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Eric Mendelsohn
One of the most important modernist architects of the first part of the 20th century, co-founder of the International style. Mendelsohn was a modernist visionary , his extant works still dominate and characterise the towns and cities where they were built:
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Schocken Store in Chemnitz
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De La Warr Pavilion Bexhill on Sea UK
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Einsteinturm Berlin
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Kaufhaus Petersdorff Wroclaw Polen
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Mount Scopus Jerusalem.
He worked very closely with Salman Schocken not only in Germany but in Palestine’ as well. Schocken was an astonishingly innovative entrepreneur and publisher and supporter of cultural Zionism. Mendelsohn built Schocken’s villa and library in Jerusalem . Mendelsohn himself never felt truly part of the Zionist movement.
His career and perspectives as an architect were the determining factors in his life. He was a relentless perfectionist , planning everything unto the finest details - like the colour and materials of the table cloths used in the Schocken villa. He was successful in Palestine but neither he nor his wife Luise felt safe there .In 1941 fearing that Rommel’s Afrika Corps would conquer the Middle East and Palestine, he fled to the United States where he continued to work , even cooperating with the American Air Force in building the German Village, (which was designed to help the US Air Force discover the best possible way of bombing Berlin) and realizing building projects for Jewish communities.