at Goethe Institut, Moscow
Booklet
52 pages
Format DINA6
languages: Russian, German and English
the publication is a collaboration with
Natasha Sabrodskaya (editor)
Viktor Timshin (audio piece)
Sergey Nikitin (text)
Johanna Rukkholm (graphic design)
and is part of the works of "Leninskij 95",
curated by Astrid Wege, cultural director of Goethe Institut Moskau
Sergey Nikitin wrote a text about the ex-GDR embassy building (te text is copied below in its English translation), now housing the Goethe Institut and on the verge of demolition. Joahann Rukkholm made the layout and I drew pencil sketches inside the building on Leninskij prospect 95.
This is a walk in the building in
Leninsky avenue, 95a,
Moscow, South-West
Originally built as an ex-embassy of GDR (aka Eastern Germany)
Then reopened as Goethe Institute and Visa service of BRD (Germany),
With historian of Soviet Moscow and its architecture –
Dr. Sergey Nikitin
(MosKultProg.ru)
I.
Blue house blue
No one wants you
II.
O brutalism, you proud child of our grandfathers!
They believed in the concrete, both its power and charms. But they mixed it with asbestos, and that was a mistake.
III.
Even ambassador of GDR was told to dislike his Moscow embassy – he preferred to work in a dacha outside of Moscow. But do we have any proof of it? It seems those people from GDR Embassy disappeared from the space. Research of Goethe institute produced no further evidence of the building in its GDR phase.
IV. A fallen fortress
Would you imagine a fortress surrendering to the enemy? Well, here we are!
There is no detailed documentation about the building – GDR diplomats accurately destroyed everything on their leaving. Quite far from a friendly image of the reunification of two Germanys that we had those days.
V. Everything had to go quite well
Once upon a time, there was 1984, and Eastern Germany built their embassy on Leninsky Avenue. You should know something about the area.
It was probably the most prestigious neighborhood of the last decades of the Soviet capital, its surroundings housing party and KGB authorities as well as some academicians: Moscow State University and many institutes of Academy of Sciences are located next to it. Also, the avenue connected Kremlin to government airport Vnukovo-2; here, Moscow crowds met Gagarin on his return from space. This was and still is the fancy area – look at the new apartment skyscraper that just appeared before our house on Leninsky avenue.
For some obscure reason, it didn’t work with GDR's house.
VI. Goodbye, Leninsky
I started to explore Leninsky avenue during my university years. Everyone around still talked respectfully about the area. But the Soviet fleur has gone rapidly. To the end of the 1990s, it was just an urban highway – like Ost-West in Hamburg, or any other peripheric avenue in Moscow – we have them so many. It was then that with my friends I'd done a series of walks "Goodbye, Leninsky" trying to re-visit big Soviet sites that made jealous Muscovites from the other parts of the city. Great Soviet shops with porcelain and furniture were still open but without a shadow of their former glory.
Not by chance, even our grey house was also declassified – from the National Embassy to the consular section and cultural department.
VII. Reserved and impassionate
The exact word to describe facades and interiors is reserved. Have you ever see the Soviet and GDR leaders those days, for instance, on the military parade? Dressed in a grey overcoat with their Karakul-hats, looking fresh and brisk in their 70s.
You may meet a lot of lovely historical details inside but a flame of passion. Perhaps in the past, this could be flags or flowers they used to decorate the halls and entrance for the national days of GDR, - Republic Day of October 7, or May 1.
VIII. Death baby
In many ways, the ex-embassy of GDR on Leninsky looks like a small brother of the unfortunate Republic Palace of GDR. Thi palace was standing on Spree, on the site of the Berlin castle. Same cement architecture, the same faceless appearance you can never remember - even if you saw it many times.
The palace of the Republic was abandoned in 1990 because of asbestos.
Asbestos is a death sentence to both of the buildings.
This material was considered suitable for construction, both for roofs and inner structures, until in the 1980s they proved that people were working with the asbestos face a high percentage of cancer.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer refers to all types of asbestos to the first group of carcinogens (alongside with tobacco, for example). In 1993 they prohibited it in Germany; since then, more than 9000 people died there, many ex-builders among them. Our house also involved asbestos.
A baby was not welcomed since the beginning; they found a good excuse to leave him.
IX. Asbestos irony
But but but. After careful chemical analysis, they realized that the asbestos in GDR house on Leninsky was not that dangerous.
So you can stay. You can continue to operate. But who wants? I am talking to a local.
- Are you staying or leaving?
- Goethe Institut is supposed to leave until 2021.
- And what is going to happen to the house when you go? Will they demolish it?
- We don't know. Probably it is not decided yet.
X. Nedobroshennyi
Like the Wall to Berlin, asbestos added a dramatic flair to the house. You have a kind of Titanic feeling when you enter some of the rooms that lost its splendor to serve as storage.
Russians use prefixes (and suffixes too) to create new words. A word to describe the actual feeling of the place is nedobroshennyi - abandoned but not fully.
XI. The main hall, pt.1
Old merchant houses in Italy included piano nobile – where they received honorary guests, threw dinners, parties showing off their richness and style.
Does our house have a big hall?
It's not easy to locate it in the whole of the building, not easy to visit it. We finally meet someone who has the keys.
