A few years ago, in 1934, Erwin Broner arrived in Ibiza fleeing Nazism. There, like many other Jewish artists and intellectuals, he found a perfect refuge.
A few years later, in that somewhat savage Ibiza, Erwin Broner was He was to become an illustrious painter and architect on the island. His vocation for the painting would result in the founding of the Ibiza 59 Group, a grouping among the few outsiders, especially those who shared concerns German Heinz Trökes, Swedish Bertil Sjoeberg, the German artist Heinz Trökes, the Swedish Russian artist Katja Meirowsky, or the Spanish ceramist Antonio Ruiz, among others. Broner would be considered the de facto role model, example and dean of the organisation. And if the Broner foreigner community was an example to architecture was no less important, building quality houses on the island of Ibiza. Probably also here it can be considered a pioneer in the island's architecture at that time, laying the foundations for the of the remarkable architectural production that was gradually splashed across the the island in the years to come. The clients he served were in reality largely those friends, almost always also friends of the foreigners, with whom he shared a culture, way of life and affection for the island. But the Erwin Broner of the 1960s was nothing like the Erwin Broner of the 1960s. the protagonist of the snapshot. At the moment of capture it costs I find it hard to believe that its protagonist accumulates too many motives for smile. This is the first time he has left his home country without a plane ticket. back. This is undoubtedly a moment of uncertainty about the past. and, even more so, into the future.
Fascism's rise to power, and his status as a Jew and a newcomer to the affiliated to the communist party, had triggered the forced exile. At Germany, Erwin was able to enjoy a more than comfortable childhood in by virtue of his family's prosperous position. Co-owner of a major bank, the Heilbroners did not think anything of it. when it came to training the eldest of the three brothers. He benefited from tutors and received classes in a wide range of subjects, from literature and from art to music and sports. They also brought him closer to the Mediterranean on several occasions, making trips to classic Greece and Italy. A familiar lap more than warm, pleasant and carefree.
With the end of the First World War, Broner decides to study fine art, training in Munich, Stuttgart and Dresden. At Hans Hoffman's school he met his first wife, Aenne Wittmer. Both lovers of painting, they spent their honeymoon in Italy, capturing on canvas various places on the mythical peninsula. These were happy, carefree years. Years to enjoy and love life. Years to paint, to play the violin and to travel. After this period, undoubtedly marked by stability, enjoyment and his passion for painting, Erwin decided in 1928 to study architecture at the Technische Hochschule in Stuttgart. He was educated at the German school until 1931. During these years he also acquired a knowledge of carpentry, thanks to which he managed to get by in later periods of great difficulty. After graduating, he received a few commissions and, together with his friend Richard v. Waldkich, founded his own architectural practice. His wife had given birth to their daughter Nanna, his professional future was promising, and he owned a large house in Hanweiller. From all this it can be deduced that in 1933 Erwin's personal shock must have been extremely violent. After a series of tragic events, he managed to emerge unscathed from the events that followed Hitler's uprising. Together with his friend Manfred Heninger, he obtained a residence permit for both families in Switzerland, valid for six months. They therefore had a very limited amount of time to find a place to settle.
Broner and Heninger decide to take a trip to Mallorca to get to know the island and consider the possibility of settling there with their respective families. However, their plans were thwarted when the small steamship linking Barcelona with Mallorca made a brief stopover in Ibiza. The result of this completely accidental event led to Erwin's discovery of the island. A fortuitous and fortunate event that brought a glimmer of hope to the possibly saddened Erwin. Perhaps a love affair in the platonic manner that would drag him throughout his life, time and again, to that little corner of the Mediterranean, as Tur Costa recalls:
"Erwin Broner was a great lover of Ibiza. He told me that one of the strongest impressions he had in his life was when he arrived on the island for the first time by boat and, already in the port, he discovered our city in the early hours of the morning".
