Anna Bronovitskaya’s lecture series continues with a talk about Erich Mendelsohn, best known in Russia as the architect who created the Leningrad factory “Krasnoe Znamya” (“Red Banner”, 1925–1927), and generally one of the most notable representatives of Expressionism in architecture.
During those years, Mendelsohn worked successfully in Weimar Germany, making designs of factories, theaters and department stores, developing a new formula for this type of architecture. Following the establishment of the Nazi regime in 1933, Mendelsohn was forced out of the country and headed to Great Britain, while a few years later, in 1935, he founded a firm in Jerusalem. In exile, he concentrated on blending Jewish tradition with contemporary architecture, and defining his national identity in the process. Mendelsohn’s buildings erected in Mandatory Palestine and the U.S., where he relocated in 1941, can be viewed as an original version of modernism enhanced with national motives.
