Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-5g6vh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-28T00:41:45.168Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Erich Mendelsohn and the fourth dimension

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 August 2008

Vaughan Hart
Affiliation:
School of Architecture and Civil EngineeringUniversity of BathClaverton DownBath BA2 7AY, United Kingdom

Abstract

In this article the design of Mendelsohn's famous Expressionist tower at Potsdam is shown to have been shaped by the cosmology of Albert Einstein informed, however, by the apparently conflicting occult philosophy of Rudolf Steiner.

Type
History
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Banham, R. (1954). Mendelsohn, Architectural Review, vol.116, pp.8593.Google Scholar
Banham, R. (1982 ed.). Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, Architectural Press, London.Google Scholar
Beyer, O. (1967). Erich Mendelsohn: Letters of an Architect, Abelard-Schuman, London.Google Scholar
Boyd Whyte, I. (1985). The Crystal Chain Letters: Architectural Fantasies by Bruno Taut and His Circle, MIT Press, Cambridge Mass.Google Scholar
Chaitkin, W. (1980). Einstein and Architecture. In (eds) Goldsmith, M., Mackay, A., Woudhuysen, J., Einstein, the First Hundred Years, pp.132–44, Pergamon, Oxford.Google Scholar
Cheney, S.W. (1930). The New World Architecture, Longmans, London.Google Scholar
Clark, R.W. (1973). Einstein: The Life and Times, Hodder and Stoughton, London.Google Scholar
Eckardt, W. von. (1960). Erich Mendelsohn, (Masters of World Architecture Series), Mayflower, London.Google Scholar
Einstein, A. (1917). Über die spezielle und die allgemeine Relativitätstheorie-gemeinverständlich, Vieweg, Brunswick [Trans. Lawson, R.W., Relativity, the Special and the General Theory: a Popular Exposition, Methuen & Co, London, 1918, 1920].Google Scholar
Freundlich, E.F (1917). Die Grundlagen tier Bnsteinschen Gravitationstheorie, Julius Springer, Berlin [Trans. Brose, H.L., The Foundations of Einstein's Theory of Gravitation, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1920].CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freundlich, E.F. (1969). Wie es dazu kam, daß ich den Einsteinturm errichtete [How I Came to Build the Einstein Tower], Physikalische Blätter, vol.12, pp.538–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giedion, S. (1941). Space, Time and Architecture, Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass.Google Scholar
Giedion, S. (1971). Architecture and the Phenomena of Transition: The Three Space Conceptions in Architecture, Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henderson, L.D. (1983). The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art, Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ.Google Scholar
Hentschel, K. (1992). Der Enstein-Turm, Springer-Verlag, Berlin.Google Scholar
Hentschel, K. and Krausse, J. (1994). Der Einsteinturm in Potsdam. Architektur und Astrophysik, Astrophysikalisches Institut, Potsdam [catalogue for the exhibition on the tower held in December 1994, entitled ‘Vom grossen refraktor zum Einsteinturm’].Google Scholar
James, K. (1994). Expressionism, Relativity, and the Einstein Tower, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, vol.53, no.4, pp.392413.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Le, Corbusier. (1954 ed.). The Modulor: A Harmonious Measure to the Human Scale Universally Applicable to Architecture and Mechanics, Faber and Faber, London.Google Scholar
Mendelsohn, E. (19141917a). Reflections on New Architecture. In Scheffauer, H.G. (trans), Erich Mendelsohn: Structures and Sketches, Ernest Benn, London, 1924.Google Scholar
Mendelsohn, E. (19141917b). The Inner and the Outer Wall. In Scheffauer, H.G. (trans), Erich Mendelsohn: Structures and Sketches, Ernest Benn, London, 1924.Google Scholar
