1st Edition

Constructing and Reconstructing History in Twentieth-Century German Architecture

Edited By Alexander Luckmann, Volker M. Welter Copyright 2025
176 Pages 16 Color & 13 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

176 Pages 16 Color & 13 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

176 Pages 16 Color & 13 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

The battle in architecture between the internationalist voices of modernism and the localized resistance, which favored traditional technologies and regional precedents, reflected in microcosm the violent and complex histories of twentieth-century Germany. The chapters in this book span the years from 1902 to 1991 and interrogate the ways in which architecture constructed and reconstructed these... Read more

Preface

Iain B. Whyte

 

Introduction: Constructing and Reconstructing History in Twentieth-Century German Architecture

Alexander Luckmann and Volker M. Welter

 

1. The ‘Restoration’ of Our Old Buildings

Hermann Muthesius

 

2. Villa

Rudolf Borchardt

 

3. The Architecture Exhibition in Munich 1926

Theo Lechner

 

4. Tradition and New Building

Paul Schmitthenner

 

5. Northern and Southern Germany: Notes on the Works of the Architect Emil Egermann, Berlin

Alfons Leitl

 

6. The Buildings of the Third Reich

Adolf Hitler

 

7. Architecture in the New Reich

Gerdy Troost

 

8. The Motor Highways built by Herr Hitler: The Planning, Construction and Importance of the Reich Motor Roads

Fritz Todt

 

9. Heretical Thoughts at the Edge of the Rubble Heaps

Otto Bartning

 

10. An Appeal: Fundamental Demands

Otto Bartning et al.

 

11. Art and Science on Track

Walter Ulbricht

 

12. Architecture in the Age of Science

Walter Gropius

 

13. Requiem for Putti

Wolf Jobst Siedler, Elisabeth Niggemeyer and Gina Angreß

 

14. The Case for Abolishing Historic Building Preservation

Dieter Hoffmann-Axthelm

 

15. Architectural Monuments

Julius Posener

 

Biography

Alexander Luckmann is a Ph.D. student specializing in histories of architecture, preservation, and landscape. His primary research focus is twentieth-century German religious architecture. Additional research interests include historic preservation, American churches and real estate, California modernism, and the German-American monk and architect Cajetan Baumann.

Volker M. Welter is an architectural historian specializing in modern architecture from the nineteenth century onwards, mainly in California but also in Great Britain and Germany. His research interests center on domestic architecture; émigré architects; patronage, histories of modernism, revival styles, and sustainable architecture.