Zitationsvorschlag

Hull, Sonja: The Weizmann House: Staging the Nation-Building Process of Israel, in Troelenberg, Eva-Maria, Schankweiler, Kerstin und Messner, Anna Sophia (Hrsg.): Reading Objects in the Contact Zone, Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing, 2021 (Heidelberg Studies on Transculturality, Band 9), S. 74–81. https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.766.c10406

Identifier (Buch)

ISBN 978-3-96822-049-9 (PDF)
ISBN 978-3-96822-050-5 (Hardcover)
ISBN 978-3-96822-051-2 (Softcover)

Veröffentlicht

10.06.2021

Autor/innen

Sonja Hull

The Weizmann House

Staging the Nation-Building Process of Israel

Abstract In 1934, Chaim Weizmann, the President of the Zionist Organi­zation and later first President of Israel, commissioned Erich Mendelsohn (1887‒1953) to build his residence on a hilltop in Rehovot, a small-town southeast of Tel Aviv. The Weizmann House served not only as a private home, but also as a stage for formal and social gatherings and has now found its place in the nation’s history. Erich Mendelsohn, a  German-Jewish architect, strove for an architectural language adapted to the specific envi­ronment,  combining local building traditions with the paradigms of mod­ern Western architecture. Mendelsohn’s  design for the Weizmann House illustrates most clearly his proposition of an East-West synthesis.

Keywords Architecture, 20th century, Nation building, Cultural transfer, Israel