Designed by Erich Mendelsohn, completed 1921 True to modernism’s precepts, the Einstein Tower in Potsdam, Germany, designed and built by Erich Mendelsohn from 1919 to 1921, is one of the most unique expressions of avant-garde architecture of the early 20th century. Born in 1887, Mendelsohn was drawn to architecture at a young age. Like so many artists and architects at the fin-de-siècle, he believed that a new era was dawning, and that new forms of architecture were necessary for the modern epoch. In 1913 Mendelsohn met the astrophysicist Erwin Finlay Freundlich; the two men discovered shared interests and developed an enduring friendship. Freundlich introduced Mendelsohn to the thenunpublished radical theory of relativity by Albert Einstein, ideas that would profoundly influence European intellectual thought, as well as the visual arts, for years to come. Freundlich; was interested in making observations that would confirm Einstein’s new theory, and Mendelsohn sought to adapt Einstein...