NEWSLETTER NUMBER TEN

JUNE 2005

--an exhibition to enhance public understanding of the architect’s work in Washington during the Gilded Age by interpreting the impact of Cluss’s revolutionary roots and his social vision on the city’s architecture and life.

Charles Sumner School Museum, Washington DC,
and Stadtarchiv Heilbronn,
September 2005 - February 2006

To join our mailing list and be kept informed about the progress of planning for the exhibition, please send your name, address, and email address to cluss@washington.goethe.org.

CHARLES SUMNER SCHOOL DETAIL:

Window typical of Cluss's general style (Sumner School)

PROJECT NEWS:

Gifts from Cluss's Great-grandson

The great-grandson of Adolf Cluss, William S. Shacklette, and his wife, Donna, have donated 85 documents and many photographs to the Castle Collection of the Smithsonian Institution. The documents include letters written to Cluss between 1872 and 1905, newspaper obituaries and biographies, and death notices saved by Cluss. The photographs include most of Cluss's children, his wife Rosa, his father Heinrich, Oak Hill Cemetery, and the house where Cluss lived in Foggy Bottom during the last eleven years of his life. The Shacklette's gift to the Castle Collection also contains an oil painting done by Cluss, stock certificates for the German-American National Bank and a notebook of Cluss's drawings done in Italy.

In the 1970s, the Shacklettes donated to the Castle Collection a portrait of Rosa Cluss, painted by Henry Ulke. It now hangs in the Smithsonian Castle, but will be displayed in the Cluss exhibition. They have also loaned many Cluss artifacts for display in the exhibition.

William and Donna Shacklette lived in Washington for many years before retiring to Lake Worth Florida. In 1960, the Shacklettes traveled in Europe, visited Heilbronn, Germany, Cluss's birthplace, and met members of the Cluss family, including Eugen Cluss, the surviving son of Adolf Cluss's brother.

Kiplinger Grant

The Adolf Cluss Exhibition Project has been awarded a grant by the Kiplinger Foundation. This grant comes at a crucial time as we try to complete the final design of all of the elements of exhibition.

Spaces, Sounds, and Cluss / Räume, Klänge, Cluss
CD Project: Spaces, Music and Sounds of the 19th Century in Washington, DC and Heilbronn

Ten audio "soundscape" features evoke the atmosphere of Adolf Cluss's buildings and life. The soundscapes are being produced by two internationally recognized sound artists: Washington's Alex van Oss and Berlin-based artist Helmut Kopetzky.

Beginning with a rehearsal in St. Kilian's Church (Lutheran), near Cluss's birthplace in Heilbronn, the German portion of the CD presents buildings and music associated with Cluss's family, friends, and associates. These include a work by composer Hugo Wolf, songs of the revolutionary German "Turner" movement, and music of the failed 1848 revolution. In Washington, the soundscapes explore such distinctive Cluss buildings as the National Museum (the Smithsonian Arts and Industries Building), Calvary Baptist Church, the Masonic Temple, Eastern Market, and Sumner and Franklin Schools.

Through music and ambience, each soundscape reflects the present and also takes listeners back in time to 19th-century Germany, for example, or to President James Garfield's inauguration ball, or to the classroom of an early American public school.

The forthcoming CD can be ordered now. The CD will be available for purchase in September ($12; € 9 plus shipping)

Hear a sample from the sounds of Eastern Market (RealAudio, 2:02)

Website Launch

The bilingual websites for the Adolf Cluss Exhibition Project, www.adolf-cluss.org (English version) and www.adolf-cluss.de (German version), are now up and running! Members of the Team on both sides of the Atlantic have exchanged messages in the guestbook, and invite you to visit the sites and add your comments as well.

WHY ADOLF CLUSS? Remarks from the producers of the forthcoming CD Project: Spaces, Music and Sounds of the 19th Century in Washington, DC and Heilbronn

Helmut Kopetzky, Journalist and Sound Designer

Echoes and Reverberations: After ten days of our wandering around with martial-looking wind protectors, head-phones, and various recording equipment, more inhabitants of this friendly town now know the answer to this question. Although we two Berliners-my wife Heidrun and I-aren't "Clussies," we had to provide an answer over and over. We've both been doing audio recording, an unusual kind of work in this visual age, for thirty years. But the task that awaited us here was of an especially delicate kind: to create an acoustic portrait of someone and something that no longer exist. Adolf Cluss has been dead for 100 years, and stones don't talk.

The hardest part of the job consisted of making places of significance to the then young architect come to life-through sound. The specific acoustics of a space have to be ausgelöst, as we say, meaning "released" for it's only sounds that you can react to-for example echoes and reverberations-and that give "presence" to spaces recorded by the microphone.

