history
Hugo Häring and Hans Scharoun’s discovery of the religious and
symbolic dimensions of traditional Chinese architecture sheds
new light on central concerns of their mature work.
The lure of the Orient: Scharoun
and Häring’s East-West connections
Peter Blundell Jones
Among Hugo Häring’s papers in the Häring archive
of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin are the minutes
of six meetings entitled Discussions about Chinese
Architecture held on Fridays and once on a Saturday
dating from November 1941 to May 1942.1 The
persons involved are Hugo Häring, Hans Scharoun,
Chen Kuan Lee and John Scott. Of Scott, a
Germanised American, we know little: it seems his
wife Gerda worked at Häring’s art school.2 But Chen
Kuan Lee is a key figure in this story. Born in
Shanghai in 1919, he had arrived in Berlin in 1935 to
study architecture under Hans Poelzig, completing
the course in 1939. He then became Scharoun’s
1a
1b
1 Chen Kuan Lee,
private house in
Stuttgart, late 1960s
assistant until 1941, working on the private houses
that provided a limited creative opportunity under
the Nazis.3 Lee returned to Scharoun’s office in 1949,
remaining there until 1953, one of only four
assistants during the crucial period of 1951/19524
when Scharoun’s new architecture was under
development with key projects such as the
Darmstadt School and Kassel Theatre. In between,
Lee served as an assistant to Ernst Boerschmann
(1873–1949),5 the great German investigator of
Chinese culture and author of several books on
Chinese architecture.6 Boerschmann had visited
China from 1906 to 1909, when he was sent by the
German government to make a comprehensive
cultural study, rather as Hermann Muthesius had
been sent to England in 1896.7 To complete Lee’s
biography, in 1954 he set up as an architect on his
own account, building several Chinese restaurants,
more than 30 private houses and some apartment
blocks in a Scharoun-like manner [1], some spatially
very interesting,8 but this kind of work went out of
fashion with the advent of postmodernism in the
1980s and Lee died quite recently in obscurity.
Since Lee had by 1941 already been Scharoun’s
assistant for four years with every opportunity for
discussion, the meetings about Chinese architecture
were presumably convened for Häring’s benefit. The
minutes were left in his possession, and he emerges
in them as the leader of the discussion. Lee is the
main provider of material, which according to the
minutes included books on traditional Chinese
architecture by Ernst Boerschmann and Rudolf
Kelling, sketches and diagrams of his own, and
publications or photos of modern buildings in
Shanghai. Lee later claimed in a CV to have spent the
years 1941–43 working with Häring.9 The following
extract from the minutes of the first meeting shows
how the conversation began:
‘The contemplation of this material suggests the existence
of fundamental rules behind the building principles of
Chinese architecture. The temple layout seems to have
provided an example which is carried even into the
dwelling, especially the strong north-south axes. The
rooms are not orientated on a practical basis, but for
religious reasons. In comparison with other great
history arq . vol 12 . no 1 . 2008 29
30 arq . vol 12 . no 1 . 2008
Peter Blundell Jones The lure of the Orient
history
2a
7 14
2 3
10
2b
2 Illustrations from
Ernst Boerschmann
article, 1911
a ‘Ground plan of
temple at Kiatingfu’
b ‘The ancestral
temple of the Ch’en
family at Canton.
The reception hall’
c ‘Ground plan of
T’ai-miao, the
temple at the foot of
the sacred
mountain, T’ai-shan,
in Shantung’
3 Hugo Häring,
‘Chiweb’ project
a Original pencil
drawing, scale
1/2000, dated 4 June
1942
b Diagram. This is
the author’s
retraced version of
Häring’s drawing.
The marked central
axis of the
essentially
symmetrical north-
south orientated
2c
3a
6
12
5
8 13
4
9
2
15
11
1
16
3b
plan leads from the administration (10)
motorway (1) across and the planning
a basin (2) via triple office (11). On the
bridges (3) to a right flank are a park
‘great forecourt’ (4), (12), an area of
culminating in the parking and shops
central (13), a residential
administration and suburb with
curatorium of the courtyard houses
Werkbund (5). (14), and the regional
Behind is a great planning office (15).
complex of ateliers Across the motorway
and workshops for are a hotel (16) along
artists and with further shops
craftspersons (6). and parking. The
To left of the drawing was left
curatorium is the incomplete, but
administration and one can presume
economic direction that the outer part
(7), to right a great on the right would
exhibition hall (8) have been mirrored
with school on the left, especially
administration and the residential
library behind. In suburb
front of this to south
is the publicity 4 Häring, Krutina
section (9). Outside garden pavilion,
this main central Badenweiler
square enclosure a Whole drawing
and across the basin b Section
are the municipal c, d Elevations
 history arq . vol 12 . no 1 . 2008 31

