Oakland - Goose Bay - Berlin (Tempelhof Airport): Pan Cogito's Now Fading First Memory Of Europe, September 1972

Tempelhof Airport [October 8, 1923 to October 31, 2008] was designed by Ernst Sagebiel.

In 1929, Sagebiel [1890-1970] took up a job in Berlin as a project leader and chief executive officer at the German-Jewish architect Erich Mendelsohn's office, but in 1932, he had to leave this job owing to the severe economic climate in Germany at that time. He worked as a construction foreman. After Adolf Hitler and the Nazis seized power in 1933, Sagebiel applied for membership in the NSDAP, and became a member of the Sturmabteilung (SA).

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Mendelsohn [1887-1953], from Allenstein (Olsztyn), East Prussia, was the fifth of six children; his mother was a hatmaker and his father a shopkeeper. He attended a humanist Gymnasium in Allenstein and continued with commercial training in Berlin.

In 1906 he took up a study of national economics at the University of Munich. In 1908, he began studying architecture at the Technical University of Berlin; two years later he transferred to the Technical University of Munich, where in 1912 he graduated cum laude....

From 1941 to 1953, Mendelsohn taught architecture at the University of California, Berkeley.














[Click on images for enlargements.]

Mendelsohn's hat factory in Luckenwalde, Brandenburg, Germany.

Luckenwalde is a town in the district of Teltow-Fläming in the state of Brandenburg, Germany. Its cloth and wool factories were once among the most extensive in Germany. Among its other traditional industries were cotton printing and a dye works, brewing, and the making of metal and bronze goods.

The site of Luckenwalde was occupied in the 12th century by a Cistercian monastery, but the village did not spring up till the reign of Frederick the Great. It was made a town in 1808.

[About a third of historic Brandenburg was annexed by Poland following the establishment of the new Oder-Neisse border, in 1945, by the Allies.]


















English: Einstein Tower in Potsdam, Germany
Deutsch: Babelsberg Einsteinturm in Potsdam im Wissenschaftspark „Albert Einstein“, Deutschland [by Erich Mendelsohn].

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Photo credits: Tempelhof Airport by the Florida Center for Instructional Technology. Others, Wikipedia Commons. With thanks.

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Königsberg Castle, East Prussia, 1895; and "House of the Soviets", built on the site of the former Königsberg Castle.

Photo credits: Wikipedia.