After completing an apprenticeship as a bricklayer, he studied architecture at the Baugewerkenschule in Weimar. That became the Bauhaus School in 1919, that's why Ernst Neufert was one of the first students of the Bauhaus School. Just one year later he finished his studies. He stayed always close related to the Bauhaus and with architects like Walter Gropius. He designed several industrial and multifunctional buildings and was always connected with the iconic key buildings of the time.
When the Nazis closed the Bauhaus School in Dessau in 1932, he went to Berlin. During the Nazi-rule he became the main architect of the glass company Vereinigte Lausitzer Glaswerke in Weißwasser. He was enthusiastic about the idea of standardizing architecture and its use. Everything should be designed and calculated on a human scale. These ideas gave rise to his work: Handbuch für den Baufachmann, Bauherren, Lehrenden und Lernenden, published in March 1936. Today it still serves as a standard work for students of architecture, design and civil engineering and is a staple in libraries.
He was not a Nazi party NSDAP member, but he supported the National Socialist Motor Corps, that was close to the party. So he managed to proceed in his idea of modern architecture. But at the end he was only able to construct industrial buildings. They were the only accepted functionalist architecture in Germany since 1933. In the late 1930s Neufert was much supported by Albert Speer, the main architect of the German Reich.During the last years of the war they tried to standardize apartment blocks and tried to invent machines for building houses.
After the war he started a career as a professor in Darmstadt and opened an office there. He constructed many official buildings in Western Germany. Some of them, like the logistics company in Nuremburg, built in 1955, show clear references to the interwar architecture.
Sources
Buildings
Weißwasser / Běła Woda, Germany
Neufert Building