41 A 1 A 1 ::. A .r. %ft L Beyond the Bauhaus Social History, Popular Culture, and Politics in Germany Kathleen Canning, Series Editor Recent Titles Three-Way Street: Jews, Germans, and the Transnational Jay H. Gellar and Leslie Morris, Editors Beyond the Bauhaus: Cultural Modernity in Breslau, 1918-33 Deborah Ascher Barnstone Stop Reading! Look! Modern Vision and the Weimar Photographic Book Pepper Stetler The Corrigible and the Incorrigible: Science, Medicine, and the Convict in Twentieth-Century Germany Greg Eghigian An Emotional State: The Politics of Emotion in Postwar West German Culture Anna M. Parkinson Beyond Berlin: Twelve German Cities Confront the Nazi Past Gavriel D. Rosenfeld and Paul B. Jaskot, Editors Consumption and Violence: Radical Protest in Cold-War West Germany Alexander Sedlmaier Communism Day-to-Day: State Enterprises in East German Society Sandrine Kott Envisioning Socialism: Television and the Cold War in the German Democratic Republic Heather L. Gumbert The People's Own Landscape: Nature, Tourism, and Dictatorship in East Germany Scott Moranda German Colonialism Revisited: African, Asian, and Oceanic Experiences Nina Berman, Klaus Muhlhahn, and Patrice Nganang, Editors Becoming a Nazi Town: Culture and Politics in Gottingen between the World Wars David Imhoof Germany's Wild East: Constructing Poland as Colonial Space Kristin Kopp Colonialism, Antisemitism, and Germans of Jewish Descent in Imperial Germany Christian S. Davis Africa in Translation: A History of Colonial Linguistics in Germany and Beyond, 1814-1945, Sara Pugach Between National Socialism and Soviet Communism: Displaced Persons in Postwar Germany, Anna Holian Dueling Students: Conflict, Masculinity, and Politics in German Universities, 1890-1914 Lisa Fetheringill Zwicker The Golem Returns: From German Romantic Literature to Global Jewish Culture, 1808-2008, Cathy S. Gelbin German Literature on the Middle East: Discourses and Practices, 1000-1989 Nina Berman Franz Radziwill and the Contradictions of German Art History, 1919-45 James A. van Dyke For a complete list of titles, please see www.press.umich.edu Beyond the Bauhaus Cultural Modernity in Breslau, 1918-33 DEBORAH ASCHER BARNSTONE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS Ann Arbor Copyright © Deborah Ascher Barnstone 2016 All rights reserved This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and io8 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publisher. Published in the United States of America by the University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America O Printed on acid-free paper 2019 2018 2017 2016 4 3 2 1 A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Barnstone, Deborah Ascher, author. Title: Beyond the Bauhaus : cultural modernity in Breslau, 1918-33 / Deborah Ascher Barnstone. Description: Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, [2016] 1 Series: Social history, popular culture, and politics in Germany I Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 20160108651 ISBN 9780472119905 (hardcover : acid-free paper) I ISBN 9780472121946 (e-book) Subjects: LCSH: Wroclaw (Poland)-Civilization-2oth century. I Wroclaw (Poland)- Intellectual life-2oth century. I Modernism (Aesthetics)-Poland-Wroclaw-History-2oth century. I Arts, German-Poland-Wroclaw-History-2oth century. I City and town life- Poland-Wroclaw-History-2oth century. I Bauhaus-Influence-History. I Germany- Intellectual life-2oth century. I Germany-History-1918-1933. Classification: LCC DK4780.2 .B37 2016 I DDC 709.438/52-dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016010865 To my beloved husband, Robert, and children, Alexi and Maya  Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Breslau and the Culture of the Weimar Republic 1 1 Tradition and Modernity: Urban Planning in Breslau 22 2 Another Way to Understand Modernism: Breslau Wohnung und Werkbund Ausstellung 1929 51 3 The Breslau Academy of Fine and Applied Arts 81 4 Dissemination of Taste: Breslau Collectors, Arts Associations, and Museums 108 5 Between Idealism and Realism: Architecture in Breslau 133 6 A Nonideological Modernism: Breslau Artists in the 1920s 162 Epilogue 196 Notes 207 Bibliography 237 Index 245  Acknowledgments I first heard of the city of Breslau as a child from my father, Abraham Ascher, who was born there. I must confess, however, that for decades the city re- mained only a remote name since my father's family had all fled or been mur- dered by the Nazis, and Breslau after the war became Wroclaw, a Polish city situated behind the Iron Curtain that was virtually inaccessible to those of us in the West. Indeed, I knew shamefully little of my father's Heimatstadt until my father decided to author his own study on the city, specifically on the Jewish community that had resided there during the Nazi period between 1933 and 1941. It was, in fact, toward the final stages of producing his book that my fa- ther called one day to inform me that he had discovered material of art histori- cal interest that might prove interesting to me. He sent me a small collection of official Nazi correspondence from 1935-37 about the extraordinary art Nazi officials had discovered in private Jewish collections in Breslau. My father was correct; the letters were a revelation, although not precisely for the reasons that he had anticipated. For, as I researched Breslau, I soon discovered that it had been home to an extraordinary community of forward-thinking people during the 1920s who were arts patrons but also artists, architects, and urban design- ers, many of whom are still world renowned today. Equally exciting was the discovery that almost none of this history had been documented or dissemi- nated in any language, much less in the English-speaking world. Thus, I have to thank my father first and foremost for this project. As with any book-length study there are innumerable people who offered support, advice, and expertise along the way. Franziska Bollerey enthusiasti- cally encouraged me to pursue the project when I was formulating the idea for the book. The German Academic Exchange Service, Washington State Univer- sity Saupe Fund for Excellence, the Technical University Delft, and University of Technology Sydney Centre for Contemporary Design Practice helped defray x Acknowledgments the costs of traveling to Germany and Poland in order to conduct the necessary archival research. The archivists at the Wroclaw state archive, University of Wroclaw Library, the Ethnographic Museum, and the Architecture Museum in Wroclaw gave me invaluable help locating materials and permitted me to pho- tocopy enormous quantities of material relevant to my work. I owe a special thanks to Jerzy Ilkosz, Piotr Lukaszewicz, and Juliet Golden. Juliet was in- domitable chasing down images and permissions for me. Beate Strtkuhl at the Bundesinstitut fur Kultur und Geschichte der Deutschen im 6stlichen Europa pointed me in the right direction at the beginning of the research and gener- ously shared some excellent resource material from her institute with me. The archivists at the German National Museum in Nuremburg; Staatsbibliothek in Berlin; the Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz; the Werkbund Archive; the Bau- haus Archive; and the Academy of the Arts, in particular Heidemarie Bock; Petra Albrecht; Tanja Morgenstern; and Dr. Eva-Marie Barkofen went beyond the call of duty in order to offer assistance. In addition to sitting in archives and libraries, I was fortunate to be able to interview several people who offered vital perspectives on Breslau; the inter- view with Brigitte Wurtz, Oskar Moll's daughter, helped me understand the cultural milieu in Breslau during the 1920s as well as the outstanding art made by both her parents; the interview with Chaim Haller about his wife Ruth's fa- ther, Ismar Littmann, provided me with important insights into collecting in Breslau; Walter Laqueur shared some key memories; and the lawyer Willi Korte helped me understand the complex nature of looted art research and recovery. Portions of three chapters were previously published as articles. Part of chapter 4, "The Breslau Academy of Fine and Applied Arts," was published in the Journal of Architectural Education; part of chapter 6, "Between Idealism and Realism: Architecture in Breslau," was published in the New German Cri- tique; and part of chapter 5, "Dissemination of Taste: Breslau Collectors, Art Associations, and Museums," was published in The Art Journal. In addition, much of the material in this book was initially tested in academic conference presentations, from which I received detailed and valuable feedback. These included the German Studies Association and the Association of Art Historians of Great Britain. The two readers for University of Michigan Press, professors Elizabeth Otto and Claire Zimmerman, both gave the manuscript a thorough reading, delivering extremely insightful and helpful criticism and direction at a crucial time in the project. Without their tough but thoughtful comments, the book would have been far weaker indeed. Lastly, I would like to thank my husband, Acknowledgments xi Robert, and my children, Alexander and Maya, who all tolerated my obsession with Breslau, my frequent absences, and hours upon hours spent glued to my computer. My children are convinced that I cannot survive without my laptop! Without their love and support, I would not have completed this book. As with every such endeavor, the strengths exist because of the many people who sup- ported me. As to the faults-I have no one to blame but myself.  Introduction: Breslau and the Culture of the Weimar Republic "The very intricacy and variety of Weimar culture, and the tensions it con- tains, have made it the archetypal emblem of what we understand by modernity." -Detlev Peukert, The Weimar Republic In 1899, a Prussian official approached Theo von Gosen, a young sculptor who was to become one of Breslau's most important artists, to suggest that he con- sider a teaching career at the Breslau Academy of Fine and Applied Arts.' Von Gosen politely refused, thinking, as he recalled decades later, "So far back there? Somewhere? Never!"2 But Breslau's lure proved more powerful than von Gosen expected. Twice more, in 1903 and 1905, architect Hans Poelzig, a "strange looking, out-of-place, black haired" man, tried to recruit him to the Academy. By Poelzig's third attempt in 1905, von Gosen reluctantly decided to give Breslau a try, largely because it was proving impossible to break into Munich's art market. Like many of his contemporaries, von Gosen saw Breslau as a remote backwater at the fringes of civilization, where no art of conse- quence was-or could be-produced. But when he got there, he discovered a rich, varied, and supportive arts community whose composition illustrates the diversity of the era's German culture, along with its complex and diverging paths to cultural modernity. The connection between Weimar Germany and cultural modernity has been axiomatic since Walter Laqueur, Peter Gay, and, more recently, scholars like Detlev Peukert and Eric Weitz penned their seminal studies.3 Despite a recent explosion of scholarship on Weimar cultural history, however, much remains to be explored.4 What were the different paths to "cultural moder- nity"? How did modern German cultural expression vary? Was that variety consistent throughout Germany, or were there differences between Berlin, the 2 Beyond the Bauhaus capital, and regional cities like Breslau? What was the relationship between Berlin and other German cities in the realm of cultural production? To answer these questions and more, this study explores the polyvalent and contradictory nature of cultural production in Breslau, in order to expand the cultural and geographic scope of Weimar history. As Andrew McElligott, John Bingham, and others affirm, Peukert's de- scription of the multiplicity of experiences and the complex nature of moder- nity in Weimar Germany continues to suggest new avenues of scholarly ex- ploration. Recent work by historians Kathleen Canning, Young-Sun Hong, and Adelheid von Saldern explores overlooked dimensions of Weimar mo- dernity such as the changing roles of women, alterations in the social welfare state, and the relationship between social reform and housing programs. Contributors to Weimar Germany question visual and mass culture, open Weimar studies to investigations of transnational aspects of German culture, and probe the role that the body and nature played in German society.5 McEl- ligott and the contributors to his Weimar Germany take the presence of "on- going tension between the different paths to modernization" as a central con- dition of Germany in the 1920s.6 Ultimately, as Karl Christian Fuhrer argues, the representation of Weimar as a "golden age" of German avant-garde cul- ture ignores certain realities. Rescuing the world of lowbrow culture, conser- vative tastes, and tradition from obscurity, he persuasively asserts that "the cultural life of the republic emerges as less spectacular and less experimental than it appears in many accounts."' While Fuhrer clearly has a particular form of culture in mind, his statement nevertheless holds true for other areas of Weimar culture, which were far more varied and less spectacular than many previous accounts suggest. The subject of this book, the arts community in the city of Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland), was one of those sites of variety. While Breslau was never as popular among artists as smaller cities like Dresden and Hamburg, by the late 1920s it had morphed from von Gosen's unap- pealing and ambiguous "somewhere" to an important center for art and culture. Yet its history remains virtually unknown. Breslau's sheer size as the sixth largest German city after Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Dresden, and Cologne, with a population exceeding 6oo,ooo by the end of the Wei- mar era, presents a strong argument in favor of critical attention. The abundance of talent that gathered there between 1918 and 1933, the vari- ety of its experimentation, and the activities of its arts institutions cement that argument. Introduction 3 Breslau Breslau was the capital of the eastern Prussian province of Silesia, a distinct region at the margins of East Prussia. The city is located approximately 180 miles east of Berlin, on the Oder River at the junction of two major historic trade routes, the Amber Road and the Via Regia (Royal Highway).8 The Amber Road was the north/south riverine route along which amber was shipped from its origins in northern territories to ports in the south, while the east/west Via Regia connected the eastern regions that produced fur, honey, and wax with coastal Europe to the west. The earliest residents of what became Breslau seem to have settled on islands in the Oder, which likely served as staging points for river crossings but also offered natural defenses against en- emies on both banks. From the early Middle Ages, if not earlier, Breslau's loca- tion made it a center for regional and international commerce and trade. Breslau sits at the intersection of several principalities and empires but is the seat of none. For much of the city's early history, it regularly changed hands between Bohemian, Piast, and Polish princes; Germanic people began to settle there after the expulsion of the Mongolians in 1241. The city's location, coupled with its commerce-oriented economy, at- tracted people with different ethnic backgrounds from all over the region. By the late Middle Ages, these political fluctuations and their attendant population shifts had given Breslau a multiethnic character, which it retained into the twentieth century. This ethnic mix likely helped make Breslau more accepting of outsiders than other German cities. Breslau, Germany, and Art Breslau became part of what would later be Germany in 1741, when Frederick the Great of Prussia annexed the city during the War of the Austrian Succession. This initially led to over a century of territorial conflict between Prussia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which may be one reason so little art was produced there, as Breslau residents were preoccupied with basic survival amidst the tur- bulence. The territorial disputes subsided only after German unification in 1871, making Breslau a late addition to Prussia, a fact that helps explain the city's long history of marginal identity in relationship to the rest of Germany.9 This sense of marginality haunted Breslau throughout the 1920s and con- tinues to haunt its status as a subject of historical inquiry. As late as the mid- 4 Beyond the Bauhaus Fig. i. Downtown Breslau looking at Adolf Rading's Mohrenapotheke (1927) on the right and historic fabric. 