I visit a remote railroad station looking for clues regarding my parent’s immigration to Bolivia in 1939. The video at the end of the blog post documents the journey. My father never admitted to me that he was a Jew. This fact, as well as his denial, is important subtext in the story […]
Month: December 2021
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 […]
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 […]
THE STRENGTH BEHIND THE BEAUTY: THE WALKER ART CENTER
What is the relationship between architect and structural engineer? How do they work together? Architects conceive the form. Engineers are the mediators between the idea of the form and its physical realization in concrete, glass, steel, brick, stone, and wood. As I traverse the country looking at buildings that my father engineered I keep asking: […]
TWO CHURCHES BY BREUER
Early in 1961 Paul Weidlinger received an urgent call from the architect Marcel Breuer. Something had gone horribly wrong during the construction of the Abbey Church that Breuer had designed for the community of Benedictine Monks in Collegeville, Minnesota. Breuer, like my father, was Hungarian. Both were influenced by the Bauhaus Movement and they knew […]
THE HANDMADE CATHEDRAL
“There is an old story of how the cathedral of Chartres was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. Then thousands of people came from all points of the compass, like a giant procession of ants, and together they began to rebuild the cathedral on its old site. They worked until the […]
THE GRAIL, REVISITED
Four years ago, as part of my research for The Restless Hungarian, I embarked on an extended cross country road trip to visit structures that Paul Weidlinger engineered. Driving from West to East, I started experimenting with time-lapse photography from my car. In western Wyoming, with great cumulus clouds scudding overhead, I listened to medieval […]
THE MISSILE GAP
Daniel Ellsberg was recently restored to popular consciousness by the movie The Post. The movie tells the story the Washington Post newspaper’s risky decision to publish excerpts from The Pentagon Papers, an exhaustive, top secret report on the United States involvement in Vietnam which completely contradicted the public narrative and justification for the war. Ellsberg […]
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 […]
NAKASHIMA’S ROOF
When I went to interview Mira Nakashima, the daughter of the famous craftsman, George Nakashima, I had the sense of stepping into another world, completely removed from the bold urban sculptures and structures I had been documenting. A small woodland hamlet, informed by the Japanese aesthetic, is the site of the George Nakashima […]