From Aachen To Berlin
Mies van der Rohe was born in 1886 in Aachen, Germany, a city best known as the location of Charlemagne's cathedral, where he was buried in 814 A.D. But it was in Berlin where Mies rose to prominence as an architect in the 1920s after a series of revolutionary sketches for all-glass skyscrapers.
However, the actual buildings he built in Germany's inflation-ravished Weimar Republic were on a more modest scale. But by the end of the 1920s, he began to gather attention, as his career rapidly gathered steam. First, in 1929, he built the German national pavilion for the 1929 Barcelona International Exhibition, more commonly known as the Barcelona Pavilion. Then in 1930, he followed it up with a house for the Tugenhadt family of Brno, Czechoslovakia.
The Tugenhadt house was an attempt to create a livable, domestic version of the Barcelona Pavilion. It became one of the most influential homes of the 20th century, with its enormous plate glass windows, tubular steel furniture, and open planning concepts.
With the Depression causing building opportunities to rapidly shrink even as his European career was its apogee, Mies turned to teaching, and became the last head of Germany's High Monastery of Modernism, the Bauhaus, before the Nazis closed it down in 1933. Because of the Nazi's general disgust with modern architecture, Mies was unable to find work in Germany, and was ultimately fearful of his life.
He ultimately left Berlin in the mid-30s to become the head of the Illinois Institute of Technology. (Architects of Fortune by Elaine S. Hochman is a superbly written look at this period of Mies's career; it parallels his life in the 1920s and '30s with that of a frustrated architect who would eventually carve out a career in German politics during that same period: Adolf Hitler.)
The "White God" Effect
Because of Hitler's art background and hatred of modernism, the Nazis persecuted numerous modernists in the 1930s. When many of these artists emigrated to America, they encountered what Tom Wolfe would famously dub the White God effect. Eager for work, Mies, Walter Gropius (who founded the Bauhaus), and other European architects and artists were somewhat astonished as they became superstars in the American art and intellectual world, which had long taken its cue from Europe. As Wolfe wrote in From Bauhaus To Our House:
The reception given to Gropius and his confreres was like a certain stock scene from the jungle movies of that period. Bruce Cabot and Myrna Loy make a crash landing in the jungle and crawl out of the wreckage in their Abercrombie & Fitch white safari blouses and tan gabardine jodhpurs and stagger into a clearing. They are surrounded by savages with bones through their noses--who immediately bow down and prostrate themselves and commence a strange moaning chant.
Article comments
1 - Rodney Welch
Ed, you're the best. Great article; interesting and informative all the way through. You know your subject and you've done your homework. I'll look for the documentary.
Have you ever read Daniel Boorstin's The Creators? Pretty good general guide through Western art and culture, I thought; a good crash course in a great deal. It has an interesting section in it on architecture, Louis Sullivan in particular. It may not tell you anything you don't know, but you might enjoy it.
2 - Huh?
"In 1946, [Herb Greenwald] was a 29-year-old former rabbinical scholar who had wanted to break into the burgeoning post-war real estate boom, and was looking for a top-flight architect to be associated with his projects. To his surprise, he discovered one of the best, living and teaching in Chicago." Yes, because Chicago is a backwater, *especially* in terms of its architecture . . . .
3 - marac
Ed. I feel you are a little too tough on the makers of this documentary. I love the opening snowy Esso scene. I wasn't expecting this..It's a surprise..a nice hook. And as you mite know..most great docs open with a something to grab the viewers attention.
By the end of the film, after learning so much about Mies and his work from others, we discover the brilliance behind the design of the gas station. How many gas statons fall under that category? I learn that with imagination even the bland gas station can add something positive to our architectural landscape. We can do so much better when designing any building...and the Esso station in Quebec proves that.
The rest of the documentary features wonderful interviews with the subjects given some nice backdrops. The photography here surely must have been nominated for awards as the buildings are as beautifully shot as I have seen. The filmmaker also makes wonderful use of the cool jazz music throughout this doc.
I mite agree that some footage of Mies could have been used. However, I'm not sure this doc suffered for lack of Mies footage. I mite have added some grainy b and w footage of Meis superimposed over some of his glass towers..for a neat effect..I'm sure the editor would have loved playing with something like that.
That's a minor quibble. If I were to find any critism of this piece is that there really isn't a journey here....However, somehow this filmmaker pulls off a delightful piece. And kudos to the person who came up with the catch title of 'Regular or Super.' Bravo!