Peter Behrens

Lifetime

1868–1940

Country

Germany

He was born on 14 April 1868 in Hamburg. Between 1885 and 1891, he trained as a painter at academies in Karlsruhe, Düsseldorf and Munich, while largely teaching himself architecture. In 1899, he was invited to join the artists' colony on Mathildenhöhe in Darmstadt, where his own house became the central feature of the 1901 exhibition. In 1903, he became director of the school of arts and crafts in Düsseldorf.

In July 1907, he became artistic adviser to the AEG conglomerate in Berlin. He standardised the company's appearance, from letterhead to factory buildings, and is therefore regarded as a pioneer of corporate design. For AEG, he designed the Turbine Hall in Berlin-Moabit (1908–1909), as well as electric kettles (1909), arc lamps, fans, coffee machines, heaters and clocks. During the same period, Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, later Le Corbusier, worked in his Berlin office.

He was a co-founder of Deutscher Werkbund. Between 1922 and 1927, succeeding Otto Wagner, he directed the master class in architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, and from 1936, following the death of Hans Poelzig, he led the master class in architecture at the Prussian Academy of Arts. He died on 27 February 1940 in Berlin.