"If one may cite Schoenberg: 'The final 'emancipation of dissonance' means that its comprehensibility is equal to its internal consistency. Its most noteworthy characteristic is the extraordinary brevity of each piece.' Dissonance also triumphs in this work of Mendelsohn's: on the one hand, there is the body of the store, proclaiming its horizontality in its solid and windowed bands, in the entrance floor, and in the sign running along the lower cornice line of the facade; on the other hand, there are the two pivot points of the semi- cylinders, one reverberating and elongated along the sloping street to the left, and the other echoing it across the roof from the other side of the building. Many critics have spoken of the musical quality of this building, of the play between 'inflection and counterpoint.' "

—Bruno Zevi. Erich Mendelsohn. p84.

The Creator's Words

"Mendelsohn's creative spark was ignited in World War I, like that of the other masters of world architecture of his generation. A civilization, it seemed to them, was at the end of its wits....'As few before us,' he said, 'we felt the meaning of living and dying, of end and beginning—its creative meaning in the midst of the silent terror of no-man's land and the terrifying din of rapid fire.' "

— Erich Mendelsohn. from Wolf Von Eckardt. Eric Mendelsohn. p11.