Dubbed the first German city of art., Munich made an intriguing and spectacular career in the 19th century, when it was mostly associated with the flourishing Munich school of painting, and then again at the turn of the 19th century, when it became one of the major centres of the European Art Nouveau, alongside Paris, Vienna and Berlin.

Dubbed the first German city of art., Munich made an intriguing and spectacular career in the 19th century, when it was mostly associated with the flourishing Munich school of painting, and then again at the turn of the 19th century, when it became one of the major centres of the European Art Nouveau, alongside Paris, Vienna and Berlin. It was in Munich that the Jugendstil became established with the aim of creating a national style combining folk traditions with picturesque historicism, Art Nouveau and Modernism. The most eminent representative of this movement was Martin Dülfer. Like a looking glass, his art reflected the dilemmas and challenges faced by the architecture of the turn of the century. Associated mostly with Munich and Dresden, Dülfer designed town houses, villas, hotels and department stores. But his métier was theatre architecture: he constructed theatres in Dortmund, Lübeck, Merano, Duisburg and Sofia/Sofiya. This publication presents the artist Martin Dülfer and his output, highlighting his influence on the development of the architecture of his times. It contains texts by Jacek Purchla, H. Ottomeyer, W. Tegethoff and D. Klein, as well as a biography and a list of Dülfer’s known works and designs. The numerous illustrations show his designs and construction projects and offer an overview of the most typical architectural projects by some of his contemporaries, e.g. Endell, Thiersch, von Seidl, Riedel, von Klenze and Fischer.

Polish version