With that in mind, we tried to re-construct acoustic situations of the 19th century: a House Concert in the so-called "Wine Villa" (the home of Cluss's half-sister, Henriette Cluss Faisst); a recording of the internationally known Württemberg Chamber Orchestra Heilbronn rehearsing in St. Kilian's (Lutheran) Church (where Adolf Cluss was christened); Heilbronn's music school orchestra rehearsing in the "Käthchen-House" and in the vaults of the Courts of the Teutonic Knights (Deutschhof-Keller), an impressive vaulted cellar lying beneath the city; a performance by a Turner-Gesangverein (singing society associated with the historical Turner gymnasts association) behind the Justinus-Kerner House in Weinsberg, where Adolf Cluss took part in patriotic meetings during his revolutionary youth in 1848; or Katzenmusik (caterwauling music) by a brass group, recreating the fantastic and loud style of protest by unhappy citizens during that period of Heilbronn's history.

We climbed up towers and scrambled inside the astronomical clock on the façade of Heilbronn's city hall, and drank and laughed with today's Heilbronners - because the sounds of 2005 will provide additional contrast to the historical sites evoked in our CD. For us, a two-person team from Germany's capital, this expedition through Heilbronn's architectural and urban history was also a vivid current-day experience.

Alex van Oss, Writer/Producer

Over the past few months, I have been visiting Adolf Cluss's Eastern Market building to record everything from street musicians and merchants to butchers sharpening their knives. Recently I strolled from the market, past the Capitol, and down along the Mall to record sounds of tourists, fountains, and the merry-go-round located outside another Cluss structure, the Arts and Industries Building. On the way, on the slope of Capitol Hill, I happened across a high school band playing marches along with an eclectic rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner that would have made Jimmy Hendrix envious at the Woodstock concert! Presently a strong wind came up, so my poor merry-go-round ambiences sound as if recorded in a hurricane. I shall have to redo them - but I don't mind, for the Mall is a pleasant place to revisit. Soon I plan to record school children at play as they recreate 19th-century skipping and clapping games for the (Cluss-designed) Sumner and Franklin Schools soundscape. Then I have to find some authentic Masonic music of the period, for the Masonic Temple soundscape. This Adolf Cluss project is anything but routine or predictable!

MORE NEWS:

Educational Materials

Look for materials for social studies, German, art, and architecture instructors to arrive on the Adolf Cluss website this summer.

Cluss in German Life Magazine

The June/July issue of German Life profiles Adolf Cluss and his contributions to architecture in its "Yesteryears" feature by Robert A. and Barbara Selig.

FEATURED BUILDINGS:
PRIVATE SCHOOLS DESIGNED BY CLUSS

Adolf Cluss and his partners designed three schools for Roman Catholic churches and orders. Unfortunately, insufficient documentation remains for Bennet School.

Academy of the Visitation
by Cynthia Field, Smithsonian Institution Office of Architectural History and Preservation

The building was done for the Sisters of the Order of the Visitation, an order founded by Saint Francis de Sales with Saint Jeanne de Chantal. In his honor, the street they created to delineate their property was named DeSales, an act emphasizing their dedication to his model of restraint in religious practice and humility. His concern for the sanctification of daily life made the order a logical outreach organization to the laity. School training was a way to transmit the St. Francis de Sales message that all Christians, lay and clergy, could santify their lives through their actions.

Activist Christianity, a religion based on acts rather than meditation and prayer, characterized many of the congregations for which Cluss designed churches. The same approach would have attracted him to Sisters of the Visitation of Mary. For them he designed a three-part, three-story structure accommodating the school and the order in one large structure; a handsome bell tower marked the division between the two. Two of Cluss's daughters, Anita and Lillian, attended the Academy and performed at musical events.

Image Credit: Academy of the Visitation, courtesy of the Library of Congress, LC-G7-497

St. John's College
by Joseph L. Browne, Project Director, Adolf Cluss Exhibition Project

St. Matthew's Church built the first school, then known as St. Matthew's Institute, in 1866 at the corner of 16th and L Streets. By 1878, the Christian Brothers, who led the school, commissioned Cluss and Frederick Daniel to build a new brick structure with a marble façade on Vermont Avenue between M and N streets. It was a four-story building, with half occupied by the brothers and half for classrooms, gymnasium, and chapel. The fourth floor contained an exhibition hall with seating for 1400 people. The classrooms differed from those in the public schools Cluss designed; they were smaller with desks for 30 students and had glass walls separating the classrooms. The grounds to the rear of the school, the Washington Post reported, "are tastefully laid out in walks which wind in and out among a wealth of shrubbery, evergreens and flowers, showing an eye to the beautiful as well as the practical." The cost of the building and grounds was estimated at $30,000. Cluss also designed a tower edition in 1889. In the 1940s, St. John's College moved to its present location on Military Road and the Vermont Avenue building was razed.

