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1991 Review of Hitlers sozialer Wohnungsbau 1940-1945: Wohnungspolitik, Baugestaltung und Siedlungsplanung, edited by Tilman Harlander and Gerhard Fehl; Deutsche Architekten: Biographische Verflechtungen 1900-1970, by Werner Durth; Faschistische Architekturen: Planen und Bauen in Europa 1930-1945, edited by Hartmut Frank Barbara Miller Lane Bryn Mawr College, [email protected]

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Custom Citation Barbara Miller Lane, Review of Hitlers sozialer Wohnungsbau 1940-1945: Wohnungspolitik, Baugestaltung und Siedlungsplanung, edited by Tilman Harlander and Gerhard Fehl; Deutsche Architekten: Biographische Verflechtungen 1900-1970, by Werner Durth; Faschistische Architekturen: Planen und Bauen in Europa 1930-1945, edited by Hartmut Frank. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 50 (1991): 430-434.

This paper is posted at Scholarship, Research, and Creative Work at Bryn Mawr College. http://repository.brynmawr.edu/cities_pubs/25

For more information, please contact [email protected]. BOOK REVIEWS 325

and one wonderswhy an exteriorsetting was desiredfor such ing her surprisewith the condescending"dati i tempi."In fact, a groupand whether amphitheaterswere unusualfeatures for Clement XI had commandedCarlo Fontanain 1701 not to settecentovilla gardens.Other questions rise in connectionwith obscurefrom view any partof the facademosaic of S. Mariain an anonymousTrevi projectfrom the pontificateof Clement Trasteverein the constructionof a new portico.I believe that XI that includesthe newly unearthedAntonine column. Could Benedict XIV's restorationof S. MariaMaggiore was a step it notbe thatthe enthusiasmfor showcasingthe "new"antiquity backwardfrom the more preservation-consciousearly decades in the context of the fountainled to the abandonmentof the of the century.Also, I cannothelp but faultthe egregiouserror wall fountainproposal during the Albani reign, and that the on page 62 ("Jones"is substitutedfor "Johns"!).Unhappily, it problemsattendant upon raising the columnultimately resulted is the only typographicalerror I found in the entirecatalogue! in the temporarysuspension of the Trevi project? The presenceof a very few faultsin ElisabethKieven's Fuga In additionto the myriadvirtues of Kieven'spresentation and only servesto underscoreits many sterling qualities,not the analysis,a numberof issues should be raised.The use of the least among them the judiciouschoice of drawings,the lucid stylisticdesignation "Barocchetto" to describea vaguely Bor- and informativediscussion of the works, and the inclusionof rominesquetendency in some early eighteenth-centuryarchi- much new and stimulatingmaterial. As an ambitiousand syn- tects perpetuatesthe notion that the early settecentois a di- theticpresentation of the intricaciesof earlyeighteenth-century minutive,precious, and watered-down extension of the . Roman architecture,Ferdinando Fuga e l'architetturaromana del The povertyof the termto describethe creativerichness of the settecentoshould occupy a placeof honor on the bookshelvesof arts of the period should lead to its exclusion from scholarly all scholarsof Italiansettecento art and architecture. discourse.Similarly, Kieven glossesthe fact that Fuga'sfacade CHRISTOPHER M. S. JOHNS for S. MariaMaggiore showed "curasorprendente" because it Universityof Virginia blockedonly a sectionof the facademosaic from view, explain-

THE ARCHITECTURE OF NAZI

TILMAN HARLANDER and GERHARD FEHL, editors, otherNazi leadersthat the ThirdReich, after driving the leaders Hitlerssozialer Wohnungsbau1940-1945: Wohnungspolitik,Bau- of the ModernMovement into exile, had completelyrejected gestaltungund Siedlungsplanung(Stadt, Planung, Geschichte, 6), the teachingsof Modernismin an effortto createa new "Na- Hamburg: Hans Christians Verlag, 1986, 446 pp., illus. DM tionalSocialist" architecture. Such works often gave most prom- 48. inence to the neoclassicalpublic buildings commissionedby Hitler and executed,for the most part,by AlbertSpeer. These WERNER DURTH, DeutscheArchitekten: Biographische Ver- treatmentspermitted, even encouraged,the notion that, with flechtungen1900-1970, Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1986, 448 pp., the suicideof Hitlerand the crushingdefeat of his regime,Nazi 120 illus. DM 86. architecture(and itself) was over and done with, and architecture,like society