German Postwar Modern

Between the end of World War II and the mid-1990s some 250 churches have been constructed in and around Munich, a significant number that mirros the wartime destructions and the growing population of Munich and the municipalities in its exurbs. In 1995 Koehler & Amelang published Birgit-Verena Karnapp’s comprehensive study „Kirchen: München und Umgebung nach 1945“ that contains a complete inventory of churches between the last stops of the commuter train. Since most studies of church architecture within a certain geographic area often focus on either catholic or protestant churches, Karnapp’s is a laudable exception as she focuses on both denominations.

The book is divided into two parts, a brief overview of the development of church architecture in and around Munich after 1945 and the inventory. For each entry Karnapp provides address, construction time, architect(s), photos and plan as well as collection of source material. In addition, a brief explanatory text provides an overview of the individual church’s characteristics, spatial disposition and building history.

I bought the book in preparation for my next trip to Munich as it provides the most comprehensive inventory of postwar churches in the area. Although a little research as to whether the church to be visited still exists is advisable the book is a great resource: thanks to its neat organization key information is easily taken in and the chronological structure enables the reader to identify the different currents in church architecture just by browsing through it.

Johannes Niemeyer (1890-1980) was one of the most versatile artists and architects of the 20th century in German yet still little known: as painter, sculptor and architect he left an extensive oeuvre that is characterized by an overarching quality, irrespective of the medium. Niemeyer was born in Halle/Saale, completed a carpentry apprenticeship at the Deutsche Werkstätten Hellerau and later studied architecture in Munich under Theodor Fischer, an impressive education that clearly mirrors his talents. Between 1921 and 1924 he taught as professor at the Kunstgewerbeschule Burg Giebichenstein and subsequently worked as independent architect in Halle and Berlin. His major architectural projects date back to this period and include a number of remarkable and elegant villas and houses as well as the Schule der Arbeit in Leipzig, a building that was usurped by the N*zis shortly after they seized power in 1933.

In line with Niemeyer’s obscurity there is very little literature on his life and work with the exception of the present catalogue: it was published in 1990 by Berlinische Galerie and represents the only comprehensive publication on his multifaceted work as it covers his paintings, drawings and architecture. The catalogue follows Niemeyer’s life up until his late years in the GDR and gathers plenty of his paintings, student works, architectural projects as well as the enchanted garden surrounding his Berlin home. In view of the fact that the book is already 35 years old a new and all-encompassing publication on Johannes Niemeyer’s would be desirable. But since a recently published volume attends to the Schule der Arbeit in Leipzig there’s a glimpse of hope!

Another book ticked off my list after a long time: Annemarie Jaeggi’s monograph „Adolf Meyer - Der zweite Mann: Ein Architekt im Schatten von Walter Gropius“, published on the occasion of the Bauhaus’s 75th anniversary in 1994 by Argon. Since 1910 Adolf Meyer (1881-1929) was a key associate of Walter Gropius involved in the latter’s most significant projects and between 1919 and 1925 Bauhaus master. When the Bauhaus relocated to Dessau Meyer remained in Weimar as independent architect. In 1926 he moved to Frankfurt/Main and became Baurat in the „Neues Frankfurt“ project. Meyer’s life abruptly ended when he drowned offshore the island of Baltrum.

The major achievement of Annemarie Jaeggi’s research into the life and work of Adolf Meyer is the assignment of authorship to the projects Adolf Meyer designed in the office of Walter Gropius and which projects they designed in collaboration. As a result the contribution and pivotal role of Adolf Meyer finally became visible and allowed for a differentiated view on the inner workings of the Gropius office.

The present hardcover edition of the book is quite rare and it literally took me years to find a pristine copy at an acceptable price. Glad to finally add it to my library!

The Bauwelt magazine once called him the „unjustly forgotten“ architect of postwar architecture in Germany: Reinhard Gieselmann (1925-2013), former student of Egon Eiermann, friend of Oswald Mathias Ungers and creator of some remarkable Brutalist churches in Germany. Especially during the 1960s and 1970s the contemporary „Gestalt“ of churches intensely occupied Gieselmann both in his architectural practice and theoretical reflections. As a result of the latter he in 1972 published „Neue Kirchen“ with Hatje Cantz, a selective but nonetheless comprehensive overview of mostly European church architecture after 1960. Many of the churches came into being after the Second Vatican Council and thus offered new spatial and liturgical configurations that also occupied Gieselmann.

