Bruno Taut was a key figure in architecture around 1920. His visionary ideas and manifestos still belong to the icons of Utopian architecture until today, among them his expressionist tract Die Stadtkrone (City Crown, 1919). Taut’s influence on German post-war architecture has been comprehensively analyzed in art and architectural history. The reception of his ideas and writings within the first generation of Zionist architects and their urban visions for Eretz Israel has however been largely overlooked in research on Taut. Among them are Alex Baerwald, Alexander Levy, Richard Kauffmann and Erich Mendelsohn – names that are inscribed in Israel’s history of architecture. With their drafts, they carried the city crowns idea to the New Zion. The article analyzes the aspects of Taut’s oeuvre which the Zionist architects adopted and implemented in their urban visions for Eretz Israel.

Since the reconstruction of concentration camp memorials in the 1990s, the history of these places hasn’t been further presented only through exhibitions. Since then it has been more about a reconnection of single presentations to the concrete points of the former concentration camp area. For this reason concrete material places and their building structures become more important for communication of historical facts.
The article focuses exemplarily on the construction of remembrance of Jewish prisoners of the Buchenwald concentration camp at the site of today’s Buchenwald Memorial (near Weimar). The research draws upon material information media including descriptions and analysis of monuments, inscriptions, photographs and texts.
It becomes apparent which historical information or associations about the prisoners history are being communicated to the visitor and what is the relation between concentration camp as a historical place and its constructed commemorative site.