and politics, could startover againin HARTMUT FRANK, editor, FaschistischeArchitekturen: Pla- West Germany,"from zero." nen undBauenin Europa1930-1945 (Stadt, Planung, Geschichte, The Third Reich, which accordingto Hitler and his propa- 3), Hamburg: Hans Christians Verlag, 1985, 334 pp., illus. DM gandistswas to be a "thousand-yearReich," lastedfrom 1933 39.50. to 1945. Twelve years,if we think aboutit in a detachedand logical way, is far too short a time to stampout one kind of Much has changed since 1943, when Nikolaus Pevsner wrote architecture,to createa wholly new one, and to eradicatethat that "of the German buildings for the National Socialist Party new one in turn. Thus it is not surprisingthat the youngest the less said ..., the better" (An Outlineof EuropeanArchitecture, generationof Germanhistorians have recentlybegun to look 7th ed., Baltimore, 1963, 411). The 1950s and 1960s witnessed at the continuities,rather than the disjunctions,in the history a number of studies-mostly American and British-that at- of modernGerman architecture. In fact, we may wonderwhy to define the architecture of tempted National Socialism in its this approachto the history of architecturehas taken so long own as of terms, expressive Nazi ideology. In the 1970s, a to arisein Germany.But of coursethe writing of historyis not of younger generation German architecturalhistorians began to alwaysrooted in logic, and for contemporaryGermans, even the architecture and study planning of the Nazi regime in the forthose born since 1945, the ideathat something of context of German society and politics during the Third Reich. lastedinto the 1930s, or that somethingof Most of these latter works focused on the Hitler period as sep- lastedinto the 1950s, has been a painfulone, since it seemsto arate, almost unique in the . Most, in imply that National Socialismitself was an of other integral part words, accepted at face value the claims of Hitler and modernGerman history. The booksby Durth,Frank, and Har- 326 JSAH, L:3, SEPTEMBER 1991

landerand Fehl, each of which rejectsthe ideaof discontinuity illustrate the development of housing policy from 1940 to 1945. in the historyof modernGerman architecture, and otherslike The volume is the sixth in the series called Stadt, Planung, them,have therefore occasioned bitter controversy in Germany. Geschichte published by the Lehrstuhle fur Planungstheorie at And eachof thesebooks is stronglymarked by a foreknowledge the Technische Hochschule in . Most of these volumes of the elementsof the controversy. are documentary collections, and they are intended to stimulate Tilman Harlanderand GerhardFehl's Hitlers sozialer Wohn- further scholarship rather than to provide a definitive history. ungsbau1940-1945 (Hitler's Public Housing, 1940-1945) is They perform this task very well, but as with any such publi- scarcelyabout Hitler at all but, rather,about the housingpolicy cation, the issue of selection arises: what documents were not conductedby the DeutscheArbeitsfront, or LaborFront, under included, and how was the focus chosen? These questions would the leadershipof RobertLey. This focusreminds us of the truth be clarified in a systematic study of Nazi housing. aboutNazi governmentfirst stated in 1942 in FranzNeumann's Werner Durth's DeutscheArchitekten: Biographische Verflecht- Behemoth:that the statewas chaoticat the top, with manyNazi ungen(German Architects: Biographical Interconnections) traces leadersvying for patronageand power. Ley's LaborFront was the career paths of a group of architects born in Germany be- one of the most powerfulof these subempireswithin the Third tween 1900 and 1910, "too young to serve in the first World Empire,and hence one of the most importantpatrons of ar- War, young enough to make a new beginning after the second" chitectureand planning. According to Harlanderand Fehl, the (p. 18). These men-the principal protagonists are RudolfWol- Nazi regimedid not reversethe housingpolicies carried on by ters, Friedrich Tamms, Konstanty Gutschow, and Rudolf Hille- the Modernistsunder the ;already from the brecht, although others such as Julius Schulte-Frohlinde, Her- beginningof the depression,the Republicangovernment under bert Rimpl, Ernst Neufert, Hans Stephan, Friedrich Hetzelt, ChancellorBriining had turned away from the "new dwelling" and Wilhelm Wortmann make frequent appearances-were the as it was carriedout at Weissenhof,Siemensstadt, Haselhorst, students