XII. The main hall, pt.2
Wow! It's huge and full of light.
And it used to be solemn once upon a time.
But it was reduced to the book storage. You know in Soviet Union they also used churches for storage.
They say the original parquette is lying underneath the flooring roll. And it is beautiful. But I don't know how beautiful.
The colossal chandelier – samely made of glass pipes as other lamps in the house - was gifted to Mosfilm film studios. Did they shoot it in some movies of the 1990s?
* * *
What you can do here now? Ballet classes? Music performances?
It is so silent inside.
XIII. The window to the world
Germany was and still is the hardest place to get a visa for a Russian.
Personally, I've failed to make it too – discouraged on seeing a huge line waiting for their turn on a frosty December day.
Now they don't do the visas here anymore.
I can visit these spaces - these waiting rooms – where the fortunes of men were decided. Everything is solid grey, old wardrobes, bleakish marble, and gun slots to insert your passport.
Closed forever.
XIV.
Achtung Enhalt Asbest
The lamps on the ceiling are covered with small plastic covers – it's done to prevent the toxic asbestos elements descend on us. They put them when they believed it could be harmful.
XV. Passion
Trying to learn something about our house building, I called Anna Bronovitskaya. She is the biggest connoisseur of Soviet modernism, and most precisely – the brutalism period. She should know. Of course, she knows!...
- Do you mean the embassy of BRD?
- No, I mean the old GDR one, on the Leninsky avenue.
- Oh, yes, I remember. It is actually not that bad. But I am afraid I don't know anything about it. Probably someone in the embassy could know?
Is it like Stasi - the secret police of GDR, could have erased all the knowledge about this gray house? And most of all – have killed all the interest, all possible affection towards this building even from the passionate researchers of brutalism?
A week after I find the names: Natalia Kuznetsova and Konstantin Babaev from Mosproekt, a state projecting corporation, are the architects. Strangely enough, they didn't build anything significant before or after our house.
A friend gives an interesting interpretation: did they want these two young guys because GDR had its vision and didn't need stars to implement it?
XVI. The Sauna!
I couldn't visit this sauna on the first floor of the embassy – the door was closed, we had to wait for the keys for 40 minutes or so. And yet it is probably one of the fascinating things to meditate. Natasha made a video for me, and as far as I see, there is a typical Russian (German?) wooden sauna with a plunge tub.
Perhaps it's ok for an Embassy to have a sauna inside – for instance, the embassy of West Germany in Moscow has a fantastic swimming pool. But in this severe grey house, this piece of hedonism sounds like a fountain a desert.
By the way, if you ever to have a sauna with germans, get ready to be nude. No pants are allowed.
XVII. Pre-Sauna
Before you (don't) enter the sauna, there is a room for relaxation. It is now also storage, but not long ago, when the house still served to host the visa section of the consular department of BRD, this is where its securities used to relax. It sounds like the disco bar in the 1980s-90s – everything is covered with wooden panels, and there is also a lovely sauna smell in the air.
A melancholic pull-up leans over from the ceiling. Guys used to work-out here.
XVIII. Unhomely (Dialogue with a local)
- You work at the Goethe Institute here since 1992. Will you ever miss this place when you move from here?
- I guess no. This building is outdated. And it is unhomely here.
XIX. Europe turns East (Dialogue with a local in the cinema hall)
- When I first came here, it was 1988 or so. I came with my German class to watch a GDR film. Getting inside was not easy, of course – we had to fill in documents and show passports.
- What was the film?
- I don't remember.
- What did you feel?
- It was like traveling to the West. Everything around in the neighborhood was so gloomy and grey.
- And how do you feel about the house now?
- Everything around is blossoming with colors. And this place looks grey and gloomy like the Soviet Union.
What about street art?
My friend curator reminded me that somewhen in the late 1990s we went to see an exhibition here. The invitation looked cool. So we took a frozen trolleybus from a metro station. And then there was this palace surrounded by a small park, immersed in the snow. An exhibition installed around the main staircase was lovely, but there was no one else. It was when contemporary art was rarely seen in town – and yet it failed to attract people.
But what do we mean – fail to attract?
Of course, if they have let street artists paint it over and over, it could be different.
Or national institutions can't play such games with their facades?
XXI. Could Christo revamp it?
Perhaps it's from outside, from the Pilyugina street, that the house might provoke strong emotion. You may not notice it at first sight, but huge curtains, quite dirty ones cover its walls, and together with crumbling staircases and dilapidated fences, they create an image of a sinking ship. Or a submarine that emerged in the totally wrong times just to be hit.
Could Christo revamp it - if he was invited to design this curtain? It could revitalize the whole avenue for sure.
XXII.Psychoanalysis of the architecture.
Does the building provoke some empathy?
I've seen hundreds of abandoned factories and vanishing beauties of constructivism, fell in love with them, celebrating them with pictures and text.
But there is a totally different emotion here – an amusement. People commissioned, designed, and bred such a cold, lonesome building. And after they failed to do anything about it, they are sitting on the luggage waiting to move somewhere else.
Probably it's something nomadic which is so natural for the diplomats that is the DNA of our house?
Here now, gone tomorrow.