architecture it is the cultural and symbolic side of old

Chinese buildings that needs researching. Topics such as
the motifs of water, forest, and sky, or water, clouds, and
sky. Also the timber construction, skeleton construction,
lack of diagonal bracing, and the restriction mainly to a
single-storey. The construction of the roof is discussed.
Major buildings in China have a stone foundation like a
hill with retaining wall. In this the motif of the [holy]
mountain can be recognised. Form-elements of stone
construction depend on timber-construction.’10 [2]
Orientation, the dominance of the roof, and the
crucial role of carpentry were thus well understood.
Even during the first meeting the dominating topic
of the later ones emerges:
4a
‘Häring stresses the seriousness of the work, and the
necessity of assuring its good effect, and suggests setting
up a Chinese cultural organisation like the Deutsche
Werkbund.’11
Parallel with these meetings was a project in the
Häring archive marked Chiweb: the most finished
general plan dates from 4 June 1942 [3]. This was the
project on which Lee claimed to have helped Häring,
and it is perhaps significant that one of the last
meetings involved Häring and Lee alone, having
moved on from general study to work on the Chinese
Werkbund idea. Chiweb is a kind of ideal town,
placing the arts and crafts organisation – its
administration and its Kuratorium – at the focal
4b
point, with private studios behind and bureaucracies
such as the civic administration and building
departments in front. Recognisably Chinese are the
hierarchical use of the north-south axis with a
southern entrance only, the canal-like basin to south
crossed by triple bridges, and the grouping of
facilities into walled precincts around courtyards,
though the symmetrical and axial layout also repeats
aspects of Häring’s general plan for Zagreb of 1929.12
Some of the detailed thinking relates to Häring’s
experience with the art school Kunst und Werk which 4c

he led in Berlin from 1935–43, the former

Reimannschule. This large and progressive institution
with departments of photography and film as well as
arts and crafts had been a rival to the Bauhaus, and
under Häring it re-employed former Bauhaus staff
like Walter Peterhans and Georg Muche, struggling
on through the Nazi years until its building was
bombed in 1943.13 Häring had become deeply
interested in education and made various ambitious
and idealistic plans to rehouse and redefine the
school both before and after its destruction. In all
these schemes education, as the provider of spiritual
direction and as the determiner of all significant
form, is given the central place, hence the proposed
werkbund’s temple-like status. Here work would be
done on ‘the secret of form’, Häring’s great final 4d
theme in his theoretical writings of the early 1950s.14

‘Den Musen geweiht’

Chiweb is not the only example of oriental influence
in the late work of Häring. Among the few buildings
he was able to plan during the War – though
unexecuted – was a tiny garden pavilion for his
writer/actor friends Krutina15 in Badenweiler [4], for
whom he had built a family house in 1937–8. Besides
acting as a greenhouse and tool-shed, this tiny
structure was to contain a writing place for the
owner. It was called a ‘hermitage’ with a beam
inscribed ‘Den Musen geweiht’ – ‘dedicated to the
muses’, and was to have had carved lions at the ends
of the main beam – sculpted figures drawn with great

The lure of the Orient Peter Blundell Jones

32 arq . vol 12 . no 1 . 2008 history
care and reminiscent of Chinese figures in Kelling’s
book, although Häring also cited Roman precedents.16
The cranked building made its architectural
statement through the expressed timber frame and
daringly low-pitched thatched roof. Its studied
primitiveness is reminiscent of Japanese Minka and
the Ise shrine, and may reflect Häring’s already well-
established interest in Japanese architecture.
In the early 1930s as secretary of the Ring, Häring
had entertained at least three of the key figures of
west-east transfer, Tetsuro Yoshida, Mamoru Yamada
and Chikadata Karata. The preface of Yoshida’s
famous book Das japanische Wohnhaus of 1935 names
Häring and Hilberseimer as the two instigators of the
book project,17 so he knew its contents, including Ise
and Katsura, and must have spent considerable time
with Yoshida. Berlin was the base for Yoshida’s
European trip, and he came and went from there five
times between October 1931 and May 1932, spending
no less than four and a half months in the city.18
Concerning the earlier visit of Yamada in 1930, Hyon-
Sob Kim has turned up more precise information.
They met no less than five times, and Häring guided
him on visits to Siemensstadt, to see Haesler’s work,
and to visit Poelzig. Yamada had discussions with
Häring about architectural form and sympathised
with his organic approach. But Yamada’s description
also includes the claim that he was ‘haunted by the
memory of Häring’s dexterous use of chopsticks’.19
Kurata was introduced to Häring by Yamada and
stayed in Berlin for some time, living in the new
siedlung Onkel Tom’s Hütte designed by Häring,
Taut, and Salvisberg, and writing articles on German
architecture for Kokusai Kenchiku.20
That Häring was also interested in the Japanese
teahouse is proved by his essay on the subject,
though it was probably written later.21 But returning
to his ‘hermitage’, it is fascinating to consider the
dates. The main drawing is marked December 1941,
neatly couched between the first meeting about
Chinese architecture on 14 November and the second
on 16 January 1942. The plan includes an interesting
skew, but in the absence of siting information its
rationale is not clear.22 The essential architecture
however appears more in the section and elevation.
As with the Chinese architecture they were studying,
more or less the whole thing is roof, some timber
members are round trunks, and the humped end
gives hierarchical priority to the ‘spiritual’ study.
That Häring had always been interested in the
expressive potential of roofs is obvious from much of
his work – one only has to think of the added accent
produced by the silo at Garkau – but it can hardly be
coincidence that in February 1942, just as he was
working on the details of the Krutina ‘hermitage’, he
also produced an essay entitled ‘Conversation with
Chen Kuan Lee about some roof profiles’ (see
translation in this issue, pp. 26–28). This seems to be
the report of a meeting held in addition to the
minuted ones, and hangs on a group of sketches
reproduced with it when it was first published in
1947.23 The original drawing is in my possession,
bequeathed to me by Häring’s assistant Margot
Aschenbrenner [5], and the curious thing is that the
Peter Blundell Jones The lure of the Orient
sketches are bunched up together and drawn every
way round on the paper, not following the order of
the argument. It seems this drawing was the original
centre of discussion, pushed to and fro across the
table, though the hand seems to be entirely Häring’s.
The text shows how well Häring understood the
critical importance of the roof in Chinese
architecture:
‘How did this […] remarkable Chinese roof […] come
about? It is a saddle roof with an exaggerated rounding of
the ridge and wide outswinging eaves, and the surface is
raised to the highest shine through the intensity of
gleaming glazed tiles which display all the colours of
nature […] Through the wave profile of the over- and
underlapping tiles, which add to the formal effect, it
survives every kind of weather. And these tiles lie in a thick
mortar-bed, so that the whole becomes extraordinarily
heavy. It is supported by a most elaborate structure of
intersecting beams, struts and columns, which seems less
the result of calculation than of a will to form and image
[… The structure] connects this skin to the great tree-
trunks which convey these extraordinary loads to the
earth. It would be wrong to group these tree-trunks with
the columns of the west, for they are the precise opposite.
They are proportional to the heavy load and the wind-
pressure, there are few of them, and they are of slender
growth. Between them are set partitions of clay, more
screens than true wall construction, and not in the
slightest load-bearing. The roof is the whole building: all
else is subordinate. When it takes the form of a gate it even
stands alone with no house beneath, just a roof held high
on tree-trunks.’24
For brevity I will summarise the argument that
follows with the help of his sketches [6]. The special
roof, which represents Chinese Wesen or ‘beingness’,
rises from the ground without attaining a peak, then
falls back again to rejoin the earth. Its form reflects
the Chinese landscape and the surrounding
mountains whose shapes are always significant, and
it also finds a parallel in the flow of characters in
Chinese script. Some of these ideas seem to derive
directly from Boerschmann’s magnum opus of 1925:
‘[…] But to bring life, the play of living forces, into the
building and make it felt, they also used the special
Chinese motif of the curving roof. The swinging lines and
surfaces of this roof, and the tremendous life it gives to the
ornament, is nourished to the fullest extent through
images furnished by nature herself. These are found in the
forms of plain and mountain, in trees, in water, and even
in passing clouds. In a purely formal sense, the light
rooflines very often lend the buildings a grace and charm
of the personal. But at the same time they awaken
transcendent voices to inform us of the great primary
source in religion, which is further reflected in a whole
series of other building characteristics.’25
Later in the essay, Häring contrasts the Chinese roof
profiles with modernist ones. Two sketches in
particular make a stark contrast [7]. One shows a
seated figure at peace in the ancestral hall – the
religious focus of Confucianism – with subordinate
dwelling rooms to the side. The other is a
representation of a modernist building which seems
to squash the poor inhabitant. The latter type is
explicitly attributed to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe,

