Expressionist architecture is an architectural movement in Europe during the first decades of the 20th century in parallel with the expressionist visual and performing arts that especially developed and dominated in Germany. Brick Expressionism is a special variant of this movement in western and northern Germany and in The Netherlands (Amsterdam School). Expressionist architecture is one of the three dominant styles of Modern architecture (International Style, Expressionist- and Constructivist architecture).

Characteristics
Expressionist architecture was individualistic and in many ways eschewed aesthetic dogma, but it is still useful to develop some criteria which defines it. Though containing a great variety and differentiation, many points can be found as recurring in works of Expressionist architecture, and are evident in some degree in each of its works.

Distortion of form for an emotional effect.
Subordination of realism to symbolic or stylistic expression of inner experience.
An underlying effort at achieving the new, original, and visionary.
Profusion of works on paper, and models, with discovery and representations of concepts more important than pragmatic finished products.
Often hybrid solutions, irreducible to a single concept.
Themes of natural romantic phenomena, such as caves, mountains, lightning, crystal and rock formations. As such it is more mineral and elemental than florid and organic which characterized its close contemporary art nouveau.
Uses creative potential of artisan craftsmanship.
Tendency more towards the gothic than the classical. Expressionist architecture also tends more towards the romanesque and the rococo than the classical.
Though a movement in Europe, expressionism is as eastern as western. It draws as much from Moorish, Islamic, Egyptian, and Indian art and architecture as from Roman or Greek.
Conception of architecture as a work of art.

Timeline
1900
Reactions to Art Nouveau impelled partly by moral yearnings for a sterner and more unadorned style and in part by rationalist ideas requiring practical justification for formal effects. Art Nouveau had however, opened up a language of abstraction and pointed to lessons to be learned from nature.
August 25, 1900, death of Friedrich Nietzsche

1905
Formation of the Dresden Die Brücke expressionist art movement.

1907
The poet Paul Scheerbart independently offers a Science fiction image of Utopian future.

1909
(1909–1912) Adolf Loos gives a collection of speeches throughout Germany that eventually become his satirical essay/manifesto “Ornament and Crime,” which rejects applied ornament in favour of abstraction.
The New Munich Artist’s Association, Neue Künstlervereinigung München is established by Wassily Kandinsky and others in Munich.

1910
Publication in Berlin of the journals, Der Sturm by Herwarth Walden and Die Aktion by Franz Pfemfert as counterculture mouthpieces against the Deutscher Werkbund.

1911
Hans Poelzig sets up practice in Breslau. Designs a water tower for Posen (now: Poznań, Poland), described by Kenneth Frampton as a certain Die Stadtkrone image, and an office building which led to the architectural format of Erich Mendelsohn’s later Berliner “Mosse-Haus” in 1921.
Wassily Kandinsky resigns chairmanship of the Neue Künstlervereinigung München.
Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer (architect) build the Fagus Factory, Alfeld an der Leine.
Der Blaue Reiter forms and has first exhibits in Munich, and Berlin

1912
Hans Poelzig designs a chemical plant in Lubań with strongly expressively articulated brick massing.
Wassily Kandinsky publishes Über das Geistige in der Kunst, (“Concerning the Spiritual in Art”)
Work of the Amsterdam School starts with the cooperative-commercial Scheepvaarthuis (Shipping House), designed by Johan van der Mey

1913
Michel de Klerk starts work on the first of three apartment buildings at Spaarndammerplantsoen, Amsterdam the last to be completed in 1921.
Rudolf Steiner commences work on the first Goetheanum. Work is completed in 1919.
Peder Vilhelm Jensen-Klint wins design competition for Grundtvig’s Church in Copenhagen, Denmark.

1914
Paul Scheerbart publishes Glasarchitecktur
Cologne Werkbund exhibition demonstrates ideological split between:
Normative form (Typisierung) – Behrens, Muthesius, and,
Individualists – Taut, van de Velde, Gropius

1915
Death of Paul Scheerbart.
Franz Kafka publishes The Metamorphosis

1917
Michel de Klerk starts building the Het Schip the third and most accomplished apartment buildings at Spaarndammerplantsoen, for the Eigen Haard development company in Amesterdam . Work is completed in 1921.
Bruno Taut publishes Alpine architecture.