Mendelsohn, E. (1919). The Problem of a New Architecture. In Beyer, O. (ed), Erich Mendelsohn: Structures and Sketches, Ernest Benn, London, 1924.Google Scholar
Mendelsohn, E. (1923). The International Consensus on the New Architectural Concept, or Dynamics and Function. In Fritsch, A. (trans), Erich Mendelsohn: Complete Works of the Architect, Princeton Architectural Press, Princeton NJ/Triangle, London, 1992.Google Scholar
Mendelsohn, E. (1928). Synthesis. In Conrads, U. (ed), Programmes and Manifestos on 20th Century Architecture, Lund Humphries, London, 1970.Google Scholar
Mendelsohn, E. (1942a). Architecture in a World Crisis. In Mendelsohn, E., Three Lectures on Architecture, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1944.Google Scholar
Mendelsohn, E. (1942b). Architecture Today. In Mendelsohn, E., Three Lectures on Architecture, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1944.Google Scholar
Mendelsohn, E. (1942c). Architecture in a Rebuilt World. In Mendelsohn, E., Three Lectures on Architecture, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1944.Google Scholar
Mendelsohn, E. (1948). My own Contribution to the Development of Contemporary Architecture. In Beyer, O. (ed), Three Lectures on Architecture, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1944.Google Scholar
Mendelsohn, E. (1953). Background to Design. In Beyer, O. (ed), Three Lectures on Architecture, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1944.Google Scholar
Morgenthaler, H.R. (1992). The Early Sketches of German Architect Erich Mendelsohn (1887–1953), The Edward Mellen Press, Lampeter.Google Scholar
Ringbom, S. (1970). The Sounding Cosmos: A Study in the Spiritualism of Kandinsky and the Genesis of Abstract Painting. In Acta Academiae Aboensis, vol.38 no.2 [entire issue].Google Scholar
Rykwert, J. (1982). The Dark Side of the Bauhaus. In Rykwert, J., The Necessity of Artifice, pp.4449, Academy Editions, London.Google Scholar
Rykwert, J. (1992). Organic and Mechanical, Res, no.22, pp.1118.Google Scholar
Scheerbart, P. (1914). Glasarchitektur, Verlag Der Sturm, Berlin. [Trans. Sharp, D., New York, 1972].Google Scholar
Steiner, R. (1914a). The Acanthus Leaf. In Steiner, R., Ways to a New Style in Architecture, Anthroposophical Publishing Company, London, 1927.Google Scholar
Steiner, R. (1914b). The House of Speech. In Steiner, R., Ways to a New Style in Architecture, Anthroposophical Publishing Company, London, 1927.Google Scholar
Steiner, R. (1914c). The New Conception of Architecture. In Steiner, R., Ways to a New Style in Architecture, Anthroposophical Publishing Company, London, 1927.Google Scholar
Steiner, R. (1914d). True Aesthetic Laws of Form. In Steiner, R., Ways to a New Style in Architecture, Anthroposophical Publishing Company, London, 1927.Google Scholar
Steiner, R. (1914e). The Creative World of Colour. In Steiner, R., Ways to a New Style in Architecture, Anthroposophical Publishing Company, London, 1927.Google Scholar
Waddington, C. H. (1969). Behind Appearance: A study of the Relations between Painting and the Natural Sciences in this Century, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Weiss, P. (1979). Kandinsky in Munich, The formative Judendstil Years, Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ.Google Scholar
Whittick, A. (1956). Erich Mendelsohn, Leonard Hill, London.Google Scholar
Williams, R.C. (1977). Artists in Revolution: Portraits of the Russian Avant-garde, 1905–1925, Indiana University Press, Bloomington.Google Scholar
Zevi, B. (1950). Towards an Organic Architecture, Faber and Faber, London.Google Scholar
Zevi, B. (1970). Erich Mendelsohn: Opera Completa. Architetture e immagini architettoniche. Con note biografiche di Louise Mendelsohn, Etas Kompass, Milan.Google Scholar
Zevi, B. (1974 ed.). Architecture as Space, How to Look at Architecture, Horizon Press, New York.Google Scholar
Zevi, B. (1985). Erich Mendelsohn, The Architecture Press, London.Google Scholar