ABSTRACT
Scarcely five years after he refused to enter the Jahrhunderthalle, the Kaiser fled a defeated Germany for exile in The Netherlands. The November Revolution of 1918 overthrew the political system crafted by Bismarck, which was replaced the following year by a republican democracy. Even before the new constitution was written in Weimar, architects who rallied to support the republic sought to erect buildings whose spaces they hoped would nurture a community they did not trust politicians to create.1 Written by Bruno Taut, the manifesto of the Arbeitsrat für Kunst (Working Council for Art), a group founded by Taut, Walter Gropius, and the critic Adolf Behne along the same lines as revolutionary workers’ organizations, spelled out the new purpose of architecture:
Art and the people must form a new unity. Art should no longer be the enjoyment of the few but the life and happiness of the masses. The aim is alliance of the arts under the wing of a great architecture.2
