How did Peter Behrens influence Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s career?

Peter Behrens played a pivotal role in the early career of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. After being impressed by the execution of Mies’s first commission, Behrens hired the 21-year-old architect to work in his office, where Mies gained experience alongside other future masters like Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier.1

Through Behrens, a leading figure in the Deutscher Werkbund, Mies was introduced to the organization’s philosophy of uniting art and technology to create a new design tradition for the industrial age. This exposure helped shape the foundations of the modern movement in architecture.1

Furthermore, Behrens influenced Mies by encouraging the emulation of the pure, bold, and simple Neoclassical forms of Karl Friedrich Schinkel. Schinkel’s work became a decisive influence on Mies’s lifelong pursuit of an architecture that embodied the clarity and order of a universal culture, or Gesamtkultur.1