Adolf Behne (13 July 1885 – 22 August 1948) was a critic,

art historian Art history is the study of aesthetic objects and visual expression in historical and stylistic context. Traditionally, the discipline of art history emphasized painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture, ceramics and decorative arts; yet today ...

, architectural writer, and artistic activist. He was one of the leaders of the Avant Garde in the

Weimar Republic The Weimar Republic (german: link=no, Weimarer Republik ), officially named the German Reich, was the government of Germany from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a constitutional federal republic for the first time in history; hence it is al ...

. Behne was born in

Magdeburg Magdeburg (; nds, label=Low Saxon, Meideborg ) is the capital and second-largest city of the German state Saxony-Anhalt. The city is situated at the Elbe river. Otto I, the first Holy Roman Emperor and founder of the Archdiocese of Magdebur ...

and studied

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing building ...

briefly, then the history of art in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

. He joined the

Deutscher Werkbund The Deutscher Werkbund (English: "German Association of Craftsmen"; ) is a German association of artists, architects, designers and industrialists established in 1907. The Werkbund became an important element in the development of modern arch ...

and was a guiding light of the

Arbeitsrat für Kunst The Arbeitsrat für Kunst (German language, German: 'Workers council for art' or 'Art Soviet') was a union of architects, painters, sculptors and art writers, who were based in Berlin from 1918 to 1921. It developed as a response to the Workers and ...

in 1918. In a 1913 critique of

Bruno Taut Bruno Julius Florian Taut (4 May 1880 – 24 December 1938) was a renowned German architect, urban planner and author of Prussian Lithuanian heritage ("taut" means "nation" in Lithuanian). He was active during the Weimar period and is know ...

, Behne helped coin the term "

Expressionist architecture Expressionist architecture was an architectural movement in Europe during the first decades of the 20th century in parallel with the expressionist visual and performing arts that especially developed and dominated in Germany. Brick Expressionis ...

", and soon became one of the leading promoters of

expressionism Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...

. He was close to the members of the

artist collective 'The ball' and demanded the creation of a new closeness between art and architecture. He was influenced by the writings of

Jakob von Uexküll Jakob may refer to: People * Jakob (given name), including a list of people with the name * Jakob (surname), including a list of people with the name Other * Jakob (band), a New Zealand band, and the title of their 1999 EP * Max Jakob Memorial Aw ...

.Behne 1914/1915. He taught at the

University of Berlin Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (german: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a German public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin. It was established by Frederick William III on the initiative o ...

until 1933. Between 1945 and 1948 he was a professor at the National University for Fine Arts, (Staatlichen Hochschule für Bildende Kunst Berlin) and belonged to the architect group

Der Ring Der Ring was an architectural collective founded in 1926 in Berlin. It emerged from expressionist architecture with a functionalist agenda. Der Ring was a group of young architects, formed with the objective of promoting Modernist architecture. ...

. As an architect he rarely had his projects executed. However, between 1932 and 1936 he built the reception building of the main station in

Düsseldorf Düsseldorf ( , , ; often in English sources; Low Franconian and Ripuarian: ''Düsseldörp'' ; archaic nl, Dusseldorp ) is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in th ...

. He died in Berlin. His hometown of Magdeburg named a street after him (Behneweg).

Selected Literature

* Behne, Adolf 1913. Bruno Taut. ''Pan'' 3(23) (7 March 1913): 538–540. * Behne, Adolf 1914–1915. Biologie und Kubismus. ''Der Sturm'' 5(11/12), 68–71. * Behne, Adolf 1919. '. Kurt Wolff, Leipzig. Reprint: Kraus, Nendeln/Liechtenstein, 1973; Gebr. Mann, Berlin, 1998. * Behne, Adolf 1926. '. Drei Masken Verlag, Vienna/Berlin. Reprint: Der moderne Zweckbau. Ullstein Bauwelt Fundamente, Frankfurt am Main / Berlin, 1964; and Gebr. Mann Verlag, Berlin 1998. Translated as Modern Functional Building, ed. & intro. Rosemarie H. Bletter. Getty, Oxford UP, Santa Monica, 1996. * Behne, Adolf 1927. '. Hesse & Becker, Leipzig. * Behne, Adolf 1928. '. Stuttgart. Neuausgabe Berlin 1984 * Behne, Adolf 1994. '. Herausgegeben von Haila Ochs. Basel, Boston, Berlin: Birkhäuser-Architektur-Bibliothek. * Behne, Adolf 1998. '. Ed. & postscript Cornelia Briel. Berlin: Gebr. Mann. * Bohm, Arnd 1993. Artful Reproduction: Benjamin's Appropriation of Adolf Behne's `' in the Kunstwerk Essay. ''The Germanic Review'' 68(4): 146–155. * Bushart, Magdalena, ed. 2000. '. Berlin: Gebr. Mann. * Gutschow, Kai Konstanty 2005. "The culture of criticism: Adolf Behne and the development of modern architecture in Germany, 1910–1914." Ph.D. diss., Columbia University. * Lindner, Bernd 1992. 'Auf diesen Berg...' Adolf Behne – Vermitter der Moderne. In: ', ed. Henrike Junge. Cologne, Weimar, Vienna: Böhlau, pp. 7–15. * Mertins, Detlef 1997. Transparencies Yet to Come: Sigfried Giedion and Adolf Behne. ''A + U'' 10(325) (Oct. 1997): 3–17. * Schwartz, Frederic J. 1998. Form Follows Fetish: Adolf Behne and the Problem of Sachlichkeit. ''Oxford Art Journal'' 21(2): 45–77.

References

External links

* *
Genealogy of Adolf Behne
{{DEFAULTSORT:Behne, Adolf 1885 births 1948 deaths German architecture writers Architectural theoreticians Expressionist architects Architects from Magdeburg People from the Province of Saxony German male non-fiction writers 20th-century German architects