of relatively conservative teachers (Schumacher, Tes- T6rten,and elsewhere and hadbegun to supportsettlements of senow, and Bonatz in most cases; Fischer and Poelzig in a few), smalldetached cottages, very rustic-lookingand often provided began their careers in the thirties, most as members of the staff with truck gardensto permit some sort of subsistenceto the of , and prepared under Speer's direction, in the unemployed.After 1933, the LaborFront took over this type last years of the war, plans for the reconstruction of German of housing for a while and touted it as "heimatlich,"close to cities, which they then helped to carryout in the 1950s. Tamms, nativevalues, as exemplifyingthe strainin Nazi ideology that for example, took over the replanning of Diisseldorf in 1948 glorified"blood and soil." But, alsoaccording to Harlanderand and set forth a reconstruction plan, based on those developed Fehl, this housing policy was soon discardedin favor of large under Speer, that was enormously successful and widely ac- apartmentblocks with subsidizedrents, built with modernma- claimed. Gutschow played a similar role in Hamburg, Hille- terialsand technology, but laid out with generousspaces for brecht in Hannover, Wortman in Bremen. All of Durth's pro- large familiesand executedwith many referencesto regional tagonists were sponsors of Modernism after 1945, just as they traditionsand rusticsiting. The design of these "Volkswohn- had to some degree been its protectors during the Third Reich. ungen"(analogous to the "Volkswagen")drew upon the teach- They had learned from their original teachers and ings of the Modernistsof the twentiesand employed their tech- a fondness for technology through working for Speer. Theirs nology;but it rejectedthe Modernists'concern with the "minimal was the Modernism of the Deutsche Werkbund, transformed dwelling,"since this seemedto contradictthe Nazi population by the experiences of the Third Reich, and reenunciated in the policiesthat favored large families. And it was this new housing 1950s. In the fifties, this group were the authors of Germany's policy, developedby the LaborFront for loyal partyservants first postwar steel, concrete, and glass curtain-wall buildings, as and for the troopswho would returnafter the war, that served well as of the reconstruction plans already mentioned. They as the basisfor the furtherdevelopment of Germanpublic hous- became, in the sixties, the teachers of a younger generation, in the 1950s. ing which now "took over their inheritance, without knowing the These areimportant insights into the continuitiesin German history of that inheritance" (p. 382). housing policy, and they have importantimplications for our Durth's is a large and subtle book, based on immense famil- views of architecturalpatronage under the Nazi regimeand its iarity with memoirs and personal recollections of the period of to relationship politicsand ideology. Certainlythey remindus the thirties and forties, on wide reading of architectural pub- thatNazi architecturewas notjust a matterof a few monumental lications from the thirties through the sixties, and on a full buildingscommissioned by Hitlerand designed by AlbertSpeer. knowledge of current research and theory about the nature of The editors' contentionthat "Hitler's'Public Housing' [was]a politics in the Third Reich. Durth is most persuasive as he connectinglink in the uninterruptedline of mass-housingrun- explains how Speer's staff thought of themselves as a techno- from the ning through 'golden'Twenties to the 'grey'Fifties" cratic elite within the Nazi state, and how this self-image en- deservesthe attention respectful of studentsof modernhousing abled them to ignore the horrors of even as they (p. 6). But much more work will need to be done on these helped Speer to organize slave labor, first for the construction issuesbefore we know the whole story:Harlander and Fehl's of Hitler's buildings and then for the conduct of the war. (They book is not a comprehensivestudy of Nazi housingbut, rather, remained on Speer's staff when he became Minister of Arma- a seriesof documents from Der reprinted sozialeWohnungsbau ments and War Production in 1942.) Durth's emphasis on group in the Deutschland, officialjournal of RobertLey as Commis- biography, on treating his protagonists as a generational cohort sionerfor PublicHousing. The documentsare preceded by about with many personal