William Jones Boone opened the missionary Protestant Episcopal Church of America as first Bishop of China in Shanghai in 1845. Samuel Schereschewsky, the second Bishop of China, founded in 1879 the first college under the name St. John’s College in Shanghai, the name referring to an American preparatory school. In 1896, after some reorganisation, the college formed into three faculties, namely natural sciences, medicine and theology, and in 1905 received accreditation as a university from the USA. St. John’s University is today the East China University of Political Science and Law.

On 8 December 1941, the Second World War reached the Pacific region with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Teachers and students in Japanese-occupied Shanghai were directly affected, with the Japanese interning some professors (first, the Americans and British) in camps in Shanghai. As a result of the internment, there was a shortage of teachers and German refugees were asked to help out. The Jewish journalist and art historian Lothar Brieger taught literature and art history. He published articles on art history in several newspapers and magazines, including Die Gelbe Post. Dr. Weinberg, who was woman, taught German, and Dr. Wiener taught national economy. Even such unlikely people as Klaus Mehnert, editor of the English-language National Socialist propaganda magazine XXTH Century, was awarded a lectureship in history and “political ideas” at St. John’s. These ambivalent strategies allowed the university to remain open during war, the only Protestant mission college to do so.

The Chinese architect and engineer Q.L. Yang became dean at the School of Engineering at St. John’s in 1939. Yang was educated in the USA and was a well-respected expert, who participated in the design of some of the campus buildings. In 1942, during the war years, he asked Henry J. Huang (Huang Zuoshen) to organise a new department to teach architecture. Huang had studied at the Architectural Association (A.A.) in London and was the first Chinese student of Walter Gropius at Harvard, before returning to Shanghai in 1941. He studied the didactic and conceptual ideas of Gropius and the teachings of the Bauhaus.

For the new architectural department Henry Huang searched for like-minded people, such as Richard Paulick, who became the only other professor besides Huang. Paulick taught from winter term 1943 until summer term 1949 in such different fields as interior design and urban planning. During the war years the Austrian architect Hans J. Hajek lectured on Western architectural history. After the war, Chinese students returned from their education in the USA and Germany. Students of Gropius and Breuer, such as Wang Dahong and Arthur Cheang, joined the faculty as part-time teachers, and urban planner Jin Jinchang returned from his studies at Darmstadt University.  

After the end of the war in 1945, the city administration commissioned the architecture faculty at St. John’s University with the urban replanning of Greater Shanghai. This was the first opportunity after 100 years of colonial rule for a Chinese administration to plan the greater Shanghai area. Richard Paulick played a prominent role in the plan for “organic decentralisation” between 1945 and 1949.