Hermann Finsterlin (18 August 1887 – 16 September 1973) was a German visionary architect, painter, poet, essayist, toymaker and composer. He played an influential role in the German

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 ...

movement of the early 20th century but due to the harsh economic climate realised none of his projects. By 1922, Finsterlin had withdrawn from the circle of expressionist architects as they moved towards the

New Objectivity The New Objectivity (in german: Neue Sachlichkeit) was a movement in German art that arose during the 1920s as a reaction against expressionism. The term was coined by Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub, the director of the ''Kunsthalle'' in Mannheim, wh ...

movement, he moved to Stuttgart to concentrate on painting and writing.

Life

Finsterlin was born in

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Ha ...

. He originally studied medicine, physics and chemistry, and then later, philosophy and painting in Munich. In 1919 he assisted

Walter Gropius Walter Adolph Georg Gropius (18 May 1883 – 5 July 1969) was a German-American architect and founder of the Bauhaus School, who, along with Alvar Aalto, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, is widely regarded as one ...

in organising the "Exhibition for Unknown architects" for the

Arbeitsrat für Kunst The Arbeitsrat für Kunst (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 Soldiers councils ...

and contributed to Bruno Taut's

Glass Chain The Glass Chain or Crystal Chain sometimes known as the "Utopian Correspondence" (german: Die Gläserne Kette) was a chain letter that took place between November 1919 and December 1920. It was a correspondence of architects that formed a basis of e ...

letters under the pseudonym ''Prometh''. Finsterlin had a curious career: he was an architect who "never built a permanent structure." Under the

Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...

regime in the 1930s, Finsterlin was commissioned to produce official portraits and frescoes in state buildings "through a misunderstanding...." Finsterlin dodged the responsibility through feigned illness as long as he could, and supplied his art to the Nazis only under threat of

concentration camp Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simpl ...

incarceration.Benson, p. 202. In 1944 his house was bombed and much of his life work was demolished — though he was able to regenerate some of his past work in the 1960s. He died, aged 86, in Stuttgart. His work was the inspiration for "Da Monsta", an expressionist gate house on

Philip Johnson Philip Cortelyou Johnson (July 8, 1906 – January 25, 2005) was an American architect best known for his works of modern and postmodern architecture. Among his best-known designs are his modernist Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut; the po ...

's Glass House compound.

References

External links

* Expressionist architects German composers 1887 births 1973 deaths {{Germany-composer-stub