Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.


Bruno Ahrends architect

Bruno Ahrends was born Bruno Arons to a Jewish family in Berlin, Germany, in 1878 and studied Architecture at the Technical University of Munich and the Technical College of Charlottenburg in Berlin. In 1935 he was disqualified by the Nazi government on the grounds of his Jewish heritage and, unable to practice as an architect, sought refuge, first in Italy in 1936, and then in England in 1939. In 1940 he was among many German-speaking, so-called 'enemy aliens' interned at Hutchinson Camp on the Isle of Man; struggling to find commercial success in Britain after his release, he settled in South Africa in 1948, the year of his death.

Born: 1878 Berlin, Germany

Died: 1948 Cape Town, South Africa

Year of Migration to the UK: 1939

Other name/s: Bruno Arons


Biography

Architect Bruno Ahrends was born Bruno Arons to a Jewish family in Berlin, Germany in 1878. His father was a prominent banker in the city and his uncle was the art collector Henri James Simon, who donated the Bust of Nefertiti to the Berlin State Museums. Arons originally wanted to become a shipwright at the Kaiserliche Werft in Kiel, but Germany's imperial shipyards did not admit Jewish students. Inspired by a trip to Strasbourg Cathedral, Arons studied architecture at the Technical University of Munich and the Technical College of Charlottenburg, Berlin and in 1903 he passed the government architects' exam. The following year Arons changed his surname to Ahrends after converting to Christianity. Ahrends began as a government architect but in 1911 decided to work independently. His first major projects were for family properties, rebuilding an old cottage and designing a new one. The former, located in Berlin–Dahlem, today serves as a residence for the President of the German Parliament. As Ahrends moved from working on suburban family homes to urban flats, he was increasingly influenced by modern, streamlined architecture akin to the Bauhaus, rather than ornamented Expressionist styles, eventually becoming one of the three chief architects for the complex of apartment buildings in Charlottenburg, today known as the 'White City' and recognised as part of the Berlin Modernism Housing Estates, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

In 1935 the Nazi government disqualified Ahrends as an architect on the grounds of his Jewish ancestry. In 1936 he moved to Italy, then to England in 1939, where his daughter had settled before the war. As he had fought against Britain as a soldier in the German army during the First World War, Ahrends was interned as an 'enemy alien' at Hutchinson Camp (the so-called 'artists' camp, due to the high number of artist internees) on the Isle of Man, until April 1942. While in captivity, he produced numerous sketches and designed a modernist plan for the refurbishment of Hutchinson Square after the camp's closure; with art historian Klaus Hinrichsen he also helped to organise the extensive programme of lectures given by academic internees and presented his own talk entitled Why Town and Country Planning is Indispensable on 26 October 1940 (see Mytum 2017). Following his release, Ahrends proposed a series of tower-block seaside resorts for bombed coastal towns, but struggled to find commercial success in Britain.

Ahrends moved to South Africa in 1948, the year of his death. In 1986 his internment sketches were included in the exhibition Art in Exile held at the Camden Arts Centre. In his review published on The Guardian, art critic Waldemar Januszczak commented: 'Ahrends' hopeless modernist dreams are among the most poignant exhibits in an extremely poignant show' (Januszczak 1986, p. 20). One of his views of Hutchinson Camp was included in Ben Uri's publication Forced Journeys: Artists in Exile in Britain c. 1933–45 (2009).

Related books

  • Simon Parkin, The Island of Extraordinary Captives (London: Sceptre, 2021)
  • Harold Mytum, The Social and Intellectual Lives of Academics in Manx Internment Camps during World War II, in eds. S. Crawford, K. Ulmschneider, J.Elsner, Ark of Civilization: Refugee Scholars and Oxford University, 1930–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 96–116
  • Sarah MacDougall and Rachel Dickson, eds., Forced Journeys: Artists in Exile in Britain c. 1933–45 (London: Ben Uri Gallery, The London Jewish Museum of Art, 2009)
  • Jutta Vinzent, Identity and Image: Refugee Artists from Nazi Germany in Britain (1933–1945) (Kromsdorf/Weimar: VDG Verlag, 2006) p. 99
  • Myra Warhaftig, Deutsche Jüdische Architekten vor und Nach 1933 – Das Lexikon: 500 Biographien (Reimer – Dietrich, 2005)
  • Klaus E. Hinrichsen, 'Visual Art Behind the Wire' In David Cesarani and Tony Kushner eds., The Internment of Aliens in Twentieth-Century Britain (London: Routledge, 1993) pp. 188-209
  • Waldemar Januszczak, `Exile and the Kingdom`, The Guardian, 28 Aug 1986, p. 20
  • Norbert Huse ed., Siedlungen der zwanziger Jahre heute. Vier Berliner Großsiedlungen 1924–1984 (Berlin: Publica, 1984)

Related organisations

  • Technical University of Munich (student)
  • Technical College of Charlottenburg, Berlin (student)

Related web links

Selected exhibitions

  • Art in Exile, Camden Arts Centre (1986)
  Bruno Ahrends
   
Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Bruno Ahrends]

Ben Uri library

Publications related to [Bruno Ahrends] in the Ben Uri Library