Review by Choice Review
With dissertation-like precision, Taylor chronicles architectural preferences and purposes of the Hohenzollern Dynasty in Berlin from 1701 to 1918, which mandated the powerful forms of the Greco-Roman tradition as they had been filtered through Baroque taste for magnificence. The continuity of emphasis (every structure was intended to impress with the authority and might of the Hohenzollerns) did not encourage creativity, and such minimal variation in directives accounts for the feeling of deja vu in Berlin's historic architecture. Because of later additions that catered to greater extravagance of form, buildings that began with Palladian concern for order lacked unity. Once regarded by the middle class as symbols of a nation's grandeur, the structures became symbols of tyranny, first of the dynasty and later of Hitler. The reasons offered for the demolitions and the lack of public protest are convincing. Reconstructions of particular buildings suggest equally recognizable motivations. As symbols of political and social power, the Hohenzollern commissions are not unique; their study as a group, however, sheds light on the aesthetics of other leaders in other times and places. In our time these buildings may have lost their symbolic ability to persuade but even the sorry remains do a remarkable job of telling us about one dynasty's aspirations. For upper-division undergraduates and graduate students.-P.N. Holder, Austin Peay State University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
