Lothar Kühne

Lothar Kühne (born September 10, 1931 in Bockwitz ; † November 7, 1985 in Berlin ) was a German Marxist cultural philosopher , architecture theorist and university professor.

Life

Kühne came from a working class family in northern Saxony . In 1949 he was able to start studying at the workers and farmers faculty in Halle . After moving to Berlin, he studied philosophy and art history at the Humboldt University from 1952 to 1957 , among others with Wolfgang Heise and Richard Hamann . After graduating, Kühne worked as an assistant in the Marxist-Leninist basic course at the TU Dresden , where he received important suggestions for his own architectural-theoretical considerations from the architecture professor Georg Münter . In 1960 he returned to the HU Berlin, where he initially became senior assistant and received his doctorate in 1965. Two years later Kühne was appointed lecturer, in 1971 ord. Professor of Dialectical and Historical Materialism at the Marxism-Leninism Section. In 1975 he received his PhD B on the aesthetic as a factor of appropriation, property and behavior.

Kühne was a member of the SED during his studies . However, his political functions were also characterized by controversial disputes. In 1952 Kühne was expelled from the party, and in 1958 he was reinstated. From 1976 political measures and scientific discrediting began; In 1980 he was transferred to the marxist-leninist section. Philosophy. In 1982 he was disabled. At the end of 1985, Lothar Kühne committed suicide.

theses

Lothar Kühne was a representative of the so-called " Berlin aesthetics " in the architecture of the GDR . In contrast to the usual art centrism, she saw the industrially produced object and the spatial relationships of people as her preferred research object. He advocated functionalism - the absolute priority of human needs in architecture - against eclectic historicism and against the postmodern architectural trend that dominated the West . He turned against the stylization of practical objects into works of art , as it has inspired contemporary art and the fundamental debate about the concept of art since Marcel Duchamp .

As Olaf Weber put it in his essay "Functionalism as GDR and Utopia", "Lothar Kühne [...] adhered to the thesis that functionalism is the aesthetic formation principle of socialism (for him: communism )."

Movie

In 1990 the DEFA studio for documentary films produced a documentary entitled "La Rotonda, Vicenza - In memory of Prof. Lothar Kühne", which honors Kühne's work.

Fonts

• On the history of the definition of the term socialist architecture . In: German architecture. Berlin 1959. H. 11. p. 633.
• Object and space. About the historicity of the aesthetic (= Fundus series vol. 77/78, ZDB -ID 254005-8 ). VEB Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 1981, online as a gz archive
• House and landscape. Articles (= Fundus Series Vol. 94/95 [recte 97/98]). VEB Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 1985.
• The?? Aesthetic as a factor of appropriation and ownership. To determine the objective behavior: work on philosophy, art and architectural theory. Dissertation B, Humboldt University. 2 vols., Berlin 1975.
• On epistemological and aesthetic problems of architectural theory. Dissertation, Humboldt University, Berlin 1965.

literature

• Michael Brie , Karin Hirdina (eds.): In memoriam Lothar Kühne. From the agony of living the state socialist modernity (= Berlin debate ). GSFP, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-929666-04-9 .
• Heinz Hirdina:  Lothar Kühne . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
• Martin Küpper, Thomas Möbius (ed.): The aesthetics of communism - Lothar Kühne . Main topic in: Berliner Debatte Initial 30 Jg. (2019), Issue 2, ISBN 978-3-947802-24-1 .
• Heinz Quitzsch: Discussions on functionalism in the 1970s and 1980s . In: Bernfried Lichtnau (ed.): Architecture and urban development in the southern Baltic Sea region from 1970 to the present. Lines of Development - Breaks - Continuities [Publication of the contributions to the art history conference, organized by the Caspar David Friedrich Institute, Art History Department, Ernst Moritz Arndt University Greifswald, 15. – 17. April 2004]. Lukas Verlag, Berlin 2007, pp. 19–34.
• Werner Röhr : Released from the form of goods. For the 70th birthday of the philosopher Lothar Kühne. In: Junge Welt , from September 10, 2001, online ( Memento from May 24, 2003 in the Internet Archive ).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Horst Groschopp: In Search of the Historical Subject for Socialist Culture - Memories of Worker Culture Research in the GDR. In: Kulturnation 1/2006. Online magazine ; Archived copy ( Memento of the original dated May 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Heinz Hirdina: Lothar Kühne . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. tape 1 . Ch. Links, Berlin 2010.
3. ↑ ^{a b} Heinz Quitzsch: Discussions on functionalism in the 1970s and 1980s. Memory of Lothar Kühne . In: Bernfried Lichtnau (ed.): Architecture and urban development in the southern Baltic Sea region from 1970 to the present . Lukas Verlag, Berlin 2007, p. 19 .
4. ^ Olaf Weber: Functionalism as GDR and utopia. (PDF; 133 kB)
5. ↑ DEFA film database