Origins & Early Life

Peter Behrens (14 April 1868 – 27 February 1940) was a leading German architect, graphic and industrial designer, best known for his early pioneering AEG Turbine Hall in Berlin in 1909. He had a long career, designing objects, typefaces, and important buildings in a range of styles from the 1900s to the 1930s. He was a founding member of the German Werkbund in 1907, when he also began designing for AEG, pioneered corporate design, graphic design, producing typefaces, objects, and buildings for the company. In the next few years, he became a successful architect, a leader of the rationalist / classical German Reform Movement of the 1910s.

Pivotal Works & Achievements

After the First World War, he turned to Brick Expressionism, designing the remarkable Hoechst Administration Building outside Frankfurt, and from the mid-1920s increasingly to New Objectivity. He was also an educator, heading the architecture school at Academy of Fine Arts Vienna from 1922 to 1936. As a well known architect he produced design across Germany, in other European countries, Russia and England. Several of the leading names of European modernism worked for him when they were starting out in the 1910s, including Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le...

Enduring Legacy & Impact

The historical impact and works continue to influence the modern world.

Contemporary Figures & Related Historical Timelines

• Adah Isaacs Menken — Contemporary (Died in 1868) (1868): American actress, painter, and poet known for sensational stage performances.
• Arnold Sommerfeld — Contemporary (Born in 1868) (1868): Pioneering theoretical physicist known for quantum and atomic structure models.
• Benjamin Guinness — Contemporary (Died in 1868) (1868): Anglo-Irish brewer and philanthropist who significantly expanded the Guinness brewing empire.
• Abbas Kiarostami — Contemporary (Born in 1940) (1940): Master Iranian filmmaker known for blending fiction and documentary styles.
• Al Pacino — Contemporary (Born in 1940) (1940): Intense American actor celebrated for his powerful stage and screen performances.
• Alan Kay — Contemporary (Born in 1940) (1940): Pioneer of GUI, Object-Oriented Programming, and modern computing paradigms.
• Adrien Brody — Shared historical date (04-14 · Born) (1973): Acclaimed American actor known for intense, emotionally charged character portrayals.
• Ali Akbar Khan — Shared historical date (04-14 · Born) (1922): Master sarod virtuoso who popularized Hindustani classical music in the West.
• Alan Guth — Shared historical date (02-27 · Born) (1947): Pioneering cosmologist known for developing the theory of cosmic inflation.
• Carlos Manuel de Céspedes — Shared historical date (02-27 · Died) (1874): Cuban revolutionary hero and 'Father of the Homeland' who initiated the Ten Years' War.
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