A few days after the Reichstag elections of 31 July 1932 that made the NSDAP the largest party in the Reichstag for the first time, the architect Erich Mendelsohn from Berlin and his friend and colleague Hendricus Theodorus Wijdeveld from Amsterdam travelled down the Rhone towards the Côte d’Azur.[1] The journey was the first concrete step towards the realisation of an art academy project that Wijdeveld had pursued for some time and which gained a new direction through Mendelsohn. Wijdeveld, an architect and set designer associated with the Amsterdam School and editor of the art journal Wendingen, had been working for several years on a plan to establish an internationale werkgemeenschap (international working community) near Hilversum. His concept, which he published in 1931, was inspired by the guilds of the British arts and crafts movement and by the Bauhaus.[2]

Mendelsohn seized on the idea of a multidisciplinary educational institution for artists arranged along the lines of a working community but was able to convince Wijdeveld to swap the lakes region of the Netherlands for the azure coast of France and the yellow sun of le Midi. The plan was backed by Mendelsohn’s healthy network of contacts with French politicians and creative artists and his commitment to a united Europe with – as he saw it – the Mediterranean as its historic centre and a bulwark of its collective identity.[3]

The European Mediterranean Academy