Alwin Seifert

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Alwin Seifert (born May 31, 1890 in Munich , † February 27, 1972 in Dießen am Ammersee ) was a German garden architect , architect, university teacher , landscape designer, local curator and conservationist . He is considered to be one of the most important representatives of the early ecological movement and biodynamic agriculture even in the time of National Socialism .

life and work

Origin and education

Seifert was born as the son of the construction engineer and contractor Hermann Seifert. His mother Anna Sourell, who came from a Huguenot family, died at birth. From 1909 he studied architecture at the Technical University of Munich and completed an apprenticeship as a bricklayer in the summer months from 1909 to 1911, which he completed in 1912 with the journeyman's examination. He completed his studies in 1913 with a diploma. He then worked as a construction technician and site manager in a Munich construction company. During the First World War , he volunteered for the railroad troops in 1915 and was a lieutenant at the end of the war.

After the war, Seifert took over his father's construction business, which went bankrupt during the hyperinflation in 1920. From 1920 to 1923 he was a university assistant at the Technical University of Munich with Emil von Mecenseffy and Hermann Buchert in the areas of structural engineering and agricultural construction. In 1923 he started his own business as an architect. Seifert married Maria Orff, sister of the composer Carl Orff, for the second time in 1924 . The marriage remained childless.

Seifert, who had already been interested in landscape and flora as a high school student, trained himself as a landscape architect , as there was neither a defined job description nor a course for this profession at that time. He was influenced on the one hand by the youth movement's understanding of nature , which he had joined as a member of the Wandervogels . On the other hand, he received the writings of Paul Schultze-Naumburg on landscape and technology as well as the concept of biodynamic agriculture by the anthroposophist Rudolf Steiner . In 1932 he got a teaching position at the Technical University of Munich, which he was able to redesign himself to later become the title of "practical garden design".

Through his work, Seifert came into contact with the homeland security movement . He became a member of the Bavarian State Association for Homeland Security and has been a member of its small building committee since 1926. From 1927 he began to publish in specialist journals and in 1929 drew attention to himself with the article “Thoughts on down-to-earth garden design” in the garden art magazine . In 1932 he took on a teaching position for garden design and agricultural construction at the Technical University of Munich, which he held until 1944.

Role in National Socialism

Seifert's role in National Socialism is shaped by his own trivializing account, which he presented in particular in the arbitration chamber proceedings for denazification . It could only be refuted years later.

prehistory

According to Joachim Wolschke-Buhlmahn and Gert Gröning , Seifert belonged to the secret Thule Society . The historian Thomas Zeller sees no evidence of this. According to Seifert's own statements, he joined the Völkisch Widar Bund in 1919 . There he met Rudolf Hess . Such a bond is not to be proven. Possibly it was a box belonging to the Thule Society . At least from 1919 to 1921 he was a member of the German National People's Party (DNVP). Seifert's ethnic and anti-Semitic attitudes made it easy for him to catch up with National Socialism .

In 1937 he became a member of the NSDAP , but later claimed that he had never been entirely in line with National Socialist ideology. So he adhered to the racial theory of the botanist Friedrich Merkenschlager , an early National Socialist who fell out with Walther Darré in 1933 . Seifert's influence during the Nazi era resulted less from his institutional functions than from his personal connections. He benefited from support from Hess and Fritz Todt and claimed that he lost influence after Todt's death and Hess's "flight to England". The fact that he had also acted as a contact person for the anthroposophical movement made him suspicious in the eyes of the Reich Security Main Office , which had him under surveillance at times in 1941.

Reich landscape attorney

In 1933 he was assigned to the staff of the commissioner (later general inspector ) for motorway construction Fritz Todt and in 1934 was appointed advisor for questions relating to the integration of the landscape in motorway construction . He used this function to get in close contact with Nazi party leaders; He conducted intensive correspondence with Rudolf Hess, Martin Bormann , Heinrich Himmler , Richard Darré , Albert Speer and Oswald Pohl . He also tried to influence the party leadership by means of polemical articles in favor of nature and the landscape. In the pamphlet The Desertification of Germany , for example, he called for the position of “General Inspector for German Water Management” including a research institute to be created. He was charged with denigrating the Reich Labor Service , but was nevertheless able to successfully position alternative hydraulic engineering methods. In 1938 Adolf Hitler awarded him the honorary title of "Professor".

