We Refugees Archive

Letter from Bruno Taut to Tokugen Mihara, August 8, 1938

My dear Yoshiyuki kun, 11This title is composed of the Japanese reading of Tokugen Mihara’s characters, “Yoshiyuki” and the informal title “Kun”.
You wrote me such kind letter which I read again and again. I hanged it at the wall of my working room. Many many thanks!
Also to your sendings of photographs; our remembrance to our staying in Japan, especially at Shorinzan will remain pure and clean, forever. Hearty greetings to your beloved Okusan, all good luck to your marriage. […] At my exhibition were a special room containing my works of Japan 1933–1936. 22In 1938, the Istanbul Academy of Arts exhibited a retrospecitve of Taut’s work. Perhaps I myself had the greatest pleasure of it.

My dear,
how are you now? With many sorrows we are thinking of Nihan. Will remain ist Bunka, will it be developed or cease? (Page 303 of my book)
I am glad of your work, also about the success of Mr. Inoue as he wrote [me] some time ago. Please say him best regards and wished that he may keep strong critic about Haikara. 33Japanese term for „western influenced“, also „modern“.
Here I remain faithful in fighting against it – in architecture ironically named „gubik“ = cubique (french). I try it in my constructions, in my teaching. Soon shall appear a book in Turkish about architectural theory.
Art remains for ever and ever highest expression of human feeling and therefore the sharpest sword against all devils in man’s soul.
Here my work is not at all easy, inspite of all beauty of nature. Nice ships, many coloured, on the Bosphore, playing dolphins, sometimes, quite near at my window in the academy.  [drawing]
[…] At any case, don’t neglect your English. Otherwise we both couldn’t have had so good friendship.

View from our small house. [drawing]
All good regards to your nice father, to your mother and your whole family!
All thanks for all what you did for us!
Ever your friend
Bruno + Erica Taut

Footnotes

• 1This title is composed of the Japanese reading of Tokugen Mihara’s characters, “Yoshiyuki” and the informal title “Kun”.
• 2In 1938, the Istanbul Academy of Arts exhibited a retrospecitve of Taut’s work.
• 3Japanese term for „western influenced“, also „modern“.

Bruno Taut (18801938) was a well-known German architect and urban planner who represented the Neues Bauen (New Building) school. Having already become successful and well-known in Germany, among others by several large housing estates in Berlin and by becoming a professor at the Technical University of Berlin-Charlottenburg in 1931, in 1933, he and his partner Erica Wittich had to flee from the National Socialists to Japan, where he worked as an advisor at the State Teaching Trade Institute Kogei Shidosho in Sendai until 1934  a time that he experienced as very fruitful and formative.
Through the mediation of his colleague Martin Wagner, former city architect of Berlin and, since 1935, urban planning advisor to the city of Istanbul in Turkey, Taut came to Turkey in 1936, where he was to lead the modernization of Turkish architecture as head of the architecture faculty at the Academy of Arts in Istanbul and as head of the construction office of the Ministry of Culture, in which he was mainly responsible for school and university construction. The recruitment of German architects was part of the Turkish modernization program. 11For further information, see Burcu Dogramaci (2016): Kollegen und Konkurrenten: Deutschsprachige Architekten und Künstler an der Akademie der schönen Künste in Istanbul. In: Kubaseck, Christopher; Seufert, Günter (Hrsg.): Deutsche Wissenschaftler im türkischen Exil : die Wissenschaftsmigration in die Türkei 1933-1945. Istanbuler Texte und Studien, Bd. 12. Würzburg: Ergon. p. 135-156.
Bruno Taut’s time in Istanbul until his early death from asthma in December 1938 was marked by a great deal of work: against some resistance, Taut tried – as professor and administrative director of the institute – to reform architectural education with a stronger practical orientation. He placed hopes in the potential of young Turkish architects and the modernist spirit in the young republic to find and implement a new architectural style. In his own architectural projects, including many school and university buildings, he enjoyed the artistic freedom granted to him. In addition, his writing on the “Theory of Architecture”, which he had already begun in Japan, was published in Turkish. After Atatürk’s 22Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–1938) founded the Republic of Turkey, which emerged from the collapsed Ottoman Empire after World War I, and was its first president from 1923 to 1938. Until today, he is admired as a symbolic figure of Turkish national self-assertion with a strong and mostly uncritical personality cult. He is best known for the uncompromising modernization course with which he led the young Turkish republic: As a path to modernization, he proclaimed a radical laicization and Europeanization of the state. death, Taut was commissioned to design his catafalque. As the only foreigner and non-Muslim until then, Taut was buried in the Turkish state cemetery in Edirnekapı, Istanbul.
In his letters to Japanese colleagues and friends, Taut’s longing for his first place of exile, Japan, with which he continued to feel connected even while living in Istanbul, becomes evident. The letters ramble from personal information and inquiries, to the uniting thoughts on reforms in architecture and professional successes, to descriptions of the urban and natural scenery in Istanbul.

Footnotes

• 1For further information, see Burcu Dogramaci (2016): Kollegen und Konkurrenten: Deutschsprachige Architekten und Künstler an der Akademie der schönen Künste in Istanbul. In: Kubaseck, Christopher; Seufert, Günter (Hrsg.): Deutsche Wissenschaftler im türkischen Exil : die Wissenschaftsmigration in die Türkei 1933-1945. Istanbuler Texte und Studien, Bd. 12. Würzburg: Ergon. p. 135-156.
• 2Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–1938) founded the Republic of Turkey, which emerged from the collapsed Ottoman Empire after World War I, and was its first president from 1923 to 1938. Until today, he is admired as a symbolic figure of Turkish national self-assertion with a strong and mostly uncritical personality cult. He is best known for the uncompromising modernization course with which he led the young Turkish republic: As a path to modernization, he proclaimed a radical laicization and Europeanization of the state.

Letter from Bruno Taut to Tokugen Mihara, August 8, 1938. Akademie der Künste (Academy of Arts) Berlin, Bruno-Taut-Collection, Nr. 145

Special thanks to Martina Krickel for her support in researching the material and background information in the Taut Collection of the Berlin Academy of Arts.