Before the Bauhaus: Architecture, Politics, and the German State, 1890-1920

by John V. Maciuika

Overview

Before the Bauhaus reevaluates the political, architectural, and artistic cultures of pre-World War I Germany. As contradictory and conflict-ridden as the German Second Reich itself, the world of architects, craftsmen and applied-arts “artists” were not immune to the expansionist, imperialist, and capitalist struggles that transformed Germany in the quarter-century leading up to the First World War. In this study, John Maciuika brings together architectural and design history, political history, social and cultural geography. He substantially revises our understanding of the roots of the Bauhaus and, by extension, the historical roots of twentieth-century German architecture and design. His book sheds new light on hotly contested debates pertaining to the history of Germany in the pre-World War I era, notably the issues surrounding “modernity” and “anti-modernity” in Wilhelmine Germany, the character and effectiveness of the government administration, and the role played by the nation’s most important architects, members of the rising bourgeois class, in challenging the traditional aristocracy at the top of the new German economic and social order.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521728225
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	04/28/2008
Series:	Modern Architecture and Cultural Identity
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	402
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 9.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

John V. Maciuika is assistant professor of art and architectural history at the City University of New York, Baruch College, and the City University of New York Graduate Center Ph.D. program in art history. A recipient of fellowships from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Graham Foundation, the NEH, and the DAAD, he has contributed to Centropa, Design Issues, and German Studies Review. He was the winner of the Year 2000 Research Article Prize from the German Studies Association of North America.

Table of Contents

Introduction: the politics of design reform in the German Kaiserreich. 1. Design reform in Germany's central and southern states, 1890–1914; 2. The Prussian commerce ministry and the lessons of the British Arts and Crafts Movement; 3. Prussian applied-arts reforms: culture, class, and the modern economy; 4. The convergence of state and private reforms in the Deutscher Werkbund; 5. Hermann Muthesius: architectural practice between government service and Werkbund activism; 6. Cultural fault lines in the Wilhelmine garden city Movement; 7. Statist commercial policies and artistic priorities at the 1914 Deutscher Werkbund exhibition; Conclusion.

Editorial Reviews

"Maciuika is well-informed and writes in a clear and scholarly way."
-Architectural Review

"Maciuka's book provides a long overdue account of some of the diverse tenets of the modern movement in German architecture and design that foregrounds the important interplay between individual reform efforts and state institutions....an invaluable contribution to the historiography of central European architecture and design that will hopefully trigger further studies of this crucial moment...."
-Sabine Wieber, Birkbeck College, University of London, H-German

From the Publisher