BERLIN QUOTES: HANS BALUSCHEK
“When I was ten years old, our maid - who was supposed to go for a walk with me on Sunday afternoons - would take me to the Hasenheide instead.
Then she would go for a quick dance at Bal champêtre, while I sat obediently at a table sticky with spilled beer, among a loud crowd, with my ears assaulted by the carousel music and the shouting of the barkers at the fairground stand; frightened by the banging shots in the shooting galleries and the hammer blows against the wooden block at the foot of the high striker - those long poles on which a small block slides up and down a rail depending on how strong you are, and perhaps even strikes the bell in triumph, if you get it to the number 1000.
And above all the noise: the dust, the dust, the dust glistening in the sun.”
Hans Baluschek, painter, from his text “Im Kampf um Meine Kunst” published in the “Gartenlaube” magazine in 1920 for his 50th birthday.