“Soviet avant-garde, 1917 to 1930: Rarely in history have art and science not faced one another like hostile brothers. Rarely has revolutionary fervour reached so far into the future.” These words opened the project announcement with which Heinz Hirdina fired the enthusiasm of students from different disciplines at the KHB in June 1989. What followed were intensive seminars, a workshop at the Bauhaus Dessau and, in 1990, a journey to Moscow to visit key sites of the avant-garde. The project culminated in a three-dimensional interpretation of El Lissitzky’s dynamic graphic work “The New Man” – a utopian construction.
The Soviet avant-garde was a central point of reference throughout Heinz Hirdina’s work. Hirdina Lecture II draws on his lectures on Lissitzky, Rodchenko, Stepanova, Tatlin and others, combining them with impressions from an extraordinary KHB project undertaken during the Wende – the period of political upheaval surrounding the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification – a time of openness but also profound uncertainty.
Silke Ihden-Rothkirch (born 1966 in Berlin) graduated in design and works as a freelance communications editor for organisations in the social sector. As an author, curator and lecturer, she specialises in design history, aesthetic education and questions of participation and accessibility in design. After studying product design and aesthetics, she joined the editorial team of “form+zweck – Zeitschrift für Gestaltung” (“form+zweck – Journal of Design”) and co-authored “Designlehren. Wege deutscher Gestaltungsausbildung” (“Teaching Design: Paths in German Design Education”, 2008). Ihden-Rothkirch co-edited and co-curated “Schönheit der Form. Die Designerin Christa Petroff-Bohne” (“The Beauty of Form: The Designer Christa Petroff-Bohne”, Dresden 2020, Hamburg 2021), and contributed to the accompanying catalogue. She also worked as co-editor, co-curator and author on “Retrotopia. Design for Socialist Spaces” (Berlin 2023/24). Her current project is the exhibition “Designing for Berlin. Design from the Academy of Art Berlin-Weißensee” (2026/27) at the Werkbundarchiv – Museum der Dinge.
Hirdina Lectures
Heinz Hirdina (1942–2013), a philosopher, cultural theorist and writer, is regarded as one of the leading design theorists of the GDR and reunified Germany. From 1988 to 2004, he taught the theory and history of design at the weißensee academy of art berlin, tracing design across disciplines from its beginnings in the nineteenth century to the present day.
As part of the special exhibition “Designing for Berlin. Design from the Academy of Art Berlin-Weißensee”, former students return to Hirdina’s lectures and discuss them from today’s perspective.
Heinz Hirdina’s lectures were published in three volumes in 2020 and 2024 by the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation in collaboration with Spector Books. The series was edited by Achim Trebeß with the support of bauhaus dessau e.V. We would like to thank them for supporting these events.