interconnections, often makes for difficult one hundred of pages introductionalong the lines of the ar- reading, since no one life is followed through from start to sketched gument above, and then the documentsthemselves finish, and the organization is chronological rather than the- BOOK REVIEWS 327 matic. But, taken on its own terms, the argumentis striking tendenciesin architecture.... Its few buildingscertainly do and persuasive.Durth has gotten to the heart of the personal not standoutside the continuumof the architecturaldevelop- experiencesof a groupof importantarchitects whose lives have ment of this century"(p. 10). Frankhopes, by investigatingthis been hard to understand.And he performshis task with an point, to redeem Germanarchitecture for architectsand for objectivitythat was not easyto achieve:he writeswith eloquence Germany."Today's anti-," he says,has "turnedagainst of the extremediscomfort of doingresearch on the ThirdReich, the furtheruse of all architecturethat had any contact with becauseone reexperiences"the ordinariness of things."He speaks NationalSocialism" (p. 9). If it is possibleto detacharchitecture of the need to avoidjudging or extolling, and of the dangerof from politics, Franksuggests, it will be possiblefor younger "Bagatellisierungder Banalitit des Bisen" ("trivializingthe ba- Germanarchitects to reclaimtheir rightfulheritage. The book nality of evil," HannaArendt's famous characterization of life attemptsto achieve this goal by comparingNazi architecture in the ThirdReich, p. 16). All researcherson Nazi historyhave to that of other ""regimes, by stressingthe existenceof felt the agony of the effort to be objective;it is good to see Modernismunder each regime, and by emphasizingthe mul- theseproblems restated by anarchitectural historian. Durth stops tiplicityof styles that continuedunder fascism. short of drawingany moralsfrom his story,but they are easy Frank'svolume is a compilationof essayson architecturein to draw.His evidencesheds further light on the politicalnaivete Germany,Italy, Spain, and Vichy France. (Nine of the seventeen of Germanarchitects in the thirties,on their egocentrism,on essaysdeal with Germany.)The essaysare based on papersgiven theirtechnocratic arrogance, and suggests that we mayfind these at a conferenceat the Hochschulefur bildende Kiinste in Ham- qualitiesamong architectsin other times and places. Hence, burg in 1983, which addedgreatly to existing controversyin althoughDurth makes every effort at objectivity,his is a highly Germany.The selection of some contributionsand, in some moralstory. cases,the titles themselvesappear to be intendedto accentuate Yet despite the great virtuesof Durth's book, it is a frag- the controversialnature of the work. So does the advertising mentaryaccount of Nazi architecture,or evenof Nazi architects. for the volume, which stressesshocking juxtapositions: "the The architectswho servedthe Third Reich in other capacities spectrumof examplesreaches from Le Corbusier's'Maison des than as membersof Speer'sstaff (Kreis and Giesler,to mention hommes'to the SS-ComradeshipHousing Development in Ber- only two) make only peripheralappearances. The men of the lin Zehlendorf' (descriptionfrom the backcover of Harlander same generationwho were not seducedby Nazi commissions andFehl). Many of thesepapers seem to havebeen little revised are also absent.The membersof the old guardof conservative for publication,so that they arealmost entirely lacking in doc- architectswho wantedto servethe Third Reich but were not umentation,or in referenceto the principalsecondary literature. welcome (Schmitthenner,Schultze-Naumburg, and to a lesser It is saidthat an Englishedition is planned;if so, I would hope extent Bestelmeyer)are not treatedin any detail.Although he that the controversialtone might abatesomewhat (since what headedthe staffand developedthe policies that are the main is controversialin Germanyis not so controversialin the United focusof the book, Speerhimself is almostabsent. Durth is right States),and that the essayswould be fully documentedfrom to say that too much of the architecturalhistory of the period both primaryand secondarysources. has focusedon Speer,but surelywe need to know more about A few of the essaysare "thinkpieces," intended to set forth him here. Buildingsare also almostentirely absent in this ac- the themesof the book. These includeHartmut Frank's "What count, in contrastto