Mendelsohn’s Rudderless Ship

Abstract

In 1921 the German-Jewish architect Erich Mendelsohn designed and built his seminal hat factory Steinberg, Herrmann & Co., whose many transformations and changing patterns of ownership finally led to a state of obsolesence. After first successful attempts to reconstruct the premises from the 2000s onwards, the building remains predominantly idle, with the risk of falling into disrepair again. Rather than focussing on issues of style, composition, or materiality, this article looks at the life of this building and its current condition, thus seeking to trace some of the aspects that are imbricated in its architecture: issues of race, war, politics, economics, preservation, climate, and function.

Keywords

• Erich Mendelsohn
• Modernism
• Luckenwalde
• Hat Factory
• Vacancy