODERNIST BUILDING

I am in possession of two curious drawings made my by father in late 1939. They are cartoon sketches of Pouqui and Mouqui, the love names my parents gave each other. The drawing shows them settled into their apartment in La Paz, Bolivia. Furniture and personal effects are carefully labeled in French. By naming these […]

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CHICAGO’S PICASSO

On August 15, 1967 – thousands attended the unveiling of Chicago’s most monumental work of public art. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra was on hand to perform George Gershwin’s symphonic poem, “An American in Paris.” On the sidelines pickets denounced the event on the grounds of incomprehensibility. Chicago Mayor Daley pulled on a white ribbon and […]

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JEAN DUBUFFET

Among the boxes I received from my family upon my father’s passing there is one that contains several bulging folders of correspondence, both personal and professional, with the French artist Jean Dubuffet. The fact that these folders were in my father’s personal files, rather than in the archives of Weidlinger Associates, is significant. Dubuffet was […]

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