Alexander von Senger

Alexander von Senger was a Swiss-born architect in Nazi Germany under dictator Adolf Hitler.

In 1911, Senger was given the commission for the "Altbau", a landmark commercial building near Zürich. He was already well-known as a conservative architect. Roderich Fick worked in his Zürich office from 1910 through 1912.

In 1931, Senger, along with other Nazi architects such as Eugen Honig, Konrad Nonn, German Bestelmeyer, and especially Paul Schultze-Naumburg were deputized in the National Socialist fight against modern architecture, in a para-governmental propaganda unit called the Kampfbund deutscher Architekten und Ingenieure (KDAI). Through the pages of the official Nazi newspaper, the People's Observer ("Völkischer Beobachter"), these architects actively attacked the modern style in openly racist and political tones. They placed much of the blame on members of the architectural group "The Ring," calling Walter Gropius an "elegant salon-bolshevist", and calling the Bauhaus "the cathedral of Marxism".

These political connections helped Senger into a professorship at the Technical Hochschule in Munich when increasing political pressure forced out architect Robert Vorhoelzer, who had made the cultural error of modernism in several Bavarian post offices.

External resources

* [http://www.swissre.com/INTERNET/pwswpspr.nsf/alldocbyidkeylu/SDUH-54AKQE?OpenDocument A history of the Altbau, including the "intense and turbulent" construction phase]