On May 31, 1940, on the occasion of his 50th birthday, he was appointed "Reich Landscape Attorney". Seifert, who became an influential advisor to Todt, gathered landscape architects, plant sociologists and conservationists around him, with whom he tried to implement his ideas. In particular, he was instrumental in ensuring that every top construction management of the Reichsautobahn had its own "landscape attorney", who was responsible for all the relevant measures and was involved in the staking out of the motorway routes. In order to achieve his goal of a “landscape-friendly” motorway, he commissioned the plant sociologist Reinhold Tüxen to map the area of ​​the Reichsautobahn in a plant-sociological way according to Tüxen's construct of potential natural vegetation . This mapping should serve as the basis for a natural "German" planting. In addition, he perceived steppe landscapes as "un-German" and demanded that the Eastern European areas conquered by the Wehrmacht be "Germanized" by planting field hedges. He criticized Rudolf Hess for the fact that the Nazi racial ideology was too one-sided "Nordic" and wanted to see an "Alpine race" included in it. In the sense of an export of nature conservation problems of the " Altreich " to the east, Seifert stated that "our Alpine lakes" (in the specific case the Tyrolean Plansee ) should be "spared" as a training area for the navy, "as long as there is an inland lake outside Germany". It is unclear whether Seifert was involved in the experiments in the anthroposophically influenced medicinal herb plantation of the Dachau concentration camp , where concentration camp prisoners had to work.

He also derived his ideas of a near-natural hydraulic engineering from his folk ideas and thus became one of the founding fathers of engineering biology . Another field in which Seifert was active was biodynamic agriculture , which goes back to the anthroposophist Rudolf Steiner .

During the Nazi era, Seifert referred to the nature prophet and pacifist Gusto Gräser , a student of the life reformer Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach , whom he portrayed in his book The Age of Living as a “herald” and “forerunner” of this same age.

Denazification process

After the Second World War , Seifert's paper NS Ordensburg Sonthofen was placed on the list of literature to be segregated in the Soviet occupation zone .

Seifert succeeded in the denazification process initially as a “fellow traveler”, later (1949) to be classified as “unencumbered” because he had to accept “considerable economic and professional disadvantages” under National Socialism. Seifert claimed that the Reichsleiter of the NSDAP, Martin Bormann , prevented Seifert from receiving a chair in 1938. As early as the early 1940s, through the influence of anthroposophy, he had turned away from his “racial arrogance”, which was born out of his materialistic mental attitude and which had buried the natural instincts for the real values ​​of a person for more than a decade. With Todt's death and Hess's flight to England in 1942, he lost his support in the regime and was massively disadvantaged as a result. His correspondence with party officials "only served scientific tasks or the defense of his professional position". In his favor it was taken into account that he campaigned for the racially persecuted and that he expressed architectural criticism of party buildings.

Phillip Auerbach, as State Commissioner for Racially, Religiously and Politically Persecuted Persons, was appalled and initiated a retrial against Seifert, which ended in second instance in October 1949 with the classification as "unencumbered". Seifert stood up for the biodynamic economy with great moral courage, spoke out in favor of Jews and politically persecuted students and accepted financial and professional disadvantages in the process.

In none of the proceedings could the party records that had been seized by the US military government be viewed . When these were finally available, it became clear that Seifert was by no means only patronized by Todt and Hess, but was in close contact with a large number of top party officials and that Himmler, Speer and Pohl had systematically advocated him.

In the Federal Republic of Germany

He continued to use the title "Reichslandschaftsanwalt" on his stationery and tried to underline his continued great influence on landscape architecture with a title: he did not succeed in becoming a "Federal Landscape Attorney". In 1950 he resumed his teaching position at the Technical University of Munich and in 1954 he succeeded in receiving a chair for landscape conservation, landscape design and road and hydraulic engineering . This was expressly described as reparation for the disadvantages suffered in the Third Reich. From 1950 to 1970 he was called in as a consultant in hydraulic engineering and designed the landscape integration and design of barrages on the Danube and the expansion of the Moselle into a major shipping route. He was involved in the construction of the Jochenstein power plant and from 1954 on the Main-Danube Canal . At his chair, he was formative for the development of the landscape architect profession.

