5. the Palestine Prefabs: a Case Study
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MIT Press Open Architecture and Urban Studies 5. The Palestine Prefabs: A Case Study Walter Gropius, Walter Gropius, Konrad Wachsmann, Konrad Wachsmann Published on: Apr 23, 2021 License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0) MIT Press Open Architecture and Urban Studies 5. The Palestine Prefabs: A Case Study Germany and Palestine Our story now turns to deal with the importation into Palestine of a number of copper and other German prefabricated houses of various types, and their erection there, in the early years of the Nazi terror. It is a Janus story with two faces: the one an account of industrialized civilization at its height, of technological skill and ingenuity; the other a tale of cynicism and high drama, encompassing the eviction of an ancient people from Germany at a time when their fellow Jews were struggling to establish a homeland in Palestine, then under British mandate. Technics, economics, and politics are inextricably interwoven in this account of a bizarre episode in the history of prefabrication, an episode nevertheless indicative of the turbulent era of the thirties. Bizarre, yes; indicative of the special circumstances of the thirties, certainly—but also a chapter in the history of prefabrication that reiterates a recurrent theme, the theme of prefabrication as a response to crisis situations. The high points in the long story of prefabrication relate to the unusual, the unforseen, the remote, rather than to the norms of settled communities living stable lives. More often than not, prefabrication has flourished in emergency situations: a new colonial settlement, a military outpost, a mining town, a tornado, a war. More often than not in the past two hundred years prefabrication has also been linked to the concept of export, of the satisfaction by the industrial nations of urgent needs elsewhere. The story of the Palestine prefabs is therefore more than an account of a unique situation; it is a well-documented case study that illuminates a much more general situation and casts light on generic possibilities and problems that characterize the movement toward the factory-made house. On 30 January 1933, Hitler became Chancellor of Germany and assumed dictatorial powers five weeks later. The position of the Jews in Germany, already threatened by the growing power of National Socialism in 1932, now became more openly imperiled. The possibility of emigration, which some had considered even in 1932, now became increasingly imperative, and many German Jews turned their eyes toward the Jewish homeland. These headlines of the Palestine Post of Jerusalem of early 1933 tell the story in staccato form. On 12 February, the almost laconic statement: “Jews Begin Exodus from Germany,” is soon followed, on 15 March, by the more poignant “Jews Flee the Nazi Reign of Terror”; and on 16 April we are told that the small, vital, and well-equipped Jewish Yishuv in Palestine has begun active “preparations for German immigrants.”1 Jewish settlement in Palestine was strictly controlled by Great Britain, the mandatory power. Immigration was restricted to a fixed monthly quota; however, 2 MIT Press Open Architecture and Urban Studies 5. The Palestine Prefabs: A Case Study some additional “capitalist” visas were available for those potential immigrants who could muster the required capital sum of £1,000.2 It was to these “capitalist” visas that many of the Jews fleeing Germany aspired. But although the more affluent of the well- established German-Jewish community had no difficulty in raising this sum, German foreign currency controls (even prior to Hitler) prohibited the transfer of such funds overseas. To break this impasse, various agreements were initiated in Palestine; and these “transfer agreements” provide the complex legal and economic framework within which the export of German prefabricated houses to Palestine was to take place. Negotiations for a transfer agreement commenced privately in 1932, before the Nazis came into power but after the imposition of German currency controls.3 These negotiations resulted in an agreement being signed, early in 1933, between Hanotea (a privately owned citrus-growing company in Palestine) and the German Ministry of Economics, “providing for the transfer to Palestine of one million marks belonging to German Jews . .”4 On 18 July 1933, this agreement was extended to three million marks. At this scale it was obviously beyond the scope of a private arrangement, and in August 1933, after extensive negotiations between the Zionist executive, Hanotea, and the German Foreign and Economic Ministries, the Anglo-Palestine Bank (the principal financial institution of the Zionist organization) was recognized by the German Government as “the competent authority in all matters affecting the transfer of Jewish capital from Germany to Palestine.”5 Consequent to this agreement “the Trust and Transfer Office Haavara Ltd. was established in Tel Aviv . to facilitate the emigration of Jews to Palestine by allowing the transfer of their capital in the form of