planning.Again, Durth says, too much LanguageDo StonesSpeak?" Marco De Michelis's"Fascist Ar- attention has been paid to the definition of a style of Nazi chitectures"(which gives the book its title), LudovicaScarpa's architecture,and to avoid this it is necessaryto talk aboutin- "The SubjectiveFactor: Architecture and Politicsin the Thir- stitutionsand personalexperiences. Thus Durth's book is a ties," and Chup Freimert's"On the Functionalismof the Aes- history of the experiencesand planning activitiesof a small thetic:Liberation or Anesthesia."Most of the essays,however, group of Speer proteges,without much considerationof the deal with specificcases of architecturalhistory in the thirties. largercontext, and without much considerationof why they Among the most interestingare Winfried Nerdinger, "Temp- receivedthe tasksthey received.Many of the groupknew Speer tation and Dilemma of the Avant Gardein the Mirrorof Ar- through Tessenow and gravitatedto his serviceas a result of chitecturalCompetitions from 1933-35";Gerhard Fehl, "Mod- personalconnection. But why did he choose them? Why not ernismunder the Swastika:An Attemptto Clarifythe Role of others?Were they any good, as architects?Was Speer?Or were FunctionalistArchitecture in the ThirdReich"; Maria-Ida Tala- they all drawntogether through common youth and lack of mona, "ItalianAgrarian Housing in Libya";Carlos Sambricio, experience?These questionsare not addressed,even though "The FascistAlternative: 1936-1945"; sociologicaland political studies on the ThirdReich have shown Jean-LouisCohen, "Vichy:French Building-Culture between that the new regime tended to draw into its serviceprecisely Authoritarianismand Technocracy";Jean-Claude Vigato, untriedyouths without well-formedpersonal or politicalalle- "CompromiseArchitecture: Between Heimatstil, , giances. andModernism"; and Wolfgang Voigt, "The StuttgartSchool HarmutFrank's Faschistische Architekturen (Fascist Architec- and EverydayArchitecture in the Third Reich." The other tures, no. 3 in the Stadt, Planung, Geschichteseries) is also entriesare very brief and narrow in focusor, like GiorgioCiuc- aboutcontinuities, although it hasother agendas as well. While ci's "Paganoand Terragni," retrace extremely well worn ground. Harlanderand Fehl, and Durth, avoid discussionof form and Nearly all the essaysdiscuss the persistenceof some form of style, Frank'svolume energeticallyconcentrates on just these Modernisminto the 1930s. And nearlyall stressthe diversity issues.The main theme of the book, as statedby its editor, is of styles that receivedofficial encouragement from fascistre- that "NationalSocialism had no time to createits own style. gimes. Nerdinger,in a provocativediscussion of Mies's entry ... [It]could only makea purposefulselection from preexisting in the Reichsbankcompetition of 1935, remindsus that many 328 JSAH, L:3, SEPTEMBER 1991

of the GermanModernists would have liked to have had the depressionand war, andwhere governmentbuildings tended to patronageof the Nazi regime,or thoughtthey would for a little be monumental,axial, somber, and dignified,with just a touch while. Fehl discussesthe streamlinedand functionalbuildings of streamlinedarchaism, not unlike the buildingsof Piacentini that HerbertRimpl, Emil Fahrenkamp,Hermann Brenner, and and Speer.This sort of comparisonwould make some partsof Werner Deutschmannerected for industryand for the armed Frank'scase even stronger. forcesduring the ThirdReich. He alsonotes the "programmatic Does this mean,though, that "stonesspeak no language"and eclecticism"favored by the Nazi governmentand points to the that architectureis autonomousfrom politics?Of coursenot. influenceof Modernism-in termsof the absenceof historical Architectureis the most politicalof all the arts.What it does references-even on the most officiallyideological buildings. meanis thatarchitectural form (andarchitects) respond to social The implicationof theseessays, which is madeexplicit by Frank, and politicalforces on severallevels. In an era of extremeeco- De Michaelis,and Scarpa,is that there was no "fasciststyle." nomicand urban crisis, all governmentswanted to reassuretheir Instead,a numberof styles-including a functionalModernism, publicwith dignified,severe, and durable-lookingmajor public a nativistregionalism, and a streamlinedmonumental neoclas- buildings,while at the same time encouragingrustic and re- sicism-persisted and receivedofficial favor under