Wolf Von Eckardt (6 March 1918 – 27 August 1995) was a German-American writer, art and architecture critic for the ''

Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', 30 August 1995.Martin Weil
Wolf von Eckardt dies at 77
''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

'', 28 August 1995.

Life

Wolf Von Eckardt was born 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 ...

on 6 March 1918. His mother, Gertrude von Eckardt-Lederer, was Jewish, and his father

Emil Lederer Emil Lederer (22 July 1882 – 29 May 1939) was a Bohemian-born German economist and sociologist. Purged from his position at Humboldt University of Berlin in 1933 for being Jewish, Lederer fled into exile. He helped establish the "University ...

was a socialist professor of political economy. His parents divorced when he was a boy. Von Eckardt was excluded from school in Germany for being Jewish. He worked as a printer's apprentice before fleeing Germany in 1936 with a younger sister and their mother. On arrival in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

, he found work as a printer's apprentice and took classes at the

New School for Social Research The New School for Social Research (NSSR) is a graduate-level educational institution that is one of the divisions of The New School in New York City, United States. The university was founded in 1919 as a home for progressive era thinkers. NSSR ...

. He later worked designing book covers for

Alfred A. Knopf Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. () is an American publishing house that was founded by Alfred A. Knopf Sr. and Blanche Knopf in 1915. Blanche and Alfred traveled abroad regularly and were known for publishing European, Asian, and Latin American writers in ...

. In 1941 he married

Karen Horney Karen Horney (; ; 16 September 1885 – 4 December 1952) was a German psychoanalyst who practised in the United States during her later career. Her theories questioned some traditional Freudian views. This was particularly true of her theories of ...

's daughter Marianne Horney, also a psychoanalyst. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

he served in Army intelligence, and after the war worked as an adviser to the West German government. in 1963 he started working at the ''Washington Post''. His marriage to Marianne Horney ended in 1975. In 1981 he left ''The Post'', but wrote about architecture for ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...

'' until 1985 and continued teaching and writing until his first stroke in 1989. In 1987 Von Eckardt married again, to Nina ffrench-frazier. He died of complications after a stroke on 27 August 1995 at his home in

Jaffrey, New Hampshire Jaffrey is a town in Cheshire County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 5,320 at the 2020 census. The main village in town, where 3,058 people resided at the 2020 census, is defined as the Jaffrey census-designated place (CDP) a ...

Works

* ''Eric Mendelsohn'', 1960 * ''Otto Dorfner'', 1960 * ''Mid-century architecture in America: honor awards of the American Institute of Architects, 1949–1961'', 1961 * ''Bulldozers and bureaucrats; cities and urban renewal'', 1963 * (with

Charles Goodman Charles M. Goodman, FAIA (November 26, 1906 – October 29, 1992) was an American architect who made a name for his modern designs in suburban Washington, D.C. after World War II. While his work has a regional feel, he ignored the colonial rev ...

) ''Life for dead spaces; the development of the Lavanburg Commons'', 1963 * ''The challenge of Megalopolis: a graphic presentation of the urbanized Northeastern seaboard of the United States'', 1964 * ''A place to live: the crisis of the cities''. Foreword by August Heckscher. 1967 * ''Bertolt Brecht's Berlin: a scrapbook of the twenties'', 1975 * ''Proposal for a National Museum of the Building Arts'', 1978 * ''Back to the drawing board!: Planning livable cities'', 1978 * ''Live the good life!: creating a human community through the arts'', 1982 * ''Oscar Wilde's London: a scrapbook of vices and virtues, 1880–1900'', 1987

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Eckardt, Wolf von 1918 births 1995 deaths American male journalists American art critics American architecture critics Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United States United States Army personnel of World War II Journalists from Berlin