Construction as an Ethical Maxim

Abstract

The two world wars certainly created a caesura in architectural history, but the theory that things began entirely from scratch in Germany after the Second World War has long been discredited among architectural historians. In structural engineering, the question seems hardly to have been addressed. While the architects not just in Germany were debating political entanglements and the architectural expression of totalitarianism, the structural engineers maintained a steadfast silence. After the war, many German engineers carried on working in much the same way as they had beforehand. Franz Dischinger (1897–1953) died comparatively young, but others, such as Ulrich Finsterwalder (1897–1988), Hubert Rüsch (1903–1979), Gotthard Franz (1904–1991), Hellmut Homberg (1909–1990) and Willi Baur (1913–1978) unquestionably provided continuity in the world of structural engineering as it became increasingly internationalized. For Anton Tedesko (1903–1994), who worked for many years in the USA, Ove Arup (1895–1988) and Fritz Leonhardt (1909–1999), it became a matter of course to build in other countries.