FAQ

Le Corbusier lived in a time of major social transformations and revolutions, totalitarian and authoritarian ideologies, and two world wars. To secure commissions, Le Corbusier therefore maintained opportunistic and often seemingly contradictory alliances with various powers and political movements. In the early 1930s, he was close to the French movement of regional syndicalism (a form of trade union socialism), but he never firmly belonged to any party or ideological movement and fundamentally considered himself an apolitical person. To promote his services, he adapted his rhetoric to the respective political environment but remained committed to his architectural and urban planning ideas.

In response to the crises of the 1920s, including the Great Depression of 1929, many French intellectuals called for a strengthening of the state and for implementing a planned economy. Accordingly, there were calls for large-scale construction and infrastructure projects, as in the Soviet Union. Le Corbusier sought contact with political groups and governments from left to right that shared this stance and promised to implement his proposals, although he himself had no firm political ties and was fundamentally nonconformist. For example, Le Corbusier was active in the Soviet Union during Stalin's time and almost simultaneously sought contact with Mussolini, who promoted modern architecture until the 1930s. At the time, the artistic and intellectual avant-garde was often critical towards democracy, as it was considered incapable of effectively addressing crises and making progress.

Le Corbusier was well-connected and also maintained ties with individuals who propagated fascism, including Philippe Lamour and Georges Valois, who had founded short-lived fascist parties in France in the 1920s, and published avant-garde magazines with them. However, he did not use these for political statements but primarily to spread his urban planning ideas. The political positions of many intellectuals were also in constant flux at the time: both Lamour and Valois later joined the Resistance against the Nazi occupation of France.

Le Corbusier's collaborators in the early 1930s, such as Pierre Jeanneret and Charlotte Perriand, were politically more left-leaning. At the same time, he was also acquainted with the right-wing doctor and "hygienist" Pierre Winter, or the doctor and Nobel laureate Alexis Carrel, a proponent of eugenics - a "science" then recognized and promoted by the state in many countries. With both, Le Corbusier shared the idea that the reorganization of cities could improve society's health and morals. This was, among other things, a fundamental concern of modern urban planning and an important socio-political issue at the time, supported across the political spectrum. Living conditions in many cities were poor, and in many districts, infectious diseases such as tuberculosis or "popular diseases" like alcoholism prevailed.

In contrast to fascism, Le Corbusier rejected violent political changes. He expressed this in numerous publications, including the book "Vers une Architecture" (1923), in which he evoked the then latent threat of a revolution and proclaimed architecture and urban planning as means to defuse social tensions: "Architecture or Revolution!". Le Corbusier also rejected militarism and ultranationalism, which he expressed in 1938 in the book "Des canons, des munitions ? merci ! des logis. S.V.P." ("Cannons, Ammunition? No, Thanks! Housing, Please"). Le Corbusier had no ties to German National Socialism and was not a supporter of Hitler. In Nazi Germany, the modern architecture developed by Le Corbusier was condemned as communist and internationalist.

The economic crisis of 1929 shattered Le Corbusier's hope of implementing large-scale projects in collaboration with leading figures in business and industry. Instead, he hoped for commissions from the state and called for extensive state interventions as solutions to the crisis. In 1930, Le Corbusier acquired French citizenship. In 1939, at the beginning of World War II, he offered his services to the French state as a convinced patriot, expecting public commissions, and worked for the Minister of Armaments, Raoul Dautry, under the centrist Daladier government. In the context of the Nazi threat, Le Corbusier accepted the commission to build a munitions factory, which, however, was never constructed.

In 1940, a large part of France was occupied by Nazi Germany. Le Corbusier initially fled to the village of Ozon in the Pyrenees. After France's surprising and shocking defeat, the authoritarian and collaborationist Vichy regime (1940–1944) was established in the unoccupied south under the leadership of General Pétain, who was revered as a national hero after World War I. Wishing to shape architectural and urban planning policies, Le Corbusier went to Vichy in 1940 and stayed there for about 18 months. He sought contact with the political leadership, made urban planning proposals, and became a member of various committees, but his activities were limited to administrative tasks without authority.

After the collapse of the French Republic, many believed they saw an opportunity in the Vichy regime to at least partially preserve France's sovereignty. The political discourse in Vichy was marked by the hope of rebuilding France, which attracted Le Corbusier and other architects. However, Le Corbusier faced mistrust in Vichy, and commissions did not materialize – partly because he was publicly denounced by right-wing voices like the Swiss architect Alexander von Senger or the French art critic Camille Mauclair as a communist, a "Trojan horse of Bolshevism," and a destroyer of tradition and identity. The Vichy regime pursued a nationalist and reactionary, anti-communist, and anti-Semitic policy, which proved incompatible with Le Corbusier's rationalist, universalist, and cosmopolitan ideas.

During this unproductive time without commissions, Le Corbusier focused mainly on art and writing books. Bitterly disappointed, he left Vichy in 1942 and returned to Paris. He then focused on reconstruction projects for the post-war period. In 1942, public opinion began to turn increasingly against the Vichy regime. Collaboration with Nazi Germany became evident, and repression increased, including the persecution and deportation of Jews. Until the liberation of France, Le Corbusier kept a low profile and increasingly believed that France's future would be shaped by General Charles de Gaulle, who led the Resistance movement against the Nazi occupation from London and Algiers. After the liberation, Le Corbusier received support for his urban planning ideas from key members of the Resistance. As a result, he benefited from significant commissions from the French state during the reconstruction.

In recent times, it has become known that the young Le Corbusier expressed anti-Semitic views in private letters to his family and closest acquaintances, where he used common stereotypes of the time. However, in his professional environment or in public, Le Corbusier did not express anti-Semitic views, nor did he contribute to the anti-Semitic and racist propaganda of his time. He made his studio on Rue de Sèvres in Paris a cosmopolitan place and maintained numerous friendships with Jews.