1920s, art historian and critic Franz Landsberger still felt the need to defend his home against disparagement, though by then Breslau, its artists, and its cultural institutions had received national and international attention. Landsberger and his contemporaries felt that Breslau would not overcome its stigma as a mar- ginal city until it was recognized as a German cultural center, or Kunststadt. In 1925, Landsberger wrote, "That Breslau is altogether an art city [Kunststadt], and an art city of the highest rank, is known by very few people outside of Silesia. 'Colony' is what one says in the West and understands by that a region whose art is the product of the old Germany of decades past and that quality also lags far behind."'O Landsberger's lament resonated, despite the growing national attention bestowed on Breslau after 1918, when Breslau art news be- gan to be regularly included in national journals like Kunst und Kiinstler (Art and Artists) and Das Kunstblatt (The Art Paper) and art from Breslau collec- tions was displayed in exhibitions at major Berlin, Dresden, and Hamburg mu- Introduction Fig. 2. View of Breslau's historic downtown. Much is as it was in the 1920S (photo by Klearchos Kapoutsis / Flickr). seums and galleries. Still, most Germans outside Silesia viewed Breslau as an unsophisticated hinterland well into the late 1920s. Because Breslau was ceded to Poland after the Second World War, its place in German cultural history has been little examined until recently, espe- cially by non-German scholars." This lacuna is partly due to the difficulty of accessing Polish archives during the Cold War; only since 1990 has Breslau and its archives truly opened to scholars from the West. But art historians, in particular, have also overlooked Breslau precisely because of its history: for centuries Breslau and Silesian artists of note left for cities like Berlin, Munich, Dresden, and DUsseldorf, which had prestigious arts communities and long traditions of aristocratic patronage of the arts. Breslauers who made their ca- reers elsewhere include the painters Adolf Dressler and Adolf von Menzel, and the architects Martin Dlffer and Carl Gotthard Langhans. But if Breslau did not have a significant arts community before the twentieth century, its status altered dramatically for a brief period between 1918 and 1933, when the city was able to retain local artists and attract talent from all over Germany." If John Bingham's assessment of Weimar Germany as the "republic of cities" is correct, then an examination of the cultural scene in major regional 6 Beyond the Bauhaus cities like Breslau is fundamental to a full understanding of the period. Bing- ham is referring to the central role played by urbanization and the urban ex- perience in the German state during the 1920s.13 Demographic data supports his claim. In 1870, two-thirds of the German population lived in the country- side, and one-third lived in cities. By 1925, those proportions had reversed: two-thirds of Germans lived in urban areas, half of them in a Groistadt (city with over 500,000 residents) like Breslau.'1 But although urban living was the norm for most Germans in the 1920s, and, as Bingham points out, con- temporary demographics and politics made Weimar cities the locus of social reform, housing innovations, important arts academies, ground-breaking ex- hibitions, exciting public and private collections, and local cultural activities, there is no comprehensive literature to date on the cultural character of cities other than Berlin even though Germany's population was highly urbanized by the late 1920s. Approximately two-thirds of all Germans lived in a city at that time. Jennifer Jenkins's outstanding Provincial Modernity examines the relationship between culture and liberal politics in a single city, Hamburg, but its historical purview is pre-Weimar. Existing studies of Breslau have a limited focus, concentrating on one aspect of its culture, like Petra Hilscher's history of the Breslau arts academy or a single artist, like Dieter Posselt's book on Otto Mueller, rather than providing a broad overview of the city's cultural context.15 Although it is tempting to view the cultural scene in Breslau as a regional phenomenon, that would be too simplistic. Self-conscious regionalism cer- tainly existed in Breslau, just as it did in many parts of Germany from around 1890, as demonstrated in recent studies by Celia Applegate, Alon Confino, and Jennifer Jenkins.16 The Heimat movement, with its focus on local and regional crafts, folklore, landscape, and history, was an integral part of the Breslau cul- tural landscape between 1918 and 1933. Like other German cities such as Hamburg, Breslau also created a myth of unique identity, used by politicians during the 1920s to argue for increased federal funding for everything from housing estates to special exhibitions, and to try to attract newcomers. After 1945, a spate of nostalgic books about the city-including Niels van Holst's Breslau-ein Buch der Erinnerungen (1950) and Ernst Scheyer's Breslau-so wie es war (1975)-reinforced that identity myth.'7 However, looking at the Breslau case purely through the lens of regional identity overlooks the impor- tant role played by avant-garde and experimental work, as well as the influence of the strong connections between Breslau and Berlin. Though the avant-garde never comprised a majority of Breslau's artists, by the 1920s a sizeable avant-garde community had collected there, counting In troductionl 7 B RE SLAU. 1 u hw-Nt, 4 N.. ~'> _ >'. K&NN 1" BUR Jj N D Fig. 3. Map of Breslau (Wikipedia). among its members artists, architects, urban designers, musicians, composers, poets, dramaturges, and novelists. This community tended to keep strong pro- fessional ties to Berlin: the architects Hans Scharoun and Adolf Rading main- tained an office there; artists like Otto Mueller and Oskar Moll worked with Berlin galleries and publishers; architects and urban designers like Scharoun and Ernst May submitted designs to national competitions and exhibitions; art- ists, architects, and urban designers held memberships in national organiza- tions like the Berlin-based Bu~nd Deuischer Archilekien (Society of German Architects); and many Breslau artists depended on Berlin for commissions, sales, and exposure, even when they lived and created in Breslau. Although the local and regional cultural press published articles about Breslau projects, they also appeared in national journals like Kunst and Kiinstler, Dais Kunstblatt, Die Form (Form), and Deutsche Bauwelt (German Building World), many of which 8 Beyond the Bauhaus were based in Berlin. Thus, the relationship between Breslau and Berlin, not to mention the rest of Germany, always played a part in determining the nature of Breslau modernism. Some aspects of Breslau cultural production did have a regional dimen- sion. In the context of national cultural politics, for example, Breslau argued that the unique identity of both city and region justified enhanced federal sup- port for cultural events.18 The contemporary literature is full of articles about the East and how unique it is. At the same time, Breslau presented itself as a bastion of German cultural values pitted against a threatening Polish neighbor. The underlying message was mixed: Breslau was both different from and sim- ilar to other German cities, unique because of its location in East Prussia yet representative of German-ness itself. Breslau thus fits recent models of region- alism, which, as Eric Storm points out, consider regional identity as a constitu- ent part of national identity rather than a totally separate construction.19 These models frame Breslau less as a distinct regional phenomenon than as one piece of a larger national condition with regional inflections. As schol- ars like Sabine Hake and Eric Weitz have argued, "intricacy and variety" were themselves the national norm during the 1920s.20 It is thus more accurate to speak of regional tolerance for a variety of approaches to modernism in Bres- lau than of a regionally determined modernism. Many of the artists who con- gregated in Breslau, like Hans Poelzig, Adolf Rading, Hans Scharoun, Oskar Moll, and Oskar Schlemmer, remarked on this tolerance.21 Poelzig attributed it to Breslau's marginal status, distance from Berlin, and history as a multieth- nic location, which he believed made the average Breslau citizen more com- fortable with difference.22 However, it is equally likely that what passed for tolerance was simply lack of interest. The city's indifference to culture and cultural institutions was legendary and a constant topic among the cultural elites of the 1920s. But if ordinary Breslauers were either tolerant of or indifferent to the art- ists in their midst, those artists and their supporters nevertheless epitomized the rich and heterogeneous cultural innovation of the period through extraordinary achievements like Ernst May's early Weimar housing developments, extensive art collections like that of Ismar Littmann, nationally recognized exhibitions like the 1929 Werkbund-sponsored Wohnung und Werkraum Ausstellung (Liv- ing and Workspace Exhibition), and the international reputation of the Breslau Academy of Fine and Applied Arts. Furthermore, the visual culture produced in Breslau, which ran the gamut from traditional to avant-garde, shows the great variety of the time and demonstrates that experimentation was taking place across Weimar-era Germany, not just in Berlin. Introduction 9 Much of the most interesting work, however, reflected a cultural variety that neither pushed the boundaries of experiment nor conformed to the expectations of tradition. Breslauers negotiated a set of cultural dichotomies that are familiar to historians: tradition and modernity, city and country, center and periphery, lo- cal and regional, regional and international. To these, we can add two other di- chotomies that Karl Ditt observed in the production of German culture: the di- vides between high culture and the avant-garde, on the one hand, and high culture and regionalist culture, on the other.23 High culture comprises the cultural prod- ucts with the highest status and is usually synonymous with the culture of the intelligentsia and aristocracy. The avant-garde pushes the boundaries of art and culture by attacking their norms and conventions. According to Ditt, the German avant-garde attacked high culture in order to destroy outmoded aesthetic norms and open the way for experimentation. At the same time, regionalists reacted against the elitism and internationalism of high culture to advocate a local- and tradition-bound Volkskunst (People's Art). The resulting three-way tug-of-war led, in cities like Breslau, to heterogeneous art and culture, threaded with varying degrees of avant-garde, high art, and regional values. Modernization and Art in Breslau The story of Breslau's brief ascent from unimportant outpost to Kunststadt begins as early as German unification in 1871 but intensifies with the changes brought about by the end of World War I, albeit at different rates in different fields. The modernization of art education can be said to begin with the hiring of progressive architect Hans Poelzig as director of the Academy of Fine and Applied Arts, as Heinrich Lauterbach asserts in Poelzig, Endell, Moll und die Breslauer Kunstakademie 1911-1932. 1916 stands out as a marquee year for collecting: at least two key figures, Ismar Littmann and Max Silberberg, began to purchase art that year; the Museum of Fine Arts hired a progressive director, Heinz Braune, in part to expand its contemporary holdings; and from that point onward, collecting contemporary art became increasingly popular. Across the board, change accelerated and magnified after the signing of the Armistice. Breslau's descent back into cultural obscurity corresponds with the crash of 1929 and the resulting economic austerity measures in 1932 and 1933. These correlations are not coincidental: the interwar political and economic situation in Germany as a whole, and Silesia and Breslau in particular, created opportu- nities for artists, arts organizations, and patrons and then took those opportuni- ties away. 10 Beyond the Bauhaus Across the country, the economic stress before currency stabilization in 1924 had a profound effect on the arts. Architects had neither public nor private commissions and building construction came to a virtual halt. With little capi- tal available for luxuries like art, the private purchases of the well-to-do stalled, while public museums were so strapped for cash that they too ceased collect- ing. For the first six years of the Republic, it was difficult to earn a living as an artist anywhere in Germany, and it was even harder in traditional art centers like Munich and Berlin, where there was stiff competition for reduced funds.24 These challenges made Breslau more appealing than it might have been in bet- ter economic times. Paradoxically, the economic difficulties also created opportunities. World War I generated tremendous population dislocations, especially among the least economically advantaged. Breslau's population surged after 1918, creat- ing an intense demand for new and affordable housing. The Weimar federal government supported public housing efforts and passed national policies de- signed to increase the affordable housing stock. Between 1919 and 1929, the Silesian provincial government and Breslau municipal government joined a series of provincial and local housing initiatives. The resulting demand for municipal architects drew talented people to the city. The first important city architect, progressive Max Berg, actually arrived in 1908, before the First World War; he was quickly followed by Richard Konwiarz, Albert Kempter, and