1918
Adolf Behne expands the socio-cultural implications Scheerbarts writings about glass.
Armistice – Republican revolution in Germany. Social Democrats form Workers and Soldiers Councils. General strikes.
Free expression of the Amsterdam School elucidated in the Wendingen (Changes) magazine.
November – Arbeitsrat für Kunst (Worker’s Council for the Arts), founded by Bruno Taut and Adolf Behne. They model themselves consciously on the Soviets and attach a leftist programme to their Utopian and Expressionist activities. They demand; 1. A spiritual revolution to accompany the political one. 2. Architects to form ‘Corporations’ bound by ‘mutual aid’.
November – Novembergruppe formed only to merge with Arbeitsrat für Kunst the following month. It proclaims; 1. Creation of collective art works. 2. Mass housing. 3. The destruction of artistically valueless monuments (This was a common reaction of the Avant Garde against the elitist militarism that was perceived as the cause of World War I).
December – Arbeitsrat für Kunst declares its basic aims in Bruno Tauts Architeckturprogramm. It calls for a new ‘total work of art’, to be created with active participation of the people.
Bruno Taut publishes Die Stadtkrone.

1919
Spring manifesto of Arbeitsrat für Kunst is published. Art for the masses. Alliance of the arts under the wing of architecture. 50 artists, architects and patrons join led by Bruno Taut, Walter Gropius and Adolf Behne.
April – Erich Mendelsohn, Hannes Meyer, Bernard Hoetger, Max Taut and Otto Bartning stage exhibition called ‘An Exhibition of Unknown Architects’. Walter Gropius writes the introduction, now considered to be a first draft for the Bauhaus programme published later in the month. Called for a ‘Cathedral of the Future’, to unify the creative energy of society as in the Middle Ages.
Bauhaus established and begins expressionist phase, to last until 1923.
Adolf Behne publishes Ja! Stimmen des Arbeitsrates für Kunst in Berlin (Yes! Voices from the art Soviet in Berlin).
Spartacist revolt ends the overt activities of Arbeitsrat für Kunst. The group starts the first Utopian letter of the Glass Chain by Bruno Taut. They are joined by previously peripheral architects; Hans Luckhardt, Wassili Luckhardt and Hans Scharoun. The letters demand; 1. Return to medieval integration of the building team. 2. Irregular form. 3. Facetted form. 4. Glass monuments.
Opening of the Grosses Schauspielhaus by Hans Poelzig in Berlin. Hanging pendentive forms create a ‘luminous dissolution of form and space’.
Bruno Taut launches the magazine Frühlicht (Early Light).
Bruno Taut and Hans Scharoun stress the creative importance of the Freudian unconscious.
Hans Poelzig is made chairman of the Deutscher Werkbund.
Design work starts on Piet Kramers De Dageraad. Construction is completed in 1923. Mendelsohn see it as more structural than the work of Hendrikus Wijdeveld.

1920
February 26, the film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari premiered at the Marmorhaus in Berlin.
Hans Poelzig declares affinity with the Glass Chain. He designs sets for The Golem.
Solidarity of the Glass Chain is broken. Final letter written by Hermann Finsterlin. Hans Luckhardt recognises the incompatibility of free unconscious form and rationalist prefabrication and moves to Rationalism.
Taut maintains his Scheerbartian views. He publishes ‘Die Auflösung der Städt’ (The dissolution of the city) in line with Kropotkinian anarchist socialist tendencies. In common with the Soviets, it recommends the breakup of cities and a return to the land. He models agrarian communities and temples in the Alps. There would be 3 separate residential communities. 1. The enlightened. 2. Artists. 3. Children. This authoritarianism is noted in Frampton as although socialist in intent, paradoxically containing the seeds of the later fascism.

1921
Taut is made city architect of Magdeburg and fails to realise a municipal exhibition hall as the harsh economic realities of the Weimar republic become apparent and prospects of building a ‘glass paradise’ dwindle.
Walter Gropius designs the Monument to the March Dead in Weimar. It is completed in 1922 and inspires the workers’ gong in the 1927 film Metropolis by Fritz Lang.
Frülicht loses its impetus.
Erich Mendelsohn visits works of the Dutch Wendingen group and tours the Netherlands. He meets the rationalists JJP Oud and W M Dudek. He recognises the conflict of visionary and objective approaches to design.
Erich Mendelsohn’s Mossehaus opens. Construction is complete on the Einstein Tower. It combines the sculptural forms of Van de Weldes Werkbund Exhibition theatre with the profile of Taut’s Glashaus and the formal affinity to vernacular Dutch architecture of Eibink and Snellebrand and Hendrikus Wijdeveld. Einstein himself visits and declares it ‘organic’.
Mendelsohn designs a hat factory in Luckenwalde. It shows influences of the Dutch expressionist De Klerk, setting dramatic tall pitched industrial forms against horizontal administrative elements. This approach is echoed in his Leningrad textile mill of 1925 and anticipates the banding in his department stores in Breslau, Stuttgart, Chemnitz and Berlin from 1927 and 1931.
Hugo Häring and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe submit a competition entry for a Friedrichstrasse office building. It reveals an organic approach to structure and is fully made of glass.

