Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe – The master of reduced building style began as an ornamentation draughtsman

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was born in Aachen in Germany on 27 March 1886. The youngest son of a Catholic stonemason family, he grew up with three sisters in modest conditions and displayed an exceptional talent for drawing from an early age. Thus, upon completing his masonry apprenticeship, he first held a position as a draughtsman for stucco ornaments – wherein lies a certain irony, for Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was known rather for his austere, form-reduced building style. Many doors quickly opened for the talented young man; in 1904, he assisted the Aachen architect Albert Schnieder as ornament draughtman for the richly decorated façade of the Leonard Tietz department store. Although that building no longer exists, it paved Mies van der Rohe’s way to Berlin, initially as draughtsman for John Martens’ Rixdorf building department, then as draughtsman and student of the great pioneer of functional architecture Bruno Paul, from whom he received friendly encouragement. 

Unstoppable rise to pioneer of modern architecture

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe recorded his first success as an architect in 1970 with Haus Riehl in Babelsberg; he soon formed a personal friendship with the building contractor Alois Riehl, who brought him numerous important contacts – amongst them his later wife Ada Bruhn who was friends with the dancer Mary Wigman. In 1908, Mies van der Rohe joined the renowned architect’s office of Peter Behrens and was able to further refine his exceptional skills by participating in several major projects. Behrens, who was committed to the avant-garde, was also associated with Walter Gropius, the founder of the Bauhaus. In 1912, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe finally took the step to self-employment; he came behind his Dutch colleague Henrik Petrus Berlage in a competition in The Hague, but he considered the contact with Berlage to be extremely instructive and significant for his personal development. Defeat could not hinder Mies van der Rohe’s rise anyway, and in the 1920s, his innovative buildings of glass and reinforced concrete continued to drive the move of German architecture into modernism. 

Leader of the Bauhaus and emigration to the USA

In 1930, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe followed the call of Walter Gropius and took over the position of director of the Bauhaus from Hannes Meyer. He was later criticised as an opportunist of the National Socialists for joining the Reich Chamber of Culture and signing the appeal of cultural works in support of Adolf Hitler. However, his modernist architecture by no means conformed to the ideas of the new power and had to accept numerous restrictions, up to and including the enforced closure of the Bauhaus in 1933. Five years later, Mies van der Rohe emigrated to the USA where he was soon able to continue his early successes in Germany. In the 1960s he worked for a time in his former home country and designed the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe died in Chicago on 17 August 1969. His daughter is the dancer and director Georgia van der Rohe.