Paul Schmitthenner

Paul Schmitthenner’s book “Gebaute Form” is a grammar of “building design” based on construction and materials. Even in the age of virtual design with CAD, it provides a necessary foundation: “Stoff” for material, “Fügung” for construction, “Aus der Naht eine Tugend machen” are neologisms of Schmitthenner, the formative architecture teacher of the “Stuttgart School” after 1918.
Paul Schmitthenner (1884-1972) was an architect of the New Tradition and an opponent of the Weissenhofsiedlung (Ludwig Mies van der Rohe et al., 1927), but modern enough to be significantly present in the discourses of the 1920s (settlement, social housing, rationalization). The improved and supplemented new edition of the comprehensive work monograph of the Deutsches Architekturmuseum (DAM, Frankfurt a.M., 2003) documents, in addition to the buildings and projects, Schmitthenner’s role in the “Third Reich” and his writing, designed as a ciphered dissociation: “Das sanfte Gesetz in der Baukunst”. Newly opened sources allow a closer look at his attitude during National Socialism, which has recently given rise to renewed controversy among architectural historians