If one had to select the most transcendental moment in his life, this would certainly be a great candidate. It was practically the same situation experienced two years earlier by Walter Benjamin, who did not hesitate to embark on a long voyage aboard a German freighter from Hamburg to land, after passing through Barcelona, on the almost unknown Balearic island. Benjamin, who had made the decision to travel to Ibiza with the intention of overcoming an acute existential crisis, wrote some notes during the journey in his inseparable diary.
Reflections that could well apply to Erwin's own experience:
"I was standing and thinking about Horace's famous cliché "one can flee from one's homeland, but one will not flee from oneself" and how debatable it is. For isn't travelling an overcoming, a purification of installed passions that are rooted in the habitual environment, and with it an opportunity to develop new ones, which is certainly a kind of transformation?"
Indeed. Transformation. That is what one could call what began to take shape inside the exiled Erwin immediately after his arrival in Ibiza. Landing in the port of Ibiza will be a real transition in his life. When he sets foot on the island, he is crossing the line that separates two distinct phases of his own biography. And so he would become part of the select colony of foreigners that populated Ibiza at that time. A scattered settlement made up of foreigners who were gradually increasing in number as it welcomed more and more nomads fleeing the National Socialist regime. It is not surprising, therefore, that the greatest contribution came from Germany, although not exclusively. What could be considered a certain constant was that it consisted mainly of migrants from the most diverse areas of culture.
The episode of the philosopher Walter Benjamin is one of the best known. But there are many other personalities who arrived in Ibiza in those years. Suffice it to mention here a few more names, such as the philologist Walther Spelbrink, the ethnographer and architect Alfredo Baeschlin, the Belgian painter Mèdard Verbugh, the writer Albert Camus, the painter Will Faber, the archaeologist Schölten, the photographers Raoul Haussman and Man Ray and the American writer Elliot Paul. However, it cannot be said that this group of outsiders formed a real collective. Although there is evidence that some were aware of others, since they were actually small in number, it cannot be said that they formed true communities. Once again, Benjamin is a privileged witness when he stated that "Not so long ago, when one arrived in Ibiza, the first thing one heard was: "with you there are already so many or how many strangers we have on the island". In fact, these illustrious wanderers preferred a personal retreat, if at all, accompanied by family or a close friend, choosing the inland areas of the island as their preferred option.
Not so Broner, who, from the very first moment, decided to live in the city. This meant going against the natural direction of the current, as the phenomenon of the assimilation of foreigners on the island of Ibiza and Formentera was taking shape. This fact reveals Broner's clear social vocation and, above all, his desire against isolation. It can be deduced, therefore, that he was not a character who, virtually knocked out by current events, tried to escape from a world, his own, in decay. Rather, Broner's would possibly be the case of a person voluntarily affected by everything that happens around him, also by the journey, and therefore, as Benjamin said, in transformation.
A metamorphosis in his biography, precipitated by the dramatic context he had to face, but which, on the other hand, led to his own liberation. Thus, when the German authorities confiscated all his assets on German soil in those years, Erwin cast off his material past. And almost without interruption, when he separated from his first wife, he was freed from his emotional past. Under these conditions Broner sees himself, perhaps for the first time in his short life, truly free. And, in this situation, he lets himself go. He lets the island's spell cast over him. His awakened curiosity became interested in some of the themes most present in the reality of Ibiza and, as the architect he was, in its architecture. An architecture, by the way, that not only seduced those who practised his profession, but was one of the island's most fascinating treasures. Vicente Valero, who has studied in depth the phenomenon of cultured immigration that took place in Ibiza in the 1930s, does not hesitate to affirm that "Nothing made such an impact on the traveller arriving for the first time on the island of Ibiza as its rural architecture".
For it seems that everyone who landed on the island was fascinated by this centuries-old architecture that had been perfected through the craftsmanship inherited from fathers and sons. A "slow-cooked" architecture that had been able to blend in with the immediate natural environment like no other. To such an extent that, now, the appearance of these modest constructions "complete" the landscape and transform it into a genuinely Ibizan image. They are yet another part of Ibiza: "This architecture without style and without an architect - as Josep Lluis Sert liked to say - was the result of artisan know-how, of an inherited typology whose origin is still debated today, and also admired by the traveller because of its location: open spaces with terraces, stone walls, narrow paths, almond, carob and olive trees... the house was one more element of the landscape and the whole was offered, before the traveller's gaze, with a singular, mysterious and ancient beauty".