Image Credit: Front elevation of St. John's College by Cluss and Schulze, August 1879, courtesy of St. John's High School, Washington, DC

MORE NEWS:

Exhibition: "The Initiated Eye: Secrets, Symbols, Freemasonry and the Architecture of Washington, DC"
The Octagon Museum, 1799 New York Ave. NW
Until December 31, 2005

Paul Dolinsky, Chief, Historic American Buildings Survey, and advisor to Team Cluss on Masonic history, has alerted us to this exhibition, which features several paintings of Cluss buildings by Peter Waddell. The exhibition is a collaboration with the Freemasons of Washington, DC, Peter Waddell, and The Octagon, the Museum of The American Architectural Foundation. It focuses on the significant contributions of Freemasons to the design and architecture of Washington, DC.

Walking Tour: "Trace the Steps of German Immigrants"
departing from Goethe-Institut, 812 Seventh St. NW
Tuesday, June 7, 5:30-9 pm

This walking tour, given in collaboration with the National Archives, will provide information found in the Archives about several German immigrants who lived in or whose work can be seen in our neighborhood. After a guided walk through the neighborhood, the tour will arrive at the Archives at about 7 pm. You will then be given a chance to begin doing research on one of your own ancestors. The Archives closes at 9 pm.

Led by Alice Stewart, local historian. Tour is limited to 15 people; photo ID required for entrance to the Archives. Cost: $5. RSVP to 202-289-1200, ext. 510

Image Credit: Stephanie Elliott Garnett

Lecture: "Shaping the Mall: The Early Years, 1790-1910"
Historical Society of Washington, D.C.
Tuesday, June 7, 6-8 pm

Dana Dalrymple, agricultural economist with USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service and an independent researcher, will discuss the development of the National Mall. The present form of the Mall has existed only since the 1930s. From the 1840s, a complex series of events set the stage for later developments. These will be examined in terms of the four principal residents of the Mall during the latter period: the Botanical Garden, the Smithsonian Institution, the Washington Monument, and the Department of Agriculture (USDA). Particular attention will be given to the tangled relationship of USDA with the Senate Park Commission from 1901 to 1905 concerning the placement and construction of the present wings of the Department's administration building. Light refreshments. Cost: $8 members; $12 nonmembers

Sebnem Kurt Arrives

Team Cluss welcomes intern Sebnem Kurt. Sebnem will be working with the Cluss Team through July on exhibition research and preparation. She is currently studying social science, history, and English at the University of Cologne, and has worked on public relations, marketing, and editorial tasks at a radio station.

Docents Needed

The Adolf Cluss Exhibition Project seeks docents to provide tours from September 15, 2005, through February 28, 2006 at the Charles Sumner School Museum. Seeking volunteers with an interest in Washington history, architecture, politics, German-American history and immigration, historic engineering, and public education. Training begins in May 2005. Contact Harriet Lesser, Cluss Exhibition Coordinator, at hlesser@adolf-cluss.org or 202-442-6051.

Planning for the exhibition, slated to open in Washington and Heilbronn, Germany, Cluss's birthplace, in 2005, is a cooperative effort among many institutions in Washington and Heilbronn, Germany.

Exhibition Contact:
Harriet Lesser, Exhibition Coordinator
c/o Charles Sumner School Museum & Archives
1201 17th Street NW
Washington, DC 20036-3009
hlesser@adolf-cluss.org

Project Director:
Joseph L. Browne, Ph.D.
c/o Friends of the Goethe-Institut Washington
812 7th Street NW
Washington, DC 20001-3718
jbrowne@adolf-cluss.org

About the exhibitions in Germany and the USA:
www.adolf-cluss.org

About Adolf Cluss:
www.goethe.de/cluss

Cluss Electronic Newsletters
Editors:
Norma Broadwater, Goethe-Institut Washington
William Gilcher, Goethe-Institut Washington
Webmaster:
Craig Childers, Goethe-Institut Washington

SUPPORT THE ADOLF CLUSS EXHIBITIONS AND RELATED PUBLIC EVENTS

"Friends of the Goethe-Institut Washington" has set up a special account to receive tax-deductible donations in support of the Adolf Cluss Project. Send your check (payable to "Friends of the Goethe-Institut Washington") to:

Friends of the Goethe-Institut Washington
812 Seventh St, NW
Washington, DC 20001-3718

This project is made possible thanks to generous support from the Transatlantic Program of the Federal Republic of Germany, with funds from the European Recovery Program (ERP) of the Federal Ministry of Economics and Labor (BMWA), the MARPAT Foundation, the Kiplinger Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Humanities Council of Washington, DC, and Edelman. A cooperative project of the Charles Sumner School Museum and Archives, the German Historical Institute, Washington, DC, Goethe-Institut Washington, the Historical Society of Washington, DC, the Smithsonian Institution’s Office of Architectural History and Historic Preservation and the Stadtarchiv Heilbronn.