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56 Friday, July 4, 1980

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

American Arts, Sciences Enriched by Those Who Fled Europe

linist and teacher, recently
Cynthia Goodman, adjunct Igor Stravinsky and con- recalled the events leading
had
to
"acquire
a
taste
for
He
had
the
prestige
to
sub-
ductor
Antal
Dorati
(now
By DAVID MAXFIELD
mit his work to publishers curator of the Fine Arts with the Detroit Sym- up to that decision. "My own
America," Kazin noted.
Smithsonian News Service
Museum of Long Island.
career in Germany
The pain of adjustment in German for translation.
WASHINGTON — For
"His role was significant in phony Orchestra). On musical
In
many
cases,
the
flight
came
to
a
halt with the corn-
these
shores,
Weill
wrote
for
the
German
intellec-
many, the traumatic,
from Europe and the process establishing New York's
ing to power of Hitler in
dangerous journey began in tual elite was no more of adaptation itself provided supremacy in the world of the scores for "Knicker- 1933," he said. "In less than
Marseilles. From a secret true than in southern the themes for an artist's art, his principles were in- bocker Holiday" and
a year, all my engagements
address, where they had California where large accomplishments
in trinsic to the development "Lady in the Dark" and were cancelled; my students
Stravinsky completed his
been handed travel direc- numbers of exiles settled. America. According to Ka- of Abstract Expressionism."
were forced to switch to
Also arriving at this "Symphony in C."
tions and visas by an under- This scene provided a zin, Hannah Arendt blos-
One Jewish musician, other teachers, and I was re-
ground international rescue classic encounter be- somed into a political time were the musicians,
entrance to oral exam-
operation, more than 1,500 tween the Old World and philosopher with "The Ori- among them the pianist Boris Schwarz, who left fused
ination
to complete my doc-
an
Germany
in
1936
to
begin
New,
according
to
European artists and intel-
gins of Totalitarianism," "a Arthur Rubinstein, coin-
lectuals fleeing Hitler made other colloquium par- book that could not have posors Kurt Weill and an American career as a vio- toral studies."
their way to Casablanca or ticipant, historian Jarrell been written without a
over the Pyrenees to Lisbon C. Jackman. Finding background of pain."
and then on to safety in the themselves 6,000 miles
She was not just a gifted
from their homeland in a
United States.
scholar in exile, he said, but
By JODY BRANSE
land
of
sunshine
and
These refugees, together
(World Zionist
"an
entirely
fearless
mind."
with 300,000 or so others palm trees, many of them It was her brilliant phrase,
Press Service)
were
intellectually
and
who reached America dur-
"the banality of evil," that
Arad is a town in the des-
emotionally
unprepared
ing the Hitler era, pro-
described the mind-set of ert: a few minutes walk in
foundly transformed for the popular and lei- Adolph Eichman, a petty almost any direction from
surely
world
of
southern
American culture. Their
bureaucrat who became the the center of Arad will bring
saga is little-told now, but California.
The Nobel Prize-winning architect of Hitler's exter- you abruptly to the edge of
from psychoanalysis to
town to face a gray and
chemistry, from literature novelist, Thomas Mann, mination campaign against
brown
ladnscape of barren
to film to architecture, the remained aloof from the set- the Jews.
The look of America it-
and rocky plains.
impact of the exiles on both ting, never writing about self was altered with the hills
You're never far from an
the arts and sciences in the America ("A work must
arrival of designers, ar- awareness that desert sur-
United States was signific- have long roots in my life," fists and architects from
om rounds this Israeli de-
he once said) developing, in-
ant.
the German Bauhaus, the velopment town, where
Americaii cities, for stead, his Germanic themes Pioneering industriall de-
Judea meets the Negev, Be-
example, owe much of their for "Dr. Faustus" and other sign esta
contemporary look to the works of fiction. Mann even whose associates had douin camels graze by the
glass-and-steel concepts ignored California's sport- re-examined everything roadside, and visitors are
advanced by one of the refu- shirt informality, always from the coffee cup to city warned to drink 15 glasses
of water a day to avoid de-
gees, Ludwig Mies van der wearing a tie and suit coat
planning.
hydration.
Rohe. Hans Bethe and in public.
It was at the Bauhaus
The parched earth is not
The noted composer Ar-
others played crucial roles
in the development of nold Schoenberg could during the 1920s that the only a border but also an
American atomic physics. never bring himself to write skyscraper as a glass tower ongoing challenge to the
And artists such as Hans for Hollywood films. But evolved — a tower sheathed Aradians; the desert often
Hofmann, Josef Albers and other exiles did adjust and in a skin of glass, criss- serves as a background to a
cluster of bulldozers, cranes
Marcel Duchamp helped were able to continue their crossed by metal frames,
make New York the art cap- careers in exile. Erich devoid of ornamentation and cement mixers that
ital of the world. Korngold, for example, won and appearing to have been signal the construction of
two Oscars for his movie produced by a machine. The another new neighborhood.
Yet the Jews and other compositions, and Billy concept was transplanted to
In 1961 a team of ar-
"enemies of the Third Re- Wilder became famous as a the States with the arrival chitects, engineers and
ich" who sought
administrators arrived to
of his studio work, of Mies van der Rohe.
Arad, between Beersheba and the Dead Sea, is
sanctuary in the States result
. .
America was ready for la out a new town on the
directing
"Sun-
writing
an
•
.
45
shown
in the top photograph in 1963, two years after it
were a small fraction
of
late au ,
the millions of Europeans set Boulevard" and "The the Bauhaus-influenced kilometers
o f th
east of was founded. The bottom p o ograp is
