The first Werkbund Exhibition of 1914 was held at

Rheinpark The Rheinpark (meaning: ''Rhine park'') is a 40 hectare (0,4 km²) large urban park along the right bank of the river Rhine in Cologne, Germany. The park lies between the Cologne districts of Deutz and Mülheim and includes a beach club, a ...

Cologne Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western States of Germany, state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 m ...

, Germany.

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 ...

's best-known building, the prismatic dome of the

Glass Pavilion The Glass Pavilion, designed by Bruno Taut and built in 1914, was a Cupola (geometry), prismatic glass dome structure at the Cologne Werkbund Exhibition (1914), Deutscher Werkbund Exhibition. The structure was a brightly colored landmark of the exh ...

of which only black and white images survive today, was in reality a brightly colored landmark.

Walter Gropius Walter Adolph Georg Gropius (18 May 1883 – 5 July 1969) was a German-American architect An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in conne ...

and Adolf Meyer designed a model factory for the exhibition. The Belgian architect Henri van de Velde designed a model theatre. Berlin-based Margarete Knuppelholz-Roeser designed the controversial Haus Der Frau. The exhibition happened mainly on the initiative of the later German chancellor

Konrad Adenauer Konrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer (; 5 January 1876 – 19 April 1967) was a Germany, German statesman who served as the first Chancellor of Germany, chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1949 to 1963. From 1946 to 1966, he was the fir ...

, then a 36-year-old aspiring inventor, Werkbund member and local politician at Cologne. The city spent the luxurious sum of 5 million Goldmarks (equivalent to million €) on the event. Planning began in earnest in 1912, and construction work started in early 1914. The exhibition was opened to the public by Van de Velde on 15 May 1914. Scheduled to last until the end of October, it was prematurely shut down on 8 August following the outbreak of

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

a week earlier; the exhibition buildings were dismantled shortly afterwards. There were two more Werkbund Exhibitions after the war. The second was the Stuttgart Exhibition of 1927, which included the

Weissenhof Estate The Weissenhof Estate (German: Weißenhofsiedlung) is a housing estate built for the 1927 Deutscher Werkbund exhibition in Stuttgart, Germany. It was an international showcase of modern architecture's aspiration to provide cheap, simple, efficie ...

. At that time, the third Werkbund Exhibition had been tentatively scheduled for 1937, but the plan was shelved in 1932 because of the

Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...

and could not be taken up again since

the Nazis The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported t ...

opposed and ultimately outlawed the Werkbund. It finally took place on a reduced scale in 1949, back in

, and turned out to be the last Werkbund Exhibition.

External links

* {{Authority control Expressionist architecture

1914 This year saw the beginning of what became known as World War I, after Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the Austrian throne was Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, assassinated by Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip. It als ...

Modernist architecture in Germany 1914 in Germany Culture in Cologne

See also

External links