In the introduction he provides a sketch of the development of modern church architecture but also reflects on the changing meaning of churches over time as well as the requirements the church building and its architects had to react to. The major part is then devoted to the churches Gieselmann selected for the book and categorized along their spatial disposition as longitudinal spaces, transversal spaces and centralized spaces. The different churches are featured in photographs, plans and texts that offer interesting insights into the often complex spatial configurations. With a keen eye Gieselmann identified the most innovative churches so that the book reads like a compendium of high points of postwar church architecture judged through the lens of a contemporary spectator. From today’s retrospective point of view this makes the book a very instructive chronicle of a period in European architecture when church architecture was a hot topic and a driver of innovation.

Together with Franz Hart and Josef Wiedemann, Johannes Ludwig (1904-96) in many ways shaped the architectural formation of postwar Munich: as long-term professor at Technische Hochschule and designer of e.g. the Paul-Gerhardt-Kirche (1953-56) or the reconstruction of the Antikensammlung am Königsplatz (1959-67) Ludwig realized remarkable buildings emblematic for his architectural concept. Influenced by Scandinavian masters Gunnar Asplund, Sigurd Lewerentz and Steen Eiler Rasmussen he embraced a differentiated modernism quite unusual in postwar Germany.

Strangely there isn’t much literature on Johannes Ludwig and the present slender volume represents the most comprehensive overview of his life and work. Published on the occasion of his 80th birthday and a retrospective at Technische Universität München „Johannes Ludwig - Bauten Projekte Möbel“ collects his most important buildings and projects as well as the furniture he designed throughout his career. Preluded by Friedrich Kurrent’s introduction the catalogue shows the two sides of Ludwig’s language, namely one indebted to Scandinavian brick modernism and one aligning with the currents of German postwar architecture: while his church designs in particular are characterized by a geometric austerity his houses, apartment and office buildings very much show a restrained postwar modernism adjusted to its urban and architectural context. The same restraint holds true for his furniture designs, irrespective of typology, as his chairs, lights, tables and drawers are handsomely artisanal but highly unpretentious.

Both Ludwig’s architecture and furniture in the present volume are concisely presented in black-and-white illustrations, plans and occasional drawings that provide a deeper understanding of the architect’s work. Together with the work catalogue in the back of the book it still is the most comprehensive publication on this undeniably important architect.

The architecture of expressionism was one of Wolfgang Pehnt’s life themes: already in 1973 he published the first edition of his reference work „Die Architektur des Expressionismus“, a fundamental study of the origins and manifestations of expressionist tendencies in European architecture with an emphasis on the German developments. For a long time I had been searching for the last and significantly expanded edition from 1998, published by Hatje Cantz, and a while ago I finally found a copy in the right condition. In contrast to earlier editions the present one is larger in size and also includes a number of stunning color photographs that perfectly suit the colors of some of expressionism’s most significant buildings. Beyond this the strength of the book not only is Pehnt’s lucid writing but also his ability to tie together the different strands of expressionism. Pehnt leads the reader along the precursors Antoni Gaudí, the Prague Cubists and also the German Monumentalism of the turn of the century towards the German key expressionists Hans Poelzig, Bruno and Max Taut and the „Gläserne Kette“ architects. In individual chapters Pehnt introduces important members like the Brothers Luckhardt, Hans Scharoun or Hermann Finsterlin whose utopian architectural visions evidence the polyphony of expressionism.

The other end of the spectrum represents the Northern German Expressionism: while the metropolitan exponents around Bruno Taut and Walter Gropius dreamt up a messianic communism, protagonists like Fritz Höger and Bernhard Hötger indulged in Germanic mythology and the brick as representative of the German temper. So, it is not surprising that both later associated themselves with the Nazis.

