10 Facts About Erich Mendelsohn

Erich Mendelsohn was born to a Jewish family in Allenstein, East Prussia, Germany, now the Polish town of Olsztyn.

Erich Mendelsohn was the fifth of six children; his mother was Emma Esther, a hatmaker and his father David was a shopkeeper.

Erich Mendelsohn attended a humanist Gymnasium in Allenstein and continued with commercial training in Berlin.

In Munich he was influenced by Theodor Fischer, an architect whose own work fell between neo-classical and Jugendstil, and who had been teaching there since 1907; Erich Mendelsohn made contact with members of Der Blaue Reiter and Die Brucke, two groups of expressionist artists.

The Hat Factory was commissioned in 1921, Erich Mendelsohn's design included four production halls, a boiler, a turbine house, two gatehouses and a dyeing hall.

Erich Mendelsohn's practice employed as many as forty people, among them, as a trainee, Julius Posener, later an architectural historian.

Erich Mendelsohn's assets were seized by the Nazis, his name struck from the list of the German Architects' Union, and he was excluded from the Prussian Academy of Arts.

Erich Mendelsohn had long known Chaim Weizmann, later President of Israel.

In Palestine, Erich Mendelsohn built many now-famous buildings: Weizmann House and three laboratories at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Anglo-Palestine Bank in Jerusalem, Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus, Rambam Hospital in Haifa and others.

From 1941 until his death, Erich Mendelsohn lived in the United States and taught at the University of California, Berkeley.