Brokers of Modernity: East Central Europe and the Rise of Modernist Architects, 1910–1950 by Martin Kohlrausch (review)

Visionaries and vanguards. Powerful, bold, and cosmopolitan. Always daring more and wanting more – not just from institutions, governments, and their colleagues but also from themselves. This is the collective portrait that the historian Martin Kohlrausch draws for many of the architects professionally coming of age in Western and Central Europe during and after World War I. Kohlrausch argues that these architects as a particular professional group were agents of modernity. That is, they were experts who, by virtue of their profession and their cosmopolitan training, promoted new ideas about a social and political order intrinsically tied to urban living. His main aim is to show that these ideas about a novel way of living, working, and interacting in a spatially redefined and redesigned urban space were cosmopolitan because their promoters were themselves cosmopolitan – less inclined to abide by and believe in allegedly national differences and ethnic divides.

The book is organized in six chapters that trace different aspects of the architects' transformation into "brokers of modernity." Kohlrausch focuses on particular figures in the movement, and especially the architects living in Poland after World War I. The political landscape of the Polish Second Republic was fraught with internecine fights among different political factions. The line between democracy and authoritarianism became increasingly blurry especially during the Sanation (Sanacja) period (1926–1935). This was a state that wanted to mobilize all social spheres in order to gain further legitimacy for its populist agenda, which included providing better living conditions for citizens.

Kohlrausch tries to place Poland in the context of the broader social and political changes occurring in Central Europe in the aftermath of the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. However, the book would have benefited from a clearer discussion of what "modernization" and "modernism" meant for various national governments in the region and for the experts these governments financially supported (as well as relied on). This clarification is particularly important because some of the pro-modernization agendas were deeply tied to nationalist ideologies and programs of nation-building that were profoundly xenophobic. To what extent then did such complex allegiances apply to the international collaboration among architects across national boundaries? The evidence of extensive international collaborations among Polish, Hungarian, French, and German architects does not necessarily mean that each of these professional groups, and even individuals, understood and promoted abstract modernist ideas in the same way. The book's arguments would have been more nuanced if the author had analyzed the choices made by some of these architects in the light of the tension between their national loyalties and their pursuits of international collaboration. This is especially important because such a tension appears to have informed the workings of CIAM-Ost, an organization to which many of these architects devoted their energy and enthusiasm.

CIAM-Ost was the "Eastern" branch of the CIAM (Congrès internationaux d'architecture modern), the organization established in 1928 by an international group of architects to promote a radically new urbanity, in which urban planning was grounded in "science, technology, rationalization, and efficiency" (P. 27). This organization is a key focus of the book, and the author draws on a wealth of sources (from periodicals to correspondence) to discuss in detail the ideological and practical agendas of the organization's founders. In doing so, he reveals the intricate but also volatile collaboration among different architects involved in this network, as well as in the broader CIAM.

Special attention is paid to a power couple of two Polish Jewish architects, Symon and Helena Syrkus, who became the leaders of the modernist movement in interwar Poland. Symon Syrkus knew how to promote his vision of a democratic urbanity, meaning "functional cities formed by apartment buildings made with new and affordable materials (steel), placed in the midst of green areas" (P. 147). He also knew how to make powerful government officials listen...