German export goods.”6 In part these transfer agreements solved the problem of the capitalist visa, for “those who deposited their money for transfer were permitted to purchase foreign currency at the Reichsbank to the value of £1,000, to serve as a deposit with the British immigration authorities.”7 For the Nazi government8 the agreement was important for a variety of reasons, some ideological—such as the desire to facilitate emigration of the Jews and thus make Germany Judenrein; some economic—the necessity to encourage exports and thus revive Germany’s industry struggling for rehabilitation in the wake of the defeat of 1918, the political and economic chaos of the twenties, and the depression of the early thirties; and some political—the desire to deflect the planned economic boycott, by which liberal forces in the west hoped to moderate Germany’s vicious antisemitism. For the Zionists9 the agreement posed a tragic dilemma—economic cooperation with the hated Nazis in order to save Jewish souls. Despite the crises of conscience and 3 MIT Press Open Architecture and Urban Studies 5. The Palestine Prefabs: A Case Study ideological conflicts which these agreements engendered in both the Nazi and Zionist camps, the transfer agreement grew in scope and importance over the years. In the period 1933 to 1939 some 60,000 German Jews emigrated to Palestine, and a total sum of over £8,000,000 (over $40 million) was transferred,10 the German share of the Palestine market growing from less than 10 percent in 1932 to 16.53 percent in 1937.11 At first the whole range of German industrial output was included in the agreement, and thus, it is significant to note, building components and building materials. The implications of this for the prospective emigrant to Palestine were great, as was realized by both Germans and Jews. As early as 7 September 1933, the Palestine Post pointed out a special provision of the transfer agreement whereby “those who wish to build a home in Palestine may pay sums of up to 50,000 marks per person into another ‘special account’ which shall also be used to pay for deliveries of German goods to Palestine.”12 Until 1936 (when as a result of its rearmament program Germany limited the exportation of strategic materials, including all metallic goods),13 this fund enabled a large number of German migrants to Palestine to purchase building materials and components in Germany for use in their new homeland. It also enabled a number to purchase complete prefabricated houses, in component form, for shipment to Haifa, prefabricated houses that were manufactured in Germany and ultimately assembled in Palestine. It is perhaps appropriate to recall how, two years earlier, the Russians had sought, in their contacts with Gropius, to come to a somewhat similar arrangement. The transfer of prefabricated copper houses to Russia, which they had then proposed, was also intended to solve two simultaneous problems: the housing shortage, and the difficulties with foreign currency exchange. Although the instances are by no means identical, there are intriguing parallels. The history of prefabrication has been described14 as a record of successful response to the challenge of recurring crises, when local demand exceeds the local capacity to supply. These enabling conditions certainly applied to the situation in Palestine in 1933. The housing position had already been critical for some years, especially in urban areas, where an occupancy of 2.3 persons per room was further aggravated by the poor, often improvised, condition of the housing stock. “In Palestine even today,” an informed commentator wrote in 1933, “a considerable proportion of the urban population is still housed below the minimum standard conditions in temporary wooden barracks, tents, etc.”15 With a rapidly growing urban population, due both to natural increase and a much accelerated immigration flow, expected to reach 35,000 in 4 MIT Press Open Architecture and Urban Studies 5. The Palestine Prefabs: A Case Study 1933, it was estimated that at least 17,000 to 18,000 further rooms were urgently required. To meet this demand, a considerable increase in building activity took place— in Tel Aviv and Haifa, building output increased fivefold. The consequences of this building boom16 were immediate and predictable: building costs shot up; land values soared; a chronic labor shortage was especially felt in the building industry, and skilled tradesmen were at a premium; and, despite a growing emphasis on the local production of building materials, critical shortages generated an enormous increase in the importation of building materials—especially cement, timber, and structural steel— from overseas.17 Much of this material, as we have noted, was imported from Germany, by means of the transfer agreement. Both in Palestine and in Germany18 the realization grew that the crisis conditions in Palestine housing produced at least a potential market for prefabricated housing, for which the technical infrastructure already existed, as we have shown, in Germany, and for which the transfer agreement could provide the necessary financial framework.