by Jon Lackman | 6 April 2006 | Architecture, Modern
Wolfgang Pehnt’s history of German architecture from the 1901 Darmstadt exhibition through the recent rebuilding of the Berlin Olympic Stadium is an old-fashioned, magisterial great-buildings survey, subtle and comprehensive — so find Dieter Bartetzko in the FAZ and Gert Kähler in the Süddeutsche. Jürgen Tietz (see NZZ and H-Soz-u-Kult) notes that Pehnt also manages to treat low moments such as the forced labor on Nazi building projects and Mies’ and Gropius’ early efforts to accommodate Hitler’s regime. Winfried Nerdinger, in Die Zeit, admits that Pehnt is a good storyteller, but finds him subjective and lacking in conceptual structure and self-critical perspective. She questions the unreflective use of categories like modern, conservative, and even German architecture, and complains that the years after 1970 are covered using openly recycled feuilleton articles.
