Erich Mendelsohn : from Berlin to Jerusalem

Abstract

This paper examines the creative persona of Erich Mendelsohn's seemingly incompatible bodies of architecture in Europe, Palestine and the U.S. The limits of existing formal analysis to explain his architectural shifts were the impetus for investigating the architectural position that facilitated not only Mendelsohn's iconic architecture in Germany, but its appropriation to Palestine as well. Beside his artistic ambiance, is also Mendelsohn's religious faith, national identity and political convictions. Mendelsohn was part of the Jewish post-assimilated generation in Germany - this experience is extended by Mendelsohn to the art of building, which was facilitated intellectually by Martin Buber's (early) teaching about the creative Jewish yearning for unity. The paper focus on how Mendelsohn's consistent architectural and political position discloses itself first in the industrial West (Germany), where it engaged the striving architectural debated of the period, and then in the Orient. In Palestine, where he took part in the "cultural Zionist" agenda, he remolded Modern Architecture into a non- Western country.