In terms of European expressionism Pehnt primarily focuses on Amsterdam School and its exponents Michel de Klerk and Piet Kramer but also sheds light on the anthroposophical architecture by Rudolf Steiner in Switzerland. In so doing Pehnt shows the varied forms and ideas behind expressionist architecture and demonstrates that based on very different starting points at least partially congruent architectural expression was able to emerge. A fascinating and insightful read!

Between 1910 and 1935 the architect Hans Heinrich Müller (1879-1951) shaped much of the architecture of the Berlin electricity supply: as head architect of the BEWAG, the Berliner Städtische Elektrizitätswerke Akt.-Ges., Müller from 1924 onwards designed numerous converting stations, substations and other functional buildings for the progressing electrification of the German capital. But the BEWAG wasn’t Müller’s first career stage because he had already served as municipal architect of the then independent Steglitz municipality, a position he assumed in July 1909 after having successfully taken the Regierungsbaumeister exam following his studies at Technische Hochschule Charlottenburg. In this capacity he got involved with the BEWAG almost immediately as he had to design a power station for Steglitz which was completed in 1911. The power station, although still indebted to the examples of Peter Behrens and Paul Mebes, set the stage for Müller’s later designs as it already demonstrated his masterful use of brick as primary material. In the decades following the architect refined his style towards a sober modernism characterized by clear-cut volumes and pointedly used expressionist details. Stellar examples of Müller’s architecture are the Wilhelmsruh (1925-27) and Humboldt (1925-27) substations and the transformer stations Scharnhorst (1927-29) and Leibniz (1928-29).

Way before Müller’s buildings became worthy of protection, Berlin architect Paul Kahlfeldt got interested in them and also published a first monograph with Birkhäuser in 1992: „Hans Heinrich Müller 1879-1951 - Berliner Industriebauten“ is a slender yet very informative volume that offers a complete overview of the architect’s work. After a biographical sketch Kahlfeldt proceeds with analyses of Müller’s work as Steglitz municipal architect and BEWAG head architect, underpinned with additional context on the gradually progressing electrification of Berlin. In addition the author also sheds light on projects Müller carried out as independent architect, among them country houses and an office building for the BEWAG, which show Müller as a very capable architect beyond the utilitarian brick buildings.

In view of the quality of Hans Heinrich Müller’s architecture it doesn’t take wonder that Paul Kahlfeldt and Hans Kollhoff used his example as reference for their architecture for the new, old German capital and Kahlfeldt’s book-length analysis surely served as an intellectual point of departure.

Little was I able to find out about architect Max Christens (1925-2009): he studied at Fachhochschule Stuttgart, in 1955 opened his office in Koblenz and later moved it to Vallendar. In the mid-1980s Christens set up a partnership with Manfred Westenberger and Benedetta Christens-Westenberger. And that’s about it regarding his CV.

Fortunately the architect Max Christens is a bit more visible thanks to the interesting churches he designed throughout the 1950s to 1970s.

A valuable source of information regarding his work is the present self-published work catalogue from 1980 which shows the architect as a decided sculptor of space: often carried out in raw concrete and/or brick his churches, schools and hospitals truly are brutalist gems that sometimes also are adorned with almost flamboyant facade reliefs (maybe done by artists involved?). Thanks to the extensive photographic documentation done shortly after the completion of the buildings these appear in their original, unaltered and unpainted concrete beauty and make the catalogue a trime travel into a time when raw concrete was a sign of modernity rather than a thorn in the public‘s side.

The German artist Wols (1913-51), born Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze in Berlin, is one of my personal favorites. His role as intermediary between the French and German art scene before, during and after WWII is fascinating, just as well as his importance for the development of the Informel in Germany. Wols’ biography alone would make for a thrilling novel but his artistic development is no less interesting: although primarily associated with his late lyrical and abstract works it shouldn’t be ignored that he also was a keen photographer and illustrator.

In 1989 the Kunsthaus Zürich dedicated a large retrospective to the multi-faceted work of Wols and the accompanying catalogue, published by Benteli, still remains a major reference to the artist. It collects works from all of Wols’ work phases as well as expert essays elaborating on the artist’s life, the qualities of his paintings and his highly individual approach towards photography. Taken together these features make the catalogue a profound and indispensable starting point for any further research into the fascinating cosmos of Wols.

