Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Lore & Background

In the 1930s, Mies was the last director of the Bauhaus, a ground-breaking school of modernist art, design and architecture in Germany. After Nazism's rise to power, due to its strong opposition to modernism, he emigrated to the United States in 1937 or 1938. He accepted the position to head the architecture school at what is today the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT). Mies sought to establish his own particular architectural style that could represent modern times. His buildings made use of modern materials such as industrial steel and plate glass to define interior spaces. He is often associated with his fondness for the aphorisms 'less is more' and 'God is in the details'.

Reader's Guide

Mies was born March 27, 1886, in Aachen, Germany. He worked in his father's stone carving shop and at several local design firms before moving to Berlin, where he joined the office of interior designer Bruno Paul. He began his architectural career as an apprentice at the studio of Peter Behrens from 1908 to 1912, working alongside Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius. He served as construction manager of the Embassy of the German Empire in Saint Petersburg under Behrens. Ludwig Mies renamed himself, adding 'van der' and his mother's maiden name 'Rohe', using the Dutch 'van der' because the German form 'von' was a nobiliary particle legally restricted to those of German nobility lineage. He began his independent professional career designing upper-class homes. In 1913, Mies married Adele Auguste (Ada) Bruhn; the couple separated in 1918, after having three daughters. During his military service in 1917, Mies fathered a son out of wedlock. In 1925, Mies began a relationship with designer Lilly Reich that ended when he moved to the United States; from 1940 until his death, artist Lora Marx was his primary companion. He carried on a romantic relationship with sculptor and art collector Mary Callery and had a brief romantic relationship with Nelly van Doesburg. After World War I, while still designing traditional neoclassical homes, Mies began a parallel experimental effort. He made a dramatic modernist debut in 1921 with his competition proposal for the faceted all-glass Friedrichstraße skyscraper, followed by a taller curved version in 1922 named the Glass Skyscraper. He constructed his first modernist house with the Villa Wolf in 1926 in Guben. He continued with a series of pioneering projects, culminating in his two European masterworks: the temporary German Pavilion for the Barcelona exposition in 1929 and the Villa Tugendhat in Brno, Czechoslovakia, completed in 1930. He joined the German avant-garde, working with the progressive design magazine G, and developed prominence as architectural director of the Werkbund, organizing the Weissenhof Estate prototype modernist housing exhibition. He was also one of the founders of the architectural association Der Ring. He joined the avant-garde Bauhaus design school as their director of architecture and served as its last director. Starting in 1930, Mies served as the last director of the faltering Bauhaus. In 1932, the

Did You Know?

• Mies was born Maria Ludwig Michael Mies in Aachen, Germany.
• He added 'van der' and his mother's maiden name 'Rohe' to his name because the German 'von' was restricted to nobility.
• His first modernist house was the Villa Wolf in 1926.
• He served as the last director of the Bauhaus.
• His first US commission was the interior of Philip Johnson's New York apartment in 1930.

Notable Quotes (Wikiquote)

"Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (March 27, 1886 – August 17, 1969), was a German architect and designer." — Ludwig Mies van der Rohe "adopted by 1947 as a precept for Minimalist design and architecture." — Ludwig Mies van der Rohe "I don´t want to be interesting, I want to be good." — Ludwig Mies van der Rohe "Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space." — Ludwig Mies van der Rohe