Mies van der Rohe in Post-War Germany The Theater Project Mannheim 1953 Here you find general information about the exhibition's content. Event In 2001, two important Mies van der Rohe exhibitions opened in New York, each focusing on one of the two bodies of his work before and after his emigration in 1938: "Mies in Berlin" (MoMa, N.Y., subsequently traveling to the Altes Museum Berlin) and "Mies in America" (Whitney Museum, N.Y.). To date, every significant exhibition in Germany of Mies's architecture has been borrowed from the U.S. (such as in Berlin, 1968, and in Frankfurt, 1987). The show in Dessau (Kandinsky-Klee Master Houses, January 11 - March 31, 2002) is dedicated to the former Bauhaus director's crucial but largely ignored work and influence in post-war Germany, and will appear concurrently with the exhibition in the Altes Museum in Berlin (December 14, 2001 - March 18, 2002), which looks primarily at Mies's pre-war work. Content One of Mies van der Rohe's most beautiful projects, his design for the National Theater in Mannheim, is also one of the most important projects based on his idea of universal space. In 1953, this project marked a turning point in Mies's work as well as a new beginning for post-war Germany's devastated cultural landscape. Interviews, texts and documents from archives in Germany and the United States reveal an unknown chapter in the history of modern architecture. The project's exemplary significance emerges in the course of its development, from the process behind the design's origin in Chicago, the competition, the hostility and controversy surrounding the Bauhaus and its glass architecture (involving Rudolf Schwarz, Walter Gropius, Hanns Hopp and Hans Scharoun), to its ultimate distortion in the realization phase. The image of the former Bauhaus director following his project to Germany with great hopes, yet in vain, hardly matches later clichés associated with Mies. Research on the project further demonstrates that already in 1953, a new avant-garde was born, whose fundamental currents of thought included Mies van der Rohe's concept of space. Curator The exhibition's curator is Prof. Dr. Thilo Hilpert, Heidelberg ( Homepage ). He is an urban planner and architectural historian, professor at the Wiesbaden University of Applied Sciences, member of the scholars' advisory board of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation. Inauguration, Friday January 11, 2002 Impressions of the exhibition's opening Dessau, January 11, 2002 Thilo Hilpert about the exhibition : "... The preparation for the exhibition turned into a research project. It could not be overlooked that the post-war theater in Mannheim still suggested Mies's influence, even in its reversal of form, and that his design for the theater was included in every publication on Mies's work. Despite the design's outstanding quality and significance in Mies's thought, it remains oddly out of reach... " The Culture Minister of Sachsen-Anhalt on the occasion of the inauguration (edited version) Home | Index | Impressum Copyright © 2002, all rights reserved.