This monograph examines the interrelationship between politics and modernist architecture in interwar Belgium, focusing on political, architectural, and administrative elites as propagators of new ideas of governance. While Belgium was strongly influenced by neighbouring France and Germany, it also developed its own avant-garde approaches to socio-political problems. In the second half of the 1930s, the country was the scene of a remarkable political and architectural experiment involving an ambitious plan for the large-scale construction of modernist government office buildings. These buildings were seen as essential to the development of a technocratic model of governance, aimed at strengthening the role of the executive and minimising the influence of parliament. More specifically, the "efficient" new office architecture was supposed to create a new type of "perfect" civil servant, whose loyalties would no longer lie with political parties, but with scientists and management experts. Such experts and scientists constituted a rising elite of homines novi with strong (though often veiled) political ambitions. As such, this book contributes to our understanding of political culture in the "age of extremes". /

Das Wort Elite ist heutige omnipräsent und reflektiert die breiten wie diffusen Erwartungen an eine herausgehobene Sozialgruppe. Die Reihe 'Elitenwandel in der Moderne' untersucht die Relevanz und den Bedeutungswandel von Eliten in der Perspektive der europäischen Moderne seit dem ausgehenden 18. Jahrhundert. Eine bedeutende Stellung nehmen Studien zum erfolgreichen und scheiternden Machtbeharren des Adels, aber auch zum Wandel dieser Gruppe ein. Gleichzeitig nimmt die Reihe das Aufkommen neuer Elitenformationen in den Blick und fragt nach den Mechanismen von Bedeutungszuweisung als Folge des Aufstiegs der Massenmedien und gesellschaftlicher Mobilisierung.

Die Herausgeber/-innen:

Gabriele B. Clemens, Universität des Saarlandes

Martin Kohlrausch, KU Leuven

Stephan Malinowski , University of Edinburgh

Malte Rolf, Universität Oldenburg