Erik Ofgang 2016-11-21 22:54:38
UNUSUAL TALES FROM OUR STATE’S COLORFUL PAST
The Hidden Nazi Past of a Famed Architect
HOW PHILIP JOHNSON, DESIGNER OF NEW CANAAN’S ICONIC GLASS HOUSE, FELL IN LOVE WITH FASCISM
Sometimes people who live in glass houses do throw stones.
That’s the case with Philip Johnson, the celebrated architect who designed and lived in the Glass House retreat in New Canaan, an important building in modern architecture that is now a museum.
Prior to the United States’ entrance into World War II, Johnson expressed passionate admiration for Nazism, traveled to Germany on several occasions and made vehemently anti-Semitic statements, before an apparent change of heart in 1940.
“He was a fervent and committed Nazi and very possibly a German agent working in the United States on behalf of the fascist government of Germany,” says Marc Wortman, the New Haven-based author of 1941: Fighting the Shadow War — A Divided America in a World at War. The book was released earlier this year and has put a spotlight on Johnson’s Nazi leanings and the activities of others who lobbied to keep the U.S. out of World War II prior to the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor 75 years ago this month.
Johnson was born in 1906 to a wealthy family in Cleveland. By 1932, the 26-year-old was a Manhattan socialite and rising architectural star. Earlier that year he co-curated the Museum of Modern Art’s groundbreaking exhibition on contemporary architecture and design, widely credited with introducing Americans to modern European architectural style.
It was also in 1932 that Johnson first heard Hitler speak at a rally in Germany. Johnson recalled of the moment, “You simply could not fail to be caught up in the excitement of it, by the marching songs, by the crescendo and climax of the whole thing, as Hitler came on at last to harangue the crowd.”
Johnson found Hitler’s attitude toward Jews to be in keeping with his own. Wortman writes that after one visit to Paris he wrote to a friend, saying, “Lack of leadership and direction in the [French] state has let the one group get control who always gain power in a nation’s time of weakness — the Jews.”
But, Johnson, who was gay, overlooked the blatant, state-sanctioned and often violent homophobia in Nazi-controlled Germany. Perhaps even more surprising, Wortman says, is that Johnson was also able to overlook the Nazi attack on modern architecture. “This was the architecture and design style that Philip Johnson had made his name advocating and it was classified as degenerate art by the Nazis,” Wortman says.
Over the course of the 1930s, Johnson’s enchantment with the Nazi Party continued, and he made regular trips to Germany. He also joined with other Nazi cheerleaders in the U.S. to support politicians he felt were fascist-leaning, including Louisiana’s Huey Long.
Prior to the outbreak of World War II, Johnson visited the Polish Corridor, the Baltic seacoast and Danzig (a semiautonomous city-state now part of Poland), and in an article cited in Wortman’s book, described the area as a wasteland waiting for Germany. “In the towns there were no shops, no automobiles, no pavements and again no trees. There were not even any Poles to be seen in the streets, only Jews!” Johnson added, “The longer I am here, the more I have to struggle to grasp once more what could possibly be the reason for Danzig’s not being part of Germany.”
Johnson got his wish on Sept. 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. Embedded with the press contingent that traveled with Hitler’s army during the invasion, he drew the ire of many of the international journalists he traveled with, who, unlike him, were horrified by the war the Nazis were perpetrating.
By that time, the FBI had began keeping a dossier on Johnson. He was never charged, but later in the war, when questions arose about a possible position for Johnson in government intelligence (because he was fluent in German), an FBI agent warned in a memo to J. Edgar Hoover, “I can think of no more dangerous man to have working in an agency which possesses so many military secrets.”
In 1940, with American fascist sympathizers facing increasing scrutiny, Johnson stopped publically supporting Nazism. “I think he understood that the U.S. government was doing all it could to support the British in their fight with Germany and that he was going to be on the losing side of history,” Wortman says.
Johnson was able to sweep his fascist leanings under the rug and it never adversely impacted his career.
Wortman says, “After the war, he never formally apologized” and tried to explain it away as “a young man’s fantasies.” However, Johnson did make overtures to Jewish communities. “He gave his services to design a synagogue in Port Chester, New York, and he did some design work for the state of Israel,” Wortman says. “He was considered to be a mentor by many architects and did not discriminate as far as I’m aware among any of the young architects [some of whom were Jewish] who followed him.”
In 2005, Johnson died in his sleep at the age of 98 at his Glass House in New Canaan.
In a 1993 Vanity Fair article, Johnson expressed regret for his actions. “I have no excuse [for] such utter, unbelievable stupidity. … I don’t know how you expiate guilt.” But when asked if he would have built for Hitler in 1936, he replied, “Who’s to say? That would have tempted anyone.”
Even still, Wortman believes Johnson’s early support of Nazism should be as transparent as the centerpiece of the retreat he designed, built, lived and died in.
“This was not the sort of passing obsession of a very young man. This was a mature adult who remained a committed Nazi for eight full years. Eight full years during which Hitler was extending his reach in Europe, creating war tensions and finally invading Poland and starting World War II.”
Published by New Haven Register formerly 21st Century Media Newspapers . View All Articles.
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