Erwin, fascinated by the discovery of this primordial architecture that so well conformed to modern postulates, decided, as could not be otherwise, to carry out an in-depth study of the subject. It was then that he "soaked up" the architecture that dazzled him, that which shone because it had been polished by the passage of time. Thus, in the company of Richard v. Waldkich, he travelled around the island by bicycle, photographing the traditional houses he came across, taking notes and measurements of these constructions. This was an invaluable learning exercise that was probably to seal the definitive bond between Erwin and the island. His friend the painter Erwin Bechtold recalls this episode of Broner's first visit to Ibiza: "First he wanted to clarify his ideas so that he could follow the traces of the charm of these rural constructions. And how could Erwin Broner, the architect, do this better than by first measuring widths and heights, depths and practical openings such as doors and windows; in other words, by getting to know the proportions and the conditions that made them possible. An architecture that is unusual and suggestive in its archaic modernity and therefore surprising. Surprising also because of the degree of ignorance it was unknown in the cultured architectural world of the time, and surprising because of the mastery it displays. In Broner's own words: "These Ibizan peasant dwellings are a surprise for the modern architect who is forced to solve complicated technical, social and functional problems, and is enthusiastic about the simplicity and plainness of these rural constructions".
However, it should be made clear at this point that Broner was not the first to approach this architecture from an educated point of view. Some time before, many illustrious and curious people had passed through the island with the intention of studying this phenomenon. The philologist Walther Spelbrink wanted to approach the Ibizan dwelling through a lexicographical study. Or the example of the archaeologist Adolph Schulten who, after visiting Ibiza in the 1920s, returned in the early 1930s to study the island's Punic ancestors. The number of photographers who, camera in hand, portrayed the architecture and customs of Ibiza and Formentera, including José Ortiz Echagüe from Aracena, the Catalans Adolf Mas and Leopoldo Plasencia, the German Gustav von Estorff and the Croatian Mario von Bucovich, stand out in this list.
However, the novelty of Broner's study is that it is carried out by an architect. An architect who has also been trained in Germany in the most incipient modernity. And hence the importance and repercussions of this studio, due to its pioneering status. Josep Lluis Sert himself acknowledges this: "In 1933 a German architect got in touch with our GATCPAC group in Barcelona. He wrote to us from the island of Ibiza, almost unknown at the time, and sent us a series of photographs and plans that were a revelation to our group. It was the architecture we were all looking for, the architecture of TRUTH. Some colleagues in our group, as well as our dear friend Joan Prats, had already visited Ibiza shortly before. But Erwin Broner had preceded us, and he had also cycled all over the island, documenting his exploration, which none of us had done".
Somehow, this foreign guy who had just arrived in Ibiza became, with great speed and by the power of knowledge, an accomplice of the reality of the place. The stranger had gone deep inside the island and probed into its secrets. For all this, Broner now knows his new physical, cultural and social environment, and is in a position to take charge of his new life. The physical geography, fascinating as it was, fitted in perfectly with the traditional Central European romantic ideal (very much of the time) of retiring to a secluded spot in the south where he could spend his hours painting. Endless summers, warm waters and blinding light were undoubtedly powerful attractions. Also the human geography which, as we have seen, was perhaps even more suggestive. All this combined with economic conditions that were difficult to find anywhere else in the world and, of course, an architectural environment that was the beneficiary of a knowledge capable of arousing the curiosity of the German architect. Perhaps now we can understand the smile that Broner gave the camera in 1934. Despite his exile. Despite abandoning his past and being deprived of his possessions. Despite losing his wife, or facing the contingency of a future marked by uncertainty, Broner now enjoys full freedom, perhaps more than he would ever have been able to achieve in his native Germany.
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