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On the Magic of the Scene. Martha Muchow’s Scenographies

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Scenographies of the Subject

Abstract

When I was a child between 10 and 12 years old, we lived on the first floor of a building in a good, but quiet neighborhood. There was a park across from the building. Once inside the door, a few steps led up to the ground floor, then you went through a swinging door to the actual staircase.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The response protocols to the questionnaires were considered lost until 2010, when 450 of the 543 responses were found by Meike Watzlawik during research on Heinz Werner. Heinz Werner had taken them with him into exile, and thus they were found at the Clark University in Massachusetts. Today they are archived at the Martha Muchow Library—Professional Library for Pedagogy, Psychology and Kinesiology at the University of Hamburg. On this see Faulstich-Wieland (2010, p. 4).

  2. 2.

    Muchow participated in a project in Hamburg schools, where the most gifted pupils were to be selected. Here she worked closely together with the schools and the school authorities (Faulstich-Wieland 2007, p. 6 f.; Hopf 2004, p. 280; Lück 2016, p. 204 f.).

  3. 3.

    Translator’s note: First translated by Ulrike H. Hochreiter in an abridged version in 1966 as “The living space of the big city child”; more recent, complete translation: Martha Muchow, The Life Space of the Urban Child, eds. Günter Mey, Hartmut Günther (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2015).

  4. 4.

    On the fascinating history of this concept, see Sprenger (2014).

  5. 5.

    In addition to Muchow and Kurt Lewin (Topological Psychology), Wolfgang Köhler (Die physischen Gestalten in Ruhe und im stationären Zustand, 1920), Kurt Koffka (Principles of Gestalt Psychology, 1935), and Kurt Goldstein (Der Aufbau des Organismus, 1934) also formulated environment concepts of subjectivation, which were later subsumed under the concept of environmental psychology. Willy Hellpach is considered the founder of environmental psychology.

  6. 6.

    It should be mentioned that the French term for environment (milieu) circulates less in social psychology, but more in recent sociology. Especially in the context of how it has been taken over in the analysis of social formations, it was already brought up in the late nineteenth century not only by Auguste Comte, but also by Hippolyte Taine, for whom it also comprised the intellectual, cultural conditions (mentalities, attitudes, etc.) of socialization and personal experience. With the French sociologist Émile Durkheim, milieu even became a central concept of the young discipline of sociology in the late nineteenth century. In turn, the first generation of the Chicago School associated with Robert Ezra Park, Ernest Burgess and Robert D. McKenzie and later the Situationists also referred to Durkheim (Echterhölter 2013, pp. 19–39).

  7. 7.

    Translator’s note: in German “Bildung,” which also means education.

  8. 8.

    She refers to Georg Simmel (1919).

  9. 9.

    In her study on The Life Space of the Urban Child Muchow already observes quasi magical everyday practices. Children cross squares, trying not to step on the cracks between two paving stones (cf. Muchow 2015, p. 125).

  10. 10.

    Stengers refers to Deleuze’s concept of the assemblage, “agencements” (Stengers 2012, p. 120).

  11. 11.

    On the other hand, psycho-technical and ergonomic contexts also resonate in the concept of innervation. At the time when Benjamin developed his concept of a revolutionary pedagogy, these contexts no longer aimed at disciplining the body through certain norms (labor norms, for example), but rather at the self-regulation and self-control of behavior within experimental exercises. For a fundamental discussion of this precarious term, see Tom Holert (2006, p. 128); Mirijam Bratu Hansen (1999, p. 340).

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  1. Universität der Künste Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Katja Rothe

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  1. Goethe-Universität Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

    Lars Friedrich

  2. Kunstuniversität Linz, Linz, Austria

    Karin Harrasser

  3. University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Ottersberg, Germany

    Céline Kaiser

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Rothe, K. (2019). On the Magic of the Scene. Martha Muchow’s Scenographies. In: Friedrich, L., Harrasser, K., Kaiser, C. (eds) Scenographies of the Subject. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-12906-4_5

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