Paul Heim, but the surge in commissions only occurred after 1918. In 1919, Theo Effenberger left private practice to work with the city since there was more work available for municipal architects. Internationally acclaimed architect Ernst May accepted his post at the Silesian Homesteads in 1919, be- ginning a series of highly significant but little-known experimental housing developments in and around Breslau. The altered political landscape after 1918 also affected the Breslau cul- tural scene. Programs like the Campaign to Resettle Silesia in the early 1920s were a direct response to the new political reality in Silesia and reflected the German government's desire to populate the region with more Germans.25 The resettlement campaign added to the existing housing demand and created even more need for civic architects and urban planners. This work was relatively new, with few existing precedents and tremendous potential for innovation and experimentation. In the 1920s, Weimar political turbulence generated hopes for cultural renewal and change. Beginning in 1918, the Rat Geistiger Arbeit (Council for Intellectual Work), a group of Breslau artists and architects, agitated for citi- zens' working councils and arts reform.26 Their program called for the reform Introduction II of arts education and museums, the opening of public commissions to free- lance artists and architects, more public support of the arts, and the conjoining of art and life. In light of Germany's altered political situation, members envi- sioned the birth of a totally new art that would reflect the values of democratic society and serve all Germans, not just the elite. "Only with democracy as the foundation for our public life is the political, economic and spiritual develop- ment of man possible," they proclaimed, in one of the series of papers they produced, whose central theme was the role Silesian art and culture might play in improving Silesian life and rebuilding Silesia.27 The group's focus was Sile- sian art and architecture; they hoped to use the postwar reconstruction as an opportunity to elevate Silesian artistic production from the inferior status they believed it held in Wilhelmine Germany. While the Rat Geistiger Arbeit ini- tially seems to have had a broad cultural agenda, from the fine arts to handi- craft to manners and social behavior, in later manifestoes (after 1919) the group advocates removing any "public institutions that inhibit or fragment in- tuitive powers" and is concerned with "creative idealism" and raising "spiritual values over material ones," rather than concepts more commonly associated with progressive thought, like rationalism, technology, and economy.28 The Breslau group was not the only such group in Germany, but it was more explicit about the connections between art, political reform, and the reinvention of Germany as a democracy than similar organizations. The Rat Geistiger Arbeit was both broader and narrower in its interests than, for in- stance, the Berlin-based Arbeitsrat fur Kunst (Workers' Council for Art). On the one hand, the Rat Geistiger Arbeit was concerned with a wide range of cultural activities, including public education; public access to cultural assets through libraries, cultural centers, and theaters; and the preservation of art and cultural capital.29 In contrast, the Arbeitsrat fur Kunst was primarily in- terested in issues related to fine art. On the other hand, the Rat Geistiger Arbeit was parochial; it was only concerned with art and culture in Silesia, not greater Germany. After 1918, Breslau artists, patrons, and art professionals operated in the space between the progressive and traditional aesthetic positions that competed in Weimar cultural debates. Contemporary artists and architects identified spe- cific conditions in Breslau that made it possible to produce art with such an immense aesthetic range. Hans Poelzig, Adolf Rading, and Hans Scharoun pointed to the atmosphere, climate, and cultural tolerance of eastern Germany, which they thought fostered a different approach to contemporary challenges.30 Poelzig describes Silesia as a "unique territory, a different atmosphere, that has to do with the certain disposition of the people-who without much, are quick 12 Beyond the Bauhaus tiI Fig. 4. Adolf Rading House for the Weissenhofsiedlung Stuttgart (1927) (Akademie der Kunste, Berlin). to fathom, friendly and accommodating."3 Poelzig paints a picture of Silesians as affable but independent people, neither susceptible to nor threatened by out- side influences. Mario Krammer writes, "On the ground of this eastern Ger- many a different wind blows and a different man matures here from that in the West . . . there is no tradition-bound world like in the old Heimat rather there is space for the ordering and constructing will."' This sense of openness and ac- ceptance distinguished Breslau from cultural centers like Munich and Berlin, where artists often felt constrained by tradition, which they either had to con- form to or react against. Breslau's size may also have made it a desirable place to live and work. It was difficult for young artists to get started in cities like Berlin and Munich, which had large and well-known art establishments.33 Ignatius Taschner, who briefly taught in Breslau, writes that in "Munich, none of the young people landed on their feet," whereas in Breslau there were opportunities for young artists.34 Landsberger points out that Breslau also offered a measure of quiet in which artists could contemplate their work and develop their talents.3' This was not so much a consequence of size, for Breslau was a large city, but of the Introduction 13 7 .. I Fig. 5. Adolf Rading's house on Stifterstrasse in Breslau (1920) (Akad- emie der Kunste, Berlin). cultural scene, which was less active and thus allowed more time and space for artists to do their work and make their mark. Breslau never hosted a "movement." Practitioners of expressionism and Neue Sachlichkeit and members of Blaue Reiter and Briicke rallied in other German cities. Some members of these groups eventually went to Breslau, like Bricke artist Otto Mueller and Neue Sachlichkeit artist Alexander Kanoldt. But they were often at the fringes of their movements. Mueller never fully con- formed to Bricke ideology or aesthetics and was something of an eccentric loner. Kanoldt too kept to himself: cantankerous and combative, he was not the sort who fit well into groups and his art was idiosyncratic. Furthermore, these artists went to Breslau to assert their independence. Oskar Schlemmer left the Dessau Bauhaus for Breslau because he objected to the direction the Bauhaus was taking and wanted greater freedoms. Breslau's tolerant atti- tude, underscored above by von Gosen, Poelzig, and Rading, made such free- doms possible.7 14 Beyond the Bauhaus Fig. 6. Erich Mendelsohn's Petersdorff department store (1929) (Wiki- pedia courtesy of Arch2aI). Breslau artists did not suffer from lack of imagination or daring. They simply did not believe in the absolutes represented by the opposing positions in Weimar cultural debates. Breslau art historian Franz Landsberger may have correctly appraised the situation when he wrote in 1927 that "art advances it- self through oppositions."38 In Landsberger's opinion, artists vacillate between ideas as a way of exploring options and discovering new modes of expression, often using one idea as a foil for developing fresh approaches. Thus, we might define artists equally by what they do and what they do not do. Marg Moll, an accomplished sculptress and wife of painter Oskar Moll, observes that "in Breslau at that time there was a hotly contested artistic climate," characterized both by open conflicts between artists and by the ideological struggles of indi- vidual artists. 9 Adolf Rading in particular left a detailed record of his personal battles and changing outlook over time.'() But while Breslau artists took differ- Introduction 15 Fig. 7. Alexander Kanoldt, Still Life (Schlesisches Mu- seum zu Girlitz). ent positions relative to Weimar debates, they did share certain core beliefs: they were generally uncomfortable with technological advances, but accepted that technology was here to stay; they believed in rational thinking, but not at the expense or exclusion of intuitive insight; they had faith in the present and future, but in connection with, not separate from, the past; and they shared a worldview that privileged natural human impulses over mechanistic meta- phors. In other words, Breslauers were profoundly uneasy with the changes brought about by modernity and modernization even as they embraced the new possibilities they ushered in. Tensions in Breslau: Case Studies In The Weimar Republic, Peukert argues that if "abrupt changes and sectoral imbalances can be expected to occur as the complex set of modernization pro- cesses unfolds, then the crucial factor governing a society's stability and sur- 16 Beyond the Bauhaus vival is going to be the way in which that society deals with these broadly in- evitable tensions."41 If Peukert is correct, then those very tensions, and the ways in which people come to terms with them, offer insights into the work- ings of the society. The challenge, as Ben Lieberman and John Bingham assert, is to identify which tensions are important and to "exploit their explanatory potential."42 In the cultural milieu of Weimar Breslau, three areas of tension were particularly evident: the conflicts between tradition and modernity, center and periphery, and regional pressures and international trends. Most historians agree that the diversity of Weimar German culture re- sulted from the struggle between tradition and modernity that accompanied industrial modernization in Germany, accelerating after 1871; Hans-Ulrich Wehler dubbed this struggle the "idiosyncratic stress ratio between Tradition and Modernity."43 This tension was a primary concern for many Breslau visual artists. A raft of new conceptual approaches to art, coupled with experimental methods and new materials, challenged old ways of thinking and making. Much early historiography of the modern movement celebrated the supposed break with the past, but Breslau attracted a cohort of artists who refused either to break with tradition or to reject innovation, but instead worked with any and all available aesthetic ideas. Members of the German avant-garde, especially the Novembergruppe (November Group), Arbeitsrat fur Kunst, and Rat Geistiger Arbeit, called for a revolution in the arts and arts education. Walter Gropius advocated "a radical solution to our problems."44 One aspect of the "radical solution" was to begin anew, rejecting the old methods and traditions. Of course, as late twentieth- century art historians such as Colin Rowe and Francesco Dal Co have shown, this was neither practical nor possible.45 Rather, artists pushed against tradition but still worked with it, in myriad ways. Rosalind Kraus and others have noted that those ways are either conceptual or methodological.46 One approach was to abstract classical principles using new materials, like Adolf Rading's archi- tecture. Another was to use traditional subject matter, like the figure, in an ab- stracted manner, as Oskar Schlemmer did in his figural painting. These are just two of the numerous combinations and recombinations that could-and did occur both at the fringes of the German avant-garde and in less experimental work, the possibilities determined only by the vast range of degrees to which individual artist accepted or rejected both tradition and modernity. Breslau art- work, architecture, and urban design, in particular, undermine the myth of avant-garde originality by showing how blurred Weimar aesthetic positions actually were, how rooted in tradition modernity really was, how nuanced con- temporary aesthetic approaches were in all media, and how regional cities par- Introduction 17 ticipated in Weimar-era modernism. The six chapters in this book explore spe- cific ramifications of these complexities. Chapter 1 discusses several post-1918 urban design and resettlement schemes in and around Breslau. Housing cooperatives and development asso- ciations were subject to complex interwar politics, in particular tensions be- tween local, regional, and national imperatives, which played out most clearly in large-scale housing projects. This complicated political context makes it easier to recognize the interplay of traditional and modern tropes in these proj- ects than in, say, the visual arts or architecture, and thus makes them a good introduction to Breslau's struggles with Weimar-era cultural modernity, as well as the geographic and political forces that shaped those struggles. Chapter 2 turns to the 1929 Werkbund-sponsored Wohnung und Werkraum exhibition (WuWA). As the multidisciplinary apotheosis of Breslau cultural achievement during the period, the exhibition was inevitably a site where the contemporary tensions in Breslau culture played out. At WuWA, regional im- peratives competed with international ambitions, local and national interests jockeyed for primacy, and the aesthetic forces of tradition and modernity were both in play. WuWA was a different enterprise from its more famous predeces- sor in Stuttgart: rather than a vehicle to exhibit and promote Neues Bauen (New Building or New Architecture, the more radical branch of 1920s German architecture), it was a showcase for regional architects and alternative ap- proaches to progressive architecture and design.47 One of the things it demon- strated, then, was that divergent forms of modernism could and did exist side- by-side in Germany. WuWA was also a truly collaborative effort, which brought together many different Breslau creative minds, including local artists, design- ers, and architects, along with businesses, politicians, and community groups. In spite of its more conservative approach to design, the exhibition received national and international attention. Indeed, the very fact that the Werkbund selected Breslau as the site for its second model housing exhibit attested to the city's rising profile as an important German Kunststadt. It was therefore unfor- tunate, even tragic, that it opened just months before the stock market crashed in New York, precipitating a worldwide economic crisis whose reverberations in Germany would ultimately result in the collapse of Breslau's art scene. Thus, WuWA was both a highpoint and a turning point.48 If WuWA was the pinnacle of Breslau cultural achievement, the Breslau Academy was the engine that drove much of the city's cultural activity and helped build its modern arts community. Chapter 3 charts the history of the Academy's rise and places it in the context of arts education in Weimar Ger- many. The Breslau Academy of Fine and Applied Arts was instrumental in 18 Beyond the Bauhaus fostering a climate receptive to contemporary art in the city. For one thing, it provided the steady income and relative professional stability that artists needed. The Academy enjoyed its greatest prominence during the 1920s, reaching a pinnacle of national and international repute in 1929, the year of WuWA and worldwide economic disaster. Chancellor Heinrich Bruning closed the Academy, along with academies in Kassel and Knigsberg, in 