5 Sketches for roof
5 about roof profiles’,
who is accused of an obsession with the horizontal:
‘[…] Exclusively horizontal energy […] spreading ever
outward without limit. Nothing competes with this
horizontality: the rising triangle of gods in the Greek
temple falls away and Promethean man no longer proudly
carries the earthly load of the architrave […] Everything
submits to the horizontal expansion of power, there is no
escape. The earth and its riches are protected and
arranged in horizontal harmony, expressive of the here
and now. Expensive materials and the noblest work are
involved, but not for their essential meaning, rather for
their corporeal display.’ 26
Häring finds an alternative to Mies in the work of his
friend Scharoun, who uses ‘no single roof-form, but
rather roofscapes’ [8]. His multiple roofs are
approved by Häring as being-like and present ‘a
musical elevation in space like an orchestra’.27 Häring
was presumably thinking of the roofs depicted in
Scharoun’s visionary sketches of the wartime period,
for those of the private houses had had to follow
conventional vernacular forms.
history arq . vol 12 . no 1 . 2008 33
7a
7b
6, 7, 8 Sketches, Neues Bauen:
profiles, original as published in Schriftenreihe des
drawing ‘Conversation with Bundes Deutscher
Chen Kuan Lee Architekten, vol. 3
(1947)
Courtyard plans, orientation and cosmology
Reference to Chinese or Japanese sources was equally
important for questions of plan. Among Häring’s
numerous projects between 1945 and 1950 for
housing schemes, some seem East-Asian both in their
inspiration and in the way they are drawn [9,10],
especially the ones with private courtyards and
protective enclosing walls, emphasising the outdoor
spaces as contained rooms. Orientation was also a
primary consideration, and in his essay on the
ground plan, Häring claimed that a house must
present itself to the sun like a flower,28 while he
planned all dwellings after about 1936 with north-
headed beds. Here East-Asian practice confirmed
ideas already present and supported by other
sources, such as water-divining and earth-radiation.29
This was much more than the mere climatic issue
subscribed to by other modernists like Gropius: it
was a deeper and more spiritual sense that direction
in architecture is important, and is a matter to which
one should never remain indifferent; it was a
The lure of the Orient Peter Blundell Jones
34 arq . vol 12 . no 1 . 2008 history
9 building art and are used to produce rhythmic and
10
9 Häring, floor plan of 10 Häring, isometric 11 Häring, Schmitz
a courtyard house projection of a houses, Biberach,
with community courtyard house, 1950
building on the north 1950 a, b, c exteriors
side facing south, in d interior
the Chinese manner
conviction that every building needs to be located,
both in relation to the planet and the cosmos. Far
from being new, this was an ancient and widespread
attitude that had been lost, for anthropologists
studying pre-industrialised peoples have so often
reported on rules of orientation for buildings that a
regular reader comes to expect them almost as a
matter of course.30 Boerschmann certainly presented
a resounding case for the Chinese, stressing from
beginning to end of his various books the religious
connotations of building and the intended
reflection of nature: first a summary text:
‘The basis of Chinese architecture is religious resonance.
Once we understand this, we have the key to
understanding the buildings themselves. The finest
considerations of the Chinese people found their
expression in religion. Here lies the root of all action. The
inner forces released by it should move us when we
consider the outer image of the Chinese landscape, of
nature and what people have added to it – when we
consider what it was, and how through works of
architecture the Chinese give their land its soul.’ 31
Then a more profound one, from the end of his two-
volume study:
Peter Blundell Jones The lure of the Orient
‘In works of architecture the Chinese see […] an image of
the cosmos, and they naturally strive to build in
accordance with this way of thinking. For when, as the
Chinese also believe, everything living is to be regarded as a
unity, this must also embrace the works of men. Since the
pure reflection of this cast of mind also appears in the form
of architecture […] one can read it in the forms of the great
sites. The harmony of the All, of stars, sun, moon, and
earth, the rhythm of the becoming and the departing, of the
seasons, of day and night, were discovered by the Chinese
in ancient times as the foundations of our being and laid
out in visible symbols, among which numbers gained a
supreme importance. Primarily numbers, but also lines,
surfaces, and spaces in their manifold divisions and
dependant relationships […] form the elements of the
harmonic order. This close relation between a rhythmic
interpretation of the world and the conscious adoption of
it in one’s own forms of life can […] scarcely be
overemphasised. Connected with this was the symbolism of
energy forces working in nature and in us, which people
longed to make visible. Among the great conceptions that
they […] tried to show in their buildings were a highest
principle, interpreted as the extreme transfiguration and
also as the void itself, then superimposed on this a dualism
of the two forces found within that unity, third a soul-like
agent, which is immanent everywhere, and finally
humanity which lets godliness remain in balance.
Examples which express these thoughts through
organisation and ordering of buildings are (1) the great
central axes of courtyards and halls as the holy route
leading away from the midday sun, (2) the tripartite
division of the axis, which is much demanded for religious
buildings and also customarily used for gates and halls, (3)
the arrangement of the principal seat for the master of the
house, the God, duke or patriarch, in the principal place in
the middle or at the end of the whole layout, and (4) the
same arrangement with temple and dwelling house
through worship of ancestors, and even of the living
family-head.’32
In a way typical of the German 1920s, Boerschmann
stressed the relativity of cultures and the way each
reflected a world-view that had to be understood in
detail within its own terms. His books are full of
respect for the Chinese, despite the colonial
circumstances of his original visit and the then
normal assumption of European superiority. The very
title of his final chapter ‘Das Wesen chinesischer
Architektur’ (The Beingness of Chinese Architecture)
resonated with Häring’s own views about the Wesen of
the building task, and sentences like ‘the unity of
inner being and external appearance, of being and
creation, is the secret of the deep affect of Chinese art
(das Geheimnis der tiefen Wirkung chinesischer Kunst)’,33
must have held an immediate appeal. If
Boerschmann did not provide the primary example
of how architecture can reflect a world-view (for
Häring was already widely read), he did at least
confirm the idea, offering a new sample for Häring’s
developing view of architectural history. In this the
various earthly regions were the Werkräume of the
various peoples who had their duties allotted to them
as part of the unfolding divine purpose – Häring
never quite broke away from his protestant roots, but
 history arq . vol 12 . no 1 . 2008 35

