Review of Hitlers Sozialer Wohnungsbau 1940-1945

Bryn Mawr College Scholarship, Research, and Creative Work at Bryn Mawr College Growth and Structure of Cities Faculty Research Growth and Structure of Cities and Scholarship 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] Let us know how access to this document benefits ouy . Follow this and additional works at: http://repository.brynmawr.edu/cities_pubs Part of the Architecture Commons, History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons, and the Urban Studies and Planning Commons 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 baroque. 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 GERMANY 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 Nazism 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 Modernism context of German society and politics during the Third Reich. lastedinto the 1930s, or that somethingof Nazi architecture 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 history of architecture. 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 Aachen. 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 Weimar Republic;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

Load more