From 1958 to 1963 he was the "federal leader" of the federal nature conservation in Bavaria . In 1961, Seifert was one of the 16 signatories of the “ Green Charter of Mainau ”, which was initiated by Count Lennart Bernadotte and announced on site by Federal President Lübke .

Seifert has been composting in his own garden in Munich-Laim since 1930 and has published his findings since 1945. With his book Gärtnern, Ackern ohne Poison , which is still published today , he wrote a work on organic farming that was particularly popular in the burgeoning green-ecological movement in the early 1970s . This was propagated among other things in circles of the World Federation for the protection of life .

buildings

Gardens and parks

  • before 1940: Wohngarten S. in Munich-Laim
  • 1938: Schwangau spa gardens
  • 1938: Garten B. in Munich-Biederstein, Klementinenstraße 8 (with Roderich Fick )
  • before 1940: gardens at a country palace in Luxembourg
  • 1950: Green areas on new row apartment buildings in Munich- Schwabing (with Ernst Barth )
  • before 1955: Garden to an administration building in the Rhineland (with Prof. Bernhard Bleeker )
  • before 1955: residential garden at Auer Mühlbach in Munich
  • before 1955: Small residential garden in the Rhineland

Memberships and honors after 1945

Fonts

  • 1930: Down-to-earth garden art . In: Gartenkunst Heft 43/1930, pp. 162–164.
  • 1931: From garden fences to gazebos - woodwork for garden lovers . Gartenbauverlag Trowitzsch und Sohn, Frankfurt / Oder
  • 1933: The coming garden . In: Deutsche Bauzeitung , issue 67/1933, pp. 367–371.
  • 1937: Nature and technology in German road construction . In: Naturschutz , issue 18/1937, 229–232.
  • 1938: Hydraulic engineering closer to nature . In: Die Deutsche Wasserwirtschaft , issue 12/1938: 361–366
  • 1938: Alpine walls In: Research work from road construction , Vol. 11, Berlin 1938
  • 1943: The real house in Gau Tirol-Vorarlberg. An investigation into the nature and origin of the alpine flat roof house and the principles of a rebirth in the spirit of our time . 83 p., With num. Ill. Alpenschriften, Innsbruck (Gau-Verlag)
  • 1943: In the age of the living. Nature - home - technology . First volume. Müller publishing house, Planegg
  • 1944: The hedge landscape . Potsdam Lectures VIII, Potsdam
  • 1945/1948/1957?: Compost primer for the Bavarian farmer (forerunner of: gardening, fields - without poison )
  • 1950: Italian gardens. A picture book . 110 p., G. Callwey publishing house, Munich
  • 1959: The restoration of the landscape in the area of ​​quarries . Nature and landscape 34:40.
  • 1962: A life for the landscape . 160 p., 49 ill., Eugen Diederichs Verlag, Düsseldorf / Cologne
  • 1964: Compost in the garden without poisons - primer for small and large gardeners, farmers and farmers . 121 S., Wirtschaftsverlag M. Klug, Munich-Pasing
  • 1971: gardening, farming - without poison . 209 p., With 14 illustrations, Biederstein-Verlag, Munich
  • 2008: gardening, farming - without poison. With an afterword by Hansjörg Küster. Verlag CH Beck, Munich, 251st - 255th thousand of the total print run

