In the early 1920s, no German architect succeeded better than the master of dynamic expressionism in expressing the zeitgeist of an entire generation and the artistic awakening of a new era with just a few strokes of charcoal: Erich Mendelsohn.

The Einstein Tower on the Telegrafenberg in Potsdam, the Mosse publishing house and the Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz in Berlin are among his masterpieces, whose elegance still inspires today.

Mendelsohn also left buildings in England, Israel and the United States that make him one of the most influential architects of the first half of the twentieth century.

The question of why Mendelsohn received a less prominent place in the architectural history of modernism than Walter Gropius or Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, with whom he met in 1924 in the artists' association "Ring", is dealt with in a book by the Berlin architect Carsten Krohn and the architectural historian Michele Stavagna have published.

It combines fine drawings with captivating photographs and convincing texts.

The rediscovery of Mendelsohn and the new appreciation this brings to his oeuvre is fully deserved.

Reconstruction measures after the opening

Key works such as the hat factory in Luckenwalde from 1923 and the former Schocken department store in Chemnitz should not be missing from the volume.

Less well known are Mendelsohn's early works in Poland and the Czech Republic, such as the Bet Tahara in Olsztyn, where Mendelsohn was born 125 years ago.

The “House of Cleaning” in what was then Allenstein has meanwhile been converted into a “Center for Intercultural Dialogue”, while the department store in Chemnitz – with its arched front and horizontal ribbon windows, one of the masterpieces of modern department store architecture – was recently transformed into the State Museum for Archaeology.

So Mendelsohn's built legacy is in flux, elsewhere as well: The B'nai Amoona Synagogue building in St. Louis is currently used as part of the Center of Creative Arts.

At the Maimonides Hospital in San Francisco, the lightness of Mendelsohn's architecture was lost due to renovations after the opening.

However, the 1950 Park Synagogue of the Anshe Emeth Beth Tefilo congregation in Cleveland Heights, a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, is still intact and operational.

Mendelsohn is best known in this country as the "architect of the modern metropolis", of swing and elegant commercial buildings, but Krohn and Stavagna's book also shows him as an architect of modern residential architecture and sacred spaces.

The comparison of the original drawings, some of which are presented in the book, with the status quo enables an assessment of the state of preservation of this architectural heritage.

Milestones of modernity

Authors such as Bruno Zevi, Kathleen James-Chakraborty, and Ita Heinze-Greenberg have previously dealt with Mendelsohn in books, but the view that Krohn and Stavagna offer is markedly different from this preliminary work.

Anyone who considered Mendelsohn to be too commercial or too unintellectual to make it into the first rank of top architects will be taught otherwise: Michele Stavagna, a proven expert on Mendelsohn's work, considers the work of the architect even after emigrating to England in 1933 in his essay During this time, Mendelsohn designed the villa in Rechovot near Tel Aviv for Chaim Weizmann, who later became Israel's first president.

Mendelsohn's buildings from this creative phase were neither commercial nor pleasing, but early milestones of modernism in Israel - with a new repertoire of forms.

In 1935 he opened his architectural office in Jerusalem, which produced designs such as Villa Schocken and the Hebrew University, Hadassah University Hospital and the Anglo-Palestine Bank (all in Jerusalem), and the government hospital in Haifa.

Despite his successes, Mendelsohn went to the USA.

In 1945 he settled in San Francisco, where he died in 1953.

Stavagna not only precisely traces the stages of life and work phases, he also looks at the unbuilt projects.

All in all, the monograph documents all seventy buildings in text and images that can be unequivocally attributed to Mendelsohn.

A catalog raisonné lists all works.

There are also new photos of Krohn, newly drawn plans and historical illustrations.

Today, the idea on which a building was based during planning is often hidden under all kinds of conditions.

The situation is different when it comes to Mendelsohn's architectural achievements – think of the Petersdorff department store in Wrocław, the Bejach house in Berlin or the metalworkers' union building, which was also erected in Berlin.

This book makes you want to take a closer look at Mendelsohn's building.

Erich Mendelsohn: "Buildings and Projects".

Edited by Carsten Krohn and Michele Stavagna.

With a foreword by Kenneth Frampton.

Birkhäuser Verlag, Berlin 2021. 240 p., ill., hardcover, €69.95.