Races to Modernity Behrends, Jan C; Kohlrausch, Martin
2014, 20140830, 2014-07-20
eBook
This volume succeeds beautifully in conveying a detailed sense of urban development in Eastern Europe and the crucial importance of cities for the moderniszation of Eastern Europe during the half ...century before World War II.
The story of modernist architects in East Central Europe. The first half of the twentieth century witnessed the rise of modernist architects. Brokers of Modernity reveals how East Central Europe ...turned into one of the pre-eminent testing grounds of the new belief system of modernism. By combining the internationalism of the CIAM organization and the modernising aspirations of the new states built after 1918, the reach of modernist architects extended far beyond their established fields. Yet, these architects paid a price when Europe’s age of extremes intensified. Mainly drawing on Polish, but also wider Central and Eastern European cases, this book delivers a pioneering study of the dynamics of modernist architects as a group, including how they became qualified, how they organized, communicated and attempted to live the modernist lifestyle themselves. In doing so, Brokers of Modernity raises questions concerning collective work in general and also invites us to examine the social role of architects today.
This article discusses the role of modernist architects in Poland during the first half of the twentieth century. The article argues that against the background of economic catching-up processes and ...the establishment of a new nation state and capital, modernist architects could enter into a close relationship with the modernising state. This relationship could partially survive World War II, albeit under different auspices. By employing the example of Poland’s foremost modernist architect Szymon Syrkus and his wife Helena, and their extensive correspondence with other Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne architects, the article discusses, moreover, the impact of the deep breaks coming with the rise of authoritarian regimes in the 1930s, the coming World War and the Holocaust, and finally the establishment of communist regimes on modernist architects.
Die Spätblüte der preußisch-deutschen Monarchie unter Wilhelm II. und der Durchbruch der Massenmedien fielen in Deutschland zeitlich zusammen. Erstmals untersucht das Buch von Martin Kohlrausch, was ...diese Konstellation für die Ausbildung der politischen Medienberichterstattung, mehr aber noch für die wilhelminische Monarchie bedeutete. Indem diese Studie die Zäsur von 1918 überschreitet, vermag sie vielschichtige, bisher kaum beachtete Verbindungen zwischen der gescheiterten wilhelminischen "Medienmonarchie" und den ubiquitären Führerkonzepten, die lange vor 1918 aufkamen, herauszuarbeiten. Dies geschieht auf Grundlage eines breiten, bisher nicht erschlossenen Quellenspektrums, insbesondere von über 1000 systematisch erschlossenen Zeitungsartikeln und einem umfangreichen Sample politischer Pamphlete.
The story of modernist architects in East Central Europe. The first half of the twentieth century witnessed the rise of modernist architects. Brokers of Modernity reveals how East Central Europe ...turned into one of the pre-eminent testing grounds of the new belief system of modernism. By combining the internationalism of the CIAM organization and the modernising aspirations of the new states built after 1918, the reach of modernist architects extended far beyond their established fields. Yet, these architects paid a price when Europe’s age of extremes intensified. Mainly drawing on Polish, but also wider Central and Eastern European cases, this book delivers a pioneering study of the dynamics of modernist architects as a group, including how they became qualified, how they organized, communicated and attempted to live the modernist lifestyle themselves. In doing so, Brokers of Modernity raises questions concerning collective work in general and also invites us to examine the social role of architects today.
This article demonstrates the social and political impact of modernist architects in Europe’s age of extremes beyond the narrower confines of architecture. In East Central Europe with its ideological ...tensions, massive socio-political ruptures and eventually the establishment of communist regimes, architects’ social visions and the states’ aspirations led to intense interactions as well as strong controversies. In order to unravel these, we stress the relevance of modernism as a belief and knowledge system. In so doing we point to often unacknowledged continuities between the interwar and the immediate post-war period thus re-politicising the work of modernist architects as a project of worldmaking in the context of competing ideologies and sociotechnical imaginaries.
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