Under normal circumstances, this text would be about this tin letterbox:
That it is on display in the permanent exhibition of the Werkbundarchiv – Museum der Dinge – in the showcase dedicated to Gustav E. Pazaurek’s “Department of aberrations of taste”. That in this letterbox, according to Pazaurek, there is a so-called “decor exaggeration” because, although it was formed in a manner typical of the material used, in the painting it imitates another material – wood. The text would further describe that the letter slot mimics a carved border and the vents are ornamented as a Gothic portico. And that this object belongs to a group of things that, as a “Feindbildsammlung” (collection of enemy objects), explains the program of the Deutscher Werkbund and serves as a prelude to the museum’s permanent exhibition.
But given the current circumstances, this letterbox now represents an anonymous Luxembourg shell corporation that has terminated the museum’s use of space on Oranienstrasse. It is almost unreal that Pazaurek wrote about the category of “decor exaggeration”: “In such cases, we experience a deception that is actually not a deception at all, because it is eliminated by the forms, but precisely because of this, as a failed joke, as a joke without a punch line, which is experienced with displeasure.”
