Max Berg
(b Stettin [now Szczecin, Poland], 17 April 1870; d
Baden-Baden, 22 Jan 1947).
German architect and urban planner. At the Technische Hochschule,
Charlottenburg, Berlin, he was greatly influenced by his teacher,
Carl Schäfer. Schäfer was a fervent supporter of Gothic
architecture, which he saw as the true expression of construction.
Emphasis on construction became an important feature of Berg’s
architecture. Under the urban planner Franz Adickes (1846–1915),
from Frankfurt am Main, who introduced zoning into planning, he
became familiar with the problems of urban planning and politics. In
1909 he became a senior building official in Breslau (now Wroclaw,
Poland), a post that he held until 1925. Hans Poelzig was head of
the Königliche Kunst- und Kunstgewerbeschule in Breslau, and he and
Berg had studied together at Charlottenburg and collaborated on a
number of projects in Breslau. Berg’s reputation is based on his
works in Breslau. One of his most important works is the
Jahrhunderthalle (1911–13), part of a large complex designed for the
centenary celebrations of the War of Liberation (1813). It comprises
a cylindrical central space topped by a cupola, while at
ground-level four large apses form a cruciform shape. The exterior
was dominated by stepped bands of windows, giving it a terraced
outline. However, it was the interior (see fig.) that made this
building one of the boldest fusions of architecture and engineering
in the first decades of the 20th century. Composed entirely of
reinforced concrete, the interior fully exposed the structural
skeleton of concrete ribs and buttresses, a system that in 1913 made
the Jahrhunderthalle the largest central space in the world. It came
to be regarded as one of the key buildings in the transition from
historicism and Expressionism to a new rational and functional
architecture. Berg had great faith in new materials and technology,
deliberately choosing concrete because it would ‘bear witness to the
culture of our times even after the passage of history’ (Pehnt, p.
69). In 1925 he designed a large exhibition hall for the same
complex, this time in timber: the timber roof beams were supported
by a series of light segmental timber arches. His waterworks of 1920
and 1925, large, almost austere brick structures, show his
affiliation to the rational architecture of the 1920s. As senior
building official Berg was also responsible for urban planning. He
devised a comprehensive scheme for the city (1921–2) and planned and
designed a number of housing developments. In his Breslau scheme he
included four high-rise blocks (unexecuted) for the city centre,
adjacent to the town hall. Berg was greatly interested in high-rise
building and produced a number of studies investigating the use of
high-rise office buildings in German cities. He believed that urban
expansion in the late 19th century and the early 20th had turned
cities into shapeless sprawls, and he saw high-rise blocks as an
opportunity to restore the skyline to the city. After 1925 Berg went
to Berlin and then to Baden-Baden; there is little evidence of his
later life and work.