literature

sorted alphabetically by author

  • Reinhard Falter : Alwin Seifert (1890–1972). The biography of nature conservation in the 20th century. In: Reports of ANL 28, 2004, ISSN  0344-6042 , pp. 69-104.
  • Gert Gröning, Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn 1989. Changes in the philosophy of garden architecture in the 20th century and their impact upon the social and spatial environment. Journal of Garden History 9/2, 53-70. doi: 10.1080 / 01445170.1989.10408267 .
  • NN: Alwin Seifert (1890–1972). “A life for the landscape” = sheets on Bavarian nature conservation history . Ed .: Bavarian Academy for Nature Conservation and Landscape Management . Laufen undated (after 1992) (twelve-page leaflet). online (PDF)
  • Joachim Radkau , Frank Uekötter (Ed.): Nature conservation and National Socialism. (= History of nature and environmental protection , 1.) Campus, Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 3-593-37354-8 .
  • Charlotte Reitsam: Reichsautobahn in the field of tension between nature and technology. Habilitation thesis at the Technical University of Munich , Faculty of Architecture
  • Charlotte Reitsam: The concept of “down-to-earth garden art” Alwin Seifert. A völkisch-conservative model of aesthetics in landscape architecture and its professional reception to this day . In: Die Gartenkunst  13 (2/2001), pp. 275–303.
  • Thomas Zeller:  Seifert, Alwin. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 24, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-428-11205-0 , p. 189 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Axel Zutz: To anchor landscape services of general interest between 1945 and the beginning of the 1960s . In: Wendelin Strubelt, Detlef Briesen (ed.) Spatial planning after 1945. Continuities and new beginnings in the Federal Republic of Germany. Campus Verlag , Frankfurt / New York 2015, pp. 151–196.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Thomas Zeller: Driving Germany. The Landscape of the German Autobahn, 1930–1970. Berghahn Books, New York, NY 2007, ISBN 978-0-85745-226-9 , p. 31 f.
  2. ^ Thomas Zeller: Driving Germany. The Landscape of the German Autobahn, 1930–1970. Berghahn Books, New York, NY 2007, ISBN 978-0-85745-226-9 , pp. 35, 39.
  3. ↑ a b c Thomas Zeller: Alwin Seifert . In: Neue Deutsche Biographie 24 (2010), pp. 189–190
  4. ^ Thomas Zeller: Driving Germany. The Landscape of the German Autobahn, 1930–1970. Berghahn Books, New York, NY 2007, ISBN 978-0-85745-226-9 , p. 35.
  5. ^ Thomas Zeller: Driving Germany. The Landscape of the German Autobahn, 1930–1970. Berghahn Books, New York, NY 2007, ISBN 978-0-85745-226-9 , p. 45.
  6. ^ Thomas Zeller: Driving Germany. The Landscape of the German Autobahn, 1930–1970. Berghahn Books, New York, NY 2007, ISBN 978-0-85745-226-9 , p. 38.
  7. ^ Frank Uekötter : The Green and the Brown. A History of Conservation in Nazi Germany. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, New York 2006, ISBN 978-0-521-61277-7 , p. 78.
  8. ^ Thomas Zeller: Driving Germany. The Landscape of the German Autobahn, 1930–1970. Berghahn Books, New York, NY 2007, ISBN 978-0-85745-226-9 , p. 39.
  9. ↑ a b c d Sabine Klotz: »I myself had never dealt with party political tendencies«. Case studies on denazification and arbitration chamber proceedings by architects in Bavaria. In: Winfried Nerdinger , Inez Florschütz (ed.): Architecture of the child prodigies - awakening and displacement in Bavaria 1945–1960. Architekturmuseum der Technische Universität München, Verlag Anton Pustet 2005, ISBN 3-7025-0505-9 , pp. 32–43, 41
  10. ↑ Joachim Radkau, Frank Uekötter (ed.), Pp. 276, 297 and 304
  11. ↑ Allgäuer Druckerei u. Verl. Anst., Kempten 1937
  12. ^ Letter S , German Administration for National Education in the Soviet Occupation Zone, list of literature to be segregated
  13. ↑ Delmenhorster Kurier, 24./25. March 1979, page 1: "Against inconsiderate interference in the cycle of nature"
  14. ↑ 130 Eigenheim , Verlag F. Bruckmann AG, Munich 1935
  15. ↑ a b Der Baumeister , born 1960, issue 5.
  16. ↑ Der Baumeister , born 1957, issue 5.
  17. ↑ a b c d The builder 6/1950
  18. ^ The spa gardens in Schwangau. Community of Schwangau, accessed on August 7, 2020 .
  19. ↑ a b c Der Baumeister , born 1955, issue 8.
personal data
SURNAME Seifert, Alwin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German garden architect and university lecturer
DATE OF BIRTH May 31, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH February 27, 1972
Place of death Dießen am Ammersee