Abstract

Noted as an architect and founder of Berlin’s Schule für Formkunst, Endell published his most acclaimed theoretical text, Die Schönheit der großen Stadt, in 1908. Then associated with inchoate urban form and political unrest, modern Berlin is imagined by Endell’s essay as a training ground for the modern sensorium. Endell illustrated his text with images by Max Liebermann and Claude Monet, thus underlining his Impressionist convictions amidst controversies surrounding the acquisition of French modernist paintings by German museums. Portions of the essay published here have been selected and translated for the first time into English by Alexander.