his God was necessarily a universal one that all

religions attempt to grasp.34
Both Boerschmann and Häring acknowledged
cultural – and racial – differences as part of the rich
variety of the world, but generously accepted the
cultural ‘other’ as an equal, with fascinated respect
rather than with any presupposition of superiority.
Although both of the Chinese-inspired texts
consulted in the meetings dated from the 1920s,
belonging essentially to the open-minded and
relativist era of the Weimar Republic,35 they were
11a
being read in 1941–2 in very different outer
circumstances. There was the chaos of war, the threat
of bombing, the Gestapo taking a tighter grip, and
for architects a total cessation of active work.
Häring’s art school had depended financially on
foreign students who no longer came, and it limped
on until bombed in 1943. Scharoun was employed as
a surveyor of bomb damage. For both, the private
excursion into Chinese architecture must have
provided the welcome refuge of another world.
By 1942, Häring’s active career was almost over.
Although he hoped for a new start after the war and
11b produced dozens of buildable designs, he only
completed a couple of houses in 1950 for his patron
Guido Schmitz. They seem almost oriental in their
spare simplicity and exposed timber framing,
particularly the interiors [11], but it was also a time
of austerity and economic struggle, of making do
with limited means. Häring spent his last years in
writing and contemplation, living in a simple attic
room, and as his assistant Margot Aschenbrenner
describes, even here was a touch of the Orient:
‘In front of the window of the attic room […] where he
11c worked on his intended book, he made a tiny “roofgarden”

11d

The lure of the Orient Peter Blundell Jones

36 arq . vol 12 . no 1 . 2008 history

12a

12b

Peter Blundell Jones The lure of the Orient

 history arq . vol 12 . no 1 . 2008 37

in a clay trough, “at the scale of 1:100”, as he explained to

visitors. The arrangement of small plants, mosses, and
stones awakened the impression of a territory to be
entered with the eyes. Amidst the greenery a small bronze
Buddha found his place, with a socket in its hand for an
incense stick. Instead of this, Häring set in his grasp a
sharp pencil, sticking up diagonally against the sky, far
beyond its holder. Delighted with his creation, Häring
interpreted the Buddha’s gesture with the words “Up here
things will be written!”.’36

