He has been described as the "father of East-German Plattenbau", almost invariably grey unpainted and uncladded apartment blocks, using large standardised concrete slabs prefabricated off-site.

[1] Paulick had a significant public profile in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and his postulation was implemented in the new towns of Hoyerswerda, Schwedt, and Halle-Neustadt.

His father, also named Richard Paulick (1876-1952), was a trades unionist employed, as a young man, at the Royal Porcelain Factory in Berlin.

[7] During this time, he developed close friendships and professional alliances with, in particular, Marcel Breuer and Georg Muche, with whom he co-designed the pioneering Steel House ("Stahlhaus") built in Dessau during 1926/27.

[9][10] Six months after starting work at Bauhaus Dessau, he enrolled again at the Technische Hochschule Berlin, where he studied between August 1925 and June 1927, now accepted into the "master class" of Hans Poelzig.

At this stage, Paulick remained at Dessau, taking responsibility for managing the office and for overseeing the completion of jobs which Gropius had hitherto been directing.

[4] A small number of projects was undertaken and completed, but in the context of the continuing economic problems that the country was experiencing, commercial success eluded him during this period.

[12] Paulick's record of non-Hitlerite political activism and the continuing inactivity in the German construction sector both pointed towards the potential advantages of emigration.

[6] In the summer of 1933, Paulick received and accepted what amounted to a job offer from his friend, former flatmate and Dresden student contemporary, Rudolf Hamburger.

[13] In 1949, Richard Paulick reacted to the events surrounding the proclamation of the People's Republic of China by fleeing back to Europe[4] where six years of war had given way to an armed frosty peace across a divided continent.

When the institute was expanded and reconfigured in 1951 as the East German Building Academy ("Bauakademie der DDR") he acquired a number of additional departmental leadership responsibilities and taking charge jointly, alongside Hermann Henselmann and Hanns Hopp, of a prestigious Meisterwerkstatt (literally, master workshop), indicating official approval, and creating opportunities to exercise a major influence over the East German built environment through a sustained period of far-reaching post-war reconstruction.

[16] A larger and more contentious element in Paulick's "Sector C" plan was his 1951 design for a vast high-rise government office block surrounded by a great square, with a combined 30,000 m2 foot-print, reminiscent of the super-human Stalinist structures appearing in Moscow and Warsaw and in other central European capitals at the time, to be built on what later became the Marx-Engels Forum.

High on the lists of his contributions cited by commentators is his work in the rebuilding of the Berlin State Opera which had been destroyed by war-time bombing, most recently, thoroughly completely on 3 February 1945.

His didactic role led to him being talked of as a "professor" in some quarters, and in 1957 he consolidated his position as an insider within the East German political establishment – somewhat belatedly by some criteria – by joining the Socialist Unity Party of Germany.

[18][19] During the later 1950s he was appointed "chief architect" and, in that capacity, given charge of a number of other important new town developments (proudly promoted at the time as "socialist cities") needed to provide accommodation and infrastructure for workers employed in new labour-intensive industries, including those at Schwedt, where the government had decided to create extensive oil refining capacity, and at Halle-Neustadt, which formed the focus of a new chemicals industry.

In 1974, with the country's population pressures reduced by the backwash from the slaughter of war and two decades of industrial-scale emigration, alongside the economic noose of impending national bankruptcy, the East German building boom was over.

When Richard Paulick died in East Berlin on 4 March 1979, he was already widely forgotten, and his disappearance went largely unreported in the (party controlled) media.