The Italian Hope: Rationalist Architecture’s Role and Reception in Germany

Abstract

Examining the relation between architecture and power in the age of totalitarianism, Germer provides a new interpretation of the Modernism of around 1930: Modern Fascist architecture in Italy, itself influenced by the German Neues Bauen, became a model for the nationalist avant-garde of the Third Reich. The conservative elite supported a constrained architectural modernity, and rejected the critique of modernist architecture as Bolshevist by pointing to modernist Fascist architecture in Italy. The advocates of Neues Bauen stressed its “revolutionary character” in an attempt to persuade the National Socialists to adopt Modernism as an official style. While opening new vistas into German-Italian cultural relations, this article illuminates the challenge to modernist architecture after 1933.