Istanbul Diary

The exile of Bruno Taut, one of the significant representatives of German expressionism and the chief architect of the Berlin Siedlung program from 1924-33, began with the rise of the National Socialists to power. In 1933, he settled in Japan, and in 1936, in Turkey. Until his death on December 24, 1938, he worked as the Head of the Architecture Department at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Istanbul, where he lived out his life, and also served as the Head of the Construction Department at the Ministry of National Education in Ankara. During his time in Turkey, Taut primarily recorded developments in his professional life in his diary by taking brief notes. He transcribed into the pages of his diary, almost in coded anecdotes, the prevailing mood of bureaucracy and academic life, which sometimes left him with a "general impression of decadence," his relationships with important figures from different professional groups of the Early Republic period with whom he was in close contact during this process, his intense work with students whom he aimed to make understand architecture beyond technical necessities, and the intellectual processes of his architectural output as both an academician and a designer. This manuscript, titled "Istanbul Diary 10.11.1936 - 13.12.1938," preserved in the archive of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, in Germany, and also in a museum in Japan, is being published for the first time as a book and brought to light through our Turkish edition.