61 Introduction During the First World War, the city of Zagreb and the majority of Croatian territory were subjected to a rather small degree of war destruction. However, building construction ceased considerably and was revitalized only after the restoration of peace, as a con- sequence of intense demographic and economic growth and mass migration of rural population to the cities in search of employment. After the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in 1918, Zagreb became in the newly formed state of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (in 1929 renamed Kingdom of Yu- goslavia) major economic and cultural centre, despite the fact that it was not the country’s capital. The city’s rapid growth was facilitated by the establishment of numerous new banking and insurance companies, by the construction of a series of industrial facilities and the foundation of new higher-education and other pub- lic institutions. The position of Croatian architects also changed – they were given the opportunity to design buildings all over Yugoslavia, free from competition of architectural studios from Vienna and Budapest. 1 In the years immediately following the war, a number of young architects who completed their training in dif- ferent European centres started returning to Croatia, influenced by diverse tendencies which marked Euro- pean architecture of the period, including Expressio- nism. Despite the fact that in the history of Croatian architecture Expressionism neither took firm hold nor had the significance and reception like it had in Ger- many, there exists a whole series of architectural designs which display a pronounced influence of this style. 2 Expressionism in Croatian architecture was not the result of a chaotic post-war atmosphere, inflation or other economic problems (it actually appeared in a period of economic prosperity), but primarily a reflec- tion of the incursion of Modernism. Architects of Cro- atian Expressionism did not form a homogenous group – they neither shared the same formation or social con- victions, nor belonged to the same political circles. What they had in common were aspirations for the accommodation of architecture to the new world, its new needs and possibilities, as well as the ways in which they transferred elements of German Expressionism to smaller-scale projects, successfully attuning them to the Croatian context and blending them with local archi- tectural traditions and/or other styles. As in Germany, every Croatian architect whose work reveals elements of Expressionism followed a markedly individual architectural expression, which represents the basic difficulty in this research. Borders between Expressionism, Art Deco, Cubism and Constructivism often resist clear delineation and mainly depend on the choice of architectural elements to be analysed. 3 architectura Band 44/ 2014 Abbreviations: ATUB = Architekturmuseum der Technischen Universität Berlin, Universitätsbibliothek. www.europeana.eu MAC = Museum of Arts and Crafts (Muzej za umjetnost i obrt) Zagreb. 1 The starting point for this paper was a much shorter ar- ticle on Expressionism in Croatian architecture included in the exhibition catalogue Expressionism in Croatia. Damjanovid 2011, 54 – 63, 159 – 163. 2 About Croatian architecture of the period see: Eorak 1981; Premerl 1990; Laslo 1999, 186 – 195. 3 The first survey on Expressionism in German architec- ture, with no reference to Croatia, was published in Za- greb in the periodical Eovjek i prostor in 1962 – 63. It was a translation of an Italian text by Vittorio Gregotti. Gre- gotti, 1962, 2 – 3; 1962, 4 – 5; 1963, 6 – 7, 9. In the course of the 1980s the topic was addressed again in: Borsi 1984, 25 – 33. Contributions on German architecture of the 1920s used as the starting point for this article are: Mül- ler-Wulckow 1929; Hilbersheimer 1967; Pehnt 1973; Mil- Dragan Damjanovi d Expressionism in Croatian Architecture of the Interwar Period 061-086 Damjanovic_001-000 Philipp et al. 17.02.15 13:59 Seite 61