Der Wille zu formen. Erich Mendelsohn e Nietzsche

Nietzsche’s influence on Expressionist architecture and Functional-ism (Bruno Taut, Walter Gropius, Peter Behrens, van de Velde), par-ticularly the views expressed in Die Geburt der Tragödie, represents an important chapter in terms of the reception of Nietzschean philoso-phy by twentieth-century avantgarde artistic movements. While some scholars have focussed their research on considerations relating to ar-chitecture included in a non-systematic way across Nietzsche’s works, less attention has been paid to the influence of his philosophy both on the theories and the actual projects developed by those architects, who found an extremely rich and innovative element of artistic inspi-ration in Nietzsche’s thought and style. In this frame, the essay aims at reconstructing through letters, articles, and conference papers the im-portance of reading Nietzsche’s works – and above all the «Tragödi-engeburt» – for the elaboration of Eric Mendelsohn’s aesthetics and the persistence of a Nietzschean ‘structure’ in his creative activity.