1932 as part of his fiscal response to the economic crisis, leaving only two art academies in all of Prussia.49 But during its brief period of national and international suc- cess, the Academy served not just as an educational center but as a nexus for talent and artistic activity of all kinds, including exhibitions, publications, as- sociation work, and other art patronage. Under the direction of August Endell (1916-25) and Oskar Moll (1925-33), the Academy recruited a cadre of pro- gressive artists who refused to repudiate tradition. As in so many artist com- munities, a cohort of good artists helped attract even more talent, both directly affiliated with the Academy and independent. Chapter 4 introduces the complex matrix of individual artists, arts asso- ciations, museums, and other patrons, who comprised the support system for the greater Breslau arts community. Art patronage was as important as the Academy in making Breslau a place for artists; exhibition venues and patrons were key incentives for artists to live and work in Breslau. These support net- works played a crucial role in lobbying politicians in Breslau and Berlin on behalf of the community, raising funds for arts organizations and exhibition venues, and purchasing work for private and public collections. The presence of this patronage network, which took root around 1916 and steadily improved as the 19205 progressed, helped underpin the contemporary arts community. For these collectors, who were faced with the tension between tradition and modernity in the visual arts, the question of what to collect was influenced by the desire to lift the marginal profile of Breslau and its citizens in the national consciousness. In a country so identified with cultural production, where achieving the status of Kulturstadt was a key goal, art collections were an in- strumental tool for raising a city and region's national profile. Chapters 5 and 6 examine some of the key figures in 1920s Breslau visual art and architecture to provide a picture of the variety, scope, and quality of the work they and their colleagues produced. Their focus is artists and architects who were considered important in the 1920s but have since been overlooked or whose Breslau production has received little or no attention. Visual artists were particularly concerned with the tensions between tradition and modernity in their work, but they relied on the center/periphery relationship between Bres- lau and Berlin for recognition and, often, for sales. Understanding their work Introduction 19 contributes to the current scholarly reassessment of modernism, in particular the nature of formal innovation and the extent of radical change. Finally, the Epilogue discusses the increasingly hostile climate toward what was perceived as modern art after 1930, including the forced closure of the Academy and its effect on the arts community. Although much of the histo- riography of Weimar recognizes "the promise and the tragedy" of the period, the disintegration of the Breslau community is framed here as a new beginning rather than simply the end of an era. Today, the teaching method and organiza- tional schema of the Academy are common throughout the Western world; the pluralistic terrain of art practice is not unlike that of Weimar; there are similar uncertainties about the place of art in a globalizing world; and the sense of boundless possibilities for conceptual and methodological experimentation gives a sense of limitless horizons for modern culture. Why Breslau Matters The story of the arts and cultural community in Breslau between 1918 and 1933 has implications beyond the history of Germany; it also depicts the vari- ety of cultural production that historians such as Detlev Peukert, Walter La- queur, and Marshall Berman consider fundamental to modernity. Berman lo- cated the beginning of modernity in a maelstrom of changes: scientific advances that altered humanity's understanding of the universe, industrialization, urban- ization, mass communication, and mass social movements.50 We can round out Berman's list with political conflict and new political systems. These changes were not unique to Breslau or Germany, but as Andrew McElligott asserts, while the Sonderweg thesis no longer holds weight, certain aspects of the Ger- man case were different from other countries, especially the "attenuation" of the modernization process." One characteristic of this attenuation was the pro- longed and multifarious engagement of German artists with the seemingly bi- nary values of tradition and modernity, exemplified in the art, architecture, and urban design created in Breslau during the 1920s. Berman views modernity as a time of tremendous and often contradictory flux. In Breslau, that flux helped to create a cultural scene in which conflict and contradiction determined form. Breslau's artists, architects, and urban design- ers worked with concepts, forms, and structures usually seen as incongruous elements of different aesthetic systems. Breslau thus gives lie to the under- standing of aesthetic systems as discrete, sequential units. In fact, aesthetic systems, and the ideas that inform them, emerge slowly over time. New ideas 20 Beyond the Bauhaus coexist with older ones and jostle for attention in an overlapping simultaneity. Modernity thus did not abolish tradition but instead added a new set of condi- tions for artists to consider and respond to. Although the Breslau case is representative of the ways Germans grap- pled with modernity, it also had specific local and regional inflections. Bres- lauers were influenced by Silesian vernacular art and architecture and regional handicraft traditions. The combination of vernacular design tropes and modern spatial planning in Ernst May's designs for public housing estates are one ex- ample of this influence. Breslau-based artists and architects also adjusted their work to respond to local taste and markets. One reason the Deutsche Werkbund included a range of aesthetic approaches at the Breslau WuWA was local prag- matism, which dictated pluralistic curating. Another reason was the local de- sire, loudly expressed, to exhibit the aesthetic scope of Silesian practice. For many in Breslau, modernity was synonymous with neither new nor innovative. Although there is a difference between the historical and aesthetic con- cepts of modernity, they have certain commonalities, including progress- oriented thinking, an interest in scientific method, and devotion to rational thought.52 The current concept of cultural modernity arose as a rejection of antiquity, in general, and, in the arts and architecture, of classicism and its value system. Furthermore, the Enlightenment notion of modernity was char- acterized by a future-oriented perspective that considered progress and its at- tendant technologies possible, desirable, and goals for all human endeavors. "Modern" was a positive value, in contrast to "ancient" and "traditional," which held negative value. From this perspective, artists, architects and urban designers who vocally embraced the ideals of both modernity and traditional art would have been considered pariahs, or at the very least, second-rate. But this was not the case in Breslau. The sense of "modern" and "modernity" shared by most Weimar-era Bre- slau artists dates to the turn of the twentieth century, when the term assumed other nuances. As von Saldern asserts, "The modern world, which still shapes the society in which we live, emerged in the decades between 188o and 1930, when the mood varied between a euphoric belief in progress and the melan- choly conviction that the world was bound to collapse. The rise of modernity pitched contemporaries into a very different world, in which new ways of per- ceiving and behaving were emerging."53 Opposition was deeply implicated in "modernity" and "modern" from the start; both terms depend on a foil, under- stood as much by what they are not as what they are. Being modern means not being old fashioned or traditional, while being traditional means not being modern. In contrast, Berman points to "the sense of living in two worlds simul- Introduction 21 taneously" as a central quality of modernity.54 According to this view, to be modern is to be both modern and traditional, at the same time. This was the essential nature of Weimar and Breslau modernity and the art produced-an art that was simultaneously past and present, local and regional, regional and in- ternational. Following this line of reasoning, modern art and culture in Breslau was not marginal to but epitomized Weimar modernity. CHAPTER I Tradition and Modernity: Urban Planning in Breslau "Nothing harms the essence of housing more than the exaggerated single- minded fanatics who find satisfying form for housing only in the village idyll or palace-like large city residence." -Fritz Behrendt, "Stadtebauliche Entwicklung, Wohnwesen, u. Bodenpolitik" While it can be difficult to distinguish traditional and modern tropes in visual art or architecture, the economic, political and social dimensions of 1920s ur- ban design make it easy to recognize them in Breslau's large-scale Weimar-era planning projects. Unlike private houses, these developments were funded through municipal housing authorities or semi-private housing cooperatives. With public funds at stake-and often severely limited-project designers had to consider economics at every level, including spatial, material, and construction-related. Wherever public institutions have a hand, politics play a role: in Silesia, the borderline nature of the province, its political instability, and the dynamics of postwar German/European relations all affected develop- ment and aesthetic decisions. After the First World War, Breslau and Silesia suffered from the combined effect of prewar under-construction and a postwar population influx that accelerated when Germans fled eastern regions awarded to Poland in 1921.1 As a result, urban designers had many opportunities, but they were also pulled in different directions, toward innovation, modern aes- thetics, and new construction methods on the one hand and traditional expres- sion, typically inspired by regional building types, on the other. Weimar de- bates over the roles of traditional and modern aesthetics in large-scale public works put additional ideological pressure on their work. A number of important urban designers worked for the Breslau munici- pality between 1918 and 1933, among them Max Berg, Theo Effenberger, Paul Heim, Albert Kempter, Richard Konwiarz, Ludwig Moshamer, and Hermann 22 Tradition and Modernity 23 Wahlich, who were employed by the Breslau Siedlungsgesellschaft A. G. (Bre- slau Municipal Planning Office), and Ernst May, who worked for the Schle- sische Heimstdtte (Silesian Homesteads), one of the housing cooperatives founded after the war. This group of planners utilized a pragmatic mix of tradi- tional and modern aesthetics and planning strategies as they negotiated the imperatives of public funding and taste, tempered by economic realities. Their projects reflect a split between a romantic worldview that revered local and regional culture and realistic responses to contemporary challenges. Housing: A Need and a Challenge Germany in the 1920s needed at least a million units of additional housing, while Breslau and Silesia were short tens if not hundreds of thousands of units.2 Breslau's need predated the war, for the city, in part due to poor plan- ning, simply could not build quickly enough to absorb the exceptionally rapid population growth between 1871 and 1910.3 The housing problem was fur- thered by the city not expanding geographically, but instead absorbing the ex- tra population into the same 4,917-hectare area it occupied in 1871. Yet another blow occurred after 1918, when approximately three million Germans were displaced from eastern territories. Although it is difficult to know how many emigrated to Breslau, the welfare rolls increased 422 percent between 1913 and 1927, from 7,441 people to 44,275, suggesting that the vast majority of newcomers were poor and in dire need.4 In 1926, Breslau was the densest city per hectare in Germany, with 114 people per hectare and 381 per constructed hectare. Berlin was second, with 46 and 308 respectively.5 Existing housing in Breslau was substandard, with more single room apartments than any other city in Germany by a factor of 1.5 compared to Berlin, 2.4 in comparison with Bremen, and 3 compared to Dresden.6 Few apartments had kitchens with day- light or proper sanitary accommodations, which probably accounts for Breslau leading the country in tuberculosis deaths in 1912.E Economic and social dislocations caused by the war compounded the housing stock issues. From 1918 onward, Breslau and Silesia had unusually high unemployment rates.8 At the same time, changes in the political struc- ture of Germany affected all aspects of the social structure. As the old mon- eyed classes lost some of their power, wealthy industrialists and upwardly mobile members of the new white collar class vied for social status, political power, and control. As political unrest shook other foundations of the Ger- man world, Silesia made the initial transition to democratic government quite 24 Beyond the Bauhaus peacefully, but in 1919 suffered Spartacist rioting and succumbed to the Kapp Putsch in 1920. The partition of Silesia was a particularly provocative event. Silesia had two parts: Upper Silesia, which was rich in coal, and Lower Silesia, where Breslau was located. After the war, Germany and Poland haggled over Upper Silesia, large portions of which were populated by ethnic Poles. Germany did not want to cede the resource-rich territory, especially in the face of the draco- nian reparations set out in the Treaty of Versailles. In an attempt to mediate between the two countries, the League of Nations mandated a plebiscite two years after the signing of the Treaty, to decide which country should control Upper Silesia. In 1919, the Prussian government mounted a Campaign to Re- settle Silesia, initially as an effort to shift the population distribution in Silesia toward ethnic Germans for the coming plebiscite, but also to help alleviate the housing crisis elsewhere.9 Although 6o percent voted for Germany in the 1921 vote, after the Third Silesian Uprising later that year, the northernmost portion of Upper Silesia was awarded to Poland, at which point huge numbers of ethnic Germans fled the region, exacerbating the existing housing crisis in Lower Silesia and Breslau.'0 Seen against this backdrop, many of the interwar resettlement and hous- ing efforts were aimed at forestalling popular rebellion, maintaining civil or- der, and consolidating support for the state in an unstable political climate. As Michael Harloe points out, the private market collapse in the aftermath of the war, coupled with social unrest and heightened demand, prompted state and municipal action." Adequate, affordable, hygienic housing was deemed a hu- man right, without which the people would become restless and perhaps dan- gerous, and Breslau adopted a series of policies to alleviate these social and political problems, including targeted housing developments for displaced per- sons, returning soldiers, low-income residents, and homeless