Hermann Mattern (27 November 1902 – 17 November 1971) was a German landscape architect and architect. Trained first as a gardener, he studied landscape and architecture in Berlin-Dahlem, attending lectures by Heinrich Tessenow and Walter Gropius. He worked with Karl Foerster and Herta Hammerbacher and collaborated with Leberecht Migge before establishing himself as a leading designer. Mattern created numerous gardens, urban development projects, and institutional landscapes, shaping German modernist landscape architecture in the mid-20th century.
Lars Hopstock’s Idyll and Ideology: Hermann Mattern and the Landscape to Live In is a heavy-lifter historiographic study. Published by Jovis in 2024, the volume arrives as a carefully crafted and tactile artefact in Jagd style, with hunting-green viscose-flocked covers reminiscent of a mounted trophy. Indeed, Hopstock has ventured deeply into archival “woods”, emerging with meticulous evidence and nuanced narratives around Hermann Mattern (1902–1971), one of Germany’s most significant yet contentious landscape architects. His expansive research not only sets the bar incredibly high for any similar undertakings but vividly frames Mattern’s navigation between aesthetic idyll and loaded ideology.
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