ON THE ARCHITECTURE OF POZNAN IN THE INTERWAR PERIOD

The article discusses selected aspects of the architecture in Poznan in the interwar period. Special emphasis is placed on the issue of the influence of German ideas that pervaded the works of the local architectural milieu which accepted them consciously, subconsciously or sometimes suppressed them from consciousness. On the one hand, this was due to the fact that Poznan designers were educated mostly in Berlin, Munich, Dresden or Karlsruhe. On the other hand, German ideas also proved attractive for architects who arrived from Galicia and knew them at least in theory from their education in Lvov, similarly to Viennese concepts. Among the many tendencies in the 1920s, the one that gained greatest prominence was the so-called 'Um 1800' style codified by Paul Mebes in his famous book under the same title, but expressionistic transformations of historical, mostly modern styles, were also frequent. The 1930s were characterized by an overlapping of two discourses: functionalization of life in a great modern city and the conservation of its monuments. A significant contribution on the part of the Warsaw milieu must be noted, but business travels and knowledge of the latest textbooks pointed the attention of the Poznan architects to Poland's closest western neighbour.