rural residents who emigrated to the city. To ease demand as quickly as possible, Breslau initially renovated base- ments, cellars, storage structures, and attics, creating close to 9,ooo units of emergency housing.12 The long-term goal was to add 3,500 units per year for the foreseeable future. Although these numbers were not realized, they speak to the gravity of the housing shortage. In 1922, Breslau sponsored an urban design competition to address planning and housing needs by rethinking the outline of the city limits. The city intended to absorb neighboring small vil- lages to add land for development, but a history of poor planning in and around the periphery made this even more challenging than it otherwise would have been. According to city architect Fritz Behrendt, Breslau had no true close-in Tradition and Modernity 25 suburbs, no streetcar network connecting outlying villages with downtown, and no water or gas service beyond the city limits.13 In short, the urban infra- structure did not penetrate beyond the city border, which hindered economic and geographic growth. Recognizing that better infrastructure was as impor- tant as new housing, officials set out to improve both as they expanded the city's territory to make space for development. In 1919, the city established a Housing Commissariat to manage the hous- ing commissions it needed. Before 1919, development was privately financed and managed, but by the end of the First World War it became clear that the situation was too dire and the economic circumstances too complicated to leave development in private hands. However, the city quickly discovered the advantages of partnering with private companies, and eleven stakeholders, in- cluding heavy industry, trade, trade unions, and interested citizens, united to form the Municipal Housing Authority, with the city retaining half of the com- pany's shares.'4 The Authority was part of the city bureaucracy and, like the provincial authority, Schlesische Heimstdtte, was linked to the housing welfare societies established by the Prussian Housing Law of 1918. As instruments were developed to facilitate the financing and construc- tion of mass housing, reformers and architects struggled with questions of de- sign. What were the goals of mass housing and what models best served the new needs? At the end of the nineteenth century, a series of housing schemes had been published and disseminated throughout Europe. Ebenezer Howard's Garden Cities of Tomorrow had a wide popular readership in Germany. Al- though his specific ideas did not become policy, his emphasis on healthy com- munities, access to green space, limiting growth and sprawl, and pedestrian- friendly city planning, as well as his belief in the importance of small cottage or low-rise development, were very popular. In Germany, plans submitted to the 1910 urban design competition "Gross-Berlin" were particularly influen- tial models. Proposals were initially exhibited at the General Town Planning Exhibition at the Royal Arts Academy in Berlin, which was visited by over 65,000 people, attesting to its impact.'5 The show then traveled to Dusseldorf and London. The plans in the exhibition addressed a host of urban challenges. Hermann Jansen examined spatial planning, including the expansion of city limits, parklands, other open spaces, and rail networks, while Bruno Schmitz imagined improvements to the city center's cultural and civic amenities. Others looked at housing and green space. Max Berg assessed the competition's importance to urban planning in a 1910 article, and it clearly influenced his work in Breslau. In his own competi- tion entry, Berg envisioned a tripartite division for the city: a work district di- 26 Beyond the Bauhaus vided into areas for commerce and industry, a monumental district comprising cultural and governmental functions, and a residential area.16 In Breslau, Berg advocated for the city's design and expansion to be planned according to these basic zoning principles. Rudolf Eberstadt's radial city proposition was particu- larly influential in Breslau, where the Magistrat approved a similar approach in 1921.17 Eberstadt's model organized new housing developments outside the existing historic core in green areas laid out in a radial pattern, connected to the center by public transit networks. Many of the housing projects planned in the 19205 were on the outskirts of Breslau where, as in Eberstadt's scheme, newly built public transit would make them easily accessible to the urban core. Along with the Garden City ideals, architects designing mass housing had to consider economy of means. The fiscal crises most European governments faced after the war ranged from mild to severe, and many countries suffered material scarcities and deficiencies in production that lasted at least until 1920- 21, if not beyond. Furthermore, mass housing of the scale needed demanded new, cheaper building techniques. Prefabrication and mass production meth- ods, standardization of parts and even sections of buildings, and the develop- ment of easy-to-reproduce models were becoming common across Europe.'8 Architects responded to these pressures and developments by exploring two basic approaches, what the Germans called the Kleinwohnung, or small home, and the Existenzminimum, or minimum for existence. The Kleinwohnung was a rationalized series of spaces small enough to be economical but spacious enough to feel comfortable. In contrast, the purpose of the Existenzminimum was to discover the absolute minimal spatial requirements for different combi- nations of occupants-a single adult, a couple, a couple with one child, and so on in order to minimize construction costs while maximizing efficiency in the dwelling. Architectural Debates Between 1919 and 1933, architects grappled with the outward expression of these projects, as well as their inward organization, that is, with "form." Throughout the nineteeth century, European architects searching for appropri- ate ways to accommodate contemporary habits in house design had experi- mented with historic styles, but the results were unsatisfactory. These styles seemed like superficial dressing rather than true reflections of new modes of living. The struggle over style continued into the twentieth century, where it coalesced over interwar housing developments, lining up traditionalists against Tradition and Modernity 27 progressives. Sometimes they fought over individual architectural elements: pitched roofs or flat; small windows or large surfaces of transparent glass; brick, stone, and colored stucco versus white stucco; wood against steel; small, differentiated rooms versus the open plan, to name just a few. Richard Pommer has written about the famous War of the Roofs or Flat Roof Controversy, which began before the First World War but increased in vehemence in the 1920s.'9 The conflict occurred at the Onkel Tom's Httte and Am Fischtal Colony hous- ing developments in Berlin, where the Httte architects constructed flat roofed units directly across from the pitched roofs of Am Fischtal. A famous contem- porary photograph shows the two developments juxtaposed in an aesthetic face-off. The controversy was important enough to engage most of the signifi- cant German architects of the day, including Walter Gropius, Ludwig Hilber- seimer, Heinrich Tessenow, and Mies van der Rohe, all of whom weighed in at one time or another.20 Roofs were only one of many contentious aesthetic issues that divided architects. A related debate focused on the outward expression of the new ar- chitecture and its mass housing projects. Positions ran the gamut: some sup- ported vernacular architecture, others proposed a combination of vernacular and modern, and still others wanted totally modern buildings, free of historic references. As Barbara Miller Lane demonstrates, the battles were aesthetic but carried political stakes that increased over the 1920s.21 Urban designers in Breslau and Silesia had to contend with both local and national funding poli- tics. By visibly mixing vernacular and modern design elements, they could appeal to parochial local and regional tastes, while also engaging national pri- orities to design housing appealing to a broad constituency. Members of Bre- slau's Heimatschutzbewegung, like Theo Effenberger, along with designers working for the Municipal Housing Authority, like Heim, Kempter, and Moshamer, and on large-scale developments for housing associations, like Ernst May, initially advocated an aesthetic mix for public housing projects, reflecting local and regional architectural heritage. What this mix meant in practice in and around Breslau varied, but more often than not it meant build- ings whose appearance referenced local or regional vernacular architecture. Some projects used pitched roofs inspired by Silesian farmhouses and barns, or traditional building materials like thatch and exposed wooden supports. Others added modern adaptations of traditional ornamentation like the hex. The question of space was practical as well as ideological. Aesthetic de- bates were concerned not only with how buildings looked but with their spatial organization and use. Urbanization altered where people lived, but it also changed how they conducted their daily lives and thus how they needed to orga- 28 Beyond the Bauhaus nize their homes. For instance, it was more and more common for people to purchase goods like food as they needed them, rather than to store them for long periods, so the need for large storage areas and attics diminished. As May later wrote, "one didn't need the steep roofs to dry onions or plums anymore."22 These lifestyle changes did not necessarily do away with steep roofs; rather, they allowed architects to rethink the space under the roof for different func- tions, such as bedrooms and smaller living units. With more women entering the workforce, less time was available to prepare food, which led to interest in more efficiently organized kitchens, timesaving machines, and easy-to-prepare foods. Life before the twentieth century had been formal, with social groups separated and spaces compartmentalized, but the twentieth century introduced the open plan and free-flowing spaces to complement the new social mobility.23 By the interwar period, a consensus had developed among most German social reformers that the mass housing ideal was detached single-family houses, though that model was often economically infeasible.24 Still, the single-family home seemed to have many more benefits than the hated nineteenth-century German Mietskaserne (tenement house), including the op- portunity for ownership; improved hygiene; contact with fresh air, light, and green space; and privacy that supported family life. Given the difficulty of constructing inexpensive freestanding homes, architects developed models that combined the economies of scale found in multistory housing with elements of the detached home. Two to five story row houses of varying lengths were the most typical solution, although architects like Effenberger and May experi- mented with two-, three-, and four-family buildings, among other variations. Across Germany, architects designed small, multifamily developments in parks and tree-lined neighborhoods, like those in and around Breslau. Although not precisely Garden City designs, the new neighborhoods certainly borrowed ideas from the Garden City. Ernst May Ernst May had first-hand experience with the Garden City. After studying at University College London, he apprenticed in Garden City designer Raymond Unwin's office in 1910. As a young architect, he also worked on Hellerau, the first Garden City built in Germany. Born in Frankfurt in 1886 to an industrialist who owned a local leather factory, May enjoyed a privileged childhood. Be- sides University College London, he studied at the Technical Universities in Darmstadt and Munich, where his most influential teachers were Friedrich von Tradition and Modernity 29 Thiersch and Theodor Fischer, from whom he likely learned to appreciate modern town planning.25 In Munich he also became lifelong friends with sev- eral young architects who would later become key players in Germany, includ- ing Paul Bonatz, Hugo Haring, Erich Mendelsohn, J. J. P. Oud, and Wilhelm Riphahn. May came to Breslau in 1919 to direct the Schlesische Heimstdtte. His primary responsibility was to oversee housing construction in unincorpo- rated suburbs and towns, homesteads, and rural settlements. The scholarship on May's work has focused primarily on his later Neues Frankfurt projects, paying little attention to Breslau. When Breslau is men- tioned, it is usually in the context of the facts behind his employment there, rather than critical assessment of his work and its aesthetics.26 One exception is Susan Henderson, who sees May's work in Breslau as "a missing link be- tween pre-war reform efforts in housing and the heroic Modernism of the later 1920s."27 However, May's work can just as easily be understood as typical of Weimar urban design practice, with its juxtaposition of conflicting ideas. In Breslau's strained economic climate, new housing had to be as inex- pensive as possible, so May focused his attention on design and construction strategies that would reduce costs, like building smaller, more efficient units. At the same time, May strongly objected to the hated Mietskaserne, which typified nineteenth-century urban low-income housing; he intended his de- signs to be an antidote to their cramped, unhygienic conditions.28 Sometimes his designs included structures that could easily be built by a layperson, a strat- egy that aligned with the growing self-help construction movement in Europe. May also combined his rational economic reasoning with an appeal to nostal- gia and the romance of Heimatgefuhl (feeling of home), which had a powerful hold on many Silesians. Heimatgefuhl is difficult to translate into English, which has no word that captures the deep emotional ties to place implicit in the German concept of Heimat. Heimat architecture tended to capitalize on attach- ment to local traditions by using aesthetic elements common to the local and regional vernacular. May's interest in vernacular types dates to his student years at University College London, where his early sketches and watercolors capture the ornate detail of the architecture around him.29 His sketchbooks from the period in Unwin's office include views of quaint English country cottages and romantic landscapes. During the First World War, he preferred drawing studies of the historic buildings in France to scenes of battle.30 In 1921, May published a series of pencil impressions of vernacular Romanian architecture that included earthen huts in Caracal, farmhouses in Stroani, a cloister in Sinaia, and a corn shed in Stroani. The images show simple but elegant gabled wooden roof struc- 30 Beyond the Bauhaus tures, with exposed beams and imaginatively shaped columns, topped by thatch. The corn shed, composed of alternating horizontally stacked wooden members that cross at the outer corners, has a wonderful visual texture. These sketchbooks reveal a deep and longstanding fascination with traditional build- ing types, construction materials, and methods, which suggest that his use of traditional architecture