Scharoun and Chinese influence

Hans Scharoun was only 52 in 1945, with a full public
career still ahead of him. During the twelve years of
Nazi rule he had been obliged to ghost for others on
housing schemes, and he put his architectural
creativity mainly into a series of private houses.
Externally they acknowledged the Nazi planning
restrictions with a vernacular appearance, but their
living spaces were freely-planned and of daring,
unprecedented fluidity [12].37 Most of them have
gardens by Hermann Mattern or his wife Herta
Hammerbacher, a couple for whom Scharoun had 14a
designed a modest house completed in 1934 which is
unusual in its reticence [13]. The Matterns were part
of Karl Foerster’s plant nursery at Bornim and
became the leading German landscape architects of
their generation. Their informal approach to
gardens and their love of creating natural-looking
landscapes in miniature suggest influence from
China and Japan, but more striking still is a sensitive

13a

14b

13b

12 Hans Scharoun, in Zermützelsee, 13 Scharoun, Mattern

weekend house for Brandenburg, house, Bornim, near
the art dealer photographed after Potsdam, 1934
Ferdinand Möller recent restoration
14 Three examples of
Mattern’s work 14c

The lure of the Orient Peter Blundell Jones

38 arq . vol 12 . no 1 . 2008 history

use of irregular paving stones counting on the

uniqueness of each piece, which is reminiscent of
Katsura [14]. The Scharoun houses repeatedly
employed such irregular or ‘crazy’ paving in the
living areas, both to link inside and out and to
eschew the space-defining effect of geometric tiling.
It probably came from the Matterns to Scharoun
rather than vice versa, and it may in turn reflect the
influence of Camillo Schneider, the plant hunter
from the Bornim school who spent 1913 and 1914 in
China and returned via the United States.38 He
certainly visited Chinese gardens and brought back
photographs, though the connection with the
Matterns has yet to be proved.
In Scharoun’s case the most blatant outcome of the
15a
discussions about Chinese architecture is a long
essay on Chinese city planning dated January 1945 –
three months before the end of the war.39 He had
been Professor at Breslau from 1925–33 but had not
taught for twelve years except perhaps for the odd
lecture at Häring’s art school which closed in 1943, so
we can take it that this essay was written for his own
private purposes with no lecture or publication in
mind. Its length is such that it is better summarised
than quoted.
For Scharoun, the traditional Chinese city was an
admirable model because of its clarity, consistency,
and phenomenal wholeness. He writes of its cell-like
structure, open-ended but following natural growth.
He acknowledges the importance of the relation with
the surroundings and the consideration of cosmic
and symbolic relations. He identifies a powerful
15b
form-tradition, but questions its continuing
relevance, fearing that the world of the ancestor-cult
will be sacrificed to western ideas. In the second part architecture after 12 years of isolation meant facing a
of the essay he lists the contributing elements, major change in scale, tackling the city, and
starting with the wall that defines the spatial dasein. providing a new public setting for democratic life in
It can act alone, freestanding, unlike house walls in a contrast with the overscaled monumentality of
western street. Next come the axes, that as ‘soul axes’ Albert Speer. Although what he proposed for Berlin
bind people to cosmos and nature. Third is light, and and elsewhere differed greatly from the Chinese city
Scharoun notes the southward orientation of the he so admired, study of the latter arguably served as a
main hall, which links people to the course of the catalyst. Most important in this respect was
sun in a way not found in the west. The buildings are Scharoun’s conviction that the city should be
also un-Western in their openness, forming considered as a whole, integrated into its landscape
thickenings not divisions within the spatial cell, like as Stadtlandschaft (city-landscape). Such large-scale
a wood in a landscape. Their roofs contain and thinking implied a duty to design each building not
project like clouds over the earth, keenly symbolic only in response to its immediate context but also
and showing relative status in subtle ways. The within the greater context of the city as a whole.
houses have raised terraces, but they are sparingly Projects such as the school at Darmstadt of 1951
used and do not divide life from the ground. and the theatres at Kassel and Mannheim of 1952 and
Everything is in proportion. The streets form a 1953 included context plans showing the whole city
hierarchy. Private houses open onto them by window [15], and indicating how the new building would
or door, and the main streets can take nine riders make reference to existing plan features and existing
abreast. Between houses are narrow walled lanes: the public monuments. This question of location and
drama of family life starts only behind the walls, not integration did not merely engage the existing city
spilling onto the street as in the west. Scharoun but also responded to its historic growth, registered
concludes his list by noting that the landscape has in the case of Mannheim in a series of redrawn city
many scales, and whether planted or built, it plans from its foundation in 1606 taken at century
continues outside the city in its cared-for order.40 intervals [16]. These plans were drawn by Alfred
Schinz (1919–1998), Scharoun’s principal research
City as a whole and ‘Stadtlandschaft’ assistant between 1950 and 1955.41 He was only one of
In 1946 Scharoun became Berlin City Architect and in four assistants in 1951/2 alongside Chen Kuan Lee,
1956 he won the Philharmonie competition: this was and he adds another Chinese connection. His father
his most fertile decade. Returning to a public Leopold Schinz had been a civil engineer in China for

