The history of architecture would be incomplete if we did not also remember those architects and urban planners who did not stand out through spectacular theories and designs but still made significant contributions in important areas of architectural creation. One such figure was the Cologne city architect Kurt Meyer (1888-1944). He is virtually unknown in this country, but in Russia, he is a well-known name. For no other German architect was as closely associated with the master plan for Moscow in the first half of the 1930s, and he significantly influenced it for a time. He was the only foreigner who prepared and contributed to essential elements of the 1935 master plan for Moscow and was likely one of the most important foreign urban planning specialists in the Soviet Union during the 1930s. Meyer’s work represents a city planning approach committed to realistic methodology. In his effort to combine continuity and progress, he demonstrated a keen understanding of the realities of urban development. Tragically, his professional biography came to an end in the summer of 1936. He was arrested and sentenced to forced labor in a camp, from which he did not survive. This publication attempts to reconstruct in detail Kurt Meyer’s life path, which intersected with those of Fritz Schumacher and Konrad Adenauer in Cologne, as well as Ernst May, Hannes Meyer, and Bruno Taut in Moscow, to trace his professional biography and personal life story, outline his environment, and provide insight into urban planning ideas from the first third of the 20th century.