in his Silesian projects was more than opportunistic. May seems to have disliked skyscrapers as much as he loved vernacular buildings. He felt the skyscraper was an excellent building for commerce, but he argued that people needed their "own home and garden ... where the family circle could find peace and relaxation," so he advocated for cottages and other low-rise public housing solutions.31 May took his responsibilities seriously and enthusiastically, convinced that he was charged with accomplishing an impor- tant social good: "The first condition underlying housing reform of every kind is the acknowledgment of social and economic efficiency, that is, of an eco- nomic policy that recognizes its limits at the point where the well-being of human beings is threatened."32 His beliefs and approach were a tidy fit for the settlement push to populate the countryside. May laid the groundwork for his design approach in a series of articles published in Schlesisches Heim, the journal he founded, edited, and wrote for, beginning in 1919.33 The articles were primarily directed at clients, not archi- tects, an important factor to consider when examining his language and argu- ments.34 The housing projects May was working on in and around Breslau were predominantly for the poor and working class, not the architect's usual educated bourgeois clientele. Because the projects required government sup- port, both political and financial, May's aesthetic had to appeal to the average German or they ran the risk of not being built.35 May chose to use the Klein- wohnung as a foundation for his projects because it was a "primary form" de- veloped from the "living requirements and habits of the segment of our folk that live in such dwellings."36 The Kleinwohnung was a type of architecture that, true to its name, was small and economical, but had a broad range of aesthetic expressions in build- ings as varied as traditional farmhouse, village dwelling, and urban apartment. In a series of design experiments, May pushed the limits of the Kleinwohnung by trying to discover "how far the living area of the small house can be shrunk."37 Many of May's contemporaries developed modern versions of the Kleinwohnung, as did May himself later in Frankfurt. But in Silesia, he chose to base his aesthetic on the traditional Silesian vernacular farmhouse, an iconic building type, centuries old and familiar to most Silesians, that provided a "pri- mary form" with enough variety to make it a good source of design tropes. The - ® 'S.,.. PA L. T E 9[bb. 12 Zp 5olteI 3('aubilb. ~1Th~Th~V ______ !J C WEKJ x CJ 0~ 9Ibb. 13. 1gp Uliq O3orberanjtdjt TI 1 :1: - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - H jn. 32 Beyond the Bauhaus use of vernacular forms also supported the nationalist rhetoric of the resettle- ment campaign, although May's devotion to the aesthetic seemed to go well beyond political exigencies. May summarized his design philosophy in a 1924 essay in Schlesisches Heim: 1. The path to the New Man 2. The path to an essential floor plan 3. The path to straightforward household effects 4. The path to honest form and with it a new style 5. The path to joyful cladding for the small house 6. The path to modern building technology 7. The path to scientific business operation 8. The path to unity of small house and garden 9. The path to a federal law for comprehensive regional planning38 By "path to the New Man," May meant that architecture should reflect the new ways people were living in the twentieth century, provide better living conditions, and be educational. May's ideas fit squarely into the reform-minded 1920s, and points 2 through 8 read like a list of the period's progressive tactics. "Essential floor plan" meant efficient spatial planning, but also the adoption of Typisierung (type forms), reusable design patterns. Related to this, and key to developing scientific modern building techniques, was Normierung (building design and construction standards). In Germany, the Deutsche Institut fir Nor- mung (DIN) (Institute for Standardization) was founded in 1917 to create stan- dards for manufacturing in order to rationalize production, improve industrial quality, and enhance interchangeability between parts and systems fabricated by different companies. Today, the DIN is still the European production standard. "Modern build- ing technology" referred to new materials and construction systems as well as Typisierung and Normierung. The eighth point on May's list reflects the inter- est in finding new ways to bridge interior and exterior spaces and connect ar- chitecture to landscape, a common concern throughout Europe in the 1920s. The final item reflects the increasing awareness among urban planners and ar- chitects of the necessity for better planning legislation if they were going to provide improved living conditions for more people. The adoption of Typisierung and Normierung was a linchpin of May's design strategy for the Schlesische Heimstdtte projects because together these approaches could ensure speedier, more economical construction. Normierung L ______________ R r T FSk ii ]U t j C I ' II I I jfi ,, III T0 l"r+ N b r '1 I MlI' ' ti iil III 'I II +1 I4 IJr I I vr I ° m i Il I'll ,. I VIII°z I I I i I i Illlr, I I j' h II a I Ir ll III III li I 'll1 i ' I i lI I I I ' +'1 i ri r I I 'r l I n s r:III IIiI I 'ull II f fly Ii A I " .= ' "JS Pr 1 A p '- C[ K u I r - J0 . ^ 34 Beyond the Bauhaus allows construction companies to prefabricate many components, which, in turn, dramatically reduces costs, as site work is more expensive than factory work and repetitive standard components are easier to assemble than unique elements. Similarly, having construction companies repeat a design by using a type was economical since it saved money on engineering and prefabricated elements by reusing already existing plans. Debates over Typisierung and Normierung raged in the architecture press during the interwar period. Propo- nents argued for the economic benefits of standardizing design and construc- tion as well as the historic importance of architectural types. May himself wrote, "it is significant for today's compromised architectural culture that we have to struggle for such evident things [as type and norms], whereas in the times of elevated building art there was never a building without a type."39 Op- ponents railed against the loss of individuality, the destruction of German building heritage, and the heartlessness of a technology-dominated society. May's strategy, which combined traditional German architecture tropes into types while normalizing construction, successfully undermined much of the critique. People seemed to accept standardization if it applied to the "invisible" aspects of architecture. May developed his arguments for design in articles such as "Ersatzbau- wesen" and "Typen fur Landarbeiterwohnungen," which charted the design methods as well.40 To begin with, he scrutinized the traditional Silesian ver- nacular farmhouse inside and out, dissecting it into discrete design elements for reuse and adaptation. A large part of the exercise involved abstracting and simplifying vernacular architecture to distill its design essentials, like the steeply sloped roof, thatch roofing material, stucco fagades, vertically clad wooden gable ends, painted gable ornaments, longhouse plan, and eyebrow windows. May believed that type should "crystallize the origin's most essen- tial, [qualities] ."41 In "Typ und Stil," he articulates his basic principles of good design: "integrative," "refusing ornamentation," and "the archetypal, essential form," which together will create a style. In "Wohnungsfirsorgegesellschaften und Baukultur," he points to "truth in the plan and outer design of the building envelope, conformation to the particular surroundings" as essential, by which he means that architecture should be responsive to the geography and cultural character of its site.42 In another set of articles, May describes the new building technologies, materials, and spatial arrangements that Schlesische Heimstdtte would employ. "Ersatzbauwesen" delineates several new building systems, in- cluding the 30-centimeter brick cavity wall, loam rendering, and sand/lime brick. These were all variations on the masonry block construction that was far Tradition and Modernity 35 cheaper in the 1920s than wood, concrete, or steel because of postwar short- ages and attendant price escalation. As well as embracing new building materials and systems, May worked assiduously to rationalize the construction process so he could reduce costs, speed up building time, and make construction sufficiently easy that inexperi- enced builders could erect their own homes. In "Die bewegliche Bodentreppe im Kleinhaus," May explains the surprising "wasted space" typical of prewar "Kleinwohnungen," which of course defies the logic of the small dwelling. In this and other articles, he sets forth new design strategies such as: reducing the number of rooms and spatial needs to a minimum; eliminating corridors; using every space in the house including those that would otherwise be wasted, like under the stairs; moveable stairs; double functioning kitchens and living rooms; and so on.43 In yet another group of articles, May proposes a series of new build- ing types based on combining vernacular design tropes with new spatial strate- gies and building technologies. May introduces the new "types" with a seem- ingly scientific classification system that groups the variants into Gruppen and Typen with accompanying subdivisions. He hopes that by using this design sys- tem, he can avoid "superficial" styles.44 He writes, the building design is "sim- ple," "using primary forms," and "like the old farmhouses there is supposed to be a harmonious effect, not through motives of some kind or through un- 'sachlich' additions but through the relationship of the building volume, size and position, with windows and door openings, as well as material colors."45 Ultimately, the new model would be a modern, scientifically determined adap- tation of the best traditional and contemporary architectural elements. By 1924, May and his team had developed a catalog of sixteen building types ranging in scale from a modest fifty-two square meters to as large as 144 square meters, although most of the constructed projects were in the middle range, with about seventy square meters.46 May initially identified the types by number, but even- tually he named them after Silesian cultural figures like poet Gerhart Haupt- mann, painter Adolf Menzel, and architect Carl Langhans, once again using regional culture to appeal to romantic Heimat sentiments. May tested his ideas in numerous drawings but also in realized projects. Between 1919 and 1928, Schlesische Heimstdtte constructed over 11,000 units of rural settlement housing, expanded even more existing settlements, and cre- ated emergency housing in the cities. Goldschmied (1919-20) and Oltaschin (1921) were two of May's first large-scale urban planning and design projects, and they are representative of his planning and architectural strategies. Gold- schmied was May's very first project, designed for a group of self-help farmers 36 Beyond the Bauhaus on a site just south of Breslau. The site on a former estate comprised 3.5 square kilometers and was meant to accommodate about 750 homes, although in the end only a small portion of the original plan was executed.47 As in many of May's subsequent projects, the houses were two-family cottages with steeply pitched saddle-backed roofs and stucco siding, arranged in large swathes of green space. May developed three variations of this double house, all con- structed on slab-on-grade, which is cheaper than building a basement, with a single main floor and habitable attic space. The settlement began with a group of houses situated around an oval public space from which the main street ex- tended. The lots were long and narrow to accommodate individual farm plots for each family. Each house had a small private front garden area that acted as a buffer between the street and sidewalk and the home. Although the homes were modest in scale, May created a sense of private ownership. The built area was to connect to a network of gently curving streets that terminated in public squares, and at the heart of the development May planned to construct a large civic area with three connected public spaces in a deliberate nod to the tradi- tional village layout with its centrally located square or green. With the excep- tion of the public squares, which were ringed with buildings, houses lined the streets and were parallel to them, in another typical village layout. Located seven kilometers outside of Breslau, Oltaschin was a typical small medieval village constructed around a public commons. At the beginning of the twentieth century, most of its residents were herb farmers. Its proximity to Breslau and ample open space made Oltaschin an excellent site for a satellite community, and in 1920 it became the location for a new affordable housing project when Baron Richthofen-Boguslavitz donated a 12-hectare plot for de- velopment. The clients were not urban commuters, however, but local farmers. In Oltaschin, May opted for the traditional farmhouse type with a steeply pitched saddle gable with a large eyebrow window in the roof and small, square windows on the stucco fagades. The gable end sported a modern adaptation of the traditional farmhouse hex decoration designed by Lotte Hartmann, May's sister-in-law, who designed similar decorations for the homes in Goldschmied. But in a departure from the historic farmhouse and May's Goldschmied designs, the roof covered a two-family house, with rental units under the eaves. May experimented with the layout of the individual units, discarding the traditional four-room model separated by a corridor and joining spaces together in a more modern corridor-free, spatially efficient plan. His professed goal was to create a more "sachlich and functional" dwelling.48 He did so by rationalizing the spatial organization to minimize the building footprint while maximizing usable space and increasing spatial efficiency, through such strategies as placing the kitchen Tradition and Modernity 37 Fig. 1o. Ernst May, Oltaschin Housing Project (1921). in the under-utilized space under the stairs. The construction system at Oltas- chin was the new mud-block wall system May wrote about in Schlesisches Heim, which could easily be assembled by nonprofessional builders. Outer walls were covered with stucco, which was readily available, cheap, and rela- tively easy to apply. Like Goldschmied, Oltaschin was planned to engage nature as much as possible. The houses were laid out in u-shaped configurations around a north-south oriented courtyard, with green space between and around the units. The site planning helped provide good lighting for the units as well as outside spatial variation. At least one contemporary, the critic Werner Hegemann, was highly crit- ical of May, though he appreciated the traditional elements in his Breslau-era projects.49 Although Hegemann was not trained as an architect, he was at the center of Weimar debates over urban design and regionalism. He argued for the reinstatement of the nineteenth-century master of bourgeois villa design, Alfred Messel, as a fundamental inspiration for contemporary design, citing his work as the backbone of German architectural heritage. Hegemann vehe- mently dismisses architects who wish to ignore or bury their heritage: "He 38 Beyond the Bauhaus 79t5 3.60 7-9 X70 3 Sri 3w ' HpU1K. gTA 11 j P. pQ SYAIl tyOCJ-tK 7.'S ' c1J'.9 3b n lc o vVOHNK.. 