Peter Blundell Jones The lure of the Orient

 history arq . vol 12 . no 1 . 2008 39

16a 16c

16b 16d

15 Scharoun, 16 Mannheim Theatre 17, 18, Hans Scharoun

Mannheim Theatre Competition, plans and Hermann
Competition, 1953, showing the Mattern, Kassel
location plan development of the Theatre
city submitted along Competition, 1952–3
with the design

eighteen years working in Jinanfu, and Alfred was

brought up in the export quarter of Berlin,
interested in things Chinese from his earliest
childhood. Having been Scharoun’s student and then
assistant, Schinz became a town planner and went to
work in China, returning to complete a doctorate on
Chinese town planning in 1976. This was the basis of
his magnum opus The Magic Square published in 1996, 17
the most detailed history of Chinese town planning
that we have in the West.42
A second aspect of Scharoun’s architecture
catalysed by the Chinese experience was the
necessary continuity between a building and its
surroundings, each new work not imposed as an
isolated object, but joining in a continuous chain of
indoor and outdoor spaces. His best known works,
the Philharmonie and State Library in Berlin, are
unfortunately somewhat anomalous in this respect,
because the contextual intentions were so repeatedly
traduced. The work that would best have shown the
idea of Stadtlandschaft unfortunately remained
unexecuted, but plans and model photographs
remain. This was the prize-winning competition 18

The lure of the Orient Peter Blundell Jones

40 arq . vol 12 . no 1 . 2008 history
design for a new theatre at Kassel of 1952, produced
jointly and on equal billing with landscape architect
Hermann Mattern [17,18].
The site on Friedrichsplatz near the centre of the
city lay between the formal square and the hillside
which drops into the Fulda valley. In the other
direction the square lay between the old medieval
centre and the Baroque gridded new town. To add to
the complexity, the Baroque gardens of the Schloss
in the valley had to be restored, and a new ring-road
had to be accommodated between theatre and
square. These elements and their attendant
geometries were taken into account, and the
building was set in the side of the hill, partly
absorbed in terraces and topped with a fly-tower that
added a new signature to the city landscape.
Scharoun and Mattern’s design promised to
reconcile and recombine historic elements, creating
a seamless flow of public spaces between park and
city centre. It was developed for construction but
abandoned under scandalous circumstances, to be
replaced by a poor design by local architect Paul
Bode. Mattern successfully reworked the Baroque
park and hillside, but the crucial chance of
collaboration with Scharoun on a large public site
was lost.43
Axes and angles
An outstanding quality of the Kassel project in the
context of the early 1950s is the daring geometric
irregularity both of plan and section, and the multi-
angularity of Scharoun’s post-war work might now
be regarded historically as its most essential and
innovative quality. Doubts about its constructability,
let alone its ‘rationality’, contributed to the project’s
demise. At first sight this irregularity seems
completely at odds with Scharoun’s admiration of
the rectangular orientated Chinese city, its regular
grid of streets, its dominant central axis, and the
underlying idea of the magic square: they could even
be considered complete opposites. But of course the
old imperial Chinese cities were embodiments of a
society that was hierarchical in the extreme, with the
emperor living in a ‘forbidden’ city at the core, and
the central axial route reserved exclusively for his
use, with instant execution for trespassers.
Something of the same axial and hierarchical nature
had appeared in the work of Speer. The new
democratic city of the Federal Republic needed, by
Peter Blundell Jones The lure of the Orient
contrast, to avoid all such hierarchy, gaining a more
complex form to reflect the egalitarian exchange of
views. This theme occurs repeatedly in Scharoun’s
texts about his post-war work. A clear example is the
‘aperspective’ auditorium of the Mannheim project
that aimed to give the theatre audience varied but
equally valid views, as opposed to the old Baroque
version which set the Duke’s box on axis and laid out
the audience according to the aristocratic hierarchy.
Once understood in relation to its politics and
supporting cosmology, the Chinese city provides a
fascinating case of how geometric discipline can bear
meaning in a manner quite outside the conventions
of the classical tradition, especially a classicism
shorn of social and political meaning and practised
as empty formalism.44 The Chinese encounter may
have induced an increased consciousness of
direction registered by both Scharoun and Häring,
and an increased consciousness of axiality which is
essential to Scharoun’s mature work. Though some
contemporaries saw in his plans only a kind of wilful
disorder, they were on the contrary highly
disciplined, for without the crutch of the grid he had
to have a reason for every dimension and every angle.
Around 1932–3 Scharoun had discovered the
advantages of shallow swings in angle to control
movement through a building both visually and
haptically, typically leading the visitor from staircase
to staircase.45 This developed into a hierarchy of
directionality which is immediately evident in the
foyer at the Philharmonie. It all depends on a special
kind of axial thinking which gives priority to the
route and to what one sees at each point, to how far
one turns and how the building reveals itself as one
moves through it.
Directionality and specificity are the hallmarks of
the organic architecture of Hugo Häring and Hans
Scharoun, and both were present in different ways in
traditional Chinese architecture. The interpretation
of Ernst Boerschmann also stressed how buildings
reflected Chinese social mores and a whole ancient
Taoist cosmology, which he summarised as Wesen or
being, a direct parallel to Häring’s frequent demand
that architecture be wesenhaft, being-like. For the two
architects, the imagined trip to the Orient in the
darkest days of the War must have been a relief and a
spur to the imagination, as well as providing fresh
examples of eternal qualities in architecture that lay
outside the classical tradition.