1922
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe publishes a glass skyscraper project in the last issue of Frülicht.
Toompea Castle is rebuilt for the Riigikogu in Tallinn, Estonia, as the only expressionist style parliamentary building in the world.
The film Nosferatu by F.W. Murnau is released.

1923
Bauhaus expressionist phase ends. Standard arguments for the reasons for this are 1. Expressionism was difficult to build. 2. Rampant inflation in Germany changed the climate of opinion to a more sober one. Jencks postulates that the standard arguments are too simplistic and instead argues that 1. Expressionism had become associated with extreme utopianism which in turn had been discredited by violence and bloodshed. Or 2. Architects had become convinced that the new (rationalist) style was equally expressive and more adequately captured the Zeitgeist. There is no large disagreements or public pronouncements to precipitate this change in direction. The only outwardly visible reaction was the forced resignation of the head of the basic Bauhaus course, Johannes Itten, to be replaced with the, then constructivist, László Moholy-Nagy.
Chilehaus in Hamburg by Fritz Höger.
Walter Gropius abandons expressionism and moves to rationalism.
Bruno and Max Taut begin work on government funded low cost housing projects.
Berlin secession exhibition. Mies van der Rohe and Hans and Wassili Luckhardt demonstrate a more functional and objective approach.
Rudolf Steiner designs second Goetheanum after first was destroyed by fire in 1922. Work commences 1924 and is completed in 1928.
Michel de Klerk dies.

1924
Germany adopts the Dawes plan. Architects more inclined to produce low-cost housing than pursue utopian ideas about glass.
Hugo Häring designs a farm complex. It uses expressive pitched roofs contrasted with bulky tectonic elements and rounded corners.
Hugo Häring designs Prinz Albrecht Garten, residential project. Whilst demonstrating overt expressionism he is preoccupied with deeper inquiries into the inner source of form.
Foundation of Zehnerring group.
June 3, Death of Franz Kafka.
Hermann Finsterlin initiates a series of correspondence with Antoni Gaudí.

1925

Hans Poelzig abandons expressionism and returns to crypto-classicism.
Zehnerring group becomes Der Ring. Hugo Häring is appointed secretary.
Max Brod publishes Franz Kafka’s The Trial
Eugen Schmohl completes the Borsig-Tower in Berlin-Tegel
1926

Founding of the architectural collective Der Ring largely turns its back on expressionism and towards a more functionalist agenda.
Wassily Kandinsky publishes Point and Line to Plane.
Max Brod publishes Franz Kafka’s The Castle
1927

Anzeiger-Hochhaus, Hannover by Fritz Höger
Grundtvig’s Church, Bispebjerg by Peder Vilhelm Jensen-Klint
Release of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.
Weissenhof Estate is built in Stuttgart. Expressionist architects, Taut, Poelzig, Scharoun, build in international style.

1928
Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM) convenes in Switzerland. Hugo Häring fails to move consensus away from Le Corbusiers call for rationalism towards an organic approach. Finally the Scheerbartian vision is eclipsed as the non-normative ‘place’ orientated approach is cast aside.
The Großmarkthalle at Frankfurt (by Martin Elsaesser) is completed.
Chapel of the Cemetery of Glienicke/Nordbahn (Germany) is completed. Architect: Paul Poser

1931
Completion of ‘The house of Atlantis’ in Böttcherstraße (Bremen).

1938
After Nazi seizure of power, expressionist art was outlawed as degenerate art.

1937
Design of Hallgrímskirkja in Reykjavík, Iceland by Guðjón Samúelsson.

1940
The Berlin Philharmonic concert hall is destroyed in 1944 during World War II.

1950
Le Corbusier constructs Notre Dame du Haut signaling his postmodern return to an architectural expressionism of form. He also constructs the Unité d’Habitation, which emphasizes the architectural expression of materials. The brutalist use of béton brut (reinforced concrete) recalls the expressionist use of glass, brick, and steel.

1960
Expressionism reborn without the political context as Fantastic architecture.
Rebuilding of the Berlin Philharmonic in 1963 by Hans Scharoun.
Church of The Highway by Giovanni Michelucci is inaugurated in Italy.

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