Mies van der Rohe and modernism in Berlin
On my Architecture Walking Tours, I often get asked about Mies van der Rohe, especially his connection to the Bauhaus School in Dessau and later in Berlin. So I thought I’d write about him. Here is some background information on one of my favourite architects of all time.
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Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, commonly referred to as Mies (pronounced MEESS, or MEESS VAN DER ROH), was a man of transformations.
One of the pioneers of modern architecture, he was an architect, academic/teacher and interior designer. One of his last and greatest buildings is the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin.
Mies was born in 1886 in Aachen, a medieval town in the west of Germany. The son of a stonemason, he left school at 14 without a qualification to attend a local trade school and worked in his father’s business, learning to carve gravestones. Then he worked on building sites, and drawing in a company that made decorative plasterwork.
At the age of 19 (1905) he arrived in Berlin capable of carving stone, laying bricks and drafting. He got his first job in an architecture studio after solving a design problem in less than an hour that his boss had been trying to resolve for weeks! He worked as a draftsman for the architect Bruno Paul while studying building and architecture.
Aged 20, he received his first independent commission for a house in Potsdam, which led to several more houses being built for well-to-do artists and intellectuals mostly in traditional styles. He worked alongside Walter Gropius, who was specialising in industrial projects. Gropius later (1919) became the founder of the Bauhaus, a ground-breaking school of modernist art, design and architecture, and pioneering master of modernist architecture.
Mies established his own business in Berlin in 1912, but had to serve in the World War from 1915 to 1918.
After the war, the Berlin artistic scene was radically progressive, aiming to create a new society and new citizens. Walter Gropius promoted radical design, staging an “Exhibition of Unknown Architects” in 1919. Mies submitted work, but it was rejected when Gropius apparently criticised its lack of modernity.
Two transformations occurred in the aftermath of the War: although continuing to build within established conventions, Mies became involved with avant-garde artists and by 1924 was editing a journal of modern German culture, committing himself to modern design. He increasingly tackled experimental works that addressed the nature of architecture and sought a new style that would be suitable for the modern industrial age. His designs changed from traditional and classical architecture to the radically modern.
Also, in 1921 he changed his surname from Mies to Mies van der Rohe. In German, “mies” suggests “miserable” or “rotten”, while his mother’s maiden name was “Rohe” (with connotations of “pure/unadulterated”). He added the Dutch “van der” for ennobling effect, since the German “von” was legally restricted to those with noble lineage. Thus he created a new public persona, transforming himself from a tradesman’s son to an architect of the German cultural elite.
In 1930 Mies became the director of the Bauhaus school of modernist design, but the ruling Nazis favoured the folk architecture of Germany – “Hansel and Gretel gothic” – over abstract modernism, with its white walls, steel and glass, and flat roofs. Under the influence of Albert Speer, Hitler’s architect, a mediocre designer of bombastic classicism referring to the Roman Empire, the modernist “International Style” of the Bauhaus was out. In addition, Communists and Jews were active in the Bauhaus, and in April 1933 the Gestapo visited, seeking sources of anti-Nazi propaganda and links to the Communist party. Mies was told to replace two teachers offensive to the regime, and instead closed the school down himself.
His principled stand did not hold when he was starved of work and, despite claiming to be a-political, in August 1934 he signed a motion of support for Hitler, to the disgust of many of his colleagues. Mies stayed in Germany for longer than many intellectuals, because he refused to believe that Germany, once a hotbed of cultural innovation, had suddenly become so stupid.
He received offers of work from several wealthy Americans, and visited the US. He felt the “flat, empty, abstract” mid-west suited his style, and met the famous American Frank Lloyd-Wright, the esteemed architect of the prairies. He moved to the US in 1938, after being questioned by the Gestapo about the “degenerates” among his Bauhaus colleagues.
In his first years in the US he lived in a hotel in Chicago, where he claimed to have only three necessities: Martinis, Dunhill cigars and expensive clothes. The only commission he received in his first decade in the US was from the Illinois Institute of Technology, where he was head of the architecture school. He designed a campus masterplan and several buildings.
Mies’ style became popular for American cultural and educational institutions, public agencies and large corporations and many of his skyscrapers remain fine examples and prototypes.
He was a partial inspiration for the character of Lazlo Toth in the 2024 Oscar-winning movie “The Brutalist”, and there is a street named after him in his birth town of Aachen – Mies-van-der Rohe Strasse.
Mies died in 1969, and his ashes were buried in Chicago, marked by a simple black slab of polished granite, unadorned except for “LUDWIG MIES VAN DER ROHE 1886–1969” carved by a stonemason.
Mies two masterworks are the modernist German Pavilion he designed for the 1929 Barcelona world exposition, and his last completed work and in many ways the pinnacle of his thinking – the Neue Nationalgalerie art museum in Berlin…
… whose story is told in another blog post.