fascist re- gionalstyles that reminded newly urbanizedpopulations of their gimes. These observationspermit Frank to arguethat architec- earlierroots in a preindustrialsociety. These were some of the turalstyle has no politicalmeaning, that stones speak no language, forces that led to a remarkablecommonality in severalstyles and that architecture,in contrastto architects,is thereforerel- and in manycountries during the 1930s and 1940s. ativelyautonomous from politics.The sameargument is made Butthe languageof architectureis alsosituational, the product by De Michaelisand Scarpa. of a specificpolitical situation in a particulartime andplace. To That a variety of architecturalstyles, including some that takethe Nazi caseonly, buildingsdesigned as SS trainingcamps grew out of the InternationalStyle, persistedand won official or for rallies cannot be discussedas if they were favorunder Nazi and fascistregimes, will not surpriseanyone Hilton Hotels or football stadiums.Nazi buildingswere de- who has followed the scholarshipon this periodover the past signedto servethe Nazi politicalprogram and the Nazi world twenty years.I madethe casefor Germanyin 1968, and since view. They were publicizedincessantly in Nazi propagandaas thattime manyAmerican scholars have investigated these issues representativeof the politicalprogram of the ThirdReich. They for Italy: Diane Ghirardo,Dennis Doordan, Spriro Kostof, were intendedas the envelopeswithin which the new National ThomasSchumacher, and HenryA. Millon, to mentiononly a SocialistGemeinschaft would be created,and they functionedto few. That therewere commonalitiesin style amongthe various create it. Speer'sNuremberg Party Groundswere the site of countriesin this periodis also no surprise:Hellmut Lehmann- Hitler'sfulminations against the Jews, andof the nearlyecstatic Hauptand Bruno Zevi talkedabout these commonalitiesin the mass experiencethat permittedGermans to supportwar and fifties, as I did in the sixties and thereafter;the most recent Holocaust.The experiencesthat people have in buildingsare treatmentis FrancoBorsi, TheMonumental Order (New York, not lost from memory;they become historicalfacts in them- 1987). It is perhapsa bit disconcertingto see these pointsmade selves. Hence, Nazi buildings were intended for ideological as if they arenew. But theseviews arerelatively new in German purposes,they functionedthat way, and we must remember scholarship,they are important,and they are well worth con- them that way. If their style is therebycorrupted for future tinued discussion.We might, in fact, extend these generaliza- generations,it is our businessas architecturalhistorians to rec- tions aboutfascist architecture in the 1930s and 1940s by look- ognize that fact. ing atEngland and the UnitedStates, where a formof Modernism BARBARA MILLER LANE flourished independentof the leadersof the InternationalStyle, Bryn Mawr College where regionaltraditions were stronglyrenewed in a time of Wissenschaftskollegzu

AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE

ROBERT M. FOGELSON, America'sArmories: Architecture, stacks:to a shelf of materialon California'surban problems for Society,and Public Order,Cambridge, Mass., and London: Har- TheLos Angeles Riots, part of a serieson MassViolence in Amer- vard xx + 268 44 University Press, 1989, pp., illus. $30.00. ica (1969); to a case of books on police administrationfor Big CityPolice (1977); and to HV90 V, where Violenceand Protest: I learned a good deal about America'sArmories while looking A Studyof Riotsand Ghettoes (1971) sits next to other studiesof for the book in the library. While an architectural historian Violencein Americanhistory (ust afterHV90 P for would Peace). consider this subject a building-type study and shelve it These shelvings suggest the intellectualorientation behind histories of alongside recently published forts, prisons, court- Fogelson'spresentation of the armoryas both product and phys- and state the houses, capitols, Library of Congress catalogue ical symbol of late nineteenth-centuryproperty-holders' fears it with United system places States military history, next to of urbanriot and classwarfare. His other publicationsindicate books on the National Guard.A search for Robert M. Fogelson's thatthe author,a professorof historyand urban studies at MIT, took me to three previous publications other sections of the comes to his subjectfrom a backgroundin the history of do-