Forgotten architects

In the 1920s and early 1930s, German Jewish architects created some of the greatest modern buildings in Germany, mainly in the capital Berlin. A law issued by the newly elected German National Socialist Government in 1933 banned all of them from practicing architecture in Germany. In the years after 1933, many of them managed to emigrate, while many others were deported or killed under Hitler’s regime. Pentagram Papers 37: Forgotten Architects is a survey of 43 of these architects and their groundbreaking work.

That's what written about this on the weblog of Pentagram Papers. And it's a truely fascinating read. Haifa-born architect Myra Warhaftig (who died on March 4th, 2008 at the age of seventy-eight) spent twenty years getting all the stories together about these architects. Of course, it's an interesting read because of the personal stories of the architects involved. But what's more: it also showed that the Nazis effectively dispersed of interesting and possibly important development within the modern movement: almost all the architects in this publication worked along the lines of the international style, and seemed to push the boundaries of the style and ways unseen at that day...