Internationality

Even after the National Socialist takeover of power in Germany in 1933, architects, urban planners and civil engineers continued to engage closely with international architecture in neighbouring European countries, the Soviet Union and the United States. The goal was not only to promote "New German Architecture" around the world, but also to cultivate the ongoing and far-reaching exchange of expertise and personnel on questions relating to architecture, urban planning and infrastructure. The extensive knowledge of building developments abroad was analysed with a view to its transferability to Germany and utilized in Nazi planning where possible. Jewish architects and building officials, on the other hand, were not involved in the planning and building under National Socialism that is the focus of this exhibition. At the onset of National Socialist rule, they were already being systematically forced out of their professions, persecuted, expelled and – if they did not manage to emigrate in time – they were imprisoned in concentration camps and murdered. Several hundred Jewish architects emigrated in the years from 1933 to 1939/40. They took the ideas, forms and construction methods that had been developed in the Weimar period out into the world – among them were Oskar Kaufmann, Alexander Klein and Wilhelm Haller, who took their work to the British Mandate of Palestine; Erwin Gutkind, Arthur Korn and Harry Rosenthal to Great Britain; Marcel Breuer, Konrad Wachsmann and Paul Zucker to the United States; Josef Frank and Alfons Anker to Sweden; Martin Punitzer and Leopold Rother to South America. Other destinations initially included France, the Netherlands and the Soviet Union, and some exiles, such as Erich Mendelsohn, who had been expelled from the Academy of Arts in 1933 and later lived in the United States, wandered from one country to the other. In 1945, after the end of the war, most of those who had been excluded from their professions, positions and social networks did not return. Too damaged were the relations with their colleagues who had remained in the country and continued to work under the Nazi regime, and who subsequently displayed little interest in addressing their roles during the National Socialist era and facing up to their collective responsibility. The situation was easier for architects who had left Germany when commissions there dried up due to design reasons or who had fallen out of political favour. After their return, some of them were given major building commissions or influential positions. These included Walter Gropius at the Interbau 1957 in Berlin, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in 1962 for the construction of the New National Gallery in Berlin, and Ernst May, who, from 1954 on, took on key urban planning tasks in Hamburg, Bremen, Mainz, Wiesbaden and Darmstadt.

Compiled by Regina Stephan and Harald Bodenschatz, using their own preparatory work and the research findings of Paul Sigel and Philip Wagner

Translated from the German by Peter Rigney