industrial
styles,
according
who were uprooted and Lost Weekend."
Beersheva and overlook- town's main street 10 years later.
to
architectural
critic
Wolf
Language, of course, pro-
persecuted during the
component of the popula-
ved
a major barrier for Von Eckhardt, because the ing the Dead Sea and
Nazi regime.
nation shared the romance Masada from an eleva- are crowded with lei- tion; Arad's strongest foun-
pedestrians,
"To discuss the talent of many of the arrivals, with
surely
for technology, for an inter-
.
a
dation is her families, and
those who made it is to dis- different professions pre- national design style and tion of one kilometer.
shoppers and o s
The
site
bore
no
reminder
singles have a difficult time
i
cuss the many who did not senting different obstacles
children.
Construction
is
for such elements as glass of the ancient settlements
integrating.
survive; we will never know and requirements. A large
under
way
on
two
resi-
and polished steel. While at nearby Tel Arad, where
Many residents work in
the full story of the Hitler number of the refugee- Mies went on to design the archeologists have un- dential quarters to ac-
horror," the author and cri- intellectuals were initially Chicago Illinois Institute of covered Canaanite habita- commodate some of the the Dead Sea chemical
tic, Alfred Kazin, recently shocked over the realization Technology and to head i its tions and a Hebrew fortress 7--12,000 newcomers ex- operations, the nuclear-
research center in Di-
told a Smithsonian Institu- that they did not have the architectural department, a of the first millenium BCE; petted by 1984.
mona, and other regional
The
pioneer
settlers
were
tion colloquium as part of its linguistic background to Bauhaus colleague, Walter nor of an abortive post-
enterprises. Arad's own
centennial observance of pursue their careers, ac-
Gropius, settled at Harvard, World War I attempt by Sabras and veteran immig-
industrial zone, outside
the birth of Einstein. cording to Helmut F. Pfan-
where he influenced a new former Jewish Legionnaires rants, many of them former
the residential sector, is
"Many governments ner, professor of German at
generation of architects, to settle in the area. But, kibutzniks and moshav- sited for optimal wind
failed to see the threat in Purdue University.
intended as a stable dispersion of pollution
To overcome what among them I.M. Pei, the like many another Israeli niks,
time," according to Herbert
designer of the Nationalphenomenon, Arad's suc- core for the absorption of and odors.
Pfanner
sees
as
the
refu-
A. Strauss, a City Univer-
Gallery's new East Building cess does not hinge on pre- later immigrants. Admis-
The economy also relies
sity of New York historian. gees' "most serious prob- in Washington and the John cedents. sion to Arad was selective at
on
tourists who take advan-
lem,"
the
immigrants
"Numerous intellectuals
F. Kennedy Memorial inArad's founders were able first, requiring an applica-
perished because govern- went to American Boston. to analyze their site and lay tion and interview; today, tage of Arad's proximity to
the therapeutic warm
ments did too little too late. movies, seeing the same
In the art world, mean- out its major lines of de- anyone who wants to live
spring§ along the Dead Sea
film
over
and
over,
and
It was not until 1948, for
while, Hans Hofmann, a velopment in terms of de- here is welcome. The origi-
example, that the United listened to religious teacher and painter whos e cades rather than years or nal 2:1 ratio of Sabras to and the Masada excava-
tions. The dry, dustfree air
immigrants still exists.
States enacted the first broadcasts because the career had spanned the months.
attracts people with res-
piece of legislation dealing ministers pronounced major modern art move-
In the central commercial
Thus, before any con-
iratory problems. A
specifically with refugee the language distinctly.
ments of the 20th Century struction began, there plaza, one mingles
with regional boom is expected in
Sabras,
pale
Pfanner
believes
that
for
policy as distinct from im-
and Romanian the next decade as com-
those who were able to in Europe, arrived in the existed a master plan, sun-bronzed
migration law."
United States in 1933, open- envisioning Arad's steady Russian
For many of those who did make the adjustment, ing schools in New York and growth toward a population newcomers, Hasidim ac- coerce, industry and
escape, adjustment to new meaning and depth Provincetown.
"The
impor-
tourism
follow
army
r --
their vacation-
of 60-70,000
by 2010.
Nine-
ployment
and the cons
American life with its focus were added to their lives
of the link he estab- teen years and 13,000 ing Rebbe, and visitors
work.
on the contemporary, con- and
Still,
Thomas Mann, lished with the major fig- people toward that goal, to- all over Israel and the tion of a new international
pared to the European pen-
world. Local Bedouins wear airport near Beersheva.
chant for continuity, proved among others, never aban- ures of art history cannot be day's Arad is-thriving.
said
their traditional white Solar Power
More
a
"bedroom
formidable. In a way, they doned his native language. overestimated,"
community" than a city, robes or the work clothes of
JERUSALEM — Israel
Arad is best char- municipal and industrial has begun operating the
employees.
acterized by the eight
There is even a contin- world's largest solar-
self-contained neighbor-
hoods radiating from the gent of black Hebrews, electric power station at Ein
on the Dead Sea.
civic and commercial members of a black Ameri- Bokek
The 150-kilowatt pilot
center, each with its edu- can sect claiming descent
cational, recreational, re- from the 10 Lost Tribes that plant works from heat col-
ligious and shopping has settled in several Negev lected in a two-acre pond.
facilities. The interior communities. But the chil- The heat activates the
roads, closed to vehicles, dren are the most noticeable plant's turbine.

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Young Town of Arad Is Thriving

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