The Many Faces of Modern Architecture: Building in Germany Between the World Wars.

Time was, not so very long ago, when modern German architectural history began with Behrens' AEG Turbine Hall and then moved via Gropius' Werkbund Exhibition Factory and the aberration of the Einstein Tower to the triumph of the Neue Sachlichkeit in the 1920s with the Bauhaus and the Weissenhof Siedlung. Then came a black hole lasting from 1933 to 1945, and the Modern Movement popped up again in the 1950s. This is of course, a simplification to the point of caricature, but the fact remains that in recent years the reputations of the big Pioneer heroes have overshadowed the many other good architects practising in Germany.

The true picture - as in Britain - is much more complicated, as anyone familiar either with German cities or the contemporary literature will know. Of the latter, the best general survey of the variety of modern architectures current in the 1920s was the three 'Blue Books' by Walter Muller-Wulckow: Bauten der Arbeit, Bauten der Gemeinschaft and Wohnbauten und Siedlungen. In these, not only are the Modern Movement classics illustrated but also more traditional neo-vernacular houses and suburbs as well as such things as Expressionist churches by that great architect Dominikus Bohm and those mannered textured brick commercial buildings by Fritz Hoger in Hamburg.

This well-illustrated new book, edited and largely written by John Zukowsky, curator of architecture at the Art Institute of Chicago, provides both a tolerant introduction to the whole period between the world wars and a very useful regional survey - which includes the former German territories now in Poland. Its particular value is that Zukowsky advances beyond 1933 and reiterates the truth that easy pejorative generalisations about Nazi architecture are meaningless and that while international monumental Classicism was alone acceptable for public projects, Modern architecture was perfectly acceptable for other building types. The best example was Herbert Rimpl's Heinkel aeroplane factory near Berlin - illustrated here - which had an austere industrial elegance worthy of Mies.

The pity is, therefore, that Zukowsky did not transcend the essential dichotomy in this book's double title and include all worthwhile architecture built between 1918 and 1939 regardless of style. Some typical Nazi architecture, like Ernst Sagabiel's Templehof airport does get illustrated, but nothing by Giesler or Klotz or Speer gets in. Yet, as the text indicates, the articulation and massing of Wilhelm Kreis's museum complex at Dusseldorf of 1926 had a great influence on Speer's Zeppelinfeld. Surely the time has come to look objectively at inter-war German architecture as a whole.