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Munich
and the making of
metropolis, 1895-1930
LEI F JERRAM
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Germany’s other modernity
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Germany’s other modernity
Munich and the making of metropolis,
1895–1930
LEIF JERRAM
Manchester University Press
Manchester
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Copyright © Leif Jerram 2007
The right of Leif Jerram to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted
by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Published byManchester University Press
Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA, UK
www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for
ISBN 978 0 7190 7607 7 hardback
First published 2007
16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Th e publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-
party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such
websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
Typeset by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Manchester
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Contents
List of illustrations vii
Introduction 1
Making sense of modernity 2
Cities, buildings and space 6
Historicising Germany, historicising buildings 10
Structure of the book 13
1 Großstadtangst: disorder and discomfort in the
metropolis 20
The culture of anxiety 24
Metropolis as Heimat 25
Producing Heimat: strategy and tactics 31
Exhibiting the city: exhibiting anxiety 39
Städtebau: building cities 47
Conclusion 60
2 Großstadtfreude: joy in the metropolis 67
Liberal mentality and the community of Großstädte,
1890–1914 69
Liberal mentality and the community of Großstädte,
1918–30 78
Urban selves and rural others: peripheries, edges and
the colonial mentality 82
The dysfunctional countryside and the useful city 90
Modern signs, modern citizens: technological
symbolism in the city 92
Conclusion 100
3 The interior world of modernity 106
The social state and the ungrateful citzen 110
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vi Contents
Domestic space and the modern citizen 126
Conclusion 142
4 The production of space and the execution of
social policy 149
The politics of aesthetics 151
Defining the problem, asking the question: the space
of home 153
Technologies of space: land versus architecture 161
Technology, rent and construction 170
From housing ‘question’ to design ‘policy’, 1917–30 172
Conclusion 185
Conclusion: Germany, space and modernity 192
Bibliography 197
Index 219
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List of illustrations
1.1 Wall paintings, Implerstraße School, Munich, 1900s.
Author’s photograph 37
2.1 The Munich Technisches Rathaus– Technical
Town Hall, 1920s. Author’s photograph 95
2.2 The Munich Elektrizitätsverwaltung– the Electricity
Board, 1920s. Author’s photograph 96
3.1 The Frankfurt Kitchen, c. 1926 Das Neue Frankfurt,
5(1926–27) 129
3.2 The Munich Kitchen, c. 1927 GeWoFAG, Die
Siedlungen der Gemeinnützigen Wohnungsfürsorge
AG München(Munich, 1928) 130
3.3 Christine Frederick’s ‘efficient’ and ‘inefficient’
kitchens, 1919 Frederick, Household Engineering 134
4.1 Typical 1890s Viennese Apartment Block, Eberstadt,
Handbuch des Wohnungswesens 157
4.2 Plans for model small flats for the poor, Vienna,
1900sEberstadt, Handbuch des Wohnungswesens 166
4.3 ‘Garden City’ designs for housing reform, 1900s
Eberstadt, Neue Studien 167
4.4 Alte Heide Housing Estate, Munich, 1919. Author’s
photograph 177
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Introduction
You live in a big city, Man lebt in einer großen Stadt,
And yet you’re so alone. Und ist doch so allein.
The man you yearn for, Der Mann, nachdem man Sehnsucht hat,
Is nowhere to be found. Scheint doch nicht da zu sein.
You don’t know him at all . . . Man kennt ihn nicht,
And yet you know him so well, Und kennt ihn doch genau,
And you live in angst, Und man hat Angst,
That he’ll pass you by. Daß er vorüber geht.1
The opening lines of Marlene Dietrich’s 1933 hit, Allein in einer
großen Stadt, give an impression of life in a big city with which
manywould have been familiar in the first decades of the twentieth
century – and may still recognise today. Yearning, desire, the frisson
of contact and the potential for love and adventure are coupled with
Angstand a fear of the unknown, and a sense that life is passing one
by. Everything is pervaded by the paradox that one has never been
so physically close to so many people, and yet so distant and
detached. The quality of life in the city – quality in both its senses,
that of the general attributes that city life possesses, and its material
standard of living – was a subject of immense general interest across
the West before and after 1900. Yet it concerned none more than
those whose job it was to ensure that this quality, in these two senses,
was as high as possible. The governors and administrators of any
city had an interest in every aspect of urban life, from the economy
to the emotional well-being of the citizens.
This book focuses on the ways in which German urban élites tried
to mould German cities in the first thirty or so years of the twenti-
eth century, between the ‘birth’ of modern planning in the 1890s and
the complete cessation of building caused by the economic collapse
around 1930. The book investigates the attributes which ‘metropo-
lis’, or Großstadt, was given by early twentieth-century Germans. It
examines the faith they had that in reshaping the life-world of the