57-USE 5TUBff T \IYOHNK. Z9.4 119.6 19.6 IT n t r i o. Qf 474 I.e rJ %(bb. 1-2: (Frbgejd~o rurrj; bey '~oppeIlarujes (fir. 11, jorrni 14 !, TI 20.Y) 216b. 13: 3tr13enan idt 311 9Ibbilbung 12, 9L 1 : 200. Fig. r1. Ernst May, plan for a house at Oltaschin (1921). who consciously wants to give up our proven construction methods ... is like a man who wants to invent a new language ... because he has discovered that our language is spoken badly by most, and because important modern terms like vacuum cleaner, telephone, water closet, radio, cinema or airplane are missing." 5 For Hegemann, architecture cannot turn its back on the past or present but must incorporate or fuse the two. Hegemann found May's Frank- furt work-and the rhetoric he uses to defend it-hypocritical, accusing him of "turning his back on the past" and "inconsistency" in his aesthetics, since at the time Hegemann was writing May had relocated to Frankfurt and was designing work quite different from what he had done in Breslau. Dismantling May's explanations of his Frankfurt work, Hegemann shows that despite his Tradition and Modernity 39 claims otherwise, May is unable to escape the legacy of traditional design. He bemoans the fact that in 1927 critics were already overlooking May's "digni- fied" work in Silesia in favor of the "modern experiments of great style" in Frankfurt. For Hegemann, May's Silesian projects were not anomalies but mainstream, and the combination of traditional regional tropes with new de- sign elements created rich results that were as modern as anything designed during Weimar. Theo Effenberger In contrast to May who worked all over Silesia, most of Theo Effenberger's work with the Municipal Housing Authority was inside or very close to the Breslau city limits. Unlike May, Effenberger was a native Breslauer. He stud- ied architecture first at Breslau's technically oriented Baugewerkschule (Build- ing Crafts School), where he was introduced to the Heimat movement, and then at the more aesthetically oriented Technical High School in Darmstadt, under Karl Hofmann, Friedrich Putzer, and Georg Wickop. Putzer was inter- ested in historical work, and his projects draw on traditional Germanic tropes like the stepped gable and use regional materials like brick. Effenberger cred- ited his education in Darmstadt with wide-reaching influence on his work, es- pecially his close collaborations with artists, applied arts masters, and other architects.5' He returned to Breslau in 1907 to join the Breslau City Building Department, then under the direction of Richard Pltddemann, where he helped design a number of hospitals and schools. In 1910, Effenberger left the city to establish a private practice, but he had a change of heart in 1919, when he joined the Municipal Housing Authority as one of its principal architects.52 In 1919, Effenberger also became head of the Hochbaunormung Schlesien, the department responsible for construction standards in the province.53 There is almost no scholarship on Effenberger, probably because, although he was an important figure in Breslau and Silesia, he did not play a national role, though he was well known across Germany during his lifetime. Christine Nielsen's 1998 dissertation and a 1926 monograph published by Gebrider Mann are the only publications to date. Nielsen rightly focuses on recovering the history of Effenberger's achievements, situating him within German efforts to mitigate regional cultural impulses and politics with national and international ones.54 From the start, Effenberger was very involved in Breslau cultural politics, partly because Breslau was his home but also because of an abiding interest in improving its cultural milieu. In 1907 and 1908, he was a founding member of 40 Beyond the Bauhaus the Knstlerbund Schlesien (Artists' Association) and the Schlesische Bund fur Heimatschutz (Silesian Alliance for Protection of the Homeland), for which he served as business director for many years. Effenberger's active membership in both the KUnstlerbund and the Schle- sische Bund fur Heimatschutz is revealing, for between them they supported the most progressive and most traditional regional art and architecture. Effenberger was particularly involved with the Bund, for which he kept copious records that can still be found in the archives. If May's work in Silesia responded to local and regional building culture as well as regional cultures of domesticity, Effen- berger's work was even more consumed with these issues. His education at both the Baugewerkschule, with its tradition-oriented curriculum, and the Technical High School, under the historicist Pilzer, contributed to his interest in tradition. Whereas May brought an outsider's perspective to Breslau, Effenberger was the consummate insider with a passionate commitment to Silesia and a strong inter- est in all aspects of its culture. Breslau was a stage in May's professional career from which he moved on to his home city, Frankfurt, where his most famous housing projects would be built. Effenberger was heavily invested in his home city, Breslau, where he spent most of his professional years. Before the First World War, Effenberger's architecture already engaged with both local and regional types, on the one hand, and simple, rational plan- ning and new technology, on the other. In a 1914 article, the eminent critic Walter Curt Behrendt cites Effenberger, alongside Tessenow and Schmitthenner, as one of a small group of German architects pursuing new aesthetics that are rooted in the past without imitating historic styles.55 That group was actually much larger and included Erwin Gutkind, Bruno Taut, and Martin Wagner, to name its best-known members. Behrendt illustrates his article with three proj- ects by Effenberger: rural cottages in Schreiberau im Riesengebirge and in an unnamed location and an addition to a school in Schmidtsdorf. From the images and Behrendt's text, it is possible to see how Effenberger's architecture com- bines traditional elements, like steeply gabled roofs and wooden siding, with modern streamlined volumes, simple unadorned surfaces, and rational spatial organization. This earlier work seems to prefigure his interwar housing projects, but more importantly it situates his work between tradition and modernity. Effenberger clearly articulates his regional concerns, which he believes should be central to national cultural policy. In an undated note to Mr. Ulitska at the Ministry of Culture in Berlin, he emphasizes the "reputation of the 'Ger- man cultural achievements' in contrast to those of the eastern border neigh- bors," but also points out that "local, competent building arts" are necessary to preserving German culture, even in technical structures like railroad terminals Tradition and Modernity 41 or factories.56 In his letters to Berlin during the 1920s, Effenberger repeatedly stresses the tactical and cultural significance of the "borderlands" as bastions of German values, not just remote edges of the country.57 The Municipal Housing Authority had extensive design and construction responsibilities, despite its complicated financial and legal status. Although not quite as productive as Schlesische Heimstdtte, it completed 7,300 units be- tween 1919 and 1931, a formidable contribution to the local housing stock.58 Although the Authority was part of the municipality, it hired private architects to design its projects and direct their construction; the initial group was Effen- berger, Paul Heim, and Hermann Wahlich. In this capacity, Effenberger over- saw one of the two largest housing developments the Authority constructed, Breslau Popelwitz (1919-20). In public housing projects like Breslau Popelwitz, Effenberger united tra- ditional and modern design tropes and tested some of the Bund's ideas. Dr. Konrad Hahm, writing about Effenberger in 1929, described him as an archi- tect who combined modernity with tradition. He writes, "The loudly pro- claimed push towards the so-called objectivity is the unpunished force behind an impoverishment of ideas," the "dilettantism," the "cliche individualism," and the "misunderstood rationalization" of contemporary architecture.59 With these and other epithets, Hahm criticizes 1920s architecture for irrationally and seemingly willfully dismissing a centuries-old design tradition in favor of new ideas. His condemnation rests on his belief that it is unnecessary to reject tradi- tion in order to adopt modern approaches. In contrast, Hahm hails Effenberger, whose "buildings show themselves as quite organically developed from a solid, indigenous, traditional building art into a modern formal language, in whose clarity and decisiveness something elemental from the present is apparent."60 He notes Effenberger's commitment to housing reform, construction, and the development of construction norms and architectural types. In other words, Hahm underscores Effenberger's modern approach. He also makes connec- tions between Effenberger's work at the SBH and at the Siedlungsgesellschaft Breslau. But most importantly, Hahm recognizes the interrelation between tra- ditional and modern architecture in Effenberger's work: "Theo Effenberger appears today in the ranks of modern architects who did not mature on the back of a (ideological) program but on the ground of a land and its tradition."61 In other words, Hahm finds Effenberger's marriage of traditional and modern ar- chitecture to be highly successful. Effenberger published his views about Silesian architecture as early as 1910, when he analyzed the historic strengths and weaknesses of building practice in his home province in "On Silesian Building Art." Revealingly, al- 42 Beyond the Bauhaus though Effenberger points to vernacular architecture as an example of Silesian design excellence, he acknowledges the dearth of good buildings, both in clas- sical masterpieces in general and after 1870, ascribing the more recent absence to the rapid growth Silesian cities experienced after 1870 and the government failure to enact adequate building codes to regulate it. He admonishes the pro- fessional and lay audience alike for the lack of sophisticated discourse on ar- chitecture, which he feels contributes to the weak building culture. In the end, though, Effenberger cites grounds for hope: he believes the younger generation has begun to construct buildings of merit. He concludes the article with the promise that, "in further issues we will show the reader what we can learn from the old buildings," making it clear that he saw vernacular architecture as a precedent for contemporary work, much as May did, and implying a direct relationship between old and new, traditional and contemporary design.62 In 1919, Effenberger outlined his approach to large development and Kleinwohnung house design in an article on Garden City planning. The article reveals additional similarities to May's work, but also some distinct differences, especially in the boldness of the designs. Effenberger begins by asserting that "before we discuss building, we need to be clear for whom we are going to build." That is, design requirements differ according to the client or user. Ef- fenberger mentions profession, income, social status, and age as factors the ar- chitect needs to consider, along with the site, whether the property will be owned or rented, and who is funding the project. Implicit in his list of consider- ations is an understanding of the client's cultural orientation, lifestyle, and aes- thetic preferences. Pragmatic thinking permeates every aspect of Effenberger's argument. He feels that form should express function in a simple and straight- forward manner and advocates a no-nonsense approach to design in which, he asserts, "art has nothing direct to do."63 He does admit, however, that "it would certainly not be an artwork when it was obviously planned as one." In other words, art in architecture arises from good, functional design, not the architect's purposeful efforts to turn a building into a piece of art. Effenberger extols simple, basic form-making that is free of ornament and has economical construction and minimal spatial planning without being op- pressively reduced. He points out that if a plan is reduced too drastically, as in the fashionable Existenzminimum, the resulting space will be uncomfortable and undesirable. The house types he mentions are almost identical to those May wrote about over the years, including single family detached, double fam- ily, row, and group houses. Even more interesting, the drawings in the article look remarkably like those May published. For instance, Effenberger's Haus- typ II, "a double house after the Dutch system," strongly resembles May's Tradition and Modernity 43 J~eirtfeh/en dP.r c'nfar m c' c e n A a IIr 2 - _7J Y~in!t ern d efrfen /ten 1i- 11, 0 tube WJ nklJh L '" - d rc'Sf~eh I O6prjtcb,r Fi g. 12. Theo Effen- Sberger, design for a 23 4 5 1 5 small house (1919). "Gerhart Hauptmann" Haustyp Like May, Effenberger uses traditional motifs like the steeply pitched roof, eyebrow windows, accentuated entries, and stucco and wood siding. However, they are often less streamlined than May's work, with more volumetric and planimetric play and a bit more ornamentation, so that they appear less rationalized and more conservative. Effenberger's inten- tions clearly aligned with May's, even if, as his biographer Christine Nielsen suggests, he was a progressive, but not a member of the avant-garde. As a local and regional leader, he was interested in combining the best of new building with the best of tradition. Planning for the Siedlung Pipelwitz began in 1919. The site was in the western part of Breslau, on land the Municipal Building Authority acquired from private owners. The Authority chose this site because the housing short- 44 Beyond the Bauhaus 4~ . - 4 Fig. 13. Theo Effenberger, Breslau Popelwitz. age was particularly acute in the West, where many industrial plants were lo- cated, including the Linke-Hofmann Works, a steel fabricator. Linke-Hofmann had close to 7,000 employees, in part due to wartime expansion. Nearby hous- ing was bursting at the seams, as typified by the Nikolai City Quarter just to the north of Popelwitz with its badly overcrowded five-story Mietskaserne. The density demanded relief. The initial 1919 sketches for the project show a low-rise settlement in a Garden City, but by 1920 Effenberger had revised his proposal, increasing building height and density as well as proposed amenities. The development plans arranged different scales of housing in different relationships to street and garden in order to avoid monotony. All the small and mid-size units had private garden space, while the large Tradition and Modernity 45 blocks had balconies and shared parks. Some sections, like the units along Polsnitzstrasse, feature closed perimeter blocks parallel to the street. Others, like the area on Hellerstrasse, have smaller