"How did architecture, design and art transform from an aesthetic enterprise to serving the needs of the masses? And how did a single individual-and an outstanding representative of "radical modernism"--pursue his personal convictions in an age marked bywar and totalitarianism in the name of the collective? These questions frame this comprehensive life story of Hannes Meyer, who as an upstart architect in Basel, director of the Bauhaus in Germany, urban planner near the China-Russian border, and designer of social housing and hospitals in Mexico, fought to affirm the rights of all to a life of comfort and human dignity while seeking to maintain his own identity in the process. "Georg Leidenberger, for the first time brings to life this steadfast, difficult and polemical architect, portraying him in the whole breadth of his existence."-- Prof. Magdalena Droste, author of Bauhaus 1919-1933. Reform and Avantgarde"--
Radical modernist Hannes Meyer (18891954) worked as administrator and artist as well as architect and urbanist. Amidst personal setbacks and the tumult of war and totalitarianism, this individual fought for the wellbeing of the masses in a collective age. The Bauhaus director and CIAM member built the Freidorf Co-op and the UNESCO Bernau School
How did architecture, design and art transform from an aesthetic enterprise to serving the needs of the masses? And how did a single individualand an outstanding representative of "radical modernism"--pursue his personal convictions in an age marked by war and totalitarianism in the name of the collective? These questions frame this comprehensive life story of Hannes Meyer, who as an upstart architect in Basel, director of the Bauhaus in Germany, urban planner near the China-Russian border, and designer of social housing and hospitals in Mexico, fought to affirm the rights of all to a life of comfort and human dignity while seeking to maintain his own identity in the process.
"Georg Leidenberger, for the first time brings to life this steadfast, difficult and polemical architect, portraying him in the whole breadth of his existence."-- Prof. Magdalena Droste, author of Bauhaus 1919-1933. Reform and Avantgarde
Table of Contents - Georg Leidenberger - List of illustrations - Preface
and acknowledgements Introduction - Childhood and Youth in Basel, 1889-1909
- Wanderjahre, 1909-1919 - From Freidorf (1921) to Freidorf (1925). A Housing
Compound, two Publications and a Modernist Awakening," 1919-1925 - A Radical
Modernist Directing the Bauhaus, 1926-1930 - Eclipsed Honeymoon in the Soviet
Union, 1930-1936 , Interlude: Geneva, 1936-1939 - Everything here is
vulkanisch: Mexico, 1938-1949 - Rootless at Home. Lugano, Switzerland,
1949-1954 - Bibliographical essay - Bibliography
Georg Leidenberger is professor of 20th-century history at the Autonomous Metropolitan University in Mexico City (UAM). He is a specialist in the history of architecture as well as urban society and politics and has published on the themes of public transportation, social housing and urban planning in Mexico, the United States and the trans-Atlantic region.