Notes
1. The heading of the first sheet is
‘Besprechung am 14 November
1941’: as yet unpublished and
untranslated. Where the meetings
were held and who took the
minutes is unclear. From the style
and intellectual grasp of the
content Margot Aschenbrenner is
a possibility, but I never asked her.
2. Supposition of Andrea Schmitz,
the executor to Häring’s secretary
Margot Aschenbrenner.
Correspondence reveals that the
Scotts moved to Denver after the
war.
3. Peter Blundell Jones, ‘Hans
Scharoun’s Private Houses’,
Architectural Review, vol. 174, no.
1042 (December 1983), 59-67; also
chapters 1 and 4 of Peter Blundell
Jones, Hans Scharoun (London:
Phaidon, 1995).
4. The others were Peter Pfankuch,
Sergius Ruegenberg who also
worked for Mies, and Alfred
Schinz, about whom more below.
5. Mentioned in Alfred Schinz, The
Magic Square: Cities in Ancient China
(Stuttgart: Menges, 1996), p. 422.
See also C. K. Lee (catalogue of the
exhibition at Architekturgalerie
am Weissenhof 30, Stuttgart,
February to March 1985).
6. Ernst Boerschmann, Die Baukunst
und religiöse Kultur der Chinesen
(Berlin, 1911-13); Chinesische
Architektur, 2 vols (Berlin:
Wasmuth, 1925); Baukunst und
Landschaft in China (Berlin:
Wasmuth, 1926); Chinesische
Baukeramik (Berlin, 1927).
7. Ernst Boerschmann, Chinese
Architecture and its Relation to Chinese
Culture (Washington: Govt. Print
office, 1912).
8. The catalogue of the 1985 Lee
exhibition in Stuttgart lists as
built 32 private houses, eight
larger housing developments and
six Chinese restaurants.
9. Lee claimed to have worked with
Häring ‘on the idea of the Chinese
Werkbund’: ‘Lebensdaten’ in
catalogue just cited. It seems
unlikely that Lee worked for
Häring on a daily basis: probably
this was the only work of this time
that he later regarded as
significant.
10. Extract from the meeting dated 14
November 1941, Häring Archive,
Akademie der Künste Berlin (my
translation).
11. Ibid.
12. Competition entry, unexecuted.
This most ambitious of all Häring’s
town planning proposals is
described and illustrated in Peter
Blundell Jones, Hugo Häring: The
Organic versus the Geometric
(Stuttgart: Menges, 1999), pp. 115-
116.
13. For the story of the school Kunst
und Werk see ibid., pp. 141-144.
14. Über das Geheimnis der Gestalt was
the title of his last great essay
published in 1954, while his
proposed book was to be titled Die
Ausbildung des Geistes zur arbeit an
der Gestalt, published in part as
Hugo Häring, Fragmente, ed. by
Margot Aschenbrenner (Berlin:
Gebr. Mann, 1968).
15. In 1935-38 Häring designed and
built a house in Badenweiler for
the writer Edwin Krutina (1888-
1953) and his wife the actress Anni
Mewes (1895-1980) who had been a
long-standing friend and
colleague of Häring’s wife the
actress Emilia Unda. Both actresses
were involved in Max Reinhardt’s
Berlin theatre operation in the
1920s. The Krutina House was one
of only three private houses
completed by Häring under the
Nazis and was somewhat
compromised by painful
alterations at the insistence of the
planning authorities. It was much
altered and extended after the war,
and so has remained uncelebrated
as a minor item in the Häring
oeuvre. The most detailed account
is in Matthias Schirren, Hugo
Häring: Architekt des neuen Bauens
(Stuttgart: Hatje Cantz, 2001), pp.
214-218.
16. Rudolf Kelling, Das chinesische
Wohnhaus (Tokyo: Deutsche
Gesellschaft für Natur- und
Välkerkunde Ostasiens, 1935), (one
of the two books noted in the
minutes). Schirren discovered
correspondence about them with
the sculptor Martin Scheible, and
reveals that the client thought of
‘Daniel in the Lion’s Den’, while
Häring wanted the kind of Roman
lions that have human-like faces:
Schirren, pp. 214-218.
17. Also mentioned in the preface to
later English editions, such as
Tetsuro Yoshida, The Japanese House
and Garden (London: Pall Mall
Press, 1969).
18. According to a table of Yoshida’s
travel dates based on his diary and
assembled from Japanese sources
by H. S. Kim, Sheffield, February
2007.
19. From Mamoru Yamada ‘Thinking
about Hugo Häring’, Kokusai
Kenchiku (International
Architecture) (October 1931), and
quoted in: Mukai Satoru,
Kenchikuka Yamada Mamoru
(Architect Mamoru Yamada)
(Tokyo: Tokaidaigaku-Shupankai,
1992), pp. 218-219 (trans. by H.S.
Kim, 14 November 2006).
20. Information on Kurata from
Nakae Ken, Hugo Häring and
organhaft Architecture (proceedings
of the Kobe University conference
history arq . vol 12 . no 1 . 2008 41
Deutschland in Japan, 2005/6).
21. This was published in 1954 as a
supplement to Über das Geheimnis
der Gestalt, and also appears in
Häring, Fragmente, pp. 309-10.
22. The south end with the writing
place is turned eastward by
around 27°, accompanied by a
three-step change in level
following the rising ground. This
differentiates utilitarian from
ceremonial functions but
probably also responds to features
of the site unknowable without
the missing site plan.
23. In Neues Bauen: Schriftenreihe des
Bundes Deutscher Architekten, vol. 3
(Hamburg, 1947).
24. From the reprinted version in
Jürgen Joedicke and Heinrich
Lauterbach, Hugo Häring: Schriften,
Entwürfe, Bauten (Stuttgart: Karl
Krämer, 1965), pp. 60-63 (my
translation).
25. Boerschmann, Chinesische
Architektur, vol. 2, p. 50, from the
last chapter entitled ‘Das Wesen
chinesischer Architektur’ (my
translation).
26. From the reprinted version in
