Alfred Breslauer (1866-1954) - Architect of a Traditional Modern Age

• Applicant: Dr. Hans-Dieter Nägelke
• Subject Area: Architecture, Building and Construction History, Construction Research, Sustainable Building Technology
• Term: from 2016 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 310703688

Alfred Breslauer is one of the forgotten architects of the early 20th century. After he graduated in history at the TH Berlin he began working for Alfred Messel where he was also involved in the design and construction of Wertheim department store. This allowed him to adopt Messel's approaches of architectural reformation. Being considered as Messel's student and successor by his contemporaries, Breslauer primarily focused on residential housing constructions by the beginning of 1900. Like his mentor, he early propagated the commitment to a reduced, bourgeois Neo-Classicism which combined a traditional formal language with a modern architecture as well as a high class interior design. Until World War I this attitude was considered avant-garde and gained a wide attendance within the bourgeois clientele. In contrast to his younger colleague Mies van der Rohe, Breslauer however, maintained to this attitude during the 20th and he therefore became a favored architect mainly to his Jewish clients. The major goal of this project is to clarify if and in how far this constellation expresses the request of a specific client group in terms of a middle class recognition by the choice of an early Prussian Classicist style. This includes the analyses of the interior spaces which were designed - like Messel did- according to the existing art collections and thus had been highly appreciated by his contemporaries. One reason why Breslauer was not recognized after 1945 is surely his own architectural style which was opposed to the upcoming New Objectivity movement. Another reason was his deprivation of rights, his defamation and finally his expulsion in the Third Reich due to his Jewish roots. In 1939 Breslauer emigrated to Switzerland where he never again received any assignments and finally died in 1954. Despite of his enforced asylum in Switzerland, in 2014, Alfred Breslauer's descendants decided to donate his preserved estate to the Architect Museum of the TU-Berlin. Bases on these materials (partly 250 large-format photographs, 510 letters, official documents and other relevant papers - inter alia about his emigration) - the Museum is currently registering the materials to put them online later on - the project serves to a deeper analysis, contextualization and visualization of the complete oeuvre far beyond of the existing estate. A full list of his approximately 200 buildings should now be compiled. Breslauer can be seen as a prototype character of traditional upper class mansions and the country home architecture between the turn of the century and the Third Reich. His biography reflects in a particular way the fate of many Jewish German architects who were deprived and deported by the Nazis. This aspect is exemplarily demonstrated by a deal of correspondence after 1933.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants