Gabion: Was Mies a Nazi? 1/4

(Text ŠHugh Pearman, images ŠMuseum of Modern Art, New York. Review of the Mies van der Rohe exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery. A fuller version of the article published in the Sunday Times, London, on December 22, 2001, as "Why settle for less?")

Mies means archetypally modern. Mies means pared-down architectural purity. Mies means an obsession with the right angle. Mies is the one who allegedly said "God is in the details" and "Less is more". He also pointed out that one cannot invent a new architecture every Monday morning. He was one of the Big Three architects of the 20th century, who will always be Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Mies. But never mind all that. Was he a closet Nazi?

Need one ask? Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (originally just Ludwig Mies until he added his mother's maiden name by means of the pseudo-aristocratic "van der") was director of the hard-left Bauhaus design school in Dessau when the new Nazi -dominated town council closed it down in 1932. Mies had designed a monument to Communist martyrs that the Fascists demolished. He had wealthy Jewish clients. His cool avant-garde style, all historic references by then expunged, was at odds with the preferred triumphalist architecture of the Third Reich. He lost most of his work as a result of the Nazis. And yet, he waited until 1938 to get out and start a new career in America. And the stunningly good new Mies exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery shows two projects that make you stop and think, hmmm - a slight tweak in the space-time continuum, and Mies could have been another Albert Speer.