Joedicke and Lauterbach, pp. 60-63
(my translation).
27. Ibid.
28. ‘A natural order will assert itself,
with the tendency for each part to
find its appropriate relation with
the sun, so that the house opens
towards the south and swings
round from east to west, while it
turns its back to the north. It
behaves like a plant presenting its
organs to the sun.’ Extract from
Arbeit am Grundriss (Work on the
Ground Plan) (1952; my
translation). For further comment
see Blundell Jones, Hugo Häring,
pp. 150-153.
29. Andrea Schmitz, the daughter of
Häring’s last major client,
remembers a water-diviner being
consulted about the site of the
Schmitz house, and its position
being changed in consequence
(oral information).
30. Specific instances are too
numerous to list here, but many
cases can be found in Enrico
Guidoni, Primitive Architecture
(London: Faber/Electa, 1987). In his
time, Häring certainly knew the
work of Frobenius which discussed
African examples. Interpretations
vary between cultures, and ideas
about fortunate directions can be
contradictory, but always there is a
system for giving direction
meaning. The only near universal
seems to be an association of east
and sunrise with birth, west and
sunset with death.
31. Boerschmann, Baukunst und
Landschaft in China, pp. V to VII (my
translation).
The lure of the Orient Peter Blundell Jones
42 arq . vol 12 . no 1 . 2008 history
32. Boerschmann, Chinesische
Architektur, vol. 2, pp. 48-53 (my
translation). I added the numbers
in the last sentence to clarify the
structure.
33. Ibid., p. 52.
34. For further discussion see Blundell
Jones, Hugo Häring, pp. 183-185.
35. Boerschmann’s key books were
published 1925-27, Rudolf Kelling’s
Das chinesische Wohnhaus was based
on a thesis written 1920-23 in
Dresden, though not published
until 1935, and then in Japan (see
note 14).
36. Introduction to Häring, Fragmente,
p. X (my translation).
37. See note 3.
38. See Claudia Vierle, Camillo
Schneider: Dendrologe und
Gartenbauschriftsteller, eine Studie zu
seinem Leben und Werk (Berlin:
Technische Universität Berlin,
1998).
39. Hans Scharoun, Chinesischer
Städtebau, included in Peter
Pfankuch, Hans Scharoun: Bauten,
Entwürfe, Texte (Berlin: Gebr. Mann,
1974), pp. 121-123.
40. Ibid. (my summary). No full
English translation is yet available.
41. In a conversation in Berlin on 24
September 1993, Schinz told me
that not only had he prepared the
historical plans of Mannheim but
he had also conducted an
investigation for Scharoun into
different theatre types. He also
undertook research for the
Darmstadt school project,
involved in discussions with
educators and doctors. He
confirmed that Ruegenberg was
the ace draughtsman, and indeed
Peter Blundell Jones The lure of the Orient
the perspectives of the projects in
that phase are often his.
42. Schinz, The Magic Square.
43. Mattern designed the garden for
the Philharmonie, but it was
something of an afterthought and
not maintained. Scharoun’s
intentions for the Kuturforum
were never carried through and
there were many changes of mind,
producing isolated objects rather
than the intended continuity.
Change of site after the
competition of 1956 to the then
completely barren Tiergarten
corner did not help.
44. I am thinking of the reductive
nature of Durand’s typologies and
of the way that ‘composition’
around axes became an automatic
process in early-twentieth-century
architectural education.
45. An advance specifically datable to
the Schminke House completed in
1933: sources as in note 3.
Illustration credits
arq gratefully acknowledges:
Author, 1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 12, 13
Ernst Boerschmann, 2
Häring Archive at the Akademie der
Künste, Berlin, 3, 4, 9, 10, 15, 16
Hermann Mattern catalogue at the
Akademie der Künste, Berlin, 14,
17, 18
Andrea Schmitz, 11
Acknowledgements
This paper is an extended version of
the session paper given at the SAH
conference in Pittsburgh, April 2007,
and it is part of the research on East-
west connections in modern
architecture undertaken at The
University of Sheffield School of
Architecture and funded by the AHRC
(grant number AR119293). Much of
the material originated in the
Scharoun and Häring Archives at the
Akademie der Künste in Berlin,
particularly the typed minutes which
were the starting point for this
investigation, and I gratefully
acknowledge their cooperation over
the last thirty years. Andrea Schmitz,
daughter of Häring’s last patron, has
also provided material and crucial
information.
Biography
Peter Blundell Jones is Professor of
Architecture at the University of
Sheffield. His research, primarily
focussed on the alternative or organic
modernist tradition, has produced
many publications, including Hans
Scharoun (London: Phaidon, 1995),
Hugo Häring: The Organic versus the
Geometric (Stuttgart: Menges, 1999),
Günter Behnisch (Basel: Birkhäuser,
2000), Modern Architecture through Case
Studies (Oxford: Architectural Press,
2002), Gunnar Asplund (London:
Phaidon, 2006) and Peter Hübner:
Building as a Social Process (Stuttgart:
Menges, 2007). As a journalist and
critic, he is a frequent contributor to
The Architectural Review, The Architects’
Journal and other international
periodicals.
Author’s address
Prof. Peter Blundell Jones
Arts Tower
University of Sheffield
Western Bank
Sheffield, S10 2TN
p.blundelljones@sheffield.ac.uk