ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the author's doctoral dissertation Tessenow in Hellerau: The Materialisation of Space. Hellerau is located some six kilometres north of the historic centre of Dresden, hidden away within the woodlands of the Dresdner Heide. Hellerau was masterplanned by the Munich Arts and Crafts architect Richard Riemerschmid, who also designed approximately one-third of its houses in his characteristic manner. Hermann Muthesius, author of Das Englische Haus, was the architect who, with Riemerschmid, designed the greater number of the houses in Hellerau. The main hall of Heinrich Tessenow's Festspielhaus represents an advance on any theatrical auditorium devised by Max Littmann by virtue of its modern Gesamtkunstwerk uniting formal abstraction with artificial lighting. Von Salzmann's great achievement, in collaboration with Tessenow, was to devise a lighting strategy of striking simplicity. Wolf Dohrn saw in Tessenow something more than merely a highly competent technician, the 'holy carpenter' in the words of the architectural historian Julius Posener.
