Max Taut was a German architect

Architect

An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...

.

Biography

Max Taut was born in Königsberg

Königsberg

Königsberg was the capital of East Prussia from the Late Middle Ages until 1945 as well as the northernmost and easternmost German city with 286,666 inhabitants . Due to the multicultural society in and around the city, there are several local names for it...

, the younger brother of Bruno Taut

Bruno Taut

Bruno Julius Florian Taut , was a prolific German architect, urban planner and author active during the Weimar period....

. He, his brother and Franz Hoffman formed Taut & Hoffman, an architecture

Architecture

Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...

 firm in Berlin, In the 1920s, Max Taut was particularly known for his office buildings for trade union

Trade union

A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...

s. Between 1922 and 1925, he built one house a year on Hiddensee

Hiddensee

Hiddensee is a carfree island in the Baltic Sea, located west of Rügen on the German coast.The island, located 54°33' north longitude 13°07' east, has about 1,300 inhabitants. It was a popular vacation destination for East German tourists during German Democratic Republic times and continues to...

 island, each one very different from the others.

The Deutscher Buchdrücker building (1924–1926) on Dudenstraße in Berlin and the consumer cooperatives' department store (1930–1933) on Oranienplatz are two of his most important buildings and are on the Berlin list of heritage sites

National Heritage Site

A National Heritage Site is a location/site that regards a building, monument, archeological, geographical,natural or topological feature having a large value that has been registered by a governmental agency of a particular country...

.

He was a member of the Glass Chain

Glass Chain

The Glass Chain or Crystal Chain sometimes known as the "Utopian Correspondence" was a chain letter that took place between November 1919 and December 1920. It was a correspondence of architects that formed a basis of expressionist architecture in Germany. It was initiated by Bruno Taut.-Names,...

 and the Novembergruppe. He was also a member of the avant garde architectural society, Zehnerring, which included Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius

Walter Gropius

Walter Adolph Georg Gropius was a German architect and founder of the Bauhaus School who, along with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modern architecture....

 and Erich Mendelsohn

Erich Mendelsohn

Erich Mendelsohn was a Jewish German architect, known for his expressionist architecture in the 1920s, as well as for developing a dynamic functionalism in his projects for department stores and cinemas.-Early life:...

. His primary importance exists in the development of framed buildings, which showed the construction of the building and symbolized a new, democratic openness in architecture.

After the Second World War, he and Wilhelm Büning founded a new architecture school at the Berlin University of the Arts

Berlin University of the Arts

The Universität der Künste Berlin, UdK is a public art school in Berlin, Germany, one of the four universities in the city...

. His postwar work includes the Reutersiedlung (1948–1952) in Bonn and Ludwig Georgs Gymnasium (1951–1955) in Darmstadt.

Taut was buried at the Choriner monastery cemetery.

Buildings

• Janusz Korczak Gymnasium, fomerly the Knabenschule in Finsterwalde
  Finsterwalde
  Finsterwalde is a town in the Elbe-Elster district , in Brandenburg, Germany.-Overview:It is situated on the Schackebach, a tributary of the Kleine Elster, 28 m. W.S.W of Cottbus by rail. Pop. 18,840. The town has a Gothic church , a castle, schools, cloth and cigar factories, iron-foundries,...
  
   (1913)
• Administration building, Allgemeiner Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund
  Allgemeiner Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund
  The Allgemeiner Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund was a confederation of German trade unions in Germany founded during the Weimar Republic. It was founded in 1919 and was initially powerful enough to organize a general strike in 1920 against a right-wing coup d'état. After the 1929 Wall Street crash,...
  
   in Berlin-Mitte (1922–1923)
• Two houses in the Weißenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart (1927)
• Former headquarters of the Deutscher Buchdrucker in Berlin (1924–1926 http://www.mediengalerie.org/haus/geschichte.html)
• Alexander von Humboldt Oberschule in Berlin-Köpenick, formerly Oberlyzeum "Dorotheenschule" (1929)
• Trade union building, Frankfurt am Main (1929–1931)
• Nöldnerplatz group of schools in Berlin-Lichtenberg (1927–1932)
• Reichsknappschafthaus on Breitenbachplatz in Berlin (1930), designed with Franz Hoffmann. Designed in the Bauhaus
  Bauhaus
  ', commonly known simply as Bauhaus, was a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933. At that time the German term stood for "School of Building".The Bauhaus school was founded by...
  
   style with a steel frame
  Steel frame
  Steel frame usually refers to a building technique with a "skeleton frame" of vertical steel columns and horizontal -beams, constructed in a rectangular grid to support the floors, roof and walls of a building which are all attached to the frame...
  
   and a ceramic-tile facade. (Used today by the Institute for Latin American Studies, Free University of Berlin
  Free University of Berlin
  Freie Universität Berlin is one of the leading and most prestigious research universities in Germany and continental Europe. It distinguishes itself through its modern and international character. It is the largest of the four universities in Berlin. Research at the university is focused on the...
  
  ).
• 1963/64 Renovation of the Jagdschloss Glienicke
  Jagdschloss Glienicke
  Jagdschloss Glienicke is a small German hunting lodge in Berlin-Wannsee near Glienicke Bridge. The Glienicke Palace and Babelsberg Palace can be seen nearby. It was begun in 1682 by Charles Philippe Dieussart for Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg and completed in 1693 during the reign of...
  
  , with bay window
  Bay window
  A bay window is a window space projecting outward from the main walls of a building and forming a bay in a room, either square or polygonal in plan. The angles most commonly used on the inside corners of the bay are 90, 135 and 150 degrees. Bay windows are often associated with Victorian architecture...
  
  s added to the two lower floors
• Ludwig Georgs Gymnasium in Darmstadt

Publications

• Max Taut: Bauten und Pläne, Berlin (1927)
• Alfred Kuhn: Max Taut - Bauten, Berlin (1932)
• Max Taut: Berlin im Aufbau, Berlin (1946)

External links