MODERNISM, MADNESS AND THE AMERICAN DREAM
In 1934 a nineteen-year-old adventurer, Patrick Leigh Fermor, crossed Europe from the hook of Holland to Constantinople. He travelled mostly on foot. He was the same age as my father. A passage from his beautiful travel memoir, written years later, inspired this blog post. Fermor wrote, in Between The Woods and The […]
There is one machine that my father would have relished explaining to Madeleine Friedli, the woman who would become my mother: The lift that carried passengers from the ground to the second stage of the Eiffel Tower. During 1937 my parents met for romantic weekends in Paris when they could scrape together the train […]
Previously, in The Pavilion of New Times, Paul encountered the work and ideas of the great French architect, Le Corbusier at the 1937 Paris International Exposition. A few months later he is given the chance to apprentice to the master… In London Pál worked happily for Moholy-Nagy for a year, (as described in Beauty, Art, and The […]
While apprenticed to the famous architect Le Corbusier in Paris, Paul struggled to formulate his own ideas on architecture, amid the cacophony of theories and slogans being bandied about by Modernists. Scribbling in cafes and on park benches, on long summer evenings and weekends, he wrote a rambling manifesto. Its introduction is a […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
You have been telling the people that this is the Eleventh Hour, now you must go back and tell the people that this is the Hour. And there are things to be considered… Where are you living? What are you doing? What are your relationships? Are you in right relation? Where is your water? Know […]