Bruno Taut in der Türkei.

Bruno Taut moved in 1936 from Japan to Turkey after being appointed head of the architecture department at the Istanbul Academy of Fine Arts. Although in poor health, he took on a huge workload in teaching, in the administration of the art school and also in the Tatbikat construction office, where he planned numerous school and university buildings on behalf of the Ministry of Education. He was never to return to Germany - he died in Istanbul in 1938 without ever having had time to really get to know his host country. The book presents the last phase of Taut's life and work on the basis of documents he left behind. Included is the text of the Istanbul Journal, in which Taut recorded events at the art academy, the progress of his projects, encounters and impressions on an almost daily basis. Entries in a small notebook supplement this information. Extensive correspondence with writing partners in Japan, Europe and the USA can be traced in over 80 letters. An important source on his work at Tatbikat is a project album in which Taut documented 19 projects. From this dense information, a multi-layered picture of the exile's living and working conditions emerges.