Working staff for the reconstruction of bombed-out cities

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The working staff for the reconstruction of bombed-out cities ( called "Working Staff Dr. Wolters" in the business distribution plan of the Reich Ministry of Armament and War Production ) was a working staff from the General Building Inspectorate , who was subordinate to Albert Speer from December 1943 and who plan and rebuild the cities destroyed in the air war of the Second World War should coordinate. The cities that were not yet the focus of the Allied bombing raids were also included in the planning.

prehistory

Since Speer took over the armaments ministry (at that time still ministry for armament and ammunition) after the death of the civil engineer Fritz Todt in February 1942, he kept an eye on a number of urban planning projects that he wanted to deal with after the war. In March 1943, he had Adolf Hitler approve, despite the general prohibition of so-called “non-war planning”, to start planning the reconstruction of some of the cities that were particularly hard hit by bombs. Hitler's idea was to restore the city centers of historic cities, if possible with widened streets. From November 1943, however, Speer's goal was mainly to create makeshift housing and to develop basic plans for redesigning cities.

The decree

The legal basis of the task force was the “Leader's Decree on the Preparation of the Reconstruction of Bomb-Damaged Cities”, formulated by Speer and signed by Hitler on October 11, 1943.

The content of the decree was as follows:

“In the cities particularly badly affected by bomb damage, in connection with the restoration work, plans must be carried out now to ensure the influence on the future design of these cities. Urban planning plans therefore still have to be carried out to a limited extent in these cities during the war. I commission the general building inspector for the Reich capital to do this,

  1. determine the cities in which such planning is to be carried out,
  2. to direct and influence the planning of these cities through appropriate measures,
  3. to support this planning by providing technical staff from other cities.

The highest Reich authorities are instructed to give Reich Minister Speer the necessary support to carry out this task. "

With the signing of the decree, Speer's powers over the Gauleiters in the German Reich were significantly expanded.

The working staff

In a meeting on December 18, 1943, in which Willy Liebel , Karl Maria Hettlage and Rudolf Wolters took part in addition to Speer , the management of the staff, the distribution of business and the filling of positions were discussed. The main employees were architects who had already worked for the general building inspector, plus other leading city planners and architects from the German Empire. On January 1st, 1944, Rudolf Wolters was appointed "Chief of the Task Force for Reconstruction Planning of Destroyed Cities" by Speer. A business distribution plan dated July 1944 identified the areas of responsibility and those responsible: 1. Organizational issues : Karl Berlitz ; 2. Reference values: Konstanty Gutschow ; 3. Planning of residential areas: Hans Stephan ; 4. Green area regulation: Willi Schelkes ; 5. Regional planning and railway facilities: Reinhold Niemeyer ; 6. Special tasks: Friedrich Tamms ; 7. Civil engineering, construction and implementation measures: Tischer (possibly Alfred Tischer ).

In addition to the aforementioned, the staff included a wide circle of advisors and speakers, including: Wilhelm Kreis , Richard Zorn (Gutschow employee), Theodor Dierksmeier , Hans Flehr , Hanns Dustmann , Karl Elkart , Hans Freese , Hermann Giesler , Friedrich Hetzelt , Hans-Hermann Klaje , Caesar Pinnau , Herbert Rimpl , Julius Schulte-Frohlinde , Wilhelm Wortmann , Hans Bernhard Reichow , Werner Hebebrand , Ernst Neufert and Rudolf Hillebrecht .

The five major meetings of the task force in Wriezen

A total of five staff meetings took place in Wriezen between the summer and autumn of 1944 : while no minutes have been handed down from the first meeting, evidence is available for the other.

The second session

At the second conference from August 19 to 21, 1944, Gutschow spoke about urban planning guidelines, Niemeyer about spatial planning and urban development, Schelkes about green space planning and Stephan about housing construction, particularly about the restoration of living space. Wolters then used Rostock as an example to explain the makeshift accommodation of 6,000 people. The following discussion covered i.a. a. Barracks, the manufacture of model buildings, financing and town planning rights and the position of technology in the administration.

The third session

The speakers at the third conference (September 16-17, 1944) were: Niemeyer on urban development and traffic, Gutschow on Hamburg's general planning, Rimpl on industrial space planning and finally Niemeyer on the redesign of the cities of Oberhausen , Duisburg and Essen .

The fourth session

At the fourth conference from October 14 to 15, 1944, Berlitz spoke about studies of housing construction, Neufert about systematic standardization, Hetzelt about building temporary accommodation after the war, Gutschow about floor plan types in housing construction and Stephan about housing construction in the general development plan of the Reich capital. Afterwards, two guests had their say, namely Friedrich Burgdörfer on population policy and housing construction and Walter Groß (head of the NSDAP's Office of Racial Policy ) on “racial issues”.

The fifth session

At the fifth and last conference from November 11 to 12, 1944, Wolters first presented the results of a consultation with Speer and then Gutschow gave a lecture on the presentation of reconstruction plans, Steffens on construction volume and construction capacity, and the statics specialist Fritz Leonhardt on the technical possibilities for the future housing construction.

Although the Gauleiter surveyed had already reported over 80 destroyed cities in the late summer of 1944, only 42 of them received a place on the list of "reconstruction cities" named in the draft of the Führer decree of 19 September 1944.

Speer and Wolters had to assert themselves against various interests in order to achieve their goals. For example, Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels banned almost all planning work in October 1944, which brought the staff to the verge of dissolution. There was also resistance from Reich Housing Commissioner Robert Ley , who wanted his “Special Representative for the Design of Residential Areas” Karl Neupert to be involved in post-war planning.

After the war

Until the end of the war, the staff worked on the plans for the reconstruction; the individual planners were assigned one or more cities, for which they were to coordinate the reconstruction planning in cooperation with the respective city planning offices. Shortly after the end of the war, the team split up and many members were commissioned as department heads and advisory councils in the cities with the reconstruction that they had already looked after on the staff.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Stadtbauwelt 1984: p. 2082.
  2. ↑ Stadtbauwelt 1984: pp. 2067, 2083.
  3. ↑ Stadtbauwelt 1984: p. 2083.
  4. ↑ Jörn Düwel / Niels Gutschow: Architecture and National Socialism - Demonstration of Power in Europe, DOM publishers, Berlin 2015, p. 275, ISBN 978-3-86922-026-0 .
  5. ↑ Gunnar Klack: Built landscapes. Fehling + Gogel and organic architecture. Landscape and movement as narrative of nature. transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2015, ISBN 978-3-8376-3290-3 , p. 266, note 269 [“ Werner Durth only writes the surname Tischer , presumably it is about the architect Alfred Tischer (1884–1971). “].
  6. ↑ Claudia Heidenfelder: Postwar Period: Reconstruction , Planet Wissen , May 17, 2016.

literature

  • Gerd Albers , Werner Durth : The legend of the "zero hour". Planning 1940–1950. In: Stadtbauwelt. 84 = construction world . 75, 48, 1984, ISSN  0005-6855 , pp. 2023-2132.
  • Werner Durth: German Architects. Biographical entanglements 1900–1970. Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-423-04579-5 ( dtv. Dtv-Wissenschaft 4579).
  • Werner Durth, Niels Gutschow : Dreams in ruins. Urban planning 1940–1950. Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-423-04604-X ( dtv. Dtv-Wissenschaft 4604).
  • Tilman Harlander : Between home and living machine. Housing construction and housing policy in the time of National Socialism. Birkhäuser, Basel et al. 1995, ISBN 3-7643-5219-1 ( City, Planning, History 18), (At the same time: Aachen, Techn. Hochsch., Habil.-Schr., 1994).

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