Topographies of Class: Modern Architecture and Mass Society in Weimar Berlin

1. Setting the Scene: Weimar Berlin, circa 1920

chapter 1 Setting the Scene: Weimar Berlin, circa 1920 Despite the modernist of‹ce buildings and public housing initiatives for which it has become known, Berlin during the 1920s and early 1930s remained essentially a Wilhelmine city. While its social composition and administrative structure underwent fundamental changes, its external appearance continued to re›ect the political ambitions and economic developments of the prewar years. Having left an indelible mark on the layout of the city center and the look of many neighborhoods, the imperial past consequently provided the stage on which modernism and modernity after World War I made their spectacular entry in the form of new media, technologies, and audiovisual attractions. Moreover, the prewar ideologies of the urban established the conditions under which Weimar architectural culture assumed such a key role in the recon‹guration and rearticulation of class. After the founding of the Wilhelmine Empire in 1871, the German capital experienced a period of exceptional growth, with its population increasing from one million inhabitants during the 1870s and two million around 1900 to four million by 1920. The belated emergence of a world city that, before German uni‹cation, had been little more than a Prussian garrison town and royal court produced a uni‹ed, homogeneous cityscape that, with the exception of the historic center, lacked the rich layers of medieval , feudal, and imperial history found in other European capitals. The creation of Greater Berlin in 1920 made the German capital the third largest city in the world after London and New York. With rigid class divisions already under attack since the rise of social democracy and workingclass movements in the 1870s, and with the political institutions and structures of the Wilhelmine Empire either dismantled or weakened after Germany’s defeat in World War I, the city was more than ready to com19 plete the process of urban reform initiated around the turn of the century and to fully realize the project of modernity under democratic conditions (‹g. 1.1). Born out of the spirit of reform and revolution, Weimar architectural culture came to function as a laboratory for artistic innovation and social change. A politically radicalized generation of architects emphatically rejected the legacies of the Wilhelmine Empire and set out to develop forms and structures more appropriate to the political goals of the Weimar Republic . Because of the lack of available funds and resources, ‹rst during the immediate postwar period and then during the world economic crisis after 1929, public and private commissions remained few and far between, prompting many to turn their creative energies toward urban utopias and architectural fantasies. The irreconcilable gap between theory and praxis— and the strong desire to close that gap sometime in the near future—con20 Topographies of Class Fig. 1.1. Kurzer Wegweiser und Bildplan von Berlin, Ausstellungs-, Messe- und Fremdenverkehrsamt der Stadt Berlin 1931. Courtesy of Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz Berlin. [To view this image, refer to the print version of this title.] tributed to the emergence of architectural culture as a master discourse bringing together diverse ideas about social reform, technological progress, economic growth, industrial design, and modern life. Key to the resulting synergies was the power of architecture to provide a spatial image of the project of modernity and to make visible the changing dynamics of modern class society. During an all too brief period after the stabilization of the currency in 1924, these ideas found their clearest articulation in the work of Martin Wagner and the architects associated with the Neue Berlin (New Berlin). In terms of measurable accomplishments, the program of the New Berlin remained limited to a few well-known buildings, and many more incomplete or unrealized projects. Even enthusiastic endorsements in the feuilleton, the cultural pages of daily newspapers and illustrated magazines, could not distract from the fact that the city’s basic structures, beginning with its geometrical layout and uni‹ed form, and its eclectic and, more often than not, ostentatious styles were products not of the modern spirit in architecture but of the enormous waves of urbanization, industrialization, and modernization already completed before the outbreak of World War I.1 Before and after the war, the oppositions, contradictions, and nonsynchronicities of Weimar architectural culture became most apparent in relation to the changing structure of class society. Wilhelmine Berlin had been de‹ned by the old aristocratic and military elites as well as by an in›uential educated bourgeoisie, a...