Kurt Liebknecht

(Otto Wilhelm) Curt Liebknecht was born in Frankfurt am Main where Otto Liebknecht (1876–1949), his father, who had shunned the family tradition of political activism, worked with what became Degussa as an increasingly senior industrial chemist.

Otto Liebknecht (the father) has been identified in one source as "one of the pioneers of Persil ("Perborat-Silikat") washing powder".

His mother, born Elsa Ernestine Friedland, was a pianist who had trained at the Berlin Conservatory: she came from a musical Jewish family.

However, it was Kurt Liebknecht's uncle, Karl Liebknecht, as one of the murdered founders of the Communist Party in postwar Germany, who left a larger footprint in the mainstream historical record than either of his parents.

Another of his father's brothers, Theodor Liebknecht, was also prominent in left-wing politics during and directly after the First World War.

Kurt Liebknecht (sometimes Curt Liebknecht: 26 March 1905 – 6 January 1994) was a German architect.

Liebknecht completed his schooling at the Wöhler-Realgymnasium (secondary school), passing his Abitur exam early in 1924, which opened the way to a university-level education.

First, however, he worked for around six months as a building worker and carpenter.

Later during 1924 he relocated to Berlin where between 1924 and 1929 he studied architecture at the Technical University ("Technische Universität Berlin").

His course provided for a period of practical study in 1927, during which he worked for the highly regarded architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

In 1928 he won first prize in a student competition with his proposal for a public building in Malchin (near Rostock).

The next year he emerged with a "Diplom-Ingenieur" degree in architecture.

Between 1929 and 1931 he was employed by the Hans Poelzig firm.

One of his projects during his time as part of "Team Poelzig" was for the interior fitting out of Berlin's prestigious new Haus des Rundfunks (Broadcasting House).

This was followed a period working as a "Regierungsbauführer" (government buildings manager) working for the Free State of Prussia, after which he passed the government exams necessary to move up a notch, to the level of a "Regierungsbaumeister".

In that position he headed up the construction of the "University Women's Clinic" ("Universitäts-Frauenklinik") in Berlin.

Further work that he undertook between 1929 and the middle part of 1931, alongside involvement in city planning projects, tended to focus on the health care sector, especially on functional buildings, principally hospitals.

The backwash from the Wall Street Crash in October 1929 had been reflected in a cut back in new building in Germany, and it was possible to anticipate more and better opportunities for architects in Moscow than in Berlin.

Till the early 1930s he was close to he New Objectivity and Neue Bauen movements, or in Soviet terms Constructivism.

May had been heavily influenced by what is known in England as the Garden city movement, and in 1930 he had moved with virtually his entire "New Frankfurt" team from Frankfurt am Main to Moscow in order to support the Soviet Union's urban modernisation programme under the direction of powerful "building policy" committees of the ruling Communist Party.

Liebknecht was assigned to the so-called "Second May Group" under the leadership of another expatriate German architect, Werner Hebebrand: construction activity was focused on Moscow.

Within the "Second May Group" Liebknecht was placed in charge of the "Hospitals Building Sub-group".

In August 1931 Liebknecht, finding himself unemployed with a heavily pregnant wife, relocated to the Soviet Union.

Initially, during 1931/32, he worked for an international team around the city planner Ernst May.

Alongside these assignments he teamed up with his Dutch colleague Marinus Gewin to enter a submission for an international competition held in 1931 involving plans (much touted but never implemented) for a Palace of the Soviets on the site of the demolished Cathedral of Christ the Saviour near the Moscow Kremlin.

He returned for visits to Berlin in 1932 and to Hamburg in 1933.

By 1932, with some of the initial impetus from Ernst May's group projects, beginning to fade, Liebknecht switched to the "People's Commissariat for Health's Commission for Project Standards" ("Kommission für Projektierungsnormative des Volkskommissariats für Gesundheitswesen ").

However, the dramatic change of government in January 1933 meant that the creation of a hostile environment for Jews became a defining underpinning of government strategy in Germany.

Kurt Liebknecht was the son of a Jewish mother which meant that in the eyes of the authorities he was a "half-Jew".

It would also have counted against him that he came from one of Germany's most famous socialist dynasties.

Between 1933 and 1948 Kurt Liebknecht stayed out of Nazi Germany.

After 1937 he pursued his career as a Soviet architect, except during a hiatus of eighteen months spent in a Soviet jail as a suspected spy.

His continuing professional success did not go unnoticed in Berlin, and after war between Europe's principal dictatorships erupted in 1941, Kurt Liebknecht's name appeared on the Gestapo "manhunt targets lists" ("Sonderfahndungsliste") of government opponents to be sought out and rounded up following a successful German invasion of the Soviet Union.

In the Soviet Union Liebknecht was entrusted, over the years, with senior positions in respect of various government construction projects.

Returning to Germany at the end of 1948, after the launch of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) in 1949 he became an important and influential member of the new country's artistic establishment during the 1950s and 1960s, both through his teaching work at the Berlin-based Bauakademie (college of building and architecture) and on account of his activities as an engaged member of the party.

As the Stalin era unfolded and his career progressed in the Soviet Union his work was increasingly defined by "Socialist classicism", the architectural expression of Socialist realism That is the style he brought back to East Germany in 1948.

This aligned with the political currents of the time, and it became remarkably ubiquitous in the postwar reconstruction architecture of the 1950s.

Between 1954 and 1963 he was a member of the powerful Party Central Committee, which under the highly centralised Leninist power structure in force in East Germany was the fulcrum of political power.

Liebknecht's approach was influenced, over time, by contrasting currents in modern architecture, which taken together can be seen as remarkably ambivalent.

During his early years he was powerfully influenced by the work of great twentieth century pioneers of modern architecture and urban planning, such as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Hans Poelzig and Ernst May.