In the years following the end of WWII the painter Ernst Geitlinger (1895-1972) was one of the spearheads of abstraction in Southern Germany. From 1951 on he was professor at Akademie der Bildenden Künste Munich and as such influenced countless students with his open-minded approach towards art. This open-mindedness might well be based on Geitlinger’s years in New York between 1913 and 1922 during which he trained as painter and stage designer. In 1922 he returned to Germany and enrolled at Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich where he joined the class of expressionist Karl Caspar, the only modern artist at the academy at the time. Geitlinger isn’t very successful during these years and also after leaving the academy in 1931 has to take on bread-and-butter jobs to earn a living. With the coming to power of the Nazis in 1933 Geitlinger contemplates a possible emigration to the US, USSR or Columbia and sees his paintings removed from exhibitions. Ultimately he stays in Germany, paints in secrecy and takes on unskilled jobs. So Geitlinger’s career actually took flight after 1945 when he joins a number of associations and as unburdened artist receives the opportunity to exhibit his works. During his years as professor at AdBK Munich he’s among the academy’s most popular staff members, a fact that in 1983 finds expression in the Ernst Geitlinger Gesellschaft, established by former students.

In 1991 the latter edited Geitlinger’s work catalogue containing the entirety of his paintings and works on paper from 1924 on. These works show an artist who until the late 1940s remains indebted to German Expressionism and influences of Picasso, Chagall or Wols. From the 1950s on Geitlinger’s work shows a more geometric leaning, certainly influenced by Matisse’s cut-outs and Léger’s bold contours. Although Geitlinger wasn’t as successful as his postwar contemporaries (maybe rightly so) it is nonetheless interesting to study an artist who not only influenced his students but was also was to being influenced by other artists and who actively sought to try out their approaches without being entirely imitating.

It is almost inconceivable that of any periods in time it was during the years of the Third Reich that sculptor Karl Hartung (1908-67) developed his first abstract works: in 1935 the „Durchlöcherte Form“ marked the beginning of a consequential processing of nature and figure that only ended with his untimely death in 1967. Strangely there is few profound literature available about the artist whose work spearheaded German art in the postwar decades. A rare exception is Markus Krause’s pioneering monograph/work catalogue „Karl Hartung 1908-1967: Metamorphosen von Mensch und Natur“, published in 1998 by Prestel: not only does it contain more than 800 sculptural works but also early works, furniture designs and some commissional works from the 1930s but it also features a detailed account of Hartung’s life and artistic development. Returning from decisive stays in Paris and Florence between 1929 and 1932 that saw Hartung admire classics of sculpture like Maillol, Despiau and Donatello he increasingly dealt with the abstract forms of Arp, Brancusi and Moore. While these works certainly were incongruent with Nazi art politics Hartung kept himself afloat with innocuous plaques or head busts, works that for the first time are presented and analyzed in Krause’s book. With the beginning of WWII Hartung was drafted for the Wehrmacht, a hard time that was only relieved by two travels to Paris where he met Henri Laurens, Picasso and Brancusi. Released from war imprisonment in September 1945 Hartung finally was free to follow the path of abstraction towards his own formal language that conveniently concurred with the Zeitgeist.

Markus Krause’s meritorious monograph and work catalogue for sure is the reference work on Hartung that beyond all obvious diligence also is a well-written, knowledgeable and very convincing piece of modern German art history.

With the currency reform of 1948 the German government heralded the start of the Wirtschaftswunder, a one and a half decade long boom of the German postwar economy. Along with it went a construction boom since wartime destructions had to be made up for and the influx of refugees from former eastern territories had to be absorbed and accommodated. In 1960 the different professional associations of architects, engineers and landscape designers published „Planen und Bauen im Neuen Deutschland“, a comprehensive compendium of a carefully selected postwar architecture: as the book’s title indicates traditionalist designs would have been contrary to the authors‘ intention to depict Germany as a modern state to be reckoned with and thus it almost exclusively features cutting-edge designs. Structured along typologies the book is a performance show of contemporary architecture and infrastructure in Germany, both state and privately owned. Together with the countless illustrations this really makes for perfect Sunday musings about postwar architecture in Germany.

