Oral history interview with Hans Barschel
odd: label: General
content: Originally recorded on 2 sound cassettes. Reformatted in 2010 as 3 digital wav files. Duration is 2 hr., 1 min.
name: label: Interviewee
content: Barschel, Hans Joachim, b. 1912
label: Interviewer
content: Brown, Robert F.
label: Names
content: Rochester Institute of Technology -- Faculty
label: Names
content: Cowles, Hobart E., 1923-1980
label: Names
content: Wildenhain, Frans, 1905-1980
label: Names
content: Witmeyer, Stanley Herbert, 1913-2011
topic: label: Occupation
content: Art teachers -- New York (State) -- Rochester -- Interviews
label: Topic
content: Design -- Study and teaching -- United States
label: Topic
content: Design -- Study and teaching -- Germany
label: Topic
content: National socialism and art
label: Topic
content: Designers -- New York (State) -- Rochester -- Interviews
acqinfo: label: Provenance
content: This interview is part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and administrators.
creator: label: Interviewee
content: Barschel, Hans Joachim, b. 1912
label: Interviewer
content: Brown, Robert F.
bioghist: label: Biographical / Historical
content: Hans Joachim Barschel (1912-1998) was a graphic designer and art instructor from Rochester, New York.
physdesc: label: Extent
content: 2 Sound cassettes (Sound recording (2 hrs., 1 min.), analog)
label: Extent
content: 50 Pages (Transcript)
unitdate: label: Date
content: 1994 September 14
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: Archives of American Art
identifier: label: Identifier
content: AAA.barsch94
objectType: label: Type
content: Collection descriptions
label: Type
content: Archival materials
label: Type
content: Sound cassettes
label: Type
content: Pages
label: Type
content: Sound recordings
label: Type
content: Interviews
altformavail: label: Existence and Location of Copies
content: Transcript is available on the Archives of American Art's website.
genre_format: label: Genre/Form
content: Sound recordings
label: Genre/Form
content: Interviews
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents
content: An interview with Hans Joachim Barschel conducted 1994 September 14, by Robert F. Brown, for the Archives of American Art.
label: Scope and Contents
content: Barschel discusses his childhood during World War I and the 1920s in two Berlin suburbs, Charlottenburg and Pankow, as the son of a civil engineer and his wife, whose father was a factory foreman; the contrast of the ludicrous militarism of the late Wilhelmine Germany with the straightened but liberalized circumstances of life in the Weimar Republic which followed; and his first acquaintance with foreign cultures during a 1929 excursion with his free-spirited aunt and uncle.
label: Scope and Contents
content: He remembers the enlightened teaching and loose curricula he experienced during 1930-35 in advertising design study with George Salter at the Municipal Art School, Berlin, and then in graduate studies in design, painting, printmaking, and photography at the Academy of Fine and Applied Arts, Berlin-Charlottenburg. He talks about his disgust at the onset of Naziism; his brief career (1935-37) in Berlin as a free-lance graphic designer and as head graphic designer for the Reichsbahn; his getting his beloved teacher, George Salter, a Jew, out of Nazi Germany; his emigration in 1937 using forged documents and his rapid establishment as a designer in New York thanks to his friendship with Dr. Robert Leslie of The Composing Room.
label: Scope and Contents
content: He discusses advertisements, posters, and book jackets designed for American publications and companies and (1948) for the United Nations; his move to Rochester, New York, in 1952, as a designer for printing companies and beginning the teaching of design at the Rochester Institute of Technology at the invitation of Stanley Witmeyer, Director of its School of Art and Design; fellow teachers at RIT, including the ceramists, Hobart Cowles and Frans Wildenhain; and the importance of continually refreshing the creative powers by sketching in nature, a principle instilled in him as a student which he carried into his teaching at RIT.