multifamily buildings separated by green space. Although divided into a grid, the blocks vary in size, offering spatial relief from the potentially oppressive uniformity of the grid planning favored by modern architects. Effenberger also allows the streets to bend gen- tly in some places and alters planning patterns throughout to create visual in- terest. At the center of the development are public services like shops, schools, a bakery, a bank, and a library. Thus, from the start, Effenberger envisioned the development as a miniature village within the larger city, an approach similar to many of May's developments although at a larger scale (Effenberger planned for 2,ooo units, while most of May's projects were several hundred). Like May, Effenberger also worked to rationalize planning in spatial orga- nization, finish choices, and construction techniques. The Municipal Building Authority developed a list of minimum requirements for all its projects that specified room sizes according to function and required direct access to light and air, which Effenberger addressed by orienting units east/west and provid- ing for natural cross ventilation. All the types included a separate bathroom in almost every unit, an indicator of the importance of hygiene to the Municipal Building Authority, since separate and interior bathrooms were still not stan- dard. Effenberger kept the building size at a minimum for the sake of economy but also to make the building function more efficiently. Large repetitive blocks of housing kept costs down, attached row construction facilitated shared utili- ties and services (which also contributed to affordability), and the absence of ornament and use of stucco fagades kept construction relatively cheap. Effen- berger worked with a series of type models similar to those May used at the Schlesische Heimstdtte to speed construction and economize on labor and ma- terial costs, but he stuck to more traditional building materials like brick. The project was also an example of Kleinwohnung planning: over 6o percent of the units had only two rooms, most of the others had one or three, and only a hand- ful had four. The only exceptions were sixty-six single family homes planned for larger nuclear families. The floor plans were as rational and simple as pos- sible. Typically, rooms opened onto a small service corridor minimized to avoid wasted space. The spatial planning was not radical, just functional and economical. In some instances, adjacent rooms opened onto a corridor and each other, a first gesture toward open spatial arrangements, but Effenberger, like May, kept the rooms in a more traditional individuated relationship. The initial perspective drawings for P6pelwitz display an idyllic vision that is hardly compatible with the intended clientele or the dire need for hous- ing, though it does present a traditional notion of domesticity. The drawings 46 Beyond the Bauhaus show pristine tree-lined streets with traffic-free roads, lawns, and open spaces. One depicts two immaculately dressed young ladies with shopping baskets slung over their arms deep in conversation. Both wear bonnets and floor-length dresses that harken back to nineteenth-century peasant dress and have little to do with current fashions. A lone male figure sporting a hat and cane walks in the distance. The three figures suggest a traditional, even ro- mantic, village scene, although the height and scale of the buildings is urban. The architecture has a pitched roof, no surface ornament, the divided light windows and dormers of traditional Silesian architecture, and fagades that appear to be stucco. Photographs of Popelwitz reveal Effenberger's design strategies at work. Each housing type had distinctive features: some roofs were pitched and others flat, entryways varied in location and treatment, windows of differing sizes were arranged in facade patterns that changed from block to block but also on each facade in single blocks, some had unique eyebrow window and dormer forms, and there were different colors and textures of stucco. The blocks also had varying relationships to the sidewalk and street, with some aligning per- pendicular to the sidewalk and others parallel, a changing orientation that cre- ates a pattern of public outdoor spaces in unexpected locations that act as relief to the flush fagades. Unfortunately, the surviving photographs were taken early on, when the planting was young, so the full effect of the landscape design is not visible. Nonetheless, the sheer variety of architectonic elements from traditional and modern architecture is fully evident. Writing about the combination of pitched and flat roofs, Konrad Hahm says Effenberger "attains in his row houses an understated unity between the two forms without discrepancy."64 But Hahm recognizes that Effenberger's achievement extends well beyond the Battle of the Roofs to his overall design solutions. He praises Effenberger for avoiding "the stale modern individualism or un-modern." Another writer praises the suc- cess of Popelwitz where, instead of "modern at all costs," the Siedlung is "pur- poseful and pleasant."65 In other words, Effenberger's pragmatic combination of design elements is in logical harmony rather than at aesthetic odds, a fine statement of his principal achievement: successfully combining tradition and modernity. Breslau Zimpel While Popelwitz did not survive the Second World War, Breslau Zimpel, an- other great Breslau housing development of the 1920s, still stands. Tradition and Modernity 47 s I:rlr' Fig. 14. Theo Effenberger, Breslau Popelwitz. Although designers Paul Heim and Hermann Wahlich did not leave a wealth of documentation like Effenberger and May, it is possible to visit Zim- pel. Located in the east of the city, in the "triangle between the Oder, old Oder, and the Ship Canal," not far from Scheitniger Park, the project is a masterpiece of planning ingenuity.66 The site is approximately one hundred hectares of which, according to the architects, 7.8 percent is covered with roads and path- ways, 79.5 percent is built, and 12.7 percent is green space, though the 79.5 percent includes constructed green spaces such as front and rear gardens. Zim- pel houses about io,ooo residents in 2,6oo units of varying sizes.67 The architects combined garden city planning ideas with traditional and modern aesthetics in an extremely comfortable manner. The overall site plan is asymmetrical, though some of the blocks have local symmetries. Rather than impose an abstract geometry on the site, the architects let its outer boundaries dictate circulation and plot geometries, in much the same way that traditional villages developed. The roads they designed run almost parallel or almost per- pendicular to older streets, with embellishments here and there to create spatial interest. Heim and Wahlich describe the street arrangement as "crooked."68 A large play area lies more or less at the center of the plan, with public buildings flanking it on both sides, including a community house, church, schools, child- 48 Beyond the Bauhaus care facility, swimming pool, stores, and office space. Even today, large ex- panses of green surround the development, giving the sense that Zimpel is situ- ated in a gigantic park. Heim and Wahlich's design choices make Zimpel feel like an isolated and special place, a kind of urban oasis, and create a lively center that recalls typical German villages. As in the traditional village, this center is the administrative, cultural, and public heart of Zimpel-Heim and Wahlich referred to it as the "cultural center" and expected it to be a place for people to congregate and cultivate "spiritual culture."69 Yet despite their age- old origins, Heim and Wahlich chose a modern design language for most of the public buildings, then further shook up the mix by using traditional Silesian brick for the fagades. The brick community house typifies this design strategy, with its simple, unadorned volumes, flat roofs, and thin, cantilevered entry canopy. The school, however, was not such a success. Heim and Wahlich planned it to be relatively low-lying and to relate to the surrounding green space. They were extremely upset when the city decided against their design proposal, in- stead opting for a compact "four-story, school bunker," likely for cost sav- ings.70 Heim bitterly writes, "For the family: out of the tenement house and for the child: into the school barracks."7' It makes no sense to him to improve liv- ing conditions without addressing the state of all the buildings in the commu- nity, and he points to advances in education research that categorically reject the old-fashioned, multistory school as a model for effective education. Heim and Wahlich approached the block arrangement by combining more traditional German planning schemas with Garden City principles. The blocks vary in size, as does their orientation to the street and garden; on principal avenues, blocks run parallel to the street with a minimal front garden; on secondary av- enues, they are set back from the street; and in the interior of the development, every other block turns perpendicular to the street to create lovely outdoor spaces and an incredible spatial dynamism. To further animate the outside spaces, Heim and Wahlich alternated the scale of front and rear gardens, small in the front and generous in the rear. The main housing styles are quite traditional. Every block has a rectangu- lar footprint, and the architects resisted "protruding bays and porches," noting, "This is the most minimal, cheapest form, allows light and sun freely in, and leads to lasting solutions."72 There are several basic types in the development, with standardized plans and construction systems, as in May and Effenberger's projects. The blocks range from semi-detached row houses to multifamily dwellings. They have pitched roofs, occasionally punctuated by eyebrow win- dows, small multipane windows in stucco fagades, and symmetrically arranged Tradition and Modernity 49 elevations. Thus, the planning is rational and modern, even if the appearance is not. Like Effenberger in Pipelwitz, Heim and Wahlich employed a number of design strategies to create visual excitement in what is otherwise an inexpen- sive mass housing project. Corner treatments vary and dormer window designs are sometimes the traditional eyebrow, other times triangular forms, other times square. Walls and picket fences alternate along the street, flanked by trees, to vary both the view and the spatial enclosure. Although Zimpel has a similar approach to many of May's housing es- tates, May cannot be credited with directly influencing Heim and Wahlich, for they began designing Zimpel in 1919, when May had just started to work in Breslau. Instead, Zimpel demonstrates the prevalence of certain ideas at the time. Writing about Zimpel in 1927, Heim says, "Our times are riven, never- theless though the disruptive, something is there, and when there is a will it is possible to lead a simple, healthy, natural life, in spite of the stone confusion of the large city. The transformation of the dwelling and placement outside the city in green alters the context."73 Erich Landsberg calls Zimpel the "ideal, of the possible [architectural] connection with nature."74 Zimpel succeeds be- cause it is a pragmatic mix of aesthetics and planning principles that respond to the functional imperatives, social needs, and site restrictions. Heim and Wahlich did well to heed Fritz Behrendt's warning about the pitfalls of housing design by avoiding "single-minded fanaticism" in any part of their design. Their willingness to combine the comforts and familiarity of the village with the efficacy of Neues Bauen planning and construction makes Zimpel epito- mize the best of Weimar-era housing design in and around Breslau. Zimpel's success, though, should not be measured by claims made in the 1920s by its architects and contemporary critics, but rather by how it has fared over the decades. Today, Breslauers proudly take visitors to visit Zimpel, telling them that it is the most desirable neighborhood in the entire city, because the green space makes it a wonderful area to live in, despite the relatively small units.75 The social and architectural aims of Breslau's housing developments re- sembled other 1920s housing projects across Germany, like Hellerau in Dres- den, Milkmadschen in Poll, and Onkel Toms Hutte and Staaken in Berlin. The interest in providing low-cost, efficient solutions to housing the masses was central to the reform movement. German architects and urban designers grap- pled with combining green space with better site planning, integrating public amenities into large-scale projects, and improving transit infrastructure and ac- cess to the urban core.76 May's attempts to standardize construction systems, floor plans, and building types were also in keeping with his contemporaries. The "Taylorist" hope of creating more functional architecture at every level is 50 Beyond the Bauhaus evident in projects like Dammerstock in Karlsruhe, while the pages of German architectural journals such as Bauwelt and Schlesisches Heim were full of schemes to rationalize architectural design and construction. The struggles with traditional and modern planning and aesthetics were equally common, as the Flat Roof Controversy and varied aesthetics at developments like Onkel Toms Hitte demonstrate. Seen in the broader German context, Breslau's housing de- velopments in the 1920s were well-designed local inflections of national trends. CHAPTER 2 Another Way to Understand Modernism: Breslau Wohnung und Werkbund Ausstellung 1929 "This house naturally satisfies high modern demands but the unforced con- nection to centuries-old requirements is comfortable, because the familiar; the everyday commodities, are connected to sentimental values." -Bauwelt, "Wohnung und Werkraum: Versuchs-Siedlung der Werk- bundausstellung in Breslau" June 1929 "The spirit and conviction of the times, also gives the building arts their tasks, which are only recognized in the context and as part of the great cultural prob- lems," wrote architecture critic Alfred Kruger in a critique of the recently opened Breslau Werkbund exhibition Wohnung und Werkraum (WuWA).' For Kruger, WuWA was the physical manifestation of contemporary modern cul- ture in its most positive forms. WuWA projects, he noted, searched for an ap- propriate expression of the Zeitgeist by reacting to conditions of modern living. He cited machines, trains, the automobile, the airplane, and radio as recent in- ventions that had a profound impact on the way people live, an impact that could be read in the exhibition designs. Kruger related the exhibition, located in a remote corner of Germany, to national cultural concerns, to make it clear that WuWA had local, regional, and national dimensions. As the crowning achievement of the Breslau arts scene, and the turning point after which that scene rapidly declined, WuWA epitomizes the complex Breslau engagement with modernity and 1920s cultural debates. An Exhibition for Breslau Heinrich Lauterbach put forward the initial proposal for a model housing es- tate, likely in 1926. It coincided with the appearance of a municipal study on 51 52 Beyond the Bauhaus W E R I'd R AU> weRm