Some of Le Corbusier's early anti-Semitic remarks in his letters can be attributed to frustrations over unrecognized achievements or disputes over construction costs and defects. Anti-Semitic sentiments were widespread in both Switzerland and France at the time. Especially in industrial cities, they were often part of a class-struggle rhetoric against the supposedly exploitative entrepreneurial class. Anti-Semitism also manifested in the rejection of communism and other "foreign" influences.

Le Corbusier received some of his first commissions from Jewish entrepreneurs in La Chaux-de-Fonds. He was well connected in this milieu. From 1914 until his move to Paris in 1917, he was even a member of a Jewish association ("nouveau cercle juif") in La Chaux-de-Fonds. Nevertheless, he sometimes spoke disparagingly of his early clients in private correspondence.

In the course of his activities in Paris, Le Corbusier worked with numerous Jewish clients, politicians, employees, and acquaintances from 1917 onwards: the artist Jacques Lipchitz, the patron couple Sarah and Michael Stein, the filmmaker Jean Epstein, the socialist politician Léon Blum, the architect Jean Badovici, the photographer Lucien Hervé, or the architect Julius Posener, who fled Nazi Germany to Paris in 1933, among others. In the avant-garde magazine L'Esprit Nouveau, which Le Corbusier published with Amédée Ozenfant, Jewish intellectuals also contributed, such as the critic Paul Westheim or the philosopher Henri Sérouya. He maintained a lifelong friendship with the Swiss architecture critic Sigfried Giedion, who supported and popularized his visions. His studio also employed architects who were involved in the Zionist movement, including Shlomo Bernstein and Samuel Barkai.

Le Corbusier had an enthusiastic following in the "Yishuv," the Jewish community in Palestine before the founding of the State of Israel, and influenced its architecture. He sympathized with Zionism and was interested in commissions from the British Mandate of Palestine. With Zionist leaders like Wolfgang von Weisl, he shared the view that the persecution-driven migration of the Jewish population from Europe should be seen as an opportunity to build a new Jewish society. After 1945, he actively supported the "Ligue Française pour la Palestine Libre," a left-wing association that fought for the creation of a Jewish state.

Le Corbusier knew how to provoke and attract attention with radical visions. For example, he proposed plans that involved a profound reorganization of cities and the demolition of historic districts, such as the Plan Voisin for Paris in 1925. Le Corbusier responded to the often dire conditions in European cities during the industrial age and used provocation to bring his ideas into the conversation. This provocative character is evident in Le Corbusier's publications, in which he sharply criticized established architects and art academies, even though he himself was neither trained as an architect nor had an academic education.

Fundamentally, Le Corbusier's visions were rooted in the ideas of the Enlightenment, rationalism, and freedom. However, with his unwavering belief in progress, his rationalist and cosmopolitan attitude, his rejection of tradition, and his optimistic conviction that technological advances could be used to improve society, Le Corbusier faced criticism throughout his career. As early as the 1920s, modern architecture was targeted by both the extreme right and representatives of traditional architecture and craftsmanship. The modern, so-called "international style" was labeled as "Bolshevik," "Jewish," or "Arab," criticized as an arrogant departure from tradition, and portrayed as a dangerous threat to regional and national culture and identity. This stance was also adopted by National Socialism. In contrast, in Italian fascism, modern architecture was initially seen as a manifestation of progress and the "new man." However, from the 1930s onwards, Mussolini also turned away from modern architecture.

In recent years, Le Corbusier's unrealized urban designs of the 1920s and 1930s have been partially criticized as authoritarian or totalitarian visions. In fact, for Le Corbusier, urban planning meant creating housing for millions of people on behalf of the state, but without the involvement of the population. Howewer, early urban designs like the ville contemporaine were not intended as concrete construction plans but rather as visionary ideas for a new society in the spirit of the avant-garde. Later, the design of the ville radieuse emerged in response to the planned economy of the Soviet Union, where numerous planned cities were built during Stalin's time. There, the belief in being able to create a "new world" attracted not only Le Corbusier but also many other architects from Western Europe, including those from the Bauhaus.

Today, Le Corbusier is also sometimes held responsible for the architectural and urban planning failures of the post-war period and the associated social problems, particularly in the area of social housing. Although Le Corbusier never built an extensive, multi-part housing estate, post-war urban planning often referred to Le Corbusier's theoretical ideas – for example, the Athens Charter, a founding document of modern urban planning, in which Le Corbusier played a leading role. These ideas were applied in many European countries after World War II and were considered forward-looking and progressive.

The post-war housing estates, which are widely criticized today, were generally realized without regard to Le Corbusier's architectural ideas, such as the use of light and color and the aesthetic quality of the spaces. Post-war architecture was primarily driven by the need to build the maximum number of apartments as quickly and cheaply as possible. Artistic aspects, which were central to Le Corbusier and characteristic of all his buildings, were hardly taken into account.

Jean-Louis Cohen, « Le Corbusier, Jews and fascism: setting the record straight», study commissioned by the City of Zurich, 2012.

Le Corbusier 1930-2020 : Polémiques, Mémoire et Histoire, ed. by Rémi Baudouï, with essays by Rémi Baudouï, Jean-Louis Cohen, Arnaud Dercelles, Tzafrir Fainholtz, Mary McLeod, Josep Quetglas and others, Paris: Tallandier, 2020.

Robert Belot, Le Corbusier Fasciste ? Dénigrement et mésusage de l’’histoire, Paris : Hermann, 2021.

Robert Fishman, «From the Radiant City to Vichy: Le Corbusier’s Plans and Politics, 1928-1942», in: Russell Walden (ed.), The Open Hand: Essays on Le Corbusier, 1983