Typisch Posener

The most beautiful aspect of Julius Posener's legacy, without a doubt, lies in his language. Even though trained as an architect, Posener changed the face of Berlin without constructing a single building. Instead, he used his writing to save buildings from demolition. In nine histories of individual buildings, Katrin Voermanek traces the footsteps of Posener, an architectural historian, critic, and activist who died in 1996. The book sheds light onto how Posener advanced his fight to preserve architectural heritage and how he articulated his criticism of new buildings: sometimes impulsively, sometimes strategically, always grounded in a profound erudition, with humor and a gentle eloquence that remains unparalleled today. The short accounts – which include the Schaubühne, the Künstlerhaus Bethanien, the Babylon movie theater, and two villas by Hermann Muthesius, among others – bring to life Berlin's architectural zeitgeist between the 1960s and 1990s and demonstrate both the necessity and effectiveness of committed architectural criticism.