m

ies van der rohe, who worked under Behrens for a considerable time, has made clear that Behrens was interested in Etruscan vases.

And the objects that he designed for aeg have something in them of classical vases, not necessarily Etruscan: they have the same “base” and “eave,” the same differentiation between weight-bearing and non-weight-bearing parts. The metal body of behrens’ clock might well serve as the base of a column. The behrens’ electric kettle sits on a pediment. All the designs draw heavily on architecture.

Architect ludwig mies van der rohe, 1956.

© frank schersche

Electric kettle, designed by behrens for aeg, 1913.

Photo courtesy of Auktionshaus HERR

As already noted, three future greats of the 

“modern movement” in architecture worked under peter behrens: le corbusier, who then still called himself charles-edouard jeanneret-gris; ludwig mies van der rohe, and walter gropius. corbusier worked in the behrens studio only a short time, from October 1910 until March 1911; mies was there from the autumn of 1908 to the middle of 1910 and again from May 1911 until early 1912, and gropius was with behrens from late 1907 until the middle of 1910.

The two future German modernists, thus, did not have the opportunity to meet le corbusier in the behrens shop. 

It is hard to pinpoint the effects of the exposure to behrens on mies, who until the mid-1920s was not part of the “modern”

movement at all, as it is with respect to le corbusier, for whom the Berlin experience was one of many accumulated in his youthful tour of Europe. But the effect on gropius is undeniable. The behrens shop specialized in the design of factory buildings, and the young gropius chose factory design as his own special field. He wrote a book on contemporary factory architecture, and when he opened his own architectural studio in 1910, with adolf meyer, another “graduate” of the behrens shop, they began with factories, in 1910–1911 designing the exemplary faguswerk in Alfeld-an-der-Leine, and in 1914 the model office and factory building shown at the werkbund exhibition in Cologne.

walter gropius his wife and le corbusier at 

the cafe des deux magots in Paris, 1923. © Getty Images

Fagus Factory in Alfeld, circa 1912

behrens also had a hand in the Cologne exhibition: he designed one of the pavilions and created its most famous poster.