Erich Mendelssohn (1887 – 1953)
Erich Mendelssohn was a young architect in Munich when he joined other Jews in Germany to fight in World War I. As a soldier he began to design the building for the Albert Einstein experimental observatory, the Einsteinturm, in Babelsberg near Berlin. Mendelssohn later worked on the addition and reconstruction of the Mosse publishing house in Berlin, and the Rudolf Peterdorff Department store in Wrozlaw, formerly Breslau. When the Nazis came to power, he emigrated to England, where he built the De La Warr Pavilion in 1934, and in 1935 he opened an office in Jerusalem where he built the Schocken Residence and Library in 1934/35, the Bank Leumi building in 1936-1939, and the Chaim Weizmann residence in Rehovoth in 1937. In 1941 he moved to the USA where he lived in San Francisco until his death in 1953.