Greening the City: Urban Landscapes in the Twentieth Century

German Ideologies of City and Nature: The Creation and Reception of Schiller Park in Berlin

German Ideologies of City and Nature The Creation and Reception of Schiller Park in Berlin Stefanie Hennecke Today public parks are an essential part of every big city, and it is hard to imagine city life without them. Often they are described as a retreat from the urban jungles of today’s postindustrial cities. Many of these public parks were established in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A park provides evidence of the social conditions and cultural values of its time, and its layout even today can reveal how the relations between city and nature were envisioned by contemporaries. This essay reconsiders the creation and reception of Schiller Park, planned in 1907 in the north of Berlin as an example of linking city and nature under uniquely German conditions. In early-twentieth-century Germany, the ideal of a new union between nature and city or culture was usually connected with a conservative point of view. This ideal was based on a critical attitude toward the contemporary social conditions in industrialized cities like Berlin. The idea of reconciling city and nature thus was still based on the old conviction that modern cities were not reconcilable with nature. If a house or a park was planned and designed in the context of the all-embracing life reform movement (Lebensreformbewegung ), it was often done not only to bring about social progress and to make life more comfortable but to fundamentally reconfigure society . Today we can appreciate these projects (for example, parks and housing developments) as a benefit to city life. But the conservative character of the vision of a new “natural” society that the authors of these works often advocated is inconsistent with our contemporary ideas of democracy. The horrific consequences—or inherent dangers—of such reform ideas became manifest in National Socialism. In light of this, it is important to analyze the ideological basis of the German reform movement, especially since this ideology , which remained powerful in city planning and open space develop- 76 | Stefanie Hennecke ment throughout the twentieth century, continues to exercise influence to this day. Schiller Park is still considered the first “people’s park” in Berlin and is generally seen as a turning point in the shift toward the modern and functional design of public parks. The process of creating the park, from the first public discussions in 1898 until its completion in 1913, was accompanied by intense debates about the reform of garden design and the inherent social benefits of public open space. The innovations of Schiller Park can be discovered not only in the design itself but also in the process of planning the park and realizing its design. The details of the planning process reveal how a holistic ideal found its way into politics and administration. Thus far, studies of Schiller Park have concentrated on the external conditions of its genesis, for instance on economic conditions, social and political affairs, and on formal questions of design. For example, since the 1970s, the aspects of the park reflecting social reform have been stressed, while its design and reception history have been neglected. But how did contemporaries envision the place of nature in the city? To answer this question, I analyze and interpret original sources from the professional journals of that time. I examine the discursive structure of the professional debates to elucidate the conception of nature held by the park’s planners. What emerges is a striking contrast between the retrospective analyses, which stress the social, political, and aesthetic meanings of Schiller Park, and the contemporary point of view held by its designer and supporters, who anticipated that Schiller Park would contribute to the establishment of a new social order. I describe the status of “nature” within the discourse of city planners, garden designers, and local politicians at the time Schiller Park was planned. In so doing, I hope to add an important dimension to the understanding of how Schiller Park was received by contemporaries and to take a critical look at the possible connections between city and nature from a sociopolitical perspective. The Retrospective Point of View Across Europe, industrialization brought about enormous social upheavals, a dramatic increase in urban populations, and the expansion of city limits. Recent scholarly literature describes social conditions in Berlin at the turn of the twentieth century and assumes that the development of public green space was brought about by the poor living conditions of the working class, and by the lack...