Egon Eiermann (1904-70) without doubt was the architect of the young German Federal Republic: his company buildings, the Expo 1958 pavilion in Brussels or the „Lange Eugen“, an office building for the members of the Bundestag in Bonn, are sophisticated examples of German postwar modern architecture. On the occasion of Eiermann 80th birthday in 1984 the first comprehensive monograph dedicated to his life and work was published: „Egon Eiermann 1904-1970: Bauten und Projekte“, published in 1984 by Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt and edited by Wulf Schirmer. The book acts on Eiermann’s maxim „logic, purity, clarity“ and presents his oeuvre, including his postwar and design works, in an exemplarily clean manner: consistently illustrated with black-and-white photographs as well as extensive plan material and brief explanatory texts the book covers each project, including those left unrealized, comprehensively according to size and relevance. In between the projects essays by Klaus Lankheit, Rudolf Büchner, Immo Boyken and Brigitte Eiermann enlarge upon a number of topics, e.g. his personality, the prewar career in Berlin and the furniture he designed. That way Eiermann’s work and also his teaching at TH Karlsruhe receives a personal dimension and additional depth.

40 years after its initial release the book has seen four editions, evidence of its status as reference work to Egon Eiermann and a status I can only underscore.

For the most part of his career Walter Gropius relied on the supporting hands of trusted partners: being more of a creative communicator than a gifted draftsman, Gropius needed sparring partners to visualize his ideas. In Adolf Meyer, Maxwell Fry, Marcel Breuer and later the partners in The Architects Collaborative Gropius found just that and thus it’s no wonder that in his introductory essay to the present volume he addresses the issue of teamwork: “The Architects Collaborative 1945-1965”, published in 1966 by Niggli, a beautifully and comprehensively illustrated retrospective of 20 years of TAC. The volume documents the considerable output of the firm as well as the great variety of projects TAC completed in just two decades, among them office buildings like the PAN-AM tower in New York, the Gropiusstadt in Berlin, churches, embassies, hospitals, libraries, hotels etc. etc. An obvious focal point of TAC was the design of schools and universities that in many examples from all over the world appear in the book and represent a bridge between Gropius’ magnum opus in Dessau and his postwar work.

A beautiful, neatly designed classic and a long overdue addition to my library.

Because of the local Daimler factory the small town of Sindelfingen near Stuttgart was heavily hit by allied bombing during the Second World War, the consequence being that also public buildings were damaged or destroyed. Among them was the historic town hall, a 15th century building that had long been deemed too small. Accordingly and despite the reconstruction of the historic building in 1954 plannings for an extension of the existing town hall were initiated, also due to the significant increase in population. Although consecutively an architect was commissioned to design an extension the plans were soon abandoned and replaced by plans for a completely new town hall: after a long eights years of working on securing the necessary funds for a new building as well as lengthy discussions about the future site of it the municipal council on 27 February 1962 approved the plans designed by architects Günter Wilhelm and Jürgen Schwarz. After another four years of determining on the requirements for the town hall ground was finally broken in August 1966. On 6 November 1970 the new town hall was opened.

Alongside the new town hall the municipal council also decided to construct a municipal library whose design was again determined in a competition that the architects Wolf Maier, Reiner Graf and Max Speidel were able to win in 1965. They designed an innovative building which besides a library of 50,000 volumes housed an auditorium as well as a gallery and was built in direct proximity to the new town hall. Just like the latter it is a typical exponent of its time carried out in exposed concrete but this time with a hint of Japan and Kenzo Tange’s Kagawa prefectural office (1954-58).

To celebrate the new buildings and to account for these prestigious buildings, the municipal council published a small volume containing building histories, explanatory notes by the architects as well as statements of costs was published by the city in 1970. Interestingly it contains a wealth of plans and photographs of each building which show them in their initial concrete beauty. The small book is a surprisingly informative antiquarian gem and a welcome addition to my library.